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| Michael Brown |
Michael Brown - 1) “Shortly after he wrote about the secret Facebook group, named "Truth4Time," he reported that the group disbanded.” That is completely false. The group did not disband, nor was that a subject of consideration for the group.
My source, a member of the group said differently. However, it is possible that the group felt the need to start up again.
Michael Brown - 2) It is stated that “the group included a ‘member of a state legislature,’ a ‘Fox News pundit,’ and various other unnamed prominent individuals,” which were then named, including Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization of Marriage and Dr. Keith Ablow of Fox News. This is actually quite misleading, since access to the site was given to people like Maggie and Keith, but to my knowledge they were never active on the site and might not even know of its existence.
Brown is being extremely deceptive here. All of these folks are listed on the membership roster. If this is a secret group, then wouldn't access be given to members? Also Brown is not clear on whether or not they knew of its existence. While it is true that people can be added to groups without their say-so, they are generally made aware of their addition. So the question is why didn't they remove themselves from the group. It's a question they need to answer.
Michael Brown - 3) According to Signorile, “McEwen said that tactics the group planned to employ included ‘ganging up’ on ‘pro-gay pages with comments and flagging Facebook pro-gay pages multiple times with the intent on getting these pages removed.’” This is patently false, from beginning to end. The group was actually formed with the intent of doing the exact opposite of this. Some of our conservative colleagues documented for us attempts by some gay activists to have their Facebook pages removed by constantly reporting them to Facebook as containing “hate speech” or “hateful” content. One of the goals of our group was to be alerted to tactics like this so we could report this to Facebook in the interest of fairness and so as to combat cyber-bullying.
I don't even need to give a written refutation of this. Brown omitted this mission statement from the site's leader:
Seems to me that Brown is being "patently deceptive" with what he is omitting.
Michael Brown - 4) Lastly, McEwen claimed that one former member of the group (who somehow was approved for acceptance) was “especially disturbed by a plan, whether it will come to fruition or not, to bombard physicians and school boards with negative and distorted information about the gay community.” This again is as misleading as it is untrue. There was no such plan, but there was always encouragement to raise the issue of the health risks of homosexual activity, as reported by the Centers for Disease Control and the like, whenever relevant in different discussions and blogs.
Brown calls it "encouragement," I call it a "plan." Read and decide for yourself:
And if I can nitpick just a bit, Brown makes it seem that the lgbt orientation is the cause for negative gay health choices, when in fact the CDC has said that racism, poverty, and homophobia play a big role.
Poor Michael. Other members of this group - with the exception of Peter LaBarbera via sad tweets - have opted to keep quiet about this controversy.
But not him.
There is an old saying which speaks so aptly here to Brown's sad attempt to refute my information:
It is better to be thought of as a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
