Bradlee Dean fundraises off prayer fiasco – to hire publicist

That track suit got me to thinking. “Man, he looks like a pedophile.” Then it hit me, he’s “youth minister” using heavy metal music to reachout to kids. Funny thing is, most of his slavish, cult-like following are, like heavy-metal fans, mostly young males. That, combined with his “nope, no gays here” preaching makes me reeeeeal suspicious. I got a feeling he’s gonna have more trouble than with just the IRS.

http://www.politicususa.com/en/minnesotas-you-can-run-ministry-cant-hide-from-irs

Minnesota’s own version of the Taliban—What’s next Mr. Dean? That all women should be covered from head to toe? You are a shameful example of how Evangelical Christianity is being twisted from being about love to being about all-out hate.
I can’t picture Jesus running around asking for money so he could harass and bully people…can you?

I’m anxious to know what publicist promotes a religio-facist.

Praise Jebus, God hates an honest messenger, Amen.

Absolutely disgusting, and an affront to the Memory of the MN Gay Soldier who DIED in the Line of Duty protecting this Jackass’s FREEDOM ……well MN, the GOP has “RELEASED THE CRACKIN of HATE”

I would think the Republican party would pay for a publicist for Bradlee Dean. They’re going to be making ample use of him and his type in the upcoming campaign to pass the Bradlee Dean Marriage Discrimination Amendment.

“And I am fed up with all the dual citizens who serve another state as their first loyalty not the USA.” I wonder if he knows that Dean is a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven?

Also, if Dean wants to “defend” himself against “character assassination,” he should maybe think of not posting fan mail with lines like ” The diversity, political correctness and perversion recruitment programs in the school systems have just about destroyed any Godly morality left” and “President Obama is an enemy of Christianity and Judaism,”which simply prove the point.

Held my nose last Saturday and watched the latest installment of Dean’s “My War” on TV. ( My War….My Struggle…Mein….?) Pompous propaganda. What makes Dean think he’s qualified to “teach” the “real story” of the constitution to high school students? If any of the people who insist our government is based on Christianity would stop waving that pocket copy of the document long enough to read it they would find no references to Jesus, the Bible, or Christianity. Do they think the founding fathers were idiots? The Constitution is exactly what the founders wanted it to be, and they took care to keep religion out of government. They did not hide their intentions in the hope geniuses like Dean, Bachmann, Barton, Beck, etc. would come along and figure out what they “really ” wanted. The founders knew such people existed, and they wrote the Constitution to defend the nation against them. We need to keep calling people like Dean on their lies.

Sounds to me like his music isn’t selling, probably third rate like his mind and thoughts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oomZH3gUunA

Maybe he could do a rendition of real Americana song.

On behalf of my dead son, let freedom ring!

ok this says it all…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEJI3_8n0bk

this is the man the GOP allowed on our floor our OUR government.

@ Jeff

As a mom I can’t even begin to type the Thank You’s to you, your family and to your Son for what he gave to me and my family without tears.

In your Son’s name, we can all fight for the equality of the little ones that will come up in the path of time behind your son. My girls are very young still, not even done or started with identifying who they are and what they will become. The mere idea that they could not be joined together with the same social respect and dignity that I have had the civil right to do, infuriates me.

Thank you for continuing this fight.

kurt zeller has tried to erase all of this from history, it has been stricken from the documents.

rep.kurt.zellers@house.mn

tell him how you feel about that

Seems the reverend Dean has had a few problems with the IRS. Thesite below contains another link to a 2009 MN Independent story. So who ordained Dean? Where?

http://www.politicususa.com/en/minnesotas-you-can-run-ministry-cant-hide-from-irs

[...] be so offensive to our politicians?” Dean wrote to supporters, the Minnesota Independent reports. “We certainly didn’t start this fight but we are more than willing to respond! Our [...]

[...] be so offensive to our politicians?” Dean wrote to supporters, the Minnesota Independent reports. “We certainly didn’t start this fight but we are more than willing to respond! Our [...]

Dean and Zellers are just playing pocket pool with each other.. I do have some advice for Bradlee Dean to help improve his image.. STOP WEARING UNDER ARMOR !! It looks great on the manikins in the sports stores.. Unfortunately the manikins in the sports stores have muscular shape to them.. When a Fat white guy wears them it makes you look like a Fat white guy trying to be tough…

Bradley Dean and his new fiction “My War” pushes the peer-repudiated and discredited teachings of hate groups and teachings, that of Paul Cameron and Scott Lively seen in his credits. Dean will look good in his new super-fabulous striped pantsuit soon.

Paul Drummond Cameron was born November 9, 1939, in Pittsburgh (PA).

He received his BA from Los Angeles Pacific College in 1961; his MA from California State University, Los Angeles, in 1962; and his PhD from the University of Colorado in 1966. His dissertation was titled Age as a determinant of differences in non-intellective psychological functioning.1

He was affiliated with various colleges and universities until 1980. They include Wayne State University (1967-68), University of Louisville (1970-73), Fuller Graduate School of Psychology [part of the Fuller Theological Seminary] (1976-79), and the University of Nebraska (1979-80).

On his curriculum vitae, he describes himself as a “Researcher/Clinician.” According to the web site of the Nebraska Department of HHS Regulation and Licensure, his license as a Psychologist has been “inactive” since 1995.

He is chairman of the Family Research Institute, PO Box 62640, Colorado Springs, CO, 80962-2640. Telephone: (303) 681-3113. Fax: (303) 681-3427. E-mail: pdcameron@juno.com

APA letter to Paul Cameron 12/2/83

In the mid-1980s, the gay press labeled Paul Cameron “the most dangerous antigay voice in the United States today.”2,3,4 Here are some important facts about him.

* On December 2, 1983, the American Psychological Association sent Paul Cameron a letter informing him that he had been dropped from membership. Early in 1984, all members of the American Psychological Association received official written notice that “Paul Cameron (Nebraska) was dropped from membership for a violation of the Preamble to the Ethical Principles of Psychologists” by the APA Board of Directors.5 Cameron has posted an elaborate argument about his expulsion from APA on his website, claiming that he resigned from APA before he was dropped from membership. Like most organizations, however, APA does not allow a member to resign when they are being investigated. And even if Cameron’s claims were accepted as true, it would be remarkable that the largest professional organization of psychologists in the United States (and other professional associations, as noted below) went to such lengths to disassociate itself from one individual.

* At its membership meeting on October 19, 1984, the Nebraska Psychological Association adopted a resolution stating that it “formally disassociates itself from the representations and interpretations of scientific literature offered by Dr. Paul Cameron in his writings and public statements on sexuality.”6

* In 1985, the American Sociological Association (ASA) adopted a resolution which asserted that “Dr. Paul Cameron has consistently misinterpreted and misrepresented sociological research on sexuality, homosexuality, and lesbianism” and noted that “Dr. Paul Cameron has repeatedly campaigned for the abrogation of the civil rights of lesbians and gay men, substantiating his call on the basis of his distorted interpretation of this research.”7 The resolution formally charged an ASA committee with the task of “critically evaluating and publicly responding to the work of Dr. Paul Cameron.”

