Tuesday's news briefs

I apologize for not having a complete post today. I was at an event that I will most likely be talking about tomorrow.

Stay tuned.

Fox passes off GOP press release as its own research -- typo and all - In the great scheme of things, people have come to expect this from Fox News. But it's awesome as hell just the same.

As predicted, the professional anti-gay forces plan to descend on NC - The LGBT community in North Carolina deserve much praise for holding out so long against the anti-gay marriage forces.

Tax dollars for homosexual adoption - gov't 'at its worst' - My news brief logs are never complete without a shout out from phony news service One News Now. This article is interesting in that it doesn't contain the usual lying talking points about the so-called "dangers of the homosexual lifestyle." And what's more interesting is the fact that the article has received a 2.5 (out of five) rating from readers. Naturally One News Now won't show the comments. Shame too cause I think our side is winning.

Now for something highly unusual . . .

Taxi: Elaine's Strange Triangle 3/3 - A hobby of mine is to examine episodes of old television shows that feature lgbt characters. This episode of Taxi won an Emmy. In it, the main female character, Elaine, falls for a young man. However, the young man likes another character, Tony.

The main character of the show, Alex, tries to get to the bottom of it. This is the scene that won the episode the Emmy. And it begs the question - did gay men really dance that bad back then?

More on phony expert John R. Diggs

In my last post yesterday, I talked about how the American Family Association is utilizing the services of phony expert John R. Diggs in a new video with the familiar whine of "Christian persecution."

In the video, Diggs pushes the old factoid about "homosexuality being a dangerous lifestyle."

I think the AFA relied on Diggs because a while back, he published a study called The Health Risks of Gay Sex.

If that study sounds familiar it's probably because it is almost identical to the Family Research Council's The Negative Effects of Homosexuality, even to the point of using some of the same sources and citations.

You will remember, however, that the Negative Effects of Homosexuality was removed from FRC's webpage because it contained "outdated sources."

Naturally, Diggs's study has some of the same errors and a few of its own. Here are just a couple:

Twice, John R. Diggs includes the study done by Alan Bell and Martin Weinberg in their book, Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women, as indicative of the entire gay population. In one passage, he even refers to it as “a far ranging study of homosexual men . . .” But Bell and Weinberg never said that their findings were indicative of all gay men. They actually said “. . . given the variety of circumstances which discourage homosexuals from participating in research studies, it is unlikely that any investigator willever be in a position to say that this or that is true of a given percentage of all homosexuals.”

Diggs cites a Canadian study twice in order to claim that gays have a shorter lifespan than heterosexuals. But his citation of the study is a mischaracterization. In 2001, the six original researchers (Robert S. Hogg, Stefan A. Strathdee, Kevin J.P. Craib, Michael V. O’Shaughnessy, Julion Montaner, and Martin T. Schechter) who conducted that study have gone on record saying that religious conservatives (like Diggs) was distorting their work.

In another section entitled Physical Health, Diggs claims that gays are victims of “gay bowel syndrome.” Gay Bowel Syndrome is an obsolete medical term and even the CDC does not use it. In fact, if one was to look at the endnotes of Diggs’ study, he would find that two of the sources he quoted concerning “gay bowel syndrome” were from articles in published in 1976 and 1983, which is consistent with the years that the term existed. One last source was a letter to the editor printed in 1994 but Diggs does not make it clear as to the circumstances surrounding it.

Diggs uses convenience sample studies, like those conducted in STD clinics, claiming that they are indicative of the gay population at large.

Diggs claims that there are five distinctions between heterosexual and homosexual populations including levels of promiscuity, physical health, mental health, lifespan, and monogamy. However, he spends very little time comparing the two dynamics (heterosexual and homosexual populations.) He uses all of his time castigating gay populations.

Diggs uses an out of date book, The Gay Report (published in 1979) to claim that gays are engaging in deviant sexual practices. Only once does he attempt to tie the alleged deviant practices of gays in 1979 to present day; and to do so, he cites two events that took place regarding bondage workshops. However, there is a strong indication that heterosexuals took part in these events as well as gays. Diggs ignores this dynamic.

