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 lobbyMay 26th, 2010
It’s time once again to lock up your tender military-aged sons and daughters. Now that it looks like the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” may be imminent, anti-gay extremists are pulling out every scare tactic to try to block the deal. They’re coming at it from so many bizarre angles that it is increasingly hard to keep up with them all.
First we have the Family “Research” Council claim that repealing DADT will result in a huge jump in “homosexual assaults.”“[H]omosexuals in the military are about three times more likely to commit sexual assaults than heterosexuals are,” they say, using precisely the same kind of mathematical fallacies they’ve previously used to claim that gays sexually abuse children disproportionately to their numbers in the general population. A key fallacy is their claim that “over eight percent (8.2%) of all military sexual assault cases were homosexual in nature.” That may be, but that doesn’t mean that it was actually self-identified gays who committed those assaults. Prison-style rapists aren’t exactly confined to gay people. The FRC has no figures to tell them which of those assailants were actually gay, or were instead straight people on some sort of power-and-violence trip — which is the primary motive for almost all rapists, gay or straight. Somehow, the Family “Research” Council has missed that fundamental fact in its much-vaunted research.
But the FRC’s objections are positively genteel compared to some of the other ones coming out of the woodwork. Cliff Kincaid says that allowing gays to serve openly “could put them on a battlefield where other soldiers could come into contact with their infected blood and bodily fluids.” Meanwhile, the American Family Association has let its collective subconscious slip in warning that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will “ram Gays-In-Minitary vote through Congress.”
Sheesh! And they say we’re the drama queens!
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Burr
May 26th, 2010
Well considering the stories we have of straight soldiers raping gay ones to put them in their place and take advantage of DADT, that probably makes up most of it.
John in the Bay Area
May 26th, 2010
These Letters to the President about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell include many people who suffered abuse while serving in the military, who did not feel they could come forward and report the crimes committed against them because of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
Ending this policy would deprive some really disturbed predators of one more tool that they have used to silence their victims. It will likely make military service safer for everyone.
Christopher Eberz
May 26th, 2010
“Disease-tainted Gay Blood Threatens Our Troops”
My heavens!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkNyC6MQMj0#t=4m50s
…comes to mind.
Edwin
May 26th, 2010
So how many straight people also have this supposed tainted blood? They are not all the goody two shoes they think they are. Those groups are mothing but bigots in a group..Wonder how many have gay children in their families?
Lindoro Almaviva
May 26th, 2010
I say if you against repealing this policy YOU and YOUR kids need to enlist and be sent to the front lines, once you have experienced the battlefront first hand, and not from the comfort of your home vicariously through Saving Private Ryan, THEN you can open your trap and flap your gums over it.
Quo
May 27th, 2010
The Family Research Council missing fundamental facts? I think what we’re seeing here is that they have an understanding of what homosexuality is that differs from that of that of gay activists like Jim Burroway – and it just might be a more accurate understanding.
I’m amused by the way Burroway seems to think that there are only two possibilities – that men who rape or sexually assault other men in prisons or the military are either “self-identified gays” or “straight people on some sort of power-and-violence trip”.
“Straight” men who like to rape other men are not heterosexual by any sensible definition. The idea that “violence and power” rather than sexual desire is the primary motive for rape is propaganda, which issues for the most part from one strand of feminism.
If a man wants to force his penis into another man’s mouth or anus, that’s gay, and there’s no way around that fact, just as there’s no way to separate “violence and power” from sexual desire in those men who desire to perform such acts.
Jim Burroway
May 27th, 2010
Quo,
If you honestly think that rape has anything to do with erotic attractions despite literally hundreds of studies to the contrary, then you are far more pathetic that I ever realized. You will truly grasp at anything, all evidence to the contrary, to confuse what is obviously and demonstrably an act of violence with romantic attactions, won’t you?
I think that says far more about you and your own issues with sexuality than anything you’ve written so far.
There was a time when you used to raise serious arguments. Now, as many in this forum, you’ve reduced yourself to trolling — tossing bombs to rile everyone rather than engaging in a serious debate. With comments like these, I can’t take you at all seriously anymore.
I will be putting you on moderation. If you want to try to engage constructively and respectfully, I will approve your comments. This isn’t about agreeing or disagreeing. It’s about your tone. If you want to understand what I’m talking about, perhaps you should review some of your earlier comments to the blog, perhaps from about a year ago, to understand what I mean.
grantdale
May 27th, 2010
Oh yeah, sure, FRC has a “more accurate understanding” of homosexuality. And Peter Sprigg is genuinely committed to accurate research and accurate reporting.
Here are two of the cases that FRC claim represent gay service men assaulting others. They also clearly show just how dishonest FRC is.
