When you write about social conservative wingnuts day in, day out, the question always comes up: are these people stupid, evil, or both? With some of the leaders, you get the sense that they’re evil, and that they’re simply preying on people who fit the “stupid” category. But all too often, it feels like they’re just stupid. Science says this hunch has something to back it up:
You’ve always had an inkling that this might be true, and now here comes Science to validate your gut: children with low IQs tend to grow up to be prejudiced adults who often adopt socially conservative ideologies. The “liberal elite” is not in your imagination, friends. Fox News viewers really are that dumb!
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The first study examined two groups of British adults, one born in 1958 and the other born in 1970. Both groups were assessed for intelligence at age 10 or 11, and then a followup was conducted when they were between the ages of 30 and 33. During the initial test, children were asked to complete tasks that tested their abilities to reason and remember. During the followup two decades later, researchers assessed the subjects’ level of prejudice and degree of socially conservative views. “Social conservatism” was determined by asking subjects to respond to a series of questions like “Family life suffers if mom is working full time” or “I wouldn’t mind working with other races.” In this study, children with low scores on the first set of tests tended to grow up to exhibit prejudiced and socially conservative viewpoints on the second set of tests.
And here’s the gay part:
The second study analyzed by the Canadian researchers examined Americans’ attitude toward homosexuality. The study found that people with poorer abstract reasoning skills tended to be more homophobic, even when researchers controlled for education level.
The Canadian researchers hypothesize that people who “have trouble grasping the complexity of the world” may tend toward prejudice and conservatism because they crave structure and can’t process chaos and nuance. Religion, authoritarianism, and isolationism appeal to a desire for order in a world that offers few absolutes.
Yep, sounds familiar! It’s the low-road anti-gay activists who fit this bill, in my estimation. The ones who lead small hate groups and whatnot. Also, Rick Santorum.
Ever since it was reported the other day that actress Cynthia Nixon, a bit indignantly, said that for her, being gay is a “choice,” I’ve been trying to get my thoughts together on exactly how I feel about what she said, and why it bothers me. Here’s the exact quote, and then I’ll tell you what I think about it:
I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line ‘I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.’ And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice. And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me.
Writer Alex Witchel reports that “her face was red and her arms were waving” as she continued, “It seems we’re just ceding this point to bigots who are demanding it, and I don’t think that they should define the terms of the debate,” Nixon said. “I also feel like people think I was walking around in a cloud and didn’t realize I was gay, which I find really offensive.”
Cynthia Nixon’s experience is Cynthia Nixon’s experience, of course, so to be clear, we are not debating that. I think that the biggest problem with her quote is that it’s irresponsible, because it introduces a concept and a reality that is really hard to capture in a sound bite. The trouble with that is that the very same bigots she refers to are simply not going to go beyond the sound bite, and choose instead to point at her and say, “see? She said it’s a choice! Now change.”
The truth of the matter, as science has been discovering for a while now, is that sexuality is far, far more complex than we’ve understood in the past, and that indeed, one of the major “x factors” involved in how people experience sexuality has more to do with how many x chromosomes they have, and less to do with whether they’re homo-, hetero- or bisexual. Tracy Clark-Flory examines this at Salon:
Activists have long combated extremist attacks on LGBT identities by highlighting the science showing that homosexuality is genetic — or, in the words of Lady Gaga, that gay people are “born that way.” It may be that simple for some, but research increasingly suggests that it isn’t for all — especially for gay women.
Lisa Diamond, a psychology professor at the University of Utah, spent over a decade tracking sexual identity changes in a group of 100 women for her book “Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire.” She wrote, “Women’s sexuality is fundamentally more fluid than men’s, permitting greater variability in its development and expression over the life course.” Based on her research, she describes three main ways that sexual fluidity is expressed: “nonexclusivity in attractions” (i.e., the capacity to find all genders sexually attractive), “changes in attractions” (i.e., suddenly becoming romantically involved with a woman after a lifetime dating men) and the capacity to become attracted to ‘the person and not the gender’” (i.e., a partner’s sex is irrelevant).
