Box Turtle Bulletin

Most Pathetic Protest Ever

The AFA’s McDonalds boycott has started off with a resounding thud. Have you ever seen anything more sad?

Oklahoma Politician Writes Wacky Homophobic Comic Book

What is it about Oklahoma?

Fresh off Sally Kern’s rantings, we have Brent Rinehart, an Oklahoma County Commissioner, who has written a comic book demonizing (literally) homosexuals and “liberal good ol’ boys”.

You have to read this nutjobbery to believe it. And The Oklahoman has it here.

“This is one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen,” said Keith Gaddie, a political science professor at the University of Oklahoma. “I’ve never seen a comic book with the phrase ‘anal sodomy’ in it before. That was a new one for me.”

In addition to fighting “pedifiles” (spelling and grammar aren’t his strong points), Rinehart rails against his political opponents with the help of an angel (opponents have a demon on their side).

County Assessor Leonard Sullivan (not pictured in the comic) perhaps said it best:

“I’ve really encouraged him on more than one occasion to get professional help. He really needs it,” said Sullivan, who is not depicted in the comic.

Certified Cameronite: Insure.com

Insure.com, a popular online insurance quote-comparison portal, is proud of its numerous awards. Its web site brags that it was named “best web site” for two years in a row by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine, and the “best life insurance site on the web” by Forbes.com. Insure.com is mentioned every day as a sponsor of Bill O’Reilly’s radio program, with O’Reilly himself voicing the commercials.

Now Insure.com can add another feather to its cap: the Certified Cameronite award for citing the discredited research of holocaust revisionist Paul Cameron.

Last Friday, BTB’s Timothy Kincaid first exposed Insure.com’s false and defamatory article which uses Cameron’s widely-discredited research to claim that gays die, on average, twenty years younger than non-gays. He also reported how Insure.com engaged in deceptive Cameronesque tactics by misrepresenting the findings of another legitimate study from Vancouver conducted at the very height of the AIDS crisis, long before life-saving Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy (HAART) became widely available.

We have been very hesitant to issue this award to a publicly traded company like Insure.com because we recognize that many people who are not familiar with Cameron’s research may fall prey to his deceptive tactics. We were, however, disturbed to see that the author of Insure.com’s anti-gay smear also engaged in similar Cameron-like misrepresentations by deliberately misquoting from Dr. Robert Hogg, the Canadian researcher who wrote to denounce the widespread misuse of his research by anti-gay extremists.

So Timothy wrote to Insure.com on June 1 to notify them of the problems with their online post. Communications were cordial at first as CEO Robert Bland personally assured us that they don’t have a political stance and that he would look into the claims himself. He asked for one to four weeks to investigate; we ultimately gave him six. Today, those false claims are still on Insure.com’s web site, and Bland has written numerous comments on this web site repeatedly touting Cameron’s credentials.

Since Insure.com still appears to be willfully ignorant about Cameron’s credentials, here they are in a handy, one-stop reference:

• Cameron was expelled from the American Psychological Association in 1983 for ethical violations
• Cameron was censured by the Nebraska Psychological Association (where he lived at the time) in 1984 for misrepresenting legitimate social science research.
• U.S. District Court Judge Jerry Buchmeyer found that Cameron had committed “fraud or misrepresentations” in testimony before the court in 1986.
• Cameron was censured by the American Sociological Association in 1985 and 1986 for misrepresenting himself as a sociologist (after having been kicked out of the APA), and for ethical violations.
• Cameron was censured by the Canadian Psychological Association in 1996.
• Cameron was censured by the Eastern Psychological Association in 2007 for misrepresenting his own research and participation at the group’s convention.

Cameron has written approvingly of how the Nazis “dealt with” homosexuality at the Dachau and Sachsenhausen concentration camps, and he once suggested that exterminating homosexuals might be an option here unless we got “medically lucky.” His obvious hatred for gays and lesbians so poisons everything he writes that Focus On the Family scrubbed their materials of all mention of him more than a decade ago.

