Marriage compared to pedophiles playing in parks

(Nearly) speechless.

So often the core of arguments against our rights are rooted in the belief that all gay people are pedophiles.

Today, it's usually done with enough subtlety that people don't have to confront the ugliness of the defamation (since more and more people know openly gay people and know this isn't true).

That's not the case in this video from one of the former leaders of the Moral Majority, and prominent televangelist.  Right Wing Watch reports that this video was posted on Bishop Harry Jackson's YouTube page in advance of an upcoming "Defense of Marriage Summit."  Jackson is one of the leaders in the failed fight to prevent marriage in DC, and is active in Maryland.

The good news is that I think the more often this argument is laid bare, the more of an advantage we gain by people who are mortified when confronted with the bigotry we face.

Read the rest of this post...

Remember when John McCain and FRC claimed the repeal of DADT would be the end of the world?

No locusts.

Military leaders and gay and lesbian service members say the year that has passed since the repeal took effect has been remarkable for what hasn’t happened. Recruitment and retention have not fallen off as some opponents of the repeal predicted they would. Harassment of homosexual troops has not significantly increased. Unit cohesion has not suffered.

In fact, some veterans who left the military under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” have rejoined. And some active-duty soldiers say cohesion has improved in their units, because people no longer have to completely guard their personal lives.

“Basically, there’s been no change in the way we do business,” says Troy Rolan, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon. “All our soldiers, they’re soldiers – regardless of who or what they are. They’re professionals. They do what they need to do to make sure everybody’s taken care of.”

I suspect that the religious right won't pay a price, in terms of their credibility, for claiming that all sorts of horrible things would happen if we repealed DADT. John McCain and other military "experts" claimed the same. And they were all wrong.

Marine Corps Times has an AP story up about how absolutely nothing has changed.

The Pentagon says repeal has gone smoothly, with no adverse effect on morale, recruitment or readiness. President Obama cites it as a signature achievement of his first term, and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, says he would not push to reverse the change if elected in place of Obama.

Some critics persist with complaints that repeal has infringed on service members whose religious faiths condemn homosexuality. Instances of anti-gay harassment have not ended. And activists are frustrated that gay and lesbian military families don’t yet enjoy the benefits and services extended to other military families.

Yet the clear consensus is that repeal has produced far more joy and relief than dismay and indignation. There’s vivid evidence in photographs that have rocketed across cyberspace, such as the military contingent marching in San Diego’s gay pride parade and Marine Sgt. Brandon Morgan leaping into the arms of his boyfriend after returning from six months in Afghanistan.

Let's revisit. First McCain:

"I hope that when we pass this legislation that we will understand that we are doing great damage," said the four-term incumbent before the vote, according to ABC News. "Today is a very sad day."

Great damage. So great, no one can find it.  But the lack of any evidence of harm is actually proof that it exists, if you listen to the officially designated hate group, the Family Research Council:

FRC will continue to monitor the consequences of this reversal of 236 years of American military policy, limit the damage–and demand that the Defense Department do the same. Expect to see celebrations from homosexual groups and fawning stories in the media about how “the sky has not fallen.” That’s only because there will be no press releases from the new victims of sexual harassment or assault, the soldiers exposed to HIV-tainted blood, the thousands of servicemembers who choose not to reenlist rather than forfeit their freedom of speech and religion, and the untold number of citizens who choose never to join the military. It’s clear this President is more interested in appeasing sexual revolutionaries than in fighting America’s enemies.

See how good they are? The proof that all of these bad things are happening is the fact that no one is hearing about any of them.  Bra-vo, sir.

And they object to being called a hate group. Read the rest of this post...

Why only stupid people like far-right Republicans

AMERICAblog reader BeccaM weighs in on my earlier post about Rick Santorum bemoaning that smart people will never support the religious right or politicians like him.

Let's take this the next layer down: These are precisely the reasons they -- the wingnut religious right extremists -- are deliberately trying to undermine our schools. It was no accident that a man like Santorum referred to going to college as snobbish.

Stupid, mis- or uneducated people are more easily manipulated. You can tell them two entirely contradictory things or stuff that literally makes no sense whatsoever and there's no critical thinking part of their brain that'll kick in and say, "Hey, this is ridiculous."

