Repost: Dissecting a One News Now article (smacking down religious right lies on gay adoption)

This is one of my favorite posts. In Marh of this year, I was able to dissect the words of Liberty Counsel's Matt Barber and show that neither him nor anyone else in religious right groups have a clue when it comes to gay adoption and gay parenting in general.

When put up against the experts in the field of childcare, their silly hysterical arguments fizzle:

Liberty Counsel's Matt Barber is angry that Florida State Senator Nan Rich has filed a bill repealing the 1977 law banning gay adoption in the state. Rich filed a a second bill to give judges the authority to determine adoptions based exclusively on the best interest of the child.

One News Now gives Barber room to vent without the courtesy of presenting the other side. So I thought I would add the other side from another article which took a more objective view of children raised by gay parents:

Matt Barber:

"The actions here by Senator Nan Rich are clearly without merit, and she has the audacity to say that she is considering what is in the best interest of children. Well that defies logic, reason, and science."

Post-Gazette article:

A number of professional medical organizations -- including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychiatric Association -- have issued statements claiming that a parent's sexual orientation is irrelevant to his or her ability to raise a child.

For the most part, the organizations are relying on a relatively small but conclusive body of research -- approximately 67 studies -- looking at children of gay parents and compiled by the American Psychological Association. In study after study, children in same-sex parent families turned out the same, for better or for worse, as children in heterosexual families.

Moreover, a 2001 meta-analysis of those studies found that the sexual orientation of a parent is irrelevant to the development of a child's mental health and social development and to the quality of a parent-child relationship.

Matt Barber:

"Frankly the studies have shown clearly that it is in the best interest of children to have a mother and a father."

Post-Gazette article:

The problem with the research cited . . . is that it compares children of heterosexual couples only with those of single parents and not with children of same-sex parent families, said Gary Gates, a senior research fellow at the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law and an expert on census data involving gay and lesbian households.

"There are virtually no studies that make a direct comparison with same-sex parents," he said, noting census data show one in four same-sex couples are raising a child under the age of 18.

Editor's note - Gates was speaking about research cited by James Dobson. However, Dobson was making the same claims as Barber - "the majority of more than 30 years of social-science evidence indicates that children do best on every measure of well-being when raised by their married mother and father."

The lesson here is clear - Barber doesn't know what the hell he is talking about. But that's business as usual with him.

Irony alert - Organization co-founded by black gay man threatens member for supporting gay rights

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is seeking to remove the president of its Los Angeles chapter, Rev. Eric P. Lee, for helping to organize opposition to Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage amendment that was passed in California last year.

From The New York Times:

In April, Mr. Lee attended a board meeting of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Kansas City, Mo., and found himself once again in the minority position among his colleagues on the issue of same-sex marriage, but he was told, he said, by the group’s interim president, Byron Clay, that the organization publicly had a neutral position on the issue.

So a month later, Mr. Lee said, he was surprised to receive a call from the National Board of Directors summoning him immediately to Atlanta to explain why he had taken a position on same-sex marriage without the authority of the national board.

Explaining that he was unable to come to Atlanta on such short notice, Mr. Lee then received two letters from the organization’s lawyer, Dexter M. Wimbish, threatening him with suspension or removal as president of the Los Angeles chapter if he did not come soon to explain himself.

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was the organization led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the 1950-60s civil rights movement. It sprung from the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and was on the forefront of the majority of racial battles during that time.

Since King's death, however the organization has fallen into anonymity and controversy (including an ugly battle between it and King's son, Martin Luther King, III).

Many media sources are playing up the fact that this was the organization led by King during the civil rights movement, but a lot of them are forgetting a crucial element of the story.

One of the co-founders of SCLC was Bayard Rustin, an aide of King, chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, and an openly gay black man.

A constant mantra amongst African-Americans is that "we never forget where we came from."

Well in this case apparently SCLC has forgotten where it came from.

Know your lgbt history - The Choirboys

No words here. Just watch the monstrosity of these two clips from the 1970s movie The Choirboys. The clips aren't exactly of good visual quality but that's an improvement based on the subject matter.

If you think Bruno is bad, then you obviously don't know what bad is. Compared to this movie, Bruno is a David Lean classic.





By the way, there is one more gay character in this movie; a young man caught cruising in a public park. In an ugly scene, he is so weepy at the police station that the officer lets him go.

Then later, he returns to the public park where he is killed by an officer having a Vietnam flashback.

Thanks for the sour persimmons, Choirboys.

It just goes to show that no matter how bad we may think things are regarding lgbt representation in movies, it's much better than what it used to be.