In fact, the only people who rely on Cameron anymore are those who occupy the most radical fringes of anti-gay extremists. Insure.com, CEO Robert Bland, and author Joseph White are now officially in their company.

See also:
Aug 15: Insure.com Pulls Cameron Quotes
Jul 17: Certified Cameronite: Insure.com
Jul 14: Insure.com CEO Defends Paul Cameron
Jul 11: Insure.com’s CEO Bob Bland Responds
Jul 11: Insure.com’s Anti-Gay Propaganda

Hearings Set for “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network is now reporting that hearings will be held on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, the Military’s ban on service by openly gay citizens.

On July 23 the Military Personnel Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee will hold a hearing on the impact of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law banning service by openly lesbian, gay and bisexual service members. The hearing will be the first since Congress enacted “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” fifteen years ago.

The hearings were scheduled by Congresswoman Susan Davis, (D-CA), Chairwoman of the Personnel Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. Davis’ district includes San Diego’s three military bases and Davis lived for years as a military wife.

Scheduled to testify against “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” are U.S. Army Major General Vance Coleman (Ret.), U.S. Navy Captain Joan E. Darrah (Ret.), and former Marine Staff Sgt. Eric F. Alva.

It will be interesting to see who will speak in favor of the current policy.

Today In History: The APA Says No

One of the top goals of the early gay rights movement was to get the American Psychological Association to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. As long as homosexuality remained listed, governmental agencies and private companies had all the excuse they needed to discriminate against gays and lesbians.

In 1957, Psychologist Evelyn Hooker began publishing the results of a series of tests which demonstrated that gays and lesbians who weren’t patients of mental health professionals were indistinguishable from heterosexuals. Before then, the mental health community thought that gays were mentally deficient because all of the prior research had only studied people who were confined to mental hospitals or were seen in clinical settings.

Despite the strength of this new evidence, it would still take many years for it to sink in. In fact, it was forty-five years ago today that the American Psychological Association declined to discuss the matter in a letter to leading gay rights activist Frank Kameny and the Mattachine Society, saying  “it is not in the best interests of the APA to meet with you, nor to publicize your meetings.”

Another ten years would pass before Kameny appeared on a panel of the APA’s symposium on homosexuality with Dr. John E. Fryer as “Dr. H. Anonymous.” That was  a key moment leading to the APA’s elimination of homosexuality as a mental illness. That was quite a turnaround from a mere ten years earlier when the APA refused to meet with them.

Frank Kameny’s papers are now a part of the Smithsonian Institution, and at 83, he’s still kicking butt and naming names from his home in Washington, D.C.

Even the Anti-Gays want Randy Thomasson to Get Lost

As we’ve shown you before, Randy Thomasson and the Campaign for Children and Families are not likely to go down in history as great thinkers of our generation. I’d go so far as to say that they’re downright loony.

Now it seems that the backers of Proposition 8 want nothing to do with them as well.

Thomasson and CCF were not backers of the current proposition to ban marriage but instead supported an alternate proposition that banned civil unions as well. Their initiative did not get enough signatures, but while it lasted they said unkind things about what is now Proposition 8.

But now Thomasson and CCF want to jump on the band-wagon. And the backers of Proposition 8 are trying to force them out. Publicly.

Law.com reports on efforts to get CCF to shut up and go away.

In a short brief filed Thursday, Folsom, Calif., lawyer Andrew Pugno, counsel for ProtectMarriage.com, argued that rather than back Prop 8, the CCF actively campaigned against it for years in favor of another amendment that would have sharply curtailed all gay rights.

“Only now that the act has qualified for the ballot as Proposition 8 do proposed intervenors support it,” Pugno wrote. “Against this backdrop, there is significant concern that the presence of [the CCF] in this action will substantially interfere with real parties’ ability to effectively defend Proposition 8.”

In an interview Monday, Pugno referred to the CCF as “extremists” who want to go beyond the issue of marriage and “strip away gay rights” of any kind.

