Thursday, April 15, 2010

Traditional Values Coalition stoops to lowest level of fraud in new attack on ENDA

Just what is it about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) that scares Lou Sheldon and the Traditional Values Coalition (TVC) so much?

I can't help but to ask this question after viewing the organization's latest endeavour, a web page called endahurtskids.com

Via this web site, TVC repeats past lies its told about ENDA, including the following:

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is the lesbian, gay, and transgender movement’s “holy grail.” It is prized precisely because it will foist the LGBT agenda into our public schools as a federally-protected right. Once this happens, every homosexual, bisexual, and transgender teacher will have free reign to indoctrinate our children into accepting these “alternative lifestyles” as normal and good.


Currently, 38 states do not make “gender identity” into a protected minority under law. But once Obama signs ENDA, this will change. Every state will be forced to make cross-dressers, drag queens, transsexuals, and she-males into protected classes. These states will be forbidden by law to reassign any cross-dressing teacher because this would be considered “discrimination.” Thus, children will be trapped in classes taught by men who dress as women and students will be indoctrinated that it’s normal behavior.

Doesn't TVC remind you of Anita Bryant when she sought to overturn the ordinance in Dade County, FL by claiming that gays want to recruit children in order to "freshen their ranks."

 TVC's webpage gets worse in the section, ENDA Will Discourage Schools From Telling Facts About:
It is clear that promoting LGBT behaviors is dangerous to students’ mental and physical health. The American College of Pediatricians (ACP) has just launched a new web site called Facts About Youth to inform students, teachers, and parents about the serious problems associated with the LGBT lifestyle.

This professional medical group has compiled numerous research papers about homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorders (GID).

The ACP just sent a letter to school districts throughout the United States to announce the launching of Facts About Youth. The ACP warned these superintendents that their schools should not tell students that same-sex attractions should be accepted. Studies indicate that such feelings go away by the time a person reaches 25 if not affirmed. In addition, students who have a Gender Identity Disorder (GID) usually lose these feelings if not affirmed by those in authority. (A person with GID thinks he or she is the opposite sex.)

Please bear in mind that it has been revealed on numerous occasions that the American College of Pediatricians is not a professional group but a shell organization designed to give legitimate cover to religious right propaganda about the lgbt community (via the Facts About Youth web page) such as:

Some gay men sexualize human waste, including the medically dangerous practice of coprophilia, which means sexual contact with highly infectious fecal wastes.

Furthermore, the American College of Pediatricians received a rebuke this week from a legitimate medical group, the American Academy of Pediatrics. Also, Dr. Gary Remafedi, M.D., M.P.H., a University of Minnesota researcher wrote the group a letter accusing them of distorting his work.

Between you and me, however, I really don't think that the TVC cares about Remafedi's rebuke. The group itself misuses Remafedi's work in another cited link on its anti-ENDA web page, Gays Recruit Public School Children.

Basically every lie that TVC pushed against ENDA in the past fewdays are included on its web page including:

the inaccurate labeling of paraphilias as sexual orientations, and

Andrea Lafferty's distortions
of incidents involving transgender teachers.

To make matters worse, TVC also pushes past distortions regarding Obama appointee Kevin Jennings (i.e. Fistgate).

But the inherent dishonest of TVC's  anti-ENDA web page lies in the link, The Gay Report: A Survey Of Homosexual Sex Habits.

As I said many times before, The Gay Report, published in 1979, was based in part on 2,500 responses from a questionnaire in a now defunct soft core porn magazine, Blueboy. TVC claims that the study proves that gays and lesbians are not only highly sexually irresponsible, but also have a negative  view of monogamy:

“One respondent to this part of the sex survey noted: ‘Promiscuity is a heterosexual concept which is used to attack us. I find it dehumanizing, sexist, and ultimately damaging to the psyche. If you speak in terms of ‘sexual freedom’ and sharing of sensual experience, it can be a fine thing. I guess it all depends upon motives.’”

So how did the Traditional Values Coalition attempt to connect a book talking about the alleged sexual habits of gays and lesbians over 30 years ago to the lives of gays and lesbians in the present?

That in itself is interesting.

While all of the sexual habits and alleged quotes from gays and lesbians taken from The Gay Report took up over one and a half page of TVC’s report, the linking of present day gay sexual behavior in the section of the report, Sex Habits Remain Essentially Unchanged Today, took up less than a quarter of a page and isnot as thorough. It did not include statistics on the present day sexual habits of gays and lesbians, only anecdotes of unfortunate incidents in which gay men were infected with HIV due to reckless behavior, such as
“barebacking.” But TVC offered no proof that “barebacking” is the norm in the gay community rather than the anomaly that many have claimed that it is.