At its August, 1986 meeting, the ASA officially accepted the committee’s report and passed the following resolution:

The American Sociological Association officially and publicly states that Paul Cameron is not a sociologist, and condemns his consistent misrepresentation of sociological research. Information on this action and a copy of the report by the Committee on the Status of Homosexuals in Sociology, “The Paul Cameron Case,” is to be published in Footnotes, and be sent to the officers of all regional and state sociological associations and to the Canadian Sociological Association with a request that they alert their members to Cameron’s frequent lecture and media appearances.”8

* In August, 1996, the Canadian Psychological Association adopted the following policy statement:

The Canadian Psychological Association takes the position that Dr. Paul Cameron has consistently misinterpreted and misrepresented research on sexuality, homosexuality, and lesbianism and thus, it formally disassociates itself from the representation and interpretations of scientific literature in his writings and public statements on sexuality.

* Cameron’s credibility was also questioned outside of academia. In his written opinion in Baker v. Wade (1985), Judge Buchmeyer of the U.S. District Court of Dallas referred to “Cameron’s sworn statement that ‘homosexuals abuse children at a proportionately greater incident than do heterosexuals,’” and concluded that “Dr. Paul Cameron…has himself made misrepresentations to this Court” and that “There has been no fraud or misrepresentations except by Dr. Cameron” (p.536).9

Footnotes

1Biographical information obtained from various sources, including Cameron’s curriculum vitae, Who’s Who in the West, 26th Edition, 25th Edition; Who’s Who in America, 52nd Edition, 51st Edition, 50th Edition. (return to text)

2Walter, D. (1985, October 29). Paul Cameron. The Advocate, pp. 28-33. (return to text)

3Fettner, A.G. (1985, September 23). The evil that men do. New York Native, pp. 23-24. (return to text)

4Pietrzyk, M.E. (1994, October 3). Queer science: Paul Cameron, professional sham. The New Republic, pp. 10-12. (return to text)

5Notice: Persons dropped from membership in the American Psychological Association. (1984). Internal communication from APA to all members. (return to text)

6The full NPA resolution read as follows:

The science and profession of psychology in Nebraska as represented by the Nebraska Psychological Association, formally dissociates itself from the representations and interpretations of scientific literature offered by Dr. Paul Cameron in his writings and public statements on sexuality. Further, the Nebraska Psychological Association would like it known that Dr. Cameron is not a member of the Association. Dr. Cameron was recently dropped from membership in the American Psychological Association for a violation of the Preamble to the Ethical Principles of Psychologists.

[Nebraska Psychological Association. (1984, October 19). Resolution. Minutes of the Nebraska Psychological Association. Omaha, Nebraska: Author.] (return to text)

7A copy of the full ASA resolution in Acrobat PDF format can be downloaded. It read as follows:

WHEREAS Dr. Paul Cameron, a psychologist, was dropped from membership in The American Psychological Association for violation of the Preamble to the Ethical Principles of Psychologists;

WHEREAS Dr. Paul Cameron has been presented in the media as a sociologist;

WHEREAS Dr. Paul Cameron has consistently misinterpreted and misrepresented sociological research on sexuality, homosexuality, and lesbianism;

WHEREAS Dr. Paul Cameron has repeatedly campaigned for the abrogation of the civil rights of lesbians and gay men, substantiating his call on the basis of his distorted interpretation of this research;

WHEREAS the American Sociological Association is on record as opposing oppressive actions against lesbians and gay men and affirming its commitment to their civil rights;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED: THAT the Association reaffirms its opposition to efforts to undermine the civil rights of lesbians and gay men through the distortion of sociological concepts and the falsifying of sociological research; and

THAT the Association articulates this opposition by charging the Committee on the Status of Homosexuals in Sociology with the task of critically evaluating and publicly responding to the work of Dr. Paul Cameron.

[Sociology group criticizes work of Paul Cameron. (1985, September 10). Lincoln (NE) Star.] (return to text)

8 The ASA Task Force findings were described in ASA Footnotes (January, 1987, p. 4). The final resolution and the committee report were published in ASA Footnotes (February, 1987, page 14). Available from the American Sociological Association, Committee on the Status of Homosexuals in Sociology, 1722 N Street, NW, Washington DC 20036. (202) 833-3410. (return to text)

9On page 536 of his opinion, Judge Buchmeyer noted the following examples of misrepresentations by Cameron to the Court:

“(i) his sworn statement that “homosexuals are approximately 43 times more apt to commit crimes than is the general population” is a total distortion of the Kinsey data upon which he relies – which, as is obvious to anyone who reads the report, concerns data from a non-representative sample of delinquent homosexuals (and Dr. Cameron compares this group to college and non-college heterosexuals);

(ii) his sworn statement that “homosexuals abuse children at a proportionately greater incident than do heterosexuals” is based upon the same distorted data – and, the Court notes, is directly contrary to other evidence presented at trial besides the testimony of Dr. Simon and Dr. Marmour. (553 F. Supp. 1121 at 1130 n.18.)”

[Baker v. Wade, 106 Federal Rules Decisions 526 (N.D. Texas, 1985).]

MFC and Dean have brought in and pushed the worst of the worst and those pushing genocidal legislation in other parts of the world. With these “special” actors involved we have absolutely NO reason to believe they will stop at simply reducing LGBTI’s right to marry. Actually their intentions are far more nefarious.

Lively’s Lies:
A Profile of Scott Lively
By Jim Burroway

The Uganda Speech

In March 2009, Scott Lively travelled more than 8,000 miles from his home in Springfield, Massachusetts, to talk to a small audience at the Triangle Hotel in Kampala, Uganda, about homosexuality. “My name is Scott Lively,” he began. “I’m married. I have four children. I am 51 years old, and I have been studying this issue for twenty years, and I want to tell you why I’m doing that.”[i]

Presenting his educational background, he explained that he is both a pastor who has studied scripture and an attorney “trained in secular reasoning.” He graduated magna cum laude with a doctorate from Trinity Law School in Santa Anna, California, and has a doctor of theology from the Pentecostal Assemblies of God.

In addition, he said, he holds “a certificate in human rights from the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France.” “I stand before you a world traveler, having spoken on this topic in almost forty countries,” he said. “I’ve written several books.”

