Tuesday, February 04, 2014

Anti-gay publication pushes misleading headline on lgbt youth

We know that some anti-gay groups and spokespeople are so determined to demonize the lgbt community that they at times push cherry-picked studies or publish comments taken out of context.

But in the case of the American Family Association's One News Now, giving  one's own article a misleading headline has to be a first. The following is the body of the article:

The journal Pediatrics has released a study showing that homosexual and bisexual boys are using illegal steroids at a rate six times greater than heterosexual teens. The motivation is partly to improve their male physique and also to fend off bullying. 
 Dr. Andre Van Mol of the Christian Medical and Dental Association says physical dangers include liver damage, tumors, damaging the reproductive system and hormone-producing organs, and high blood pressure. Vol also cautions about 'roid rage, when people become aggressive after taking large doses, and taking several performance-enhancing drugs, known as "drug stacking." 
 "If these steroids are being purchased on the black market, which they quite often are," says Vol. "There's no guarantee of exactly what else might be in them or if they're actually steroids in the first place. So the toxicity risk becomes even greater at that point." The Food and Drug Administration recently issued a statement saying teens and steroids are a bad combination.

It reads like a standard story with no bias on behalf on One News Now, right? However, one wouldn't get the impression from reading the article's headline and subhead, which reads nothing like the context of the article itself:

Homosexual lifestyle has another danger: Steroids

Homosexual teenagers are destroying their future to appear appealing to other homosexuals.

 Other than the misleading headline, One News Now nearly posted an unbiased article on lgbts.  What is this world coming to?

1 comment:

Andrew said...

Besides the headlines, there are three oddities about the story:
1) Comments were shut down within one day;
2) The article gives the impression that Dr. Andrew Van Mol has something to do with the study, which he doesn't. He's a GP in California and member of a Christian M.D. association which posits associations between homosexuality and pedophilia, etc. But Van Mol's quoted comments are reasonable as far as they go.
3) I love the Onenewsnow's line that "the motive (of gay steroid use) is partly to improve their male physique and also to fend off bullying." Actually, A) Blashill, the study's author, was careful not to assert definitive motives -- he respects the difference between speculation and empirical data; and B) listen to his actual speculation about the motives of steroid use -- they have nothing to do with "improving their male physique": "LGBT young people experience bullying, verbal and physical harassment at rates much higher than their straight peers and Blashill noted that gay and bisexual boys may be at elevated risk of AAS use due to increased symptoms of depression, victimization, substance use, and poor body image because of this." Gee, did Onenewsnow omit this quote because it implies a moral responsibility to stop anti-LGBT harassment?