The Daily Agenda for Sunday, May 26
The Daily Agenda for Saturday, May 25
The Daily Agenda for Friday, May 24
Boy Scouts of America Votes To Allow Gay Members, Retains Ban On Gay Leaders
Nevada House votes to reverse marriage ban
The Daily Agenda for Thursday, May 23
It's Not the Principle, It's the Prejudice
Congratulations Mitch!
Featured Reports
What Are Little Boys Made Of?
In this original BTB Investigation, we unveil the tragic story of Kirk Murphy, a four-year-old boy who was treated for “cross-gender disturbance” in 1970 by a young grad student by the name of George Rekers. This story is a stark reminder that there are severe and damaging consequences when therapists try to ensure that boys will be boys.
Slouching Towards Kampala: Uganda’s Deadly Embrace of Hate
When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 500 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.
David Benkof: Behind the Mask
At first glance, David Benkof appears to be a young gay man who believes that same-sex marriage will damage the institution of marriage, that there are better options for gay couples than marriage, that the community should join him in prioritizing other more pressing issues, and that the marriage discussion is harming the efforts of gay couples in red states to get recognition for their unions. He also claims that he’s a gay columnist, that he speaks for an influential collection of gay thinkers, and that he is part of the gay and lesbian community and that he shares our goals and dreams. But none of that is true.
“Repeat After Me”: The Reparative Therapy Echo Chamber
The April 2008 edition of the pay-to-publish vanity journal Psychological Reports featured a new report from NARTH. Written by NARTH president A. Dean Byrd, past president Joseph Nicolosi, and Richard W. Potts, the report carries the unwieldy but self-descriptive title, “Clients perceptions of how reorientation therapy and self-help can promote changes in sexual orientation.” While the title describes what the authors meant to show — how clients describe the benefits of reparative therapy — the report itself actually illustrates something very different: the ex-gay movement’s remarkable ability to instill an almost robot-like parroting of ex-gay rhetoric among their clients.
Testing the Premise: Is MRSA The New Gay Plague?
The Toronto Star said that a new study “discover[ed] a new strain” of a super-bug “hitting gay men.” Headlines in Britain screamed, “Flesh-eating bug strikes San Francisco’s gay community,” and anti-gay extremists across America spread the alarm that gays were introducing another plague into “the general population.” But there was a small problem with all of this: None of it is true!
Paul Cameron’s World
In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.
From the Inside: Focus on the Family’s “Love Won Out”
On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.
Prologue: Why I Went To “Love Won Out”
Part 1: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Part 2: Parents Struggle With “No Exceptions”
Part 3: A Whole New Dialect
Part 4: It Depends On How The Meaning of the Word "Change" Changes
Part 5: A Candid Explanation For "Change"
The Heterosexual Agenda: Exposing The Myths
At last, the truth can now be told.
Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!
And don't miss our companion report, How To Write An Anti-Gay Tract In Fifteen Easy Steps.
Testing The Premise: Are Gays A Threat To Our Children?
Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.
Straight From The Source: What the “Dutch Study” Really Says About Gay Couples
Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.
The FRC’s Briefs Are Showing
Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.
Review: The Gay Report
When Karla Jay and Allan Young published The Gay Report in 1979, it quickly a favorite source of statistics for many anti-gay extremists. But before you accepts these statistic at face value, you should examine the inner workings of this survey very carefully. What you learn might surprise you.
Daniel Fetty Doesn’t Count
The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.
News, analysis and fact-checking of anti-gay rhetoric
Posts 
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L. Junius Brutus
December 21st, 2010 | LINK
Religious radicals of the world, unite, no matter your religion!
Scott P.
December 21st, 2010 | LINK
Hmmm, if memory serves me correctly, the Hasidim in Israel don’t serve in the military on religious grounds. Isn’t that the same here? If so, it takes a LOT of chutzpah for them to dare to even come near the gates of West Point, let alone protest against the repeal!
Mana
December 21st, 2010 | LINK
Every religion has its nutjobs, but you’d really think that after a couple thousand years of anti-Semitic persecution, even hardcore conservatives would have some sense knocked into them.
EZam
December 21st, 2010 | LINK
I wonder if those Hasidics would rather live in a Muslim country.
Emily K
December 21st, 2010 | LINK
Scott P. is right, the Haredi in Israel don’t serve in the army. They also get a LOT of tax money to sit around and study. Basically, thanks to their clout, they’ve voted the state of Israel into supporting them carte blanche.
And yes I doubt many of the evangelicals in the gates would take very kindly to them. (Then again, the evangelicals might learn a thing or two about the Torah.)
Regan DuCasse
December 21st, 2010 | LINK
That’s FOUR guys, right?
The controversial Rabbi Shmuely Boteach recently wrote that anyone who doesn’t want talented and committed gay soldiers to serve in an all volunteer military, better be prepared to strap on a rifle and dodge bullets themselves.
SOMEBODY has to protect one’s country and it’s citizens.
This is definitely one of those STFU times for these protesters.
