Gay marriage and racism: There’s nothg ratnal about opposg gay marriage.

Contents:

• ACTIVISTS NMN VLENCE AGAST LGBTQ MUNY ST. VCENT, WHERE GAY SEX IS ILLEGAL
• CHARL BARKLEY FENDS LGBTQIA+ MUNY, BUD LIGHT EXPLETIVE-FILLED RANT: ‘IF YOU’RE GAY, GOD BLS YOU’
• GROUPS OPPOSED TO GAY RIGHTS RAKE LNS AS STAT BATE ANTI-LGBTQ BILLS
• IS OPPOSG GAY MARRIAGE MORE RATNAL THAN OPPOSG INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE?
• 10 ANTI-GAY MYTHS DEBUNKED
• 18 ANTI-GAY GROUPS AND THEIR PROPAGANDA

ACTIVISTS NMN VLENCE AGAST LGBTQ MUNY ST. VCENT, WHERE GAY SEX IS ILLEGAL

Passg the Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Fay Valu bill would further rce eedoms a untry where gay sex is already punishable wh up to three years jail, crics and activists Odoi, an amic rearcher, filed a lawsu on July 7 challengg the bill's nstutnaly, sayg would impact donor aid and other forms of fancial support. Ghana's Supreme Court on Wednday led her arguments were not sufficiently nvcg to grant an lg cleared the way for the bill, one of the harsht towards the LGBTQ muny Ai, to go through a fal stage of parliamentary approval before beg signed to May, Uganda's Print Yoweri Meveni signed one of the world's tought anti-LGBTQ laws, which spelled out the ath penalty for "aggravated homosexualy"'s bill, backed by relig and tradnal lears, clus jail sentenc of up to 10 years for advotg for LGBTQ rights. Vcent, anal sex is punishable by up to 10 years prison, while “gross cency” wh another person of the same sex is punishable by up to five years, acrdg to lonial-era laws that are mon the socially nservative Caribbean rarely voked, the rights group and a lol activist said the laws help legimize hostily and abe agast gay people.

”Human Rights Watch terviewed more than 20 members of the island’s LGBTQ muny who shared their stori but were not intified to protect them, notg that lol police are often openly discrimatory toward gay people who seek help. Several reported that their fai are homophobic and physilly and verbally abed them, g them to bee homels and promptg some to nsir also stggle to fd jobs amid a high unemployment rate and said they face discrimatn, cludg a 19-year-old gay man who said he has rorted to beggg: “Sometim I am so hungry. Early rults show promise At this pot, most of the rearch has foced on how well doxy-PEP works when offered to gay and bisexual men, and transgenr women — groups that have disproportnately high rat of STIs.

“Many of those, while not specifilly tied to a church, are rooted the nservative Christian, biblil sense of human sexualy, ” said Stt McCoy, the terim puty legal director for LGBTQ rights and special ligatn for the SPLC and the SPLC Actn Fund, the group’s polil actn simply holdg a relig belief that views homosexualy or transgenr inty as sful do not tomatilly land a church or an anizatn on the SPLC’s list of hate groups. Gay rights advot and others say that gay and lbian people want to get married for the same reasons that straight people do – they want to be rg, stable relatnships, they want to build a life and even start a fay wh someone else.

CHARL BARKLEY FENDS LGBTQIA+ MUNY, BUD LIGHT EXPLETIVE-FILLED RANT: ‘IF YOU’RE GAY, GOD BLS YOU’

I don’t thk there is an issue that is a tougher issue for people to stand up agast Amerin culture today than this one, both om the standpot of the mastream media and the popular culture nmng you for your – they n e all sorts of words to scribe you – tolerant, bigot, homophobe, hater. ” The qutn is part of a larger bate that’s recently taken on new fervor what may seem like the twilight of the fight for gay equaly—a qutn Saletan asks a related post: “Is everyone who oppos gay marriage a bigot? Much of the recent bate has followed om the flap over a New Mexi photographer who was sued for refg to serve a gay uple, which together wh some siar s prompted several stat to nsir bills protectg relig-based discrimatn.

They range om social nservativ like Ross Douthat (who lled parisons of relig exemptn bills to racial segregatn “mendac and hysteril”) to well-meang straights who support gay equaly, like Saletan and the Atlantic’s Conor Friersdorf (who fend the photographer’s discrimatn as rooted scere “Christian beliefs”), to gay wrers like Brandon Ambroso (the most simplemd stance of a gay apologia, which the latt bête noire of gay advot argued that “beg agast gay marriage don’t make you a homophobe” bee—and this really was the cx of his argument—if did, that would make his parents and the pope anti-gay, apparently not a notn the wrer is able to enterta).

Ined, divorce and remarriage are strongly nmned the New Ttament (“Anyone who divorc his wife, except for sexual immoraly, and marri another woman ms adultery”), but there is no ser movement today to ban divorced people om gettg married—jt gays. The obv hypocrisy of the relig eedom argument has for years prompted social nservativ to tie themselv knots seekg a secular argument for blockg gay marriage, one that appears to be a ratnal ncern about social harms rather than an article of relig fah. Yet though he disagre wh them, Saletan accepts as “ratnal” and “fensible” arguments by the vilently anti-gay nservative Catholic profsor Robert Gee that, Saletan’s paraphrase, “sex is a much brighter le than fertily or tentn to bear children.

