Box Turtle Bulletin

Disputed Mutability: More On Her Visit To “Love Won Out”

Disputed Mutability is at it again. Her second post on “Love Won Out” is as thoughtful as her first.

When I attended Love Won Out, the talk on “The Condition on Male Homosexuality” was given by NARTH’s then-president Joseph Nicolosi. What a horrible talk that was. Thankfully, the Love Won Out conference I attended in Phoenix on Feb 10, 2007 was the last conference that Nicolosi participated in.

When Love Won Out went to Omaha in April, Nicolosi was replaced by Joe Dallas, who has been giving the talk on male homosexuality ever since. I was able to listen to audio of Dallas’ talk several weeks later and found his more nuanced and considered tone a huge improvement over Nicolosi’s. Disputed Mutability’s latest entry bears that out.

But while Dallas offers a somewhat more balanced overview of the possible causes of homosexuality (acknowledging that biology may play a role), DM notes that he nevertheless only discussed his developmental theory:

The funny thing is he went on from there to simply present the developmental theory, as if none of his cautions and qualifications mattered. I found this puzzling… Once you recongize that the theory probably doesn’t apply to 100% of the cases, why would you devote 100% of your remaining time talking about it? Does Love Won Out have anything to offer the person or family who can’t find themselves in the developmental picture?

DM’s question reminds me of a co-worker a few years back who was fond of saying, “Sometimes when your only tool is a hammer, all of your problems end up looking like nails.”

LaBarbera Award: Mike Huckabee

We reported earlier on former Arkansas governor and GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee’s 1992 remarks on AIDS, in which he called for the “isolation” (thus avoiding the “q” word) of “AIDS carriers” — presumably all 253,448 people with AIDS known to exist in 1992. When asked about those remarks last week, Huckabee refused to back down. That storm barely had time to blow over before other outrageous anti-gay comments began to emerge. Some of these comments border on the harmlessly ill-informed, like this one from the New York Times:

The governor regards 1968 as the dawning of ”the age of the birth-control pill, free love, gay sex, the drug culture and reckless disregard for standards.” The Rolling Stones album ”Their Satanic Majesties Request” provided the soundtrack for that annus terribilis. But Mike Huckabee wanted me to know that he believes in the separation of church and stage.

But others, like his AIDS comment earlier, have a ring of menace to them. David Corn at Mother Jones found this gem in Huckabee’s 1998 book, Kids Who Kill:

In lamenting the “cultural conflicts” besetting the country, he wrote, “Abortion, environmentalism, AIDS, pornography, drug abuse, and homosexual activism have fragmented and polarized our communities.”

Why was he lumping environmentalism with activities he considered sinful? He did not explain further. A few pages later, Huckabee complained, “It is now difficult to keep track of the vast array of publicly endorsed and institutionally supported aberrations—from homosexuality and pedophilia to sadomasochism and necrophilia.”

Institutionally supported pedophilia and sadomasochism? Institutionally suppored necrophilia? What “institional support” could he possibly be talking about?

Huckabee said his views on AIDS haven’t changed much since 1992. What about his lumping homosexuality with pedephilia and necrophilia? Joe Carter, Huckabee’s director of research, tried to clarify Huckabee’s remarks:

“He’s not equating homosexuality with necrophilia,” Carter told us. “He’s saying there’s a range of aberrant behavior. He considers homosexuality aberrant, but that’s at one end of the spectrum. Necrophilia is at the other end.”

So homosexuality is in the same class as necrophilia, but we’re just not as bad. As with his AIDS comment, Huckabee stands by this one too. And for that, Gov. Mike Huckabee is today’s LaBarbera Award winner.

Review: John Corvino’s “What’s Morally Wrong With Homosexuality?”

I’m sure our postal delivery person is confused by some of the mail she delivers to our house. Catalogs from Christian booksellers and mailers from Focus on the Family often arrive in the same day’s delivery as my copy of the Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide and fundraising solicitations from Wingspan, our local LGBT center. My partner, who has little stomach for much of the mail I receive, just piles it on the dining room table for me to sort through when I get home.

