The dangers of not challenging false anti-gay testimony are numerous

This is the last of  a series of posts highlighting the need for Congress to scrutinize misleading religious right testimony during its hearings. The first post today showed of Maggie Gallagher gave misleading testimony  during an earlier DOMA hearing this year. The second post showed how Tony Perkins gave misleading testimony during a Congressional hearing on ENDA in 2009. Now this post demonstrates just how dangerous it is to allow testimony like this to go unchallenged.

To put it simply, via ThinkProgress, when lies about the lgbtq community go unchallenged during Congressional hearings, you will find Congressional leaders repeating these lies as reasons to vote against gay equality.

The following words are during a 1996 debate on DOMA. While you view this footage, ask yourself just how much of it have you heard coming from the mouths of Tony Perkins, Peter Sprigg, and the rest of that bunch:




Sign the petition to keep injustices like this from happening.

Family Research Council head gave misleading testimony on ENDA in 2009

This post is Part 2 in a series highlighting the need for Congress to scrutinize misleading religious right testimony during its hearings. This repost has to do with 2009 testimony which Family Research Council leader Tony Perkins gave in front of Congress to oppose the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). Just like Maggie Gallagher's testimony earlier this year (which was highlighted in today's earlier post), Perkins's testimony was misleading. And the two unfortunate things about it were that he was not called out for his errors and in 2010, he was allowed to give testimony opposing the confirmation of now Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan.

October 1, 2009 

Recently, Family Research Council head Tony Perkins submitted testimony to Congress in opposition of Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

The bulk of his testimony were anecdotes of supposedly how ENDA would hurt free speech.

As Goodasyou.org pointed out, at least one of his anecdotes was a distortion of the facts. Perkins claimed that the person in the case was able to sue because he was merely perceived as gay.

Perkins was making the point that the lawsuit in that case was frivilous.

But Jeremy Hooper from Goodasyou.org showed that the person in the case was not only perceived as gay, but also harassed and fired because of that perception.

And I think I found another sly distortion from Perkins regarding ENDA. The part I want to address is in bold:

The principle at stake is whether personal disapproval of these chosen and harmful behaviors (homosexual conduct and sex changes) should be officially stigmatized under law as a form of bigotry that is equivalent to racism. Since such disapproval is the dominant viewpoint in the American public,explicitly taught by leading religions,and empirically supported by the negative health consequences of those behaviors

Perkins is pushing the "homosexuality has negative consequences" factoid that has served the religious right well for so many years.

The endnotes of his testimony say:

Evidence for the negative health consequences of homosexual conduct is available even from pro-homosexual sources such as the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association. See their "Top Ten Issues to Discuss with Your Healthcare Provider" online at: http://www.glma.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.viewPage&pageId=586&parentID=533&nodeID=1

To echo Jeremy Hooper in his denunciation of Perkins, it's a matter of perception.

Perkins is pushing the notion that "if people engage in same-sex intercourse, they face negative consequences."

Maggie Gallagher gave misleading testimony during April 15 DOMA hearing

Editor's note - As you all know, I have begun a petition asking Congress to scrutinize and call out misleading testimony given by religious right figures during its hearings. Part of the reason for this petition is the blowback Sen. Al Franken received when he called out Focus on the Family's Tom Minnery for his misleading testimony during a recent hearing on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Another reason is to highlight the times in which religious right figures were able to get away with misleading testimony. Today, I will be reposting various pieces highlighting those incidents. This is the first and it took place at an earlier DOMA hearing in April of this year. Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage gave the same type of misleading testimony which Tom Minnery was called out for. The only difference is that no Congressional leader called her out. The site Equality Matters did call her out, but that was after the hearing was over.

April 25, 2011

According to Equality Matters, the witnesses speaking for DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act) during the April 15 Congressional hearing gave incorrect testimony on several occasions. I invite everyone to take a look at the section, but the one which stands out for me is a statement made by the National Organization for Marriage's Maggie Gallagher.

She claimed that social science proves that the best place to raise children are in homes with biological, married parents as opposed to same-sex households:

Transcript:

GALLAGHER: From what we know from the social science evidence, marriage protects children to the extent that it increases the likelihood they are born to and raised by their own mother and father in a low-conflict, enduring relationship. We know this because, frankly, children do not do better under remarried parents than they do with solo mothers on average, which means that it is not simply a set of legal benefits that we can transform. It is the extent and way to which marriage as a legal and public institution helps to protect a particular kind of family that it helps to protect children or fails to protect children.

However, according to Equality Matters, in her written testimony, Gallagher cited a study on heterosexual single parents:

We know this from the social science evidence showing that children do no better, on average, in remarried families than they do living with single mothers. 1 Marriage protects children to the extent that it helps increase the likelihood that children will be raised by their mother and father.

