House of Commons officially passes marriage equality
British Commons Approves Marriage Equality Bill
Email address of Attorney General prosecuting 18 year old Florida lesbian
Gay Man's Murder Sparks Massive Rally
The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, May 21
Connecticut Scouts simply announce that they are accepting gay scout leaders
Church of Scotland allows ministers in relationship
Last Minute Bid to Sink Marriage Bill Fails in British Commons
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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Pope Benedict XVI used the occasion of an address to the Curia to wish them Merry Christmas and gays!
Patrick
December 21st, 2012 | LINK
The pope has made a life-long commitment to another man and has never been in a heterosexual marriage. In light of that, his comments seem rather hypocritical. And in other news, the earth still revolves around the sun.
Ben in Oakland
December 21st, 2012 | LINK
When we say, “please stop hitting us over the heads with 2×4’s. it’s been going on for 2000 years and we’re running out of aspirin.” …
We really mean “destroy heterosexuality. Destroy families. Hate. Hate. Hate”. I know this because there’s a glossary in my copy of the gay agenda.
Priya Lynn
December 21st, 2012 | LINK
“Bernheim, also a philosopher, argues that homosexual rights groups “will use gay marriage as a Trojan Horse” in a wider campaign to “deny sexual identity and erase sexual differences””.
This common talking point is really one of the dumbest things they could have come up with it. That its still so widely used demonstrates their desperation for something to make their case against marriage.
The idea that gays and lesbians want to make it so gender doesn’t matter and to erase sexual differences is obviously absurd to anyone that’s given it brief thought. Of couse gays and lesbians think gender matters and sexual differences are important to them. The vast majority of gays will never say “Gender and sexual differences don’t matter, give me a relationship with either a man or a woman, it makes no difference to me.” Similarly the vast majority of lesbians will tell you you can’t just swap a man into their relationships and have them think its just as good with a man as with a woman. Gender and sexual differences matter every bit as much to the vast majority of gays and lesbians as they do to heterosexuals. Only a few bisexuals will tell you that when it comes to relationships men and women are interchangeable.
Priya Lynn
December 21st, 2012 | LINK
With so many problems in the world I’m baffled as to what the hell is wrong with these people that oppressing gays is the most important thing to them.
Victor
December 21st, 2012 | LINK
Benny’s comments are in line with what one would expect from the head of the world’s biggest organized crime syndicate.
Kim
December 21st, 2012 | LINK
Sooo…the head of the world’s largest mafia controlling the lives of millions of gullible Catholics says “the family was being threatened by ‘a false understanding of freedom’”?
As far as undermining the heterosexual fundimentals of society goes, that just means that people of all sexual identities would have a say in the shaping of our society. So, where’s the problem with that?
William
December 21st, 2012 | LINK
Priya Lynn: You are so right. A similar argument (if one can call it that) to Bernheim’s was used some years ago by a Vatican official (I can’t now remember his name) and also by the Anglican Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria. These people’s problem is that they don’t actually understand what homosexuality is and therefore shouldn’t really be writing or speaking about it.
Priya Lynn
December 21st, 2012 | LINK
William, I’m glad I’m not the only one that sees how dumb that “argument” is.
PLAINTOM
December 21st, 2012 | LINK
I support marriage equality and all marriages. The people are the ones attacking marriage.
Richard Rush
December 21st, 2012 | LINK
As the pope and so many other religious “leaders” demonstrate, one of the most dependable paths to power and/or wealth is the skillful exploitation of human gullibility. Sure, people are exploited through avenues other than religion. But religion is uniquely insidious in how it allows for clever people to invent preposterous stories, and claim they were divinely revealed.
Kevin F.
December 21st, 2012 | LINK
Ironic that gays cause families to “vanish,” since the pope causes Catholic’s to “vanish.” Vanish from the pews that is.
It makes me sad. Here is a very intelligent, educated, and thoughtful man who is consumed with prejudice against lesbian/gay/bisexual and transgender people. I don’t know what personal demons are driving him and his campaign of hate (which predates his papacy), but I wish he would exercise those demons immediately.
Hunter
December 21st, 2012 | LINK
The man’s a politician, first and foremost. You don’t get to be pope by being saintly. I suspect the increased illogic and general shrillness of his statements comes from the same source as the equivalent utterances from American conservative “Christians” — they’re losing, and they know it. And they’re all hampered by being locked into a world view that might have had some validity 4,000 years ago in the Middle East, but its relevance today is iffy, at best.
Ben In Oakland
December 21st, 2012 | LINK
Kevin, he is very much exercising his demons– in fact, he’s giving them a hell of a workout.
What he needs is to exorcise them, but exercsing them is much easier.
Charles
December 21st, 2012 | LINK
It sure seems to myself that a lot of heterosexual Catholics are practicing birth control that is not sanctioned by the Church.
Bill T.
December 21st, 2012 | LINK
I was really looking forward to the Mayan apocalypse just so I wouldn’t have to hear something stupid from the usual homophobic publicity whores. Oh well, maybe next year.
