NOM's Maggie Gallagher caught in a huge lie about 'ex-gay' therapy

Maggie Gallagher

One of the most annoying qualities of National Organization for Marriage former head Maggie Gallagher is how pathetically transparent she is when it comes to lying.

Last week is a perfect example. On July 15, she made the following statement in the National Review:

Chuck Limandri, my old friend from the Carrie Prejean, Prop 8 fights, is a heckuva a lawyer and one brave man. He’s taking on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s massive legal machine to defend the right of Jewish gay people to seek help:

“If SPLC wins this landmark legal case, it will communicate to gays and lesbians seeking to conform their sexual lives to Torah values that they are second-class citizens, without the same right to seek help that other gay people enjoy,” said Limandri.

SPLC is using consumer-fraud laws to try to bankrupt these small nonprofits and if it wins this case has announced plans to take it nationwide against 70 groups offering some form of sexual-orientation-change efforts. They must not want publicity because this landmark case is flying under all media radar screens.

Limandri is defending a Jewish ex-gay therapy group, JONAH from a lawsuit by the Southern Poverty Law Center for consumer fraud. By her statement, Gallagher was giving support not only to JONAH but the practice of ex-gay or "reparative" therapy.

Doing this contradicts not only her but NOM's talking points that they are merely attempting to protect marriage.

So what did Gallagher do to cover up her inadvertent comment? She lied like a rug. In the July 18th edition of National Review, she said the following:

My last NRO post on Chuck Limandri and the ConscienceDefense.org case he will argue tomorrow in court in Jersey City has generated predictable headlines in the gay/left press that I’m now backing “conversion therapy.” I don’t back something called “conversion therapy.”  I don’t even really know what conversion therapy is, and I’m not qualified to express an opinion on a particular kind of therapy.

I back the right of gay people to seek the kind of counseling help they want, not the kind the SPLC lawyers want them to have, including help to live their sexual lives with integrity, according to their own values, not the SPLC’s values. That’s all.

And there is the immature quality of lying in the face of insurmountable proof. According to Equality Matters:

Gallagher is lying. In 2001, she wrote an article for Townhall.com explicitly calling for more federal funding for research into "ex-gay" therapy, calling homosexuality "a sexual dysfunction":

Dr. Robert L. Spitzer is a brave man.

He was a brave man back in 1973 when, as a member of the American Psychiatric Association's Task Force on Nomenclature, he met with gay activists. As a result of his intervention, the APA, while rejecting the argument that homosexuality is "a normal variant of human sexuality," agreed it "does not necessarily constitute a disorder."

He was an even braver man this week when he reported the results of a new study of 200 "ex-gays": "(S)ome people can change from gay to straight, and we ought to acknowledge that," as he told the Associated Press.

Furthermore, in the first National Review post regarding the JONAH lawsuit, Gallagher bragged about being chairman of Limandri's group. Surely she must have known about the lawsuit beforehand.

Finally, how could Gallagher not know a thing about reparative therapy when her group, NOM issued support of JONAH in the lawsuit on its blog with language and tone almost similar to what Gallagher used in her National Review post:

On Friday my friend and hero Chuck LiMandri (who was one of the first to help us get Prop 8 on the ballot!) will be in court in New Jersey, taking on the goliath Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and its new militant attempt to misuse consumer fraud laws to attack a small Jewish nonprofit named JONAH that helps observant Jews with same-sex attraction live according to the Bible's laws.

This is one of the hugest stories you've never been told by the media: the SPLC wants to use its $250 million budget and 7 full-time staff lawyers to bankrupt therapists, counselors, and religious nonprofits that offer help to people with unwanted same-sex attraction. And they are misusing "consumer fraud" statutes to do it.

I suspect SPLC picked a Jewish service organization first because they were hoping many of us in the Christian community would ignore it. But whatever you think about sexual orientation, it's wrong to tell people they can't ask for help to live their sexual lives as they choose, not as the SPLC's lawyers want them to do.

It's Gallagher's incredible audacity to tell a blatant lie in the face of so much contradictory evidence which has led many to see NOM for the fraudulent organization that it is.

So I say, keep it up, Maggie! Keep it up!

Know Your LGBT History - Gays in Film

Let's play a game. How many of the following movies can you name. Feel free to list them in the comment section. A special no-prize goes to those who can name which ones were Oscar nominees/winners:


 

Past Know Your LGBT History Posts:

'Religious right spokesperson - Disney Channel is dangerous because it shows gay parents' and other Friday midday news briefs

Porter: Disney Channel Unsafe for Kids Because of Lesbian Moms - Cause apparently Disney showing same-sex parenting is the next phase in our plan to take over America, make Judy Garland's birthday a national holiday, or whatever . . . 

Matt Barber: Parents of trans kids should be tried for child abuse - When people ask why do I give attention to the madness of the religious right, I tell them because it makes my job easier. Letting them hang themselves keeps me from getting rope burn.

National Organization For Marriage Defends Ex-Gay Therapy As A Religious Liberty - A key part of this story? After backing "ex-gay" therapy earlier this week, Maggie Gallagher is doing a moonwalk worthy of the late Michael Jackson. 

 NOM Embraces Group Being Sued For Cruel, Degrading Forms Of "Ex-Gay" Therapy - And THIS is the ex-gay therapy NOM is supporting.  

Eugene Delgaudio Finally Disciplined By Loudoun County Board of Supervisors - Using taxpayer money for private anti-gay activities? This one bears looking at.

Absent fathers, marriage equality are NOT connected issues

The National Organization for Marriage is pushing chart by another group, the Heritage Foundation, which supposedly shows the dangers of marriage equality or as they put it "redefining marriage."

But there is one HUGE problem with the chart. It has nothing to do with marriage equality, but the dangers of fathers not being present in their children's lives:

In an attempt to connect the chart with marriage equality, Heritage Foundation member Ryan T. Anderson says the following:

“[R]edefining marriage further distances marriage from the needs of children and denies the importance of mothers and fathers. Redefining marriage rejects as a matter of policy the ideal that children need a mother and a father,” explains Heritage’s Ryan T. Anderson. “Redefining marriage diminishes the social pressures for husbands to remain with their wives and children, and for men and women to marry before having children,” he continues.

In other words, according to the Heritage Foundation, marriage equality (notice how they attempt to change the term to "redefining marriage") leads to more single-mother families mired in poverty.

Bear in mind that the Heritage Foundation offers no proof that marriage equality leads to single-mother families.

And that amazingly brazen leap of logic is why NOM, the Heritage Foundation, and those who support their endeavors against marriage equality are losing the fight.

House Republicans abandon marriage defenses

After spending over $2 million on a disastrous defense of DOMA, House Republicans are abandoning it. From Buzzfeed:

WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders announced in a court filing Thursday that they will not defend remaining statutes similar to the Defense of Marriage Act that ban recognition of same-sex couples’ marriages.

The move comes three weeks and one day after the Supreme Court ruled in Edith Windsor’s case that the federal definition of marriage in DOMA was unconstitutional because it banned the federal government from recognizing same-sex couples’ marriages.

“[T]he House has determined, in light of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Windsor, that it no longer will defend that statute,” lawyers for the House Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG), controlled by House Republicans, wrote about veterans’ benefits statutes that similarly ban recognition of same-sex couples’ marriages.

“The document from the legal team speaks for itself,” House Speaker John Boehner’s spokesman, Michael Steel, told BuzzFeed, when asked for comment on the move.

You can read the rest here. But I think Boehner and company owes the American people some sort of parting gift. After all, it was our money.

'Ex-gay leader compares himself to Harriet Tubman, creates WANTED poster to match' and other Thursday midday news briefs

Any 'ex-gay' leader who compares himself to Harriet Tubman and creates a WANTED poster to match can't be all there. That's just my opinion. Apparently he compared himself to Jesus, too. More about DL Foster here - Ex-Gay Pride Leader: I'm Harriet Tubman and Right Wing Watch Are Slave Catcher 

In other news

FRC's Sprigg admits it: ENDA opponents want 'right' to brand LGBT people as 'immoral' - Why Peter, ENDA won't keep you from branding us as you usually do. You just won't be able to use the law to codify your homophobia.

COMMENTARY: Refusing service in the name of religion is never acceptable - FINALLY, someone with a prominent position in the media is loudly voicing what I have been asking in regards to this "religious liberty" argument.

Media Outlets Are Ignoring One Of The Most Significant Non-Discrimination Bills In LGBT History - I'm sure that they will remember it enough to invite Tony Perkins to come on their shows for a one-sided inaccurate monologue about the lgbt community.

'Porno Pete' LaBarbera is talking about 'nude street fairs' again

While Bryan Fischer attacks the military for its supposed "hypermasculine homosexual" soldiers, Porno Pete LaBarbera is preparing us for the Folsom Street Festival in San Francisco:

 Below is the “official” promotional poster for the Folsom Street Fair, an annual, sadomasochism-celebrating street festival in San Francisco. The “fair” is notorious for its open-air perversions, mocking of religion [also see this], sadistic whippings, “master-slave” couples, and full nudity — and the latter will be allowed again this year due to an exemption granted to FSF to a new anti-public-nudity law passed by city supervisors. Words can barely convey the evil captured by this image — a rebellious wickedness that comes from glorifying sin in defiance of the wholesome boundaries for sex established by God. Folsom is also the creepy cousin of “gay pride” and “diversity” — there would be no Folsom Street Fair were there not first a “gay” revolution, with its ground zero in the homosexual Mecca of San Francisco. Click on the graphic to enlarge, if you must

For the uninitiated, it's like this every year.  Folsom has its street fair and LaBarbera wrings his hands in abject - and fake - shock. Then he, or one of his associates, manages to show up, take pictures (omitting the heterosexuals participating in this event), and go into graphic details about what they allegedly saw. Very. graphic. details.

It used to play well in parts of the conservative media, but other than a brief media blitz on Fox, LaBarbera's sad attempt to connect this subcultural event to the larger world of lgbt activism always falls on its face.

Its no longer interesting anymore. But it's always fun to report about.