[…]

1 See Sara McLanahan & Gary Sandefur, Growing Up With a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps (Harvard U. Press 1994) (“In general, compared with children living with both their parents, young people from disrupted families are more likely to drop out of high school, and young women from one-parent families are more likely to become teen mothers, irrespective of the conditions under which they began to live with single mothers and irrespective of whether their mothers remarry or experience subsequent disruptions.”). [Statement of Maggie Gallagher, Hearing on “Defending Marriage,” 4/15/11]

Equality Matters went on to use the words of Judith Stacey, Professor of Sociology and Professor of Gender and Sexuality at New York University to call out Gallagher and others on the right who inaccurately use studies on the heterosexual family dynamic to demonize same-sex parenting, and by proxy, marriage equality:

According to the child protection discourse that Professor Wardle, Maggie Gallagher, and others deploy, social science research demonstrates that legalizing same-sex marriage poses dangers to children and families… In particular, claims that research establishes the superiority of the married heterosexual-couple family and that children need a mother and a father conflate and confuse research findings on four distinct variables - the sexual orientation, gender, number, and the marital status of parents… Unfortunately, opponents of same-sex marriage, like Maggie Gallagher and Professor Wardle, and even some advocates, draw selectively, indiscriminately, and inappropriately from research findings about all four variables to address questions the studies were not designed to, and are not able, to illuminate.

[…]

Opponents of same-sex marriage draw on a third body of literature in which researchers have achieved an unusual degree of consensus. Most family researchers agree that, all other things being equal (which, of course, is almost never the case), two parents are better than one. Research indicates that children raised in single-parent families are at greater risk of various negative outcomes (e.g., dropping out of school, delinquency, unwed teen pregnancy, substance abuse, etc.) than children raised in comparable two-parent families. All of this research, however, as Maggie Gallagher acknowledged, has been conducted on heterosexual-parent families. Moreover, this research generally compares children in married-couple and single-parent families, thereby confounding the effects of the number and the legal status of parents. None of the research cited to demonstrate the importance of fathers (or mothers) examines the adjustment of children raised by same-sex couples. Moreover, this research does not indicate that it is the gender or the sexual orientation of the absent parent that is responsible for the different outcomes of children raised in single versus two-parent families. Rather, most researchers conclude that the number and economic resources of parents as well as the disruptive effects that parental desertion or divorce can inflict on children's lives account for these differential risks. N12 [University School of Quinnipiac Law Review, via Lexis, emphasis added, 2004]

Gallagher has done this sort of thing before. In in January of last year, she distorted a study on child abuse to make the case that children in married biological homes do better to protect children from abuse than children in same-sex households.

The distortion comes because the study in question - the one she cited - didn't even look at children in same-sex households. We know this because Gallagher even admitted at the time that same-sex households wasn't a category in the study:

All the other family structures studied (which does not include same-sex parent families probably because these are such a small part of the population), but does include solo parents, other married parents (remarried primarily), single parents living with a partner, cohabiting parents, and no parents.

Please bear in mind that at that same April 15 Congressional hearing,  Gallagher said it was unfortunate that people misinterpret things she says as a condemnation of "gay people" and "their parenting skills."

If Gallagher wants people to not think that she is condemning "gay people" and "their parenting skills," then maybe she should stop being so deceptive in her testimony.

Sign the petition to keep Gallagher and company from getting away with deceptions like this.

Know Your LGBT History - Bachelor Party

Very few actors who are considered legendary entered the industry in a prestige picture (okay, Meryl Streep did but it was one speaking line in the Oscar winning movie Julia) and Tom Hanks is no different.

Before he became known as the two-time Academy Award winning and Emmy-award winning 21st century version of Gary Cooper, Hanks did his time in lowbrow comedies, such as Bachelor Party (1984).

Bachelor Party had a simple plot. Hanks is a common bus driver engaged to heiress Tawny Kitaen whose family despises him. His even more low brow friends plan a bachelor party for him with hookers, drugs, a live band - the whole nine yards.

Meanwhile, there are forces, i.e. Kitaen's former boyfriend and her father, who are conspiring to break up the soon-to-be married couple.

Like I said, this comedy is lowbrow, very lowbrow with coarse humor and nudity all over.

That's not to say that I don't care for lowbrow. Some of it can be hilarious.

But a lot of it can be offensive.

That's not to say that Bachelor Party didn't have its moments. The late actress Wendie Jo Sperber stole the movie in certain places - especially at the end when she discovered that her husband cheated on her with a hooker.

And the movie also included a performance by one of my favorite new wave band of the 80s, the Waitresses.

Now for the lowbrow stuff.. I will omit the hot dog scene in the male strip club and scene where the donkey dies of a drug overdose during a strip act. But for the purpose of this site, I want to feature two very different scenes. One is totally offensive and I am conflicted by the other.

