Don't fall for the anti-lgbtq right's 'tolerance trap'

Linda Harvey

Hate group leader and columnist Linda Harvey is what I like to call an "old school hardcore homophobe." Forget the deceptive and flowery language, because Harvey has no problem smearing, in very blunt language, the lgbtq community as pedophile sinners out to cause havoc and mayhem .

While her candor is nauseating, I consider Harvey a "useful idiot" in helping me to expose the true face of the religious right. Today, she is going to assist me demonstrating the hypocritical talking point about "gays not showing tolerance."

I'm sure you've heard of the talking point so many times that you can repeat it from memory. It goes like this "gays are always asking for tolerance for their lifestyle but won't show any for people who disagree agree with it." It's cute and very widely used semantic trick. Harvey uses it in a recent column, Jesus Rose To Save Homosexual Sinners:

People often comment on how vicious and intolerant the homosexual movement has become. “Where’s the ‘respect’ they said they wanted for everyone?”

Don't get out the weeping towel just yet. Harvey answers her own question in a way which demonstrates the hypocrisy of herself and the anti-lgbtq right in general

 . . . it’s easier to understand – and even scarier – once we see what is going on at a deeper level in the anti-God orientation that produces same-sex attraction in the first place. They repudiate heterosexuality. They resent marriage, motherhood and fatherhood as designed by God. Newly legalized homosexual couples sometimes want a family, but it will be of their own crafting, eliminating either a father or mother in the process. It moves beyond sexual sin into a rejection of the design of God.

Seems to me that if you are whining about a group of people's intolerance to your viewpoint, the viewpoint in question shouldn't be one which smears them. But that's what we are talking about with Harvey and the religious right's viewpoint about the lgbtq community.  When they whine that the lgbtq community isn't "tolerating their viewpoint," what they are actually upset at is that we aren't acting like the docile half of an abusive relationship.  They cry foul because we aren't acting like the self-hating oversexed creatures they conjure up then hide behind their religious beliefs. They seem to think that we should take their demonizing language, lies, and attempts to deny us equality with good nature aplomb because they are supposedly "only expressing their religious beliefs" and we are nasty, dirty people who know that what we are doing is supposedly wrong.

Please.

No one can honestly say that any group, while being attacked and smeared, will just take the abuse in the name of "tolerance." Why should we?

Eliminate Hate campaign's goal is to call out & expose anti-lgbt hate groups

To paraphrase Addison DeWitt in  'All About Eve,' I am now available for dancing on rooftoops and singing in the streets. The reason? The war against anti-lgbt propaganda just got a bit more serious:

On April 13, Media Matters For America, in coalition other organizations including the National Center for Transgender Equality, The National LGBTQ Task Force, SoulForce, The Equality Federation, and The Matthew Shepard Foundation, launched the Eliminate Hate campaign — a new effort aiming to expose, undermine, and mitigate the increasing influence and harmful impact of anti-LGBTQ hate groups while empowering and supporting local leaders and community members confronting extremism in their daily lives. The Eliminate Hate Campaign is a broad-based nationwide coalition of organizations, faith leaders, and local community members who are united in our commitment to increase media accountability and public awareness of the growing influence and extremism of anti-LGBTQ hate groups; provide resources to empower grassroots actions to combat hate and extremism; and mitigating the harm caused by discrimination and bigotry. 

The Eliminate Hate campaign features wonderful site with resources which our community and allies need to support. And it makes the point about how we need to stop being so cavalier about anti-lgbt groups, spokespeople and their propaganda. If we ignore them, they aren't going away. While we make fun of them, they are working behind the scenes to make us second-class citizens. And if we march in the streets against them, they will simply plead victimhood while kissing up to legislative bodies to pass more laws against us. We are talking about groups and individuals with budgets in the millions who are dedicated to eradicating our equality, right to self-determination, and dignity. Defeating these groups will take discipline and focus, not silly and vulgar comments and definitely not attacks on religion as a whole.

No more pussyfooting around. This battle is bigger than single entities. This battle is about us, our future, and most of all, the future of our lgbt kids. The big question is are you "down?"

Check out just a few the site's resources:

How The Media Covers Hate Groups: Six Years of Studies

Reuters Foundation Exposes An Anti-LGBTQ Hate Group Representing America At UN Women’s Rights Event
 
List of Active Anti-LGBTQ Hate Groups  

10 Facts About The Nation’s Largest Anti-LGBTQ Hate Group 

 LGBTQ Groups To Journalists: Stop Conflating Bigotry With Religious Faith

Alliance Defending Freedom attacking lgbt community with more than just 'bathroom bills'

The Alliance Defending Freedom is also behind nationwide 'religious liberty' bills

A few days ago, NBC published a wonderful article which exposed the Alliance Defending Freedom as the anti-lgbt hate group behind the crop of anti-transgender bathroom bills bubbling up across the nation. It should be required reading:

Bills have been introduced in 15 states nationwide this year that aim to restrict transgender people's access to sex-segregated facilities. From Minnesota to New York, many of the legislative bills awaiting votes focus specifically on schools as kids and teens find themselves at the center of a battle over bathrooms. 

