Via Alvin McEwen, I see this post over at Equality Matters…
NOM President Claims Marriage Equality Will “Normalize Pedophilia”
On August 18, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) posted a “NOM Marriage News” update, written by NOM president Brian Brown, to its blog.
You read that update and you really start believing that NOM desperately wants to be on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hate groups list. Because now they’re just about saying flat out that legalizing Teh Gay means your children are going to get raped. Carlos Maza quotes a passage from Brown’s dirty little rant on the Equality Matters blog. I’m going to quote a tad more of it here, because you need to notice something about the organization Robert George Super Genius co-founded…
NORMALIZING PEDOPHILIA
When you knock over a core pillar of society like marriage, and then try to redefine Biblical views of marriage as bigotry, there will be consequences. Will one of the consequences be a serious push to normalize pedophilia?
The Daily Caller raised the question by pointing us all to a high-level academic conference in Baltimore this week, “Pedophilia: Minor-Attracted Persons and the DSM: Issues and Controversies.”
The DSM is the diagnostic manual that defines mental illness. You probably recall that a key moment in the gay rights campaign was the 1973 decision by the American Psychiatric Association, the organization that produces the DSM, to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses.
Here’s how the brochure describes the goal:
“This day-long symposium will facilitate the exchange of ideas among researchers, scholars, mental health practitioners, and minor-attracted persons who have an interest in critical issues surrounding the entry for pedophilia in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association. The symposium will address critical issues in the following areas:
- Scientific and philosophical issues related to the DSM entry on pedophilia and/or hebephilia
- Effects of the DSM entry on stigma, availability of mental health services, and research
- Ways in which minor-attracted persons can be involved in the DSM 5 revision process”
When professors from Harvard and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine get together to discuss ways in which “minor attracted persons” can be involved in the DSM revision process—watch out.
Enquiring people want to know: Will pedophiles become “minor-attracted persons” in our culture? Will courts which endorse orientation as a protected class decide down the road that therefore laws which discriminate against “minor-attracted persons” must be narrowly tailored to a compelling government interest?
Here’s the fundamental truth: Ideas have consequences and so do words—because they contain ideas, because they are the vehicle through which and by which human beings describe reality.
NOM is pushing two old lies here. First, that gays and pedophilia go hand in hand. Anyone who has watched them since Proposition 8 knows that this is a regular song of theirs…The Gays Are After Your Children! Anyone who has studied the gay rights struggle since Anita Bryant knows that this is how the anti-gay industrial complex win elections. They go straight for the GAY=PEDOPHILE attack and the only question is do they do it overtly or do they dog whistle it. But the anti-gay campaigns where that scarecrow isn’t being waved in voters faces is the rare exception to the rule.
The other lie is that homosexuality was removed from the professional psychiatric association diagnostic manual of mental illnesses after a gay rights campaign. It was no such thing. The emerging science on sexual orientation brought about the change, much to the everlasting regret of the bigots in that profession, then and now. The science simply does not support the conclusion that there is anything clinically wrong with gay people. Evelyn Hooker in her her 1957 paper The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual, showed that sexually active male homosexuals were clinically indistinguishable from sexually active male heterosexuals. All the science done since then has confirmed that over and over again. There is nothing innately wrong with gay people. We are simply attracted to our own sex in the same way heterosexuals are attracted to the opposite sex.
The science drove the change in the DSM. The politics on the streets were the inevitable result of both the science, and the fact that gay people were beginning then to come out of a period of intense cultural isolation and persecution and were seeing for themselves that what the popular culture and traditional medicine were saying about them was simply wrong. When the popular culture keeps telling you that you are a monster, and you look around at the others of your community and you don’t see monsters, but fellow human beings, after a while you get angry about being told constantly that you are a monster. Sometimes you even get politically active about it. This is only surprising to people who still believe, who still need to believe, that homosexuals are either dangerous psychotics or contemptible faggots. They’re not human beings defending themselves they’re homosexuals desperately wanting social approval… But that gay anger did not drive the change to the DSM. It was the science.
Anyone who has studied the struggle for gay equality since the change to the DSM knows exactly what happened next, what the ones who could not let science override their cheapshit bar stool prejudices about homosexuals did. They started their own cottage industry of junk science to have something to support their prejudices against what the actual scientists were saying. Paul Cameron being probably the main example of that. But he is hardly alone.
