Tag: gay

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Memphis Gaydar News

Report: South Has Most LGBTQ Residents In the U.S.

CREDIT: Movement Advancement Project/Campaign for Southern Equality

Movement Advancement Project/Campaign for Southern Equality

The South is really gay, y’all.

A new report from two gay rights groups says that one in three LGBTQ people in the country call the South their home, more than any other region in the country.

The report says LGBTQ people live in the South despite its “hostile policy landscape.” Of those LGBTQ Southerners, 93 percent live in states with laws that negatively impact “virtually every aspect of daily life” for them. For all of this, the group called its report, “Telling a New Southern Story: LGBTQ Resilience, Resistance, and Leadership.” Movement Advancement Project/Campaign for Southern Equality

“Contrary to media depictions of LGBTQ people primarily living in New York or California, the South is home to more LGBTQ people than any other region, as well as incredible racial diversity among LGBTQ people,” said Logan Casey, policy researcher at the Movement Advancement Project (MAP) and author of the report. “LGBTQ advocates in the South are both creative and effective in response to the political landscape and have often led the nation in working in broad coalitions and across a wide range of issues.”

The report is from Colorado-based MAP and North Carolina-based Campaign for Southern Equality (CSE). It finds that 3.6 million LGBTQ adults live in the South. The South is also home to over half a million transgender adults, more than any other region. Also, more than one in five LGBTQ Southerners are Black, more than any other region of the country.

Movement Advancement Project/Campaign for Southern Equality

Here are some other key findings from the report:

• LGBTQ Southerners are more likely than LGBTQ people outside the South to be religiously affiliated, with over half of LGBTQ Southerners being religiously affiliated.

Movement Advancement Project/Campaign for Southern Equality

• LGBTQ Southerners experience multiple challenges in economic security, health access and outcomes, as well as in daily life

• According to a survey from the CSE, 71 percent of LGBTQ Southerners have experienced harassment related to their sexual orientation or gender identity.

• 23 percent of LGBTQ Southerners have experienced physical violence, with higher rates for people who are transgender.

Movement Advancement Project/Campaign for Southern Equality

• One in three Black LGBTQ Southerners reported experiencing physical violence because they are LGBTQ, the highest rate of any racial or ethnic group.

Progress has been made across the South in the last 10 years, according to the report, despite harsh state policies. LGBTQ people are innovative, focusing on building community and providing direct support to address community needs without waiting for state legislatures, the report says.

“It’s true that LGBTQ Southerners experience a lot of barriers to equality and full inclusion, from a difficult policy landscape to the cultural realities of the South,” said Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, executive director of the CSE. “These forces often require that we organize in different ways, dreaming up new strategies, finding ways to work the seams and the fault lines — in other words, that we approach organizing in ways that are both queer and Southern.

“There’s a deep sense of resolve and hopefulness, even as we also carry significant pain and grief. The impact of LGBTQ people staying in the South, being out, sharing our stories, being in public leadership – all of this is changing old notions of what’s possible in the South. This is our home, and to claim it as such is an act of both resistance and reclamation.”
Movement Advancement Project/Campaign for Southern Equality


Read the entire report for yourself right here:
[pdf-1]

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Film Features Film/TV

Test

On Thursday, September 11th, Outflix 2014 closes with Test, the second feature from San Francisco writer/director Chris Mason Johnson. In 2014, 30 years into the AIDS epidemic, the disease has been demystified. Even if it’s not curable, there are reasonably effective treatments available, and the cause and methods of prevention are well known. But, as Test reminds us, the world of 1985 was very different. The disease had only been described in the scientific literature in 1981, and when it burst into public consciousness it caused a wave of anti-gay hysteria.

Frankie (Scott Marlowe) is a struggling gay dancer who lives in San Francisco at the height of the AIDS panic. Since there was much early confusion as to how the disease was spread, homosexuals had yet another stigma to deal with. Frankie’s neighbors who know he is gay give him a wide berth on the street. At rehearsals, straight dancers are afraid to come into contact with the sweat of gay dancers. Headlines ask, “Should Gays Be Quarantined?” Among Frankie’s gay friends, there is confusion and suspicion. Some, like Bill (Kevin Clark), Frankie’s fellow dancer, carry on as usual, even hustling on the side to make ends meet. But Frankie, like most people, is confused and scared. His feelings become even more complicated when he strikes up a relationship with his neighbor Walt (Kristoffer Cusick), and when the first HIV blood test becomes available, he is torn between the impulse to be safe and the horror that he might receive a death sentence.

