08/09/2005
Focus on the Family Releases Warning List
Worried that your child might be (gasp) homosexual?
Our favorite group of anti-gay bigots, Focus on the Family, has released a set of guidelines for parents so that they may judge whether or not they may want to prepare some electro-shock treatments for the kid, or perhaps wait a few years and send him to a brainwashing center.
The guidelines include this gem: "A susceptibility to be bullied by other boys, who may tease them unmercifully and call them 'queer,' 'fag' and 'gay.'"
Which we all know are words the bullies have probably learned from their closeted homosexual bigoted hypocritical fathers.
(via Crooks and Liars, thanks zach)
Posted 3:54 PM EST by Andy Towle in Current Affairs | Permalink
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Of the 7 warning signals I only had part of number 2 (I did and still do cry easily)and I am a 6 on the Kinsey scale.
Being a child /parent is hard enough without having this added pressure
Posted by: Donald | Aug 9, 2005 4:11:28 PM
Also, does your child plan fabulous parties? If so he may be gay.
Posted by: Lucky | Aug 9, 2005 4:15:32 PM
So where are the guidlines for girls? Oh that's right, who cares about those bitches, just make sure your boys grow up to be manly men. The people who write this need to meet some of the leather guys around... they will show them what being a tough guy is all about. There is nothing tougher than being able to fit a fist up your ass.
Posted by: Kia | Aug 9, 2005 4:37:46 PM
Oh please! If you cry you're a homo, if you don't play sports then you're a fag, if you feel "different" then you're queer...WHAT?? Who are these people?? My God! I'm just amazed by this!
And, as Kia asks, where are the guidlines for girls?
Please stop the insanity! Oh wait, I'm the one that's insane because I'm one of The Gays!
Posted by: Wayne | Aug 9, 2005 4:48:33 PM
This type of groups have always perplexed me, seeing how "the family" is something they are the least concerned with.
I would bet a chunk of change that these same men also think its a husbands right to beat his wife.
Oh, and if slavery were still legal I'm sure they'd have a few, mainly women they could rape and then refuse to admit the children were theirs despite obvious interracial features.
Women and minorities are protected in this nations, so christian bigots just came up with another taraget: homos.
This too shall pass, and hopefully these jesus freaks will as well.
Posted by: Jason | Aug 9, 2005 4:59:10 PM
I believe they got that list from the NY Post!! lol
Posted by: tommy | Aug 9, 2005 4:59:21 PM
OMG! That is atrocious! Shame on them! UGH!
Posted by: Roy | Aug 9, 2005 5:12:41 PM
Does anybody else wonder if shit like this would compel some nutjob homophobe to look at his young son in a different light? Maybe harm his child if *gasp* he may be homosexual? I really wish the good Dr. Dobson and his ilk would focus on their own fucking families.
Posted by: Steve | Aug 9, 2005 5:17:58 PM
How about *kill* his child as one ignorant man did not too long ago (as read on this blog)?
Posted by: Ed | Aug 9, 2005 5:21:45 PM
Hey Andy...sick to my stomach after reading all the horsepucky these freaks say...perhaps you can post something like their emails/contact information...so all of us at once can overwhelm their system...I don't even know if something like that would be possilbe or at the least effective/annoying?
Posted by: Jeff | Aug 9, 2005 6:29:15 PM
Having grown up in a conservative household, it kills me to read this stuff. Luckily, I met supportive friends and profs in college who've helped me realize that this stuff is shit. It's easy to dismiss these people as crazy, but it's tough when you know people personally who buy into this stuff...like my parents.
Posted by: phil | Aug 9, 2005 6:44:51 PM
My favorite piece of wisdom from the website is this:
Psychologist Robert Stoller said, “Masculinity is an achievement.” In other words, “growing up straight isn’t something that happens. It requires good parenting. It requires societal support. And it takes time.”
So I guess homosexuality is natural--it's the straights who had to be converted.
Posted by: James | Aug 9, 2005 6:45:53 PM
What century are these people from?
I spot a few choice omissions on the list of “homosexual warning signs”:
- listening to music above 120 BPM
- dancing abilities beyond that of their more "masculine" counterparts
- early and genuine concern about "crow's feet"
In all seriousness, any sane sociologist/psychologist would have a field day with these warning signs of "masculinity" and perceived "gayness".
