Box Turtle Bulletin

How to conduct a fraudulent “poll”

Hello, my name is Timothy and I’m from Fraudulent Polling, Inc., a national polling agency. Can I ask you a few questions about issues that you will face in the upcoming election? Thank you.

* Would you mostly support, completely support, or overwhelmingly support legislators who want to ban the slaughter and eating of puppies and kittens by passing the new Healthy Nutrition Act?

Press Release: A new poll found that by a huge majority, Americans support the Healthy Nutrition Act, a vegan-only bill which would charge anyone who engaged in the eating of any meat or any animal-based product with first degree murder.

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Of course that is silliness. But it isn’t that far off the mark of what some unscrupulous characters do to try and convince others that their unpopular views have support. And they don’t get much more unscrupulous than Elaine Donnelly, the extremely wacky president of the anti-gay Center for Military Readiness.

Elaine has commissioned and released a new “poll” that claims that Americans oppose the overturn of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. And it’s a doozie. In fact, it’s nearly a case-study of how to conduct a fraudulent “poll”.

And here are a few of the very obvious reasons why.

First, we checked to see who conducted the “research”. The political association of a pollster does not automatically disqualify their findings, but if there is strong ideological bent then one must question whether the poll is legitimate or simply propaganda.

In this case it is some outfit called “the polling company inc. / WomanTrend”. Sounds good, right? Sure, until you realize that the group is headed by conservative strategist Kellyanne Conway (whose husband was heavily involved in efforts to impeach Bill Clinton) and conducts “research” for the Heritage Foundation and other such organizations. Red flag, number one.

Then we looked at the options for answers. Rather than give a range of possibilities, most included only variations of the answers that supported Donnelly’s agenda. In some cases “I don’t know” or “neither” were not provided as an option, cuing the participant to instead select between choices that might not be optimal.

Then we inspected at the language and found it deceptive and dishonest. For example, look at this little phrase in the summary of the “poll”,

Respondents were informed at the beginning of the survey, “Throughout this survey, “gay or lesbian” and “homosexual” are used interchangeably.” Numerous questions throughout this poll employed the words “lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender persons”—terms that are used by leading advocates of overturning the law.

Well, that’s interesting. While it is true that “leading advocates” do use the term “lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender persons”, it is a complete lie that they use it in context of this law. Because while “transgenders in the barracks” may frighten the horses, the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell does not impact transgender people one way or the other.

Finally we analyzed the order of the questions to see if they “push” the participants towards a mindset or a viewpoint before the big question is asked. And Conway and Donnelly’s questions were about the most blatant that I’ve ever seen.

We aren’t provided with the exactly language of the script but it appears that the following questions were asked in this order:

1. In 1993 Congress passed a law stating that homosexuals are not eligible to serve in the military. Please tell me whether you (ROTATE) agree or disagree with the following findings that are in the current law.

1.a. One finding says, QUOTE “The primary purpose of the armed forces is to prepare for and to prevail in combat should the need arise.” END QUOTE

1.b. One finding says, QUOTE “The military is a specialized society…that is characterized by its own laws, rules, customs, and traditions.” END QUOTE

OK, most everyone agreed to those two statements. These are not, of themselves, egregious questions, but they do set the tone and suggest that “the current law” has the right priorities. Let’s go on.

2. I will now read to you the opinions of two people. Please tell me which comes closest to your own view:
(ROTATED PERSON 1/PERSON 2)

Person 1: In considering this issue, Congress should listen mostly to advocates who want to overturn the law and to require the armed forces to accept professed lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons in the military.

Person 2: In considering this issue, Congress should listen mostly to the four chiefs of staff of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps, who have expressed concerns about overturning the current law.

This question pits “advocates who want to require transgender persons” against “the chiefs of staff who have expressed concern”. A completely false dichotomy. (Amusingly, in the footnotes they praise themselves for not using the phrase “gay activist group”). Not only is this not about transgender persons, but there is no mention that the repeal is supported by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Yet, surprisingly, the support for person two was only 48% to 41%. Those pesky “advocates” and their transgender folk have more support than Conway and Donnelly like. So it’s time to smear the President.

3. In his 2008 campaign, Barack Obama promised that if he was elected President, he would seek to repeal, or overturn, the law regarding homosexuals in the military, often called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Congress passed and President Bill Clinton signed the law in 1993. Do you believe he is assigning high priority to this issue (ROTATED) mostly out of principle or mostly for political reasons?

