Analyzing and refuting the inaccuracies lodged against the lgbt community by religious conservative organizations. Lies in the name of God are still lies.
The Family Research Council helped to create a report which justified Trump's trans troops ban. Now they are attempting to pass it off as legitimate Department of Defense work.
With Biden's continued push for the rights of transgender Americans, the religious right is stepping up its game to spook the country via lies and distortions against the president's goals.
The latest comes from Family Research Council spokesman Peter Sprigg, who published a piece in the (very biased conservative online publication) The Federalist entitled Biden's Transgender Military Order Is Based On Politics, Not Facts.
The title is ironic based upon the number of things in the piece Sprigg either omitted or got plain wrong. I want to point out a glaring (and deliberate) distortion and why it matters.
Sprigg said the following about Biden's recent executive order which overturned Trump's ban on transgender troops:
The Biden executive order appealed to “a meticulous, comprehensive study” issued in 2016 that asserted that allowing “transgender individuals to serve” would have “a minimal impact on military readiness and healthcare costs.” The “nonpartisan federally funded research center” that published this study was the RAND Corporation. On the other hand, said Biden, “the previous [Trump] administration relied on a review that resulted in a policy that set unnecessary barriers to military service.”
Biden failed to explain this “review” was conducted by the Department of Defense.
The findings were published in a March 2018 “Report and Recommendations.” A comparison of the RAND study with the Pentagon report helps to put the issue in perspective.
Most importantly, the RAND study was speculative and released around the time the Obama policy was announced. Since transgender people had never been permitted to serve in the U.S. military, RAND could only make projections based on experiences in the private sector and in other countries.
The Pentagon, on the other hand, provided actual data based on the 20 months or so of experience between when the Obama policy took effect and when the “Report and Recommendations” were issued, resulting in some interesting contrasts.
There is a reason why Sprigg attempts to trash the RAND Corporation. It's all about credibility. The RAND Corporation has been around since 1948 and since then has provided research and analysis to the United States Armed Forces. Its reputation is sterling.
By contrast, the March 2018 study supposedly done by the Department of Defense was in fact NOT done by the Department of Defense. In truth, it was done by an ad-hoc committee brought together by former VP Mike Pence. And the members of this committee were several anti-LGBTQ activists, including Tony Perkins. Perkins is the head of the Family Research Council and Sprigg's boss. In addition, Pence pushed hard for the ban, even to the point of overruling then Defense Secretary James Mattis who saw no problems with transgender men and women severing openly in the military:
According to a Zack Ford article in Think Progresson March 25, 2018:
Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern reported Friday night that, according to multiple sources, Pence played “a leading role” in creating the report, along with Ryan T. Anderson of the Heritage Foundation, which has been dubbed “Trump’s favorite think tank,” and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (FRC), an anti-LGBTQ hate group. Both Heritage and FRC praised the report Friday. According to Stern’s reporting, it was true that Mattis favored allowing transgender military service, but Pence “effectively overruled” him.
A separate source independently confirmed to ThinkProgress Saturday that Pence was involved, characterizing him as forming his own ad hoc “working group,” including Anderson and Perkins, separate from the panel of experts Mattis had assembled. Though it bears Mattis’ signature, the report released Friday appears to reflect the findings of Pence’s working group and not the committee report that Mattis submitted to Trump last month. Mattis’ original document was not currently publicly available at the time of the recommendation, but it was widely reported that Mattis favored an inclusive approach that resembled what had originally been proposed by Defense Secretary Ash Carter under President Obama in 2016. His February recommendation, also released Friday, jibes with the new report, contradicting reports at the time.
Ford goes on to carve up the report bit by bit, revealing its continued reliance on junk science. But here is the problem I have with this entire situation.
