Analyzing and refuting the inaccuracies lodged against the lgbt community by religious conservative organizations. Lies in the name of God are still lies.
Sorry to folks who may feel the need to roll their eyes, but I am going to post more pictures of gay couples just married in Washington state this week:
I can't help it. But be honest. Wouldn't you rather be staring at this rather than Maggie Gallagher, Brian Brown, Tony Perkins, Linda Harvey, Matt Barber, or the rest. Of course that's not to say that I won't be on my soap box tomorrow throwing out thunderbolts as usual. But for tonight, let's just bask in the glow of progress:
Julea Ward, Michigan Counseling Student Expelled For Gay Views, Wins Settlement - Expect the religious right to be crowing over this one. However don't be deceived. Ward didn't win on merits but solely because the university decided to settle. In other words, she was lucky to be backed by a religious right group with deep pockets and eager to appeal every loss she suffers. Still, it sends a message about counselors who don't want to counsel us or our children - we won't put up with the disrespect. And in light of our recent victories, I say let the religious right enjoy this minor victory. Let them savor it and make sure it's the last victory they receive for a long time.
NOM moves forward with 'Gays Against Gay Marriage' meme - So NOM will move with its supposedly secret, nefarious plan of astroturfing a gay movement against marriage equality even though it's not so secret to us all. Now that's just tacky. There is no style in duplicity and master plots of evil anymore. It's almost depressing.
Politico Poll Needlessly Skews Marriage Equality Favorability - Nate Silver accused Politico of treating politics like a sports game. I would say he was as exact about that as he was about the 2012 election.(In case you don't know, Silver predicted an Obama landslide in the face of a lot of derision and opposition, which ended up making him look like a king while his opponents looked like a stable of horses' asses.
The religious right group One Million Moms is obviously not a glutton for embarrassment. Unlike so many other religious right groups, after it makes a public fool of itself, it knows that it's time to pull back:
The conservative group One Million Moms says it is "moving on" from its recent protest of Ellen DeGeneres and J.C. Penney.
One Million Moms (OMM), a media watchdog group founded by anti-gay,
conservative Christian group American Family Association, spoke with The
Christian Post about its ongoing protest of "strong gay activist" DeGeneres as a J.C. Penney spokesperson, telling the publication that the group is moving on from the most recent feud.
The group made headlines this week after blasting a new J.C. Penney Christmas ad featuring DeGeneres.
"JCP has made their choice to offend a huge majority of their customers
again," read a portion of the statement posted to the group's website.
"We're not taking action, we're moving on. We've already contacted
the company," OMM Director Monica Cole told The Christian Post Thursday.
This is the second time the group has attacked JC Penney and DeGeneres. Initially when it was announced that DeGeneres would be the company's spokesperson, One Million Moms demanded that she be fired.
That demand backfired as folks rallied around DeGeneres and JC Penney.
With this new development, OMM recognizes that its face is cracked and on the ground.
Forgive me for saying so, but part of me hopes that this clarity doesn't strike other religious right groups when they get embarrassed during a public protest.
Countering
previous studies that found little difference between kids of same sex
couples and those in a traditional marriage, a new report reveals that
children of gay parents are 35 percent less likely to make normal
progress in school that those living with their own married parents.
Based on the largest sample to date for such a study, the new work
from three economists raises anew the impact state laws approving of
same sex marriage have on children. The new study provided to Secrets said: "Children of same sex
couples are significantly less likely to make normal progress through
school than other children: 35% less likely than the children of
heterosexual married parents, 23% less likely than the children of
never married mothers, and 15% less likely than the children of
cohabiting parents." The study also looked at similar scholarly work that had determined
no difference in children of same sex and traditional marriages. The
authors said that those studies filtered the sample of children to get
their result.
Sounds interesting, except when you see the original article in The Washington Examiner and read the last two paragraphs which is conveniently not a part of NOM's excerpt:
"The
previous study claiming no differences between the children of same sex
parents and other children had serious problems," said study co-author
Douglas Allen, an economics professor at Simon Fraser University in
British Columbia. That study, he said, "excluded children who were not
biologically related to the household head, and children who did not
live in the same place for five years. That threw out over half of the
observations. When we put those children back into our analysis, but
controlled for these factors, we found that the children of same sex
parents are less likely to make normal progress through school."
Allen's study was just published in the journal "Demography." He is a member of the Ruth Institute
Circle of Experts, a group dedicated to traditional marriage. The other
authors were Catherine Pakaluk of Ave Marie University and Joseph Price
of Brigham Young University.
Did you see that? Douglas Allen was identified as the co-author of this study. He was also identified as a member of the Ruth Institute.