You can be proven to be a corrupt con-man and still the stupid people will send you their money. All you have to do is promise them eternal bliss after they die -- and the best part is you never have to prove you can deliver.

You can tell the stupid people that cutting taxes increases revenues and they'll believe you. You can imply that oil, gas, and coal reserves are effectively infinite. You can tell them the reason their lives are sh*tty isn't because the rich people are grabbing all the money, but because people whose lives are even sh*ttier are actually to blame.

They want a vast pool of extremely stupid people. Or as I prefer to call them, sheep.

Read the rest of this post...

Santorum: "We will never have the elite, smart people on our side"

Failed GOP presidential candidate, former US Senator, and all around gay-hating guy, Rick Santorum told a religious right conference (sponsored by a number of officially-designated "hate groups") that smart people will never support religious right Republicans.

Santorum seems to have missed the irony.

Let's dissect Santorum's statement (which is below).

1. Smart people will never be on your side - but the audience, made up of religious right leaders from around the country, is on your side.  Thus religious right leaders are not "smart people."

2. If you really had the correct policy prescriptions for America, wouldn't you think "smart people" would embrace that?  I mean, do you think "dumb" people are better able to determine the life of a fetus than "smart" people?  Are dumb people better able to analyze the science on global warming and determine whether or not it's a hoax?  On gay rights, are dumb people really more capable at determining whether there's a constitutional right to civil rights for gays?  And finally (but not limited to), health care reform - you really think dumb people are better than smart people and determining its constitutionality, let alone whether health care reform is the best approach, among those available, at helping more Americans get more affordable, and better, health care without hurting the economy, et ?

I'm sorry, but when you have a brain tumor, you don't seek out a dumb doctor.  When the IRS audits you, you don't hire a dumb accountant.  And no one wants a dumb banker, or a dumb lawyer.

It's seems the only time you really want someone dumb is when Rick Santorum and the religious right are stumping for votes.

That ought to tell them something.  But it clearly doesn't.

I'm reminded of a quote from high school (from the poet TS Eliot to be exact), "we had the experience but missed the meaning."

Perhaps they're just too dumb to get the irony.

PS I still can't read stuff like this and not see the word "Jew" hidden between the lines.  Maybe it's just me.

Rick Santorum at the hate group sponsored Values Voter Summit 2012:

"[T]he media doesn't go along with us. You have to understand that. They don't like conservatism. They like the other side. Not necessarily, I would argue, because they necessarily agree with them -- it's because they can influence the country more. You see, if just a few people make decisions about what this world looks like and what this country looks like, well then you can have people sitting in offices -- the major media outlets and in Hollywood -- they can deal with a small group of people, and influencing them and getting them to jump through the hoops they want them to. It's much harder if all of you collectively build America. It's much harder to influence you. We will never have the media on our side -- ever, in this country. We will never have the elite, smart people on our side, because they believe they should have the power to tell you what to do. So our colleges and our universities, they're not going to be on our side."

Read the rest of this post...

Gays may have caused Hurricane Isaac, right-wing preacher claims

To paraphrase a popular joke going around Facebook: If we can control the weather, then you'd better f'g listen to us.  From nutty anti-gay right wing preacher:

The hurricane is scheduled to hit the New Orleans area on Wednesday, August 29 which is the beginning of an annual homosexual event in New Orleans called “Southern Decadence.” (I do not recommend going to this website.)

Isaac, of course, is a biblical name meaning laughter.

Isaac is projected to make landfall as a category 3, which would be the same power as Hurricane Katrina. The amazing thing about Katrina was it also hit on August 29, during the week of Southern Decadence in 2005! Katrina was the greatest natural disaster ever to hit America. Now seven years later, to the day, another hurricane is heading towards this city.

The fact the events are seven years apart is very significant as this number is biblically important. It is the number of completion: God created the universe in seven days. The church, city and nation have not repented and the homosexual agenda is far worse than it was in 2005. New Orleans is still hosting Southern Decadence with open homosexuality manifesting in the streets of the city. It could be that God is putting an end to this city and its wickedness. The timing of Hurricane Isaac with Southern Decadence is a sign that God’s patience with America’s sin is coming to an end.

