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Wayne Besen
PO Box 25491
Brooklyn, NY 11202
Today, I want to take the opportunity to endorse Barack Obama for President.
Note: This is not an endorsement from Truth Wins Out -- because my organization does not endorse candidates.
Obama has proved himself worthy of reelection. The president has made strides on LGBT equality issues, performed well in a tough economy, and has represented the United States with dignity overseas.
Meanwhile, his Republican opponents all appear to have extreme visions of America and seem captive to the most radical fringes of the GOP and Tea Party. There is not a single Republican candidate that seems worthy of the Oval Office.
Barack Obama's solid and respectable performance -- and at times inspiring -- stands in great contrast to the pandering of GOP candidates to the Party's most unsavory elements. The President has an alluring vision of the future. Meanwhile, his Republican opponents have a disturbing scheme of tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, while gutting the middle class and finding scapegoats to distract angry citizens from the GOP's economic voodoo.
While Obama has not given me everything I had hoped for, he has easily cleared the bar for reelection. Without his swift action at the beginning of his term, I am convinced the George W. Bush recession would have spiraled into another Great Depression. On LGBT issues, the President effectively used his bully pulpit, signed a hate crime law, and scrapped the dreaded Don't Ask/Don't Tell policy.
It is my sincere hope that the President continues "evolving" on marriage equality -- to the point where becomes a fierce advocate. Surely, it does seem like his opinion is headed in the right direction -- while we can expect nothing but indifference or outright gay bashing by his Republican opponents.
Even at this early stage in the election cycle, the choice is clear.
Anti-gay activists have long considered 1993's Don’t Ask/Don't Tell compromise one of their most prized victories. In one fell swoop, they humiliated President Bill Clinton, flexed their political muscle, and put lesbian and gay people in their place.
What the extremists never understood was that Don't Ask/Don't Tell was their movement's death knell. This bitter fight elevated gay rights to a national issue for the first time in history. Prior to 1993, discussions about LGBT people were usually spoken in hushed tones. Suddenly, gay people were photographed on the cover of magazines, quoted in the A Section of newspapers, and interviewed on television news programs (not just the daytime talk shows). The nation was introduced to honorable role models such as Tracy Thorne, the Top Gun pilot with movie star looks, and Vietnam Bronze Star recipient Grethe Cammermeyer.
The national March on Washington occurred at roughly the same time, offering an opportunity for thousands of people, emboldened by the gays in the military debate, to come out of the closet in a safe and inspiring atmosphere.
Up until that moment, the public, the media, and religious institutions had decided to render gay people invisible or portrayed them as sinful circus acts. There was virtually no effort to show homosexuals as multi-dimensional people who led complete, fulfilling lives.
The first Don't Ask/Don't Tell loss was actually a victory (except for the 14,000 brave gay troops who were fired) because it destroyed the taboo of homosexuality. At that moment, LGBT people became an identifiable group to mainstream Americans and were firmly ingrained in public consciousness.
Seventeen years later, the scare tactics of the opposition were rendered ineffective because people had friends and family members who were openly gay. Even the majority of the troops said they thought they had served with gay service members.
This time around, our gay spokespeople were seen as dignified and patriotic, while the opposition appeared freakish, paranoid, and melodramatic. America looked at our opponents and asked, "What are you so scared of? Your fears are misplaced and, quite frankly, weird."
There was one striking difference in this year’s tussle. In 1993, it was the politicians who were trying to get out in front of public opinion. In 2010, two-thirds of the public was squarely in favor of repealing Don't Ask/Don't Tell, yet many elected officials were bucking the views of their constituents to appease anti-gay special interests.
The unsettling disconnect between the majority of Americans and some members of Congress -- overwhelmingly Republican -- who kowtow to hardcore litmus test voters, remains a real problem that will be exacerbated in 2011 when Republicans take over the House. Indeed, passing the bill took a massive lobbying effort, which included Washington insiders and new direct action groups. The legislation only made it through at the last possible moment -- flaring tempers and fraying nerves.