Test

Test is at its best when director Johnson goes atmospheric, such as the exceptionally photographed and choreographed dance sequences. Marlowe is an excellent dancer and fine, square-jawed eye candy. Scenes when he strolls pensively through the San Francisco streets listening to ’80s gems by Bronski Beat, Laurie Anderson, and Memphis’ own Calculated X, work great to set the mood of paranoia and uncertainty. But the first-time actor’s stiffness becomes apparent in scenes with people with more extensive resumes, such as his forays into San Francisco’s legendary gay bar scene. But overall, the film’s combination of backstage drama and history lesson makes for a compelling package.

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Film Features Film/TV

Outflix Film Festival

The Outflix Film Festival enters its 17th year on a strong note, coming off its most successful edition ever with more and better films portraying the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender perspective. This year’s entries topped 300 films, up more than 50 percent from last year, reflecting the festival’s growing profile. “It’s great for me, because I love to watch films,” says festival director Will Batts.

The annual festival is a fund-raiser for the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center where Batts is executive director. “We have to have a really diverse lineup, because we serve a really diverse community,” he says. “We want to make sure we have women’s films, transgender films, and films with people of color who are leads. We want to make sure that the whole community can see themselves on the screen.”

Outflix was started in 1997 by Brian Pera, an acclaimed Memphis filmmaker. “He started it as a kind of experimental theater project,” Batts says.

Early in its existence, the festival was held on the campus at the University of Memphis before moving briefly to commercial theaters and then lying fallow for a few years. “We started it back up in 2005, which is actually how I got involved in the center,” says Batts.

After one year at the former Memphis Media Co-Op and another at the now-defunct Downtown Muvico theater, the festival found its permanent home at the recently remodeled Malco Ridgeway cinema. “We’ve been there through the transition and the remodel. It’s great. The only bad thing is that there are fewer seats now in the theaters, so we’re seeing more movies sell out.”

Out in the Night

Batts says that during his decade at the festival he has had a front-row seat for the technological transition that has affected every level of the movie industry. “The first couple of years, everything came in on VHS, so we had cases of VHS tapes. But this year, probably 95 percent of the films were digitally submitted. That means that a lot more filmmakers are getting their films in front of us. So we get a lot more variety.”

The weeklong festival begins on Friday,September 5th and runs for one week, screening 19 narrative features and documentaries. This year’s opening night film is Kidnapped For Christ, directed by Kate S. Logan.

“It tells the story of something we deal with at the community center all the time,” Batts Says, “which is this belief that gay and lesbian people are somehow damaged in some way and need to be fixed; parents immersed in this culture that tells them that their kids are bad or wrong or sinful or whatever, and they need to be sent off to some camp in the middle of nowhere to beat the gay out of them. We want to get the message out that this is really harmful, and it continues to this day.”

Among the feature-length movies will be shorts, screening both before the features and as part of a shorts program on Sunday evening. “I especially love short films,” Batts says. “There’s something really powerful about telling an entire story in five minutes. “You can watch some of them on YouTube, but that’s just not the same experience as sitting in a theater full of people watching a really powerful short film.”

Much has changed about film and television’s vision of homosexuality in the 17 years since Outflix started, but there’s still a long way to go. “I think there are more accurate portrayals of LGBT people, but it still hasn’t permeated the mainstream,” Batts says. “We’re moving closer to reality, but we’re not quite there yet. The films we show at Outflix are more real, because they’re made by LGBT filmmakers and they’re about and starring LBGT actors who know the experience. They’re not going to tone it down for an audience who won’t understand them. Some of the films are more open about sexuality, some of them are open about what it means to be transgender or intersexed, so they’re educational in a way. Some of the films are about injustice and intolerance. It’s a much more real portrayal of LGBT people. We don’t get to see ourselves portrayed on the big screen as real people, warts and all. And that’s why Outflix exists.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Goodbye Gary

Each June since 1993, the Memphis gay community has held a gay pride parade. But the parade was almost a no-go in 2004 when Memphis Pride, the group that organized the annual celebration, dissolved.

That’s when Gary Wilkerson stepped in. In only six weeks, Wilkerson managed to put together a new group, Mid-South Pride, and organized a successful parade down Cooper Street.

Wilkerson, 45, died September 28th at Saint Francis Hospital after suffering a series of strokes.