But many of the so-called "bathroom bills" filed across multiple states closely resemble each other. That's because many used language strongly similar to the model legislation called the Student Physical Privacy Act drafted by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a powerful conservative Christian law firm with a decades-long track record of litigating against LGBT rights. It's also been labeled a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

. . . The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the Alliance Defending Freedom mission differently: "Making life as difficult as possible for LGBT communities in the U.S. and internationally" by fighting against same-sex marriage and transgender people's access to private facilities. In 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center designated ADF an "active hate group" in a list that includes Westboro Baptist Church, KKK chapters, and Neo-Nazi groups. In a report, SPLC cited ADF's briefs in the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas case in which the firm argued for criminalizing gay sex through sodomy laws, and claimed ADF was behind efforts to keep sodomy laws on the books in Belize.

The article primarily focuses on ADF's attack on the transgender community via "bathroom bills." However  we should remember SPLC's words about how the group is doing what it can to make life difficult for the lgbt community.

 Remember the SB1062 fight in Arizona in 2014? SB1062 was the so-called "religious liberty" bill which was so extreme in allowing anti-lgbt discrimination on the grounds of "religious beliefs" that it caused huge protests and then-governor Jan Brewer to cast a veto.

I'm sure you remember the controversy:



The fight over SB1062 was so brutal that it is still being felt today by the Arizona legislature.

Guess who was behind SB1062?

Using the same tactics back then it now uses to push "bathroom bills," the Alliance Defending Freedom was behind it, as well as other "religious liberty" bills.  ADF even had a hand in "advising" Indiana lawmakers during that state's disastrous attempt to create a "religious liberty" law.

I would venture to say that the Alliance Defending Freedom has become one of the most, if not the most dangerous anti-lgbt organization in the nation. It's one thing to utilize petitions, junk science, and homophobic rhetoric. It's quite another to gather together and plan a behind-the-scenes physical strategy to actively create discriminatory laws and keep groups in second-class status.


Photo courtesy of Media Matters.

'Is Trump's anti-lgbt Army Secretary nominee also a birther?' & other Wed. midday news briefs

Mark Green

Army Secretary Nominee Mark Green’s Anti-LGBTQ Bigotry Is Only the Start of His Disqualifications - Continuing the articles on Trump's secretary of the Army pick, Mark Green. Turns out not only is he homophobic, but he is also transphobic, Islamophobic, and has a problem with the Latino community. And all of that may pale when one reads this passage about him speaking in front of a tea party group last year. Is he also a birther:

Green agreed with a questioner that President Obama is not a citizen and he refused to answer whether the former president is really a Muslim. 

Nevada Gov. Signs Law for Transgender ID in Foster, Court Case - Damn right he had better sign it.

 Beyond the bathroom: Report shows laws' harm for transgender students - Like so many other times, the religious right spins horror stories about the lgbt community to distract how their actions actually harm us.

 New Reporting Exposes Anti-LGBTQ Hate Group Suing This Pennsylvania School District - Some journalists are pointing out the fact that the Alliance Defending Freedom is an anti-lgbt hate group. Good.

Debunking anti-lgbt myths - a refresher video

Editor's post - I ran this video two years ago, but with a certain orange encrusted you-know-who in office causing religious right groups to grow eager, anxious, and hungry to cause all sorts of anti-lgbt havoc, a refresher Debunking of LGBT Myths is way overdue. It serves to remind us to not get taken in when religious right groups and their spokespeople seek to control the narrative of this so-called culture war.

'Official involved in Bush-era purge of gay employees now in Trump Administration' & other Tue midday news briefs

Official Involved in Bush-Era Purge of Gay Employees Now in Trump Administration - What's scarier? An official involved in the Bush-era purge of gay employees is now in the Trump Administration? Or the fact that probably very few of us remember the Bush-era purge of gay employees? 

LGBT advocates launch effort to block Trump’s ‘appalling’ Army secretary nominee - This is about another wannabe Trump appointee and you better believe we are going to fight against him.  

Fake “Radical Feminist” group actually paid political front for anti-LGBT James Dobson organization - Simply disgusting!  

Trey Pearson Sends Hopeful Message To Gay Christians In New Video - With the religious right bogarting all talks about the lgbtq community and religion, this video is DEFINITELY needed.  

