Contact: Wayne Besen, Executive Director
Phone: 917-691-5118
E-Mail: wbesen@truthwinsout.org
TWO Addresses Concerns with Montgomery School Superintendent Joshua Starr in Open Letter
WASHINGTON – Truth Wins Out sent an open letter to Montgomery School Superintendent Joshua Starrstrongly urging him to stop disseminating “ex-gay” fliers by the discredited organization Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX). The virulently anti-gay group distributed 8,000 sheets at five Montgomery County schools this week, even though Starr calls the fliers “reprehensible and deplorable.”
“While non-profit literature must not be blocked based on viewpoint, it can and should be prohibited if it contains blatant misinformation that jeopardizes the health and well being of students,” wrote TWO’s Executive Director Wayne Besen in the letter to Starr. “The PFOX flier easily fits this description and the group has a dubious history that includes bizarre and bigoted practices that have no place in your public school system.”
The letter points out that PFOX board member Peter Sprigg, who works for Southern Poverty Law Center hate group the Family Research Council, once said that he wanted to “export” LGBT people and that he supports criminalizing homosexuality.
In August 2010, PFOX president Greg Quinlan spoke at a conference organized by another SPLC- certified hate group, Americans for Truth About Homosexuality. In his speech, Quinlan made an outrageous and offensive anti-LGBT slur:
“I wasn’t your flaming faggot, you know,” Quinlan said. “I can say that because I’ve been there and done that. You know, the one’s whose wrists are so limp that when the wind blows they slap themselves in the face. I wasn’t one of them.”
At the same-conference, PFOX public speaker and convicted felon, Arthur Abba Goldberg, smeared LGBT people with ugly stereotypes disguised as scientific observation:
“By the way, did you notice that a lot of gays who remain in the gay lifestyle also do a lot of body building,” said Goldberg. “They will be in the gym a lot trying to build up their pecs…Because they have these body image issues and don’t feel they are masculine enough.”
“Let’s not beat around the bush: If an unsavory organization insulted other minorities with despicable epithets and demanded that they be ‘exported’ or jailed – no school in Montgomery County would be distributing their leaflets,” TWO’s letter said. “The fact that you would allow this politically motivated organization to spread its noxious message about LGBT people shows an unreasonable and unfathomable double standard.”
Furthermore, the former president of PFOX, Richard Cohen, was permanently expelled from the American Counseling Association for multiple ethics violations. Cohen is the individual most associated with the discredited mental health techniques trumpeted by PFOX.
“Why would Montgomery County want to place LGBT youth, already at an elevated risk for bullying, depression, and suicide in dangerous situations that can lead to tragedy?” TWO’s letter asks. “To continue allowing this specific organization into your school system is to court disaster. It is grossly irresponsible, reckless, and a dereliction of the primary duty of administrators to protect students from harm.”
Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that fights anti-LGBT religious extremism. TWO specializes in turning information into action by organizing, advocating and fighting for LGBT equality.
To: Montgomery County Public Schools
Attn: Superintendent Joshua Starr Re: PFOX flier distribution
Dear Sir:
We write with great concern today about a grossly misleading flier that was disseminated to Montgomery County students by the organization Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX).
While non-profit literature must not be blocked based on viewpoint, it can and should be prohibited if it contains blatant misinformation that jeopardizes the health and well being of students. The PFOX flier easily fits this description and the group has a dubious history that includes bizarre and bigoted practices that have no place in your public school system.
The flier in question is highly deceptive because it falsely states that PFOX “promotes diversity” and “supports tolerance.” Indeed, PFOX board member and spokesperson, Peter Sprigg, played an instrumental role in the Southern Poverty Law Center declaring the Family Research Council, where he works, a certified hate group in 2011. Sprigg has called homosexuality “unnatural and unhealthy,” and an attack on the “natural family.”
In March 2008, Sprigg responded to a question on Hardball with Chris Matthews about uniting gay partners during the immigration process by saying: “I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them.” He later apologized, but then went on to tell MSNBC host Chris Matthews, “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions on homosexual behavior.” “So we should outlaw gay behavior?” Matthews asked. “Yes,” Sprigg replied.
In August 2010, PFOX president Greg Quinlan spoke at a conference organized by another SPLC- certified hate group, Americans for Truth About Homosexuality. In his speech, Quinlan made an outrageous and offensive anti-LGBT slur:
“I wasn’t your flaming faggot, you know,” Quinlan said. “I can say that because I’ve been there and done that. You know, the one’s whose wrists are so limp that when the wind blows they slap themselves in the face. I wasn’t one of them.”
(8:00-8:13)
At the same-conference, PFOX public speaker and convicted felon, Arthur Abba Goldberg, smeared LGBT people with ugly stereotypes disguised as scientific observation:
“By the way, did you notice that a lot of gays who remain in the gay lifestyle also do a lot of body building,” said Goldberg. “They will be in the gym a lot trying to build up their pecs…Because they have these body image issues and don’t feel they are masculine enough.”
Clearly, PFOX mischaracterized itself when it claimed that it “promotes diversity” and “supports tolerance.” Do you want LGBT students under your jurisdiction to contact a group that browbeats them with guilt and shame and believes they should be “exported” or criminalized? Are you inadvertently encouraging pupils to reach out to a group that undermines their mental health by hurling demeaning, homophobic slurs and hurtful stereotypes? More important, are you prepared to face legal action if a student is harmed or commits suicide as a result of being subjected to the destructive “therapy” pushed by this viciously anti-gay outfit?
Let’s not beat around the bush: If an unsavory organization insulted other minorities with despicable epithets and demanded that they be “exported” or jailed – no school in Montgomery County would be distributing their leaflets. The fact that you would allow this politically motivated organization to spread its noxious message about LGBT people shows an unreasonable and unfathomable double standard.
Furthermore, the former president of PFOX, Richard Cohen, was permanently expelled from the American Counseling Association for multiple ethics violations. Cohen is the individual most associated with the discredited mental health techniques trumpeted by PFOX.
We have provided video so you can see Cohen in action. Mr. Starr, I seriously doubt that you can watch these surreal “therapeutic” antics and not wince at the thought of the students under your charge – or your own children — coming under Cohen’s “care.”
Certainly, you are aware that so-called “ex-gay” therapy is rejected by every mainstream medical and mental health organization in the nation, including the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. The American Psychiatric Association says that attempts to change sexual orientation can lead to “anxiety, depression, and self-destructive behavior.”
Why would Montgomery County want to place LGBT youth, already at an elevated risk for bullying, depression, and suicide in dangerous situations that can lead to tragedy? To continue allowing this specific organization into your school system is to court disaster. It is grossly irresponsible, reckless, and a dereliction of the primary duty of administrators to protect students from harm.
This is absolutely not about free speech, but about the distribution of blatantly false speech by an organization that brazenly misrepresented itself as a benign group promoting tolerance and diversity. In reality, it is advocating for outright discrimination and even criminalization, pushing junk science, and referring youth to unqualified therapists.
Judging by news reports, it appears that you disagree with PFOX’s flier – yet it was still handed out. We are assuming that at the time of distribution you were simply unaware of the full scope of PFOX’s anti-LGBT activities and its direct ties to hate groups that demonize and dehumanize LGBT people.
Well, now you know the facts. The question is what are you going to do about it?
Truth Wins Out looks forward to your response and is available to answer any questions you might have about PFOX and the trauma caused by “ex-gay” therapy.
Sincerely,
Wayne Besen
Executive DirectorTruth Wins Out
917-691-5118
The wingnut reaction to Hillary Clinton’s historic speech on international LGBT issues has been predictably lame, so it’s no surprise that Porno Pete has decided to weigh in, expressing his heartfelt support for the most homophobic nations on earth and their right to discriminate against gay people however they see fit. Here, let us comment on his latest emanation, and then move on to making fun of the WorldNetDaily column Peter posted along with it:
With their new escalation of promoting homosexual behavior to other nations through U.S. foreign policy, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have raised America’s defiance toward her Creator to a new level — while needlessly alienating nations less morally compromised than our own. Not content to keep our decadence between our shores, the United States – through aggressively pro-“gay” Democratic administrations – now demands that other countries sink to our level by embracing homosexuality as a “human right.”
Nations “less morally compromised than our own” = places like Iran and Uganda. Those countries didn’t stop killing pr wanting to kill gay people just because it wasn’t “cool” anymore.
Who knew that when President Ronald Reagan spoke idealistically about America becoming a “shining city on the hill,” that city would turn out to be Sodom? Hillary earned plaudits from the Left with her U.N. speech on international “gay rights,” but her words were an affront to our Declaration of Independence, which appeals to “Nature and Nature’s God.”
Americans gang rape angels? [Pssst, Porno Pete: if you don't get that joke, it's because you're not smart enough to read the Sodom and Gomorrah story for what it actually says, rather than what your homophobic twit brain needs it to say.]
By redefining “human rights” to include the normalization of same-sex behaviors and gender confusion, Obama and Clinton have turned God’s natural moral order on its head. There are many countries – including Muslim-dominated nations and major powers like Russia – that reject homosexuality. By pushing sexual deviance on these nations, we only confirm their perception of America as a corrupt and declining – and very arrogant — superpower.
And wingnuts are so well known as crusaders against American imperialism and colonialism.
America, rooted in the Bible, historically embraced anti-sodomy laws, but now we are in the grip of an unprecedented moral and spiritual crisis that blackens our reputation worldwide. As one Muslim tweeted in reaction to Obama’s international “gay rights” plan: “There is a great divide between the Founding Fathers and the pro-gay regime ruling America [today].”
“One Muslim tweeted.” Well, that sounds like a consensus to me!
Aberrant sexuality is not a fundamental liberty, and defending morality is not hateful “bigotry.” Hillary claims, “Being gay is not a Western invention, it is a human reality.” But homosexuality is about changeable behavior – not intrinsic, innate identity – as evidenced by countless men and women who now live happy lives apart from homosexuality, despite once considering themselves “gay” or “lesbian.”
Actually, Hillary is right and Porno Pete needs to stick to fetish photography. Meanwhile we’ll keep on keepin’ on trying to keep track of all the “ex-gay” leaders who are coming out of the closet, again.
(There are no “Adultery Pride Parades” or “Porn-Users Pride Months.”)
Well, Pete, considering what you post on your “family blog,” maybe you should lobby for the second one. Might bring a few more hits to the old AFTAH site.
All Americans who love God and respect His wonderful design for mankind should be ashamed of Obama’s and Hillary’s campaign to force a deeply flawed sexual ideology on innocent nations that do NOT want to emulate American decadence.
That’s the end of his press release, and I feel like it’s missing an “Allahu akbar!”
Anyway.
So Pete links to another wingnut called Bob Unruh, who wrote about the same thing. Let’s make fun of him for a minute. First, the headlines:
Obama offers plan for U.S. to be global LGBT sex cop
Wait, have we moved onto the Bob Unruh guy? Because that sounds like something from Americans For Truth or some other similar kinky sexytime website. Sub-headline:
Wants to import homosexuals with special asylum privileges
Well that’s just crazy. Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council hate group told us several years ago that gays should be an “export,” NOT an “import.” [It's because our currency is weak.]
And, you know, honestly, having read Unruh’s article, there’s nothing in there that remotely tops those two headlines. Oh sure, there’s mewling from Matt Barber and Randy Thomasson — Unruh basically called the first three third-rate wingnuts in his rolodex, I guess — but nothing that interesting.
In summary, anti-gay wingnuts have looked at this issue and decided that it’s best to side with nations like Iran, where they still hang people for being gay.
I wouldn’t expect any better from them, and neither should you.
“It is startling that President Obama is prepared to throw the full weight and reputation of the United States behind the promotion overseas of the radical ideology of the sexual revolution. If he did the same on other issues, his own liberal allies would undoubtedly accuse him of cultural imperialism. Threats to withhold foreign aid from poor countries unless they conform their laws to the views of Western radicals are unconscionable.
“The United Nations, like the United States, remains sharply divided on the issue of whether special rights should be granted on the basis of sexual conduct, sexual orientation or gender identity.
Indeed, we have failed to come to an agreement on special rights such as the parking spaces and Groupons For Gays Only that I personally advocate, but here in the United States a clear majority support equal rights for LGBT people, and the other civilized nations in the world are far ahead of us in that respect.
“President Obama should increase efforts to defend human rights that are widely recognized, such as religious liberty, rather than appeasing his domestic allies by imposing an alien ideology on other countries.”
The only allies Peter Sprigg has left are uneducated hicks, both at home and abroad. He pleads with the Obama administration to leave just this one thing intact, their right to discriminate against LGBT people. Otherwise, fundamentalists far and wide will actually have to start coming to grips with the fact that, when judged by their merits, their contributions to our global society exist on a line between non-existent and destructive.
Look, it’s Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council hate group, clinging childishly to the belief that average Americans are bigots with weird hair like he is. It’s very, very sad, and we should all take a break from making fun of him to pity him.
He says that DADT repeal will change the military, due to the fact that soldiers who are sad bigots like Peter Sprigg will have to take up a Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell policy about their weird, unnatural hatred of gays. Or something. Who knows what this man is ever talking about? Meanwhile, the actual military is pretty much shrugging their shoulders at the change, because they’re grown-ups.
An article in the Christian Post today is doing that thing that fundamentalists all do, all the time, annoying non-Christian writers like me and deeply offending the great majority of Christendom who aren’t unreconstructed bigots. They’re asking “Can Christians avoid being called haters for being against gay marriage?” Uh…well first of all, not all Christians are against marriage equality. Indeed, lots of them are all for it! Straight Christians, too! ”Are we haters for simply being pro-family?” Uh…well, if you only support families that fit your widdle daffynition of what constitutes a family, then yeah, you sort of are acting from a place of hate. It may be cloaked in nice Christian words, but…
Let’s just look at the article.
Peter Sprigg, senior fellow for policy studies with the Family Research Council, believes that Christians need to make it clear that they are motivated by love.
Thanks for your input, hate group leader who has called for gays to be exported from the United States. The idea that any human alive would be taking direction on “love” from a person such as Peter Sprigg would be offensive if it weren’t so ludicrous.
“I think that’s kind of the major challenge that we face,” he commented to The Christian Post. “We in the pro-family movement … those of us who are Christians, we know in our hearts that we are motivated by love, not hate. The definition of love is not that you let people do whatever they want.”
Ah, so this kind of illuminates one of the silly things that fundamentalist Christians believe about themselves. These people who haven’t contributed a major scientific or artistic breakthrough in Western society in quite awhile nonetheless feel that they are The Arbiters [the loving, disciplinary parents, if you will], for the entire rest of society, even though their own record on the principles they espouse is no better than the rest of the population, and is often worse. They simply believe they are better. The word for this is “supremacist,” and “love” is nowhere in the definition.
“The essence of love,” he added, “is to desire the best for someone, and to act to bring that about. And I would argue that’s what we think we’re doing.”
Here is another silly thing that fundamentalist Christians believe about themselves. Starting from a place where they actually believe they have the right answers [they who believe that the earth is 6,000 years old and under whose tutelage we never would have had antibiotics], they feel they have the right to act to control other people’s lives in order to “bring about the best” in the rest of society. The problem is that Peter Sprigg is not an expert on any damn thing! The actual experts — scientists, the medical profession, the mental health community — uniformly state that homosexuality is a natural part of the human condition, is not a disorder, and should be treated just as heterosexuality is. Therefore, taking the statements of actual experts, repealing DOMA and bringing about full equality for gays and lesbians is simply doing what is verifiably the best thing for our community. Peter’s opinion on the subject is irrelevant, as the fact that he has some thoughts about what’s written in an old book have absolutely no bearing on the issue at hand. I have some thoughts about that book, too, but I certainly wouldn’t use them to deny anyone their constitutional rights.
They talked to another bigot for the article, an “ex-gay” one:
But what worries Greg Quinlan, president of the Pro-Family Network, is that many Christians aren’t standing in opposition to gay marriage for the sake of getting along with those on the other side of the debate.
“I am intolerant,” he said, “but I don’t hate. Yes, there is a difference … We have to turn the definitions around.”
Good luck.
“Christians have to understand how to tell the truth in love, but it isn’t love until you tell the truth. Now, we have to not be concerned about what other people think of us. We have to stop trying to be nicer than Jesus.”
You aren’t nicer than Jesus, Greg. You and your kind lie about, malign and spread hate against an entire minority population in this country in service of your conception of a deity. At least when Jesus was in a mood he acted with a shred of integrity.
“When somebody calls us a hater … we need to be all the louder, all the more persistent and consistent with our message,” he said.
When you’re correctly called a hateful bigot, hate louder, he seems to be saying!
Well then, that was fun. Until next time one of these fools says something stupid…
It amazes me how much the Christian press and fundamentalist leaders will just outright lie to their flocks. LifeSiteNews is whining about the “Every Child Deserves a Family” act, introduced by Rep. Pete Stark [D-CA]. The main purpose of the bill is to address the myriad number of kids who go homeless in this country every year, in part by denying federal funds to adoption agencies that discriminate against qualified loving parents, i.e. religious organizations that won’t place kids with loving gay couples. Here, let the Washington Blade explain:
The Every Child Deserves a Family Act, which has 33 original co-sponsors, would restrict federal funds for states that allow discrimination in adoption or foster care placement based on the sexual orientation, marital status or gender identity of potential parents — as well as LGBT children seeking homes. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) is expected to introduce companion legislation in June in the Senate.
[...]
At the news conference, Stark billed the legislation as a means to ensure children living in the foster care system have access to a greater number of adoptive families — including households with single parents or same-sex parents.
“What’s in the child’s best interest is what the bill is trying to promote,” Stark said. “There is no information that shows that children raised by a single parent or gay or lesbian parent households have any more or less problems than all other children.”
According to Stark’s office, the U.S. government spends more than $7 billion each year on a foster care system against potential single and LGBT parents and allows around 25,000 children age out annually. More than 500,000 children are in foster care and 120,000 of them available for adoption.
See? It’s a two-fer. On the one hand, it’s about considering the children first, but it has the side effect of correcting an injustice for LGBT families. As you can read for yourself [because you are liberals], the bill, again, denies federal funds to groups that discriminate. It doesn’t force them to shut down. It just says, “here, if you are a bigot, that is fine, but get off the government teat.”
So how does LifeSiteNews breathlessly report this to their mouth-moving readers?
Ominous House Bill would effectively ban US
Christian adoption agencies
Holy crap, they lie in the headline!
A bill reintroduced into the U.S. House of Representatives this month proposes federal-level punishment for states that ban homosexual couples and non-married individuals from adopting children. Effectively, the bill would ban all Catholic and Christian adoption agencies or forbid them from acting on faith beliefs.
And they lie in the first paragraph! That federal-level “punishment” is simply a withholding of federal support. If you need to be a bigot, and also run an adoption agency, get your own damn donors! It is that simple.
Later in the piece, LifeSite decided to contact a hate group executive for his opinion:
Peter Sprigg, senior fellow for policy studies at the Family Research Council, agreed. “It would have the effect of either banning Christian adoption agencies or forbidding them from acting on their faith convictions and their moral convictions in terms of what is in the best interest of a child,” he warned.
Sprigg said that Christian organizations, such as Catholic Charities are among the “most effective adoption agencies” which have an “outstanding record”. Additionally, he said, “unique problems” associated with homosexual couples and non-married couples indicate that these homes are “likely to be less stable than a married husband-and-wife household.”
Uh huh. First of all, Peter is lying about “unique problems” making gay couples’ households “less stable.” We know this. We know how the FRC lies with research. There is NO credible evidence that kids do any worse with same-sex couples. And his remark about “forbidding [bigot agencies] from acting on their faith convictions and their moral convictions in terms of what is in the best interest of a child” is not true either. Again, they’re just losing federal funding. If they rely on that in order to stay open, well, sucks for them. The problem — for the bigots — is that “what is best for the child” is not open to religious interpretation. “Religious interpretation” for Christian Scientists would suggest that the “best interests” of a child with leukemia involve prayer. Irrefutable facts about the “best interests” of that child, on the other hand, would lead the parents to head to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis as quickly as possible. Likewise, fundamentalist bigot interpretations of what is in the “best interests” of children who are in the system may exist, but that does not mean that they are actually correct, and really, in a nation as large as this one, with hundreds of thousands of kids In The System, we need to be supporting adoption agencies , on a governmental level, that truly look out for the best interests of those kids, ALL of them. So run around with your “religious interpretation” of the best situation for kids all you want, but if you want to receive federal money, if this bill is passed, you’re going to have to go with the grown-up, fact-based version of what’s best for those kids.
So sorry. Go cry about your religious freedom now. It’s abundantly obvious to the rest of us that you religious wingnuts care far more about upholding your easy-to-shatter misconceptions about the world around you than you EVER will care about actual kids in need.
This is your weekly reminder, Maggie Gallagher, Brian Brown, Tony Perkins, Peter Sprigg, Laurie Higgins, Peter LaBarbera, Matt Barber, Linda Harvey, and whatever other sad sack bigots I missed: UPDATE YOUR RESUMES.
We’re winning the younger generation on abortion, at least in theory. What about same-sex marriage? We’re losing on that one, especially among the 20- and 30-somethings: 65 to 70 percent of them favor same-sex marriage. I don’t know if that’s going to change with a little more age—demographers would say probably not. We’ve probably lost that. I don’t want to be extremist here, but I think we need to start calculating where we are in the culture.
You and the demographers are right, Jim. Those numbers ain’t goin’ back, baby. Civil Rights issues never, ever, follow that sort of trajectory. EVER. Especially on the issue of equality for gays and lesbians — it doesn’t matter what your family looks like, what you believe, what color you are, how much you make, or anything else: you have gays and lesbians in your family, in your circle of friends, in your church. And the second people get to know us, they start voting for us, because they learn that what they’ve been taught is not only a lie, but a damned lie.
[The stuff about reproductive rights is wishful thinking, but eh, not getting into that right now.]
The interview in World is subscription-only, which makes me laugh, so I’m kind of relying on Pareene at Salon for these quotes from the interview, but he pulls out another interesting one about the Obama family:
I may not agree with any of his policies. I do appreciate that he’s married to his first wife and raising his two children. We need more men like that. I once said that America would be better off if we had more families that reflected the Obamas, and a lot of conservatives went nuts with that, but it’s true! Some of the conservative candidates that we put up—between a couple of them recently, I think they had seven or eight marriages. That seems a bit hypocritical.
The overarching message here? Clean up your own damn house, fundies, or as the bumper sticker on my old car used to say, “Focus On Your Own Damn Family.” It’s a known fact anyway that liberals do better with things like marriage than fundamentalists anyway, so it’s not like they have anything to teach us. We’re doin’ just fine.
Still, it’s nice to see a prominent Evangelical leader begin to embrace reality.
You know, as more and more studies come out showing the correlation between a negative environment for gay teens and a heightened suicide rate, and as more of the gruesome results of anti-gay bullying are reported seemingly every week, we’ve seen the most awful haters on the Religious Right [Linda Harvey and Peter LaBarbera come to mind] do everything but express real concern for the kids involved. They hate gay people for many reasons, but one of them is that our existence negates the reality they’ve constructed for themselves. Peter Sprigg, who memorably suggested that gay people should be exported from the United States, and a primary factor in the Family Research Council being listed as a hate group, has decided to double down, penning this abjectly stupid, amoral screed against gay teens:
Last week, the journal Pediatrics published a study designed to bolster the political case for pro-homosexual policies in schools.
The Associated Press described the findings this way: “Suicide attempts by gay teens — and even straight kids — are more common in politically conservative areas where schools don’t have programs supporting gay rights.”
The study’s author, Mark Hatzenbuehler of Columbia University, called his findings “a call to action in providing a roadmap for how we can begin to reduce suicide in LGB youth.”
[...]
In any discussion of “sexual orientation,” it is important to remember that this is only an umbrella term for three quite different things—a person’s sexual attractions, the sexual behavior, and their self-identification. In the survey upon which this study was based, there was only a single question on “sexual orientation,” which asked “which of the following best describes you.” The choices were “heterosexual (straight), gay or lesbian, bisexual” or “not sure.” This is essentially a measure of self-identification.
Therefore, the logical take-away from the study would be this: the most effective way of reducing teen suicide attempts is not to create a “positive social environment” for the affirmation of homosexuality. Instead, it would be to discourage teens from self-identifying as gay, lesbian, or bisexual.
Peter, you festering boil, stop talking. You are far too ignorant to speak on this subject. Because, you see, regardless of whether kids “self-identify” as gay, THEY WILL STILL BE GAY! We know that you, Peter, are an eliminationist monster, but that does not change reality! Homosexuality, despite what you think you’ve read in your old book of faith stories, is real, and it IS a perfectly normal sexual orientation, according to all true adults who are experts on such subjects. We have to deal with the reality that exists, Sprigg, not the one you envision in your black, bigoted heart.
He continues:
However, there is at least some evidence even in this study that merely self-identifying as “gay,” at least publicly, is in itself a risk factor. Hatzenbuehler, in reviewing previous research on suicide attempts by “LGB” youth, noted “earlier age at disclosure” as a “risk factor . . . associated with suicidality.” In other words, the younger a teen “comes out of the closet” and announces to the world that he or she is homosexual or bisexual, the more likely that teen is to attempt suicide.
And I wonder what it is that LGBT kids come in contact when they come out younger! Stigma? Bullying? The kind reinforced and supported by the Religious Right? I wonder, I wonder, I wonder!
No, Peter, the problem is you, and all people like you. When your kind reaches Klan status in the average American mind — and you’re well on your way, based on your own words and actions — the problems for LGBT teens will drop sharply. Until then, well…I just hope we can be proactive enough to help reach these kids before they become statistics.
