Scientist tells 'Christian homophobes' to stop misusing his research

Alvin McEwen adds to his long list of scientists and researchers who want the anti-gay industry to stop misconstruing their research:

Yet another researcher is accusing religious right groups of misusing his work.

John Horgan, a science journalist and Director of the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ, yesterday published an article in Scientific American calling various religious right groups to task for what he says is a distortion of his work.

Hogan's article is titled: Queer notions: How Christian homophobes misuse my "gay gene" report.

This is a pattern among homophobes. Alvin documents ten other examples of legitimate researchers who have complained about this right-wing tactic. This is especially important now:

In light of the Prop 8 decision last week and lawyer David Boies's eloquently put take down of religious right head Tony Perkins on Face the Nation about how religious right groups deal in fear and phony data regarding the lgbt community, these complaints of scientific inaccuracies need to be brought out to a wider audience.

Remember that it is these groups which the news media legitimizes by pushing them as the "pro-family" opposition without making people aware of their history of duplicity when it comes to lgbt research.

We need to understand that religious right groups and spokespeople don't deal with concrete ideas, but abstract illusions.

So, the homophobes push junk science and lie about real research. They've got nothing except their homophobia. We just need the traditional media types to understand that.

Last week on Hardball, Chris Matthews seemed to figure out that Wendy Wright from Concerned Women for America was a homophobe. He told her it sounds like you've a real problem with the gay orientation of people. That's true. She's got no other argument. Read More...

Fierce Advocate wants you to... join his email list so you can work on other non-gay issues

So Joe is surfing the Web yesterday, and he sees the following Google ad:


That's great - Obama's Organizing for America, now run by the DNC, is finally doing something on a major gay commitment of the President.

So Joe clicked through. Here's what he got:



Wow, it's a page where you can join OFA's email list, and help them on every other issue BUT gay issues in the future.

Nowhere is there a Senate target list, nowhere do they ask you to call the Senate to push for the DADT compromise to be passed. Just as they did a few months ago, OFA is simply dropping in on our civil rights in order to build their email list so they can fight on other issues that have nothing to do with gay civil rights.

It's pretty sleazy.

Now, if OFA had a track record of fighting for gay civil rights, then building a gay list might be a fine strategy - it would only help them contact that many more people when the time came to have everyone call their members of Congress. But OFA doesn't have a track record of fighting for gay civil rights. They in fact have a track record of using our civil rights to build their email list, then they ignore us.

So this is basically a PR stunt, and a sly way to build their email list, without really doing anything to help repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

And they wonder why they're having problems with the gay community. Read More...

Senior Dept. of Education official says White House is the problem in getting more support for gay kids

Fierce advocate strikes again:

This April, the Bay Area Reporter editorialized on Jennings falling far short as a visible federal government advocate for gay students and youth, and his refusal to speak with the paper regarding his accomplishments, whatever they may be. Who can say if he's been effective at anything when he doesn't conduct any transparent business in his government, or talk regularly to the gay press, in extensive interviews?

Last week in Washington, Metro Weekly's writer Chris Geidner caught up with Jennings at a public speech he made to summer interns. What did he say about being muzzled?

''We're all here to serve the president's agenda. If I were president, there might be more progressive things going on than if the president was president, but the fact is I work for him.''

''Do I feel constrained? Absolutely,'' Jennings continued. ''Everybody who takes one of the jobs should feel constrained because we're not here to push our personal agenda; we're here to advance the president's agenda.''

Geider questioned him about pushing for two pieces of legislation, endorsed by his former org GLSEN, addressing bullying and gay students languishing in Congress. His reply:

''We can't endorse legislation on our own. The Education Department doesn't make the policy, the White House does. The [Domestic Policy Council] sets the policy; we implement it. That's how it works. So, if you want movement on this issue, you call the White House.''

Sounds to me like the former gay advocate pushing for change has been muzzled into being an Obama administration insider, one who takes no leadership role in the legislation, or much of anything public that might benefit gay kids.

Keep in mind that even when this White House endorses legislation, it doesn't mean they're going to lift a finger to actually get the legislation passed. In fact, the contrary is usually the case - President Obama believes it's Congress' job to work on legislation. He simply makes general statements about the proposed laws, and then sits back until the day the issue is ripe for possible passage, even though by that time the bill might be a mere shadow of its former self.

Putting that aside, it's disturbing that a senior Dept. of Education employee basically just told us that the White House is the problem in trying to get more administration support for gay kids in schools.

Not very fierce. Read More...

