Ex-Gay Watch

This is a follow-up in our effort to separate fact from fiction in the alleged assault claimed by Parents and Friends of ExGays and Gays (PFOX) at the Arlington County Fair last month. If you haven’t read our earlier coverage, please do so first to help put the following in context. You can find what could be referred to as parts one and two in our archives, along with this related article.

When we last reported on this issue September 5, the Arlington County Police Department, representatives from the Arlington Fair, an Arlington County Board Member and two eyewitnesses all reported having no idea what PFOX was talking about when they claimed an assault had taken place at the Arlington County Fair on August 18. One thing has changed since that time.

On September 10, we received the following email from John Lisle, our contact at the ACPD. It was our original inquiry to him that started their investigation into the matter and we asked that he let us know if any new information turned up. This was also posted to the original thread by a commenter about an hour after we received it.

One officer told me today he was on patrol at the Fair when a woman approached him and told him a man had knocked over pamphlets at the PFOX booth and assaulted another man there.

The officer then spoke to the alleged victim. He did not want to press charges and therefore no written report was filed.

Based on the description the officer was given, he located the suspect at the Fair. Another officer escorted that gentleman off the Fair grounds.

This was quite exciting, as up to now we were coming up dry everywhere. Contrary to the way it has been framed by some, this obviously isn’t proof of an assault — even the police have no witnesses — but it is something. Clearly the PFOX workers had talked with the officers and we were able to exchange questions with them through Lisle over the next week or so. Read more…

I’ve been the victim of sexual harassment.

Near the end of my 20-year, U.S. Navy career, a subordinate of mine decided I was gay and didn’t want me in his Navy – he talked to my last four division officers trying to get an investigation into my alleged homosexuality started on me.

My subordinate finally found a sympathetic ear in a new Executive Officer (XO). I got called in front of the XO twice. I’d stayed within the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) rules, but he asked me if I were gay anyway.

I wrote up my subordinate and my XO for male-on-male sexual harassment — they violated the DADT rules in a way that met the Navy’s three criteria for sexual harassment:

1. The attention was unwelcome.
2. The harassment was sexual in nature.
3. The harassment involved the workplace.

Unfortunately for my harassers, for seven years of my military career I’d been a Naval Equal Opportunity and Sexual Harassment instructor. Both of my harassers were found at the end of investigation to have committed male-on-male sexual harassment. The Navy didn’t take male-on-male sexual harassment seriously, so my subordinate’s punishment was a verbal reprimand, and my XO got a “fiche 5″ service record entry.

I knew the rules and criteria for sexual harassment. (One can read more of my DADT story on the SLDN‘s or HRC‘s website.)

Why mention my story of harassment here? Matt Barber of the Concerned Women For America’s Culture And Family Institute recently announced what he believes a sexually harassing, hostile work environment is created when a transwoman uses a female designated bathroom.

Read more…

Normalizing the behavior has always been the crux of the gay agenda. Part of the process involves mainstreaming the lifestyle through entertainment.

–Unattributed quote, Transgender Plot Unfolds on Daytime TV, Focus On The Family News

For those who haven’t heard, the ABC Soap Opera All My Children (AMC) is adding a transitioning transgender/transsexual character. GLAAD and some New York based transpeople have done some consulting with the AMC producers with the goal of creating a realistic, transitioning character. That might be a little hard since they named the character “Zarf” and made hir a rock star, but hey — this is a soap opera we’re talking about.

Damon Romine, GLAAD’s entertainment media director, was one of the consultants and had this to say about the storyline:

“Telling the story of a character’s transition from male to female is groundbreaking television. All My Children has a track record of telling honest and important stories, and we applaud them for their commitment to sharing Zarf’s story with compassion and integrity.”

GLAAD is glad; others aren’t so happy. Janice Crouse, of the Concerned Women for America, says that:

… the show’s plot is no accident, but a carefully planned strategy by gay advocates.

“They will push as far as they can until the people say, ‘That’s far enough.’ You can be sure, unless we express our outrage, this will continue to heaven knows how far they will go.”

Bob Knight, director of the Culture and Media Institute at the Media Research Center has his reaction captured in an AgapePress article:

Knight says ABC “likes to think of itself as cutting edge,” and the network has already, along with countless others in the entertainment industry, embraced the homosexual agenda fully. Therefore, he suggests, ABC is now bringing a transgendered character onto All My Children, largely “to shock, to get headlines, and to try to get more people to watch one of their longtime soaps.”

Pro-homosexual ABC and Hollywood think Judeo-Christian standards are “just a holdover from a bigoted, superstitious era,” the culture and media analyst contends, and as self-described progressives, they need to attack those faith-based values. “They are dedicated to tear down every moral standard,” he says, “and they’re now using the transgender people to do it.”

Meanwhile, Knight asserts, transgender individuals themselves are among the homosexual agenda’s casualties. “I see these poor, sexually confused people as victims and pawns of a larger movement that wants to destroy Christianity and to turn America into a country we would no longer recognize,” he says.

Knight believes homosexual activists and their supporters realize that the homosexual lifestyle is so empty and devoid of meaning that the best they can do is to continue shocking people. (emphasis added.)

And, Exodus International’s Alan Chambers has a section devoted to his reaction to the AMC TG character in Focus On The Family News’ Transgender Plot Unfolds on Daytime TV. From the article:

Read more…

I loathe the idea of commenting on the Foley scandal here in the XGW; however; Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth commented on the scandal, and his comments apply to this forum.
Read more…

UPDATED

Concerned Women for America has an internship program in which they train young women to be culture warriors against those who don’t share CWA’s view of how the world should be. Part of this training appears to be writing negative and accusatory articles about the gay community.

Molly Hamrick, a recent graduate with a degree in Political Communications from Bryan College, took a claim by Peter LaBarbera that the Gay Games was “a flop” and paraphrased this as “Gay Games VII is the third “gay” event that has failed financially”. However, the Washington Blade reports

Organizers in Chicago said this week they expect to post a profit after final numbers are tallied in August.

“We’re projecting a surplus,” said Gay Games spokesperson Phyllis Jones, “but I can’t tell you if that’s a million dollars or two dollars.”

This is not the first time that a CWA intern repeated a story that was untruthful. The following is my email to CWA advising them of their inaccuracy:

Molly Hamrick’s article about the Gay Games VII in Chicago is incorrect. In it, Ms. Hamrick states “Gay Games VII is the third “gay” event that has failed financially;…”

Actually, the Gay Games VII did not fail financially. While the final numbers have not yet been made available, projections show the organizers expecting a profit.

Please revise your article accordingly.

Hamrick relied heavily on Peter LaBarbera’s reporting. However, she forgot that LaBarbera writes in a manner to deceive, using words that may be technically correct but imply something that is not true. In this case, LaBarbera suggested that the Gaymes were financially insolvent by calling them “a flop”. But LaBarbera was simply claiming that they were a flop by his definition while leaving the reader to think otherwise.

Ms Hamrick is no doubt young and has not yet learned that when you use as a source those who have no commitment to objective truth but instead rely on innuendo and deception to fight their battles in the culture war, you will unwittingly be an instrument of deception and lies.

And that should make any honest woman concerned.

UPDATE

Gay Games VII reports that attendance was 40% greater than expected and that for the events which were ticketed, ticket sales were 50% above projected. The organization will release financial details before 9/30 but are predicting a surplus.

It is highly unlikely that CWA or LaBarbera will revise their report to allign with reality. Honesty doesn’t appear to be very important to either of them.

AlterNet on July 7 reprinted Top 10 Power Brokers of the Religious Right, published in June by Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

James Dobson ranks No. 2. (Blame Pat Robertson.)

The top power brokers are indexed, along with much longer versions of the following profiles for each:
Read more…

EDITED: I’ve edited this posting to narrow my focus of criticism.

Addendum, July 7: CWFA has revoked intern Sarah Kuziomko’s original press release without explanation or apology; here is a copy of the original press release, obtained from Google cache. Here is CWFA’s revised press release.

Grove City College, where prominent ex-gay proponent Warren Throckmorton teaches, has contributed a new combatant in the Culture Wars. Sarah Kuziomko, an intern at Concerned Women for America, is a communications major at the school.

However, Ms. Kuziomko appears to be learning the lie, spin, and distort branch of communications. Her latest effort was to repeat the false story about the “mobbing” of the son of anti-gay activist David Parker.

A mob of schoolchildren seized and beat the 7-year-old son of pro-family activist David Parker behind his school, Estabrook Elementary, in Lexington, Massachusetts, recently, on the second anniversary of same-sex “marriage” in Massachusetts.

The victim, first-grader Jacob Parker, apparently is feeling the heat for his father’s opposition to forced pro-homosexual education.

The school became aware of the fight immediately and discussed it with all parties. The investigation determined that the scuffle was over who sat where in the cafeteria. When the Parkers issued a press release filled with paranoia, the school administration invited an investigation by the police. All of this is clearly explained on the website of the school.

We know that Kuziomko has seen either the site or read some of the refuting evidence because her story references the police involvement, which was not included on the original press release:

Recently the school superintendent asked three different government agencies to investigate the beatings. All three mysteriously declined.

There was nothing mysterious about their disinclination to become involved with a schoolyard fight over a chair. If the boys were so content with the resolution that they had a subsequent play date, surely this is not a police matter.

There is no question that Kuziomko knows that the story she’s spreading is false. It is clear in the way that she selects phrases like “apparently is feeling the heat”, “mysteriously declined”, and “many observers believe”. She’s walking the fine line between an outright lie and giving a false impression.

I am concerned that this behavior is evident in a student at a Christian school. It makes me wonder whether the Communications Department at Grove City College is adequately teaching an ethic that places emphasis on truth, fact, and honesty.

(thanks GoodAsYou)

Brady at Some Guys Are Normal notes that Ohio’s antigay constitutional ban on nonmarital unions and any rights or services associated with such unions has resulted in court rulings that unmarried heterosexual partners enjoy no legal recourse under the state’s domestic-violence laws.

Meanwhile, Ohio antigay uber-activist Linda Harvey is using her “Mission America” nameplate to bury the state’s HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programs in litigation and red tape, presumably to force the financially strained organizations to close and to cut off medical help (except for abstinence-only lessons) to people at risk for HIV/AIDS.

Gay People’s Chronicle, March 24
The Advocate, March 27

Ohio health advocates suspect that Beverly LaHaye’s Concerned Women for America is pulling the strings behind Harvey’s campaign.

Sometimes I’m shocked at the degree to which anti-gay activists will go to bring pain and harm to gay people. This is one of those times.

The State of New York overwhelming voted to allow domestic partners to make decisions relating to the burial of their loved ones. The Republican governor, George Pataki, signed the bill. This was not a partisan issue or even a controversial issue.

Today the AgapePress has an article about the act which claims it “damaged the roll of the traditional family”. They quote Robert Knight of Concerned Women for America and Peter LaBarbera of the Illinois Family Institute.

Knight:

Bob Knight of the Culture and Family Institute, however, says while that might seem compassionate on the surface, family is family.

“Family has been given preference for a reason,” says the pro-family leader. “And to say that grieving parents, for instance, just have no rights over what happens to their child’s body is a perversion of the law.”

LaBarbera:

The IFI director also seems a bit surprised by the fact that Pataki signed the bill. “If a Republican governor can assert the primacy of [so-called] homosexual ‘families’ over blood relatives, it’s a pretty scary sign,” he says.

It is inconceivable to me that there are truly activists who hate “the homosexual agenda” so much that they’ll try to stop people from deciding for themselves who will make decisions regarding their burial. This suggests to me that their hatred goes far beyond “the sin”, and shows its true face, a burning hatred against gay people that actively seeks to do them harm and cause them pain.

According to no less of an authority than Concerned Women For America’s Robert Knight, all but 5 teachers in the San Leandro Unified School District worship the ancient god Baal.

The startling discovery was made when 5 teachers in the school district decided that their religion (apparently not Baal worship) required that their classroom be an unsafe place for gay students. They objected to including a sign in their class which said that “this is a safe place to be who you are.”

According to Knight, the heated debate going on at San Leandro High is not about safety at all. “This is about bullying people and saying you will kneel down and bow to the Baal god of homosexuality — or we’ll make your life very miserable,” he says.

In arguing for an unsafe place for gay students, Bob Knight argues, “What [such policies] produce is intolerance toward anyone who won’t accept homosexuality.”

To put that into English, he’s upset that these policies produce intolerance to the intolerant. It seems to me that if you’re in the “won’t accepting” business, you can’t complain too much about people who won’t accept your “won’t accepting”. I would think you’d feel right at home with intolerance.

But, then again, what do I know? I didn’t even know that Baal was the god of homosexuality.