The art of undermining

Today's blog entry is a departure from the norm because of recent events I want to call everyone's attention to:

"If politics were fair, Democrats would be in as much trouble as Republicans. And they'd be just as vulnerable. They've been obstructionist, anti-tax-cut, soft on terrorism, and generally obnoxious. On top of that, Pelosi is the most unpopular national politician in America. But in the sixth year of the Bush presidency, with a GOP-run Congress, Democrats aren't the issue. Republicans are." - "journalist" Fred Barnes, Oct. 23rd edition of the Weekly Standard

"I think it's interesting, Matt, that both sides agree on the stakes. It is Iraq. It is whether we support the president's policy in Iraq or not. It is whether we want Nancy Pelosi to be the first woman speaker of the House or not. My own view is that iconic fact of that woman sitting behind the president during a State of the Union address is an enormous change in our culture. A lot of professional women and men women will say, 'Great.' A lot of the more conservative people will say, 'Wait a minute, this woman's from San Francisco, she's a liberal.'" - "journalist" Chris Matthews, The Today Show, Sept. 5th

"Let's talk about this possibility -- it seems likely now, in almost all cards that the Democrats will get control of the House, which will bring us two years of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is not a popular figure or respected figure nationally. Her behavior will be more visible than ever, more conspicuous than ever. What effect does that have on the possibility of Hillary Clinton being nominated or even elected in 2008? I think it is a very good question. I suspect the effect would not be terrifically positive." - "journalist" Brit Hume, Fox News, Oct. 15th

"Ordinarily, a party's leadership structure is set by the caucus in advance, and all members are expected go along with the decision. In the eight years Rep. J. Dennis Hastert, Illinois Republican, has been speaker, he's never had a protest vote cast against him. Mrs. Pelosi, whose voting record is considerably more liberal than many of her fellow Democrats, has never enjoyed that luxury. In last year's election for speaker, one Democrat opposed her for the top post. Four Democrats opposed her in 2003, with three of them simply voting "present" as a protest. Such protest votes are a sign of dissension within a party. But in the upcoming Congress -- where Democrats could hold the majority by just one or two seats -- any members who vote for someone other than Mrs. Pelosi or simply decide not to vote could trigger parliamentary mayhem. " - Pelosi no shoo-in for job as speaker, The Washington Times, Oct. 20, 2006

Does anyone see a pattern here? An echo chamber is forming.

Obviously, in getting ready for a possible change in leadership on Nov. 7, some "journalists" are undermining Rep. Nancy Pelosi's credibility to serve as U.S. of Representatives Speaker of the House before she even has the opportunity to take over the duties.

This is how Al Gore lost in 2000.

Journalists, instead of doing research, took Republican talking points against Gore (i.e Al Gore has a problem with lying because he claims to have invented the internet) and repeated them on talk shows and news commentaries, creating an echo chamber that ultimately helped Bush.

Gore's loss demonstrated just how dangerous lazy journalists are.

Now I am afraid that the same thing is happening with Pelosi.

Just who are these people who claim that Pelosi is unpopular? Do any polls verify this?

No and as proof of this, check out this link- http://mediamatters.org/items/200610150005

One thing this does prove - misrepresentation is not a hallmark that belongs solely to the anti-gay industry.

Liberty Sunday: Garbage in, Garbage out

"They want to silence, and they will silence, Christians. If we don’t win this battle, the day will come when they’ll walk into your church if you say one thing wrong [or] bad about homosexuality; they’ll walk in your church and they’ll shut you up and you’ll be arrested for a hate crime. That sounds far, far removed but it’s the truth."

To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, "there they go again."

By now, the anti-gay industry's whinefest, or as they call it, "Liberty Sunday" is over and done. And it was the same mess they always perpetrate.

Blah, blah, blah, homosexuals are out to get us. Blah, blah, blah, it's an agenda to hurt Christians.

I don't know what's worse: the fact that they always conveniently forgetting how many of us gay folks have a deep faith in God or the fact that they are trivializing Christianity by reducing it to a Tammany Hall voting machine.

But lying on the gay community is a usual occurrence for Wildmon.

According to the website, Media Matters for America, Wildmon repeated a lie about gay income during a March 2006 radio broadcast (http://mediamatters.org/items/200603160008):

"You know, I saw yesterday how much - - how much money the homosexual community has. I mean, good gracious, the average homosexual makes four times more than I do"

Not only did Media Matters call this claim a lie, but also it had the facts to back up its claim:

"Though Wildmon did not state specifically ‘how much money the homosexual community has,’ according to the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, the AFA has, for many years, based its statements on average gay incomes on a discredited 1988 survey by the Simmons Market Research Bureau, which listed the average gay income as $55,430 . . ."

