Last week both the National Organization for Marriage and Concerned Women for America were profiled in the new Winter Intelligence Report issued by the hate-group trackers at the Southern Poverty Law Center. The list of 18 Anti-Gay Groups and their Propaganda was released last Monday by the SPLC, the civil rights center that’s been tracking hate groups for nearly four decades (and who should really know better than to release this stuff on three-day holliday work weeks.)
According to the Montgomery, Alabama-based center, “viewing homosexuality as unbiblical does not qualify organizations for listing as hate groups,” but instead groups are included on the list for making “claims about LGBT people that have been thoroughly discredited by scientific authorities…and [for] repeated, groundless name-calling.” 13 of the 18 groups profiled in the Intelligence Report will be appearing on next year’s detailed list of hate groups currently active in the United States, a list which also includes white supremicists, holocaust deniers and neo-Confederates.
You may remember the Concerned Women for America: they love Donna Hughes (pdf) and they hate Harry Potter. According to the SPLC, the group–founded in 1979 in anti-feminist response to the National Organization for Women—pushes an anti-gay agenda based on dubious scientific claims that have been totally discredited.
NOM you know, probably; they’re the tax-dodging meteorologists that came to town on a bus and spoke in tongues at the State House last summer. Founded in 2007, the group’s website states that gays don’t have the right to redefine marriage. The profile notes also that the group’s former bus driver sent out messages indicating that gay men have extremely short lives, a falsehood often repeated by homophobic hate groups. NOM president Brian Brown responded last week, saying that “[t]he whole idea that somehow those folks who stand up for traditional marriage, like the Family Research Council, are hateful is wrong. [The law center is] trying to marginalize and intimidate folks for standing up for marriage and also trying to equate them somehow to the KKK.”
Also appearing on the SPLC list were the Dove World Outreach Center, the Florida church which made headlines earlier this year for placing illegal “NO HOMO MAYOR” signs on its lawn and again this fall when its minister wanted to burn the Qur’an on September 11; MassResistance, the Bay State group that keeps insisting gay men are trying to force a homosexual agenda in schools; and the leaden-titled Heterosexuals Organized for a Moral Environment, who think that gay behavior should be “illegalizeable” (their word) and also that it has something to do with Freemasons. [links to these sites intentionally not included.]
Neither NOM nor CWA will be on next year’s list of active hate groups, although the American Family Institute and the Family Research Council will both be profiled when the list is updated in 2011.
But why have those assertions been dismissed? Was it dismissed based on pure science or did homosexual activism come into play? Most of what i read from you last link had more to do with the individual opinions and activism than any big scientific discovery. And some key facts from the other side weren’t even mentioned (for example, identical twin studies where one twin is gay and the other isn’t). If gay activism can declassify a mental disorder, why shouldn’t we cite our religious beliefs to protest?
On the contrary, I’ve read a great deal about it, over many years. But I come from a family of scientists, and have relied mostly on broadly respected scientific sources, not fringe or rogue ‘scientists’ who reject long-accepted scientific standards when then return results they disagree with on a personal level. Or, as in the case of Dr. Cretella, go and form their own groups after rejecting scientific norms.
While groups like NARTH would very much like to be considered respectable scientific organisations, the fact remains that their assertions have been fully vetted and dismissed by the vast majority of the respected scientific community.
It’s perhaps regrettable that respectable science sometimes disclaims our prior assumptions. I’m sure many were dismayed and distressed when asked to accept that the earth goes about the sun, instead of the other way ’round, and children who cry when they learn that there’s no Tooth Fairy. But the grown-up reaction is to adjust your perspective, not to disclaim the disclaimers.
Thanks for the link wess. It proved my point. You are gung ho to discuss so-called gay marriage but you won’t go near anything about the nature of homosexuality itself.
Also, if that’s the funniest thing you’ve seen all week, you need to get out more.