President Bill Clinton's painful experience with gays in the military led Obama to be overly cautious, almost killing repeal efforts. His go slow approach was frustrating and, at times, infuriating. But, in the end, he will be judged by what happens on his watch -- and his efforts just earned him an upgrade from a Casio to a Rado.
To get the Rolex, he will have to sign a law prohibiting employment discrimination and abolish the odious Defense of Marriage Act. Still, the President did enough to temporarily quell bubbling anger in the LGBT community, while earning himself a degree of trust. He said he would end this heinous policy -- and he did. Few people will remember the details and history will celebrate the signing ceremony, which signaled a major victory for the LGBT movement and the Obama administration.
However, expectations will be higher now that the ghost of Don't Ask/Don't Tell has been slain. The integration of openly gay soldiers will prove to be a non-event, (like gay people marrying in 5 states) giving wavering Democrats and moderate Republicans few excuses not to vote for equality in the future.
As for our foes, they will be in disarray and have to live with the inconvenient fact that their gloom and doom scenarios never came to pass. And, they will soon have to watch their worst nightmare come to fruition, as heroic openly gay and lesbian soldiers stand on elevated platforms to receive medals for saving lives in the heat of battle.
It is telling that the week ended with former president Jimmy Carter, an observant evangelical Christian, saying he thought America would soon be ready for a gay president. With this week's historic victory -- suddenly anything looks possible.
Protest Against Notorious ‘Ex-Gay’ Therapy Group NARTH In Philadelphia, Saturday, Nov. 6
Demonstration Takes On New Urgency Following LGBT Teen Suicide Crisis
What: A coalition of local and statewide LGBT organizations will protest the annual conference of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), on Saturday, Nov. 6 (noon-1:30 PM). The so-called “ex-gay” group falsely believes that homosexuality is a psychological condition that can be cured through prayer and therapy. The organizations protesting want to send the message that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are fine just the way they are, and that you can’t “pray away the gay.”
The LGBT advocacy groups will be joined by mental health professionals, survivors of “ex-gay” therapy and nationally known LGBT bloggers. The demonstrators will point out that “ex-gay” therapy is harmful, ineffective and a fringe practice that is rejected by every respected medical and mental health association in America. The protest takes on new urgency, following a series of teen suicides due to anti-gay bullying.
Theme: The notorious "ex-gay" group NARTH is hoping that Americans have amnesia and don't remember that its most "prominent" board member, George Rekers, was forced to resign in May. Rekers stepped down after he was caught vacationing with a male escort he met on RentBoy.com. When asked why he had hired the young man, Rekers said it was to, "lift his luggage." The theme of this event is “Lift My Luggage” and protesters are urged to bring luggage to the protest (pink luggage would be ideal).
Who: The Lift My Luggage demonstration is co-sponsored by Truth Wins Out, Equality Pennsylvania, PFLAG-Philadelphia, Equality Forum, The William Way LGBT Community Center, MCC Philadelphia, The Mazzoni Center, ex-gay survivor Chaim Levin, mental health professionals Drs’. Michele Angello and Dr. Maureen Osborne, Joe Jervis (Joe.My.God), Jeremy Hooper (Good As You) and Zack Ford (ZackFordBlogs.com).
Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that fights anti-LGBT religious extremism. TWO monitors anti-LGBT organizations, documents their misinformation and exposes their leaders as charlatans. TWO specializes in turning information into action by organizing, advocating and fighting for LGBT equality.
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Last week, I attended the Net Roots conference in Las Vegas. This is a yearly event where bloggers and grassroots activists meet to network and discuss strategy for advancing progressive issues. Net Roots began with fireworks, as the gay organization Get Equal staged a major protest on the Las Vegas strip that stopped traffic.
The demonstrators were demanding that hometown Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would prohibit firing people based on their sexual orientation. A total of twenty activists endured 106-degree heat to unfurl a large banner over a pedestrian walkway. Activists Robin McGehee and Lt. Dan Choi were among 7 people arrested during the protest.
