Analyzing and refuting the inaccuracies lodged against the lgbt community by religious conservative organizations. Lies in the name of God are still lies.
Journal by Pence-helmed foundation described gay sex in graphic detail - See, children. If you spread lies about gay sex, there are no repercussions. You too can go on to be elected to Congress, serve as governor, and be a vice presidential candidate. THAT is the main reason why more needs to be done to not only refute anti-lgbt propaganda but also hold those who spread it in the present and past accountable.
Anti-lgbt and all-around conservative hagstorm Phyllis Schlafly passed away yesterday at 92. I won't crack any jokes about her age, her life, or the fact that even though she had a gay son, she bent over backwards to be nasty to us. I will just revisit the wackiest reactions to last year's SCOTUS ruling for marriage equality just as a way of demonstrating how yet again the lgbt community has survived and thrived whilst another enemy of our equality is gone:
Tuesday, September 6 will mark the 10th anniversary of this blog. It's come a long way since being than an idea I had to pump up knowledge of a book I was self-publishing.
For the record, the book was somewhat of a disaster, but this blog has existed on its own to break barriers, get a bit of acclaim and a few awards, as well as put a great spotlight on a issue we've long needed to discuss - how the religious right and morality groups use junk science, cherry-picked science, and outright lies to create a pattern of deceit against the lgbt community. This pattern is then used to manufacture reasons to deny us equality under the law.
I like to think that I've done well to expose these lies and the entities who tell them. I also like to think that I've made history in my own little way as one of the many tireless lgbt activists and independent news figures. We've all come a long way from 2006 and have gotten so many victories because of our efforts.
I've certainly learned a lot about my community and myself. And it will be something I hope to continue the next 10 years.
The following is the first post I published here and reading it always pleases me. It reminds me of where this blog is now in comparison to where it began. It also reminds me that anyone willing to work and sacrifice for the better of his or her community will always succeed in their goals.
There are a bunch of organizations in this country who thrive on ignorance, fear, and a sense of entitlement.
They refer to themselves as "pro family" and even members of the gay community regard them as the religious right
With
all due respect, I don't see them as that. They are an anti-gay
industry who seeks to gain political power by building on the religious
beliefs and ignorance of people of faith. And they have been pretty
successful.
Central to this success are their so-called studies
on the gay community. In order to prove that gays and lesbians should
not have any protection of laws, they have created a written and oral
pattern of deception that is not only blatant in its attempts but
shameful in its audacity. In their zeal to prove the worst about the gay
community, the anti-gay industry runs roughshod over science and truth.
They have created a houses of pseudo-scientific studies based on
distortions, lies, headless monsters, and legitimate studies taken out
of context , which are then pushed by fake experts, Ph.D.s, conservative
columnists and bloggers, and ignorant people of faith all willing to
sacrifice their integrity on the altar of an alleged higher calling.
We know the claims these studies make:
gays have a short life span gays molest children at a higher level than heterosexuals lesbians abuse their partners at a high level gays are more violent and are prone to crimes gays are promiscuous and cannot handle the concept of marriage.
For
two years, I have studied the methodologies of so-called "pro family"
groups (i.e. Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, the
Traditional Values Coalition, etc) and am glad to say that their claims
are rooted in lies, outright deceptions, and legitimate studies with
portions cherry picked out.
In 2007, I will publish my book, Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters,
detailing just what how the anti-gay industry propagandizes about the
gay community. Through this blog, I will publish some of my findings and
update everyone as to the progress of my book. I will update this blog
on a weekly basis.
Now I must emphasis that I am not attacking
anyone's religion. I respect a Christian's right to believe that
homosexuality is an abomination. I also respect the right of the Boys
Scouts of America to prohibit gays from serving as members. Of course I
also believe that if the organization had any integrity at all, it
should refuse any form of public monies because some of this money is
derived from gay sources via taxes. And isn't accepting money from those
who you feel will not conform to your moral code just as bad as
allowing them in your group.
But I digress.
What I am
saying through my book and my blog is that distortions and lies in the
name of God are still distortions and lies. And anyone who knowingly
uses them and can still refer to themselves as a person of faith needs
to examine themselves.
Editor's note - I will be celebrating my blog's 10th anniversary with a September 17th party. Pictures will be posted.
The anti-gay right has terrible habit of cherry-picking science
Recently, I've written several posts about a supposed new study which disputes the idea that people are born gay or transgender. The supposed study, published by Drs. Lawrence Mayer and Paul McHugh, has been pushed by members of the anti-lgbt industry as a supposed breakthrough and a new development with regards to the lgbt orientation.
However, others were quick to point out how its credibility is damaged by the motivations its publishers and authors. Last month, The Daily Beast published an article detailing the extensive anti-lgbt bias of one of the authors, McHugh.
