Amanda Marcotte got an annoying, misinformed letter from a bigot. Here’s what it said:
Dear Ms. Marcotte:
No one is born “gay” or “transgender.”
These conditions arise as a result of faulty bonding and identification with the same-sex parent, starting in early life. They indicate deep-seated gender self-alienation (TG’s cross-identify with an opposite-sex figure), and are preventable and treatable.
The writings of well-known figures like Chastity Bono, James Morris, and Richard Raskind confirm this pattern.
Psychiatrist Richard Fitzgibbons’s articles “Gender Identity Disorder in Children” and “The Desire for a Sex Change” are instructive.
The Left has been lying to the public for decades, with false science and false argument. “Gays” are a manufactured “minority” used for political purposes.
The National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality has the real information (http://www.narth.com).
More and more Americans are learning the truth. GayScam, this fraud, will be ended. The laws will be adjusted accordingly.
–Sharon Kass Washington, D.C.
Oh, they think they’re so smart. They quote known quacks, but they somehow think they’re the ones with the correct information, and that the rest of us and the mainstream scientific community are collaborating against them, just to make them look stupid, when in reality, they don’t need our help to make themselves look stupid. Anyway, Amanda’s response is pitch-perfect:
Well, you weren’t born an asshole, either, but I still think it’s wrong to take your computer away.
She, of course, elaborated on that response in a second reply, in case the wingnut didn’t get the joke, and you should read her piece in its entirety, but sometimes I think the above answer more than suffices.
One thing that consistent when it comes to dealing with the Religious Right is that you can’t trust a word they say or write. I’d go as far as to say that when they make any sort of statement, it’s best to assume they’re lying unless proven otherwise. The latest case of a Religious Right organization lying about the work of an actual researcher is a doozy:
This time it’s Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons of NARTH, writing a long piece about same-sex adoption. It has a small section titled, “The children do suffer,” with this opening:
There are strong indications that children raised by same sex couples fare less well than children raised in stable homes with a mother and a father.
He brings up two studies to support this, one of them by Seton Hall professor Dr. Theodora Sirota, and then regretfully tells us:
Not surprisingly, there are scholars who oppose this weighty evidence.
I know something that might surprise Fitzgibbons: One of those opposing scholars is — have you guessed? — Seton Hall professor Dr. Theodora Sirota, the source of his weighty evidence.
Dr. Sirota wrote to Box Turtle Bulletin to ask them to help spread the word about the misrepresentation of her work by NARTH. As with most Religious Right lies, it’s fairly simple and staring you in the face, but you have to actually know the content of Sirota’s research to see it:
You can read the full text of Sirota’s message here, but let me put it in a nutshell. To support his denunciation of same-sex adoption, Fitzgibbons offers this summary of Sirota’s research:
Researchers interviewed 68 women with gay or bisexual fathers and 68 women with heterosexual fathers. The women (average age 29 in both groups) with gay or bisexual fathers had difficulty with adult attachment issues in three areas: they were less comfortable with closeness and intimacy; they were less able to trust and depend on others; and they experienced more anxiety in relationships compared to the women raised by heterosexual fathers.
The problem is not with what Fitzgibbons said; it’s what he left out: The gay and bisexual fathers in Sirota’s study were married to the mothers.
Dr. Sirota’s article is about the impact of a homosexual father raising a girl in a heterosexual marriage. It has nothing to do with same-sex couples, nothing to do with same-sex adoption at all.
Typical. This is very similar to the tactics wingnuts like Maggie Gallagher employ when they compare statistics of children raised in single parent homes vs. married parent homes in order to argue against gay parenting. Because you see, in so many places, gay parents can’t be technically married, therefore it’s reasonable to say that loving, committed gay couples raising children are the same as single parents, right? Of course not, but wingnuts are liars.
Alvin McEwen has a nice little round-up of other instances of wingnuts misrepresenting actual grown-up science to further their ideology here.
PHOENIX, AZ – As the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) – an organization that promotes discredited therapies for “those who struggle with unwanted homosexuality” – prepares to hold its national convention this week in Phoenix, pro-equality organizations are planning a convention of their own to debunk the theory that you can “pray away the gay.”
Over the course of two days during the NARTH convention, a collective of organizations and individuals — including No Longer Silent: Clergy for Justice, Human & Equal Rights Organizers (H.E.R.O.), and Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) of Phoenix — will host press conferences, presentations, protests, and discussions during an “alternative convention” at the Phoenix Airport Marriott Hotel – the same venue as the NARTH convention.
