Family Research Council Recycles Old, Offensive Anti-LGBT Arguments
Reduce, reuse, recycle.
The virulently anti-LGBT (FRC) is good at the reusing and recycling part, but not so much the reducing. The group鈥檚 website currently features a piece titled 鈥溾�� by Timothy Dailey in its 鈥淭rending鈥� section.
Filled with anti-LGBT junk science and distortions of legitimate sources, the article appears to be lifted from the 2004 book Dailey co-wrote with FRC colleague , called . Specifically Chapter Four, which is titled 鈥淚s Homosexuality a Health Risk?鈥�
The article makes myriad false claims, including that gay men are promiscuous and STD-ridden, that lesbians are 鈥渃ompulsive鈥� and that gay and lesbian relationships are more violent than heterosexual relationships. The piece also claims 鈥渞educed lifespans鈥� among LGBT people and says LGBT people are mentally ill. The article also makes a reference to 鈥淕ay Bowel Syndrome,鈥� a term first coined in 1976 to describe a collection of ailments that was popularized on the anti-gay right by Paul Cameron. This term among legitimate medical authorities since the 1980s.
Indeed, many of the sources the Dailey article cites have not been in use since then, either. The most recent source in the piece is dated 2001. 鈥淭rending鈥�? Hardly.
FRC has a long history of making outrageous claims about LGBT people, and an equally long history of using either discredited and outdated sources to support them. They also distort legitimate research (see , , and ), even when those researchers demand that the organization their work in such a way. The authors of one study cited in the Dailey article to support the FRC claim about 鈥渞educed lifespans鈥� even about the misuse of their research by religious right groups.
But that hasn鈥檛 stopped the FRC in its ongoing misinformation campaign against LGBT people. For them, it鈥檚 reuse, recycle, repeat.