Some, who believe Reid should not be pressured during a tough reelection race against loopy Tea Bagger Sharron Angle, questioned Get Equal’s action. However, I support their advocacy and believe it brought much needed attention to a bill that seems to be languishing in the Senate. The pressure and media exposure created by Choi and Get Equal is crucial for several reasons.
First, LGBT issues should not be considered radioactive. Politicians ought to be held accountable for their promises and proudly support equal rights at all times. With the American people overwhelmingly in support of ENDA, there is no excuse for timidity. The time to end discrimination in the workplace is today.
Second, there will always be tough political battles and there seems to never be a convenient time for elected officials to take a stand. The LGBT community was told to wait its turn when Obama was elected because there were complicated issues -- such as the economy and two wars. But now, defenders of the status quo still say we should hold off to avoid causing waves during the contentious midterm elections.
If the Republicans win over one or both houses of Congress we will surely be told that nothing can be done because the Republicans are in charge. If the Democrats win, we might be asked to take one for the team because President Obama has a difficult reelection campaign in the near future. And if Obama wins, we may be informed that he does not have the power to act because he is a lame duck president?
There will always be excuses why apprehensive leaders, who gladly take LGBT money and votes, should not act. Meanwhile, as the politicians dither and justify inaction, more gay people are fired from jobs every day. And, an even larger number of workers remain closeted, fearful of losing their careers and facing financial ruin in this dreadful economy.
Third, there are those who claim that groups such as Get Equal should not be targeting "friends" of the LGBT community. I happen to agree with this logic, but believe one is only a true friend in the House or Senate if they are taking bold action to end discrimination. When Harry Reid moves ENDA through the Senate he will be amazed that protesters are no longer causing traffic jams in Las Vegas.
Fourth, some critics say that we should take a go-slow approach and only end one form of state-sanctioned bigotry at a time. This crowd says, we should not push for ending Don't Ask Don't Tell and ENDA in the same year.
This is nonsense and the notion of incremental action on LGBT issues is absurd. It is just as wrong to fire a person in the military, as it is to end a person’s career in the civilian workforce because he or she is gay. If a politician states anti-gay discrimination is morally repugnant, it is his or her obligation to seek out and end all forms of official bigotry at once.
Indeed, contrary to conventional beltway wisdom, eliminating anti-gay discrimination on the same day, through one bill, would be simpler than the current plan of having several protracted fights. It makes sense that once a single vote on a comprehensive LGBT rights bill is taken -- the battle would be over with. The American people would see they have nothing to fear and life would move on. No one in Washington has been able to rationally explain how having Congress take one difficult vote on gay rights is more challenging politically than taking multiple tough votes.Only in DC is 10 bloody fights considered "easier" than one.
Finally, critics of Get Equal and Dan Choi, who also confronted Reid on stage in Las Vegas, like to portray these advocates as publicity seekers. However, I can’t understand how effectively using the national media to draw attention to broken promises is bad for the LGBT movement. These activists should be universally applauded for not allowing ENDA or Don't Ask/Don't Tell to suffer quiet deaths on Capitol Hill. The more noise they make, the more likely these bills will become law.
Choi and McGehee headline the best young crop of activists the movement has seen. They are smart, engaging, brave, media savvy and politically aware. Most of the criticism against them stems from jealousy or a need to defend failure to get the job done. As someone who has served in this movement for two decades, I am proud to have these advocates on my side and thankful for the vitality and verve they bring to the LGBT movement.
If so-called "ex-gay" therapists had a slogan it would be, "getting paid and getting laid." This is a sick, exploitative industry run by diabolical and dysfunctional quacks that systematically sucker or seduce vulnerable clients.
Earlier this week, Truth Wins Out released a video featuring Ben Unger and Chaim Levin, two survivors of abusive "ex-gay" therapy. The young men grew up in Orthodox Jewish families in Brooklyn and were taught that they could not be gay and retain their faith. When Levin and Unger confronted this conflict, they were referred to the "ex-gay" organization Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH).
