Sean Harris, pastor of Berean Baptist Church on Glensford Drive, said he does not advocate hitting children and wishes he could take back a remark encouraging fathers to punch boys who act effeminately…
…and let’s just forget completely about that part about cracking their wrists…
…But he defended his belief in the need to reinforce traditional gender roles in children. “If I had to say it again, I would say it differently, no doubt,” Harris said Tuesday. “Those weren’t planned words, but what I do stand by is that the word of God makes it clear that effeminate behavior is ungodly.”
Preaching at parents that they need to break the bones of their gay kids however being the epitome of godliness. So long as you say it differently. As the twig is bent so grows the tree…so parents I give you special dispensation to crack those dear little twigs back into Straightnesswhen you see them going limp…
Coming Soon To A fundamentalist Church Near You! Pat downs for recording devices, and petitions to make taping anti-gay child abusive rants in church a class one felony punishable by stoning…
Jim Burroway over at Box Turtle Bulletin quotes a little Michael Heath…
During my lifetime I have witnessed the descent from Playboy into the abyss of online porn…
Okay…That’s about all I need to read. If you think the human, let alone the American fascination with pornography started with Playboy Michael, and the mass consumption therein, then you have been very grievously misinformed. Google Tijuana Bible Mike. No…that’s not a translation for Spanish speaking Christians.
My own fascination with pornography ended pretty soon after it began, when I eventually figured out (don’t laugh) that there is very little romance in it. The few porn magazines I bought back in the day all had images of guys being affectionate as well as sexual. That was my turn on. No matter how hot I thought the guys were, if it was just sex I got bored if not a tad turned off. There had to be affection on display too. The more affection the better. But affection of that sort between males was a pretty radical thing to portray in any form back then, back room magazine rack or mainstream movie house. In some ways, and in some venues, it still is.
I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating because it really says it all. Back in the day an old high school friend of mine told me about taking a college course on human sexuality. The course, he said, included a number of films which you might expect to find in an Adult Entertainment store rather then in a university classroom. And so naturally most of the college students who signed up for that course did so, according to my friend who probably did also, just to see those films. What they didn’t bargain for was also having to watch a bunch of sex they didn’t much like. This was after all, a course on human sexuality, not a course on pornography. In addition to the hot young babes there was also footage of folks old enough to be their own parents having sex. Then there were the sections on geriatric sex. You can imagine how well that went over with a bunch of college students. But it was the section on gay male sex that bothered some the audience most of all. And it wasn’t the sex specifically that offended them. In fact, the sex really didn’t bother that group much at all. According to my friend, when the gay male sex scenes came on screen the ignorant jock types in the class burst out laughing and mocked the couple.
But then images of that couple being affectionate with each other came on screen and the jock’s attitude changed. Those scenes of that male couple being affectionate, kissing, holding hands, being in love, completely offended the jocks my friend said, far more, far, Far more, then watching them have sex did.
What pornography is, to my mind at least, is it just pushes your sexual buttons and nothing else. That’s all it’s for. That’s all it does. Empty button pushing. But that’s all some folks want it to be. Oh well for them I guess. What I discovered about myself, and had I not the freedom to at least look the stuff over I might not have figured this out about myself, is that I am about romance, affection, playful fun, when it comes to sex. I like to be teased. I like the friendly smile and the longing look. And the kiss. Especially the kiss. I am not much about just having my buttons pushed for the sake of pushing them. There has to be more. There has to be love. There has to be the kiss. So what my little private collection of erotic art began to consist mostly of as I grew older, is that. Sex yes, but not always that specifically and always in the context of romance. Body and soul together. I love that. It turns me on.
Your mileage may vary. That’s fine. I’m pretty sure in any case that your definition of pornography Michael is almost certainly a lot broader then mine. Anything having to do with same-sex couples even if it’s just a kiss probably counts as pornography in your book. No…Especially if it’s just a kiss. Because homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. But here’s the thing Michael…most of us just look the other way when we’re grossed out or disinterested. When I found out there wasn’t much in pornography that interested me, at least of the hard core sort, I stopped looking. But you can’t for some reason.
