Focus on the Family yesterday criticized the American Medical Association for spelling out, in detail, the plain truth:

Christian Right discrimination against LGBT couples and gay servicemembers negatively impacts public health.

A complete copy of the AMA resolution is available in PDF format.

Focus on the Family did not provide readers with a copy of the resolution, nor did it disclose to its readers the facts supporting the AMA resolution.

Anti-Gay Organization Drew False Link Between Sexual Abuse and Homosexuality

NEW YORK – In a letter made available to Truth Wins Out, the authors of a book on the health of gay men have accused Focus on the Family of distorting their research. The researchers publicly repudiated an article written by “ex-gay” activist Jeff Johnston in Focus on the Family’s web magazine, Citizen Link, which falsely linked homosexuality to childhood sexual abuse. This letter marks the tenth researcher in two years who has claimed that Focus on the Family misrepresented their work.

“Focus on the Family has zero credibility when it comes to interpreting or analyzing scientific research,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. “This group has serially distorted legitimate studies on human sexuality to score political points and demean gay and lesbian people. We thank these researchers for having the courage to come forward and set the record straight.”

In the article, “Childhood Sexual Abuse and Male Homosexuality”, Johnston wrote, “Many pro-gay researchers, activists and theorists deny that there could be a connection between child sexual abuse and adult homosexuality.” As proof of a supposed connection, he cited a 2008 book, “Unequal Opportunity: Health Disparities Affecting Gay and Bisexual Men in the United States”, edited by Professors Richard J. Wolitski, Ron Stall (pictured), and Ronald O. Valdiserri.

When approached by Truth Wins Out, the researchers were surprised by the manipulation of their data and agreed to respond.

“We want to respond to a recent Focus on the Family characterization of scientific findings reported in our book, ‘Unequal Opportunity: Health Disparities Affecting Gay and Bisexual Men in the United States’ that misrepresented findings in the book to suggest that childhood sexual abuse causes male homosexuality,” Stall and Valdiseri wrote in their letter. “The Focus on the Family description of the findings reported in Unequal Opportunity is inaccurate and, in our opinion, a distortion of the scientific literature.”

Focus on the Family has made a habit out of twisting science to back its anti-gay agenda. Melissa Fryrear, a Love Won Out speaker, has also repeated the phony link between abuse and homosexuality.

“I never met one woman who had not been sexually violated or sexually threatened in her life,” said Fryrear at a 2007 Love Won Out conference in Phoenix. “I never met one woman. And I never met one man either, that had not been sexually violated or sexually seduced in his life.”

“We call on the media to stop quoting an organization on gay issues which has proven to be untrustworthy and unethical in its use of research,” said Besen. “It is abundantly clear that this organization will do and say anything in its effort to misrepresent the lives of gay and lesbian people.”

The editors of the book have released the following statement to Truth Wins Out regarding Focus’ portrayal of their publication’s research:

We want to respond to a recent Focus on the Family characterization of scientific findings reported in our book, Unequal Opportunity: Health Disparities Affecting Gay and Bisexual Men in the United States (Oxford University Press) that misrepresented findings in the book to suggest that childhood sexual abuse causes male homosexuality. The Focus on the Family description of the findings reported in Unequal Opportunity is inaccurate and, in our opinion, a distortion of the scientific literature. (Read More)

For decades, the Family Research Council has — for ideological reasons — used various backdoor methods to place American couples at increased risk for untimely pregnancy and abortion.

One such method was a Bush Administration health-care “conscience” clause which allowed ideologically biased health-care workers to violate the ethical standards of their profession — and their employer — by withholding information and services that would give patients alternatives to pregnancy and abortion.

FRC, a cheerleader for that denial-of-service clause, believed that the amorality or immorality of a health-care worker — rationalized with flimsy references to religion — should trump the ability of a patient to make fully informed decisions.

The Obama administration is moving swiftly to stop FRC’s government-backed attack against patient education and informed decisionmaking. (Read More)

New cases of sexually transmitted infections are rising among women and African-American heterosexuals, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

CNN reports:

The CDC began a national syphilis elimination program in the late 1990s, targeted at African-American heterosexuals, especially women and their babies. As a result, the condition was nearly eradicated as an ongoing health problem in the United States.

But in the last two years, the trend has reversed, said Dr. John Douglas, director of the CDC’s Division of STD Prevention.

“The success we’ve been experiencing for a number of years in African-American heterosexual populations, particularly women, is beginning to be eroded,” he said.

Syphilis resurfaced as a danger in 2001, and cases went up by 15.2 percent between 2006 and 2007, the CDC said.

Reported cases of chlamydia and gonorrhea together surpassed 1.4 million in 2007, the report said. Both of these conditions can cause infertility when left untreated. The CDC will address HIV rates in the United States in a later report.