When they first arrived, the co-founder of JONAH, Arthur Abba Goldberg, guaranteed they could become heterosexual if they worked hard. Levin and Unger were sent to JONAH's lead therapist, Alan Downing, who contradicted Goldberg's rosy assessment -- and told both men that he was still "struggling" with gay feelings.
So a few questions beg:
1) If ex-gay "reparative therapy" works so well, than why is JONAH's primary "life coach" still gay?
2) Why should people pay Downing money to "change", when he could not achieve this desired change in his own life?
3) Isn't it risky to place a self-loathing, sexually repressed counselor in a position of power over confused young clients?
Well, of course it’s a bad idea, and the results of such unholy arrangements have consistently been disastrous. Not surprisingly, Unger and Levin claim that the "life coach" asked them to do what amounted to a "psychological striptease."
"He was encouraging me, 'it's okay Ben, you can take your shirt off'...here was a man that was much older than me, and I was around 20," said Ben Unger. "At that point, I was just staring at a mirror with my shirt off and he was right behind me staring at the mirror with me at my body. Then telling me to look at my body and feel my body. It was weird."
"While I was standing there without my clothes on, he asked me to touch my genitals," says Chaim Levin. "Once again, I communicated that I was not comfortable with it. And he was like, you know, 'just feel yourself. Just feel it for a second. So, you can grasp your masculinity physically.'"
Group's like JONAH might disingenuously claim such bad behavior is an anomaly. However, it's not -- and to understand just how pathological this enterprise truly is, one just has to examine the charlatans running programs such as JONAH and Journey into Manhood, which is a backwoods "ex-gay" retreat designed to make gay men more masculine.
The guru of these programs and the pioneer of their bizarre techniques is Richard Cohen, the outlandish therapist who was expelled for life from the American Counseling Association in 2002 after it accused him of six violations of its ethics code.
Cohen's specialty is "touch therapy", where he places a male client between his thighs and caresses him. He and his minions claim that such petting is "non-sexual touch", but I’m not buying it. If a closeted gay therapist is pressing his groin up against a sexually frustrated gay client (who is also forbidden from masturbating), this is a form of sex. Indeed, it is a therapeutic lap dance and should be called re-perv-ative, not reparative therapy.
Interestingly, Cohen learned his creepy methods from the Wesleyan Community Christian Church, a cult that practiced nude therapy, including adult women breast-feeding men in a church sanctuary.
The main promoter and cheerleader of such wacky techniques is JONAH's Arthur Abba Goldberg, a Wall Street criminal mastermind, who prior to co-founding the "ex-gay" organization, was convicted in 1987 and sent to prison for “fraud of spectacular scope.” So, basically you have a former convict selling the naked therapy of a disbarred former cult member, to desperate clients. And, this is what passes for science in "ex-gay" circles.
Predictably, the results have been disastrous. Cohen-style therapy has led to cases of sexual impropriety and abuse. For example, in 2007, Christopher Austin, an "ex-gay" counselor linked to the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), was convicted in Irving, Texas of sexually assaulting a client. Last year, Truth Wins Out exposed Exodus therapist Mike Jones of Lansing, MI, who was sexually abusing a client under the auspices of touch therapy.
How ironic, therapists who claim to cure homosexuals keep ending up naked with their gay clients. Such lurid exploitation has moved from a disconcerting pattern to a full-blown trend. We need to look beyond the shocking individual scandals to see that reparative therapy at its corrosive core is, in fact, scandalous. Isn't it time these "therapists" shut their doors and finally get the help they so desperately need?
Helen Thomas is usually a fine reporter. But, this time she revealed an ugly bias. To suggest Jews leave their homes in Israel and go back to Poland and Germany turns my stomach and makes my skin crawl. Her words were bigoted, insensitive, profoundly ignorant, and painful to all Jews who had to flee such places.
It is a good start that she has apologized for her remarks -- but it is difficult to believe that she is sincere. Thomas has damaged her legacy and it is a stain on her overall body of work. She ought to be ashamed of herself.
