Explaining Homosexuality To Children

Third State Introduces Conversion "Therapy" Ban

From Philebrity:

“Just last month, New Jersey’s Republican governor and Democratic legislature worked together to ban this practice. The governor there cited ‘a litany of potential ill effects of trying to change sexual orientation, including depression and suicide.’ California has also passed a similar law. Pennsylvania children deserve the same protection. 

It’s been 40 years since the American Psychological Association excluded homosexuality from being classified as a mental disorder, and the APA has published studies showing that patients younger than 18 suffer from a multitude of harmful effects associated with this so-called therapy, including withdrawal and suicidal thoughts. It’s time to protect Pennsylvania children from this quackery that can inflict years of harm for those who manage to survive it.”

-State Rep. Brian Sims (pictured)

Representative Sims is the state's first openly gay legislator and is a co-sponsor of the proposed bill, which addresses conversion therapy for minors only.

Responsible Gun Ownership #3

From the Virginian-Pilot: 

An 18-year-old man faces charges after police say he pointed a gun at two elementary school students Monday.

Shortly before 3 p.m., a bus was unloading students at the intersection of Brian Avenue and Rachel Street when two students told the driver that someone behind the bus had pointed a gun at them, police said in a news release. The person was in a blue pickup.

The driver returned the students to Pembroke Elementary and notified school authorities and police.

An investigation determined that a dispute had broken out between the 18-year-old and several students at a bus stop over a rebel flag in the pickup.

A Bill Precluding Rapists From Custodial Rights

Rep. Schultz (D-FL)

From Think Progress: 

On Thursday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) held a press conference to explain their recently-introduced legislation designed to help rape survivors maintain full custody rights over their children. The lawmakers were joined by Shauna Prewitt, a rape survivor and victims’ rights advocate who was forced to endure the type of custody battle with her rapist that the bill seeks to prevent. 

The Rape Survivor Child Custody Act would provide funding incentives to states that have laws allowing mothers of children conceived through rape to “seek court-ordered termination of the parental rights of her rapist.” These states would receive federal grant funding for programs authorized under the federal Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). 

Currently, 31 states have no custodial rights protections for mothers of children conceived in rape. Of the 19 states that do have some protections, only six reach the standard advocated by the proposed bill...

It will be interesting to see how people against this bill justify their position.

Would Your Child Pass the Predator Test?

Children of Same-Sex Couples Speak Out

Study: Sexual Orientation Isn't A Parenting Detriment

From the Williams Institute: 

Key findings include:

• Child age at placement— or the duration of time in the pre-adoptive context— did not emerge as a significant predictor of child adjustment (likely because all children in the sample were placed under 18 months).

• Parents’ level of preparation for the adoption was related to both externalizing and internalizing symptoms, such that parents who were less prepared reported more symptoms in their children.

• Parents’ depressive symptoms were also related to externalizing and internalizing symptoms in adopted children, such that more depressed parents reported more symptoms in their children. Depressive symptoms may compromise parents’ emotional availability and ability to parent effectively, which can contribute to child adjustment problems.

• Parents who reported more relationship conflict during the early transition phase reported that their children had more internalizing behaviors 2 years later.

• Family type (i.e., parent sexual orientation) was unrelated to children’s adjustment.

I'm guessing that this study is far more reliable than the Regnerus study (although that's an incredibly low bar). You can read the full report HERE.

Trailer: Kidnapped For Christ

What the GOP is Teaching Their Children

Sen. Flake (R-AR) & family

From Slate Magazine: 

Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake’s teenage son, Tanner, went by the name “n1ggerkiller” in an online game, and posted YouTube comments using the word “nigger” and calling Mexicans “the scum of the Earth.” On his Twitter account, he made prolific use of the word faggot and called his friend a “Jew” for stealing a joke. 

A few hours after the Flake story appeared, Stanton reported that Nevada Rep. Joe Heck’s son, Joey Heck, had posted equally stomach-turning comments to his Twitter account. In addition to his repeated use of “faggot” and “nigga,” he made anti-gay and anti-Mexican remarks, saying NFL quarterback “[Mark] Sanchez can hop the border faster than he can throw the ball” and retweeted “There are gays everywhere. Maybe that’s gods way of thinning out the population because faggots can’t have babies.” Being a politically minded young lad, he also commented that ABC’s Martha Raddatz should not have been a presidential debate moderator because she’s a woman and that Mitt Romney made Barack Obama his “slave” in a presidential debate. Heck also said that Obama’s main accomplishments as president were promoting the sports of “spear chucking and rock skipping. The sports they do in his home country…”