Anyone who has spent an time at all around young straight men in groups will clearly recognise what is occurring here: hazing/harassment, and a juvenile prank. None of it acceptable, but also clearly not what FRC would have the ignorant believe.
There is a reason FRC keeps referring to the assaults as “homosexual in nature”: it allows them to load all such cases onto the the “3%”, and hence come up with the distorted “three times more likely” claim. Sprigg has form as far as this type of cameronising is concerned, and this FRC “report” is plainly yet another in the series.
Sheesh, what frat boy hasn’t fallen asleep after 10 too many beers and been photographed with one of his mates dicks on his head??? Probably about the same proportion that have had an eyebrow shaved, had lewd comments written on their forehead in texta or been roped to the flagpole with his pants around his ankles.
If juvenile pranks are the FRC benchmark for what makes young straight men “gay”, then we’d better revise that 3% figure. To 93%.
Emily K
May 27th, 2010
Jim, I think Quo is getting more and more desperate for attention since his latest comments don’t generate the long pointless back-and-forth threads they once did. So he’s increasingly making more and more outrageous comments.
At some point it might be wise to take out the banhammer. I know this is an open forum but there’s a difference between having an opposing viewpoint (like Peter Ould did earlier) and trolling.
Obvious Troll is Obvious.
grantdale
May 27th, 2010
Further to the above, FRC has also only used 1643 of the 3230 reports of “sexual assault” across all services.
The reports are classified as “restricted” or “unrestricted”, which limits what is published. The restricted cases tend to be more serious, leading to criminal investigations etc, rather than simply disciplinary. The FRC cannot have included restricted cases, for obvious reasons.
There were 2516 unrestricted reports (some of which had started as restricted), and of these the gender of both parties are unknown/unreported in some cases.
The difference in report rates between the services is also worth noting, and it may well reflect what gets classified as a “sexual assault”. The FRC seems at a loss that that “only” 122 cases came from the Air Force. Of which 1 — yes, one case — was male-male (and 2 female-female).
Given there are some 390,000 males serving in the Air Force (incl Reserves etc)… one case in an entire year kind of puts the “gay menace” in perspective, even if it did involve a gay man. Even 2 cases from 95,000 serving women hardly seems cause for alarm.
I’d be more worried if I was a 12 year old girl living in Okinawa than a 22 year old straight man in uniform.
Emily K
May 27th, 2010
grantdale:
here in the states, instead of “texta” we would say “sharpie.” lol!
grantdale
May 27th, 2010
@Emily lol, Yes, indeed, I geographically placed myself with that didn’t I … but, and to date myself as well, who would want a youth subculture from 1970’s Melbourne on their forehead? Also, the fun of correcting small children (who all seem to say textRa by default) would then be gone.
Sharpie markers (at least in Australia) are permanent markers. Texta are washable. Fun’s fun, and all, but drawing a large donger on a mate’s forehead with a PERMANENT marker seems to be going just that little bit too far. Maybe you went to a rougher school than me? Or are just meaner? :)
Richard Rush
May 28th, 2010
It’s worth looking at this map to see the other countries of the world with which the rabid anti-gay crowd would have us remain aligned:
Cuba, China, Egypt, Greece, Iran, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Somalia, South Korea, Sudan, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Uganda, United States, Venezuela, and Yemen.
Ben in Oakland
May 30th, 2010
“Straight†men who like to rape other men are not heterosexual by any sensible definition. The idea that “violence and power†rather than sexual desire is the primary motive for rape is propaganda, which issues for the most part from one strand of feminism.”
Quo–easy enough to prove.
Go into a prison– you personally– find out which men have raped other men, and call them fags.
If they make tea for you, you’re right, they’re fags. If they turn you into their personal sock puppet, you’re wrong.
Actually, folks, all quo is doing here is reiterating FRC’s positon that sexuality is all aobut behaviour.
Jason D
May 30th, 2010
the straight males do enough “tainting” of the blood supply on their own.
I went to part of Junior High and almost all of High School in Okinawa, Japan. My Dad was a Marine. I went to one of the Department of Defense Dependants
Schools.(DoDDS)
Yearly we had a sex ed slideshow. Boys in the cafeteria, girls in the library. Some gentlemen came from the local Navy Hospital (that everyone went to, btw) with dozens of slides of STDs. I think nothing in the world is a better tool for promoting abstinence and condoms, than showing adolescents EXACTLY what STDs look like on a real person and what they can do your body, while doctors describe the pain and embarassment of both the symptoms AND what some of the “treatments” are for things like genital warts.
Seeing this slideshow 4 years in a row, they ALWAYS had a fresh crop of new photos, there were never any repeats from the year before.
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