Not too surprisingly, 57% found that Obama’s imagined motivations for “assigning high priority” are the same as the same reasons that our community suspects for his doing damn well little on the matter.

But now that they’ve introduced sinister motivation, they now need to imply a threat:

4. Please tell me which comes closest to your own view:
(ROTATED PERSON 1/PERSON 2)

Person 1: If the current law is overturned, the military should attempt to change personal attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality and impose “zero tolerance” career penalties on anyone who disagrees for any reason, including religious convictions.

Person 2: Even if the current law is overturned, the military should not attempt to change personal attitudes and feelings toward human sexuality. Imposing career penalties on anyone who disagrees would discriminate against military personnel and chaplains who do not support homosexuality.

Ookie spookie. Those advocates want to engage in mind control and court martial those who go to church. Good wholesome Christian kids will be stockaded and chaplains will be beaten if they don’t endorse the radical militant homosexual agenda.

Scared enough yet? Oh, but there’s more. You knew it was coming…

5. The military should modify training programs to promote acceptance of openly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons in all military colleges, training programs, and schools run by the U.S. Defense Department.

Oh Noes! The children! They’re coming after the children!

6. Over the next six months, what should be the number one priority for Congress and the President?
(READ AND ROTATED. ACCEPTED ONLY ONE.)

Creating jobs
Reducing Government spending/the deficit
Plugging the oil leak in the Gulf/cleaning up the oil spill
Winning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
Changing the law to allow homosexuals to serve openly in the Military

Well gosh, that proves that our legislators are Wasting! their Time! on these nefarious schemes because they can only do one thing at a time. And if DADT is overturned, jobs will be lost and pelicans will die.

And now, now that you know that it’s transgender advocates who are going against the most important purposes of the military and who are ignoring the concerns of military leaders so that they can push this unwanted effort to jail Christians and brainwash children, all of which is motivated by political cynicism, now let’s get your opinion.

7. Would you prefer that your elected representatives in Washington, DC (ROTATED) vote to overturn the 1993 law and allow homosexual persons to serve openly in the military, OR vote to keep the law as it is?

48% VOTE TO KEEP IT AS IT IS
45% VOTE TO OVERTURN
7% DO NOT KNOW/DEPENDS (VOLUNTEERED)
1% REFUSED (VOLUNTEERED)

And that’s how your conduct a completely fraudulent poll. It’s almost surprising that there weren’t questions about slaughtering puppies and kittens.

And amusingly, even after pushing the participants as hard as possible, less than half opposed repealing DADT. And even after trying to scare them with career penalties and brainwashed children, 34% of military members polled supported overturning DADT and enacting a “zero-tolerance” policy.

This is just downright funny. But what do you bet that John McCain ends up waiving it around in Washington.

Mind-NOMingly boring rally in Harrisburg

The National Organization for Marriage must be dispirited by the recent rulings for marriage equality. But they can take hope from their latest stop on their Tour of Mostly-Empty City Plazas. Because in Harrisburg, PA, they got more than a couple dozen supporter and – for the first time in a long time – outnumbered the counter-protesters. The Tour Tracker is reporting that NOM’s supporters numbered about 75 as compared the 53 protesters.

But those were probably the only rays of light in an otherwise dull and gloomy day.

The Trial Tracker reports today’s rally to be particularly dull and uninspiring. That may well be due to the growing realization on the part of NOM’s leaders that they are ineffectual and, at this point, just going through the motions.

And so far NOM’s Summer for Marriage blog is choosing to pretend as though there was no rally today. Instead, Brian Brown is ranting about Judge Walker’s decision to deny a stay on his motion.

When a lower judge makes an unprecedented ruling, that totally overturns existing Supreme Court precedent, the normal thing for that judge to do is to stay his decision, and let the higher courts decide in an orderly fashion that respects the rule of law, if he’s right, or if he’s way off-base. Judge Walker’s ruling is more evidence he is not a neutral referee, he’s an activist on this issue. He doesn’t even want his ruling ignoring Supreme Court precedent and imposing gay marriage against the expressed wishes of the electorate appealed to the Ninth Circuit…

The Proponents, in their appeal to the denial of stay, also make a great deal about this “existing Supreme Court precedent.” You’ll notice that Brian Brown is not providing much information about this precedent, other than to demand that it trumps Perry v. Schwarzenegger. And that’s probably because it is a case from 1971.

