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!
Gay Couples Excluded from Immigration Bill Markup
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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The Lauderdale
August 7th, 2012 | LINK
“The case, which we have covered comprehensively, involves a couple who got a civil union in Vermont, planned a family through artificial insemination, raised a child for years, and then broke up.”
Not that it really changes anything, but they didn’t raise Isabella together for “years.” She was born in 2002, and I think Lisa scooted down to Virginia with her about a year later. According to Lambda Legal, she “filed an action in circuit court in Virginia seeking to have herself declared the child’s sole legal parent” in July of ’04.
This case has dragged on for virtually all of Isabella’s life to date, which I find very sad.
MLouise
August 8th, 2012 | LINK
I’m not Mennonite either, but I do live in an area (Lancaster County, PA) with a large Mennonite population. There is a strong history of non-compliance with what they perceive to be unjust laws, and of civil disobedience, among the more politically-active Mennonites. This usually takes the form of opposition to war and to paying for war. During the years of focus on solidarity with liberation movements in Central America, Mennonites were the core of our local Pledge of Resistance.
There is also a long history of anti-gay sentiment and action. In general the Mennonites who are most active in the peace movement aren’t the ones who are strongly anti-gay. But I can understand how the pastor involved could arrive at the conclusion that aiding the run-aways was equivalent to aiding the Central American refugees that moved through the U.S. on their way to Canada in the ’80′s and early ’90′s. Obviously I think the reasoning is faulty, but I can see how he could have arrived there believing that he was firmly within his faith tradition.
As for now trying to win his freedom on a technicality, I suspect that is a tactic suggested by his lawyer. It would not be consonant with the ethic of civil disobedience, which says that you knowingly break an unjust law with the intention of accepting the consequences of your actions and that your only defence is the assertion that the law itself is wrong.
Ezam
August 8th, 2012 | LINK
The real question is: where are Lisa Miller and Isabella? It’s been almost three years and little has surfaced. For all we know they could be in Timbuktu right now.
Hyhybt
August 8th, 2012 | LINK
Would it be possible to fix the bug that makes *every* BTB article shared on Facebook show up with the description of the Kirk Murphy story, please?
Timothy (TRiG)
August 8th, 2012 | LINK
Hyhybt,
It is possible, on Fb, to click on the auto-generated description and edit it to something more appropriate.
TRiG.
Regan DuCasse
August 8th, 2012 | LINK
There is a serious moral disparity between a parent that didn’t raise their child because they abandoned that child and didn’t WANT to raise the child.
And a parent whose other partner took the child away so the other parent would never have the opportunity to. And despite their best and most reasonable effort, the parent who took the child engaged in extraordinary and extreme behavior to keep the other parent and child separate, with help from outsiders to do so.
Had Janet Jenkins been a MAN, they would have been encouraged and supported in the effort to be a parent.
And not having a biological connection to that child, also makes the anti gay engage in a double standard of requiring ONLY biological parents to matter.
Which would leave adoptive and step parents in legal limbo, regardless their interest and experience in raising their non biological child.
This issue with Miller/Jenkiins is what makes this all similar to the way SLAVES in America and THEIR relationships were treated.
Black slaves couldn’t marry, and their familial interest or connection in their children was constantly under siege or subject to disruption at any time.
No decent Christian would or should engage in such cruel regression and disrespect for the parent/child relationship because of what the parent WAS, not their treatment of the child.
That any people could feel so comfortable and go to such lengths to be cruel to Janet Jenkins, is scary and awful and no legal entity should support child kidnapping to that degree just to spite gay people.
It’s not like the child isn’t and couldn’t be harmed by it. And apparently THAT doesn’t matter either.
Timothy Kincaid
August 8th, 2012 | LINK
Lauderdale,
Thanks for the timeline correction.
Hyhybt
August 9th, 2012 | LINK
TRiG: Thanks. This is the only site I’ve found doing that to be necessary, and it hadn’t occurred to me to try it.
Still seems bizarre that it would happen in the first place.
occono
August 9th, 2012 | LINK
And Bryan Fischer is advocating more of this.
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