Why tell the truth when the lies are so compelling?

You may have heard that there's a suit filed in Idaho by a wedding chapel who claims they are being threatened by the city over their refusal to marry same sex couples.  Not true.      It's a PR stunt by the right.

Mike Huckabee tells the lie:

"Remember when same-sex marriage activists used to claim that it would never infringe on other people’s religious beliefs? Well, that was a lie....Donald and Evelyn Knapp own a wedding chapel in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, called The Hitching Post. They’re both ordained ministers and devoutly religious, so they declined to perform a same-sex wedding."

Facts are so inconvenient:

"The city of Coeur d’Alene has been contacted by a huge volume of people inquiring about our anti-discrimination ordinance, passed in 2013 by the City Council. These contacts have been a reaction to a lawsuit filed by the owners of a local marriage chapel, the Hitching Post, which claims the city has taken inappropriate action against their business for their decision to not perform same-sex marriages. In fact, the city has received no complaints about the Hitching Post and we have never threatened them. If we did get a complaint we would investigate it like any other complaint to determine if there is a legitimate violation of a city code. If we investigate it and determine that they fall within our exemption for religious corporations, we would not pursue it further because they would be exempt."

REgnerus fallout

Do you remember the Regnerus study, in which a sociologist purported to show that children of gay parents do worse?  Problem is, his definition of "children with gay parents" REALLY was "children whose parents broke up and one MIGHT have been gay."  He didn't compare kids from stable straight families, to kids from stable gay families.  And as any scientist knows, you really have to control for all those variables if you want to draw a conclusion.

An investigation by the journal that published the data found that it was unjustifiable,  while the author was in a rather--shall we say, ethically shaky relationship with the far-right group that funded the study.  The peer review was anything but objective.  The primary scholarly group in this field has roundly criticized the study as not worth the paper it is printed on.  Since then, Regnerus has been on the "circuit" arguing that Teh Gayz make terrible parents.  (You can read our coverage here).

Trying to get at how an article with such dubious merits got published, a reporter has filed for documents from the University of Central Florida, where the editor is.  UCF is vigorously trying NOT to reveal the documents.  Hmmmm, wonder why?

More at The Regnerus Fallout site.

Exposing the lies of the anti-equality side

Right on schedule, the fear-mongering ads are being run in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington.

You know the ones, about how horrible homos will sue anyone who disagrees with them, ruin hardworking people's businesses,  or force churches to marry goats.  Or something.

This article from Portland, ME the exposes the strategy.  Go!  Read!  Share!

Frank Schubert likes to tell stories.

Really, really short stories. 

Stories so short they can scare the bejesus out of you before you even know what they're actually about. 

Schubert, you'll recall, is the California schemer who choreographed the repeal of Maine's same-sex marriage statute in 2009. Now he's back, leading the National Organization for Marriage's offensive against same-sex marriage in referendum campaigns in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington. 

Schubert's strategy of choice? Take a complicated story and, in 30 seconds or less, reduce it to televised graffiti.... 

Now I'll be the first to admit there are plenty of things to lie awake worrying about between now and Nov. 6. But an ongoing employer-employee spat that happened in another country? 

Hey, like all the others crafted to inflame rather than inform, that's Frank Schubert's kind of story. 

So short on facts it's scary.

What? Marriage equality opponents are lying?

No, really?  They wouldn't do that, would they?

From the Bangor Daily News (ME):

Opponents of same-sex marriage in Maine are mischaracterizing the reasons that Catholic Charities of Boston stopped brokering adoptions in 2006, according to Peter Meade, the organization’s former board chairman, who spoke with reporters in Maine on Wednesday. 

[S]upporters of a group called Protect Marriage Maine have alleged that among the consequences of granting same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, Catholic Charities was forced to stop performing adoptions after Vatican officials learned that at least 13 children had been placed with same-sex couples. 

....Meade said the situation that unfolded in Boston was driven by 1989 anti-discrimination laws that were on the books for more than a decade before same-sex marriage was legalized in the Bay State in 2004.
....
Catholic Charities of Boston formerly held a state-issued contract funded by taxpayer dollars to provide adoption services, and placed 13 children with same-sex couples between 1989 and 2006. The work was done in accordance with a Massachusetts anti-discrimination law that requires taxpayer-funded services to be provided equitably and without regard to sexual orientation, among other things. 

Meade said that the Vatican demanded in 2006 that Catholic Charities end its adoption service, despite a unanimous vote by the charity’s local board to continue adoptions. 

“Frankly, the only criteria for us was what was in the best interest of the child and we thought the Vatican was changing that,” said Meade. “People are suggesting in the campaign that it had something to do with the [same-sex marriage law] that allowed for marriage equality. That’s not correct.”

The truth about Ocean Grove Camp

Remember the favorite rightwing talking point, of a Methodist church "forced" to host gay weddings?  From the New Civil Rights Movement:  (my emphases)

...Judge Solomon Metzger affirmed the findings of a 2008 New Jersey State Division of Civil Rights investigation, ruling the couple was illegally discriminated against. Judge Metzger’s written decision makes a blatant lie out of a favorite Republican anti-gay marriage talking point: that a New Jersey Methodist group, The Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, will be forced to allow same-sex unions on their private property despite their religious objections. It turns out, the Association was not so much victim of a “War on Christianity” as it was caught in it’s own scam to cheat on their taxes. ... 

....Under New Jersey law, the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association could have kept their camp completely private. They also had the option of opening the camp for public use but protecting it under a state provision that allows religious organizations to exempt themselves from hosting people or events that are at odds with their religious faith. (That’s right, never mentioned by the Republicans who tell this story, there already exists in New Jersey law a “carve out” that would have allowed the camp to legally discriminate against Paster and Bernstein.)  But the Camp Meeting Association chose neither of those options.

The Methodists decided protecting their anti-gay “values” and keeping same-sex couples from using their camp was not their priority. Instead, they applied for the “Green Acres” real estate subsidy New Jersey offers for conservation or recreational property, knowing that one of the requirements for the tax break was that the camp would be “open for public use on an equal basis.” When they refused to allow Paster and Bernstein to use the camp pavilion in the same way they allowed dozens of other heterosexual couples to do in the past, the Association breached that contract. It is that simple. So says Judge Metzger..... 

The Camp lost its property subsidy. That was its only punishment. Contrary to Republican lore, the Camp was forced to host exactly zero same-sex unions. Once it lost the “Green Acres” tax exemption it lied to obtain, Ocean Grove Camp decided to sign up for that “religious exemption” after all, and they are now free to legally act out their “values,” keeping the Christian trees safe from gay influence. 

....Facts have never gotten in the way of a good Republican “victimhood” tale, but with Judge Metzler’s decision, those who claim The Ocean Grove Camp Association is a victim the “War on Christianity” have lost their moral high ground.  

Religious freedom (3): the myth of persecution

The right wing likes to claim that we are a Christian country and they are right.  Christian language and Christian symbols are part of our everyday life. We even have state holidays on Christian feast days,  But at the same time, we have an explicit protection of religious freedom that is intended to give those of faith broad latitude to practise their religion peacefully, and not to impose it on anyone else.  We protect minority religions.  And never forget, the biggest growing group in American faith is the "nones".  

What they are NOT allowed to do is inflict their religion on anyone else.

But the GOP, and particularly Newt Gingrich, have decided that Christians are more persecuted than gay Americans.  (That's Newt's big thing, now that the campaign has moved to South Carolina.)

Because, of course, Christians can't mention their religion at work, or in the military…. they need to keep it in the closet.  They can't marry…. they are scorned on the street, subject to violence….

Yeah, right.

Okay, so it's time for Christians who know this is nonsense to stand up to this.  I'm calling on all of you who claim "Christian" to write your paper, speak up to your neighbor, and encourage your church leadership to speak up to say,

Enough of this nonsense! You do not speak for me, Newt Gingrich, or Archbishop Timothy Dolan!

BECAUSE we are Christians, we support the full civil rights of LGBT people!
Because if you let them keep telling the lies, without challenging them, they will get away with it.

