Repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act . . . special rights for homosexuals, lesbians, transvestites, and transsexuals . . . ultimately silencing both pastors in their pulpits and Christian and conservative broadcasters.

And they site a very prestigious name to back up their claim:

Religious freedom? Not for you, if the Harvard International Law Journal is right:

“[S]cholars [are] now suggesting that even core religious practices . . .

can be regulated in the name of equality . . .”

“Regulate” your religious freedom? We can’t let that happen!

But wait a minute, doesn’t the United States still have a First Amendment guaranteeing the free exercise of religion? How did the editors of the Harvard International Law Journal miss that?

It turns out, they didn’t. The article the FRC is quoting from was written by Carolyn Evans and Beth Gaze, scholars at the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies, Melbourne Law School, Australia.

That’s right. Australia. The relevant quote — without the ellipses — is this:

On the other side, there is an increasingly powerful movement to subject religions to the full scope of discrimination laws, with some scholars now suggesting that even core religious practices (such as the ordination of clergy) can be regulated in the name of equality.[6] At present, exemptions are given to religious organizations in many non-discrimination laws,[7] but the scope of those exemptions is being reduced in many liberal democracies.[8]

Now most people never bother to look at footnotes. But the relevant footnote are very instructive — as footnotes always are:

[6] See Pru Goward, Address at the Ordination of Catholic Women Annual Conference, Melbourne: Women, Human Rights and Religion (Nov. 5-6, 2005), available at http://www.ocw.webcentral.com.au/ articles.htm; Cass R. Sunstein, On the Tension between Sex Equality and Religious Freedom, Public Law and Legal Theory Working Paper No. 167 (2007), available at http://www.ssrn.com/ abstract_id=995325; Cf. Reid Mortensen, Rendering to God and Caesar: Religion in Australian Discrimination Law, 18U. Queensland L. J. 208, 219 (1994-1995).

[7] See, e.g., anti-discrimination laws in the U.S. and the U.K.: Civil Rights Act of 1964 §§ 702 and 703, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-1 and 2000e-2; Equality Act 2006 (U.K.), §§ 50 and 57-60; Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003 (U.K.) §§ 7 and 25.

[8] For example, in 2000 a European Directive (Council Directive 2000/78/EC of 27 November 2000) was issued that created quite strict limitations on the ability of EU member states to grant exemptions from anti-discrimination laws to religious employers.

Notice what’s happening. There are three scholars (two in Australia and one in Chicago) who believe that the state ought to regulate “core religious practice.” There are, of course, other scholars not cited who believe the opposite, and can back up their beliefs as well. But that doesn’t mean a court will go along with it.

The authors also cite the European Union in as attempting to impose such regulations. But the authors cite the United States as holding a body of laws which preserve religious freedom.

And when the authors go on to examine “core religious practice” (i.e. “selection and training of clergy, the language and symbolism of ritual, and the determination of membership of the religious community”) they conclude that religion enjoys a special claim to being exempted from the kinds of regulation that the FRC would have us fear.

It’s been a while since we awarded a Cameronesque award to anyone. But it’s been a while since we’ve seen such an outrageous example of misuse of the professional literature. The Family “Research” Council is now a two-time winner.

It’s a lengthy brochure and it would take days to research the whole thing, but its entire premise is build on three specific claims. The first two are:

Relationship duration: While a high percentage of married couples remain married for up to 20 years or longer, with many remaining wedded for life, the vast majority of homosexual relationships are short-lived and transitory. This has nothing to do with alleged “societal oppression.” A study in the Netherlands, a gay-tolerant nation that has legalized homosexual marriage, found the average duration of a homosexual relationship to be one and a half years.

Monogamy versus promiscuity: Studies indicate that while three-quarters or more of married couples remain faithful to each other, homosexual couples typically engage in a shocking degree of promiscuity. The same Dutch study found that “committed” homosexual couples have an average of eight sexual partners (outside of the relationship) per year.

Both of those claims come from the same so-called “Dutch study,” published in 2003 bt Maria Xiridou and her colleagues in the journal AIDS. We’ve already published a full analysis of that report, but here’s the Cliff Notes version:

• This study was not about gay relationships, as most people who misuse this study claims. Its purpose was to study how HIV is transmitted in the Dutch population. That’s why the study was based only on those with HIV/AIDS attending STD clinics. It is no more generalizable to the general LGBT population than heterosexuals with STD’s are representative of straight people overall.
• This study excluded everyone over thirty — the prime age in which people are more likely to settle down and marry.
• “Relationships” weren’t defined. Anything including a second date to a lifetime commitment could be counted. You simply cannot compare that to straight couples who are married as the FRC does.
• FRC cites the study as taking place in a country with “legalized homosexual marriage”, but the Netherlands didn’t have anything like it when the study ended in 1998. Registered partnerships for same-sex and opposite-sex couples didn’t begin until October 1, 1999. A limited form of same-sex marriage wasn’t available until 2001.
• And this is the most important point of all: Because the purpose of the study was to look at how AIDS is transmitted, all monogamous couples were specifically excluded from the study. Because monogamous couples aren’t transmitting HIV, they would have been completely irrelevant to the study’s goals.

And what happens when you exclude all monogamous people from the study? It turns out that when people say they’re not monogamous, they tend to sleep around. But it has absolutely nothing to do with those who are monogamous, or the broader population generally.