“He wasn’t feeling well in May, but he refused to go to the doctor because he didn’t want it to interfere with his commitments to this year’s Pride event,” says Kent Hamson, Wilkerson’s partner of eight years. “He was afraid he’d be put in the hospital and have to miss Pride.”

Such commitment was typical of Wilkerson. Elizabeth Wilkerson, Gary’s mother, says he began donating all his extra money to the Make-a-Wish Foundation when he was a teenager.

He even cancelled his post-high school graduation plans to help raise his younger brother and sister after his father died in 1979.

“We made it all those years, and we didn’t lose a thing. That’s because Gary stepped in and took over. He loved his family,” Elizabeth Wilkerson says.

Gary and his mother began working with HIV/AIDS victims through the Aid to End AIDS Committee (now known as Friends for Life) in the 1980s.

“He and his mother cared for close to a thousand people who had no one else to take care of them,” Hamson says. “He would literally hold these people in his arms when they died.”

Wilkerson worked as a computer technician and was an active member of Holy Trinity Community Church. It was through his connection with his church that he ended up spearheading Mid-South Pride.

“He’d been calling Memphis Pride [in 2004] to make sure Holy Trinity could get booth space [at the Pride festival],” Hamson says. “When he didn’t get a response, he started talking to other people, and they’d all had the same experience. Somebody suggested starting a new organization, and Gary said he was willing to do it.”

Wilkerson became president, and a board of directors was formed. In a matter of weeks, they had a parade permit, street closure, and insurance for the event.

“Gary is one of the main reasons that Mid-South Pride has such a good relationship with the police department, the park commission, and the permit bureaus,” says Vincent Astor, a member of the group’s board.

Astor says they are creating a 100-foot flag to be carried in next year’s Pride parade in Wilkerson’s honor.

“Gary was very passionate about people having the same rights as everybody else,” says board member Edie Love. “And he was so outgoing. He could talk to anybody. He seemed fearless to me.”

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News

C’mon Memphis: Say It Loud, You’re Gay and You’re Proud

Come out, come out, wherever you are! Out of the closet, that is. Thursday, October 11th is National Coming Out Day, and gay rights groups and community centers around the country are celebrating with film screenings, music festivals, and rallies.

The Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center is hosting a three-day celebration beginning tonight with a screening of Tell: Coming Out in the Military. On Friday, the center will host an art show with works by Debbie Crawford and music by Kim Richardson and Tracy Rice.

The celebration culminates on Saturday at Crossroads with OUToberfest Music Festival featuring Valerie June, Murlpervis, Madelyn Hatter, Cowboi Mindy, Skinny White Chick, Amy Steinberg, and Chris Pureka.

For more info, go here.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: (AP Photo/Troy Maben)

“Idaho senator Larry Craig quit his Senate seat,

saying that he wanted to spend more time not being gay.”

— David Letterman

The arrest of Senator Larry Craig (Perv-ID) in an airport bathroom sex sting and his vacillations about resigning make writing a column just plain fun. Craig said he kept the incident quiet so he could consider his options. It was yet another good decision by bathroom-stall enthusiast “not gay” Craig, deftly avoiding a media circus.

The mix of politics and religion has always been a hypocrite-magnet and brings to mind my award-eligible column about the Rev. Ted Haggard (who opposed gays even as he was hiring a male hooker and buying drugs with church money in a hotel room) entitled, “Ministers Should Do More Than Lay People.”

But this story floors me. At first, I thought Craig was like many of our grandfathers and dads — an out-of-touch old man who did not know the gay signals. After all, he was caught in this sex sting in a state that elected a pro wrestler as governor. Perhaps they took a hard line on bathroom-stall toe-tapping for fear it would lead to more musicals. Then, when his fellow GOP leaders did not defend him, and he did not even get a “you’re doing a heckuva job” out of President Bush, I figured that Craig probably had a history of such conduct.

The Democrats were handed yet another election-year gift and thought they had seen the last of yet another GOP right-winger. There they were, standing around Craig’s twitching body, poking him with a stick (which I bet he likes), when suddenly the Craig camp (a camp you do not want to send your son to) said he might not resign. Dems, who were afraid they might actually have to come up with a reasonable alternative agenda to defeat the GOP in the fall, fretted.

Gays were torn over whether to be happy that Craig was forced to reveal his actions or offended that this creep is gay.

