News, analysis and fact-checking of anti-gay rhetoric
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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.North Carolina Targeted For Anti-Gay Amendment
Jim Burroway
February 10th, 2009
North Carolina is the only Southern state without an anti-gay marriage amendment. The Winston-Salem-based group, Return America, has announced that they will hold a thousands-strong rally at the North Carolina Legislative Building on March 3. The Christian Action League and NC4Marriage are also supporting the rally.
On Feb 22, NC4Marriage will urge pastors and churches to participate in special services for “Marriage Sunday”. That day will also be used to inform congregants about the rally a week later.
Equality North Carolina plan a their own rally at the Capital for March 24.
Certified Cameronite: Mary Frances Forrester
Jim Burroway
March 17th, 2008
Mary Frances Forrester, the wife of a conservative North Carolina state senator James Forrester (R-Gaston County) published an incredible anti-gay screed in the Christian Action League web site. Mrs. Forrester led off her piece with “evidence” for what she calls “the real homosexual agenda” — you know, the one that begins:
“We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies. We shall seduce them in your schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, …”
And so on. Anti-gay extremists love quoting this essay, but when they do, they always omit the preface:
This essay is an outré, madness, a tragic, cruel fantasy, an eruption of inner rage, on how the oppressed desperately dream of being the oppressor.
That’s right. This “agenda” is a complete work of fiction — a satire, more specifically — and the author said so when it first appeared in 1987 in the now defunct Gay Community News. In fact, the anonymous writer used the pseudonym “Michael Swift,” which is an obvious tip of the hat to the English language’s most famous satirist, Jonathan Swift. Unfortunately, Forrester, like so many anti-gay extremists, aren’t swift enough to pick up on the obviously satirical nature of the work.
But that’s not why Forrester has been branded a Certified Cameronite. It’s this:
Did you know that the average life span of a homosexual is 39 years as opposed to 78 for heterosexual women and 76 for heterosexual men?
This statistic comes straight from Paul Cameron’s 1994, “The Longevity of Homosexuals: Before and After the AIDS Epidemic” (Omega 29, no. 3: 249-272), which in turn was based on Cameron’s laughable “Obituary Studies.” Nick Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute said Cameron’s study was “just ridiculous.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were similarly unimpressed with Cameron’s work. And yet this statistic, more than any other, is the one that refuses to die.
And then there’s this one:
Read your social history and you will find that most societies that condoned homosexual behavior did not survive past one generation.
Which society is she referring to? Certainly not Greece — they managed to last for centuries. Maybe she’s getting her information from Sally Kern.
Mary Frances Forrester can’t seem to distinguish satire from fact, or “research” from the crazed imagination of a holocaust revisionist. And for that, she joins a long list of those who have lined up behind Cameron’s Nazi-admiration society.
