Read it and marvel/vomit over the fact that this man runs free, still able to hurt little boys like the one described here:

What do you do with a little boy who likes cross-dressing and playing with dolls? If you’re George Alan Rekers, you “extinguish” the boy’s feminine behavior with a sometimes violent Pavlovian regimen while your scientific team observes through a one-way mirror.

(…)

In 1974, Rekers, a leading thinker in the so-called ex-gay movement, was presented with a 4-year-old “effeminate boy” named Kraig, whose parents had enrolled him in the program. Rekers put Kraig in a “play-observation room” with his mother, who was equipped with a listening device. When the boy played with girly toys, the doctors instructed her to avert her eyes from the child.

According to a 2001 account in Brain, Child Magazine, “On one such occasion, his distress was such that he began to scream, but his mother just looked away. His anxiety increased, and he did whatever he could to get her to respond to him… Kraig became so hysterical, and his mother so uncomfortable, that one of the clinicians had to enter and take Kraig, screaming, from the room.”

Rekers’s research team continued the experiment in the family’s home. Kraig received red chips for feminine behavior and blue chips for masculine behavior. The blue chips could be cashed in for candy or television time. The red chips earned him a “swat” or spanking from his father. Researchers periodically entered the family’s home to ensure proper implementation of the reward-punishment system.

After two years, the boy supposedly manned up. Over the decades, Rekers, who ran countless similar experiments, held Kraig up as “the poster boy for behavioral treatment of boyhood effeminacy.”

At age 18, shamed by his childhood diagnosis and treatment, Rekers’s poster boy attempted suicide, according to Gender Shock, a book by journalist Phyllis Burke.

I believe the scientific term for George Alan Rekers is “you sick, sadistic bastard.”

It’s one sort of evil to take your own seething self-hatred out on adults. It’s yet another to rape the innocence and identity out of a child whose only crime is that he doesn’t fit into the gender-binary construct that George Rekers, apparently, has never been able to attain for himself.

But let’s be clear about one thing: the reason organizations like Truth Wins Out exist, why Jeremy spends countless hours chronicling the anti-gay movement at Good As You, why Amanda Marcotte takes the time to analyze and explain patriarchy in words any can understand but few have heard before at Pandagon, why Pam Spaulding and her crew and Joe Jervis and the Box Turtle guys (AND SO ON) — and the reason why I make a point of mocking these people as dismissively as they truly deserve — is that this story, while grotesque, should not be shocking. Yes, it’s appalling, but it is only the natural result, taken to its extreme, of Religious Right teachings on sexuality and on gender. And these stories, in all their varying degrees, are myriad, but they all have one simple common denominator: the overarching, bellyaching desire of heterosexual religious men (and those who wish to God every night that they might one day be heterosexual) to control the lives, the gender expression, the sexuality, of all people they view as lesser. This includes women, children, racial minorities, and certainly LGBT people. Again, this is the natural conclusion of the notion of the junk science of “reparative therapy.” This is what happens when people who have been trained like show ponies to repress everything authentic about themselves in the pursuit of the lifeless, unhappy “ideal” of the fundamentalist worldview are allowed to flourish unhindered by modernity. (I mean, look at Saudi Arabia, for god’s sake. Yeah, it’s the same.) This is what happens when those people’s ideas are accorded an ounce of respect. We all have freedom of speech, at least in the United States, but part of that freedom is the responsibility for those of us who live in verifiable reality to do everything we can to ensure that the sadism of the Religious Right, and its concomitant junk science, are granted all the respect they deserve in the marketplace of ideas. (Hint: That would be “none.”) It’s our responsibility to do everything we can to help as many people understand that when people like George Rekers, Tony Perkins, Peter LaBarbera, the entire staff of Focus on the Family (including the chipper young cretins they’ve hired to “reach out to millenials,” a battle they’ve long lost), Matt Barber, Elaine Donnelly, Laurie Higgins, Maggie Gallagher, or any of their buttbuddies in bigotry open their maws and spew forth, their words amount to nothing more than long disproven, hateful, ignorant lies. It’s our responsibility to make sure that those who come across our words are armed with the resources (our side being the only one which actually relies on research and reason, citations, real science, etc.) to know the Religious Right is lying, only and always, and to know precisely how and why they’re lying.

This is a big part of why we do what we do.

Our adversaries hurt people. They drive their own to decades of depression and despair, and they drive their own children to substance abuse, rejection, depression and sometimes even suicide.