The reparative therapies promoted by NARTH have been repudiated by numerous studies and deemed harmful by the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Medical Association.
WHO: Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) organizations and individuals who refuse to give cover to the quack science and destructive practices of “ex-gay” therapy
WHAT: LGBT equal rights organizations confront the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) attendees with an “alternative convention” by sending a clear, strong message that hate will be met with relentless challenge and radically-inclusive love.
WHEN:
PRESS CONFERENCE
Friday, Nov. 4, 2011 at 10:30 a.m. at the Phoenix Airport Marriott, 1101 N. 44th St, Phoenix, AZ 85008
Professionals from the psychological community will hold a press conference to refute misinformation taught at the conference.
SIGN MAKING PARTY
Friday, Nov. 4, 2011 at 6 p.m. at One Voice Community Center, 4442 N. 7th Ave, Phoenix, AZ 85013
Participants create signs for Saturday’s protest. Food and beverages provided.
ALTERNATIVE CONVENTION
(All events take place at the Phoenix Airport Marriott, 1101 N. 44th St, Phoenix, AZ 85008, unless otherwise indicated)
Saturday, Nov. 5, 2011
7:30 – 10:30 a.m.: No Longer Silent Presents: Psychology & Theology – Why Homosexuality is Neither a Sin nor a Sickness
Apologies are all the rage with the “ex-gay” set right now! John Smid has been running around apologizing for various things for the past several weeks/months — he even showed up at Memphis Pride with those grotesque “I’m Sorry!” cards distributed by the Marin Foundation — and now Richard “Beat That Pillow With A Tennis Racket Like It’s Your Mom” Cohen has caught the fever as well! Unfortunately, his “apology” is not an apology at all, and nothing seems to have changed about his beliefs or his life’s work.
It comes via a press release on changeispossible.com, so let’s take a look. Here is the headline:
International Healing Foundation Apologizes to the LGBTQCommunity on its 21st Anniversary
Organization Expands Mission from ‘Change is Possible’ to ‘Coming Out Loved’
Uh huh. Notice that they are “expanding” their vision, rather than “changing” it. Change is apparently not possible in their world.
The International Healing Foundation has educated and counseled thousands of men, women and adolescents who experience unwanted same-sex attraction (SSA). However, on its 21st anniversary, IHF apologized to the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning) community for years of unknowingly fueling anti-gay sentiment by simply stating, “Change is Possible.”
That’s not what people are demanding apologies for. It’s more for the years upon years of religious bigotry repackaged as false, discredited “science,” giving people false hope, depression and increasing the suicide risk among vulnerable people who have been abused by religion into believing that “change” is even necessary, much less possible. It’s also for the thousands upon thousands of families which have been damaged further or ruined by such techniques. Moving on.
“We at IHF wish to offer a sincere, heartfelt apology to everyone in the LGBTQ community,” said IHF founder and director, Richard Cohen. “I apologize and ask forgiveness to those who were hurt by our message.” Cohen, a leading expert in the field of sexual orientation and married father of three, knows first-hand how it feels to be ostracized having lived a gay life.
I’m not feeling your apology, Richard.
Beginning today, IHF’s doors are wide open to everyone in the LGBTQ and straight communities. The new mission, “Coming Out Loved,” is the catalyst of true tolerance, real diversity, and equality for all. IHF staff will assist anyone who is conflicted about their sexuality and other challenging issues that arise for many in the gay community.
Wait, they weren’t willing to act as predators for any easy prey in the past? I’m confused.
IHF has adopted therapeutic guidelines from the American Psychological Association for members of the lesbian, gay and bisexual communities; American Counseling Association guidelines for the transgender community; and National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality therapeutic guidelines for anyone questioning their sexuality and/or experiencing unwanted SSA.
Nice! So if you come in and you’re happily gay — why would you go there if you were happily gay? — they’ll at least attempt to use a veneer of professionalism by using APA guidelines. If you’re transgender, they’ll use the guidelines of the American Counseling Association, from which Richard Cohen was banned for life in 2002 for multiple ethics violations. And if you’re their target market, which is, again, people who have been abused so much by religious indoctrination and bigotry that they believe that there are inherently sick, evil and flawed, they’ll continue to use the guidelines of the sham organization NARTH, a group which masquerades as secular and scientific [and which quietly kicked Cohen out of their lives a few years back -- they don't like for their public faces to be that crazy, though they will continue to work with people like him behind the scenes], while being purely ideological in nature, and a group so consistently dishonest, with such a long trail of broken homes in its wake, that I cannot imagine what would constitute an “ethics violation” in their world. Telling the truth? Reporting the results of a scientific study accurately? Not using willful abuse of children as the basis for much of their work?
