Box Turtle Bulletin

Ah, Irony

Mass Resistance is a anti-gay site that seeks (rather futily) to promote anti-gay attitudes in Massachusetts. Amy Contrada is one of the main haters. Typical rantings from Amy:

Many of you may be aware of the pro-homosexual play “The Laramie Project” that’s being presented in colleges and even high schools across the country. It’s an extremely offensive piece of propaganda that uses the murder of the gay college student Matthew Shepard to push acceptance of homosexuality and horribly demonize Christians and others who have moral issues with homosexual behavior. It is also an extremely violent and profane work, meant to be psychologically jarring, with little value beyond that.

So perhaps it’s more than a little amusing that QueerToday.com is reporting that Amy’s daughter, Claudia Contrada, is performing in her school’s production of…The Laramie Project. This is confirmed by a couple of fellow students who also report that Claudia is delightful.

Let’s hope the production goes well and touches the hearts of all who watch it.

hat tip GoodAsYou

UPDATE

Yep. It’s Amy Contrada’s daughter. And MassResistance responded in their usual loving way:

This is the true sleazy, self-centered face of the homosexual movement, that cares about no one else’s rights and nothing but their immediate emotional desires.

As reported by Queer Today, Contrada basically argues that other people should boycott The Laramie Project, but that because her daughter enjoys acting then her family is exempt:

Amy and her husband were forced into a no-win situation by the school when the “Laramie Project” was chosen as the fall play. Their daughter had her heart set on acting during her senior year; being involved means a great deal to her.

And here I had my heart set on equality for all citizens regardless of sexual orientation.

Reorientation, Old School Style

Pete Price is a radio personality in the UK. The Liverpool Echo has an extract of his autobiography Pete Price is a Namedropper. Price describes some of the methods used on him to cure his homosexuality:

In the morning I was shown into a windowless room with a male nurse. A crate of Guinness arrived, and I was given a stack of dirty magazines showing body builders – not the sort of thing that would have turned me on in a million years.

The nurse started playing the tape of my conversation. I sat and listened, flicking through the books with a pint, not knowing what the hell was going on.

Then he gave me an injection and suddenly I started feeling sick.

“I think I’m going to vomit!” I yelled out. “I need a basin.”

The doctor smiled. “Then be sick.”

“I think I’m going to go to the toilet.”

“Just do it on the bed.”

I screamed: “You’re joking.”

All the while the tape of the doctor’s questions was playing in the background, over and over: “What you do is disgusting.”

It continued for 72 hours – the drink, the injections, the vomiting and excrement – hour after hour.

All I could think was that I wasn’t going to get out alive.

When it ended, I lay there sobbing, the doctor came in.

“Now you’ve got to have the electrodes … ” he said.

That’s just a little something to think about whenever anti-gays start missing the good ol’ days of “homosexuality is an illness”.

Dr. Throckmorton Reports on Crosswalk Blog about Jones and Yarhouse Study

In perhaps the most careful and least exaggerated coverage of the study in the Christian Press that I have seen, Dr. Warren Throckmorton talks on his blog on Crosswalk.com about the results of the Jones and Yarhouse Study. He concludes:

In a way, this book has something for everyone. Critics who say change is rare will note that a relatively small percentage made complete shifts. And the authors disclosed that same-sex attractions lingered for many participants. Social conservatives will point out that, for many people, living in accord with traditional religious teachings regarding sexuality does not appear to increase emotional distress. From my perspective, the study highlights the beneficial role that faith and religious community can have in supporting valued identity and behavior.

I would suggest that this report did not seem to identify anyone who made a “complete shift” (I’m still waiting for my copy of the book so this is a tentative claim). Otherwise this conclusion seems true.

Hate Crimes Bill Passed by Senate

Today 50 Democrats, 9 Republicans, and an Independant voted to add the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Bill to the bill that funds the war in Iraq.

39 Republicans voted against the measure. Technically the vote was for cloture – to end debate. The vote to add hate crimes to the defense bill was passed by voice vote unopposed. This allows Senators to have voted both for and against the bill.

A similar situation happened in 2004 but Republican leadership removed hate crimes in negotiations between the Senate and the House. That is unlikely to happen this time around.

President Bush will be in the uneviable position of either signing the bill and infuriating his social conservative supporters (about the only supporters he has left) or vetoing the bill and trying to explain to America that preventing hate crimes legislation is more important than paying our soldiers overseas.