At the end of the piece quoted above, it’s stated that, even though George Rekers was caught in flagrante diddle-fingers coming back from Europe with a young male whore, that the brain trust at NARTH still stands by Rekers’ “science.” Of course they do. They will never let something like reality, or trails of blood leading to the bodies and souls of kids hurt by their “science,” get in the way of their obscene, wrongheaded, and wholly self-loathing vendetta against those citizens of the world who dare to survive, to love authentically, to dream, to fly, to fuck, to question authority, to laugh, to breathe, to celebrate, to mourn, to rage against the dying of the light…in short, to live, and to do so without asking the permission of the self-appointed religious police. NARTH and similar groups do not care about people. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that they have clear and palpable contempt for people, much as most right-wing organizations have clear, palpable contempt for their readers, knowing as they do that their intended audience is too stupid, too abused, or too brainwashed to know any better. They simply don’t care about the human beings involved.

So yeah. We do this to fight for the kids like Kraig, those many years ago, and those who still are vulnerable to an enemy which sees them not as people but as notches on their Culture War belts.

Can. I. Get. A. Witness?

Okay, I’m done spitting daggers now, so if anybody needs this soapbox…

(h/t Towle)

When the opposition polls veterans, they tend to rush for the nearest nursing home, since they know that they have no prayer of making a case against openly gay troops when they ask the actual men and women who are fighting for our country right now. It shows an alarming lack of disrespect for their sacrifices when Elaine Donnelly and her viper-tongued brethren do this, but she’s not a moral person, so we shouldn’t be surprised.

A new poll, of veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, tells a more accurate, a more current story:

As the Pentagon prepares to survey soldiers about President Obama’ decision to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, a new poll of military personnel who served in the Afghanistan or Iraq wars has finds that sexual orientation is “not a burning issue that overwhelms veterans’ lives.”

The new poll, commissioned by The Vet Voice Foundation and conducted jointly by Republican and Democratic pollsters, finds that most veterans are “comfortable around gay and lesbian people, believe that being gay or lesbian has no bearing on a service member’ ability to perform their duties, and would find it acceptable if gay and lesbian people were allowed to serve openly in the military.” Fifty-eight percent of veterans said they served alongside gays or lesbians, and only 22 percent thought they had not:

– 60% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans believe that being gay or lesbian “has no bearing on a service member’ ability to perform their duties.” Only 29% disagree.

– 73% of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans say it is “personally acceptable to them if gay and lesbian people were allowed to serve openly in the military.” Only a quarter (25%) would find it unacceptable.

– 73% Iraq and Afghanistan veterans say “they are personally comfortable in the presence of gays and lesbians.” Only a quarter (23%) is uncomfortable, and hardly anyone is very uncomfortable (only 7%).

Much as it might chap Elaine Donnelly’s behind, those numbers aren’t going back their way either. There’s simply too much education out there nowadays, and the great majority of younger people in this nation know that the Religious Right’s anti-gay fearmongering has been simply much ado about nothing.

By the way, the poll sample included more than twice as many self-identified Republicans as it did Democrats.

(h/t John Aravosis)

I am not a gay conservative…to say the least. And I’ve questioned in the past the wisdom of GOProud, the gay conservative group, participating at CPAC along with groups that want to legislate away their dignity. I still question that wisdom. They’ve been sending out reports from CPAC along the lines of “Nobody has beat us up yet, so that means conservatives aren’t bigots after all!” They’re also stupidly suggesting that because Dick Cheney got a standing ovation, that the wingnuts are somehow supportive of gays because Dick Cheney supports gays.

It’s pathetic. Newsflash: Wingnuts like Dick Cheney because Dick Cheney is a torture-mongering ghoul, and wingnuts are weak people, so they feel strengthened by the idea of torturing people, as long as they don’t have to personally exhibit any strength or courage of their own.

Anyway. I don’t care how nice people are to the gay CPAC-ers; what matters is what policies they support. Lots of people are nice to people they hate, especially Southerners, who I would imagine are overrepresented at Winguttapalooza. It’s so ingrained in our culture that we have code phrases that express disdain while always being able to claim the mantle of gentility. (”Bless her heart.”) So personally, the fact that the gay conservatives haven’t been shot at yet at CPAC isn’t impressive.

Also, they’re dealing with the fact that the GOP line on their dignity and existence is that they shouldn’t have any. Consider this quote from Chris Plante, who’s running the National Organization for Marriage (nom nom nom) booth just a few feet away:

“Gays and lesbians have the right to live as they choose, but they don’t have the right to redefine marriage for the rest of us,” Plante said.

Uh huh, right. And believe me, NOM is more welcome there than GOProud is. Again, I don’t care now nice and polite CPAC-ers are to the gays in their midst. The fact that gay conservatives are impressed and excited to be included without having to wear pink triangles is pathetic and reveals the self-loathing and the deeply ingrained beliefs in their own inferiority that we’ve always seen in them.

