Debunking the Bigotry of the "National Organization for Marriage"

Getting to the Bottom of Bigotry & Hatred, i.e. Understanding the American Family Association of Pennsylvania

by Dr. Joe Wenke - Huffington Post - June 18, 2013:

Hatred and bigotry are very old news. Yet they're in the news every day. More than that, they're in our face constantly, particularly on the Web. The Web is great, but the anonymity of social media provides the perfect breeding ground for haters to spew their hate speech.

Last week, when Sebastien de la Cruz, an 11-year-old Mexican-American boy wearing a mariachi outfit, sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the third NBA finals game in San Antonio, Texas, his performance was met with a torrent of ethnic, anti-immigrant hatred. The bigoted response to this little boy, who was invited back to perform the national anthem for the fourth game, was shocking but hardly surprising.

Hate speech is absolutely pervasive on major social media sites 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For example, check out the comments on just about any YouTube video featuring a member of any minority group. They're disgusting. I've also found that if you hit the wrong button, so to speak, on Twitter (like if you type the words "gun control"), you are immediately treated to a barrage of vitriol and contempt.

Hatred is so pervasive that there's the danger that we may actually get used to it, become numb to it, write it off as "same old same old." If you feel yourself drifting in that direction, consider the anti-LGBTQ comments that were generated by a recent HuffPost story on the extremely high incidence of suicide attempts among LGBTQ youth in San Francisco. Some of the comments are downright pathological. Consider, for example, the following remark, which has since been removed: "This [i.e., the high incidence of suicide attempts among LGBTQ youth] is really good news. It is nice to see these kids care enough about the pain & embarrassment that they brought upon their parents, to end it once and for all."

Comments like that make me ashamed to be a human being. They also make me ask the obvious question: Why do people hate other people? What's at the bottom of hatred and bigotry?

For example, what exactly is it about a human being's sexual orientation that triggers such hate? What's it to them -- the haters of gay, lesbian and bisexual people -- whom other people are sexually attracted to and love? Why are transgender people so hated, so marginalized? Why is there so little respect for these courageous people?

Why do so many men hate women (and there seem to be a lot)? Why do they, the hateful men, think that they are superior to the women they hate? And what about hatred based on race, ethnicity, country of origin, religious or political beliefs? What's going on? Why is hatred so prevalent? Why is it such a big part of the human experience?

It's pretty weird when you think about it: Bigots hate people they don't know. They hate them because of the group they belong to. If you're a member of the group they hate, then they hate you even though they know nothing else about you. That's the very definition of bigotry.

But why hate a group of people? Well, in almost every case, people don't hate people from the group they belong to. They hate people from a group they don't belong to. For example, straight people don't hate other straight people just because they're straight, and white people don't hate other white people just because they're white. Haters, bigots, seem almost invariably to hate people who are different from them. To the haters, "different" is bad. Are they afraid of the different people? Do they feel threatened by them? On the other hand, are they perhaps secretly attracted to them? If they do feel threatened, however, what exactly is the threat? Do they think they are going to be hurt by the different people? Do they think the different people are going to take something important away from them -- like a job or a girlfriend? Are they going to change the neighborhood? Do they speak a language that the haters don't speak or understand? Do they dress differently? Eat different types of food? Celebrate different holidays?

It certainly appears to be part of the character of some human beings to hate whomever is different from them. That's really bad. That's really disturbing, but the whole truth is even worse. What's the whole truth? Two more things. Number 1: Bigots don't think they're bigots. They think they're right. Number 2: Often the justification for bigotry is based on religion. The justification for the denigration of women goes all the way back to the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible. Similarly, the justification for believing that black people are inferior to white people, indeed the justification for slavery itself, was for hundreds of years based on the Bible story of the curse of Ham. Anti-Semitism has often been justified by the absurd idea that all Jewish people are responsible for killing Jesus, who was, of course, Jewish. Then there's the belief that your religion is the one true religion and that other people not only have no right to different religious beliefs but have no right to live. That incredibly lethal idea comes to fruition in the oxymoronic notion of "holy war," which is perpetuated today by the radical Islamic interpretation of jihad but which has a long and bloody history in Christianity as well, as evidenced by the Crusades and the Inquisition.

Most LGBTQ bigots base their bigotry on their religious beliefs, only they don't see their beliefs as bigoted; they think they're right, and they believe that their bigoted view of LGBTQ people is sanctioned by God. According to these people, being homosexual is unnatural, perverted, or, to use the Catholic Church's term, "disordered." I cannot conceive of a more hateful or disgusting characterization of another human being than to say that the very way that they are, their very being, is unnatural or perverted, but that is exactly what LGBTQ bigots believe. That's why "love the sinner, hate the sin" is really just a form of hate speech rather than legitimate Christian compassion. It says, "I don't hate you. You're my neighbor. The Bible tells me to love my neighbor, and I do, but you, my neighbor, need to change. Being homosexual is not an essential part of your being. You weren't born that way. Something went wrong somewhere. You need to acknowledge that and get some therapy. Go straight. Love someone of the opposite gender. If you can't do that, well, then you can never marry or have sex. By the way, you can't be a Boy Scout either."

I don't think we'll ever really know why human beings hate, but we do know how they most often justify their hatred. They do it through religion. It is profoundly disturbing but true: When it comes to sanctioning hatred and bigotry, religion is most definitely the root of all evil.

The War on Gays: American Christian Zealots Promote Bigotry Abroad

from The Economist - May 4, 2013:

IT MIGHT seem only a nasty coincidence. As gay rights advance in the West—France and New Zealand are the latest countries to legalise same-sex marriage—homophobia is on the rise elsewhere. But these apparently contradictory trends may be related. Confounded at home, a crusading squad of American conservative Christians are taking the fight abroad.