And the Ruth Institute is a "project of National Organization for Marriage Fund." This is clearly seen on the Ruth Institute's webpage. In other words, NOM seems to be trying pass this "study" as objective when in reality, one of the study's authors, Allen, is affiliated with NOM. Lastly, Allen and the other two other professors - Pakaluk and Price - deal in economics. It's the usual shuck-and-jive we have come to expect from NOM. Geez guys, can you come up with any new deceptions? This is beginning to get rather boring.
Conservative Pundits: Accepting Same-Sex Marriage Is Common Sense - Love the capitulation, but remember how the religious right are. They are like a rash which won't go away so I doubt they will be swayed. Also, didn't some of these pundits predict a Romney landslide?
Photo of couple applying for marriage license goes viral - I know that you all have seen the picture of the elderly male couple applying for their marriage license in Washington state. The story behind the couple is as awesome as the picture.
This is what love looks like. The following photos of are couples in Washington state getting their marriage licenses:
Okay, if there are any anti-marriage equality folks out there reading this post, I am calling you out. Tell me just what is wrong with these couples getting married? I'm serious so you had better be. No nonsense about "the parts don't fit" and no discredited or cherry-picked science (I will tear you apart for that one).
Tell me, what's wrong with these lovely soon-to-be married couples?
I got my new computer (and sold my soul to the rent-to-own store), so like I promised, the following graphic is just a small, bare-bones preview of a section of my upcoming online booklet How They See Us: Unmasking The Religious Right War on Gay America.
If you find the following not sufficiently satisfying as far as previews go, remember it is only an appetizer.
However, if it wets your whistle, then you ain't seen nothing yet:
I have a real treat for everyone tonight as I present the 1997 television episode of Ellen which helped to change it all when it comes to gay visibility and made Ellen DeGeneres a gay icon - The Puppy Episode:
Ellen DeGeneres Ad: One Million Moms Angry Over JC Penney Christmas Commercial - For those who pretend to don't know a thing about anti-gay bigotry, I present to you Exhibit A. The anti-gay group One Million Moms is angry at Ellen DeGeneres for a perfectly innocent commercial she filmed for JC Penney. And why? Simply because she is a lesbian. It's no different than racists getting angry at an African-American for filming a commercial with white people.
Gay Paternity Leave: How To Do It - In spite of the ugly claims to the contrary organizations like the National Organization for Marriage and the Family Research Council, same-sex families are NORMAL families and thus should have as much positive how-to information as possible.
Through this flyer, the right-wing Liberty Counsel (home of arch-homophobe Matt Barber) is channeling the "homosexuality is more dangerous than smoking" lie:
The Liberty Counsel is the latest religious right group to push that lie and it has been a mistake of the gay community to not challenge it aggressively.
Not to refute this lie, mind you, because the notion is ridiculous.
Rather, all the gay community has to do is reveal where this "homosexuality is more dangerous than smoking" lie came from. And then watch members of the religious right stumble over each other in an effort to retreat from the charge.
It was a 2007 study published by discredited researcher Paul Cameron.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, who has designated Cameron's group The Family Research Institute as a hate group because of his history of deliberately putting out fraudulent information on the gay community, Cameron created his study via the following specious means:
First, Cameron presents it as a given that the average gay life span is
43 years, citing his own 1995 study as evidence. Then he compares 43
years to the average life span of smokers to conclude that having gay
sex is far more dangerous that cigarettes.
Every time the gay community allows this lie to be repeated without saying where it comes from is a missed opportunity to connect the religious right groups to their tendency to rely on junk science in order smear us.
As for the Liberty Counsel, it's rather brazen for the organization to talk about Jesus and God's love while at the same time breaking one of the Ten Commandments by "bearing false witness" against the gay community.
There is an old saying in the African-American community that's very appropriate here.
When members of the Liberty Counsel die, they are going to bust Hell wide open.
From Right-Wing Watch comes this interesting blurb which shows that the National Organization for Marriage is still catching grief from the right over it's election day losses:
After four defeats on the issue of marriage equality at the ballot
box and a failed attempt to remove an Iowa justice who favors same-sex
marriage, right-wing activists are starting to panic and offering their
advice to the GOP and groups like the National Organization for Marriage
and Focus on the Family: you’renotanti-gayenough. Yesterday, Matthew Cullinan Hoffman of LifeSiteNews similarly argued that organizations that oppose same-sex marriage need to get nastier.
According to Hoffman, who is also a correspondent for the National Catholic Register,
“the very fact that” gay marriage is even up for debate “is an
indication of a level of moral confusion and decadence that borders on
the apocalyptic.”
He went on to maintain that same-sex unions are a “narcissistic
parody” of opposite-sex relationships as “homosexual relationships do
not represent an authentic intimacy, but rather involve mutual
exploitation for the sake of satisfying an unnatural lust” and lead to
suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, violence along with other “destructive
consequences.” “Homosexuals themselves, who are the greatest victims of
the ‘gay lifestyle,’ and are in desperate need of the truth,” he writes.