Lively went on to describe his family background—which has enough in it to keep a psychologist, armchair or other, occupied for a long time: he is the oldest of six children, and his father developed a mental illness when Lively was young. Lively himself became an alcoholic at the age of twelve. For the next sixteen years, he said, he couldn’t hold a job. He slept under bridges and begged for money on the streets. A brother and a sister, he said, “went into homosexuality,” and another sister “wasn’t able to enter into marriage until she was in her forties because of the pain of the family life that we had.” Finally, said Lively, “[I] got down on my knees and surrendered my life to Jesus Christ. I was healed in an instant. I never had another desire to drink or use drugs ever again. When I got up off my knees, I was clean and healed.”

Lively became involved in antigay activism because of two people who were, he said, “very close to me”—a four-year-old boy and a nineteen-year-old man, who, Lively said, molested the boy: “And I saw what happened to that little child. He was transformed [from] a sweet and innocent person into a tortured and tormented child, filled with anger and rage. And he never recovered from it.” The nineteen year old, Lively said, “is still living in a gay lifestyle in Los Angeles, California. He’s an active homosexual and he’s active in a church that endorses what’s called ‘gay theology.’”

Lively “had his eyes opened” to all this right after he became a Christian, he said. “And God moved me very quickly into a ministry where I would deal with these things. And so for all of these years, I have been focusing on this topic. I know more about this than almost anyone in the world.”

What Lively “knows” and came to warn his Ugandan audience about is chilling. He told them that one of the most common causes of homosexuality is child molestation; that’s how gays recruit children into homosexuality, he said. He told them that European gays were flooding Uganda with money and gifts to recruit children. “They are very predatory,” he said.

They are very sexually oriented. They want to satisfy their sexual desires. Often these are people that are molested themselves and they’re turning it around. And they’re looking for other people to be able to prey upon. And when they see a child that’s from a broken home, it’s like they have a flashing neon sign over their head.

He told the Ugandans about what he said are the various kinds of gays: the transsexuals, the transvestites, the effeminate gays, and the “normal” ones, who blend in. They are the hardest to spot, he said. Then there are the others: machos and, worst of all, he said, the “super machos.” It’s the latter two groups, Lively claimed, who founded the Nazi party and helped Hitler to come to power. “These are men who have very little restraint,” he said.

They are so far from normalcy that they’re killers. They’re serial killers, mass murderers. … This is the kind of person that it takes to run a gas chamber, right? Or to do a mass murder, like—the Rwandan stuff probably involved these guys.

There’s some dispute about whether Mark Twain actually said, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” But there is no dispute that Scott Lively has thoroughly proven this truism. “The gay movement is an evil institution,” he told his spellbound Ugandan audience. “The goal of the gay movement is to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.” His voice rising and his eyes flashing with anger, he continued, If you deny and reject the design of your own body, and you engage in conduct that is self-evidently wrong and harmful to you, then you’re going to receive in your body the penalty of your error which is appropriate. Can anyone say AIDS?

The Ugandan audience was unfamiliar with this American colloquialism. They didn’t understand that Lively’s question was rhetorical. “AIDS,” some obediently but quietly answered. They knew AIDS all too well, a disease which began making itself known in the Congo River Basin in neighboring Zaire as far back as the 1960s,[i] long before it appeared on Western medicine’s radar. By 1982, doctors became aware of a new disease in rural Uganda that the locals dubbed “slim,” because of the way people who had it wasted away.[ii] It was (and is) a disease mainly of heterosexuals.

A Pushpin on the Hate Map

The peripatetic antigay activist has traveled the world, and everywhere he goes, wholesale lies about gay people fall about him like acorns in autumn. In 2007, Lively was particularly active, traveling to Riga, Latvia, in the spring; then to Novosibirsk, Russia; then back to Riga. “There is a war going on the world,” he told his Novosibirsk audience. “It’s a war between Christians and homosexuals.” The war, he said, is “the design of the devil to destroy civilization, because civilization is based on the natural family.”[iii]

This kind of rhetoric landed Lively on the Hate Map developed by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) [http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/hate-map#s=ID]. The SPLC tracks more than 1,000 hate groups across the United States, but only seventeen of them are highlighted as specifically antigay. Lively’s Abiding Truth Ministries is one of them, and Lively has connections with several others. In 2007, he helped to found the international Watchmen On The Walls, which quickly landed on the SPLC’s antigay list (The Watchmen are no longer active in the United States). He has spoken at fundraising banquets for MassResistance, written several articles for the Chalcedon Foundation, a Christian Reconstructionist organization which endorses the revival of the Old Testament punishments of death for gay people. He has contributed money[iv] to anti-gay activist and former Washington Times reporter Peter LaBarbera’s Americans for Truth about Homosexuality.[v] He continued to contribute to discredited “researcher” Paul Cameron’s Family Research Institute long after Cameron called for the quarantining of HIV-positive gay men and expressed admiration for how the Nazis “dealt with homosexuality.”[vi] All of these groups are on that same, short SPLC antigay list.

The Oregon Years

Lively cut his teeth on antigay activism in Eugene, Oregon, where a February 1991 article in the Eugene Register-Guard described him as the assistant director for the Oregon Citizens Alliance (OCA).[vii] OCA had been formed just a few years earlier by Vietnam vet, ex-hippie, and born-again Christian Lon Mabon,[viii] with support from the Oregon branch of Pat Roberston’s Christian Coalition.[ix] (Lively and Mabon served on the Oregon Christian Coalition’s board of directors until 1993.) According to the article, Lively denounced a group of protesters against the first Gulf War as “burned-out hippies and professional malcontents.” His rhetoric wasn’t terribly original, but he was just getting started. The OCA would be his training ground.

Lively quickly gained a reputation for being a loose canon. In October 1991, the photographer Catherine Stauffer attended a church meeting where the OCA was previewing a videotape it had cobbled together in preparation for a campaign in support of a series of local antigay ballot measures across the state. Lively ejected Stauffer from the meeting forcefully, by throwing her against the wall and dragging her across the floor.[x] She sued Lively and OCA. The jury determined that Lively was guilty of using unreasonable force and awarded Stauffer $20,000.[xi]

OCA’s ballot measures were far reaching. They would prohibit “promoting, encouraging or facilitating homosexuality”—restrictions that would determine such basic community issues as which books could be accepted into the local library and which groups could access city facilities, including streets and parks. They would institute a double standard: for example, OCA could hold meetings in city buildings, while Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays could not.

Lively took a particular interest in the contest in Springfield,[xii] a suburb of Eugene. An antigay ballot measure passed there by a margin of 54 percent to 46 percent,[xiii] making Springfield the first city in the country to pass such an ordinance. But even there Lively’s intemperance once again got him in trouble. In a press release, he carelessly suggested that the former Springfield Human Rights Commissioner George Wickizer was “a practicing homosexual man.” Wickizer wasn’t, and he sued[xiv]: being falsely labeled a homosexual was considered libel at the time. But Lively lucked out. The court ruled that Wickizer was a public figure, making winning a libel case difficult.[xv] Sure enough, Wickizer lost.