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Copious research has revealed striking differences in male and female sexual orientation and arousal. In immensely awkward studies measuring men’s hard-ons while viewing various sexual stimuli, most guys have a strong response to either males or females; and their sexual orientation generally predicts their physical reaction. On the other hand, Bailey explains, “Women’s genital sexual arousal pattern is much less predictive of their sexual identity and their stated preferences,” he says. “Lesbians have a relatively weaker arousal preference for female sexual stimuli, on average, and straight women have no preference at all, on average.”
Okay. so, if you’re an honest person and you pay attention to this stuff, you already knew all of this. If you’re a decent person, it doesn’t change your support for things like marriage equality and nondiscrimination acts. Because it doesn’t matter! On that point, Cynthia Nixon and I agree. However, where it gets difficult, in this sound bite world, is in explaining that, even acknowledging the fact that men’s sexuality tends to be pretty much what it is, from the first time we get boners associated with sexual thoughts, whereas women often experience sexuality in a much more complex way, that still doesn’t do a damn thing for the Religious Right’s argument that people should want to change from gay to straight. And because we’re dealing with the Religious Right, we are in a situation where we are not arguing with people who are willing or even capable of rational, detailed discourse. For them, it’s all about their ideology and about preserving white male conservative Christian heterosexuality as the only truly “okay” state of being. Also, it’s about control.
But they will, as I said above, use sound bites like that against us, which is why I think it’s irresponsible. Cynthia has lent her voice to our cause in very powerful ways over the years, so this is in no way an attack on her. I feel that, perhaps, maybe she could have said a bit more on the subject, perhaps not casually throwing the word “choice” around and instead talking about how her sexuality evolved in the way it did. Readers on this side of the spectrum pretty much get what she’s saying, I think, but the Religious Right hears “choice,” and they think “well that proves it. Cynthia Nixon woke up one morning and decided to embrace the homosexual lifestyle.” Cynthia is free to correct me if I am wrong, but I doubt that her story is that simple, or that the story for any other women who have experienced a more fluid sexuality is that simple.
Moreover, what of bisexuals? One of the silliest Religious Right lies out there, one that truly makes me shake my head in the direction of whatever rock they live under, is that bisexuals naturally will want/need to marry one person of each gender. Indeed, when bisexuals decide to settle down into relationships, they tend to choose a partner they’re compatible with, regardless of gender. Sometimes they end up with same-sex partners, sometimes they end up with opposite-sex partners. Because they’re bisexual! I don’t think Cynthia is necessarily bisexual — she surely disavowed the concept in her statement — but there are many bisexuals out there who, when settling down with partners, make a choice to settle down with either a man or a woman. This, of course, still shouldn’t give the Religious Right any reason to feel stronger in their argument that, due to unreasoned bigotry hiding behind a third-grade reading of an ancient holy book, those people should opt for opposite-sex partners.
Here’s what we know. Men, due to our biology, tend to have a fixed, lifelong sexual orientation that we experience regardless of any “choices” we make. Alan Chambers “chooses” to live in what I would assume is a fairly sexless marriage with a woman, while admitting that he still is very much into guys. Many women experience a sexual orientation that is fixed in just the same way, but others experience it in a more fluid way that can change over the course of their lives.
Here’s what else we know. All major, grown-up mental health and medical associations have stated that reparative therapy, religious attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation through outside force, are somewhere between ineffective and harmful. Moreover, all major, grown-up mental health and medical associations have very politely stated that there is nothing inherently unhealthy or disordered about being gay, bisexual or straight.
Here’s another what else we know. Religious wingnut arguments against homosexuality have absolutely no place in rational discourse, as they do not involve rational thought, but rather stupid bigotry dressed up in religious language. We also know that the Religious Right has a pattern of using the same “biblical” arguments against whatever the hell it is that they hate these days. For them, it is all about control and their petty unwillingness to play well with others in a secular society that doesn’t automatically give them blow jobs, ponies and first prize ribbons simply for existing.