In May 1970 Jack Baker and James McConnell applied for a marriage license in Hennepin County, Minnesota. They were denied. They sued and lost at district court and in appeal at the Minnesota Supreme Court. They appealed to the US Supreme Court but the SCOTUS did not hear their appeal for “want of a substantial federal question.”

Normally, a refusal to hear a case is not considered precedent on the merits of the case. However, anti-marriage activists argue because that this case came to the Court through mandatory appellate review, then therefore it is by default a judgment on the merits of the case and establishes precedent which all lower courts must follow for perpetuity.

The Proponents also discuss Adams v. Howerton, a 1982 immigration case in which the Ninth Circuit ruled that Adams and his same-sex non-legal husband were not married and that the Federal Government has a rational basis for refusing to recognize this marriage.

But while relying on those cases may have been valid in, oh say 1984, it hardly lends itself to ranting indignation in this case.

Since that time, Romer v. Evans has determined that an initiative cannot be designed solely to disadvantage a class of people and Lawrence v. Texas determined that a state cannot legislate based solely on moral disapproval of a class of people. It was not necessary that these two cases deal with gay issues for them to apply to Perry v. Schwarzenegger, but it does make them impossible to ignore.

Another case that Brown likes to reference – but which is ignored by the Proponents – Citizens for Equal Protection v. Bruning. This was a 2006 ACLU challenge to Nebraska’s DOMA constitutional amendment. A lower court found it to be an unconstitutional violation of the Equal Protection Clause, but the Eighth Circuit reinstated the ban. I am not certain why both Judge Walker and the Proponents have not referenced this case.

“I’m a Citizen…I’m a Combat Veteran”

Last night I attended a sidewalk protest against the Ruth Institute at the L.A. Airport Marriott. The Ruth Institute is part of the National Organization for Marriage. Its goal is to indoctrinate college students with lies about gay and lesbian relationships turn college students into “traditional” marriage advocates. Ruthers were at the Marriott for their annual gala dinner. We were there, well, mainly just to be visible and offer a reality-based presence — you know, actual human beings — to counteract NOM’s abstract notions of gays and marriage. You know what I found when I arrived?

The Gay War Machine was nowhere in sight.

You know about the Gay War Machine. According to NOM, equality activists are a highly funded, tightly organized group of bitter, angry people who don’t really represent the gay community, who want to turn marriage into nothing more than a “registry of friendships,” and who aim to destroy religious freedom before the decade is out. Read the rest of this entry »

MassResistance Endorses Scott Lively As Write-In Candidate for Governor

Scott Lively calls Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill "the lesser of two evils."

MassResistance, the most prominent group in Massachusetts that has been fighting a quixotic battle against ‘the state’s same-sex marriage law since the Goodridge decision, has become increasingly rabid in its anti-gay opposition. So much so, that they are one of only fourteen anti-gay hate groups tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center. (That’s out of 932 active hate groups in the United States the SPLC tracked in 2009.) But to give you an indication of how firmly entrenched they are in the politics of personal vilification, MassResistance has now endorsed holocaust revisionist Scott Lively as write-in candidate for Massachusetts governor in the GOP primary:

Lively is everything that (GOP primary front-runner) Charlie Baker is not. He is principled, pro-family, pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, pro-2nd-amendment, pro-religion, pro-parents’ rights, and utterly fearless.

Send a clear message to the RINO establishment

There’s nothing quite like voting for someone you actually support, rather than the lesser of two (or three) evils.

And by thousands (we hope!) of people voting for Scott Lively as a write-in candidate in the September 14 Republican Primary, a very strong statement will be made to the RINO Republican establishment, especially since relatively few people vote in most primaries. Don’t assume you own us. What you’re selling, we’re not buying. The people running the Massachusetts Republican Party love to use social conservatives to do the grunt work on campaigns, but they arrogantly see themselves as above “dirtying” themselves with the principled issues that conservatives care about.

Scott Lively is best known as the author of the widely discredited book, The Pink Swastika, in which he claims that the Nazi movement was, at its core, a gay movement, and that the inevitable result of LGBT equality would be the imposition of murderous fascism. He recently argued that repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” would result in a Nazi takeover of the U.S. military, and he told The Daily Show that gay men exhibit absolutely no moral restraint whatsoever.