Meanwhile, an insane press conference happened, featuring Elaine Donnelly, Queen of the 101st Chairborne Brigade, and Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family (who apparently can’t pronounce the word “debacle”), who projected their pathetic Fear of the Gay onto our brave troops as they came out in opposing DADT repeal. Also speaking were know-nothing Tony Perkins and David Keene, who organized the entire conference. Oh, also, there was an old retired admiral who probably had to be helped onto the stage, testifying about his 1930’s version of reality. Watch it if you want, but you’ll lose a few brain cells.

All of that being said, though, this video of Jimmy LaSalvia, the King of the Gay Wingnuts, is pretty funny:

ZING! The boys at the NOM booth are total pansies! On that, we agree.

Anyway, so there you go. Jimmy LaSalvia made a funny and nobody’s been gay-bashed yet at CPAC. Glad to see, again, that they’re persevering in their quest to win the gay rights battles of the 1970’s.

UPDATE: Okay, so all of that being said, this video is also funny. Ryan Sorba, a hysterical and likely closeted anti-gay activist, decided to take to the stage and condemn CPAC for inviting GOProud to the event, and he was received poorly by some in the room. What I notice is that at the beginning, some were booing him, and some were cheering him, but as his childish tantrum grew more hysterical, the boos got louder. Mike Madden at Salon’s War Room opened his report on this by saying, “Turns out CPAC isn’t quite the place for insane jeremiads against homosexuality.” I would suggest, rather, a more balanced reaction, because if you click on the link above to watch the aforementioned press conference, you’ll see that there is indeed a place for insane jeremiads against homosexuality at CPAC. It seems to me that what’s become socially unacceptable, even in CPAC, is the kind of frothing, unhinged anti-gay ranting that’s the hallmark of Ryan Sorba’s “career.” I guarantee you that, for a lot of people in that room, their issue is not the content of Sorba’s tirade, but rather the unfiltered nature of it, because they know that their bigotry is not acceptable in intelligent society. So NOM and Elaine Donnelly and Tom Minnery are fine with them. The rhetorical equivalent of playing with your dingleberries on stage, as exhibited by Ryan Sorba, is not.

Pretty funny, though.

If you missed the event he’s referencing, where the students at Smith College exposed Sorba for the embarrassment he is, click the clicky and laugh.

As if we had not suffered enough inclement weather, citizens of Lynchburg, Virginia and South Bend, Indiana will get “ex-gay” snow jobs this weekend.

In Lynchburg there will be a conference on Friday, “the Consequences of Same-Gender Attraction.” The hate-fest will feature Exodus International’s President Alan Chambers, (pictured) who is using this opportunity as a warm-up act for an April trip to Belfast, Ireland.

Hasn’t Chambers’ irresponsible outfit caused enough problems already in places like Uganda? How this man wakes up in the morning and can look in the mirror without feeling deep shame, (not counting the shame he internalizes over his sexuality) I’ll never know. It takes a special type of human being, one with out a conscience, to consistently lie to himself and others.

I’d like to remind the good folks of Lynchburg, that last time Liberty University tried the ex-gay thing, it didn’t go so well. Their “pray away the gay” poster boy was a man named Michael Johnston. He now lives in a sex addiction facility in Kentucky, following a slew of bareback orgies with men. Here’s the mini-movie:

On Saturday, the Liberty University Law Review will host a legal symposium entitled “Homosexual Rights and First Amendment Freedoms: Can They Truly Coexist?”

Of course they can co-exist, unless your religious beliefs and practice are defined exclusively by violent anti-gay animus. If you believe the First Amendment allows you to harass, intimidate, torment and physically abuse LGBT people then there is a conflict. Other than that, there’s no problem.

So, why all the fear-mongering?

It seems quite obvious that in states with laws that protect citizens based on sexual orientation, people are still free to pray any way they wish. But, reality has never been the Religious Right’s cup of tea.

If you are fortunate enough to be around at 1:30pm on Saturday, you will catch a panel featuring arch-homophobes Robert Knight (pictured) and Elaine Donnelly, “Hire Them and Don’t Fire Them: How Homosexual Rights and Privileges Have Eroded Employers’ Rights and Destroyed Religious Freedom.” (Read More)

A year after it helped launch the Uganda genocide legislation, Exodus is teaming up with Robert Knight, Matt Barber, and an attorney who affirmed child abduction by her ex-gay activist client. Joining with NARTH’s leading political activists “therapists” at Liberty University’s School of Law, their objective is simple: Convince the public that the Constitution’s Bill of Rights cannot survive so long as LGBT people have any rights at all.