The Springfield win propelled the OCA toward its fall statewide campaign for a proposed amendment to the Oregon Constitution that would bar the state from using “monies or properties to promote, encourage or facilitate homosexuality, pedophilia, sadism or masochism.” It required all levels of government, including school systems, to recognize “that these behaviors are abnormal, wrong, unnatural and perverse and they are to be discouraged and avoided.” The proposal, known as Measure 9, was the most severe statewide antigay measure ever proposed in the United States, and the campaign was acrimonious. Lively described gay people as “living a voluntary lifestyle based on sodomy,” and alleged that child molestation by other homosexuals was the most likely cause of homosexuality.[xvi] He also released a video purporting to demonstrate the kind of sexual activity in which gay men and lesbians commonly engaged. The video was loaded with false health information as well as testimony from two ex-gays—men who claimed to have rejected homosexuality to become straight.[xvii]

Payback Time: The Nazi Connection

Lively’s and the OCA’s campaign backfired. Measure 9 was defeated 56 percent to 44 percent,[xviii] and the OCA took a drubbing as well. A statewide poll after the election found that 57 percent of all Oregonians had an unfavorable opinion of the alliance, while only 14 percent were favorable.[xix] Lively and OCA were undeterred. Two years later, they returned with Measure 13, a slightly watered-down version of Measure 9. Measure 13 was also defeated, but Lively used this campaign to try out a new rhetorical theme. Appearing on a public-access cable program in Salem, Oregon, he tied homosexuality to the Nazi Party. “It wasn’t just that homosexuals were involved in the Nazi Party,” Lively told the television audience.

Homosexuals created the Nazi Party, and everything that we think about when we think about Nazis actually comes from the minds and perverted ideas of homosexuals. When you think of the Nazi Party… you cannot help but understand that this organization was a machine constructed by militant, sadomasochistic, pedophilic homosexuals. … They built the Nazi machine. They were the people that ran it, and that put it together. Most people understand that there were some homosexuals involved in the Nazi Party—no, it wasn’t that. They were the foundation of the Nazi Party.

Where did this idea come from? OCA’s Lon Mabon remembered that back in 1991, when he had filed papers in Springfield for the local antigay measure, he had passed hecklers calling him “Nazi,” “Mr. Ayatollah,” and “hatemonger.” Mabon reportedly said that Lively had “gotten tired of being called Nazi.” He decided to do some digging and concluded that “many Nazi leaders were homosexuals and that the Nazi Party was closely tied to pre-Nazi Germany’s gay-rights movement.”[xx] In other words, this was payback time.

As Lively was developing this theme, he may have come across an article written by Kevin Abrams, a Canadian Orthodox Jew who moved to Israel, that appeared in Peter LaBarbera’s Lambda Report in August 1994.[xxi] “If history is to be told accurately,” Abrams wrote, the behavior of homosexuals under Hitler’s barbarous rule provides further evidence that homosexuality is a pathology… Ironically, the record shows that there was far more brutality, rape, torture and murder committed against innocent people by Nazi deviants and homosexuals than there ever was against homosexuals.

Lively and Abrams quickly joined forces, releasing a book in July 1995 titled, The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party. The book, now in its fourth edition, solidified Lively’s career, not just as an antigay extremist but also as a Holocaust revisionist—although Lively denies that he blames gay people for the Holocaust. He reserves the actual blame for Satan; homosexuals, he says, were merely “instruments in its enactment.”[xxii] The vast homosexual conspiracies detailed in The Pink Swastika were sweeping: that gay people are naturally violent,[xxiii] predatory,[xxiv] and hostile to all moral norms;[xxv] that the permissiveness of the Weimar Republic provided the opening necessary for gays to wield power;[xxvi] that Nazi ideology was a modern revival of pagan “homo-occultism;”[xxvii] that homosexuals specifically target the youth, both for political indoctrination as well as sexual induction;[xxviii] that, yes, some gays were killed, but they were the effeminate ones targeted by the “butch” in their unquenchable thirst for absolute power;[xxix] that the Nazi Party’s stranglehold on German life was the direct result of this bloodlust;[xxx] and that the same fate awaits any nation that institutes equality for LGBT people.

The few historians who bothered to comment on Lively’s historical revisions dismissed them as farce,[xxxi] while Charles Schiffman, Executive Director of the Jewish Federation of Portland, expressed outrage over Lively’s “low effort to use a terrible tragedy for political purposes.”[xxxii] Lively and Abrams were unfazed. Lively, in particular, now had a mission: to sound the alarm that what had happened in Nazi Germany could happen here. “From the ashes of Nazi Germany,” he wrote, “the homofascist Phoenix has arisen again—this time in the United States.”[xxxiii] And not just in the United States. Lively has sounded this warning everywhere he goes.

Going Global

Some time in the late 1990s, Lively moved to Sacramento, California. There, he founded the Pro-Family Law Center and became involved in litigation on behalf of conservative Christian causes. For a while, he also served as director of the California American Family Association. Sacramento, it turns out, has a substantial Evangelical Christian, Russian-immigrant community, due largely to a popular shortwave radio station based there that used to broadcast to the Soviet Union. Although Lively soon moved to Temecula, near Los Angeles, his connections in Sacramento opened the doors to a new world of antigay activism. Russians and other Eastern Europeans had suffered terrible atrocities at the hands of the Nazis, and their children and grandchildren eagerly embraced The Pink Swastika’s litany of conspiracy theories.

Together with the Sacramento-based Russian radio host Vlad Kusakin, Seattle pastor Kenneth Hutcherson, and Latvian megachurch pastor Alexey Ledyaev, Lively founded the Watchmen On the Walls, which quickly became closely identified with violence, both rhetorical and real. When LGBT advocates tried to hold a gay rights march in the Latvian capital of Riga in 2006, a mob of parishioners from Ledyaev’s New Generation Church pelted them with eggs, rotten produce, and excrement as they tried to leave a gay-affirming Anglican church. In May 2007, Lively traveled to Riga and spoke at New Generation, where he called the gay rights movement “the most dangerous political movement in the world”[xxxiv] and commended Ledyaev’s work in Latvia.

Meanwhile, back in Sacramento, a group of Russian-speaking men killed Satendar Singh, a 26-year-old gay Fijian of Indian descent. One of the two men charged with the crime fled to Russia. A month later, Lively traveled to Novosibirsk for a Watchmen conference, where he spoke about Singh’s death to cheers and applause. Lively tried to quiet the celebration—“We don’t want homosexuals to be killed; we want them to be saved”—but only after complaining that the murder investigation and news coverage proved that “homosexuals have achieved very high power… They’ve begun to cause the political powers to punish anyone who says that homosexuality is wrong.”[xxxv]

The Nuclear Option: Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill

Lively’s demagoguery took an even more dangerous turn when, in 2009, he traveled to Uganda to deliver his now-infamous talk at the Triangle Hotel. Two other U.S. evangelicals—Exodus International board member Don Schmierer and International Healing Foundation’s Caleb Lee Brundidge—joined him to deliver what Lively later called his “nuclear bomb against the gay agenda.”[xxxvi] Lively threw everything he had into the talk: gays as child abusers, gays as insatiable sexual predators, gays bent on political domination, gays bent on the destruction of civilization, gays as Nazis. And a new one: gays as responsible for the Rwandan genocide.

