The Family Research Council is a rightwing anti-gay, pro-family Christian organization. The SPLC has designated them a hate group, which they may well be. The SPLC then lists a number of charges that the FRC has made about homosexuals and says that all of these charges are proven false. Let us go through the charges and see which are true and which are false.
True after a charge means the SPLC is wrong, and the anti-gays are right, Mixed after a charge means that SPLC and the anti-gays are right on some thing and wrong on others, and False after a charge means the SPLC is right, and the anti-gays are wrong.
A tallying of the data shows that 6 of the anti-gay charges are false (the anti-gays are lying), 8 of the anti-gay charges are mixed (some lies, some truth), and 7 of the charges are true (anti-gays charges are true). So of 21 anti-gay charges, only 6 are complete lies and the other 15 are either true or have some truth to them.
False (anti-gays are lying)
“Welcoming open homosexuality in the military would clearly damage the readiness and effectiveness of the force – in part because it would increase the already serious problem of homosexual assault in the military.”
— Peter Sprigg, “Homosexual Assault in the Military,” 2010
I do not agree that gays in the military has a bad effect on the readiness and effectiveness of the force. At any rate, the anti-gays have never proved it. There is indeed a serious male on male sexual assault problem in the military, believe it or not. Whether allowing open gays in the military will increase this problem remains to be seen.
“Gaining access to children has been a long-term goal of the homosexual movement.”
— Robert Knight, FRC director of cultural studies, and Frank York, 1999
This is the “the fags have come for our kids!” line. I have never believed it, and there doesn’t seem to be any evidence for it. At any rate, most gay men have no interest in young boys.
Sprigg claimed that ex-gay therapy works, that sexual orientation can change…The FRC also strongly promotes the “ex-gay” movement as a way to combat LGBT civil rights measures…
It is true that you cannot make gay men straight by any therapy. This has been proven in the lab. This has been proven endlessly. Consequently, straight man apparently cannot be turned gay by any therapy. Whether or not lesbians can change their orientation remains to be seen, and the data here is not adequate as the question has not been properly explored.
…that gay people are mentally ill simply because homosexuality makes them that way…
Homosexuality is not a mental illness, but in a lot of cases, it sort of acts like one, oddly enough. The hard fact is that there are quite a few gay men who are as mentally healthy as any straight man or as healthy as a man can be. The fact that there are homosexuals who are this healthy means that homosexuality cannot possibly be a mental illness.
Nevertheless, gay men do have higher rates of depression and anxiety and no one seems to know why. New studies out of Sweden and Denmark have recently affirmed this. These two countries are probably the most pro-gay nations on Earth. The traditional argument has been that so many gay men are nutty because of how society treats them. But the new studies seem to suggest that even when gay men are treated as well as possible, they still have elevated rates of depression and anxiety. However, the reasons for the higher rates of depression and anxiety in gay men are not yet known.
“Sexual abuse of boys by adult men is many times more common than consensual sex between adult men, and most of those engaging in such molestation identify themselves as homosexual or bisexual.”
This is one of the craziest arguments I have ever heard. There is much more men having sex with boys than there is men having sex with other men? Are you kidding. I wonder if I am reading this right.
Mixed (Some anti-gay charges true, others lies)
“The reality is, homosexuals have entered the Scouts in the past for predatory purposes.”
– FRC vice president Rob Schwarzwalder, on radio’s The Janet Mefferd Show, Feb. 1, 2013.
It is no doubt true in the past, some gay men entered into scouring to get access to boys, but not all gay men in the past entered into scouting for this reason.
“The videos are titled It Gets Better. They are aimed at persuading kids that although they’ll face struggles and perhaps bullying for ‘coming out’ as homosexual (or transgendered or some other perversion), life will get better. …It’s disgusting. And it’s part of a concerted effort to persuade kids that homosexuality is okay and actually to recruit them into that lifestyle.”
— Tony Perkins, FRC fundraising letter, August 2011
The basic idea behind the videos is a good one. It is indeed part of an effort to persuade kids that homosexuality is ok. I have never believed the “gays recruit young kids” argument and I see little evidence that they do. Do they try to convert and recruit straight men, especially young straight men? Well of course.