~

To read Tanner Flake and Joey Heck’s online posts is to see the powerful strain of bigotry that exists within a certain sector of conservative politics. It’s true that children of Democrats can be just as wretched as children of Republicans and can do equally idiotic, terrible things. (See the news of Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu’s son, Connor, being arrested on charges of drunk driving and hit-and-run driving or any one of Al Gore III’s repeated arrests for driving under the influence and reckless driving.) But when bad Democratic kids behave badly, they’re way more likely to drive 100 mph while drunk than to say the president chucks spears. Likewise, you rarely ever see Democratic officials getting in trouble for passing on horrible, racist chain emails or making horrible racist remarks. This has everything to do with the political differences between the two parties and their voters. 

Again, Republicans aren’t all racist. But the party actively cultivates racists as voters. Which means that some portion of the Republican electorate, as well as Republican officials, are racists. When a kid literally lives in that political environment, he has a greater chance of being caught up in the extreme end of it. If all of your friends are Republicans and even a small subgroup of Republicans are racist, homophobic bigots, then you’re more likely to associate with racist, homophobic bigots and become one yourself than if you’re hanging out with liberal, crunchy kids.

By the way, Joey Heck should be aware that Mark Sanchez was born in California, not Mexico.

A proposal coming before the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section would permanently render the so-called “gay panic” defense inadmissible in court. According to the dot429 blog, if the proposal is ratified, it will ban defense attorneys from using the sexual orientation or gender identity of a victim against them in court.
Too often, according to dot429, attorneys representing perpetrators of violent acts against LGBT people resort to accusing the victims of “bringing it on themselves” in order to defend their clients in court. The “gay panic” defense says that an LGBT brought violent retribution on themselves, up to and including murder, by sexually propositioning someone who was so enraged by the gesture that they had no choice but to react violently.
It was invoked, unsuccessfully in the trail of the murderers of Matthew Shepard and Gwen Araujo. The term “gay panic” was first used by psychiatrist Edward J. Kempf in his 1920 book Psychopathology, in which he described it as “a distinct stage in the psychoses.” However, it is rarely used in modern courts since no one has able to verify its existence as a genuine psychiatric phenomenon.

As dot439 pointed out, “If merely being sexually propositioned was a legally acceptable reason for killing someone, countless thousands of heterosexual men would be at severe risk for being murdered by women they made a pass at.”
- See more at: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/12/american-bar-association-may-ban-gay-panic-defense/#sthash.Za4tjxnI.dpuf

Children Raised By Same-Sex Couples Thrive

From The Age:

Children of same-sex parents are doing as well or better than the rest of the population on a number of key health indicators. 

That is the initial finding from the world's largest study on the children of same-sex parents, under way at Melbourne University. 

The Australian Study of Child Health in Same-Sex Families collected data on 500 children nationwide, up to the age of 17.

~

''Because of the situation that same-sex families find themselves in, they are generally more willing to communicate and approach the issues that any child may face at school, like teasing or bullying,'' lead researcher Dr Simon Crouch said. 

''This fosters openness and means children tend to be more resilient. That would be our hypothesis.''

So in an ironic twist, the very people who think same-sex couples should not be parents are the very reason same-sex couples have better family cohesion.

RWNJ: Gays Are "Filthy People"

Gay Teens Starved, Tortured, & Killed

This is what homophobia leads to and why it MUST end.

Republicans, Guns, & Sex-Ed

Five Year Olds Owning Guns

From the L.A. Times: 

A 2-year-old Kentucky girl was accidentally killed by her 5-year-old brother who fired a rifle he had been given as a gift, officials said Wednesday. 

Cumberland County Coroner Gary L. White said an autopsy of Caroline Starks showed the toddler had died from a single shot from the .22-caliber rifle. The death has been ruled accidental and no charges will be filed, he said in a telephone interview with the Los Angeles Times. 

“Most everybody in town is pretty devastated by this,” White said. “Nobody wants to take anyone’s guns away, but you’ve got to keep them out of harm’s way for the kids. It’s a safety issue.”

~

The rifle used in the accident is a Crickett designed for children and sold under the slogan “My First Rifle,” according to the company's website. It is a smaller weapon designed for children and comes with a shoulder stock in child-like colors including pink and swirls.

You can't drive until you are 16, you can't vote or join the military until you are 18, you can't drink alcohol until you are 21, you can't rent a car until you are 25, but you can own a gun at 5.