So, come on, whether you are a Bishop or a pew-sitter, speak out.  Talk to the news, talk to your neighbors.  Push back!  Claim the title of Christian and push back!

Religious freedom (1): protection under the law

As the march towards full equality for LGBT people continues, those opposed are now cloaking themselves in the mantle of victimhood. They are claiming that somehow protection of a minority's rights infringes on THEIR liberty. I have never understood how being told you can't discriminate can be perceived as discrimination, but as Susan Russell often puts it, this is a bit like claiming sympathy for being an orphan after you've murdered your parents.

Yesterday the Supreme Court passed down a ruling giving broad protections to religious organizations that essentially exempt them from civil laws. This should put to rest the lies they tell. It won't, but it should. From the Daily Beast:

In its first major religious-freedom case in decades, the Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with a Pennsylvania Lutheran school that fired a teacher after she took disability leave for narcolepsy, then returned mid-year demanding her job back. ….
The court based its decision in Hosanna-Tabor v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on a long history of reverence for the “ministerial exception”—the idea that it violates the First Amendment for the state to interfere in who religious groups hire and fire. The decision hinged on a broad definition of “minister,” arguing that because she was ordained, considered “called” by God to her position, and collected religious-tax breaks, the teacher is the type of person religious groups should be able to select—and get rid of—without state interference. …

If you’d only been listening to the religious right for the past three years, this decision—especially the fact that it was unanimous—would come as a shock. ...

In the theoconservative imagination, almost everything the government does to ensure equal rights, especially for LGBT Americans, is a threat to religious liberty. Non-discrimination statutes could force churches or Christian businesses to hire gay employees. Legalized gay marriage could lead to churches being forced to conduct gay weddings. The end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell could force chaplains not to preach against homosexuality.

But the Supreme Court’s decision in the Hosanna-Tabor case illustrates how overheated this alarmism has been. ...

It would be nice if this decision made it clear that they are lying, but it won't.  We'll continue to explore this meme of "Christian victimhood" in my next few posts.

Voices of Faith Speak Out: The Real Assault on Marriage

A conversation with Rev Dr Nancy E. Petty, Senior Pastor of Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina.

“One of the actual threats to marriage in our society today...comes from people misusing the Bible to define marriage. If you look at the Old and New Testaments, you will not get one picture only of what constitutes marriage. In fact, often in the Bible, men had numerous wives, and women were bought and sold as property. The claim that the Bible defines marriage for today is false....

“The real assault on marriage is to be found in right-wingers’ support of inequality within marriage, with a man given more power than a woman. If you look at what Jesus said about relationships, he calls us into relationships that are loving, just, compassionate and equal. Where [anti-marriage activist] Crouse says that love is not the most important thing in a marriage, her argument is morally, spiritually and ethically bankrupt. The real assault on marriage is Crouse’s use of hateful language spoken in a total void of what love means. For obvious reasons, it does not work well, generally, for a homosexual person to marry a heterosexual one. Where one social group, feeling itself superior, is beating another group down in order to get ahead, that is not talking about what is of value in loving commitments, and it certainly is not an authentically Christian way of being. The foundational Christian message is to love one another.”

Debunking anti-gay myths

I have discussed in several places the antipathy of the right towards science, and how they get away with dismissing scientific consensus if it doesn't conform to their views.

THe site LIveScience dismisses 5 prominent myths about LGBT people, pointing at data to show that these are false. THese myths are the misperception that homosexuality doesn't exist in animals, that gay people aren't capable of long-term relationships, claims that gays are pedophiles and vv, or bad parents, or that sexuality is purely a choice. Each of these is demonstrably false. But the right-wingers persist in believing them.

What's depressing is the comments, some of which dismiss the findings as "pro-gay propaganda" and one which strikingly calls for "incurable" gays to be locked up in camps.

They really hate us, don't they?

SPLC debunks 10 common anti-gay myths

Check it out here. I'll have more to say about the SPLC report when I have a chance to read it.

Lies, Damn LIes, and the Religious Right

One of the memorable moments of the DOMA hearing was Sen. Al Franken calling out the mis-representation of the data by Tom Minnery, of Focus on the (right wing heterosexual) Family.