Don’t you think that puts you in the same ugly peep show stall that the people you’re railing against are stuck in? Well…except they seem to be enjoying themselves and you’re not. And what is offending you most of all Michael, isn’t the sex gay couples are having. It’s the affection. It’s their joy. It’s the kiss…isn’t it Michael. You’re calling it “sodomy based marriage” now…it’s your new slogan that you seem to honestly think is a winner but it’s merely your way of turning kisses into pornography. Because that’s how they seem to you.
You begin your email to supporters with a little rant about pornography, but it’s all about same-sex marriage with you, not pornography, not sexual decadence. And that’s because it’s the kiss that offends you, not the sodomy. Marriage is about love and devotion, about body and soul together as one, and same sex couples are fighting for access to marriage, because they love, because they are devoted, because they are one in body and soul. And you see it don’t you. Yes…yes you do. And it bothers you massively doesn’t it. And you can’t look away. Why is that Michael?
Some might suggest that it’s because you’re a closet case yourself. I honestly doubt that you are in that particular sort of closet. There’s another, darker, colder one your sort lives their lives in. There is a marvelous scene in Mary Renault’s The Fire From Heaven, where Alexander’s father Philip, punishing his son and his son’s lover for a transgression, knowing that the punishment of his lover will hurt Alexander more then his own punishment, thinks, “…between contempt and a deep secret envy…The man does not live that I could feel that for, or the woman either.”There you are Michael. There’s why you can’t look away. There’s why you need their kisses to be empty. There’s why you hate them.
[Update…] After I cross posted this over to Truth Wins Out I checked out some of the other posts there and found This One from Evan Hurst concerning Peter LaBarbra’s post also referencing the rant of Coach Dave Daubenmire that I riffed on a few posts back. Remarkably, it contained this image from an episode of Glee, tastefully censored to prevent cases of the vapors in the kook pews. I’ve captured the full context from Pete’s site….just look at this would you…
…blocked for decency’s sake… Oh make my case for me why don’t you? Christ almighty…Pete…listen…there is something seriously wrong with you. If the image of two guys in love kissing is enough to motivate you to start up the image editor of your choice, load that image into it, and take the time to carefully black out (white out?) those two dear little pairs of lips locked like they were mashing genitals instead of kissing, you have problems. Seriously…get help.
“Permit me to clarify the definition. Sodomy is one MAN inserting his genitals into the mouth or anus of ANOTHER MAN. Say it again. Say it out loud so your ears hear it. Picture it in your mind. Picture Barney Frank and Elton John in action. Barney Frank putting his genitals into Elton John’s. That is what they want to tell us is normal€¦no wait€¦tell our children is normal. Into that ‘union’ they are asking permission to place children. Would you let them put YOUR grandchild into a sodomy-based family? Why would you let them do it to someone else’s child? Have normal people lost their minds?” -Crackpot “Coach” Dave Daubenmire.
Normal people don’t obsess about the sex their neighbors are having Dave, particularly when it’s sex that turns them off. You on the other hand, clearly can’t seem to get it out of your head.
You have issues Dave. Let me try to address one of them. If you think opposite sex couples wouldn’t do anything that grosses you or “normal” people out then you really don’t know much about what other people are up to. Perhaps that’s for the best. All in all, I wish sometimes I didn’t know myself.
See Dave…when I was a young gay man, back in the early 1970s, there weren’t many places I could go to get my weekly copies of The Washington Blade or The Advocate. You may of course assume these are gay porn since they’re gay publications and we homosexuals don’t have lives, we just have sex. But they’re newspapers, classifieds and ads for various sexually graphic other publications notwithstanding. And being a young gay man living in a world which at that time was loath to admit that such as I even existed, I needed a source of news and information for my community.
