Monday, August 10, 2020

Repost - Family Research Council anti-LGBTQ pamphlet works better as lining for your birdcage

Editor's note - It is frustrating enough when anti-LGBTQ groups create bad studies about us. But it's worse when they are allowed to do so without hardly any push back. Very few in our community are willing to do the work and promote the truth. Thus, no matter how many times anti-LGBTQ lies and junk science is refuted, the truth-telling doesn't resonate as it should.

Last month, I posted a piece about the Family Research Council's newest junk study, Sex Education in Public Schools: Sexualization of Children and LGBT Indoctrination. However, I am reposting it because the study remains on FRC's webpage and the group has a wider reach than I do. After its reposting, I intend to make my piece a permanent part of my blog's page.


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Cathy Ruse just published a silly pamphlet.
The Family Research Council is shocked! I repeat, shocked about the following:

The LGBTQ movement demands that homosexual relationships be presented to children as good, healthy, and equal in every way to heterosexuality within man-woman marriage. Many sex-ed developers and providers are all too happy to comply. 
 Parents in Illinois were alarmed when they learned that their preschool children were being instructed: “If you have two mommies, they can be called LESBIANS. 
 In Austin, Texas, schools introduce sexual orientation and gender identity concepts to third graders and have sixth and seventh graders play a sexuality matching game with terms like “bisexual,” “gay,” “lesbian,” and “homophobia.” 
 . . .California law instructs public school teachers to emphasize homosexual relationships: “Teachers should… actively use examples of same-sex couples in class discussions.”

This hysterical junk is only a small portion of FRC's newest pamphlet -Sex Education in Public Schools: Sexualization of Children and LGBT Indoctrination and it's a doozy.


A hot mess.
What you should know about FRC's pamphlets, "research papers,"etc is that none of them contain any legitimate information. In the past, the group used to rely on junk science and legitimate science its employees rigorously cherry-picked to denigrate LGBTQ people.The group generally reduced us to being called a "dangerous lifestyle."

Things have changed tremendously. Thanks to the efforts of bloggers like yours truly and groups like SPLC who took the time to call out those lies, FRC relies less on distorted science and more on anecdotal horror stories from legitimate news sites and biased homophobic right-wing propaganda news sites all sewn together with alarming phraseology. The goal is to create the same connotation as past reliance on bad science did - that LGBTQ people are not normal and are dangerous to America, particularly children.

The passages I cited at the beginning of this post speak to that effect. Same-sex marriage is legal in America. Same-sex couples, as well as single LGBTQ people, are raising children in a large number. They have been doing this for many years and are doing it very well. The existence of LGBTQ children is a simple fact. And as these LGBTQ children are coming out earlier and earlier, more education and information is needed for the sake of their physical and mental well-being.

But to hear FRC talk, these situations are not facts, but aberrations. And the results of a so-called plot to take over America and supposedly "recruit" children.  It's less about equipping people with information and more about exploiting ignorance to create fear. That fear creates more ignorance which creates more fear and so on and so on.

The desired end result is the harming of LGBTQ equality and safety and a forced shoving of our community into a closet of second-class status, depression, and sadness, self-hatred, and, according to the CDC, self-harm via negative behaviors.

And of course FRC and other like-minded organizations will be there to exploit the negative behaviors by falsely claiming that they are characteristics of being an LGBTQ person instead of what they truly are - a characteristics of being oppressed.

Also, there is one more thing you should know about FRC's pamphlets, research papers, etc.  They are usually created by people who have absolutely no expertise in what they write about. In reality, what they claim to know couldn't fit the navel of a smurf.

This particular pamphlet I've been talking about was published by FRC employee Cathy Ruse, who  the Senior Fellow and Director of Human Dignity.   I have no idea what that entails, but if you read Ruse's biography, you will see that her expertise lies in how many conservative groups gave her a paycheck over the years.  And also how she's connected by marriage to another religious right spokesperson, Austin Ruse.

Ruse, head of another conservative group, C-FAM, is an absolutely vile individual who has gone on record supporting Russia's persecution of its LGBTQ citizens.  He and I have sparred on more than one occasion including here in 2013. In 2014, he got into trouble for saying that liberal academics should be taken out and shot.

In spite of this, Cathy listed him as a legitimate source in her pamphlet. According to GLAAD's profile of Mrs. Ruse, vicious homophobia and transphobia seems to be one characteristic she and Austin have in common.

That brings me to the issue of bad sources, which Ruse frequently cited in the pamphlet. 

One person she cited was Dr. Michelle Cretella of the American College of Pediatricians. Of course Ruse omits that  the American College of Pediatricians is an organization recently deemed a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center because of how it attempts to pass homophobic bad science as legitimate.

Nor does Ruse tell anyone how Cretella herself was called out by the The Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine (SAHM) for several errors contained in a piece she published entitled “I’m a Pediatrician. How Transgender Ideology Has Infiltrated My Field and Produced Large-Scale Child Abuse.”  And that in itself is a huge irony, seeing that the Cretella's piece was used by Ruse to attack the transgender community in her pamphlet.

Ruse also cited American College of Pediatricians information independent of Cretella.

Feel free to read the entire pamphlet, but might I suggest that you print a copy. That way, you can make proper usage of it . Line your birdcage. Use it to pick up dirt while you're sweeping.

Or how about using it to fan yourself.  The weather tends to get hot this time of year.

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