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 lobbyJune 15th, 2011
On Monday the judges of the Central California Division of the United States Bankruptcy Court ruled that DOMA Section 3 is in violation of the US Constitution
. House Speaker John Boehner, who has hired attorney Paul Clement to defend the bill and instructed the House General Counsel to oversee the defense, has indicated that there will be no appeal of this decision. (LATimes)
A spokesman for Mr. Boehner, Brendan Buck, said the ruling would not be appealed.
“Bankruptcy cases are unlikely to provide the path to the Supreme Court, where we imagine the question of constitutionality will ultimately be decided,” Mr. Buck said. “Obviously, we believe the statute is constitutional in all its applications, including bankruptcy, but effectively defending it does not require the House to intervene in every case, especially when doing so would be prohibitively expensive.”
June 15th, 2011
Sometimes I’m just staggered by the sophistry coming from our opponents. Take these statements from New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan:
Last time I consulted an atlas, it is clear we are living in New York, in the United States of America – not in China or North Korea. In those countries, government presumes daily to “redefine” rights, relationships, values, and natural law. There, communiqués from the government can dictate the size of families, who lives and who dies, and what the very definition of “family” and “marriage” means.
Exactly! Except…the archbishop misses his own point. Those communiqués in North Korea limit the choices made by its citizens, narrowing down what people are allowed to do with their own lives. And now, here, in America, which side is trying to do that? The side trying to ban same-sex marriage.
Dolan continues:
But, please, not here! Our country’s founding principles speak of rights given by God, not invented by government, and certain noble values – life, home, family, marriage, children, faith – that are protected, not re-defined, by a state presuming omnipotence.
Actually, our founding principles speak of citizens who are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights — not by any specific sectarian God. Further, thank the Creator that the government has redefined marriage in the past, unless you believe we were better off when wives could not own property, when they could be legally beaten (gently) and raped (but only if they were uncooperative) by their husbands.
And as for the “omnipotent state”? Seriously? Which government is claiming more power? One that lets people marry adults of either gender, or one that issues a communiqué dictating that only opposite-sex marriages are allowed.
Dolan goes on:
Please, not here! We cherish true freedom, not as the license to do whatever we want, but the liberty to do what we ought; we acknowledge that not every desire, urge, want, or chic cause is automatically a “right.” And, what about other rights, like that of a child to be raised in a family with a mom and a dad?
This is truly chilling. True freedom is the liberty to do what you ought? Every tyranny in history could call itself a free country by that definition. Even North Korea can say it gives its citizens the liberty to do what they ought.
I’ll skip past his insult that my desire to build a committed life with my partner is nothing more than a random urge. Instead I’ll marvel at this irony: a man who speaks of the right of a child to be raised in a family with a mom and dad represents a church whose adoption agencies would rather leave kids with no parents at all than place them with a same-sex couple.
Can we sum up this Orwellian manifesto?
Yeah. Just like war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.
And, apparently, 1984 is 2011.
June 15th, 2011
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Netroots Nation: Minneapolis, MN. Netizens from all across the country will gather for tomorrow’s kick-off of Netroots Nation, the annual gathering of progressive activists, politicians, and citizen journalists. There will be a pre-conference activity today for LGBT bloggers and activists. As the conference continues through Sunday, participants will hear from Sen. Russ Feingold, Sen. Al Franken, Gov. Howard Dean, Van Jones, Sen. Ben Cardin, Rep. Keith Ellison, Rep. Donna Edwards, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, Rep. Tim Walz, State Sen. Chris Larson and many, many more. Given the recent internet hoaxes, there should be plenty to talk about between sessions.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Neil Patrick Harris: 1973. His Doogie Howser days are long over, and since then NPH has been able to cross two important acting barriers. A former child actor, he was able to successfully navigate the difficulties of becoming an adult actor in Broadway, film, and television. And he has also navigated the difficult transition from assumed-straight actor to a highly visible gay one — complete with a partner, David Burtka, and twin children who were born just last September.
If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. PLEASE, don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).
June 15th, 2011
It’s probably because you’re trying to figure out who that inarticulate guy was you saw on AC360. More specifically, you’re probably interested in our extensive report on the aftermath of four-year-old Kirk Murphy’s treatment by George Rekers in 1970. You can find that in our original investigation, “What Are Little Boys Made Of?” And if you are interested in learning more about the so-called “independent investigations” which supposedly showed that Kirk’s treatment rendered him straight and mentally healthy, you can find out about that in our epilogue, “The Doctor’s Word.”
One other thing. I mentioned the lack of resources for ex-gay survivors. I really do wish that there was a national hotline or a referral web site where people can find a local therapist who can help in recovering from the ex-gay experience. But there are at least a couple of resources I can recommend. First, there is the web site, Beyond Ex-Gay, where you can read personal testimonies from others who have gone through the experience and lived to tell the tale. It helps to know that you’re not alone, and the people who have posted their own stories on that site are proof that there really is life after ex-gay therapy.
And second, I heartily recommend Jallen Rix’s book, Ex-Gay No Way: Survival and Recovery from Religious Abuse
Update: If you are a therapist interested in resources in helping ex-gay survivors, the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists is a good resource for you. Lay people, including ex-gay survivors, can also obtain help and information there.
June 14th, 2011
I’ve just heard that my interview about last week’s investigation, “What Are Little Boys Made Of?“, is slated to appear in the second hour of Anderson Cooper 360 tonight, which would put it at sometime after 11:00 p.m. Eastern, 8:00 p.m. Pacific. Yeah, I know, you’ve heard that one before…
June 14th, 2011
Last night, seven candidates for the GOP presidential nomination appeared in a debate in New Hampshire, home to the nation’s first primay. Participating were Godfather Pizza magnate Herman Cain, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, Texas Congressman Ron Paul, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, former House speaker Newt Gingrich, Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachman, and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. And of course, LGBT issues came up in the debate.
Only Herman Cain and Ron Paul opposed a Federal Marriage Amendment to ban marriage equality in the states.
Herman Cain said that he didn’t support repealing DADT, but he didn’t want the distractions that it would take to put it back into effect. Pawlenty says that he would seek the advice of “combatant commanders.” This wiggle room leaves open the likelihood that he would re-instate DADT. Ron Paul appeared to say the would keep it in place. He talked about punishing behavior, without specifying whether a consensual relationship between two people of the same gender would be punishable. Romney dodged the question altogether, saying that DADT should not have been repealed “until this conflict is over.” Gingrich answered by building a case for its reinstatement, an indication that he would work to restore the discriminatory policy. Bachmann said she “would keep the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy.” When asked to clarify, she indicated that she would reinstate the policy after sufficiently cloaking it with “advice” from the military. Santorum took a lot of words to more or less repeat what Ron Paul said, but given the context of Santorum’s overall policies and attitudes toward gay people, I don’t think his eagerness to reimpose the policy would be much in doubt.
Not one candidate spoke about gay people as though they were taxpayers, patriots, or fellow citizens.
June 14th, 2011
Karen Ocamb counts five very specific ways in which the “Amina” blogger hoax has put real people in real danger — all because of Tom MacMaster’s narcissistic exercise in creative writing. When one considers that people really are being rounded up by Syrian authorities and are disappearing off the street, MacMaster’s self-indulgence means that Syria’s state media gets to label those reports as fiction and they have MacMaster’s posts as “proof.” Meanwhile, people really are being detained while the media is now distracted over trying to figure out what’s up with MacMaster.
And pivoting off the second blogger hoax that is the Paula Brooks/LezGetReal debacle, Ocamb continues:
OK – now let’s bring that home. What will journalists and accuracy-minded bloggers do when they come across a blog with a horror story about same sex domestic violence – but the blog only uses anonymous sources? Or what about an email from someone who claims to be a gay person in the military or the loved one of someone suffering under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell who needs to get an important story out about discrimination – what proof will we now require that this person is not a fraud?
