Box Turtle Bulletin

Homosexual Wizards

Those who follow the Harry Potter series of books will by now have read the final episode, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. So I’m sure I’m spoiling no secrets when I tell you that one of the subplots involves the relationship of revered headmaster Albus Dumbledore during his youth with his rival Gellert Grindelwald.

But what you may not know is that the relationship was more than a friendship based on mutual admiration of magical abilities. No, Albus was blind to Grindelwald’s ambitions because, gasp, he was smitten.

According to the Chicago Tribune, author J.K. Rowling set the record straight for her fans at a recent appearance:

She was asked by one young fan whether Dumbledore finds “true love.”

“Dumbledore is gay,” the author responded to gasps and applause.

But Rowling is no fool. She’s aware that her revelation will not bring her adoration from some camps.

Not everyone likes her work, Rowling said, likely referring to Christian groups that have alleged the books promote witchcraft. Her news about Dumbledore, she said, will give them one more reason.

No doubt.

(hat tip GoodAsYou)

Low Turnout At Watchmen Conference

It looks like this past weekend’s Watchmen On the Walls conference turned out to be a bust. Organizers of the conference had expected 600 to 700 people to show up to the convention center in Lynnwood, Washington, but according to news reports the conference drew only a little over a hundred. It would appear that there were nearly as many protesters outside the convention center as there were conference attendees inside.

Seattle television station KING was there with a video report on the conference. Box Turtle Bulletin was credited for relaying the video of the Scott Lively speaking at the Watchman conference in Novosibirsk last August.

The Watchmen On The Walls issued this statement Friday during a news conference before the start of the conference:

We are the Watchmen on the Walls.

We are a global coalition of men and women of every race, color and nationality who believe in the superiority of the natural family and marriage between one man and one woman.

We are against cohabitation, divorce, abortion, adultery and other behaviors that weaken the marriage-based society on which civilization depends. But we are especially focused against homosexuality, because those who practice this self-destructive vice, and have organized themselves into a political movement, are the chief enemies of the natural family.

We do not promote or condone violence.

We do not apologize for opposing homosexuality because it is morally, physically, psychologically and socially wrong, unnatural and harmful. This is self-evident to the vast majority of the citizens of the world, whom we represent.

…

We are the Watchmen on the Walls and we will not shrink from our duty.

Notice how they sandwiched a single statement about not condoning violence between statements characterizing homosexuality as “morally, physically, psychologically and socially wrong, unnatural and harmful” and the “chief enemy of natural families.” While they don’t seem to explicitly condone violence, they certainly couch their rhetoric in the language of warfare.

And in the face of real violence, Lively in particular has shown an amazing capacity to excuse it whenever it occurs. And Lively is no stranger to violence himself. According to the SPLC, Lively was ordered by a court in 1991 to pay $20,000 to a lesbian photojournalist he was accused of dragging by the hair through the halls of a Portland church.

See also:
Watchmen Wrap-up

Video: Inside “Love Won Out”

Why I Attended Love Won Out

Assumptions About What It Means To Be Gay

See also:

The “Love Won Out” Series:
Prologue: Why I Went To “Love Won Out”
Part 1: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Part 2: Parents Struggle With “No Exceptions”
Part 3: A Whole New Dialect
Part 4: It Depends On How The Meaning of the Word “Change” Changes
Part 5: A Candid Explanation For “Change”

Protesters In Scary Costumes Against “Scary” Reparative Therapy

Wayne Besen and his group Truth Wins Out protested last year’s NARTH conference with the theme “quacks” featuring duck costumes, duck calls and large inflatable duck pool toys.

Besen spoke to the Dallas Voice about his theme for this year’s protest:

Besen said protesters have the option of wearing “scary costumes” in connection with the protest’s theme that “reparative therapy is scary.”

“It will highlight the horrors of coming out of the ex-gay movement,” Besen said. “As scary as the costumes might be, they pale in comparison to the real thing.”

But Besen said he hopes no one shows up in anything that might be considered obscene.

“We want to present a colorful depiction of reparative therapy, but we don’t want anyone providing poster images for the ex-gay movement,” Besen said.

Last year, Besen coordinated a protest of the group’s conference in Orlando, where the protesters wore duck suits and “quacked” at the therapists. Duck suits would also be appropriate this year, he said.

Wayne has all the details for those interested in attending the protest on his website.

Obama’s Campaign Gospel Tour To Feature Ex-Gay Advocate

Senator Obama’s campaign has planned an “Embrace the Change” gospel concert tour to consist of three dates in South Carolina featuring five acts, one of whom is Donnie McClurkin according to the New York Times. (Yes, the tour is named “Embrace the Change” which XGW also finds worth noting.)