Bigoted Christians Are the Most Special Snowflakes - As of now, the lgbt community needs to send a message to the Trump Administration: "We did not come to play with you #@%!"

Hate group demonstrates how its anti-lgbt propaganda undermines fight against HIV/AIDS

Hate group American Family Association undermines fight against HIV/AIDS

For National Youth HIV and AIDS Awareness Day, anti-lgbt hate group the American Family Association decided to push some old, but reliable semantic garbage about gay men and AIDS. What the group actually achieved was to demonstrate a textbook case of the anti-lgbt propaganda which has been used to undermine the fight against HIV/AIDS.

Via an article in its fake news site, One News Now, AFA accused the lgbt community of ignoring what it claims is the root cause for HIV/AIDS:

Today is "National Youth HIV and AIDS Awareness Day," and the message should be going out that sexual behavior is spreading the disease, says a conservative activist.
"I hope that they will point out that it is the behavior that causes AIDS," observes attorney and writer Matt Barber. "That it's aberrant sexual behavior - male on male homosexual behavior - that is the catalyst for this horrible disease, that it is something that can be prevented simply by not engaging in the behavior that causes it."
Homosexual activists say the purpose of the day is to help young people make "informed and responsible decisions" about their "sexual health," and planned activities include a visit to Capitol Hill, a Facebook Live chat, and various programs and events. But a message of self-control is unlikely to get far, however, since homosexual activists downplay their own role and point to heterosexuals and drug users, and blame Ronald Reagan for failing to address the disease early on.

Yet the statistics are hard to ignore. Citing sobering statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, the website for the Human Rights Campaign story about "Awareness Day" acknowledges that HIV rates increased 87 percent among black and Latino homosexuals and bisexuals from 2005 to 2014. The rate increased 56 percent among white men during that same period.

The story blames a lack of "comprehensive sex education," "stigma" about HIV infection, and "feelings of isolation" as barriers to preventing HIV/AIDS.

The truth is that AIDS is a "gay disease" because it has disproportionately devastated the homosexual community, columnist David Benkof, who is homosexual, wrote in a February column at The Daily Caller.

Homosexual activists, he explains, claimed that "AIDS is not a gay disease" at a time when they were fighting "haters" who misunderstood the virus. He writes:

But of course AIDS is linked with homosexuality. Even today, gay men receive more than two-thirds of HIV diagnoses, and earlier in the epidemic that number was even higher. Gay men are maybe 2 percent of the American population, but 55 percent of Americans living with HIV.

Benkof goes on to admit that HIV has spread so quickly because homosexual men have multiple sexual partners.

Notice the deception here. The One News Now article cites CDC data with regards to statistics about HIV/AIDS. However, the article's author chooses to then discard the reason for the CDC statistics (lack of comprehensive sex education, "stigma about HIV infection, feelings of isolation), even though the reasons themselves come from the CDC.

It used to be back in the day when religious right groups cited negative gay statistics, they would omit the reason for these statistics if it didn't fit their ugly narrative about lgbts. Thanks to intrepid bloggers like myself, they now acknowledge the reasons, but then verbally undermine them.

This leads me to ask why should groups like the AFA even bother citing the CDC in the first place? It shows blatant dishonesty to use statistics to craft a narrative, then discard reasons behind said statistics because they refute the case you are making.

And what makes AFA's blatant lying even worse is who the organization chooses to refute the research it doesn't like. David Benkof is columnist who, as far as I know, has no background in medicine or research. A columnist whose big "add" to the article is that he is gay and published a piece in a  right-wing publication.

Matt Barber is even worse. Many, myself included, have written extensively  about the various ways he has attacked the lgbt community, including his vile fascination with talking about the so-called mechanics of gay sex (or as Barber puts it - "one man violently cramming his penis into another man’s lower intestine and calling it ‘love'").

Barber is a veritable treasure trove of homophobia,  including when he:

 called marriage equality "Satanic,"

said that marriage equality is about "persecuting Christians,"

implied that he was sent by God to tell gays that HIV was a punishment for sinning.

So that's who the American Family Association has to refute the Center for Disease Control information which doesn't comport with the narrative it is trying to create about gay men and HIV/AIDS - a gay columnist with no medical background and a religious right spokesman who seems to have an obsession with gay sex on the level that some like to claim that gay men have for Barbara Streisand.

It's important to realize that what the AFA spewed by way of One News Now isn't information designed to educate or spread truth. The article was created to justify prejudice and homophobia. It was created to demonize, stigmatize, and isolate, i.e. creating and exploiting conditions which the CDC has clearly said contribute to the spread of HIV/AIDS.

If we are to have an honest debate about HIV/AIDS, how the AFA and other religious right groups distort information and spread propaganda  must be included as one of the topics.