Blogger Alvin McEwen points out that the mis-representation of data by those opposed to equality is an ongoing issue. Over and over again, they pull this off.  It's way passed time to call them on it.  McEwen has a great post with documentation:

Minnery's misreading of study in order present a bad picture of same-sex households is commonplace in religious right data. Often times, religious right spokespeople will cite studies which have nothing to do with same-sex households in order to claim that these households are not the best place to raise children....

And we're not just talking about studies regarding households, either.When groups like Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, or the National Organization for Marriage aren't busy scaring people with how the gay community wants to "recruit children," they busy themselves distorting all sorts of legitimate data, creating conclusions that the researchers never intended or worked for.

We know this because at least 11 of these researchers complained....

These are the reasons why many of us are celebrating Franken's dressing down of Minnery. It revealed to so many what a lot of us in the gay community have known about the religious right for years - that all of their talk about "morals" and "values" and "personally held religious beliefs" are a dodge. They are a smokescreen which these organizations use to hide their deceptions.

When it comes to the gay community, the vast majority of religious right studies and data have been fallacious distortions designed to exploit fear, not educate.

You should bookmark McEwen's blog, Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters. He's a bulldog in exposing the lies.

Debunking the myth that kids do better with straight parents

How often have you heard the words, "Studies show," and then a statement to be taken as fact? Increasingly, we need to apply a caveat emptor to such statements because around the GLBT issue, the opposition has a regrettable tendency to mis-state those studies.

I told you recently about a new study that shows kids of lesbian parents are doing in some measures better than kids with straight parents. Well, it turns out that study isn't alone.

A new paper, How Does the Gender of Parents Matter? from THe Journal of Marriage and Family (72:3-22 (2010)): takes on the frequently heard claim that "children do better with a mother and a father" , performs a meta-analysis of prior studies, and discredits the statement.

One of the authors comments (emphasis mine)

Significant policy decisions have been swayed by the misconception across party lines that children need both a mother and a father. Yet, there is almost no social science research to support this claim. One problem is that proponents of this view routinely ignore research on same-gender parents. The bottom line is that the science shows that children raised by two same-gender parents do as well on average as children raised by two different-gender parents. This is obviously inconsistent with the widespread claim that children must be raised by a mother and a father to do well.

When you go to the paper itself, it says (emphases mine)

Almost all of the studies [...] cited, however, compared single-mother with married-parent families. .....To support its claim that "a child who is not living with his or her own two married parents is at greater risk of child abuse" [they] cited studies of children who live alone with single mothers, in stepfamilies, or with their mother's boyfriends.It ignored research on lesbian and gay parenthood....

The entrenched conviction that children need both a mother and a father inflames culture wars over single motherhood, divorce, gay marriage, and gay parenting. ....Current claims that children need both a mother and father are spurious because they attribute to the gender of parents benefits that correlate primarily with the number and marital status of a child's parents since infancy. At this point no research supports the widely held conviction that the gender of parents matters for child well-being.

What does this mean? It means that if you actually analyze the research, the claim that "a child does best with a mother and a father" is not true. What IS true is that a child does best with two committed parents in a stable relationship.

The sort of people who write comments in response to news articles or tweets have argued that the recent Pediatrics study cannot be true, because there may have been gay advocates supporting it. This is another version of only straight white Christian men are objective fiction, and completely ignores the fact that the study was published in a rigorously peer reviewed journal, which than you can say for most of their stuff. Indeed, those opposed to equality frequently point to studies from the anti-gay group NARTH. This is a long-discredited group that supports "gay cures" and their website (to which I won't link, as I will not send traffic to hate sites) is full of lies and misinformation.

Using NARTH as a source for scientific data on homosexuality is like using the Flat Earth Society for studies of Earth's geology.

But then, when has the right wing cared about science and facts?

SO: if you want to back up your contention that gay and lesbian parents do just as well and sometimes better than straight parents, send your opponents to the following studies for starters. Think of the Church and Galileo- you have truth,and the facts, on your side, and E pur si muove!