Last week, I spent two days in Lynchburg, Va., to observe a major Religious Right conference, "The Awakening", which featured many of their biggest stars. The symposium revealed the decline of anti-gay focus and showed that it was no longer the far right's number one priority. The obsession with all things gay was nudged aside by an intense hatred of Barack Obama, which was closely followed by a passionate dislike of immigrants, who many in the crowd wanted to see promptly returned to their homeland.
While the sheer number of anti-gay attacks had decreased from past conferences, the remaining rhetoric was vicious and vile, as desperate homophobes realize they are losing the battle of public opinion.
The sullen mood over ceding ground was best summarized by Lou Engle of "The Call". During a breakout session on the "LGBT Agenda", he acknowledged that when he preaches against LGBT issues, Christian youth often "rage against" him. Engle said that the far right has lost on this issue barring a miracle. One idea floated by Engle to turn the tide was creating an intercession by holding a 500,000 strong youth rally.
If Engle is wondering how his movement lost the current generation of youth, it is because the hatred and hyperbole spewed by anti-gay activists is incongruous with reality. Many teenagers, including evangelicals, have friends who come out of the closet at early ages. They listen to the slurs and the slander at such conferences and know, based on real life experience, that they are hearing lies. Such cognitive dissonance is costing evangelical leaders enormous credibility.
I was not "undercover" (Sorry Porno Pete) at the event, having signed up under my own name in case they checked ID. But I was trying to keep a low profile so I wouldn't get thrown out of the conference. To look inconspicuous, I grew some facial stubble, wore a lumberjack shirt and left out the hair gel. The plan worked until The Traditional Values Coalition's Andrea Lafferty spotted me at the LGBT Agenda breakout session, which made me as comfortable as a fly crash-landing on a porcupine.
She asked me if I had any questions. I looked around the room and saw no movable middle in this bunch, so I declined. I preferred to plead the 5th to ensure I could attend the big revival that was planned that evening.
During the seminar, Lafferty said if we pass The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a bill in Congress to protect LGBT Americans from job discrimination, we are on a slippery slope to protect those who have sex with amputees, children and animals.
Lafferty seemed to have an unusually acerbic, if not allergic, reaction to transgender people saying, "they are actually she-males.... we need to talk about how truly troubled they are.... Do we want them in the classroom?"
The Liberty Counsel's Matt Barber chimed in, saying that transgender Americans are the "ultimate act of rebellion against God." He justified persecuting LGBT people claiming, "The ultimate act of hatred is to help someone foster a self-delusion."
Just to let everyone know his heart and soften his vitriolic presentation, Barber kindly added, "We are not homophobic."
After the seminar, I photographed Barber and Lafferty. As I left the room, Lafferty pulled me aside to introduce herself. With a friendly smile she shook my hand and told me that the demeaning lies against LGBT people "weren't personal attacks."
Likewise, Barber approached me, shook my hand and told me that he was very glad to have me at the seminar. In a statement on an anti-gay activist's website, Barber claims that I was, "clearly confused and taken-aback by the kindness."
He also wrote, "Meeting Wayne in person, it was clear to me that he is searching. It is my hope and prayer that he and all who struggle with same-sex attraction, live a life of heterosexual or homosexual promiscuity or adultery, or anyone else for that matter, can come to know the life-changing, life-saving, life-making grace and redemption that can only come through surrender, belief and acceptance of Christ Jesus."
It was true that I was searching for something -- the nearest exit. I had reached my limit on anti-gay activists and their cult-like mentality for the day. However, Barber was wrong to say that I was "taken aback" by he and Lafferty's friendly demeanor. I have met several anti-gay activists over the years and many of them seem like nice people. If it weren't for their poisonous politics, we might even be friends.
However, it is always disheartening that activists, who give presentations that reduce LGBT people to human garbage, somehow don't think they are leveling personal attacks. Their ability to disassociate their words and actions from the harm they cause real people is astonishing.
While I appreciate being welcomed at hate-spewing anti-gay conferences, genuine kindness would be not having such conferences at all.
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