Alvin McEwen Writes 'How They See Us: Unmasking the Religious Right War on Gay America'

One of the most infuriating things to me is straight people that don't have a problem with, or even support LGBT individuals, but don't understand why they do so much complaining.  A perfect example is how the media was allowed to frame the Chick-fil-A issue.  A majority of the commentary involved how "gay activists" were attacking CfA President Dan Cathy's right to free speech, when what LGBT people were really upset with is Chick-fil-A's donations in support of anti-gay legislation like Uganda's Kill the Gays bill.

When many paint LGBT bloggers and media members as "cry babies" that are pushing for change that is too radical, too fast, it can be difficult to address and justify as there is so much animus coming in from so many places on the right.

That's what I like most about Alvin McEwen, author of the blog Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters, and his new publication How they See Us: Unmasking the Religious Right War on Gay America.  McEwen does a great job of not only illustrating how the religious right has worked to denigrate LGBT individuals, but also complies a wide array of quotes from anti-gay individuals and organizations, many of whom are considered "trustworthy" by the mainstream media (Focus on the Family, and the Family Research Council for example).

So when people ask why we LGBT are so pissed off, and have such loud voices?  This.  This is why.

Lazy Sunday Links

It's Sunday which means Football, and Football are on and I don't really feel like writing anything.  So here's some stuff by other people to read.

Foster Kids Do Equally Well When Adopted by Gay or Lesbian Parents
Psychologists from UCLA studied 60 foster kids placed with heterosexual parents and 22 placed with gay (15) and lesbian (7) parents.  The sample sizes are a little small, but the results are encouraging.  (Credit to Alvin McEwen for the find.)

Mitt Romney - Gays having children - "not right on paper, not right in fact."
Not that I want to reference certain over-simile-d German leaders, but the marking of the birth certificates of the children of LGBT parents is...creepy.

The Totally Not a Hate Group Family Research Council Wants Pastors to Link Homosexuality to Pedophilia
I have nothing to say other than that this is par for the course for the FRC.

Debunking the Religious Right's Four Most Common Anti-Gay Lies Regarding Marriage Equality
The article wants to call them horror stories, I'll call them what they are, outright lies.  The worst one is that gay marriage shut down adoption agencies.  First of all, the laws that these religious run adoption agencies had a problem with were anti-discrimination laws, not gay marriage laws.  Secondly, those agencies ceased operations on their own.  They were given the following options:

1. Help ALL children by obeying anti-discrimination laws and continuing to recieve public funding
2. Help SOME children by refusing to obey anti-discrimination laws and operating privately
3. Help NO children by shutting down.

They chose option 3.

Conservative Groups Milking Victimhood for All It's Worth

I don't feel it is necessary to again highlight how repulsive yesterday's act of violence at the FRC was so I will avoid doing so.  But to hear conservative groups talk, that's all we should be doing because they have a rare moment of legitimate victimhood, and by god, they're going to milk it dry.  Take my brief conversation with Andy Parrish, head of the anti-equality campaign Minnesota for Marriage, which is aimed at passing a constitutional ban on marriage equality in Minnesota.  (If his name sounds familiar, it's because he was the boy who cried 'hacked!' when some posts surfaced on MN for Marriage's facebook page endorsing the Leviticus passage that gays should be put to death.)

Tony Perkins's Face on Your TV Should Send You Into Fits of Rage

I've said it so often that I might as well make a song about it, but a quick recap.  The Family Research Council is an SPLC designated hate group masquerading as a Christian organization that promotes "family values."  What it actually does is defame the LGBT community by publishing discredited studies and misinterpreting legitimate studies to reinforce their beliefs that LGBT are somehow harmful in a variety of ways.

Retro Post: Hypocrisy and Lies of the Anti-Gay Right

Jim Daly is the president of Focus on the Family, the group that was responsible for the Tim Tebow Super Bowl ad and a group that has ties to several Southern Poverty Law Center designated hate organizations.  Recently he wrote a nice little article complaining about how the religious right has been demonized by "hate."