So one day last week, I was sorting through my mail and opened a package containing a DVD titled, “What’s Morally Wrong With Homosexuality?” He glanced over my shoulder and muttered, “Great! Another freak show…”

Before I even had the chance to pop the DVD into the player, I already knew that John Corvino was really onto something with his latest DVD offering. That title — “What’s Morally Wrong With Homosexuality?” — challenges us to confront one of our most glaring problems in the debates over homosexuality today. It’s the idea that the word “morality” is automatically associated with anti-gay positions. In fact, in today’s cultural debates, all one has to do us utter the words “moral” or “morality,” and right away he has signaled that that every word that follows will be hostile to gays and lesbians.

The problem though is that this suggests that pro-gay positions cannot be articulated from a moral standpoint. And we really can’t blame the religious right for that. Too many pro-gay advocates won’t touch the subject of morality with a twenty-foot pole.

There’s a reason for it, even if it’s not a good one. We should care deeply about moral principles, and I’ve argued that in fact, we really do build our lives around deeply held moral precepts whether we acknowledge it explicitly or not. But we’ve been afraid to talk about morality, or even to acknowledge that moral standards are important and ought to be espoused. Instead, we instinctively shrink back wherever we hear the word “morality” because we’ve too often experienced the word as a bludgeon and not for what it really is:

moral: mȯr-É™l, mär-) adj. [Middle English, 14th century, from Anglo-French, from Latin moralis, from mor-, mos custom] 1 a: of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior : ETHICAL <moral judgments> b: expressing or teaching a conception of right behavior <a moral poem> c: conforming to a standard of right behavior d: sanctioned by or operative on one’s conscience or ethical judgment <a moral obligation> capable of right and wrong action <a moral agent> …

Dr. John Corvino, associate professor of philosophy at Wayne State University, is a prolific author and an engaging lecturer on the moral dimensions of gay rights. He writes the bi-weekly column called “The Gay Moralist” for 365gay.com and he’s a regular contributor at the Independent Gay Forum. He also appears with Focus On the Family’s Glenn Stanton several times a year in a series of debates on same-sex marriage.

This latest DVD captures the lecture by the same title that Dr. Corvino been giving in various forms since 1992. It’s a great topic and one that’s rarely explored, which is a shame since the discussion of homosexuality as a moral mode of existence is every bit as vital today as it was when he started fifteen years ago. Lectures often come across as dull and dry on DVD, but Corvino tackles the often eye-glazing topics of morality and ethics with a sharp wit, engaging empathy, and an intellectual rigor that is both accessible and memorable. Who knew philosophy could be so much fun?

The DVD begins with three simple questions: what is wrong with homosexuality? If it’s wrong, how do we know it’s wrong? And if there’s nothing wrong then what is all the fuss about? And he tackles these questions from the anti-gay activists’ home turf: theology (It’s wrong because the Bible condemns it), social science (It’s wrong because of diseases or it harms families/children), and nature (It’s wrong because it’s unnatural).

This web site routinely delves into the social science and the “nature” aspects on homosexuality. Regular readers will find Corvino’s take on these topics familiar, so I won’t go into them in much detail. But that first aspect, theology, is something we generally try to avoid on this web site. Sure, we discuss homosexuality as it relates to how different religions and denominations talk about it, but we generally avoid explicitly theological discussions. A lot of this has to do with the fact that I’ve never really seen this handled this convincingly — by this, I mean in a way that a Christian fundamentalist, for example, might shake his head and say, “Hmmmm. There might be something to this.” And when it looked like Corvino was going to tack the theological objections himself, I feared he would fall prey to the same problems that have plagued so many other well-meaning apologists.

