Last week, the House Education and Labor Committee held a full hearing on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, (ENDA) which would ban job discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. ENDA is the crown jewel of an incremental strategy that has dominated the GLBT movement in Washington. The idea is to cut up gay rights into a series of small legislative bites that are digestible to moderate Democrats and Republicans (at least the few left) in swing districts.
For example, we have a bill that would eliminate the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). We have another that would allow gay people to serve openly in the military. There is legislation that adds sexual orientation to existing hate crime law. The list goes on.
This strategy may yet work and it deserves a chance, if only because our advocacy groups in Washington have invested so much in its success. It would be very difficult, in any case, to turn this ship around. Perhaps, the ENDA snowball will roll downhill and slowly turn into an avalanche of individual bills that become law. Maybe the piecemeal pupu platter really will become a full meal.
But, what if we don’t see tangible results in the next couple of years? Will we be flexible enough to pivot and go in a different direction?
I know it is counterintuitive, but I believe that a single comprehensive GLBT rights bill, that incorporates most of the bills floating around Congress, will be easier to pass than the current flurry of legislation. The reason is, having numerous bills requires repeated partisan fights — each one bloodier than the next. One large bill would require only a single fight — which would greatly benefit Democrats in conservative districts. (Read More)
In response to the American Library Association’s commemoration of Banned Books Week, Focus on the Family is encouraging antigay and antiabortion activists to overwhelm public libraries with stacks of donated conservative books.
Focus complains that the ALA’s campaign in defense of free speech and access to ideas “showcases books to which parents have objected — and which libraries have generally not pulled from shelves.”
“Every year, the ALA and other liberal groups use this trumped-up event to intimidate and basically silence concerned parents,” said Candi Cushman, education analyst for Focus on the Family Action.
1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
3. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
6. Ulysses by James Joyce
7. Beloved by Toni Morrison
8. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
9. 1984 by George Orwell
But those efforts have stalled, so Focus tries to buy time:
Cushman said it’s time for families to turn the tables and challenge the ALA to honor its own principles.
“You can do this most effectively by simply going to your local public library, or a school library,” she said, “and donating books that communicate your family’s perspective on those issues.”
While Focus continues its low-key campaign to ban American literature, meantime our nation’s libraries can look forward to receiving hordes of freshly bound, barely read copies of classic works by the greats: Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck, Randall Terry, and John Paulk.
Focus on the Family complained tonight that “Alabama schools are now required to write stricter anti-bullying policies, thanks to language in a bill that opens the door to the gay agenda.”
But Focus political writer Josh Montez (pictured) doesn’t seem to know the difference between a bill and a law; he uses the two terms interchangeably.
He may be referring to the Student Harassment Prevention Act, which goes into effect Oct. 1. (PDF copy of the Act.) The legislation empowers the state department of education to develop a model policy for local districts to receive reports of harassment and to punish perpetrators. In particular, the law directs the department to develop “a procedure for the development of a nonexhaustive list of the specific personal characteristics of a student which may often lead to harassment. Based upon experience, a local board of education may add, but not remove, characteristics from the list.”
In other words, the state might specify race and religion for statewide protection; a local district might add sexual orientation to its local policy.
Until now, there haven’t been any legal repercussions from bullying and it’s an issue the state has long needed to address, said longtime educator Lisa Moses, of Florence, who said bullying is one area addressed in another new piece of legislation known as Taylor’s Law. Under that law, a student’s behavior at school, including bullying, can delay the student from acquiring a driver’s license.
“Bullying has too long been ignored on the school level and has somewhat been accepted with a ‘boys will be boys’ attitude,” Moses said. “Kids need to be able to report these things anonymously, but they don’t trust that it will be kept quiet and they’re scared.” …
The issue came to a head in April when 11-year-old Jaheem Herrera committed suicide at his Atlanta-area home after his parents say he was repeatedly tormented in school. District officials denied it, and an independent review found bullying wasn’t a factor, a conclusion his family rejects.
Until now, Alabama children have been completely unprotected:
Alabama’s law covers grades pre-kindergarten through 12th. The sponsor of the bill, State Rep. Betty Carol Graham, D-Alexander City, said the new Alabama law was three years in the making and grew out of the rise in suicides among youth in the state and nation.
Focus on the Family objects to the law’s attention to “the motivations and ‘characteristics’ of victims, rather than on the wrong actions of the bullies.”
In other words, Focus believes that bullying is not really bullying in the case of certain types of victims. Focus believes that the distinction between “bullying” and physical action to correct homosexual youths should be decided not by the community or police, but by individual bullies and antigay faculty members.
