Family Research Council spokesman advocates criminalizing homosexuality

[dreadgeek]

Last night on Hardball with Chris Matthews, a spokesman for the Family Research Council had this to say:


MATTHEWS: Should we outlaw gay behavior?

SPRIGG: I think that the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas which overturned the sodomy laws in this country was wrongly decided. I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior.

MATTHEWS: So we should outlaw gay behavior?

SPRIGG: Yes

Yes, Virginia, this lot really wants to make it illegal for us to exist in this country. Forget the 'love the sinner, hate the sin' crap (which I've always maintained was just something to set us at ease so we would put our guard down). Presume that this guy said what he meant and meant what he said.

As much as American religious conservatives want to say that there's no link between them and the Ugandan 'kill the gays' law, I don't see any daylight between them. Given half a chance, these same folks like Dobson, Robertson, et. al. would have America in the same boat.

Cheers
Aj

[Semantics]

It's so maddening that we have what is, essentially, a spokesperson from a hate group invited onto news programs as if he is some sort of authority.

Sprigg is the same guy who last year said that we should all be exported out of the country because we're destructive to society.

[Soon]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LN8D40qRWW4"]YouTube- Family Research Council's Peter Sprigg: Gay Behavior Should Be Outlawed[/ame]

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Semantics

It's so maddening that we have what is, essentially, a spokesperson from a hate group invited onto news programs as if he is some sort of authority.

Sprigg is the same guy who last year said that we should all be exported out of the country because we're destructive to society.

This is where I get torn. On the one hand, I WANT people like Sprigg, as long as they exist, to be out in the public eye where we can see them coming. What's more, I want people to actually see them and then have to ask themselves "am I on their side". This is what I think was the doom of the segregationists. I have no illusion that white people in America woke up one day circa 1964 with universal love and fellow-feeling for black people. I think they woke up, saw screaming, hateful white faces attacking calm, peaceful, sometimes terrified black faces and thought "well, I may not know anything about blacks, I may not want my kid to marry one, but I know I'm not on the side of those guys with the fire hose and baseball bats..."

I ALSO want folks like Sprigg and his lot on TV so that WE don't get complacent. For too long I watched the gay movement (at least the Left leaning side of it) play this game of on the one hand talking about how the patriarchy oppresses queer people (true as far as it goes) but then pretending, sometimes in the same diatribe, that the most visible and obvious manifestation of that patriarchal mindset was no more than a few hundred under-educated people meeting in a couple of basement churches with no political or cultural influence. And time and time again, they beat us at the ballot box. Yet, we didn't take them seriously.

Having someone get on TV and hearing them say "I want to make a law against you" focuses the mind quite wonderfully.

Cheers
Aj

[iamkeri1]

This being a free country, I would have to support their right to speak, though I would not allow them to advocate violence or hatred for queerfolk of any variety, because that is against the law. (both the natural law, and law of the USA.) Also, I would like for throngs of people, either gay or straight to show up and oppose them each time they speak, as people do when a known Ku Klx Klan gathering is made public. I would like them to have to hide their faces and bodies behind a coverings, to speak their awful opinions, because the disapproval of they have to say is so strong that their fear exposure. I would like them to be seen as creatures who should be scorned and shunned, as people whom Jesus would have shouted down in the temple, rather than people who are followers of and speakers for Jesus as they make themselves out to be. While I choose not to hate them, because I don't want that hatred inside myself, I hate their attitude of smug superiority and self-righteousness; their assurance that "God is on their side"
Smooches to my peeps and raspberries to the haters.
Keri

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

This is where I get torn. On the one hand, I WANT people like Sprigg, as long as they exist, to be out in the public eye where we can see them coming. What's more, I want people to actually see them and then have to ask themselves "am I on their side". This is what I think was the doom of the segregationists. I have no illusion that white people in America woke up one day circa 1964 with universal love and fellow-feeling for black people. I think they woke up, saw screaming, hateful white faces attacking calm, peaceful, sometimes terrified black faces and thought "well, I may not know anything about blacks, I may not want my kid to marry one, but I know I'm not on the side of those guys with the fire hose and baseball bats..."

I ALSO want folks like Sprigg and his lot on TV so that WE don't get complacent. For too long I watched the gay movement (at least the Left leaning side of it) play this game of on the one hand talking about how the patriarchy oppresses queer people (true as far as it goes) but then pretending, sometimes in the same diatribe, that the most visible and obvious manifestation of that patriarchal mindset was no more than a few hundred under-educated people meeting in a couple of basement churches with no political or cultural influence. And time and time again, they beat us at the ballot box. Yet, we didn't take them seriously.

Having someone get on TV and hearing them say "I want to make a law against you" focuses the mind quite wonderfully.

Cheers
Aj

[Andrew, Jr.]

Personally, I am sad to see this kind of hate.

[Lips]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Having someone get on TV and hearing them say "I want to make a law against you" focuses the mind quite wonderfully.

Cheers
Aj

I agree. I think the issue with complacency comes with living in the "Gay Bubble" personally. A lot of us don't want to believe that this vitriol exists, however it hasn't been too long since Anita Bryant was tour-de-force in this country.

I think when faced with extremes, most people tend to migrate to the middle, especially when faced with such extremism. Or maybe that's what I'd like to believe.

These type of people (Fundie Christians) are the people behind the Ugandian Law. People like Scott Lively, who wrote The Pink Swastika and his ilk like Sprigg.

[dreadgeek]

Keri:

Of course they have the right to speak. Although I wouldn't shed any tears if they didn't have any venues from which to speak (free speech only protects you from government prosecuting or persecuting you for speech, it doesn't grant you a right to a venue). For the most I agree with you although I don't agree that it would be great if they had to hide their faces behind hoods like the Klan does. The reason for this is because of what I have seen that do for race relations in America.

For the most part what large numbers of white Americans consider racism can be thought of as a synonym for "What the Klan does". As long as you aren't wearing a white sheet, burning a cross or dragging black people behind your truck you're not a racist using that definition. It lets too many people off of the hook far too easily. It is part (but not the whole) of why I think race relations have been going around in circles since the 70's. The other reason I think that having these folks hide their faces is it allows those on the sidelines to imagine that the people under the hoods are monsters--grotesque and hideous beings. The reason why I want folks like Sprigg on TV, spouting his crap, is so that people can see that the folks who hate us are the guy down the street, the pastor of the megachurch, the nice guy at the gas station, your boss, your kid's soccer coach, etc. I also want them to see that they really mean us actual harm.

It pains me to say this but in the *media* battle, the other side has done a much better job than our side has. They learned that outright hate doesn't play well so they try to make it sound like they are just interesting in 'protecting the family' which makes US seem like the threatening party. Except we aren't the threatening party, they are. One of the things that I enjoyed about the exchange between the former Army officer and Sprigg was that the pro-gay person kept returning to the point that there was no basis in fact for any of the latter's assertions. When we do that and stay calm, we throw the radicalism of the other side into sharp relief.

Cheers
Aj

Originally Posted by iamkeri1

This being a free country, I would have to support their right to speak, though I would not allow them to advocate violence or hatred for queerfolk of any variety, because that is against the law. (both the natural law, and law of the USA.) Also, I would like for throngs of people, either gay or straight to show up and oppose them each time they speak, as people do when a known Ku Klx Klan gathering is made public. I would like them to have to hide their faces and bodies behind a coverings, to speak their awful opinions, because the disapproval of they have to say is so strong that their fear exposure. I would like them to be seen as creatures who should be scorned and shunned, as people whom Jesus would have shouted down in the temple, rather than people who are followers of and speakers for Jesus as they make themselves out to be. While I choose not to hate them, because I don't want that hatred inside myself, I hate their attitude of smug superiority and self-righteousness; their assurance that "God is on their side"
Smooches to my peeps and raspberries to the haters.
Keri

[iamkeri1]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

Keri:

Of course they have the right to speak. Although I wouldn't shed any tears if they didn't have any venues from which to speak (free speech only protects you from government prosecuting or persecuting you for speech, it doesn't grant you a right to a venue). For the most I agree with you although I don't agree that it would be great if they had to hide their faces behind hoods like the Klan does. The reason for this is because of what I have seen that do for race relations in America.

For the most part what large numbers of white Americans consider racism can be thought of as a synonym for "What the Klan does". As long as you aren't wearing a white sheet, burning a cross or dragging black people behind your truck you're not a racist using that definition. It lets too many people off of the hook far too easily. It is part (but not the whole) of why I think race relations have been going around in circles since the 70's. The other reason I think that having these folks hide their faces is it allows those on the sidelines to imagine that the people under the hoods are monsters--grotesque and hideous beings. The reason why I want folks like Sprigg on TV, spouting his crap, is so that people can see that the folks who hate us are the guy down the street, the pastor of the megachurch, the nice guy at the gas station, your boss, your kid's soccer coach, etc. I also want them to see that they really mean us actual harm.

It pains me to say this but in the *media* battle, the other side has done a much better job than our side has. They learned that outright hate doesn't play well so they try to make it sound like they are just interesting in 'protecting the family' which makes US seem like the threatening party. Except we aren't the threatening party, they are. One of the things that I enjoyed about the exchange between the former Army officer and Sprigg was that the pro-gay person kept returning to the point that there was no basis in fact for any of the latter's assertions. When we do that and stay calm, we throw the radicalism of the other side into sharp relief.

Cheers
Aj

Dread,
What I meant was that I was looking forward to a day when the unchristianity of these christian (and other anti gay haters) would be so obvious to folks that the haters would not want to have their opinions known to people in general. Many out-queers do not realize how many queer folk are still in the very back of the closet, and from that spot, the opinions of these very vocal haters and the power they wield, seem unstoppable. Besides the incredibley low self-esteem these closeted queers have from absorbing all the hate-speech they are subjected to, they are afraid of the losses they will suffer and the actual physical attacks that they may be subjected to. While I do not advocate that anti-gay people be attacked... I don't approve of that it any way ... I do look forward to the day when total acceptance of queer folk is the norm, and that people who act in an unjust manner toward us will fear villification, rather than us fearing it.

Thanks for starting this thread, though I find these opinions personally horrifying, we still must know about it and deal with it.

An yah, them not having a venue to spue their hate talk would be great!
Smooches,
Keri

[Soon]

Religious right selfishly turns boy into pawn in gay-adoption battle


(excerpt):

That judge's ruling — which focused solely on the child's well-being — enraged some on the religious right.

Why? Because the little boy's adoptive parents are gay.
....

And to make their point about just how frightening this ruling was, the Policy Council included a photograph of the couple — a strange and androgynous-looking duo, one with bleached skin and both with mullet haircuts. The couple look so odd (you literally can't tell whether they are male or female) that one might wonder how any judge could place a young child with such a disturbing-looking duo.

Except the judge didn't.


The abnormal-looking couple that the Policy Council chose to illustrate this story is not the same couple granted the right to adopt the child.

No, the two-woman couple awarded custody of the 1-year-old — South Florida trade-show executive Vanessa Alenier and her partner, Melanie Leon — look more like J.Crew models: all-American with catalogue clothes and smiles.

The picture that the Policy Council chose was a grotesque caricature.

These are the dirty tactics of Christianity's far-right warriors.


_________________
click on the link to see the image the FFRC used to convey who these parents fighting for the son are versus the actual image of the parents--Alenier and Leon.

[Greyson]

I had no idea there is a law on the books here in California mandating research to cure homosexuality. I think it was in 1972 that homosexuality was officially removed as a mental illness, psychiatric disorder by the professional organization for Psychiatrists.

______________________________________________

http://www.sacbee.com/2010/02/20/v-print/2551289/bill-would-overturn-mandated-search.html

This story is taken from Sacbee / Capitol and California / State Politics



Bill would overturn mandated search for homosexuality cure
swiegand@sacbee.com
Published Saturday, Feb. 20, 2010


Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal figures 43 years is long enough to try to "cure" homosexuality.

So the Long Beach Democrat has introduced a bill that would strip a section from California's Welfare and Institutions Code mandating a search for such a cure.

Assembly Bill 2199, is just one of hundreds of bills given birth this week by lawmakers scurrying to meet a Friday deadline for introducing legislation this session.

AB 2199's targeted section, which was placed into law in 1967, requires the Department of Mental Health to "plan, conduct and cause to be conducted scientific research into the causes and cures of sexual deviation, including deviations conducive to sex crimes against children, and the causes and cures of homosexuality, and into methods of identifying potential sex offenders."

It's unclear how seriously the department ever heeded the Legislature's instructions.

Department spokeswoman Nancy Kincaid said any research that did go on would have ended decades ago.

But Lowenthal thinks the edict's mere existence on the books is odious enough to warrant its demise.

"The fact this language has survived this long is pretty amazing," she said in a news release. "We need to blot it out and make it clear we're moving forward as a society, not backward."

Lowenthal's chief of staff, Will Shuck, said the section was brought to Lowenthal's attention by Equality California, the state's largest gay-rights group.

"This section of the code is deplorable," said Geoff Kors, the group's executive director, because it implies both that homosexuality is an illness and that gays are a threat to children.

Updating old laws is just one of scores of topics covered by the swarm of bills formally proposed this week.

There's a measure (AB 1956) to let state Fish and Game officials move dead animals around without a permit, if the carcasses are being used to feed wild condors.

There's a proposal (SB 1210) to tax sweetened beverages, with the revenues going to a program to fight childhood obesity.

And there are bills on milk and marijuana; personal trainers and prostitutes; horse racing and horse meat; attorneys and pest control.

One bill, by state Senate Republican leader-elect Bob Dutton of Rancho Cucamonga, would allow courts to notify local authorities when mentally disordered sex offenders are released into communities.

A news release from Dutton's office said the bill would "give local authorities the ability to use common sense."