The problem with getting into theological arguments about homosexuality is that they often devolve into discussions of what this word means in the original Hebrew or what that word was referring to in the Greek, or which cultural influences play what role in which passage. You know, context. The word that everyone uses to try to explain out passages or explain in others. But the problem with this approach is that once we reach this level of Biblical exegesis, it requires that everyone be on the same page in how they view the specifics of Biblical understanding. And this simply never happens. Whenever one side of a debate like this begins to make headway, the other side invariable says, “you’re taking it out of context.” And since nobody can agree on the proper context to begin with, we quickly reach a stalemate.

This problem isn’t unique to the topic of homosexuality. Take a look around. There are literally tens of thousands of independent Christian denominations worldwide, mostly because people can’t agree on Biblical context or interpretation on one point or another. And so it often seem that trying to throw another interpretive argument into the mix ends up looking like trying to throw a teaspoon of fresh water into the ocean and hoping it will make a difference.

So as I said, I had a lot of trepidation when Corvino began diving into the theology of homosexuality. Thankfully, Corvino avoids this pitfall. Sure, he brushes lightly into some of the pro-gay theological arguments but he doesn’t invest much energy there. Instead he quickly arrives at what I think is a much stronger position: discussing not so much the theology itself, but how the anti-gay theology is derived and used in the debates. To illustrate this, Corvino uses two well-chosen passages from Leviticus. The first one is Leviticus 18:22, the one we all know very well:

Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.

Most translations (including the translation Corvino read out) use the more famous word “abomination.” But either way, the passage is unmistakable to one who holds to a literalist Biblical point of view. If one were to take everything from the Bible in a consistently literal light, then there’s no way around it: The Bible says that homosexual acts are “detestable” or an abomination. And for one who derives their morality from a literal view of the Bible, it logically follows then, that all homosexual acts are immoral — no if’s, and’s or but’s.

But as Dr. Corvino points out, the Bible holds a lot of things to be immoral that we no longer condemn with such fervor (for example, divorce, or women speaking in churches or wearing slacks), and the Bible gives explicit approval — and even instruction — on some things that we today consider to be immorally outrageous. The best example of the latter comes from an equally unmistakable passage of Leviticus. This time it’s Leviticus 25:44-46:

Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.

The passage is as unmistakably clear as the first one. And if one were to take everything from the Bible in a consistently literal light, then there’s just no way around it: the buying and selling and inheriting of people as chattel slaves is not immoral; it is instead expressly permitted — with rules laid down for its proper execution. But there are very few Christians who are so consistent in their literalism that they would always “approve what the Bible approves and condemn what the Bible condemns” when it comes to slavery. Only Christian Reconstructionists and a few other theonomists are able to sustain this kind of consistency.

So why is it that some people are consistent with literalist interpretations of Scripture where homosexuality is concerned, but when the subject of slavery comes up it’s suddenly all about context, original language and cultural norms? Corvino suggests that we either have to commit ourselves to the idea the authors’s concerns and ours might be very different, and understanding that difference is vital to understanding the text. But understanding context still might not get us to a satisfactory explanation for some of these passages:

I”m not convinced that any amount of context is going to help the slavery passages. I think when we look to those passages, we have to admit that the prejudices and limitations of the Biblical authors crept into the text. And if they did that with respect to slavery, it could happen with respect with homosexuality.

Corvino tackles the other objections with great wit and grace, whether they are the more profound and complex arguments (the implications for both sides of the nature/nurture debate, or the roles that sex play in the lives of ordinary people) or the trivial and silly ones (“The parts don’t fit” — yes, they do!). But through it all, he never takes his eye off of the bigger picture: the impact that morality — more specifically, a moral code that is illogically derived — has on those it is cast against:

One of the biggest misconceptions about the work that I do is that people think I’m out to attack morality, that I’m out to espouse some kind of moral relativism…

Nothing could be further from the truth. So much of what I’ve said tonight is based upon my moral convictions — convictions about fairness, convictions about justice. I think the way gay and lesbian people are treated in our society is wrong. Not just irrational, but morally wrong. I think there’s something perverted about the fact that we hate people because of whom they love. We do violence against people because of the affection that exists in their lives. And the effects of that treatment are a far greater moral tragedy than sex between consenting adults could ever be. …

You see, morality has a point. It’s about enabling us to flourish as human beings in a society where other people are trying to do the same thing. And that’s everybody’s concern. Conservative or liberal, red state or blue state — all of us have a responsibility to stand up for morality.