First let's look at the offensive scene. One of Hanks's buddies just finished having intercourse with a female he met at the bachelor party. However, after it's over, he discovers something about her. You know where this is going:

Gary's Dream "Girl"




Bachelor Party

— MOVIECLIPS.com

All I can about this monstrosity of a scene is that is demonstrates just how far the lgbtq community has come. When this movie came out, no one made any noise about the scene. Do you think we would be silent if some mess like this came out today?

And another thing. There have been many fights about pro-gay non-discrimination ordinances mostly because the religious right refers to them as "bathroom bills." The above image is what they want to convey to folks in order to scare them.

Now the second scene has me conflicted because I think it's funny. Here is the scenario - the villain of the piece, Kitaen's ex-boyfriend, sends some "entertainment" that was supposed to go to Hanks's bachelor party to Kitaen's bridal shower. The entertainment is two women "putting on a show." Why do I think this is funny? Simply because of how the actresses portraying the women shocked at what they are seeing behaved. We don't see anything graphic but their reactions are priceless. I hope I am not offending my lesbian sisters by saying this. Well judge for yourselves:

Bachelor Party Classic Scene : Shower Scene - The best video clips are right here

Past Know Your LGBT Posts: 

Anti-gay state rep caught wanting some gay 'nookie' and other Friday midday news briefs

All The Anti-Gay Rhetoric From The GOP Presidential Debate…In Under 2 Minutes - From ThinkProgress comes a new way to get nauseous:




Anti-Gay Marriage State Rep. Accused Of Offering Young Male Money 'For A Really Good Time' - Why oh why doesn't something like this ever happen to Rick Santorum or Peter Sprigg or Brian Brown or Tony Perkins?

How Do You Handle A Huffy Town Clerk That Doesn’t Wanna Sign Gay Marriage Licenses? - You fire the person for not doing her job. End of story.

Barber: Gays Are Targeting Your Kids In Order To Plant "Poison In Their Impressionable Little Minds" - Personally I don't give a crap about the Bert and Ernie thing but I wonder what Matt Barber's opinions are on The Smurfs? Come on now - a village with over 100 male smurfs and one female smurfs. I mean was Smurfettte the world's biggest "fag hag" or what? Well we know that at least one of the smurfs wasn't gay.  Don't you think that it's odd that Smurfette showed up in season one and then all of the sudden Baby Smurf showed up in season three?

Lead with Love - a documentary which should be required viewing

As much as I would absolutely love to skewer the religious right today, I want to focus on something a bit more positive. From Think Progress:

A new documentary called Lead With Love looks at four families responding to learning that their child is gay. The 35-minute film can be watched online. Here’s the trailer:

A documentary as wonderful as this needs as much attention and support as we can give it.

NOM slapped down by the courts while its bus tour is flopping hard

It hasn't been a good day for the National Organization for Marriage. According to ThinkProgress:

The First Circuit Court of Appeals has again ruled against the National Organization for Marriage’s attempts to challenge the “constitutionality of a Rhode Island election law requiring the reporting of so-called ‘independent expenditures.’”  NOM has been actively challenging financial disclosure laws across the country to protect the names of its few but generous donors. The Court borrowed largely from its own decision against NOM’s challenge to Maine’s laws. Read the full decision.

The Maine Public Broadcasting Network goes into more detail about NOM's loss:

NOM, which was the major funder behind the effort to overturn Maine's same sex marriage law two years ago, had had challenged the constitutionality of Maine's election law, claiming that its reporting requirements for political action committties are vague and over-broad.

District Court Judge Brock Hornby ruled against NOM on most of its challenge, and now the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals has also weighed in, siding with the state of Maine.

"That's correct, NOM had made 'vagueness' claims and First Amendement claims, and the 1st Circuit rejected all of them," says Tom Knowlton, an assistant state attorney general who serves as counsel for the Maine Ethics Commission. "The 1st Circuit has upheld the constitutionality of Maine's laws that require the disclosure of contributions and expenditures in candidate elections by PACs and by independent groups."

And as if NOM's court loss isn't bad enough, according to Equality Matters, the organization's "Values Bus" tour is an unmitigated flop:

On Tuesday, NOM -- along with the anti-gay Family Research Council and anti-choice Susan B. Anthony List -- began its 2011 “Values Bus Tour,” which plans to stop at 22 Iowa cities and energize ‘value voters’ to participate in the Ames Straw Poll on August 13 (the day the tour ends). 

So far, tour stops have included appearances from GOP presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Tim Pawlenty, with others expected to show up before the week ends.

Not making appearances so far? Actual voters.

So far, looking over the scant news coverage the tour has received, it appears that few of NOM loyal followers bothered coming out to show their support.

And Equality Matters is definitely twisting the screws into NOM's wounds by going into detail as to where NOM stops on its tour and just how many people are not showing up. 

I know I shouldn't enjoy Equality Matters's breakdown of NOM's flopping tour but I am.

Sometimes you gotta say what the hell and do things for your own personal enjoyment.