right wing

Incredible hypocrisy about the FRC's own statements

Zinnia Jones, , , 16 Comments

In the wake of Wednesday’s tragic shooting of a security guard at the headquarters of the Family Research Council, right wing radio hosts Janet Mefferd and Peter LaBarbera have found someone to blame other than the shooter: people who quoted what the FRC’s staff, campaigns, and official publications have actually said.

Mefferd: I was reading through for example what the Human Rights Campaign had posted the day before the shooting and they had a whole list there that was very inflammatory about the Family Research Council, ‘they want to export homosexuals from the US’ and ‘they equate homosexuals with pedophiles’ and all this stuff. I thought: if you were somewhat of an unstable person and you read this sort of stuff and you were in line with what they believe I think it could drive somebody to violence. So we’re back to the question of, to what degree should there be public pressure on some of these gay rights organizations to tone it down?

Tone it down? These quotations are not something that LGBT groups have made up out of whole cloth. The FRC and its representatives really said these things. Peter Spring, senior fellow of the FRC, did say “I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them into the United States, because we believe that homosexuality is destructive to society.” Sprigg did say ” I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior.” And Tony Perkins, president of FRC, did say “While activists like to claim that pedophilia is a completely distinct orientation from homosexuality, evidence shows a disproportionate overlap between the two. … It is a homosexual problem.”

How exactly are we supposed to tone down their own words? If they’re really going to argue that mere exposure to their own words is sufficient to inspire violence (a notion they strangely find unthinkable when others point out that their ongoing campaign of homophobia and transphobia might be in part responsible for anti-LGBT hatred and violence, LGBT youth suicide, family rejection and homelessness), then how can they hold others accountable for simply quoting what they said, but not themselves for actually saying it? Why are they saying any of this in the first place if they don’t want anyone to know they said it, and believe that people are literally going to shoot them upon hearing what they’ve said?

It’s like they started with victim-blaming and ended up blaming everyone but themselves. When they say something, they are responsible for nothing; when we just quote what they said, we are responsible for everything. This makes no sense whatsoever. If you really don’t want anyone to notice that you said gay people are pedophiles who should be “exported” and criminalized, then there’s an easy way to avoid this: don’t say it in the first place.

Incredible hypocrisy about the FRC's own statements
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Incredible hypocrisy about the FRC’s own statements

Zinnia Jones, , , 16 Comments

In the wake of Wednesday’s tragic shooting of a security guard at the headquarters of the Family Research Council, right wing radio hosts Janet Mefferd and Peter LaBarbera have found someone to blame other than the shooter: people who quoted what the FRC’s staff, campaigns, and official publications have actually said.

Mefferd: I was reading through for example what the Human Rights Campaign had posted the day before the shooting and they had a whole list there that was very inflammatory about the Family Research Council, ‘they want to export homosexuals from the US’ and ‘they equate homosexuals with pedophiles’ and all this stuff. I thought: if you were somewhat of an unstable person and you read this sort of stuff and you were in line with what they believe I think it could drive somebody to violence. So we’re back to the question of, to what degree should there be public pressure on some of these gay rights organizations to tone it down?

Tone it down? These quotations are not something that LGBT groups have made up out of whole cloth. The FRC and its representatives really said these things. Peter Spring, senior fellow of the FRC, did say “I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them into the United States, because we believe that homosexuality is destructive to society.” Sprigg did say ” I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior.” And Tony Perkins, president of FRC, did say “While activists like to claim that pedophilia is a completely distinct orientation from homosexuality, evidence shows a disproportionate overlap between the two. … It is a homosexual problem.”

How exactly are we supposed to tone down their own words? If they’re really going to argue that mere exposure to their own words is sufficient to inspire violence (a notion they strangely find unthinkable when others point out that their ongoing campaign of homophobia and transphobia might be in part responsible for anti-LGBT hatred and violence, LGBT youth suicide, family rejection and homelessness), then how can they hold others accountable for simply quoting what they said, but not themselves for actually saying it? Why are they saying any of this in the first place if they don’t want anyone to know they said it, and believe that people are literally going to shoot them upon hearing what they’ve said?

It’s like they started with victim-blaming and ended up blaming everyone but themselves. When they say something, they are responsible for nothing; when we just quote what they said, we are responsible for everything. This makes no sense whatsoever. If you really don’t want anyone to notice that you said gay people are pedophiles who should be “exported” and criminalized, then there’s an easy way to avoid this: don’t say it in the first place.

Incredible hypocrisy about the FRC’s own statements

Nothing good will come of this

Zinnia Jones, , , 13 Comments

People who walk into random businesses or public places and open fire on innocents usually aren’t disposed to rational discourse or long-term planning, but Floyd Lee Corkins’ shooting of a security guard at the headquarters of the Family Research Council (allegedly accompanied by his declaration of “I don’t like your politics”) will surely do nothing but backfire. This wasn’t just needlessly violent and intolerably destructive – it will also prove to have been actively counterproductive.

The FRC and all other anti-gay right-wing groups that share its goals won’t hesitate to exploit this incident to portray themselves as the real victims in their ongoing fight against liberal values. NOM is already at it, demanding that bigoted, hateful groups no longer be called “bigoted” or “hateful” or “hate groups” because apparently that will cause people to shoot them (raising the question of why exactly it took so long for that to happen even once). I fully expect that they’ll continue bringing this up for the foreseeable future whenever they find it convenient to make supporters of gay rights look like maniacs who want to kill them – which is to say, always.

And every single time they milk this for more sympathy, we’ll be obliged to recite ad nauseam that yes, we unambiguously deplore all violence, no, this is never an acceptable approach to civil debate in the public sphere, yes, this was a terrible tragedy and our hearts go out to the victim, no, this man does not represent what we stand for… and so on. Meanwhile, they’ll continue working to criminalize our relationships, ban our marriages, tear apart our families, exclude us from full participation in our society, depict us as child abusers, and fight tooth and nail against our progress at every step. And now, they’ll be forcing us to apologize along the way.

You wounded more than just one person yesterday, Floyd.

Nothing good will come of this

We don't care about your dead guy

Zinnia Jones, , , 48 Comments

CNN contributor Dana Loesch recently provided a textbook example of how ready and willing religious conservatives are to leap into a shameless, disgustingly self-righteous defense of their narrow and exclusive version of faith, utilizing every fallacy at their disposal to pretend this is the One True Religion, while not even respecting it enough to bother trying to make a valid argument. They demonstrate no real concern for whether they’re actually right – sheer loudness and repetition will suffice to convince themselves of this.

This five-minute excerpt from the July 24 episode of Loesch’s radio show is a display of rapid-fire ignorance so packed with intellectual dishonesty that it’s a challenge just to keep up with it. When a caller says she refuses to go to Chick-fil-A because of the upper management’s homophobic beliefs and funding of anti-gay causes, Loesch responds with a string of claims so ridiculous, it’s difficult to accept that she even believes what she’s saying.

She first tells the caller:  “I don’t understand how you can claim to practice the Christian faith while saying that someone else’s Christian viewpoint is hate.” Apparently nothing can possibly be hateful as long as it’s part of someone’s “Christian viewpoint”. It doesn’t matter what their viewpoint is, or how obviously hateful it would otherwise be – claiming it’s covered by some kind of Christianity is enough to legitimize it. But Loesch takes this even further, telling the caller, “you consider aspects of the Christian faith to be hate” – as if criticizing Chick-fil-A is the same as criticizing Christianity as a whole. Is the anti-gay stance of a chicken company now a defining feature of the Christian religion, delineating what is and is not Christianity?

And then comes the most hollow accusation I’ve ever heard: “You only subscribe to certain aspects of Christianity.” You know, unlike all of the other Christians who somehow follow every mutually contradictory belief that’s ever been endorsed by thousands of different Christian sects. When the caller rightly points this out, Loesch objects: “That’s not how the gospels are presented!” Well, you’d better go tell that to every Christian who’s ever existed. Congratulations to Dana Loesch, the one person who, out of billions of Christians throughout history, has finally established what Christianity truly is.

Finally, Loesch claims that if she thinks so-called “traditional marriage” is “hateful”, then she’s “literally calling Christ hateful”. It’s not unexpected to see conservative Christians twist any criticism of their openly prejudiced beliefs into some kind of personal attack against their head honcho in heaven, but the sheer arrogance of treating disagreement with their views as a direct assault on the almighty creator of the universe is always staggering. Of course, Loesch wasn’t finished taking offense on behalf of her imaginary savior, concluding: “I know you hate Christ.”