Pro-Discrimination Group Seeking Last Minute Signatures

Oregon has a provision whereby a vote of the legislature can be put to a vote of the people if adequate signatures can be obtained. Oregon has 2.1 million registered voters and requires 55,179 voters to sign a petition in order for the issue to reach the ballot.

Anti-gay activists in Oregon are collecting signatures to put SB2 – an anti-discrimination law – and HB2007 – a civil unions bill – up to the vote of the people.

Today at 3:00 pm is the deadline for turning in these signatures and placing the legislative action on the 2008 ballot. Otherwise they become law.

According to the Statesman Journal, as of Tuesday the group seeking to keep discrimination legal and civil unions absent had about 55,000 signatures. However, they are still seeking a buffer of about 8,000 signatures as there are always signatures that are not valid on every petition. If they do not get their buffer, they will not file.

UPDATE

Per Oregon Live,

Marylin Shannon, a former state senator and spokeswoman for Defense of Marriage Again, said the groups had delivered nearly 63,000 signatures to overturn each of the two laws.

Now the verification process begins (probably by sampling). If the Secretary of State determines that there are adequate signatures, the two bills go to the voters for confirmation in November 2008.

Upcoming Hate Crimes Vote Thursday

Word has it that the Senate is expected to vote on the Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007. The anti-gay lobby knew this was coming, with it receiving nearly constant mention at the Family Impact Summit. At one point, the Family Research Council stopped selling their $20 DVD devoted to the subject and started handing it out to anyone who would take one. They’ve been pumping out tons of lies about what this legislation would supposedly do.

I encourage you to inform yourself, read the text of the bill (which I’ve posted three times, something hate crime opponents refuse to do), and call your Senator.

College Runner Comes Out On-Line

Willamette College is a liberal arts college in Oregon with a United Methodist heritage. Steven Millard is a runner at Willamette.

Recently Steven gave an interview to the ever interesting Outsports.com in which he talks about his life as a gay collegiate athlete.

I am not out to anyone on the team, although I don’t mind if they know. I think that bad reactions will be very limited. The campus is supportive, the coaches are supportive and the team has a lot of special men and women on it. I think they will like me for who I am as a person, as they do for everyone else. And when it comes down to it, my sexuality has no affect on how I perform or how I interact with my teammates.

He also discusses how his faith impacted his decisions surrounding his sexuality.

Outsports: How have you reconciled your Christian faith with your sexuality?

Millard: Not simply or easily. When I first started to deal with my feelings I struggled with thinking that my faith and feelings might collide. I did a lot of reading and a lot of personal investigation and have come to the conclusion that the bible simply does not speak to the issue of homosexuality as we understand it today. One source that was tremendously helpful to me was the website gaychristian.net which has several thoughtful responses regarding the issue. Today, I am happy with where I am at regarding my faith.

I with Steven all the very best success both on and off the track and hope that his team is as supportive as he anticipates.

Additionally, with all of the language about “evil agenda” that is coming from anti-gay Christians, I believe we all owe a great debt to Justin Lee and the others at www.gaychristian.net who provide young gay and lesbian Christians with thoughtfully researched and eloquently articulated information about sexual orientation from a Christ-centered perspective and give a supportive home to those who seek a reconciliation between their sexuality and their faith – whatever way that takes them.

ABC Article on Gay Husband

ABC has a new article on the choices women make when they find out their husband is gay. This story is hardly new – husband comes out, church recommends reorientation therapy, couple stays together, another kid or two, husband finally admits it just isn’t working.

As a happy note, it appears that the couple have grown through the experience and are aware of the pressures that trapped them in a non-functional relationship.

Jennifer says, in retrospect, one of her biggest regrets in life was to believe that her husband’s sexuality could be changed by conversion therapy. She wishes churches would embrace anyone and everyone, but doubts that will ever be a reality.

A Short Comment On Comments

Warren Throckmorton is not a sociopath. Since I can attest to this, I thought I ought to clear that up. I recently made the error of standing on the sidelines while one of my good friends, Wayne Besen, crossed a line. Since then, a few concerned citizens from all sides have been calling me on this off-line. And so I offer my apologies for not dealing with that matter sooner and more forthrightly as I should have. Wayne agrees:

“I apologize for calling Dr. Throckmorton a sociopath – it was over the top. I was just trying to point out that I find his attitude towards ex-gay survivors insensitive, at times. However, my diagnoses was uncalled for and I regret using that term to describe him.”

So now I think we can all put this behind us and play nice. Whadayasay?

Family Impact Summit: A Lesbian Shows Peter Sprigg How To Debate

It was last Saturday afternoon, and I had already endured nearly two full days of the Family Impact Summit in Tampa. You can imagine what kind of a mood I was in by then. And as I sat down to enjoy another dose of verbal gay-bashing at a town hall meeting called “Defending Marriage: What’s At Stake?” I overheard two people behind me talking about a small protest by gay activists that was taking place outside.

“Do you think any of them will try to come in here?” the older one asked.

“Nah. They won’t bother because they know they won’t be able to find anyone to have sex with afterwards,” sneered the other.

“Hah! So true!”

Nice crowd. These were the kind of people whose company I enjoyed for most of the weekend.

Only about 120 people took their seats in the sanctuary for the main even that afternoon. This session was conducted by four B-list speakers: Rena Lindevaldsen, law professor at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University and associate director of the Center for Constitutional Litigation and Policy; Peter Sprigg, vice president for policy at the Family Research Council; John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council which is collecting signatures to put a gay marriage ban on the Florida ballot; and Dale O’Leary, a speaker and author who bills herself as an expert on the “lies” of the gay rights movement.

And when they began their panel, we heard about a two more hours of lies from the anti-gay movement.

I won’t get into all of them here – it would take a book to do it and they aren’t anything you haven’t heard before. But it mostly went like this: we’re all prone to mental illnesses and physical diseases, we’ve all been abused as children, we’re all substance abusers, and we don’t really want marriage because we don’t want it to interfere with our promiscuity. Dale O’Leary put it this way:

And so I think we need to understand is that the desire to live in a nice little cottage with a dog and two children and all the things we think of as parents is not their goal. That is their P.R.

But at least she was nice enough to note, “The fact is, they love the children they acquire.” But after detailing the supposedly horrible childhoods these “acquired” children endure, she concluded, “Nobody should be in the business of making tragedies.”

After the panelists had their say (after about an hour of this, I might add), the “town hall meeting” was finally opened up to questions from the floor. And the second questioner, a brave young woman wearing a red tee-shirt, was a stunner:

Hi. My names is Cathy James and I would like to challenge all of the individuals here listening today to really take a look at some of the rationale and some of the comments that speakers have given in regard to things such as …why government gets involved with personal relationships, that is, for the procreation of children. I think as most of the attorneys will tell you, that civil marriage was created for one purpose only, and that was property and how to divide property.

And so I am a lesbian, I live in the Riverview area with my partner of thirteen years and our son who is seven. And I go to work Monday through Friday and attend church weekly, I volunteer at the school, I volunteer at the homeowners association. And what I have a hard time understanding is why you are interested in keeping a legal framework from us in being able to handle the same things as heterosexual couples and such things as visitation, and hospital…. And how to divide our property in the same way, and how to parent our child?

The stunned silence was amazing. John Stemberger thanked her for coming and tried to stammer out an answer. He said that some forms of discrimination are perfectly legitimate (“home ownership benefits society in the way renters do not.”) and ended by saying, “marriage uniquely benefits society in the way same sex couples do not.” But Cathy remained calm and firm:

But in what way? What’s the difference in the benefit? How does your marriage benefit society more than my relationship with my same gender partner does not?

Peter Sprigg jumped in to assert that “without question” the best family structure was headed by a man and a woman. But Cathy persisted:

…But now you’re devaluing, what, over fifty percent of the children who live with one parent or that one parent as died or that they’re divorced and now they’re just living with one parent. You’re devaluing them and that’s not fair.

By now the panel was speechless, leaving Peter Sprigg to stumble around trying to get his footing. “Each person’s relationship choices serves as an example to the rest of society… and if that example becomes more widespread, more people will make the same choice, more children will suffer.”

So you’re saying a man and a woman in a marriage are valued higher than single people? They’re valued higher than…

Sprigg cut her off and instead of relying on his own outwitted wits, he decided to read from David Blankenhorn’s book, The Future of Marriage. And as he read, his voice rose, becoming more strident, more angry, more sharp with each word. “I would be rich if I had a nickel for every time someone who knows almost nothing about marriage has told me that historically marriage was all about property. That is nonsense!” But as he continued to spit out the words, it slowly dawned on him that Blankenhorn was talking about dowries and gifts to the bride’s family – which had nothing do with Cathy’s questions.

Clearly Sprigg is a man who doesn’t like having his reputation as an “expert” challenged. And it became obvious that he wasn’t up to this particular challenge. But he kept reading, vainly looking for the rescue that he was sure he’d find in Blankenhorn’s book. But it wasn’t there. He finally gave up and Cathy graciously thanked all of the panelists for their time.