How many stories will we now pass up for fear of being duped?
I’ve been burned by using what has turned out to be unreliable sources. My response? Retract and apologize as soon as possible, and vow never to rely on that source again. And so to answer Karen’s question, I have already passed up stories for fear of being duped, and sometimes I think I haven’t passed up enough stories. These latest hoaxes will certainly only make me even more cautious.
Now to be honest, I didn’t post about Amina’s dissapearance mainly because I was so busy preparing for the release of our own massive exercize in online journalism. I simply didn’t have time to delve into the details. If I had, and if I had noticed that the news of “Amina’s” abduction came from a relative who figured out how to post to “Amina’s” blog, I probably would have held back. If I had noticed that detail, it would have been a familiar red flag. I’ve seen bloggers disappear/be murdered/get beaten up and hospitalized before, and have “learned” of those events when a friend/relative/boyfriend somehow managed to get the blogger’s account data to post an update on the terrible catastrophe that has befallen said blogger. Only to discover that it was a hoax.
But without stronger evidence of it actually being a hoax, I probably wouldn’t have raised that alarm either. Instead, I would have just sat on it. And that’s the tragedy, isn’t it? There may have been an opportunity to put an earlier halt to the madness before it reached the point where the U.S. State Department got involved and it had the potential to harm the brave people of Syria. Conversely, we can also predict that someday, somewhere, a blogger or a journalist will really get into serious trouble, and at some point it will be up to a trusted colleague or relative to get the word out. Will we believe it when it happens? Or will we hold back fearing that it is a narcissistic stunt?
Hoaxes have huge consequences, and as they say, you cannot unring a bell. Amina and LezGetReal, in my book, are toast. They are permanently damaged brands. It’s too bad though that the damage won’t be contained to those two sets of URL’s. Instead, the damage will continue to emanate throughout the blogosphere. Anyone who reads a blog today (including this blog), knowing what we learned the past two days, would be wholly justified in questioning, “is this blog reliable?” And so in that way, all of us have been damaged to some extent. All of us are now suspect. And once again, each of us has something to prove as though we were writing for the very first time: that we can be trusted to be who we say we are, and to report the truth to the best of our abilities.
June 14th, 2011
An ex-gay with the unfortunate name of David Pickup headed off to North Ireland to share his message of recovery. And about 65 people showed up for the seminar, though 50 of them were there to protest. (BBC)
Mr Pickup said people who came to him were “usually distressed”.
“I don’t cure anybody – The client always determines if there are root causes for homosexuality,” he said.
“I don’t force anybody or cure anybody – a client naturally spontaneously grows into his authentic heterosexual self.”
Rather than try to explain Pickup’s methods, I’ll let him speak for himself. Here’s his video advertisement:
You too can feel your own sense of increasing manhood. Go deep.
hat tip to Ex-Gay Watch. No this is not a parody.
June 14th, 2011
Andrew Cuomo must be pretty confident with his vote count. He’s introduced a marriage bill in the NY Senate.
In addition to providing for same-sex marriage, it has broad protections for “a corporation incorporated under the benevolent orders law or described in the benevolent orders law but formed under any other law of this state or a religious corporation incorporated under the education law or the religious corporations laws.”
Some will no doubt be annoyed by this inclusion, but it appears that this will purchase safe passage in the Senate. And while there may be some religious universities that refuses to recognize a professor’s spouse for insurance purposes, this exclusion will not impact very many. Catholic hospitals already have to recognize the patient’s designation of who is “family”, and we really have no interest in making some anti-gay church rent us their reception hall.
A second Republican has pledged support for the bill, leaving only one more to go (New York Post Daily News Courier Tribune Bulletin Times):
New York is within a single vote of legalizing gay marriage, after a second Republican state senator said on Tuesday that he would support the measure should it come to the floor this week.