Several years ago the Washington Post noted McClurkin’s public statements on his own sexual history and views on gay conversion:

McClurkin wrote on a Christian Web site in 2002 that he struggled with homosexuality after he was molested by male relatives when he was 8 and 13. “I’ve been through this and have experienced God’s power to change my lifestyle,” he wrote. “I am delivered and I know God can deliver others, too.”

Via AmericaBlog

Shirtless In Abercrombie

I normally don’t post stuff like this, but what the heck; it’s the weekend. There has been a lot of commentary over the past several years on the negative effects that impossibly beautiful models have on women’s body image in connection with the rise of anorexia and bulimia. This problem is also emerging among some gay men as well. The clothing store Abercrombie & Fitch has provided plenty of images of male perfection, so much so that it has become an often controversial icon in discussions of body images.

The New York group ImproveEverywhere staged an event which brilliantly contrasts the idealization of the utterly perfect, fat-free and blemish-free male figure with the much more common reality. By sending 111 shirtless guys into a New York Abercrombie store, “the rest of us” get to celebrate a healthy dose of that reality. ImproveEverywhere’s full report can be found here but here are two clips of highlight reels:

111 Shirtless Guys

Afterwards

The Watchmen: Protections for LGBT Youth Worse Than Holocaust Furnaces

Earlier this week, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed several pieces of legislation which improves the rights of LGBT residents of that state. Much of that legislation is designed to protect students from harassment and bullying in public schools by making sure teachers and school administrators fully understand their responsibilities to protect youth.

These protections for LGBT youth have generated howls of protest among leading anti-gay activists. Not the least of them are the Watchmen On the Walls, an emerging international anti-gay extremist group we’ve been monitoring recently. The Watchmen will be meeting in Lynnewood, Washington this weekend. We’ve already offered a preview of some of the virulent, hate-inducing rhetoric emanating from that group from a Watchmen conference held last August in Novosibirsk.

Another glimpse into what we might find at the upcoming confab can be found in last weekend’s Watchmen gathering in Sacramento to protest the governor’s latest moves. For example, Randy Thomasson of the Campaign for Children and Families spoke at that Watchmen meeting and said that the new laws in California will leave children “morally raped” in the classroom. And then there’s this, from a translation of the Watchmen’s Russian-language web site:

Vlad Kusakin, human rights activist and owner of “The Speaker” media holding company, told the audience: “Now it’s time to rescue our children from the public schools as from a hellish furnace. Just like one who would prescribe the burning of kids in the Nazi’s concentration camps furnaces, now 65 years later Arnold Schwarzenegger opened furnaces which are even worse for our children by his signature. Pray and fast for the kids and families of California and take your kids out of public schools”.

We earlier reported on Scott Lively’s influence in the Slavic-American evangelical community. That influence comes mainly from his book, The Pink Swastika, where he blames gay people as being behind the formation of the Nazi Party and carrying out the Holocaust. This theory has been readily accepted among a population who suffered mightily at the hands of the Nazis during World War II. You can see this reflected in Kusakin’s remarks.

Lively, who with Seattle-area pastor Kenneth Hutcherson, and Riga, Latvia megachurch pastor Alexey Ledyaev, founded the Watchmen. Lively also spoke in Sacramento. Again, according to the Russian language web site:

Scott Lively, human rights activist, historian and lawyer, stated that “in American legislatures there are ways to pass, as well as to repeal, any law. Therefore, the only thing we’re lacking in the struggle for Judeo-Christian morality is the unity of the churches and the courage of clergy. Let’s put away our denominational ambitions and unite our prayers and efforts for the sake of rescuing the civilization.”

George Neverov cited statistics on deaths and diseases among homosexuals, and he also demonstrated that 3% of population is dictating the moral principles of life for the rest of overwhelming majority: “For how long shall we cowardly bend before a morality that is alien to us? For how long shall we swallow all that loathsome stuff that is imposed on us by immoral law-makers and minorities? When, O Church, will you raise in prayer and spiritual battle over the land that is entrusted to you?”

Ken Hutchison dismissed objections to the Watchmen’s violent rhetoric, telling The Seattle Times: “You’re going to have extremists on any aspect on any teaching.” But these extremists aren’t just some fringe part of the Watchmen movement. Lively and Kusakin, along with Hutcherson, are among the most prominent U.S.-based leaders. In the Watchmen world, these guys don’t represent the extremes; they’re at the very the core of the movement.