Oh, this just in: Isaac might also be evidence that God is upset with Mitt Romney over Israel.

It is also significant that Isaac is affecting the Republican convention. There are postings from Israel stating at the convention that Romney is going to place a two-state solution into the platform. Let’s also watch this very closely.

Read the rest of this post...

Creepy Gary Bauer upset with Orrin Hatch on marriage

Bauer is yet another creepy religious right leader who sets off all sorts of gaydar. First time I saw him on PBS during the gays in the military debate in 1993, I turned to someone in the room and ask "who's that fag?" Bauer used to run the Family the Research Council.

More from Signorile:

Bauer, president of American Values and former president of the conservative Family Research Council, responded to Hatch's turnaround in an interview on SiriusXM OutQ radio program.

“Of course as you know that’s not the goal of the gay rights movement. The goal of the gay rights movement is to take a state that has same-sex marriage and to use that state as a battering ram and a lawsuit before the Supreme Court to force every state to have same sex marriage," he said. "So I’m sorry that Orrin fell for it. But if only your side was willing to allow each state to make the decision on their own. I think Orrin Hatch may have had a bad moment or he forgets what’s happened in the last 30 years -- courts forcing radical social change on the American people.”

Right. And then when we win in the states, like Maine and Iowa, the religious right tries to overturn it. So spare us the "if only your side was [sic] willing to allowed each state to make the decision on their own." Bauer helped the FRC master its art of lying.  It is said that these self-proclaimed Christian leaders have such difficulty with the truth.  Which is a sin, by the way that the Bible does talk about. Read the rest of this post...

NOM admits Regnerus study was bogus

A gay blogger attended NOM's anti-gay student conference and got an earful about that Regnerus study that supposedly, but didn't, show that gay parents are bad for kids. It seems NOM is admitting that we were all correct, the study doesn't really look at that many real gay families.

Economist Douglas Allen, a speaker at NOM's conference: "[Regnerus] came up with some shocking results. What’s good about his study: so he wanted to use a large sample, and he tried but he still ended up with fairly small numbers given his definition. He wanted to use a wide range of hard measures, that’s very commendable. He has about forty different measures. And, I think what’s most commendable, he posted or has agreed to post, all of his data, all of his procedures, all of his work. That’s a huge leap forward in this literature. What’s not so good about it, well this is what he’s gotten beat up for. So he has a very wide definition of what it means to grow up in a same-sex household. 'I grew up in an opposite-sex household, but my dad had an affair with another man when I was twelve,' that counts as growing up in a same-sex household. A lot of people have said 'no, that counts as him growing up in a dysfunctional household.' And, you know, they’re probably right about that. So that’s the Achilles heel of this study, but he has been literally vilified in the blogosphere and all over the place. And of course, he admits this, he’s also unable to disentangle all of his effects. But he admits that. He says “look, I’m finding all these really seriously bad correlations.” You know, if you grew up in a same-sex household, by his definition, you are multiple times more likely to face sexual abuse, for example." [emphasis added]

Read the rest of this post...

Anti-gay pastor convicted of playing with himself in public park

Best part of the story - he's the guy who regularly protests New Orleans' Southern Decadence gay festival as "depraved."

Takes one to know one.

From the NY Daily News:

During his confession, Storms told police he was cutting some grass in the park when he took a break to drink a beer and became "horny," the newspaper reported.
"Why do you go to the park and do this, as far as masturbating,” Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office Sgt. Kevin Balser asked Storms during the interview, according to the Times-Picayune.
"I don't know," Storms said. "I guess a thrill."
"So it's a thrill-slash-fantasy for you?" Balser said.
"Yes," Storms said.

I love how the press is talking about speculation that he did this because he was a pedophile (there was a park nearby). They're forgetting another possibility. I don't know about the South, but here in the North there's another reason a guy pulls out his thang while parked. And it's not spend the time alone, or to meet women. Read the rest of this post...

B-list hate groups take advg of FRC shooting to get gays kicked off TV

One guy walked into a religious right organization with a gun, shot one man in an arm, and now America is no longer safe for bigoted right wingers.

The shooting was inexcusable, but give me a break.