The senator, Roy J. McDonald, from the capital region, made his comments to reporters amid growing indications that Republican leaders would bring the bill to an up or down vote on Thursday or Friday. Three other Republican state senators, speaking on condition of anonymity because their conference had not yet formally debated the measure, said they believed the bill was almost certain to come up for a vote and that it would likely pass, making New York the sixth and largest state in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage.
Earlier today, Sen. Alesi, the first Republican to pledge support, predicted that the bill will pass with 6 Republicans in support.
June 14th, 2011
A federal judge on Tuesday refused to invalidate last year’s ruling against Proposition 8, deciding the gay jurist who overturned the same-sex marriage ban had no obligation to step aside because of a possible conflict of interest.
The decision by Chief Judge James Ware of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco left the ruling by retired Judge Vaughn R. Walker in place. Walker’s decision remains on hold pending a separate appeal to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Pretty much as expected.
Now the focus turns to the CA Supreme Court who will determine if California law allows for the authors of propositions (or other people who are not named in lawsuits) to step in when the defendants decide not to appeal a court’s decision.
UPDATE: The beautiful language that I’m sure the Prop 8 Proponents did not want to be established as precedent (idiots):
After considering the Oppositions to the Motion and the governing law, as discussed below, the Court finds that neither recusal nor disqualification was required based on the asserted grounds. The sole fact that a federal judge shares the same circumstances or personal characteristics with other members of the general public, and that the judge could be affected by the outcome of a proceeding in the same way that other members of the general public would be affected, is not a basis for either recusal or disqualification under Section 455(b)(4). Further, under Section 455(a), it is not reasonable to presume that a judge is incapable of making an impartial decision about the constitutionality of a law, solely because, as a citizen, the judge could be affected by the proceedings. Accordingly, the Motion to Vacate Judgment on the sole ground of Judge Walker’s same-sex relationship is DENIED.
In other words, even if Judge Walker wanted to marry his partner, such a wish is no different from any other member of the general public and would not be grounds for recusal. And read this:
[I]t is inconsistent with the general principles of constitutional adjudication to presume that a member of a minority group reaps a greater benefit from application of the substantive protections of our Constitution than would a member of the majority. The fact that this is a case challenging a law on equal protection and due process grounds being prosecuted by members of a minority group does not mean that members of the minority group have a greater interest in equal protection and due process than the rest of society. In our society, a variety of citizens of different backgrounds coexist because we have constitutionally bound ourselves to protect the fundamental rights of one another from being violated by unlawful treatment. Thus, we all have an equal stake in a case that challenges the constitutionality of a restriction on a fundamental right. One of the duties placed on the shoulders of federal judges is the obligation to review the law to determine when unequal treatment violates our Constitution and when it does not. To the extent that a law is adjudged violative, enjoining enforcement of that law is a public good that benefits all in our society equally. Although this case was filed by same-sex couples seeking to end a California constitutional restriction on their right to marry, all Californians have an equal interest in the outcome of the case. The single characteristic that Judge Walker shares with the Plaintiffs, albeit one that might not have been shared with the majority of Californians, gave him no greater interest in a proper decision on the merits than would exist for any other judge or citizen.
Wow. Just, wow.
June 14th, 2011
Okay, it’s a little breathless. And, yeah, it could probably be classified as “liberal media bias”. (NY Daily News)
A shadowy group run by religious fundamentalists is bankrolling a pitched crusade against same-sex marriage in New York.
Secretive and flush with cash, the National Organization for Marriage is igniting a culture war as it battles Gov. Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg in their campaign to legalize gay wedlock.
But that is the way that thePost writes and, well, it’s the facts ma’am. As ooky-spooky nefarious as it sounds, they’re spot-on:
“They came into the state with a big splash,” said civil rights lawyer Evan Wolfson, president of Chelsea-based Freedom to Marry. “They’re basically just a shell group that exists to funnel money into anti-gay causes from a small set of secret donors.”