Well, Pugno certainly knows Thomasson and his goals. But I would say the differences between them are only a matter of degrees.

(hat tip Good-As-You)

Proposition 8 Goes Forward

The California Supreme Court decided not to hear an appeal brought by civil rights groups to keep the anti-gay marriage ban off the ballot. Their argument was that

1. Those signing were told that the initiative would not change the law, just keep it the same. This is no longer true. California law now recognizes marriage.

2. The language of the proposition does not amend the constitution. Because it is not just a matter of changing marriage law but instead goes to the heart of equal protection and discrimination against a suspect class, it revises the nature of the Constitution, which is a much more complicated process than just an initiative.

Per the San Jose Mercury News

Without comment, the court unanimously refused to hear the legal challenge, filed last month by civil rights groups. The organizations argued that the ballot measure was legally flawed and should not be put before the voters.

The latest legal salvo most likely ensures that voters will consider the measure, which would amend the state Constitution to confine marriage to a union between a man and a woman.

A Few Hickups In Exodus’ Message Machine

Exodus International’s annual conference went under way in Asheville, North Carolina yesterday, and their messaging machine was rolling along. We’ve often noted before how Exodus carefully tailors their message for different audiences, and ths time is no exception. Exodus President Alan Chambers told the Ashevile Citizen-Times, “The truth is that homosexuality does not send people to hell. Gay people live in heaven. It’s not about fire and brimstone, it’s about an alternative option.”

Chambers’ most recent comment is a drastic turnaround from just ten months ago, when he labeled the push for equality under the law an “evil agenda” last fall. But we’ve seen twists and turns in Chamber’s message before. Exodus is very good at modifying its message depending on the audience. You may recall that Alan Chambers had a similar charm offensive in advance of last year’s Exodus conference in Irvine, where he downplayed “change,” a statement from which he appeared to have backtracked somewhat a few days later. And his charm offensive turned decidedly ugly with his snide remarks in response to heartfelt apologies from former Exodus leaders.

While Chambers has nice words for the newspapers, Exodus vice-president Randy Thomas, like many vice-presidents, takes the roll of attack dog:

Thomas countered, “Exodus is no stranger to opposition, but neither was Jesus. Exodus is not in the business of converting anyone. We just offer a hand to walk beside people who want freedom from the bondage of sexual addiction.”

Sexual addiction Randy? Is that what this is all about? I thought it was homosexuality.

Actually, this is another key component of the Exodus message machine: painting all gay people as sex addicts. I don’t know what choices Randy Thomas has made in his life, but it’s time he recognized that the rest of us bear no responsibility for his past choices.

Randy, this message is especially for you today.

Al Reynolds: “I Am Not A Homosexual”

Star Jones’ soon-to-be ex-husband has announced that he is “not a homosexual.” I know! But you can believe it this time because he took 397 words to say it.

Massachusetts Senate Votes to Open Marriage to Out-of-Staters

The AP is reporting

The Massachusetts Senate has voted to repeal a 1913 law used to bar out-of-state gay couples from marrying in the state.

The law prohibits couples from obtaining marriage licenses if they couldn’t legally wed in their home states.

The House is expected to vote this week.

I find that unfortunate. Truly. As a Californian, I wanted us to have the advantage – at least for a while – of wedding tourism.

But I guess I have to be unselfish and offer my best wishes for passage in the House. Then those same-sex couples that are residents of Rhode Island and New York and who wish their state to honor their marriage won’t have to fly to California or leave the country in order to legally marry.

AFA’s Latest Email Perfectly Illustrates Their Fixation With Man On Man Sex

I just received an email from the AFA’s “One Million Dads” campaign “alerting” me to the grave danger that awaits young children in any public library with a reasonably stocked gay and lesbian studies section Barnes and Noble bookstores.