Back then there were no gay publications to be found at the local bookstores and newsstands, let alone the public libraries. There was no Internet. If you were a gay American back in the early 1970s and you wanted news and information concerning your community you didn’t have a lot of choice. Luckily for me growing up in the Washington D.C. suburbs, there was Lambda Rising. But to get there I had to borrow mom’s car and drive downtown. The Metro subway system wouldn’t reach out to my suburban neighborhood for nearly a decade.
So I was always on the lookout for a place closer to home where I could find my gay newspapers. One day, running errands for mom, I drove past a small strip shopping center near Wheaton Plaza, and I glimpsed a sign: ADULT BOOKS.
Well we all know what “adult” means don’t we? So working up the nerve (and I must have driven around that block several times…) I parked the car nearby and strolled in. I think I had just turned 21 but I might have been only 20 and in any case in Maryland then I only needed to be over 18.
The bookstore was small, a tad rundown, but neatly organized. There were a few customers inside. The front area of the store was your usual newstand layout with various magazines and newspapers on the shelves. As you moved toward the back you saw more and more straight skin magazines of the Playboy/Penthouse sort. Your usual softcore men’s magazine stuff. I don’t think Playgirl had yet started publishing. There was a door in the back with a sign over it that said You Must Be 18 or Over To Enter and a nice older lady sitting at a counter beside it. It took me a few minutes of wandering close, pretending to look at the other magazines before I worked up the nerve to enter that door. I’m certain the old lady at the counter had seen first time customers doing that dance many, many times before and she wasn’t fooled. She knew where I was headed.
Oh look…another room…I think I’ll have a look inside… Inside the door was another room about the same size as the front one. The light in there was a bit harsher and the shelves seemed starker somehow. Nearly all the titles were wrapped in plastic, presumably to make people pay to enjoy their contents. But the covers…oh gosh…
As I said, I was 20, maybe 21 and I thought I knew everything there was to know about how to have sex. Well…no. As it turned out, there were Lots of other ways. Lots and Lots and Lots of other ways. Being a gay guy I felt somewhat enlightened and tolerant by the fact that the thought of heterosexuals getting it on really didn’t bother or gross me out. But clearly what I had been imagining was only the Reader’s Digest version. Here before my eyes was the unabridged, and little Baptist boy me was horrified. No…I won’t go into details. The details aren’t important.
Eventually I worked my way clear to the back where, in a corner, was the Much smaller gay section. Once more I beheld a universe of sexual possibilities I really had absolutely no interest in, and many of which to be perfectly honest grossed me out considerably. But I must also honestly admit there were some magazines back there that definitely tweaked my interest. Unsurprisingly these were the ones that matched the imaginings of sex I’d had since my hormones started percolating. Some of the guys in them were beautiful. During later visits I would actually buy a few of these. But that wasn’t my goal just then. Mostly I just wanted to see if I could get my newspapers and be out of there. And sure enough, right at the very bottom of one of those shelves, were copies of the Blade and The Advocate, and nearby, a couple gay softcore titles I’d never seen before. Playboy could sit in the front, but gay softcore had to sit with the straight hard core porn because…well…it was gay after all.
I much preferred going to Lambda Rising, but for about the next decade, when I couldn’t get downtown, I made the trek to ADULT BOOKS and got my newspapers.
So…dig it Dave…for almost a decade I had to walk a gauntlet of heterosexual pornography just to get my damn newspapers.
I am so sorry for you. I mean…a coach for goodness sakes…and here you are like a freshly minted teenage boy so fascinated, so completely preoccupied with sex, and yet blissfully naive about it all. How did that happen to a guy your age? The thought of one man having oral sex with another grosses you out does it? I could tell you things that heterosexuals do that would curdle your milk Dave. You poor sorry soul. I have a suggestion. Never…Never…order up one of those adults only channels next time you’re on the road without your wife. You might have a heart attack.