Past Know Your LGBT History postings:

Know your lgbt history - Eddie Murphy

Know your lgbt history - The Killing of Sister George

Know your lgbt history - Hanna-Barbera cartoons pushes the 'gay agenda'

Know your lgbt history - Cruising

Know your lgbt history - Foxy Brown and Cleopatra Jones

Know your lgbt history - I Got Da Hook Up

Know your lgbt history - Fright Night

Know your lgbt history - Flowers of Evil

The Jeffersons and the transgender community

Friday midday news briefs

Congress Urged to Take Action Against Bullying in Schools - Keep your fingers crossed.

There was this mother whose son killed himself or something. But anyway, back to what I was saying about the evil gay agenda... - And hold your nose when you get a load of what Andrea Lafferty says about the bill. Lafferty runs the Traditional Values Coalition with her father Abraham Simpson . . . I mean Lou Sheldon.

Two men kissing kicked out of East Side Chico's Tacos - Cause you know when we kiss (even if it's a quick peck), we are really plotting the take over of the world.

Jackson Lee, NBJC, NAACP, Cong. Black Caucus Demand Investigation into Murder of August Provost - Damn right. This needs a HUGE investigation. It's good to see some of the African-American leadership on this.

Sign a 'gay marriage' bill, lose some luster - And now courtesy of One News Now is a lesson on how the religious right spin machine works. In Wednesdays' news briefs, I included a link showing Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council misleading poll on the popularity of New Hampshire Governor John Lynch. Now today, One News Now continues to push that inaccurate spin via a phony news article.

The Guardians Of Marriage - This is an excellent piece on Sens. John Ensign and Tom Coburn.

Traditional Values Coalition attacks Kevin Jennings and . . . Tom Cruise?

I'm not trying to be overconfident about the Kevin Jennings situation, but I can't help but to feel a little less worried about Jennings being able to keep his job as Assistant Deputy Secretary, Office of Safe & Drug Free Schools at the Department of Education when the opposition pulls nonsense like the picture on the right.

The picture, by the way, is courtesy of the Traditional Values Coalition (TVC), the religious right group in California run by one Lou Sheldon. A perfect description of Sheldon would be termed as "Abraham Simpson on speed."

This lovely insult to Jennings, Tom Cruise (oh come on, was his last movie really that bad), and all taste and decency is accompanied by the reasonings as to why Jennings should be dismissed from his job.

The reasonings are the same batch of lies; Jennings is anti-religion, Jennings teaches children how to have sex, Jennings hides instances when children are molested.

The entire TVC report is an excercise in shrill lunacy such as the following:

Jennnings Wants Kindergarten Kids!

At a GLSEN conference in 1998, Kevin Jennings told his fellow gays that his dream is to promote homosexuality in public schools – even to kindergarten children.

That picture linking Jennings to the German Nazi Party via Tom Cruise's movie Valkyrie is merely the piece de resistance in a surfeit of silliness.

So much for the "hate the sin but love the sinner" Christian attitude.

It's been said that sometimes an enemy can be your best friend. Former President Bill Clinton can attest to this fact because it was the constant accusations of his enemies that served to desensitize the country and ruin the impact when they did finally get something dirty on him.

For us, it's folks like TVC. The lgbt community can always count on the group to go overboard with it's anti-gay hostility.

But do they have to make such ugly pictures? Tom Cruise looks terrible in purple.

He should sue.

Other HB/HM posts on Kevin Jennings and the religious right:

Support Sean's Last Wish and Kevin Jennings

The religious right thinks that character assasination is a Christian virtue

The war against Kevin Jennings - now it's getting pathetic

Attacks on Kevin Jennings sleazy, un-Christian

More right wing lunacy on Kevin Jennings courtesy of Kevin McCullough

More attacks on GLSEN'S Kevin Jennings - Now the Family Research Council gets in the act'''

'Fistgate' and President Obama - religious right pushes a pitiful attempt of guilt by association

Stance against hate crimes legislation reveals lack of honesty, integrity

According to my favorite phony publication, One News Now, religious right groups today urged their supporters to call, email, or write their Senators and urge them to vote against adding new categories to national hate crimes legislation:

The American Family Association, Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, and other conservative activist groups are urging their supporters to call, e-mail, fax, or visit their senators today to express their disapproval of S. 909, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act (Senate Bill 909). The bill would authorize the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute certain bias-motivated crimes based on the victim's actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability.

Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr., a member of the conservative coalition known as the Arlington Group, says the measure would have a chilling effect on the religious liberty of pastors.