That’s just how immersed some people are in their religious worldview. They can’t conceive of any kind of difference of opinion without it being forced into the framework of either loving or hating their preferred deity. If you don’t agree with them, if you don’t follow their personal interpretation of religion,  if you don’t patronize a business whose president declares that support for marriage equality means shaking our fist at God, that means you are literally hating some guy who died 2,000 years ago. This is nonsense. We don’t need to hate or love your Jesus – he’s just not that important. Try to understand that just because he matters to you, that doesn’t mean he matters to us. This is about what you said, and we simply don’t care about some unaccountable corpse to whom you attribute your beliefs.

We don't care about your dead guy

We don’t care about your dead guy

Zinnia Jones, , , 48 Comments

CNN contributor Dana Loesch recently provided a textbook example of how ready and willing religious conservatives are to leap into a shameless, disgustingly self-righteous defense of their narrow and exclusive version of faith, utilizing every fallacy at their disposal to pretend this is the One True Religion, while not even respecting it enough to bother trying to make a valid argument. They demonstrate no real concern for whether they’re actually right – sheer loudness and repetition will suffice to convince themselves of this.

This five-minute excerpt from the July 24 episode of Loesch’s radio show is a display of rapid-fire ignorance so packed with intellectual dishonesty that it’s a challenge just to keep up with it. When a caller says she refuses to go to Chick-fil-A because of the upper management’s homophobic beliefs and funding of anti-gay causes, Loesch responds with a string of claims so ridiculous, it’s difficult to accept that she even believes what she’s saying.

She first tells the caller:  “I don’t understand how you can claim to practice the Christian faith while saying that someone else’s Christian viewpoint is hate.” Apparently nothing can possibly be hateful as long as it’s part of someone’s “Christian viewpoint”. It doesn’t matter what their viewpoint is, or how obviously hateful it would otherwise be – claiming it’s covered by some kind of Christianity is enough to legitimize it. But Loesch takes this even further, telling the caller, “you consider aspects of the Christian faith to be hate” – as if criticizing Chick-fil-A is the same as criticizing Christianity as a whole. Is the anti-gay stance of a chicken company now a defining feature of the Christian religion, delineating what is and is not Christianity?

And then comes the most hollow accusation I’ve ever heard: “You only subscribe to certain aspects of Christianity.” You know, unlike all of the other Christians who somehow follow every mutually contradictory belief that’s ever been endorsed by thousands of different Christian sects. When the caller rightly points this out, Loesch objects: “That’s not how the gospels are presented!” Well, you’d better go tell that to every Christian who’s ever existed. Congratulations to Dana Loesch, the one person who, out of billions of Christians throughout history, has finally established what Christianity truly is.

Finally, Loesch claims that if she thinks so-called “traditional marriage” is “hateful”, then she’s “literally calling Christ hateful”. It’s not unexpected to see conservative Christians twist any criticism of their openly prejudiced beliefs into some kind of personal attack against their head honcho in heaven, but the sheer arrogance of treating disagreement with their views as a direct assault on the almighty creator of the universe is always staggering. Of course, Loesch wasn’t finished taking offense on behalf of her imaginary savior, concluding: “I know you hate Christ.”

That’s just how immersed some people are in their religious worldview. They can’t conceive of any kind of difference of opinion without it being forced into the framework of either loving or hating their preferred deity. If you don’t agree with them, if you don’t follow their personal interpretation of religion,  if you don’t patronize a business whose president declares that support for marriage equality means shaking our fist at God, that means you are literally hating some guy who died 2,000 years ago. This is nonsense. We don’t need to hate or love your Jesus – he’s just not that important. Try to understand that just because he matters to you, that doesn’t mean he matters to us. This is about what you said, and we simply don’t care about some unaccountable corpse to whom you attribute your beliefs.

We don’t care about your dead guy

20 years of perspective on Chick-fil-A

Zinnia Jones, , , 28 Comments

…which Liberty Counsel’s Matt Barber clearly lacks:

Sure, massive public displays of prejudice are always disappointing. But let’s look at the bigger picture. Set gay rights back 20 years? Really, what did Chickenpalooza ’12 actually accomplish?

– Showed us how many people don’t prioritize LGBT equality at all, fail to comprehend what “freedom of speech” means, and will probably never understand or accept people like us.