So let me make myself very clear. I am not asking you to stop making moral judgments or to keep your judgments to yourself. I’m all about the moral judgments. I’m asking you to make sure you have reasons for the moral judgments that you make. I’m asking you to put yourself in people’s shoes before you judge them. And I’m asking you to judge people not on whom they love, but on whether they love. That’s my moral vision. That’s my “agenda.”

You can buy a copy of “What’s Morally Wrong with Homosexuality?” at the Gay Moralist web site, where you can also find the DVD’s trailer. And this shorter clip has just been posted on YouTube by the DVD’s director, Marc-Antoine Serou:

Mental Illness and the I-35 “Miracle”

I’ve already mentioned that a very good childhood friend of mine developed schizophrenia when we were in high school (he wasn’t diagnosed until his mid-twenties however, despite years of counseling). But wait, that’s not all. During a summer session in college, one of my four dorm roommates was particularly interesting. His name was Codé; he was French and rode a Peugeot bicycle around campus. We all thought something didn’t add up to his story though. There were just too many odd twists and inconsistencies. Then after about a month, he disappeared and nobody knew what happened.

Well, toward the end of the term, we finally learned that “Codé” was in a psychiatric hospital on the West Coast. He wasn’t from France, but he was from Versailles, Kentucky (where they pronounce it “ver-SAILS”). And he was bipolar. The moral: when someone is acting very strangely, there’s a good chance we’re dealing with a serious mental illness.

Warren Throckmorton has been digging further into the “Highway to Heaven” story. He talked with three principals in the story: Rev. Joe Oden of the Dallas-area Heartland World Ministries Church, Paul Strand at CBN, and Michael Johnston at Pure Life Ministries. The interesting thing that’s coming out is that they all saw clear signs of mental illness, but they all chose to ignore it. Unless there’s a worse possibility: that they are not trained to recognize it when they encounter someone who’s mentally ill.

The episode with Codé surprised all of us. But then, none of us were studying to be mental health professionals, nor did any of us pretend to participate in the neo-counseling netherworld in which so many ex-gay ministries operate. Heartland World Ministries and Pure Life are being supremely reckless when they take on the task of “counseling” those who they say are suffering from a “pathological” condition while refusing to submit themselves to professional regulation. They get away with it by saying that they’re Christian counselors, not psychologists, psychiatrists or, you know, real counselors. But they’re doing nobody any favors. What’s more, their purposeful lack of professionalism exposes them and their clients to potentially serious consequences. Heartland and Pure Life are lucky things didn’t spin tragically out of control. But the luckiest of all is James Stabile. Damn lucky.

Uruguay Approves Civil Unions

It’s a good day for same-sex couples. Following up on Hungary, Reuters reports that Uruguay is also now offering its gay couples protection under the law.

Uruguay’s Congress legalized civil unions for homosexual couples on Tuesday in the first nationwide law of its kind in Latin America.

Under the new law, gay and straight couples will be eligible to form civil unions after living together for five years. They will have rights similar to those granted to married couples on such matters as inheritance, pensions and child custody.

Uruguay’s Senate passed the bill unanimously after the lower house approved it last month, a congressional spokesman said. The country’s center-left president is expected to sign it into law.

Although this was expected, its nice to se unanimous Senate support.

See also:
Civil Union In Uruguay
Uruguay Approves Civil Unions
Uruguay To Offer Civil Unions

Hungary Adopts Registered Partnerships

We told you last month that Hungary was to consider a bill that would allow same-sex couples to register their partnerships and receive many of the same rights and obligations as married couples.

Reuters is reporting that the effort was successful

The law passed with 185 votes in favor, 154 against and 9 abstentions. It will take effect as of January 2009.

