Rep. Huelskamp: Employment Protections ‘Reward Homosexual Behavior’

As momentum for LGBT employment nondiscrimination protections increases, conservatives have begun to retaliate, claiming such policies somehow create special privileges for LGBT people. Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS), one of the most anti-gay members of Congress, made just such a claim on Tony Perkins’ radio show on Tuesday. According to Huelskamp, equal protections under the law for gays and lesbians are “radical ideas” that “selectively reward homosexual behavior”:

HUELSKAMP: The response from the general leadership is: gosh, we can’t talk about social issues. But the President can? Someone has to stand up and defend the seventy percent position that most Americans support traditional marriage, most Americans understand the value of family, they understand it’s under attack and they understand that, they see it, they believe it. So we got to stand up. I’ve always been confused by Republicans that refuse to support a seventy percent position and say, ‘gosh we can’t take our stand there.’ But whether it’s Obamacare, whether it’s these radical DoD [Department of Defense] proposals coming out of the White House or changing all the employment rules to specifically and selectively reward homosexual behavior, those are really radical ideas and most Americans do not accept them.

So we’ll have an opportunity to hear from the President but again don’t forget he is a lame duck President, he’s not running for election again and I think this could be the most radical we’ll hear from him in a long time because it is Obama unleashed. We’re going to hear tonight probably exactly what he would like to do and he promised he’s going to change America and he’s still after that agenda and that goal.

Listen to it (via RightWingWatch):

A “reward” implies something special or extra that other people are not entitled to. The only “reward” of employment protections for gay people is getting to keep their jobs. Granting benefits to the same-sex partners of military servicemembers does not create “a new class of beneficiary” as the Family Research Council claimed on Tuesday; the only reason there is a separate class is because some families are still treated different than others.

It’s clear that opponents of equality would prefer that the LGBT community remain second-class citizens. When they object to basic nondiscrimination protections, the special “reward” they’re afraid of is fairness under the law.

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Inside Ex-Gay Therapy: Homosexual Behavior Is A Fantasy Addiction To A Wounded Gender Identity

The late psychoanalyst Joyce McDougall believed homosexuality was a perversion.

Joseph Nicolosi, founder of ex-gay group NARTH and trainer of many other ex-gay therapists, is back with another brief article attempting to explain his perspective on the nature of homosexuality. Earlier this month, he explained that his patients can get over their supposed “addiction” to gay porn by simply making friends with more men. This week, he offers a convoluted description of homosexual behavior as an addiction to acting out a fantasy that compensates for a wounded gender identity:

Joyce McDougall has investigated the central role of “theatre and role-playing” in non-typical forms of sexual activity, including homosexuality. She is among the few contemporary psychoanalysts willing to study such forms of sexuality. McDougall understands “sexual theatre” as an acting-out of intrapsychic sexual forces in a symbolic attempt to resolve an identity conflict. In this regard she confirms the classic psychoanalytic understanding of “perverse” (as the term was used in previous years) sexual activity as being rooted in identity confusion. Noting the repetitive-compulsive nature of these role enactments, McDougall found that while her patients complain about the constrained structure of these “erotic theatre pieces,” they could not abstain from their enactments: “…and have to do it again and again and again” (McDougall, 2000, p.182).

What Nicolosi is trying to suggest is that gay people (and “the extreme case of transsexuals”) were somehow sent the wrong messages by their parents about how they are supposed to understand their own gender. This leads to a sense of inner conflict that they then address through compulsively trying to fulfill that “false” identity. Essentially, he thinks that gay people are just actors cast in the wrong role who don’t know how escape the performance because they believe they are trying to fix some kind of “past trauma” by acting it out.

Stepping back from that gobbledygook, it’s actually easy to make sense of how these perpetrators of fraud arrive at such nonsense. The obvious explanation for why there are gay people who don’t want to be gay is because they exist in a society that condemns homosexuality; they are taught from a young age that being gay is wrong and something to be ashamed of. Mainstream social science recognizes this reality, which is why the recommended professional practice is to affirm same-sex orientations to help resolve the inner conflict.

Ex-gay therapists take the opposite approach. They assume same-sex attractions are a defect by default. Thus, they need to invent other explanations for why people feel conflicted about having them. And like most aspects of ex-gay therapy, the easy solution is to blame the patient. Nicolosi’s gibberish is a means of doing just that. It’s a gay person’s fault he’s gay, it’s a gay person’s fault he feels bad about being gay, and only by accepting that shame and blame can that gay person attempt to find recovery. That’s the insidious message behind ex-gay therapy.

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POLL: Only 37 Percent Believe ‘Homosexual Behavior’ Is A Sin

POLL: Only 37 Percent Believe ‘Homosexual Behavior’ Is A Sin | A new poll from the Souther Baptist-affiliated research group Lifeway shows that the number of Americans who believe “homosexual behavior” is a sin has dropped to 37 percent, while 45 percent believe it is not. That’s a flip from 2011 when 44 percent believed it was a sin and 43 did not. Those opposed to LGBT equality try to distinguish between people who are gay and people who engage in gay behavior, but the growing support for and visibility of committed same-sex families is helping to debunk that approach.

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