Cohen asserts everyone should be loved and accepted for who they are. “By opening our doors to everyone in the LGBTQ and straight communities, we are expanding upon our mission and broadening the scope of our services,” he says. For more information, visit www.ComingOutLoved.com.
And that is the end of the press release. Is this anything more than a cry for help out of the ravines of inadequacy and irrelevance?
In case not everybody’s familiar, let’s take a little tour of the failure that is Richard Cohen’s life, and visit a couple of his friends as well, which should clear up any remaining confusion over whether Cohen’s apology is worth anything.
If readers have been following the “kill the gays” debacle in Uganda, it’s important to remember that one of the major backers of that bill is Stephen Langa, who got much of his information on gay people from Cohen’s book Coming Out Straight. Here is Rachel Maddow tearing Cohen apart on her show in 2009, and showing Langa teaching directly from his book.
And here is a picture you may have seen before, of Stephen Langa with other noted unhinged American homophobes and “ex-gay” leaders, Scott Lively and Don Schmierer, respectively. The man in the middle is Caleb Brundidge, who is also on the staff of Richard Cohen’s International Healing Foundation [sic]. The picture was taken in Uganda, right before the “kill the gays” Crusade really got its legs. Thanks for all your help, American hate group leaders/whack-jobs! Cohen definitely has blood on his hands.
Richard Cohen also used to be the president of PFOX, but thoroughly embarrassed himself and his entire movement when he was on The Daily Show a few years back, so they canned him. [Our own Wayne was also on that episode, if you haven't seen it.] He keeps close ties with them, though, and with NARTH. Indeed, his close associate at the International Healing Foundation [sic], the group who issued this crap apology, is Christopher Doyle, a “sexual reorientation coach” who is also on the board of PFOX.
If you don’t remember Christopher Doyle, here is a picture of him queening out and running away from Joe Jervis at the Truth Wins Out protest of the NARTH convention.
The tall bald guy is Christopher Doyle, an “ex-gay” who is on the board of PFOX and who is on staff with “ex-gay” whackadoodle Richard Cohen as a “Sexual Reorientation Coach” at the International Healing Foundation. If that wasn’t enough for this professionally “former” c*cksucker, he writes newspaper editorials arguing against the Day Of Silence. Anyway, I don’t think pillow-whacker Richard Cohen has totally gotten Doyle in touch with his “natural masculine nature,” because when I kept taking photos, Doyle put his hand on his hip and hissed, “I don’t need this. Why don’t you just sssssssstop!”
If you don’t know what Joe means when he refers to Richard Cohen as a “pillow-whacker,” we’ll get to that at the end, so that we can end on a funny note.
Earlier this year, Christopher Doyle, who is, again, the very fey bestie of Richard Cohen, who works with him at the organization which just issued this BS apology, said this:
Putting “ex-gay” in quotes suggested that such a sexual orientation is not valid, not recognized or both. But thousands of former homosexuals collectively identify themselves as such. The D.C. Superior Court ruled in 2009 that ex-gays are a protected sexual orientation class in the District.
Not all persons who experience same-sex attractions choose to live gay lives. Many of us have voluntarily left a homosexual life through therapeutic work or behavioral choice. I did, and I have been happily married to a woman for nearly five years; we have two children. I no longer experience same-sex attraction and have no desire to return to the homosexual life. Please respect this choice.
Left unproven, as he is obviously unwilling to do so, is his assertion that he “no longer experience[s] same-sex attraction.” Wayne and I wait with bated breath for the first professional “ex-gay” swindler to submit himself to testing which would prove that they are no longer gay, but it never comes. Instead, on a fairly regular basis, they admit, as Alan Chambers and John Smid have, that they are still totally into dudes.
To wrap this up, you can have a look at the truly insane things Richard Cohen believes about why people end up gay or lesbian, or you can just have a laugh watching a couple of videos. Here’s Richard Cohen on CNN beating a pillow with a tennis racket and screaming at his mom, just after he cuddles a grown man.
And here is Richard having a bizarre, queeny temper tantrum about how mean gay people are. Listen to him scream!
This is the man who is very sorry for seemingly nothing, and wants you to think he is relevant, and also to give him more money, because his movement is dying and his life’s work is a waste.