The latest effort to take political advantage of the shooting came today when a number of officially designated hate groups - including one that claims gays were the real people behind the Holocaust - called on Fox News to stop having gay rights advocate Wayne Besen on their show because Wayne is mean to people who call him a pedophile.

Last time I checked, Wayne never accused any of these groups of being behind the Holocaust, or being pedophiles.

What's particularly interesting are two things:

1. The groups use the Washington Post's Dana Milbank, who defended FRC's hate and now is apparently a darling of religious right anti-gay activism.

2. No national religious right groups signed the letter.  One of the local groups that signed even had two different employees sign, upping the numbers of signatories.

Karen Ocamb has the rest of the story. Read the rest of this post...

"Adam and Eve," not "Adam and Steve," committed the first sin

Matt Barber of the conservative Liberty Council went off on "homosexual activists" earlier this week, accusing pro-marriage equality folks of gradually leading America onto a road of polygamy and incest, hell-bent on "deconstructing the Judeo-Christian notion of marriage as marriage has always been."

Let's be generous to Mr. Barber and assume that whatever is in the Bible - as disagreeable and detestable as some of it may be (remember, the Bible supports slavery, as well as putting gays to death) - is right. According to Barber, homosexual fornicators are the bringers of polygamy and incest, while Matt's righteous heterosexual living has been society's saving grace. But reading from the Book of Genesis all the way through to the Book of Revelation, it's not been gay people who have multiplied across generations via polygamy and incest - it's been straight people.

Take Earth's very first humans (according to the Bible). Bigots will tell you there was no such thing as "Adam and Steve." And they are correct, because it was actually Adam and Eve's children who were forced by God to commit incest in order to populate the earth.  It was also Adam and Eve who are responsible for kicking mankind out of paradise (Eve taking that bite of the apple).  And it was Adam and Eve's child Cain who committed the first murder.

This isn't even mentioning the fact that Adam and Eve lived in sin, since it's not entirely clear they were ever married.

Adam and Eve's other kids include Seth, as well as "other sons and daughters" the Bible neglects to name (they probably got into lousy colleges or something). Even more interesting? Not one homosexual to be seen.

The Bible continues on with more accounts of heterosexual incest, including Lot and his daughters, Abraham's marriage to his half-sister Sarah, and Isaac's marriage to his cousin Rebekah. If traditional, Biblical marriage means having to marry one of my sisters, or that weird cousin with the One Direction obsession, count me out.

Matt also insists that gay marriage will lead to polygamy. Returning to the Bible (the one book that matters, remember?), it's not gays who have monster-trucked society via polygamy, but rather heterosexuals. Countless Old Testament figures revered by Christians had multiple wives, including Abraham (a double-whammy, since he's also the incest guy previously mentioned), King David, King Solomon, Moses, Gideon, and Saul.

Again, not one homo in the bunch.

Even more telling are Bible verses seemingly condoning heterosexual polygamy, like Deuteronomy 21:15 ("If a man has two wives, and he loves one but not the other...). Equally awkward is that conservatives frequently cite this very book when condemning homosexuality. But it's not like bigots are known for cherry-picking the Bible or anything like that.

And finally, when it comes to the Gingrich Award for Most Wives, the honor goes to David's son Solomon, who had 700 wives and 300 concubines to his credit. Again, none of those seemed to be gay marriages, but rather traditional, Biblical, heterosexual marriages. Sure, today's conservatives claim that marriage is between one man and woman, but if we're following the word of God as shown in the Bible, Newt deserves to get his bush burned for not having married all three of his wives at once.

Matt Barber want us to believe that gay marriage is to blame for society's downfall, and will be ultimately responsible for destroying traditional marriage. Except that claim couldn't be any more false. Some Bible study would show that it's never been gays who have been responsible for these acts, but rather heterosexuals. Furthermore, when it comes to redefining traditional marriage, it's heterosexuals who no longer follow the Biblical tradition of marrying 700 women at once.

Now excuse me while I go wash my eyes out with bleach. Read the rest of this post...

