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 lobbyFebruary 25th, 2015
The virulently, almost hysterically, anti-gay Liberty Counsel has offered an amicus brief to the Eight Circuit Court of Appeals. Its official purpose is to strike down rulings for same-sex marriage, but it can’t resist pushing one of its favorite notions: that gay men are pedophiles.
I refer to crazy bigotry in my title, but that’s redundant. Bigotry, almost by definition, is an emotional reaction that cuts one off from facts and reason, and that’s what crazy is. You’ll see that in bizarre reasoning used in this brief.
It shows up in what’s almost a throwaway line:
In 2010, young MSB (men having sex with boys, aged 13-24 years) accounted for 72 percent of new HIV infections among all persons aged 13 to 24.
“Men having sex with boys.” They got this assertion from the CDC, which worded it more clearly honestly:
In 2010, young gay and bisexual men (aged 13-24 years) accounted for 72% of new HIV infections among all persons aged 13 to 24, and 30% of new infections among all gay and bisexual men.
I’m sure you can see the many distortions Liberty Counsel managed to insert as they twisted this information.
Liberty Counsel actually anticipates this in a footnote, but it only serves to illuminate how crazy, how divorced from fact and reason, they are:
Since the incubation period for HIV can be 10-12 years, this means that they were first infected when they were 3 to 14 years old.
One obvious rejoinder would that just because the incubation period can be 10-12 years, that doesn’t mean it necessarily is. But that misses the point. The incubation period, of course, is the time from infection to the full onset of AIDS. The CDC, however, is not talking about AIDS, but about the age at initial infection. This whole incubation-period argument is nonsense, along with their “3 to 14 years old” conclusion.
Let me amend that: This whole “men having sex with boys” argument is nonsense, at least as presented in the brief.
That being said, I don’t claim Liberty Counsel is trying to deceive anyone. They may be completely sincere; crazy people often are. I’m also not saying their intentions are innocent. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have staff retreats devoted to nothing but inventing ways to spread vile statements about us. What stunning here is the naked stupidity with which they present their disgusting fantasies. And that, of course, can only be explained by recognizing homophobia truly is a mental and psychological disorder.
And with that, we can dismiss the rest of the brief. Not that I’ve proven it’s wrong from start to finish — I just mean it’s not worth our time. Once you hear the guy on the corner scream out one crazy thing, you don’t stick around to fact-check the rest of his rant. That’s just masochism. And in this case, Liberty Counsel truly is the crazy guy screaming on the corner.
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Dave H
February 25th, 2015
Besides, what does any of this have to do with the constitutionality of same-sex marriage bans?
Nathaniel
February 25th, 2015
I’m sure somebody saw the age range and asked “What 24 year old is having sex with a 13 year old?”
Dave, in answer to your question, this: if gay people can get married and live out normal lives, young people may not feel as stigmatized engaging in same-sex sexual activity. This, in turn would result in them being more aware as a sexual participants, including being more aware of the risks, and feeling less stigmatized about planning accordingly. Since LC and its ilk think that AIDS is God’s punishment of gays, then seeing HIV infections eliminated from the population (or, at least, having infection rates drop to those equal to straight people) would prove their little fantasy wrong. So please, for our children, keep gay sex stigmatized, so we can watch them suffer through illness or struggle to pay for their medications and for food and housing, by keeping same-sex couples from marrying.
Of course, I’m sure their brief actually reads something like: “So see, gays are gross, and icky, and they have cooties. I don’t want them to get their cooties all over marriage, ’cause if they do, then we’ll all get cooties.” Or, perhaps, some nonsense about maintaining our disapproval of gays in order to save our children from catching the “gay plague” (because that is working out so well).
Hunter
February 25th, 2015
Of course they’re trying to deceive people — that’s what they do for a living. They may or may not be crazy, but they are certainly con artists.
Ben in oakland
February 25th, 2015
And most obviously — I imagine you’re practically screaming this by now — on what planet do we count 18-24-year-olds as boys?”
Well, Rob, the answer to that is the world of sexuality, of sexual fantasies, of both as they come from whatever deep well of archetypes that exist in our minds.
They are counted as boys in the world of gay porn, just as women of the same age, even into their upper thirties, are also called girls.
Given my known sentiments about homo-hating-homos– I am increasingly convinced that a good portion of our most vocal and aggressive enemies are such– i suspect that they get it from the world of gay porn, or their own darkest fantasies.
Or both.
That’s where their minds go when they read what the CDC said and translate it into what THEY said.
It’s purely projection. And one thing you have noticed is that so much of what the right wing religious anti gay crazies has to say is pure projection.
