The Post Gives Voice to Anti-Gay Bigots

The Washington Post has been painted into a corner by the Southern Poverty Law Center's recent designation of the Family Research Council and other anti-gay organizations as hate groups. The Post and similar mainstream media outlets have developed a philosophy of journalism that assumes the two sides of any debate are equivalent, concluding that unbiased reporting is reporting that covers them both equally. A statement is just a statement, it is not the responsibility of the media to determine if it is a lie, or even to report that it is a lie when it clearly is, the statement is simply written down and submitted to the gullible public as if two rational people were discussing a topic.

The Family Research Council has provided reams of copy to The Post over the years. They see a conspiracy by gays and lesbians behind everything, they imagine that schools and television and the Internet serve mainly to recruit young people into the "gay lifestyle," and they are unembarrassed to commandeer a microphone in a public place to talk about it. As is their policy, The Post writes down the quotes and reports these assertions as "controversy," as if a significant proportion of the population feels the same way. In fact, it would never even occur to the great proportion of people to theorize that gays and lesbians, of all people, were any kind of significant force in the world at all, beyond wanting to be respected as ordinary citizens. It is only because media organizations like The Post continuously pound the anti-gay drum that anyone marches to it at all.

So now the Southern Poverty Law Center, which very carefully weighs these things, has added some anti-gay organizations such as the Family Research Council, the National Organization for Marriage, and the American Family Association to its list of hate groups. They are lumped in with the Ku Klux Klan and that God Hates Fags Baptist church in Kansas. This has the potential of making it much more difficult for the Washington Post to continue quoting them as authorities.

Not a problem. The Post, which did not mention it when the SPLC issued their report, asks the Family Research Council how they feel about it.

The Southern Poverty Law Center this week labeled as "hate groups" several political and religious organizations that campaign against same-sex marriage and, the center says, engage in "repeated, groundless name-calling" against gays and lesbians.

Included on the list released by the civil rights organization is the Family Research Council, a prominent and politically influential group of social conservatives. The report by the law center, which has spent four decades tracking extremist groups and hate speech, accuses the council and a dozen other groups of putting out "demonizing propaganda aimed at homosexuals and other sexual minorities."

The report, which has sparked debate across the Internet, taps into the continuing potency of social issues, such as same-sex marriage, in American politics. Several of the groups described in the report supported a successful effort to oust state Supreme Court judges in Iowa because of a unanimous ruling last year that legalized same-sex unions.

The Family Research Council has been at the forefront of political activism against same-sex marriage. In explaining the decision to put the council on its hate-groups list, the law center highlighted comments by Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow for policy studies at the council, who told MSNBC host Chris Matthews this year that he thinks "homosexual behavior" should be outlawed. 'Hate group' designation angers same-sex marriage opponents

Imagine it is 1960, and The Post has a headline: 'Hate group' designation angers mixed-race marriage opponents. Hopefully in a few years the intent behind this headline, and this article, will be obvious to any reader, as racist remarks from a generation ago are obvious to us today.

The former newspaper gave the top guy at the Family Research Council a chance to explain how he feels about it.

Council President Tony Perkins, who was also named in the report, called the hate-group designation a political attack by a "liberal organization."

"The left's smear campaign of conservatives is . . . being driven by the clear evidence that the American public is losing patience with their radical policy agenda as seen in the recent election and in the fact that every state . . . that has had the opportunity to defend the natural definition of marriage has done so," Perkins said in a statement.

"Earlier this month, voters in Iowa sent a powerful message when they removed three Supreme Court justices who imposed same-sex marriage on the state. Would the SPLC also smear the good people of Iowa?"

Iowans showed themselves susceptible to a well-financed media campaign and showed themselves not to have a good grasp on the concept of checks and balances. And let us not forget, the number of people who agree with a statement is no measure at all of its truthfulness. People can be wrong, even a majority of people.

It does not appear that the Washington Post actually spoke to anyone at the Southern Poverty Law Center, but simply read the report online.

The law center said it chose to highlight the groups on the list "based on their propagation of known falsehoods" and "repeated, groundless name-calling."

"Viewing homosexuality as unbiblical does not qualify organizations for listing as hate groups," the report said.

The debate over the list has focused on whether the law center is right to equate anti-gay views with racism.

The question is whether constant propagandizing against a group of people who have done nothing to harm you, because they are different from you, is "hate." The hoped-for result of the constant propagandizing is discrimination and prejudice, the inevitable result is shame and suicide in the population that is targeted by the propaganda.

There is no positive side to it, no benefit expected or hoped for. Gay people aren't going to stop being gay, I don't think even the Family Research Council believes they can or will. They aren't going to go away, they aren't going back into the closet. Gay and lesbian people are what they are, they are contributing members of society, and that's simple reality. Family Research Council leaders like Peter Sprigg and Tony Perkins might feel uncomfortable around LGBT people for their own reasons, I don't claim to have any insight into why they feel the way they do, but there is no point to the stream of hateful filth they produce except to maintain prejudice and discrimination against a group of people.

Dan Savage, a gay rights advocate and columnist, said in an interview on CNN that "we need a cultural reckoning around gay and lesbian issues. There was once two sides to the race debate. There was once a side, you could go on television and argue for segregation, you could argue against interracial marriage, against the Civil Rights Act, against extending voting rights to African Americans, and that used to be treated as one side . . . of a pressing national debate, and it isn't anymore. And we really need to reach that point with gay and lesbian issues. There are no 'two sides' to the issues about gay and lesbian rights."

Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, objected to his organization's inclusion in the center's report and said the notion that groups opposed to same-sex marriage are equivalent to racists is wrong.

"This is about protecting marriage. This isn't about being anti-anyone," Brown said. "The whole idea that somehow those folks who stand up for traditional marriage, like the Family Research Council, are hateful is wrong. [The law center is] trying to marginalize and intimidate folks for standing up for marriage and also trying to equate them somehow to the KKK."

The can try to re-frame it however they want, it is what it is. The National Organization for Marriage had a bus tour of the US this summer where they went from city to city spreading their message of hatred against gay people. In some cities crowds numbered in the double digits, generally fewer than thirty people showed up for each event, in cities of millions. These groups don't need to be "marginalized," they are marginal already. While many straight people might be uncomfortable with the image of two men kissing, and might find it difficult to understand why anybody would be that way, most people realize that somebody else's sexual orientation is none of our business. Groups like the Family Research Council and the Washington Post can focus on the discomfort and try to legitimize it, but ordinary people left to think the issue through come to the reasonable conclusion.

The Post includes Dan Savage's quote because certain readers will see it as saying that gay people are afraid to allow debate on the subject. But the fact is, the debate itself is what the debate is about. A small group of nuts will insist that "homosexuals are trying to recruit our youth and undermine the institution of marriage" or whatever, and the question is whether the press should publicize those paranoid statements. The Washington Post has obviously decided to buy into it, this article attempts to trivialize the SPLC's decision and put a sympathetic face on the poor bigots at the Family Research Council. The Post has taken sides in the debate: they have decided to treat it as a debate.