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Wayne Besen
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The last few weeks have shown that so-called pro-family organizations are some of the most useless, money-sucking scams in the world. With real families suffering from economic hardship in America, a declining birthrate in Europe and Google doubling the price of daycare for employees, the only thing right wing family groups want to discuss is their bizarre and all-encompassing fagela fetish.
Recently, The Brooklyn Paper, had a huge headline, "SPLITSVILLE: Brooklyn divorces up 30%." The article cited a number of reasons including, "when the economy tanks, so do many marriages."
One would think this would alarm so-called pro-family organizations and they would be out in force repairing marriages -- or at least looking for economic solutions to take the stress off couples. Unfortunately, as I walked around my Brooklyn neighborhood, I saw not one representative from the American Family Association.
Well, I take that back. I did encounter one of the group's representatives on CNN Headline News as we debated a Heinz mayonnaise ad in the United Kingdom that featured two men kissing. I'm sure the children of these broken marriages in Brooklyn will feel much better knowing Heinz pulled the ad and they can have gay-free mayonnaise at both mommy and daddy's separate houses.
A new study by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University showed that in 2006, for the first time in U.S. history, a majority of births to women under 30 -- 50.4 percent -- were out of wedlock. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert points out that, "By comparison, when John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960, just 6 percent of all births were to unmarried women under 30.
One imagines that this report might have startled "pro-family" organizations and they would have put their millions of dollars towards stopping this trend. No such luck. Instead, they are investing huge piles of money and manpower to pass anti-gay marriage amendments in Florida, Arizona and California. The upshot for "pro-family" groups is that if heterosexuals keep screwing up marriage, by the time gay people finally win the right nationally, we won't want to use it.
"Evangelicals of the older generation have become obsessed in almost a technical psychological sense in opposing gay rights," David Weddle, a professor of religion at Colorado College told the Colorado Springs Gazette. "The irony is that homosexuality is not a biblical theme."
Right wing organizations and their flocks want to be taken seriously, but their priorities and actions are reprehensible. For example, a middle school teacher was fired in Mount Vernon, Ohio last month after preaching in the classroom, refusing to remove his Bible and burning crosses onto the arms of pupils. You read that correctly -- he seared crosses on the body parts of impressionable students, as if it were a gang ritual.
Surely, reasonable people can agree that such behavior is inappropriate in the classroom. But, oh no, some of the yahoos in Mount Vernon believe their religion places them above the Constitution - so they are holding demonstrations in the town square. I wonder if these zealots would have the same reaction if a teacher were burning a Stars of David or Muslim crescents on the forearms of students?
A recent New York Times magazine article, "Childless Europe," explored why certain countries in Europe are losing population. The hopelessly out of touch Pope Benedict chimed in with his typically sunny advice. "Europe is infected by a strange lack of desire for the future," the Pontiff said. "Children, our future, are perceived as a threat to the present."
Instead of selfishness, as the Pope implied, it was the traditional values of the Pope that contributed to the problem. In societies that either offered a safety net or where men shared the burdens of child rearing, women were having more babies. However, when educated women were stuck at home and forced to do all the work - such as in Italy - they chose to have less children. Will the Pope now call on men to help out more at home or for countries to ensure daycare for families?
Finally, the Wall Street Wonder, Google, plans to raise the amount it charged for in-house day care by 75 percent. Under the revised plan, parents with two children in Google day care could see their yearly bill increase to more than $57,000 from around $33,000. This crushing blow to the family drove a few employees to tears.
Was the American Family Association in Silicon Valley raising hell and standing up for families? No, they ignored grimacing parents, so they could punish Ronald and Grimace by launching a boycott against McDonald's for supposedly having a gay agenda. Maybe the delusional scolds at the AFA thought they saw rainbow color fries, in much the same way they once accused the cartoon character Mighty Mouse of snorting cocaine.
Right wing organizations can be considered many things - but certainly not advocates for the family. They inhale money, exhale anti-gay pollution and have done absolutely nothing for the traditional families they claim to represent. It seems the more such groups proliferate, the more the family deteriorates.
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Our friends at Box Turtle Bulletin discovered a news story with an interesting headline: "Study links virus to rare cancer in heterosexual men." The article talks about how straight men are catching HPV - otherwise know as genital warts, which can lead to cancer.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the cancer risk to heterosexual men posed by HPV is low. Homosexual and bisexual men are 17 times more likely to develop anal cancer as a result of HPV than heterosexual men are, according to the CDC's Web site.
But the UA's research appears to contradict those figures.
Conducted with the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute in Tampa, Fla., the UA study collected biological specimens from 253 men in Tucson and Florida who said they'd had sex with a woman in the last year. Of the 222 men in the survey who said they'd had sex only with women in their lives, roughly 25 percent had an anal HPV infection, according to the research. Of that group, one-third had a strain of HPV that could lead to anal cancer, a rare form of cancer unrelated to colon cancer, the study found.
I wonder where the right wing fanatics are who are always trumpeting headlines when a disease is linked to gay people?
The truth is, diseases do not discriminate. It is sickening when right wing lunatics try to link homosexuality to certain illnesses, rather than unsafe sexual practices. What do you want to bet that the fundamentalist lobby doesn't exploit this story to point out the danger of the "heterosexual lifestyle"? These people are such self-serving hypocrites.
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I just wanted to let you all know that I am also blogging at The Huffington Post. My first column was on James Dobson of Focus on the Family distorting research. Please visit the site and post comments.
John McCain needs to decide who he wants to be. Two weeks ago, McCain met with gay Republican leaders (people his staff had met with repeatedly before). After the religious right flipped out, McCain then met with virulently anti-gay religious right leaders, and promised those leaders that he would be more vocally anti-gay in public in the future. Then one week after that, McCain outfoxed those same religious right leaders by hiring a gay man to one of the most senior positions in his campaign.
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Florida's allegedly closeted gay governor wants to be Vice President so darn bad, that he got himself a beard. That's right, the long-time bachelor Republican governor of the Sunshine State will marry a socialite so he won't be seen as light in his loafers by the party's base.
This stunt comes only weeks after he visited John McCain's Arizona ranch with a slew of other VP wannabes. The Republican party becomes more of a circus act by the hour.
I certainly hope Christ gets the job, as he's somewhat moderate, the religious right will beleive deep down that he's gay and, well, I'd hate see him not get the gig and get stuck with a beard and have to carry out the act until a divorce can be arranged.
Well, thank God we can finally eat McNuggets in peace without the yahoos at the American Family Association annoying us at the next table. The AFA will announce a boycott today because they claim the company supports the so-called "gay agenda" and has taken sides in the "culture wars."
"It is about McDonald's, as a corporation, refusing to remain neutral in the culture wars," whined the oft-offended AFA. "McDonald's has chosen not to remain neutral but to give the full weight of their corporation to promoting the homosexual agenda, including homosexual marriage."
The AFA - the Tupelo, Mississippi-based group that once claimed Mighty Mouse snorted cocaine - has once again gone mad. What next, they will claim that Grimace is secretly gay because he is the same lavender shade as the Teletubby Tinky Winky?
McDonalds is not promoting a "gay agenda." They are simply supporting equality for all people in the workplace. This boycott will fail, just as AFA's Disney Boycott fell flat. The group is all hat and no cattle and has emerged as one of the most dishonest groups on the far right fringe. They even sell a video, "It's Not Gay" featuring failed ex-gay Michael Johnston - without a disclaimer telling AFA members that Johnston has participated in gay orgies, while claiming to have "changed." Now, how moral is that?
I'm going to do my part this morning. I will put my yogurt back in the refrigerator, march down to McDonald's, and buy a delicious Egg McMuffin. Yum!
Please call McDonald's today and thank them for being a fair-minded company and let them know you would rather eat without the angry, puritanical AFA crowd.
David Benkof likes to portray himself as a courageous man who tells difficult truths about gay life. Originally, he agreed to defend his many outrageous anti-gay positions on an August 22, National Lesbian and Gay Journalist Association (NLGJA) panel. I was also scheduled to appear and was prepared to challenge his irrational and inflammatory arguments.
Unfortunately, Mr. Benkof announced today that he is withdrawing from the event unless I "switch to a different panel." In an e-mail exchange, he told me that I should also pay for his plane ticket, even though I am paying my own way. (This was odd, as he boasted he was making a lot of money publishing in mainstream news publications)
To pull out at this late date and demand "travel welfare" highlights a deep character deficit and shows Benkof's fear of a direct challenge to his lightweight arguments.
In my view, Benkof is only capable of fooling the uninformed and gullible with sophistic arguments that show his utter lack of knowledge and cluelessness to historical precedent. Benkof understands in his heart that he is deficient in intellectual heft and academic discipline and thus must avoid face-to-face exchanges of ideas. His cowardice is understandable, considering the flimsy arguments that he would be forced to defend - but still disappointing. It seems Benkof would rather hide behind the Internet and lob rhetorical bombs, than sit in the hot seat and answer questions about how he misrepresents himself, misquotes people and distorts the truth.
If I had to lie and mislead people much as Benkof, I'd be shy about debating in public too.
For a brief moment, it looked as if the GLBT community might escape gratuitous gay baiting in the 2008 presidential campaign. Unlike the past few election cycles where the strategy was to secure the base at all costs, McCain and Obama were vigorously vying for moderate and Independent swing voters.
The pro-gay Obama was competing in all 50 states - thus tailoring his general election message to the skeptical rather than the converted. McCain, for his part, appeared on Ellen DeGeneres' talk show and pointedly refused to exploit marriage as a wedge issue in California.
The dream scenario playing out was almost too good to be true. If Obama won with a firmly Democratic Congress in place, it would likely lead to the advancement of GLBT issues on Capitol Hill. If McCain emerged as the victor without pandering to the Religious Right, he would be free to pursue a moderate agenda and not be beholden to extremists. It is doubtful that this would lead to any advancement on GLBT equality, but it would set the GOP on a more moderate course and curtail their anti-gay obsession.
The beauty of this situation was that for the first time in memory, GLBT people were not forced to put all of their eggs in one basket and play feast or famine politics. I'm certainly not saying the records of the two men are equivalent. Obama is an all you can eat buffet, compared to McCain, a stingy one-course dish with a soggy side of greens. Still, this would have been a superior situation to a Republican nominee getting elected on the backs of gay and lesbian people.
Unfortunately, McCain made a strategic decision last week that he could not win without securing the party's right wing base. My guess is that the campaign's internal polling suggested that Obama - aided by his bloated bank account - was winning too many Independents, so McCain had no choice but to make peace with social conservatives.
Leaders from the Religious Right were reinforcing this reality by making it clear that if McCain did not grovel, they wouldn’t help get out the vote.
"We told him that if he didn't come out and share his pro-family stances on these issues, then he can kiss Ohio goodbye," said influential anti-gay Ohio activist Phil Burress, according to the Los Angeles Times.
With his divisive new strategy in place, McCain met with prominent social conservatives in Ohio and all but licked their boots. At the meeting, he announced his support for an initiative in California to ban same-sex marriage. In his speech he said that Californians ought to "recognize marriage as a unique institution between a man and a woman, just as we did in my home state of Arizona. I do not believe judges should be making these decisions." (Despite McCain's anti-gay campaigning, the Arizona amendment failed)
McCain's efforts seemed to work and suggest there is time to rally the right to his side.
"It was obvious there were a lot of changed hearts in the room," said Burress. "We realized that he's with us on the majority of the issues we care about."
McCain also said that he hoped to meet with James Dobson, the virulently anti-gay leader of Focus on the Family. Dobson has said he would not vote for McCain and claimed that neither candidate gives "a hoot about the family."
To convert a skeptical Dobson, McCain would have to make extraordinary promises and essentially sell his soul. Such a move would signal that McCain has dropped all pretenses of appealing to mainstream Americans and that his campaign has decided to follow the Karl Rove playbook of using red meat to create red states. This incipient strategy is depressing and ends hope of a classy campaign that could have united Americans.
Obama, for his part, is going after religious voters who are dissatisfied with McCain. He met last month with Rev. Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham, and endorsed a sweeping faith based initiative.
In my view, the faith-based initiative is a nightmare in practice, if not principle. These programs are useless, a waste of taxpayer money and are nothing more than pork barrel prayer and thinly disguised preacher payoffs. The Obama campaign should lose voters over this stunt, but it won't, as McCain's flirtation with the fringe no longer leaves him as a viable option.
This past week will be remembered for McCain abandoning his efforts to win GLBT votes, but it will also mark the moment the GLBT community lost much of its leverage over the Obama campaign. The only way Obama could now lose significant GLBT support is by selecting an anti-gay Vice Presidential candidate, such as Sam Nunn.
A presidential race with the religious right on the sidelines was fun while it lasted, but too good to be true. Now, comes the ugly phase of the campaign, where the GOP lies about our lives and our families become fodder to rile up conservatives in an effort to save John McCain's sluggish campaign.
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The San Francisco Chronicle analyzed information from all public marriage licenses filed with the Assessor-Recorder's Office in San Francisco between June 17 and 25.
Now that licenses have no gender designation, it can be difficult to determine whether couples are heterosexual or homosexual. But looking at their names, The Chronicle estimated that 751 of the 1,004 licenses filed during that period were by same-sex couples and that 87 of those live outside California.
In addition, 80 couples have filed confidential licenses, meaning they are not public records. Nine of those were from outside the state, though the clerk's office didn't say how many of the couples were gay or lesbian.