We on the side of fairness, equality and reality should be comfortable with dealing with science and reality, as they are. Reality doesn’t threaten us. But we do, until this battle for equality is fully won, have to be careful with our rhetoric and our casual comments, because our enemy is not upstanding and is not honest. As I said above, perhaps with this issue, it’s better to explain more of the reality, not less. We are only beginning to truly understand human sexuality from a scientific perspective, and what we’re learning is fascinating. But it’s nothing as simple as “a choice,” and certainly not in the way the Religious Right uses that word.
Of course, I also agree with Cynthia that, however sexual orientation works, it shouldn’t matter when it comes to things like equal rights. I mean hell, we’ve given the Religious Right carte blanche for decades for their beliefs, and those beliefs are clearly chosen. No, this is about dignity, fairness and equal opportunity.
So maybe this is a teachable moment, for those willing to learn. Sexuality is far, far, far more complex than people often understand, and is fascinating to study. People deserve equal rights, regardless of their sexual orientation. Those two ideas shouldn’t have a hard time coexisting, as they haven’t a damn thing to do with one another.
One thing that consistent when it comes to dealing with the Religious Right is that you can’t trust a word they say or write. I’d go as far as to say that when they make any sort of statement, it’s best to assume they’re lying unless proven otherwise. The latest case of a Religious Right organization lying about the work of an actual researcher is a doozy:
This time it’s Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons of NARTH, writing a long piece about same-sex adoption. It has a small section titled, “The children do suffer,” with this opening:
There are strong indications that children raised by same sex couples fare less well than children raised in stable homes with a mother and a father.
He brings up two studies to support this, one of them by Seton Hall professor Dr. Theodora Sirota, and then regretfully tells us:
Not surprisingly, there are scholars who oppose this weighty evidence.
I know something that might surprise Fitzgibbons: One of those opposing scholars is — have you guessed? — Seton Hall professor Dr. Theodora Sirota, the source of his weighty evidence.
Dr. Sirota wrote to Box Turtle Bulletin to ask them to help spread the word about the misrepresentation of her work by NARTH. As with most Religious Right lies, it’s fairly simple and staring you in the face, but you have to actually know the content of Sirota’s research to see it:
You can read the full text of Sirota’s message here, but let me put it in a nutshell. To support his denunciation of same-sex adoption, Fitzgibbons offers this summary of Sirota’s research:
Researchers interviewed 68 women with gay or bisexual fathers and 68 women with heterosexual fathers. The women (average age 29 in both groups) with gay or bisexual fathers had difficulty with adult attachment issues in three areas: they were less comfortable with closeness and intimacy; they were less able to trust and depend on others; and they experienced more anxiety in relationships compared to the women raised by heterosexual fathers.
The problem is not with what Fitzgibbons said; it’s what he left out: The gay and bisexual fathers in Sirota’s study were married to the mothers.
Dr. Sirota’s article is about the impact of a homosexual father raising a girl in a heterosexual marriage. It has nothing to do with same-sex couples, nothing to do with same-sex adoption at all.
Typical. This is very similar to the tactics wingnuts like Maggie Gallagher employ when they compare statistics of children raised in single parent homes vs. married parent homes in order to argue against gay parenting. Because you see, in so many places, gay parents can’t be technically married, therefore it’s reasonable to say that loving, committed gay couples raising children are the same as single parents, right? Of course not, but wingnuts are liars.
Alvin McEwen has a nice little round-up of other instances of wingnuts misrepresenting actual grown-up science to further their ideology here.