On Monday, Dean Hamer, Ph.D. and scientist emeritus at the National Institutes of Health, blasted the report in an issue of The Advocate:
The article claims to be “a careful summary and an up-to-date
explanation of research — from the biological, psychological, and social
sciences — related to sexual orientation and gender identity.” It
claims to show sexual orienation is chosen and not fixed, and that gay
people are not "born gay." In truth, it is a selective and outdated
collection of references and arguments aimed at confusing rather than
clarifying our understanding of sexual orientation and gender identity.
. . . The authors' review of the role of genes in sexual orientation, the area of my own research, is revealing of their methodology. Of the six studies using proper probability sampling methods that
have been published in the peer-reviewed literature in the past 16
years, they include only one — and it just so happens to be the one with
the lowest estimate of genetic influence of the entire set.
They then discuss, at great length, an obscure study of 7th-to 12th-graders,
published in a sociology journal, that doesn't even measure sexual
orientation, instead relying on a single question about “romantic
attraction.” It's an odd choice of articles to review given Mayer and
McHugh's emphasis on proper trait measurement; perhaps they were driven
by the fact that it failed to find any heritability, thus supporting
their claim that nobody is “born gay.” A very different conclusion was
reached by a careful meta-analysis of allthe available twin data, recently published in a large review that Mayer and McHugh fail to even mention.
Hamer's accusations isn't the first time that various members of anti-lgbt and conservative groups have been called out for scientific cherry-picking when making their case against lgbt equality. Over the years, I've catalogued a few incidents:
In 2012, Seton Hall professor Dr. Theodora Sirota complained that Rick
Fitzgibbons of the NARTH (the National Association of Research and
Therapy of Homosexuality) misused her work to make the case that children
in same sex households are not raised better than children "in stable
homes with a mother and a father."
In 2011, Tom Minnery, a spokesman from Focus on the Family, was dressed down
by Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) during a Congressional hearing for
deliberately misrepresenting a study. Minnery initially used the study
to claim, as Fitzgibbons did in his misrepresentation, that same-sex
households are inferior to two parent mother/father households.
In his sloppy pursuit of the White House, GOP candidate Donald Trump is getting so many groups angry at him.
You can now add black Republicans to the list. According to Buzzfeed, Trump actually has them enraged regarding an interview he will be having with a black pastor. Initially this was spun as Trump coming to a predominantly black church in a bid to reach African-American voters. But then, it turned into a simple interview. Now, it has become something absolutely comical:
On Saturday, Donald Trump will sit down for an interview with Wayne
T. Jackson, a pastor in Michigan as part of his tentative black outreach
efforts — and black Republicans are fuming.
For one thing,
they say, Jackson isn’t conservative and doesn’t support Trump. But
Jackson also presided over a ordination ritual some time ago that became
a source of viral controversy.
The video published in 2013 shows
Jackson mounting two male bishops on the ground as part of an
“consecration” ceremony; the video drew scrutiny, with some criticizing
it as sexual, and others saying it wasn’t sexual, but had no place in
the church.
That would be this video below:
In the ceremony, Jackson tells the men, “You got to be buried… you
got to die.” With the contemporary gospel song “I Give Myself Away”
playing in the background, the men first laid face down on the ground.
In the video depicting the ritual, Jackson circles them a number of
times, appearing to grab their ankles. When the two men were covered,
face down, in white sheets, Jackson then covered them in another red
sheet, and promptly laid on top of each of them, one at a time, to the
audience’s approval. After being helped up, Jackson removed the sheets.
Jackson defended the act to Fox 2 Detroit
as nonsexual, saying the bishops were being consecrated under his
authority. “For somebody to take that and try to use that, you know, in a
perverted way, we pray for them. We walk in love,” he said in an
interview with Fox 2 Detroit. He lambasted detractors, saying, “if you’re ignorant about something, you need to shut up.”
The black Republicans quoted in the Buzzfeed article saying that Trump choosing to be interviewed by Jackson, in light of the fact that the pastor does not support Trump and the controversial video, shows that the GOP candidate is not taking them seriously.
If they feel that way about Trump, they need to take a number and get in line.
Woman arrested for child abuse citing Pence's religious freedom law as a defense.
Woman charged with child abuse uses Indiana Religious Freedom Law as defense - Another case of an anti-lgbt law having consequences far beyond what some folks think. And no, this woman was not simply "disciplining" her child. She put 37 bruises on the body of this seven-year-old using a coat hanger and then cited the Bible. Bang up job pushing that law, Mike Pence!
NC Gov. Pat McCrory and Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick like to play dumb with regards their verbal and legislative attacks on the transgender community. Both have gone on record claiming that there is no clear definition of a transgender person. They should educate themselves by watching this short video created by the Human Rights Campaign:
