'Gov. Brownback wrecks Kansas again, this time by signing 'religious liberty' bill' & other Wed. midday news briefs

Brownback

Watch: Kansas Governor Signs Anti-Gay 'Religious Liberty' Bill Into Law - I would be angry at Kansas but after the way Gov. Sam Brownback ruined the state's economy with his policies, the fact that he attempts to pose as a Christian is a sad allegory for our times. 

NORTH CAROLINA: Special Session Bill Would Ban ALL LGBT Rights In State, Not Just In Charlotte - Don't do it, North Carolina. It probably will and all hell will be in session. And we don't plan to be without our pitchforks. Listen to the audio of the session here.

 Family Research Council uses work of phony medical group in new attack on transgender community - Reiterating this morning's post. How the Family Research Council is using a phony medical group who believe that gay men sexualize feces and a John Hopkins University professor (whose university really should disavow him) to launder false information about the transgender community. 

 FBI Will Determine If Boiling Water Attack On Gay Men Was A Hate Crime - Uh yes it was.  

Rafael Cruz, Dinesh D'Souza And Selectively Flexible 'Moral Absolutes' On Marriage - Two anti-gay hypocrites and marriage . . .

Family Research Council uses work of phony medical group in new attack on transgender community

The Family Research Council was in a braggart's mood yesterday as it launched another attack against the transgender community:

Liberals like to say they're pushing these gender-neutral bills for the kids, but new research suggests they're doing it despite the kids. Every day, it seems like another city or school board is pushing a policy that tells children to ignore the anatomy that classrooms should be teaching! The waves of gender-neutral bathroom and athletic proposals keep coming, no matter how devastating it can be for students. Gender isn't a matter of self-determination, the American College of Pediatricians (ACP) is arguing, and suggesting otherwise can harm kids for life.

This isn't about helping children "find themselves" or accepting them for who they are, it's about glamorizing a disorder with life-long consequences. When legislatures or educators indulge and even encourage this confusion, ACP warns, it's child abuse. In a strong response to the transgender ideology marching across America, U.S. pediatricians are urging a complete and total rejection of these so-called "non-discrimination" bills. "Conditioning children into believing a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful is child abuse," they write in a statement released yesterday. In an eight-point dismantling of the trans-movement, they remind Americans that gender confusion is a "mental disorder" -- a fact, ACP points out, that has never been disproven.

I will spare you the rest of FRC's taunt. However, it cannot be ignored that yet again FRC is distorting information. Don't be fooled by the official sounding name of the organization. (The American College of Pediatricians) which crafted the  statement that FRC is pushing as legitimate.

To put it plainly, the American College of Pediatricians is a fraud, an organization which, while sounding credible, is actually a front for giving anti-lgbt propaganda a more respectable veneer. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center:

Like NARTH, ACPeds was born from an ideological split within a profession. It was founded in 2002 as a protest against the much larger American Academy of Pediatrics’ support for LGBT adoption rights — and that opposition remains central to the group’s identity. ACPeds is believed to have no more than 200 members, a tiny fraction of the nearly 60,000 professionals who belong to the American Academy of Pediatrics. But thanks to its deceptive name — which makes it sound as if it is the mainstream professional organization for pediatricians — ACPeds often serves as a supposedly scientific source for groups pushing utter falsehoods about LGBT people.

 . . . Dr. Joseph Zanga, who heads ACPeds, described what he hoped his group would become: “essentially a Judeo-Christian, traditional-values organization ... open to membership for pediatric medical professionals of all religions who hold our core beliefs ... that life begins at conception and that the traditional family unit, headed by an opposite-sex couple, poses far fewer risk factors.

In 2010, the group sent letters to 14,000 school district superintendents asking that they peruse and use information from a webpage it created entitled Facts About Youth.   I said the following about it during that time:

Facts About Youth contains the same tired lies and misinformation about the gay community found on almost every religious right web page and repeated by almost every religious right talking head.

 The following are just a few bits of misinformation which I discovered

'Christian' mom's 'rap attack' on transgender youth is a sin against all good taste

Two words for what you are about to say:

Lort Hammercy!