Lest we forget, any registered psychologist will lose their license for trying to "de-homosexualize" their patients.
Posted by: Justin | Aug 9, 2005 8:53:58 PM
The saddest thing is that the views of people like this do influence vast numbers of people across the country. Fuck freedom of speech, this stuff is pure hate and they shouldn't be able to get away with peddling it without concern for the damage being caused.
Posted by: Victor Victoria | Aug 9, 2005 9:23:13 PM
...and how does this help anyone's family?
Posted by: LostMonkey | Aug 9, 2005 9:24:11 PM
I swear, the mere knowledge of the Right's existence should make anyone question the existence of god.
It's never been tough to dismiss these people as lunatics for me despite living among them nearly my entire life. I never seen the country wholeness, all I've ever seen was a subliminal rage, hatred, and confusion underneath smiles.
With the exception of Bill O Reily and the tranny Coulter, their just mad and never smile unless on bookcovers...
Posted by: Damon | Aug 9, 2005 9:27:56 PM
As tragic as it is, it doesn't come as a surprise to me. As a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), I'm both amused and offended by their nonsensical, nonscientific reasoning. However, I don't think that giving them more publicity would be the best answer to combatting them. You can only fight ignorance with education.
Some people's minds will never be opened to reality, but I stay in the ring because there's always people out there who are young and impressionable.
My advice to them isn't simply to believe what I say, but to explore the arguments, scientific and non-scientific, inform themselves, and eventually, come to an educated conclusion about homosexuality or any other aspect of biology.
I caution against taking a hard-left response to the hard-right. Right now, the hard-right is doing a pretty damned good job of gradually alienating their own people. It may take decades, but the fundamentalist nutjobs are eroding their institutions from within... why give them any help?
You can't sit by and ignore the James Dobsons, Fred Phelpses and Henry Morrisons of the world... but you can fight ignorance without fanning its flames. It takes a lot of patience... and mine, too, is wearing thin. The biggest mistake I think Urvashi Vaid ever made was turning GLAAD into nothing more than, at least in appearance, an institution seeking not equality but reversal of fortune. This is the same mistake made by the Nation of Islam and many other minority movements. I am speaking as a minority, myself.
If we want to convince the world that we, as minorities... gay, female, asian, whatever... are equal, then we have to take the shots and resist giving anyone the satisfaction of thinking this kind of pedantic crap emanating from the orifice of the religious right has any value at all.
Stupid people are going to be stupid, and have stupid children whom they will keep stupid, with their lack of education in the home and in the school... that has not changed throughout history and never will change.
However, with the internet, decentralization of information and expansion of education resources, the fence-sitters, the impressionable ones who can be reached, will be reached... More than anything, though, we all have to teach by example. The standard to which we hold ourselves has to be higher than what they expect of us... or they'll have a bone to pick.
We also have to think about generations ahead. If there's going to be equality in this world, we have to be prepared to accept that change is accepted at only so great a pace... Rush it too quickly, and present and future generations will suffer backlash. Focus on the Family and all its idiotic contemporaries cannot be fought successfully by rushing headlong against them.
Future generations are counting on you, each and every one of you... this fight will, as history certainly attests, take longer than we are alive.
So just because Congress, George Bush, fucking Ralph Reed... will not change or effect change here and now... we cannot let that reality make us throw our hands up in the air and leave the next generation holding the bag, either.
Give them no rationale, no rope, not a single angle of debate... and their arguments will fall apart on their own as surely as the Church's geocentric view of the universe to which they had desperately clung up until the nineteenth century!
Galileo may have recanted, he may have been put under house arrest, but remember... centuries later, and for all eternity, he has had the last laugh.
Posted by: Rubin Safaya | Aug 9, 2005 9:41:27 PM
Dr. James Dobson's credentialed history should make him a progressive, insightful man. Instead, the indoctrination and blinding influence of religious zealotry have, like an aggressive form of cancer, eaten away at his mind, corrupting his thinking to the point where there is nothing but a self deluded, blithering idiot. Dr. Dobson represents a classic example of the real danger that Evangelical Christianity represents to the pursuit of real knowledge and understanding. It is a corrosive and destructive movement bent on sending the world back to the dark ages or destroying it in order to achieve their delusional belief in their special place in a non-existent God's heart.