Time for AFA to pull out the 'persecuted Christians' card

Pam's House Blend alerted me to this mess:

This is all the American Family Association has left, folks, but it's slickly produced bile. When homo-hating, illegal pistol-packing state legislator Sally Kern cited the book After the Ball as the proof of the Homosexual Agenda last week at a fundnut fest in OKC, it should have been no surprise that the AFA has been propagandizing this nonsense with its web site and hour-long video, Silencing Christians.com.

The premise is that Christians are under assault by homosexualists, enabled by state and local governments and schools, to force them to accept LGBTs as -- gasp -- human beings deserving of civil rights! They are careful to mention "former homosexuals" and those struggling with "unwanted same-sex attraction" in order to soothe and absolve the target audience of "Christians" that their motivations are rooted in compassion, not bigotry.

You can watch the video on Pams House Blend. It made me positively ill.

It's a bunch of one-sided anecdotal nonsense with the same claptrap i.e. yet more isolated incidents anecdotes taken out of context, and out-and-out lies which push the same message - homosexuals are nasty oversexed radicals who want to force their beliefs on everyone and silence Christians.

For the record, Matt Barber is in it, so is Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jim Naugle. But the person who really caught me by surprise was phony expert John R. Diggs.

I've talked about him several times on this blog. He wrote The Health Risks of Gay Sex, a piece of anti-gay propaganda so worthless that no one but members of the religious right cites it. Tomorrow morning, I will repost the errors I found in Digg's piece .

This constant complaint about being persecuted will only backfire on the AFA. You saw it last week when it and other religious right groups tried to claim that a simple wording of something in President Obama's stimulus package would lead to the persecution of Christians. Despite their planning and despite enlisting the help of Sen. Jim DeMint to push the lie, they were shot down in Congressional debates.

How long will it be before the AFA's (and religious right's for that matter) consistent lie about being persecuted evoke images not of Roman arenas and lions but cynical politicians. Or wild haired men on street corners with huge display cards.

Soon, I hope.

And by the way, if you want a real view of persecution, check out this via One News Now:

TN: Adoption by married couples best for children

Shades of Arkansas no doubt. But the state Congressman pushing for this travesty may have put his foot in his mouth with his explanation of the proposed law:

"We were having a lot of [unmarried] individuals apply to adopt children from state custody....And while single people can make very good parents, what we were finding is that some of those individuals were in same-sex relationships," he points out. "And we just thought it was not advantageous to have children who are the responsibility of the state being placed in such homes."

So the law is about denying lgbts the right to adopt children and not just keeping unmarried couples from adoption.

Of course the law will probably have no incentives for married couples to adopt children, therefore the Congressman's premise is faulty.

But neither lies nor faulty premises have ever stopped the religious right. After all, what's truth when you are trying to remake America in "God's" image?

What if you held a protest and no one gave a damn?

With Peter LaBarbera, the laughs keep coming.

As I understand it, he continued his protest against Winter Wickedness with a small number of protestors this weekend.

If you blink, you will miss it because no one covered it - that is except for a newspaper in Columbus who had a very interesting point of view of the entire thing:

Our neighborhood in old Worthington is a close-knit, tolerant and faithful community. So it was shocking this morning on the drive home from grade-school wrestling practice, to see a small group of protesters lined up outside of the Holiday Inn on Wilson Bridge Road waving “God Hates Fags” signs.

Try explaining to your first grader “what’s a 'fag'?” then explaining that, number one: we don't say 'fag' and God is love, and number two: if God has a problem with somebody, he’s got the resources to work it out on his own—you don’t have to worry about judging anyone, son.

And all this before my third cup of coffee. Yeah, it would piss you off, too.

