What Is Blogging For Truth?

For over 30 years there have been organizations dedicated to spreading lies and false studies about our lives, our loves and our persons.

It's time to stop listening to and believing them.

Let's tell the world our truths and stand up to speak for ourselves instead.

Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself. ~Harvey Fierstein

Monday

Flesh and Blood Truth

These two quotes have been rolling around in my head now for over a week:

The first from Lauro Aguirre: "Truth for the tyrants is the most terrible and cruel of all bindings, it is like and incandescent iron falling across their chests, and it is even more agonizing than hot iron for that only burns the flesh, while truth, burns it's way into the soul..." and from Robert Louis Stevenson: “Truth, even in literature, must be clothed with flesh and blood, or it cannot tell its whole story.” 

They tie into my last post and what Jendi Reiter wrote for us last May. One particular series of statements from her writing has continued to haunt my mind and grow in scope:   Some conservatives address the problem by redefining what homosexuality is. It's an immoral choice, it's a curable neurosis, it's a perversion. It has to be, because the text says so.

This is the rhetorical move that frightens me. "We know you better than you know yourself: your love is only lust, your identity is confusion, and if you can't change, it's because you're not trying hard enough." Basically, the conservative church is saying to GLBT people that they can't trust their own perceptions of reality, even concerning the contents of their own minds and the feelings in their bodies."....
 
....Other conservatives would acknowledge that same-sex orientation may be innate and unchangeable, but they argue that the Bible calls all people so afflicted to live celibately. This position at least avoids the necessity of spreading misinformation about GLBT sexuality, but it's still a variation of the same power grab discussed above.

She goes on to point out: All of us "Bloggers for Truth" have stories we can tell about our own partnerships or those of our parents, teachers, pastors and friends--all GLBT people whose lives have been touched by the Spirit. But we also have to make the Scriptural case that stories are truths, on a par with or superior to the truths of abstract reasoning, at least when it comes to practical ethics. Time and time again I hear anti-gay Christians argue that we are biased by our personal desires (either lust or pride) while they are merely following "what the Bible says". Their epistemology doesn't allow for scrutiny of the human element in interpretation, nor of their own emotional biases, because they need the Bible to remain magically exempt from the human condition of partiality and uncertainty.

Where has this been all leading? From now on the focus of this site will no longer be to expose the Anti-Gay's industry's lies and rhetoric, the pieces written here and elsewhere, as well as the findings of the most reputable medical and psychological organizations across the globe, are proof enough that they continue to use bad science, fear and outright lies to spread their vitriol.  We know they do.  We KNOW they do.  Enough of focusing on the negative. I am believing that as we move forward towards our rights, this can become a starting place, hopefully, of affirmation, encouragement and healing.  To share our truths with each other and even the world, and see how common our experiences are, to tell why you know you are who you are and how amazing it is to be just that. 

Once we have achieved the recognition of the rights that already belong to us as citizens, we will need to accept within ourselves that we do indeed deserve them.  Our greatest offense and defense against further oppression is breaking down any lingering doubts of what our hearts and minds already know, we are full citizens, who deserve full civil and human rights.

I would like to encourage any of you who wish to offer an article of your own flesh and blood truth, to email this blog at the contact link on the left. 

Your experience is the truth, it is your witness and it is our power.  From now on, all of us can come to accept that what we know is true, and no one will ever be able to take that away from us. 

“There are certain things that are fundamental to human fulfillment. The essence of these needs is captured in the phrase 'to live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy'. The need to live is our physical need for such things as food, clothing, shelter, economical well-being, health. The need to love is our social need to relate to other people, to belong, to love and to be loved. The need to learn is our mental need to develop and to grow. And the need to leave a legacy is our spiritual need to have a sense of meaning, purpose, personal congruence, and contribution." -- Steven R. Covey


Sunday

Our Life Experience Is What Sets Us Free

The other day, I picked up a novel, and opened it, and here is what was written as a front piece:
Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.
~ Deuteronomy 4:9

This hit me powerfully because it was one more confirmation of something I am beginning to see is very important to each of us as we grow and heal from years of oppression. I am only now beginning to realize how much our own life experiences are incredibly powerful truths and testimony against the Anti Gay Industry. Talk about scientific studies all you want, but I KNOW with my full intellectual capacity, my heart and even in my soul, how wrong it is to ask someone to change the very soul of their LGBT nature, even if that person wishes to due to societies pressures. I KNOW because for 30 years I tried just that. During that 30 years, it is true, I never acted on my desires, but that was accomplished only by shutting down every one of my very normal, very human emotions. No amount of praying, no amount of pleading with God to take away the very nature I was created in, literally on my face before him, would allow me to be whole. I finally learned it was only the fear of what others believed that caused me to even try to change. It wasn't the will of God that I change who I was created to be after all.

Now and then I run across someone that tries to tell me that if I just would try harder I could learn to be heterosexual......I am sorry, but I could have 30 PhD.'s in heterosexuality as hard as I did try. There are others who have suggested I should just be celibate then, and give it to God, OK, I say, you go first. The look of amazement on their face is priceless. Why are they asking me to do something I have not been called to, especially when neither have they obviously. Physical relations with the one you love is a wonderful gift from God, why should I deny this gift when I have been given it?

Being a lesbian or gay is not about just sex. It is not just about who I want to sleep with, but it is everything about how I react to the world at large, yes it is about who I love, but it is also about having deeper feelings and passions than I thought possible, and not just towards the woman whom I love, but towards humanity and life at large. To deny this, to suppress it, means not only do I go back into the closet, but all that I am, all who I love and all that I do goes back into that closet as well.

Anyone who goes back in takes everything they have to offer to this world back in with them. These are our true colors and we should be proud of them, not ashamed any more, nor should we continue to listen to those who suggest that we return to a life of loneliness and shame once more because their motives are based on fear and discomfort. It is simply their own problem that they must learn to deal with.

I was inspired today, by this video suggested by a friend of mine on Facebook:


There Is Nothing To Fear, But Fear Itself......

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety. ~Henry Louis Mencken

Our world is changing, not so very fast that it is too hard to understand. But it is changing and it is scaring the hell out of a number of people. They fear it because they do not understand that change can be a good thing, or is needed in some cases. Those in the United States who fear change the most, seem to have no ideas on making sure the changes are for the better, but instead are resorting to creating more fear, and violence in our country. There are more people joining hate groups, committing violent hate crimes and disrupting meetings to discuss health care reform. The garden of fear was plowed and watered by the mindset coming out of the previous administration, the labors of the past 8 years are now coming into full bloom. Once upon a time, when we faced a crisis in this country we didn't resort to the criminal antics we are witnessing now, we stood up, came together and found real solutions to the problems. What we need now are idea people, and we need them now. Not these weak minded fearful cowards whose voices are screaming the loudest.

