Saturday, June 24, 2006
Initially, it seemed that Bush was on the ball, with the FBI disrupting a sinister plot to blow up the Sears Tower and a federal building in Miami. The bust was conveniently timed to coincide with a Beltway debate over withdrawing troops in Iraq. It also followed the elimination of uber-terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, clearly showing momentum in the war on terror.
Upon closer inspection, this very public "bust" is nothing more than a
goofy gimmick and a public relations stunt to boost the Bush administration's sagging poll numbers. While it is great that these wannabe thugs were snagged off the streets, it is also clear that they were low level losers who were out of the loop. The only "contact" they had with Al Qaeda was the FBI agent posing as a terrorist. And these punks were so poor that they had to ask the undercover cop for "boots." This hardly is the American incarnation of Osama.
Of course, the FBI should be thanked for catching these clowns - but let's be honest, we bagged some Bozos. This incident should never have been elevated to front page news. At best, this story was worthy of maybe a blurb in the newspaper. All the breathless coverage of these nobody thugs accomplished was scaring Americans into likely making more stupid decisions - like further surrendering their civil liberties and staying in Iraq indefinitely.
Unless a prime terrorism suspect is apprehended or a major plot uncovered, why is it news? By crying wolf so many times, we erode America's readiness for the real deal.
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Thursday, June 22, 2006
The
Senate on Thursday roundly rejected two Democratic proposals to begin pulling troops out of
Iraq, as
Republicans and
Democrats staked out starkly different positions heading into Congressional elections this fall.
The Republicans think they have a victory, but it is going to backfire. Things are not getting better in Iraq. We are stuck in a quagmire. More American soldiers are going to die because of this stupid war. The GOP will pay on dearly on election day.
Bush and conservatives in Congress grabbed the hand of the Democrats and jumped down a deep well. Responsible for getting stuck at the bottom of this murky pit, Republicans now look at Democrats and ask, "So, what's your plan to get us out of this?" Give me a break!
Unfortunately, too many Democrats are playing along with this deadly game, while the lives of young men and women remain at risk.
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The religious right has launched a war on
contraception and condoms - particularly since
Bush took office. They have tried to make it appear as if condoms don't work - so abstinence is the only solution to STDs. The problem is, as long as sex feels good, people will partake in it. Leaders of the right wing likely have as much sex as anyone else, they just lie about it or feel guilty and "repent" after the deed is done.
A
new study out today shows that condoms are effective at preventing human papillomavirus.
"The findings are definitive," said Dr. James R. Allen, president of the American Social Health Association, an organization in Research Triangle Park, N.C., dedicated to the prevention of sexually transmitted infections.
We can now look forward to a week of spin from the right with their tired and discredited message: "If it feels good, it's fatal."
The right wing will surely say that condoms don't work 100% of the time. However, "virgin pledges" don't work all the time either, and I don't see the right wing abandoning their "
abstinence only" programs because they lack perfection.
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Wednesday, June 21, 2006
(Weekly Column)
I have yet to visit Focus on the Family's massive "campus" in Colorado Springs - a place so large it has its own zip code. But each year, thousands of fundamentalists traipse through this tourist trap to bow to King James. The people I know who have visited say that pictures of the group's leader, James Dobson, hang ubiquitously while tour guides reverently refer to him as "Dr. Dobson."
"I felt like I was in North Korea and Dobson was playing the part of Kim Jong Il," a friend recently told me. "Call it what you will, but this was a form of idolatry."
While I'm sure the toady tour is mesmerizing, what I really want to do is slip past security and into the bowels of the building where a trap door must exist that leads to "The Fib Factory."
In this liar's lair, I picture a team of butch women and effete men - ex-gays in their Homosexuality and Gender Department - hooked up to polygraph machines. These "experts" are asked by Dobson to say whatever comes to mind about homosexuality. Whenever a red light flickers, signifying a bald faced lie, Dobson turns to his personal assistant and says -- "Write that down -- we have a new talking point."
This scenario is fiction, but so is this group's alarming propaganda. Dobson's maddening mendacity is only surpassed by his capacity for audacity. The hocus pocus from Focus is spreading like a plague of locusts, while their fallacies are finding their way into municipalities.
This week, my organization,
Truth Wins Out, caught the right wing's 800 pound gorilla in two white lies as large as New Hampshire's White Mountains. The group grossly distorted a study by a Canadian researcher that showed teenage lesbians had a higher rate of suicide attempts. Unconscionably, Melissa Fryrear, a spokesperson for Focus on the Family,
blamed gay activists for causing the deaths, saying that teaching self-acceptance caused the young women to be suicidal.