For the two and a half days of the summit so-called “experts,” one after another, paraded from one stage to another convincing everyone who would listen that homosexuals would be the downfall of society. The solution? “Ordered Liberty Under God” went the oft-repeated battle cry.

But one brave woman burst through the bluster and showed that the emperors had no clothes. It was a wonderful moment, and for me the greatest highlight of the whole conference.

Words Have Consequences

In May we reported about Waymon Hudson and Anthony Niedwiecki, a couple that was startled to hear Scripture played over the Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport calling for their death. Steve Rothaus, on a Miami Herald blog site, provides a follow-up on how the incident turned the men into activists.

Just a few days ago, we reported how Alan Chambers went to Florida to tell anti-gay activists that they were fighting an “evil agenda”.

Why do I list Chambers’ words of demonization (literally) here with Hudson and Niedwiecki? Because this is what Hudson tells us has happened in Florida since their experience:

”A woman came up to me [in Publix] and asked if she had seen me on the news,” Hudson said. “I said possibly. She looked at me right in the face and said, `You two deserve what that man said to you.’

”The next day I was at the gym,” Hudson said. ‘A large-size note that had `fag’ scrawled across it was stuck in my windshield. At that point I started to take side roads going home. It was a weird way to live. A few days later, a woman came up to me and spit in my face in the grocery store, with her 6-year-old son in hand.”

Can I prove that these vile people were in the audience at the Family Values Summit? No, of course not. But when you tell people that they are fighting against “evil”, you justify anything they do. All the “love the sinner” in the world won’t offset giving permission for cruelty and abuse.

Ahmadinejad: “We Don’t Have Homosexuals”

(Click for video at PageOneQ)

Maumoud Ahmadinejad, speaking at Columbia stated

“We don’t have homosexuals… I don’t know who told you we had it.”

Ahmadinejad’s statements were met with laughter and boos after each translation.

Fear the Fatal Anal Wart

You can always count on anti-gays – especially of the ex-gay variety – to spice up your week with a healthy dose of crazy.

Take, for example, Bill Whatcott, a former teen prostitute who is running for mayor of Edmonton, Alberta on an anti-gay campaign. Per the Winnipeg Sun, Whatcott showed up at the candidate registration wearing a shirt with anti-gay stick figures and had this to say:

“Homosexuality is killing young men with diseases like anal warts, anal gonorrhoea and anal cancer — you’re not going to get that living the lifestyle of a Ukrainian,” he told Sun Media yesterday.

I’m not sure what Ukranians have to do with it, but by all means Fear the Fatal Anal Wart.

Oh, and while you’re at it, Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!

Paul Cameron Announces a New “Journal”

What do you do when you are having trouble getting your junk science published in reputable peer-reviewed journals? Well, one solution would be to improve the quality of your science. Or, if you’re Paul Cameron and you’re running an outfit called the Family Research Institute (FRI), you try something else:

FRI is doing something exciting — we are starting an online scientific journal! It is entitled the Empirical Journal of Same Sexual Behavior (EJSSB)

That exciting announcement went out to members of Paul Cameron’s mailing list. The brainchild of Paul Cameron and George Rekers, the EJSSB’s first articles were slated to appear sometime in September, although the pay-to-publish website (beginning at $500) appears to still be under construction. But even if it does go live, don’t look for this journal to appear in your local university library:

Not too many years ago, launching a scientific journal was a colossal undertaking. First, you had to assemble an editorial board and get capitalized sufficiently to be able to print and ship the journal. Then you had to find a way to get libraries of the world to subscribe — hopefully covering all or most of your costs. Daunting to put it mildly.

Times have changed. The internet now permits journals to bypass many of the previous hurdles.

Cameron intends to dress this “journal” up as an academic journal, but that doesn’t mean it will actually be one. Because there are some 1,700 real social science journals listed in Journal Citation Reports, an article in the most reputable journals may still be read by only a few thousand professionals around the world. But that’s not who Cameron is targeting. Instead he wants to draw in thousands of unsuspecting readers on the internet, few of whom will realize that it isn’t a reliable journal — or even a real one.

George Rekers has some firsthand knowledge of how this works. He set up the Journal of Human Sexuality in 1996, featuring such luminaries as Peter LaBarbera and Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively. As far as I can tell, that journal appeared only once and few libraries bothered to acquire it. Notice how WorldCat listed it as a “book” despite it’s name. But that doesn’t prevent several anti-gay activists from citing it as though it were a real journal.