“Those who understand the homosexual community—the activists—they’re very aggressive, they’re—everything they accuse us of they are in triplicate. They’re intolerant, they’re hateful, vile, they’re spiteful. …. To me, that is the height of hatred, to be silent when we know there are individuals that are engaged in activity, behavior, and an agenda that will destroy them and our nation.”
— Tony Perkins, speaking to the Oak Initiative Summit, April 2011
You’re darn right that gay activists are aggressive, intolerant, hateful, vile and spiteful, just like most Identity Politics crazies. Political homosexuality has been a huge mistake, and much of what they peddle is PC lies. The Gay Lobby lies all the time, like all Identity Politics groups. However, it is dubious that homosexuality will destroy our country and lot all homosexuals are “destroyed” by their behavior, though quite a few certainly are.
“One of the primary goals of the homosexual rights movement is to abolish all age of consent laws and to eventually recognize pedophiles as the ‘prophets’ of a new sexual order…homosexual rights movement has tried to distance itself from pedophilia, but only for public relations purposes.
—1999 FRC publication, “Homosexual Behavior and Pedophilia,” Robert Knight and Frank York
I really doubt if the gay movement wishes to abolish all age of consent laws, although the Gay Lobby had a far too cozy relationship with the boylovers in NAFTA and other groups for far too long. Furthermore, a number of prominent gays associated themselves with or supported NAFTA.
Nevertheless, I refuse to believe that gay men wish to make it legal for adult men to have sex with very young boys. Most gay men are not even interested in little boys.
However, it is very much true that the Gay Lobby would love to lower the age of consent so that gay men could have access to those teenage boys so many of them love and crave so much. It has been known since Antiquity that gay men have a thing for teenage boys. This stuff didn’t start with Death in Venice you know. Gay men are much more likely to have had sex with teenage boys when the men were over age 23 (25%). Straight men are much less likely to have sex with teenage girls when the men are over age 23 (6%). So there is something to the old chicken hawk charge.
…homosexuals are promiscuous, and that lesbians exhibit “compulsive behavior.”
Gay men are absolutely promiscuous and they probably always have been. I am not aware of any evidence that shows that lesbians exhibit any more compulsive behavior than other women.
In another paper titled “Homosexual Parenting: Placing Children at Risk,” Dailey quoted from a study that claimed, “A disproportionate percentage — 29 percent — of the adult children of homosexual parents had been specifically subjected to sexual molestation by that homosexual parent… . Having a homosexual parent(s) appears to increase the risk of incest with a parent by a factor of about 50.”
It is absolutely true that being raised by gay parents increases the risk that the child will be molested by someone during childhood. The figure I am not sure of is the 29% figure. Nevertheless, the likelihood that a child will be molested in a traditional family is also quite high, much higher than you might guess.
On Oct. 11, 2010, Perkins managed to get the Washington Post to run his op-ed, in which he reiterated his point that anti-bullying policies are not really intended by their supporters to protect students. “Homosexual activist groups like GLSEN [Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network] … are exploiting these tragedies to push their agenda of demanding not only tolerance of homosexual individuals, but active affirmation of homosexual conduct and their efforts to redefine the family.”
True and false. GLSEN, etc. do indeed want to stop anti-gay bullying in schools because it traumatizes many gay boys. Many gay men are still traumatized from the way straight males tortured them in school. However, certainly these groups also want to promote tolerance of homosexuals and affirmation of homosexual conduct. The gay movement absolutely seeks to redefine the family, among other things they wish to redefine, including gender itself.
“While activists like to claim that pedophilia is a completely distinct orientation from homosexuality, evidence shows a disproportionate overlap between the two. … It is a homosexual problem.”
— FRC President Tony Perkins, FRC website, 2010
Well, there is a certain amount of overlap between male homosexuality and child molestation of boys and pedophilia as discussed below. Nevertheless, the average gay man is highly unlikely to be a child molester because pedophilia is such a rare condition.
True (anti-gay charges against homosexuals are correct)
“A little-reported fact is that homosexual and lesbian relationships are far more violent than are traditional married households.”
— Timothy Dailey, FRC publication, “Homosexual Parenting: Placing Children at Risk,” 2002
There is little doubt now that both gay and lesbian relationships are much more violent than straight relationships. The debate is over on this one.
“[Homosexuality] … embodies a deep-seated hatred against true religion.”
— Steven Schwalm, FRC senior writer and analyst, in “Desecrating Corpus Christi,” 1999
Considering that most religions condemn homosexuals and especially their behavior, it would not be surprising if many gays were hostile to religion. After all, if you hit someone enough times, they might just start hitting back.
Knight authored numerous anti-gay papers, and even used Cameron’s infamous “gay obituary” study in testimony he offered before Congress to oppose the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) in 1994. In his prepared statement on that topic, he said, “A study of more than 6,400 obituaries in homosexual publications reveals that homosexuals typically have far shorter life spans than the general population.”
Cameron is a prick and a nut, but his data is usually pretty good. His study has now been replicated numerous times, including new studies out of Sweden and Denmark, two of the most gay-tolerant countries on Earth. Being gay absolutely shaves at least 20 and maybe 30 years off the lifespan. Much of this is due to HIV, but even if you pull HIV out of the equation, even gay men who are HIV-negative live on average 22 years less than straight men.
Lesbians also lose about 20 years of life expectancy. Leaving aside the question of HIV, there is a lot of debate about why gays die so soon, and it is not yet resolved. Many lesbians are obese and are much more likely to drink and smoke too much than straight women. They also get a lot of breast cancer. These factors may explain the loss in life expectancy. Why HIV-negative men die so soon is not known.
“…homosexuals are less likely to enter into a committed relationship…”
True, at least for gay men. There is a lot of good research backing this up. Data for lesbians is unknown, but they often do enter into long-term committed relationships.
Gays are less likely to be sexually faithful to a partner.
100% true, at least for gay men. Even when gay men marry, they typically have open marriages and each partner has an average of 7 partners each year outside the marriage. Data for lesbians not known.
…links homosexuality to a variety of sexually transmitted diseases.
Gay men are absolutely linked to quite a few STD’s and in fact, some STD’s are present almost exclusively among gay men and little if at all among straights or lesbians. Lesbians do not appear to have an elevated risk of STD’s.
“Homosexual activists vehemently reject the evidence which suggests that homosexual men … are … relative to their numbers, more likely to engage in such actions [childhood sexual abuse] than are heterosexual men.”
– Peter Sprigg, Senior Fellow for Policy Studies at FRC, on why the Boy Scouts should not allow LGBT Scouts or leaders, FRC blog, February 1, 2013.“We believe the evidence shows … that relative to the size of their population, homosexual men are more likely to engage in child sexual abuse than are heterosexual men.”
— Peter Sprigg, “Debating Homosexuality: Understanding Two Views.” 2011.In some of his other papers like “Homosexuality and Child Abuse,” Dailey links homosexuality to pedophilia, and claims that “a tiny percentage of the population (homosexual men) commit one-third or more of the cases of child sexual molestation.”
…gay men commit a disproportionate number of child sex abuse cases…
This is unfortunately true. Indeed, 35% of all molestations are of boys. Almost all of the men doing this identify as gay or bisexual. Gay men are 3% of the males in the US and they commit 35% of the molestations, so gay men are much more likely to be pedophiles and child molesters than straight men. However, the numbers of gay men who molest boys must still be quite small, and your average gay man is highly unlikely to be a pedophile. This is because pedophilia is rare. If gay men were highly likely to be pedophiles, half of the gays in San Fransisco would be in prison.
The crazy argument that if one is pedophilic then one cannot possibly be gay is truly insane, but this is the argument that the American Psychological Association has adopted. The Gay Lobby is on a major jihad to fight this charge and it is understandable why they do not wish to see gay men linked to child molestation. Nevertheless there is some truth to the charge.