Focus on the Family should really be called "Concentration on the Dominion." Minority Domination and Fundamentalist Authoritarianism are their principal interests. Concern for families or the well being of individuals has nothing to do with this organizations agenda.
Posted by: Robert In WeHo | Aug 9, 2005 10:02:52 PM
The reason they don't mention girls: the straight man's continuing fetishization of lesbians.
And while religion flames these fools' beliefs, it's their inate heterosexual male fear of homosexual males that holds this hate. Most of these dingalings have never met or normally interacted with a gay man. All they see are freaks on tv, pride parade coverage, etc. If they find out someone is gay, they avoid them - in fear. (Of what I'm not sure.)
As someone who's come out later in life than most these days, I've discovered that when you make your interactions personal vs political and set a 'good example,' - meaning you act like a person first, that you act like YOU as opposed to an assigned or assumed stereotype - you change far more minds and opinions. I know I have.
(Meanwhile, I know fags who constantly chase after and hit on straight men and reject normal gay men. The level of self-loathing is astounding but that's another conversation, yeah?)
Posted by: Dave | Aug 10, 2005 7:56:42 AM
Phil-
I know exactly what you mean. I've recently discovered how my sister really feels about me after her thinly veiled cover of "Christian Tolerance" shattered in an argument we had and her hyprocrisy came tumbling out. My family buys 100% into this bullshit. The saddest part is, they're just the same ignorant uneducated
people as everyone else out there. Its heartbreaking because there was a time I thought they loved me unconditionally. I recently found out that's not the case.
Posted by: R Brock | Aug 10, 2005 6:41:07 PM
I once had a straight co-worker ask me why gay men have such poor relationships with their fathers (I suspected he thought "because homosexual men are really just women trapped in men's bodies so that's why they're closer to their mom") and I paused for dramatic effect--uh oh, I might be *gay*--and said "because fathers know early on when their sons are "different" [Sponge Dob's laundry list of warning signs was what I had in mind] and they sometimes conciously, most times unconciously, reject the boy. Which REALLY SUCKS because that's a horrible thing to do to a young boy who had no choice about his homosexuality".
He seemed to buy it. BTW, my mom is cold and distant and I love my dad and am very close to him because I refused to let his homophobia and freaked out attitude when I came out come between us. I once snarled at him "You fucking made me this way when your sperm impregnated mom so fucking deal with it".
Posted by: Jim | Aug 11, 2005 1:23:28 AM
Most of those signs are those of a male to female transkid. When the APA was getting rid of homosexuality as a psychopathology and mental illness they were turning transsexualism into one.
Transkids are often so abused they are unable to even complete high school. Their futures are limited especially if they are either people of color or from an ethnic back ground with a strong macho component. Often they become throw away children and wind up doing street sex work.
Dobson is a Nazi.
Posted by: Suzy Cooke | Aug 11, 2005 12:05:42 PM
This is a direct quote from Focus on the Family's website:
"Accept your child and affirm his or her worth regardless of the characteristics you observe. Show unconditional love."
Now if they would only stop there and "leave the judgment to God", everything would be OK.
Posted by: Dave | Aug 11, 2005 11:00:47 PM
You guys should actually read some of Focus on the Family's publications, instead of blindly flaming them from afar. Just a suggestion. Usually it helps to back up your arguments with actual evidence than what you can pull out of your rear end, which apparently makes you more manly if you can fit a fist in it. I typically think of pirates, lumberjacks, and beef jerky when I hear the word 'manly,' not the size of objects I can fit in my behind. Just a thought.
Posted by: ALex | Aug 16, 2005 1:41:49 AM
I actually had all of them except 5 and 7. I grew up in a house that was extremely conservative. My parents still revere James Dobson as one of the greatest men to ever live.
The thing is, those same parents have figured out that of their three kids, the black sheep gay one is the only one that calls on a regular basis to say "How are you?" The other two only talk to Mom and Dad when they want or need something.
Is that what straight children do when they grow up in those loving, god-fearing, straight homes?
I'm glad I'm the gay kid.
Posted by: Kevy | Aug 19, 2005 4:04:47 AM