Biblarz, T.J., Stacey, J. (2010) How Does the Gender of Parents Matter? Journal of Marriage and Family, 72, 3-22

Gartrell, N. and Bos, H., Pediatrics (2010) US National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study: Psychological Adjustment of 17-Year-Old Adolescents Pediatrics (online prior to publication) DOI10.1542.peds.2009-3153

Tasker, F. (2005). Lesbian mothers, gay fathers, and their children: A review. Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, 26, 224–240.

Telingator, C. J., Patterson C. (2008). Children and adolescents of lesbian and gay parents. Journal of American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 47, 1364–1368.More important than the gender of parents’ partners for teenagers’ adjustment, it seems, is the quality of relationships within the families they have.

More resources here, at the COLAGE website.

But here's the big one: From the American Psychological Association, Lesbian and Gay Parenting document, intended to provide resources "for the use of clinicians, researchers, students, lawyers, and parents involved in legal and policy issues related to lesbian and gay parenting." Here's what they conclude:

In summary, there is no evidence to suggest that lesbian women or gay men are unfit to be parents or that psychosocial development among children of lesbian women or gay men is compromised relative to that among offspring of heterosexual parents. Not a single study has found children of lesbian or gay parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents. Indeed, the evidence to date suggests that home environments provided by lesbian and gay parents are as likely as those provided by heterosexual parents to support and enable children's psychosocial growth.

Update reviewing data that the kids are doing fine, from Alternet.

Update New study from U. Virginia shows that the gender/orientation of adoptive parents does not affect how well the kids are doing.

Update Media matters has another helpful summary here.

Consulting for hate

Political consultants operate under a code of ethics that supposedly prevents them from attacking people on the basis of race or religion. Not, apparently, sexual orientation. This Huffpo article from a few months ago explains how a political consultant for the "Yes on H8" campaign picked up a slew of awards from his professional association. Hate sells:

Political consultants will do almost anything to win. So it was a little surprising to see that their professional association - the American Association of Political Consultants - has a significant and no doubt well-intentioned code of ethics.

Imagine if their members actually adhered to it. Better yet, imagine for a moment what political campaigns might have been like if that code of ethics included no bashing based on sexual orientation and gender identity....

These questions about ethics surfaced after AAPC held their annual "Pollie Awards" on March 29. They're considered that industry's Academy Awards, given in the categories of Campaigns, Public Affairs and Issues and Referenda.

....The Yes on Proposition 8 campaign won a slew of awards, including the "gold" for TV Radio Campaign (produced by Schubert/Flint Public Affairs), the "silver" for Best Fundraising, and "bronze" for the robocall using Barack Obama's voice ....

Yes on 8 Campaign Manager and AAPC board member Frank Schubert accepted the gold award but was apparently not well-received. ....."He detected the chilly reception and acknowledged that many people disagreed with him. But then he said, 'However, I represent those who read the Bible and believe in God.' Some people found that incredibly offensive. At one point, some people were hissing."

Hissing, no doubt, because people of faith supported the No on Prop 8 campaign as well,....

What is ethical about knowingly disseminating false and inaccurate information in order to win a campaign?
....
Imagine how political campaigns might change if the professional association to which most of them belonged decided to ban gay-bashing as a matter of ethics?

Anatomy of the lies

There is an absolutely OUTSTANDING exposé at Daily Kos explaining how the bad guys won Prop8, and how they might win with Question 1 in Maine. This DK diary lays it all out in stunning detail. Read it, because it's what we're up against, not only in California, but nationally.

The author shows how the key to their victory was framing the question not about our marriages, but about what it might cost them---even if those costs were palpably LIEs about children and education. Coupled with numerous mis-steps on our side it was a masterful bit of swiftboating, as the author terms it.

The story is instructive because Religious Right professionals have succeeded in making it appear as if all people of faith are antigay and anti-marriage equality. Worse yet, they are using religion as an excuse to perpetrate lies and deception – to swiftboat same sex couples in the name of God, when in fact they are just advancing another end-justifies-the-means political scheme.

Don't wait, go here and read it NOW. Because they are trying exactly the same approach in Maine, and they will continue to do this unless and until we manage to expose their lies and dishonesty.