In Collierville, Tennessee, recently, an 11 year-old boy named Landon Howse was walking through the Barnes & Noble bookstore when he noticed a book lying open on one of the reading area tables. His dad, Brannon Howse, was right behind him. What Landon saw were graphic pictures of two men engaged in sex. The book was titled “Ultimate Gay Sex,” and is one of the many sexually explicit books offered in Barnes & Noble stores.

[snip]

Since this story broke, AFA has learned that this is a serious problem in Barnes & Noble stores across the country. Many parents have written to say they have had the same type of heart wrenching experiences with their children as Barnes & Noble does not place the homosexual pornography behind the counter or even in a restricted area not open to minors. Anyone can go in and find it on the shelf. I wanted to warn parents and grandparents about this danger because this is the largest bookstore chain in America and other bookstores have similarly have no responsible policy when it comes to placing these kinds of books in theirs stores.

“Since this story broke” the AFA says? Odd how a Google News search for the father’s name turns up nothing.

But back to my main point. The offending book, “Ultimate Gay Sex,” or at least the one sold on Amazon.com is nothing more than a sex guide, a sex guide that happens to be written for gay people. Gay people of course enjoy reading about how they can improve their sex lives much as straight people do.

But alas the AFA hysteria alert makes no mention of straight sex guides sold at Barnes and Noble — yet another example of how the AFA is fixated on the sex lives of gays and lesbians more than any other group.

As a side note, Collierville hosted a Love Won Out conference earlier this year.

Mission Impossible

Chad Hardy, the creator of a the calendar that featured shirtless Mormon missionaries was excommunicated following a disciplinary meeting with LDS church leaders in Las Vegas.

The “Men On A Mission” calendar includes pictures of 12 returned Mormon missionaries. The men also were photographed in traditional missionary garb, as well as in shirtless poses. Nearly 10,000 copies have been sold. Hardy, 31, described the project as an exercise of breaking down stereotypes:

“The project is about stepping outside the stereotypes and stepping outside of the image,” Hardy said. “Not everybody fits the image and I let them know we’re not trying to portray an image for the entire church.”

Some may argue that a calendar like this would be a good recruiting too, but the church didn’t see it that way. Some of the 12 models have also been called to disciplinary meetings, although none reportedly have punished.

Chad Hardy said he doesn’t hold a grudge against the church. “I felt like I spoke my truth. Bottom-line, they still felt the calendar is inappropriate and not the image that the church wants to have.”

Sen. Sessions Seeks To Retain HIV Travel Ban

Efforts to repeal the prohibition on travelers with HIV from entering the U.S. has taken a tortured path. It had been held in the Senate under a filibuster, which ended last week on a 65-3 vote. Before the vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) named Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) as the senator who was trying to quash the travel ban’s repeal. The repeal is part of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief or PEPFAR.

Now we learn that Sen. Sessions has introduced an amendment to keep the United States in the same company of such enlightened states as Sudan, Russia, Libya and Saudi Arabia. The Human Rights Campaign has asked its members to email their senators.

More Anglican Heads of Churches Speak Supportively

Much attention has been given to the tempest and fury coming from anti-gay elements within the Anglican Communion. The meeting of conservative primates and their declarations and demands have, at times, nearly drowned out the welcome that has been the voice of Anglicanism in many nations.

So it is reassuring to hear words of inclusion from two bodies within the Anglican worldwide family.

Last week the Belfast Telegraph brought report of statements made by the head of the Church of Ireland. While not yet calling for full recognition of gay couples within the church, Archbishop Alan Harper acknowledged that such a day may come:

“It has not yet been conclusively shown that for some males and some females homosexuality and homosexual acts are natural rather than unnatural,” the Archbishop told the conference.

“If such comes to be shown, it will be necessary to acknowledge the full implications of that new aspect of the truth, and that insight applied to establish and acknowledge what may be a new status for homosexual relationships within the life of the Church.”

And today’s Telegraph is reporting that the primate of the Church in Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, expressed support for gay bishops:

“If they said they want to do that well so be it. If a priest had a partner and someone nominated them that wouldn’t be a bar to them becoming a bishop,” he said.

