Ten years ago, gays were blamed for 9/11 and other Tuesday midday news briefs

Happy 10th Anniversary Of Being Blamed For 9/11 - Ten years ago, the late Jerry Falwell blamed gays for 9/11. Ugly anniversary.

She shares my name, not my support. Does she get to share my enthusiasm? - Unbelievable. NY Rep who voted against marriage equality in the state trying to take credit for its passage.

Anti-Gay Marriage Forces Converge On NY-9 - And speaking of New York, there is a special election today to replace Anthony Wiener in Congress. It looks like the Republican may win. NOM and the Family Research Council have been spinning a false narrative - and spending a lot of money - to claim that the Democrat's vote for marriage equality in the state legislature is leading to his possible loss. Of course this is a lie, as the article points out.

Bill To Repeal DOMA Attracts Record Number Of Co-Sponsors - Great news!

Sad State of Affairs in Africa - Things don't look good for us in the Mother Land.

Oregon GOP Removes Anti-Gay Language From Party Platform - Good news out of Oregon.

Racists and homophobes use the same lying tactics

Those on the right claim that opposition to marriage equality and opposition to interracial marriage is like "comparing apples to oranges."

If that's the case, then why do folks who oppose both use the same tactics?

Many who oppose marriage equality, like Bob Vander Plaats of the Iowa Family Leader, say that their opposition is because of the supposed "health risks" of homosexuality:



Just like racists (The Nationalist Coalition) who made the following video claim that interracial dating is wrong because supposedly African-Americans are a high risk group for sexually transmitted diseases.



Apples and oranges my foot. Strip away all of the lies and cherry-picked science and what you are left with are lies and fear tactics manipulated to exploit people's ignorance.

There is no difference.

Religious right group helped to craft NC anti-gay legislation

Some people - specifically in the gay community - underestimate the religious right. They fail to see how much power these groups have in spite of the wild words coming out of the mouths of their representatives. If you want a clue to the power of these groups, the following tidbit should give you an indication. The North Carolina legislature is presently debating an anti-marriage equality amendment. If it pass the legislature, it will be voted on in Nov. 2012. There has been a lot said about this amendment, which has just passed the House and now moves on to the Senate. But here is something you should remember:

Majority Leader Paul Stam (R) said the “public won’t get to speak because they will get to speak at the ballot box.” The proposed ballot initiative has been rescheduled to a May vote because Speaker Thom Tillis (R) wanted to remove the argument that the amendment was politically motivated by being on the November ballot.

During the Rules Committee debate, Stam acknowledged that he worked with lawyer Austin Nimocks in developing the language of the amendment. Nimocks works for the Alliance Defense Fund, an anti-gay Christian group, and he recently testified before Congress in defense of the Defense of Marriage Act.

According to Think Progress, the Allied Defense Fund has been known to spread falsehoods about marriage equality, including how it supposedly harms children and will lead to religious persecution.

But that doesn't matter, does it? All that matters is that the Alliance Defense Fund was able to work with NC legislators on this awful amendment in spite of its propensity to lie.

That's why it's necessary that the gay community work to expose the lies of religious right groups every chance we get. We need to make this exposures public and not assume that the public won't care. Sunlight is always the best disinfectant.

We need to start making the argument about them rather than us. The question should never be is the gay community deserving of equality. The question should be why are these supposed Christian groups engaging in lies and deception to keep that equality from becoming a reality.

Related post:

It's not enough to call them bigots

Gays in the military will cause Jesus's return? and other Monday midday news briefs

Retired Gen. Jerry Boykin: The DADT Repeal Will Cause The Rapture! - Forget war and famine. THIS will be the thing to bring Jesus back to Earth - gays in the military. But this statement confuses me. I thought folks like Boykin WANT Jesus to come back. If that's the case then shouldn't they support gays in the military?

NAACP Joins Maryland Marriage Fight - In Maryland as well as North Carolina, the NAACP is attacking the divide and conquer strategy of the anti-gay industry.

Minnesota Priest Advocates Ex-Gay Therapy, Compares Homosexuality To Adultery, Crime, And Addiction - Meanwhile, the homophobes try to carry on in Minnesota.

Anti-gay marriage amendment campaign hires communications director - I wonder how many "gays want marriage to corrupt children" commercials and flyers will he okay?