Servicemembers United Action Fund takes on the oppostion to DADT repeal

Servicemembers United Action Fund has launched a new website, MilitaryReadiness.org, and a new ad campaign to push for repeal of DADT. Here's the first ad with Staff Sergeant Brian Muller, a former Army Bomb Disposal Technician, who was discharged under DADT. Via press release:

"This new ad, and the subsequent ads that will be released each week, helps put a human face on the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' issue for a national mainstream audience and effectively demonstrates how this outdated law actually harms military readiness," said Alexander Nicholson, Executive Director of Servicemembers United and the Servicemembers United Action Fund.

At Pam's House Blend, SU's Jarrod Chlapowski explains the campaign, which he promises will "hard-hitting" and "show why repealing DADT will improve military readiness":

For this ad we focused on addressing the effects of open service and the impact of losing critical talent.

Today's opposition tends to either believe that open service would be detrimental to the oft-repeated concepts of unit cohesion, troop morale, and combat readiness; that it would be in the best interest of the military to hold off on repeal until after we've completed our current overseas obligations; or that the US should not move on repeal in Congress until after the Pentagon working group completes its review in December of this year.

The logic behind all three arguments is that open service would to some degree be detrimental to military readiness, that conflict and disarray would inevitably result. This video shows - and SU's subsequent videos will show - that the exact opposite is actually true.

We as a community sometimes have a tendency to focus on how horrible DADT is and how detrimental it is to the military's mission. While true, these points do not address or challenge the perspective that the existence of openly serving gays and lesbians will be damaging to the military too. The experiences of those who were able to successfully serve openly under DADT for a period of time - those like Brian - do address this fundamental opposition claim.

Again, this is the first in a series of ads. Please, pass this video around, spread the word. And check out the web ad campaign's homepage while you're at it.

We're not done fighting DADT, and neither are you. See you next week.

Read More...

Talibangelicals speak for themselves

Thank G-d for our "First Amendment Right" so that our enemies can freely speak and let EVERYONE know what they stand for. The following is an excerpt from the Minnesota Indepent and a YouTube posting of a Christian radio show featuring GOP-linked punk rock group called "You Can Run:"



I truly appreciate the Talibangelicals feeling comfortable enough to let us know what they are truly saying about us, and how they are supported by the Republican party:

You Can Run But You Cannot Hide, Inc., a 501(c)3 nonprofit ministry that brings its hard rock gospel into public schools, has been deepening its long-running ties to the Republican Party of Minnesota. Long a cause célèbre for Rep. Michele Bachmann, who has twice lent her name to the group’s fundraising efforts, You Can Run (YCR) had a booth at the GOP convention in April, and the group’s frontman, Bradlee Dean, reports that gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer recently accepted an invitation to visit with him at Dean’s home. But recent controversial statements by Dean — that Muslim countries calling for the execution of gays and lesbians are “more moral than even the American Christians” — have drawn the ire of some both within and outside the party.

“Muslims are calling for the executions of homosexuals in America,” Dean said on YCR’s May 15 radio show on AM 1280 the Patriot. “This just shows you they themselves are upholding the laws that are even in the Bible of the Judeo-Christian God, but they seem to be more moral than even the American Christians do, because these people are livid about enforcing their laws. They know homosexuality is an abomination.”

The group goes on to claim, “If America won’t enforce the laws, God will raise up a foreign enemy to do just that." Not to mention:

“The bottom line is this… they [homosexuals] play the victim when they are, in fact, the predator,” Dean said, before going on to make a claim that has no basis in fact: “On average, they molest 117 people before they’re found out. How many kids have been destroyed, how many adults have been destroyed because of crimes against nature?”

Wow, considering the number of gay people in the United States, that is a LOT of molestations going on! Can someone please do the math for me? Methinks someone has "The Gays" confused with sexually repressed Evangelicals and the Catholic Church? Read More...

Florida gubernatorial candidate McCollum opposes gay foster parents

Because kids these days have it too easy. Especially kids in foster care in Florida.

George Rekers supporter, Florida Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum think so. Rather than provide these kids with stable homes with couples that just want to help kids, McCollum has used his platform and candidacy to come out against gay couples serving as foster parents. This is in addition to opposing gay couples being able to adopt children.

When asked by the Florida Baptist Witness about gay couples serving as foster parents, McCollum said (emphasis added),

Q: Should the law [allowing gay couples to serve as foster parents] be changed?

McCollum: I think that it would be advisable. I really do not think that we should have homosexuals guiding our children. I think that it’s a lifestyle that I don’t agree with. I realize a lot of people do. It’s my personal faith, religious faith, that I don’t believe that the people who do this should be raising our children. It’s not a natural thing. You need a mother and a father. You need a man and a woman. That’s what God intended.

Once again, not just an attack on gay families and parents, but an insult to single parents. Read More...