From Raw Story:

An aspiring rap artist weighed in recently on bathrooms for transgender students in Alberta schools

The song, entitled “Gender Bender” is by MH Weibe, who describes herself as a “concerned mom.” In January, Alberta schools adopted legislation requiring bathroom facilities to accommodate transgender people by allowing them to use the bathroom according to the gender they identify as, Global News reports.

Weibe raps that she doesn’t think the issue should be legislated but instead focus should be placed on preventing cuts in classrooms, and also that she thinks being transgender is unnatural.

Yes, it is as bad as you think. And I'm not just talking about the ignorance and transphobia.  No offense but her rap is so bad, the ghosts of Biggie and Tupac are looking for her ass:




 If I were you, I would hurry up and take a gander at this thing because I have a feeling that it will be taken down. I'm talking youtube itself will take the form of a sentient being, destroy this monstrosity, and then join the ghosts of Biggie and Tupac in looking for this woman 

'Trump's potential SCOTUS picks may be trouble for gays' & other Tue. midday news briefs

Editor's note - All of my prayers and good thoughts go to the innocents in Brussels caught up in today's madness. I further wish that our media would use discernment and care in terms of who they seek comments from and that we all don't break out the pitchforks before we find out the truth of the matter.

Trump quietly plans to do dirty to lgbts via SCOTUS choices

Trump Says He Will Only Appoint To Supreme Court Nominees Approved By Anti-Gay, Anti-Immigrant Group - Well Trump just became a larger nightmare for the lgbt community.  In this article he says will only appoint SCOTUS nominees approved by the Heritage Foundation. That's the "lovely group" which, amongst other things, employs the very anti-gay Ryan T. Anderson. I can just imagine that little Mr. Anderson is drooling over the thought of picking SCOTUS judges.

Gay “Cures” Are Harmful And Don’t Work, Says World’s Largest Body Of Psychiatrists - Yep and the more legitimate medical bodies saying this, the better.

NC Lawmakers Announce Special Session for Wednesday to Void Charlotte LGBT Protections Ordinance - Sigh! Oh well, North Carolina. You will learn.

‘Empire’ Star Jussie Smollett Reminds Us That AIDS Isn’t A Problem Of The Past -  Amen.

Why some gays are part of the problem - Kevin Jennings nails it. Or let me put it another way - "LGB will NOT drop the T." PERIOD.

Family Research Council fundraises by lying about Kim Davis controversy

Family Research Council tell lies to make the money.

In its desire to fundraise, the anti-gay hate group the Family Research Council will tell any lie to make the money, no matter how demonstrably transparent the lie may be.

I received an email request from FRC loaded with lurid accusations against the Obama Administration of supposedly discriminating against Christians who feel that homosexuality is a sin (because not all Christians feel this way, no matter what the religious right says) and thereby robbing them of their "religious liberty."

"I am a man of faith and believe deeply in religious freedom, but . . ."

These words were recently spoken by President Barack Obama in an interview with an LGBT (Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender) magazine.

And when he said "but" he meant: You have religious freedom UNLESS you openly express your belief in biblical truth about marriage, family, and sexuality.

If you refuse to DENY your biblical beliefs—then you'll be PUNISHED.

Am I being too severe? Read what he said next: " . . . but at the end of the day, nobody is above the rule of law."

By "nobody," President Obama means you, your family, your church members, and other Christians.

Kim Davis

Then came the money paragraph, and by that I mean the center argument in the FRC letter almost guaranteed to make money jump out of the reader's pocket and into FRC's bank account on its own accord. Usually the money involves an anecdote. Instead of junk science or cherry-picked science designed to give a false impression of how "dangerous" homosexuality is, FRC has moved to giving "examples" of how certain Christians have been supposedly "persecuted" because of their faith. Usually these examples omit certain pertinent facts which refute the narrative FRC attempts to push.

But in today's letter, FRC really went all out by telling a jawdropping lie:

Ask Kim Davis.

She was the Christian county clerk who went to jail for asserting her legal right not to issue a same-sex marriage license with her name on it, because it so flagrantly violated her freedom of religious conscience.

Instead of finding someone else to give the license, the government threw Kim in jail!

To answer both of your questions, the above paragraph is NOT a typo and you aren't in the Twilight Zone. FRC is falsely claiming that Kim Davis had a legal right to deny same-sex couples marriage licenses.

Of course those of us with good sense or even a quarter of sense God gave a goose know that FRC's claim is inaccurate and any claims that it's merely the opinion of the organization would be yet another lie.

At the time of her arrest in September of last year, Davis HAD NO legal rights to not issue marriage licenses.That is why she was thrown in jail. She refused to follow a judge's order to grant issue those marriage licenses:

 

Kim Davis, a clerk in Rowan County, was found in contempt of court on Thursday morning by Judge David Bunning. Davis has said granting marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples would "violate God's definition of marriage" and infringe on her personal beliefs as an Apostolic Christian. Bunning said Davis would be released only when she agreed to follow his order and issue marriage licenses.

 . . . "God's moral law conflicts with my job duties," Davis told the judge. "You can't be separated from something that's in your heart and in your soul.

But Bunning was unconvinced. "I myself have genuinely held religious beliefs," the judge later said, but "I took an oath." 

 In December, newly elected Kentucky Gov. Mat Bevin issued an executive order removing county clerks' names from marriage licenses, but that was a result of the controversy involving Davis and not because her rights were violated in any manner.

In telling this outlandish lie, the Family Research Council has proven once again that the rights of Christians who believe that homosexuality is a sin is not under attack, but the words "faith," "morality," and "religious liberty" are being held hostage by charlatans who don't care how transparent their lies are.

Related links:

16 reasons why the Family Research Council is a hate group

10 Facts about the Family Research Council

'Georgia learning about anti-gay discrimination the hard way. Will NC be next?' & other Mon. midday news briefs

If the NC legislature is smart, they won't listen to the Benham brothers.

Benham Brothers Headline Protest Calling For Special Legislative Session To Kill Charlotte NDO - And the push to destroy lgbt anti-discrimination laws begin in North Carolina. The opposition doesn't know which lie to choose from - that the law will endanger women and girls in bathrooms and locker rooms or the law will discriminate against those who think that homosexuality is a sin (note, I will NOT say Christians because not all Christians believe that homosexuality is a sin. Not playing by THEIR language, don't you know.) So they will alternate between lies. 

NFL, Apple Come Out Against Georgia’s Discriminatory ‘Religious Liberty’ Bill - Georgia is going to learn so well about not discriminating against lgbts that folks will be able to repeat the lesson from memory.  

The Intersection Between the Practice of Jungle Justice and the Culture of Homophobia In Nigeria - The bravest of us all are the ones who fight for equality even in the face of extreme danger. 

 More than 50 Conservative Catholics Back Ted Cruz - The forces fighting against marriage equality have lost the war but are counting on Ted Cruz to be president so they can attempt to erase gays' right to marry.  

Johns Hopkins Professor Endangers the Lives of Transgender Youth - Junk science rears its ugly head against the transgender community.  

The American College of Pediatricians and the Laundering of Junk Science - And the junk science from the above link is partly coming from this group, which is why I am pulling this post from 2009. It is a prime example of why we must catalog and define the groups pretending to be legitimate as they astroturf  homophobic lies into the scientific community. And also why we must have this information ready for anyone attempting to do research.

Documentary allows children of same-sex parents to have their say

From people like Ryan Anderson of the Heritage Foundation, the only time we ever hear about same-sex parents and their children is when lies are spun about them. And then sometimes we don't hear about them at all. This is a cynical tactic designed to both demonize lgbts when it comes to children and render same-sex families invisible.

But they, as all people with dignity, refuse to be rendered negative or invisible. Particularly the children.

From the Huffington Post:

A groundbreaking new film is taking a compelling look at what it’s like to grow up with same-sex parents by speaking with those who are most intimately impacted by them: their kids. “Gayby Baby” follows four Australian children — Gus, Ebony, Matt and Graham — who just happen to have gay parents and explores the joys and unique challenges they each face.