In an unusual case, brought under the Alien Tort Statute, a judge in Massachusetts is pondering a claim by Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), a gay-rights group, against Scott Lively, a preacher and co-author of “The Pink Swastika” (which argues that Nazism was fuelled by homosexuality). Mr Lively visited Uganda in 2009, meeting politicians, appearing on television, and sharing his theories about homosexuals’ recruitment of youngsters.

Shortly afterwards a Ugandan MP introduced a parliamentary bill that would stiffen existing penalties for homosexual behaviour; among other drastic measures it mandated the death sentence for “aggravated” homosexuality. Amid a burst of anti-gay vitriol, and headlines such as “Hang Them, They Are After Our Kids”, a gay activist was murdered. SMUG alleges that, on this occasion and previously, Mr Lively conspired to persecute Ugandan homosexuals. He says he advocated therapy and prevention, not harsh punishments.

This episode is part of a wider campaign. Other preachers, such as Lou Engle, a fundamentalist pastor at a megachurch in Kansas, have also been to Uganda. A new documentary, “God Loves Uganda”, depicts co-ordination between the visitors, resident missionaries and American-trained Ugandan priests. Offshoots of the American Centre for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a group founded by the televangelist Pat Robertson, in Kenya and Zimbabwe, are said to have resisted gay-friendly changes to their constitutions. (The ACLJ insists it “does not export an agenda”.)

In Africa campaigners adopt the language of anti-colonialism, portraying gay rights, and even homosexuality itself, as Western impositions; opponents counter that the criminalisation of gay sex is itself largely a legacy of empire. But the rhetoric and tactics are flexible. The Americans are happy, when necessary, to co-operate with like-minded Roman Catholic and Orthodox believers, which barely count as Christian in the eyes of extreme Protestants. Hardline Islamists are tacit allies too.

In the former Soviet Union, where homosexuality has mostly been legalised, the emphasis is on preventing its “promotion”. Here, says Julie Dorf of the Council for Global Equality, a lobby group based in Washington, DC, American efforts are feeding prejudice and anti-gay legislation.

Two bills trundling through Ukraine’s parliament, for example, would criminalise gay “propaganda” (a similar bill is on the stocks in Russia’s Duma). To be sure, indigenous hostility (sometimes violent) towards homosexuality abounds. But Jim Mulcahy, a retired priest now ministering to gays in Ukraine, thinks the anti-gay lobby’s resources and multimedia techniques bespeak American involvement.

Both Paul Cameron, an American psychologist who likens homosexuality to drug use, and Mr Lively, have toured eastern Europe. Gay activists in Moldova say that outsiders’ influence helped to reduce the prominence of sexuality in a recent anti-discrimination law. In Latvia Mr Lively fraternised with a church whose members have harassed gay-pride marches.

A third front is the Caribbean and Central America. Caleb Orozco of UNIBAM, a gay-rights group in Belize, is arguing in court that its criminalisation of homosexual sex violates the constitution. According to Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Centre, an American civil-rights watchdog, a coalition of churches resisting the move is supported by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), another American outfit. (The ADF, like Mr Engle, could not be reached for comment.) Belize’s most prominent anti-gay cleric is American; his church is affiliated to a ministry in Arizona, whose leader has urged believers to raise the dead in morgues. Mr Orozco has been threatened and attacked with a bottle.

Collateral Damage


The American fundamentalists see themselves as defending biblical values and stemming degeneracy. Abroad, the policies they advance in that cause are often more extreme than those they espouse at home (though Mr Lively would like to “re-criminalise adultery, fornication and homosexuality” in America, too, albeit as minor misdemeanours). Several would like to usher in a global theocracy.

In America exponents of such ideas are liable to be dismissed as cranks and bigots; for their part they regard their own country as morally lost. But on their travels abroad they receive a respectful hearing, addressing parliaments and appearing on mainstream television.

That sort of reception boosts morale, but can offer practical benefits, too. Influence, visibility and access, in countries where (as the faithful see it) righteousness remains unvanquished, all help with fund-raising. The activists often traverse the same circuit, in what could be seen as a kind of competition.

The arguments they deploy make the connection between the changes in the West and the pushback elsewhere explicit. Anti-discrimination laws and other liberalising reforms are evidence of a worldwide secular conspiracy, against which Africa, or eastern Europe, or the Caribbean must fortify themselves. Occasional rebukes by the American government about persecution of gays abroad only prove the conspiracy’s power. Some clues suggest that the itinerants’ real focus is elsewhere. Their sound and fury about issues such as gay marriage and adoption may resonate in America, yet have little relevance in countries where even private homosexual acts are illegal.

Kapya Kaoma, an Anglican priest from Zambia who works for Political Research Associates, a liberal think-tank in Boston, observes that the campaigners face a powerful progressive lobby at home, but in east Africa their adversaries are isolated and weak. The suffering of homosexuals in such places, he says, is “collateral damage” in America’s culture wars.

When Did You Choose to Be Straight?

Street interviews conducted by Travis Nuckolls and Chris Baker in Colorado Springs prove that asking the right question can be more important than anything you can tell someone.

The Good, Bigoted People

By Nico Lang - The Huffington Post:

When you're a kid, you don't see difference. You're trained to see difference by a society that tells you that other people are not like you. You are told to hate that.


My parents taught me what gay people were. Before he divorced my mother, I remember watching a Richard Simmons video at home with my father and Julia, our nurse. Julia loved Richard Simmons and so did I -- for his loud costumes, wild hair and the way the screen lit up when he was on camera. Simmons didn't look like most other people I saw on TV, and his voice was unbearably shrill, but I liked that. It was how my prepubescent, pre-queer voice sounded. I thought he meant I could be myself. Instead, my father made us change the channel, because he didn't want to watch that. I asked him what "that" was. I wanted know why I wasn't allowed to sweat to the oldies. I felt like Lucy Ricardo, kept from the one thing I really wanted for reasons that weren't clear. Why couldn't I be in the show? He wouldn't say.

The next time I saw Richard Simmons on TV, I changed the channel myself.