Video: "NOM's Assault on the Family'

From Rob Tisiani of Waking Up Now. Just watch:

H/T Alvin McEwen, who saw it on GoodAsYou.org. Jeremy says, "Maggie, you hurt people. You just do. Sorry. But you do. And you could stop. If you wanted. But you don't. Or at least won't." She won't. She's obsessed with hating gays. Read More...

Signorile on the 'outrageous hypocrisy' of the corporate media when it comes to naming who is gay

Mike has a post at Huffington noting that the San Francisco Chronicle decided to report that Judge Walker is gay because it was an "open secret." Over the past week, many in the right wing media have used that info. to attack Walker's Prop. 8 decision and the traditional media dutifully reported those attacks. Yet, there are many "open secrets" about gay politicians, many of whom are conservative and anti-gay. But, for some reason, that's off-limits:

But the outrageous hypocrisy here on the part of the corporate media -- and one that shows how they are manipulated by the right -- is the fact that, even with proof and evidence, news organizations refuse to report on the secretly gay sexual orientation of conservative, anti-gay politicians and public figures when the argument for their exposure is made from the left. When Kirby Dick's much-discussed documentary Outrage hit theaters in 2009, and later premiered on HBO (for which the film has now been nominated for an Emmy), many media organizations wouldn't report on the conservative Republican politicians who were claimed to be gay in the film, like Florida Governor Charlie Crist or California Congressman David Dreier, though there was a plethora of sources and witnesses in the film -- far beyond just "open secret" reporting.

The Washington Post noted in its review that it would not name names, and National Public Radio censored a review on its website. At the time, NPR's ombudsman Alicia Sheppard claimed in an interview on my Sirius XM radio program that reporting on public figures' undeclared sexual orientation was against NPR policy and vowed -- after I pointed out that this was hypocritical in light of others they have named in the past -- that she would police all future revelations on NPR.

Well, there was NPR last week, in an "All Things Considered" report, jumping on the bandwagon, like the Washington Post and others, reporting on Judge Walker as "openly gay" in the context of the criticisms against his ruling. The only difference was that this time the claims were coming from right-wing smear artists, whom the mainstream media are only too eager to accommodate.

There are still too many people in the media who operate like there's something wrong with being gay. And, they "protect" politicians -- and others in the media -- who are gay. It is outrageous hypocrisy. Read More...

Sharron Angle doesn't want money tainted by the gays, but she's been taking it anyway

Remember how we learned on Friday that Nevada's GOP/Teabagger Senate candidate Sharron Angle hated the gays so much that she didn't want campaign contributions from any entity with ties to from teh gay?

Yeah. Well guess who is taking money with gay ties? Yep. Sharron Angle.

Via Steve Freiss at the Daily Beast:

Las Vegas Sun columnist Jon Ralston, who first noticed and reported the response after it was overlooked in an Associated Press exclusive on the questionnaire itself, also noted on Friday that Angle had already received $5,000 from the Senate Majority Fund PAC that included funds from Intel.

In addition to that, however, Angle has accepted $5,000 from the Alamo PAC, Bluegrass Committee, Free & Strong America PAC, Rock City PAC, Tenn PAC and Senate Victory Fund PAC as well as $2,000 from the Hawkeye PAC. All of these, according to the Federal Election Commission’s website, received money from companies that include 3M, Abbott Laboratories, Amazon.Com, UPS and others. Some companies that gave to those PACs, such as Anheuser Busch and Pepsico, have created gay-specific advertising that has been placed in gay-targeted media as well.

There's more gay tainted money. Let's see if she gives it back. Read More...

Very conservative California paper on why marriage equality is inevitable

And why the judge was right to intervene. The San Diego Union-Tribune editorial:

But the public will, like the law, is an evolutionary thing; there is little doubt that, despite the passage of Proposition 8 two years ago, voter sentiment in California has been steadily moving toward greater acceptance of same-sex marriage.

The position of this editorial page has likewise been evolutionary, having moved from support for civil unions and opposition to gay marriage some years ago, to support for same-sex marriage and opposition to Proposition 8 in 2008.

We have also expressed serious reservations about achieving this societal evolution by court directive rather than the democratic process of legislative action or a public vote. But we recognize that the courts are also part of the democratic process of checks and balances and have on many, many occasions served as an important protector of the rights of minority citizens.

Read More...

Director of Nixon museum is gay, not Republican, and Canadian

Sort on an interesting side note. Read More...

When these young people 'tell,' the Obama admin. is doing the right thing and ignoring the law

Not gays, immigrants.