The rise happens to coincide with the growth of federally funded, abstinence-only programs which claim to promote abstinence by denying teen-agers access to information about disease and pregnancy prevention. Instead, these programs result in unsafe sex and an increased risk of pregnancy and abortion.

Whatever the role of abstinence-only “education,” experts say shame surrounding sexual behavior appears to be contributing to an atmosphere of silence and ignorance among youths-at-risk, parents, and doctors.

According to Dr. John Douglas, director of the CDC’s Division of STD Prevention:

If the parents assume that’s the doctor’s business, or the teacher’s business, and don’t roll up their sleeves and get in there themselves, and if our schools aren’t giving comprehensive education, and if our clergy and other community leaders who are interested in youth well-being aren’t including sexual health on the agenda, we’re going to create missed opportunities.

The second researcher in less than a week has confirmed that the religious-right American Family Association and its allies lied about research regarding sexual orientation.

Earlier today, Truth Wins Out reported that Francis Collins, Ph.D, of the Human Genome Project has again repudiated falsehoods being spread about his research by ex-gay activist Greg Quinlan and the American Family Association. We also pointed out that a recent article by Kathleen Gilbert, published by the American Family Association and LifeSiteNews, appeared to have falsely reported the results of a British paper by professor Michael King.

In a followup story, Box Turtle Bulletin today said it checked the original British paper and found little resemblance between it and the claims of AFA and LSN. The Bulletin asked King for his reaction. King replied:

LifeSiteNews and OneNewsNow have misinterpreted our review.  Evidence from around the world identifies the main stressors leading to mental distress in gay and lesbian people as discrimination, prejudice, bullying in schools and colleges, and the consequent need for many LGB people to keep their homosexual identity secret, even from their families.

Our review did not examine links between mental disorder and homosexual “behaviour” or “lifestyle”.  Our work reviewed studies of the mental health of lesbian, gay and bisexual people, and sadly, those studies showed that it is people (not behaviour) that are discriminated against, and not least by religious groups and organisations.

Discrimination on the grounds of sexuality is even more devastating than other forms of discrimination such as racism, as it reaches right into families and leaves no refuge for its victims.

Box Turtle Bulletin adds:

To throw more confusion into the mix, Gilbert tossed in a discredited 2007 study by Nazi-apologist Paul Cameron which supposedly demonstrated that “that the lifespan of a homosexual is on average 24 years shorter than that of a heterosexual.” She also used Cameron’s study to claim that discrimination hat nothing to do with it, saying that, “Homosexuals in the United States and Denmark – the latter of which is acknowledged to be highly tolerant of homosexuality – both die on average in their early 50’s, or in their 40’s if AIDS is the cause of death.”

We have already examined glaring flaws in Cameron’s study, as has Danish epidemiologist Morton Frisch who described his study as “humorous example of agenda-driven, pseudo-scientific gobbledygook.” Cameron’s false claims of presenting this “study” before the Eastern Psychological Association earned him an official condemnation from EPA president Phile Hineline in April 2007.

Exodus International seems eager for such misinformation to continue to confuse the ex-gay movement and its allied churches and political groups: Since April 2007, the organization has declined to publicly warn the antigay and ex-gay movements about the lies, nor has the organization challenged AFA, LSN, NARTH, or Quinlan to correct themselves.

Religious-rightists on Monday lost one phase of their campaign to give California doctors a blank check to practice bigotry against any class of patient for supposed religious reasons.

While anti-family activists explicitly sought to deny medical care to same-sex-attracted Californians and unmarried women, an unlimited religious “right” to discriminate against entire classes of patients could give bigoted doctors the right to discriminate against Jews, Asian-Americans — anyone whose existence was contrary to a medical group’s choice of supposed religious beliefs.

According to The Washington Post, the California Supreme Court ruled that physicians’ constitutional right to the free exercise of religion does not exempt businesses that serve the public from following state law that prohibit discrimination.

Jennifer C. Pizer, a lawyer with the gay rights group Lambda Legal who is representing [Guadalupe] Benítez, said that while the law protects doctors who refuse certain treatments on religious grounds, it does not allow them to do so on a discriminatory or selective basis.

In other words, a doctor may refuse to provide fertility services for religious reasons, but may not cherry-pick patients for whom to provide those services.

Despite the legal setback, right-wing political activists continue to maintain that the U.S. Constitution gives them a blank check to violate any law that they deem to be in conflict with their religious whims — and to use their own religion to infringe upon the freedom of others.

According to the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow propaganda service:

Attorney Mailee Smith of Americans United for Life (AUL), spokeswoman for the Christian Medical & Dental Associations and several other faith-based groups who presented amicus briefs in the case, said the ruling takes away a federally protected Constitutional right of physicians to freely exercise religion.