A few years later, I was driving down the road with my mother after we went to get a soda at the store. I bought a Sprite because it had the most bubbles, and I liked the way they tickled my nose when they reached the surface. I put it between my legs so I could put my hands out the rolled-down window, trying to grab the summer air. We were listening to Elton John, as he pined in space for a home he could never return to. Elton John was my mother's favorite, and she loved him dearly. She sometimes would sway with him in the dark as she got used to a life without my father. Elton was her candle in the divorce. However, she told me that if she I found out I was "like that," she would "lock me in a closet and beat me." I got it now.

I accidentally squeezed the Sprite between my legs, and the bubbles burst everywhere. They didn't tickle this time. They were cold.

I brought this incident up to my mother almost a decade afterward, because it was a formative memory from my childhood. When I grew older and my queerness became apparent, my mother became an ally and, more importantly, someone I could talk to, and she doesn't remember a time when she was not supportive or wasn't by my side, fighting with me. But I remember things differently. I remember when I was nine and having a hard time relating to the other kids around me, not as athletic and coordinated as the other boys or socially adept enough to hang out with the girls. I felt like I would never be accepted or have someone to love me for who I was.

When I asked her if she would be my friend, my mother admitted that if she were my age, she wouldn't be. She didn't hang out with kids like me back when she was in school.

She probably thought she was being helpful by being honest. She was being a good mother, sparing me years of pain by encouraging me to just fit in and keep my difference to myself. I needed to be like other boys -- or I would always be picked on for being too short and too much of a "sissy." I would always be the kid whose backpack was thrown in the garbage can and the one nobody would sit next to on the bus. I was destined to be alone. Adolescence is much easier when you drift along with the current and stop fighting the waves. It's a lot like drowning.

You don't hate by accident. You have to be taught to hate -- in little ways that are reinforced every day, ways you might not even recognize. In my case, hating yourself takes a lifetime. It involves the help of many people around you. It takes standing in church and watching everyone talk to a God they think hates you, listening to a bunch of people silently pray that you will pay for being different, because they think it's the right thing to do. They think they are doing what God wants. I remember the nice ladies in church who hugged me when I was in the closet and hugged me differently after I came out, when I kept going to the same Baptist congregation, daring them not to accept me. They hugged me harder because they didn't want to let go of something. They just weren't sure of what.

No one thinks of themselves as a bigot. They don't look in the mirror and say, "I hate gay people. I am a homophobe." Those women didn't hate me. They loved me so much that they didn't want me to stay the way I was. They didn't want me to experience an eternity of damnation. They wanted to save me, just like my mother did. My mother didn't want me to come home crying or have to stay up late with me because I was too scared to go to school the next day. She didn't want the world to break my heart at such a young age, and it was too hard to ask everyone around me to change. So she asked me to change and broke my heart her own way. I was the one being punished again for not understanding what being different meant.

I thought about this some months ago when I read a tweet from "Morgon Freeman," a fake Twitter account that facetiously bills itself as "messages from God" -- or Black Hollywood God. In the tweet, Freeman wrote, "I hate the word homophobia. You are not scared. You are an asshole." Were those nice ladies from church assholes? Was my mother being an asshole? Is my father still an asshole? My father and I haven't had a real conversation in years, not just because I'm queer but because there's something about me he fundamentally can't relate to.

When I took Eric, my brother from my father's second marriage, to see Life of Pi, my father made a strangely big deal about it, but in a mock-genial manner. He told us it was a "girl movie," and we should go see something else instead. How about the Red Dawn remake?

My father hadn't seen Life of Pi. He didn't even know what it was about. His problem wasn't with the movie. He couldn't articulate what his problem was, the problem he can never talk about, the one we've never talked about. He was scared that I was growing up to be different than he is and that I'm going to have a life he doesn't understand. He thinks he's going to get left behind. It's the same look I saw in his eyes when I was a kid and wanted to play with Barbies or asked to try on a dress. It's the same look I saw when I told him I was going to art school. It's the same look I saw when I eventually told him that the family I create wouldn't look like his.

He already lost two sons. He was afraid of losing another.

I thought about my father when I read Ta-Nehisi Coates' piece last Thursday in the New York Times, which discussed the recent frisking of Forest Whitaker in a New York deli. This incident was yet another example of daily aggressions and microaggressions, not the capital-R racism that we're constantly told is a relic of the past but the smaller racisms that go ignored, the ones that thrive in the margins. It's about the racism that's so ingrained we don't notice, the racism of "nice" people. Coates writes,

In modern America we believe racism to be the property of the uniquely villainous and morally deformed, the ideology of trolls, gorgons and orcs. We believe this even when we are actually being racist... The idea that racism lives in the heart of particularly evil individuals, as opposed to the heart of a democratic society, is reinforcing to anyone who might, from time to time, find their tongue sprinting ahead of their discretion... But much worse, it haunts black people with a kind of invisible violence that is given tell only when the victim happens to be an Oscar winner.

We do this with homophobia. We believe homophobia to be the exclusive territory of diehards, the people who wave signs that "God Hates Fags" or broadcast their revulsion through a microphone outside Old Navy on State Street. We label them as "crazy" and quickly look away.

However, bigotry isn't so easily identifiable. It doesn't always wave signs or march on your funeral or spit in your face at a Pride parade. Bigotry might be your grandfather who turns away slightly when you hug your boyfriend or your grandmother who asks you're bringing your "friend" to Christmas. It might be your mother who gave life to you but doesn't know how to deal with this other thing inside you, who fights herself to love you better. It might live in your own heart, tucked away in one of the rooms you never go into, a room you might not know is there. It might shine in that ersatz smile you show to the trans* and queer youth of color that walk down your street, the ones you push past and learn to politely ignore when you get that late-night cocktail at Minibar. It might be the neighborhood you want to keep "nice."

When I reflect on 2011's Take Back Boystown meetings in Chicago and the people who told our youths they don't belong here, I don't think about bad people. I think about people who fear losing something. I think about my father. I think we're all not as different as we imagine.

A great filmmaker I know once interviewed Rev. Fred Phelps for a documentary. This is how I remember her story. She told me that when she turned the camera on, Phelps spewed the conservative religious dogma he is famous for, performing the intolerance we expect of him. However, after the film stopped rolling, Rev. Fred Phelps became a different person. He offered her a glass of water, because it was a hot day and he worried she wasn't properly hydrated. Phelps and his wife doted on her. They cooked for her. She met members of their family. She shook their hands. She sat on their couch and talked with them.

When she said goodbye and took her crew with her, they embraced her, hugging her differently than she expected. They hugged her like they didn't want to let go. She told me they were the nicest people she's ever met.

The Bullies of Venango County

A New Report Examines the Anti-Gay Lobby’s ‘Pro-Bullying Agenda’ and it is directly applicable to the tactics used by Venango County's very own anti-gay extremist organization, the ironically-named American Family Association of Pennsylvania (whose prez, Diane Gramley, is pictured at right). 

As students around the country participated Friday’s “Day of Silence” to show solidarity with bullied LGBT children and teens, anti-gay activists continued to step up their efforts to prevent schools from protecting bullied students.

 A new report from People For the American Way (PFAW) details the efforts of right-wing activists and organizations to prevent school districts from implementing strong anti-bullying policies that protect LGBT and LGBT-perceived students.

“It’s no secret that anti-gay bullying is a growing problem in our schools,” said Michael Keegan, President of People For the American Way.

“Yet anti-gay activists are determined to keep parents, teachers and administrators from confronting the problem. “It’s almost unbelievable that there are organizations dedicated to opposing anti-bullying programs, but they’re out there and stronger than ever. These groups are so determined to fight every step of progress for LGBT rights that they’re willing to hurt children and teens in the process. That’s just shameful.”

The new report supplements a PFAW investigation released last year, updating it with the latest activities of the anti-anti-bullying movement, including:

• The Tennessee legislature moved forward on a “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which would prohibit teachers from discussing homosexuality. 
• Anti-gay groups fought anti-bullying measures in states across the country, including Arizona, Minnesota and West Virginia. 
•  Prominent Religious Right groups rallied against the Day of Silence: the Family Research Council called it “a cover for the promotion of homosexuality,” the American Family Association accused it of “hijacking of the classroom for political purposes,” and Focus on the Family said it was all about “indoctrination.” 
• Several anti-gay activists blamed the gay rights movement for the suicides of LGBT teens. 
• Anti-gay groups attacked positive portrayals of LGBT teens in the show “Glee,” accusing the show of “radical homosexual promotion,” “deviant sexuality” and “demonic manipulation.” 

Read the full report HERE.

The Horrors of War and Anti-Gay Bigotry

Amidst the incomprehensibly tragic horrors of war, such as the apparently unprovoked slaughter of more than a dozen Afghan civilians Sunday by a lone American soldier, what is the viciously anti-gay Venango County-based American Family Association of Pennsylvania focused on?


Why, preventing justice and equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender members of the American military, of course!

In fact, the AFA of PA's illustrious President, Diane Gramley (pictured right), says in a press release that repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell, the law banning openly LGBT people from military service, was a "Military Death Sentence."

So much for priorities, morality and family values!

Bigotry Isn't Rational

Residents of Pennsylvania have long known that bigotry isn't rational simply by being witness to, or targets of, the extremism of those who use religion and the bible as a weapon or who follow hate groups like the Venango County-based American Family Association of Pennsylvania.

Genetic or Not, Gay Won’t Go Away

by Frank Bruni for The New York Times:

Born this way.

That has long been one of the rallying cries of a movement, and sometimes the gist of its argument. Across decades of widespread ostracism, followed by years of patchwork acceptance and, most recently, moments of heady triumph, gay people invoked that phrase to explain why homophobia was unwarranted and discrimination senseless.

Lady Gaga even spun an anthem from it.

But is it the right mantra to cling to? The best tack to take?

Not for the actress Cynthia Nixon, 45, whose comments in The New York Times Magazine last Sunday raised those very questions.

For 15 years, until 2003, she was in a relationship with a man. They had two children together. She then formed a new family with a woman, to whom she’s engaged. And she told The Times’s Alex Witchel that homosexuality for her “is a choice.”

“For many people it’s not,” she conceded, but added that they “don’t get to define my gayness for me.”

They do get to fume, though. Last week some did. They complained that she represented a minority of those in same-sex relationships and that she had furthermore handed a cudgel to our opponents, who might now cite her professed malleability as they make their case that incentives to change, not equal rights, are what we need.

But while her critics have good reason to worry about how her words will be construed and used, they have no right to demand the kind of silence and conformity from Nixon that gay people have justly rebelled against. She’s entitled to her own truth and manner of expressing it.

Besides which, there are problems with some gay advocates’ insistence that homosexuality be discussed and regarded as something ingrained at the first breath.

By hinging a whole movement on a conclusion that hasn’t been — and perhaps won’t be — scientifically pinpointed and proved beyond all doubt, they hitch it to a moving target. The exact dynamics through which someone winds up gay are “still an open question,” said Clinton Anderson, the director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Concerns Office of the American Psychological Association. “There is substantial evidence of various connections between genes, brain, hormones and sexual identity,” he said. “But those do not amount to a simple picture that A leads to B.”

One landmark study looked at gay men’s brothers and found that 52 percent of identical twin brothers were also gay, in contrast with only 22 percent of nonidentical twin brothers and 11 percent of adoptive, genetically unrelated brothers. Heredity more than environment seemed to be calling the shots.

Other research has posited or identified common anatomical and chromosomal traits among gay men or lesbians, and there’s discussion of a gay gene or, rather, set of genes in the mix. The push to isolate it is entwined with the belief that establishing that sexual orientation is like skin color — an immutable matter of biology — will make homophobia as inexcusable as racism and winnow the ranks of haters.

But bigotry isn’t rational. Finding a determinative biological quirk, deviation or marker could prompt religious extremists who now want gays in reparative psychotherapy to focus on medical interventions instead. And a person’s absence of agency over his or her concentration of melanin has hardly ended all discrimination against blacks.

What’s more, the born-this-way approach carries an unintended implication that the behavior of gays and lesbians needs biological grounding to evade condemnation. Why should it?

Our laws safeguard religious freedom, and that’s not because there’s a Presbyterian, Buddhist or Mormon gene. There’s only a tradition and theology that you elect or decline to follow. But this country has deemed worshiping in a way that feels consonant with who you are to be essential to a person’s humanity. So it’s protected.

Our laws also safeguard the right to bear arms: not exactly a biological imperative.

Among adults, the right to love whom you’re moved to love — and to express it through sex and maybe, yes, marriage — is surely as vital to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as a Glock. And it’s a lot less likely to cause injury, if that’s a deciding factor: how a person’s actions affect the community around him or her.

I USE the words “moved to love” in an effort to define the significant, important territory between “born this way” and choice. That solid ground covers “built this way,” “oriented this way,” and “evolved this way”; it incorporates the possibility of a potent biological predisposition mingling with other factors beyond anyone’s ready control; and it probably applies to Nixon herself. In a Daily Beast interview after the Times article appeared, she clarified that she has experienced an unforced, undeniable attraction to individuals of both sexes. In other words, she’s bisexual, not whimsical. She just happens not to like that term, she said.

In any case, concentrating on how she ended up like that misses the point.

“Most people’s sexual attractions are pretty much fixed” once they take root, said Jack Drescher, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who has written extensively about homosexuality. In light of both that and the unanswered questions about what fixes them, there’s more wisdom and less harm in accepting and respecting homosexuality than not.

We don’t need to be born this way to refute the ludicrous assertion that homosexuality poses some special threat to the stability of the American family. We need only note that heterosexuality — as practiced by the likes of Newt Gingrich and John Edwards, for example — isn’t any lucky charm, and yet no one’s trying to heal the straights.

We don’t need to be born this way to call out Chris Christie, currently trying to avoid responsibility for a decision about same-sex marriage in New Jersey, for being a political wimp. Andrew Cuomo showed courage and foresight in fighting successfully for such legislation in New York. Christie, who fancies himself a dauntless brawler, should do the same in the state next door.

I honestly have no idea if I was born this way. My memory doesn’t stretch to the crib.

But I know that from the moment I felt romantic stirrings, it was Timmy, not Tammy, who could have me walking on air or wallowing in torch songs and tubs of ice cream. These feelings gelled early, and my considerable fear of society’s censure was no match for them.

I know that being in a same-sex relationship feels as central and natural to me as my loyalty to my father, my pride in my siblings’ accomplishments and my protectiveness of their children — all emotions that I didn’t exit the womb with but will not soon shake.

And I know that I’m a saner, kinder person this way than trapped in a contrivance or a lie. Surely that’s not just to my advantage but to society’s, too.

The Einstein Of Sex

Speaking of the effects of homophobic and transphobic bigotry, Magnus Hirschfeld said:

"The time will come when such tragedies will be no more, for knowledge will conquer prejudice, truth will conquer lies, and love will triumph over hatred."


Magnus Hirschfeld (May 14, 1868 - May 14, 1935) was a German physician and sexologist. An outspoken advocate for sexual minorities, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, which Dustin Goltz called "the first advocacy for homosexual and transgender rights.

Learn more at GLBTQ.

Religion-based Bigotry Harms Youth

by Mitchell Gold for the Washington Post:

In the past few weeks, the shocking number of suicides by gay teenagers has sparked a serious national discussion about the root causes of anti-gay harassment and bullying. Across the country, parents, school officials, legislators, religious leaders, and others are recognizing that young people are deeply harmed by the message that being gay is sinful and wrong. For the first time, many voices are calling for accountability from groups and public figures who misuse religion to justify anti-gay bigotry.


Not surprisingly, those who have made careers of promoting anti-gay views are fighting back. Last week, Tony Perkins, the director of the Family Research Council, attacked those who "lay blame at the feet of conservative Christians who teach that homosexual conduct is wrong." In a guest voices column for On Faith, Perkins cynically denied any connection between the harassment of gay youth and the belief that gay people are sinful and disordered. According to Perkins, all responsibility must be placed on the bully, and not on religious teachings that condemn homosexuality as a threat to society. Incredibly, Perkins claimed that if gay youth commit suicide, it is because they "recognize intuitively that their same-sex attractions are abnormal," not because of rejection by family, friends, and religious leaders.

Perkin's distortion of scientific research and callous disregard for the harm caused by his anti-gay views have been widely condemned, and rightly so. And yet the views he expressed are shared by millions of Americans of integrity and good will who genuinely love and care for their gay children and family members. For decades, anti-gay religious leaders have taught that homosexuality is not an innate aspect of a person's identity, but a sinful choice to engage in immoral and abnormal conduct. Many people of faith have been deeply influenced by those teachings and have internalized them with little thought or reflection.

But unlike professional anti-gay advocates such as Perkins, most people who hold these views are genuinely unaware of the harm they are causing to gay youth. Tragically, many well-meaning and loving parents and family members who have been exposed to these teachings mistakenly believe they are protecting a gay child by rejecting their child and doing all they can to force the child to stop being gay. As a result, many gay teens are kicked out of their homes or sent to therapists who try to change their sexual orientation because their parents have been taught their child is choosing "an immoral lifestyle." Many loving grandparents reject a gay or lesbian grandchild because their church group said they must do so "for the child's own good." Too often, young people are ostracized by their families at the very time they most need their love and support--because the families have been taught that is what God would want them to do.

In reality, however, sexual orientation is a God-given trait--not a "choice." There is not a shred of evidence it can be changed. And just as is true for heterosexual people, it is a very central and important part of one's being. When parents reject or punish a child for being gay, they are rejecting the essence of who their children are as people.

That rejection can have deadly consequences. Gay youth who are rejected or ostracized by their families are at high risk of depression, substance abuse, HIV infection, and dropping out of school. They are also at least four times more likely than other youth to commit suicide. For gay youth who are sent to a therapist who tries to change their sexual orientation, that risk is even higher. Let me emphasize, it is not their being gay that puts them at risk but rather how they are treated by their parents and clergy. And by people like Tony Perkins.

During my visits with people of faith in all parts of the country, I have spoken with Evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants and Jews who have been taught that homosexuality is immoral and wrong. Almost invariably, they are surprised and concerned when they hear about the harms caused by those teachings. Many have told me they had not fully considered the impact on a gay young person of being told that he is sinful and abnormal, or that he will be cut off from God's love unless he can do the impossible and change who he is.


It is tragic that it has taken the death of so many young people in the past few weeks to focus national attention on the impact of anti-gay beliefs and the central role played by anti-gay religious leaders in promoting those beliefs. Once people of faith are made aware of these facts, they must ask themselves whether causing such severe harm to young people can exist comfortably with their deepest religious values.

True faith, compassion, and love do not ask any person to harm another human being. The past weeks have made the harm caused by anti-gay attitudes painfully clear. People of faith must ask whether they are complicit in causing such devastation and whether their beliefs give them the right to judge and condemn others--even when those beliefs may convince a young person that he would rather be dead than gay.


Mitchell Gold is co-founder of renowned home furnishings brand Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, and founder of Faith in America, a 501 C-3 non profit whose mission is to educate about the harm caused to LGBT Americans by religion based bigotry; and in 2008, published a book entitled CRISIS: 40 Personal Stories Revealing The Personal, Social and Religious Pain And Trauma Of Growing Up Gay In America.

Overcoming the Myth of Lifestyles

by Linda Henderson:

I received a letter the other day from my step-grandmother.

The Lord had put it upon her heart to write to me about the "homosexual way of life." She included a tract from church which lamented the horrors of a homosexual lifestyle.


Businessdictionary.com has a very good definition of lifestyle:

"Way of living of individuals, families (households), and societies, which they manifest in coping with their physical, psychological, social, and economic environments on a day-to-day basis. Lifestyle is expressed in both work and leisure behavior patterns and (on an individual basis) in activities, attitudes, interests, opinions, values, and allocation of income. It also reflects people's self image or self concept; the way they see themselves and believe they are seen by the others. Lifestyle is a composite of motivations, needs, and wants and is influenced by factors such as culture, family, reference groups, and social class..."

Stereotyping is one of the oldest tools in the book for keeping a hated group isolated and feared.

The idea that there is a "homosexual lifestyle" is the first myth we have to overcome.

How ridiculous!

What is the heterosexual lifestyle? Do they all have the same activities, attitudes, interests, and allocate their income in the same manner?

Talk with anyone who admonishes the "homosexual lifestyle" and ask them if they actually know any homosexuals.

My step-grandmother has never been to my home - not in 42 years. I have actually seen her about 20 full days in my life. Her opinions about my lifestyle are purely based on what her church tells her my lifestyle is about. She, and others like her, will not learn any different because they will hold firm to their stereotype. Because they have used the Bible to justify their mythical beliefs, they will accept no evidence that would contradict it.


Actually getting to know GLBT people would shatter the "lifestyle" myth. Examining their Bible in full context would shatter their literalist myth. Insisting that every single verse in the Bible be applied in it's most literal interpretation would expose the foolishness of their views.

There is no more a homosexual way of life than there is a heterosexual way of life.

Stereotyping is bigotry even when you use the Bible to justify it.

Surprise! Anti-Gay Forces Work to Regain Influence

"Religious" conservatives fear Congress will advance gay rights legislation

By Chris Johnson for the Washington Blade:

Anti-gay conservatives are increasing their rhetoric and activities because they fear public officials are more likely than ever to act on pro-gay initiatives.


That’s the perception of at least one activist, who said he’s noticed an upswing in the ferocity of opposition to pro-gay initiatives now that social conservatives have lost power on the national stage and may be unable to stop lawmakers from approving measures like hate crimes legislation and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said opponents of gay rights are “lying and spreading misinformation in greater ways than they ever have before.”

“The more gains you make and the closer your opponents are to losing, the more ferocious they are in the way in which they lash out,” he said. “That is just the nature of social change.”

But Neil Giuliano, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, said even as anti-gay forces use homophobic rhetoric, Americans are becoming more able to see through it.

“Anti-gay activists have continued to recycle the same divisive rhetoric and inflammatory misconceptions in their attack on LGBT people and our families,” he said, “and I think more and more people are seeing a contrast between the inclusive, affirming rhetoric of our current administration and the divisive, politics of the past that these groups represent.”

One ill-fated attempt at demonizing gays emerged last week, as a one-hour television special targeting gay rights was slated to air on WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids, Mich. The show, titled “Speechless: Silencing Christians,” was promoted as a program that would “reveal the truth about the radical homosexual agenda.”

The opening of the special, which is still available to view online, shows women who suggest they were arrested for “trying to share the gospel.”
Another male speaker decries how “we have compartmentalized where the gospel is allowed to go.” A female speaker says gays “can’t tolerate a story like mine that says … I used to be gay, but with the help of Jesus, I’ve been able to overcome that.”

Grassroots activists in Michigan worked for days to convince WOOD-TV to remove the show from its schedule. Colette Beighley, assistant director of the gay resource center at Grand Valley State University, led the grassroots efforts by spearheading online networking on Facebook and speaking against the special to local news outlets.

On Feb. 11, shortly after HRC issued an “action alert” urging supporters to call the station and oppose the special, WOOD-TV rescinded its offer to air it.

The American Family Association, the organization that produced the show, didn’t respond to the Blade’s request for comment.

