CNN Hosts Plagiarist Baptist Leader Who Says Gays In Boy Scouts Will Lead To Sex Abuse

Richard Land, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, told CNN today that allowing gays into the Boy Scouts will lead to sexual abuse. Land, despite being president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, lost his radio show after admitting to ethics violations — plagiarism and making racially-charged comments while speaking about the Trayvon Martin case — but not his position, which he has held since 1988. Land is also the executive editor of The Christian Post.

“During an interview Tuesday on CNN’s Starting Point, Land pushed the widely debunked myth that allowing gay men to participate in the Boy Scouts would raise the risk of child sexual abuse,” Media Matters reports:

Land said that he was “not accusing homosexuals of being pedophiles,” but added: “I’m accusing homosexuals of being what they say they are — attracted to males. How many people that are listening to me would allow their teenage girls to go on campouts and engage in camping activities with heterosexual males?”

Land went on to say:

LAND: Heterosexual males would not be allowed to be girl scout masters. Why? Because they’re attracted to girls, to young women — in the same way homosexual males — I’m not talking about pedophiles. Now, I’m talking about — homosexual means attracted to the same sex.

Do parents really want to allow their teenage boys to go on campouts with men who are attracted to the same sex. They wouldn’t let their girls go on campouts with men who are attracted to women. This is — this is — this verges on being beyond the realm of the rational.

Land continued: “It’s gonna lead to human tragedy, and the human tragedy’s gonna be, sadly, boys and men who are going to end up in relationships that are going to be tragic.”

During the segment, CNN’s Brooke Baldwin noted that “studies show that homosexuals are no more pedophiles than heterosexuals.”

Media Matters adds:

CNN must have been aware of Land’s history of anti-gay rhetoric. Land has claimed that gay people are working to usher in the “full-blown paganization” of America and are “recruiting” children, saying this is “really child abuse.” Land has also claimed that being gay is “one sin that I know about that I find totally incomprehensible.”

In fact, CNN has decided to repeatedly push the boundaries of ethical journalism by hosting guests who are not experts in science or psychology or child psychology on this issue, but by hosting hate-mongers and fear-mongers, and member of certified anti-gay hate groups.

Rather than invite a child psychologist or medical expert in the field of child sexual abuse, or pedophilia, to discuss the issue (note: to be clear, there is no issue of increased risk here) CNN has decided to host people like avowed homosexual hater Richard Land, and avowed homosexual hater Peter Sprigg — two people who have no expertise at all on this so-called “issue.”

Yesterday The New Civil Rights Movement gave CNN a pass when the hosted Sprigg, as his organization paid for an ad in USA Today and the segment was produced under the false guise of being about the ad.

This is journalistic malpractice and CNN has crossed this line far too often.

As The New Civil Rights Movement has reported before, Dr. Land, a virulent homophobe, has said that “the devil takes pleasure in anything that causes destruction in human society and the homosexual lifestyle does cause destruction.”

Land also participated in a short film that attacked Hillary Clinton for supporting the rights of gay people as “human rights,” and he has advocated for the criminalization of homosexuals in this country and abroad.

Land has also participated in another short film that portrayed heterosexual, righteous, “moral” Christians as the Titanic, and homosexuality, aka the “radical homosexual agenda” as the iceberg.

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is “the world’s largest Baptist denomination and the largest Protestant body in the United States, with nearly 16 million members as of 2012,” according to WIkipedia.

http://mediamatters.org/embed/static/clips/2013/02/05/28784/cnn-sp-20130205-land2