Analyzing and refuting the inaccuracies lodged against the lgbt community by religious conservative organizations. Lies in the name of God are still lies.
The next big cultural fight is landing smack dab in the middle of trans issues. Be prepared for a retread of lies the religious right pushed against gays to be repackaged against transgender Americans.
But as the following memes from the Family Research Council demonstrates there is a nauseating twist. Claiming that LGBTQ equality and by extension, LGBTQ people, will harm children is an old but highly successful tactic of the religious right, going way back to the 1970s and Anita Bryant. It's probably the single most effective scare tactic they have and they use it in almost every fight against the LGBTQ community.
But when it comes to specifically attacking the transgender community, there is a slight change in how they push the "harm to children" trope. Groups like FRC are personalizing their attacks against transgender people by portraying them specifically as the other out to harm children. And they have no problem with smearing transgender children with this label, either as these recent memes prove.
In their past lies, the religious right have claimed that it was LGBTQ orientation fed to children as a viable concept which could hard them. Now they seem to be pinpointing transgender children as the specific danger. For groups who claim that they want to "protect children," the eagerness they show in demonizing transgender children sends an ugly message about that they think about these most vulnerable boys and girls.
The Family Research Council helped to create a report which justified Trump's trans troops ban. Now they are attempting to pass it off as legitimate Department of Defense work.
With Biden's continued push for the rights of transgender Americans, the religious right is stepping up its game to spook the country via lies and distortions against the president's goals.
The latest comes from Family Research Council spokesman Peter Sprigg, who published a piece in the (very biased conservative online publication) The Federalist entitled Biden's Transgender Military Order Is Based On Politics, Not Facts.
The title is ironic based upon the number of things in the piece Sprigg either omitted or got plain wrong. I want to point out a glaring (and deliberate) distortion and why it matters.
Sprigg said the following about Biden's recent executive order which overturned Trump's ban on transgender troops:
The Biden executive order appealed to “a meticulous, comprehensive study” issued in 2016 that asserted that allowing “transgender individuals to serve” would have “a minimal impact on military readiness and healthcare costs.” The “nonpartisan federally funded research center” that published this study was the RAND Corporation. On the other hand, said Biden, “the previous [Trump] administration relied on a review that resulted in a policy that set unnecessary barriers to military service.”
Biden failed to explain this “review” was conducted by the Department of Defense.
The findings were published in a March 2018 “Report and Recommendations.” A comparison of the RAND study with the Pentagon report helps to put the issue in perspective.
Most importantly, the RAND study was speculative and released around the time the Obama policy was announced. Since transgender people had never been permitted to serve in the U.S. military, RAND could only make projections based on experiences in the private sector and in other countries.
The Pentagon, on the other hand, provided actual data based on the 20 months or so of experience between when the Obama policy took effect and when the “Report and Recommendations” were issued, resulting in some interesting contrasts.
There is a reason why Sprigg attempts to trash the RAND Corporation. It's all about credibility. The RAND Corporation has been around since 1948 and since then has provided research and analysis to the United States Armed Forces. Its reputation is sterling.
By contrast, the March 2018 study supposedly done by the Department of Defense was in fact NOT done by the Department of Defense. In truth, it was done by an ad-hoc committee brought together by former VP Mike Pence. And the members of this committee were several anti-LGBTQ activists, including Tony Perkins. Perkins is the head of the Family Research Council and Sprigg's boss. In addition, Pence pushed hard for the ban, even to the point of overruling then Defense Secretary James Mattis who saw no problems with transgender men and women severing openly in the military:
According to a Zack Ford article in Think Progresson March 25, 2018:
Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern reported Friday night that, according to multiple sources, Pence played “a leading role” in creating the report, along with Ryan T. Anderson of the Heritage Foundation, which has been dubbed “Trump’s favorite think tank,” and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (FRC), an anti-LGBTQ hate group. Both Heritage and FRC praised the report Friday. According to Stern’s reporting, it was true that Mattis favored allowing transgender military service, but Pence “effectively overruled” him.
A separate source independently confirmed to ThinkProgress Saturday that Pence was involved, characterizing him as forming his own ad hoc “working group,” including Anderson and Perkins, separate from the panel of experts Mattis had assembled. Though it bears Mattis’ signature, the report released Friday appears to reflect the findings of Pence’s working group and not the committee report that Mattis submitted to Trump last month. Mattis’ original document was not currently publicly available at the time of the recommendation, but it was widely reported that Mattis favored an inclusive approach that resembled what had originally been proposed by Defense Secretary Ash Carter under President Obama in 2016. His February recommendation, also released Friday, jibes with the new report, contradicting reports at the time.
Ford goes on to carve up the report bit by bit, revealing its continued reliance on junk science. But here is the problem I have with this entire situation.
At my count, that's twice that the Family Research Council has attempted to pass off a study it had a hand in creating as legitimate Department of Defense work. My guess is that they are going to do it again and will continue to do so because very few in the media seems to care enough to put them on blast. With so many overwhelming things going on, folks aren't paying attention to how the religious right is creating a false narrative with about Biden and trans right. The attempt to reconfigure how Trump's ban came into place, while ignoring how they helped to create it, is only part of their plan
They stand in front of a broad canvas slowly but surely painting in a vile masterpiece filled with vividly colorful lies about how Biden is "erasing women," ignoring science, and putting Americans - particularly children - in jeopardy in order to satisfy a tiny but very intolerant minority (that's supposed to be us) with an "agenda" aimed at destruction.