I Am Not Obsessed With Sex Sex Sex Sex Sex Sex Sex Sex Sex Sex Sex Sex
Roy Edroso writes gleefully about the argument Andrew Sullivan and Rod Dreher are having about what it means to be a good Christian. I won’t go into detail about it here, you should just go read Roy’s post over at Alicublog. But (since I can’t post comments over there because the JS-Kit commenting engine he uses is just too goddamned cranky) I want to just take note of one thing that leaped out at me. This is Dreher speaking…
It’s interesting how so many liberal Christians accuse conservatives of being obsessed with sex, yet so much of their own writing and activism focuses on sex and sexuality, especially homosexuality.
In case you missed it, Dreher is saying right there that whenever you talk about Teh Gay you are talking about sex. Equal marriage rights for gay couples? Sex. Protecting gay people from discrimination in the workplace? Sex. Anti-bullying campaigns in the schools to protect gay kids? Sex. The horrific rise in anti-gay violence in recent years? Sex.
But no, he’s not obsessed with sex. He’s a bigot who can’t see the people for the homosexuals. He is a man who simply cannot grasp that homosexuals might have lives too, apart from their bedroom shenanigans, just like the heterosexuals do. Heterosexuals have lives, homosexuals have sex.
Remember, this is the guy who wrote an entire post off of a news story about a man surviving the home invasion massacre that killed his entire family, to vent about how shocked he was to discover “a bisexual culture” in East Texas. No he’s not obsessed with sex, he’s a bigot. His hated other is that ingrown hair, that burr under his saddle, that itch he just can’t scratch. Everything he reads that even remotely touches on gay people, even the massacre of an entire family, becomes a story about sex because that is all homosexuals amount to. He is not obsessed with sex. He’s obsessed with homosexsexsexsexsexsexsexsexsexsexsexsexuals.
To the gentleman about my own age in the bar I was just in who got Very friendly with me while I was trying to enjoy my crabcakes and a drink: No, you are not the married man who has permission to hit on me. And no, I don’t care if your wife is cool about it either.
As gay men and lesbians get closer and closer to the mainstream they’ve often traded in their image as the queer radicals who started the Stonewall Riots for the milquetoast assimilationists who want to get married and have kids and put HRC bumper stickers on their cars. That doesn’t mean we’re still not queer radicals. It just means we’re hiding it from you…
If this list amounts to what it means to be a queer radical then my gay friends would say I hide it very well too. Even from them. No, no…this is a lot of horseshit, and it’s been getting static from…well…gay folk all over the net already. But the writer could have expected that if he’d ever looked more closely at the lives of gay people then his regular night out with the boys at JR’s (or whatever his city’s equivalent is…). Here…let me have my swing at it…
Bottoming Is Fun
I suppose it is if you’re a bottom. Some of us are not that however, and what is more some of us are “Versatile” and some of us don’t like the anal thing At All.
This is a very superficial way to look at sex. Yes, yes…getting fucked is supposed to be some sort of dire insult to a guy’s manhood and we all need to push back on that. Especially since some straight guys enjoy being the bottom to their girlfriend’s Top (I’ll leave you to figure out the mechanics of that. Or just go ask Dan Savage). The point is what needs to be understood isn’t that some gay men like to be fucked and that’s okay, but that sex isn’t something one person does to another. It’s something both partners do Together. Active/Passive…Top/Bottom… Seriously, these are kinda useless terms if we’re supposed to take them literally. They don’t really mean anything.
Poppers Are Awesome
And maybe it’s the drugs telling you that.
Cocksucker Is Not an Insult
Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Neither is “Queer” I suppose. See above Re: Bottoming. Also George Carlin’s line about how “Fuck You” should really be “Not Fuck You” because fucking is a good thing.
We Have Our Own Celebrities
I have a question: would you still like your celebrities if I took your poppers away?
We Want to Fuck All the Hot Straight Boys
No. Just…no. Here…let me explain…
“It’s even better when you help…” Best movie line ever. See…straight boys don’t help. Yes, yes…they can be very easy on the eyes. Hot even. But…seriously. They’re straight. They’re not into guys. And I don’t particularly want to be fucked by someone who is weirded out by gay sex. I’d rather not end up after it feeling used and dirty. Perhaps you’re into that sort of thing. To each his own. I don’t want to fuck someone who isn’t as into it with me as I am into it with them. It’s even better when you help.
Not All Gay Couples Are Monogamous
You don’t say? Here…let me tell you a secret: not all heterosexual couples are either. Think about it. What would country music singers have to sing about if their girlfriends were faithful? Oh…right…their trucks…
We Can Have Sex Anywhere at Anytime
So can straight guys. It’s been called the world’s oldest profession. Nowadays its called Craig’s List.
We Don’t Love Drag Queens As Much As You Do
Speak for yourself. But I could have just said that at the beginning of this post and left it at that. Oh look…JR’s is half off on the house tequila. Hurry! I’ll be you can find some poppers there too. You don’t want to spend the rest of your life sober do you?
[Update…] Just so I’m not mistaken for a gay conservative crank because this guy’s list of radical queer baggage is full of crap, let me reiterate something I’ve droned on about over and over again here. You want to be a gay radical? A militant homosexual? Listen: A militant homosexual is a homosexual who doesn’t think there is anything wrong with being a homosexual. A militant homosexual activist is a homosexual acting like they don’t think there is anything wrong with being a homosexual.
That’s it. That’s all it takes. Really. When a gay person loves their other half with all their heart and soul and feels not the slightest shred of guilt or shame over that fact, when the fact of their love lifts them both to a higher place body and soul and makes them both feel that life is good and sweet and full of joy…they have become militant homosexuals in the eyes of the haters. When a gay individual reacts to an attack on their sexuality, on their capacity to feel love and desire the same way as any heterosexual would, they become militant homosexual activists.
Top or bottom doesn’t cut it. Poppers don’t make you anything but high. Oral sex, who you want to fuck, whether you are monogamous or not…it doesn’t matter. What makes you a radical queer is you are fine with yourself. Don’t believe me? Listen to how the haters talk about us a little more closely. They’re not pissed at the sex we have. They’re pissed because we don’t hate ourselves anymore.
And finally…something I used to put on my Sig line back in the Usenet days: I do not speak for the militant homosexual conspiracy. I only work here.
From Sullivan, who posts on the heterosexual version of Grindr…
Marshall Sella went undercover to understand the allure of the gay-cruising app. After interviewing the men who met up with him, he applied his knowledge to Blendr, the straight version:
In large part, human interaction is irrational or it is nothing. This is especially true with dumb sex. Dumb sex makes a fool of logic. If you’re the man who has a “type” in romance, you probably also have a “system” at cards. Blendr is built on these insights into our silliness and our strangeness, and instead of finding you the person you think you’re looking for, the software opens your eyes to the people around you.
The person you think you’re looking for… No jackass. I have a type in romance…which is to say I know what my libido is sexually attracted to and what it is not, and what sort of person I am emotionally attracted to and what sort of person I am not. Combine sexual attractiveness with emotional attractiveness and you have your romantic type. That is, if you are even the type who is into romance. A lot of people aren’t. If you aren’t…look…don’t even think for one second you grok those of us who are. You don’t. You can’t. Clearly, it isn’t you.
Dumb sex makes a fool of logic… Well no…actually the fool is you. Knowing what works and what doesn’t work for you romantically isn’t the same as thinking you have a system for playing cards. You might have a system for finding and dating your romantic type that works as well (or not) as your system at cards but that is a separate thing from who you are, and who you are not attracted do. And you almost get it when you say that sex can make a fool of logic. It’s making a fool of yours right now.
Yes…libido has its own separate and relentless logic and you just have to accept that it will want what it wants. It isn’t something you can switch on and off, it isn’t a blackboard you can wipe clean and scribble onto it whatever you’d rather have there. It is what it is. Your gay neighbors understand (or they damn well ought to) how that is…
This switch does not exist
We learn to deal with it. You can too. But that’s just the desire part. Then there is this thing we tend to refer to metaphorically as the “Heart”. It has its own logic too. My libido may or may not tick like yours. Likewise for my heart.
You may think the heart part doesn’t matter, or isn’t important, or it always gets shoved into the car and taken for a ride to the nearest motel by the libido part…but that’s just how it looks to you. A lot of people probably share your point of view. A lot of people don’t. We’re not naive. You are, if you think your point of view is the only realistic one.
It’s like the lady said: Some people are settling down, some people are settling and some people refuse to settle for anything less than butterflies. But also like the man said: When you die you’re going to regret the things you don’t do. You think you’re queer? I’m going to tell you something: we’re all queer. You think you’re a thief? So what? You get befuddled by a middle-class morality? Get shut of it. Shut it out. You cheat on your wife? You did it, live with it. You fuck little girls, so be it. There’s an absolute morality? Maybe. And then what? If you think there is, go ahead, be that thing. Bad people go to hell? I don’t think so. If you think that, act that way. A hell exists on earth? Yes. I won’t live in it.
If Grindr is your thing then go for it. If random casual sex is your thing, fine. Be that. If you wake up next morning in bed with a total stranger and you’re feeling ashamed like you always do when you do that then stop doing that. If a new conquest every night makes you feel like you’re on top of the world then bask in the glory. But don’t fucking tell me that something like Grindr “opens your eyes to the people around you.” Hahahaha….that’s bullshit. It’s the kind of bullshit people tell themselves because they’re afraid of being called pigs and sluts.
Look…admit it…Grindr just a goddamned sex park and if you’re there then clearly it’s because you want to be an item on somebody’s menu. Fine. No, really. It’s Okay. If that’s you, then go ahead and be that. If you think all that dating and romance stuff is for children and arrested adolescents who still cry when Rick tells Ilsa they’ll always have Paris then so be it. Life is short. As long as everyone knows what they’re in it for and they treat the people they take into their arms honestly and decently then for god’s sake go ahead and just whore around if that’s what you want. Sex is wonderful!
Life is good. Don’t end up on your death bed with a lot of regrets about everything (everyone) you didn’t do when you had a chance to. There’s nothing to be ashamed of here. Admit it: you don’t actually want to get to know any of those people, just fuck them. Grindr is telling you everything you want to know about them, and nothing you couldn’t care less about. Are they sexy…yes or no…are they close at hand…is there someplace nearby I can get them alone and horizontal…
I am not being cynical here. This poor angry world, I am convinced, would be a much nicer, more peaceful and productive place, if everyone was a bit more sexually fulfilled. What we all need to understand in the pursuit of that great big beautiful tomorrow however, is that one person’s paradise is another person’s trailer park. I get that. You need to get it too.
Now kindly get the fuck off our backs. You don’t get romantics. You never will. Now go away.
Q: How Can You Tell When A Homophobic Bigot Is Lying…?
Answer: Their mouth is moving. This, from Joe. My. God…
Yesterday we enjoyed the evisceration of anti-gay NC Sen. James Forrester at the hands of Michelangelo Signorile, who got rather incredulous at Forrester’s lack of HIV knowledge, especially considering that Forrester claims to be a Fellow with the esteemed American College of Preventive Medicine. As it turns out, THAT WAS A FUCKING LIE.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention. The quick answer to your questions is that Dr. Forrester is not, and never has been, a member of ACPM (much less a Fellow, which is our highest designation of membership). However, this is troubling to us, too, that he’s apparently claiming to be a Fellow of ACPM, and we would like to know where Dr. Forrester is making these proclamations so that we can approach him and demand that he cease falsely using ACPM credentials in his campaign or wherever else he’s using it. If you can point us to some places where he’s using those credentials, we’d be most appreciative. Many thanks.
This you may recall, is the Upstanding All-American Heterosexual Christian Pillar Of His Community…
…who introduced the current anti same-sex marriage amendment in the North Carolina Senate, and whose rational for doing that was in part, his longstanding work as a physician and Fellow at the American College of Preventive Medicine dealing with the medical problems of homosexuals.
When all is said and done, the only problem I have with bigots who live in their own alternate reality is they can’t actually go live there, they have to keep inflicting their fantasy world on the rest of us in the reality based community. That said, it is occasionally sweet to watch reality bite them in the ass from time to time. I stopped waiting long ago, for any of them to learn anything from the experience. I just bask in the schadenfreude. Can you at least take that little tin North Carolina Flag lapel pin off your jacket while you’re looking your fellow senators in the face and lying through your teeth? Try to be respectful of your state flag man.
On August 18, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) posted a “NOM Marriage News” update, written by NOM president Brian Brown, to its blog.
You read that update and you really start believing that NOM desperately wants to be on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hate groups list. Because now they’re just about saying flat out that legalizing Teh Gay means your children are going to get raped. Carlos Maza quotes a passage from Brown’s dirty little rant on the Equality Matters blog. I’m going to quote a tad more of it here, because you need to notice something about the organization Robert George Super Genius co-founded…
NORMALIZING PEDOPHILIA
When you knock over a core pillar of society like marriage, and then try to redefine Biblical views of marriage as bigotry, there will be consequences. Will one of the consequences be a serious push to normalize pedophilia?
The Daily Caller raised the question by pointing us all to a high-level academic conference in Baltimore this week, “Pedophilia: Minor-Attracted Persons and the DSM: Issues and Controversies.”
The DSM is the diagnostic manual that defines mental illness. You probably recall that a key moment in the gay rights campaign was the 1973 decision by the American Psychiatric Association, the organization that produces the DSM, to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses.
Here’s how the brochure describes the goal:
“This day-long symposium will facilitate the exchange of ideas among researchers, scholars, mental health practitioners, and minor-attracted persons who have an interest in critical issues surrounding the entry for pedophilia in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association. The symposium will address critical issues in the following areas:
Scientific and philosophical issues related to the DSM entry on pedophilia and/or hebephilia
Effects of the DSM entry on stigma, availability of mental health services, and research
Ways in which minor-attracted persons can be involved in the DSM 5 revision process”
When professors from Harvard and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine get together to discuss ways in which “minor attracted persons” can be involved in the DSM revision process—watch out.
Enquiring people want to know: Will pedophiles become “minor-attracted persons” in our culture? Will courts which endorse orientation as a protected class decide down the road that therefore laws which discriminate against “minor-attracted persons” must be narrowly tailored to a compelling government interest?
Here’s the fundamental truth: Ideas have consequences and so do words—because they contain ideas, because they are the vehicle through which and by which human beings describe reality.
NOM is pushing two old lies here. First, that gays and pedophilia go hand in hand. Anyone who has watched them since Proposition 8 knows that this is a regular song of theirs…The Gays Are After Your Children! Anyone who has studied the gay rights struggle since Anita Bryant knows that this is how the anti-gay industrial complex win elections. They go straight for the GAY=PEDOPHILE attack and the only question is do they do it overtly or do they dog whistle it. But the anti-gay campaigns where that scarecrow isn’t being waved in voters faces is the rare exception to the rule.
The other lie is that homosexuality was removed from the professional psychiatric association diagnostic manual of mental illnesses after a gay rights campaign. It was no such thing. The emerging science on sexual orientation brought about the change, much to the everlasting regret of the bigots in that profession, then and now. The science simply does not support the conclusion that there is anything clinically wrong with gay people. Evelyn Hooker in her her 1957 paper The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual, showed that sexually active male homosexuals were clinically indistinguishable from sexually active male heterosexuals. All the science done since then has confirmed that over and over again. There is nothing innately wrong with gay people. We are simply attracted to our own sex in the same way heterosexuals are attracted to the opposite sex.