The National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) Conference is this coming weekend in Phoenix, AZ and will feature, Sharon Slater, a prominent leader in efforts to work through UN delegations to keep homosexuality illegal around the world. NARTH refuses to oppose criminalization but has invited Slater who works to maintain it. Seems to me NARTH is complicit in these efforts and should be held accountable.
I agree with Dr. Throckmorton that NARTH is a political organization — not a scientific one — that has close ties to shady characters like Dr. Michael Brown and Sharon Slater.
Conservative Christian professor and blogger Warren Throckmorton confirms what many have long suspected:
The ex-gay think-tank NARTH (National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality) claims to be a professional mental-health organization — but it isn’t.
Actually, according to NARTH’s operations director, David Pruden, only about 250 of NARTH’s approximately 1000 members are mental health professionals. Furthermore, some of those 250 members who have mental health degrees are academics who write about sexuality but do not provide sexual reorientation therapy. Thus, the lion’s share of NARTH’s members consist of lay people, ministers, and activists who have an interest in the materials provided by NARTH but are not scientists or therapists. …
Two prime speakers at next week’s convention in Phoenix are not scientists at all, but antigay activists.
Here’s another way of putting it:
NARTH is an organization of 750 antigay bigots who pay a token number of ethically sketchy ideologues with college degrees to pose as experts, distort the research of others, and parrot the antigay prejudice that donors pay to consume.
Southern Poverty Law Center and Truth Wins Out Launch Campaign Targeting Destructive Conversion Therapy
Community Meetings Planned in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. – The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Truth Wins Out (TWO) launched a national campaign today targeting conversion therapy, a thriving practice that claims to “convert” people from homosexuality to heterosexuality. The groups made the announcement in coordination with today’s National Coming Out Day.
The campaign will begin with a series of community meetings in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., for survivors of the practice, which has been discredited or highly criticized by virtually all major American medical, psychiatric, psychological and professional counseling organizations. Survivors are also invited to share their own stories at www.splcenter.org/conversion-therapy. The campaign also will encourage community advocates and elected leaders to scrutinize local conversion therapy programs.
“Conversion therapy programs have devastated all too many lives and families by attempting to change a person’s sexual orientation,” said Christine Sun, deputy legal director, who leads the SPLC’s LGBT rights project. “This practice is based on nothing more than junk science and must stop.”
“There’s a serious concern that the damage inflicted by conversion therapy can reach far beyond the individual receiving the ‘therapy’ and into communities across the country,” said Wayne Besen, founder and executive director of Truth Wins Out.
Central to conversion therapy – sometimes known as reparative or “sexual reorientation” therapy – is the belief that being gay is a mental disorder – a position rejected by the American Psychiatric Association nearly four decades ago. People who have undergone conversion therapy have reported increased anxiety, depression, and in some cases, suicidal ideation.
Despite these findings, the conversion therapy movement continues to push its message and is increasingly targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth, often recommending that parents commit their children to treatment against the child’s wishes.
The American Medical Association officially “opposes the use of ‘reparative’ or ‘conversion’ therapy that is based on the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or based upon the a priori assumption that the patient should change his/her homosexual orientation.”
In 2006, the American Psychological Association declared: “There is simply no sufficiently scientifically sound evidence that sexual orientation can be changed.”
Yet the message that LGBTQ people can and should change their sexual orientation is echoed throughout the literature promoting conversion therapy:
“Anyone who experiences SSA [same-sex attraction] is not ‘gay,’ ‘lesbian,’ ‘bisexual,’ or ‘transgender.’ They are all latent heterosexuals!”
“Self-deception about gender is at the heart of the homosexual condition. A child who imagines that he or she can be the opposite sex—or be both sexes—is holding on to a fantasy solution to his or her confusion. This is a revolt against reality and a rebellion against the limits built into our created human natures.”
Absurd theories and treatments also are promoted within the conversion therapy movement:
“The penis is the essential symbol of masculinity—the unmistakable difference between male and female. This undeniable anatomical difference should be emphasized to the boy in therapy.”
“The family model that produces a homosexual son has, in our view, typically failed to validate the boy’s masculine individuation during the formative phase of gender identification.”
There are other troubling aspects of this practice. The American Psychological Association expressed concern in 2006 that the positions espoused by some of the leading advocates of conversion therapy, such as the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), “create an environment in which prejudice and discrimination can flourish.”
The potential for conversion therapy to foster an anti-LGBT atmosphere is another concern for the SPLC, which analyzed 14 years of federal hate crime data and found that homosexuals are far more likely to be victims of a violent hate crime than any other minority group in the United States. The SPLC also has worked to combat anti-gay bullying in schools.