Video: Inside “Love Won Out”

Today we present two contrasting messages found at Love Won Out, one celebrated publicly and the other disclosed more privately. In the first video Jim looks at Mike Haley’s speech (in a general session) in which he proudly displays his marriage photos having achieved successful change. Then Jim contrasts this with Alan Chambers small breakout session in which he discusses frankly the life of struggle all ex-gays can expect.

“Mike Haley – The Hope For Marriage”

Alan Chambers: “I live a life of denial”

Video: Inside “Love Won Out”

In this segment Jim recounts Nancy Heche’s speech in which she describes praying her daughter, Anne Heche, out of lesbianism. This is one of the most bizarre moments of Love Won Out so we’ll let Nancy’s do her own talking, here’s the video:

“Highway to Holiness” Becomes Highway To Hell

Remember the street evangelists who sought to make I-35 a Highway to Holiness? Pat Roberson enthusiastically reported on this revival effort on his television show a while back. That report prominently featured James Stabile, a young man who was supposedly cured of his homosexuality at a “purity siege” held in Dallas’ Oak Lawn gayborhood.

John Wright of the Dallas Voice has followed up on the story. He contacted Joe Oden of Heartland World Ministries Church, who was also featured in Robertson’s report, to discover what happened after Stabile was “cured”:

Oden told me Stabile had been shipped off to Pure Life Ministries, which operates a residential treatment program in Northern Kentucky.

“It’s a program for people who’ve lived alternative lifestyles just to get totally clean,” Oden told me.

Upon further investigation, I discovered Pure Life Ministries is also the place where Mike Johnston — remember him?! — is director of donor and media relations.

Johnston was the HIV-positive “ex-gay” who was featured in the anti-gay video “It’s Not Gay” before he was busted in 2003 for hosting orgies and having unsafe sex with other men on the side. (Despite all that, the American Family Association is still selling his video as if nothing every happened.)

Wright also contacted Stabile’s father, the Rev. Joseph Stabile, who is the pastor at Dallas’ oldest church, the Cochran Chapel United Methodist Church. Rev. Stabile said he’s fully accepting of his son’s sexual orientation and believes that being gay is neither a choice nor a sin. When asked what happened, he said that his son simply left home that Friday evening and never returned:

James called a few days later and told his parents he was moving out, and that he’d be back to get his stuff. James apparently had moved in with some folks from Heartland.

After that, it would be some time before James’ parents heard from him, as his church friends reportedly advised him not to contact them.

Joseph Stabile said the Heartland folks also may have advised James to throw away his medication, telling him that God would cure his bipolar disorder, too.

Joseph’s parents said James has a tendency to be less than truthful, especially when he’s off his medication, and that he loves attention. They said they don’t believe he’s ever questioned his sexuality, but that the folks from Heartland manipulated and exploited him for publicity.

Not surprisingly, James Stabile didn’t stay in the program for very long.

When James was kicked out of Pure Life, his father asked if they could provide him with a bus ticket home. After all, James had paid $2,100 up front plus $150 a week to be part of the program. Pure Life refused.

Now nearly four months after that fateful “purity seige,” Jame has returned home where he’s seeing his therapist once again and is hopefully back on his meds.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Hear

This Sunday’s 60 Minutes will feature a gay soldier who told, and told, and told.

[Sgt. Darren] Manzella, a medic who served in Iraq for a year, currently serves as medical liaison for the 1st Cavalry Division stationed in Kuwait, where he says he is “out” to his entire chain of command, including a three-star general.

And no one heard.

He then says his commander reported him, as he was obliged to do, and then “I had to go see my battalion commander, who read me my rights,” he says. He turned over pictures of him and his boyfriend, including video of a passionate kiss, to aid the investigation. But to his surprise, “I was told to go back to work. There was no evidence of homosexuality,” says Manzella. “‘You’re not gay,'” he says his superiors told him. This response confused him and, he says, the closest a superior officer came to addressing his sexuality was to say “I don’t care if you’re gay or not.”