Exodus International President Alan Chambers will headline a two-day conference and symposium Feb. 12-13. The events will criticize sexual honesty, reject mainstream psychiatry, deny the existence of sexual orientation, and assert that conservative Christians’ rights are incompatible with the rights of sexual and religious minorities.

According to the Liberty Counsel, a Christian Right legal-attack squad, the February 12 conference is titled “Understanding Same-sex Attractions and Their Consequences.” On February 13, the Liberty University Law Review will host a legal symposium entitled “Homosexual Rights and First Amendment Freedoms: Can They Truly Coexist?” Liberty University was founded by fundamentalist Jerry Falwell, and it is operated as a veritable police state where no dissent from the late Falwell’s ideology and lifestyle are permitted.

Chambers will tell fundamentalists — as he has done many times before — that same-sex attractions are caused by bad parenting and abuse, that public honesty about one’s orientation is sinful, and that recognition of the equality of religious and sexual minorities is demonic. (Read More)

Elaine Donnelly, a woman with no military training and little understanding of the military, runs the Center for Military Readiness, a “think-tank” devoted to opposing the open inclusion of LGBT citizens (and women) in the military. According to her missives, the United States Military just isn’t as strong as the rest of the militaries around the world (like Israel, the United Kingdom, etc.), in which open gays and lesbians serve alongside straight servicemembers. In short, Elaine Donnelly is a know-nothing demagogue who has far more of a voice than her merit deserves.

And now, via Think Progress, Elaine has given an interview to Secure Freedom Radio’s Frank Gaffney, in which she claims that the true culprit in the Abu Ghraib scandal was women serving alongside men in the military:

DONNELLY: Ok, now how are we going to deal with four different sexual groups, say in Special Operations summaries. How’ that going to work? Or are we going to have the kind of military ‚Äî and he clearly suggests this ‚Äî he says yes, we have women in the military. We all support women in the military. However, he says that everything has been going on just fine without incident. Umm, what was that Abu Ghraib scandal all about? It started out as misconduct between men and women and then it steadily deteriorated into abuse of prisoners. The common denominator is lack of discipline. Once you break down discipline, good order and discipline and morale, everything that’ required for unit cohesion, you undermine the culture and the strength of the armed forces. This man obviously doesn’t get that.

Again, she’s a know-nothing demagogue. She seems to be unaware that there are multitudes of decorated female servicemembers, as well as LGBT servicemembers, and it’s done nothing to damage discipline. And, Think Progress also points out that Ms. Donnelly doesn’t seem to have a clue what the Abu Ghraib scandal was all about in the first place, as it’s part of a revealed pattern of torture techniques in Iraq and Afghanistan that started at the very top, with Rumsfeld’s Defense Department. Perhaps Ms. Donnelly doesn’t watch the news very much (and I wouldn’t expect a demagogue of her kind to stay informed about much of anything), but we’ve been discussing the incidence of U.S.-sanctioned torture in these conflicts in our national discourse for several years now. Abu Ghraib was merely the first glimpse of the problem. Torture has happened at CIA black sites, at Guant?°namo, and a recent report in Harper’s exposes* a previously unknown black site at Guant?°namo referred to as Camp “No,” run either by the CIA or by J-SOC, in which Americans may have tortured detainees who had never been charged with a crime, quite literally, to death.

So no, Ms. Donnelly, you’re simply making things up again, in service of your bigotry. It’s important to remember that our foes who fight against the LGBT community tend to also be fierce misogynists. The fact that a few of them have two X chromosomes is irrelevant. They have simply bought into the ideology that states that all human beings should be subservient to straight, white, Christian men. Donnelly believes that women who serve simply don’t “know their place.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Donnelly repeats her tired claims that the repeal of DADT is part of some monolithic “Gay Agenda” which seeks to undermine the military. Same old, same old, like a broken record.

Meanwhile in the real world, General John Shalikashvili, who implemented the policy in the first place, stated this week that it’s time to repeal the DADT policy. Ever the tin-foil hat conspiracy theorist, Pam Spaulding reported that in 2007, when Shalikashvili first came out against the policy, Ms. Donnelly claimed that the general had been coerced into changing his mind by Big Gay Activists, due to the fact that he had recently had a stroke.

What say you now, Elaine? No, just kidding. No one cares what you think.

If you’re interested in what other know-nothings on the Religious Right have to say about the repeal of DADT, Kyle at Right Wing Watch has posted a round-up of their reactions.

Last night, President Obama called for the policy to be repealed this year. We shall see if he follows through, but John Aravosis looked at the language he used and found reasons to be encouraged, and indeed White House Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett stated that the process for repeal will start right away.

I’m cautiously optimistic.

*If you haven’t read that Harper’s piece, please find thirty minutes to do so. It’s extremely important.