The results were disastrous for the LGBT community in Uganda, a country that is already very conservative and deeply homophobic. In the wake of Lively’s talk, radio stations launched vigilante campaigns, reading out the names, addresses, and places of employment of gay Ugandans. Newspapers published their photos. LGBT people were attacked, arrested, and subjected to blackmail. A few weeks after the conference, mobs marched on the Ugandan Parliament at the behest of conservative Ugandan pastors, demanding new legislation to deal with the so-called homosexual problem.

Parliament was receptive to the idea. There had already been talk of imposing new restrictions on Uganda’s LGBT community, and that idea took on added urgency immediately following Lively’s explosive talk.[xxxvii] The morning after the Triangle Hotel conference, Lively met with fifty to one hundred members of Parliament for four hours to discuss ideas for a new law.[xxxviii] Among his suggestions was that the Ugandan government offer so-called restorative or reparative therapy, which promises to turn LGBT people into heterosexuals, as an alternative to life imprisonment—which, given the conditions of a typical Ugandan prison would not have been a difficult choice for most. Such therapies, however, have been widely discredited as not only ineffective but harmful, including by the American Psychological Association. Another suggestion, which he repeated often in his travels, was to impose a legal ban on all advocacy on behalf of LGBT people.[xxxix]

In October 2009, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill was introduced into the Ugandan Parliament. The bill would impose the death penalty on gays and lesbians under certain circumstances, including for “repeat offenders”— anyone who had had more than one relationship. The bill established a low bar for conviction, making mere “touching” for the perceived purpose of homosexual relations a criminal offense. It threatened teachers, doctors, friends, and family members with three years imprisonment if they didn’t report anyone they suspected of being gay to police within 24 hours. While Parliament ignored Lively’s call for forced therapy, they did include his recommendation to broadly criminalize all advocacy of homosexuality including, conceivably, the legal defense of accused gays. The bill even threatened landlords under a “brothel” provision if they knowingly rented to LGBT tenants.

Lively was proud of his “nuclear bomb,”[xl] even though he disavowed any responsibility for its fallout. In fact, his first response was to claim that the bill was the LGBT community’s fault. Ugandans, he said, were merely reacting to “a lot of external interference from European and American gay activists attempting to do in Uganda what they’ve done around the world—homosexualize that society.”[xli]

As for the bill itself, Lively called it “a step in the right direction,” although he said he opposed the death penalty.[xlii] But even there, he struggled. He told one interviewer that given the alternative of seeing Uganda become more accommodating to gays and lesbians, he would rather the bill passed “as the lesser of two evils.”

“Even with the death penalty?” an interviewer asked him. After much hemming and hawing, Lively admitted that even as the “lesser of two evils,” he would oppose the bill’s passage if it included the death penalty.[xliii]

Lively’s Latest Campaigns

Lively’s “nuclear bomb” earned him worldwide condemnation—about which he seemed ambivalent. Sometimes he appeared to relish the attention; other times he tried to flee from it. In July 2009, Lively announced his “final book on the homosexual issue.” [xliv] He bragged that this book, Redeeming the Rainbow, “is the product of twenty years of service as a front-lines opponent of the homosexual movement and encompasses all that I have learned through this long tour of duty.” And with that, he said would “no longer be monitoring the day-to-day developments of the culture war regarding homosexuality as closely, nor posting stories about it to this website.”[xlv] However, just a few weeks later, he was back to obsessing about homosexuality. He had moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, in 2008, and in August 2009 he traveled to Boston to testify against a transgender rights bill. (To him, gender identity and sexual orientation are indistinguishable.) After his testimony, he gave an interview that was posted on YouTube. “Frankly, I see things simply disintegrating very rapidly and I believe that we’re going to suffer some kind of infrastructure collapse in this society because of the failure of moral culture,” he said.[xlvi]

In Springfield, Lively initially worked at a church affiliated with Ledyaev’s New Generation Church. In January 2011, he reiterated to the Boston Globe that he was through with talking about homosexuality, and that he wanted to “re-Christianize Springfield.”[xlvii] He explained, “If someone were looking for Scott Lively to stop being involved in the other stuff [antigay activity], this is it. Those people who criticize me, they should be happy.” He opened the Holy Grounds coffee shop, a drop-in center for Springfield youth. Springfield officials expressed concern that truants from a nearby high school were hanging out at the coffee shop. The shop’s manager, Michael Frediani, was arrested in January because he failed to register as a convicted child-molester. Lively banned the students during school hours, and defended his manager as someone who had changed by converting to Christianity.

The Rev. Kapya Kaoma is an Anglican priest from Zambia who attended Lively’s talk in Uganda. As a PRA researcher, Kaoma wrote the report, Globalizing the Culture Wars, about antigay organizing in Africa by U.S.-based conservative Christians. Kaoma doesn’t think Lively’s new focus is particularly credible. “Honestly, I wouldn’t believe a thing from Scott Lively,” he said. “I don’t even think he’s capable of toning down his antigay rhetoric.”[xlviii] As it turns out, Kaoma was right. In March 2011, Lively traveled to the formerYugoslavian Republic of Macedonia to denounce a proposed antidiscrimination law as the product of “a secret plan by the homosexual powers of the E.U.” He warned that its passage would result in an “outbreak of homosexuality.”[xlix] The Macedonian bill has been shelved for now.

Jim Burroway is the editor of Box Turtle Bulletin (http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/), a website founded in 2005 to analyze the claims of antigay organizations. Jim was the first in the West to break the story of Scott Lively’s fateful conference in Kampala, Uganda, in 2009, and his website has faithfully chronicled events in Uganda since then. He attends conferences and other events to monitor antigay leaders and organizations first hand.

http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v27n1/ScottLively.html

More repugnant and peer-repudiated Holocaust revisionist Paul Cameron

http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/Articles/000,020.htm

Intelligence Report, Winter 2010, Issue Number: 140
10 Anti-Gay Myths Debunked

By Evelyn Schlatter and Robert Steinback

10 Anti-Gay Myths

Ever since born-again singer and orange juice pitchwoman Anita Bryant helped kick off the contemporary anti-gay movement more than 30 years ago, hard-line elements of the religious right have been searching for ways to demonize homosexuals — or, at a minimum, to find arguments that will prevent their normalization in society. For the former Florida beauty queen and her Save Our Children group, it was the alleged plans of gays and lesbians to “recruit” in schools that provided the fodder for their crusade.