Yeah, that’s pretty harsh. But how about everything the chicken controversy didn’t do? For instance, it didn’t…

– Revoke same-sex marriage in Portugal, Iceland, Argentina, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Canada, Spain, South Africa, Belgium, the Netherlands, Mexico City, Massachusetts, New York, New Hampshire, Washington, D.C., Iowa, Vermont and Connecticut.

– Revoke civil unions in Ireland, Lichtenstein, Hungary, Austria, Colombia, Ecuador, Switzerland, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom*, Luxembourg, Finland, Germany, France, California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Rhode Island, Nevada, Washington, New Jersey and Maine.

– Re-criminalize homosexuality in Mozambique, Fiji, India, Nicaragua, Panama, Nepal, Tokelau, Puerto Rico, Cape Verde, Marshall Islands, San Marino, Iraq, China, Mongolia, Romania, Costa Rica, Armenia, the United States, Azerbaijan, Gabon, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chile, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, South Africa, Southern Cyprus, Tajikistan, Ecuador, Tasmania, Macedonia, Macau, Albania, Moldova, Bermuda, Germany, Serbia, Belarus, Gibraltar, Ireland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Russia.

– Re-ban gay people from the military in the United States, Serbia, Argentina, the Philippines, Uruguay, Russia, Britain, Romania, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Canada.

– Revoke the Matthew Shepard Act.

– Make Barack Obama un-endorse same-sex marriage.

As far as I’m concerned, they can go ahead and wallow in their greasy “victory” if it makes them happy. Let them think they’re actually doing something with any real impact, and meanwhile, we’ll keep progressing toward full equality for everyone.

* Thanks to David Hart for the correction.

20 years of perspective on Chick-fil-A

After Regnerus debacle, where are the apologies?

Zinnia Jones, , , 13 Comments

Now that an internal audit at Social Science Research has confirmed that Mark Regnerus’ “gay parenting” study was indeed so badly flawed it never should have survived peer review, it’s safe to say that we can move past examining the specifics of how it went wrong, and start looking at the deeper question of why so many in the media and the right wing readily accepted its conclusions with little critical scrutiny while dismissing the valid concerns raised by others. Given that their hailing of the study as a revelation about the supposed inferiority of same-sex parents was actually based on a paper that should have been immediately disqualified from publication, are they prepared to correct the record? What many of them described as a paper about “gay parenting” covered barely a handful of respondents who had lived with same-sex couples as parents for an appreciable fraction of their childhood, far too few to be representative of the true proficiency of same-sex parents. This is not merely a matter of partisan political opinion – Regnerus himself acknowledged these shortcomings. Are these reporters and activists willing to admit they were wrong?

Where is the apology from Maggie Gallagher, who wrote that the Regnerus study is “the best gay-parenting study we have to date” and shows that “the ideal for a child is a married mom and dad”, when the study’s “gay fathers” and “lesbian mothers” groups were actually packed with as many unstable families as possible?

Where is the apology from William Saletan of Slate, who decried legitimate criticism of the study’s faulty conclusions as part of a “liberal war on science”?

Where is the apology from Ed Whelan of the National Review, who described all other studies on same-sex parenting as “schlock social science” compared to the Regnerus study, and claimed that the new study discredits “the junk social science that so many proponents of same-sex marriage propagate”, even as he admitted that he doesn’t “regard Regnerus’s study as authoritatively and definitively settling much of anything”?

Where is the apology from Mona Charen, who claimed the study showed that “same-sex households provide children with the least stability”, when the study actually included hardly any actual households with same-sex parents?

Where is the apology from the Deseret News, which also erroneously claimed that the study’s results reflect “children growing up in lesbian households” – and then, ironically, called for “healthy skepticism for so-called consensus findings, especially with regard to hot-button social issues where the biases of researchers might influence design and interpretation”?

Where is the apology from Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council, who uncritically repeated the study’s methodological sleight-of-hand of defining a child of “homosexual parents” as having at least one parent who ever had a same-sex relationship?

Where is the apology from Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, who cited the study’s clearly insufficient data to demand that gay parents should be denied custody of their children?

Where is the apology from the American College of Pediatricians, a non-authoritative anti-gay group which cited the Regnerus study in an amicus brief in a federal case against the Defense of Marriage Act and again falsely claimed that it was about “children raised by same-sex couples”?

Where is the apology from political strategist Frank Schubert, who claimed that the study’s results warrant banning same-sex marriage?