Soren456
December 21st, 2012 | LINK
@Kevin: I think that the one unfailing sign of a good education is an active and unconcealed awareness of how much one does not know, and a refusal ever to proclaim absolutes–especially about nature.
I don’t see this awareness or this refusal anywhere near this Pope or, frankly, anywhere near his clergy (indeed, most clergy) anywhere in the world.
A man who would not only make the statements that this Pope makes about life and nature and science, but would also insist that he has spoken indisputable truth, is an illiterate man. Illiterate because, aside from his own dogma, this man knows nothing. And he’s neither aware that he reveals himself, nor is he curious about it.
TomTallis
December 21st, 2012 | LINK
Razi the Nazi strikes again…
codyj
December 21st, 2012 | LINK
Wow, hes not like ‘supremely’ FKD-UP is he?. him and his hatred, and serving his ‘skygod’? sure am glad im agnostic
KZ
December 21st, 2012 | LINK
Gay marriage has been on the Pope’s mind recently and frequently. I think he’s getting desperate. Uruguay leqalized same-sex marriage. France is ready to take up the issue. He has to know about the US election victories in Washington, Minnesota, Maine and Maryland. He’s desperately trying to breathe life into a dying, bigoted campaign against marriage equality.
I’d wish him luck (he’ll need it), but his logic is… is… Ok, I’m not seeing any logic in any of the statements he’s issued concerning same-sex marriage.
Mark F.
December 22nd, 2012 | LINK
“Ironic that gays cause families to “vanish,” since the pope causes Catholic’s to “vanish.” Vanish from the pews that is.”
Church attendence is down at pro-gay liberal churches as well. The idea that conservative churches are losing members but liberal ones are not is false.
andom
December 22nd, 2012 | LINK
If someone is interested:
http://www.grandrabbindefrance.com/mariage-homosexuel-homoparentalit%C3%A9-et-adoption-ce-que-l%E2%80%99-oublie-souvent-de-dire-essai-de-gilles-bern
Hunter
December 22nd, 2012 | LINK
I’ve gotten to the point where I react to public statements by the pope the same way I do to public statements by Pat Robertson: When someone is obviously senile, have pity — don’t let them make fools of themselves in public.
Eric in Oakland
December 22nd, 2012 | LINK
“the family was being threatened by ‘a false understanding of freedom’ and a repudiation of life-long commitment in heterosexual marriage.”
It sounds like he is blaming the gays for a problem caused by heterosexuals. “life-long commitment in heterosexual marriage” was on the decline long before gay marriage. Furthermore, the issue is not “freedom” but justice and equality. I guess it is easy for him to confuse the three since he doesn’t understand the principles behind them.
Eric in Oakland
December 22nd, 2012 | LINK
Priya Lynn said, “With so many problems in the world I’m baffled as to what the hell is wrong with these people that oppressing gays is the most important thing to them.”
I think this is partly because some of the worst “problems in the world” are the fault of the Roman Church. They need a distraction and a scapegoat, and we are convenient targets. “Look over there! Gays!”
Maurice Lacunza
December 22nd, 2012 | LINK
I’ll say it again: I think this man-pope is evil. Look at his eyes. Quit looking at gold and lace robes. Look at the lines on his face. They are hard lines.
Tell me you do not think that there is something very wrong with him.
EastsideJim
December 22nd, 2012 | LINK
I wonder if Huckabee coordinated his “gays and abortionists are to blame for the school massacre” with the Pope to present a united front of religious bigots?
Hue-Man
December 22nd, 2012 | LINK
The catholic cult has become as deranged as the TeaParty/GOP. The parallels are striking – insulated from rational thought and facts, extreme ideologues, purges of the impure, mostly old white men, successor leadership is even more deranged than existing leadership with a perpetual spiral into extreme right-wing policies, moral decline, popular decline (“old white men are dying off”), no source of renewal.
Now which of all the cranky old white men of the TP/GOP is most like Joe Rat.?
andom
December 23rd, 2012 | LINK
I wonder why I do not hear any criticism of the Grand Rabbi of France?
What keeps you from doing so?
aski
December 23rd, 2012 | LINK
Damned that Grand Rabbi of France!
Hunter
December 23rd, 2012 | LINK
KZ — Your comment just registered. When you look at the countries where same-sex marriage has been legalized, and those in which it’s under consideration or which have managed a pro-tem accommodation, he has every right to panic: Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Argentina, and likely or partially in effect in Brazil (3 states, with simple conversion from civil union to marriage in the others), Mexico (also three jurisdictions, recognized nationwide), Uruguay, France, and under discussion in Ireland. The Constitutional Court of Colombia has instructed the Congress to pass enabling legislation asap. All “Catholic” countries. (There are others, but these are the most “Catholic”.)
Add in the fact that the laity in places like the US pretty much ignores the bishops on issues like birth control, SSM, and the like, and figure he probably doesn’t like what he sees. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to have the vaguest idea what to do about it.
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