Some day we will know exactly which super-rich Catholics are using NOM as an intermediary in their effort to finance the institutionalization of Catholic Doctrine into civil law. But in the meantime, New Yorkers need to know the truth about NOM and their purpose. Even if it is a bit over the top in style.
[Ugh…. No, this was not a NY Post article. It’s the Daily News]
June 14th, 2011
France has a limited second-tier recognition it allows for same sex couples, pacte civil de solidarité. It appears that this will remain the case for a while (Pink News)
The French parliament has rejected a bill designed to give gay couples the right to marry.
Today, lawmakers voted by 293 votes to 222 to block the bill, which was not expected to pass.
This is a bit ironic. One of the unexpected results of offering the second tier PACS is that many opposite-sex couples are opting for PACS as a sort of trial-marriage rather than take on the full obligations in marriage. Those who voted for religious beliefs about marriage being ideal or who sought to “protect marriage” actually hurt their cause.
June 14th, 2011
This is an extremely light day. Other than it being Flag Day (U.S.) and Boy George’s birthday (1961), there’s just not a whole lot happening as far as I know. We’ll try this again tomorrow.
June 14th, 2011
When Gene Douglas Balas and Carlos A. Morales, a married couple in California, tried to file a joint bankruptcy petition, the U.S Trustee in the case moved to dismiss the case because the couple were both males, and thus didn’t qualify for a joint bankruptcy filing because of DOMA. The judge was skeptical. “The debtors are already married to each other, and allowing them to proceed jointly in this bankruptcy case cannot have the slightest cognizable effect on anyone else’s marriage,” Judge Thomas B. Donovan said.
Because the case was filed after Attorney General Eric Holder revealed that the Justice Department would not defend DOMA under a rational basis test, the bankruptcy court forwarded to case to the U.S House of Representatives’ Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, which is defending the Defense of Marriage Act in several other cases. But the BLAG chose not to respond, leaving the bankruptcy court to conclude:
This court cannot conclude from the evidence or the record in this case that any valid governmental interest is advanced by DOMA as applied to the Debtors. Debtors have urged that recent governmental defenses of the statute assert that DOMA also serves such interests as “preserving the status quo,” “eliminating inconsistencies and easing administrative burdens” of the government. None of these post hoc defenses of DOMA withstands heightened scrutiny. In the court’s final analysis, the government’s only basis for supporting DOMA comes down to an apparent belief that the moral views of the majority may properly be enacted as the law of the land in regard to state-sanctioned same-sex marriage in disregard of the personal status and living conditions of a significant segment of our pluralistic society. Such a view is not consistent with the evidence or the law as embodied in the Fifth Amendment with respect to the thoughts expressed in this decision. The court has no doubt about its conclusion: the Debtors have made their case persuasively that DOMA deprives them of the equal protection of the law to which they are entitled.
One more nail in the coffin…
[Timothy: This ruling was not signed solely by Judge Donovan, but by twenty of the twenty-five judges who serve the Central California Division (Los Angeles) of the US Bankruptcy Court. In my employment, I’ve worked with a number of these judges and they are very diverse in temperament and perspective. It is rather amazing to get this level of agreement.]
June 14th, 2011
It was just last week when we learned that the so-called Lesbian Syrian Blogger known as Amina Arraff was actually Tom MacMaster, a man who was born in Georgia and is currently living in Scotland. Before MacMaster revealed his hoax, one of “Amina’s” strongest defenders was LezGetReal’s Executive Editor Paula Brooks:
On Friday, the editor of Lez Get Real, a lesbian news Web site based in Washington, told readers she and Amina had corresponded after Amina posted a thoughtful comment on her site. The editor said she had determined that Amina’s e-mails had been sent from a computer in Edinburgh.
In several interviews, the editor — who spoke on condition that she be identified only by her pseudonym, Paula Brooks — said she encouraged Amina to write more, first on Lez Get Real and later on a new blog, titled “A Gay Girl in Damascus.”
Yesterday, MacMaster apologized on the blog, saying “While the narrative voice may have been fictional, the facts on thıs blog are true and not mısleading as to the situation on the ground, I do not believe that I have harmed anyone — I feel that I have created an important voice for issues that I feel strongly about.”