NYT on Savage vs Brown

Interesting that Dan went into the evening hoping something good could come of it, while the self-proclaimed messenger of God went into the evening all cynical, and sounding downright mean. NYT:

I spoke with [NOM's] Mr. Brown by phone, and he seemed to agree that the setting had made little difference. “There’s this myth that folks like me, we don’t know any gay people, and if we just met them, we would change our views,” he said. “But the notion that if you have us into your house, that all that faith and reason that we have on our side, we will chuck it out and change our views — that’s not the real world.”

As for Mr. Savage, he felt that being on his home turf had actually worked against him. “Playing host put me in this position of treating Brian Brown like a guest,” he said. “It was better in theory than in practice — it put me at a disadvantage during the debate, as the undertow of playing host resulted in my being more solicitous and considerate than I should’ve been. If I had it to do over again, I think I’d go with a hall.”

It was my hope, of course, that Mr. Brown might witness a sane, functional, happy family in a bourgeois home, and consider it as another piece of evidence, something more for reason to operate on. Indeed, Mr. Brown’s former ally, David Blankenhorn, the founder of the Institute for American Values, recently changed his views on same-sex marriage — in part, he said, because he listened to the stories of gay parents.

Actually, Mr. Brown, for normal human beings, knowing someone gay, meeting their children, breaking bread in their home, does change them. It's the human element that informs our understanding. Forget gay.  Knowing your adversary, period, makes a difference for normal people.  And if you're not a hateful, hate-filled, automoton, it's bound to affect you in some way.

I think of Thomas Hardy's poem I read in high school, "The man he killed."  Granted, Hardy still killed his adversary in the poem, but at least he thought about, was touched by, the man's humanity.  The self-proclaimed agent of God had no such introspection, no such empathy.   No humanity.

Dan Savage proved himself not only to be the better man at the table, he was the only man at the table. Read the rest of this post...

Video: Dan Savage vs. the head of NOM

Dan Savage recently invited Brian Brown, the head of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), to dinner at his house for a conversation about Christianity and gays, moderated by the NYT religion reporter.

The dinner took place on August 15, last week, and it was just released. It's an hour long, but worth a watch. The first 15 minutes are Dan talking about why in fact we know the Bible has made mistakes before, such as advocating for slavery. Dan argues that if the Bible could get something as basic as slavery "wrong," then it's a certainty that it got something as complicated as human sexuality wrong.

Dan also hits Brown for the religious right's ongoing "bearing of false witness," particularly as it concerns linking gays to pedophilia, and how it impacts young gay kids who were thrown out of their homes because their parents worried they might molest their younger siblings.

Dan also points out - thank God, because I rarely see gay advocates mention this - that the religious right said we were a threat to the family because we wanted rampant sex without commitment, but now that gays want to marry and codify their love for each other, the religious right says our commitment is what endangers the family.

Can't have it both ways, haters.

Read the rest of this post...

Alleged hate crime, that I didn't believe, was a hoax

Thank you. I got beaten up on Twitter by a number of lesbians who called me a woman-hater for not writing about this "hate crime" because the story smelled funny to me. I just didn't believe it. Hard to say why. I read the story, and it just didn't sound right. And I was right.

From AP:

A former University of Nebraska women's basketball star faked an attack in which she allegedly carved anti-gay slurs into her skin because she felt it would spark change, police said Tuesday.

Four days before Charlie Rogers crawled naked and bleeding from her Lincoln home, screaming for help, she outlined in a Facebook posting what investigators believe was her motive for faking the July 22 attack, Police Chief Jim Peschong said at a news conference.

Furthermore, genetic testing on evidence gathered at the crime scene undermines Rogers' account of what happened, Peschong said.

Charlie Rogers, 33, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to making a false police report and was released on her own recognizance. She didn't respond to a message seeking comment left Tuesday at a number listed as hers, but her lawyer, Brett McArthur, said she maintains the attack happened and plans to vigorously defend herself.

I can't tell you why the story sounded fake, that's part and parcel of being a good journalist/politico - it's just something in your gut. I can say why I didn't write about it. You HAVE to get these stories right. We can't be seen pushing alleged hate crimes that are fake, lest we become the LGBT who cried wolf the next time a real hate crime happens. And yes, the religious right lies like a cheap rug, but we're better than that, and we're smarter than that.

There's a reason a number of the lead religious right groups have been designated official hate groups - because lying for them isn't just second nature, it isn't just a bug, it's a feature.