So I returned to the protesters, notebook in hand, to find out why these three had such a giant bug up their collective ass. After introducing myself, I asked what they were protesting and why they were doing so from Holiday Inn’s side lawn.

“Is it a homo paper?” asked a scruffy 50+ man who spoke broken English with an Appalachain twang. In one hand he waved a large sign with the anagram “Gross Anus Yearning Sodomists” (whatever in the world that means) and in the other, he had two naked Ken dolls taped together in the position commonly referred to as “doggy style”.

All I can say is Lawd Hammercy!!

I’m not down with the maps

I’m going to come out and say it - this recent idea regarding the use of maps to show who donated to anti-gay marriage amendments is a BAD idea for us to pursue.

I didn’t feel comfortable when it began in California and I don’t like that it's being used in regards to the Florida vote.

Proposition 8 was a travesty. What happened in Florida was a travesty. Any time lgbts are denied fairness through lies, fear tactics, and propaganda is a travesty.

But some of us, in our anger, will not grasp the fact that we are teetering over a precipice. While I may not agree with where individual people donate their money, it just doesn’t sit right with me to call them out in the manner that these maps do.

While we may not intend it to be such, the map effort could border on intimidation. It could also end up biting the lgbt community in the ass.

What if we won a vote against a referendum and religious right organizations use the map idea against us? We would have no grounds to complain because we started this notion of tracking donations via zip codes. The opposition would be simply following our lead.

And in a practical sense, this method of tracking individuals donors is counterproductive i.e. yet another way for the right to control the argument.

Never mind the lies that were told to pass Proposition 8, never mind the families who are being told that they are inferior, and never mind the possible future problems for lgbt couples because the talk shows (such as those of O’Reilly and Hannity) will be spotlighting religious right spokespersons and the “All-American families” as they spin stories of intimidation by the “radical homosexual lobby” via these maps.

All of our arguments about the unfairness of anti-gay marriage initiatives will mean nothing in the wake of that onslaught.

We fall in this trap so many times:

Religious right organizations organize their followers and push for a law or referendum

The lgbt community, unorganized and unprepared, lose the vote.

We get angry and some of us act irrationally. We may say stupid things and some of us may lash out in inappropriate manners (i.e. sending allegedly threatening messages via blogs or seemingly accosting people who voted for the law/referendum).

The religious right (having monitored the blogs and our reactions to the vote) uses our anger against us in talking points, press releases, and on talk shows.

Subsequently, we end up on the defensive.

I’m tired of feeling like a dog chasing his own tail so I want to present a few notions.

Maybe it’s time we did some soul searching. Lgbts should have our full rights, undiluted by someone else’s religious beliefs or stereotypes. But are our actions (like this map thing) the product of our own laziness - like that of a high school student who suddenly remembers the exam he is supposed to take an hour before classes start?

Are we trying to gain something by quick cramming rather than steady and meticulous action? Why do we sit on our asses or play Dynasty games with our circle of friends until things are done to us and then act precipitously with the incorrect belief that our anger alone will get us what we need?

A protest here. A march there and presto. We have our rights.

It simply doesn’t work like that.

And why are we so quick to write off religious right organizations and their supporters as “homophobic simpletons?” Some of those “homophobic simpletons” control the media (i.e. Mike Huckabee) and are elected officials (i.e. Sally Kern). Like it or not, they have power.

And specifically, they organize, study, and plan. Maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to point out their ignorance but rather study their dedication to their cause. Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to copy that dedication.

Sometimes I hesitate to ask these questions because a few of my lgbt brothers and sisters get so caught up in their “anger” that they lash out and attack their own.

But that’s okay. You don’t agree with what I’m saying? That’s fine. Tell me so. But remember that while we may disagree we should not be disagreeable.

Get angry by all means but realize that anger is only a first step to getting things done. Transitory visibility is fleeting and acts of temporary empowerment are just that - temporary. But it can also have negative long term consequences.