Wikileaks: Ugandan First Lady “Ultimately Behind” Anti-Homosexuality Bill - The sick source behind the possible genocide of the Ugandan gay community.

NC NAACP strongly rebuke the gay vs. black divide and conquer game

William Barber

Time after time, we have seen the forces against marriage equality play the black and gay communities against one another. The divide and conquer game has brought them a lot of success. With this in mind, they are now trying it in North Carolina as they attempt to push an anti-gay marriage amendment through that state's legislature.

However, the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP simply is not being silent. In fact, the organization is very vocal in its stance against the amendment.

NC NAACP President Rev. William Barber wrote an open letter to North Carolinians last week in which he not only strongly rebukes the potential amendment but the hypocrisy of the parties involved in pushing it. Part of this letter is as follows:

Our research shows that today shadowy money with connections to ultraconservative think-tanks and millionaires are financing a cynical move to trick some North Carolina voters in next year’s election by trying to place a state constitutional amendment onthe issue of “Same Sex Marriage” on the presidential election ballot. The Family Research Council has reportedly paid for radio ads, targeting both African American and White legislators who have large African American constituencies. The millionaires who fund these election tricks could care less about who marries whom. But they invest their money in issues that will affect who votes for whom. They tried to cut back on early voting and to make everyone wait in line at the DMV to get a picture ID before they can vote. Now they want to forever write discrimination into the N.C. Constitution as a means of affecting the presidential vote. The millionaires’ purpose is simple: They want to distract voters’ attention from our pressing economic problems to a personal issue of conscience–a matter best dealt with in our houses of worship and our consciences. This is a matter of conscience, not constitutions.

. . . The issue of same sex marriage is a matter of conscience — a matter of religious or moral perspective. It should be worked out within one’s conscience, within one’s faith, and within one’s own heart and faith community. The North Carolina legislature is not the modern day Council of Nicaea — and we should not want it to be. Public policy, not personal morality, is what we ought to address in the legislature. How should the government address the public policy challenges of abject poverty, unemployment, poor education, economic justice, caring for those without health care, and equal protection under law? 

These are the questions that the legislature should be addressing. We should not allow my tax dollars, and my beloved state of North Carolina, to put their beliefs into our state’s most important document, to dictate to the consciences of other people here. This is a matter of conscience, not constitutions

A vote on the same sex marriage amendment has nothing to do with your personal opinion on same sex marriage but everything to do with whether or not you belief discrimination should be codified and legalized constitutionally.

We need to stop for a minute and remember the history of amending the U. S. Constitution. Our nation had to fight a long and bloody civil war that our Constitution, on paper at least, began to expand its protections to all persons. The 13^th Amendment abolished slavery; the 14^th Amendment guaranteed all persons equal protection under the law, the 15^th Amendment provided voting rights regardless of race or previous condition of servitude, the 19^th guaranteed voting rights for [White] women, the 23^rd provided voting rights in presidential elections for residents of the District of Columbia, the 24^th eliminated discriminatory poll taxes in federal elections, and the 26^th provided voting rights for younger Americans. None of the other amendments ever restricted the rights of any persons, except the two that established, then repealed, prohibition. Similarly, the North Carolina Constitution has always expanded and extended the equal rights of all persons that is in the First Section quoted above. When we look at the history of our U.S. and N.C. Constitutions, there has never been an amendment to narrow their protections, but always to expand their protections to all persons, and to remedy past injustices.

The real insult to the Civil Rights Movement is that same regressive ultra conservative tea party type folks suing to overturn the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which many historians consider the most important achievement of the Civil Rights Movement, re-segregate and rob our public schools of valuable resources, block workers’ rights to organize, force us all to get photo ID’s to exercise our right to vote, cut back on the time to vote, and repeal the Racial Justice law, now somehow think the sons and daughters of the Civil Rights Movement can’t see through their Trojan Horse trick.

The ultra-conservative sponsors push their anti-gay amendment with one hand, and their restrictions on our voting rights with the other. They would write discrimination into our Constitution with one hand, but violate it by withholding enough funds for children to get a sound basic education.

It's not enough to call them bigots

 A repost from last year

We know that religious right groups peddle distortions designed to demonize the lgbt community.

However we really should do more than simply declare them bigots.  Members of the right tend to embrace that definition, using it to play the martyr and lie about about how they are being unfairly attacked for simply speaking about their "personally held Christian beliefs."

The lgbt community needs to follow the advice of high school math teachers and "show our work" in proving what needs to be known about these so-called pro-family groups, i.e. that they lie intentionally to create a phony picture of the lgbt community. So I have compiled a pattern of religious right deception which can be broken down to six techniques:

1. Using nonrepresentative or out-of-date studies to make generalizations, or distorting legitimate studies to give misleading conclusions

Example 1 - Religious right talking point: According to the book Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women, 43 percent of white male homosexuals had sex with 500 or more partners, with 28 percent having 1,000 or more sexual partners. Therefore gays have no concept of mongamy and certainly can't be trusted to raise children.

Truth - Homosexualities was a book written in 1978 that only looked a certain portion of the lgbt population (gay men in the city of San Francisco). It also did not look at same-sex households. In addition, the authors of Homosexualities (Alan Bell and Martin Weinberg) said that their book should not be used to generalize about all gays in general:

“. . . given the variety of circumstances which discourage homosexuals from participating in research studies, it is unlikely that any investigator will ever be in a position to say that this or that is true of a given percentage of all homosexuals.”

Example 2 - Religious right talking point: Same sex marriage and gay adoption are bad ideas because research shows that the best places to raise children are in homes with a mother and a father.

The truth - The research only looked at heterosexual two-parent households as opposed to single parent heterosexual households. Same-sex households were never included.

Reasons why NOM should be named as a hate group

While the National Organization for Marriage was called out by the Southern Poverty Law Center for attacking the gay community with lies and propaganda, the organization was not declared a hate group by SPLC. However, based upon the following reasons, I think SPLC needs to take closer look at NOM and declare the organization to be an anti-gay hate group:

May 10, 2011 - NOM exploiting children to stop gay marriage in New York - NOM puts out a commercial in New York repeating the variation of the "kindergartners are being taught about gay marriage" lie which was exposed by Politifact in February.

May 14, 2011 - Politifact gives NOM 'Pants on Fire' rating for lying - Politifact catches NOM lying yet again. This time it is about marriage equality in Rhode Island.

May 15, 2011 - Brian Brown reveals NOM's anti-gay game of divide and conquer - At a march against marriage equality in New York, NOM president Brian Brown repeats the lie that  " . . . kids as young as kindergarten are taught in Massachusetts that their parents are bigots because they believe marriage is the union of a man and a woman."

May 16, 2011 - NOM - Homosexuals wants to destroy children's innocence through gay marriage - NOM sends out a flyer claiming that gay marriage will destroy the "innocence" of children.

An inaccurate flyer put out by NOM

May 22, 2011 - MN's chief anti-equality lobby: 'Accepting homosexuals as normal victimizes homosexuals themselves' - It is discovered that NOM's partner to stop marriage equality in Minnesota - the Minnesota Family Council - has material on its webpage falsely accusing the gay community of pedophilia, bestiality, and the consuming of urine and feces.  This material is removed from the webpage, but MFC's president, Tom Prichard, still defends the lies. NOM makes no comment about the controversy and is presently still partnered with the group.

June 28, 2011 - NOM astroturfed 'legal scholars' in New York - During its unsuccessful attempt to stop marriage equality in New York, NOM tried to make it seem that objective legal scholars were claiming that marriage equality in the state will negatively impact those who disagree with it. But NOM omits the fact that these scholars are not objective. They are all against marriage equality. And one of the scholars in question, Robert George, is presently the Chairman Emeritus of NOM.

And if those reasons aren't enough, Equality Matters has a huge breakdown of NOM's exploits which go way beyond simply "expressing Christian faith" or "defending traditional marriage." The following are just a few:

NOM’s Ruth Institute: “It Gets Better” Project “Aggressively Promotes Deviant Sex”

NOM: Homosexuality Will “Hurt You Badly,” “End Your Life Prematurely” 

NOM President Claims Marriage Equality Will “Normalize Pedophilia”

NOM Links Homosexuality To Pedophilia (Again)

NOM Newsletter: Gays Are Engaged In “Jihad,” Want To “Take Away Your Rights”

NOM’s Idea Of “Excellent” Analysis: Calling Homosexuality An “Addictive,” “Learned” Behavior 

NOM Promotes Column Claiming That Normalizing Homosexuality Is “Sexual Anarchy”

And then there are the following past incidents which I have referred to on several occasions.