Although many of the Republican candidates for President think that servicemen and women are too conservative to bond with a gay fighter, I suspect that when it comes to fellow warriors, our soldiers are more interested in conserving their skin than conserving their prejudices.

For more information on how you can make an impact in changing this discriminatory and freedom-threatening policy, visit the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network website. (Photo curtesy of SLDN)

Benedict XVI: Gay Marriage “Obstacle On the Road to Peace”

Pope Benedict XVI has issued his Message for the Celebration of World Peace Day, titled “The Human Family, A Community of Peace.” In this traditional January 1 message (issued in advance of 2008), he discusses “the one human family’s” importance for world peace:

6. The social community, if it is to live in peace, is also called to draw inspiration from the values on which the family community is based. This is as true for local communities as it is for national communities; it is also true for the international community itself, for the human family which dwells in that common house which is the earth. [All emphasis in the original]

There is so much to appreciate in this statement:

• A call for people to treat each other as family (“We do not live alongside one another purely by chance; all of us are progressing along a common path as men and women, and thus as brothers and sisters.”),
• responsible stewardship of the earth’s energy resources and the environment (“sustainable development capable of ensuring the well-being of all while respecting environmental balance”),
• the “prudent use of resources and an equitable distribution of wealth,”
• laws “which would foster true freedom rather than blind caprice, and protect the weak from oppression by the strong,”
• concerns over wars and conflicts in Africa and the Middle East, and continuing arms races in countries all over the world.

In many ways, it is a beautiful and well-considered document. It’s the sort of document I often appreciated during my Catholic days. Except this time, there’s this that’s buried in the text:

…[E]verything that serves to weaken the family based on the marriage of a man and a woman, everything that directly or indirectly stands in the way of its openness to the responsible acceptance of a new life, everything that obstructs its right to be primarily responsible for the education of its children, constitutes an objective obstacle on the road to peace.

If I were in a flippant mood, I might say that he’s not talking about same-sex marriage because the ability for gays and lesbians to enter into marriages does nothing to weaken anyone else’s family. But of course we all know better; we know exactly what he’s talking about.

Arms races, Conflicting economic interests, dwindling resources, not being able to see each other as brothers and sisters in the “one human family” — these are all serious impediments to world peace, no question about it. And framing these conflicts as disruptions inside the human family is a useful way of looking at things.

But gay marriage? An objective obstacle on the road to peace?

I think Benedict missed another important obstacle to peace: efforts by some world leaders to scapegoat a few members of that one human family for the problems suffered by other members of that family. I’m sure it’s just an oversight. Maybe he’ll pick up that theme for 2009.

Church of Sweden Endorses Gay Marriage Law

As we reported earlier, Sweden is committed to converting from its provisions for Civil Unions to gender-less marriage. The Church of Sweden, which represents the faith community of about 80% of the nation’s citizens, had previously decided that they would continue to provide legal officiation of wedding ceremonies if the law changed.

According to The Local, the Church has now announced that it supports the legal change in status

“Marriage and (same-sex) partnerships are equivalent forms of unions. Therefore the Church of Sweden’s central board says yes to the proposal to join the legislation for marriages and partnerships into a single law,” the Church said in a statement.

The church, which has performed blessings of same-sex unions since earlier this year, is in agreement with granting the civil and religious recognition simultaneously. Currently civil unions cannot be conducted in a religious ceremony.

However, it wishes to hold the term “marriage” in reserve for only opposite-sex couples.

Announcing the Cameronesque Award: The Christian Defense Coalition

A lot of groups and individuals put out piles of misrepresented statistics and bogus research. Few can match Paul Cameron’s audacity, but from time to time we run across something that surely must put a smile on Cameron’s lips. One such email blast reached my inbox yesterday, and it was so good I thought it might be time to inaugurate a brand new award.

And so I’m announcing the Cameronesque Award, given for the individual or group who engages in the most egregious manipulation, misuse, or misrepresentation of research or statistics that would make Paul Cameron proud.