This misused study is one of the FRC’s favorites. At the end of our “Dutch Study” report, we maintain a list of those who misuse this study, and the FRC are repeat offenders — including in two amicus briefs that we know of before the Maryland Court of Appeals and the Superior Court of New Jersey. If the FRC has no fear of lying to the courts, then they certainly aren’t ashamed of lying to the public.

The third point the brochure is built on is this:

Intimate partner violence: homosexual and lesbian couples experience by far the highest levels of intimate partner violence compared with married couples as well as cohabiting heterosexual couples. Lesbians, for example, suffer a much higher level of violence than do married women

They base this claim on the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Violence Against Women Survey (PDF: 62 pages/1,475 KB) If you want to see how they construct this particular distortion, I encourage you to download the report yourself and we’ll go through it step by step. Believe me, it’s worth it because this is a classic example.

On page 29, you will find that when you only look at victims with a history of same-sex cohabitation and compare them with those with a history of opposite-sex cohabitation, then it’s true, gays and lesbians experience higher levels of intimate parter violence. But that’s not true for gay and lesbian couples.

To see this, go to the next page. Among women with a history of same-sex partnership:

• 30.4% were raped, assaulted or stalked by their husband/male partner
• 11.4% were raped, assaulted or stalked by their wife/female partner.

And among men with a history of same-sex partnership:

• 10.8% were raped, assaulted, or stalked by their wife/female partner.
• 15.4% were raped, assaulted, or stalked by their husband/male partner.

So here is what it all means. Many women with a history of same-sex partnership also have a history of opposite-sex partnership. Because of that, they are far more likely to report being raped, assaulted or stalked because it is the men in their lives who are doing the raping, assaulting or stalking, not the women. Same-sex cohabiting women were nearly three times more likely to report being victimized by a male partner than a female partner.

And here is where the statistic gets really interesting: 20.5% of women in opposite sex relationships were raped, assaulted or stalked by their husband or male partner. That compares to 15.4% of men who were raped, assaulted, or stalked by their male partners. In other words, gay men are safer around their same-sex partners than straight women are around their husbands or opposite-sex partner.

But if course the Family “Research” Council didn’t want you to know the full story. That’s what makes their “research” so Cameronesque, and it’s why they are such deserving recipients of our latest award.

And so I’m announcing the Cameronesque Award, given for the individual or group who engages in the most egregious manipulation, misuse, or misrepresentation of research or statistics that would make Paul Cameron proud.

For the first winner of this brand new award, I chose the Christian Defense Coalition. Headed by Rev. Pat Mahoney, the Christian Defense Coalition was formed to advocate on behalf of Terri Shiavo’s parents, and they’ve been involved with conservative Christian politics ever since. Yesterday, they put out a blaring press release claiming that the “shootings in Colorado highlight the fact that Christians and churches are the overwhelming target of hate crimes in America.”

Did you get that? Christians and churches are the “overwhelming target” of hate crimes in America. Not blacks, not gays, not Jews. Christians.

The Christian Defense Coalition goes on, citing statistics from the National Burned Churches Coalition:

For example, between 1997 and 2007 there were 3,500 acts of either arson, attempted arson, bombings and suspicious fires at churches according to the National Coalition for Burned Churches.

The group also reports that 600 churches were subjected to arson alone between 2000 and 2006.

The National Burned Churches Coalition was founded in 1997 in the wake of several church fires that occurred in the South. Since then, they’ve provided valuable aid and advice to churches recovering from arson, bombing or vandalism, and they do research for crime prevention. The NBCC does genuinely good work.

But not all of the acts that the NBCC tracks were hate crimes. According to their web site, some of these churches are damaged or vandalized as part of common criminal activity, and some are targeted by teens “just for the thrill of it.”

Don’t get me wrong. The NBCC is filling a legitimate need. But not all of the churches they assist were victims of hate crimes. And the NBCC doesn’t get involved with acts of hate directed at other groups. That simply is not their mission, which means it’s not possible to put their data into perspective against what other groups experience.

So who does track hate crimes nationwide against all legally-specified categories? Well, the FBI of course. And for 2006, here is what they reported:

Now the Christian Defense Coalition ignored the FBI data altogether. Using the NBCC data, they complained:

Most would believe that the groups or facilities most likely to be targets of hate crimes are persons of color, gays, Muslims or abortion clinics. The reason for that is the national press, media, elected officials and special interest groups focus, dramatize and over report when those groups and facilities are subjected to violent acts.

But let’s look at the FBI’s data, which is the only source for statistics of hate crimes against all of these groups (except abortion clinics). If you add the anti-Protestant and anti-Catholic reports of hate crime incidents, you’ll find that there were 143 hate crimes reported against Christian groups or individuals.

That’s a lower figure than for every other group that the Christian Defense Coalition mentions. That figure is minuscule compared to the 3,136 anti-Black hate crime incidents. It’s even blown away by the 1,008 anti-White hate crime incidents. It’s also tiny compared to the 1,366 combined anti-homosexual hate crime incidents and the 1,027 anti-Jewish hate crime incidents. It’s even lower than the 191 anti-Muslim hate crime incidents. In fact, even Asians and Pacific Islanders experience more hate crime incidents that Christians — and Christians make up the majority of the U.S. population!

A lot of people are lining up to exploit the Colorado shootings to advance their agenda. Monday, we cited the Family “Research” Council’s Tony Perkin’s craven attack on the “secular media.” Today we have the Christian Defense Coalition trying to dress their claims with meaningless statistics. I have a feeling that somewhere in Colorado Springs, Cameron is smiling.