Between 1933 and 1945, approximately 50,000 gay Germans were incarcerated and as many as 10,000 were slaughtered in the concentration camps.

But that horrible fact has been declared politically inconvenient by the religious right, and so Kentucky’s General Assembly has removed mention of gay victims from a new law making additional Holocaust-education curriculum materials available to eighth-graders. (Read More)

Become ex-gay — or else: Sydney, Australia, Anglican Rev. Richard Lane once wrote to High Court Justice Michael Kirby, urging him to join an “ex-gay” ministry or face the wrath of God. Lane’s letters were publicized at a Sydney forum on religious tolerance and homosexuality. In response, Kirby accused the churchman of using intemperate language, ignoring modern discoveries about sexual orientation and missing the “central loving message of Jesus and the Gospels.” Kirby stated, “There is not a single word of Jesus that sustains the thesis of animosity in your letter.”

Kern’s double-talk: Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) released recordings of its 40-minute meeting with Oklahoma state Rep. Sally Kern, refuting Kern’s subsequent claims that she did not object to antigay discrimination and that she did not agree to meet again with the families of gay Oklahomans.

Exodus support for Kern? Video is now available of Exodus member activist Stephen Black giving his support to Oklahoma state Rep. Sally Kern and falsely claiming that most gay people are abused or badly parented. Exodus’ national office declined to affirm or condemn Black’s statements.

Door open to future antigay violence: Massachusetts antigay group MassResistance, which has been classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, has declined to condemn violent threats made against Lexington, Mass., School Superintendent Paul Ash. Antigay parent David Parker, whose campaign against tolerance in Lexington schools has been trumpeted by Exodus, conditions his own opposition to the threats by simply saying that violence is not justified “at this time.”

Reclaiming Judaism: A new Hebrew-language website has been launched in Israel to counter ex-gay propaganda published by Atzat-Nefesh. (XGW)

Shock ‘em straight? Maybe not: Officials of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints have accepted an invitation to meet with Affirmation, a support group for gay and lesbian Mormons. Affirmation wishes to discuss the church’s historical support for ex-gay therapies including electric shock aversion therapy, which prompted some Mormons to commit suicide. (BTB)

Concern is rising about violent antigay mob violence in Jamaica — violence that has been supported by some of the island nation’s antigay Christian pastors.

As a result of authorities’ and churches’ refusal to take action against the violence, the gay-affirming Metropolitan Community Church has called for a possible tourism boycott against that island nation.

While claiming to offer compassion and a cure for homosexuality, Exodus Global Alliance — a worldwide network of ex-gay activists — has offered no public condemnation of the violence.

Indeed, the organization appears to support criminalization of homosexuality in the region.

Consider the following Exodus Global Alliance flier for a 2006 conference in Barbados — click the banner to view the full flier.

The Exodus-Project Probe slogan, “Some say decriminalise homosexuality …… we say lets offer solutions” (sic), markets fraudulent ex-gay therapy as an alternative to decriminalization.

Throughout recent media coverage of violence in Jamaica, Exodus Global Alliance has declined to announce an unambiguous public policy opposing antigay violence or reversing its nod to criminalization.

This should not be a tremendous surprise: The organization’s newsletters claim, in country after country, that “sexual freedom” is unilaterally harmful and must be stamped out in places as far-flung as Barbados, Brazil, China and Ethiopia — where Exodus blames sexual freedom for AIDS.

Exodus Global Alliance apparently believes that, even with proper education, people cannot be trusted to manage their own lives — that they need the harsh hand of authoritarian law to control their sexuality. And when Exodus responds to mob violence with silence, it joins Jamaica’s local police in offering a cold shoulder to gay people as mobs bash gay residents and loot their homes.

Prof. Warren Throckmorton, a prominent pro-exgay pundit, has proposed an antigay Golden Rule campaign to compete with local antiviolence advocates’ Day of Silence in various U.S. schools, scheduled for April 25. The ex-gay network Exodus subsequently provided marketing support for the campaign this week through its Exodus Youth “Voice” newsletter.

In the National Day of Silence, students pledge to remain silent for a day at school. Some may carry a card briefly calling upon classmates to actively oppose antigay bullying and thus end the silence.

Antigay industry leaders including the American Family Association have rallied antigay parents to keep their students home from school, in defense of gay-specific intolerance and in opposition to antiviolence programs which explicitly recognize gay and gender-variant victims of violence.

Throckmorton proposes what he considers a fine line that navigates between antiviolence advocates and paranoid parents. Specifically, he advises conservative Christian students to pass out cards in school that quote the Bible:

I pledge to treat others the way I want to be treated.

Will you join me in this pledge?

“Do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Luke 6:31)

But a serious analysis of Throckmorton’s campaign finds little substance: It trivializes the Golden Rule while doing nothing to stop bullying: (Read More)

Against freedom: An antigay Catholic group is upset that many Catholic universities permit freedom of speech and freedom of association among their gay-tolerant students and faculty. Styling itself as “The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property,” the group claims that, out of 211 U.S. Catholic universities and colleges, at least 96 have pro-tolerance clubs on campus. Patrick Reilly of the Cardinal Newman Society equates tolerance of homosexual persons and their constitutional rights with promotion of homosexual activity, and he insinuates that sexual honesty is incompatible with “students’ moral formation.” Focus on the Family appears sympathetic to both Catholic antigay groups. (Focus)

Freedom from crime a “special right”: In its ongoing war against young victims of violence, the antigay American Family Association of Michigan has targeted state Sen. Valde Garcia, a Republican, for his support of legislation to protect students from bullying. Gary Glenn of AFA/M asserts that protection from bullying amounts to “special rights” if youths’ specific at-risk demographics are acknowledged. But Garcia says he had already threatened to withdraw his sponsorship of the legislation unless a list of protected demographics was removed. However, Garcia then contradicted himself — admitting he would hypothetically support legislation granting explicit anti-crime protections if they were limited to seniors, children and police. According to Sean Kosofsky of The Triangle Foundation, “If it’s not specific, it [anti-bullying legislation] will end up having little impact.” Kosofsky added, “There’s nothing gay about this bill whatsoever. It protects all students.” (Daily Press & Argus)

Gay genetics study: ABC News oversimplifies research into ties between genetics and homosexuality by falsely suggesting up-front that researchers seek a single gene that might explain sexual orientation. That’s not the case. According to the fine print in ABC’s own news story, the hypothesis is more complex:

Dr. Alan Sanders, a psychiatric geneticist at Northwestern Healthcare Research Institute, is currently heading the biggest study ever undertaken on sexual orientation. He’s looking at the genetic makeup of more than 700 sets of gay brothers.

“I think the evidence is pretty convincing already that a substantial contribution to sexual orientation comes from genetics,” he said. “It’s probably the single biggest factor that we know about.”

FRC apologizes: Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council apologizes for suggesting that America export its gay citizens in lieu of granting legal immigration to their foreign partners. (FRC Blog)

Kern meets with PFLAG: Oklahoma state Rep. Sally Kern still says equality for gay people is a bigger threat to America than terrorists — and further calls her opinion “Biblical.” But she has also met with members of the Oklahoma City chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, and stated that she opposes discrimination against gays in the workplace. That should infuriate Concerned Women for America, which defended Kern’s terror talk as something that “reasonable people can debate.” Earlier, Kern debated a gay Christian pastor on KFOR-TV. (Queerty, PageOneQ, Good As You)

Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Robert L. Jamieson Jr. visited Exodus speaker Ken Hutcherson at his Seattle-area megachurch recently and today offered observations about Hutcherson’s betrayal of his own victory over discrimination — and Hutcherson’s exploitation of “ex-gays”. (Read More)

Update: ‘Repent America’ Leader Guilty: Michael Marcavage, whose Philadelphia-area band of followers uses megaphones to shout down public events, was found guilty of disorderly conduct for shouting down a Halloween festival last year in Salem, Mass. Previously, Exodus officially defended Repent America’s megaphone raid against a Philadelphia gay event as a matter of religious expression. (American Family Association) (More: The Salem News)

Focus on the Family Undermines Couples to ‘Save’ Marriage: Focus on the Family says that states must keep traditional families intact. How? By discriminating against all other families. Focus is upset at a same-sex couple that is suing the University of Hawaii after being excluded from married student housing on campus. Focus accuses the couple of “attacking marriage” by seeking respect as a couple and by honoring marital commitment. (Focus) (Update.)

Focus on the Family Thwarts Evangelicals, Defends Global Warming: Rejecting the guidance of the National Association of Evangelicals regarding creation care and environmental stewardship, Focus on the Family cheered a gathering of industry researchers and religious conservatives who blame climate change on ordinary cycles in the Earth’s history. (Focus)

Protest Planned against Ex-Gay Charlene Cothran: Chicago-based Gay Liberation Network will protest on March 13 against “ex-gay” Venus magazine publisher Charlene Cothran, who is developing an inflammatory new project: a speech entitled “How Homosexuality Destroys Families, Not Just Values.” (Queerty)

Hutcherson and the Legacy of MLK: On the Wallbuilders Live radio program, Exodus speaker Ken Hutcherson expands his campaign against his daughter’s school to include attempts to shut down the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance and end the school’s participation in The Day of Silence. Hutcherson warns that the school faculty should be glad he’s not still committing acts of violence against whites, but adds: “If they don’t fire these teachers, I’m going to sue ‘em and I’m going to ask them for their dreams. And then they’re going to mess around and laugh and I’m going to take their tongue out.” So much for Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of nonviolent social unity and equal opportunity. (Right Wing Watch)

Lighter Side: Who cares what overpaid, over-blowdried anchors think? Anderson Cooper doesn’t — and doesn’t think the public should, either. (Romenesko)

Exodus International president Alan Chambers said last week that the ex-gay network had halted its aggressive antigay political advocacy as of August 2007.

Exodus youth activist Mike Ensley, however, vows to continue using his position in the ex-gay network as a soapbox to silence gay students, withhold accurate information from heterosexual peers of those students, and deny the existence of intersexed persons.

(Read More)

• Exodus board member Phil Burress, speaking as the leader of Ohio-based Citizens for Community Values, says nominee-in-waiting John McCain has failed to mobilize so-called “values voters” (conservative Christians). Disappointed at the defeat of Southern Baptist former pastor Mike Huckabee in the GOP presidential race, Burress spells out what he thinks McCain must do to win support: “apologize to evangelical Christians and values voters for the way he has treated them over the years” and “strengthen his pledge to appoint strict constructionist judges to the Supreme Court.”
• Exodus conference speaker Ken Hutcherson prays for God’s help to hinder a woman’s right to visit her lesbian partner in the hospital — and to deny other basic rights to certain types of Americans who do not self-identify as African-American.
• Ex-gay activist groups including Abiding Truth Ministries and Stephen Bennett Ministries have mobilized to scare conservative Christian parents into keeping their kids home from school when antiviolence advocates commemorate an annual Day of Silence. Watchmen on the Walls, an organization co-led by Exodus conference speaker Ken Hutcherson, also is joining the campaign to stop antiviolence efforts in schools. Two gay and gender-variant youths were killed last month, one of them in an Oxnard, Calif., classroom. Since then, youths and young men have been assaulted in Florida and Georgia.

In the United States, the leaders of Exodus International and Focus on the Family strive to make life dangerous for gay and bisexual Americans and their families by:

• associating equitable punishment for violent antigay hate crimes with “thought crime“
• distributing antigay literature in public schools and opposing anti-bullying programs
• opposing inclusion of sexual orientation in existing antidiscrimination laws, which already include religion as a protected category and exempt religious groups from compliance
• blaming innocent parents for their child’s sexual orientation
• promoting pro-violence activists such as Ken Hutcherson, an Exodus conference speaker who demands that employers discriminate and affirms violence against gay men and “effeminate” heterosexual men in the United States and Eastern Europe

The goal of these activities, as Exodus president Alan Chambers has acknowledged, is to compel same-sex-attracted persons to change, in defiance of biology, psychology, and sound moral conscience. Chambers admitted in 2004:

Had same-sex marriage been legal in 1990 I am certain that I would have tested that option. I met men whom I wanted to “marry.” … The law kept me from making one, if not many, huge mistakes. And while honoring and preserving the sanctity of heterosexual marriage is the bedrock of my opposition to redefining marriage to suit a few, I believe a positive bi-product of keeping same-sex marriage illegal is that it will save tens of thousands of hurting young people like me from the biggest mistakes of their lives: looking to man to meet a need that only God can meet.

In Jamaica, according to Human Rights Watch and the New York Times, “pro-family” advocates go a few steps further to discourage homosexuality:

In addition to making homosexuality illegal, public officials, the media, and ministers have incited mobs to such a degree that, on Jan. 29, one mob invaded a house where five gay people who were having a dinner party, beat them senseless and apparently killed at least one man. Last year, a mob disrupted a gay man’s funeral and trashed the church. In 2004, according to Time magazine, a teenager was nearly killed when his father learned his son was gay and urged a mob to lynch the boy at his school. And when two of the island’s gay-rights advocates, Steve Harvey and Brian Williamson, were murdered, a crowd celebrated over Williamson’s disfigured body. Time recounts numerous other mob killings in recent years.

(Read More)