I realise it’s easier for you to use my brain instead of your own, and I can understand why you’d want to, but it’s not my job to do your research for you. If you’re going to make claims, it’s your responsibility to investigate them, not anyone else’s.
http://tinyurl.com/35nn9aa
But perhaps it’s irrelevant. One issue we keep running into is that many people whose public views are guided primarily by their private religious views often simply reject any assertion, no matter how professionally researched or expertly argued, that happens to contradict their religious views. This is sort of a one-step-removed version of the archaic view that priest are always right and anyone who disagrees is always wrong — the ancient fundament of theocracy, which is the basis of religious tyranny. (A distinction which is purely academic, as theocracy inherently implies — and inevitably delivers — discrimination based on religion.)
Everything I read and hear from the RCC on what they frame as ‘moral’ issues seems to argue for Catholic hegemony in the public sphere — a notion that rational defenders of democracy rejected centuries ago.
I find it amusing that you consider me either “a troll or a damned fool” . Funniest thing I’ve heard all week, just because I’m opposed to so-called same sex marriage.
You seem like a very intelligent and well read person wess. Perhaps you could direct me to some documentation as to why homosexuality was removed from the DSM.
And yet, it required a ruling of the U.S. Surpreme Court to overturn antimiscengenation in the thirteen States that still had it. And the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed by a single vote.
Bigotry is a powerful force in the world. As recently as a decade ago, one in ten Americans polled still opposed so-called ‘inter-racial’ marriage. Left to bartime-style ‘democracy,’ freedom and equality come slowly, if ever.
It doesn’t surprise me one bit that all or nearly all of NOM-RI is Roman Catholic. (I make the ‘Roman’ distinction here because not all Catholic groups oppose gay rights.) Even as Rhode Island as a whole is less than half Catholic. Which of the many other denominations in this state are represented there?
You say you (or they, though I figure there’s probably no meaningful distinction to be made) don’t oppose gay rights, and then immediately disclaim every civil right that’s distinct to gay citizens. I’d call it hypocrisy, where it not so patently self-denying.
I’ve never been able to decide firmly if you’re a troll or just a damned fool, but either way, as I’ve said before, your forensics are childishly inadequate. You conflate assertion with argument, stating facts without support, as if merely saying something made it so — like a child would, not a grown-up. You construct senseless arguments that are rationally self-defeating. However much sense it may seem to make to you, I assure you that you cannot push on a rope.
The comparison between interracial marriage and so-called same-sex marriage is a comparison between apples and oranges. Race is a genetic trait while sexual orientation is not. In fact, the nature of sexual orientation remains a mystery.
Additionally, interracial marriage still involves the union of a man and woman. The comparison to so-called same-sex marriage falls flat here as well.
I suspect that the only reason gay marriage supporters oppose voting on this issue is the fact that every state that has put it to a vote has voted overwhelmingly in favor of traditional marriage.
The positions of NOM regarding so-called same-sex marriage are compatible with the teachings of the Catholic Church. It should come as no surprise that most if not all of NOMs advisory board are Catholic.
By the way, the Catholic Church does not oppose so-called gay rights. They oppose the redefinition of marriage and the false assumption that same-sex attraction is morally acceptable.
What I find most curious — and yet, least surprising — is the very strong correlation between opposition to gay rights and Roman Catholicism. From my own (admittedly amateur) research, all but two named members of NOM-RI’s Advisory Board have close ties with the Church. They’re not merely RCC churchgoers, they’re deeply involved, in one way or another (sometimes more than one). Of the remaining two, I haven’t confirmed that they are *not* Catholic. It’s entirely possible — and again, would not surprise me — that they are *all* Catholic.
Care to comment?
Our outgoing governor is friendly with NOM and in fact he gave James Bopp, Jr. $15,000 of our tax money for an opinion on same-sex marriage. He could have had mine for free.
The rights of a minority can not be put up for a vote. If we had to vote on whether interracial marriage should be legal we’d still be fighting it state to state.
NOM claims to defend the family but they haven’t done anything for mine– and I’m in a traditional marriage. I suggest they start with flex time for working parents.
NOM is not a hate group. They are a group that opposes redefining marriage to satisfy the whims of a small minority of a minority group of people who somehow got the mistaken idea that same-sex attraction is normal, natural and healthy. They do not use hateful slang slogans, nor do they make outlandish claims about homosexuality. They do rely on studies and research that show that children are best served by being raised by a mother AND father in a traditional marriage.