At my count, that's twice that the Family Research Council has attempted to pass off a study it had a hand in creating as legitimate Department of Defense work. My guess is that they are going to do it again and will continue to do so because very few in the media seems to care enough to put them on blast. With so many overwhelming things going on, folks aren't paying attention to how the religious right is creating a false narrative with about Biden and trans right. The attempt to reconfigure how Trump's ban came into place, while ignoring how they helped to create it, is only part of their plan
They stand in front of a broad canvas slowly but surely painting in a vile masterpiece filled with vividly colorful lies about how Biden is "erasing women," ignoring science, and putting Americans - particularly children - in jeopardy in order to satisfy a tiny but very intolerant minority (that's supposed to be us) with an "agenda" aimed at destruction.
If they are successful in this pursuit, LGBTQ Americans will be having some serious problems in the future.
The first LGBTQ characters I remember seeing on screen are the lesbians who fought Pam Grier in Foxy Brown. But it had an opposite effect on me than the one the makers of the movie probably desired.
I'm going to divert a little from the usual fare in order to tell an interesting story about LGBTQ images. I hope folks reading this will give their comments in the section below.
On Twitter today, a question was raised which had me chasing memories. It was:
Finish this sentence: The first time I remember seeing a queer person on screen was ______.
Ironically, as much as I write about LGBTQ issues, I could not remember the answer to this question. I remember seeing that Harry Hamlin movie, Making Love, in 1983 on network television courtesy of a channel in another state my T.V. could catch because my local station wouldn't show it.
I remember seeing a strange CBS movie, Welcome Home, Bobby in 1986 about a guy who may or may not have been gay.
And I remember seeing Revenge of the Nerds on VHS in the same year, which is extremely ironic because a little under a decade later, my college life mimicked that of the black gay character in the movie - i.e. being a semi-closeted black gay male in a predominantly white fraternity.
Then it came to me.
The first time I remember seeing a queer/LGBTQ person on screen was in the first movie I ever saw on screen - Foxy Brown starring Pam Grier. To the uninitiated, Grier was the queen of blaxploitation, which itself was a genre featuring generally low-budget action movies in the 1970s starring black characters. They were also very controversial. This particular movie, Foxy Brown, was one I saw at a drive-in with my uncle, aunt, and cousin when I was a little boy. In it, Grier was fighting a crime cartel in her neighborhood. The scene below was her attempting to rescue a prostitute from a lesbian bar:
One would think that this scene created a negative view of LGBTQ people in me. Actually, it was the opposite view. Being a small child, I didn't understand the dialogue, but it disturbed me tremendously how Grier caused a huge brawl. To my young mind, Grier went into the bar and began beating the hell out of the women who were simply minding their own business. Subsequently for a number of years - at least until college when I saw the movie again - I always had a fear of Pam Grier.. I saw her as the "big black lady with the afro who came to parties and fucked people up." I even imagined her using razor blades on folks (which she did not in this movie).
Maybe my experience proves how young people are simply too hip to fall for the junk that adults traffic to get us to fear each other. Or maybe, there was a small part of my mind which was aware of my LGBTQ sexual orientation, even at that young age, to recognize this silly attempt to demonize a bar full of lesbians.
Who knows? Regardless, I encourage and appreciate your comments about the first time you saw a queer/LGBTQ character on the screen.
We all know that the anti-LGBTQ industry is targeting the transgender community in an attempt to undermine President Biden's general push for LGBTQ rights. But we should as adept in knowing about the no-so secret weapon in its attack - Fox News. There is justifiable focus on distortions and lies propagated against the trans community as well as the groups pushing those lies, such as the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council. But equally important is spotlighting how Fox News is helping to spread these lies under the guise of "objective news coverage."
On January 20, President Joe Biden signed an executive order telling federal agencies to protect LGBTQ Americans from discrimination in numerous areas of public life, such as housing, health care, employment, public accommodations, and education. Despite the order’s myriad protections, over the following week, Fox News aired 19 segments -- totaling 51 minutes -- that miscategorized the order as a move that would destroy women’s sports; only one of those segments even alluded to its nondiscrimination protections.
. . . From January 20 through 27, Fox News aired at least 19 original segments that mentioned the executive order, amounting to a total of 51 minutes. In every segment, Fox hosts and guests misleadingly framed it as focused on trans athletes, falsely claiming it would allow boys to play in girls sports and that it would destroy women’s sports. The Fox personalities also repeatedly misgendered trans athletes as “biological males.”
In fact, only one segment of the 19 alluded to the broader nondiscrimination protections covered by the executive order. In that segment, anchor Sandra Smith asked, “President Biden signed an executive order aimed at eliminating discrimination based on gender identity, but instead of leveling the playing field, could this move threaten the future and fairness of girls sports?”
In some of the mentions, Fox framed the executive order around locker rooms and bathrooms in addition to athletics; right-wing media have long and falsely suggested allowing trans people to use the restroom would pose a threat to women’s safety and privacy.
And what's worse, according to Media Matters, not only did Fox News distort Biden's executive order, but the guests invited on its network shows to discuss the issue were others who did the same.
Notably, nine of the 19 segments were on Fox’s so-called “news” side programs (as opposed to opinion shows), and every single one of the guests or commentators who discussed the executive order held either right-leaning or anti-trans views. These included Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Beth Stelzer of anti-trans group Save Women’s Sports, and The Federalist’s Ben Domenech.
In other words, Fox News not only demonized trans Americans when talking about Biden's executive order, but also rigged the debate in general by inviting only the opponents of trans right to comment.
The report by Media Matters makes for good reading and studying if we are to call out the anti-LGBTQ industry's latest moral panic before it grows the teeth to bite us. The report underscores how the media's depiction of the debate over trans issues needs a huge overhaul with a bit more focus on trans Americans themselves and genuine medical experts who deal with their issues. It would definitely be an improvement over fake analysts, phony experts, and the news personalities who enable them with fear stories and lies appealing to basic prejudices and ignorance.
Editor's note - Trump may be gone (thank God), but the policy established by this blog to every now and then focus on light LGBTQ issues in order to de-stress ourselves will continue.
Openly gay actor Wentworth Miller made a comment in a recent article which got me thinking. To summarize, he was tired of gay roles which are defined by struggles and sadness. He wanted more roles which put LGBTQ people in a position of power and authority. And I agreed with him. I have long wanted to motion picture featuring a gay black man as an androgynous action hero who saves the world while beating the hell out of bad guys. To tell the truth, I would settle for seeing any LGBTQ action hero doing all of that. I thought I had never seen that portrayal before.
It turns out that I was wrong. I had seen the character before. And so had a lot of America. In 2017, Academy Award-winning actress Charlize Theron starred in the hit motion picture Atomic Blonde. In the movie, she portrays undercover agent, Lorraine Broughton, trying to retrieve a missing list of double agents. Check out the trailer:
I got this form email from Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council:
If you are following the record number of executive orders that the Biden administration has issued during their first week in office, then you know how important it is that we pray and stand. The measures range from canceling the Keystone pipeline and shutting down oil production to imposing trangenderism upon our military and America's schools.
Tonight we will pray for our nation -- specifically, for the men and women who serve in our nation's military and their families who will be impacted by the executive orders aimed at using the military to advance a radical social agenda.
We will also pray for our nation's media, that any deceit designed to misguide the American people will be exposed and new sources of information that will speak the truth will be elevated in this critical time.
Please join me . . . along with Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Jerry Boykin and former pastor and congressman Mark Walker, at . . . s we seek to hear and obey the voice of God and walk in His ways. He is our only hope!
God forbid Perkins prays for honesty, understanding, and little bit more kindness in the world. His prayers fall strictly in the political realm.
This is the same Tony Perkins who lied last night about how Biden canceling the Keystone Pipeline is costing ten of thousands of jobs while trying to pass off a junk science report he had a hand in creating as legitimate work from the Department of Defense.
The same Tony Perkins who signed a letter not that long ago spreading the lie that Biden's electoral win was fraud.
The same Tony Perkins who called LGBTQ people pawns of the devil and leads an organization whose mission is to make our lives miserable at every turn.
When he says God is our only hope, just who is he talking about?
Chyle please. I wouldn't bother to squint my eyes around Perkins and his ilk or even stoop to pray around them. Not even a little bit.
FRC's Tony Perkins tells so many lies, he probably doesn't remember the definition of truth.