Giuliano said the effort’s success shows that “when our community is vocal and visible … media outlets come to a greater [understanding] of their responsibility to serve their entire community with the public’s airwaves.”

Anti-gay forces on the defense in GOP

On Feb. 12, Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, issued a statement urging Michael Steele, the newly elected chair of the Republican National Committee, to resist giving the Log Cabin Republicans a greater voice within the GOP.

In an appearance on Fox News earlier this month, Steele, who has a history of opposing gay rights initiatives as a former one-term Maryland lieutenant governor, said reaching out to people who support gay rights is “an important opportunity” for the GOP.

LaBarbera’s statement warns Steele that reaching out to Log Cabin may cost the Republican Party supporters in its base.

“Michael Steele and the GOP need to do the math,” LaBarbera said. “It is foolish and impractical to risk alienating millions of pro-family, pro-life, conservative grassroots Republicans to appease a tiny homosexual special interest group with fewer members than the population of Liberal, Kansas.”

LaBarbera told the Blade he issued the statement to Steele because he thinks Log Cabin “is angling to say that it has got the upper hand” with the election of Steele as RNC chair.

“Log Cabin is out of step with the grassroots base of the Republican Party,” LaBarbera said. “When you’re joining the other gay groups in trying to reverse Proposition 8, very few Republicans are going to say that’s a winning strategy for the Republican Party to be behind.”

LaBarbera said he has heard that “hundreds, if not thousands” of calls were made to Steele’s office in support of Americans for Truth’s statement. The RNC didn’t respond to a request to comment.

LaBarbera acknowledged that there was fear among social conservatives because “at least politically, on the Hill, the gay side is stronger than ever.”

Regarding lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill, Solmonese said HRC has noticed “increased activity” in opposition to the movement of pro-gay initiatives.

“I think the fact of the matter is, as we become more successful and we’re able to move legislation in a more successful way, either at the state or the [federal] level, we see increased opposition to that movement and we always will,” he said.

However, Solmonese said that it’s “hard to measure an increase” in opposition to pro-gay lobbying efforts because Congress hasn’t been in position to advance pro-gay initiatives until recent years. He said “it remains to be seen” whether members of the far right are going to engage in correspondence with lawmakers and visits to their offices when bills like hate crimes legislation come before Congress.

A number of organizations traditionally opposed to pro-gay initiatives wouldn’t comment on whether they shared a perception that anti-gay rhetoric and activity has increased since the election. Focus on the Family declined to comment for this article and the Family Research Council didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Pam Spaudling, a lesbian who operates Pam’s House Blend, a blog that often tracks anti-gay efforts, said she wasn’t sure if the rhetoric and activity against the gay community has increased, but said she has noticed “a shift in focus” by anti-gay organizations toward more activism in getting anti-gay measures passed.

A resident of North Carolina, Spaulding said there are efforts underway there to encourage the state’s General Assembly to pass a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. North Carolina is the only state in the South that doesn’t have a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

The Rowan County Board of Commissioners passed a resolution on Monday urging the General Assembly to bring the marriage amendment to the floor for debate, Spaulding said. And supporters of the ban are planning to stage a march near the state capitol and bus people in to Raleigh on Tuesday, she said.

Spaulding said she thinks anti-gay forces are trying to build off the momentum from their victory of passing Proposition 8 in California, which ended same-sex marriage in that state.

“I think they are desperate to have some more wins because, quite frankly, they spent a ton of money getting Prop 8 to pass, so they need to fill their coffers,” she said. “And the fact that they don’t have a hotline to the White House any longer means that they have to increasingly participate in activities that make them highly visible in order to keep the money coming in.”

Spaulding said she didn’t know whether anti-gay forces would succeed in passing a marriage amendment in North Carolina, but she predicted that if the groups are unable to pass any more anti-gay initiatives this year or in 2010, they will fall back on the line that “they are oppressed Christians and that any pro-LGBT efforts are squashing religious freedom.”

“I think that this continued theme of being victimized by the homosexual agenda is their backup plan if the public decides that [it] isn’t important enough to pass any anti-gay legislation,” she said.

Online media used to further anti-gay causes

Anti-gay groups are also making use of online media to advance their positions.

The National Organization for Marriage launched a web site and a group called the DOMA Defense Fund last month to raise money to preserve the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages and allows states to ignore same-sex marriages enacted in other states.

“In the wake of repeated setbacks at the ballot box, and with an increasingly receptive audience in Washington, gay marriage advocates are now seeking to impose same-sex marriage on the entire nation with a single stroke of the pen,” the web site says.

The web site urges opponents of same-sex marriage to tell their legislators to uphold DOMA and donate money to the DOMA Defense Fund to “take this effort from coast to coast with radio and TV ads if needed.”

Solmonese said it’s interesting that anti-gay activists are focused on DOMA because “it’s in a basket of a greater set of things we’re working on.”

U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who is gay, previously told the Blade that “we’re not even close to being able to” repeal DOMA.

“It almost makes you wonder,” Solmonese said, “are they going right to that because they think that’s going to fire people up more so than if they talked about the immediate things that in fact we are focused on this year?”

Web sites have also been launched to advocate against the approval of relationship recognition bills in various states, where passage in state legislatures seems imminent.

In Maine, where lawmakers are poised to debate same-sex marriage, the Maine Marriage Initiative has launched a web site arguing that, “changing the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples has very real, and very negative, consequences.” And in Hawaii, where the legalization of civil unions is about to be debated in the Senate, a group has created a web site to protect Hawaii’s “keiki,” or children, against “homosexual marriage in the state.”

Despite these web sites, gay activists view the online presence of anti-gay forces as minimal.

Spauding said anti-gay forces are “not afraid to use the Internet to spread their message,” but added, “whether or not they have a receptive audience — that is questionable.”

“This is about energizing the base activists on their side,” she said. “I think they’re just throwing everything against the wall at this point.”