The science drove the change in the DSM. The politics on the streets were the inevitable result of both the science, and the fact that gay people were beginning then to come out of a period of intense cultural isolation and persecution and were seeing for themselves that what the popular culture and traditional medicine were saying about them was simply wrong. When the popular culture keeps telling you that you are a monster, and you look around at the others of your community and you don’t see monsters, but fellow human beings, after a while you get angry about being told constantly that you are a monster. Sometimes you even get politically active about it. This is only surprising to people who still believe, who still need to believe, that homosexuals are either dangerous psychotics or contemptible faggots. They’re not human beings defending themselves they’re homosexuals desperately wanting social approval… But that gay anger did not drive the change to the DSM. It was the science.
Anyone who has studied the struggle for gay equality since the change to the DSM knows exactly what happened next, what the ones who could not let science override their cheapshit bar stool prejudices about homosexuals did. They started their own cottage industry of junk science to have something to support their prejudices against what the actual scientists were saying. Paul Cameron being probably the main example of that. But he is hardly alone.
NOM is with them, if not in generating their own junk science, then at least in cheerfully passing it along. But there is more to it. Take another look at Brian Brown’s alarm at this academic conference in Baltimore…
Here’s how the brochure describes the goal:
“This day-long symposium will facilitate the exchange of ideas among researchers, scholars, mental health practitioners, and minor-attracted persons who have an interest in critical issues surrounding the entry for pedophilia in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association. The symposium will address critical issues in the following areas:
Scientific and philosophical issues related to the DSM entry on pedophilia and/or hebephilia
Effects of the DSM entry on stigma, availability of mental health services, and research
Ways in which minor-attracted persons can be involved in the DSM 5 revision process”
When professors from Harvard and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine get together to discuss ways in which “minor attracted persons” can be involved in the DSM revision process—watch out.
Yes. Watch out. Because science might happen. Note that there is nothing in that brochure or the bullet points he cites even remotely suggesting that this conference has any interest in normalizing pedophilia. But notice also that Brown doesn’t even bother trying to make that case. What Brown is saying there, clearly, sickeningly, is science can’t be trusted.
Science turned our world upside down when they said nothing was wrong with the homos after all. That is proof that science can’t be trusted. Next thing you know they’ll be saying rape doesn’t harm children. How do you know they won’t? Science always turns things upside down. Science can’t be trusted. Next thing you know they’ll be saying humans and apes have a common ancestor. Next thing you know they’ll be saying the earth isn’t at the center of the universe. This is, seriously, how the folks in the organization co-founded by Robert George Super Genius think.
It’s a mindset thing. It’s a worldview thing. Understand this: the attack on science by groups like NOM isn’t motivated by a simple matter of applying the best political tactics to the job at hand. That’s the mindset of a Karl Rove, but not the folks at NOM. NOM is to homosexuality and marriage, what creationists are to biology and evolution. They’re throwbacks to an age before reason and science, that still needs its demons, witches and scapegoats. Behind that mask of dispassionate logic and rationality George assumes, and the others like Maggie and Brown try to, is, demons, witches, and scapegoats.
Demons. Witches. Scapegoats. Homosexuals. That’s their world. When professors from Harvard and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine get together…watch out… If you ever wondered why none of them can bring themselves to simply look at their gay neighbors in this life and see fellow human beings, some good, some bad, some just trying their best, there’s your answer.
Jerry Buell, a long-time Lake County social studies teacher, said during a recent Facebook exchange that he “almost threw up” in response to a news story about legalized same-sex marriage in New York.
Deux…
On the same July 25 Facebook post he said same-sex marriages were part of a “cesspool.”
Trois…
He went on to call the unions a sin.
Quatre…
“It wasn’t out of hatred,” he said in an interview with the Orlando Sentinel.
Cinq…
“It was about the way I interpret things.”
Six…
“I’ve had kids that I’ve known that have been homosexuals,” he said.
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