Kevin Spacey's Gift to Anti-Gay Extremists and Hate Merchants

Despicable Kevin Spacey and gay hater extraordinaire, Scott Lively

For the more than two decades that I have monitored self-labeled Christian "family values" organizations - e.g., Family Research Council, American Family Association, Focus on the Family, etc. - one thing has been consistent: deliberate, vicious lies about LGBT individuals.  Seemingly, no lie is too foul or too extreme.  Indeed, one gay activist friend compiled a comparison between Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda and the anti-gay propaganda of these groups and in many instances, the word "gay" had merely substituted for "Jew."  One of the perennial favorites of these anti-gay extremists is to disseminate the myth that all gays are would be child molesters and/or pedophiles.  The fact that most pedophiles are HETEROSEXUAL males, simply doesn't matter to these falsely sanctimonious "godly folks."  Now, with the accusations against Kevin Spacey, who disingenuously chose to "come out" to distract attention from the sexual misconduct story, has given the Christofascists a gift that has left them near orgasmic.  A piece in Queerty looks at Spacey's gift to the liars and hate merchants (NOTE: Scott Lively cited in the piece has a long list of anti-gay lies and false "research"):

We knew it was only a matter of time before conservative wingnuts began using the news of Kevin Spacey’s coming out to fuel the age-old “all gay men are pedophiles” myth. In a new blog post for World Net Daily titled “Will Spacey scandal expose ‘gay’ male obsession with young teens?”, Scott Lively says the Spacey scandal is just the tip of the iceberg of a larger gay pederasty scandal that has been going on since the beginning of time.

Lively writes that gay men have historically been attracted to younger men and boys, all the way back to the days of ancient Sparta. . . . . And now, thanks to Spacey, “the American public has … been allowed a glimpse of the pederast underworld.” . . . . Lively then goes on to offer a laundry list of totally random and unrelated gay men who he believes have links to pederasty, including activists Karl Heinrich Ulrichs and Harry Hay, NAMBLA founder David Thorstad, HRC founder Terry Bean, Seattle mayor Sam Adams, even Hitler’s second-in-command Ernst Roehm, among others.

Lively also claims the Stonewall riots had nothing to do with LGBTQ rights but were instead sparked by the arrest of “a 14-year-old boy transvestite prostitute” whose clientele were older gay men."

Lively finishes his op-ed by saying he believes Hollywood liberals will do their best to sweep the Spacey scandal under the rug.  “There is no higher priority on the political left than protecting the ‘gay’ movement from the link to pederasty,” he writes. 

For the record, I have zero sympathy for Spacey and believes the destruction of his career is well deserved.  My only sympathy is for others who worked in the shows and movies that will suffer because of Spacey's utterly disgusting behavior.   That Spacey willing threw the gay community under the bus in his self-centered effort to distract the media storm is inexcusable. 

The Right Freaks Out - and Lies - About Rise of LGBT Millennials

click image to enlarge

The 2016 General Social Survey was publicly released back in April, 2017, and it reported on many things, including the growing number of people who admit to being LGBT.  In fact, the data that Gallup shared showed that the LGBT population increased dramatically between 2012 and 2016, from 3.5% to 4.1% of the U.S. population (or an estimated 8.3 to 10.052 million people).  That’s a big change for a short period of time.  And the majority of that change could be accounted for by large increases among young people, women, the college-educated, people of color, and those who are not religious.  The findings showed that a great deal of that increase can be accounted for by Millennials.  Perhaps not surprisingly, given marriage equality (at long last) younger generations have become progressively more likely to identify as LGBT.  But the gap between Millenials and other generations is large and growing much to the horror of the right wingers. Rather than admit to the fact that Millennials have left religion in rapidly accelerating numbers (nearly a third at this point) and correspondingly do not feel the shame and stigma of being LGBT that Christianity seeks to inflict, the right wingers blame the rise of LGBT Millennials on what might be called recruitment.  Anything rather than admit that sexual orientation is fixed at birth or accept modern medical and mental health knowledge.  A piece in American Conservative illustrates the longstanding lie that is being promoted. Here are highlights: 

[F]or those who want to grapple honestly with this issue, these data from Patrick Egan show pretty clearly that the nurturing that culture provides does make a big difference.

Therefore, for communities who wish for their children to remain heterosexual, to form heterosexual marital unions, traditional families, etc., neutrality on the matter of sexuality will result in five to eight times as many people claiming homosexuality or bisexuality as would have otherwise been the case. (There have also been skyrocketing numbers of people claiming to be transgender.)

Sexuality is a lot more fluid than we think. For post-pubescent adolescents, teenagers, and young adults in their twenties, re-setting the boundaries of what is permissible resets the boundaries of what is thinkable, and for a meaningful number of them will change the way they behave.

Here’s what I mean. It must be that there are young people who experience homosexual desires as teenagers, but who do not act on them for reasons of religious belief or social custom. Later in life — in their twenties, say — their sexual desire solidifies as heterosexual, allowing them to form a stable marital bond with someone of the opposite sex, and start a family. Had they had the opportunity to experiment with homosexuality as a teenager, they might have remained confused and unstable well into adulthood.

What we have now says there is virtually no sexual norm outside whatever one feels is right for them, right now. If one thinks that one would like to try out being gay, or bi, or the opposite gender, well, why not? One big problem with this, though, is: what about the kids? Social science has abundantly demonstrated that kids need stable homes in which to thrive. If issues of sexuality and gender identity remain fluid, it will be very difficult to create the kind of environment in which these young people can be formed in a healthy way.

It's pretty much the same lies promoted for decades by anti-hate groups and even the Catholic Church - even as the Vatican turned a blind eye to the rampant raping of children and youths by priests - and which is contrary to findings by legitimate associations of gay parenting.  Andrew Sullivan rightly goes ballistic.  Here are excerpts from his response:

 I’m usually pretty good at staying calm under assault from the religious right. . . . . But this latest post by my friend Rod Dreher deeply upset me. Titled “Born That Way? Really?” it accuses those of us who have long argued that homosexuality is involuntary or innate of being cynical liars: “The ‘truth’ in this matter [0f the origins of homosexuality] has always been ‘what works to advance the cause.’” He then argues that there is such a thing as “latent homosexuality” that can be “made active” by a more tolerant society. Hence the need to reinstate stigmatization of gay people as human beings who have chosen sin — to keep anyone else from experimenting and thereby becoming gay.

His sole evidence for this? A graph from a comprehensive study of the 2016 election that shows much higher identification as bisexual among today’s millennials than among older generations.

It is merely a measurement of who is prepared to identify as such in a survey. That’s a far more malleable and amorphous figure. And it finds, to Rod’s horror, that around 13 percent of 18-year-olds now identify as bi. That drops to around 6 percent for those who are 28; and around 4 percent for those now in their 30s. Another longitudinal survey — from Gallup — also shows a sizable increase among millennials who identify as “LGBT” in the last few years. The change is from 3.5 percent in 2012 to 4.1 percent in 2016.

If Rod’s interpretation is correct, it means that there were far, far fewer gay people as a proportion of the population a few decades ago than there are now. It means that, by the study Rod cites, there were almost no gays or lesbians born in America in 1930. It means that more progressive and secular countries, like the Netherlands, would have much higher numbers of gay people than in the past or elsewhere. There is no solid evidence for any of this.

But the obvious explanation for these numbers is a simple one: it is that millennials simply have much less shame about sexual orientation than older generations. Growing up in a world of legal marriage equality, that should not be surprising. Gallup suggests as much: “It’s likely that millennials are the first generation in the U.S. to grow up in an environment where social acceptance of the LGBT community markedly increased. This may be an important factor in explaining their greater willingness to identify as LGBT.” Maybe destigmatization will mean that more bi people will experiment with same-sex relationships, even though the study actually shows gay identification as stable for the past few decades. They might even — God forbid — have happier, healthier lives as a result. But what distresses me about Rod’s post is his belief that homosexuals should be restigmatized for the sake of others, that one part of the population should be shamed and targeted purely to send a message to otherwise confused kids that being gay is wrong. The only word for this is cruelty, the immiseration of gay kids for the sake of controlling those who may eventually be bi. I cannot see anything remotely Christian about that.

The Fruits of Right Wing Demagoguery

One hears ad nausea about how Christofascists "hate the sin, and love the sinner" as they spew vile anti-LGBT vitriol, never giving a care about the possible violence they are inciting. Indeed, after the Pulse massacre, some "godly Christian" pastors stated that the victims got what they deserved and/or that they wished more had been killed.  Fast forward and such talk appears to have been the motivation of a would be "Christian warrior" in Las Vegas who was fortunately caught before he could put his murderous plans into action.  Every time you hear a Southern Baptist bellowing anti-LGBT statements or parasites like Tony Perkins deliberately disseminating lies and untruths, know that somewhere a would be mass killer is listening and coming to believe that murdering others is righteous.  Here are highlights from KTNV TV 13:

A 24-year-old Las Vegas man has been charged for making terrorist threats in a video that was posted on YouTube.

Las Vegas police say they were notified on July 2 by Interpol via Google about a suspicious/threatening YouTube video.

Although Google had removed the video, they were able to provide a link for a detective to watch the video.

In the video, a man named Bryce Cuellar reportedly showed off two rifles and was wearing a military flak vest and night vision goggles.

Cuellar reportedly said in the video that he is tired of the government trying to take away his First and Second Amendment rights and says that he cannot wait to use his rifle in the manner in which the founding fathers intended.

He also said that he wanted to kill "gays, faggots, lesbians and satanists" and claimed to be a Christian warrior. Cuellar also said that he is tired of America and would begin killing soon.

Police also checked his Facebook page and found posts about the Orlando shooting and posts that outlines his anti-government, sovereign citizen and militia ideologies. Police say that Cuellar has become increasingly more radical and aggressive in his videos over the past 3 years. Based on the video and statements, Cuellar was charged with terrorist threats. He was also placed on a mental health hold at the time by Clark County Detention Center staff. 13 Action News was able to find a YouTube page that appears to be connected with Cueller. The YouTube channel has almost 161,000 subscribers and the channel's videos have been viewed more than 73 million times.

Cueller is being held at CCDC on $100,000 bail. He is scheduled to be in court on Sept. 1.

161,000 subscribers - that is frightening.  Yet, GOP and Chrisofascist extremist continue to stoke the flames that can ignite someone like Cueller - usually so that they can gain votes or line their own pockets with money.

Christofascists Rally Around New Faux Study on Sexual Orientation and Gender

As noted in a post earlier today, the Christofascists go to all lengths to avoid admitting that their supposedly inerrant Bible is deeply flawed and in many instances simply untrue.  That same refusal to accept science and objective reality flows over into the never ending effort to sustain the myth that sexual orientation is changeable.  Why?  Because, if homosexuality is a natural phenomenon in nature - in God's plan, if  you will - then their one of their major arguments for condemning homosexuality falls apart.  Likewise, the purported prohibitions in Leviticus are exposed for what they are: the efforts of a small fringe demographic to differentiate itself from older, larger and more advanced surrounding cultures where homosexuality was accepted - e.g., the Persian Empire and Hellenistic cultures.  

In keeping with this seemingly never ending effort to embrace ignorance and rejection of scientific and medical knowledge, the Christofascists are hailing a new "study" that claims that sexual orientation is not fixed - and is therefore changeable - and that rejects much of the existent knowledge on transgender individuals.  In the wake of the repudiation of the sham study done by Mark Regnerus, the Christofascists are desperate for something to keep alive their anti-LGBT lies.  Their lifeline?  A "study" by Lawrence Mayer and Paul McHugh published in “The New Atlantis,” a non-peer reviewed journal co-published by right wing organizations (the current co-chairman of one of them is a founder of the National Organization for Marriage).  For those not knowledgeable about the term "peer reviewed," it means that articles and studys have been reviewed and approved by legitimate scholars and experts.  Non-peer reviewed journals are one step above pay to publish journals which will publish almost anything so long as the author pays the going price to have his/her piece published.  Right Wing Watch looks at the near orgasms being experienced by professional gay haters such as NOM's Brian Brown.    Here are highlights from RWW:

Anti-equality organizations are enthusiastically promoting a new study on sexual orientation and gender, hoping it will be new culture war ammunition.

The study by Dr. Lawrence Mayer and Dr. Paul McHugh appears in “The New Atlantis,” a journal co-published by the right-wing Ethics and Public Policy Center and the Center for the Study of Technology and Science, which shares an address with EPPC. The New Atlantis is not a peer-reviewed journal, and has critiqued peer review, widely considered the gold standard in scientific publishing.

Among the authors’ contentions are that the belief that sexual orientation and gender identity are innate or fixed properties is “not supported by scientific evidence.” The study also says that the stress of social stigma is not a sufficient explanation for higher rates of mental health and substance abuse problems in LGBT communities.

Mayer says that McHugh initially approached him to review a monograph he had written and the project expanded from there. The prominent but controversial McHugh is a Catholic in his mid-80s who has described himself as “religiously orthodox, politically liberal, and culturally conservative – a believer in marriage and the Marines, a supporter of institutions and family values.” The new study builds on a body of work that dismisses the notion of transgender identity. TransAdvocate and others challenged McHugh’s “selective reading of transgender medical literature” two years ago, and ThinkProgress critiqued his work in 2015.

Brian Brown at the National Organization for Marriage can hardly contain his excitement about the new study, writing in a letter to supporters, “The importance of this new study cannot be overstated.” He urges people to “help spread the word” to “make sure that this groundbreaking research gains the wide hearing it deserves despite what will surely be a concerted effort by the media to bury its findings.”

Also participating in the roll-out is the Heritage Foundation’s Ryan Anderson, one of the most prominent opponents of marriage equality. Anderson says the study’s findings undermine the Obama administration’s requirement that schools accommodate transgender children as well as the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling.

Anderson has written a book and spoken widely about how the anti-equality movement should reject and resist the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling.  Anderson has urged the anti-equality movement to conduct new research (citing  the widely discredited Mark Regnerus study on “family structures”) to create “new insights” that future Supreme Court justices could use as justification for overturning Obergefell.

As readers may recall, the Regnerus "study" was funded by right wing, anti-LGBT organizations and basically picked the conclusion it wanted to reach and doctored the "research" data to achieve that desired result.   Given the authors of this new attack on LGBT individuals, especially Paul McHugh, an ultra-right wing Catholic, I fully expect that dissections of this "study" will similarly tear it to shreds.  Not that the coming repudiation will deter the "godly folk" Christofascists from lying through their teeth.   Other than perhaps Donald Trump, no one lies as often or as viciously as the "godly Christian" crowd. 

What Dennis Hastert Tells Us About Sexual Predators

While Christian Right extremists and the Catholic Church hierarchy consistently try to depict LGBT individuals as sexual predators who lurk in restrooms and other places seeking to molest children, these claims, like so much that comes from the lips of these "godly folk" are lies.  The truth is something very different, including the fact that most child molesters are heterosexual males. And in the context of the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, having been raised Catholic and been an altar boy in the 1960's, I would argue that much of the abuse was due not to the alleged homosexuality of abusive priests, but rather the near psychotic obsession with repressive views on sex and sexuality within the Catholic clergy that created truly emotionally and psychologically disturbed individuals. The requirement of priestly celibacy only intensifies such dysfunction.  Indeed, it took years of therapy for me to overcome the brainwashing I received as a child and youth growing up Catholic. A piece in Chicago Tonight looks at the true profile of sexual molesters in the context of Dennis Hastert's admitted abuse of some of his students.  Here are excerpts:

Former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert is going to prison for violating federal banking laws.

But at his sentencing yesterday, Hastert acknowledged that he sexually abused students during his time as a wrestling coach in far west suburban Yorkville.

Hastert's high-profile disgrace has renewed questions about the nature of sexual predators and what parents and communities should know about them.

Char Rivette is the executive director of the Chicago Children's Advocacy Center, which coordinates the efforts of child protection staff, law enforcement professionals and medical experts in dealing with an average of more than 2,000 child sexual abuse reports each year.

“In general, a common profile is that the perpetrators are known to these children. Over 90 percent of children who are sexually abused are abused by someone they know,” Rivette said. “It’s not rape by a stranger, it’s generally someone who has developed a relationship with this child, and usually their parents also, and who creates scenarios and contexts within which they can successfully groom and find situations where they can act out against these children.”

According to Rivette, Hastert might not fit the description of an outright psychopath or pedophile. But his apparent state of denial at Wednesday’s sentencing is common for an abuser.

“Obviously Hastert was a coach, a teacher, a citizen of the community and he had to know that deep-down what he was doing was wrong and harmful and inappropriate,” she said. “Yet he was still compelled to do these things, so he must have come up with rationalizations to just kind of get him through this and allow him to do this without the guilt, without the shame, without the understanding that what he was doing was harming these children.”

When it comes to the survivors, Rivette said, it’s also common for them to not speak out and to feel shame or guilt.

“If you are able to disclose and someone believes you, it’s a big key to actually getting trauma treatment and actually moving on. If you don’t, what I see is a lot of emotional struggles throughout life, a lot of inability to form healthy relationships as an older adult, really a lot of struggles with substance abuse,” she said.

But Rivette said the good news is that we’re getting better at addressing these issues in the wake of the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal and now Dennis Hastert.

To stop sexual abuse of children, the first step is knowing who the predators are and not falling prey to animus based lies or psychotic sexual dogma.  It is also important to recognize that all too often the real predators are the very ones seeking to demonize and stigmatize others. I don't think it is a coincidence that sexual abuse by conservative Christian clergy is common despite all of their rantings against sex and sexuality.  The more they condemn something, the more likely they are to be the ones engaging in it or fantasizing about it. 

CBS and AP Cite Liberty Counsel's Hate Group Label

Hate merchants Mat and Anita Staver

It drives me to distraction that all too often the mainstream media gives a platform to hate groups and their leaders - Tony Perkins and FRC are usual examples - and never disclose to readers and/or viewers the ugly reality about these individuals and groups.   Whether it is out of simple laziness or some sick sense of wanting to appear "balanced," the unwary are left with the wrong impression that these are simple "Christian" and/or family values advocates rather than hate merchants. Mat Staver and his equally deranged wife and their utterly misnamed "law firm" have been seeking to ride the Kim Davis circus all the way to the bank.  Thankfully, their effort has led to CBS News and now the Associated Press to look into and expose their sordid, hate filled, and lie filled nature and tactics.  As Joe Jervis notes, Liberty Counsel is finally being exposed for the generate of lies and hate that it has always been.  Here are highlights:

The Associated Press today published a story which rips the Liberty Counsel’s “imaginary” Peruvian soccer stadium story and points out that the SPLC has very good reasons for categorizing them as a hate group. Nothing in the story will be a bombshell to regular JMG readers, but it’s good to see the mainstream national media report on what we have known for years. Some excerpts:

Kim Davis’ lawyer stood onstage in a Washington D.C. hotel and pointed to a photo on the screen. It showed 100,000 people packed into a Peruvian soccer stadium, Mat Staver told the crowd, all there to pray for the Kentucky clerk battling against gay marriage. The crowd erupted. It wasn’t true.

The Southern Poverty Law Center lists the Liberty Counsel as an anti-gay hate groups for spreading false information. “A group that regularly portrays gay people as perverse, diseased pedophiles putting Western civilization at risk are way, way over the line,” said Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the center. The Liberty Counsel has connected homosexuality to higher rates of promiscuity and incest, Potok said, despite scientific evidence to the contrary. The firm opposes laws banning hate crimes and supports discredited conversion therapies that purport to turn homosexuals into heterosexuals. Staver once declared that the Boy Scouts would become a “playground for pedophiles” once it allowed gay troop leaders.

Having followed these "Christian" and "family values" groups for many years, there is literal no one who lies more and spreads knowingly false information about gays and others whom the "godly folk" view as "other."  If one wants a reason to walk away from the label "Christian," look no farther than these individuals and organizations.

"Godly Folk" Freaking Out and Lying About End of Boy Scout Gay Ban

It would almost be amusing to watch the rants of the Christofascists over the Boy Scouts of America's vote to end its ban on gay scout leaders.  The amount of hyperventilation and flying spittle is truly off the charts.  Unfortunately, these same "godly folk" who follow the Ten Nine Commandments - they don't observe the Commandment against bearing false witness and lying - are likewise off the charts in the anti-gay lies that they are disseminating.  The common thread being disseminated is that all gays are would be pedophiles and that all molestation of boys is done by gays.  The REAL truth is that HETEROSEXUAL MEN have been documented to commit the vast majority of sexual molestation.  Thus, both claims are total lies, but sadly we are indeed to a point were if these folks' lips are moving, it's about a 99.99999% likelihood that they are lying.  The big danger is that the ignorant and gullible fall for these lies and that gays will suffer violence as result.  Among those spouting this anti-gay animus are some of the usual suspects (all of whom are welcomed with open arms by the GOP):

Don Blake, president of the Virginia Christian Alliance, a coalition that encourages Christians to stand up against the rise of secular culture, told a central Virginia NBC affiliate that Christians who are involved with the Boy Scouts of America need to protect their children by either starting their own scouting programs or joining already existing programs that do not permit openly gay scout leaders.  "All the church people who believe in the Bible need to drop out of the Boy Scouts and start their own program," Blake asserted. "There are existing programs out there."

Robert Jeffress,who leads the 11,000-member Dallas First Baptist Church, urged parents to "run away" from the organization."My advice to parents who are asking me about this is: If you are concerned about the safety of your boys, you should run, not walk, away from the Boy Scouts as quickly as possible," Jeffress stated. Jeffress then contended that "100 percent" of child sex abuses cases in the Boy Scouts have been committed by "homosexuals."

Not to be outdone, anti-gay hater extraordinaire Bryan Fischer pulled out all the stops and, utterly lied about gays and sex abuse:

"The percentage of child sexual abuse cases in which men molest boys is many times higher than the percentage of adult males who are homosexual, and most men who molest boys self-identify as homosexual or bisexual." . . . . homosexuals are responsible for a staggering "one-third of the total number of child sex offenses." 

 

Ponder that: one percent of the population is responsible for 33 percent of all sex crimes against children. This is just another clear indication that there are unmistakable pathologies associated with the homosexual lifestyle. This is not a lifestyle any rational society should celebrate, endorse or promote, let alone sanction with the term "marriage."

[I]t is the height of irresponsibility to deliberately place homosexuals in positions where they have frequent access to young boys. It is inexcusable and virtually criminal.

It is the same kind of campaign of lies that the Nazis used against the Jews and that Vladimir Putin is currently employing against gays in Russia.  If you want to know why the number of "Nones" is exploding in this country, look no farther than these "godly Christians."  They are foul liars and modern day Pharisees - and most make a plush living as parasites preying on the ignorant, uneducated and gullible.  Yet people wonder why I no longer want to call myself a Christian.  Anne Rice got it right.  If this is what Christians are, count me out.

 

Holocaust Historian Debunks Christofascist Gays Are Nazi Lies

If one compares the propaganda the Nazi regime against Jews and the anti-gay propaganda of the Christofascists one thing becomes striking: the Christofascist campaign against gays utilizes the template perfected by the Nazi regime in the 1930's against European Jews.   E.g., gays/Jews are diseased, gays/Jews are out to prey on children, gays/Jews are a small rich minority harming Christians, etc., etc.  Yet despite this fact, leading mouth pieces for the "godly folks" continue to claim that gays were behind the Nazi regime.   Like everything that comes out of the mouths of these people, it is all a lie.  As Queerty reports, a Holocaust historian has again debunked this vicious lie.  Here are higlights:

Bryan Fischer boasts a huge radio audience, religious right fan base, and a dangerous obsession with homosexuality. Even when his propaganda is disproven by facts, he keeps right on repeating it, ad nauseam. There’s his constant conflation of homosexuality and pedophilia.

One particularly ugly canard, drawn from Scott Lively‘s discredited 1998 book The Pink Swastika, claims that gay men dominated the Nazi Party ranks and instituted many of the horrors of the Third Reich. The notion is so absurd even Lively’s absurd employer, the far-right American Family Association, distanced itself from the claim.

The demonstrably false claim serves several purposes for antigay activists like Fischer. For one, it turns gay men into jackbooted thugs rather than victims of the antigay right that they are today, not to mention in Nazi Germany, where tens of thousands were murdered or perished at concentration camps. It also justifies extreme antigay measures because we are defined as the moral descendants of the worst villains in history. Fischer and his far-right ilk view themselves as under siege, like Jews in Nazi Germany, but they also fancy themselves the conquering Army, led by General God.

[H]e received an email from historian Peter Black with a detailed destruction of the Fischer-Lively claims.

The response from the Holocaust historian, in full:

The Nazis shared the belief with many in the German population that same gender sexual relations were 1) unnatural and immoral; 2) undermined the cohesiveness of the family; 3) increased the habit and temptation to engage in other criminal behavior; 3) encouraged the seduction and corruption of minors; 4) and rendered public sector officials vulnerable to blackmail by foreign intelligence agents and (5) both public and private sector employees susceptible to using or demanding sexual favors in the workplace to obtain or grant discriminatory treatment in hiring, promoting, receiving assignments, rewarding and disciplining employees.

On a broader level, the Nazis also shared with many others among all classes of German society a notion that homosexuality undermined the vitality of the German male, and the capacity of Germans to stand up for themselves diplomatically or in war. Beyond this, the Nazis believed that homosexuals undermined the future of the German race by not devoting their sexual energy to reproduction. Even here, the Nazis had no exclusive ownership of this belief on this belief.

Hence when the Nazis came to power, over the first three years of Nazi rule, they 1) broadened the applicability of the law to criminalize even gestures without touching that might suggest a homosexual relationship or intent to engage in same-gender sex; 2) decreed stiffer penalties for persons convicted under the broader law; and 3) ordered more focused and consistent police enforcement of the law. Under Nazi rule, some 100,000 persons were arrested under the law; approximately 63,000 were convicted. . . . were sent to concentration camps, where hundreds, possibly thousands died under Nazi rule.

There are no records of 40,000 “confessions of Nazi Party members to having engaged in same-gender sex.  There is no record to confirm that the Nazi Party was founded in a so-called gay bar.

While SA Chief of Staff Ernst Röhm did place on his staff individuals who were homosexuals — primarily because he had known them for years and could count on their personal loyalty to him — neither he nor the SA commanders ever recruited on this basis.
There is no documentation that would confirm that the killers on June 30 1934 of Röhm and the other victims, were, as a group, homosexuals, either openly or “in the closet.”  The three main conspirators — Himmler, Heydrich, and Goring — were not homosexuals, nor were the best known of the executioners, Josef Sepp Dietrich and Theodor Eicke.

There is no reliable documentation that would confirm that Baldur von Schirach (Hitler Youth Leader), Franz Gürtner (Minister of Justice to 1941), Otto von Thierack (Minister of Justice (1942-1945) Hjalmar Schacht (Minister of Economics to 1938), Walter Funk (Minister of Economics,. 1938-1945), Hermann Göring, Hans Frank (Hitler’s personal lawyer up to 1939, or any of his personal bodyguards were gay.

There is no reliable documentation to confirm that Hitler worked as a male prostitute in Vienna.

While there is plenty of evidence that both Himmler and Hitler were implacably hostile to the Christian Churches and denominations, in particular the Catholic Church, there is no documentation that provides confirmation that either was, as the article says, “a closet homosexual”.

[T]he existing documentary evidence does not confirm that “many of the guards and administrators responsible for the concentration camp horrors were themselves homosexuals.” After 1941, conviction under paragraph 175 (sexual deviation) for an SS man meant at a minimum expulsion from the SS and could carry a death sentence.  

Scott Walker Rushes to "Clarify" of His Anti-Gay Boy Scout Remarks

Faced with a swift and hard hitting backlash against his statement that the soon defunct Boy Scouts of America policy that barred gay scoutmasters "protected children" - which implied that gays were pedophiles and child molesters - Scott Walker's minions have rushed to do damage control and "clarify" what Walker really meant.  Walker and his handlers obviously think most of us are complete morons because for anyone who saw the video of Walker or read the text of his remarks, it was crystal clear what he meant, and it wasn't what Walker's spin masters are claiming.  Most folks are buying Walker's bull shit excuse/clarification and, if we are lucky, it is only one of many gaffes that Walker will make that show him to be an utter douche bag.  Bottom line, Walker is so full of shit that it's a wonder he hasn't exploded.  Here are highlights from Think Progress on Walker's damage control effort:

The Wisconsin governor declared his entrance into the 2016 race with a promise to be a bold conservative who wins on principle, but on only his third day out he’s already waffling on his commitment to targeting the LGBTQ community for discrimination.

On Tuesday, [Walker] came out in opposition to the Boy Scouts of America’s unanimous decision to overturn its ban on gay troop leaders only one day after announcing his candidacy. One day later, the Republican Wisconsin Governor attempted to walk that position back.

On Wednesday, after widespread media coverage noted Walker’s suggestion that gay adults are child predators, Walker rushed to mitigate the damage, claiming he never meant that the ban protected boy scouts from gay leaders but actually protected the children from the debate Americans who want to discriminate against the LGBTQ community force upon the nation.

[D]uring a press conference in South Carolina today, the New York Times reports that Walker himself attempted to clarify his remarks, saying the ban protected children “from being involved in the very thing you’re talking about right now, the political and media discussion about it, instead of just focusing on what Scouts is about, which is about camping and citizenship and things of that nature.”

When Walker was specifically asked about his comment supporting the ban, explicitly calling out his claim that “it protected children” on Tuesday, Walker doubled down, citing the fact that his mother was a den mother and calling the ban “perfectly fine”

Scott Walker: Boy Scout Ban on Gays ‘Protected Children’

As NPR and other news outlets are reporting, the executive committee of the Boy Scouts of America has unanimously adopted a resolution that would allow gay adults to serve as Scout leaders, ending a longstanding ban on gay scout leaders in the organization.  A ban that was based on religious inspired bigotry and the lies disseminated by the "godly folk."  The Boy Scout's National Executive Board will meet July 27 to ratify the resolution.  While many view the move as yet another step towards expanded equality and a rejection of religion as a justification fort evil, the Christofascists are acting as if someone did a bowel movement in their Cheerios.  Joining this latter group is GOP presidential candidate Scott Walker who says that the ban "protected children" - a repeat of the Christofascist lie that gays are all would be child molesters and sexual predators.   The Daily Beast looks at Walker's foul anti-gay statements.  Here are excerpts:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has spoken out against the Boy Scouts’ recent decision to lift its ban on gay troop leaders. In an interview with IJReview, Walker cited his support for the “previous membership policy because it protected children and advanced Scout values.”

In response to the vote, Walker told IJReview:

“I was an Eagle Scout, my kids have been involved, Tonette (Walker) was a den mother.

“I have had a lifelong commitment to the Scouts and support the previous membership policy because it protected children and advanced Scout values.”

Scott Walker is a despicable asshole.  Even worse than his anti-gay views are his desire to spread the economic poison he has sown in Wisconsin nationwide.   If there is a scandal to be found in Walker's background, I wish it would explode to the surface now.
 

Nut Case Pat Robertson: The Gays Are Recruiting Youth

I keep wondering when Pat Robertson's sons are going to force him into retirement.  His outbursts of verbal diarrhea seem to be getting worse with each passing month and not only does he make himself looks like an utter fool, but he is an huge embarrassment to the Hampton Roads area of Virginia.  In his latest delusional rant, Robertson went on a tirade claiming that gays are recruiting young people.  If Robertson would get his head out of his ass and pay any attention to modern knowledge and science, he know that no one recruits you into being gay.  You are born that way. Period, end of story.  If any recruitment is going on its by the Christofascists who try to get gays to pretend that they are "ex-gay'" and do untold damage to gays and their straight spouses in the process.  The Advocate looks at Robertson's latest pile of bullshit.  Here are highlights:

Pat Robertson yesterday took advantage of a 700 Club viewer’s concerns about her son’s questionable relationship to rant about gay men supposedly recruiting young people into homosexuality.

The viewer, identified as Nancy, said her son, who lives with her, is involved with a married man who goes to their church. The man’s wife, she said, knows nothing of the relationship. “What would the Lord want me to do?” the viewer asked.

The homophobic televangelist immediately called the married man a “pedophile,” although Nancy did not specify her son’s age. He also questioned the son’s identity. “Her son right now doesn’t know what he wants and he doesn’t know whether he’s a homosexual or not a homosexual, but this guy is trying to talk him into that,” he said. “There’s so many people, young people, impressionable, some coach comes after them, some adult comes after them, some older sibling comes after them, and they somehow think, ‘Because they did this I must be gay.’ Well, he doesn’t know that for sure, he doesn’t know what sexual identity he’s got.”

Robertson needs to be placed in a mental ward.   Virginia Beach will never be taken seriously as a city as long as Robertson and CBN continue to spew batshitery.

There's No Real Case Against Gay Marriage

As we wait for the United States Supreme Court to hand down its ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, it is worth reiterating that there is no real case against same sex marriage other than religious based ignorance and bigotry (and selective parsing of the Bible).  A piece in Politico looks at the lack of substance to the arguments put forth by the Christofascists in a pathetic attempt to disguise their anti-gay animus.

Marriage equality opponents are having a hard time pointing to any good reason for fencing same-sex couples out of marriage. So the latest move has been to invite the Supreme Court to cast their collective gaze into the future.

Obergefell v. Hodges, the marriage case before the Court, . . . . . Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee and Kentucky want the Court to look into a crystal ball and imagine that a ruling for marriage equality will lead to the erosion of marriage, an increase in single parenthood, and even, according to a group that styles itself “100 Scholars of Marriage,” a dramatic spike in the number of abortions.

[T]he legal arguments for the couples who want to marry (or to have their out-of-state marriages recognized by their home state) are clear, and have been stated many times. In brief: the guarantee of equal protection under the law requires the state to recognize their relationship, unless there is a good reason not to do so. Conversely, non-recognition causes serious harm to the couples and to their families. Plaintiff James Obergefell presents perhaps the most sympathetic case of all: He can’t even get himself listed on the death certificate of his deceased husband, John Arthur, because his home state of Ohio won’t recognize the couple’s out-of-state marriage. Among the other plaintiffs are Valerie Tanco and Sophy Jesty, who can’t get on a single health insurance plan in Tennessee. More worrying, Jesty’s legal relationship to their child is unclear.

Against these realities stand a couple of arguments that the states have been making during the past decade, but that have mostly melted away after a decade that has seen the national dialogue around marriage equality dramatically transformed.

The first argument—that kids do best when raised by a mother and a father—isn’t supported by the evidence.  . . . As the brief filed by the American Sociological Association makes clear, when the correct comparison is made, children raised by same-sex parents fare just as well as those raised by the opposite-sex counterparts.

The second argument is that marriage is about procreation and that excluding gays is necessary to protect the only relationship—a man and a woman—that can lead to “natural” procreation. This argument has been thoroughly eviscerated. As Justice Elena Kagan pointed out during oral argument in the Proposition 8 case in 2013, there’s no age limit on marriage—a limit that one would expect if marriage were really all about procreation.

With this wispy underbrush swept away, the focus naturally turns to the many costs imposed by the marriage bans. They’re expensive, because marriage carries many benefits. They’re damaging to emotional and physical health, because, as the brief co-authored by the American Psychological Association points out, excluding same-sex couples from the protection of the law creates a stigma—and stigmatized groups suffer stress, with resulting health consequences.

Expect hate merchants like Tony Perkins, James Dobson and Virginia's own heinous Victoria Cobb to continue to repeat the discredited lies and underscoring the reality that no one lies more than the fundamentalist "godly folks."

Bobby Jindal's Hate Group Relationship

Among the would be Republican presidential nominees the willingness to prostitute themselves to the Christofascist/Tea Party element of the party base seems to no few limits.  But even among these self-prostitution individuals, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal seems to take self-prostitution to new levels.  Hence his agreement to headline a rally organized by The American Family Association, one of the vilest of the Southern Poverty Law Center certified hate groups.  What makes Jindal's pandering all the more disgusting is the fact that he's not some uneducated rube.  He's Ivy League educated but is only too happy to embrace ignorance in the quest for political power.  A piece in Media Matters looks at Jindal's shameless embrace of hate and ignorance.  Here are excerpts:

Louisiana Governor and GOP presidential hopeful Bobby Jindal is the keynote speaker for a rally funded and organized by an anti-LGBT group that has blamed gay people for causing the Holocaust and advocated imprisoning homosexuals.  So why isn't his appearance garnering national media attention?

On January 24, Jindal will keynote a six-hour prayer event at Louisiana State University called "The Response: A Call To Prayer For a Nation In Crisis." The event is sponsored and funded by the American Family Association (AFA), one of the most extreme anti-gay hate groups in the country. It's also being staffed by a number of notorious anti-LGBT activists.

The event has drawn protests from members of the LSU community. On January 22, the Faculty Senate passed a resolution expressing displeasure with the event, and a university spokesperson has clarified that the rental of an LSU facility "does not imply any endorsement."

Jindal has thus far dismissed criticism of the event, according to The Clarion-Ledger:

Asked if he agreed with the American Family Association's agenda, Jindal sidestepped that question and said, "The left likes to try to divide and attack Christians."

Jindal said the protesters themselves should consider joining the prayer rally. He said they "might benefit from prayer."

AFA's status as a hate group is largely thanks to the work of its spokesman, Bryan Fischer, whose anti-LGBT remarks go well beyond mainstream social conservatism. Fischer's inflammatory comments about gay people include:

• Repeatedly calling for the criminalization of homosexuality
• Blaming gay people for the Holocaust
• Linking homosexuality to pedophilia
• Arguing gay people are disqualified from holding public office

[A]side from a few outlets noting AFA's "controversial" stances, national coverage of Jindal's association with the hate group has similarly been glossed over by the media. It's a stark contrast to the tremendous media attention surrounding GOP House Majority Whip Steve Scalise's infamous 2002 speech to a white nationalist group. When it comes to GOP politics, media outlets have a hard time seeing what's newsworthy about a hate group like AFA being used to cement the campaign of a potential presidential candidate.  

Scaremongering Begins Ahead of Ireland Vote on Marriage Equality

Christian elements in Ireland - using that term loosely, especially in regard to the morally bankrupt  Catholic Church - have begun a scaremongering campaign in advance of the vote in May that would legalize same sex marriage in the former bastion of Catholicism.  Among the slogans being used is "Should children be exposed to the sound of sodomy" (I'm not sure what those sounds might be) and other phrases denigrating gays and depicting gays as child predators.  Gay Star News looks at the anti-gay effort to impose one set of religious belief on all citizens.  Here are highlights:

With a referendum due in Ireland in May on the issue of same-sex marriage, campaigning between opposing factions is intensifying.

Although early opinion polls estimated that 70% of the country supported equal marriage, in the last fortnight, several Government politicians have said that the vote could me much closer than previously anticipated, and that LGBT campaigners cannot afford to be complacent.

Now, in a controversial twist that has set Twitter alight, a Christian group has found itself widely mocked for producing pamphlets encouraging people to vote against same-sex marriage.

Why? Because, according to the group’s literature, children must be protected from ‘the sounds of sodomy’.

In the pamphlet, titled ‘Should children be exposed to the sounds of sodomy?’, the group says that, ‘it’s time for Christians of conscience to examine the dire consequences for the innocent if homosexuals are given access to the sacrament of marriage.’

Should children be exposed to this beastly obsession with unholy acts? Should the sounds of sodomy echo in the halls of a Christian home?’

The leaflets were reportedly handed out yesterday in Dublin. . . . the pamphlet elicited a huge backlash on social . . . 

Can't you feel the "Christian love"?   I'd say that children are better off hearing the sound of sodomy than being indoctrinated with the hate, bigotry and ignorance that passes for Christian belief.