Focus offers applause to Betty Peters, a member of the Alabama education board, who (Focus claims) said gay activists are “encouraging like-minded individuals to sign up for local committees that will be responsible for writing similar policies. She encouraged parents who oppose the gay agenda to do the same.”
Focus warns:
Parents should watch out for attempts to mandate special protections for “gender identity” and “sexual orientation”— which can pave the way for pro-gay curriculum and mandatory “diversity” training.
Focus believes other characteristics of students may be protected from bullying — but not gender identity or sexual orientation.
Josh Montez, Focus’ staff writer, fails to inform readers that Peters is a member of the American Family Association, Alabama Republican Assembly, Eagle Forum, and Christian Coalition. Peters wants creationism to be taught in schools. She was the lone no-vote on state Superintendent of Education Dr. Joe Morton’s recommendation that Alabama participate in a state-led initiative to develop common core standards for English and mathematics. Peters also opposed President Obama’s speech to school children.
Peters’ Eagle Forum membership is worth remembering — we shall revisit this momentarily.
Montez also failed to tell readers about the experiences of bullied students and faculty. According to radio station WBHM-FM in Birmingham:
…Critics say that merely implying that gay students are protected is not enough. The result, they say, is that no one is safe, even those who are just perceived gay.
Experts say that these days children are hearing more anti-gay language in school. Carly Friedman is a Samford University psychology professor and research consultant for the Alabama Safe Schools Coalition. Friedman is surveying Alabama students to gauge how often they hear gay slurs in school.
“We are seeing an increase in things like, Oh that’s so gay, You’re such a fag. These words that we are hearing more often I think that really can have an effect on young people.”
She’s found that they don’t concentrate as well, they skip class, and they have higher rates of depression and suicidal thoughts. Friedman adds that gay slurs affect all youth. …
But people like Eunie Smith, president of Eagle Forum of Alabama, a conservative activist group, say homosexuality shouldn’t be talked about in schools, much less tolerated.”Well, young people are highly impressionable. And for the schools to provide some special status for those who would perceive themselves to be homosexual…would be to legitimize and therefore to encourage these unhealthy lifestyles.”
Smith and Peters — both of them, leaders within the Eagle Forum — object to safety for LGBT students despite those students’ safe and responsible lifestyles, and even when those students’ parents and churches accept them. In the view of Smith and Peters, antigay parents and students enjoy a “religious freedom” to slander and bully others: a freedom that supersedes the personal and religious freedom of LGBT students and their families.
But Focus’s Montez does not share any of this information with readers.
Focus says Montez obtained a bachelor’s degree in communication from Moody Bible Institute. One wonders what kind of communication is really taught at Moody.
We are now seeing that the idea of a black president seems to drive some white folks crazy.
In comparison, the quickest way to drive the black community nuts is to mention the subject of the lgbt community.
African-American gospel singer Tonex recently became the first black gospel singer to come out publicly.
Granted, he is not the first African-American gay gospel singer (i.e. James Cleveland and others), but he is the first to have the guts to be honest about his sexual orientation.
These are his words in an exclusive interview with Black Voices:
I’m studying daily on the subject of same-sex matters. I’m tired of echoing what I’ve been told. I want to know for myself the true interpretation of scriptures in Biblical text and well as scientific documentation.
You know, it’s not easy growing up in a Pentecostal/Evangelical church, where everyone is pretty much anti-gay, although it’s common knowledge that some of the most anointed musicians and singer-songwriters have, or have dealt with, same-sex attraction at some point. For me, it was particularly taboo because of my upbringing and the ministerial call on my life. I then had to think about the repercussions of this revelation. But I knew I had to get free.
… There was so much more in that interview that I thought was, unfortunately, overlooked. So much more to my story then the sexuality part, but most church folks are sexually repressed anyway, so they naturally gravitate right toward that type of subject matter. I noticed parts one and three weren’t juicy enough for the church or the public, yet they were the key to the whole puzzle. I talked about my same-sex attraction. I don’t think that there was any new information here. I’ve addressed this issue in my music for years. But for many, I guess, it was a shock of sorts. But believe me, it wasn’t for shock value. The real story is not cute, ladies and gentlemen. Freedom, my friends, is not for cowards.
There is a sad part to this entire situation as far as I am concerned. Tonex says that 96 percent of the responses he received have been positive. That enough confirms a belief I’ve had about the black community.
Approval or disapproval of gays and lesbians in the black community is far more complex than folks realize.
The simplistic belief that the black community automatically does not approve of homosexuality is driven by three factors:
The religious right’s eagerness to exploit the ignorance of the African-American community regarding its lgbt members.
