News, analysis and fact-checking of anti-gay rhetoric
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French President Hollande Signs Marriage Bill
The Daily Agenda for Saturday, May 18
Fox News Ignores Marriage Equality Wins
The Era of Civil Unions Is Coming To An End
Orthodox Priests Lead Violent Attack On LGBT Rights Rally in Tbilisi, Georgia
France's Marriage Equality Bill Clears Final Hurdle
The Daily Agenda for Friday, May 17
Marriage Equality Made This Maryland Legislator Drive Drunk
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
After Tyler Clementi was humiliated at school and after he stepped off the side of the George Washington Bridge, his story was everywhere. But it wasn’t really Tyler’s story, just a few moments at its end.
We didn’t really get to know Tyler. But now his older brother – his older gay brother – fills in the picture a little.
Out Magazine has published some of James’ thoughts composed as letters to Tyler.
(yes, Regan, you will need tissues)
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Posts via daily email:
Reed Boyer
February 1st, 2012 | LINK
Regan will get the tissues after I’ve done with them. I have no words.
Darina
February 1st, 2012 | LINK
Now I’m in serious need of tissues too.
WMDKitty
February 1st, 2012 | LINK
*passes the tissues*
Yeah, I needed them, too.
Bruce in VA
February 2nd, 2012 | LINK
I did not have any tissues at hand while reading this, because I am a college freshman (sitting more or less where Tyler was sitting, in terms of emotionally maturing, incidentally) and therefore on a tight budget.
I regretted this fact afterwards.
Regan DuCasse
February 2nd, 2012 | LINK
My dear friends…
I get the hard copy of People, as well as OUT/Advocate.
Tyler’s family was profiled in People a few months ago. How they have moved forward in committing to advocacy. It was mentioned that one of their older sons, James was also gay.
For me, so many things go very deeply. I’ve wondered why. I don’t have a dog in the fight.
I really don’t.
And these methods of suicides…I know what the result would be on these tender bodies. There would be terrible trauma, that gives a visible evidence to the hate that caused it.
All the pictures of Tyler, show us a music loving geek, of light coloring and an open pleasant face.
No one, not even his tormentors, would have to see what he’d look like after a long fall, and a week in a river.
I wish they’d be FORCED to look at what their sense of humor did to him.
And it’s hard to imagine the kind of maliciousness that made a kid pump two bullets into the head of another, or the beatings that Asher took, coming from KIDS.
Tears…
Most days, I am beyond them now. What I feel is an anger, and determination that rises much quicker and stronger than it used to.
And I THINK…what to say, that’s hard, fast and efficient like a bullet to the hardest of hearts.
I’ll save these tears for now. The young folks that I know, that I want to prepare and counsel and save, are comforted by the warrior spirit in me that teaches strategy and enables fire and iron in their own. I won’t show them, or any others tears.
The Tylers, Seths, Sakias and Scotty Joes…grow within me. Within us all.
I felt FIRE when I read the story.
FIRE!
And it’s with that, we can give fire to the Clementi family in the name of all the rest.
Timothy Kincaid
February 2nd, 2012 | LINK
Regan,
You DO have a dog in the fight. It’s your heart.
Darina
February 3rd, 2012 | LINK
Regan,
As a certain gay man once told me on the gay forum where I would later became a moderator, “It’s our shared humanity”.
That’s our “dog” in this fight.
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