###
The Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Alabama with offices in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi, is a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society. For more information, see www.splcenter.org.
Truth Wins Out (TWO) is a nonprofit organization whose goal is to create a world where LGBT individuals can live openly, honestly and true to themselves. TWO monitors anti-LGBT organizations, documents their lies and exposes their leaders. TWO specializes in turning information into action by organizing, advocating and fighting for LGBT equality.
###
1. Richard Cohen, Straight Talk About Homosexuality: The Other Side of Tolerance, 2010, p. 112.
2. Joseph Nicolosi and Linda Ames Nicolosi, A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality, 2002, p. 22.
3. Ibid., p. 24.
4. Joseph J. Nicolosi, Shame and Attachment Loss: The Practical Work of Reparative Therapy, 2009, p. 39.
Awwww, this is too bad. Poland unfortunately lags behind the rest of the European Union when it comes to abandoning medieval views about sexuality, so Joseph Nicolosi and NARTH were able to book one of their weird little “Reparative Therapy: How To Without Leaving Visible Wounds” conferences at a medical school in that country. But then the school canceled. The source article is LifeSiteNews, so you’ll have to filter this out of wingnut speak and into grown-up reporting in order to get the gist:
A conference on the treatment of homosexuality has been denied use of facilities at a medical school in Poland, after the school had initially given approval for the event. The decision by the Medical School (UM) Foundation not to host the September 16 Reparative Therapy Conference, featuring psychologist Dr. Joseph Nicolosi of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), followed front-page criticism of the conference by leading Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza.
“We received a reservation request for the organization of this conference and we granted it,” said UM Foundation President Roman Dworzynski at the time. “I see no (problem). (Reparative therapy) is a scientific theory like any other … When Louis Pasteur spoke about the existence of bacteria, no one believed him.”
Obviously Roman Dworzynski hasn’t been introduced to the wonders of Google or he would understand why he sounds like a product of the Texas school system with that remark.
Gazeta Wyborcza’s (GW) coverage of the conference has stressed that the American Psychological Association (APA) expresses concern about the effects of treatment for same-sex attraction. The APA also states, however, that there is “insufficient evidence” to either approve or discredit such therapy.
Actually, the APA resolution moreso says that there’s insufficient evidence to approve the therapy. The “discredit” part is really you all being cute with language. But again, we’re used to crappy reporting from right wing sources.
Here’s the female Polish wingnut version of Joseph Nicolosi, whining about censorship:
The Foundation for Health and Psychotherapeutic Education head, psychologist Bogna Bialecka, said that her Poznan-based organization has been planning the conference for several months so that Nicolosi could share his professional experience helping men deal with their unwanted same-sex attraction.
“The decision of the Medical University’s governing body is a sad example of censoring the freedom of speech,” she said.
Yes, well, Ms. Bialecka, in the United States we have a word for people like you: quack. She showed up in the comment section to the piece and said this:
It’s still hard time. We are fighting for the right to free speech. And happygael is right. The worst part of it are thousands of homosexuals who don’t identify with gay activism, who are looking for change, but can’t receive it, because of lack of trained, fully professional reparative therapists.
No, you’re fighting for the right to hurt people based on your own bigoted, uneducated, ill-trained notions of psychology. And without unqualified hacks like you and Joe Nicolosi, spamming the public with your perpetual nonsense on sexuality, there wouldn’t BE “thousands of homosexuals” who are unhappy with their sexual orientation. People like you must first inject hate into the discourse for people to be unhappy with their natural sexuality. That said, Bialecka’s complaint about “trained, fully professional reparative therapists” and the “lack” thereof are not the result of censorship of free speech, but more about the fact that no such thing exists.
This crap might fly in Poland, but ask your friends at NARTH how well they’re doing in the United States.
[Warning: This piece is completely freaking long. I have tried to make it enjoyable. If you don't like that, read something different.]