"Regrettably, they think they have to embrace homosexuality because pro-gay advocates told them that they were born gay," said Fryrear.
This interpretation of the data "baffled" Dr. Elizabeth Saewyc, the Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, who conducted the study.
"Nothing in the brief results we presented or in our overall study could lead to such conclusions," she said after I contacted her and showed her how Focus on the Family portrayed her study results. "Population surveys cannot determine cause and effect, they can only suggest possible links. Even so, other researchers have not found these sorts of links, and neither have we."
The
Canadian Press, a wire service, interviewed Sawwyc and she expressed further alarm on how her scholarly work had suddenly ended up as culture war fodder for the Focus foxhole.
"The research has been hijacked for somebody's political purposes or ideological purposes and that's worrisome."
Realizing that she was caught in a calumny, Fryrear invoked the work of Dr. Robert Spitzer, a Columbia University researcher who had published a 2001 study on sexual orientation. The Focus spokeswoman said in the article that Spitzer's research linked contemplating suicide to unwanted attractions to the same sex.
I contacted Spitzer the next day and it turns out that his work had also
been distorted. He sent me a statement outlining his dismay over the way Focus on the Family misrepresented his study.
"Unfortunately, Focus on the Family has once again reported findings of my study out of context to support their fight against gay rights,"
said Spitzer. "Although a third of the subjects in my study reported having had serious thoughts of suicide related to their homosexuality, not one of them blamed the gay rights movement's advocating a 'born-gay' theory of homosexuality as the cause of their suicidal thinking."
Fryrear essentially tried to dig herself out of a hole caused by distorting the work of one researcher by twisting the work of another. Isn't there something in the Bible about not bearing false witness? Just another day at the
Fib Factory, I guess.
Focus on the Family has always been truth challenged and taken special delight in mocking science. Remember, this group also started The Family Research Council, a Washington lobby that ironically does virtually no original research.
In Focus on the Family's mammoth "campus" there are hundreds of employees. But is there a single person there who knows a centrifuge from a centerfold or a test tube from a boob tube? All they understand is the science of spin, which can lead to embarrassing sin, as James Dobson learned this week.
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Tuesday, June 20, 2006
On June 13, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) sent a letter to the Pentagon requesting that a Department of Defense (DoD) instruction that lists homosexuality as a mental disorder be updated. APA CEO and Medical Director James H. Scully Jr., M.D., wrote:
"Based on scientific and medical evidence the APA declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973 – a position shared by all other major health and mental health organizations based on their own review of the science. I urge you to remove homosexuality from the 'Physical Disability Evaluation' instruction."
Dr. Scully’s letter was addressed to Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs William Winkenwerder Jr., M.D.
The American Psychiatric Association is the nation’s leading medical specialty society whose more than 36,000 physician members specialize in diagnosis, treatment, prevention and research of mental illnesses including substance use disorders. Visit the APA at www.psych.org and www.HealthyMinds.org.
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Dr. Robert Spitzer Says Group Used His Work to Support Fight Against Gay RightsMiami Beach, FLA. --For the second time in two days, Focus on the Family was accused of distorting research in their efforts to attack gay and lesbian equality. Today, Columbia University's Dr. Robert Spitzer said in an e-mail statement to Wayne Besen, Executive Director of
Truth Wins Out, that the conservative organization took his controversial 2001 study on sexual orientation "out of context."
"Unfortunately Focus on the Family has once again reported findings of my study out of context to support their fight against gay rights," said Dr. Robert Spitzer, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University.
"Focus on the Family has a bottomless capacity for audacity," said TWO's Wayne Besen. "They are trying to dig themselves out of a hole caused by distorting the work of one researcher by misrepresenting the work of another. It is time they shut down their fib factory and started helping real families."
On Monday, the Colorado Springs-based group was criticized by a Canadian researcher who says she was "baffled" by the conclusions the organization drew from her research. The study by Dr. Elizabeth Saewyc, an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, showed that lesbian teenagers were more likely to attempt suicide. Reacting to survey results, Focus on the Family
blamed the very people trying to help teens enter a more accepting society.
"Regrettably, they think they have to embrace homosexuality because pro-gay advocates told them that they were born gay," claimed Melissa Fryrear, a spokesperson for Focus on the Family, on their website.
Truth Wins Out challenged Fryrear's statement by informing Dr. Saewyc of Focus on the Family's interpretation of her work. She told the
Canadian Press that, "The research has been hijacked for somebody's political purposes or ideological purposes and that's worrisome."