There is literally no anti-science conspiracy theory far-fetched enough for a dim bulb like Bryan Fischer to latch onto. So we are not surprised that the most hateful spokesperson for one of the country’s most ridiculous hate groups, the American Family Association, is now an AIDS denialist:
I recently came across several articles commemorating the 20th anniversary of Magic Johnson’s HIV diagnosis. I still remember the screaming headlines in 1991, the abrupt termination of his NBA career at the height of his powers, and his subsequent and short-lived come back.
One would have expected pictures of Magic, taken 20 years after this life-sentence diagnosis, to be a withered, shriveled version of his former self, his life force eaten away by this killer virus.
“One would have expected,” said the renowned scientist and medical researcher Bryan Fischer.
So why is Magic the picture of health 20 years after this supposedly terminal diagnosis? Easy: the HIV virus does NOT cause AIDS. Since, as one of the world’s leading virologists, Peter Duesberg of U.C. Berkeley, says, HIV is a “harmless passenger virus,” Magic is likely to carry HIV with him to the end of a long and healthy life.
Duesberg wrote a bombshell book in 1996, Inventing the AIDS Virus, which exposes the myth of the so-called AIDS virus.
Peter Duesberg’s theories have been widely disproven, and hundreds of thousands of people have died in Africa, in part because certain leaders over there took him seriously for a while. He’s a quack, pure and simple. Right up Bryan Fischer’s alley…
In fact, in this respect, the bogus HIV/AIDS link is just like the hysterical anthropogenic global warming scam.
And only true idiots or those who stand to profit from huge corporations for propagating the idea that anthropogenic global warming is a myth would lend credence to that statement. As I highly doubt that Bryan Fischer is making that much money from the AFA, I’m going to continue believing he’s simply hysterical, incredibly easily led and simply not that smart.
Anyway, there’s no reason to go through Bryan’s piece line by line — that would be giving him more attention than he’s worth — but he sums up by blaming the entire AIDS crisis on gay men and poppers. This, of course, discounts the lives of the untold numbers of AIDS victims around the globe who are heterosexual, women and children. But wingnuts are pretty casual about discounting other people’s lives when it comes to pushing their propaganda, I’ve found.
This classic study, published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology in 1996, used a delightful technique called “penile plethysmography” to measure porn-induced “tumescence” in men who self-identified as “exclusively heterosexual.” Its abstract concludes: “Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies.”
More fun facts:
In the homophobic group, 20% showed no significant tumescence, 26% showed moderate tumescence, and 54% showed definite tumescence to the homosexual video; the corresponding percentages in the nonhomophobic group were 66%, 10%, and 24%, respectively.
Think about it. Of the penises belonging to this group of straight-identified homophobic men, 80% got more engorged while their owners were watching gay porn. Eighty percent. Of those belonging to non-haters, about a third did. Think about that, homophobes.
This is predictable. Just as so often conservative Catholics want to deflect attention from child-molesting priests by using their crimes to smear gay people [see: Bill Donohue], Evangelical hate group spokesmouths are now taking the crimes of Jerry Sandusky at Penn State as an excuse to spew bile at gay people.
The press has focused largely on Paterno and others in the Penn State hierarchy who covered up Sandusky’s pedophilia, some of whom even committed perjury to keep his dark and dirty secret from being exposed.
But perhaps some of that press focus is diversionary, to direct the attention of the public away from one of the darkest pathologies associated with homosexual behavior: homosexuals molest children at ten times the rate of heterosexuals.
Homosexual activists will of course lamely argue that since Sandusky is married, he is not a homosexual. Fine, call him bisexual if you will. But his sex crimes are same-sex crimes, and 10-year old boys whose bodies have been cruelly invaded could care less what label homosexual activists want to slap on their abuser.
Also, gay activists will not argue that due to Sandusky’s marriage, he is not homosexual. That would be lame indeed, as we know for a fact that it’s extremely common for conservative Christian men to be simultaneously married to women and also gayer than Glee. However, we will argue that the fact that he’s married and has been molesting young children means that he is a freaking pedophile, as that is what science, reality and common sense suggest.