It is the lack of real ideas on how to fix health care by those disrupting the meetings, the lack of wanting to seek out the truth and find out what would really work that disturbs me no end. The ignorance that they are already paying for the uninsured in higher medical costs and perscriptions. They don't understand that should they lose their job due to an accident, employer cut backs, or total disability they will become one of the millions of uninsured themselves. This happened to my ex husband 10 years ago, and the waiting period after becoming disabled is 2 years. In that two year waiting period, we incurred over 600,000 dollars in medical bills.

Before he was disabled, he worked 12 hours a day, six days a week, so that I could be a stay at home mom. We had always paid our taxes and took care of our own. He developed artery and heart problems at the age of 42 because of hereditary issues. Once he lost his job because of his disability, we could not afford the 600.00 a month COBRA payment, and my employer did not offer health insurance to him because they considered it pre-existing.

Oh, the 600,000 dollars we owed? You paid it, we couldn't, so the hospital wrote them off, I have recently filed bankruptcy for the rest of them. It has been added to your next hospital stay. It has been added to your next dr.'s appointment.


Quotes about the nature of fear and the importance of overcoming it.

You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith. ~Mary Manin Morrissey


Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. ~Marie Curie


Fear is a darkroom where negatives develop. ~Usman B. Asif


Keep your fears to yourself but share your courage with others. ~Robert Louis Stevenson


There is a time to take counsel of your fears, and there is a time to never listen to any fear. ~George S. Patton


Many of our fears are tissue-paper-thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them. ~Brendan Francis


There is much in the world to make us afraid. There is much more in our faith to make us unafraid. ~Frederick W. Cropp


There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them. ~Andre Gide


Fear is faith that it won't work out. ~Sister Mary Tricky


Fear is the lengthened shadow of ignorance. ~Arnold Glasow


Fear is the father of courage and the mother of safety. ~Henry H. Tweedy


Fear is the highest fence. ~Dudley Nichols


Obstacles are like wild animals. They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can. If they see you are afraid of them... they are liable to spring upon you; but if you look them squarely in the eye, they will slink out of sight. ~Orison Swett Marden


Fear is the needle that pierces us that it may carry a thread to bind us to heaven. ~James Hastings


To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another. ~Katherine Paterson, Jacob Have I Loved


Fear has a large shadow, but he himself is small. ~Ruth Gendler


Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends. ~Shirley Maclaine


To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. ~Bertrand Russell

He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Those who fear life are already three parts dead. ~Bertrand Russell


Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself. ~Samuel Butler


Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is. ~German Proverb


If a man harbors any sort of fear, it percolates through all thinking, damages his personality and makes him a landlord to a ghost. ~Lloyd Douglas


A cat bitten once by a snake dreads even rope. ~Arab Proverb


Fear prejudices courage. ~Abigail Charleson


Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light? ~Maurice Freehill


Fear: False Evidence Appearing Real. ~Author Unknown


Fear is a slinking cat I find beneath the lilacs of my mind. ~Sophie Tunnell


I would sort out all the arguments and see which belonged to fear and which to creativeness. Other things being equal, I would make the decision which had the larger number of creative reasons on its side. ~Katharine Butler Hathaway


He who fears something gives it power over him. ~Moorish Proverb


Feed your faith and your fears will starve to death. ~Author Unknown


He who fears to suffer, suffers from fear. ~French Proverb


There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice. ~Mark Twain


Fear can be headier than whiskey, once man has acquired a taste for it. ~Donald Dowes


Fear dances with courage. ~Ever Garrison


The wise man in the storm prays God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 1833


Anything I've ever done that ultimately was worthwhile... initially scared me to death. ~Betty Bender


To lead is difficult when you're a follower of fear. ~T.A. Sachs


I have accepted fear as a part of life - specifically the fear of change.... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back. ~Erica Jong


The way you overcome shyness is to become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid. ~Lady Bird Johnson



Very often a change of self is needed more than a change of scene.
~ Arthur Christopher Benson~

The reality is that changes are coming... They must come. You must share in bringing them.
~John Hersey~

We must learn to view change as a natural phenomenon - to anticipate it and to plan for it. The future is ours to channel in the direction we want to go... we must continually ask ourselves, "What will happen if...?" or better still, "How can we make it happen?"
~Lisa Taylor~

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
~Charles Darwin~

Things do not change; we change.
~Henry David Thoreau~

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
~Carl Rogers~

Life is always at some turning point.
~Irwin Edman~

The one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain or unchangeable.
~John F. Kennedy~

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.
~Henri Bergson~

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
~George Bernard Shaw~

Change is the watchword of progression. When we tire of well-worn ways, we seek for new. This restless craving in the souls of men spurs them to climb, and to seek the mountain view.
~Ella Wheeler Wilcox~

I've never met a person, I don't care what his condition, in whom I could not see possibilities. I don't care how much a man may consider himself a failure, I believe in him, for he can change the thing that is wrong in his life anytime he is prepared and ready to do it. Whenever he develops the desire, he can take away from his life the thing that is defeating it. The capacity for reformation and change lies within.
~Preston Bradley~

Readjusting is a painful process, but most of us need it at one time or another.
~Arthur Christopher Benson~

We accept the verdict of the past until the need for change cries out loudly enough to force upon us a choice between the comforts of inertia and the irksomeness of action.
~Learned Hand~

Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.
~Mark Twain~

He who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality.
~Anwar Sadat~

The most significant change in a person's life is a change of attitude. Right attitudes produce right actions.
~Willam J. Johnston~

Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.
~Arnold Bennett~

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy, for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter into another.
~Anatole France~

He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place.
~Charles Caleb Colton~

The first step toward change is acceptance. Once you accept yourself, you open the door to change. That's all you have to do. Change is not something you do, it's something you allow.
~Will Garcia, person with AIDS~

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
~Helen Keller~

I have accepted fear as a part of life - specifically the fear of change... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back...
~Erica Jong~

Thursday

Practitioners Should Avoid Telling Clients They Can Change from Gay to Straight

August 5, 2009 -

APA PRESS RELEASE

August 5, 2009
Contact: Kim Mills
(202) 336-6048 until Aug. 5
(416) 585-3800 – Aug. 5-9


INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE THAT SEXUAL ORIENTATION CHANGE EFFORTS WORK, SAYS APA

Practitioners Should Avoid Telling Clients They Can Change from Gay to Straight


TORONTO—The American Psychological Association adopted a resolution Wednesday stating that mental health professionals should avoid telling clients that they can change their sexual orientation through therapy or other treatments.

