U.S. Supreme Court hands NOM a huge loss

No, the Supreme Court didn't give the National Organization for Marriage the BIG slapdown - hopefully that comes later. But the court do the following:

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a request by Protect Marriage Washington that the state be blocked from releasing further copies of Referendum 71 petitions while PMW appeals an earlier Federal District Court decision that ordered their release.

The request had been made to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy who apparently referred it to the entire Court. Justice Alito alone would have granted an injunction and Justice Kagan “took no part in the consideration or decision”, making this a 7-1 decision.

“This means that we can once again release these public records,” said Katie Blinn, the state elections co-director.

In 2010 the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 against Protect Marriage Washington in an earlier phase of the same case, Doe v. Reed. At that time, PMW was trying to strike down all public records laws across the country that give the public access to initiative or referendum petitions once those petitions are submitted to the state. In the current phase of the case, PMW is asking for a special exception to keep only R-71 petitions secret.

Referendum 71 was the 2009 ballot measure that PMW used to try to repeal Washington’s domestic partnership law. In November, 2009 over 53% of the Washington electorate voted to approve Referendum 71, making Washington the first state in the nation to vote affirmatively in support of comprehensive relationship recognition for LGBT families.

Hat tip to Pam's House Blend.

'Gay parents = serial killers?' and other Tuesday midday news briefs

BYU newspaper letter compares gay parents to serial killers - As vile as this is, a community response and a public pushback is necessary. There are some folks who have a hateful opinion of our families. We need to make clear that while respect somone's freedom of speech, if that person calls us out with lies and smears, we will answer back with truth and dignity.

New FRC Pamphlet Obsesses Over ‘Homosexual Conduct’, Ignores Gay People - Kudos for Zach Ford regarding his takedown of the Family Research Council newest junk science pamphlet. He doesn't get as clinical as I do, but he more than adequately does the job in exposing the distortions.

Teen in gay-student slaying case agrees to 21-year prison term - This sad case is finally over at least for the public. This is a tragedy which shows the extent of hate and homophobia. My heart goes out to EVERYONE caught up in this.

Audio: If you show up with your same-sex spouse, you're victimizing Maggie Gallagher and Jen Roback Morse - They attack us, disrespect our families and our relationships, but yet WE are the bad guys? Okay.

TWO Special Report: The Call Detroit – A Slick Political Rally Disguised As a Religious Revival - A sad case of how the religious right tries to rope in the black community.

Liberty Counsel: Aggressive Gay Agenda Seeks To Push Children Into Gay Relationships - Okay folks, this is not offensive. It's so ridiculous that it becomes comical.

Family Research Council whines that no one wants to debate 'homosexual' issues

Peter Sprigg

In dealing with the fact that it is an officially declared hate group, the Family Research Council pulls the shuck-and-jive argument that it is being attacked by people who don't want to debate gay issues. This following missive came in a recent email

The harms associated with homosexuality include serious physical and mental health problems. Pro-homosexual activists have begun to demand that no debate on the issue of homosexuality be permitted.

Of course we all know that this is a lie. The fact of the matter is that aside from appearing on friendly locations such as Fox News, neither FRC's president, Tony Perkins, nor its spokesperson, Peter Sprigg, will put themselves in a situation to clearly debate FRC's stance on the gay community.

Of course we all remember what happened the last time Perkins went on a head-to-head debate on the issue. It was last year on Hardball against the Southern Poverty Law Center's Mark Potok.

Close to the end of the show, Perkins cited research  from a group which supposedly proved a connection between homosexuality and pedophilia. On a later show, Hardball's host, Chris Matthews, acknowledged that Perkins' citation wasn't exactly unbiased.

Since that time, it has been increasingly obvious that Perkins and Sprigg have avoided in depth discussions on FRC's claims about the gay community or the methods FRC uses to reach its conclusion about the gay community.

All the group has done was to whine that it is "being silenced" from the so-called intolerant gay community because it is merely standing up for traditional values.

Who knew that "traditional values" meant avoiding debate while whining about not being to have one?

The bottom line is that a lot of us want this debate. In fact, we look forward to it. I personally would like an answer to several of these questions:

1. What makes Peter Sprigg a policy expert when he clearly has no expertise in the issues he is talking about?

2. Why does the Family Research Council continue to pursue the false homosexuality/pedophilia connection even at the point of distorting legitimate studies to make the claim?

3. Why did the Family Research Council remove several anti-gay studies from its webpage claiming that the studies contained "outdated" material and then sneak them back on years later?

4. Why does the Family Research Council continue to distort legitimate studies to attack the gay community such as the 1997 Oxford study on the supposed gay lifespan and the study done by Robert Garofalo on gay youth and negative behavior?

5. Why does Peter Sprigg cherry-pick work from pro-gay sources to demonize the lgbtq entire community?

6. Why didn't the Family Research Council acknowledge that it pushed a fraudulent video on GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network) and was forced to walk it back?

7. Why does the Family Research Council continue to cite the work of the discredited Paul Cameron, a junk scientist who claims, amongst other things, that gays stuff gerbils up their rectums ? (FRC used Cameron's work in Homosexual Parenting - Placing Children at Risk - endnote 60  - one of the studies it removed from its webpage and then surreptitiously placed back - see question 3.)

Of course none of these questions will be answered because FRC really doesn't want a debate. If we were to have a debate, then the truth about FRC would come out.