NOM is with them, if not in generating their own junk science, then at least in cheerfully passing it along. But there is more to it. Take another look at Brian Brown’s alarm at this academic conference in Baltimore…
Here’s how the brochure describes the goal:
“This day-long symposium will facilitate the exchange of ideas among researchers, scholars, mental health practitioners, and minor-attracted persons who have an interest in critical issues surrounding the entry for pedophilia in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association. The symposium will address critical issues in the following areas:
- Scientific and philosophical issues related to the DSM entry on pedophilia and/or hebephilia
- Effects of the DSM entry on stigma, availability of mental health services, and research
- Ways in which minor-attracted persons can be involved in the DSM 5 revision process”
When professors from Harvard and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine get together to discuss ways in which “minor attracted persons” can be involved in the DSM revision process—watch out.
Yes. Watch out. Because science might happen. Note that there is nothing in that brochure or the bullet points he cites even remotely suggesting that this conference has any interest in normalizing pedophilia. But notice also that Brown doesn’t even bother trying to make that case. What Brown is saying there, clearly, sickeningly, is science can’t be trusted.
Science turned our world upside down when they said nothing was wrong with the homos after all. That is proof that science can’t be trusted. Next thing you know they’ll be saying rape doesn’t harm children. How do you know they won’t? Science always turns things upside down. Science can’t be trusted. Next thing you know they’ll be saying humans and apes have a common ancestor. Next thing you know they’ll be saying the earth isn’t at the center of the universe. This is, seriously, how the folks in the organization co-founded by Robert George Super Genius think.
It’s a mindset thing. It’s a worldview thing. Understand this: the attack on science by groups like NOM isn’t motivated by a simple matter of applying the best political tactics to the job at hand. That’s the mindset of a Karl Rove, but not the folks at NOM. NOM is to homosexuality and marriage, what creationists are to biology and evolution. They’re throwbacks to an age before reason and science, that still needs its demons, witches and scapegoats. Behind that mask of dispassionate logic and rationality George assumes, and the others like Maggie and Brown try to, is, demons, witches, and scapegoats.
Demons. Witches. Scapegoats. Homosexuals. That’s their world. When professors from Harvard and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine get together…watch out… If you ever wondered why none of them can bring themselves to simply look at their gay neighbors in this life and see fellow human beings, some good, some bad, some just trying their best, there’s your answer.
This is a deliberate confusion of sexual orientation with legitimate mental disorders of a sexual nature.
And as Bruce notes, par for the course.
Let’s backtrack to the APA in 1973 in Honolulu:
The reason the APA dropped homosexuality from its list of mental disorders was that there was absolutely no evidence that being gay is a mental disorder, though there was plenty of evidence that a lot of people didn’t like it, and confused their dislike with sincere medical belief.They had a definition of mental disorder, but to make it stick for gay people they had to ignore their own definition, and say that “Of course. Gay people are mentally disordered BY definition. Just not the definition we apply to everyone else.” It could not hold up to any kind of scientific scrutiny, not that much of psychiatry can. The whole procedure underlined that prejudice was really the defining issue, not homosexuality, as is often the case on issues around sexuality in our deeply puritanical culture.
(On a side note, I used to have a boyfriend who didn’t want to shave his stuff because he thought that it put too much attention there. People might think he was gay and thought ‘too much’ about sex, and you shouldn’t– well, you know. When I pointed out that he is gay, he DID think a lot about it, and liked lots of attention there, he got over himself. but I digress. It’s just an illustration of the twisty ways of sex). Anyway…
Not surprisingly, religious reactions to gay people are very similar. First, a whole category of people is defined as mentally ill (or particularly sinful) with no scientific or experiential (or biblical) reason to do so, only a cultural and religious prejudice. They they have a vote, and presto-change-o, a whole category of people are “cured” overnight. Then, the people who whose livelihood depend on the the “mental illness” issue try to make another vote to make all of those people “sick” again. Sounds just like the debate that has been going on in a number of protestant Churches we could name. Clearly, not a matter of good science or good medicine– or good theology– just prejudice. You might call it the politics– or theology– of diagnosis.
A lot of what passes for claiming paraphilia as a sexual disorder is just the mere fact that some people don’t share that particular taste. for example, Diaper Dave was engaging in, I guess, paraphilia that I don’t find particularly attractive. Actually, I don’t find it attractive at all. I also find his brand of conservative hypocrisy unattractive. neither is an illness or even worthy of psychiatric attention.
And thus, Bruce, you are right in your conclusion. It’s another attempt to write an unacknowledged subtext into a conversation that is ostensibly about something else. much like “teaching” gay marriage in school was deliberately conflated with “teaching your children homosexuality, all in an attempt to engage in the gays-are-gonna-get-your-childrenfear-mongering that was a major reason for the success of prop. 8. They couldn’t do much with the child molestation thingy any more– too many people are educated, at least those that aren’t bible-believing Christians of the cherry picking variety. (Jimmy Swaggart: Homosexuality is the WORST sin. No it isn’t, Jimmy. Hypocrisy is miles ahead of it). so they did the next best thing.