When TVC did attempt to prove the notion that gays and lesbians are engaging in the same habits as they allegedly were in 1979, it cited an earlier study it published entitled Homosexual Behavior Fuels AIDS and STD Epidemic.

This study:

“. . . quotes Dr. John Diggs, who published ‘The Health Risks of Gay Sex’ for the Corporate Resource Council. Diggs notes that homosexuals typically engage in oral and anal sex, rimming (mouth to anus contact), fisting (insertion of the fist and arm into the anus), golden showers (urination), sadomasochism, and the insertion of such objects as bottles, flashlights, and even gerbils into the rectum.”

Diggs's paper has several problems regarding accuracy but for the purpose of the point which  I am trying to make here, the main problem with Diggs's paper as somehow validation of the data in The Gay Report is this:

In order to gain information for his report, including the above excerpt regarding gay sexual behavior, Diggs received his information from The Gay Report.

Therefore in essence, TVC is citing the same book (The Gay Report) twice while attempting to make the citations sound as if they come two different sources.

Now none of TVC's claims on its web page have anything to do with the real purpose of ENDA, which is to protect the lgbt community from workplace discrimination. But it has everything to do with exploitations of fear and ignorance.

It's funny because I never knew exploiting fear and ignorance through lies and fraud were Christian values.



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AFA: Gays can't serve on Supreme Court because they are deviant felons, and other Thursday midday news briefs

AFA's Fischer: Gays Are Biased, Sexually Deviant Felons And Can Never Serve On the Supreme Court - So much for Christian love or truth.

OUT Magazine’s LGBT Power 50 - He'p me law. It looks like Matt Drudge may be listed.

3rd Grade Class saved from the evils of *GASP* Crossdressing! - a ridiculous controversy which Day of Silence nearly got embroiled into.

Police Investigate Burned Flag At LGBT Center - This ain't good.

Should LGBT media use male beauty to attract readers? - Well hell, what about us intelligent homely folks? Our community needs to aspire to a higher plain.





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Religious business owners should not have the 'special right' to discriminate

Matt Barber of the Liberty Counsel just gave the real reason why religious right groups oppose the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).

And it has nothing to do with "drag queen teachers" or any other fear story drudged up by his colleagues in other religious right groups such as the Traditional Values Coalition.

It has to do with giving religious business owners special rights.

Barber spelled out this position in a Washington Times piece:

ENDA would force - under penalty of law - Christian, Jewish or Muslim business owners to adopt a secular-humanist viewpoint, ignoring all matters surrounding sexual morality while making hiring and firing decisions. Unlike race or sex, homosexual and cross-dressing behaviors are both volitional and mutable. Nonetheless, and despite the reality that such conduct is in direct conflict with every major world religion, thousands of years of history and uncompromising human biology, ENDA would compel business owners with 15 or more employees to leave sincerely held religious beliefs at the workplace door and submit to the demands of the homosexual activist lobby.

You got that? Barber said nothing about churches or other religious institutions, which ENDA has exemptions for. He is talking about a business owner's personal beliefs, even if they are trying to make money via a commercial business.

Barber's attempted stance against ENDA again reveals the religious right's need for nice sounding talking points designed to obscure facts but his carefully positioned words cannot hide the fallacies behind his argument.

Barber's opinion is that a restaurant owner, who calls himself a Christian, Jew, or Muslim should be allowed to discriminate in practices of hiring and firing.

But why stop there? If business owners of a secular enterprise can discriminate in cases of religious beliefs, then why not race or gender?

For the record, I don't think any business owner should be allowed to discriminate in cases of race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation irregardless of his or her personal "deeply held beliefs."

Or as EEOC Commissioner Chai Feldblum eloquently stated:

Once an individual chooses to enter the stream of economic commerce by opening a commercial establishment, I believe it is legitimate to require that they play by certain rules. If the government tolerated the private exclusionary policies of such individuals in the commercial sector, such toleration would necessarily come at the cost of gay people’s sense of belonging and safety in society. Just as we do not tolerate private racial beliefs that adversely affect African Americans in the commercial arena, even if such beliefs are based on religious views, we should similarly not tolerate private beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity that adversely affect LGBT people.

No matter how noble Barber tries to make his position sound, it all adds up to special rights for religious business owners and discrimination against those who don't share their beliefs.

And neither concept has any place in this great country.




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