The "Resolution on Appropriate Affirmative Responses to Sexual Orientation Distress and Change Efforts" also advises that parents, guardians, young people and their families avoid sexual orientation treatments that portray homosexuality as a mental illness or developmental disorder and instead seek psychotherapy, social support and educational services "that provide accurate information on sexual orientation and sexuality, increase family and school support and reduce rejection of sexual minority youth."

The approval, by APA's governing Council of Representatives, came at APA's annual convention, during which a task force presented a report that in part examined the efficacy of so-called "reparative therapy," or sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE).

"Contrary to claims of sexual orientation change advocates and practitioners, there is insufficient evidence to support the use of psychological interventions to change sexual orientation," said Judith M. Glassgold, PsyD, chair of the task force. "Scientifically rigorous older studies in this area found that sexual orientation was unlikely to change due to efforts designed for this purpose. Contrary to the claims of SOCE practitioners and advocates, recent research studies do not provide evidence of sexual orientation change as the research methods are inadequate to determine the effectiveness of these interventions." Glassgold added: "At most, certain studies suggested that some individuals learned how to ignore or not act on their homosexual attractions. Yet, these studies did not indicate for whom this was possible, how long it lasted or its long-term mental health effects. Also, this result was much less likely to be true for people who started out only attracted to people of the same sex."

Based on this review, the task force recommended that mental health professionals avoid misrepresenting the efficacy of sexual orientation change efforts when providing assistance to people distressed about their own or others' sexual orientation.

APA appointed the six-member Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation in 2007 to review and update APA's 1997 resolution, "Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation," and to generate a report. APA was concerned about ongoing efforts to promote the notion that sexual orientation can be changed through psychotherapy or approaches that mischaracterize homosexuality as a mental disorder.

The task force examined the peer-reviewed journal articles in English from 1960 to 2007, which included 83 studies. Most of the studies were conducted before 1978, and only a few had been conducted in the last 10 years. The group also reviewed the recent literature on the psychology of sexual orientation.

"Unfortunately, much of the research in the area of sexual orientation change contains serious design flaws," Glassgold said. "Few studies could be considered methodologically sound and none systematically evaluated potential harms."

As to the issue of possible harm, the task force was unable to reach any conclusion regarding the efficacy or safety of any of the recent studies of SOCE: "There are no methodologically sound studies of recent SOCE that would enable the task force to make a definitive statement about whether or not recent SOCE is safe or harmful and for whom," according to the report.

"Without such information, psychologists cannot predict the impact of these treatments and need to be very cautious, given that some qualitative research suggests the potential for harm," Glassgold said. "Practitioners can assist clients through therapies that do not attempt to change sexual orientation, but rather involve acceptance, support and identity exploration and development without imposing a specific identity outcome."

As part of its report, the task force identified that some clients seeking to change their sexual orientation may be in distress because of a conflict between their sexual orientation and religious beliefs. The task force recommended that licensed mental health care providers treating such clients help them "explore possible life paths that address the reality of their sexual orientation, reduce the stigma associated with homosexuality, respect the client's religious beliefs, and consider possibilities for a religiously and spiritually meaningful and rewarding life."

"In other words," Glassgold said, "we recommend that psychologists be completely honest about the likelihood of sexual orientation change, and that they help clients explore their assumptions and goals with respect to both religion and sexuality."

A copy of the task force report may be obtained from APA's Public Affairs Office or at http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbc/publications/therapeutic-response.pdf.

Members of the APA Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation:

Judith M. Glassgold, PsyD, Rutgers University – Chair
Lee Beckstead, PhD
Jack Drescher, MD
Beverly Greene, PhD, St. John's University
Robin Lin Miller, PhD, Michigan State University
Roger L. Worthington, PhD, University of Missouri

The American Psychological Association, in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and is the world's largest association of psychologists. APA's membership includes more than 150,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance psychology as a science, as a profession and as a means of promoting health, education and human welfare.


In other words........stop misleading people, stop lying to them and let them become truly whole as human beings!

Saturday

Who is Paul Cameron and why would anyone believe his lies?

Paul Cameron is the man responsible for the "legitimization" of many, many anti gay beliefs held by the American public. His debunked science is quoted by many unknowing Churches, politicians and even the public at large, and by the Anti Gay Industry who do know better who is behind them and what his agenda truly is. It is the ultimate agenda of this man to "exterminate" all "unrepentant" LGBT persons. "At the 1985 Conservative Political Action Conference, Cameron announced to the attendees, 'Unless we get medically lucky, in three or four years, one of the options discussed will be the extermination of homosexuals.' According to an interview with former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, Cameron was recommending the extermination option as early as 1983." - Mark E. Pietrzyk, News-Telegraph, March 10, 1995.

Paul Cameron, received his doctorate in psychology at the University of Colorado-Boulder in 1966, He co-founded the Institute for the Scientific Investigation of Sexuality in 1983 after being dropped from the membership of the American Psychological Association . That organization eventually turned into The Family Research Institute. The Southern Law Poverty Center, our nations hate group authority, has officially designated The Family Research Institute a hate group. The FBI uses the SLPC data in it's hate group watch list. Cameron uses The Family Research Institute as a vehicle to publish reports saying homosexuals were more likely than heterosexuals to commit crimes and to molest children as well as most of the false statements made towards the LGBT community. Have you ever wondered what kind of mind would create two groups with the sole purpose of spreading lies about the LGBT community? From Paul Cameron's own words, you can get a pretty good idea.

Though he was kicked out of the American Psychological Association for ethical violations in 1983 (he was alleged to have used unsound methods and misrepresented the work of others, a practice his organization as well as others like his, still employ today, please visit: Respect My Research.org) — and then, after pawning himself off as a sociologist, declared "not a sociologist" by the American Sociological Association — his studies alleging every evil under the sun as coming from gays frequently cited by not only others in the Anti-Gay industry but Churches and the general public include:

"Homosexuality is a crime against humanity."- Paul Cameron's pamphlet "Criminality, Social Disruption and Homosexuality" quoted by Mark E. Pietrzyk, News-Telegraph, March 10, 1995. (Outrageous opinion held by many in the Anti Gay Industry)

In a 1981 debate, Cameron claimed a 4-year-old boy had been sexually mutilated in a Lincoln, Neb., mall rest room as part of a "homosexual act" — but police in Lincoln said no such crime had occurred. (Out right lie, there were no newspaper reports or any calls to the police regarding this)

Causes of homosexuality include: "sex with animals"- http://www.biblebelievers.com/Cameron3.html, What Causes Homosexual Desire and Can It Be Changed?, By Paul Cameron, Ph. D. (Outrageous lie held by many in the Anti Gay Industry)