GROUPS OPPOSED TO GAY RIGHTS RAKE LNS AS STAT BATE ANTI-LGBTQ BILLS

Gee actually argu that “an fertile man and woman n together still form a te marriage” while a gay uple n’t bee “the behavral part” of a straight sex act remas “orred to reproductn even when nonbehavral factors” like fertily don’t. Let me grant that one important way opposn to gay marriage is more fivable than opposn to terracial marriage: Gay marriage is a more recent nceptual possibily bee gay inty is a newer velopment than the nstctn of race. Ever sce born-aga sger and orange juice pchwoman Ana Bryant helped kick off the ntemporary anti-gay movement some 40 years ago, hard-le elements of the relig right have been searchg for ways to monize gay people — or, at a mimum, to fd arguments that will prevent their normalizatn society.

But addn to hawkg that myth, the legns of anti-gay activists who followed have add a panoply of others, rangg om the extremely doubtful claim that sexual orientatn is a choice, to unalloyed li like the claims that gay men molt children far more than heterosexuals or that hate crime laws will lead to the legalizatn of btialy and necrophilia. The fairy tal are important to the anti-gay right bee they form the basis of s claim that homosexualy is a social evil that mt be supprsed — an opn rejected by virtually all relevant medil and scientific thori.

Depictg gay men as a threat to children may be the sgle most potent weapon for stokg public fears about homosexualy — and for wng electns and referenda, as Ana Bryant found out durg her succsful 1977 mpaign to overturn a Da County, Fla., ordance barrg discrimatn agast gay people. Others have ced a group lled the Amerin College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) to claim, as Tony Perks of the Fay Rearch Council did November 2010, that "the rearch is overwhelmg that homosexualy pos a [moltatn] danger to children. Gregory Herek, a profsor at the Universy of California, Davis, who is one of the natn's leadg rearchers on prejudice agast sexual mori, reviewed a seri of studi and found no evince that gay men molt children at higher rat than heterosexual men.

IS OPPOSG GAY MARRIAGE MORE RATNAL THAN OPPOSG INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE?

The Amerin Amy of Child & Adolcent Psychiatry affirmed 2013 that “[c]urrent rearch shows that children wh gay and lbian parents do not differ om children wh heterosexual parents their emotnal velopment or their relatnships wh peers and adults” and they are “not more likely than children of heterosexual parents to velop emotnal or behavral problems.

The Amerin Amy of Pediatrics (AAP) a 2002 policy statement clared: "A growg body of scientific lerature monstrat that children who grow up wh one or two gay and/or lbian parents fare as well emotnal, gnive, social, and sexual functng as do children whose parents are heterosexual.

” Schumm, who has also argued that lbian relatnships are unstable, has ti to discreded psychologist and anti-LGBT fabulist Pl Cameron, the thor of numero pletely basels “studi” about the alleged evils of homosexualy. The Amerin Psychiatric Associatn noted a 2000 fact sheet available on the Associatn of Gay and Lbian Psychiatrists, that alg wh gay, lbian and bisexual issu, that sexual abe do not appear to be any more prevalent among children who grow up and intify as gay, lbian or bisexual than children who grow up and intify as heterosexual. Siarly, the Natnal Organizatn on Male Sexual Victimizatn not on s webse that "experts the human sexualy field do not believe that premature sexual experienc play a signifint role late adolcent or adult sexual orientatn" and add that 's unlikely that anyone n make another person gay or heterosexual.

10 ANTI-GAY MYTHS DEBUNKED

Anti-LGBT anizatns, seekg to promote heterosexualy as the healthier "choice, " often offer up the purportedly shorter life spans and poorer physil and mental health of gays and lbians as reasons why they shouldn't be allowed to adopt or foster children. On the basis of the same obuari, Cameron also claimed that gay men are 18 tim more likely to die r accints than heterosexuals, 22 tim more likely to die of heart attacks than wh, and 11 tim more likely than blacks to die of the same e. Anti-LGBT anizatns have also tried to support this claim by distortg the work of legimate scholars, like a 1997 study nducted by a Canadian team of rearchers that alt wh gay and bisexual men livg Vanuver the late 1980s and early 1990s.

18 ANTI-GAY GROUPS AND THEIR PROPAGANDA

Anti-gay activists, who have long opposed addg LGBT people to those protected by hate crime legislatn, have repeatedly claimed that such laws would lead to the jailg of relig figur who preach agast homosexualy — part of a bid to ga the backg of the broar relig muny for their posn. Anti-gay groups have been adamantly opposed to allowg gay men and lbians to serve openly the armed forc, not only bee of their purported fear that bat reads will be unrmed, but bee the ary has long been nsired the purt merocracy Ameri (the armed forc were succsfully racially tegrated long before Amerin civil society, for example). At the same time, gays and lbians have served openly for years the armed forc of 25 untri (as of 2010), cludg Bra, Israel, South Ai, Canada and Atralia, acrdg to a report released by the Palm Center, a policy thk tank at the Universy of California at Santa Barbara.

Dpe the fact that gay men and lbians have been servg openly the ary sce September 2011, anti-LGBT groups ntue to claim that openly gay personnel are g problems the ary, cludg claims of sexual abe by gay and lbian soldiers of straight soldiers.