The other day, I wrote about an awful segment on Fox’s Houston affiliate, in which the newscaster, Damali Keith, hosted hate group lackey Bryan Fischer and gay activist Ray Hill to debate the question, “Is TV too gay?” It was a truly terrible segment, as Keith asked ridiculous leading questions suggesting that the gayness of the characters on Glee was comparable to “product placement,” and suggesting that people should be concerned by the show’s early time slot. Lots of other people have taken notice since then. Mary Elizabeth Williams has an entertaining piece at Salon which cuts right to the heart of what terrible journalism this was:
During the segment, which aired after last week’s Lady Gaga-themed “Born This Way” episode, host Damali Keith kicked off by comparing the show’s gay themes to “product placement” — you know, the kind that leaves “everyone in the theater thirsty for that particular brand.” Yes, that’s how it happens, America. One day your teenage son is banging the head cheerleader. The next, he hears a few bars of Chris Colfer’s seductive warbling, and wham! Suddenly he’s “thirsty” for that particular “brand.” Of penis. Homosexuality – it’s exactly like walking past a Cinnabon.
It’s funny, because that’s actually sort of what Religious Right wingnuts believe. The fact that it’s ridiculously stupid just makes it more attractive for them.
Williams sums the whole issue up here:
You can’t unring the stupid bell, and both Keith and Fischer’s ignorant remarks have already been given the undeserved legitimacy of a platform. But as “Glee” and its ilk continue – not always successfully or convincingly, but at least always with sensitivity and consistency – to explore the issues facing gay and questioning youth and their communities, it remains crucial to keep sending the message to broadcasters to stop booking bigots.
[...]
[T]he punditsphere has got to step up and try a little harder, to say that crackpots don’t deserve airtime. Because idiocy and intolerance are neither fair nor balanced.
Hear, hear! This is what we’ve saying for a long time now, and what the media WILL finally figure out someday. Despite the crowing of bigots, there are not two sides to these issues! Science has spoken, and continues to speak as scientists learn more. Mental health associations have spoken. Child welfare experts have spoken. Every single credible expert in every relevant field is on our side of this battle, encouraging full inclusion and acceptance for LGBT people. There is no debate anymore, for this is too much correct information out there. Media outlets don’t address issues of interest to black people by asking the Ku Klux Klan for their opinion. It’s high time they stop asking the Klan’s anti-gay equivalent to weigh in on matters of interest to LGBT people, and society at large.
Williams points out that Fox Houston originally agreed to apologize when GLAAD called them out, but that they have gone back on that promise. Sign the petition at change.org to demand that apology.
A Ugandan High Court judge has ruled that media companies in the country should not publish the identities of people they say are homosexuals.
The decision was described as a “landmark ruling” by gay rights activists.
The case was brought against The Rolling Stone newspaper which last year published several lists of people its editor said were gay.
[...]
“The judge granted a permanent injunction against Rolling Stone from publishing these names,” lawyer John Francis Onyango, who represented the three gay rights campaigners who brought the case, told AFP.
“But the ruling went beyond these applicants and extended to all media,” he added.
Of course, the government is still a danger to the Ugandan people, but at least there are a few voices of sanity in positions of power in Uganda.
An outgrowth of an already very effective organization:
As gay people around the country reveled on Sunday in the historic Senate vote to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a liberal media watchdog group said it planned to announce on Monday that it was setting up a “communications war room for gay equality” in an effort to win the movement’s next and biggest battle: for a right to same-sex marriage.
The new group, Equality Matters, grew out of Media Matters, an organization backed by wealthy liberal donors — including prominent gay philanthropists — that has staked its claim in Washington punditry with aggressive attacks on Fox News and conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.
It will be run by Richard Socarides, a former domestic policy adviser to President Bill Clinton who has been deeply critical of President Obama’s record on gay rights. A well-known gay journalist, Kerry Eleveld, the Washington correspondent for The Advocate, will leave that magazine in January to edit the new group’s Web site, equalitymatters.org, which is to go online Monday morning.
Wherever Kerry is, she’s an asset, so we’ll be looking forward to having Equality Matters on the front lines in Washington. For now, check out the site here.
To perhaps nobody’s surprise, a study released this week finds that Fox News viewers are the most misinformed of any news consumers.
The University of Maryland study, called “Misinformation and the 2010 Election,” looked at “variations in misinformation by exposure to news sources,” among other things, and specifically newspapers and news magazines (in print and online), network TV news broadcasts, NPR and PBS, Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN.
These are some things Fox viewers believe, all of which are patently not true:
Most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses (12 points more likely)
Most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit (31 points)
The economy is getting worse (26 points)
Most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring (30 points)
The stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts (14 points)
Their own income taxes have gone up (14 points)
The auto bailout only occurred under Obama (13 points)
When TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it (12 points)
And that it is not clear that Obama was born in the United States (31 points)
To us over here in Reality Land, to hold even one of these beliefs is beyond stupid. But Fox’s genius has been to feed easily led people complete bullshit in service of the Almighty Dollar while simultaneously convincing them that allegiance to their network is part of a larger tribal war for “Real Murrika.” The fact that so many people have, like peasants, pledged their heartfelt fealty to this paradigm is a sad statement about our country, but that’s just how it is.
In an interview/piece about the new hate crime statistics and the fact that gays are the most likely to be targeted in hate crimes of ANY minority, Dan Savage said the following, to a CNN anchor:
“There are no ‘two sides’ to the issue of LGBT rights. Right now one side is really using dehumanizing rhetoric. The Southern Poverty Law Center labels these groups as hate groups and yet the leaders of these groups, people like Tony Perkins, are welcomed onto networks like CNN to espouse hate directed at gays and lesbians. And similarly hateful people who are targeting Jews or people of color or anyone else would not be welcome to spew their bile on CNN.”
THANK YOU. Dear everyone supportive of LGBT people who ever appears in the mainstream media: Keep Saying It. The Family Research Council and other groups who appear on CNN and other networks are hate groups. And Dan’s exactly right: there are NO “two sides” here.
Over the weekend, SBS “Dateline” in Australia aired a report about those in Uganda who live in fear for their safety due to their opposition to the country’s barbaric Anti-Homosexuality Bill.
Those behind the new laws see homosexuality as an abomination against their religion and believe a Western ‘homosexual juggernaut’ is threatening Uganda. They say they want to ‘cure’ gays and lesbians and get rid of all homosexual influence in the country.
One lawyer opposing the plans tells video journalist Aaron Lewis that even murderers are treated with higher regard than gays and lesbians.
The transcript begins by introducing the dangers faced by human-rights activist Frank Mugisha:
Daily life on the street has become even more difficult for Uganda’s sexual minorities since the campaign for the bill began. Not yet passed into law, the bill has further criminalised Frank and others in the eyes of the public.
FRANK MUGISHA: Many Ugandans have taken the law into their own hands and started attacking homosexuals, beating them up. Landlords have thrown people out of their houses because they are saying “If this legislation is passed and I have a homosexual who is a tenant, then I become a criminal, so it is better I throw you out now before the law is passed”.
Pepe works with Frank on advocacy for sexual minorities.
PEPE: Kampala is one of the places that is known for mob injustice – anything can happen. You can move on the street and someone can say “Look, the homosexual is doing something” – just that word alone is going to draw attention and something can happen so that we live in fear of all the time.
Besides outright violence, Ugandan mobs are taught by certain Christian churches to use “corrective rape” as a method of turning people straight.
Sheila Mugisha is a lesbian. She’s lived her entire life under attack. Sheila’s worst fears were realised at only 12 years old. She had already started to show interest in other girls and she then became the target of what is known here as curative rape.
REPORTER: Curative rape is the process of sexually assaulting someone hoping that, that process will turn them into a heterosexual?
SHEILA MUGISHA: Yes.
REPORTER: And this has happened to you?
SHEILA MUGISHA: It has happened to me.
REPORTER: Can you tell me anything about that?
SHEILA MUGISHA: At the age of 12 I had a friend at home – and actually these things are done by friends. I had always told him my stories, my secrets, my encounters in bed. So, he would tell me, “You know what? I want to teach you how to play with boys, not with girls.” He put his leg here, and here, and then he got into my body, into my vagina, and I screamed because I’d never had any sex, I’d never known, you know, any of those practices. “So, from now, you are going to learn how to play with boys.”
As a result of the rape, Sheila became pregnant at the age of 12. Her family took her to have the child aborted but the effects of the rape continued.
SHEILA MUGISHA: I went to a certain AIDS information centre in Mengo with a friend – I took a test – and it was positive.
SBS observes that “Uganda is a deeply Christian country where the church and state work hand in glove.”
Hand in glove, that is, to purge and kill religious dissidents. They learned the rationale for such a purge from the U.S. ex-gay movement:
If the anti-homosexuality act were to be passed, courts like this could have their hands full. A whole range of everyday behaviours, including public touching, text messaging, or reporting on a gay or lesbian issue, would be criminalised. Even witnessing an act of same-sex public affection and failing to report it to the authorities could land you in the dock.
DAVID BAHATI: I think the bill addresses the real problem. And the real problem is promotion of homosexuality in Uganda. Whether it is children, whether it’s the adult people, it’s the real problem.
David Bahati and Moses Male both believe that if no-one is promoting the homosexual lifestyle, there simply won’t be homosexuals.
PASTOR MOSES MALE: None is born a homosexual. Homosexuality is a habit that is gradually learned. When it is gradually learned, it can finally become an addiction, just like drugs, just like alcoholism.
Evangelicals are teaching this myth in Uganda because the ex-gay movement was never discredited there:
Lad Rakafuzi tells me that this idea of promotion is the biggest danger for Uganda’s sexual minorities.
LAD RAKAFUZI: That means shutting out debate on these issues. Which means it will be infringement of freedom to speak and freedom to communicate, and to receive information.
Dissidents include religious authorities:
Bishop Alawe Sonjogo was threatened with excommunication from the Anglican Church of Uganda for defending the rights of homosexuals.
BISHOP ALAWE SONJOGO: That bill is draconian and the first thing – people into hiding.
REPORTER: In what way is the bill draconian?
BISHOP ALAWE SONJOGO: First of all, you have to report, me as a counsellor, I would be reporting people who are homosexuals – if I don’t – I could be punished. So anyone working with a person is supposed to report that person. And again, the punishments, the penalties are so severe, ranging from five years to life imprisonment, even to have some people sentenced to death.
Meanwhile, journalist Stanley Nduala of the antigay vigilante tabloid Red Pepper admits what “values” drive the antigay pogrom:
REPORTER: So here in Uganda, being a rapist is minor compared to being a homosexual?
Since George Alan Rekers, NARTH, and Exodus International continue to sidestep the Rentboy sex scandal that has consumed Rekers this week, Truth Wins Out wants journalists and activists to know the questions that George Alan Rekers and his allies haven’t answered – and what Rekers must do to either absolve himself or make amends for the wrongs that he has committed against the worlds of science, sexuality, and conservative Christianity.
The Questions for Rekers
1. Did you visit rentboy.com? Please provide independent journalists with unfettered access to your computers’ browser caches and e-mail records.
2. Did you receive massages, embraces, or other physical touches from your travel assistant?
3. Have you hired young male travel assistants in the past?
4. Are young men physically or sexually attractive to you?
5. Why did you hire a professionally inexperienced gay man, close in age to your adopted son — instead of a qualified assistant possessing experience with disabilities and travel, and instead of traveling with your wife?
6. Since you have repeatedly injected yourself into the private family life of thousands of gay couples in order to mischaracterize them and deny them legal equality, the next question is absolutely pertinent and justified: How often do you have sexual intercourse with your wife? Please make your wife available to the media so that they may confirm independently of your claims.
7. Do you have any biological children? If not, why not? If pertinent, please provide independent medical documentation.
8. Have you had physical contact of any kind with your adopted son? Please detail the specific contacts: Handshake, hug, upper body clothed, full body clothed, or other. At any time were you in the presence of your adopted son in a partially clothed or unclothed state? Please certify that you have listed all types of contact that occurred and omitted mention of none.
Rekers’ To-Do List
Since Baptists pride themselves on the notion of redemption, here are the steps required for penance:
1. Admit that you are attracted to young men
2. Admit that reparative therapy has not worked for you
3. Admit that, according to your own standards, you should not have been allowed to adopt
4. Admit that you should not have collected taxpayer money to lie about your orientation and about your failed therapies
5. Admit that you have corrupted the churches of North America and Europe with falsehoods about the nature and treatment of sexual attraction, aka orientation.
6. Admit what judges and other scientists have already said: That you have committed fraud with the legitimate research of other scientists
7. Admit that you have harmed thousands of people by promoting the same ineffective and counterproductive therapy which condemned you to an entire life of self-delusion and public denial.
8. Pay for the college education of Lucien at a school of his choice.
These lists are not comprehensive and are subject to expansion.
This morning I lost my virginity… my TV interview virginity, that is.
Those who know me, know me as a fairly quiet person, so the last place they would expect to see me is on a live TV broadcast on ETV morning news, talking about international matters. Come to think of it, that’s the last place I would expect to see me. Never the less, I found myself there this morning, a bundle of nerves, like a lamb being led to the slaughter. (Read More)
Rachel Maddow is doing an amazing job covering this issue. Please check out video of her investigation. Time Magazine also has an extensive piece on the topic.
View Rachel Maddow’s entire series after the jump. (Read More)
West Coast Ugandans and humanitarians who appeal to the consul in Los Angeles for respect and equality toward LGBT Ugandans are likely to receive a small taste of that nation’s U.S. evangelical-bred cultural warfare:
Veteran gay activist Michael Petrelis discovered that Uganda‘s L.A. honorary consul is none other than Matthew Crouch, son of the infamous prosperity-preachers Paul and Jan Crouch of Trinity Broadcasting Network.
The younger Crouch is a Hollywood Christian entertainment producer.
An October 2005 news release on President Yoweri Museveni’s web site shines light on Crouch’s quid pro quo deal in which he would promote Uganda among U.S. Christians in exchange for government support of his activities.
However, some of Crouch’s shady business dealings were exposed by the Los Angeles Times in 2006.
In many ways, Crouch and his company, Gener8Xion Entertainment, are Hollywood anomalies. He hasn’t had to look further than his parents ‚Äî with their tax-free donor base and worldwide television reach ‚Äî to bankroll and market his movies. In other ways, the stereotype of a Hollywood producer fits snugly. Friends and foes describe him, by turns, as charismatic, arrogant, charming, ruthless, visionary and greedy. [...]
Associates also say that Crouch’s impulsiveness ‚Äî and perhaps a desire to escape his father’s long shadow ‚Äî has prompted him to take shortcuts that have led to risky decisions. During the production of “Omega Code,” his key personnel included a former adult-film actor and a novice screenwriter who was arrested and convicted of soliciting a child for sex.
Nevertheless, a year later, Crouch was appointed honorary consul for Uganda — a Hollywood entertainment-industry ambassadorship.
Petrelis uncovered Tweets from Crouch dated in the spring of 2009 regarding one of the evangelist’s recent trip to Uganda:
@MC8X at nashville airport flying to Dallas. Leaving for Uganda Africa on tues. Scheduled to meet with President Museveni while there! 1:49 PM May 30th from Tweetie
@MC8X wow! Couldn’t tweet from Uganda. Back from Africa a few hours ago. Was at a pastors conference with 10,000 people/leaders in Africa! 9:52 PM Jun 11th from Tweetie
Petrelis has written to Crouch asking for communication about his Ugandan political affiliations.
The Uganda-Los Angeles consul’s address:s Gener8xion Entertainment, 7095 Hollywood Blvd, Suite 1260, Los Angeles, CA 90068.
This morning I lost my virginity… my TV interview virginity, that is.