The only other way to look at it is to assume that either they are not very smart, which is quite possibly all it is, though it is remarkably consistent for stupidity…
Or they are very smart indeed, relying on the stupidty of the people that pay their salaries and vote for their candidates.
mudduck
February 25th, 2015
“. . . no one denies that boys — and girls — get molested. . .” But even statements like this deny that sexually mature people may be sexually active.
Lord_Byron
February 25th, 2015
“And most obviously — I imagine you’re practically screaming this by now — on what planet do we count 18-24-year-olds as boys?”
People like the lawyers at LC or Porno Pete seem to be under the impression that people at that age are still immature and don’t understand what they are doing. Clearly they are being taken advantage of by older gay men *barf*. Porno Pete is a great example of this when he goes to folsom. He likes taking pictures of young guys being tied up by older men and say things like, “what if this was your son.”
@Nathaniel
You are right about the briefs. In the brief for the Missouri case they argue that gay men have STIs and therefore shouldn’t be allowed to get married. Makes no sense but it’s the argument they are going with.
Neil
February 25th, 2015
Indeed, Lord Byron:
And they’re so jealous they don’t seem to have much success converting these “boys” to their own cause.
MattNYC
February 25th, 2015
Methinks that Porno Pete is just mad that they aren’t in HIS bed, spanking him…
CPT_Doom
February 26th, 2015
“People like the lawyers at LC or Porno Pete seem to be under the impression that people at that age are still immature and don’t understand what they are doing. ”
Well, they are right, but not for the reasons they may think. People of that age do tend to be immature, and they sure as heck don’t know what they’re doing, because they haven’t been taught. With the rise of “abstinence-only sex education,” in which same sex encounters are not even mentioned, it is no surprise that our young people don’t know how to protect themselves from STDs. Or worse, may think HIV is inevitable if you’re gay (as some of the “curricula” for these programs basically claim), so don’t bother to protect themselves.
There was a story in the DC media about the most popular class at the University of Maryland – it’s on human sexuality. Unfortunately it is so popular that only seniors can get in, and the professor who teaches it noted that most of his students are getting their education well after they began to be sexually active, and that is way too late.
Ben in oakland
February 26th, 2015
Curse you, Matt. That thought, once thought, cannot be un-thought.
Though I happen to think in petey’s case…
David in DC
February 26th, 2015
As Frank Zappa said on his “Absolutely Free” album “deep in the back of a businessman’s mind lives a dream of a girl whose only thirteen,” I think these men are just projecting!
Chris McCoy
February 26th, 2015
On the other hand, we really should point this out to the CDC and request that they split that category into 13-17 and 18-24.
Grouping under-age and of-age gay men in the same category for reporting is just begging for this exact trouble.
Richard Rush
February 27th, 2015
As a religion-based organization, Liberty Counsel would have everyone believe they are all about truth all the time, and it’s not just ordinary truth, it’s absolute truth as confirmed by the ultimate authority ~ God’s Holy Word.
And yet, the documented evidence-based reality shows that Liberty Counsel’s statements and activities consistently involve deception, distortion, and often, blatant lies. So, I guess the lesson that we ordinary people fail to grasp is that God’s Truth can only be revealed through deception, distortion, and lies.
But, that’s why it’s not truth, it’s TRUTH (Truly Repugnant Unsupportable Theological Hogwash).
Lightning Baltimore
February 28th, 2015
MSB is the Michael Stanley Band. Why are they infecting children with HIV?
enough already
February 28th, 2015
The value of editorial comments such as this one is that they show what liars the Christian haters are.
I’ve often asked Christians why they lie. The answer is always the same: The evil the fight is such that anything is justified.
Timothy Kincaid
March 2nd, 2015
EA,
how very odd.
I’ve never met a single Christian ever that said that in fighting evil anything is justified. In fact, every Christian I’ve ever met did not believe that lying is justified at all.
(Though, I suppose Liberty Counsel and such are exceptions to that rule.)
What a very different breed of Christians we have met.
Priya Lynn
March 2nd, 2015
I know a lot of christians that say lying isn’t justified at all but then they do it anyway. Cognitive dissonance I guess.
Nathaniel
March 2nd, 2015
The real cognitive dissonance, I suspect, is believing the BS they spout. Lots of people have seen evidence for truth (evolution, vaccines, etc.) and continue to reject those ideas they cannot accept. They truly believe they are right, even when what they believe are proven lies. So, I will charge them with malice, but I doubt everybody that makes/agrees with such statements would think they are lying.
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