This post has been updated to address recent news

On January 8, I published How They See Us: Unmasking the Religious Right War on Gay America  on Scribd. My goal at the time was to create a simple understanding of  religious right  anti-gay propaganda by the use of graphics, visuals, and information I gleaned from my blog.

I’m happy to report that five months later, while not on the radar of the mainstream lgbt media, the book has become a huge success.

As of right now, How They See Us has drawn over 20,000 readers, making it the number one political book as well as the number four non-fiction book on Scribd.

A lot of the credit is owed to the book’s supporters who consistently either talked it up to their friends, tweeted it on a daily basis, or embedded it on their blogs. And recent events has shown that this book is needed.

Remember last month when Michigan Republican leader, Dave Agema, posted what he called “facts about homosexuality” on Facebook. Many of Agema’s claims had already been cited and refuted in How They See Us. And the fact that Agema pulled his claims from an over 20-year-old piece even proved the basic point of my booklet – that the same claims made now by such groups as the Family Research Council, the American Family Association, and other so-called pro-family groups are not facts but old lies rooted in junk science or cherry-picked legitimate science.

And with marriage equality quickly gaining support and popularity, there seems to be this false dichotomy going around that  Christians are being victimized for speaking against marriage equality. Two weeks ago, an article on CNN’s webpage asked that question.  The article was okay but it nevertheless still gave the inaccurate impression that religious right groups are unfairly victimized simply for expressing religious opposition to marriage equality. This mindset totally absolves them of the propaganda they have spread about the lgbt community before marriage equality was even an issue.

My next goal with How They See Us is getting more  copies into the hands of people who can use them. I am currently creating a hard copy edition of How They See Us which I intend to distribute at pride festivals free of charge. I also intend to mail copies to certain members of Congress, HRC, GLAAD, and also put the word out to many pride centers across the nation that the book is available for their usage free of charge.

While articles have been written which ask the question of whether or not Christians are being attacked for professing their so-called personal beliefs, there has been very little media attention and virtually NO mainstream articles focusing on present-day religious right anti-gay propaganda or how so-called “pro-family” groups routinely cherry-pick science to demonize gays. And that’s a real shame. Hopefully, How They See Us can help to change that.

France’s president has signed into law a controversial bill making the country the ninth in Europe, and 14th globally, to legalise gay marriage.

On Friday, the Constitutional Council rejected a challenge by the right-wing opposition, clearing the way for Francois Hollande to sign the bill.

He said: “I have taken [the decision]; now it is time to respect the law of the Republic.”

The first gay wedding could be held 10 days after the bill’s signing.

But Parliamentary Relations Minister Alain Vidalies told French TV he expected the first ceremonies to take place “before 1 July”.

Mariage pour tous!

From McKinney, Texas, “Judge says lesbian mom’s partner must go“:

Page Price and Carolyn Compton have been together for almost three years, but a Collin County judge is forcing them apart.

Judge John Roach Jr., a Republican who presides over the 296th District Court, enforced the “morality clause” in Compton’s divorce papers on Tuesday, May 7. Under the clause, someone who has a “dating or intimate relationship” with the person or is not related “by blood or marriage” is not allowed after 9 p.m. when the children are present. Price was given 30 days to move out of the home because the children live with the couple.

Price posted about the judge’s ruling on Facebook last week, writing that the judge placed the clause in the divorce papers because he didn’t like Compton’s “lifestyle.”

From Pittsburg, Texas, “Caught off guard“:

With his partner of 34 years in a nursing home, a court order preventing him from entering the facility and two weeks to get out of his house, Lon Watts sold his wedding ring to pay for gas to get to his mother’s place in Oklahoma.

Watts never expected to be in this position, because he always thought of himself as part of his partner Jim Heath’s family.

But after Heath was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, his sister stepped in and took guardianship from Watts, who is now unable to see or talk to Heath.

“Historic Yes to Equality”

The Senate of Puerto Rico passed an LGBT anti-discrimination bill on Thursday on a vote of 15-11.

The bill (PS-238) would amend Puerto Rico’s existing anti-discrimination laws, adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the classes already protected against discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations and government services.

“The bill’s passage comes three days after San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz mandated the Puerto Rican capital’s police department to equally apply the island’s current domestic violence laws, regardless of the reported victim’s sexual orientation. She also signed a second executive order that bans discrimination against the city’s municipal employees based on their sexual orientation or gender identity and expression,” reports Washington Blade.

The bill now moves to the House for consideration.  Gov. Alejandro García Padilla supports the bill.

Use the hash tag #PS238 to follow commentary on the bill on Twitter.