For the first winner of this brand new award, I chose the Christian Defense Coalition. Headed by Rev. Pat Mahoney, the Christian Defense Coalition was formed to advocate on behalf of Terri Shiavo’s parents, and they’ve been involved with conservative Christian politics ever since. Yesterday, they put out a blaring press release claiming that the “shootings in Colorado highlight the fact that Christians and churches are the overwhelming target of hate crimes in America.”

Did you get that? Christians and churches are the “overwhelming target” of hate crimes in America. Not blacks, not gays, not Jews. Christians.

The Christian Defense Coalition goes on, citing statistics from the National Burned Churches Coalition:

For example, between 1997 and 2007 there were 3,500 acts of either arson, attempted arson, bombings and suspicious fires at churches according to the National Coalition for Burned Churches.

The group also reports that 600 churches were subjected to arson alone between 2000 and 2006.

The National Burned Churches Coalition was founded in 1997 in the wake of several church fires that occurred in the South. Since then, they’ve provided valuable aid and advice to churches recovering from arson, bombing or vandalism, and they do research for crime prevention. The NBCC does genuinely good work.

But not all of the acts that the NBCC tracks were hate crimes. According to their web site, some of these churches are damaged or vandalized as part of common criminal activity, and some are targeted by teens “just for the thrill of it.”

Don’t get me wrong. The NBCC is filling a legitimate need. But not all of the churches they assist were victims of hate crimes. And the NBCC doesn’t get involved with acts of hate directed at other groups. That simply is not their mission, which means it’s not possible to put their data into perspective against what other groups experience.

So who does track hate crimes nationwide against all legally-specified categories? Well, the FBI of course. And for 2006, here is what they reported:

Now the Christian Defense Coalition ignored the FBI data altogether. Using the NBCC data, they complained:

Most would believe that the groups or facilities most likely to be targets of hate crimes are persons of color, gays, Muslims or abortion clinics. The reason for that is the national press, media, elected officials and special interest groups focus, dramatize and over report when those groups and facilities are subjected to violent acts.

But let’s look at the FBI’s data, which is the only source for statistics of hate crimes against all of these groups (except abortion clinics). If you add the anti-Protestant and anti-Catholic reports of hate crime incidents, you’ll find that there were 143 hate crimes reported against Christian groups or individuals.

That’s a lower figure than for every other group that the Christian Defense Coalition mentions. That figure is minuscule compared to the 3,136 anti-Black hate crime incidents. It’s even blown away by the 1,008 anti-White hate crime incidents. It’s also tiny compared to the 1,366 combined anti-homosexual hate crime incidents and the 1,027 anti-Jewish hate crime incidents. It’s even lower than the 191 anti-Muslim hate crime incidents. In fact, even Asians and Pacific Islanders experience more hate crime incidents that Christians — and Christians make up the majority of the U.S. population!

A lot of people are lining up to exploit the Colorado shootings to advance their agenda. Monday, we cited the Family “Research” Council’s Tony Perkin’s craven attack on the “secular media.” Today we have the Christian Defense Coalition trying to dress their claims with meaningless statistics. I have a feeling that somewhere in Colorado Springs, Cameron is smiling.

Video: Inside “Love Won Out”

Love Won Out isn’t just about selling the idea to parents that their children can change, there’s a political element as well Jim Burroway discovered. Here Jim describes a “fear inducing” speech by Dick Carpenter on how homosexuality is handled in public schools. Carpenter takes relatively benign videos promoting tolerance for children of gay couples and presents it as propaganda. Carpenter presents the material but never explains what the implications of the videos clips are supposed to be. Those in attendance, including Jim, are left to wonder.

“This is What Love in Action Looks Like” In Post-Production

Peterson Toscano reports queer filmmaker Morgan Fox is in need of additional funding to assist with editing and licensing of his upcoming film about Love In Action. Peterson (along with Bruce Garrett) is an associate executive producer on the film.

If you wish to donate money you may do so at the film’s blog.

And, in case you live on Mars and haven’t seen the trailer yet, here it is.