Analyzing and refuting the inaccuracies lodged against the lgbt community by religious conservative organizations. Lies in the name of God are still lies.
Gary Bauer, who allegedly undermine the fight against AIDS during the 80s, is just one of many conservative evangelical leaders eager for the power Trump gives them.
Unlike the rest of American society, I refuse to catch the vapors while watching right-wing evangelical leaders debase their "integrity" in support of Donald Trump. To me, they were always hypocritical bloodsucking bullies who saw Jesus as a commodity in their quest for political power to shape America into their definition of a bastardized version of "The Promised Land."
And I say this as an LGBTQ, a member of the community they spent years stigmatizing as the "dreaded other" before Trump opened the door of the Oval Office to their clutching claws.
Look at some the cast of characters in this group:
Gary Bauer who, when he worked in the Reagan Administration, deliberately kept Surgeon General C. Everett Koop from meeting with the president about the AIDS crisis because he felt it was "God's punishment."
James Dobson, who once claimed that gays have thousands of partners
Franklin Graham, who once praised Vladimir Putin for persecuting the Russian LGBTQ community.
During a recent edition of MSNBC Live with Kendis Gibson, a good friend of mine and a wonderful transgender activist Monica Roberts, who runs the GLAAD Media Award-winning blog Transgriot, was interviewed about how transphobic rhetoric leads to violence against community.
It goes without saying that she did a wonderful job. And it was definitely a refreshing thing to see a transgender American invited on a news program. Particularly in light of how the Fox News network and the rest of the right-wing media will practically bend over backwards to exclude the trans community in debates, while giving transphobic people and groups a wide berth to spew their lies.
Though some folks have criticized me for it, I like going through past written words and videos of groups who oppose LGBTQ equality. I do it for three reasons - 1. to educate myself on their arguments because they generally get recycled and repackaged 2. keep myself from becoming slack in refuting them. 3. marvel at how simplistically idiotic they are.
And the above video by the group TFP Student Action is a doozy. TFP Student Action is an offshoot of the American Society for the Defense Tradition, Family, and Property - a far-right Catholic group . Naturally, this means that another activity of the group is pushing the lie that the LGBTQ community is unhealthy to society. It was small, but very vocal, part of the conservative right's ultimately unsuccessful fight against marriage equality. And with arguments made in the video above, it's no wonder they lost.
All it contains is a hashtag of bad talking points backed by wishful thinking, religious entitlement, and deceptions (i.e. using President Obama talking about single parents to denigrate same-sex households and spinning the lie about the Massachusetts father who was jailed for allegedly trying to keep his son from being "exposed" to homosexuality in his school.)
Yet, this video contained the general arguments of those opposing our right to marry. And what the opposition ended up arguing in the courts. A special highlight comes at 4:28 when the only black guy in the video is some random person they filmed on the street going on about "Adam and Steve" as he and his facial piercings draw so close to the camera that you think he's going to lick it.
But I shouldn't be too harsh. What points the video loses on facts and logic, the participants make up for it by being vigorous. Extremely vigorous.
The most enjoyable thing about watching this video is knowing that a few short months after it was made, the Supreme Court legalized marriage equality, thereby telling TFP - and other religious right and conservative groups - to go play with themselves. And after watching this video, can anyone really blame SCOTUS?