"At least twice Cameron has advocated the tattooing of AIDS patients on the face, so that people would know when they were meeting with an infected person. The penalty for trying to hide the tattoo would be banishment to the Hawaiian island of Molokai, a former leper colony. In the event that a vaccine were developed to prevent AIDS, Cameron has proposed that homosexuals be castrated to prevent them from 'cheating' on nature." - Mark E. Pietrzyk, News-Telegraph, March 10, 1995. (Outrageous opinions held by many in the Anti Gay Industry)

"I think that actually AIDS is a guardian. That is I think it was sent, if you would, about forty years ago, to destroy Western civilization unless we change our sexual ways. So it's really a Godsend." - Cameron quoted by Mark E. Pietrzyk, News-Telegraph, March 10, 1995. (Outrageous opinion held by many in the Anti Gay Industry)

"33% [of gays surveyed] ingested feces via anal/oral contact"-Paul Cameron quoted at http://www.biblebelievers.com/Cameron2.html (Made up, not based on fact)

"a large minority of gays engage in torture for sexual fun. Sex with minors 25% of white gays admitted to sex with boys 16 or younger as adults"-Paul Cameron quoted at http://www.biblebelievers.com/Cameron2.html (Made up, not based on fact)

"Cameron also views AIDS as being such a large threat to 'innocents' that he has proposed nationwide testing for HIV and the forcible quarantine of all those testing positive, either by confinement to their homes or in regional detention centers." - Mark E. Pietrzyk, News-Telegraph, March 10, 1995. (C. Everett Koop scolded Cameron for this suggestion)

"He has also advocated the outlawing of homosexuality and the forcible closing of all Gay bars; homosexuals would be required to register with government authorities and have their movements tracked." - Mark E. Pietrzyk, News-Telegraph, March 10, 1995. (Outrageous opinion held by many in the Anti Gay Industry)

"Older homosexuals often approach the young" - http://www.biblebelievers.com/Cameron3.html, What Causes Homosexual Desire and Can It Be Changed?, By Paul Cameron, Ph. D. (Opinion while held by many is just not based on fact)

"There is evidence that homosexuality, like drug use is 'handed down' from older individuals. The first homosexual encounter is usually initiated by an older person."- http://www.biblebelievers.com/Cameron3.html, What Causes Homosexual Desire and Can It Be Changed?, By Paul Cameron, Ph.D. (Again, opinion, not based on fact)

"A quarter of homosexuals have admitted to sex with children and underage teens"- http://www.biblebelievers.com/Cameron3.html, What Causes Homosexual Desire and Can It Be Changed?, By Paul Cameron, Ph. D. (Outrageous opinion, not based on fact, the facts are, all studies show Gays and Lesbians to have much much lower rates of child predatory behaviors than practicing heterosexuals, the latest show 1/2 the rate)

"Cameron also presented data that homosexuals are disproportionately child molesters. This research was also based on newspaper stories, which he said prove homosexuals are perpetrators in 40 percent of all molestation cases." - The Minnesota Daily, August 22, 1997 (as above, proven false)

"gays who practice oral sex verge on consuming raw human blood"- Paul Cameron quoted at http://www.biblebelievers.com/Cameron2.html (Opinion, not based on fact) "gays average somewhere between 106 and 1105 different partners/year"-Paul Cameron quoted at http://www.biblebelievers.com/Cameron2.html (Made up, not based on fact, just how much energy does this man think we have?)

Gays have sex with "bottles, carrots, even gerbils"-Paul Cameron quoted at http://www.biblebelievers.com/Cameron2.html (Opinion, not based on fact. Here is the source of all the gerbil jokes by the way)

"The typical life-span of homosexuals suggests that their activities are more destructive than smoking and as dangerous as drugs."-Paul Cameron quoted at http://www.biblebelievers.com/Cameron2.html (Opinion, not based on fact, very poor research methods used)

"Those who treat AIDS patients are at great risk"-Paul Cameron quoted at http://www.biblebelievers.com/Cameron2.html (Opinion, facts show otherwise)

"The typical sexual practices of homosexuals are a medical horror story --imagine exchanging saliva, feces, semen and/or blood with dozens of different men each year. Imagine drinking urine, ingesting feces and experiencing rectal trauma on a regular basis. Often these encounters occur while the participants are drunk, high, and/or in an orgy setting. Further, many of them occur in extremely unsanitary places"-Paul Cameron quoted at http://www.biblebelievers.com/Cameron2.html (Made up, not based on fact or even an attempt at research)

"Homosexuals are sexually troubled people engaging in dangerous activities"-Paul Cameron quoted at http://www.biblebelievers.com/Cameron2.html (Opinion, not based on fact)

"Homosexual coupling undermines its participants' health, has the highest rate of domestic violence, shortens life, and is a poor environment in which to raise children."- Paul Cameron quoted at http://www.biblebelievers.com/Cameron1.html (Made up, not based on fact)

"homosexual couples have higher rates of domestic violence than do heterosexual couples, especially among lesbians"- Paul Cameron quoted at http://www.biblebelievers.com/Cameron1.html (Made up, not based on fact)

"The largest study, and the only one based on a random sample, estimated that less than half of a percent of Americans have had a homosexual parent. Those who did were more likely to: report having had sex with a parent….be sexually molested"-Paul Cameron quoted at http://www.biblebelievers.com/Cameron1.html (Not only made up nor based on fact, but this outrageous lie, hurts real victims of child abuse and prevents LGBT persons from becoming foster or adoptive parents in many states.)

"Homosexual unions are not built around lifetime commitments"-Paul Cameron quoted at http://www.biblebelievers.com/Cameron1.html (Guess he didn't talk to the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of couples who are in relationships lasting 10 years or more)

"Thomas Jefferson said that homosexuality ‘should be punished, if a man, by castration, if a woman, by cutting through the cartilage of her nose a hole of one-half inch in diameter as least.’ " Paul Cameron - Medical Consequences of What Homosexuals Do. (It is true that he proposed this legislation. The problem with the argument though is that it drops the context of the times and intent of Jefferson’s proposal. At this time the punishment for these "crimes" was death (so those that say that Jefferson’s position was too extreme are, in effect, saying that they believe they should have continued to execute homosexuals. Jefferson sought to make the punishment less severe. He did not propose castration out of the blue where no law had existed before.)

The American Psychological Association quickly launched an investigation into Cameron’s methodology after receiving complaints from some of its members. The association sent Cameron a letter in December 1983, saying it had decided to ”drop you from membership” because he had not cooperated with the investigation. Asked if the association still has concerns about Cameron, a spokeswoman, Rhea Faberman, said: ”We are concerned about Dr. Cameron because we do believe that his methodology is weak.”

In 1984, the Nebraska Psychological Association issued a statement saying it ”formally dissociates itself from the representations and interpretations of scientific literature offered by Dr. Paul Cameron.”

The American Sociological Association issued a resolution saying: ”Cameron has consistently misinterpreted and misrepresented sociological research on sexuality, homosexuality, and lesbianism.”

“I’m amazed that he is able to continue to be published,” said Perrin, a professor of pediatrics at the Floating Hospital for Children, Tufts-New England Medical Center. Perrin emphasized that her concern is not just about Cameron, but also about the way his research is quoted by others to justify restrictions on adoption by same-sex couples.

Gregory M. Herek, professor of psychology at the University of California at Davis, who has followed Cameron’s career, said: ”Most members of the public assume that a paper published in an academic journal is a legitimate scientific study. They don’t understand that journals vary widely in their quality and in the rigor of their review process. Cameron’s work is methodologically weak and in many cases the conclusions he draws from his data are not valid.”

Most recently, Cameron has said that “the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has suppressed a new study that concludes homosexuals are involved in criminality more than their heterosexual counterparts.” But Karen Hunter, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the government agency has “never conducted a study of criminal activity among homosexuals versus heterosexuals. If we have never done a study, we would not be able to suppress it.” Cameron responded that his data came from a government drug-abuse survey, but the agency that collected the data said it could not replicate Cameron’s findings.

Cameron’s publisher, Psychological Reports, said it does not reject an article on grounds that it has received a negative review from peers, although it often asks for revisions. As Ammons, the editor, put it, “No opinion of a reviewer will ever veto, by itself, an article . . . We just simply invite them to comment. If they disagree with some aspect, they are free to submit a comment.” “People want to anoint something published in a scientific journal as ‘The Truth.’ It isn’t and it can’t be,” Ammons said. He added that his publication does not have a political agenda, and he said he personally disagrees with much of what Cameron has written but believes he should be
published.

According to The Family Research Institutes own statement: “Those of us at FRI are determined to do our best to oppose these death activists.[what these "scientists" call LGBT persons] As you see, the Internet has given us far more clout than our limited budget and effortscould otherwise hope for.”

In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center described Paul Cameron’s theories on homosexuality this way: "Of all the vices," Cameron concluded in one pamphlet, "only homosexuality constitutes a conspiracy against society." Cameron's "science" echoes Nazi Germany in that these disparaging descriptions of homosexuals are reminiscent of themes found in the ugly history of anti-Semitism, where Jews were historically associated with disease, filth, and child stealing. Cameron has been thrown out of legitimate professional organizations for his crackpot and inhuman science.

According to FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin/March 1, 2003 By John R. Schafer, MA and Joe Navarro, MA The seven-stage hate model: The psychopathology of hate groups, the Definition of Hate is a complex subject, divides into two general categories: rational and irrational. Unjust acts inspire rational hate. Hatred of a person based on race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or national origin constitutes irrational hate.

Both rational and irrational hate mask personal insecurities. Everyone experiences personal insecurities in varying degrees throughout their lives. The more insecure a person feels, the larger the hate mask. Most people concentrate on the important issues in life, such as earning a living, rearing a family, and achieving personal goals. These pursuits give meaning and value to life. Nonetheless, irrational hate bleeds through day-to-day activities.... Not all insecure people are haters, but all haters are insecure people.

On the "Journals" he publishes his reports in:

Psychological Reports et al. Instead of publishing in highly-respected, scientifically rigorous, and highly influential psychological journals (such as those in the top half of the Journal Citation Reports rankings), most of the Cameron group's research reports have appeared in Psychological Reports. Psychological Reports consistently ranks near the bottom of the list for impact. Other approaches to ranking the prestige and significance of journals have similarly ranked Psychological Reports at a low level in comparison to other psychology journals.

Psychological Reports publishes a larger number of articles and has a lower rejection rate than is typical for psychology journals. According to Journal Citation Reports in 1994 and 1995, for example, Psychological Reports was the third largest journal for which statistics were collected, publishing 510 articles in 1994 and 504 articles in 1995.

Psychological Reports is also different from the vast majority of psychology and social science journals in that it requires contributing authors to pay a fee (in recent years, $27.50 per page). The practice of charging a per-page fee or requiring purchase of preprinted copies of the article is rare in psychological and social science journals. Such per-page fees are not charged by the high-prestige psychology journals (e.g., those published by the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science).

As with Psychological Reports, the other journals in which the Cameron group has published have had consistently low rankings over time. Using 1977 SSCI impact ratings to rank 99 psychology journals, for example, Buffardi and Nichols (1981) ranked Adolescence, which Cameron himself once labeled as obscure, 98th out of 99. Another Cameron outlet, the Journal of Psychology, was ranked 79th.

Thus, the Cameron group has published its empirical research in academic journals with low prestige and, at least in the case of Psychological Reports, with a low rejection rate and a publication fee required from authors.

From Queer Science by Mark E. Pietrzyk
Mark E. Pietrzyk holds a Ph.D in political science from the George Washington University. He has been an instructor at DePaul University, a Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, and a researcher for the Heritage Foundation and National Defense University. His articles have appeared in The New Republic, Terra Nova, International Affairs Review, and The American Spectator.


Until 1980 Cameron was an instructor of psychology at the University of Nebraska. When his teaching contract was not renewed, he devoted himself fulltime to a think tank he founded called the Institute for the Scientific Investigation of Sexuality (ISIS),where he touted himself as an expert on sexuality, particularly on the societal consequences of homosexuality. During the 1980s he published hysterical pamphlets alleging that gays were disproportionately responsible for serial killings, child molestation and other heinous crimes.

Shortly after Cameron made these claims, several psychologists whose work he had referenced -- including Dr. A. Nicholas Groth, director of the Sex Offender Program at the Connecticut Department of Corrections -- charged Cameron with distorting their findings in order to promote his antigay agenda. When the American Psychological Association (APA) investigated Cameron, it found that he not only misrepresented the work of others but also used unsound methods in his own studies. For this ethical breach, the APA expelled Cameron in December 1983. (Although Cameron claims he resigned, APA bylaws prohibit members from resigning while under investigation.)

Unfortunately, the misrepresentations persist. Distortions and sloppy methods continue to shape Cameron's studies. As anyone who has taken a statistics class knows, a survey is valid only if the sample it uses is representative of the whole population. Sex surveys pose a particular problem, since many people who normally would be included in a representative sample are loath to discuss their private lives. That, however, hasn't deterred Cameron from his work.

Consider, for instance, his 1983 ISIS study, a survey of the sexual and social behavior of 4,340 adults in five American cities. Although thousands of heterosexuals allegedly responded to his survey, Cameron could get only forty-one gay men and twenty-four lesbians to respond. The extremely small sample size should have invalidated any conclusions about the sexual behavior of the gay population. In any case, the skewed results of the survey show that Cameron did not get an adequate random sample of heterosexuals either. He claims to have found that 52 percent of male heterosexuals have shoplifted; that 34 percent have committed a crime without being caught; and that 12 percent have either committed or attempted to commit murder. Most people would toss out such a survey but Cameron published the results in several pamphlets and in “Effect of Homosexuality upon Public Health and Social Order," an article in Psychological Reports.

In one pamphlet, Murder, Violence and Homosexuality, Cameron asserts that you are fifteen times more apt to be killed by a homosexual than by a heterosexual during a sexual murder spree; that homosexuals have committed the most sexual conspiracy murders; and that half of all sex murderers are homosexuals. Cameron based these conclusions on a sample of thirty-four serial killers he selected from the years 1966 to 1983. He stacked the deck not only by including phony figures (he counts in his sample the claims of Henry Lee Lucas, who subsequently recanted his boast that he murdered hundreds of people) but by examining only those serial killers with an apparent sexual motive. This allowed him to include John Wayne Gacy and his victims but to exclude the great majority of serial killers who are heterosexual, according to sociologist Jack Levin, the author of Mass Murder: America's Growing Menace.

In Cameron's writings on child molestation, the pamphlet Child Molestation and Homosexuality and two published articles, “Homosexual Molestation of Children/Sexual Interaction of Teacher and Pupil and “Child Molestation and Homosexuality'" he concludes that gays have perpetrated between one-third and one-half of all child molestations; that homosexual teachers have committed between one-quarter and four-fifths of all molestations of pupils; and that gays are ten to twenty times more apt to molest children than are heterosexuals.

These figures are said to be based on the content of other child molestation studies, yet Cameron has distorted those studies to get the results he wants. For example, he defines all adult male molestation of male children as molestations committed by homosexuals, a definition rejected by the very experts Cameron cites.

Groth, among other experts, has explicitly said that most molesters of boys are in fact men who are heterosexual in their adult relationships. These men are attracted to boys, he says, largely because of the feminine characteristics of prepubescents, such as a lack of body hair. (They also had more access to young boys than girls. In child molestation, the perpetrators choose who they are allowed to be alone with, the gender of the child has nothing to do with it.)

Cameron also has provided anti-gay organizations with research indicating absurdly high rates of extreme sex practices and venereal diseases among gays and lesbians. In his pamphlets on these subjects, Cameron has claimed, for instance, that 29 percent of gay men practice “urine sex" and that 37 percent of gay men have sadomasochistic sex.

Gay men, he says, are fourteen times more apt to have syphilis than heterosexual men and are three times more apt to have had lice. Lesbians are said to be nineteen times more apt to have syphilis than straight women and are four times more apt to have had scabies. (the opposite is true) Cameron's findings, however, are based on two sources: his discredited 1983 ISIS survey and other studies that ignore random sampling techniques. Several studies Cameron cites to support his conclusions rely on the responses of gay men who were recruited entirely from V.D. clinics.

A Cameron study that has received perhaps the most attention is “The Lifespan of Homosexuals." It concludes that less than 2 percent of gay men survive to old age; that lesbians have a median age of death of 45 that gays are 116 times more apt to be murdered than straight men and twenty-four times more apt to commit suicide, etc. The source of this material? A comparison of obituaries from gay newspapers with a sample from regular newspapers, a method that would be laughed at by any reputable scholar.

Obituaries in gay papers do not accurately portray deaths in the gay population as a whole. They are not meant to provide a public record of deaths of all gays but to allow members of the urban gay community to express mourning for their peers, particularly those whose lives have been cut short by illness or accident. Gays who die outside these communities or who die of natural causes are much less likely to be written up in a gay paper.

I no longer believe Paul Cameron or his "studies." All I know is that I believe my own life experience, I believe the life experience and witness of my LGBT peers and my own experiences as people who have tried but could not change who we are, who come from every nation and background, every religious community and non religious community, we come from every walk of life and every profession known. From the earliest days we have existed. Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum were ancient Egyptian royal servants. They shared the title of Overseer of the Manicurists in the Palace of King Niuserre during the Fifth Dynasty of Egyptian pharaohs, circa 2400 B.C., and are listed as "royal confidants" in their joint tomb. They are speculated to be the first recorded same-sex couple in recorded history. Surely they were not just the first.

We have brought art, science, beauty and love to the places we have graced and lived. Though the people of the Anti-Gay Industry try to dehumanize us and deny us civil rights and ultimately our lives, they will never succeed because truth and love are always in the end stronger than lies and hate.

Growing Up Gay and Lesbian

Thursday

The Legacy of Jerry Falwell

Jerry Falwell may well be best remembered as the founder of the Thomas Road Baptist Church, Liberty University, a staunch segregationist, the man who said AIDS was God's judgment against homosexuals, that called the purple teletubby, Twinkie Winkie, gay, the "father" of the Anti-Gay Industry, and as the co-founder of the Moral Majority in 1979.

What is not so well known about Jerry Falwell, is that in 2005, two years before his death, he said in an appearance on MSNBC television, that he was not troubled by reports that the nomine
e for Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, John G. Roberts (whose appointment was confirmed by the U.S. Senate) had done volunteer legal work for gay rights activists on the case of Romer v. Evans.

Falwell told MSNBC's Tucker Carlson that if he were a lawyer, he too would argue for civil rights for LGBT people. "I may not agree with the lifestyle, but that has nothing to do with the civil rights of that part of our constituency," Falwell said. When Carlson countered that conservatives "are always arguing against 'special rights' for gays," Falwell said that equal access to housing, civil marriage, and employment are basic rights, not special rights. "Civil rights for all Americans, black, white, red, yellow, the rich, poor, young, old, gay, straight, et cetera, is not a liberal or conservative value. It's an American value that I would think that we pretty much all agree on."


Jerry Falwell it seems, had begun to see the error of his ways in his waning years. It would, unfortunately, be too late to undo all the damage to the civil rights of countless Americans of color, of the LGBT communities and of our belated response to the AIDS epidemic under Ronald Regan who listened to Falwell's Moral Majority and ignored it for many years. And it was too late to undo the damage done by his false beliefs about race and sexual orientation to the millions of his followers.


In 1979, Jerry Falwell formed the conservative Christian political force he called the Moral Majority. One reason he did so was his opposition to integration of public schools. "If Chief Justice Warren and his associates had known God's word and had desired to do the Lord's will," he said about the Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board of Education decision, "I am quite confident that the 1954 decision would never have been made.... The facilities should be separate. When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line."

He encouraged his membership to become elected to school boards because as he stated: "That certain teachings in public schools and secular education in general, are breeding grounds for atheism, secularism, and humanism," which he claimed to be in contradiction with Christian morality. He called on the United States to change its public education system by implementing a school voucher system which would allow parents to send their children to either public or private schools. His motives were to decrease the number of children attending public schools until they all would be shut down or taken over by Christian churches that toed his line.

Jerry Falwell wrote in America Can Be Saved that "I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them."

Jerry Falwell always claimed he believed in the inerrancy of the Bible and followed it strictly, he might have done some good for his fellow man had he realized the Old and New Testaments contain a total of 31,156 verses - of which over 6,000 deal with alleviating poverty, defending the oppressed and caring for the widow and fatherless child, while not one verse deals directly with schools, abortion, segregation based on race or gay marriage.

Sunday

Musings Of A Novitiate Ally: Part 1

I found this post at Meet Adam and Steve by Hugh Yeman and he graciously has allowed me to cross-post it here:
See after the post for more about Meet Adam and Steve

Musings Of A Novitiate Ally: Part 1

Two weeks ago I was hanging out at Blind Tiger waxing enthusiastic about my new blog. Seth took a look at my flier, saw the words "GAY / LESBIAN / BISEXUAL / TRANSGENDER" and said "I'm not comfortable with transgender people." I shot back "Well, who would be?"

This was an exaggeration. I know that many people are comfortable with transsexuals. The point I was trying to make was "Dude. You get to be uncomfortable." This assertion was high in my constellation of mental talking points for several reasons.

Just a few nights previously I'd hung out at the Ramrod, and you'd damned well better believe I was uncomfortable. Why? Not because I was in a room full of gay guys on the gayest street in the gayest neighborhood I knew of. I was uncomfortable because the bartender was being a big drama queen, loudly telling the customer next to me about his sexual exploits. But I was beginning to realize something else: that I would have been just as uncomfortable with a straight woman saying the same things. Or a straight man - heck, that probably would have made me more uncomfortable because of the misogyny with which such exhortations are almost inevitably marbled. It wasn't that he was gay; it was that he was airing his musky laundry, and that bugs the shit out of me.

So you see, I learned that I'm never really uncomfortable with LGBT folks; I'm uncomfortable with behaviors that I may associate with them, but are actually found throughout humanity. And if I can shed my false discomfort, so can everyone else.

No. Fuck that.

I'm not that much of a happy-happy marginalizing Kumbaya-singin' Pollyanna. That ain't me, babe. Y'know why? Because I believe that we are, as a species, psychotic about discomfort. I mean, for gosh sake, does no one remember the land of the Lotus Eaters? There's a reason why Homer thought that those lazy fuckers missed the existential boat, and it's the same reason James T. Kirk would puke in his mouth at the thought of shunning discomfort. Our discomfort is made of our demons, and Facing our demons makes us mighty. Our discomfort is exactly that which does not kill us, and we all know what that does.

Why is discomfort so important to me? Well..

I went to Cornell from the fall of 1988 until the spring of 1992. During those four years I grew to loathe knee-jerk political correctness, which I later came to see as Nazi mind control. The best way to describe the atmosphere is to recount a short conversation in the dorm lounge. Folks were talking about abortion, and I was trying to articulate my view that the whole question of when a fetus becomes a baby seemed pointless to me: the point was that it was a potential human life, and the thought of cutting that off saddened me, even though I was pro-choice. I never got to that last bit, though. The girl arguing the feminist talking points cut me off with the big liberal conversation-ender du jour: she dismissed me as a man who would never have to make the decision. That I was on her side didn't matter. I wasn't toeing the party line, so I had to be shut up and shut down.

I thought about this for the umpteenth time. Then I thought of the 2004 elections, when some people voted for Bush because their religious leaders said that the liberals wanted to force people into gay marriages. And for the first time, I saw the small kernel of plausibility in those stories. I still say that the people who believed them were gullible fools, but when i think back to the PC mind-control attempts of the early ninetes it becomes understandable.

We are complicit in the backlashes that hurt our movement. We have to own that. We have to be smart: learn from our mistakes, choose our battles, and not try to control peoples' minds! People get to be uncomfortable with abortion. People get to be uncomfortable with homosexuals. I get to be uncomfortable with transsexuals, and if you disagree, then let's reframe this. Here's a short list of people who make me uncomfortable, in no particular order. If I were to sort the list and put transsexuals in, I doubt they would be near the top.

  • Football players and gym rats
  • People with lots of piercings
  • Really fat people (I was really fat)
  • Orange ladies who are supposed to look tanned
  • Women with lots of makeup
  • Young girls trying to look sexy
  • Inconsiderate people, e.g. cell shouters and people who talk in movies or don't make room for others on the train
  • People who disguise hate or a desire to win an argument as logic
  • Ignorant people
  • Myself, when I see my own ignorance

Being uncomfortable with other humans, not to mention our own inner workings, is part of the design specs of a human. We get to be uncomfortable. So to all you conservatives and religious folks out there: if anyone tells you that you're not allowed to be uncomfortable with homosexuals, you tell them from me - a liberal, fag-loving unbeliever - that they can go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. No one gets to control your mind.

Last year, when I was going through some bad times, a good friend told me something that his mother had told him as a child: "If someone has a problem with you, it's their problem." This stuck with me, because I know that I worry way too much about what other people think of me. I wouldn't want to go too far in the opposite direction, because I find people who spend their lives proudly exclaiming "I don't give a shit what anyone thinks of me" to be particularly odious. But I could stand a good, heaping dose of "It's their problem." And it works both ways.

If I am uncomfortable with transsexuals it's my problem. If you're uncomfortable with the thought of homosexuality, it's your problem. I ain't a victim by a damn sight, and neither are you; they didn't make us uncomfortable; we just are uncomfortable. And our state of being gives us no more right to reduce another person to a second-class citizen than would an aversion to russet tones justify us in taking a razor to every redhead we saw on the street.

So. You get to be uncomfortable, and the operative word here is "be". Discomfort is a state if being - your being. You get to have your reactions. What you don't get to do is abrogate another person's rights because of your discomfort. You have an immensely powerful processor squelching about in your skull. You are capable of parsing your inner discomforts from your outer sanctions. Figure it out.


The mission statement of Meet Adam and Steve:

Many of you out there don't know anyone (or don’t think you know anyone) who is GLBT because of where you live. Some of you may think that all such people look or act a certain way, but this is simply not true. There are many lesbians that most people don’t recognize as such because they don’t fit the stereotype, and the same thing applies to gay men.