In the video below, watch Pedro Julio Serrano of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz and openly gay council member Pedro Peters Maldonado celebrate passage of the bill by the Senate:

Unbelievable. A day after smearing gay men with an ugly tweet about the Boy Scouts and pedophilia, Liberty Counsel member and Liberty University Dean (yeah, I know!) Matt Barber has the audacity to talk about how marriage equality is from Satan and is a way that government is “shaking its fist” at God.

I doubt Satan has anything to do with marriage equality. If you ask me, I think he was too busy getting Barber to post that nasty tweet.

Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) reiterated his longstanding support for passage of the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) on Wednesday with a personal note.

“My niece is a lesbian,” Reid told reporters. “She’s a school teacher. Her employment shouldn’t be affected with that. We should have a law that says that, not just the good graces of wherever you work.”

ENDA would ban workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.  It is currently legal to fire or refuse to hire gay workers in 29 states and transgender workers in 34 states.  Federal law already prohibits employers from discriminating based on race, religion, age, gender and disability.

Freedom to Work, and organization advocating passage of the bill, thanked Sen. Reid by posting the image above on their Facebook page.  Shortly thereafter Sen. Reid re-posted the image to his own Facebook page with the message “Thank you for all your support. I am committed to passing ENDA!”

Many people left appreciative comments on Sen. Reids post in response, but plenty of others left comments that demonstrate so clearly why ENDA is needed.  They range from “need to be educated on the issue” to outright homophobic in nature.  When LGBT people are up against these kinds of attitudes in the workplace, the need for legal anti-discrimination protections is obvious.

Um how about all men created equal …the constitution…we dont need some affirmative action for homosexuals.

The constitution says nothing about sexual preference. Why have politicians made it an issue?

Sexual orientation has NOTHING to do with discrimination! It is a personal choice – NOT a human rights issue!

Tell the clam clacker to go teach school in Saudi Arabia! (Lets see how well that works out)

So long as she DOES NOT push her lesbianism on our kids!!!!!!!

Let me guess… She has had an abortion too!!! Lmao. U dern liberals are a mess!! Sick!

Put the ENDA back in the closet where it belongs, you moron.

The underlying assumption of the epithet was simple: the racist belief or fear that blacks were slovenly and criminally-inclined, and could only ‘pollute’ a white neighborhood and its denizens’ bloodlines.

Although racial, ethnic and religious minorities and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Americans have different, albeit sometimes overlapping histories in this country, they have the commonality of all having been targeted with biased speech and laws.

When I first joined the marriage equality movement in 2003, the rhetoric coming from marriage discrimination proponents was immediately familiar. The words had been updated to fit the times, replacing “neighborhood” with “institution of marriage”, but the same message came though loud and clear: if gays are allowed to marry, there goes the neighborhood.

The parallels between arguments made today against same-sex marriage and arguments made in the 19th and 20th centuries against marriage for slaves and interracial couples have been documented by Howard University School of Law Civil Rights Clinic in a friend of the court brief in the Proposition 8 case now before the United States Supreme Court.  The brief’s authors summarize the phenomenon:

Marriage is a symbol of civil freedom, a marker of social equality, a badge of full citizenship, and a social resource of irreplaceable value. Yet this fundamental expression of human dignity has also been misused as a political sieve for separating individuals into a preferred class, to which society grants a broad complement of legal rights and privileges, and a lesser class, to which it accords less than a full measure of equality. Such was the case when slaves before Reconstruction and interracial couples in the days of segregation were denied full marriage equality.
…
Today, public debate over interracial unions has generally died since this Court’s Loving v. Virginia decision in 1967 such that we are now long past the time when anyone would seriously claim that race-based marriage equality threatens the moral fabric of our civilization, is contrary to nature, or is harmful to children. Yet these arguments, however discredited, have not disappeared altogether. Instead, they have been recycled to oppose same-sex marriage.

Below are paired examples of racist and anti-gay quotes provided in the brief to illustrate how today’s marriage discrimination proponents have recycled the rhetoric of their racist predecessors:

Like Marriage for Same-Sex Couples Today, Interracial Marriage was Once Widely Considered a Threat to Social Order and the Institutions of Marriage and Family

Racist:  “It is through the marriage relation that the homes of a people are created … These homes, in which the virtues are most cultivated and happiness most abounds, are the true officinæ gentium—the nurseries of States. Who can estimate the evil of introducing into their most intimate relations, elements so heterogeneous that they must naturally cause discord, shame, disruption of family circles and estrangement of kindred?” Source: Green v. State, 58 Ala. (1877)

Anti-Gay:  “The damage done to the minds, bodies and social welfare of this nation by drugs is nothing compared to the damage that same-sex marriage will do to this nation and its people.” Source: Brief of Westboro Baptist Church as Amicus Curiae (2013)

Like Same-Sex Couples Today, Interracial Couples were Once Condemned as Unnatural and Pathological

Racist:  “The moral and physical development of both races … require that they should be kept distinct and separate … that connections and alliance so unnatural that God and nature seem to forbid them, should be prohibited by positive law, and subject to no evasion”.  Source: Kinney v. Commonwealth, (Va. 1878).

