Anatomy of an anti-gay lie - Day three

FRC is now fully embracing the anti-gay distortion I posted about on Sunday.

For three days, I have been tracking an anti-gay distortion regarding the SCOTUS ruling for marriage equality.

To recap - Last week,  statement from a right-wing think tank, the Americans Principles Project, claimed that over 60 "prominent scholars" signed a statement claiming that Obergefell v. Hodges , the case which legalized marriage equality, should be ignored because it was inaccurately decided.

The Americans Principles Project omitted to say that many of these "prominent scholars" were individuals aligned with groups who have opposed marriage equality from the beginning, such as:

 Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University, Founder of American Principles Project (George is one of the founders of the National Organization for Marriage, which opposes marriage equality. And he was also one of the main arranger of the funds given to Professor Mark Regnerus to conduct a study on gay parenting study, which has since been discredited. The study was created as an attempt to sway the Supreme Court against marriage equality. )

John C. Eastman, Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service, Dale E. Fowler School of Law at Chapman University (the present chair of the National Organization for Marriage)

George W. Dent, Jr., Professor of Law, Case Western Reserve University School of Law (Dent supplied the discredited information which the defenders of DOMA used in court to unsuccessfully defend that law.)

 

I have been tracking this distortion not out of concern that it will do any damage, but simply because I want to see how long will it take before it becomes a widely repeated falsehood by members of the anti-gay right.

Today, it just took another step in that direction. In my last post concerning this distortion, I related how the Family Research Council retweeted it from another source, CNSnews.

As of now, FRC has the distortion as a full article on its webpage. An excerpt follows as such:

Last week, a number of scholars and law professors released a statement calling on all officeholders to resist -- within the grounds of their own constitutional authority -- the Supreme Court's illegitimate and groundless ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. The scholars' statement points to the grave consequences of letting this decision continue to be treated as legitimate and binding precedent on the entire nation, and urges public officials to exercise their independent authority to follow the Constitution regardless of Obergefell's dubious claims:

One lacking anything remotely resembling a warrant in the text, logic, structure, or original understanding of the Constitution must be judged anti-constitutional and illegitimate. Obergefell should be declared to be such, and treated as such, by the other branches of government and by citizens of the United States.

The authors of the statement remind us that the Supreme Court is not the only branch of government granted authority by the Constitution. While the Supreme Court has the authority and responsibility to decide cases and controversies between parties, it does not have the authority to declare entirely new doctrines of law binding on parties not before the court.

Conveniently, FRC doesn't even include the names of the statement's signers (Not to worry, though. I left a comment on its webpage giving a short description of why the statement is a distortion.)

So in the past week, the distortion has moved from the Americans Principles Project to the National Organization for Marriage's webpage to the vile anti-gay Barbwire webpage to the CNSnews webpage and has stopped for now at the Family Research Council's webpage.

And that's not counting pit stops at other right-wing sources such as Free Republic and various other conservative blogs.

If it ever breaks through to Fox News, either by television or online news site, I think I will create a chart.

Related posts:

Anti-gay right sloppily dredge up 60 'legal scholars' to oppose Obergefell decision

Anti-gay right continues to push the anti-marriage equality 'scholars' distortion

Anti-gay activist turns drama queen in pulpit over marriage equality

In the video above, courtesy of Right Wing Watch, Vision America's Rick Scarborough  is STILL angry about marriage equality. He no doubt thinks that he is making a wonderfully dramatic statement in the pulpit. If you ask me, I think he is auditioning for an Ed Wood movie. Three points which I have to make about it, though. What's with the disrespect of the Supreme Court, when exactly did God define marriage, and what exactly is a "God hater?"

'Desperate Ted Cruz disrespects transgender soldiers' & other Tue. midday news briefs

Sen Ted Cruz disrespects transgender military.

Cruz blasts efforts to lift trans military ban - Sen. Ted Cruz is picking on transgender soldiers and he is using the phrase that anti-gay folks use when they want to create the false idea that our presence or existence is out of the ordinary - "social experiment." They said the same thing about same-sex families, even though lgbts have been raising children for YEARS. The semantics are so annoying. 

Gay Man Kicked Out Of His Church For 'Embracing The Homosexual Lifestyle' (Video) - A few years back, we had sort of the same situation at a church in my area. Some members came to the pastor wanting to kick out gay members. He told them to forget it because it was wrong to keep people away from God. And this was a black church. It's a shame that one hardly ever hears about these incidents of bravery.

 Transgender foster kids in California can now go to homes that match their gender identity - Wonderful!!  

Little Red Riding Hood And The Big Bad Gay Wolf - Proving how SOME people have too much time on their hands, an anti-gay activist transforms the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood into a cautionary tale about the lgbt community.  

Trans Activist On Keisha Jenkins Murder: 'It Feels Like I'm Next' - This is a spooky situation and needs more attention.