But in addition to hawking that myth, the legions of anti-gay activists who followed have added a panoply of others, ranging from the extremely doubtful claim that homosexuality is a choice, to unalloyed lies like the claims that gays molest children far more than heterosexuals or that hate crime laws will lead to the legalization of bestiality and necrophilia. These fairy tales are important to the anti-gay right because they form the basis of its claim that homosexuality is a social evil that must be suppressed — an opinion rejected by virtually all relevant medical and scientific authorities. They also almost certainly contribute to hate crime violence directed at homosexuals, who are more targeted for such attacks than any other minority in America. What follows are 10 key myths propagated by the anti-gay movement, along with the truth behind the propaganda.

MYTH # 1
Homosexuals molest children at far higher rates than heterosexuals.

THE ARGUMENT
Depicting gay men as a threat to children may be the single most potent weapon for stoking public fears about homosexuality — and for winning elections and referenda, as Anita Bryant found out during her successful 1977 campaign to overturn a Dade County, Fla., ordinance barring discrimination against gay people. Discredited psychologist Paul Cameron, the most ubiquitous purveyor of anti-gay junk science, has been a major promoter of this myth. Despite having been debunked repeatedly and very publicly, Cameron’s work is still widely relied upon by anti-gay organizations, although many no longer quote him by name. Others have cited a group called the American College of Pediatricians to claim, as Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council did in November 2010, that “the research is overwhelming that homosexuality poses a [molestation] danger to children.”

THE FACTS
According to the American Psychological Association, “homosexual men are not more likely to sexually abuse children than heterosexual men are.” Gregory Herek, a professor at the University of California, Davis, who is one of the nation’s leading researchers on prejudice against sexual minorities, reviewed a series of studies and found no evidence that gay men molest children at higher rates than heterosexual men.

Anti-gay activists who make that claim allege that all men who molest male children should be seen as homosexual. But research by A. Nicholas Groth, a pioneer in the field of sexual abuse of children, shows that is not so. Groth found that there are two types of child molesters: fixated and regressive. The fixated child molester — the stereotypical pedophile — cannot be considered homosexual or heterosexual because “he often finds adults of either sex repulsive” and often molests children of both sexes. Regressive child molesters are generally attracted to other adults, but may “regress” to focusing on children when confronted with stressful situations. Groth found that the majority of regressed offenders were heterosexual in their adult relationships.

The Child Molestation Research and Prevention Institute notes that 90% of child molesters target children in their network of family and friends. Most child molesters, therefore, are not gay people lingering outside schools waiting to snatch children from the playground, as much religious-right rhetoric suggests.

Some anti-gay ideologues cite the American College of Pediatricians’ opposition to same-sex parenting as if the organization were a legitimate professional body. In fact, the so-called college is a tiny breakaway faction of the similarly named, 60,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics that requires, as a condition of membership, that joiners “hold true to the group’s core beliefs … [including] that the traditional family unit, headed by an opposite-sex couple, poses far fewer risk factors in the adoption and raising of children.” The group’s 2010 publication Facts About Youth was described by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association as non-factual. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, was one of several legitimate researchers who said Facts misrepresented their findings. “It is disturbing to me to see special interest groups distort my scientific observations to make a point against homosexuality,” he wrote. “The information they present is misleading and incorrect.”

MYTH # 2
Same-sex parents harm children.

THE ARGUMENT
Most hard-line anti-gay organizations are heavily invested, from both a religious and a political standpoint, in promoting the traditional nuclear family as the sole framework for the healthy upbringing of children. They maintain a reflexive belief that same-sex parenting must be harmful to children — although the exact nature of that supposed harm varies widely.

THE FACTS
No legitimate research has demonstrated that same-sex couples are any more or any less harmful to children than heterosexual couples.

The American Academy of Pediatrics in a 2002 policy statement declared: “A growing body of scientific literature demonstrates that children who grow up with one or two gay and/or lesbian parents fare as well in emotional, cognitive, social, and sexual functioning as do children whose parents are heterosexual.” That policy statement was reaffirmed in 2009.

The American Psychological Association found that “same-sex couples are remarkably similar to heterosexual couples, and that parenting effectiveness and the adjustment, development and psychological well-being of children is unrelated to parental sexual orientation.”

Similarly, the Child Welfare League of America’s official position with regard to same-sex parents is that “lesbian, gay, and bisexual parents are as well-suited to raise children as their heterosexual counterparts.”

MYTH # 3
People become homosexual because they were sexually abused as children or there was a deficiency in sex-role modeling by their parents.

THE ARGUMENT
Many anti-gay rights proponents claim that homosexuality is a mental disorder caused by some psychological trauma or aberration in childhood. This argument is used to counter the common observation that no one, gay or straight, consciously chooses his or her sexual orientation. Joseph Nicolosi, a founder of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, said in 2009 that “if you traumatize a child in a particular way, you will create a homosexual condition.” He also has repeatedly said, “Fathers, if you don’t hug your sons, some other man will.” A side effect of this argument is the demonization of parents of homosexuals, who are led to wonder if they failed to protect a child against sexual abuse or failed as role models in some important way. In October 2010, Kansas State University family studies professor Walter Schumm said he was about to release a related study arguing that homosexual couples are more likely than heterosexuals to raise gay or lesbian children.

THE FACTS
No scientifically sound study has linked sexual orientation or identity with parental role-modeling or childhood sexual abuse.

The American Psychiatric Association noted in a 2000 fact sheet on gay, lesbian and bisexual issues that “no specific psychosocial or family dynamic cause for homosexuality has been identified, including histories of childhood sexual abuse.” The fact sheet goes on to say that sexual abuse does not appear to be any more prevalent among children who grow up and identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual than in children who grow up and identify as heterosexual.

Similarly, the National Organization on Male Sexual Victimization notes on its website that “experts in the human sexuality field do not believe that premature sexual experiences play a significant role in late adolescent or adult sexual orientation” and added that it’s unlikely that someone can make another person a homosexual or heterosexual.

With regard to Schumm’s study, critics have already said that he appears to have merely aggregated anecdotal data, a biased sample that invalidates his findings.

MYTH # 4
Homosexuals don’t live nearly as long as heterosexuals.

THE ARGUMENT
Anti-gay organizations want to promote heterosexuality as the healthier “choice.” Furthermore, the purportedly shorter life spans and poorer physical and mental health of homosexuals are often offered as reasons why gays and lesbians shouldn’t be allowed to adopt or foster children.

THE FACTS
This falsehood can be traced directly to the discredited research of Paul Cameron and his Family Research Institute, specifically a 1994 paper he co-wrote entitled, “The Lifespan of Homosexuals.” Using obituaries collected from gay newspapers, he and his two co-authors concluded that gay men died, on average, at 43, compared to an average life expectancy at the time of around 73 for all U.S. men. On the basis of the same obituaries, Cameron also claimed that gay men are 18 times more likely to die in car accidents than heterosexuals, 22 times more likely to die of heart attacks than whites, and 11 times more likely than blacks to die of the same cause. He also concluded that lesbians are 487 times more likely to die of murder, suicide, or accidents than straight women.

