Anti-LGBTQ hate group having a problem staying relevant

Lou Sheldon

From the Southern Poverty Law Center comes a story which should give optimism to the LGBTQ community as we go through the Trump years. It would seem that we are outlasting another hate group whose purpose was to end our struggle for equality:

For those who can't remember back in the day, the Traditional Values Coalition, led by Lou Sheldon, was one of the meanest, most vindictive anti-LGBTQ hate groups in America. Forget subtleties because TVC made its objective clear. According to it, the LGBTQ community were a bunch of diseased, Morlockian monsters who needed to be stamped underfoot:

(Lou)Sheldon, a protégé of Christian Right evangelist Pat Robertson, launched TVC in Anaheim, California, before moving its headquarters to Washington, D.C. His anti-LGBT rhetoric — calling homosexuality a “deathstyle;” claiming child molestation is the real “homosexual agenda;” suggesting AIDS victims should be forced into leper-like colonies — pushed TVC to the forefront of the battle against equal rights in the 1990s. 

In 1993, TVC distributed a video, featuring Sheldon as well as then-Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, called “Gay Rights/Special Rights: Inside the Homosexual Agenda,” as a propaganda tool to galvanize opposition to LGBT rights. The film attempts to contrast the civil rights movement of the ‘60s with the fight for LGBT equality, with one speaker condemning the “high-handed attempt of the gay and lesbian movement to highjack the 1964 Civil Rights Act in trying to give national credence to their immoral lifestyle.” The video also attempts to conflate homosexuality with pedophilia, a common refrain from TVC (the TVC website, when it was online, claimed “[t]he effort to push adult/child sex… is part of the overall homosexual movement”). 

A December 1994 New York Times article titled “Minister Brings Anti-Gay Message to the Spotlight” heralded Sheldon’s influence with the incoming conservative congress elected the month before. The next year, Sheldon was part of a push to support a senate bill to cut federal money for public schools “encouraging or supporting homosexuality.”

Supposedly, in 1995, then Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich promised Sheldon that there would be Congressional hearings looking at the so-called promotion of homosexuality in public schools.

That's how powerful TVC was back then. Twenty years later, things have changed tremendously. SPLC's article points out that Sheldon's daughter, Andrea Lafferty, seems to be having problems keeping the group relevant and afloat.

The poor dear (sarcasm intended.) I guess there is no room for unbridled, free-range homophobia in the now passive-aggressive world of the religious right.

'Judge tosses ridiculously homophobic rainbow flag lawsuit' & other Mon midday news briefs

Judge Dismisses Homophobe’s Lawsuit Claiming Rainbow Flags Are Religious Symbols - We have more important fights so I'm glad this anti-LGBTQ mess was thrown out of court. 

FBI National Academy Accepts First Transgender Applicant - In the face of ignorance and stupidity, the transgender community keeps on shining and achieving.

In photos: The private lives of India’s LGBTQ community - I've said it once and I will say it again - our fight is universal. 

Alaskans set to vote on bill that would ban transgender people from using the bathroom - And of course the group pushing this is reading from the script of inaccurate anecdotal horror stories of transgender women using the restroom.

New Amazon ad features gay couple getting ready for their wedding - Sweet!

Do you find this offensive? Or funny?

Let's ease into Monday with another somewhat "frivolous" post. Seeing how successful my recent post on Prince at the 1985 Grammys was, I may post things from time to time to bring up a bit of nostalgia or make you think about internal issues regarding the LGBTQ community.

Do not worry, though. The main goal of this blog - to expose the religious anti-LGBTQ right and their tactics to undermine our equality and safety - remains and will be the subject of the majority of posts here.

That being said, let me ask a question, mostly to the younger folks. The above clip is from a legendary 1974 comedy Blazing Saddles. In a wild, madcap way, Blazing Saddles, and its director Mel Brooks,  makes fun of Western movie cliches, as well as racism, anti-Semitism, and bigotry and stereotypes of all kinds. And let's not forget homophobia. 

Do you find this scene in which the cast of Blazing Saddles end up in a brawl with the gay men shooting a musical (don't ask) offensive or funny? Personally, I find it hilarious and I doubt I'm alone among those who grew up watching this film. Still, I want to know what others think. Please, do not go on any tirade about "political correctness" or nonsense like that. Just simply, what do you think and why?

'Big questions remain about Trump's trans ban. Who gave the recommendations?' & other Fri midday news briefs

No one will say who gave the recommendations for Donald Trump's recent transgender military ban.

Pentagon says White House helped draft transgender military ban, contradicting White House’s claim - The questions linger and I hope they don't stop. We could be looking at something potentially big here.

Pentagon refuses to clarify unknowns in transgender ban - More on the situation. 

Real Visibility Is Transgender People Living Openly And Authentically - AMEN! 

Mike Pence says he's 'proud' that his hometown is hosting its first Pride - Yeah. Right.

LGBTQ Americans Won't Be Counted in 2020 U.S. Census After All - Positives and negatives about this. Either way, I am very wary of the situation.

Watch It - Prince steals the show at the 1985 Grammy awards.

I'm putting this post out for two reasons:

It's Prince, which in itself is reason enough. And we are nearing the second anniversary of his death. A lot of us still miss him because he was frankly talented as hell, as this video shows.

The 1985 Grammy Awards show came a year after Michael Jackson's legendary sweep and in contrast to that show, the competition was heavy. Especially for Album of the Year.

Cyndi Lauper, the winner of Best New Artist, was at the start her career, with She's So Unusual. Bruce Springsteen - who only received one award that night - had cemented his legendary status and hype with Born in the USA. Tina Turner - who turned out to be the big story of the awards - won three, thereby completing what was called the greatest comeback in music history with Private Dancer. And there was Prince, who has come into his own with the monumental album and movie Purple Rain. He also won three that night.

Unfortunately the winner of Album of the Year turned out to be Lionel Richie's Can't Slow Down, which had to be seen as an upset. It was one of two Grammys  he won that evening.

Still, the best performance of the night had to belong to Prince, performing "Baby I'm A Star" with his band at the time, the Revolution, Sheila E,  and members of the audience joining in (was that Grace Jones on stage?)

I'd kill to have that outfit he wore. I'd even wear it to church.

Trump Administration's cozy relationship with anti-LGBT hate groups is being ignored . . . and that's not good

If the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins had said these lies about any other group of Americans, neither he nor his group would have hardly any influence in the Trump Administration

Editor's note - Just one news brief today because it's an important one:

The trans military ban is yet another example of the White House's cozy relationships with anti-LGBTQ hate groups - Trump's attempt to ban transgender troops is only part of the story about his cozy relationship with the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Family Research Council, and other anti-LGBTQ hate groups who are attempting to undermine LGBTQ safety and equality:

 After consulting with ADF, Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions released religious exemptions guidance making it easier for individuals and businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ people. 

 The Justice Department issued an unusual brief on behalf of ADF’s client in the Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission Supreme Court court case.
 ADF is reportedly in “negotiations” with the Trump administration to undo protections for incarcerated transgender people. 

 Perkins has bragged about how many times he has visited the White House. 

 Trump is nominating attorneys with ties to ADF for federal judgeships. 

 Former ADF legal counsel Matt Bowman works in the Health and Human Services Department (HHS), which has been employing more right-wing religious activists and has started a Conscience and Religious Freedom Division that makes it easier for health care providers to deny services to LGBTQ people, among others.

Dear Family Research Council, repetition does not turn a lie into truth

Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council can't make their lies into truth no matter how many times they repeat them.

An annoying, but enduring tactic of anti-LGBTQ groups is to repeat a lie consistently no matter how many times it has been refuted.

A good example of this is yet another Washington Update by the Family Research Council praising Trump for his latest attempt to ban transgender men and women from serving in the military.

I will spare you the nauseating entirety of the kiss-up because I wanted to point to the follow excerpt:

For this White House, rolling back Obama-era extremism is nothing new. President Trump has been doing it for the better part of 14 months. But doing the right thing isn't always the easiest thing, and the media is doing its best to make the administration's reversal of the Pentagon's transgender policy sting. Lucky for us, Donald Trump isn't bothered. With the military on the brink, staring down a $3.7 billion price tag for service members' sex changes, President Trump decided it was time for a return to common sense. And plenty of Americans are lining up to thank him.

That $3.7 billion price tag comes from FRC itself. Supposedly, the organization claims that it reached this amount by using "pro-LGBT" resources.

With all due respect to FRC, it doesn't exactly have a history which lends to affirming its credibility when it comes to using data. In the past, the group has cherry-picked information from pro-LGBTQ sources and legitimate science or relied on junk science  to reach false (and negative) conclusions about the LGBTQ community.  Remember that FRC's lies are so numerous that the Southern Poverty Law Center designated it as a hate group.

I'm old school about this sort of thing. If a person or group has demonstrated a propensity to lie about a certain issue, I'm generally not going to believe any future claims they have about said issue.

In reality, the Pentagon commissioned a study about this subject in 2016. According to Fortune magazine:

The study, conducted by the Rand Corporation, estimated that there are between 1,320 and 6,630 transgender individuals on active duty in a force of 1.3 million people. The cost of providing those individuals with specialized health care, including possible surgeries, would be between $2.4 million and $8.4 million a year. Total military health-care expenditures were $6.27 billion in 2014.

In all fairness, Fortune magazine also points out that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis criticized the RAND study, claiming that it “heavily caveated data to support its conclusions, glossed over the impacts of health care costs, readiness, and unit cohesion, and erroneously relied on the selective experiences of foreign militaries with different operational requirements than our own.”   

But in July of last year, Reason magazine pointed out another study which, while not coming to the exact numerical figures as the RAND study, backed up the belief that the cost of allowing transgender troops to serve is nowhere remotely near $3.7 billion:

A New England Journal of Medicine study from 2015 found slightly less than 13,000 transgender service members and transition-related care amounted to between $4.2 million and $5.6 million per year. The military's annual health-care budget is around $48 billion a year. Those numbers are small enough on their own, but they shrink even more when put into context of other medical expenditures. For instance, the Pentagon spends about $42 million a year on the erectile-dysfunction drug Viagra and another $23 million on Cialis. According to one estimate, the Navy spends $115 million a year simply to transfer pregnant women from active duty back to land.

So who should you believe? Two groups with pretty much no credibility issues about this subject or a faux Christian organization which is infamous for lying about and denigrating the LGBTQ community to the point of being designated as a hate group?

In a reasonable society, this wouldn't have been a question anyone would have to ask.