If they are successful in this pursuit, LGBTQ Americans will be having some serious problems in the future.
The first LGBTQ characters I remember seeing on screen are the lesbians who fought Pam Grier in Foxy Brown. But it had an opposite effect on me than the one the makers of the movie probably desired.
I'm going to divert a little from the usual fare in order to tell an interesting story about LGBTQ images. I hope folks reading this will give their comments in the section below.
On Twitter today, a question was raised which had me chasing memories. It was:
Finish this sentence: The first time I remember seeing a queer person on screen was ______.
Ironically, as much as I write about LGBTQ issues, I could not remember the answer to this question. I remember seeing that Harry Hamlin movie, Making Love, in 1983 on network television courtesy of a channel in another state my T.V. could catch because my local station wouldn't show it.
I remember seeing a strange CBS movie, Welcome Home, Bobby in 1986 about a guy who may or may not have been gay.
And I remember seeing Revenge of the Nerds on VHS in the same year, which is extremely ironic because a little under a decade later, my college life mimicked that of the black gay character in the movie - i.e. being a semi-closeted black gay male in a predominantly white fraternity.
Then it came to me.
The first time I remember seeing a queer/LGBTQ person on screen was in the first movie I ever saw on screen - Foxy Brown starring Pam Grier. To the uninitiated, Grier was the queen of blaxploitation, which itself was a genre featuring generally low-budget action movies in the 1970s starring black characters. They were also very controversial. This particular movie, Foxy Brown, was one I saw at a drive-in with my uncle, aunt, and cousin when I was a little boy. In it, Grier was fighting a crime cartel in her neighborhood. The scene below was her attempting to rescue a prostitute from a lesbian bar:
One would think that this scene created a negative view of LGBTQ people in me. Actually, it was the opposite view. Being a small child, I didn't understand the dialogue, but it disturbed me tremendously how Grier caused a huge brawl. To my young mind, Grier went into the bar and began beating the hell out of the women who were simply minding their own business. Subsequently for a number of years - at least until college when I saw the movie again - I always had a fear of Pam Grier.. I saw her as the "big black lady with the afro who came to parties and fucked people up." I even imagined her using razor blades on folks (which she did not in this movie).
Maybe my experience proves how young people are simply too hip to fall for the junk that adults traffic to get us to fear each other. Or maybe, there was a small part of my mind which was aware of my LGBTQ sexual orientation, even at that young age, to recognize this silly attempt to demonize a bar full of lesbians.
Who knows? Regardless, I encourage and appreciate your comments about the first time you saw a queer/LGBTQ character on the screen.
We all know that the anti-LGBTQ industry is targeting the transgender community in an attempt to undermine President Biden's general push for LGBTQ rights. But we should as adept in knowing about the no-so secret weapon in its attack - Fox News. There is justifiable focus on distortions and lies propagated against the trans community as well as the groups pushing those lies, such as the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council. But equally important is spotlighting how Fox News is helping to spread these lies under the guise of "objective news coverage."
On January 20, President Joe Biden signed an executive order telling federal agencies to protect LGBTQ Americans from discrimination in numerous areas of public life, such as housing, health care, employment, public accommodations, and education. Despite the order’s myriad protections, over the following week, Fox News aired 19 segments -- totaling 51 minutes -- that miscategorized the order as a move that would destroy women’s sports; only one of those segments even alluded to its nondiscrimination protections.
. . . From January 20 through 27, Fox News aired at least 19 original segments that mentioned the executive order, amounting to a total of 51 minutes. In every segment, Fox hosts and guests misleadingly framed it as focused on trans athletes, falsely claiming it would allow boys to play in girls sports and that it would destroy women’s sports. The Fox personalities also repeatedly misgendered trans athletes as “biological males.”
In fact, only one segment of the 19 alluded to the broader nondiscrimination protections covered by the executive order. In that segment, anchor Sandra Smith asked, “President Biden signed an executive order aimed at eliminating discrimination based on gender identity, but instead of leveling the playing field, could this move threaten the future and fairness of girls sports?”
In some of the mentions, Fox framed the executive order around locker rooms and bathrooms in addition to athletics; right-wing media have long and falsely suggested allowing trans people to use the restroom would pose a threat to women’s safety and privacy.
And what's worse, according to Media Matters, not only did Fox News distort Biden's executive order, but the guests invited on its network shows to discuss the issue were others who did the same.
Notably, nine of the 19 segments were on Fox’s so-called “news” side programs (as opposed to opinion shows), and every single one of the guests or commentators who discussed the executive order held either right-leaning or anti-trans views. These included Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Beth Stelzer of anti-trans group Save Women’s Sports, and The Federalist’s Ben Domenech.
In other words, Fox News not only demonized trans Americans when talking about Biden's executive order, but also rigged the debate in general by inviting only the opponents of trans right to comment.
The report by Media Matters makes for good reading and studying if we are to call out the anti-LGBTQ industry's latest moral panic before it grows the teeth to bite us. The report underscores how the media's depiction of the debate over trans issues needs a huge overhaul with a bit more focus on trans Americans themselves and genuine medical experts who deal with their issues. It would definitely be an improvement over fake analysts, phony experts, and the news personalities who enable them with fear stories and lies appealing to basic prejudices and ignorance.