The Archbishop, who is an old friend of Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, said that the Church should select people on their ability rather than discriminating against them because of their sexuality.

I appreciate the willingness of these men to let their voices counter the bigotry and hatred spewing from some elements within the Church.

Insure.com CEO Defends Paul Cameron

Last Friday, Timothy Kincaid revealed for the first time that a popular insurance portal, Insure.com, is hosting false and defamatory anti-gay claims. This follows nearly six weeks of private communications with Insure.com CEO Robert Bland, in which we tried to work with them in resolving the situation.

Soon after Kincaid’s exposé appeared, Mr. Bland wrote a response defending his company’s material, and he has left other comments on this web site which suggest that Insure.com has little interest in factual accuracy or professional responsibility. With these latest comments, whatever hope we first held that Insure.com would act responsibly and in the best interests of their customers, shareholders and participating agencies has now vanished.

In a comment on Kincaid’s article, Mr. Bland wrote:

We expect to take another look at this article over the next 4 weeks because we want to make certain that we encompass all available current research on this topic. We think that there’s a human interest story to be researched here on why all U.S. life insurers decline HIV-positive applicants (many of whom are healthy and have been for two decades) but will not even attempt to segregate gays who, according to a growing body of evidence, may have a much shorter lifespan than non-gays. [emphasis ours]

This comment left us dumbstruck. There simply is no “growing body of evidence” to suggest that gays have a different lifespan — let alone a “much shorter” one — from non-gays. In fact, there’s no evidence for it at all. We challenge Insure.com to show us their “growing body of evidence,” because we certainly haven’t seen it in any of the hundreds of peer-reviewed journals that we continually monitor as part of our work.

Mr. Bland is not unaware that Insure.com’s claims are without merit. This is not an example of benign ignorance or lack of information, which was our assumption when Kincaid first contacted Insure.com on June 1. We both have provided him with evidence that the bases for Insure.com’s anti-gay article are either not relevant or are the product of a discredited anti-gay extremist.

We repeatedly told Mr. Bland about Paul Cameron’s professional misconduct. Kincaid even warned him that relying on Cameron has resulted in public embarrassment of those who quote him, including Secretary of Education William Bennett. Kincaid provided links to detailed analysis, and he advised Mr. Bland to search the Internet for additional information about Mr. Cameron.

This is not difficult to do — Cameron’s reputation is very well known. Even Exodus International, which works closely with Focus On the Family to lobby against civil rights for gays and lesbians, has pulled their references to Paul Cameron. Focus On the Family themselves scrubbed their materials of anything associated with Cameron more than a decade ago. And yet just last Saturday morning, Insure.com’s CEO returned to our web site once again to cite Cameron and his Denmark gay lifespan “study”:

Then, in early 2007, Drs. Paul and Kirk Cameron reported at the Eastern Psychological Association convention that married gays and lesbians lived about 24 fewer years than their married heterosexual counterparts. This time, the Camerons extracted official data from Denmark, the country with the longest history of gay marriage, for 1990-2002. Married heterosexual men died in Denmark die at a median age of 74, while 561 partnered gays died at an average age of 51.

We found this surprising, as we had already provided Mr. Bland with Burroway’s analysis of that study when Kincaid first contacted Insure.com six weeks before. But if Insure.com doesn’t trust our analysis, then maybe they can trust conservative Christian psychology professor Warren Throckmorton. He examined Cameron’s Danish “Gays Die Young” notions and devoted a nine part series to the subject. Throckmorton concluded that the Camerons skewed their findings “to the point where any results cannot be trusted.”

And as insurance professionals, Insure.com surely can trust Dr. Morten Frisch. He’s the senior epidemiologist at Copenhagen’s Statens Serum Institut. Frisch described the Camerons’ report as having “little to do with science… The methodological flaws are of such a grave nature that no decent peer-reviewed scientific journal should let it pass for publication.” But Dr. Morton did manage to find one good thing to say about it:

Although the Camerons’ report has no objective scientific value, the authors should be acknowledged for providing teachers with a humorous example of agenda-driven, pseudo-scientific gobbledygook that will make lessons in elementary study design and scientific inference much more amusing for future epidemiology students.