Yes, I know that to LGBTQ Americans, the fact that Family Research Council head Tony Perkins has has a habit of telling lies is rather passe. He and his group have told so many lies about us that if they ever accidentally told the truth, that would be the story.
But anti-LGBTQ industry lies about us are like lumps in oatmeal. Every time one pops up, you have to beat it down.
And this latest lie about President Biden is a doozy. Perkins is attempting - like the rest of the right, no doubt - to create a belief that some Americans are now having rethinking their votes for Biden. The fact that Perkins is attempting to pass along this talking point is simply more proof his hypocrisy. It wasn't that long ago that he and his group were a part of an effort to claim that Biden's win was the result of election fraud. So how can there be voter remorse if there was election fraud?
But it gets better. The entire theme of Perkins's piece is that Biden's honeymoon as president is supposedly over because he is costing Americans their jobs and prioritizing things like transgender rights:
Just three days in, the hashtag #BidenRemorse started popping up on social media. By then, the new president had stopped work on the border wall, shut down the Keystone XL Pipeline, and issued an oil and gas moratorium for drilling on federal land -- firing tens of thousands of workers in the process
Yeah that's a lie. In a 2015 post, Media Matters (a group which catalogs conservative distortions) said the following:
. . . an exhaustive study by the State Department concluded that the Keystone XL project will result in just 50 jobs, including “35 permanent employees and 15 temporary contractors.” Further, the report stated that spending on the project would support only 3,900 temporary construction jobs if construction lasted one year and just 1,950 temporary construction jobs if construction lasted two years. The report also states that a majority of potential other jobs supported by the project would come from “indirect and induced spending,” yet a recent Washington Post article detailed how the “indirect” job estimates themselves don't hold up, as some have already been created in anticipation of the pipeline, and most would last for less than a year . . .
But the centerpiece of Perkins' distortions about Biden is - guess who - us. Or more specifically, the transgender community. Ever since Biden took office, the religious right has accelerated lies and horror stories about transgender men and women. This particular lie has to do with his repeal of Trump's trans troops ban.
Unfortunately for our troops, the new president doesn't seem to care how his social experimentation affects our actual warfighting. Unlike Donald Trump, who insisted the military study the comprehensive effects of such a policy, Joe Biden -- from the so-called "party of science" -- has not asked for any updated information. In fact, he claimed this morning that opening the doors to transgenderism "does not have any meaningful negative impact on the Armed Forces" and "minimal" effect on "readiness and health care costs."
That's interesting, since the findings of then-Secretary James Mattis in 2018 were that the Obama administration had to ignore stacks of research to justify the change. After wading through 21 months of actual fallout, the DOD believed that introducing this type of gender chaos into the military presented a "considerable risk" to its "effectiveness and lethality." The memo does a great job dismantling the flawed and outdated RAND study that both Presidents Obama and Biden have used to prop up their decision. After almost two years of seeing the real impact on troops, the DOD argued that RAND had "mischaracterize[d] or overstate[d] the reports on which it rests its conclusions" (p. 39). "In fact," officials write, "the RAND study itself repeatedly emphasized the lack of quality data on these issues and qualified its conclusions accordingly" -- a fact the Biden administration hasn't bothered to mention.
There are times when the LGBTQ community gain a victory, we don't wrap up loose ends. This generally puts us in a situation where we find ourselves in a new battle with the same forces we defeated before. Then we busy ourselves wondering how we can combat their techniques this time while forgetting that they were same techniques used against us in the last fight.
The recent situation regarding Biden's repeal of Trump's ban on transgender troops is a good example of what I'm talking about. Now when Trump announced the ban, he claimed that he consulted with his military leaders. But this turned out to be a lie. They too were caught by surprise.
In that same month, America learned that the ban did not come about from genuine concern about the military. It actually came from the minds of the anti-LGBTQ industry with assistance from former Vice President Mike Pence.
Multiple sources are saying that Mike Pence – along with some anti-LGBTQ activists – wrote the report behind Donald Trump’s new transgender military ban.
The White House released a plan on Friday night to purge transgender people from the military, which revoked the previous transgender military ban that was announced last year.