I have been arguing with myself over whether to post on this screed by someone called “Jim O’Neill,” because to do so could be very time consuming. First of all it is so long-winded that to address its points could take the entire day. Even simply mocking the piece, paragraph by paragraph, could take an hour. What we have here is a guy who seems to have gone quite far off his rocker, who believes that obscure, fringe sources and unhinged hatemongers like NARTH and Scott Lively, who are rejected by the entire scientific and mental health communities, are somehow the only ones telling him the truth, and who truly thinks he has found a nugget of an idea in stating that the “homosexual agenda” is actually the same as the “Islamist agenda,” because both [he says] are misogynistic! Uh, yeah. All you lesbians? You hate women. So much. And all you gay men who shout “divaaaaaa!” at the ceiling any time a woman does something “fierce,” are also he-man woman haters. Also, apparently liberals don’t care about female genital mutilation in the Islamic world. Actually, I learned all about that issue from liberal sources. Anyway, but first, before we enter the biggest vortex of stupid I’ve ever encountered [and this is in a world that contains Peter LaBarbera], let’s look at his bio, because it’s funny:
Born in June of 1951 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Jim O’Neill (constitutionalwrites.com) proudly served in the U.S. Navy from 1970-1974 in both UDT-21 (Underwater Demolition Team) and SEAL Team Two. A member of MENSA, he worked as a commercial diver in the waters off Scotland, India, and the United States. In 1998 while attending the University of South Florida as a journalism student, O’Neill won “First Place” in the “Carol Burnett/University of Hawaii AEJMC Research in Journalism Ethics Award.” The annual contest was set up by Carol Burnett with the money she won from successfully suing the National Enquirer for libel.
He is in MENSA, you guys! You know, I have had the opportunity to join MENSA, and have never done so, mostly because I don’t care, but even if I did, you would NEVER see my “MENSA membership” in my bio. I mean, my goodness. But also, he was a Navy SEAL! Now, as we all know, Navy SEALs are trained to be bad-ass and do things like shoot Osama bin Laden in the face, but this does not tell us anything about their perceptive capabilities when it comes to subjects like homosexuality, now does it? Indeed, there are gay Navy SEALs! This would freak Jim O’Neill out, a lot, as you will see.
Also, your fancy pants college journalism award is named after a campy gay icon, so there is that.
Anyway, let’s jump into the vortex of stupid, but we’ll try not to stay too long. The supposed thesis of this word salad is that gays should not be able to serve in the military:
Disturbing news out of my home state of Wisconsin: Yesterday in the central Wisconsin town of Waupaca, 71-year-old former bus driver Delton Gorges was sentenced after being convicted on multiple counts of sexual assault of a child. Waupaca County Circuit Court Judge Philip Kirk made the following remarks from the bench while delivering the sentence:
I was looking for it here, Mr. Gorges, in one of the three reports I got, I couldn’t find it, but it described you as, or your self-description, as a heterosexual. That’s about the only piece of information in these three reports that I would correct as patently incorrect. Listening to all this stuff, it seems to me that… if you give [a] $10 bill to somebody and you buy $4 worth of goods, you ask for 2 threes back or one six. I think you were born gayer than a sweet-smelling jock strap, and I think that if anyone believes that in the last 10 years or 15 years, all of a sudden you developed an interest in homosexuality and young boys, then, uh, I must have looked ravishing in my prom dress this year. It is just wrong.
I don’t even know where to start with this one. “Gayer than a sweet-smelling jock strap?” Judge Kirk doth protest too much, methinks. The image is so vivid that I can’t help but wonder how often visions of sweet-smelling jock straps sassily sashay through his honor’s subconscious. How many hours of research went into his sweaty, stereotype-filled statement?
Kidding aside, Judge Kirk’s homophobic comments were unprofessional and inexcusable. In addition, they show that the spurious conflation of homosexuality and pedophilia remains so thoroughly embedded in popular culture that even an ostensibly well-educated circuit court judge has internalized the myth. As Equality Matters points out, this roundly-discredited meme is “one of the most cherished smears” of anti-gay groups like NARTH, the Family Research Council, Porno Pete’s AFTAH, and the American Family Association (and even the Vatican!). We at Truth Wins Out are all too familiar with these organizations — we spend a huge amount of time fighting back against their pernicious propaganda, so we find it incredibly disturbing that Judge Kirk would use the bully pulpit of the bench to spread their lies, regardless of whether or not he intended to do so.
Finally, many have rightly pointed out that Judge Kirk went on to make seemingly sympathetic remarks about the plight of gay people forced by society to remain closeted. That’s all well and good, but in our fervent search to find a silver lining, let’s make sure we don’t forget the facts: Delton Gorges is a convicted child molester. Homosexuality and child molestation arenotconnected. Kirk should never have linked the two in the first place. Saying that his later, friendlier remarks somehow mitigate the earlier, offensive ones, or taking them as evidence that Judge Kirk “means well,” makes just about as much sense as putting lipstick on a pig or gold plating on a pile of dung.