The cowardice of influential black leaders who tackle the issue with the force of a baby licking the tip of icing off of a cake.
And the self absorption of the lgbt community at large which refuses to acknowledge that the lgbt struggle for self-determination is present in some form or another in every ethnic group, every culture, and every country.
It’s a question that deserves far more attention than it is getting (hello Advocate magazine!).
However, I know that waiting for a major lgbt magazine to do a serious story on gay issues in the black community is like waiting for BET or Ebony or Jet to do a serious story on the issue.
I’ll probably be waiting so long for this to happen that my credit will become good.
Still, Tonex should be commended for his pioneering step. It’s not his fault that both of his communities are way behind on the issue.
In 2007, Mark Yarhouse of Pat Robertson’s Regent University co-wrote an informal study of ex-gay therapy. The study was funded by Exodus International — the North American network of evangelical ex-gay activists — and co-written by Stanton Jones, another evangelical who is employed by the conservative Wheaton College in Illinois.
Exodus falsely marketed the study as “peer-reviewed” — it wasn’t — and Yarhouse and Jones were criticized for rigging the sample of subjects and standards of success or failure in order to guarantee a result that would satisfy Exodus.
Specifically, Jones and Yarhouse’s work suffered from the following flaws:
The study originally sought 300 participants, but after more than a year of seeking to round up volunteers, they had to settle on only 98 participants.
During the course of the study, 25 dropped out, and one participant’s answers were too incomplete to be used.
Of the remaining 72 only 11 reported “satisfactory, if not uncomplicated, heterosexual adjustment.” Most of these 11 remained primarily homosexual in attraction or, at best, bisexual, but were satisfied that they were just slightly more attracted to the opposite sex, or slightly less attracted to the same sex.
After the study ended, but before the book was finished, one of the 11 wrote to the authors to say that he lied — he really wanted to change, had really hoped he had changed, and answered that he had changed. But he concluded that he hadn’t, came out, and is now living as an openly gay man.
Dozens of participants experienced no lessening of same-sex attraction and no increase in opposite-sex attraction, but were classified as “success” stories by Jones and Yarhouse simply because they maintained celibacy — something many conservative gay people already do.
The study purposely declined to interview any ex-gay survivors: people who claim to have been injured by ex-gay programs and who have formed support groups such as Beyond Ex-Gay. Despite — or because of — this omission, Yarhouse and Jones made the unfounded claim that there is little or no evidence of harm resulting from unproven, unsupervised, unlicensed, and amateur ex-gay counseling tactics.
In short, the study design was so flawed that no mainstream, peer-reviewed, mental-health journal would publish it.
Nevertheless, Exodus, Focus on the Family, and other Christian Right political groups immediately cited the study as proof that anyone can change their orientation without fear of ill effects from disproven methods or disreputable amateur counselors.
Now, however, Yarhouse is backing away from some of the early reactions to the study.
At a Sept. 25 symposium at Regent, Yarhouse said — according to The Virginian-Pilot — that while same-sex attraction may be changeable in some individuals, not everyone can change.
“For me, in my own practice, I would not focus on change of orientation,” said Yarhouse, a psychologist and counselor who teaches at Regent, an evangelical Christian school. …
Yarhouse’s study focused on those who said their same-sex attractions collided with their religious beliefs. He said his research found that there was “modest” movement away from homosexuality among some Exodus participants, but categorical conversions to heterosexuality were rare.
Yarhouse recommended that counselors avoid uniformly steering struggling gays toward heterosexuality and focus instead on the best outcome for the individual.
That could include celibacy or exploring different faith groups with various attitudes toward gays and lesbians, he said.
Despite Yarhouse’s statements, no one on the Christian Right who misreported the study’s findings in 2007-2008 has yet retracted their false boasts. Until Yarhouse becomes much more vocal, the public in general and Christian Rightists in particular will remain purposely misinformed about the inability of most same-sex-attracted persons to change their orientation.
James Dobson and his Focus on the Family empire rose to fame on a philosophy of authoritarian parenting that consisted of generous doses of spanking to ensure agreement, conformity, and obedience.
That philosophy was often criticized for its frequent outcome: Aggressive behavior, youth-on-youth violence, anxiety disorders, and externalization or projection of one’s problems. Christian Rightists countered that the benefits of harsh discipline outweighed these costs.
However, two new studies by Prof. Murray Straus at the University of New Hampshire find that children who are spanked suffer reduced intellectual capacity. The research was presented Friday at the 14th International Conference on Violence, Abuse and Trauma, in San Diego, Calif.
Pam Spaulding breaks the situation down with her usual excellence and candor:
A black teen-ager who was verbally assaulted and “exorcised” by his pentecostal church earlier this year tells a skeptical Tyra that he is cured of his sexual orientation.