Two Gay Dads, Two Kids, A Normal Family

Tenn. Republican Lambasted For "Study Or Starve" Policy

When Parents Discriminate Against Their Kids

I do not have children myself. However, what I do know from friends who are parents is that having kids and watching them grow into being their own person changes how a parent views things they once thought they had a handle on. While parents spend so much time and effort (and money) trying to teach their children they ways of the world, the children have the effect of teaching their parents. Often times, the child can open their parents‘ eyes to a perspective they may not have thought of as viable.

It was a major news story last month when Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) announced his support for marriage equality in the wake of his son Will coming out as gay about two years beforehand. The Senator is certainly not the first person to site a familial connection as the catalyst for supporting LGBT equality, nor will he be the last. Many people - be they public figures or private citizens - who once stood in opposition to equality viewed those issues differently when they could put faces on them as a result of someone close to them coming out of the closet. 

For many people, even such a personal connection as a gay family member is not enough to induce open-mindedness. Case-in-point, Representative Matt Salmon Sr. (R-AZ). Like Portman, Salmon has a gay son (named Matt Jr.). Unlike Portman, Salmon is utterly unmoved on marriage equality, even though he has had more time with an openly gay son than Portman. Even though it takes longer for some folks to come around than others on any given topic, it appears that Rep. Salmon feels no need to make a change regardless of how the policies he advocates negatively effect his own flesh and blood.

What does it say about a parent when they are unable or unwilling to alter their views for the sake of their child‘s freedom and equality under the law? The bottom line is that a parent who is comfortable with the institutionalized discrimination their child faces is a prime example of poor parenting. It is hard to fathom that some people have such an unwavering disregard for the well-being of those they profess to love. On the positive side, in terms of the quest for LGBT equality, evidence points to Representative Salmon being far more the exception while Senator Portman is far more the rule.

Tweet of the Day: February 18, 2013

Yet Another "Don't Say Gay" Bill in Tennessee

From The New Civil Rights Movement:

...As The New Civil Rights Movement reported in January of last year, “Rep. John Ragan, a Southern Baptist, pro-life, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-education Republican, responded to a constituent’s letter asking him to oppose a now-infamous Tennessee bill that essentially delivers a license to bully to anyone who claims religious or moral prerogative. Ragan used the phrase ‘mentally healthy adult human being,’ as in, gays and lesbians are not mentally healthy adult human beings, three times in his letter.”

Ragan’s bill, ironically introduced on Valentine’s Day, is identical to Sen. Campfield’s, and legally requires that any school official approached by any student with questions or comments about “inconsistent with natural human reproduction,” i.e., homosexuality, contact that child’s parents.

In other words. if Johnny is gay, bi, or trans, or questioning, and approaches his favorites trusted teacher, that teacher would now be required to contact Johnny’s parents and out him. In the state of Tennessee, where it’s safe to say the overwhelming majority of parents likely would not be welcoming.

If the Campfield-Ragan bill passes and if Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam signs it into law, expect Tennessee’s LGBTQ homeless population to increase, expect more LGBTQ youth and teen suicides, and expect tolerance to drop.

In short, if Tennessee’s “new and improved” “Don’t Say Gay” bill becomes law, Stacey Campfield and John Ragan will have blood on their hands...

"Family Values" Congressman Stiffs His Kids...Again

From the National Memo:

The “family values” ex-congressman, who has remarried and presumably supports the children he had with his second wife, enjoyed an annual salary of $174,000 for the two years he was in Congress, and somehow managed to loan his own campaign $35,000 and take expensive vacations with his girlfriend while claiming to be too poor to support his children. His wife eventually had to sue to wring a dime out of him, and after nearly 10 years of legal wrangling, court-ordered payments were deducted from his congressional paycheck from the time he took office.

~

However, those payments actually stopped at the end of 2012, according to paystubs obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times, and now Walsh is once again trying his hand at the court system, this time filing a “Motion to Terminate Child Support Obligation” in an attempt to legally stiff his ex-wife and children this time.

The filing reads: (PDF)

Joe’s employment has been terminated through no voluntary act of his own and he is without sufficient income or assets with which to continue to pay his support obligation. Due to a substantial change in circumstances, Joe requests that his child support obligation be terminated based on his present income and circumstances.

Just so we are clear, this is the same congressman who received a "family values" award form the so-called Family Research Council while at the time owing over 170,000 in child support. Clearly, the people always talking about "family values" are merely talking out of their collective rear ends.