Hiding behind the children: the current tactics of the anti-gay brigade
Some of them are appalling individuals. Creators and fomenters of social apartheid. Others are ordinary people, caught up in the storm, parroting the discredited propaganda of old. Propaganda that’s been fed to them by conservative patriarchal power structures for a very long time.
Watching the opponents of LGBT rights in my lifetime has often made me wonder, If they genuinely believe the things they’re saying? Why do they need to resort to that? A question I’ve had to ask very often because anti-gay campaigners have relied heavily on misinformation, manipulation and what I could only refer to as deceptive tactics. The last of which is extremely well documented and readily available on the internet.
If you visit these anti-gay sites, whether of the sophisticated political variety or the home-made kind- the information and insinuations you’ll find are nothing but reformulations of ignorant and antiquated stereotypes designed to cast aspersions on the entire LGBT collective. Dangerous to children, dangerous to society, even dangerous to civilization. Here’s a long-winded 1960’s PSA perpetuating the myth that homosexuality and paedophilia are one and the same:
I’m sure you’re thinking, “wait, wasn’t the gay marriage debate just an issue of semantics? Wasn’t the problem the use of the word marriage?”
No, it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t. That was just another tactic in their nefarious campaign. I know because I was born in the 70’s. Long before opposition to gay marriage I saw the opposition to civil unions. Before opposition to civil unions, I witnessed anti-gay hostility in its pure, unadulterated form.
Same sex guys?
And now the front-line tactic for supporting the marginalization of gay people is allegedly protecting children. The paedophilia slant has been debunked, but that hasn’t stopped them from dragging children into the discussion as a means to scare people and pull at heartstrings.
This is done with extraordinary callousness:
And here’s the problem, it’s a farce. The “we’re worried about children” angle is a technique rather than a genuine concern. Less than 1 in 10 lgbt people have children. The proportion of those who adopt is even smaller. Here are some numbers:
The legalization of same-sex unions doesn’t in any way affect the number of lgbt people who have biological children. It also doesn’t stop single parent adoptions which are legal in much of the world. That means the whole protect the children/protect traditional marriage malarkey is but a facade for traditional anti-gay discrimination. It’s what they hide behind because their former outright hostility and belligerence is no longer acceptable in society today.
My Mazamet 
Over on Insanity’s blog there’s a shitstorm of anger over WP having the rainbow banner up. Funny, feeble-minded people.
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Hurrah!
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Somewhere over the rainbow, anti-gay a-holes learn the value of keeping their bigotry and hatred focused on themselves rather than projecting it onto others. Here in the states, I propose we wall up Texas and Florida, fill them with gun tooting anti-gay, conservative christian douche-bags and let them have at each other. This way, they won’t be bothering the rest of us.
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Impossible because their identities are linked to an exclusivist ideology- and religious leaders will always use (even create) wedge issue to keep the us vs. them scenario going.
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That’s why I LOVE religious leaders SO much. 🙂
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I see them as a necessary evil. The more they try to spread venomous lies about lgbt people the more people see these religious thugs for what they are and side with us. My bigger concern is what they are doing in developing countries where human rights and free speech are much more fragile.
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Perhaps their concern for children could manifest itself by investigating the prevalence of abuse of children within the ‘orthodox’ family structure.
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Better yet, the suffering and death of children whose parents believe in faith healing and not doctors. If only we could drive a wedge between religion and families, based on all-too-real examples of such legally-sanctioned, murderous religious behavior…
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I’ve finally made it through every link and vid. Interesting compilation. I found the creepy sixties one fascinating, not least because America clearly had an obesity problem back in the sixties. Sadly, the F and R vid, some 40 years later was equally as bad, despite the progress of time. I’m also left wondering why all these young American boys were getting lifts from strangers. I had ‘Do not get into a car with ANYONE’ dinned into me from infancy. No wonder they ended up obese, should have walked or cycled. Sorry, I digress.
Helen makes a valid point. There is always under reporting of any sexual assault, and the amount of abuse within heterosexual families is just unknown. Simple as that.
And yes, it is a total smokescreen. Change the goalposts, find some different excuse to discriminate against homosexuals. I can’t get it into my head that someone finds what two consenting adults do together is their business. It defies logic, and equally importantly, it defies humanity and decency.
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It does. Maybe one has to be really screwed up to be able to achieve that level of anger with the world, where the desperation to find a scapegoat is a matter of sheer survival
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Back in the 70-s, the whole child safety was perceived differently. These days, my wife reads stories on the Internet where neighbors called CPS seeing unsupervised children playing in their backyard for an hour after schools while their parents got stuck in traffic after work.
As a 3rd grader, I took a public bus to get to school every day alone or with friends. My school was about 40 minutes of walking distance from home, and I had classes from 3pm till 7pm because the school had 2 shifts. When I was 7, I stayed home alone waiting for parents to get back from work, cooking myself a simple dinner like pasta or fried eggs. These days, parents cannot even leave their kids alone until they are 12. I don’t think, there were fewer maniacs or child abusers back in the 70s. Just the whole notion of child safety has changed.
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Ha! I guess we’re as old as each other. Smoking, no seatbelts, men (fathers) drinking and driving, children playing with fireworks- and here we are still alive!
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Those who are still alive – yes, here we are 🙂
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Some things do change for better. Attitude to gays is one example. When I moved to the US, I went to grad school in electrical engineering. I the old building, they had EE class pictures on the walls from fourties to eighties. Interesting that in those pictures, there were no females until seventies. Then they started having 1-2 females per class. I was told, the engineering college building did not have a women’s bathroom. They also say that it was not uncommon for a professor to light up a cigarette in class. Once the professor did it, most of the students would do it to. So, most of the class was spent in thick smoke. I think, it’s good that this has changed. I think, life today is more exciting than in 70s. More dynamic. There are more opportunities due to more information (Internet) and fewer stereotypes. I cannot imagine having a casual almost real-time conversation with someone across the globe on a topic like gay equality.
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That PSA was just horrific! And the Jerry Falwell clip, well, that guy’s always been an idiot. Of course, the Conservatives blame everything from 9/11 to climate change on LBGT rights. I worked for an ultra Conservative man and he had no trouble telling me that ALL blacks will steal from you, and ALL homosexuals will kill, just a matter of time. I cannot even fathom the stupidity of some people. Sadly stupidity seems to go hand in hand with cruelty and hate.
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Thankfully many of the homophobes in question are not long for this earth, or in the case of Falwell, already gone along with another notorious homophobe, Jesse Helms! Thank goodness most Millennials have more sense!
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As a gay parent I cannot help but take incredible offense when anti gay activists suggest that I am likely abusive, negligent or just plain dangerous to my children. They can call me “F*G” until the end of time and it will not enrage me the way this kind of defamation does.
I’ve seen your comments on “that other blog” and I appreciate your balanced tone engaging these people in conversation. I couldn’t continue because it got too personal for me and I think these people are horribly dishonest. Shoot me an email and I can share a couple thoughts I have in private.
Thanks.
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I know it’s tough, but we must engage. Otherwise we get dangerous pockets in society and bad things happen.
People in those groups may not even know it, but they have lgbt children too. Some of whom might be reading that stuff. We have to be there to oppose those ideas and so those children know there’s another point of view.
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Katy Faust posts deliberate misinformation and employs tortured logic to rationalize what is ultimately a position based on her religious beliefs. I am certain that one of the commenters is her writing colleague “Rivka Edelman” and I wouldn’t be surprised if the others included Robert Oscar Lopez, Heather Barwick, Janna Darnelle, etc. When I attempt to engage in the civil debate without personal attacks Ms. Faust claims to foster on her site, she usually falls silent and allows her attack dogs to scour my personal blog, send me vulgar harassing messages on Twitter, and personally attack not only me but directly address my children that I have left out of the conversation. Katy Faust does nothing to rein in her colleagues and thus passively endorses their behavior. The only reason she does not engage in it herself is because it would damage the “compassionate Christian conservative” image she has cultivated, and because her cloak of anonymity has already,thankfully been neutralized.
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I absolutely don’t understand the logic why gay parents are presumed to sexually abuse their children any more frequently than heterosexual parents or why sexual violence among gays should happen more frequently than among heterosexuals.
I have found that ALL anti-gay arguments can be reduced down to two reasons:
1. Physical disgust to homosexuality
2. Religion (the Bible says so)
Often, it’s both. Both positions cannot be argued with any reason.
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I wrote a full blog post about this issue –>
Comment, bring friends, (reblog?) state your opinion. I’m trying to get my blog up and running. Started today 😀
Genuinely I think there’s a failure to communicate, with the conservative community. I mean… If they honestly think that DPs are the same as SSMs, then there is no rationale reason to be against SSM and have baseless separations of contracts that offer virtually the same things.
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Children everywhere in the world need a reliable protection, protection from religious obscurantism of any kind!
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Jeez – that 1960’s public service announcement is unreal! Well, at least I wish it were. You’re absolutely right in this:
“And here’s the problem, it’s a farce. The ‘we’re worried about children’ angle is a technique rather than a genuine concern… the whole protect the children/protect traditional marriage malarkey is but a facade for traditional anti-gay discrimination. It’s what they hide behind because their former outright hostility and belligerence is no longer acceptable in society today.”
Great post – thanks!
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