Ex-Gay Watch

From 365gay.com:

Finding that children are not harmed by living with gay or lesbian parents, an Arkansas court Wednesday struck down a state regulation that banned gay people and anyone living in a household with a gay adult from being foster parents in the state.

Circuit Court Judge Timothy Fox "found that being raised by gay parents doesn’t increase the risk of psychological, behavioral, or academic problems for children and that children of lesbian and gay parents are just as well adjusted as children of straight parents," according to 365gay.com.

The state’s expert witness in the case was George A. Rekers, an exgay therapy advocate and FRC co-founder. Rekers’ past work, along with that of other reparative therapists, is thoughtfully analyzed from a clinical perspective by Jeramy Townsley.

The ACLU response, and the full text of the court decision, are available from the ACLU website.

(Hat tip: James B.)

Liberals often fight for the academic freedom to study topics deemed taboo.

Now, CNN reports, some conservative students are battling for the academic freedom not to study books and topics, such as the Qur’an or peace studies, which they prejudge as "offensive," often without knowing anything about the topic.

Perhaps it is better to hate one’s enemy in ignorance than to understand why the enemy is disagreeable?

John Aravosis, ImpossibleMike, and Big Muddy IMC comment on the latest Alan Keyes/Larry Klayman political fundraising scam:

A national shareholder campaign to force major employers to bar gay-straight employee groups and to deny benefits to gay workers and their families.

(Hat tip: James B.)

This is an "open draft" — meaning that I welcome input in creating the list of reasons why exgays should support civil unions. I’ll be out of town on vacation for a week, which means I might have time to help work on this — or I may be unable to access the Internet, in which case the content of this post is entirely up to you.

Reason 1: Gay life partners are united in love and commitment, not lust. (Substantiate.)

Reason 2: Civil unions are not marriage. (Explain.)

Reason 3: Same-sex retirement benefits lag (Boston Globe, Dec. 29, 2004)

Reason 4: Hospitals, landlords, police, public agencies, and antigay family members often disregard powers of attorney and other costly legal substitutes.

Reason 5: Civil unions ease the government’s job of taxation while resolving inequities suffered by gay taxpayers. (Explain.)

Reason 6: Civil unions reward monogamy, decreasing health risks and removing opportunities for exgays to be tempted by the availability of single gay men. (Self-evident?)

Reason 7: Civil unions reduce opportunities for societal discrimination, which may otherwise be used by some activists to justify pre-emptive or retaliatory discrimination against exgays.

Reason 8: (Add your own reasons, along with substantiation — including links whenever possible.)

Dispatches from the Culture War continues to perceive dishonesty and outright brutality in the political religious right’s battle to split up some families where the gay parent appears to be the better, safer choice to raise the kids.

Who wudda thought a wife-murdering, daughter-molesting father is a better parent than a lesbian?

From Dispatches:

Dec. 28: Alliance Defense Fund intervenes in Utah family

Dec. 27: Florida and Alabama families under antigay legal assault

From Overlawyered.com:

Dec. 20: Overlawyered.com tracks the Vermont-Virginia ex-gay custody battle.

From Reuters:

Both gay and heterosexual men are equally likely to aspire to an
unattainable body type, or to harbor a distorted image of their actual
body, new research indicates.

This finding contradicts the conventional wisdom that gay men
have more "hang ups" about their appearance than straight men, study
author Dr. Armand Hausmann told Reuters Health.

This assumption stems from a wide range of stereotypes,
Hausmann noted, including the belief that gay men are more likely to
adopt a "feminine gender identity," that gay culture places a high
emphasis on body image, and that gay men have generally lower
self-esteem.

However, no research has adequately substantiated any of these
notions, the investigator noted, suggesting more research is needed.

And…

Read more…

65gay.com reported Dec. 28:

San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer … has told the city it cannot include arguments countering the assertions made by conservative groups opposing same-sex marriage that gays can be cured and that children are better off with opposite-sex parents.

Among the documents submitted by the Alliance Defense Fund are statements by Princeton University psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover that gays misled the American Psychiatric Association into removing homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1973. Satinover regularly promotes so-called reparative or aversion therapy’ for gays.

Another document submitted by the group was from "ex-gay" leaders Alan Chambers and Randy Thomas of Exodus International which also promotes "converting" gays to heterosexuality. Yet another, by University of South Carolina professor George Rekers,  claims studies show children do better with heterosexual than with gay or lesbian parents.

Kramer told the city that he would not accept counter testimony, saying that he will base his ruling on legal arguments, not factual disputes.

Yet none of the exgay documents seem to offer pertinent legal arguments.

(Hat tip: Dan Gonzales, Google Alerts)

The journal Issues in Legal Scholarship published a full issue not too long ago on single-sex marriage.

Among the articles is "Nordic Bliss? Scandinavian Registered Partnerships and the Same-Sex Marriage Debate."

From the abstract:

The proponents of same-sex marriage have long argued that committed lesbian and gay couples should have the same legal options as committed straight couples, including marriage. Same-sex marriage opponents have shifted from one argument to another in an effort to find one that can appeal to the increasing number of Americans open to equal rights for gay people. Since the 1990s, opponents have argued that allowing same-sex marriage would undermine the institution of marriage. In recent publications, Hoover Institute scholar Stanley Kurtz has expanded this argument and provided evidence to support it. He argues that Scandinavian "registered partnerships", which provide same-sex couples with almost all the same rights and responsibilities as marriage, are "both an effect and a reinforcing cause of this Scandinavian trend toward unmarried parenthood." According to Kurtz, "Once marriage is separated from the idea of parenthood, there seems little reason to deny marriage, or marriage-like partnerships, to same-sex couples. By the same token, once marriage (or a status close to marriage) has been redefined to include same-sex couples, the symbolic separation between marriage and parenthood is confirmed, locked-in, and reinforced."

Eskridge, Spedale, and Ytterberg dissent from Kurtz’s speculative causal link between registered partnerships and what he calls the "end" of marriage in Scandinavia. To begin with, the authors question Kurtz’s logic. Family law throughout much of the West has, arguably, undermined marriage as an institution by making it easier to exit and by providing civil alternatives with some of the benefits and few of the obligations. But expanding the eligibility of marriage, or a parallel institution, to same-sex couples who want to take on the civil obligations as well as the benefits of marriage does not logically undermine the institution of marriage. More important, the evidence from Scandinavia refutes rather than supports Kurtz’s logic. Long-range trends in marriage rates, divorce rates, and nonmarital births either have been unaffected by the advent of same-sex partnerships or have moved in a direction that suggests that the institution of marriage is strengthening. Finally, the authors focus on the security of children in Scandinavia and find none of the ill effects posited by Kurtz.

In a concluding section, Eskridge, Spedale, and Ytterberg raise normative questions relevant to the ongoing search for arguments to deny gay people civil equality. The big loser in such a campaign is marriage. By scapegoating gay marriage (or partnerships) as the "cause" of marriage’s decline, pseudo-conservatives tend to reinforce the actual causes of the decline – the options straight couples are utilizing, such as no-fault divorce and cohabitation rights.

The full article is available only to academic institutions and to subscribers. (I have a copy.)

Reviews:

freedomtomarry.org (Oct. 21, 2004) offers an extended commentary on the article and the larger problem of the religious-right smear campaign against marriage and gay equality in Europe.

marriagedebate.com (Oct. 17, 2004) offers a hasty dismissal of the article.

Episcopal seminarian Bob Griffith comments on the divide between Christians who, like the fabled Pharisees, demand "right belief" and wage war against independent thinkers and feelers — and those who live out Christ’s mission to love thy neighbor.

Richard T. Cooper and Johanna Neuman of the LA Times profile the obsessively antigay religious-right outfit Concerned Women for America.

While it cites conservative critics of the CWFA’s ideological extremism and incivility, the article at no time balances its coverage with viewpoints outside the religious right.