Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Viciously homophobic interview confirms HRC's 'Export of Violence' report

Earlier today, I published a piece about an explosive report by the Human Rights Campaign, The Export of Hate, which pointed out how various anti-gay figures were peddling lies and propaganda to foreign countries in an attempt to spread anti-gay hate abroad.

My piece also pointed out some individuals spotlighted in the report were claiming that HRC was lying about them, targeting them for violence, and attacking them simply for their Christian beliefs.

Well the following interview refutes those lies. It's between anti-gay talking head and Colorado state legislature candidate Gordon Klingenschmitt, and another anti-gay figure who is spotlighted in HRC's report, Paul Cameron.

Based on what you are about to see and hear, these two videos need no introduction.






However, there are two things you should keep in mind.

1. Cameron is a discredited researcher who is head the Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group the Family Research Institute. Almost two decades ago, he was THE go-to man for anti-gay propaganda even though he was known to be a quack who pushed such theories as gay men stuffing gerbils up their rectums.

His work has been cited on more than one occasion by many anti-gay groups from the Family Research Council to the American Family Association. As his history of fraud became widely known, these groups distanced themselves from him without so much as an apology for using him as a source in the first place.

But not totally. Last year, Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association conducted an interview with Cameron, allowing him to freely cite the lies which got him dismissed  and censured from the American Psychological Association and the American Sociological Association in the 80s.

2. According to HRC's report, The Export of Hate (pgs 11-12)

Cameron has visited Russia and Eastern Europe repeatedly since 2008 to peddle his “research.” In June 2008, Cameron first appeared at a roundtable on “deviation of social norms in modern society” at Moscow State University.  In October of that year, he was in Moldova to lecture on the “demographic disaster” that he believes is being unleashed by contraception and rights for LGBT people and women. Cameron returned to Moldova in 2011 to lobby against anti-discrimination laws. The Moldovan government took Cameron’s message to heart and in 2013 passed a law banning LGBT “propaganda,” but it was quickly repealed as part of the nation’s drive to join the European Union. Cameron has also appeared elsewhere in Eastern Europe, including a controversial trip to Poland in 2009 when he was turned away from giving a speech on homosexuality at a university and forced to find a new venue after a newspaper learned of his background.

Cameron also returned to Russia in 2013, to address a Duma roundtable on “family values.”  Cameron’s presence was intended to bolster support for a bill that targeted gay and lesbian parents and threatened to take away their children. Cameron’s testimony was full of false statistics, including the “fact” that one in three gay people support having sex with children. Duma member Alexander Sidyakin later tweeted that Cameron’s testimony was evidence that children should be taken away from LGBT parents and adopted by other families.

Even in countries Cameron has not visited personally, his influence has been felt. The original authors of Uganda’s horrific anti-homosexuality law cited Cameron’s work alongside that of Scott Lively when drafting their bill. When the bill was passed into law in 2014, Cameron openly applauded and claimed that harsh penalties were needed to discourage homosexuality, just like murder.

Just more proof that any ideas that HRC's report is an attempt to silence Christians  or subject them to violence is a lie.  Those who believe this tripe should be less fearful of HRC's report and more fearful that they think Cameron is the type of person who encompasses a true Christian.


Editor's note - Cameron's "statistics" were widely cited to create illustrations for the 1985 comic book, Deathstyle. I used these illustrations in my booklet, How They See Us: Unmasking the Religious Right War on Gay America. The purpose of How They See Us was to demonstrate the roots of anti-gay propaganda and how it doesn't change over the years.

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