"Back in 2006, [Democratic Representative] Artur Davis from Alabama, who will be running for governor by the way in that great state, made a statement to [Representative] Louie Gohmert [R-Texas] in a [House] subcommittee meeting that a pastor could be held liable or [as] a co-conspirator of sorts in a hate crime if we found out that his preaching and teaching incited -- according to their thinking -- someone to commit a violent act against someone that is gay," Jackson explains.

This entire push against adding sexual orientation (because that's what is getting the religious right up in arms) to existing hate crimes legislation reveals the abject dishonesty of religious right groups.

They have careened from one argument to another in their attempts to kill this bill. From inaccurately saying that it will protect nasty sexual behavior to claiming that it will keep pedophiles who molest children from going to jail, this entire controversy has been a window into the mindsets of some so-called Christians, revealing just how low they will stoop in the name of God.

While they claim that adding sexual orientation to hate crimes legislation will cause mere speech to be punished, not one of them from Harry Jackson to Tony Perkins to James Dobson has said a word about eliminating existing hate crimes legislation altogether; especially the statue that punishes crimes committed on the basis of religion.

And they refuse to acknowledge that heterosexuals are also protected under the sexual orientation addition.

But what's more interesting is that statement by Jackson:

"Back in 2006, [Democratic Representative] Artur Davis from Alabama, who will be running for governor by the way in that great state, made a statement to [Representative] Louie Gohmert [R-Texas] in a [House] subcommittee meeting that a pastor could be held liable or [as] a co-conspirator of sorts in a hate crime if we found out that his preaching and teaching incited -- according to their thinking -- someone to commit a violent act against someone that is gay,"

First of all to be exact, Jackson is inaccurate about the year in which the exchange took place. It was in 2007.

And what is wrong with a pastor being charged if his preaching and teaching incited someone to violence? The devil, as they say, is in the details.

Seems to me if a pastor actually tells someone to go out and harm an lgbt or anyone else via teaching or preaching, then the pastor should be charged with a crime.

And that pastor would be charged with a crime even if hate crimes legislation did not exist.

But a good question would be what if the pastor merely said that homosexuality is a sin and someone took that as a statement telling him to harm an lgbt?

That would be a problem except for an action committed by Rep. Davis during the hearing; an action that Jackson omitted bringing up. According to the webpage, Religious Tolerance:

Artur Davis (D-AL), a co-sponsor of the bill, offered a change that clarified that the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech would not be affected by the bill. That is, pastors and other Christians who denigrate homosexuals (or women or the disabled, etc) need not fear being charged with conspiracy if a someone is motivated by the speech to commit a violent act. The amendment reads:

"Sec. 8: Rule of Construction:
Nothing in this Act, or the amendments made by this Act, shall be construed to prohibit any expressive conduct protected from legal prohibition by, or any activities protected by the free speech or free exercise clauses of, the First Amendment to the Constitution."

Which means the concern about a minister getting arrested for merely preaching that homosexuality is a sin is a smokescreen. It was a smokescreen in 2007 and it is one now.

Or in other words, a cynical lie thought up by a group determined to destroy a bill.

I never knew that Jesus told us to tell lies. Jackson and company must have a new translation of the Bible. I knew they would flip after they discovered that the King James version was offered by a gay man.

Other posts on hate crimes legislation:

Hate crimes legislation makes Doug Giles lose his mind

SC gay groups organizing response to DeMint letter

Tell Senator DeMint to stop lying about hate crimes legislation

Snappy comebacks to stupid religious right talking points and Thursday midday news briefs

Just because I feel like it, I will now introduce an every-now-and-then new feature on this blog:

Snappy comebacks to stupid religious right talking points

Don't you just hate it when the religious right tries to condense the complexities of sexual orientation to stupid talking points that totally mischaracterize the entire argument?

For example:

Religious right talking point - "You can't compare being black to being gay because there are no ex-African-Americans but there are plenty of ex-gays."

Try this answer:

Answer - "Just as some blacks have tried to pass for white in the past due to their light skin tone, some gays try to pass for heterosexual. And history has shown us that neither attempt to hide who you are is, in the long run, successful."

Now on to news briefs:

"Madea" Actor/Singer Terrell Carter Outed by Ex-Boyfriend - Speaking of which . . .

Gay couple 'backed out of foster plans after negative media coverage' - On one hand, this isn't good because I'm sure they would have made a very good home for the child. But on the other, so much for the stupid notion of gays pursuing adoption for selfish reasons. They obviously thought of the child's needs first.

NARTH: Rubbish in the Guise of Research - More details about that fradulent NARTH study.

Video: If credibility began and ended at FOF's front door, then vids like this might help - Perfect example of the religious right echo chamber. NARTH creates a fradulent study and Focus on the Family pushes it as legitimate.