Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyMarch 2nd, 2009
There must have been two different parties on Saturday in Salt Lake City, both of them sharing the name “Buttars-Palooza.” How else would one explain the two very different estimates of crowd size. First, the Salt Lake Tribune:
More than a thousand people converged on the Utah Capitol on Saturday, not for legislative protest, but to party.
Couples, families and individuals danced on the south lawn to live music at “Buttars-Palooza,” a festival meant to exploit the audacity of Utah Sen. Chris Buttars’ now-famous comments about gays.
The LDS church-owned Deseret News had a different estimate:
The crowd of 300 or so cheered and waved rainbow flags.
“We are all here as part of something larger, something that is a little bit more threatening to Chris Buttars than the gay-rights movement,” said Araveni Olivares, a local activist. “We are part of a lasting movement for civil rights and social justice.”
The Deseret News’ coverage has taken a considerable turn lately, so much so that News reporters recently refused to allow their names to appear in their stories’ bylines in protest over editorial policy changes. Two well-respected editors, Chuck Gates and Julianne Basinger, were demoted after having criticized the paper for tailoring the paper’s content to be more pleasing to LDS readers.
Latest Posts
Featured Reports
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.
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.
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.
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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“Google” is a trademark of Google Inc.
© Box Turtle Bulletin. All Rights Reserved.
Posts 
Posts via daily email:
Tavdy
March 2nd, 2009
You know, I never imagined that Mormons would be cool with hallucinogens. Hell, I never imagined they’d be cool at all.
;-)
cowboy
March 2nd, 2009
Now, now. Is it bash the Mormons time again? There are some “cool” Mormons out here.
adam kautz
March 2nd, 2009
The whole Buttars incident is the very reason that us gays need to use their words against them in this case the mormons. We need to make average Americans understand that 90% of all mormons view lgbt americans in the same light as those monsters that flew those jets into the trade towers and the pentagon. If people see that these people are that out of touch it will destroy their evangelizing efforts with the public and force these assholes to apologize to us and america for even implying that we are like the terrorists. I had no problem with the mormon church until they compared me with Osama Bin Laden. Now there will be hell to pay. I intend with all my being to destroy all the mormons evangelizing efforts with the public until they issue a true heartfelt apology.
Johnson
March 2nd, 2009
Utah has certainly gotten a lot of bad press in the last year or so, and it seems to get worse every day.
John B
March 3rd, 2009
Cowboy – unfortunately the “cool” Mormons are few and far between.
Unfortunately the few cool members can not offset the hardliners, which are still the vast majority. And when push comes to shove, the cool ones will ultimately “act like sheep” and bend to the will of their stronger brotheren (of course I would say “stronger women” too, but the church treats women as nothing more than child bearers).
Todd Bennett
March 4th, 2009
I was at Buttars-palooza on Saturday. It was a cool event, but there were NOT 1000 people there — I’d guesstimate perhaps 500-600 tops.
Which, unfortunately, means Des News (pronounced D’Snooze) had a closer estimate.
Leave A Comment