Another Exodus Conference Is Upon Us. Let's Review.
For Our Opponents: Talking to Your Kids About Same-Sex Marriage
The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, June 18
The Daily Agenda for Monday, June 17
The Daily Agenda for Sunday, June 16
The Daily Agenda for Saturday, June 15
The Daily Agenda for Friday, June 14
South Africa Teen’s Death Shows It’s Time to Ban Ex-gay Therapy Everywhere
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 
Posts via daily email:A very poor joke asks: What is meaner than a pit bull with AIDS? The guy who gave the dog AIDS, of course. This could be the fightingest son-of-a-gun in the whole Army. But should he be?
Stefan
December 23rd, 2012 | LINK
It’s actually been 2 years and a day since repeal was signed.
Steve
December 23rd, 2012 | LINK
Not only was DADT a law, but in some ways it actually made things worse. The only positive aspect was that discharges weren’t punitive, but administrative now. On the other hand, because of the entire media circus, now everyone talked about the gays and the atmosphere became a lot more homophobic. Commanders were never properly trained on how to apply the law. So the witch hunts and illegal investigations continued until around 2001. Discharges rose every year until the Afghanistan war.
The military outright lied about what DADT really meant (no surprise given that the architect of the law was a homophobe who went on to work for a prominent “family values” org) and the politicians of course believed them because the military can no wrong.
Ben in Oakland
December 23rd, 2012 | LINK
“Those persons who define their very existence by a sex act….”
One of the defining characteristics of homohatred is the willingness of the homophobes to project whatever garbage is flowing through their heads onto gay people, blaming US for THEIR misdeeds.
This is a classic exampl of it. WE don’t define our existence by a sex act, YOU do. We don’t threaten marriage by getting married, YOU threaten it by a 40% divorce rate and a 40% illegitimacy rate, by offering civil unions or domestic partnerships instead of the gold standard of marriage. WE don’t threaten military cohesion, molest children, or recruit. The people who threatened to quit rather than serve with gay people, heterosexual fathers who are the culprits 50% of the. Time, and exgay programs do these things.
And on and on and on.
TomTallis
December 23rd, 2012 | LINK
He’s still just as mean as he looks in that pic. His latest craziness is that Jews will take over the world. Now where have we heard that before…? Hmmmm…
Reed Boyer
December 23rd, 2012 | LINK
I remember this vicious old SOB with great clarity and unabated loathing. Dannemeyer, Dornan, and Schmitz. Orange County’s finest exemplars of absolute rock-ribbed self-righteous contempt parading itself as “morality.”
But Dannemeyer had a special “straight to the gutter with the dogs” flair to his rhetoric: dehumanizing, demonizing, and without regard for anything other than “saving the past.”
Ben in Oakland
December 23rd, 2012 | LINK
Oh my. He certainly has crossed over the great divide between garden variety bigot and virulent Jew hater. You’ll never guess who are Christ killers again, just when I was giving up my ancestral guilt for doing exactly what god wanted them to , and its still all my personal fault. What was the charming reference in John about Jews being stiff necked?
I’ve always believed that for most out and proud bigots, if you scratch the surface bigotry you’re bound to find a bright, shiny bigot underneath. It’s too bad the living long is absolutely no antidote for stupid.
Donny D.
December 24th, 2012 | LINK
Jim Burroway posted:
It is SO NICE to see a gay or pro-person get this right! So often, most of the time, actually, I see MORONS claiming that Clinton sought at the beginning of his term to get rid of the military’s anti-LGB ban, screwed up, and got us Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue instead. Nope! As Jim said, Clinton said during his campaign he’d work to end the ban, but at the very beginning of his first term he was WAYLAID, or maybe I should say AMBUSHED by the military’s upper brass and their little toadies in Congress. The new administration was put completely on the defensive, and tried to fight what the top brass and its sycophants were doing, but lost the fight. The morons can claim whatever they want, but I remember that time quite while, and since then had to go through years of people, including on OUR SIDE getting this wrong before I started to see anyone get it right. Why that should be, I have no idea, with so many of us having lived through those years.
I hope someone can tell me I’m remembering this wrong, but one thing I remember from that time were the government proceedings, mostly congressional hearings, where NO openly lesbian, bisexual or gay person was allowed to speak.