Cameron is among the most extreme of the anti-gay activists, and he’s become something of a persona non grata in more respectable quarters for many reasons: whether they be his numerous ethical violations, his widespread abuses of science, or his deeply chilling solutions that he poses for the “homosexual problem” in America — including his admiration for how Auschwitz commandant Rudolph Hoss dealt with homosexuals in the 1930’s.

Cameron’s letter to his supporters lists the initial public members of the Editorial/Review board for Cameron and Reker’s latest venture. In addition to Paul Cameron, his son Kirk, and Rekers, they include:

Toby B. Bieber: She and her late husband, Irving Bieber, co-authored the famous 1962 book Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study of Male Homosexuals, which popularized the too-close mother and distant father theories of male homosexuality. They were an ardent opponent of the APA’s 1973 decision to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. Since Irving’s death in 1991, Toby Bieber has carried on her husband’s opposition to that decision by serving on the Scientific Advisory Committee of the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), an organization she helped to foster from its beginning.

Gerard van den Aardweg: Another NARTH Scientific Advisory Committee member and Dutch psychologist, Gerard van den Aardweg is the author of The Battle for Normalcy: A Guide for (Self-)Therapy for Homosexuality� in which he cites four different Cameron works. Oddly for a “professional,” none of Cameron’s works that he cited were published in remotely professional setting. Among the Cameron sources Van den Aardweg cites is “Medical Consequences of What Homosexuals Do”.

Thomas Landess: A former English professor at the University of Dallas, Landess co-wrote three articles with Paul Cameron between 2001 and 2005, all of which appeared in the low-ranked pay-to-publish Psychological Reports. Cameron described Landess as a “long-time FRI collaborator, supporter, and friend” at a 2002 FRI banquet, where Landess was the featured speaker. Landess is also identified with the Neo-Confederate Movement and once served as contributing editor of Southern Partisan magazine. One 1984 article for that magazine condemned the Statue of Liberty for its the ideals of freedom and nineteenth and early twentieth century immigration.

Nathaniel S. Lehrman: A former Clinical Director of the Kingsboro Psychiatric Center in Brooklyn, Lehrman holds revisionist views about gays in the holocaust which closely parallel Paul Cameron’s and Scott Eric Lively’s, another holocaust revisionist. Like Cameron and many other anti-gay extremists, Lehrman contends that there is no such thing as sexual orientation.

Walter R. Schumm: A professor at Kansas State University, Schumm published a 2000 article in Psychological Reports, Paul Cameron’s favorite publication outlet, in which Schumm defended Cameron’s research methods against Dr. Gregory Herek’s criticisms.

Little is known about the remaining three names given for the Editorial/Review board: Ralph E. Mayberry (MD), John Raney (MD), and Steven Rice (MD). There is a Steven Rice, MD, who serves as a board member and Public Policy Liaison for the Memphis-based and Exodus-affiliated Love In Action ex-gay ministry. I have not been able to confirm whether this is the same Dr. Steven Rice.

While it appears that the “journal” is not yet up and running, I wouldn’t be too terribly surprised to see Cameron’s “Scandinavian Lifespan Study” appear as one of its first so-called “peer-reviewed” articles. If so, I wonder if he will have given himself a discount to get it published?

Hat tip: An unnamed reader I met at the Ex-Gay Survivor’s Conference who managed to get on Cameron’s mailing list. You know who you are. Thanks.

Dark Clouds In the Sunshine State

I’m in Tampa, and it’s been nice and sunny today. But instead of heading to the beach, I’ve been spending my day in nearby Brandon attending the Family Impact Summit where the skies are considerably darker.

In case you haven’t heard, our country has been lead by principalities and powers. They are rich, they are powerful, their leaders make hundreds of thousands of dollars from their activism. “We have to stand up against an evil agenda. It is an evil agenda and it will take anyone captive that is willing, or that is standing idly by,” Alan Chambers said as he neared the conclusion of his talk.

All of that was just from Alan Chamber’s talk this morning. It was interesting to hear him before a very different audience: it wasn’t CNN, and it wasn’t in front of “strugglers” at Love Won Out or the Exodus Freedom Conference. This was in front of culture warriers, on a panel called “The Homosexual Agenda,” with fellow panelists Robert Knight (Media Research Center), Peter Sprigg (Family Research Council), and Chris Stoval (Alliance Defense Fund).

And that is just scratching the surface of what I saw at the Family Impact Summit. It’s been a long day, and I have another full day tomorrow. But stay tuned. I’ll have so much more to share once I catch my breath.