Where is the apology from Christian Smith, who glossed over the study’s flaws and instead dismissed criticism of its shortcomings as “an academic auto-da-fé” against Regnerus?

Where is the apology from the 18 social scientists who claimed that “much of the public criticism Regnerus has received is unwarranted” and misleadingly described it as a “study on same-sex parenting”? (And if you’re impressed by that number, note that 200 researchers signed a letter which raised concerns about “the academic integrity of the peer review process for this paper as well as its intellectual merit”.)

We can keep going all day. I realize not everyone has an education in social science – I certainly don’t. But the mistakes of the Regnerus study are easily understandable by the layperson, and those in the media whose job it is to report on this have an obligation to do so accurately in the course of informing the public. Here, many of them have failed, and because of their lack of diligence, they’ve unjustly impugned parents like me and my partner in the minds of millions. They are responsible for that. Does this not warrant an apology? Can they admit that they were wrong, that these criticisms of the study’s structure and conclusions were indeed valid, and that they failed to recognize this? Or do they just not do this anymore?

After Regnerus debacle, where are the apologies?

Defining deviancy up, down, and every which way

Zinnia Jones, , 27 Comments

Career bigot Linda Harvey is quite dismayed that Alan Chambers, Exodus International’s “ex-gay” president, admitted that homosexuality has no “cure” and he’s still attracted to men:

This shows very poor judgment as the leader of this ministry to, first of all, be experiencing this and secondly, to announce it to the whole world. Of course a person can leave homosexuality; there are thousands of people who have done it and God’s word clearly states that he can deliver us from sin. And the proud, open sinner who is publicly proclaiming it as good in defiance of God’s word? It is highly questionable that such a person is saved. […] We would not be making this exception for well-adjusted adulterers would we? How about a compassionate pedophile? What about incest like two brothers involved in homosexuality? Why not just defy God’s word on this?

Yes, it’s the old “gays are like pedophiles” angle: not just a difference of moral outlook, but a disconnect from reality so wide and deep that no distinction is made between acting on one’s desires in a way that results in raping children, and acting on one’s desires in a way that results in pissing off Linda Harvey. It’s revealing that such a false equivalence is even necessary for them to make. We don’t see them arguing the reverse – “pedophilia is just as bad as homosexuality!” – even if this is exactly what their equation of homosexuality to pedophilia entails. Pedophilia is able to stand alone as a Very Bad Thing. Homosexuality isn’t, which is why the comparison to pedophilia is needed. Its perceived Badness must be elevated.

A largely unrecognized implication of this claim is that the corollary of “Did you seriously just compare us to pedophiles?” is indeed “What the hell? You really think pedophiles are no worse than gay people?” And those who make this argument probably didn’t expect, or intend, that some people might agree with them in exactly the opposite way: that pedophilia should be considered just as acceptable as homosexuality. On one side, we have St. Petersburg banning “the promotion of homosexuality and pedophilia”. On the flip side, we have Reddit users endlessly defending pedophiles by comparing them to gay people:

If we as a society can accept that one can be born gay, why do we feel that pedophilia is a behavior which is chosen?

That’s the same kind of thinking as a anti-gay supporter. It’s not his choice to have the attraction, nor is he acting upon it.

I disagree with you. I think it is genetic, along with being homosexual. I have quite a few friends who are gay, and they have known since they were 4-5 years old that they liked the same gender as themselves. They can remember back to PE class changing in the locker room, etc.

That surely wasn’t a choice… it was predetermined.

Being gay, I tend to agree with this, and I think this is the reason why I’m so sympathetic towards pedophiles. I didn’t choose to like guys, and so I’d imagine they didn’t choose to like kids. And, I don’t think they should be thrown in jail just for liking kids (or possession of child porn, which I think is a problem with the person who made it, and not the person viewing), but, I do believe they should get help in order to manage their urges.

In all seriousness though, maybe being a pedophile isn’t a decision any more than being gay is, which would make treatment…very complicated.

Does the LGBT community accept pedos for who they are? Not child molesters but people attracted to younger people. do they accept them as being in the same boat as them since its not really their choice to be attracted to who they are attracted to?

Homosexuality is a significant deviation in ‘normal’ sexual behavior shared by a fairly large number of adults. Likewise, pedophilia is a significant deviation from normal sexual attraction shared by a fairly large number of adults, although not as prevalent as homosexuality. I think there are legitimate similarities that can be discussed as long as everyone remains mature.