In March 2009, Lively was one of three American anti-gay activists to deliver what he called his “Nuclear Bomb against the gay agenda” at a conference in Kampala, Uganda which ultimately led to the introduction of the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda’s Parliament. That bill calls for the death penalty against LGBT people under certain circumstances, and virtually criminalizes knowing or providing services to gay people. Lively has called that bill “a step in the right direction” and “the lesser of two evils,” although he claims to oppose the death penalty and has falsely claimed on multiple occasions that the death penalty has been removed from the bill. It has not. The bill, while unchanged, now appears stalled in two Parliamentary committees following international outcry.

Scott Lively himself is no stranger to the SPLC’s list of anti-gay hate groups. His own Abiding Truth Ministries, now based in Springfield, Massachusets, is also listed as an anti-gay hate group. He has worked closely with the other two Massachusetts-based anti-gay hate groups. He delivered a series of lectures at the School of Christian Activism, which is a ministry of the New Generation Christian Center. New Generation itself is a ministry of Latvia-based pastor Alexey Ledyaev, founder of the New Generation Movement. Lively and Ledyaev co-founded an international anti-gay movement known as Watchmen On the Walls, which is also listed as an anti-gay hate group by the SPLC.

(By the way, here’s a trivia note. The picture that MassResistance posted in their endorsement of Scott Lively is a cropped version of my screen-capture from video of Lively speaking on the first day of a Watchmen On the Walls conference in Riga, Latvia. What, they couldn’t get a headshot from their good friend?)

Which means, for those of you keeping track, that Lively is now working very closely with four of the fourteen anti-gay hate groups tracked by the SPLC.

Scott Lively’s ties with MassResistance are deep. He has appeared on MassResistance’s podcast as far back as 2006, and his writings are promoted in MassResistance’s web site. Last March, Lively joined Peter LaBarbera to speak at a MassResistance banquet. Last March, Lively joined Peter LaBarbera to speak at a MassResistance banquet.

MassResistance’s Brian Camenker spoke at a rally put on by the Plymouth Rock Tea Party last July. This appearance followed the cancellation of another Tea Party rally on the Lexington Battle Green due to controversy over Camenker’s participation.  Camenker will also appear at a South Boston Tea Party rally on Aug 22, where the featured speaker will be Don Feder. It should come as no surprise that Feder, who once described himself as being “to the right of Attila the Hun,” was also a featured speaker at the Watchmen’s Riga conference. Anti-gay extremism forms a very tight little world.

Prop 8 proponents request stay from 9th Circuit

As expected, the supporters of Proposition 8 who argued in defensed of the amendment in Perry v. Schwarzenegger (hereafter called the “Proponents”) have requested that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals stay Judge Walker’s decision. But I was amused at the language they used.

It is thus imperative that a stay pending appeal be entered on or before August 18, 2010 at 5 p.m. to avoid the confusion and irreparable injury that would flow from the creation of a class of purported same-sex marriages.

Purported. They just couldn’t help themselves. They had to use the legal equivalent of scare quotes.

And is this appeal bitter? Oh, you betcha.

And their objection to the ruling: the judge relied on testimony rather than “legislative facts”, (those that were not presented in court and subjected to cross-examination and rebuttal, but rather could be read in books). And they claim that their lack of credible witnesses are the fault of the judge who scared them away.

It appears that the basis upon which they wish to appeal is that the judge relied on the testimony of witnesses rather than social presumption.

Voters are really really (not) concerned about “protecting marriage”

The latest Pew Research Center survey is in and they’ve found that when it comes to same-sex marriage, voters could not care less. Literally. Of the thirteen categories of concern, same-sex marriage was at the very bottom, in both parties.

The reason we haven’t heard the politicians screaming about Judge Walker’s ruling is because they have figured out that their constituents aren’t interested, don’t want to talk about it, and are probably suspicious about anyone who wants to rant about gays instead of the economy.

Ninth Circuit may not be favorable to Prop 8 supporters

The next steps that the supporters of Proposition 8 must do convince the Ninth Circuit 3-judge panel that they have standing for an appeal and meet the requirements for a stay in the ruling.

Rick Hasen notes that this months panel may not be ideologically inclined to view their requests favorably.

That stay request will be heard by a motions panel of the Ninth Circuit, which is made up this month of Judges Leavy, Hawkins, and Thomas. Not a great draw for Prop. 8 supporters.

If unable to convince the panel, they can appeal to Justice Kennedy.

The stay is denied, but extended one week to allow for appeal

From the LA Times

A federal judge Thursday refused to permanently stay his ruling overturning Proposition 8’s ban of gay marriage but extended a temporary hold to give supporters time to appeal the historic ruling.

U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn R. Walker, who overturned the measure on Aug. 4, agreed to give its sponsors until Aug. 18 to appeal his ruling to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. No new marriages can take place until then.

This is perhaps the most appropriate response. When we get the order we will know the language, but it appears that the Judge has ruled that the defendants have no likelihood of winning at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and therefore no stay on his ruling should be held, but he also is allowing time for the Ninth Circuit to weigh in and not create a situation in which marriages occur that may be ruled invalid within days or weeks.

Should the Ninth Circuit refuse to grant a stay, then they are unlikely to consider any intermediate marriages to be invalid regardless of their ruling.

There is not yet any word as to whether the defendant-intervenors has standing to appeal the judge’s ruling.

UPDATE:

The order reads (PDF: 40 KB/11 pages)

Judge Walker also suggests that the supporters of Proposition 8 may not have standing to request a stay:

To establish that they have standing to appeal the court’s decision under Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution, proponents must show that they have “suffered an injury in fact, which is fairly traceable to the challenged action and is likely to be redressed by the relief requested.” Didrickson v United States Dept of Interior, 982 F2d 1332, 1338 (9th Cir 1992). Standing requires a showing of a concrete and particularized injury that is actual or imminent. Lujan v Defenders of Wildlife, 504 US 555, 560 (1992). If the state defendants choose not to appeal, proponents may have difficulty demonstrating Article III standing.

The state defendants have chosen not to appeal.

The Judge’s logic is that only the state is involved with the implementation of marriage licenses. And to prove his point he relies on the decision made in 2004 to stop the City of San Francisco from issuing marriage licenses.

In Lockyer v City & County of San Francisco, the California Supreme Court explained that the regulation of marriage in California is committed to state officials, so that the mayor of San Francisco had no authority to “take any action with regard to the process of issuing marriage licenses or registering marriage certificates.” 33 Cal 4th 1055, 1080 (2004). Still less, it would appear, do private citizens possess authority regarding the issuance of marriage licenses or registration of marriages.

And if the ruling does not impact them in any way – they don’t have to issue licenses or register them or do anything they don’t want to do – then they haven’t experienced harm. And not having not “suffered an injury in fact”, they have no standing to appeal.

It appears that the earlier decision to allow the Prop 8 Supporters to intervene was based on the recognition that they had an interest in Proposition 8. But that interest may not extend to marriage law, per se. For the case to go forward, the State must appeal, or the interveners “need to show standing in the court of appeals.”

In short, being allowed to bring in your lawyers to argue the state’s case (because you think they will not do a good job) does not magically make this your case.

And this is not without precedent

The Supreme Court has expressed “grave doubts” whether initiative proponents have independent Article III standing to defend the constitutionality of the initiative. Arizonans for Official English, 520 US at 67.

Basically the judge said: you have no standing, if you are allowed to appeal you likely won’t win, you can’t argue on the behalf of the state any more – you aren’t the state and both the Governor and AG disagree with you, you aren’t harmed in any way but staying the decision would harm both gay people and the state as a whole. But I’ll give you a week to convince the Ninth Circuit otherwise.

Judge Walker Lifts Prop 8 Stay Effective August 18

We have received word that Chief U.S Federal District Judge Vaughn Walker has lifted the stay on enforcing last week’s ruling declaring California’s Prop 8 unconstitutional. Effective 5 PM PDT on August 18, California becomes the sixth state where same-sex couples enjoy the freedom to marry.

The order reads (PDF: 40 KB/11 pages):

None of the factors the court weighs in considering a motion to stay favors granting a stay. Accordingly, proponents’ motion for a stay is DENIED. Doc #705. The clerk is DIRECTED to enter judgment forthwith. That judgment shall be STAYED until August 18, 2010 at 5 PM PDT at which time defendants and all persons under their control or supervision shall cease to apply or enforce Proposition 8.

It will now be up to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to decide whether to issue a stay. Given that none of the defendants have any intention of appealing, it’s unlikely the Appeals Court will intervene. The Alliance Defense Fund, which intervened to defend Prop 8, is not a named defendant and it is unclear that ADF would have any standing either to ask for a stay or seek an appeal.

UPDATE: We have two threads on this order. Please continue conversation on the other thread.

Judge To Rule On Prop 8 Stay Today

When U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker released his ruling striking down California’s Proposition 8 as unconstitutional, he also imposed a temporary stay blocking immediate implementation of his decision. Judge Walker is expected to rule today, sometime between 9:00 a.m. and noon PST on whether he will life the stay or hold it in place pending appeals.

Two defendants of in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the state Attorney General and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, have already announced that they will oppose the stay and will not appeal the case. The Board of Supervisors for Imperial County, which had attempted to intervene when the original defendants declined to defend the case, voted on Tuesday to appeal the ruling. It is doubtful that they will have standing to appeal. It is also questionable as to whether the Alliance Defense Fund, which ultimately did intervene to defend Prop 8, has standing to intervene either. If that’s the case, then the ruling would apply only to the state of California and would not go to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals or the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Trend Toward Acceptance

Prompted by yesterday’s CNN Poll, Nate Silver looked at public polls since 1988, and believes we are experiencing an accelerated trend toward broad acceptance of same-sex marriage:

One caveat is that LOESS regression tends to be fairly sensitive on the endpoints, and so yesterday’s CNN survey, which showed the pro-gay marriage position leading 50.5-48.5, makes a fair amount of difference. But even if we ignored that survey, support for gay marriage would instead be in the range of 45-46 percent (and opposition between 51-52 percent): that would reflect acceleration in the rate of support for gay marriage, about a 4-point gain over the past 16 months, faster than the long-term rate of increase, which has been between 1 and 1.5 points per year.

Glenn Beck — Yes, That Glenn Beck — Says Marriage Equality Not A Threat

As more evidence that many social conservatives have found other groups more attractive as wedge issues, Fox News’ Glenn Beck told Bill O’Reilly yesterday that same-sex marriage is not a threat to the country:

Honestly, I think we have bigger fish to fry. You can argue about abortion or gay marriage or whatever all you want. The country is burning down…I don’t think marriage, that the government actually has anything to do with…that is a religious right…I believe that Thomas Jefferson said, “If it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket, what difference is it to me?”

But not everyone has moved on. Reps. Lamar Smith (R-TX), Steve King (R-IA), Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and John Fleming (R-LA) introduced a resolution in the House of representatives condemning Judge Vaughn Walker of failing “to conduct himself in an impartial manner before striking down California’s popularly enacted Proposition 8.”

Update: Last year, Glenn Beck had a very different view of same-sex marriage:

Oh Ben, You’re So Butch

I’ve taken this campaign ad from Ben Quayle (yep, Dan’s boy) and given it the tiniest tweak. See if you can spot it.

Maggie finds Judge Walker’s orientation relevant, not necessarily relevant, could be relevant, not totally irrelevant

When Maggie Gallagher is around her buddies it’s easy to just say that Judge Walker is gay and everyone knows what that means. When you all share the same opinion that gay people and gay relationships are inferior and when you all think of gay people as “the other side” then you don’t need to explain yourself.

Oh, but listen to her try to explain that comment to Tour Tracker’s Arisha Hatch

She also seems to have read a ruling other than the one released by Judge Walker. Nothing new, nothing non-Maggie.

But then she said: “The way to get a totally neutral status is to just get the government out of the marriage business” before immediately reverting to her talking points.

What’s this? Is this Maggie’s next approach? “If we have to be equal then no one should get married!!”

The Peter’s wackadoodle school exposed

Last weekend Peter LaBarbera and a host of wackadoodle anti-gay activists held a three day seminar to teach young recruits how to demean, disparage, and fraudulently portray gay people. Hemant Mehta, the Friendly Atheist, sent in two infiltrators to report on Peter’s nonsense.

They provide some interesting information about the speakers and the audience:

Quite honestly, I found that many of these people were not “hateful” in the sense that they don’t actively wish LGBT people harm. They truly believe that if homosexuals would only live the lifestyle and hold the beliefs they themselves hold, those homosexuals would go on to live richer, more fulfilling lives. I experienced many of those attending the conference to be kind, concerned individuals.
…
By my count, around 45 people attended the conference on any given day. That’s including the speakers and the families of the speakers, so actual attendee numbers on any given day were lower, and some new attendees were there on Friday and Saturday. Of the people attending, a large majority were older. On the first day there were only around five people attending who looked to be under the age of 30.