Accompanying the new plan was a memo signed by Defense Secretary James Mattis and a report from the Department of Defense.
Multiple sources told Slate that Mike Pence “played a leading role in the creation of this report,” along with anti-transgender activists Ryan Anderson and Tony Perkins.
Anderson works at the right wing Heritage Foundation and recently wrote When Harry Became Sally, a book that claims that being transgender is a mental illness based on the narratives of “ex-transgender” people. Perkins works for the Family Research Council, an SPLC designated hate group.
Another source told Think Progress that the report was a product of a “working group” led by Pence that produced a report with different conclusions from Mattis’s committee report. The source said that Pence “overruled” Mattis’s report, but did not explain exactly what that meant.
Joe Biden Repeals Donald Trump’s Transgender Military Ban - More proof that voting matters. Instead of a Trump second term in which more attacks on our rights, health, and safety were assured, LGBTQ Americans now have a president with our best interests at heart. And determined to fight for them.
Christiana Holcomb, legal counsel at the conservative nonprofit organization Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents the plaintiffs in the Connecticut suit, said she is seeing a growing trend where lawmakers across the country are recognizing that it’s “a real problem” when state athletic associations or school districts allow transgender women to compete in women’s sports.
The ADF goes from state to state pushing this madness up, writing anti-LGBTQ bills for state legislators to pass, and then defending the mess in court. There is NO trend. Just them instigating and pushing lies.
Since being appointed by Trump as director of the Office of Civil Rights at HHS in 2017, Roger Severino seemed to have made it his mission to strip LGBTQ Americans of basic health rights. With Biden's victory in November, he is out of a job.
Editor's note - Ever since Biden won last November, I've been waiting with much anticipation to announce this news.
As of now, LGBTQ Americans have one less homophobe in government to worry about. Thanks to the Biden Administration, that is.
Roger Severino is gone from Health and Human Services.
In March 2017, Severino was appointed by former president Donald Trump as director of the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. His appointment created immediate and intense consternation within the LGBTQ community because he had a long history of employment with groups who worked against our rights and safety, such as the Heritage Foundation and the Becket Fund.
In 2018, The Advocateclaimed that he was attempting to "erase trans people out of existence" by pushing a memo which would say that gender identity doesn't exist and that gender is set at birth and defined by genitalia.
Severino was also responsible for an attempt to create a rule which would roll back protections for the trans community against discrimination through Obamacare, and a "conscience rule" which said any healthcare worker could deny services to LGBTQ people based on "moral or religious" reasons. In November 2019, three different federal courts struck down the rule and one court found that HHS exaggerated a justification for the rule. Severino was pointed out in an NPR article to have contributed to that exaggeration.
While probably not as attention-grabbing as the Trump Administration's other exploits against LGBTQ Americans, Severino's actions had to potential to garner more negative repercussions. The Centers of Disease Control and other major medical centers have pointed out that a major impediment to good LGBTQ healthcare is a fear of discrimination and stigma. We are scared of being outed, being humiliated, or even of possible violence This makes us less likely to seek out good physicians and the medical care we need. In addition, the stress created by this situation makes us more susceptible to depression, drug abuse, and STDs.
Anything which undermines our ability to receive decent medical care, even if it is a rule which discriminates against us under the deceptive tone of "anti-religious discrimination," has the potential to have a negative effect our health. And the results would allow the anti-LGBTQ industry to exploit the evergreen trope of "homosexuality is a dangerous lifestyle."
My opinion is that Severino knew this. And had Trump won a second term, he would have been able to do more damage to us.
But now, Severino is out of a job. He is no longer employed at HHS. Dismissed. Purged. Given "the old heave ho." No matter how you phrase it, that turkey is gone and I am extremely glad about it. His page on the HHS site is also gone and in place of his name on the HHS leadership webpage is Robinsue Frohboese as 'acting director.'
From what one of my sources tells me, Frohboese previously served as principal deputy director of OCR (Office of Civil Rights). In addition, Frohboese worked for 17 years in the Special Litigation Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, first as Senior Trial Attorney and subsequently as Deputy Chief. Lastly, Frohboese has played a key role in many civil rights initiatives and OCR’s implementation of the HIPAA Privacy Rule.