Heterosexuality, homosexuality, and pedophilia to me are very comparable.

There would be no problem with pedophilia if it weren’t for that the fact that children cannot consent to sex. How is pedophilia any different that people are strictly attracted to a certain race, a certain body time, or a certain sex (same or opposite)? The only difference I can surmise is the issue of consent.

No because then it’d be putting it out there that I am one and I equate any counseling on the subject matter to “praying out the gay”. It’s who I am and there’s zero chance that I’d hurt anyone so therapy isn’t for me.

You would be right in saying it is involuntary, and the notion that people would choose to be a pedophile, like you said, is just ludicrous. For me I have no control over my thoughts, however, I have complete control over my actions. That is the most crucial and the absolute crux of my argument here. The same goes for gays, lesbians, people who are into beastiality, you name it. Sexual desire is ingrained into your mind. Only the strongest of people are actually able to block out their thoughts, something that I hope one day I can achieve.

To clear this up for you, being a pedophile is not a choice. At least for me. I can’t imagine that there are many people out there who want to be a pedophile to be honest. I would put it in the same boat as being gay/lesbian, it is uncontrollable and simply your sexual preference.

Here’s a horrible thought: Imagine that pedophiles are born that way and they are not actually cured by therapy any more than gays are. And here the world is, dragging their reputations through the mud because of a few bad eggs, and trying to ‘cure’ them.

You are right in that children cannot consent (which, in fact, many times they can. Who hasn’t fantasized about having sex as a kid?), but I chose my sexuality just as little as a gay person. I didn’t decide to become a pedophile, it’s not like I said “Hey, I think I’m gonna be attracted to children”.

Yes, I do take offense when people call it a disease, because it’s not. There is absolutely nothing wrong with me, physically or mentally, and I would need not visit a psychiatrist for this. I do have a friend, however, who is a pedophile just like me, and he had to to talk to a psychologist because he had got the impression from society that it was wrong, that who he was is shameful and evil.

Yeah, just like gays should get help for being homosexuals? Fuck you, having a different sexual orientation doesnt make you sick. This kind of shit, saying that people who has a different sexual orientation are “sick” leads to depression & suicide.

Look, if some 16 yo gay kid made a video on youtube saying how is bullied and discriminated for being gay then everyone would try to support him… While pedos have NONE of that support. Isnt that hypocrysy?

Your situation is akin to the situation of homosexuals 50 years ago (or even now) where people tried to “cure them”, to cure their homosexuality. Now people think that pedophiles are “sick” and need to be put on a mental institution. I HATE what has happened to you and I sincerely, completely give you my support, because I was in a similar situation myself. We need to keep fighting so no more kids are placed in your situation.

YOU ARE NOT SICK. YOU ARE NOT A “PERVERT” OR HAVE AN “ILLNESS”. Its just another sexual orientation.Please, dont ever give up and think you are worthless. I wish I could hug you 🙁

I think its funny when people are pro gay rights but are so ignorant about pedophiles and think they are bad people. Well yes, to do sexual things or take advantage of a child is bad but just like being gay they are born that way, I am sure most people do not want to be attracted to children.

It pains me to think that there might never be a “cure” for your “condition.” I put those words in quotes because I HATE having to use them. Like I said, your attraction to children doesn’t make you a bad person, it just has unfortunate consequences. The only reason society would want to “cure” you is to avoid those consequences. I hope I don’t sound like I think you need to be dissected on an operating table or something. I also hate having to use those words because many people have talked similarly about “curing” gays, which even if possible, would be totally stupid and unnecessary. It seems to me that both homosexuals and pedophiles are similarly wired in the brain from an early age (in most cases), its just that pedophilia comes with repercussions that being gay doesn’t.

Well, I certainly don’t consider it to be a disease. I think that the jury is still out on it being a sexuality. I think that some people are afraid that recognising that it most likely forms in the same way homosexuality does and at the same time as sexuality is determined, gives acting on it some sort of legitimacy. I don’t think this is necessarily the case. I don’t think that is an illness, no.

(I stopped here not because I ran out of examples, but because I was too disheartened to continue.)