“Until and unless pro-family activists adopt a comprehensive and
coherent answer to the ideology of the culture of death,” Hoffman
concludes, “we will continue to suffer defeat after defeat, until the
institution of marriage is completely destroyed.”
It sounds like to me that Hoffman wants NOM to go from this:
You remember this commercial that MSNBC would not run:
According to Equality Matters, it got worse in terms of Perkins' invitation on news programs:
During
their coverage of the 2012 GOP primary, cable news networks regularly
called upon Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council
(FRC), to provide commentary on behalf of social conservatives. Perkins
made 56 appearances on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC over the course of the
primary, but never once was identified as the leader of an anti-gay hate
group.
Tony Perkins Made 56 Television Appearances Over The Course Of The GOP Primary. According to an Equality Matters analysis,
during the period between the first Republican presidential debate on
May 5, 2011 and the Republican nomination in August, Tony Perkins
appeared on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC a total of 56 times to discuss the
GOP primary:
The Equality Matters report is an indictment of a lazy, overpaid media.
In spite of all he and FRC has said and done to demean the gay community, Perkins is seen as an expert/analyst on news programs. And no one seems to be interested in debating him about the rhetoric put forth by his organization to demean our community.
But I can't help but thinking that it's our fault. We aren't pressing hard enough. We have several magazines, prominent journalists, and even television network, but none of those entities has even done one expose on not just the hate pushed by FRC and other religious right groups but the shoddy way they create their homophobic memes.
In the past, we didn't have the means, so we had to work with what we had, i.e. street politics created by a community united by word of mouth.
Now, we have the means to take these groups on and we just won't do it.
Let me rephrase that. Those who have some power in our community won't do it.
Those of us considered nonexistent, i.e. bloggers like myself, do it every day.
And with that, allow me to segue into announcing an upcoming project sure to place the much deserved onus on organizations like FRC.
I am in the process of creating an free online booklet/brochure which offers an old interpretation on the lies of the religious right, but with a new spin designed to create controversy and a bit of righteous indignation, which I hope will be used - not in a negative fashion - put positively to ask questions and demand answers from not only Perkins and the FRC but also from the media who is supposed to represent us.
Provisionally, it is titled How They See Us: Unmasking the Religious Right War on Gay America.
Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council has a huge problem with the World AIDS Day coverage of last week:
December 1 is “World AIDS Day,” so both of Washington’s newspapers—the liberal Washington Post and the conservative Washington Times—featured stories on the worldwide AIDS epidemic.
The Post report focused on the promise of the latest generation of antiretroviral therapy. The Times article dealt with the efforts to expand circumcision of men, in the wake of scientific findings that this, too, can help reduce spread of the disease.
But what was missing?
In both articles, there was not a word about men who have sex with men (MSM).
And in neither article did the word “condom” appear a single time.
In the United States, men who have sex with men continue to be the group at highest risk for infection with HIV (overseas, heterosexual transmission is relatively more common). Yet the idea of fighting AIDS by discouraging the sexual conduct most likely to transmit it is completely taboo.
For the record, AIDS is a scourge which goes beyond the gay community.
But Sprigg is inaccurate with his attack on the Post and the Times. And that's because he only focused on one article in both publications.
The Washington Post featured several articles talking about prevention in the days leading up to and after World AIDS Day. And several of these articles focused on the problems faced by gays dealing with the disease.
What Sprigg says about condoms is irrelevant because later in his article, he creates a straw man argument:
And at one time, condoms were considered to be THE answer to the AIDS epidemic. If we could just get men to use a condom every time, for every act of sexual intercourse (vaginal, oral, or anal), then we would beat the disease. This has proved easier said than done.
No one at any time has ever said that condoms was the answer to the AIDS epidemic. Condoms was and is considered as one solution, but not the only solution.
It sounds like to me that Sprigg is creating a false meme that
"political correctness is keeping people from fully talking about AIDS
in terms of the dangers of catching it." Basically Sprigg sounds like he is disappointed that neither publication used World AIDS Day as an opportunity to stigmatize gay men.
And that is Sprigg's problem.
World AIDS Day is an occasion in which we reflect on how this awful disease has hurt the world and what we can do to stop it.
It's not about finger pointing. It's about basic human kindness and compassion.
Sometimes those who engage in homophobia are totally oblivious to their actions.
Case in point, 'Porno' Pete LaBarbera of the Americans for Truth. This is what he said while criticizing megachurch pastor Rick Warren. Apparently LaBarbera is a bit miffed that Warren regrets how he helped Prop 8 in California to win at the ballot box:
“The homosexual activist never agonizes and says, ‘Wow, I don’t think I
should talk beyond my group of homosexual activists,’” LaBarbera
explained. “They’re pontificating all the time. They’re telling us what
to think. They’re telling us that we’re bigots if we are against
homosexuality, or even if we’re against same-sex ‘marriage’ now, they
call you a bigot or a hatemonger or a homophobe.”