As for what Drs. Cameron “reported” at the Eastern Psychological Association convention, Burroway wrote EPA president Dr. Phil Hineline in April 2007 to ask about the nature of the Camerons’ participation at the gathering. Dr. Hineline responded with a public letter condemning the Camerons for misrepresenting their participation at the convention. First, the Cameron’s didn’t present a report at all. All they did was participate in a “poster session,” in which they manned a table with a poster of some of their data in a large hall, alongside scores of other presenters. Not to be too condescending about it, but this is more like a science fair for grown-up professionals than a formal presentation before the convention as the Camerons portrayed it. What’s more, Dr. Hineline confirmed that the data they submitted to the EPA had nothing to do with lifespans at all — that had been added later — and he said they would not have been accepted it if it did.

We both tried to disabuse Insure.com’s CEO of the notion that most gay people have HIV, as he appeared to have alluded to such an argument in an earlier email. On June 12, Kincaid explained that at most, perhaps 15% of gay men and almost no gay women have HIV. And yet last Saturday morning, Mr. Bland continued his “gay = AIDS” smear by quoting from a Canadian doctor who said that once diagnosed with HIV, the average lifespan of such a person is 8 to 10 years, and that’s why we all die so much earlier. But even if that “gay = AIDS” canard were true — and it clearly isn’t — we suggest that the Canadian doctor and Mr. Bland read last week’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, which found that the life expectancy of those with HIV is actually approaching something closer to normal.

Our readers have suggested that Insure.com pull down the disputed article until pending verification of its sources. As an insurance portal providing relevant information to its many customers, that would be the prudent thing to do. But instead of following that sensible advice, CEO Bland reposted the entire article as a comment on our web site, saying that Insure.com has “no intention of ‘taking (it) down’ because it contains no factual errors and no editorial bias or slant whatsoever.”

Insure.com is a well-known, publicly traded company. In our private communications with CEO Bland, he reassured us on June 2 that Insure.com has no political agenda, and that in their 24 years in business they have never asked about anyone’s sexual orientation before hiring them. We took them at their word, which is why we waited nearly six weeks before going public with our concerns.

Mr. Bland kept delaying and asking for more time, claiming that “other priorities” interfered with Insure.com’s investigation of the article. But since Friday, Insure.com’s busy CEO has found the time to write several comments on this web site — and on at least one other web site as well — claiming that “Box Turtle Bulletin is too anxious to bash Insure.com.” He decided it was a priority to take the time to write these comments, and yet he hasn’t found it to be a priority to simply have someone hit the delete button on the false information promoted by Insure.com. The remedy for all this is incredibly simple.

But instead of doing the reasonable and sensible thing, Mr. Bland continues to stake his reputation and that of his publicly-traded company in defending these anti-gay smears. More startling, he continues to tie this reputation to that of Paul Cameron, a man who:

• once said that “unless we get medically lucky, in three or four years, one of the options discussed will be the extermination of homosexuals,”
• wrote approvingly of how the Nazi’s “dealt with” homosexuality at the Dachau and Sachsenhausen concentration camps,
• and who just last month urged a group of Russian ultra-nationalists to press on with their often-violent suppression of gays in that country.

We frankly find this to be both puzzling and troubling.

Mr. Bland claims that he is not homophobic and that Insure.com does not have an agenda. We believe that the “growing body of evidence” suggests otherwise.

See also:
Aug 15: Insure.com Pulls Cameron Quotes
Jul 17: Certified Cameronite: Insure.com
Jul 14: Insure.com CEO Defends Paul Cameron
Jul 11: Insure.com’s CEO Bob Bland Responds
Jul 11: Insure.com’s Anti-Gay Propaganda