In a world where people recognize that homosexuality is clearly not morally objectionable, dishonestly equating it to pedophilia won’t necessarily succeed in making homosexuality seem worse than it really is. It could just make pedophilia seem better than it really is. Linda Harvey and other homophobes don’t seem to have predicted the full scope of the moral chaos they’ve introduced with these ignorant claims. The problem with placing arson, murder and eating ice cream on the same level isn’t just that people might turn against ice cream. They might also side with ice cream, along with the rest of the ethical bundle – glossing over the key fact that any momentary weakness which ends in eating ice cream won’t burn anyone’s house down.

Defining deviancy up, down, and every which way

Citizens for Community Values: Mere awareness of LGBT existence will “confuse children”

Zinnia Jones, , , 31 Comments

In a story on the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow site, Phil Burress of Citizens for Community Values claims that training foster parents in how to care for potentially LGBT children is how “homosexual activists continue to build their numbers”:

Potential foster parents may be required to spend 40 hours in gender sensitivity training, thanks to AB 1865 — a bill that has already passed in the California Assembly. It would require an “administrator of a group home facility, licensed foster parent,” or an “extended family member caregiver” to undergo training to provide care for lesbian, “gay,” bisexual or transgender children.

Phil Burress of Citizens for Community Values (CCV) does not think this will actually benefit the children.

“It’s going to continue to confuse children,” he asserts. “This is the way the homosexual activists continue to build their numbers — is to get people confused about their gender identity and start acting out.”

It’s always puzzling when people think that children can’t legitimately know whether they’re gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender and any knowledge of these concepts will only “confuse them”, yet accept without question the assumption that all children must be straight and cisgender. This is the result of a mentality that pathologizes sexual diversity and gender variance as somehow being caused by bad influences – it’s beyond their comprehension that this could actually be a natural, normal and acceptable part of who someone is.

Will increased awareness of LGBT identities lead more people to identify as LGBT? Yes, but not because such knowledge causes anyone to become anything they weren’t before. It just means that those who are in a gender/sexual minority will now have the conceptual basis to describe and understand who and what they are, instead of being confused and only knowing that they’re somehow different. That’s not a problem. It’s a solution!

And what’s with the scare quotes around “gay” only? Are the rest of us not important enough to have our identities passive-aggressively questioned? OneNewsNow previously ran into trouble with an automated system to replace the word “gay” with “homosexual”, which resulted in a story about Olympic sprinter “Tyson Homosexual”. I suppose Tyson “Gay” would at least be a step up.

Citizens for Community Values: Mere awareness of LGBT existence will “confuse children”

Citizens for Community Values: Mere awareness of LGBT existence will "confuse children"

Zinnia Jones, , , 31 Comments

In a story on the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow site, Phil Burress of Citizens for Community Values claims that training foster parents in how to care for potentially LGBT children is how “homosexual activists continue to build their numbers”:

Potential foster parents may be required to spend 40 hours in gender sensitivity training, thanks to AB 1865 — a bill that has already passed in the California Assembly. It would require an “administrator of a group home facility, licensed foster parent,” or an “extended family member caregiver” to undergo training to provide care for lesbian, “gay,” bisexual or transgender children.

Phil Burress of Citizens for Community Values (CCV) does not think this will actually benefit the children.

“It’s going to continue to confuse children,” he asserts. “This is the way the homosexual activists continue to build their numbers — is to get people confused about their gender identity and start acting out.”

It’s always puzzling when people think that children can’t legitimately know whether they’re gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender and any knowledge of these concepts will only “confuse them”, yet accept without question the assumption that all children must be straight and cisgender. This is the result of a mentality that pathologizes sexual diversity and gender variance as somehow being caused by bad influences – it’s beyond their comprehension that this could actually be a natural, normal and acceptable part of who someone is.

Will increased awareness of LGBT identities lead more people to identify as LGBT? Yes, but not because such knowledge causes anyone to become anything they weren’t before. It just means that those who are in a gender/sexual minority will now have the conceptual basis to describe and understand who and what they are, instead of being confused and only knowing that they’re somehow different. That’s not a problem. It’s a solution!

And what’s with the scare quotes around “gay” only? Are the rest of us not important enough to have our identities passive-aggressively questioned? OneNewsNow previously ran into trouble with an automated system to replace the word “gay” with “homosexual”, which resulted in a story about Olympic sprinter “Tyson Homosexual”. I suppose Tyson “Gay” would at least be a step up.

Citizens for Community Values: Mere awareness of LGBT existence will "confuse children"