Remarkably, these claims have become staples of the anti-gay right and have frequently made their way into far more mainstream venues. For example, William Bennett, education secretary under President Reagan, used Cameron’s statistics in a 1997 interview he gave to ABC News’ “This Week.”

However, like virtually all of his “research,” Cameron’s methodology is egregiously flawed — most obviously because the sample he selected (the data from the obits) was not remotely statistically representative of the homosexual population as a whole. Even Nicholas Eberstadt, a demographer at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, has called Cameron’s methods “just ridiculous.”

MYTH # 5
Homosexuals controlled the Nazi Party and helped to orchestrate the Holocaust.

THE ARGUMENT
This claim comes directly from a 1995 book titled The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party, by Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams. Lively is the virulently anti-gay founder of Abiding Truth Ministries and Abrams is an organizer of a group called the International Committee for Holocaust Truth, which came together in 1994 and included Lively as a member.

The primary argument Lively and Abrams make is that gay people were not victimized by the Holocaust. Rather, Hitler deliberately sought gay men for his inner circle because their “unusual brutality” would help him run the party and mastermind the Holocaust. In fact, “the Nazi party was entirely controlled by militaristic male homosexuals throughout its short history,” the book claims. “While we cannot say that homosexuals caused the Holocaust, we must not ignore their central role in Nazism,” Lively and Abrams add. “To the myth of the ‘pink triangle’ — the notion that all homosexuals in Nazi Germany were persecuted — we must respond with the reality of the ‘pink swastika.’”

These claims have been picked up by a number of anti-gay groups and individuals, including Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, as proof that homosexuals are violent and sick. The book has also attracted an audience among anti-gay church leaders in Eastern Europe and among Russian-speaking anti-gay activists in America.

THE FACTS
The Pink Swastika has been roundly discredited by legitimate historians and other scholars. Christine Mueller, professor of history at Reed College, did a line-by-line refutation of an earlier (1994) Abrams article on the topic and of the broader claim that the Nazi Party was “entirely controlled” by gay men. Historian Jon David Wynecken at Grove City College also refuted the book, pointing out that Lively and Abrams did no primary research of their own, instead using out-of-context citations of some legitimate sources while ignoring information from those same sources that ran counter to their thesis.

The myth that the Nazis condoned homosexuality sprang up in the 1930s, started by socialist opponents of the Nazis as a slander against Nazi leaders. Credible historians believe that only one of the half-dozen leaders in Hitler’s inner circle, Ernst Röhm, was gay. (Röhm was murdered on Hitler’s orders in 1934.) The Nazis considered homosexuality one aspect of the “degeneracy” they were trying to eradicate.

When the National Socialist Party came to power in 1933, it quickly strengthened Germany’s existing penalties against homosexuality. Heinrich Himmler, Hitler’s security chief, announced that homosexuality was to be “eliminated” in Germany, along with miscegenation among the races. Historians estimate that between 50,000 and 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality (or suspicion of it) under the Nazi regime. These men were routinely sent to concentration camps and many thousands died there.

In 1942, the Nazis instituted the death penalty for homosexuals. Offenders in the German military were routinely shot. Himmler put it like this: “We must exterminate these people root and branch. … We can’t permit such danger to the country; the homosexual must be completely eliminated.”

MYTH # 6
Hate crime laws will lead to the jailing of pastors who criticize homosexuality and the legalization of practices like bestiality and necrophilia.

THE ARGUMENT
Anti-gay activists, who have long opposed adding LGBT people to those protected by hate crime legislation, have repeatedly claimed that such laws would lead to the jailing of religious figures who preach against homosexuality — part of a bid to gain the backing of the broader religious community for their position. Janet Porter of Faith2Action was one of many who asserted that the federal Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act — signed into law by President Obama in October 2009 — would “jail pastors” because it “criminalizes speech against the homosexual agenda.”

In a related assertion, anti-gay activists claimed the law would lead to the legalization of psychosexual disorders (paraphilias) like bestiality and pedophilia. Bob Unruh, a conservative Christian journalist who left The Associated Press in 2006 for the right-wing, conspiracist news site WorldNetDaily, said shortly before the federal law was passed that it would legalize “all 547 forms of sexual deviancy or ‘paraphilias’ listed by the American Psychiatric Association.” This claim was repeated by many anti-gay organizations, including the Illinois Family Institute.

THE FACTS
The claim that hate crime laws could result in the imprisonment of those who “oppose the homosexual lifestyle” is false. The Constitution provides robust protections of free speech, and case law makes it clear that even a preacher who suggested that homosexuals should be killed would be protected.

Neither do hate crime laws — which provide for enhanced penalties when persons are victimized because of their “sexual orientation” (among other factors) — “protect pedophiles,” as Janet Porter and many others have claimed. According to the American Psychological Association, sexual orientation refers to heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality — not paraphilias such as pedophilia. Paraphilias, as defined by the American Psychiatric Assocation, are disorders characterized by sexual urges or behaviors directed at nonhuman objects or non-consenting persons like children, or that involve the suffering or humiliation of one’s partner.

Even if pedophiles, for example, were protected under a hate crime law — and such a law has not been suggested or contemplated anywhere — that would not legalize or “protect” pedophilia. Pedophilia is illegal sexual activity, and a law that more severely punished people who attacked pedophiles would not change that.

MYTH # 7
Allowing homosexuals to serve openly would damage the armed forces.

THE ARGUMENT
Anti-gay groups are adamantly opposed to allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the armed forces, not only because of their purported fear that combat readiness will be undermined, but because the military has long been considered the purest meritocracy in America (the armed forces were successfully racially integrated long before American civilian society, for example). If gays can serve honorably and effectively in this meritocracy, that would suggest that there is no rational basis for discriminating against them in any way.

THE FACTS
Homosexuals now serve in the U.S. armed forces, though under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy instituted in 1993, they cannot serve openly. At the same time, gays and lesbians serve openly in the armed forces of 25 countries, including Britain, Israel, South Africa, Canada and Australia, according to a report released by the Palm Center, a policy think tank at the University of California at Santa Barbara. The Palm Center report concluded that lifting bans against openly gay service personnel in these countries “ha[s] had no negative impact on morale, recruitment, retention, readiness or overall combat effectiveness.” Successful transitions to new policies were attributed to clear signals of leadership support and a focus on a uniform code of behavior without regard to sexual orientation.