Also present are synopses of the speakers’ views. For example, this is from a group session:

Barber: We should not be politically correct. It’s natural for gays to be reviled. It’s important to focus on the health risks of homosexuality, but we need to be aggressive and unapologetically loving.

Quinlan: If you Bible-thump or talk about sex, it turns pro-gays off. If you give them the science, you sound like somebody in authority and they don’t know how to respond to that.

Goldberg: We need to use the term “homosexual” instead of “gay” because it has a more negative connotation. No one is gay; they’re only “gay identified.”

Kincaid: This issue of homosexuality affects you because gays are demanding to give blood. The hemophiliacs are outraged by the homosexual lobby saying they have a right to give blood. They want to force themselves into the blood supply in a callous and arrogant manner. Mothers need to speak up. Mothers, your children are at risk!

Quinlan: The church has to be involved in politics. Politics are dirty. Our Founding Fathers were all religious men. They weren’t all just deists. They were Bible-believing men. We do have the truth and the truth is this: a family is made up of a mother and a father because it takes a mother and a father to raise a child.

Higgins: Parents need to remove their children from public schools. Even after doing that, they need to make law changes because our taxes go to the public schools. When we are silent on this issue, we teach our children through role-modeling to be cowardly conformists. We bequeath a legacy of much greater oppression to our children and our grandchildren. At least I can say to my children that I did everything I could.

Lindevaldsen: We need to work to completely eliminate public schools — government schools — and push a Christian/Biblical model of educating our children

Sorba: We need to unify behind common winning talking points. Boycott the term “gay.” They are in no way attached to any kind of identity because it’s not an identity. They’re not functioning in accord with their design. We need to repeat over and over and over again that there is no scientific evidence that people are born gay. There is no study that proves causation. Psychiatrists need to reclassify homosexuality as a mental disorder.

LaBarbera: “Born gay” evidence is unreliable. There was once a pro-gay activist yelling as loud as he could that I was a maniac who wanted to kill gay people. This shows how unstable these guys are.

Sorba: Genes code for proteins, not for behaviors. The “born gay” thing is a debate that we’re definitely going to win. Nobody’s a meat puppet dangling from the strings of the chemical reactions of their brain. It’s letting your emotions rule instead of your reason. It’s a debate about if you’re able to define reality vs. your ability to intellectually understand the reality of world around you. We should be able to argue for the re-criminalization of sodomy and overturn Lawrence v. Texas — the punishment would just be a fine. It would inhibit gay night clubs from springing up where AIDS is spread. It’ll inhibit pornography. We need to go on the offense. Then we know we’re gonna win. You’re not born gay; it’s a vice. These people need help.

Barber: The reality of ex-gays poses an enormous threat to the homosexual movement. Their entire argument hinges on the immutability of homosexuality.

LaBarbera: [Discussing LGBT protesters] They come there with their hateful signs; this is the level of fanaticism we’re dealing with. It’s just as hard to convey how radical the movement is as how bad the behavior is.

Barber: At gay pride parades, they have sex in the street in front of children.

Kincaid: Left-wing student groups are leading boycotts of blood drives, because they’re “discriminatory.” This movement is expanding. If this keeps getting bigger and bigger, we are going to face a shortage of blood. It’s extortion. I remember when AIDS happened. I remember covering this. You have to be older to understand what was happening at this time. I really don’t think a lot of the young people today remember the panic and catastrophe that enveloped the nation because of AIDS. They don’t understand how it developed. They don’t understand the devastation. We need to educate the young people about this disease as well as new-and-potentially-just-as-deadly diseases that may not be being detected currently through blood tests. It’s not a matter of discrimination. It’s a matter of life.

Sorba: Of course romantic attraction can happen between any two people, but the question is whether it adheres with the “Good.” A thing is Good insofar as it helps actualize the potential for humanity. Man is a rational animal. His final end is to know God and truth; truth means correlation with reality. Absent truth, what’s the point? Absent correspondence with reality, what are we doing here, dreaming? If Eros is the thing by which you define the Good, a man leaves his wife and kids in the name of “love.” Love is not the supreme decision maker for us. The Good is.

Go check out the multi-page report. It is well worth reading