We're the good guys. That doesn't mean we can't be as tough as them, it does mean that we're better than them. Read the rest of this post...

Why the Family Research Council is a hate group

I've just written a long post about why the FRC is in fact a hate group. Read the rest of this post...

SPLC calls out FRC for more lies

Who'd have guessed that an organization that's faced down the Klan for decades wouldn't blink in the face of religious right bullies:

SPLC: Family Research Council License-to-Kill Claim 'Outrageous'

Posted in Anti-LGBT, Extremist Propaganda by Mark Potok on August 16, 2012

Editor's Note: The following statement may be attributed to Mark Potok, Senior Fellow of the Southern Poverty Law Center and editor of its Intelligence Report and Hatewatch blog.

Yesterday's attack on the Family Research Council and the shooting of a security guard there was a tragedy. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) deplores all violence, and our thoughts are with the wounded victim, Leo Johnson, his family and others who lived through the attack.

For more than 40 years, the SPLC has battled against political extremism and political violence. We have argued consistently that violence is no answer to problems in a democratic society, and we have strongly criticized all those who endorse such violence, whether on the political left or the political right.

But this afternoon, FRC President Tony Perkins attacked the SPLC, saying it had encouraged and enabled the attack by labeling the FRC a "hate group." The attacker, Floyd Corkins, "was given a license to shoot an unarmed man by organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center," Perkins said. "I believe the Southern Poverty Law Center should be held accountable for their reckless use of terminology."

Perkins' accusation is outrageous. The SPLC has listed the FRC as a hate group since 2010 because it has knowingly spread false and denigrating propaganda about LGBT people -- not, as some claim, because it opposes same-sex marriage. The FRC and its allies on the religious right are saying, in effect, that offering legitimate and fact-based criticism in a democratic society is tantamount to suggesting that the objects of criticism should be the targets of criminal violence.

As the SPLC made clear at the time and in hundreds of subsequent statements and press interviews, we criticize the FRC for claiming, in Perkins' words, that pedophilia is "a homosexual problem" -- an utter falsehood, as every relevant scientific authority has stated. An FRC official has said he wanted to "export homosexuals from the United States." The same official advocated the criminalizing of homosexuality.

Perkins and his allies, seeing an opportunity to score points, are using the attack on their offices to pose a false equivalency between the SPLC's criticisms of the FRC and the FRC's criticisms of LGBT people. The FRC routinely pushes out demonizing claims that gay people are child molesters and worse -- claims that are provably false. It should stop the demonization and affirm the dignity of all people.

False is what FRC does. Read the rest of this post...

If SPLC is responsible for the shooting because they labeled FRC a "hate group"...

...then what responsibility does FRC have for actually being a hate-filled group?

Isn't it a bit like complaining, "Joe punched me because you told him I slept with his wife."

But you did sleep with his wife.

That doesn't mean he should resort to violence, ever.  But you did sleep with his wife.  So let's stop pretending that the sinner here is the guy who caught you. Read the rest of this post...

"The far right is responsible for fostering an environment of hate, intolerance and violence"

A friend writes about the shooting yesterday at the headquarters of the influential religious-right anti-gay activist organization, the Family Research Council, which was designated an official hate group last year by the Southern Poverty Law Center:

Romney says, "There is no place for such violence in our society." Of course there's room. There's more than sufficient room for violence because Romney, FRC, the GOP generally, Log Cabin republicans particularly, and all their right-wing lobbyists at the NRA have engaged in systematic behavior designed specifically to create a culture of violence.

Seriously, how can you terrorize gay people for generations, insist on free-flowing guns to every human alive, and act surprised when one of the victims of your unrelenting gay-bashing finally cracks under the pressure? No place for violence? Romney and the FRC cleared the path.

This is not intended to be a statement in support of violence, but, like John above, an observation as to how surprising it is to me that this does not happen more frequently because history has demonstrated that violence begets violence.

I am not shocked when these kinds of things happen because I recognize that very loud, influential forces at work in this society routinely foster an environment where these kinds of events are very, very likely to happen. The disingenuous outrage of the far right (and it is the far right that is largely responsible for fostering the aforementioned environment of hate and intolerance and violence) is amazing.