Media Matters for America went on to say that the survey was discredited because it did not reflect a representative sample of the gay population. Apparently, the survey only questioned readers of popular gay-oriented magazines and those who filled out sign-up sheets for the 1993 Gay March on Washington:

"As the National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals, Inc. (NOGLSTP) noted, ‘ People who buy and read newspapers and magazines tend to have more education and higher incomes. Gay events attract people who can afford to travel or pay an entry fee.’"

As a further example of this, Media Matters for America said, the NOGLSTP also demonstrated that a 1989 survey by the Simmons Bureau showed that readers of African-American-oriented magazines earned 41 to 82 percent more than average African-Americans.

Media Matters for America added this coda that shed even more light on Wildmon’s exaggeration about gay and lesbian income:

" . . . even if the Simmons survey was accurate, Wildmon’s assertion that ‘the average homosexual earns four times more than I do,’ would not be. According to the AFA’s 2004 990 filing - -the Internal Revenue Service’s return for organizations exempt from income tax – Wildmon paid himself $58,010 plus $31, 787 in benefits and a housing allowance of $39,200. He paid his son, Tim, who is president of AFA, $79,000"

We are not the problem. Obviously, Wildmon has gay on the brain.

Scalia's ignorance

In less than a month, my blog has over 1,000 hits. Now I am not completely computer literate but I think that is damned good.

It shows that you all are interested in what I have to say and for that I thank you. Now I hope you buy my book. :D

But onto today's news

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia continues to bitch about the Lawrence vs. Texas decision. In a debate with ACLU head Nadine Strossen, he said that homosexual sodomy is not in the Constitution(http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Video_Scalia_says_abortion_homosexual_sodomy_1016.html)

No kidding.

Scalia, who dissented with the majority of the court in that decision, still continues to harp about it in terms of gay sex. Don't get me wrong, I think Scalia is a brilliant man. He has to be if he is on the Supreme Court. So why does he continue to break the Lawrence vs. Texas case down to incorrect simplicity?

Lawrence vs. Texas (and by the way, the case is covered in my upcoming book as to how the anti-gay industry creates moral panics) was not about sodomy. The case asked the question can the United States government create laws that discriminate against a group of people simply based on the "morality of the majority."

Remember, Texas's sodomy law prosecuted gays, not heterosexuals.

The court obviously said no, which it should have. People should not be discriminated against simply because of the "morality of the majority."

Of course "the right to homosexual sodomy" is not written in the Constitution. But the right to be judged equally is.

The real question is that how can someone as intelligent as Scalia be so unintelligent about something so simple?

It just goes to show that even intelligence can fall victim to bias.

"Liberty Sunday"

Well "Liberty Sunday" took place and it was as nauseating as I thought it would be. In the coming days, I intend to break down several lies and distortions that Perkins, Dobson, Wildmon and company committed yesterday.

But bear with me if I don't do it tonight. Even I need a break from the trash pits.

Liberty Sunday, the Conspiracy Theory, and the Echo Chamber

When I talked about tonight's anti-gay industry whinefest, Liberty Sunday, two posts ago, I made an error.

I said that Liberty Sunday was indicative of one anti-gay industry propaganda technique: dire consequences.

Actually, Liberty Sunday is a combination of the dire consequences technique and another technique which I outline in my upcoming book: the conspiracy theory.

From time to time, so-called "pro family" groups will claim that gays are undertaking a huge Machiavellian conspiracy to overturn American values or "force acceptance."

These groups hardly ever offer any proof of a conspiracy, but will take unrelated current events and string them together on the strings of paranoia.

The only reason why the conspiracy theory works so well for the anti-gay industry is because they have many people of faith bamboozled to believe every word that comes out of their mouths.

So-called “pro family” groups claim to speak for and to people of faith. Unfortunately many of these people of faith are not familiar with the gay community. Nor are they aware of the diverse segments that make up the gay community. In short, they view gays and lesbians as monolithic or all the same. Lastly, a great majority of them view homosexuality as a sin.

All the anti-gay industry has to do is pull up a “questionable” quote from at least one gay or lesbian leader to exploit this ignorance and they easily have these people of faith convinced that an “agenda” is afoot.