Let me be clear. A heterosexual pedophile who committed such crimes against young girls should likewise be sent to the chair. Forcible rape of anyone used to be a capital offense everywhere in this country and should be so again.
Without getting into the argument over what punishment should be meted out for these heinous crimes, for our purposes we’ll just note that Bryan Fischer doesn’t seem to know a damn thing about the phenomenon of child sexual abuse. People who molest young kids molest young kids, regardless of the gender of the child. Bryan’s desire to use this as a way to smear gay people is disgusting.
So is Porno Pete’s:
LaBarbera: How Many Boy Victims of Penn State Homosexual Predator Jerry Sandusky Will End Up Thinking They are ‘Gay’?
Ugh. Whichever ones would have been gay anyway, you moron. Indeed, and sadly, many, many kids have been molested since the dawn of time, by people of the same and different genders as they are, and they have grown up to be straight, gay, bisexual, and whatever else in between. There is NO evidence that being molested “causes” anyone to be gay.
Many openly homosexual (“gay”) men, like CNN anchor Don Lemon, were molested as boys or experienced abnormally early sexualization. Yet many of these same men do NOT see their boyhood victimization at the hands of homosexual male predators as causing their homosexuality. (This is due partly to the success of the modern “gay” movement that falsely ascribes “gayness” to a person’s (innate) identity, and emphasizes the ambiguous notion of “sexual orientation” as opposed to behavior that is sinful, destructive and changeable.)
Don Lemon has actually talked about this in detail, so it’s a wonder Porno Pete’s so completely unwilling to listen to Lemon’s words on the subject, while simultaneously playing armchair psychologist to a man he’ll never be lucky enough to meet.
Thus, how many boy victims of homosexual predator Sandusky will end up believing that being homosexual (“gay”) is “who they are”? How many will struggle with sexual identity issues? And how many will be told by LGBT advocates and liberal-minded people just to “accept being gay” as “who they are” because they were “born that way”?
Because the media and academia have largely become apologists for the modern homosexualist movement, they downplay or ignore obvious causative factors in the formation of “gay” identity – including pederastic molestation. CNN’s Lemon is a case in point: he is now an “out gay” celebrity, yet few question the absurdity of him not associating the molestation of his youth with his later embrace of homosexuality as a positive identity.
Porno Pete is a scientist and is therefore qualified to point out “obvious causative factors in the formation of gay identity.” Oh wait, no he is not, he is an amateur fetish sex photographer who leads a very small hate group.
There IS a long history connecting homosexuality to pederasty, and a disproportionate link between homosexuality and pedophilia: why else would so many child molestation victims be boys when only 1-3 percent of the population is homosexual? Since cases of women molesting boys remain rare, if homosexuality were not such a strong factor, nearly all of pedophile victims should be girls, which is far from the case.
Except for the fact that there’s a hell of a lot of science on the issue, which points to many factors that lead to boy victims. One of them is ACCESS. Let us look at the Catholic Church again for a minute, please. Who do Catholic priests have the most consistent access to? Young boys! So those who are child molesters are going to go for the kids they have the easiest ACCESS to. This is science, but it’s not that damned complicated.
Sandusky is married but obviously has a homosexuality (perversion) problem.
No, he has a child rape problem. It’s amazing that Porno Pete has missed that child rape is the crux of the Penn State debacle, so blinded is he by his hatred of gay people.
But we’re used to this kind of crap from bizarrely gay-fixated wingnuts like Bryan and Porno Pete.