Craig’s June guilty plea in Minneapolis and rumors that he had done this before in a train station in Washington, D.C., created a dilemma for Democrats. On one hand, they had a great chance to embarrass a Republican, but they had to do so by condemning a gay guy who supports public transportation. When events defy logic, you can rest assured politicians are involved.

Craig said that he is not a guy who will go down easy. I bet the arresting cop disagrees. Standing beside his wife and adopted kids, he said that he wanted a do-over on his guilty plea. His defense is going to be — and I am not kidding — that his plea was not intelligently arrived at. Now if you ever wonder why our legal system is messed up, look no further than Senator Craig — a “lawmaker,” remember.

I would argue that, unlike openly gay males, closeted ones like Craig hurt their families by perpetuating a fraud about their sexual orientation. For you homophobes out there, you should be more supportive of those who come out. Richard Simmons is not going to sneak up on you in a bathroom in his candy-striped short-shorts. He’s out. It’s the guys with secret sex lives who are the problem.

I have long said that the GOP is misguided when it espouses minimal government and individual freedom yet seems obsessed with pushing laws to make it difficult for consenting adults to do what they want as long as no harm is done to anyone. We haven’t caught bin Laden. We’re running massive federal deficits. We have bigger problems than persecuting people for what they do in private with a consenting partner.

It is hard for Craig to think about the surge when he is constantly fighting an urge.

Incidentally, what sort of cop signs up for sitting in a toilet and tapping his toe in hopes that a gay dude will hit on him? The cop from the Village People?

It is comforting to know that our phones, e-mails, and bathroom stalls are now monitored by our government. It seems the only two things they are not watching are their spending and our borders!

Ron Hart is a Southern libertarian who writes about politics and life. His e-mail address is RevRon10@aol.com.

Categories
News The Fly-By

“Refuge” Closed

For the past few years, local filmmaker Morgan Jon Fox has been piecing together a documentary about Love In Action (LIA), a Christian-based ministry for people struggling with their homosexuality. But Fox needed one more thing to wrap up production: a happy ending.

For Fox, that came last month when he learned that Refuge, LIA’s two-week “straight camp” for teens, was closed.

In 2005, 16-year-old Zach Stark posted a blog entry about his parents forcing him into the Refuge program. The post sparked a week of protests by gay activists and criticism that adolescents were being sent to Refuge against their will.

“One thing that really concerned me about Refuge is that when some kids weren’t changed after going through the program, they would be abused by their parents,” says Fox, who helped organize the 2005 protests.

Josh Morgan, communications manager for LIA, says the protests did not affect the center’s decision to close Refuge. It was replaced by the four-day Family Freedom Intensive to improve communication between parents and their children. Refuge did not include parental involvement.

“We’re focusing on giving parents and kids common language and helping them understand exactly what’s going on,” says Morgan. “We don’t want to work with the child and let parents stay out of the loop.”

LIA’s Web site describes the Family Freedom Intensive as a “course designed for parents with teens struggling with same-sex attraction, pornography, and/or promiscuity.” The program involves lectures, workshops, and discussion groups and costs $600 per attendee. Parents can sign up with or without their children.

The $7,000 Refuge program was a two-week summer day camp. After two weeks, parents could opt to leave their child in the program for additional time. During its three-year existence, Refuge saw 35 clients.

“We don’t turn people straight. That’s a common misconception,” says Morgan. “We exist for people who already feel a need to change or explore different options. If someone is … happy with the way they are, we wouldn’t accept them into the program.”

Peterson Toscano, a former LIA client who tours the country with his one-man comedy Doin’ Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House — How I Survived the Ex-Gay Movement!, is happy to see Refuge go but doubts the new program will be much different.

“How does [LIA] know they’re not taking kids against their will? Parents have a tremendous amount of power,” says Toscano.

Including parents in the program could result in both the child and parent leaving with mixed messages, says Toscano. When he attended the adult residential program in the mid-’90s, parents were invited to attend a few days of treatment.

“The parents hear generalized teachings about what makes a person gay. The basic ex-gay ideology that’s been going around for decades is you become gay because you have an overbearing mom and an emotionally or physically absent dad,” says Toscano. “Parents walk away with the message ‘I screwed up my kid.'”