Focus on the Family defended itself in the Canadian Press article by invoking Dr. Robert Sptizer's work. TWO contacted Dr. Spitzer and he was dismayed that his study had been twisted for political gain.
"Although a third of the subjects in my study reported having had serious thoughts of suicide related to their homosexuality, not one of them blamed the gay rights movement's advocating a 'born-gay' theory of homosexuality as the cause of their suicidal thinking," said Spitzer.
This is not the first time that the far right has misinterpreted Dr. Robert Spitzer's work. In 2001, he released a controversial study reportedly showing that a small fraction of gay people might be able to shift sexual orientation. This received international media attention because Spitzer is the doctor who played a key role in taking homosexuality off the list of mental disorders in 1973. His 2001 findings were immediately disputed by many scientists and gay advocates who complained his study sample relied heavily on anti-gay activists, many of whom made a portion of their living by claiming they had become straight through prayer and therapy. Still, Dr. Spitzer concludes that change is
"a pretty rare phenomenon." "While TWO disagrees with Dr. Spitzer’s findings, we are in solid agreement that right wing groups have wrongly drawn conclusions that were not presented in his work," said Besen. "Focus on the Family should stop falsifying the facts and misquoting the Spitzer study."
Truth Wins OUT is a non-profit organization that counters right wing propaganda, exposes the "ex-gay" myth and educates America about gay life. For more information, visit www.TruthWinsOut.org.
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Monday, June 19, 2006
(Melissa Fryrear Misrepresents Study)Contact: Wayne Besen, Truth Wins Out
E-Mail:
wbesen@TruthWinsOut.org
FOCUS ON THE FAMILY BLAMES 'PRO-GAY ADVOCATES' FOR LESBIAN TEEN SUICIDES
Truth Wins Out Discovers That Researcher Is 'Disturbed' that Group Distorts Study Results
Miami Beach, FLA. -- Going far beyond the research results, Focus on the Family claims a
recent study presented at a Canadian public health conference links "pro-gay advocates" to increased rates of lesbian teen suicide attempts, a claim that has baffled the scientist who conducted the study.
"Nothing in the brief results we presented or in our overall study could lead to such conclusions," said Dr. Elizabeth Saewyc, an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, and research director of the
McCreary Centre Society.
Reacting to survey results that showed higher rates of suicide attempts among lesbian high school students vs. heterosexual teens,
Focus on the Family blamed the very people trying to help teens enter a more accepting society.
"Regrettably, they think they have to embrace homosexuality because pro-gay advocates told them that they were born gay," claimed Melissa Fryrear, a spokesperson for Focus on the Family, on their website.
When contacted about Focus on the Family's claims, Saewyc, the study's principal investigator, said she was "disturbed" by what "seems to be an attempt to make their opinions more credible by linking them to scientific research--even though the research doesn't support those beliefs." She said Focus on the Family draws conclusions well beyond the study results by claiming that lesbians are suicidal because they are "embracing homosexuality," as well as other inaccuracies in their article.
"Population surveys cannot determine cause and effect," Saewyc explained, "they can only suggest possible links. Even so, other researchers have not found these sorts of links, and neither have we."
She added, "What we have found is that sexual, racial, or anti-gay harassment, discrimination, and violence are strongly associated with suicidal attempts among young people -- and that includes heterosexual teens too." She noted her previous study of Seattle high school students, which found 4 out of 5 students experiencing anti-gay harassment identified as heterosexual, and harassed students were significantly more likely to report suicide attempts regardless of their orientation.
"Focus on the Family has attempted a sick spin on tragedy," said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out, an organization that challenges right-wing organizations on issues of gay identity. "Lesbian, gay and questioning teens commit suicide because of the shame and ostracism that Focus on the Family peddles every day."
The research found 38 percent of lesbian teens and 30.4 percent of bisexual teen females had attempted suicide in the year before the survey. That compares to just 8.2 per cent of the heterosexual teen females surveyed.
The data came from the McCreary Centre Society's 2003 survey of more than 30,000 Canadian students in Grades 7 through 12.
Besen said Focus on the Family's rhetoric is the first sign of a push into North American schools.
"In Canada and the U.S., we're tracking efforts by Focus on the Family and others to push anti-gay pseudo-science into schools. Wherever gay-straight alliances exist, those schools will be their first targets," Besen said. “They have no shame, using the tragedy of gay teen suicide as a talking point against youth having a safe space in which to discuss their identities."
Truth Wins OUT is a non-profit organization that counters right wing propaganda, exposes the "ex-gay" myth and educates America about gay life. For more information, visit www.TruthWinsOut.org.
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