Thoughts?
Read the rest of this post...

Do we hold all straight people responsible for this?

Read the rest of this post...

Comment: "Members of the LGBT community have been extraordinarily non-violent in our responses"

Reader comment on the FRC shooting:

The shooting and the years of hate are two different things. The hate does not justify the shooting. Fortunately the guard was only wounded, not killed. I hope he recovers quickly. And fortunately no one else was hurt. it appears from the reports that he and some other people had the courage to disarm the the shooter.

But the group has a history of hate. They are rightly called a hate group. They cannot excuse their hate. What is clear is that despite the negative things they say and the things they do to harm us, members of the LGBT community have been extraordinarily non-violent in our responses. What is also clear is that we have been the people who have suffered considerably from not only the emotional violence against us from groups like the FRC, but also the physical violence against us.

Read the rest of this post...

Does the shooting at the Family Research Council exonerate the group's 20 years of hate?

The information is still coming in, but someone apparently started shooting in the lobby of the religious right hate group Family Research council in Washington, DC today.  A security guard was unfortunately wounded.

Conservatives, such as CNN's Erick Erickson, are already trying to tie Democrats to the attack.  Why?  Because people on the left had the audacity to challenge the Family Research Council's decades of hateful and bigoted attacks against gay and lesbian Americans.  And other conservatives are calling for the Southern Poverty Law Center to no longer list the FRC as a hate group because of today's violence.  That would be wrong.

Because of conservatives trying to take political advantage of the shooting I'm now forced to recap just how hateful and bigoted an organization the Family Research Council really is.  I'd have preferred to have avoided that this so soon after the attack, but conservatives leave us no choice.

 First let's say a word about the violence.

1. It doesn't matter that the FRC is a hate group, violence is not the answer, ever - period.  Violence is wrong, the shooting was wrong.  Period.

2. This is more evidence of the increasing culture of violence in our country, and the absurd availability of guns to every nutjob who wants one.

Now back to FRC.

FRC's status as a hate group does not change because some nut decided, wrongly, to use violence.  The violence is abhorrent.  It is wrong.  But it's also wrong for conservatives to suggest that the violence somehow changes the fact that the FRC routinely uses false claims to promote the hatred and demonization of gay people.  It's a fact that they do.

Here's what the Southern Poverty Law Center said about why it finally added the FRC to its list of hate groups:

The Family Research Council (FRC) bills itself as “the leading voice for the family in our nation’s halls of power,” but its real specialty is defaming gays and lesbians. The FRC often makes false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science. The intention is to denigrate LGBT people in its battles against same-sex marriage, hate crimes laws, anti-bullying programs and the repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

“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.”
— FRC President Tony Perkins, FRC website, 2010

You really need to read the rest of the SPLC's report on the Family Research Council. It's an eye-opening list of the various reasons that the FRC was finally listed as a hate group.

Has the FRC decided to no longer endorse the imprisonment of gay people?

Does the FRC still think gay kids know they are "abnormal"?

Does FRC still think homosexuality is destructive to society?

Does the FRC still think gays are pedophiles?

Does the FRC still think gays consider pedophiles "prophets"?

"...one of the primary goals of the homosexual rights movement is to abolish all age of consent laws and to eventually recognize pedophiles as the 'prophets' of a new sexual order." - "Homosexual Activists Work to Normalize Sex With Boys," FRC publication, July 1999, http://www.frc.org/misc/bl057.pdf

Does the Family Research Council still think gays are deviants?

"Homosexuals have never been forced to sit in the back of the bus. They are as privileged a group as any. To compare their attempts to affirm deviant sexual conduct to the legitimate discrimination claims of true minorities is a sham," said FRC Director of Cultural Studies Robert H.
Knight - FRC's CultureFacts, July 28, 1999, http://www.frc.org/culture/cu99g4.html

You can read much more of FRC's anti-gay hate here.

And here's a post I did a while back dissecting how brilliantly the FRC uses lies and innuendo to foment the hatred of gay people.

The Family Research Council is a hate group.  But that doesn't justify anyone using violence against them.  Nor does the violence justify conservatives now trying to whitewash FRC's record of hate.  The organization's record, sadly, speaks for itself.

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