Fox, however, is glad to see some change at LIA. He hopes to enter his documentary, This Is What Love In Action Looks Like, in this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

“To me, [the Family Freedom Intensive] is way different from Refuge,” says Fox. “But who knows? Maybe kids are still being forced to go. It’s really hard to tell.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall

Violent Femmes

Beware: The lesbians are coming to get your young daughters. The dirty purse-snatchers work in gangs and revel in holding small children down while putting things in places things shouldn’t be put. And — horror of horrors — the phenomenon of lesbian gang bangers is spreading like wildfire across the prairie. Well, at least according to Memphis’ Fox affiliate WPTY and popular conservative talk-show host and columnist Bill O’Reilly. The Eyewitness News Everywhere report spoke of lesbian terror cells called GTOs or “Gays Taking Over.” Beverly Cobb of the Shelby County Gang Unit told news crews that the dastardly dykes aren’t afraid to use the weapons they carry and “will sodomize [little girls with sex toys] and will force [them] to do all sexual acts.”

“They are forcing themselves on our young girls in all our schools,” Cobb was quoted as saying. “They will use [weapons] quicker than any male that I’ve ever come upon.”

Of course, there’s no data whatsoever proving that lesbian gangs are spreading across the country threatening little girls with switchblades or dildos. Just last week, even O’Reilly, a man not known for saying he’s sorry, admitted that the report was “overstated.” Kinda like his credibility.

… And then the Fireworks

From the AP: “Police in Memphis have charged a 32-year-old man with murder in a shooting that erupted over fireworks.” According to investigators, the bloodbath that left one person dead and five others wounded started when “a youngster threw a firecracker at another child on the Fourth of July.” This kind of news makes the older generation long for the good old days when tragedies like these were motivated by drugs and modest sums of money.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Choosing the Gay Option

The religious right has traditionally argued that homosexuality is a choice and that gays and lesbians can, and should, “change” (i.e., become heterosexual through reparative therapy or religious conversion).

In response, liberal advocates for gay and lesbian civil rights argue that homosexuality, or sexual orientation in general, is not a choice and that gays and lesbians should have civil rights protections because they are born gay or lesbian and cannot change their sexual orientation. Both of these arguments are misleading and oversimplify scientific facts and research on sexual orientation.

The argument that human sexuality is biologically determined is contrary to social scientific research, which suggests that sexuality is largely socially constructed. It ignores not only the sociological evidence against an innate, unchangeable sexuality but also the radical insight of Freud that humans are not born “heterosexual” or “homosexual” and that the development of an exclusive “heterosexuality” requires the repression of homosexual desire.

Even Kinsey, the much misunderstood and misquoted sex researcher, rejected the concept of an innate sexual orientation, preferring to categorize people based on their sexual behaviors.

Kinsey never argued that heterosexuals and homosexuals were two separate innate sexual orientations. Like Freud, he believed that all human beings were potentially bisexual.

Why do many in the mainstream gay movement argue that it is impossible to choose to be gay or lesbian? Many radical feminists argue that women can choose to be lesbian — that identifying as a lesbian is a social and political choice available to women to liberate themselves from patriarchy and compulsory heterosexuality.

The early radical gay liberationists argued that gay liberation requires the sexual liberation of everyone from the socially constructed hetero/homo dichotomy. They believed that everyone could be “gay.” They rejected the scientific claim that homosexuality was a biological or psychological pathology or that same-sex desire was even “abnormal.” The gay rights movement created a modern “gay” identity.

There have not always been “gay” people, so it is erroneous to claim that people are “born” gay. Bisexuals are also left out of the “sexual orientation is not a choice” paradigm, since they can choose their sexual identity. If we base gay/lesbian rights on the argument that it is not a choice, then we exclude bisexuals and deny their right to choose.

Why all the focus on the question of can gays change? Why not ask, “Can straight people change”? Both questions focus on the same issue: If we could change our sexual orientation/identity, do we have a right to make that choice? This is the important issue.

The purpose of the “ex-gay” ad campaign (and the public focus on whether gays can change) is to undermine the central claim of the gay/lesbian rights movement that people are born gay or lesbian and that it is not a choice since no one can change their sexual orientation. The religious right is exploiting an opportunity handed to them by the misguided strategy of the liberal/mainstream gay movement.

We should focus the political debate on the freedom of people to be gay, lesbian or bisexual regardless of how or why they arrive at their sexual identity, not wasting time on the futile “nature vs. nurture” debate.