The folks on these pages were kind enough to let me photograph them, and to allow me to share their faces and their stories with you. Click on a few and see them as the normal people they are. I hope that this will help break some barriers, stop some ignorance within people, and help to spread a universal message of love.

-Hugh Yeman

Saturday

Response to "Silencing The Christians"

The American Family Association recently showed their film "Silencing The Christians" in Florida. They are attempting to show it across the country. The following is: "I want SEX in public? A rebuttal video to Speechless: Silencing Christians"


As an LGBT activist, I would like to state, I have never read the book discussed in this film, nor do I know anyone who has........

This is who The American Family Association is:

The American Family Association's president Tim Wildmon has praised America Vision founder Gary DeMar as "one of the best writers out there in the Christian community and thinkers."

Gary DeMar on the February 2, 2006 broadcast of Today's Issues, a program of AFA's American Family Radio stated in an interview:

DeMAR: The definition of Christian Reconstruction is simply this: The Bible applies to every facet of life. That means not just the judicial aspects of life, such as civil government, church government, but business, economics -- every facet of society. The Bible has something to say about each area. For example, on homosexuals: We do not believe that homosexuals ought to be executed. The Bible doesn't say that homosexuals ought to be executed. What it says is thGary DeMaris: If two men lie together like man and woman, they are to be put to death.

PORTEOUS: What the hell do you think that is?

DeMAR: Well, wait a minute. If a guy comes up to me and he says, "I'm a homosexual," that doesn't mean he's to be executed. If you understand the Scriptures, it says very clearly: If a man comes up to you and says, "I've murdered somebody," that doesn't mean that person ought to be executed.

GONZALES: Oh, so what you are saying, Gary, is, if you catch homosexuals in the act, then the Bible says to execute them.

DeMAR: The Bible lays forth the severest penalty, which would be capital punishment for two men who publicly engage in sodomy. DeMar continued by stating his nominal support for the death penalty for adulterers and abortion doctors:

GONZALES: If, indeed, the Reconstructionist movement ever made it in America, would you advocate these biblical principles being carried out: the execution of the adulterer, the abortionist, and the homosexual?

DeMAR: I'm saying that they could be implemented, yes.


From Wikipeidia:

The AFA defines itself as "a Christian organization promoting the Christian Biblical Ethic of decency in American society with primary emphasis on TV and other media"

It pursues its views and other issues through a number of activism efforts, including boycotts, "action alert" e-mails, publications on the AFA's web sites or in the AFA Journal, broadcasts on American Family Radio, and lobbying. The legal efforts previously promoted by the AFA Center for Law and Policy were eliminated in 2007.

Chief among its efforts were the recognition of Christmas in seasonal print advertisements; the criminalization of homosexuality; lobbying against same-sex marriage, and in opposition of equal-rights and hate-crime legislation that would include sexual orientation and gender identity under categories already protected and advocating censorship of print and electronic media.

The organization has an annual budget of roughly US $14 million and owns 180 American Family Radio stations in 28 states.

The AFA has boycotted multiple U.S. companies for various reasons, most often relating to Christmas controversies, pornography, support of pro-choice activism, and support of LGBT activism, including same-sex partner employee benefits.

These organizations include: 7-Eleven, Abercrombie & Fitch, American Airlines, American Girl, Blockbuster Video, Burger King, Calvin Klein, Carl's Jr., Clorox, Crest, Ford, Hallmark Cards, Kmart, Kraft Foods, S. C. Johnson & Son, Movie Gallery, Microsoft, MTV, Mary Kay, NutriSystem, Old Navy, IKEA, Sears, Pampers, Procter & Gamble, Target, Tide, Walt Disney Company, and PepsiCo.

Although the AFA criticizes the People's Republic of China for its persecution of Christians the AFA has yet to actually move to boycott retailers of Chinese goods. To the contrary, the AFA has urged its members to support retailers such as Wal Mart, which deal mainly in Chinese goods.

On October 19, 1998, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, led by Leslie Katz, wrote a letter to the AFA in response to an advertisement placed in the San Francisco Chronicle by the AFA regarding homosexuality and Christianity. The letter stated:

Supervisor Leslie Katz denounces your rhetoric against gays, lesbians and transgendered people. What happened to Matthew Shepard is in part due to the message being espoused by your groups that gays and lesbians are not worthy of the most basic equal rights and treatment. It is not an exaggeration to say that there is a direct correlation between these acts of discrimination, such as when gays and lesbians are called sinful and when major religious organizations say they can change if they tried, and the horrible crimes committed against gays and lesbians.

Friday

CNN story: 'Gayby boom': Children of gay couples speak out

'Gayby boom': Children of gay couples speak out

CNN -- Jesse Levey is a Republican activist who says he believes in family values, small government and his lesbian mothers' right to marry. Levey is part of the "gayby boom" generation. The 29-year-old management consultant is the son of a lesbian couple who chose to have a child through artificial insemination. He's their only child.

Critics of same-sex marriage say people such as Levey will grow up shunned and sexually confused. Yet he says he's a "well-adjusted heterosexual" whose upbringing proves that love, not gender, makes a family.

It damages the children, says Dale O'Leary, author of "One Man, One Woman: A Catholics Guide to Defending Marriage." She says that all children have a natural desire for a parent of each gender. But children of same-sex couples are forced to repress that desire because their parents won't accept it, she says. Their parents won't acknowledge their children's needs because they don't want to admit that they have caused their children to suffer.

O'Leary says she doesn't personally know any same-sex parents or their children. That's the problem, some children of same-sex children say. So many people are talking about them; not enough are talking to them, they say.

Some gayby boomers say they are tired of hearing that their family isn't legitimate. It's an argument many have heard since they were children. They learned that they didn't fit the definition of the "right" family, and worried how others would react if they found out about their parents.

The result: the children of same-sex couples often lived lives that were more closeted than their parents. "Many of us were so closeted that we didn't know others like us were out there," says Danielle Silber, a 26-year-old fundraiser for the International Rescue Committee, who was raised by lesbian mothers and gay fathers in Takoma Park, Maryland.

"In middle school, because of pervasive homophobia and taunting, I didn't tell any of my new friends in school about my family to the point where I wouldn't invite them to my birthday parties," Silber says. Silber says she didn't tell her parents about her fear of harassment because she was afraid to stand up for her family in school even though she was proud of them.

"Although I would normally turn to my family, I couldn't because I was ashamed that I was ashamed of them," she says.

Shame has now turned to pride for some gayby boomers. Many are now adults. They're writing memoirs, searching one another out online and have even formed their own support and advocacy group.

Please read the entire story at CNN.com