It amounts to ego stroking. The anti-gay industry are constantly complimenting people of faith in an offhand way. Statements like "our Christian values," "this country was found on Christian principles," or "we must take our country" back gives people of faith an impression that all of their opinions are righteous.

So what happens when an entity, like say the Supreme Court does not agree with this notion? Why the Supreme Court must be wrong because it disagrees with the opinion of "righteous people." Even more, the Supreme Court must be under the "thrall of activist judges."

When you have a group of people in your hip pocket, you can manipulate them in all sorts of ways, even creating an echo chamber.

Or check this out:

the Supreme Court rules for against a law they favor. Agape Press, owned by the American Family Association, prints an article biased, of course, against the ruling, and quoting so-called “pro family” leaders such as Gary Bauer who claim that the ruling is a travesty on the country. Other talking heads such as Robert Knight and Pete LaBarbera write columns falsely claiming that the Supreme Court ruled against them because of alleged biases of the justices. These columns are filtered to other right-wing publications and web pages.

James Dobson (Focus on the Family) criticizes the ruling on his radio program, as does Tony Perkins (Family Research Council). Other articles are written trying to prove how the ruling will hurt America. More articles are written digging up speeches that the judges made, hinting on flimsy correlations between their ruling and so-called personal biases. The think tanks emanating from these groups write books smearing the reputations of the judges. The phrase “activist judges” is used over and over again in columns, articles, and books.

The Traditional Values Coalition, the Family Research Council, and other so-called “pro family” groups solicit donations making the claim that either the ruling will doom Christians and will lead to homosexuality being taught “as normal” to children or it will lead to criticizing homosexuality as a hate crime. They get people of faith who are gullible enough to believe their lies to write letters in to Congress and their local newspapers (using a script of their talking points.) Andrea Lafferty (Traditional Values Coalition) and others lobby the Congressional halls citing data from the books and columns, even if the data may be distorted and misinterpreted (which it often is).

There are backdoor meetings with and threats from people such as Dobson and Lou Sheldon (Traditional Values Coalition) to President Bush and members of Congress. President Bush and members of Congress use the “activist judges” quote in speeches and on the floor of Congress. So-called news programs (Fox News) begin debating whether or not judges have a bias against people of faith.

Right-wing bloggers and columnists begin writing about “activist judges.” Meetings are coordinated across the nation complaining about “activist judges.” Bills are proposed to “limit judicial tyranny.” Events such as Justice Sunday or Liberty Sunday fill the airwaves, scaring people of faith about a supposed plot to take away their liberties and their ability to worship.

Through it all, no one has offered up any credible proof as to the suspected bias of the judges. The echo chamber that the anti-gay industry create replaces truth; utilizing the very same power they claim that the gay community have.

And the people who assist most the creation and progression of this echo chamber are naive people faith, totally convinced that the anti-gay industry is trying to protect their interests and their very lives.

Lying is so simple yet so complicated.

Hypocrisy, thy name is Agape Press

It's been wild in South Carolina. Apparently we face an anti-marriage equality amendment on our ballot. Subsequently, my community have been mobilizing like never before.

This is good for a number of reasons. The main reason being that many have written off this state. Everyone seems to be talking about how anti-marriage equality amendments may be defeated or blunted in Wisconsin or Colorado, but have taken for granted the gay community in South Carolina.

We are putting up a rip-snorting (yeah I said rip-snorting) fight. Trust me, if we go down in this state, it will be with both barrels loaded.

But I did have time to point out a very interesting contradiction of terms as to how the anti-gay industry looks at us:

In the article, Sexualized Culture Blamed for Teacher-Student Sex Epidemic (http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/3/302006d.asp), Agape Press thinks that it is terrible that there is a trend with female teachers having sex with their male students.

In this respect, I agree with the publication. But rather than attacking the teachers per se, the Agape Press article seems to be blaming the "culture" for the problem:

"Kupelian is convinced there are several primary factors fueling the epidemic of teacher-student sex. For one, he says, American culture is very sexualized.

'Our popular culture is swimming in it, TV and movies are filled with it, and with the Internet, more young people have seen hard-core sexual images than at any time in history," he exclaims. "That's one major factor. But there's another huge factor, which I think is even more devastating, and that is that many Americans just have no understanding of right and wrong anymore.'

Kupelian, author of the book The Marketing of Evil, says the epidemic can also be traced to a lack of parental involvement in children's education."