And that plain truth is that the Family Research Council is a group deliberately exploiting people's values and fears in order to bear false witness against the gay community for political gain.

In other words, contrary to the organization's whine, the debate on gay issues is a debate FRC can't afford to have.

Related post:

16 reasons why the Family Research Council is a hate group

A religious right lesson in fear and entitlement

No message can go through without an eager audience and when it comes to religious right lies, the audience sometimes tends to bend over backwards to be receptive.

Witness the firsthand account by Ana Beatriz Cholo of a meeting of folks seeking to overturn SB48, the newly passed California law which mandates that classrooms teach about the contributions and roles of lgbtq figures in age-appropriate classes.

I will showcase the comments made by several folks at the meeting, making sure to include some explanation behind what they really mean:

 I drove an hour and a half to hear Karen England, Stop SB 48's main proponent, discuss their failed campaign and what their next steps are in stopping "the homosexual agenda." England is the executive director of a "pro-family" organization called the Capitol Resource Institute. As England put it that night, it's one thing to live with same-sex marriage. After all, even some hardcore conservatives might say with resignation, "Well, that's in their home. Live and let live."


"But now you're talking about bringing it into our schools; you're messing with our kids," England continued indignantly. "Kids need to learn their ABCs, not about transgendered people."

Please notice how England omits the fact that same-sex families have children attending these schools. She also omits the fact that lgbtq children are attending these schools. Her words are exploiting the notion that gays are "recruiting" children because apparently we don't have any of our own (a huge lie).  Also notice how she intentionally pushes the notion of "transgenders corrupting children."

Another woman identified herself as a school employee. She works in her school's print shop and said she had a conversation with the assistant principal about the new law in recent weeks.


"I won't print that stuff for the children," she said she'd informed the administrator, referring to LGBT-related materials that might end up coming her way. "I will walk," she'd told him. The administrator had tried to dismiss her concerns, but she made it pretty clear that she would rather quit her job than allow gay people to be humanized.

She will quit her job and walk right into a new gig with the National Organization for Marriage as their latest phony defamation victim, even though her rights would not be violated by simply doing her job. She doesn't know what the materials will be but yet has made it up in her mind that she will not print them, as if she is entitled to do so.

An elderly man said his worse fears were medically motivated. "The gay community has a lot of health issues that straight people don't have."

We've all heard this before. One wonders if the man brought up the "gay bowel syndrome" lie.

So what do you do when you're up against such nonsense. Engage those you can, waste no time getting into useless arguments with those who won't listen, but above all, put the truth out there consistently.

Satan, pedophilia, the gay community, and other Monday midday news briefs

DeMint Accuses El Salvadorian Ambassador Of ‘Promoting The Homosexual Lifestyle’ - Ah yes Sen. Jim DeMint from my state of South Carolina. The man who is afraid of the possibility of a gay president. The man who attacks the idea of unmarried female and gay teachers. The man who is the single reason why I laugh when I am encouraged to call my Senators to get their support for pro-gay legislation. Seriously though, who uses the phrase "promoting the homosexual lifestyle" anymore?

Audio: NOM's 'marriage defamation' star spent weekend conflating homosexuality and pedophilia - Don't listen unless wanting to "purge."

NOM: Decriminalizing Gay Sex Helped Cause Penn State Scandal - Yep. THAT'S the ticket.

Whitemarsh passes human relations ordinance with ease - Some good news for a change.


Liberty Counsel: Satan Plants The Seed Of Homosexuality - Here we go again.

Petty lawsuit + lots of money, religious right spin = big problems

From the American Family Association's One News Now:

A pro-family attorney says officials of one California school district were biased when they wouldn't allow a parent to be involved in her child's education.

The Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) filed legal briefs with the California Court of Appeal, arguing that San Jose Unified School District officials broke the law by refusing to acknowledge Norina Mooney's request to make changes to a pro-LGBT event at her daughter's school.

The lawsuit stems from a "Rainbow Day" event at Castillero Middle School that addressed the issue of lesbian, "gay," bisexual, and transgender bullying. Mooney asked the school district to place a request on the agenda that would recognize other minorities who are affected by bullying, but the superintendent and board president refused. PJI filed suit in June to protect parents' rights to participate in such decisions, but a Santa Clara County judge rejected the case without comment, prompting appeal.

And of course as you can read, and will probably read more, this is not the end of the story. I'm guessing that this faux controversy will continue and, as with other cases in the past, we will be bombarded with religious right spin portraying this woman as a so- called innocent parent stymied by the so-called gay agenda.

The fact that the lawsuit was dismissed without comment because it was petty means absolutely nothing.  Nor does the comment from San Jose Unified School District that the the school district doesn't have the ability to ask schools to change school-wide events mean anything also.

This isn't about bullying or parents. This is yet another attempt to undermine the gay community under the guise of morality. As long as there are religious right groups with unfettered finances to pursue such petty lawsuits, as long as there are enough right-wing publications eager enough to publicize the one-sided drivel of these groups, and as long as there are enough ignorant morons out there whose homophobic bias outweighs their common sense and who will comment about the evils of the so-called gay agenda even when they know that the situation they are commenting about is false, we should expect more phony moral panics like this.

2011 Transgender Day of Remembrance

May the day come soon that commemorations like this are never again needed: