Via Right Wing Watch comes news of Michigan Republican Paul Scott from Grand Blanc, who is running on a four-pronged platform. One of those prongs is this:
I will make it a priority to ensure transgender individuals will not be allowed to change the sex on their driver’s license in any circumstance.
Uh huh! And why?
When asked to explain how such a mandate from the Secretary of State would benefit Michigan, he said it was about “preventing people who are males genetically from dressing as a woman and going into female bathrooms.”
Gotcha!
In other news, apparently you have to show your drivers’ license before you use public restrooms in Michigan. What if you really have to go and you left your license in your other pants? Michigan sounds awful!
The Michigan state senate voted Wednesday to reject a measure that would protect students from violence committed on the basis of sexual orientation. Opponents of the bill do not object to legislation protecting students on the basis of race or religion; their sole objection is to the protection of gay students from violence.
Democratic Sen. Glenn Anderson said:
It is imperative that we compel public schools to protect students from bullying in the academic environment by adopting a policy to deal with this destructive behavior.
Anderson’s measure lost on a vote of 21 to 16, according to the Michigan Messenger.
This move by the senate is the second recent example of Michigan officials protecting antigay violence.
In recent months. former ex-gay Patrick McAlvey has come forward to accuse Exodus member activist Mike Jones of sexually accosting him during “ex-gay” therapy sessions. Jones’ ex-gay activist website is hosted by Michigan State University. The university has refused to withdraw its taxpayer-subsidized hosting of Jones’ “Corduroy Stone” website, and both Jones and Exodus president Alan Chambers refuse to respond to the allegations.
Worse, perhaps, than the senators who support antigay bullying are those Republicans who say that protecting any student from bullying is too expensive. According to the Messenger:
[Some] Senate Republicans took a different tact in the floor debate Wednesday. They argued the bill could result in numerous lawsuits against public schools across Michigan.
“[The bill] is written in such a way as to guaruntee lawsuits against employees or the school,” said Sen. Alan Cropsey, a Republican from DeWitt. “This will turn every incident of bullying into a lawsuit, and cost the schools hundreds of millions.”
Schools across the nation are already being sued by parents of battered gay students; the parents accuse school faculty of failing to protect their children. So long as Michigan singles out gay youths and young adults for abuse, the lawsuits in that state are likely to escalate.
Despite accusations that he sexually accosted a young male client and uses public property to promote sectarian religious bigotries, Mike Jones and his Corduroy Stone ex-gay ministry will continue to receive its web hosting from Michigan State University.
The Michigan Messenger reported Friday that David Gift, vice provost for libraries, computing and technology at MSU, said that the university’s hands are tied because Mike Jones is a retired university employee.
We have made systematic progress over the past year at removing public purchased web publishing and e-mail accounts that had been established at MSU. However, retirees have the benefit of continued use of their MSU web space and our existing policies for controlling their use of that space are quite limited and do not permit us to address this particular case. The owner of this site is a retiree, and after we closed his purchased account under our general change of business practices he set up shop in his retiree space. He apparently has arranged for a .com URL, but has that URL redirected to his MSU personal webspace.
Terry Denbow, vice president for university relations, further explained MSU’s policy:
The point is that we do allow retirees to have Web spaces that link to other organizations. The fact that this organization has material that is offensive does not, in and of itself, violate any University policies. We cannot, under the First Amendment, make content based distinctions on what sites we allow and which ones we do not. We are continuing to review and update our acceptable use policies and will take this under advisement as we do so. In the meantime, so long as Mr. Jones is in compliance with U policy, his web space will remain available to him.
Denbow said that while the university was blocked from further action under
current policies, it might be time to revisit those policies.
Truth Wins Out executive director Wayne Besen and Jones’s victimized client, who is no longer ex-gay, reacted here.
It is frankly alarming that MSU policy allows alleged predators to host websites on public property simply because they are retirees. MSU’s see-no-evil policy may serve as an open invitation for other retirees to launch sites inciting prejudice and sexual violence against ethnic and religious constituencies.
A true “conservative,” small-government, or libertarian policy would demand that no personal or private sectarian sites of any kind be hosted on taxpayer-supported government property. Instead, taxpayers are being forced to host the work of a predatory ex-gay who inflicts his failures upon students.
Truth Wins Out has sought comment from Corduroy Stone and from Exodus International regarding the accusation of sexual abuse; both have refused to comment.
I’m on my way to Grand Rapids, Michigan to give a presentation at Grand Valley State University on the harm caused by the “ex-gay” industry. My speech, followed by a panel discussion, is in response to Focus on the Family’s traveling road show, Love Won Out, which will be in town on Saturday. Having countered several of these conferences, I must confess, I still don’t understand what point they are trying to make.
If Focus on the Family’s goal is to convert gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people into evangelical Christians, they are doing a lousy job. It seems convincing gay people to end their relationships is a far higher priority to this ministry than having gay people develop personal relationships with Jesus Christ.
For every guilt-ridden homosexual who temporarily falls under their spell, they lose hundreds, if not thousands, of gay people who view their conversion program as intolerant. If your ministry causes many gay people to write off not just Christianity, but all religion, by what measurement can you consider your evangelizing a success?
At Love Won Out, speakers go to great lengths to profess their deep concern over the mental and physical well being of homosexuals. It turns out, however, that the anti-gay sentiment expressed at these conferences may be hazardous to the health of GLBT people.
A new Emory University study concludes that the bans on same-sex marriage pushed by Focus on the Family can be tied to a rise in the rate of HIV infection. The scientists found that a constitutional ban on marriage equality raised the rate by four cases per 100,000 people.
“We found the effects of tolerance for gays on HIV to be statistically significant and robust, they hold up under a range of empirical models,” says Hugo Mialon, an assistant professor of economics. “Intolerance is deadly,” Mialon said. “Bans on gay marriage codify intolerance, causing more gay people to shift to underground sexual behaviors that carry more risk.”
Earlier this year, a study by San Francisco State’s Caitlin Ryan concluded that “teens who experienced negative feedback (when they came out) were more than eight times as likely to have attempted suicide, nearly six times as vulnerable to severe depression and more than three times at risk of drug use.”
So, if Love Won Out is truly concerned about the health of gay people, particularly teenagers, it will transform into a gay affirming ministry. To continue down their destructive path of judgmental condemnation is senseless and significantly harmful to the very GLBT people that Focus purports to want to help.
Of course, Focus on the Family will insist that they love gay people and just want to help those who are unhappy. But, isn’t it a conflict of interest when you lobby to pass anti-gay laws that make gay people miserable and then offer yourself up as the panacea to the pain? Is it not hypocritical to sponsor a conference supposedly about love, where the main speaker is Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International?
Chambers hosts a Christian television show, Pure Passion, which pollutes the airwaves by repeatedly calling gay people “sexually broken” and “perverse.” Exodus also sells “Pursuing Sexual Wholeness” a book authored by Andy Comiskey that says, “Satan delights in homosexual perversion.” Such pronouncements are often accompanied by exorcisms given by churches affiliated with ex-gay ministries. Obviously, such extreme actions are anathema to creating a welcoming church environment for GLBT people.
Focus on the Family also claims its conferences are for parents, friends, family members or ministry leaders who want to “lovingly reach out with uncompromised faith.”
Genuine love, of course, requires making the very compromises and sacrifices that Love Won Out is telling people are unnecessary. Rejecting a friend or family member’s innate sexual orientation as sinful and defective, rarely leads to a healthy relationship based on trust and mutual respect.
Finally, the investigative reporter Thomas Maier just released a groundbreaking book, “Masters of Sex.” In it, he reveals that the famed sex research team, Masters and Johnson, had fabricated claims of curing gay people in their 1979 book, “Homosexuality in Perspective.” Given this vital new information, why hasn’t Focus on the Family taken the opportunity to review and question the validity of its program? Wouldn’t that be the moral course of action to take?
The hard truth is, Focus on the Family’s leaders are only capable of loving people exactly like themselves, which explains their tremendous efforts to remake gays in their image. While their splashy road show may get high marks for good theatre, it’s ultimately futile because their transparent version of “love” rarely wins converts and succeeds only at convincing most gay people to run out of the church door.
The gross hypocrisy and outright cynicism is difficult to believe.
Focus on the Family is bringing their notorious “ex-gay” road show, Love Won Out, to Grand Rapids, Michigan this week. In response, Grand Valley State University is hosting my presentation, followed by a panel discussion on the danger of ex-gay programs.
Focus on the Family is livid and demands that the panel include anti-gay Focus on the Family speaker Michael Brown. They are urging their huge mailing list to complain and bully university officials.
“The ‘Religion and Homophobia’ panel discussion seems awfully one-sided for an event sponsored by the school’s ‘inclusion and equity’ department,” wrote Gary Schneeberger, vice president of media and public relations at Focus on the Family.
Focus on the Family might be taken seriously if they had actually extended an invitation to gay advocates and pro-gay preachers to speak at Love Won Out. I’d be more than happy to present my slide show, “Pray Away The Gay” on Saturday, at the Focus on the Family event. I’d even bring along the original photograph I took of Love Won Out’s ex-gay founder, John Paulk, (pictured) fleeing a gay bar.
Unfortunately, no such invitation was forthcoming. It seems that Focus on the Family has a double standard when it comes to inclusion and diversity. They demand representation, yet do not have the decency, manners and common courtesy to extend an invitation of their own. And, they wonder why their assertions of “love” and “morality” are deemed politically motivated and insincere.
If you are encouraged that Grand Valley is offering this program — “Religion and Homophobia: Spiritual Violence in our Community” — then let the university know: 616-331-2221.
If you are in Michigan and would like to attend the panel, please visit www.TruthWinsOut.org for more information.
TWO Thanks Grand Valley State For Terrific Event Discussing The “Ex-Gay” Industry
NEW YORK – Truth Wins Out thanked Grand Valley State University for hosting a top-notch event that evaluated the claims made by the “ex-gay” industry. In front of several hundred people, TWO’s Executive Director, Wayne Besen, spoke about the harm done by Focus on the Family’s Love Won Out conference, which will be in Grand Rapids on Saturday. Following his talk, he participated on a distinguished panel with local experts including:
• John Corvino, Wayne State University professor, author and lecturer;
• Milt Ford, director of Grand Valley’s LGBT Resource Center;
• Judith Snow, Grand Rapids area forensic therapist and author;
• Doug Van Doren, pastor of Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ;
• Josh Sleutel, GVSU student, previous reparative therapy patient.
Besen will take-part in a protest response to Love Won Out on Saturday, hosted by the National Organization of Women. ( June 13 at the Calder Plaza from noon-1pm)
“We thank Grand Valley State University, the LGBT resource center – and particularly Dr. Milt Ford and Colette Seguin Beighley – for organizing an amazing event that had a community-wide impact,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. “I hope people in Grand Rapids will join me at the NOW protest on Saturday, so we can help the parents and children being targeted by Focus on the Family. Our participation in such events helps people come out and even saves lives.”
With a gift of $35 to Truth Wins Out, you can receive an autographed copy of "Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth."