The argument for “gay rights” should not be based on questionable scientific claims of the biological immutability of  “sexual orientation” but rather on the right of gays and lesbians to CHOOSE their sexual identity! This argument sets aside the biological argument and bases gay rights upon the constitutional right to speak and the freedom of conscience guaranteed to religious groups.

Our right to be gay or lesbian or bisexual is the right to be free from religious and government interference in our private lives, to make our choices about who we have sex with and who we want to have intimate relationships with (as long as they are consenting adults). Let’s not let those opposed to sexual equality take away our right to choose.

To be gay, lesbian, bisexual, or straight involves making a series of choices. Those choices should be a right like any other basic human right and not dependent upon scientific opinion about how and why a person arrives at their sexual identity. Let’s defend the freedom to choose our sexual identity and quit hiding behind questionable scientific dogma.

Jim Maynard is a local gay activist. This piece is a modified and abbreviated version of a longer essay.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: AP

The biggest misnomer in the Mark Foley fiasco is that his transgressions were caused by the “closet.” We hear that his
career ended in tragedy because living in secrecy warps the mind and leads to sleaze on the sly. This, of course, is often true, as in the case of former New Jersey governor James McGreevey, but Foley
doesn’t fit the script.

For one, it seems every gay man in West Palm Beach has at least one Mark Foley story. For someone supposedly on the down low, Foley attended gay parties and was brazen enough on one occasion to introduce his longtime partner to a news reporter.

In Congress, if Foley wasn’t officially out to the Republican leadership, it was certainly Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The congressman had been “outed” repeatedly in the gay press, and rumors swirled on the Internet. It just isn’t credible to believe that in the gossip mill known as Capitol Hill, these whispers did not circulate to the top echelons of power.

The former congressman is not a victim of the closet but of naked ambition and raw opportunism. Foley began his career as a Democrat but figured his prospects were better as a Republican and switched parties. From the beginning, it was clear he stood for nothing but the attainment of personal power. This is why he had little trouble joining a party that was ascending, in part, by embracing an anti-gay “family values” platform. (Of course, given the way House speaker Dennis Hastert has handled allegations of Foley’s impropriety, it appears that the GOP’s party leadership is as insincere on “family values” as Foley was.)

In the same cavalier way he snookered the right, Foley consistently trampled the gay community. He saw no contradiction in parading around with his long-term boyfriend in Florida while returning to Washington to vote in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits states from recognizing same-sex marriages performed in other states. Foley was willing to give second-class status to relationships, including his own, to satisfy his lust for power.

In a final act of monumental hypocrisy, Foley was the co-chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. He strutted around touting this commendable legislation while proclaiming, “We track library books better than we do sex offenders. … If I were one of these sickos, I’d be nervous with America’s Most Wanted on my trail.”

Only nine weeks later we come to find that Foley has written more pages than Stephen King. The original online banter was creepy but not sexually explicit. Newly released Instant Messages reveal a deeply disturbed man who was clearly abusing his authority to try to gain sexual favors from pages.

In an effort to garner sympathy, Foley claims that his moral failures took place because he is an alcoholic. But even if he were a heavy drinker, he was still well aware that pages are high school juniors, making even this weak alibi irrelevant.

Make no mistake, Foley’s disgraceful fall has damaged the gay community because it perpetuated the devastating stereotype that homosexuals are child molesters. To compound the problem, Foley’s lawyer claimed that as a boy Foley was molested while finally acknowledging that the disgraced former lawmaker is a gay man. By conflating the two subjects, Foley provided fodder for every right-wing organization in the nation that claims that gays are the sinful byproduct of abuse or neglect.

The jackals on the right wasted no time exploiting the situation. “While pro-homosexual activists like to claim that pedophilia is a completely distinct orientation from homosexuality, evidence shows a disproportionate overlap between the two,” said Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council.

Perkins’ comments are disgustingly mean-spirited and untrue. A 2000 study by Dr. Michael R. Stevenson concluded: “A gay man is no more likely than a straight man to perpetrate sexual activity on children.” A 1994 study by Dr. Carole Jenny found that less than 1 percent of the children in her study were abused by a gay man or lesbian. In 1978, Drs. Nicholas Groth and Jean Birnbaum found that none of the 175 molesters in their study had an exclusively homosexual adult orientation.

Unfortunately, perception is reality, and when Foley-gate is out of the headlines, the damage he wrought will make it difficult for the gay and lesbian community to turn the page.

Wayne Besen writes the syndicated column”Anything But Straight.”