Solmonese agreed that “social conservatives have been behind the ball” in exploiting online media.

“I think that most people agree that that’s a generational issue,” he said.
“New forms of communication — whether it’s social networking or cell phone technology — those are things that tend to be used more by younger people who tend to be more supportive of LGBT issues.”

And how should gays respond when opponents speak out against them — be it through television specials, activism or online media?

Solmonese said anytime that occurs, pro-gay forces need “to call the other side out” and “do whatever it takes it make sure that we counter those lies with the truth.”

“That’s what we did in Michigan,” he said, “and anytime we see that happening, that’s what we as an organization have a responsibility to do.”

Hate Moves To Facebook - Anti-Gay Extremist Group Seeks Friends

by Jon Ponder for Pensito Review:

Don Wildmon, the leader of the Mississippi-based, virulently anti-gay group, the American Family Association, joined Facebook recently, and has sent an email blast to his followers urging them to sign up so that they can use the social networking platform as an outlet for propagating hatred and intolerance of gay people.

“I have joined Facebook. Please join me on Facebook and become a friend of AFA,” reads the email’s headline. In the body, Wildmon explains what Facebook is and hints at how his followers can use it to promote the homophobia agenda:

Every day new technologies are emerging on the Internet. For several years now Internet “social networking” has been the preferred choice of many for keeping in touch with friends and family. From Yahoo! 360 to MySpace to Facebook, people of all ages are enjoying quick, easy, and inexpensive ways of communicating with others near and far. And best of all it’s FREE!

I have joined Facebook. I hope you will join, too, and become a friend of AFA. Facebook allows users to send and receive emails, add comments, post photos and videos, share links, and join groups or causes. You can also learn about the people you meet or would like to meet. And you can network with like-minded people concerned about America’s moral decline. Once signed up, you can invite your family and friends to visit or join your homepage. You can also search the entire Facebook site to see if relatives, friends, acquaintances, and classmates are already members. Facebook is informative, fun, and easy to use. There simply is no reason not to join!

Take Action!

It’s likely that most Facebookers are not familiar with the AFA, which is among the wealthiest of the groups that raise money based on gay-hate mongering. In fiscal year 2006, the last year for which figures are available, it claimed net assets of $37 million. The AFA generates almost all its revenue in advertising campaigns designed to raise the specter of hatred of gay people, mostly among less educated, low-income whites.

The AFA is known for its “off with their heads” approach to boycotts. It even targets companies that exercise free speech — and free enterprise — by marketing to gay consumers. The list of companies boycotted by AFA is a who’s who of American brands, including 7-Eleven, Abercrombie & Fitch, American Airlines, American Girl, Blockbuster Video, Burger King, Calvin Klein, Carl’s Jr., Clorox, Crest, Ford, Hallmark Cards, Kmart, Kraft Foods, S. C. Johnson & Son, Movie Gallery, Microsoft, MTV, Mary Kay, NutriSystem, Old Navy, IKEA, Sears, Pampers, Procter & Gamble, Target, Tide, and Walt Disney Company.

The group is not just opposed to gay marriage, it even attacks companies that provide partner benefits for their employees:

[The AFA asks]”Christian consumers”to think twice before they patronize companies that support the homosexual agenda.” AFA lists major corporations that have non-discrimination policies that include sexual orientation or that offer domestic-partner benefits for same-sex couples… “One company losing five to ten percent of its sales will send a clear message to every company in America,” offers Don Wildmon. AFA attacked Kraft Foods (owner of brand names Post, Oscar Meyer, and Maxwell House, among others) for the company’s support of the 2006 Gay Games in Chicago.

Facebookers should know that, like all anti-gay groups, AFA purports to base its anti-gay agenda on the Scriptures. But not only is using the Bible to justify organized hate campaigns a bizarre construct, it also requires a mind-bendingly selective reading. The Bible does condemn homosexuality in a few obscure references, but, in the Old Testament, it classifies it as an “abomination,” a class of sins that also famously includes eating shrimp, lobster and ham, as well as burning incense, cheating at business, women wearing pants, haughtiness, lying and improperly covering one’s poop in the desert. among other infractions.

At the same time, anti-gay Christians selectively ignore sexual sins that the Bible decries much more frequently and fervently than homosexuality, including sex between unmarried people, which it calls “fornication,” and, in particular, adultery. Adultery, unlike homosexuality, is prohibited in the Ten Commandments — the only Old Testament laws that Jesus did not rescind with his New Covenant.

In the real world, adultery, unlike gay marriage, is a real threat to “traditional” marriage. Adultery destroys families, and is a direct cause of the high incidence of single-parent homes, poverty and a whole host of social ills. Heterosexual adulterers are 100 percent more likely than monogamous gays and others to contract sexually transmitted diseases. Adulterers are, by definition, liars, and there is no doubt that adultery, unlike being gay, is a choice.


But the AFA is mute in opposition to the civil rights of adulterers. It has never opposed the right of adulterers to remarry. It has never launched a boycott against a company that employs adulterers or that gives partner benefits to remarried philanderers. The AFA once forced the Fort Worth Star-Telegram to reassign a reporter who covered education because he happened to be gay, but the AFA finds no problem with adulterous reporters covering education or even with adulterers working as teachers, where they are can recruit children into their sinful, adulterous lifestyle.

When the day comes that the AFA expands its agenda to advocate rescinding the marriage rights of adulterers and denying adulterers’ protections from being fired or evicted because of their status as sinners, we’ll start to believe their antipathy toward gays is purely Bible-based. Until then, the only conclusion to draw is that they are using the Bible to excuse their own personal prejudices and, too often, their own self-loathing — a fact that renders their hatred of gays to be as destructive and scornful as white supremacists’ hatred of blacks and antisemites’ hatred of Jews.

Like all social media platforms, Facebook is largely self-policing, so it will be interesting to see whether the Facebook community will tolerate a hate group like the AFA moving in and establishing an outpost there for its message of intolerance and oppression.