And THEN, after DADT became law, the media presented it as better than the previous status quo, and only SOMETIMES quoted gay groups, who always said it was worse than the military’s old policy. It took the straight media, oh, excuse me, the mainstream media, YEARS to come around to our way of understanding DADT.
I’m not a big “gays in the military” booster, but I still feel anger and disgust when I remember those times. Back then, it seemed like we were the only people on our side.
Donny D.
December 24th, 2012 | LINK
Reed Boyer wrote,
If you are referring to crypto-Nazi John Schmitz, I think his district was in Los Angeles county, specifically in and around the city of San Marino, adjacent to Pasadena. But John Briggs, famed for his anti-gay initiative, was one of the Orange county rightwing whacko politicians. Don’t know if he was antisemitic, though.
I didn’t know that bigot William Dannemeyer was still around. Somehow, it’s not a surprise that he is now, or is now publicly, antisemitic. Orange county has always been (in)famous for being whacked out and rightwing.
Donny D.
December 24th, 2012 | LINK
In my first message above, “gay or pro-person” should read “LGB or pro-LGB person”.
Ben in Oakland
December 24th, 2012 | LINK
Donny. Your memory is exactly correct. Sam nunn orchestrated the attack on Clinton, the whole dog and pony show that included ”o no, the showers” meme, and the rest.becuase of that, for twenty years, I refused to donate a dime to any political party and any politician. I took delight in donating to maisie hirono in her fight against Linda lingle, and to Elizabeth warren against Scott brown. 2012 was the first time I donated, mostly to Obama.
Timothy Kincaid
December 25th, 2012 | LINK
Donny,
I don’t disagree with most of your comment. However, I have a different recollection of this:
And THEN, after DADT became law, the media presented it as better than the previous status quo, and only SOMETIMES quoted gay groups, who always said it was worse than the military’s old policy.
As I recall, the community’s attitude was, “dammit, well at least it’s better than it was.” We were under the delusion that “don’t pursue” was actually going to be policy.
I think it took us some time to discover that the new policy was actually, “Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t you dare leave any possible sign that some person who doesn’t like you can use to open an investigation against you.”
Timothy Kincaid
December 25th, 2012 | LINK
Oh my. He certainly has crossed over the great divide between garden variety bigot and virulent Jew hater. You’ll never guess who are Christ killers again, just when I was giving up my ancestral guilt for doing exactly what god wanted them to , and its still all my personal fault. What was the charming reference in John about Jews being stiff necked?
One of the more disturbing (and perplexing) oddities is how anti-Semites try and use scripture as support. For some reason they seem to forget that these criticisms were made by Jews to Jews about Jews. Sure Paul makes a big deal about how there are some Greeks and how they are just as good as he is but for the most part this was at that time an internal dispute inside the tribe and the criticism of fellow Jews was to justify their outreach into non-Jewish communities.
But in the minds of bigots, not just the apostles and Jesus – but even the Old Testament heroes – are magically put into the non-Jewish category and “the Jews” are the problem.
I swear, I really wonder if the people who most claim to defend themselves by the Bible have ever read it or know anything about its writing, compilation and what was included or excluded and why.
Ben in Oakland
December 25th, 2012 | LINK
My suspicion, Timothy, is that they read the bible exactl the same way I watch porn, and perhaps for the same reasons.
People forget that Christianity started out as a Jewish heresy, which is why the Old Testament is a part of the bible. Paul started in on the Gentiles when it was clear the Jews weren’t interested. Jesus, whatever his lineage, was the promised messiah, the one descended from David who would re establish the house ofdavid and the righteous kingdom of Israel. He failed to deliver the promised political changes, and was perhaps farm more interested his role as apocalyptic prophet than he was in a political undertaking.
The antiSemitism of historic Christianity is visible as early as the book of acts. By the time the gospel of John appeared, the Jews had been turned into devils who refused Jesus and caused him to be killed. The disappearance of Jewishness from both Jesus and his apostles was into full flower.
That’s why, in my opinion, it is so easy for antiSemites to avoid the obvious conrptradiction in their prejudice. They Christian mentality and the Christian mind were prepared for it from the earliest days of the church.that’s what happens when you’re on the losing end of a heresy charge.
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