Basically my feelings are this: Unless the black community comes to grips with the fact that lgbts of color exist and talk with us instead of looking at us as outsiders, expect more nonsense like this.
Two California Christian-Right organizations — the Capitol Resource Institute and Pacific Justice Institute — say that if antigay parents want to teach their children to bully gay classmates, the schools shouldn’t stand in their way.
The two organizations further contend that their own “religious freedom” trumps the religious and personal freedom of the bullied students and their parents.
According to Edge, parents suing the Alameda Unified School District near Oakland claimed the schools’ anti-bullying lessons are “being foisted on kindergartners” and that they saw the curriculum as a form of “indoctrination” in antiviolence and civility — traits which to them, apparently, are effeminate and sissyish. Edge continues:
But other parents who support the curriculum argue that the lessons are vital for countering school bullying.
The lessons consist of 45-minute videos shown once during the course of the school year. Kindergartners learn about teasing and how it can be hurtful; issues of sexual orientation are included in the presentation shown to fifth-graders, which is the last year that the anti-bullying presentations are required in the Alameda Unified School District.
The lessons commenced after kindergartners repeatedly hurled antigay epithets at classmates. Antigay parents want that behavior to continue.
It’s that sort of bullying among the very youngest children that the curriculum is intended to address, say supporters of the program like Carrie Brash, a mother quoted in the article as saying that her daughter had to endure harassment from schoolmates who would strike up a chorus of, “Lesbian, lesbian, your mom’s a lesbian,” in order to torment her.
Antigay parents teach their children to insult not only their classmates, but those classmates’ parents. The objective: Drive people they don’t like out of the public-school system and out of their neighborhoods.
The lawsuit seeks to recall the school board and replace the members with Christian Rightists.
“If homophobia is allowed to flourish under the protection of religious freedom, then any form of bigotry can be justified.”
It appears that the Christian Right will not rest until they are the only people in California, Michigan, and other states who are permitted to enjoy religious freedom and protection from angry, violent mobs.
The Michigan state senate voted Wednesday to reject a measure that would protect students from violence committed on the basis of sexual orientation. Opponents of the bill do not object to legislation protecting students on the basis of race or religion; their sole objection is to the protection of gay students from violence.
Democratic Sen. Glenn Anderson said:
It is imperative that we compel public schools to protect students from bullying in the academic environment by adopting a policy to deal with this destructive behavior.
Anderson’s measure lost on a vote of 21 to 16, according to the Michigan Messenger.
This move by the senate is the second recent example of Michigan officials protecting antigay violence.
In recent months. former ex-gay Patrick McAlvey has come forward to accuse Exodus member activist Mike Jones of sexually accosting him during “ex-gay” therapy sessions. Jones’ ex-gay activist website is hosted by Michigan State University. The university has refused to withdraw its taxpayer-subsidized hosting of Jones’ “Corduroy Stone” website, and both Jones and Exodus president Alan Chambers refuse to respond to the allegations.
Worse, perhaps, than the senators who support antigay bullying are those Republicans who say that protecting any student from bullying is too expensive. According to the Messenger:
[Some] Senate Republicans took a different tact in the floor debate Wednesday. They argued the bill could result in numerous lawsuits against public schools across Michigan.
“[The bill] is written in such a way as to guaruntee lawsuits against employees or the school,” said Sen. Alan Cropsey, a Republican from DeWitt. “This will turn every incident of bullying into a lawsuit, and cost the schools hundreds of millions.”
Schools across the nation are already being sued by parents of battered gay students; the parents accuse school faculty of failing to protect their children. So long as Michigan singles out gay youths and young adults for abuse, the lawsuits in that state are likely to escalate.
Last week, the House Education and Labor Committee held a full hearing on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, (ENDA) which would ban job discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. ENDA is the crown jewel of an incremental strategy that has dominated the GLBT movement in Washington. The idea is to cut up gay rights into a series of small legislative bites that are digestible to moderate Democrats and Republicans (at least the few left) in swing districts.
Cushman defends “silenced” parents’ efforts to 
But Focus political writer Josh Montez (pictured) doesn’t seem to know the difference between a bill and a law; he uses the two terms interchangeably.
Focus offers applause to Betty Peters, a member of the Alabama education board, who (Focus claims) said gay activists are “encouraging like-minded individuals to sign up for local committees that will be responsible for writing similar policies. She encouraged parents who oppose the gay agenda to do the same.”
We are now seeing that the idea of a black president seems to drive some white folks crazy.
Specifically, Jones and Yarhouse’s work suffered from the following flaws:
