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.
1. Brian at Right Wing Watch points us to the new, garbled, illogical pamphlet from hate group leader Peter Sprigg on the Top Ten Harms of Same-Sex Marriage. You haven’t become accustomed to thoughtful consideration or intelligence from the Family Research Council and that certainly won’t change today, because they’re still morons.
2. How do anti-gay forces like the NOM leaders sleep at night? Towleroad has a heartbreaking story and testimony from a lesbian couple in Rhode Island, one of whom is terminally ill, and who, because of that, have become accidental activists in the fight for marriage equality in that state.
3. Since anti-gay wingnuts are also anti-choice/anti-woman wingnuts, PZ Myers has one for you. In Nebraska, a woman was forced to give birth to a baby that they knew would not develop lungs, because her water broke very early in the pregnancy. These are the kinds of situations that George Tiller specialized in. The worst, most painful kind. Because of the misogynistic bastards who pushed through a draconian anti-abortion law in Nebraska, that woman had to carry the pregnancy to term, watch her baby attempt to take one breath, and then die. Thanks, fundamentalist Christians! You really help out with things.
4. Want to go to Mormon Heaven? Ted Cox will show you how. Hint: there are secret handshakes involved!
There’s no good place to start, and I’m coming back after a long weekend which involved my laptop, a mug of coffee being spilled on it, and a magical screw that used to be in the laptop, but is now in my pocket, so let’s just jump in and look at the wingnut reactions to the Southern Poverty Law Center adding the Family Research Council and the American Family Association to their list of anti-gay hate groups.
Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage may indeed be illiterate. He is very upset about NOM being added to the list, which is hilarious, because NOM wasn’t added to the list. Here’s what he said:
“This is an absurd distraction emanating from a once-great organization’s real mission — with all the actual hate groups out there, how can Southern Poverty Law Center stoop so low?
This report is not an attack on NOM but on the majority of Americans who believe that to make a marriage you need a husband and wife. It is also further proof of what NOM has been saying: today’s gay marriage movement is no longer about tolerance, live or let live — it’s about driving out dissenting voices from the public square.
Gay marriage now serves as the tip of the spear to a new campaign to demonize and generate hatred against those who adhere to traditional views of sex and marriage.
Regular readers of NOM’s work know how we characterize gay people: those who support our vision of marriage, we welcome to join our work. For gay marriage advocates (the majority of whom are not gay) we say: we think you are wrong, and we will fight for our right to vote for marriage in the public square.”
Yeah, Brian, please learn to read good and do other stuff good too. You’re definitely a disturbed bigot, and so is Maggie Gallagher, but y’all aren’t on the list yet. You were profiled in the report as an anti-gay group, but the report specifically explained, in English, that those listed on the official hate groups list were those with asterisks [looks like this: *] next to them.
The next several quotes are viaAlvin McEwen, who did the hard work of writing about this during the holiday weekend, while the rest of us were being lazy. Here’s Robert Knight, whose Coral Ridge Ministries somehow managed to stay off the list. Robert is very upset and says that the SPLC are the REAL HATURS:
“No organization better defines what a hate group is all about than the Southern Poverty Law Center,” said Robert Knight, Washington correspondent for Coral Ridge Ministries. “Smearing legitimate groups merely for disagreeing about homosexuality is a very hateful act.”
“Lumping Christian groups in with violent, racist gangs is a form of ‘bracketing,’ a political tactic described in the gay strategy manual ‘After the Ball.’ It’s guilt by association and it’s meant to intimidate,” Knight told WND.
This is known as the “I know you are, but what am I” defense, and it is very popular with childish wingnuts. But no, Robert, the SPLC specifically stated that merely disagreeing with homosexuality was not enough to land a group on the list. One of the prerequisites is a tendency to lie about LGBT people, and all of the groups on the hate group list [as well as your own] lie about LGBT people with feverish abandon.
In that same piece from WingNutDaily, here is some whining from King Hater Tony Perkins:
“The Left’s smear campaigns of conservatives is being driven by the clear evidence that the American public is losing patience with their radical policy agenda as seen in the recent election and in the fact that every state, currently more than thirty, that has had the opportunity to defend the natural definition of marriage has done so,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.
That’s some wishful thinking, since every poll taken on gay rights over the past twenty years has shown us progressively winning over a few more percentage points every year, all the way to where we are now, with support for marriage equality being the majority position. But then again, people like Tony Perkins lie to support their agendas.
Gary Cass of the Christian Anti-Defamation Coalition:
“We are going to form a coalition of organizations to lobby Congress to withhold funds from SPLC,” Christian Anti-Defamation Coalition head Gary L. Cass told WND. “We will also demand Congress restrict federal law enforcement from relying on the biased SPLC reports, like the discredited ‘Report on Right-Wing Extremism’ SPLC wrote for the Department of Homeland Security.”
The SPLC doesn’t receive federal funds, dingus.
Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America, who is also inexplicably not on the list:
Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America, contended that SPLC is more focused on advancing a radical political agenda than on combating hatred.
“This might be an opportunity to point out who are actually filled with hate and bigotry,” said Wright. “If they were to judge according to actions, they would have to have a special section for homosexual groups that vandalize and threaten people who oppose the homosexual agenda. We’ve had death threats against us posted openly on websites because of our work to uphold traditional marriage.”
“It’s the homosexual groups that have violated and invaded churches, vandalized homes and cars, that instigate death threats against people who are simply trying to uphold traditional values,” Wright observed.
The Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg has called for gays to be deported from this country. The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer is such a frothing hatemonger that his work almost singlehandedly landed him on the list. Note that Wendy is also using the second grade level “I know you are but what am I?” defense. She bitches about “death threats,” but cannot point to a single person killed or taking his own life due to anti-fundamentalist-wingnut bias, yet continues to ignore the bodycount of gay and lesbian schoolchildren, as it interferes with her slavish devotion to her incorrect worldview.
Isn’t it cute how present day haters and bigots never think their hatred and bigotry is like the hatred and bigotry of their direct ancestors? People: Tony Perkins bought David Duke’s mailing list for a reason. On some level, he understands that his group and other groups like his are connected to white supremacist groups of days past via a direct line of inheritance.
Anyway, Bryan Fischer has also weighed in, claiming that all the religious right lies about gay people that have been exposed are actually true, because Bryan Fischer is a liar. Whether he knows he’s lying or not is open to discussion. That’s all for now. There are more out there, but this post is long already, so I’ll post some more tomorrow!
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released a landmark report today adding new official Hate Groups to its well-respected list. The report concludes that the overall climate is getting better for LGBT people, which is leading some anti-gay organizations to get even more extreme.
Such extremism has taken its toll.
SPLC analyzed hate crime statistics and compared the rate of victimization for homosexuals to that of the other groups:
The figures show that homosexuals are 2.4 times more likely to suffer a violent hate crime attack than Jews (8.3 divided by 3.5). In the same way, gays are 2.6 times more likely to be attacked than blacks; 4.4 times more likely than Muslims; 13.8 times more likely than Latinos; and 41.5 times more likely than whites, according to the FBI figures. The basic pattern holds by years as well as across the years.
The bottom line: Homosexuals are far more likely than any other minority group in the United States to be victimized by violent hate crime.
One new organization certified as an official hate group is the Family Research Council. A key reason for the listing is FRC’s Peter Sprigg, who is also on the board of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays. PFOX just weaseled its way in as a charity at the World Bank. Here is what SPLC had to say about PFOX’s go-to guy:
Headed today by former Louisiana State Rep. Tony Perkins, the FRC has been a font of anti-gay propaganda throughout its history. It relies on the work of Robert Knight, who also worked at Concerned Women for America but now is at Coral Ridge Ministries (see above for both), along with that of FRC senior research fellows Tim Dailey (hired in 1999) and Peter Sprigg (2001). Both Dailey and Sprigg have pushed false accusations linking gay men to pedophilia (see related story, p. 31): Sprigg has written that most men who engage in same-sex child molestation “identify themselves as homosexual or bisexual,” and Dailey and Sprigg devoted an entire chapter of their 2004 book Getting It Straight to similar material. The men claimed that “homosexuals are overrepresented in child sex offenses” and similarly asserted that “homosexuals are attracted in inordinate numbers to boys.”
More recently, in March 2008, Sprigg, responding to a question about uniting gay partners during the immigration process, said: “I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them.” He later apologized, but then went on, last February, 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. At around the same time, Sprigg claimed that allowing gay people to serve openly in the military would lead to an increase in gay-on-straight sexual assaults.
When the World Bank learned about PFOX’s radical program, it made a step in the right direction by ensuring it would not receive tax-payer money through World Bank matching funds in 2011. However, to punish PFOX, the World Bank had to undermine 24 legitimate organizations that will also not be eligible for matching funds.
Given this new information on Sprigg and his ties to PFOX, the World Bank should move expeditiously to reinstate the legitimate organizations and drop PFOX as a charity. Unless, that is, the World Bank is comfortable associating itself with extremists who seek to discriminate against, blatantly lie about, deport and imprison LGBT people.
The World Bank should act now before it diminishes its reputation as a tolerant organization that respects diversity. This is particularly important because associating with radical hate-mongers will also damage the World Banks global efforts to combat HIV/AIDS.
This is not the first time that PFOX has been tied to hate groups.
In August, two key members of PFOX spoke at the “Truth Academy”. The conference was hosted by Americans For Truth About Homosexuality’s founder Peter LaBarbera, whose organization was also listed today as an official hate site by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
At the Truth Academy, PFOX Board President Greg Quinlan raised eyebrows with an offensive speech. Quinlan explained how he allegedly went from gay-to-straight, and found support from an Assemblies of God Church that accepted him because he allegedly was not effeminate.
“I wasn’t your flaming faggot, you know,” Quinlan told the chuckling crowd. “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, Arthur Abba Goldberg, the convicted Wall Street thief who runs PFOX’s speakers bureau, demonstrated PFOX’s unscientific use of stereotypes.
“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 Abba 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.”
Again, we ask the World Bank: Do you really want to be linked to destructive people such as Abba Goldberg, Sprigg, LaBarbera and Quinlan?
The Southern Poverty Law Center today updated its list of designated hate groups, and this year is significant in that some of the larger anti-gay outfits have made the cut. After a litany of ever more extreme statements from people such as Peter Sprigg and Tony Perkins of the FRC, Bryan Fischer of the AFA and Laurie Higgins of the IFI, the SPLC has determined, correctly in our view, that these groups all deserve to be designated as having gone beyond mere advocacy, and into full-blown hatred against the LGBT community. Especially after the recent spate of gay teen suicides elicited no remorse from any of these institutions, they have indeed earned their place in the halls of hate.
It is notable that Focus on the Family is not on the list. Though we at Truth Wins Out still stand in solid opposition to Focus’s mission, they have indeed made baby steps in the past year to moderate their message, which is in stark contrast with the growing extremism at FRC and AFA. Higgins and the IFI have always been awful, of course. These groups especially deserve recognition for their abject ignorance of facts and reality, choosing as they do to spread anti-gay propaganda at all costs, which indeed suggests that their “work” is inspired by little more than juvenile animus.
The list of anti-gay hate groups now includes the following:
1. Abiding Truth Ministries [Scott Lively]
2. American Family Association
3. Americans for Truth About Homosexuality [Peter LaBarbera]
4. American Vision
5. Chalcedon Foundation
6. Dove World Outreach Center [Terry Jones]
7. Faithful Word Baptist Church [Steven Anderson]
8. Family Research Council
9. Family Research Institute [Paul Cameron]
10. Heterosexuals Organized for a Moral Environment
11. Illinois Family Institute
12. MassResistance
13. Traditional Values Coalition
Tony Campolo once told a story to his audience that illustrated the point I’m about to make, and it was directed at uptight, lips-pursed church ladies like Peter Sprigg. It went like this:
“I have three things I’d like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don’t give a shit. What’s worse is that you’re more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night.”
Anti-gay bigotry and hatred, fueled by Religious people, leaves a bloody bodycount. Religious Right leaders who propagate junk science and lies in the name of conforming the world to their fantasy version of reality where homosexuality does not exist leads kids to kill themselves, tears families apart, and damages our world in the long-run.
So what is Peter Sprigg clutching his pearly white panties about? Well, you see, there’s a homoseckshul activiss project right now called FCKH8, where people from all walks of life say, well, “fckh8.” I like it. It’s funny, it’s a bit shocking, and it gets the point across, sort of like Tony Campolo did when he used the phrase “give a shit” in front of a bunch of uptight fundamentalists in order to snap their skulls to attention.
Whine, Peter:
If you go to the website, you will find a short (two minutes or so) video. It consists of several people ranting and raving against the opponents of same-sex “marriage”–while repeatedly “dropping the f-bomb.”
Is this supposed to be funny? Do homosexual activists really think that the way to persuade opponents of same-sex “marriage” to support it is–to swear at people? Repeatedly?
The fact that he interprets the people in the video as swearing at him is telling.
During the Proposition 8 campaign, one of the most effective issues for advocates of Prop. 8 was the concern that children would be taught to affirm and celebrate homosexuality and same-sex “marriage” in the public schools. Opponents vehemently insisted that same-sex “marriage” would have no impact on schools or on children whatsoever. So then what happened? A class of first-graders was brought to San Francisco City Hall to witness the wedding of their lesbian teacher.
Yeah, marriage equality will have no harm on children. That was the point. The reality, Peter Sprigg, is that there are tons of kids being brought up by gay couples! Also? Most kids have a gay person in their family, whether or not they realize it. All marriage equality will [help to] do is teach kids that, hey, this is part of reality. I know that one of the Five Pillars of Fundamentalist Christianity is a head in the sand, ass in the air [but not for sex!] mentality when it comes to acknowledging reality, but the rest of us out here in Sanity Land at least try to have a healthy grasp on the way things are.
Also, the kids who surprised their teacher at her wedding are, presumably, still alive, but maybe they’re a little more educated and less bigoted than Peter Sprigg today. They also probably have better hair.
Watch this though:
But what is really shocking about the video is this: three of its participants are children. Not teenagers–young, pre-adolescent children. One is a boy who appears to be about six years old. Another is a girl who looks to be perhaps nine. The third is a girl who is perhaps eleven. And yes–the children drop the “f-bomb” too.
Is this supposed to be funny? It’s not. It’s child abuse.
Uh no. Telling a child that she’s going to hell for being who she is is child abuse. Letting a kid get bullied so mercilessly that he sees suicide as the only way to escape is child abuse. Beating your own child/throwing her out for being gay is child abuse. People can argue about whether it’s wise to let kids say the word “fuck,” but the fact is that it’s a word they’ve probably already encountered anyway, and will encounter throughout their lives.
This is another part of that reality thing that Peter is obviously so upset about. In the real world, there is foul language, and that word is extremely common, even among the rubes Peter calls followers. Oh, sure, they probably don’t say it in front of him, and Sprigg himself might be so uptight with shame that he would turn to salt if a potty word ever came out of his mouth, but he’s the minority.
So, say what you will about the shock value of a few kids, who obviously had their parents’ permission, using a naughty word. And then put that up against the actual, real trail of blood left by the Religious Right, and then choose what you’re going to bitch about wisely.
Oh, noes! I used “bitch” as a verb! Was that child abuse?!
Seth Walsh, a California teen who spent the last 10 days on life support after attempting suicide over relentless bullying because he was gay, died today. He was 13 years old.
Seth’s family took him off life support this afternoon, reports KGET-TV.
[...]
Seth was found Sunday, September 19, unconscious and not breathing, and it appeared he had tried to hang himself from a tree branch, according to police reports. He was rushed by helicopter to Kern Medical Center in Bakersfield.
According to reports, Seth was openly gay and was taunted by bullies for years, at school and at a local park.
He attended Jacobsen Middle School last year and for only two weeks this year, before being transferred to independent study — reportedly because he had been bullied relentlessly. But school officials at Tehachapi Union School District claim there have been no reports of bullying.
Because they ALWAYS claim there have been no reports of bullying, because they’re too damned preoccupied with Whatever-The-Hell to notice when kids are being relentlessly teased, and hell, some of the teachers and administrators have Perfect Snowflake Babies too, and it never crosses their minds that maybe these kids are not “Just Being Kids,” and perhaps they should step in; meanwhile, well-meaning groups like GLSEN and others try to step in and educate the schools on how to combat this problem, but nothing ever seems to get done; and blocking their path, you have motherfuckers like Focus on the Family and Laurie Higgins, and many others on the Religious Right who fight tooth and nail against any anti-bullying program that deigns to consider gay kids fully human, lest you interfere with their “God-given Religious Freedom” to hate anyone that doesn’t conform to their ridiculous, uneducated worldview, even though half the faggots raised in this world come from their homes, and…
Oh, excuse me, did my foul language offend the purest white virgin ears of the Religious Right?
More than the dead body of a child offends you, a child who killed himself because people like you work every day to create a climate where kids like him learn to hate themselves?
Look up at the picture, Higgins. You too, Glenn Stanton. Then look at this one. Then read about this one. A thirteen year-old, a fourteen year-old and a fifteen year-old, all in the same month.
This is the result of your work, Focus, Laurie Higgins, Peter LaBarbera, Matt Barber, Bryan Fischer, Scott Lively, Tony Perkins, Peter Sprigg, and all the rest of you. These are dead kids. Happy yet?
But it doesn’t matter to you, does it? They’re just dead faggots. What else, in your worldview, would please your Jesus more?