When it comes to direct, head-to-head examination of truth and fact, these people have nothing to stand on. Their only course, other than the “Not in God’s Plan” argument, is to toss out all the “What Ifs”. What if after recognizing that gay people aren’t sick and mentally disordered, they expect to be soldiers, teachers, doctors, or ordinary people? Once that happens, what will be next? Bigamy? Polygamy? YES! Then pedophilia, of course. Your children will be seduced and recruited to be future homos! (Never mind that they keep having the babies and we keep automatically showing up.) The human race will die out because homosexuals will replace all those normal heteros and women will be useless to men. If, if , if – what other horror stories and connections can we dream up? The more preposterous the “what if”, the more believable to these looney-tunes.
Agreed Gianni. Their arguements are based on fear, and ignorance, not love an rationality.
Given that these child-murdering bigots seem incapable of understanding the concept of informed consent, am I the only one who fears for the safety of their wives?
Oh Christ. Always with the pedophilia and the destruction of civilization. Can’t these gibbering idiots at least TRY to come up with something new? Here, I even have a few suggestions:
1. Equal marriage will cause aliens from the Andromeda galaxy to invade Earth and turn us into TV dinners.
2. If a cow eats grass that has been stepped on by a gay man, it will give vinegar instead of milk.
3. If a pregnant woman is startled by a lesbian, the baby will be born with a tail.
There you go, NOMbies. I guarantee these will frighten the rubes and bring in the donations.
RainbowPhoenix – No, you’re not. Also their children, female co-workers or employees … basically any living organism in the vicinity that is smaller or weaker. That’s why roaches scatter when the lights come on. They’re afraid it’s a TalEvangical come to get them.
@Hunger Tallest Palin.
Brian Brown NOM speaks:
“Contrary to what gay activists say, we don’t hate anyone with same-sex attraction and it is not NOM that suggests that if a cow eats grass that has been stepped on by a gay man, it will give vinegar instead of milk
I don’t think that would hold up scientifically but what NOM is calling for is credible research into the possibility that the milk comes out sour and whether the sour milk can actually kill babies. Look at Massachusetts.
I mean, just look at Massachusetts.”
Yep, even if you point out VERY specific and irrefutable facts on why the DSM changed it’s definition of homosexuality, you get nothing back but the same lies and conjecture and libel that gay people somehow blackmailed or intimidated the psychiatric establishment to their will. As IF anyone could actually do that.
No credentialed medical or psychological body will support civil and public policy that denies any individual the right or ability to be SELF RELIANT, responsible and contributing when they ARE and CAN be in ways that normal people are.
But NOM’ers and the rest of the anti gay mob, constantly conflate religious sin with moral sin. They are quick to insist they be trusted, but medical science, updated research cannot be.
They don’t like us comparing the injustices and threats against gay people as the same as that against blacks, women and Jews…but will compare gay people to murderers, adulterers and thieves in a heartbeat.
These people defy accuracy, sound analogies and comparisons and historical context to the same.
They are so certain of the cowardice, laziness and stupidity and dependency of their supporters that any form of honesty, truth and open discussion is virtually impossible.
And their own supporters ARE exceptionally DUMB in how little they question or how incurious they are about the obvious ironies and contradictions in NOM’s very assertions.
For example: using the excuse that they don’t want to defend their activity or anti gay assertions in courts of law, because they have received death threats and are intimidated by public exposure. All the while organizing bus tours, public rallies in parks and on the steps of public civil buildings and marches that DO expose them outright.
The claim that they ‘will be’ silenced, all the while being interviewed in print and broadcast media and making speeches in locations of their choosing.
Claiming there are death threats, and in our age of instant sharing, preservation of e-mails, phone messages, photographs of vandalism or other attacks being possible, they DON’T share any. Even in order to prove their claims are true.
Not only is their hyperbole believed, but many of their supporters at these public rallies are infected with it.
The subtext is ALWAYS, that gay people are threatening, and they are the victims.
The assertions are, that scientific and social evidence cannot be trusted, but their hysteria and libel can be.
The only other people who have used this tactic have been segregationists, misogynists, neo Nazis, white supremacists and Aryan militias.
The proof that I have, is decades and decades of archived propaganda from all of them. I volunteer for the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. And the Anti Defamation League can happily provide the same proof.
So can the SPLC.
NOM’s got no such proof. But bitching about the SPLC and Dr. Michael Brown calling the SPLC the ‘real’ hate group is what gets them through the day.
Michael Brown’s article on the SPLC can be found in
http://www.townhall.com
All of this my friends, is proof that NOM et all, are wussie, cowardly pissy pants and are such whining babies you just want to throw up.