Religous right distortions deserve more attention

From the Washington Blade comes this news:

The U.S. Senate is expected to approve hate crimes legislation by Wednesday, according to a Democratic source.

Lawmakers are expected to pass the measure by amending S. 1023, or the Travel Promotion Act, said the source. The bill is geared toward establishing a national travel promotion program to communicate U.S. travel policies and to promote travel to the United States.

"The idea is that that will be an amendment to the tourism bill that's going to be on the floor this week in the Senate, and we're thinking that the vote will happen probably [Tuesday] or Wednesday," said the source.

This news means we can expect more lies from the religious right about pastors being arrested for calling homosexuality a sin and how the bill protects pedophiles. It never ceases to amaze me out how those folks will lie even after being refuted.

But one thing we probably won't see should the law pass is an lgbt community so happy that we will get caught up in a celebration and forget about the other fights.

We are too focused for that.

I am aware of the fact that there has been a lot of anger towards President Obama regarding his slow movement on pro-lgbt legislation and his Administration's baffling defense of DOMA.

To say that the lgbt community is pissed is an understatement and personally, I like it.

Now I don't know if its because of Proposition 8, but there is an interesting tone of intensity in the community that I find refreshing.

It's about time but I have one small suggestion.

Can we take just a little bit of that intensity off of President Obama's Administration and focus on religious right lies? Not too much, mind you, because we need to continue to put the president's feet to the fire.

But earlier today, I talked about the myriad of researchers who have complained about the distortion of their work by the religious right and yet how very few people are aware of this.

Not counting the ones I mentioned in the post earlier today, there are many cases of this happening. The following are just a few of the ones I am aware of - A. Nicholas Groth, the six researchers of a Canadian study (Robert S. Hogg, Stefan A. Strathdee, Kevin J.P. Craib, Michael V. Shaughnessy, Julio Montaner, and Martin T. Schehter), Dr. Kyle Pruett, Dr. Elizabeth Saewyc, Carol Gilligan, Dr. Robert Spitzer, Dr. Francis Collins, Gary Remafedi, Professor Michael King, and Professor Lisa Diamond.

And religious right distortions are like cockroaches - for every one you see, there are at least five others you don't see.

The one thing that always frustrated me is how in the past the lgbt community let religious right lies slide. But now we don't seem to be in the mood to let anything slide.

On the blogs, there seems to be momentum and a push to expose religious right distortions. Sites like Truth Wins Out, Good As You, Box Turtle Bulletin, Americablog, Pams House Blend, and my humble blog , Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters (if I am forgetting a site, please charge it to my head and not my heart) are doing what we can.

But I am serious when I say I would love to a cover story in The Advocate magazine, The Washington Blade , or any of our major publications about the religious right misuse of studies. Now is the perfect time.

While we are demanding our rights to self-determination from the Obama Administration, let's take the next step and demand the right to proper news and education from those who claim to be our media representatives.