Anti-gay legislation rooted in lies, not Scripture

Dave Agema

For those who wonder why bloggers like me "pay attention" to the religious right and spotlight their lies, the following post is you: 

Michigan Republican Committeeman: Homosexuality ‘Usually Leads To Early Death’ - During the Supreme Court hearings this week on Prop 8 and DOMA, Michigan Republican Committeeman Dave Agema posted on his Facebook page something called Statistics on Homosexuality, a vicious anti-gay list of lies, including:

Many homosexual sexual encounters occur while drunk, high on drugs, or in an orgy setting.

Homosexuals live unhealthy lifestyles, and have historically accounted for the bulk of syphilis, gonorrhea, Hepatitis B, the "gay bowel syndrome" (which attacks the intestinal tract), tuberculosis and cytomegalovirus .

 25-33% of homosexuals and lesbians are alcoholics .

 Of homosexuals questioned in one study reports that 43% admit to 500 or more partners in a lifetime, 28% admit to 1000 or more in a lifetime, and of these people, 79% say that half of those partners are total strangers, and 70% of those sexual contacts are one night stands (or, as one homosexual admits in the film "The Castro", one minute stands).

 Also, it is a favorite past-time of many homosexuals to go to "cruisy areas" and have anonymous sex.

 78% of homosexuals are affected by STDs. 50% of suicides can be attributed to homosexuals The median age of death of homosexuals is 42 (only 9% live past age 65). This drops to 39 if the cause of death is AIDS. The median age of death of a married heterosexual man is 75. The median age of death of lesbians is 45 (only 24% live past age 65). The median age of death of a married heterosexual woman is 79.

Homosexuals are 100 times more likely to be murdered (usually by another homosexual) than the average person, 25 times more likely to commit suicide, and 19 times more likely to die in a traffic accident. 

 It wasn't that long ago that "high-profile" religious right groups such as the Family Research Council, the American Family Association, the National Organization for Marriage, and Concerned Women for America peddled this information free and unashamed. They still do peddle these lies, but only covertly.


You see, this is why it is so important for us to focus on religious right groups and spokespeople. Not only because of the lies they peddle, but because how these lies can influence people already with an animus towards the lgbt community, such as Agema. These false statistics provide those folks with the push they need to attack the lgbt community with violence or anti-lgbt legislation.

Indeed, the vast majority of anti-gay legislation (whether it be Prop 8, DOMA, or fiendish legislation targeting our transgender brothers and sisters and people with HIV or AIDS) is rooted in these lies masquerading as good research.

 It's why I work as hard as I do to call these folks out.

Unfortunately as the media focuses on Agema's nonsense, very few - if any at all - are making the point to refute his lies. The following links are posts I have done in the past which does look at claims made by Agema.

Why we should care about Paul Cameron - If you look the endnotes of Agema's screed, you will see this man's name. He is responsible for a vast majority of junk science peddled against the lgbt community even today. Paul Clement, the lawyer attempting to defend Prop 8, even cited his research even though Cameron has been called out or censured for his awful methodologies and false claims. One of Cameron's claims is that gay men stuff gerbils up their rectums.

How religious right groups distort legitimate research to demonize the gay community - Other statistics in Agema's screed come from legitimate sources, but as this post demonstrates, that doesn't mean they are being used in a legitimate manner. Religious right groups have a way of cherry-picking legitimate info to get their factoids about lgbts.

How They See Us: Unmasking the Religious Right War on Gay America - as this booklet of mine clearly proves, the religious right already have preconceived negative notions about the lgbt community which they rely on junk science or cherry-picked science to justify. Don't be fooled.

Agema is just one public official we know of who push these lies as truth.

I'm sure there are a lot more whom we don't know about and that should scare the hell out of us.