Ben in Oakland
December 21st, 2010 | LINK
As an occasional Jew, I always find it amazing when Jews, of ALL people, can find it in their hearts to justify a hatred/fear/superiority/ignorance towards a group of people they do not know, know nothing about, and who have done them no harm except to exist.
“Only God can establish what’s wrong and what’s right. We cannot uproot his rules,” Diamant said. “The whole LGBT agenda is evil,” using the abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. Substitute “Jewish” for LGBT and you have the basic philosophy of the Third Reich…
…which in turn found it’s justification in 2000 years of official anti-semitism.
And here is htat lovely man, Martin Luther, on this very same subject:
Section XI of the Luther’s “On the Jews and Thier Lies” contains a series of seven points, in some of which Luther calls (1) for Jewish synagogues and schools to be set on fire and razed to the ground, (2) for houses owned by Jews to be likewise razed, 3) for rabbis to be forbidden to preach, and to be executed if they do, (4) for safe conduct on the roads to be abolished for Jews, 5) for the Jewish population, whom he elsewhere refers to as “venomous, bitter worms”, to be put to work as agricultural slave labor.
Charming.
Ben in Oakland
December 21st, 2010 | LINK
I couldn’t resist it. I sent a somewhat expanded and spell-corrected version of the above to http://www.Torahjewsfordecency.org, who are no better than yuou would expect them to be. They are the sponsorso f that little four man love fest. Here it is.
Sir:
I cannot call you Rabbi, for it is clear you need to learn more than other people need you to teach.
As a Jew, I always find it amazing when Jews, of ALL people, can find it in their hearts to justify a hatred/fear/superiority/ignorance towards a group of people they do not know, know nothing about, and who have done them no harm except to exist, and offend their current notions of what is proper.
In an article upon your protest of the end of DADT, one of your men said: “Only God can establish what’s wrong and what’s right. We cannot uproot his rules. The whole LGBT agenda is evil,” using the abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.
Charming.
That’s one of Hashem’s rules? Which one? Substitute “Jewish” for LGBT and you have the basic philosophy of the Third Reich, which in turn found its justification in 2000 years of official anti-Semitism.
Speaking of which, here is that lovely man, Martin Luther, on this very same subject. Section XI of the Luther’s “On the Jews and Thier Lies” contains a series of seven points, in some of which Luther calls (1) for Jewish synagogues and schools to be set on fire and razed to the ground, (2) for houses owned by Jews to be likewise razed, 3) for rabbis to be forbidden to preach, and to be executed if they do, (4) for safe conduct on the roads to be abolished for Jews, 5) for the Jewish population, whom he elsewhere refers to as “venomous, bitter worms”, to be put to work as agricultural slave labor.
Also charming.
You should be ashamed of yourself, but self-righteousness knows no shame. There is no room for it.
Lindoro Almaviva
December 21st, 2010 | LINK
remember my comment on "Countdown till the HRC claims that they worked tirelessly to repeal DADT"?
Apparently that countdown was like 3, 2, 1… liftoff!
Rob San Diego
December 21st, 2010 | LINK
If GOD hated us, don’t you think he would come down and talk to us? Or maybe he would send his daughter to teach us his ways. he already tried sending down his son and look what happened to him, we murdered and executed him. Now if you were GOD, wouldn’t you be pissed off at your creations and never talk to them again?
TampaZeke
December 21st, 2010 | LINK
Why should ANYONE care what a Hasidic Jew has to say about military service?
Next thing you know they’ll be picketing the Jimmy Dean sausage factory complaining that gays shouldn’t allowed to eat pork.
BlackDog
December 22nd, 2010 | LINK
Funny how the people bitching about the DADT repeal the most are those who never served in the military.
Aside from John McCain I don’t think I’ve heard of any veterans making a big deal of it.
Most of the people crying about it the most didn’t serve, and probably have never had to work all that hard or been on the wrong end of prejudice themselves.
The Hasidim have it pretty easy. Here maybe not as much but in Israel, um, yeah. I’d LOVE to get paid just to sit around and study all day, not to mention be allowed to live where I want even if it’s where somebody else’s village used to be and the Army has to shed blood to defend me. So maybe if these Hasidim don’t like it here now that we have gays in the military…they could move to Israel?
Oh. Wait. Israel has had gays in its military for years, serving openly even.
I guess that counts these four out, eh?
Aeval
December 23rd, 2010 | LINK
“Only God can establish what’s wrong and what’s right. We cannot uproot his rules,”
So why are they upset about the DADT repeal, was DADT a divine comandment?
e2c
December 27th, 2010 | LINK
I highly recommend the documentary
“Trembling Before G-d” (mainly about Hasidim who are LGBTQ) to those protesters, as well as to commenters here.
I just cannot imagine the kinds of pressures that non-conforming Hasidim are under – regardless of sexual orientation. It reminds me a little too much of the way the most severe Old Order Amish churches treat those who don’t quite fit in. [shivers]
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