Interesting.

Now check out this article, Ex-Homosexual Ministry Leader: 'My Heart Breaks for Mark Foley' (http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/10/52006e.asp) :

"Stephen Bennett, a former homosexual and founder of Stephen Bennett Ministries (SBM), says his ministry often deals with homosexuals who were abused as youngsters. In fact, he says there is a definite correlation between molestation and homosexuality. "

Stephen Bennett, by the way, is not an expert. He is another phony spokesperson propped up by anti-gay industry money.

So when a female teacher molests a male child, it's the "culture" but when a male molests a boy or teenager, it's because he is a "dirty homosexual?"

Oh yeah, tell me again how objective and Christian you are, Agape Press.

Liberty Sunday Sham!

The anti-gay industry is having a huge simulcast event this Sunday entitled Liberty Sunday. To put it in the words of Family Research Council head Tony Perkins, the event is taking place because:

"The expansion of non-discrimination laws to include homosexuality inevitably constricts our right to express and act on our religious beliefs. Recently, there has been a string of incidents involving government intolerance against those who live out their faith in the public square. "

In other words, Mr. Perkins is saying, "yes we believe that gays should be denied jobs, housing, etc because of their orientation. Our religious beliefs that homosexuality is a sin should supersede any rights that gays have as U.S. citizens. In addition, we are going to either manipulate current events or make up stories about gays are keeping Christians from expressing their beliefs."

Indeed on the Liberty Sunday webpage, people are encouraged to write in and tell stories of how they have been discriminated against. These stories, unsubstantiated of course, will no doubt be peddled in future mailings of anti-gay industry groups or on news programs by their spokespeople.

This is yet another tactic of the anti-gay industry: Dire Consequences.

One of the most effective tactics of the anti-gay industry is to claim that pro-gay laws will lead to "dire consequences." They say that laws created to protect gays would either a: cause homosexuality to be “forced” on everyone, particularly children or b: cause those who supposedly speak out against homosexuality to be jailed. Possible coercion by an “aggressive homosexual lobby” is a constant theme in anti-gay industry data.

The “dire consequences” argument is an old fear tactic that was used in other battles. Just as white racists claimed that any elimination of Jim Crow laws would lead to mixed couples and “mongrelization,” the anti-gay industry claim that any law or ordinance that protect gays and lesbians from discrimination or give them any form of visibility is a capitulation that would lead America down a pathway to destruction.

In April 2005, several hundred people gathered together at the state house in Maine. Michael Heath, executive director of the Christian Civic League of Maine, called what was going on “an hour of deep crisis.” Several individuals, Heath included, talked about how they were angry at the legislature and how marriage is a sacred institution.

Heath even said, “Gone forever will be the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman for life. Marriage will have been destroyed, the family as we know it will disappear, and the long-desired goal of social disintegration will be complete.”

So what exactly were these people angry about?

Believe it or not, they were angry at a bill that had nothing whatsoever to do with same sex marriage. The bill, which was signed by Governor John Baldacci, prohibited discrimination in employment, housing, credit, and other areas based on sexual orientation. Nothing in the bill addressed same sex marriage.

Heath and his supporters attached same sex marriage to the argument because they were seeking to overturn the bill via a referendum. However, none of them said how the prohibition of housing, credit, or job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation could lead to same sex marriage.

Robert Knight from the Concerned Women for American attended the same rally. He claimed the following:

“If the gay activists succeed at everything they do, you will see the criminalization of Christianity.”- Politics, religion simmer at anti-gay rights rally, Bangor Daily News, April 29, 2005

By threatening that the anti-discrimination bill would lead to gay marriage, the Christian Civic League was able to get enough signatures to force a repeal referendum.

Luckily Maine’s voters did not fall for this subterfuge. By a large majority, they voted to turn back the referendum.

Liberty Sunday is what the anti-gay industry tried to do in Maine on a larger scale.

I noticed that one of the speakers of this simulcast will be David Parker. Last year in Massachusetts, Parker was arrested at his son's elementary school for not leaving a school meeting. He was angry that his son brought home a book that talked about same sex households.

Parker tried to claim that any conversation about same sex households constituted a talk about sexual behavior and pressed that his son be opted out of such discussions, even if they happened by chance.

No doubt he will talk about how he was handcuffed and put in jail merely for being a concerned parent.