Someone ask Treasurer Andy Tobias over at the DNC why the Obama administration can ignore federal law, and let these kids stay, even when they've openly admitted that they're here "illegally" (we call that "telling" in civil rights vernacular), but when gay service members "tell" (and even when they don't tell at all), the Obama administration tells us they simply must follow the letter of the law and kick those soldiers out, lest we be perceived as a country of lawlessness. Why not let both stay? That would involve Obama actually keeping his promises to gays and immigrants.

And, these kids, the DREAM activists, aren't just telling. They're telling, among others, Obama and members of Congress. Check out this letter to Obama today from UCLA student David Cho. Watch his video, too. "Coming out" as undocumented sounds like "coming out" as gay. Or read Mohammad Abdollahi's letter to Obama, which Nick posted a couple weeks ago.

It's not like the Obama administration is keeping its promises to gays or immigration advocates. The Obama administration has deported more undocumented people than the Bush administration. And the President's promises to pass immigration reform - first last year, then this year - have gone about as far as his promise to repeal DOMA and pass ENDA.

But that leaves unanswered the issue of why Tobias, among other administration apologists, such as White House lobbyist Robert Raben, keep lecturing the gay community on how we have to accept the Obama administration's insistence on enforcing DOMA and DADT, and defending those bigoted laws in court, because the President simply has no choice - he must uphold the rule of law.

Except apparently he mustn't. And he doesn't. On a pretty regular basis. Except when it comes to our civil rights. Read More...

Ted Olson's impressive performance on FOX

Yesterday, a couple of the Sunday shows were actually kinda fun to watch. We've already posted the debate between David Boies and Tony Perkins. Boies demolished Perkins and his lies on CBS.

But, things even went well on FOX. It helped that the guest was Ted Olson who understands the ways of FOX. Igor Volsky posted the video of Olson's interview with Chris Wallace. Olson was very, very impressive. Wallace thought so, too. From Igor:

Throughout the interview, host Chris Wallace attempted to trip up his guest with a series of familiar Republican talking points, all of which Olson repudiated.

Wallace asked Olson to identify the right to same-sex marriage in the constitution and wondered why “seven million Californians” “don’t get to say that marriage is between a man and a woman.” Olson replied that the Supreme Court has ruled that marriage was a fundamental right and pointed out that the constitution made no explicit mention of interracial marriage either. He stressed that under our system of government, voters can’t deprive minority groups of their constitutionally guaranteed protections and reminded Wallace that in the 1960s, “Californians voted to change their constitution to say that you could discriminate on the basis of race in the sale of your home; the United States Supreme Court struck that down.”

When Wallace pressed the point further, likening same-sex marriage to abortion and noting that “the political process in the case of same-sex marriage was working” since states had been deciding the issue on a “state-by-state basis,” Olson asked Wallace how he would like it if Fox News’ right to free speech was decided in such a manner

Read More...

Here's a surprise: FRC's Tony Perkins lied on FTN yesterday

As David Boies said in the great video face-off Joe posted yesterday, of Boie vs. the Family Research Council's Perkins, the religious right simply lies. And they know that on TV they can get away with it, but when they did it in a court room, on the witness stand, they got stung.

One of their usual big lies, which the ironically fey religious right leader, Perkins, repeated on Face the Nation yesterday: That there's no evidence that gay parents are good for kids. First off, it's an interesting twist on an old argument, that belies how badly the religious right is doing. They used to say that the evidence showed straight parents were better, and gay parents were bad. Now that they've been caught in that lie, they claim that there isn't enough evidence showing gay parents are good. Only problem? Yes there is.

Media Matters has pulled together the quotes from the scientific organizations proving FRC's lie. Read More...

When David Boies destroyed Tony Perkins on 'Face the Nation'

Tony Perkins from the Family Research Council debated Prop. 8 lawyer David Boies this morning on "Face the Nation." Boies didn't let Perkins get away with spewing falsehoods and lies. After Perkins spewed the usual right-wing anti-gay rhetoric, Boies let him have it:

"In a court of law you've got to come in and you've got to support those opinions, you've got to stand up under oath and cross-examination," Boies said. "And what we saw at trial is that it's very easy for the people who want to deprive gay and lesbian citizens of the right to vote [sic] to make all sorts of statements and campaign literature, or in debates where they can't be cross-examined.

"But when they come into court and they have to support those opinions and they have to defend those opinions under oath and cross-examination, those opinions just melt away. And that's what happened here. There simply wasn't any evidence, there weren't any of those studies. There weren't any empirical studies. That's just made up. That's junk science. It's easy to say that on television. But a witness stand is a lonely place to lie. And when you come into court you can't do that.

"That's what we proved: We put fear and prejudice on trial, and fear and prejudice lost," Boies said.

Seriously, anyone who is going to debate any of the right-wing homophobes should watch this interview and learn from Boies.
Read More...