Others on the ground in Syrian disagree sharply. MacMaster really did put a lot of people in harm’s way because of his vanity:
“MacMaster’s hoax aimed at enhancing continuous fabrications and lies against Syria in term (sic) of kidnapping bloggers and activists,” a report on state-run news agency SANA said.
Syrian state TV aired a report on MacMaster’s “lies.”
Linda S. Carbonell, Managing Editor of LezGetReal, also worried about MacMaster’s lies causing harm as well — to their web site:
The website that identified you, Electronic Intifada, thinks we are zionists working against the Palestinians. …Worse, that same site is accusing us of not existing. They accused our executive editor of being an avatar, called into question her qualifications and entire life experiences. …
Both Paula (Brooks) and I have close family members who work for the government. … Paula and I have always worked under pseudonyms to protect our families. Furthermore, because our site is blatantly and unapologetically liberal, we risk our own jobs if our site is connected to us. America is not free. It just pretends to be.
That was yesterday. And so today, we now learn that Paula Brooks isn’t who she says she is:
Just one day after the author behind a popular Syrian lesbian blog admitted to being a married, American man named Tom MacMaster, the editor of the lesbian news site Lez Get Real, with the tagline “A Gay Girl’s View on the World,” acknowledged that he is also a man.
“Paula Brooks,” editor of Lez Get Real since its founding in 2008, is actually Bill Graber, 58, a retired Ohio military man and construction worker who said he had adopted his wife’s identity online. Graber said she was unaware he had been using her name on his site.
Linda S. Corbonell responds to this latest body-blow to LezGetReal’s credibility with this rambling post just hours ago:
I am Linda Carbonell. That’s my maiden name. Back in the stone age when I got married, there was no question of keeping my own name, but it’s the name I call myself, and when one of the people my husband worked for in the Federal Judiciary threatened his job if I ever wrote another letter to an editor, I started using my maiden name to keep writing those letters and joining on-line political groups. Even though he’s retired, I’ve kept it up because I am me, not an extension of him. So I will continue to write as Linda Carbonell, even though the Washington Post has, in my sister’s words, “outed” me as Linda Carbonell LaVictoire.
Maybe I’m too naive. It honestly never occurred to me that there were people who could take someone like my Reiny and create a life on the internet with it. I’m not dumb enough to believe everything on the net – heaven knows there is way too much junk, hate and conspiracy nonsense out there, but I never really questioned whether or not the people were real.
The past three days have been devastating for all of us on LezGetReal. “Paula Brooks” has been a part of our lives for three years now. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around this. It has been especially hard for Bridgette because theirs was a very good friendship.
Would that be Bridgette P. LaVictoire — who now happens to share the same last name as Linda Carbonell LaVictoire? Bridgette’s “interview” of “Dr. Paula Brooks” seems rather fawning, don’t you think?
If I sound suspicious, it is because at this point I don’t know who or what to believe over there. I can vouch for the real-life existence of Melanie Nathan, one of the writers at LezGetReal. I met her last year at the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association convention in San Francisco. She does appear to be who she says she is. Melanie is no longer associated with LezGetReal. But as for the others I think a heavy dose of skepticism is in order for everything posted over there until all of this is sorted out.
I can also personally vouch for all the writers here at BTB. I have often wanted to expand the number of writers at this web site, but I have always insisted on watching, vetting, and getting to know something about each of our writers before inviting them on. I’ve met them all except one, and that one I’ve spoken to on the phone and he came highly recommended by other good friends of mine who know him.
And everyone writes under their own given name. BTB is a pseudonym-free zone. It didn’t become that way because of policy; it’s just the way it has worked out. But I do think that it will be a good policy to have from now on.
UPDATE: I’m told that Bridgette P. LaVictoire is Linda Carbonell LaVictoire’s daughter. I’m waiting for the long form birth certificate.
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.
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