I go into detail about Parker in my upcoming book. I won't give away much of what I dicovered, but I will say this: Parker's claim is a lie. Not only did he intentionally get arrested but a year later, he falsely claimed that his child was beaten up because of his stand against the school. When it was discovered that this was not the the case, neither Parker nor the so-called "pro family" groups apologized for the press releases they sent out.

The entire story is here (http://www.lexingtoncares.org/ChildsAltercationUnrelated.html)

I hope Parker recounts the lie of his son getting beaten up because if he does, then I know what my post will be on Monday.

Paul Cameron, the Traditional Values Coalition, a little game that I like to call "Time Line" (revised and revisited)

I see our friend Lou Sheldon is frothing at the mouth again about gay people and pedophilia:

"Homosexual activists from the Log Cabin Republicans and other liberal radicals are making the TV talk show rounds claiming that pedophilia has nothing to do with homosexuality. This is a half-truth designed to confuse the viewer into thinking that adult homosexuals have no interest in boys." - (http://www.traditionalvalues.org/modules.php?sid=2883)

In honor of Mr. Sheldon's "mission" to stamp out "homosexual pedophilia," I would like to reprint a time line I wrote a month ago about him, Paul Cameron and truth. Revisions have been made to correspond with recent dates:


July 31, 2005

"(Paul) Cameron's work is controversial even among conservative groups. For example, the Traditional Values Coalition claims to speak for 43,000 churches. For three years, the coalition has quoted Cameron's studies on its website in an article headlined, ''Report Shows Homosexual Foster Parents Apt To Molest Children," and has told its membership to 'read and distribute Dr. Cameron's report.'

But when The Boston Globe asked the Traditional Values Coalition last week about Cameron, the group responded within minutes by removing all references to Cameron from its website. The group's spokeswoman, Daniella Lopez, said Cameron's research had been ''mistakenly' put on the website." - Beliefs Drive Research Agenda of Think Tanks, The Boston Globe


March 31, 2006

I order a copy of Traditional Values Coalition head Lou Sheldon's The Agenda. One of the passages from The Agenda is as follows:

"In 1993 and 1994, Dr. Paul Cameron conducted an important study of the mortality rates of homosexuals . . . what he found ws that the median age of death was the late thirties for those who acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). For those who had not developed AIDS, the median age of death was only slightly longer, in their early forties."

Sheldon refers to Cameron's work several times in The Agenda.


October 11, 2006

While The Agenda was published before the Boston Globe interview, neither Sheldon nor his organization has made any type of public comment regarding the usage of Cameron's work in The Agenda. Nor is it known whether or not the Traditional Values Coalition issued any type of recall of The Agenda.


October 11, 2006

The report, Exposed: Homosexual Child Molesters, remains on the Traditional Values Coalition webpage. The report contains these two passages:

“Drs. Freund and Heasman of the Clark Institute of Psychiatry in Toronto reviewed two studies on child molesters and calculated that 34% and 32% of sex offenders were homosexual. In cases these doctors handled, 36% of the molesters were homosexual.”

“In 1987, Dr. Stephen Rubin of Whitman College conducted a ten-state study of sex abuse cases involving school teachers. He studied 199 cases. Of those, 122 male teachers had molested girls, while 14 female teachers had molested boys. He also discovered that 59 homosexual male teachers had molested boys and female homosexual teachers had molested girls. In other words, 32 percent of those child molestation cases involved homosexuals. Nearly a third of these cases come from 1-2 percent of the population.”

This study can be found here - http://traditionalvalues.org/urban/one.php

Now check out these two passages from Paul Cameron's study, Child Molestation and Homosexuality (http://www.familyresearchinst.org/FRI_EduPamphlet2.html):

“Drs. Freund and Heasman of the Clark Institute of Psychiatry in Toronto reviewed two sizeable studies and calculated that 34% and 32% of the offenders against children were homosexual. In cases they had personally handled, homosexuals accounted for 36% of their 457 pedophiles"

“In 1987, Dr. Stephen Rubin, associate professor of psychology at Whitman College, conducted a 10 state survey and found 199 sexual abuse cases involving teachers. 122 male teachers had abused female pupils and 14 female teachers had abused male students. In 59 cases, however, male teachers had abused male pupils and in 4 cases, female teachers had abused female students (overall 32% were homosexual).”


What do you think of a man who will castigate gays for being immoral and sick but does not relying on information (which his own organization admits to not being credible) in order to prove his opinions about gays?

Can you say hypocrite, boys and girls?