For the record, I don't consider folks who a religious view against homosexuality as bigots.
But I do consider you a bigot if you create and post the following picture of openly gay Congressman Barney Frank as a TSA agent:
Or if you post a huge photo of a sexually transmitted disease (in this case, anal warts) on your homepage in order to demonize the gay community at large (Editor's note - you can see the link here, but remember that you have been warned).
Yesterday, I posted a piece about how JET Magazine published a wedding announcement of a gay couple.
Today, the African-American online magazine, The Grio, posted an article about the announcement and needless to say that it has caused an excellent discussion in the comments section below the post. I suggest that folks read what is said because it totally disproves a lot of notions about "African-American homophobia."
Granted, there are some folks who voice their disagreement with JET, but for the most part, there is a large amount of support to not only JET but the gay couple.
Cadet Chapel, the landmark Gothic church that is a center for spiritual
life at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, hosted its first
same-sex wedding Saturday.
Penelope Gnesin and Brenda Sue Fulton,
a West Point graduate, exchanged vows in the regal church in an
afternoon ceremony, attended by about 250 guests and conducted by a
senior Army chaplain.
The two have been together for 17 years.
They had a civil commitment ceremony that didn't carry any legal force
in 1999 and had long hoped to formally tie the knot. The way was cleared
last year, when New York legalized same-sex marriage and President
Barack Obama lifted the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy prohibiting
openly gay people from serving in the military.
Naturally, members of the religious right are going apoplectic.
Pat Robertson commented on the wedding in his usual nonsensical way, whining about how several generals, such as Douglas MacArthur, Ulysses S. Grant, and Robert E. Lee are "rolling over in their graves":
And not to be outdone, the Family Research Council had to get a word in:
Army officials are experts at following orders--except when it comes to federal marriage law. For the second time in two weeks, the brass at West Point opened its gates to lesbian "wedding" ceremonies in direct defiance of the Defense of Marriage Act. Adding insult to the law's injury, Saturday's service was held in the Cadet Chapel, a 176-year-old house of worship that has been the heartbeat of the Academy's Christian community for almost two centuries.
Brenda Fulton, one of the "brides," said the Chapel was a particularly meaningful site, because it's where she first heard the Cadet Prayer: "Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong"--words that, in the end, even West Point failed to live up to. Fulton and her same-sex partner marched down the aisle knowing full well they were leading the military's own processional away from the rule of law. "The liberal social experiment with our military continues," said a frustrated Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) in June.
The fact that FRC had to reach far in the past to get a doom-ridden quote should give you an indication of the difficulty the organization had in making this non-controversial story into something dire and huge.
But you have to give FRC ome pity points for attempting the moral panic. The organization's post was accompanied by the following graphic:
Lighten up, folks! It was a just a wedding. You know, a joyous occasion.
I guess for the rest of us who are happy over the blessed event - specifically the brides - it's a case of mind over matter.
Those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.
So, FRC and Mr. Robertson, I guess you don't matter.
JET Magazine,
the nation’s preeminent African-American biweekly magazine, in its
December 10th issue, featured Dr. Ravi Perry and Paris Prince as part of
its December JET LOVE wedding series.
Ravi,
an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Mississippi State
University, and Paris, a licensed real estate broker and
anti-discrimination compliance expert, were married in August at their
home in Worcester, Massachusetts.
The biweekly feature, which traditionally showcases straight couples,
includes a short bio of the couple and explains how the couple fell in
love.
"We are excited and honored to have our wedding featured in the
historic yet ever-current JET Magazine. Long the hallmark in publishing
news, culture, and events pertaining to the Black American experience,
Jet's publishing of our union is historic" said Ravi and Paris.
As part of our year-round work to raise visibility of LGBT people of
color in the media and to grow acceptance of LGBT people in these
communities, GLAAD worked closely with Ravi and Paris to help them shape
their story and also worked with JET to feature the couple.
Over the years, GLAAD has highlighted the work of JET Magazine,
including drawing attention to their coverage of LGBT stories such as
their feature on Kye Allums,
a former George Washington University student who made history as the
first Division I college basketball player to come out as transgender
while competing, and applaud JET Magazine for continuing to recognize
that all loving and committed couples deserve respect. Last year, JET
Magazine featured its first lesbian wedding, telling the beautiful story
of Nyema Vernon and Dr. Tenika Jackson.
I'm sure there will be haters but who cares? Let 'em hate. To this gay black man right here who is writing this post, something like this in JET Magazine is long overdue.
And the visibility is very much needed in the black community.
i