If Linda Harvey had her way, I surmise, gay people really wouldn’t be allowed to do much of anything. Unfortunately for her, lots of the best doctors in the country are gay — indeed, I would venture a guess that a gay doctor has cared for Linda at some time or another, which means, according to her logic here, that she has been influenced by the Cootie of Gay. Here is Linda Harvey of the surely-about-to-be-named-a-hate-group Mission America, commenting on how the sexuality of physicians is more important than the health of children:
How do you feel about open homosexuals tending to your child in a health care setting? Do you think these folks provide good role modeling at a time when your child is very vulnerable? I was thinking about this recently when I heard that Children’s Hospital in Columbus has a homosexual employees group called NCHARGE, which stands for Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s Advocates Representing Gay Employees. The meeting minutes of this groups reveal that they participated in last June’s gay pride parade, that they participated in a health expo on adolescent health this summer and that they’re concerned about same-sex partner benefits. They’re also planning to be identified with rainbow lapel pins.
But let’s say your eleven year-old has broken her leg rather badly and needs to be in the hospital a few days, which would you prefer: a nurse who’s proud of her lesbianism, who has rainbow identifiers on her work clothing, or a nurse who does not?
I would like to suggest that parents think long and hard about this. If you want your children to admire people who proclaim a homosexual lifestyle, they’re involvement with your child during a hospital stay is sure to be an influence. And let me be clear that folks involved in these behaviors can be certainly competent workers but they are tacking on to their workplace identity one that is highly offensive to many people and can be erroneously influential to children who won’t, or shouldn’t, see the whole picture of how this behavior really manifests itself.
Here’s what parents can do: select your pediatrician very carefully, first of all. There are a few homosexual doctors treating kids, there are far more nurses, LPNs, technicians and other health care workers in these lifestyles so you may want to consider writing a letter that you file with your pediatrician that should your child ever be hospitalized, you do not want your child to be treated or cared for by one of these members of the Children’s Hospital gay employees group except in the case of an emergency situation. But for routine in-hospital care where contact with your child would be required, your values should be respected.
Um, yeah. Along the same lines, I would also suggest that Fundamentalists stay true to their beliefs and only see doctors who believe in Creationism. I mean, it’s not like evolution is the freaking foundation of biology or medical science or anything. Here’s the video if you’re bored to death or something:
Dan Savage points out that Linda does make an exception to this rule, which truly makes me question her commitment to Sparkle Motion*:
Harvey notes that straight parents should clearly communicate that it’s okay for gay and lesbian doctors and nurses to treat their children in “emergency situations,” which can be seen as either tremendously gracious on Harvey’s part—”Well, okay, that lesbian nurse can save my daughter’s life”—or as the kind of wishy-washy moral relativism that is destroying the moral fabric of this great nation.
ANYWAY, so now you know. Fundamentalists really need to be more concerned with who their doctors and nurses sleep with at night, rather than whether they have the expertise required to care for their sick or injured children. Priorities!
*Oh, my god. I had never thought of that before. THAT is who Linda Harvey reminds me of! If you haven’t seen Donnie Darko, watch this clip, then Netflix the movie.
Having been raised in the South in a fairly conservative area, and having been raised in a fairly conservative church and, for a time, a conservative Christian school, one would think that most of the people I grew up with are fairly active church-goers. Not the case. In fact, it’s been sort of interesting to see, particularly starting with my generation [I'm an X-er, but barely], how few of them actually have remained active in any sort of “faith” community. The Evangelical Barna Group recently did a study to find out why all the young folks are leaving, many never to return. I’ll excerpt the broad headlines and let you jump over to read their explanations:
1. Churches seem over-protective.
2. Teens’ and twentysomethings’ experience of Christianity is shallow.
3. Churches come across as antagonistic to science.
4. Young Christians’ church experiences related to sexuality are often simplistic, judgmental.
5. They wrestle with the exclusive nature of Christianity.
6. The church feels unfriendly to those who doubt.
Okay, so those are the broad categories. Wingnuts will ignore most of them and focus on number two, arguing that tradishnul Christianity just isn’t wingnutty enough anymore to keep the flock under lock and key [they will phrase that differently, I guess], but a couple of them merit closer examination. Here is Barna’s explanation of number three:
One of the reasons young adults feel disconnected from church or from faith is the tension they feel between Christianity and science. The most common of the perceptions in this arena is “Christians are too confident they know all the answers” (35%). Three out of ten young adults with a Christian background feel that “churches are out of step with the scientific world we live in” (29%). Another one-quarter embrace the perception that “Christianity is anti-science” (25%). And nearly the same proportion (23%) said they have “been turned off by the creation-versus-evolution debate.” Furthermore, the research shows that many science-minded young Christians are struggling to find ways of staying faithful to their beliefs and to their professional calling in science-related industries.
