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!
Gay Couples Excluded from Immigration Bill Markup
How To Spot A Swivel-Eyed Loon
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
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T.J.
March 30th, 2011 | LINK
No such thing as a homosexual. Right, just heterosexuals who struggle with same-sex attraction. It would be hillarious if it were not so sad.
Amicus
March 30th, 2011 | LINK
Thank god there are people who are willing to share their experience of this stuff.
I found the guy who testified at the Prop8 trial absolutely compelling.
As best memory serves, there was a institute in Mexico, circa 2005?, that would take American kids in. One of them testified that he was put in a room and told that he wouldn’t be able to talk to his parents again until he was “cured”.
In other words, torture.
Amicus
March 31st, 2011 | LINK
Regarding “fundamental dogma”, I’ll add since it is fresh in mind, that the “New Natural Law” is fully complicit, so far as one can tell.
NNL state plainly that gay sex, even for gays (!), is “illusory”.
Strangely, some of them seem to admit that there is a class of individuals that might (biologically?) be gay (I don’t have source on this, yet, just second hand – if anyone has, do share); but, nevertheless, the *only* expression of that available to them is … fake (immoral), no matter how subjectively perfective or objectively integrative and constructive it might be.
Is it any wonder that the ‘natural’ result of such an undiscerning view, in culture and at law, is torture, another gross assault on the dignity of the individual?
And I think this has moral implications for those who sit smugly on the sidelines of this, mumbling that they would never condone torture, but love the sinner and hate the sin. Not only do they give leeway at law and in culture to those who would do torture (on the kids and even adults), they fail to consider the grave peril of their own position (or “soul”): what if they are wrong and there is no intrinsic “sin”?
Thus, in full discernment, there is a clear path from these considerations to equality-at-law (for *gays*, not “in general”), either by mercy or by right.
Amicus
March 31st, 2011 | LINK
Oh, and let’s be clear, to anticipate objections.
The physical torture did not end because it was torture. It ended because they came to think (McBride or otherwise) that it wasn’t effective. (!)
Which leaves the everpresent possibility that it could start again, just with a ‘new technique’.
Cowboy
March 31st, 2011 | LINK
Was shock therapy only a Mormon thing?
It’s just my observation and with some first-hand accounts of some Mormons I know but they don’t really care if the cause of homosexuality is biological or learned. It can be cured because it’s not how God made me. And if it can’t be cured with one method they’ll use the scientific arm of their beloved BYU to find some way to adjust your orientation.
The use of aversions-therapy/torture was only one methodology used by Mormons. I know my family attempted to play the “tough love” psychological tricks on me. They said I would go to outer darkness when I died. I would be shunned. I would be the object of ridicule and vandalism. I even had the “I wish you were never born…” statement along with a mocking limp-wrist signal tossed at me by my Mother.
It’s like they have a ‘list’ of suggested statements to read they get from a pamphlet: “How to React When Your Son/Daughter Tells You They are Gay.”
Richard Rush
March 31st, 2011 | LINK
Corrected:
A corollary is that no one is born a Mormon (or conventional Christian, etc.). Everyone is born an atheist (as God intended them to be;)). Thus Mormons (and conventional Christians, etc.) are just atheists with an indoctrination problem.
While there is no confirmed evidence that a homosexual can convert to a heterosexual, there are mountains of evidence that people of one religion can convert to another, or none.
Amicus
March 31st, 2011 | LINK
Cowboy, it certainly was not.
England, for instance, gave some people the option to “volunteer” to be tortured “medically” or else be locked up, if they had been arrested.
Some actually volunteered to be tortured.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC344257/
In Germany, Steinach did other tortures. He did surgery, putting the testicles of corpses into gay men. As I recall, the first were involuntary (unethical by today’s standards) and the later were all tragically voluntary, based on false hopes.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/queerscience.htm
John Cameron
May 27th, 2011 | LINK
I wrote the play 14. I just wanted to let everyone know that there were a few mistakes in the article at ABC.com which have since been corrected. Ford never said there was no such thing as homosexuality, although my intro to psych teacher at BYU did say it when I went to him for help.
cowboy
May 28th, 2011 | LINK
BYU (by extension, an agency of the Mormon Church) has done some terrible things to homosexuals in their midst. I know a gay LDSaint told me he went through convulsions when he went through electro-shock treatments at BYU.
Was it some experiment at BYU not sanctioned by any ethical medical association?
Could the Mormon Church be trying to distance itself from this particularly sordid past to indemnify itself from any legal action?
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