The SPLC’s Casey Sanchez reported that the Watchmen “routinely deliver hateful screeds on the airwaves and from the pulpit in their native tongue that, were they delivered in English, would be a source of nationwide controversy.” Maybe it’s time we learned a little Russian.

Thanks to Ruslan Porshnev for his help with the translations.

Military Mistakenly Recruits On LGBT Web Site

USA Today is reporting that the the Army, Navy and Air Force had mistakenly advertised for recruits on  GLEE.com, a networking website for gay professionals, despite gays being barred from military service under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Most of the jobs posted in the web site were for were thousands of hard-to-fill positions requiring specialized training, including Arabic translators, intelligence analysts, and medical professionals, as well as nearly a thousand combat positions. Ironically, we’ve seen dedicated gays and lesbians kicked out of all of these positions under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Recruiters were surprised about the postings on GLEE.com, and they said they would remove the ads:

“This is the first I’ve heard about it,” said Maj. Michael Baptista, advertising branch chief for the Army National Guard, which will spend $6.5 million on Internet recruiting this year. “We didn’t knowingly advertise on that particular website,” which he said does not “meet the moral standards” of the military.

Openly gay Americans proudly serving their country does not “meet the moral standards” of the military, but convicted felons and gang members are perfectly acceptable.

Peterson Toscano Presents Outline Of Harms Done By Ex-Gay Programs

We ex-gay survivors are able to list the individual ways our lives have been affected by our ex-gay experiences but it’s good to see Peterson Peterson has compiledan outline categorizing all the forms of harm in a logical fashion. His basic categories (many of which have sub-categories) are:

• Emotional Harm
• Psychological Harm
• Spiritual Harm
• Relationship Harm
• Financial Harm
• Career Harm
• Physical Harm
• Sexual Harm
• Developmental Harm

Peterson invites commenters to share either on the post itself or at BeyondExGay.

Guess Who the First Published Author In Cameron’s New “Journal” Is

Last month, I reported on Paul Cameron’s new fake online “journal”, something he decided to call the Empirical Journal of Same Sexual Behavior. Maybe he can no longer afford the price of being published in his previous favorite vanity journal, the pay-to-publish Psychological Reports. Now, with his own pay-to-publish online “journal,” he can publish whatever he wants whenever he wants for free. Which pretty much means that his new “journal” is what the rest of us would call a “web site.”

His new web site, err, “journal” now features only one article for its premier: “Teacher-Pupil Sex Across the World: How Much Is Homosexual?” — by none other than Paul Cameron himself. And for Cameron’s first article in his little pretend journal, he decided to try to find every instance of teacher-student sexual abuse as reported in newspapers all over the English-speaking world.

But it doesn’t look like he was able to get very far. In his wide-ranging search of newspaper articles from 1980 to 2006, he was only able to find 340 perpetrators in the United States. That average out to fewer than thirteen per year. It’s hard to draw any conclusions from such a fractional size, but that has never stopped Cameron before — even though he understands perfectly well why his sample is so problematic:

Even though teacher/pupil sexual events are fairly common, an instance of teacher/pupil has to run a veritable gauntlet before it becomes public knowledge. Educational systems try vigorously to assure that teacher molestations are not brought to light. So such an event is likely to be suppressed. Thus, an Australian commission uncovered scores of teachers who were either shifted to other assignments or given a letter of commendation rather than being prosecuted…

Which may explain why there were only ninety-five teachers in his Australian sample.

I won’t bore you with the details since you can guess what he has to say: The gays are out to molest your children. Warren Throckmorton spotted the biggest problem with this “research” right away:

Anyone familiar with schools and teacher behavior knows that these events are frequently covered up with many never getting to trial and thus are not captured by newspapers. Who knows how many actual events occur? Who knows how many of the same-sex perpetrators are married with kids? Not to mention that same sex perpetrations might actually be more likely to be reported and made public. And yet, Cameron considers news reports a source of data adequate enough to include in his inaugural issue. So since he demolished any credibility the study could have, there is no point in going any further, right? Of course, he does, and we get statistics that may end up in a news release somewhere.

Whenever I come across a paper like this, the first thing I do is a survey of the footnotes or the bibliographical references. That’s where I get the first clues of where his distortions are (he typically recycles the same material over and over), and I am never disappointed. Cameron typically loads his papers up with dozens of bibliographical references. Even his popular tracts and brochures are burdened with such scholarly debris. Medical Consequences of What Homosexuals Do has thirty-three references alone.