Shorter version of that: younger people are better educated in science these days, simply because there is far more information out there than there used to be, and it’s becoming harder and harder for them to stick their heads in the sand and deny the reality that science presents when it comes in conflict with the creation myths of ye olde time religion. Or even simpler, it’s hard to look at a young cancer researcher and say, “evolution is a myth,” when they can look back and you and say, “dear sweet moron, I’ve observed it in a lab.”
That’s also related to number four, and Barna’s explanation of their own research leaves something out that’s kind of key, as the Public Religion Research Institute points out:
But buried within Barna’s category of “sex and sexuality” is something quite specific: churches’ stances on gay and lesbian issues. Research from earlier this summer reveals that nearly 7-in-10 (69%) Millennials agree that religious groups are alienating young people by being too judgmental about these issues. Only 37% of seniors agree.
This is also part of the reality-denial thing. It is simply a bridge too far to ask a sentient, educated human being to adhere to the sorts of belief systems advocated by the Matt Barbers and the Bryan Fischers of the world. Kids these days just aren’t that stupid. They have Google at their disposals, as well as their own experiences with gay and lesbian friends and family members to be able to look at the teachings of wingnuts on these issues and say, unequivocally, “what crazy, unhinged liars.” And if their churches are pushing that crap, they’re not likely to stay around.
Granted, there are many religious people who are involved in churches and faith communities which don’t strenuously seek to deny reality at every turn, and I know many of them. If that’s your path, go for it. But I find it encouraging that, at least among the generations who will be handed the torch when it comes to determining public policy and whatnot, we’ve finally reached the point where the insanity of anti-gay, anti-science teachings just don’t resonate. Update your résumés, professional Religious Right hacks.
If I’m what Mission America priestess of hatred Linda Harvey considers evil, I don’t want to be good. Linda Harvey brought a woman who almost equals her in unbridled, unreasonable, unmitigated, dishonest hatred, Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute hate group, onto the radio with her for the purpose of wah wah wah:
Higgins: Homosexual activists are deceptive in terms of concealing information. They know full well that Queer Theory, which emerges from the homosexual community, says homosexuality is not fixed, it’s not hereditary, and it’s mutable, and it’s flexible, particularly among women. So not only can they not marshal in the evidence to prove the ‘born that way’ theory there’s a lot of at least anecdotal evidence to suggest it’s not fixed and it’s not immutable and certainly there’s no genetic or biological research proving that they are ‘born that way.’ So they’re not even honest about that, they know what I’ve just said. The problem is, the mainstream public doesn’t know.
Harvey: Well and the mainstream, homosexual person on the internet who believes these evil bloggers, they are evil, these people are evil and they are purposefully deceptive. I get my comments edited all the time. These folks will believe a smidgen here and a smidgen there and think, ‘oh it’s been settled,’ it hasn’t been settled, check it out! That science is not at all settled and in fact there’s tons of evidence that people are not born that way.
A numbered list because these women don’t deserve prose:
1. Queer theory isn’t mainstream even among the mainstream gay community. Though it has interesting things to say, this writer finds a lot of it tedious and just plain wrong. Unlike fundamentalist Christians, though, gays are not a borg of groupthink, and rather feel free to argue with one another. However, it should be pointed out that Queer Theory is a very different thing from SCIENCE (!!!!), which does, yes, tend to state that homosexuality is not a choice, that it’s hereditary and that efforts to change it through outside means are ineffective and often harmful. The fact that women’s sexuality is often more fluid than men’s is in no way an argument for Linda & Laurence’s belief that homosexuality is eeeeeeeeeeevil and must be stopped. Only the truly stupid would make that connection in their heads.