The case of Guadalupe Benitez will revert back to trial court where it will be determined whether Benitez was denied medical care due to her marital status or her sexual orientation.

We’ve reported recently about a new chain of lies issued by PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays), claiming that gay youth are suicidal disease carriers.

In the first lie, PFOX misused the research of Gary Remafedi, M.D., M.P.H., on suicide attempts in gay youth to argue that people should not identify their sexual orientation at young ages. Remafedi’s findings do not support the contention that young people choose their identity or the timing of events in identity formation. Nor, Remefedi said, is there any evidence that the availability of Gay-Straight Alliances influences those developmental processes. GSAs help defend gay youth from bullying — a key to reducing suicide rates among youth generally. PFOX, on the other hand, seems committed to keeping gay youths closeted out of fear of their classmates, teachers, and family members.

In the second lie, PFOX falsely claimed that 71 percent of gay people aged 13-24 are HIV-positive. Ed Brayton of ScienceBlogs.com read the current U.S. Centers for Disease Control report and found the actual infection rate to be between 3 and 5 percent.

Now the misnamed American “Family” Association has come to the aid of PFOX by telling the lie — without substantiation — that the CDC in June 2007 blamed homosexual sex for 71 percent of all HIV cases. The AFA derived this lie by distorting a CDC factsheet revised in 2007 but based on CDC reports for 2005. According to the factsheet, 53 percent of all U.S. HIV/AIDS diagnoses in 2005 were attributable to men who have sex with men (MSM). Unprotected male-to-male sex could be blamed for 61 percent of U.S. cases among men since the beginning of the epidemic — but fully 27 percent of U.S. HIV diagnoses were in women. The AFA distorted another aspect of the research: CDC research only covers the United States. In the developing world, HIV is spread primarily through heterosexual sex. (Source: U.K. Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology PDF).

Infections related to sexual behavior occur mostly through failure to use safer-sex practices, such as condoms — precautions, it must be noted, that are discouraged by PFOX and its ex-gay allies.

Hat tip: Box Turtle Bulletin

One week ago, TruthWinsOut.org published exclusive comments by Gary Remafedi, M.D., M.P.H., a professor of pediatrics at the University of Minnesota, who said the “ex-gay” organization PFOX distorted his research findings:

“My work has been cited by PFOX in response to a Washington Post article on gay-straight alliances (GSA),” wrote Dr. Remafedi. “PFOX misuses one of my studies on suicide attempts in gay youth to argue that people should not identify their sexual orientation at young ages. Our findings do not support the contention that young people choose their identity or the timing of events in identity formation. Nor is there any evidence that the availability of GSAs influences those developmental processes.”

Today, Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays was caught in another lie by Ed Brayton of ScienceBlogs.com.

Brayton (pictured) noticed that, in an article posted by the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow propaganda service in the wee hours of July 26, PFOX executive director Regina Griggs said: “Over 70 percent of young kids 13- to 24-years-old, men having sex with men, are now HIV-positive.”

Brayton, who is heterosexual, crunches the numbers from current federal Centers for Disease Control research on youth sexual health, and finds that approximately 3.1 percent of men aged 13 to 24, who have sex with men, are HIV-positive. In a worst-case scenario, Brayton finds that 5 percent of MSM in this age group might be HIV-positive.

Brayton comments:

[Griggs] also makes the ridiculous claim that teenagers can’t self-identify as straight or gay. Has she never been a teenager? I knew I was straight the moment I hit puberty and started feeling sexually attracted to girls. Every gay man I know says the exact same thing about feeling sexually attracted to boys at the same time. There wasn’t any confusion about it, you just are what you are, no choice involved.

Hat tip: Box Turtle Bulletin

TruthWinsOut.org expressed concern today over a Reuters news story about a drug-resistant strain of MRSA bacteria that is more prevalent among gay men in urban centers, such as Boston and San Francisco. The organization also slammed extremist groups for exploiting the news in order to smear the GLBT community and advance an agenda of pure prejudice and discrimination.

“The comments by Concerned Women for America is hatred in its rawest and ugliest form,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of TruthWinsOut.org. “These wing nuts wasted no time seeking the spotlight and creating a climate of panic and fear. They are factually wrong, morally wrong-headed and tragically addicted to bigotry.”

Matt Barber, policy director for cultural issues with Concerned Women for America, used the news to viciously attack gay people. “Citizens, especially parents, need to stand up and say, ‘No More! We will no longer sit idly by while politically correct cultural elites endanger our children and larger communities through propagandist promotion of this demonstrably deadly lifestyle,’” Barber said.
(Read More)