But his latest effort stops at a paltry eleven. Three of them are Cameron’s own work. Another is a magazine article from McCall’s, which he brings up four times in the text as though it were a scholarly study. Now that he doesn’t have to pay Psychological Reports to get his stuff published, it’s as if he’s not even trying anymore.

See also:

Testing The Premise: Are Gays A Threat To Our Children?

Video: Inside “Love Won Out”

Love Won Out held a conference in Irvine, CA over the weekend and since the media down there appears to be “ex-gayed out” the most news coverage it appears to have received in a blog entry at the OC Weekly. This ex-gay media saturation in OC is of course why none of the familiar faces chose to head down there last weekend.

That said I personally have been busy editing footage of Jim Burroway discussing his experience attending the Love Won Out conference held in Phoenix earlier this year. I present to you the first two of twenty eight video clips.

Who Attends Love Won Out?

What Melissa Fryrear Says About The Prospect Of Change.

See also:

The “Love Won Out” Series:
Prologue: Why I Went To “Love Won Out”
Part 1: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Part 2: Parents Struggle With “No Exceptions”
Part 3: A Whole New Dialect
Part 4: It Depends On How The Meaning of the Word “Change” Changes
Part 5: A Candid Explanation For “Change”

Street Preachers Have Their Own Conference

Who knew?

Dozens of street preachers denounced the perceived evils of homosexuality, masturbation, Judaism and Islam — among others — during four days of local protests coinciding with the Southeast Open Air Preachers Association’s annual conference.

About 50 preachers, including some who advocate the death penalty for gay sex and childhood rebellion, gathered in the Holiday Inn Express in Kennesaw for the convention held Sept. 25 through Oct. 1.

John Lennon Was Not Gay

I’m glad we could clear that up.

Ever Wonder What Anti-Gay Hatred Sounds Like In Russian?

Here’s American Scott Lively speaking alongside his Russian translator at last August’s Watchmen On the Walls conference in Novosibirsk:

See also:
From Novosibirsk To Lynnwood

From Novosibirsk To Lynnwood

The international anti-gay extremist group Watchmen on the Walls will hold a conference in Lynnwood, Washington October 19 through 21. Unfortunately, the Lynnwood Convention Center doesn’t appear to know who they are dealing with:

The venue is owned by the Lynnwood Public Facilities District, a public taxing district that operates the convention center but is separate from the city.

“Our understanding is that they’re law-abiding. They have a right of free speech just like any other group,” said Mike Echelbarger, the board’s chairman.

“If we were talking about the (Ku Klux Klan) we’d have a totally different take on it. Of course we wouldn’t rent to the KKK,” he said.

Of course, they wouldn’t rent to the KKK. But as we reported earlier, they may as well. The rhetoric the Watchman use has often been violent, using the rhetoric of warfare in their speeches and writings. Founded by Redmond, Washington by preacher Kenneth Hutcherson, holocaust revisionist Scott Lively, and Latvian megachurch pastor Alexey Ledyaev, Watchmen on the Walls have gained a tremendous amount of influence in Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine and Russia. Ledyaev’s fomenting of anti-gay hatred in Riga, Latvia led to violence when skinhead and other demonstrators threw excrement and eggs at Gay Pride participants in 2006.

And as the SPLC recently reported, the Watchmen also represent an increasingly violent anti-gay movement among Slavic evangelical immigrants in several U.S. cities which have previously been known as being gay friendly. In July 2007, a group of Russian-speaking men killed Satendar Singh, a 26-year-old gay Fijian of Indian near Sacramento, California. Two men, Andrey Vusik, 29, and Aleksandr Shevchenko, 21 were charged in connection with Singh’s death. Vusik fled to Russian in July and is being sought by the FBI. Ledyaev and Lively have refused to publicly condemn the killing.

Scott Lively (right) at the Watchmen conference in Novosibirsk, Aug 16-19.

I recently learned that the Watchmen held a conference last August in the Siberian capital of Novosibirsk in the Russian Federation. Scott Lively appeared at that conference, where he described Singh’s killing to his Russian audience his way:

Now, I’ve been working with the Russian community in Sacramento. And I want to tell you this is an example of how bad things are in the United States. Because we’ve come to a place in the United States where the homosexuals have achieved very high power. And they’ve begun to punish… They’ve begun to cause the political powers to punish anyone who says that homosexuality is wrong.

