Saturday, December 04, 2010

Funny How The Hate Groups Fail to Counter SPLC Label with Specitics

As noted in several posts, the hate merchants at Family Research Council and American Family Association have been shrieking and wailing over the fact that they have been - justly in my view - labeled as registered hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. We've seen various disingenuous statements that Christianis are being labeled as haters and other broad brush efforts to malign SPLC who these folks would have people believe has become a tool of the "gay agenda." God forbid that theses veracity challenged groups try to counter the specific charges laid by SPLC. The reasons, of course, is because they cannot and their only defense is to throw up smoke and mirrors and hope the main stream media is too lazy to look at specifics (sadly, something that is typically a safe assumption). Blogger friend Alvin McEwen has a good post at Pam's House Blend that looks at specific instances of why SPLC was right on target. In his post, Alvin looks at some of the "Top Ten Myths About Homosexuality" that has been disseminated by AFA and its kindred purveyors of hate and how Robert Stienbeck at SPLC laid out the untruthfulness of the allegations. Many readers have no doubt seen similar refutations before, but it is worthwhile to look at them again so that one is prepared to counter statements by the ignorant which may use such lies as justification for positions hostile to full LGBT equality. Here are highlights from Alvin's post:
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Myth: Homosexuals molest children at far higher rates than heterosexuals.
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Steinbeck - Fischer is referring to a 1989 Journal of Sex Research article by the late researcher Kurt Freund, who concluded that homosexuals were not any more disposed to pedophilia than heterosexuals — a finding exactly opposite to what Fischer suggests. Fischer constructs the 33% figure from Freund’s research by assuming that every case of men molesting boys is committed by a “homosexual” man — a conclusion rejected by virtually all legitimate sex researchers. As Freund said, since most pedophiles have no sexual interest in adults of either gender, terms like “homosexual” and “heterosexual” don’t apply at all. It is the child’s prepubescent nature, not his or her gender, that attracts this type of “fixated” pedophile
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Myth: Same-sex parents harm children [who engage in more promiscuity].
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Steinbeck: A study Fischer cites was conducted in 2001 by professors Timothy J. Biblarz of the University of Southern California and Judith Stacey of New York University. . . . In an E-mail to Hatewatch this week, Stacey blasted Fischer’s misuse of her research. “They are misrepresenting our 2001 article … by cherry-picking out of context one finding we mentioned that came from one very small British study,” she wrote. “Even so, their claim that children raised by lesbians are more sexually adventurous is also inaccurate. In the small study we mentioned … it was only the daughters who were sexually active a bit earlier than daughters of straight moms. Boys raised by lesbians were less sexually active than sons of straight moms!
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Myth: Homosexuals don't live nearly as long as heterosexuals [we supposedly die 20 years early].
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Steinbeck: Again, Fischer ignores that the authors of that 1997 study updated it in 2001, pointing out that advances in treatment of HIV-AIDS even at that point had significantly improved the expected longevity of those infected, which would inevitably narrow any gap between gay and straight life spans caused by the disease. Moreover, the authors explicitly rejected the attempts of anti-gay organizations to construe the 1997 observations to justify denigration of gays. “These homophobic groups appear more interested in restricting the human rights of gay and bisexuals rather than promoting their health and well being,” the authors wrote in their 2001 update.
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Myth: Homosexuals are more prone to be mentally ill and to abuse drugs and alcohol.
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Response: Fischer omitted the fact that the GLMA clearly say that these behaviors are not indicative of the lgbt orientation but reactions to homophobia of society: GMLA: Depression and anxiety appear to affect gay men at a higher rate than in the general population. The likelihood of depression or anxiety may be greater, and the problem may be more severe for those men who remain in the closet or who do not have adequate social supports. Adolescents and young adults may be at particularly high risk of suicide because of these concerns.
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You get the drift: outright lies and deliberate distortions of research and then blaming the victims of bigotry for their ensuing reactions to the unrelenting denigration and discrimination. And these bastards wonder why they were labeled as hate groups? Again I ask, WWJD?

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