A 2008 Military Times poll of active-duty military personnel, often cited by anti-gay activists, found that 10% of respondents said they would not re-enlist if the DADT policy were repealed. That would mean some 228,000 people might leave the military in that instance. But a 2009 review of that poll by the Palm Center suggested a wide disparity between what soldiers said they would do and their actual actions. It noted, for example, that far more than 10% of West Point officers in the 1970s said they would leave the service if women were admitted to the academy. “But when the integration became a reality,” the report said, “there was no mass exodus; the opinions turned out to be just opinions.” Similarly, a 1985 survey of 6,500 male Canadian service members and a 1996 survey of 13,500 British service members each revealed that nearly two-thirds expressed strong reservations about serving with gays. Yet when those countries lifted bans on gays serving openly, virtually no one left the service for that reason. “None of the dire predictions of doom came true,” the Palm Center report said.

MYTH # 8
Homosexuals are more prone to be mentally ill and to abuse drugs and alcohol.

THE ARGUMENT
Anti-gay groups want not only to depict sexual orientation as something that can be changed but also to show that heterosexuality is the most desirable “choice” — even if religious arguments are set aside. The most frequently used secular argument made by anti-gay groups in that regard is that homosexuality is inherently unhealthy, both mentally and physically. As a result, most anti-gay rights groups reject the 1973 decision by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses. Some of these groups, including the particularly hard-line Traditional Values Coalition, claim that “homosexual activists” managed to infiltrate the APA in order to sway its decision.

THE FACTS
All major professional mental health organizations are on record as stating that homosexuality is not a mental disorder.

It is true that LGBT people suffer higher rates of anxiety, depression, and depression-related illnesses and behaviors like alcohol and drug abuse than the general population. But studies done during the past 15 years have determined that it is the stress of being a member of a minority group in an often-hostile society — and not LGBT identity itself — that accounts for the higher levels of mental illness and drug use.

Richard J. Wolitski, an expert on minority status and public health issues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, put it like this in 2008: “Economic disadvantage, stigma, and discrimination … increase stress and diminish the ability of individuals [in minority groups] to cope with stress, which in turn contribute to poor physical and mental health.”

MYTH # 9
No one is born a homosexual.

THE ARGUMENT
Anti-gay activists keenly oppose the granting of “special” civil rights protections to homosexuals similar to those afforded black Americans and other minorities. But if people are born gay — in the same way people have no choice as to whether they are black or white — discrimination against homosexuals would be vastly more difficult to justify. Thus, anti-gay forces insist that sexual orientation is a behavior that can be changed, not an immutable characteristic.

THE FACTS
Modern science cannot state conclusively what causes sexual orientation, but a great many studies suggest that it is the result of biological and environmental forces, not a personal “choice.” One of the more recent is a 2008 Swedish study of twins (the world’s largest twin study) that appeared in The Archives of Sexual Behavior and concluded that “[h]omosexual behaviour is largely shaped by genetics and random environmental factors.” Dr. Qazi Rahman, study co-author and a leading scientist on human sexual orientation, said: “This study puts cold water on any concerns that we are looking for a single ‘gay gene’ or a single environmental variable which could be used to ‘select out’ homosexuality — the factors which influence sexual orientation are complex. And we are not simply talking about homosexuality here — heterosexual behaviour is also influenced by a mixture of genetic and environmental factors.”

The American Psychological Association (APA) acknowledges that despite much research into the possible genetic, hormonal, social and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no evidence has emerged that would allow scientists to pinpoint the precise causes of sexual orientation. Still, the APA concludes that “most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation.”

In October 2010, Kansas State University family studies professor Walter Schumm said he was about to release a study showing that gay parents produced far more gay children than heterosexual parents. He told a reporter that he was “trying to prove [homosexuality is] not 100% genetic.” But critics suggested that his data did not prove that, and, in any event, virtually no scientists have suggested that homosexuality is caused only by genes.

MYTH # 10
Gay people can choose to leave homosexuality.

THE ARGUMENT
If people are not born gay, as anti-gay activists claim, then it should be possible for individuals to abandon homosexuality. This view is buttressed among religiously motivated anti-gay activists by the idea that homosexual practice is a sin and humans have the free will needed to reject sinful urges.

A number of “ex-gay” religious ministries have sprung up in recent years with the aim of teaching homosexuals to become heterosexuals, and these have become prime purveyors of the claim that gays and lesbians, with the aid of mental therapy and Christian teachings, can “come out of homosexuality.” Exodus International, the largest of these ministries, plainly states, “You don’t have to be gay!” Another, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, describes itself as “a professional, scientific organization that offers hope to those who struggle with unwanted homosexuality.”

THE FACTS
“Reparative” or sexual reorientation therapy — the pseudo-scientific foundation of the ex-gay movement — has been rejected by all the established and reputable American medical, psychological, psychiatric, and professional counseling organizations. In 2009, for instance, the American Psychological Association adopted a resolution, accompanied by a 138-page report, that repudiated ex-gay therapy. The report concluded that compelling evidence suggested that cases of individuals going from gay to straight were “rare” and that “many individuals continued to experience same-sex sexual attractions” after reparative therapy. The APA resolution added that “there is insufficient evidence to support the use of psychological interventions to change sexual orientation” and asked “mental health professionals to avoid misrepresenting the efficacy of sexual orientation change efforts by promoting or promising change in sexual orientation.” The resolution also affirmed that same-sex sexual and romantic feelings are normal.

Some of the most striking, if anecdotal, evidence of the ineffectiveness of sexual reorientation therapy has been the numerous failures of some of its most ardent advocates. For example, the founder of Exodus International, Michael Bussee, left the organization in 1979 with a fellow male ex-gay counselor because the two had fallen in love. Alan Chambers, current president of Exodus, said in 2007 that with years of therapy, he’s mostly conquered his attraction to men, but then admitted, “By no means would we ever say that change can be sudden or complete.”

This man is a certified evil, despicable IDIOT!

This makes Bradlee Dean the new Paul Cameron-spewing Poo-Poo pastor???

Or Tom Prichard??? Oooh I can hardly wait to see who it will be! Anyway, Africa had some creative ways to point out the ridiculous of these claims by MFC, FRC and AFA aka… The Family

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toQVG0mRqOw&feature=related

What a SCUMBAG!!!

Lively, Cameron, Dean and others of their ilk are disgusting excuses for human beings. The hatred they espouse toward those who belong to the LGBT community is a frightening example of those who insist everyone live within their narrow views of what love, sexuality and family should be. They frequently claim to be the standard bearers of the freedom we are guaranteed in this country and contend they hold a greater patriotism than others. But these are the same people who want to deny freedom to those different from them. They want to take away freedom of choice, freedom to love who you choose to love, the freedom to legally establish a family with your soul mate if that soul mate doesn’t meet the definition they demand. Marry? Not unless you follow their confines. Making choices regarding your family? Not if they have anything to say about it. In other words, they want to take your rights to live your life in the manner you choose to do unless your choices line up with their narrow life path. No freedom there..Not patriotic to want to deny the freedoms our founding fathers wanted- that we are guaranteed in our Constitution.