Hates Group and the Christian Right

There are two important posts I saw today – the first is on AmericaBlog and addresses the mainstream media’s horrendous failure to expose the real nature of the leading “Christian” anti-gay organizations that oppose any rights for gays and amended hate crime legislation that would provide equal protection for all groups (Note: religion is already a protected class under existing hate crime law). As others have pointed out, Tony Perkins at Family Research Council has former ties to Klan leader, David Duke, yet this fact is never mentioned when Perkins is given a platform by the main stream media. Here is the complete post from AmericaBlog (http://americablog.blogspot.com/).

ABC News: Hate groups on the rise in America. Then why are the lead religious right groups promoting a well-known hate group? by makeprofilelink("John Aravosis (DC)"); John Aravosis (DC) · 5/02/2007 07:04:00 PM ETDiscuss this post here: Comment myCount('2708010949725980586'); s (129) · digg it · reddit · FARK · · Link

It's time the media asked the American Family Association, the Family Research Council, and the Concerned Women for America why they are promoting a known "hate group" on their Web sites.Who says they are promoting a known hate group? Why, none of than the same expert on American hate groups just interviewed on ABC's World New Tonight: the Southern Poverty Law Center. ABC reports that the number of hate groups has risen 40% since the year 2000. One of those hate groups, as documented by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is Paul Cameron's "Family Research Institute." Cameron's specialty is concocting phony "science" that dehumanizes gays. Cameron has discussed the extermination of all gay people. The Southern Poverty Law Center lists Cameron's Family Research Institute alongside the neo-Nazis and the Klan - that's how bad he is.

So with hate groups on the rise in America, why are 3 of the top 4 religious right organizations in America - the American Family Association, the Family Research Council, and the Concerned Women for America - promoting Cameron and his research on their Web sites as I write this? They are promoting a known hate groups that has been likened to the Klan and neo-Nazis. The Southern Poverty Law Center says that "Cameron's 'science' echoes Nazi Germany." America's lead religious right organizations are using their Web sites to promote "science" that "echoes Nazi Germany." Think about that. And these aren't fringe groups. These are THE groups - the people who meet with George Bush, who pull the Republicans' strings in Congress. They aren't the fringe of the religious right - they ARE the religious right.How in God's name are these organizations quoted by American media, welcomed into the offices of Republicans in Congress, and invited to meet with George Bush's White House staff when they cavort with hate?And why do the American Family Association, the Family Research Council, and the Concerned Women for America continue to promote on their very public Web sites the Nazi science of a known "hate group"? Is their hatred for gay Americans so great that they would promote the work of a group akin to the Klan?You can read much more about this, including links to all the original sources I cite above,

here. Rest assured we will continue to document how long the religious right leaders continue to promote this known hate group. It's a fact that every member of Congress should discuss during their floor speeches about the hate crimes bill tomorrow in the House. These are the faces of the people who oppose the hate crimes bill. These are the faces of hate enablers. It makes me sick as a Christian that these extremists claim to speak for me.

The second posting comes from Ex-gay Watch and discusses the fact that NARTH, one of the leading “expert” groups on “curing” gays continues to cite false research by Paul Cameron, whose organization has been identified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Why does the main stream media continue to allow these bigots to go on their merry wat spreading lies and untruths? Here’s the Ex-Gay Watch posting (http://www.exgaywatch.com/wp/).

NARTH Web Site Promotes Discredited ‘Research’ of Paul Cameron
Posted on April 30th, 2007 by Jim Burroway
Last week, we saw that Exodus was still promoting Paul Cameron’s junk science. Even though this wasn’t the first time an Ex-Gay Watch author raised this issue, last week’s post prompt some remarkably swift corrective actions from Exodus president Alan Chambers. In a commendable act of transparency, Exodus’s FAQ on life expectancy was replaced with this statement: “This article has been removed due to the inaccuracies surrounding the research of Paul Cameron.”

Now it’s time to turn our attention to NARTH. A quick search of NARTH’s web site reveals that they have been just as willing to promote Cameron’s so-called “research.”

For our first example, NARTH member Ross Olson sent a letter to the Pediatric Annals, a letter that was

published on NARTH’s web site (I don’t know if that letter was ever published by Pediatric Annals). In that letter, Olson criticizes an article that described a thirteen-year-old transgender MTF. Because the original article described the teen’s sexual activities, Olson jumped to the conclusion that the teen was being sexually abused, and that allowed him to bring up the familiar charge that ties homosexuality to pedophilia. For support, he cited Cameron’s “research” as though it has been presented in a professional journal. Here’s the screen-shot of that paragraph:

This citation is one of the more amazing ones I’ve ever seen. The Journal of the Family Research Institute? It doesn’t exist, at least not as Olsen implies. The link actually goes to a quasi-monthly newsletter that Cameron published for several years called the Family Research Report (hence the “FRR” in the URL). It’s not a journal by any stretch of the term, let alone a peer-reviewed one. Maybe Dr. Olson aspires to be the Dr. Cameron of pediatrics.

But the worst offense has to be an article by Christopher H. Rosik that appeared in the Journal of Pastoral Care. The article carries the ironic title, “Conversion Therapy Revisited: Parameters And Rationale For Ethical Care.” Ironic, because he deploys a number of unethical distortions to provide rationale for a supposedly ethical care. The article, which purports to be a wide-ranging review of gay sexual practices, follows many of the common practices authors use to write lesser anti-gay tracts. Rosik cites Cameron’s discredited “obituary study,” the same study that Exodus cited without attribution on their FAQ.

Rosik also cites Cameron’s “randomly sampled 5,182 adults” to claim that incestuous sexual relationships during childhood were disproportionately reported by homosexual respondents.” But that so-called “random” survey was riddled with problems, including an abysmally low response rate (about 23%), biased questions and puzzling results among the heterosexual population (for example, 52% of straight men have shoplifted; 12% committed murder or attempted murder.)

When Cameron’s work was publicly brought to Exodus’ attention a second time they finally did something about it. Exodus removed the discredited content and left a public note about the problem for all to see. Will NARTH show the same integrity as Exodus and publicly acknowledge their error? Or will they fall back to their familiar patterns of behavior we saw last year by defending the indefensible and denying responsibility for the content of their own web site before finally eliminating these embarrassments and pretending they never existed?

These organizations truly sicken me. How many lives have they destroyed or seriously harmed? Why are serious journalist afraid to take on these liars and false Christians, expose them, and destroy their political influence/control of the GOP?