Anti-Gay:  “[A] constitutionally mandated genderless marriage regime will effectively advance a particular conception of the moral equality of forms of sexuality, a conception grounded in the influential ‘comprehensive doctrines’ of some Americans, particularly among the Nation’s elites, but one contested by the comprehensive doctrines of many other Americans.” Source: Amicus Brief for the Coalition for the Protection of Marriage (2013)

Judeo-Christian theological interpretations often have been invoked to challenge marriage for both interracial and same-sex couples

Racist:  “A man can not commit so great an offense against his race, against the country, against his God, in any other way, as to give his daughter in marriage to a negro—a beast—or to take one of their females for his wife.” Source: Ariel [Buckner H. Payne], The Negro: What Is His Ethnological Status? (1867)

Anti-Gay: “[T]he devil wants to blur the lines between right and wrong when it comes to family structure”; “marriage is the symbol of our salvation and the symbol of our relationship with Christ”; that God is “giving America a second chance”; and implored voters to “stand up for Jesus Christ” and not deny Jesus like Peter did”.  Source: A pro-Proposition 8 ad (2008)

Racist:  “You shall not let your livestock breed with another kind. You shall not sow your field with mixed seed. Nor shall a garment of mixed linen and wool come upon you.” James Graham Cook, The Segregationists (1962), quoting Leviticus 19:19

Anti-Gay:  “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”  Source: Ubiquitous, quoting Leviticus 18:22 (Laurel’s note: e.g. Family Research Council)

Like Same-Sex Parenting Today, Interracial Parenting Was Once Considered Damaging to the Physical and Psychological Health of Children

Racist:  “If allowed to live with her mother [and black stepfather, the child] ‘will not grow up and mature as a normal white child should but rather will be rejected, shunned and avoided by children of both races and as a result her entire life could, and unavoidably would, be adversely affected.” Source: Romano, Race Mixing: Black and White Marriage in Postwar America (2003)

Anti-Gay:  “[T]he man-woman marriage institution is essentially child-centered; a genderless marriage regime ‘neutralizes the law’s ability to say that children need their mothers and fathers and reifies a new conception of marriage that is centered on the couple rather than children,’ teaching that marriage is a private relationship between two people created primarily to satisfy the needs of adults.” Source: Brief for Coalition for the Protection of Marriage (2013)

The Howard University brief concludes:

In the final analysis, there is nothing new in the arguments against same-sex couples having the freedom to marry. Underneath the surface politeness of many of the submissions by Petitioners [Prop 8 proponents] and their amici lie the same uncivil sentiments that animated the opposition to interracial marriage: the words may be less uncharitable, the phrasing less intemperate, but the debasing and degrading ideas are at bottom the same. However much opponents of marriage for same-sex couples may insist “this time it is different,” there remains an appalling familiarity to the refrain that allowing same-sex couples the same human dignity as everyone else will threaten social order, degrade individuals, and harm children. We suffered through the same awful dirge when slave owners sought to preserve the ban against slave marriage and segregationists opposed interracial marriage. Then, as now, some claimed with all sincerity and unwavering conviction that if African-Americans were accorded full human dignity, our society, our morality, and our faith would come to grief and lay in ruins.

But the certainty and monotony with which some will always sound the death knell for society, morality, and faith, just because two adults choose to marry, cannot obscure the reality that we heard virtually the same arguments for almost three hundred years to justify preventing two black people from marrying and then a black man from marrying a white woman. Nor, when all is said and done, can these jeremiads about how marriage equality for same-sex couples will lead to our final slouching toward Gomorrah obscure the reality that it is “an inexorable law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one’s own.”

The brief contains a lot of nuance and detail that can’t be easily summarized here.  Click here to read the whole document.  But the excerpts above are enough to prove that anti-gay “traditional marriage” advocates are truly traditional in at least one sense: they use traditional racist talking points in their effort to ban marriage for same-sex couples.

Assisted by five young lady-staffers, Eugene Delgaudio claimed on Monday to be delivering 1,000,000 petitions to Congress.