There was a situation in Sacramento a few weeks ago in a public park. There was a group of homosexuals and they were very drunk and one of the homosexual men was taking off his pants. And there were children in the park. And a Russian man went over to these homosexuals and he was rebuking them and there started a fight. And the Russian man punched the homosexual. [The audience starts to shout and applaud.] No, no, no, don’t… The man was very drunk… the homosexual was very drunk. He was very drunk and he fell down and he hit his head and he died. [Some in the audience start to applaud and laugh] No…. no…

Now the Russian man has been accused of murder and the FBI is seeking him. And all of the powers in Sacramento have been accusing all of the Russian community of being murderers. And the goal is to silence everyone who speaks against homosexuality. And this is a very dangerous situation because we don’t want homosexuals to be killed. We want them to be saved. Amen?

Do you feel the love?

Scott Lively’s fame in the Slavic-American evangelical community stems from his book, The Pink Swastika, where he blames the rise of Nazism in Germany on gays. This theory has been readily accepted among a population who suffered mightily at the hands of the Nazis during World War II. In a June 23, 2003 letter to the Washington Times, Lively wrote that “No clear-thinking person believes that the homosexual sexual ethic and that of the family-based society can peacefully coexist. …One must prevail at the expense of the other.” He repeated and expanded that war rhetoric in his remarks in Novosibirsk:

There is a war that is going on in the world. There is a war that is waging across the entire face of the globe. It’s been waging in the United States for decades, and it’s been waging in Europe for decades. It’s a war between Christians and homosexuals.

This is a war you haven’t seen yet. You’ve only seen a little bit of it, because Russia had been protected against the homosexual movement by the Communists. One of the few good things that the Soviet Union did is that it stopped the sexual revolution from infecting the Russian people. But all across the West, the sexual revolution changed the culture of the nations. The sexual revolution embraces the idea that there should be no limits on sexual conduct.

And this is the design of the Devil to destroy civilization, because civilization is based on the natural family. One man and one woman united in marriage bringing children into the world and training them to replace them in the next generation. That’s the foundation of civilization and the heart of Christian living.

And in the United States where the sexual revolution began, it was the homosexual political movement that designed this strategy to attack Christianity. The homosexual movement teaches sexual freedom, and its first target is the heterosexual people. The homosexual activists stayed hidden but they taught this philosophy through their activists. And out of the philosophy came the principalities and powers that is destroying the West: The pornography industry, the abortion industry, and the destruction of marriage through divorce.

These things are the product of a way of thinking. They deny the Truth of God. They deny the design of God for human beings. And their purpose is the change the cultures of the world.

Now, the homosexual movement has been winning this war in the United States, and it has been winning this war in Europe. And we’re looking at the future collapse of Western civilization. And Watchmen on the Walls is an organization to fight against this collapse. Watchmen On the Walls is an organization of men and women with courage, who will stand on the Truth of God and without compromise demand that the culture will follow the guidance of God. That marriage and family must be held at the highest level.

Ken Hutcherson has been equally blunt with the war rhetoric, telling the Seattle Times last January, “We better wake up. This is a war.” Hutcherson went to Latvia last March to speak at Ledyaev’s church in preparation for this year’s Pride celebrations. While there, he claimed that he was speaking on behalf of President Bush, saying that the White House’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives named him “Special Envoy for Adoptions, Family Values, Religious Freedom, and Medical Relief.” When the Seattle Stranger asked the White House about it, spokeswoman Alyssa J. McLenninghen said nobody gave Hutcherson any such title or authority to speak on behalf of the White House. Hutcherson promised to prove his status by producing video of him being given the “power,” but no such proof has surfaced.

According to a translation of the Watchmen On the Walls website, Vlad Kusakin says the conference in Lynnwood is intended to promote the “protection of traditional Christian and moral values, which, owing to the liberalization of mores are under threat of extinction.” Kusakin is the host of a Russian-language anti-gay radio show in Sacramento and the publisher of a Russian-language newspaper in Seattle. He is also one of the speakers at the conference. Scott Lively rallied his Novosibirsk audience with a similar mandate:

If we allow the people who hate God to take control of all the centers of power, then they will change all of the rules and they will put barriers in the way of the Gospel. They will prevent us from telling the truth to the people around us. But if the people of God can step forward and take control of the centers of power, then we can make the rules work in favor of the Gospel. We can use the government to help us tell the message of Jesus Christ. And we must do this!

Hat tips: Ruslan Porshnev and BTB reader Tom.

See also:

Ever Wonder What Anti-Gay Hatred Sounds Like In Russian? — for video of Scott Lively’s talk last August in Novosibirsk.
The Watchmen: Protections for LGBT Youth Worse Than Holocaust Furnaces