The Religious Right's Big Lie Stategy

People for the American Way has just come out with a more detailed account of the religious right's attempt to scare the Senate into stripping away a portion of the stimulus bill that they inaccurately claimed discriminates against religion.

It's an excellent read. An excerpt is as follows:

On Thursday, February 5, the U.S. Senate took up an amendment introduced by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) to strip church-state protections from the stimulus bill. The amendment failed 43 to 54 after DeMint repeated the inflammatory claims he had been making all week and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) swiftly and effectively refuted them.

The creation of a phony crisis that DeMint’s amendment was supposed to solve is a case study of Religious Right leaders’ strategic use of false alarms about threats to religious liberty – and of the willingness of right-wing media and elected officials to play along. . . . in the wake of the amendment’s defeat, for Religious Right leaders to use the vote as “evidence” that Democrats are hostile to people of faith and to try to undermine support from religious Americans for the new administration.

Wildly alarmist rhetoric from DeMint and right-wing leaders accusing the Obama administration and congressional Democrats of hostility to faith and public prayer was especially ridiculous coming in the week that President Obama spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast and announced the creation of a multifaith advisory panel for his office of faith based and community initiatives. But stoking fears about anti-Christian “persecution” and claiming that liberal politicians are out to destroy religious liberty is a fundraising and organizing tactic that the Religious Right cannot seem to give up.

Here’s how it played out, as documented in near-real time by People For the American Way’s RightWingWatch.org.

And here I thought it was the GAYS who are persecuting Christians.

Sooner or later, that argument of religious persecution is going to get old.

Nice try Peter LaBarbera, but no dice

Sometimes it's nice to see folks like Peter LaBarbera twist in the ropes of their own nonsense.

Earlier this week, Peter took it upon himself to expose an alleged upcoming sadomaschistic hotel orgy.

Just one problem - this alleged event seems to have been heterosexual, which would not big deal in the matter except for the fact that LaBarbera has, in the past, made a name for himself by going to gay subcultural events such as Folsom Street Fair, taking pictures and posting them on his webpage, and going on talks shows decrying about how "gay culture" is indicative of these events.

In this case, Peter seems to have out trumped himself. Lgbts have nothing to do with this upcoming event.

So what does he do now?

A. Let the situation die out, allowing it to add another dubious chapter to his reputation as Porno Petey.

B. Admit that he has been unfairly generalizing about all lgbts based on the alleged behavior of some gay men at a subcultural event?

C. Try to link this heterosexual orgy to lgbt culture irregardless of the fact that the orgys's very existence negates all of the bullshit he has been spouting about gays in the past.

If Peter had done anything but "C," I would have admired his new found maturity.

But, as I have come to expect from him, Peter picked the choice that not only deepens the wound but makes me wonder just how low can his reputation sink.

LaBarbera is actually trying to link this heterosexual event to lgbt culture by claiming that we "led the way" to sexual misconduct:

While homosexuals certainly cannot be blamed for the entire, sordid Sexual Revolution, the “gay pride” (GLBT) movement has paved the way for a perversion explosion among “heterosexuals.” For if it’s perfectly acceptable for men to sodomize other men in the name of “love” — and lesbianism and bisexuality and now transsexuality to be treated as OK (while it’s NOT OK to judge them as wrong) — then what on earth is stopping other perverts like Tristan Taormino (above left) from pursuing the same popularity and acceptance? And ditto for “poly rights” in the law.

So a bunch of heterosexuals decide a big sadomaschistic orgy in a hotel and it's not their fault. It's the GAYS who put the idea in their heads. It's the GAYS who started the entire thing.

I don't know what's funnier. The idea that LaBarbera actually believes this stuff or his insistence to sneak something about gay sex into the piece.

Sometimes I think he dwells on sodomy more than gay men.

If LaBarbera keeps this up, I'm going to have stop posting about him.

Exposing the lies of the religious right is one thing but dwelling on a man who seems to be melting down in the contradictions of his own nonsense is something else entirely.

And I'm not that sadistic to give an audience to it.