2. Oh, we are so evil, making fun of you and trying to stop you from driving your own children to suicide, like you all do on a regular basis. As I’ve said before, pig ignorant bigotry is one of the only forms of “trickle-down” that actually works, and the blood on the hands crusts over thickest at the top.
3. Neither one of you has ever had your comments edited here. Indeed, one major difference between the religious right and the eeeeeeeeeeeevil (boo!) gay bloggers is that we have open comments sections, because we know that our ideological opponents are so phenomenally intellectually unequipped to handle reasoned argument that they will make fools of themselves all on their own. Moreover, we quote you people directly in our own posts, all the freaking time, and just let you damn yourselves with your own words. Why would we censor people who accidentally help our side of the culture wars with their vicious uninformed nonsense?
Alvin McEwen has a great, very important petition at Change.org that you should all check out. In it, he is petitioning the United States Congress to subject Religious Right testimony on LGBT issues to a high level of scrutiny, based on their pattern of cravenly distorting actual research in order to further their anti-gay agenda:
In June of this year during a Congressional hearing on the Defense of Marriage Act, Sen. Al Franken exposed Focus on the Family’s Tom Minnery’s attempt to inaccurately cite a study to defame same-sex households.
Earlier this year during another Congressional hearing on DOMA, National Organization for Marriage’s Maggie Gallagher committed the same distortion – i.e. inaccurately citing a study to defame same-sex households. Gallagher’s group (NOM) has also been called out twice by the Pulitzer Prize winning site Politifact for inaccurate negative statements it has made about the gay community.
The Family Research Council was declared as an official anti-gay hate group last year by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its tendency to spread propaganda about the gay community such as gays molest children at a high level and same-sex households harm children.
However, the head of the Family Research Council – Tony Perkins – is frequently called as a Congressional witness on many occasions from discussing issues of gay equality to the selection of Supreme Court justices.
That’s just three examples. Alvin points out at his blog that, though Tom Minnery was called out, Maggie Gallagher and Tony Perkins got away with it, and that this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Religious Right distorting the work of real, honest researchers. That petition, again, is at Change.org, so check it out and sign it.
The other petition comes from Kathy Baldock, and focuses on the pride celebration in Charlotte, North Carolina. If you’re not familiar with Kathy, she is a straight, evangelical woman who spends her days fighting for dignity and respect for LGBT people within the church. At Charlotte Pride, as usual, the vehemently anti-gay activist Michael Brown has planned a counter demonstration called “God Has A Better Way.” Brown has a distinct pattern of pretending that he is reaching out in love to LGBT people, and somehow managing to send some of the most grotesque, hateful messages possible to the gay community. Kathy explains a bit more about the message of the God Has A Better Way people:
The stated beliefs of the backers of GHABW * with respect to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are:
Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are a deviation from God’s best, God’s intentions and His design.
Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people can change orientation and be heterosexual with no negative effects.
If they do not succeed in orientation change, they should remain celibate in order to identify as Christians.( “Gay Christian” is always placed in quotation marks to dismiss the existence of gay Christians.)
The majority of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are inherently unhappy, unhealthy, sexually immoral or rebellious to the will of God.
Transgender people would best follow God’s plan by using hormonal therapy, prayer and counseling to overcome the issue of gender identity. Sexual reassignment surgery should never be used as an option.
Acting on same sex attraction is sinful and indicative of non-submission to God.
Same-sex attraction is a behavior, not an orientation.
In your face hateful, as usual. These people, of course, claim that they are bringing this message in “love,” but Michael Brown has shown repeatedly that his concept of “love” is warped at best.
Sign Kathy’s petition to ask the group to cancel their nasty little counter rally here.
