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crossposted on Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters
Religious right groups often place themselves on the pedestal of virtue and respectability. However if one assesses how they conduct business, one would wonder if they actually deserve to be knocked off that pedestal.
Last weekend, it was Matt Barber of the Liberty Counsel actually defending countries who torture and execute lgbts
Yesterday, the Family Research Council spoke out against Obama Administration plans to create a national resource center for lgbt seniors:
HHS has no idea how many LGBT seniors exist. No one does! The movement is only a few decades old, and people who are 80- or 90-years-old didn't grow up in a culture where it was acceptable to identify with this lifestyle.
Only a few decades old? Who knew 20 or 30 years was such a short time?
What a crude and totally insensitive remark.
And totally untrue. Via that ugly statement, FRC tried to refute information supplied by the Obama Adminstration as to the number of lgbt seniors:
Of course, the real tragedy here–apart from the unnecessary spending–is that, given the risks of homosexual conduct, few of these people are likely to live long enough to become senior citizens! Yet once again, the Obama administration is rushing to reward a lifestyle that poses one of the greatest public health risks in America.
Experts estimate that as many as 1.5 to 4 million LGBT individuals are age 60 and older. Agencies that provide services to older individuals may be unfamiliar or uncomfortable with the needs of this group of individuals. The new Resource Center for LGBT Elders will provide information, assistance and resources for both LGBT organizations and mainstream aging services providers at the state and community level to assist them in the development and provision of culturally sensitive supports and services. The LGBT Center will also be available to educate the LGBT community about the importance of planning ahead for futurelong term care needs.
Also, according to a September 18, 2008 issue of Newsweek:
Over the next 25 years, persons in America who are 65 and older are expected to grow from about 12 to 20 percent of the total population, and various estimates indicate that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered individuals will comprise 7 to 10 percent of that senior population. Meanwhile, like the Baby Boomers of all stripes, aging gays and lesbians are radically redefining what it means to be a senior—and how they fit into the larger community. They're coming out of the closet, vocalizing their experiences and needs, and, most importantly, demanding public recognition. “If you go back 40 years, there were virtually no openly gay seniors,” says Gary Gates, a senior research fellow and demographer at the Williams Institute. “But now you have a large enough group that people are paying attention.”
It doesn't matter whether or not the specific number of elderly lgbts are known.
The point is finding out who they are and taking care of their needs, i.e. a perfect reason for the creation of this national resource center.
But we shouldn't be surprised that FRC feels the need to attack the idea.
Just noting the existence of lgbt seniors refutes the “gays have a short life span” and the “homosexuality poses a great health risk” lies that FRC and other so-called pro-values groups push.
In fact, it is their continued citings of discredited Paul Cameron data, reliance on outdated studies, and constant distortion of legtimate studies that have led these lies to take root in the minds of many people.
But the meanspirited way FRC went about attacking the idea of an lgbt senior resource center belies its claim to be a Christian organization.
Expressing a belief that homosexuality is a sin is one thing. Actively trying to throwing a monkey wrench into plans to help senior citizens simply because you do not agree with their sexual orientation is entirely something else.
And part of FRC's reasoning for its opposition actually goes against the nature of Christianity.
In the Bible (Matthew 25:45), Jesus said ” . . .whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”
So now FRC, which claims to espouse the values that Jesus taught, is implying that since the number of lgbt senior citizens are allegedly small, they shouldn't warrant any help from the government.
The organization must be reading that new Conservapedia version of the Bible everyone is talking about.
In its eagerness to espouse its version of “values,” FRC seems to have abandoned basic Christian decency, as well as common human decency.
The organization forgets that some of these lgbt seniors could be someone's mother, someone's father, or a veteran.
And isn't it moral to take care of our elderly citizens, period?
In the real world, the answer to this question would be yes. But in the bizarro world of pseudo Christian values that FRC populates, we know the answer is “only if they are not homosexuals.”
Hat tip to www.Goodasyou.org
Related articles and posts:
Gay couples enter golden years with more risk
The Family Research Council continues to use 'outdated' work
How religious right groups distort legitimate research to demonize the gay community
Why we should care about Paul Cameron
U.N. official defends murder of lgbts and the religious right defends HIM
8 Comments
They know these seniors are alienated from their families, the made sure it was the case. They like it when we suffer look at the creepy smiles they have.
20 or 30 years? Stonewall was 40and let us not forget the Mattachine Society, founded in 1948. We were protesting the White House and State Department in 1965.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M…
Like they careAbout what’s actually in the Bible. The evangelical movement is a political movement based on the morality of hate that has been giving free pass by the relatively moral words of Jesus in the Bible.
I can attest that these people have not read the Bible. They have their pastor tell them to read a passage and then they have everyone close their books while the pastor explains why that means they are to hate various groups and actions.
So no, the fact that they are not “christian” is no surprise. It’s all a con game.
These people can put out a screedclaiming that the movement is 20 years old, there are no old LGBTs, and they all die anyway – and in the same pamphlet attack Harry Hay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H…
Then they will oppose the census asking if people are gay while they say that no one knows how many there are.
It’s all consistent, if you are a christian nut job.
You both beat me to it.Exactly the point I was going to make. And all that is just in the States and not counting places like pre-war Germany.
But even with just the anniversary of Stonewall being counted off year after year, how could anyone — let alone an LGBT blogger — think that the movement for LGBT equality started in 1989???
Wow, that’s some great stuff Kathleen1882, who knew?!? Although I’m not super-surprised, it seems there was a tiny window in the late 19th century, early 20th, before the rise of evangelical movement where gay people, like the rest of society, enjoyed a little sense of freedom from the constraints of Victorian era.
But to hear social conservative tell it, the clock on GLBT right was reset in 1993 with DADT. In some ways, that’s another disservice Clinton did us. He restarted the clock on gays in the military issue. Though we’d been fighting that policy for decades, every article mentions 1993 and 16 years as though that was the starting point.
Eff them; just eff-them!… and their smug, hating little personality disorders.
Not a true follower of Christ in the bunch. All about preserving their hetero-centric [white] patriarchal privilege and power in the name of religion. Whitewashed tombs that make their disciples twice as fit for hell as they are themselves.
Somewhat incidental……to the specific topic of the post, but that old chestnut about homosexuality as a “public health risk” really got to me today.
It struck me that even if their hateful lies about STD-riddled gheys were true, homosexual behavior would pose a “health risk” only to those who chose to participate, not the broader public. The usual fear-politics from a bunch of guilt-driven assholes, which should be little surprise; guilt and fear are very close cousins, if you think about it.