Isn't it nice to have a qualified person in this position instead of an overpaid lackey for anti-LGBTQ think tank?
After four years of Trump, I guess we're back to normal with the religious right snatching up its petticoats and screeching about "homosexual indoctrination," boycotts, and cries of "won't someone PLEASE think of the children."
I received this email via the American Family Association:
If you look forward to having your annual Cadbury Crème Egg each Easter season, you might not like how the company celebrates the risen Savior.
Cadbury just released a commercial that has resulted in a backlash of comments from Christians and non-Christians alike. Everything from "disgusting" and "very disappointing" to "yech" and "gross."
Todd Starnes best describes the ad this way: "It's like Disney's 'Lady and the Tramp' scene where the two dogs share spaghetti. Except, it's two grown men spinning around in a circle and sharing a creme-filled chocolate egg in a sexualized way."
The 10-second segment is part of a longer commercial called "Crème Egg Golden Goobilee," showing ways to eat a Cadbury Crème Egg. You can see it here. Warning: This video is graphic and offensive.
Cadbury makes a huge push to sell its Crème Eggs in America during the Easter season each year.
A portion of each sale goes to help finance Cadbury's social agenda that has nothing to do with chocolates and candies.
If U.S. sales are strong, Cadbury just might bring this ad to American televisions for your children to see. Taking a stand now will send a strong signal that their eggs are cracked up.
First of all, there is no controversy about this commercial (except for the AFA) and Todd Starnes (who probably wishes he had someone to share a Cadbury egg with). But as hinted by AFA and confirmed by an LGBTQNation article, this ad isn't even running in America.
It's a British commercial.
But since grifters have to grift, AFA linked to a 10 second segment about the ad:
Donald Trump is gone. He is no longer president. In his place is Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. With their ascension comes optimism that America can repair all of the damage Trump caused over a course of four years.
But he is not without his defenders. Chief amongst them is anti-LGBTQ hate group the Family Research Council and its president, Tony Perkins. Perkins took it upon himself to praise Trump in long diatribe saluting not only the former president, but the members of his administration who stayed until Biden took over so that they could add last minute policy changes and rules.
These policy changes and rules include a ridiculous piece of something attacking trans athletes here, something enshrining the right-wing bastardization of "religious freedom" there, and a bit about abortion sprinkled throughout. Hopefully now that Biden has taken over, these policy changes and such will be eliminated. However, they are a good personification of the relationship which Trump had with religious conservatives these past four years. It had nothing to do with integrity or values. It was all about what Perkins and company wanted, what Trump gave them, and what he got in exchange. He gave them the bigoted legislation and policies and the conservative judges they wanted and they kissed his butt as if it were a holy relic left over from Jesus' crucifixion.
The last part of Perkins' cloying piece is especially nauseating:
. . . while the media and far-Left drone on about how ashamed Americans should be for supporting this president, I refuse to be. This administration wasn't just about one man -- it was about thousands of people living out their conviction for us. They leave these four years exhausted, but they should also leave them proud. Because regardless of how the chapter ended, the story of what they achieved matters.
Really Tony? You refuse to be ashamed of supporting Trump simply because of what you were able to get from him. Let's talk about the costs of a Trump administration:
This video should probably be considered irrelevant
if you think that 400,000 deaths from COVID thanks to Trump's incompetence is irrelevant to a proclamation on the National Sanctity of Human Life Day 2021. Because apparently saying that you're "pro-life" always outweighs actually doing the work which saves lives,
if you think that it's perfectly fine to support a leader who has told over 30,000 lies if he makes it allowable for "faith-based" groups to discriminate against the LGBTQ community while receiving our tax dollars, and
if you think that the 26 women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct don't matter because his administration pushes anti-transgender rules based upon the false notion that trans women have an unfair advantage against cis women in sporting events.
Perkins doesn't have to be ashamed of his support of Trump. The rest of us have enough shame for him. And history will definitely heap on more.