Mr. Delgaudio is president of Public Advocate of the United States, an anti-LGBT organization with a million-dollar annual budget.  Public Advocate of the United States has paid Mr. Delgaudio a total of at least $720,000 in “management” fees for the years 2005 through 2011.

The petitions that Mr. Delgaudio allegedly delivered to Congress must be printed on virtual paper, because the stacks of pizza boxes supposedly housing them are so light that they seem almost weightless when carried (0:06-0:12), and bob and sway when Mr. Delgaudio rests his hand upon them (1:29-1:46).  Watch the video, right.

It’s as if there was nothing but air in those boxes.

Mr. Delgaudio has been soliciting signatures (and cash donations) for this petition since January.  The petition is in protest of the Student Non-Discrimination Act, which Family Equality Council describes as “a federal bill that would prohibit bullying, harassment, and discrimination against students because of their sexual orientation or gender identity or because they have LGBT parents or friends”.

Mr. Delgaudio uses a more animus-driven description of the bill in his latest solicitation email:

The radical homosexual activists infiltrating the United States Congress have a plan:

Indoctrinate an entire generation of American children with pro-homosexual propaganda and thereby eliminate traditional values from American society.

Their ultimate dream is to create a new America based on sexual promiscuity in which the values you and I cherish are long forgotten.

I hate to admit it, but if they pass the deceptively named “Student Non-Discrimination Act,”that’s exactly what they’ll do.

Better named the “Homosexual Classrooms Act,” its chief advocate in Congress is Rep. Jared Polis, himself an open homosexual and radical activist.

That’s why I need you to act quickly — right away — to protect our nation’s youth.

Please sign your petition right away. The sooner I receive it, the sooner I can rush it to the Capitol with thousands more.

And please consider a generous contribution of $5, $10, or $25 to help Public Advocate fight this battle.

Polis’ Homosexual Classrooms Act contains a laundry list of anti-family provisions that must be defeated or will:

*** Require schools to teach appalling homosexual acts so “homosexual students” don’t feel “singled out” during already explicit sex-ed classes;

*** Spin impressionable students in a whirlwind of sexual confusion and misinformation, even peer pressure to “experiment” with the homosexual “lifestyle”;

*** Exempt homosexual students from punishment for propositioning, harassing, or even sexually assaulting their classmates, as part of their specially-protected right to “freedom of self-expression”;

*** Force private and even religious schools to teach a pro-homosexual curriculum and purge any reference to religion if a student claims it creates a “hostile learning environment”.

And this bill is just the beginning of the Homosexual Lobby’s radical agenda.

In fact, it will set them up to ram through their entire perverted vision for a homosexual America.

Read the actual bill text here and judge for yourself whether Mr. Delgaudio is as honest in his description of the bill is he is about the content of those pizza boxes.

This absolutely vindictive cartoon is courtesy of Liberty Counsel member Matt Barber. The sad irony is that this is the same guy who had the nerve to pen a “I don’t hate you, just your lifestyle” letter:

I know from which I speak. I am no better than you. I, too, once lived a lifestyle of sexual sin. Not homosexual sin, but sexual sin nonetheless. As a young man I did not treat God’s daughters as He intended and, instead, engaged in a lifestyle of selfish womanizing and fornication.

The wages of sin in my life was death – spiritual and emotional death. I was on your same path.But by His grace, I was offered and accepted “the free gift of God.” I, instead, was saved and given “eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Do I still struggle with sin? Of course. Every day. We all do. We are fallen. We are sinners. Still, Christ’s gift to me was forgiveness, redemption and life everlasting. My friend, that gift is available to you as well.

 

Is this hypocrite for real? What Barber did by tweeting that awful cartoon is no different than what racists to do African-Americans:

Or what anti-Semites do to people of the Jewish faith:

I think Matt Barber needs to stop worrying about gays and read his Bible again. Apparently he is so consumed about the so-called sin of homosexuality that he seems to have forgotten the one about bearing false witness against one’s neighbor.

It’s people like Barber – two-faced people who talk about how they have Jesus’ love with one face while bashing their neighbor with the other – who do more harm to Christianity. At the very least, Barber’s tweet is something to remember the next time he, Tony Perkins, and the rest of the religious right whine to the press about “anti-Christian persecution” by gays.

Hat tip to Right Wing Watch.

The following video is yet another one pushed by the Family Research Council claiming that if gays are allowed in the Boy Scouts, there will be more boys at risk of being molested. This time, FRC allows Brian Rushfeldt, head of Canada Family Action do its dirty work.

It’s truly nauseating how low FRC will stoop with the lies.