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Opinion: National Review’s VerBruggen Repeats NOM’s Anti-Gay Smears

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The National Review as an Organ of Arrogant Bigotry

Robert VerBruggen writes for The National Review, which was founded by the white supremacist William F. Buckley, Jr.

National Review writers ofttimes still defend the publication’s apartheid roots.

VerBruggen, for his part, is a heterosupremacist who thinks that because anti-gay bigots do not want gay couples to get married, gay couples must not be allowed to marry. That echoes the National Review’s history of saying that because a privileged white majority wanted segregation, whites deserved to see racial apartheid continue. See here for more of VerBruggen’s gay-bashing bigotry.

One of VerBruggen’s co-contributors is the arch-anti-gay-bigot Maggie Gallagher of the so-called National Organization for Marriage, an anti-gay-rights group that sponsors hate rallies where NOM speakers yell through megaphones that homosexuals are “worthy to death.”

On July 12 in The National Review, Gallagher attacked me by lying that I have written that she has blood on her hands because she opposes “gay marriage.”

Gallagher’s NOM is behind the funding of a fraudulent study carried out by the University of Texas, Austin’s Mark Regnerus. Gallagher has been militantly active in smearing gay people in political contexts on the basis of Regnerus’s fraudulent study.

Understanding what makes Regnerus’s study a fraud is not complicated.

Regnerus alleged he wanted to study child outcomes for gay parents. Regnerus’s “test” group in his “test-and-control-group” study, however, was not actually comprised of known gay parents, as the American Medical Association — along with seven other major professional associations — explained in a Golinski-DOMA amicus brief. The one thing Regnerus’s test group respondents almost all had in common, was that they were products of broken heterosexual homes. Without so much as asking his respondents “Is your mother lesbian?” Regnerus went ahead and labeled the parents of his “broken homes” test group as either “lesbian mothers” or “gay fathers.”

His control group, by contrast, was comprised of young adult children of continuously married heterosexual couples.

Regnerus compared the people from broken homes, to the people from continuously married parents, and declared that he had “revealed” that “children raised by same-sex parents” fare worse.

The invalid comparison invalidates the entire study, but does not stop gay-bashing bigots from wielding it as a political weapon.

The heterosupremacists’ motto is: “When all else fails, defame the sexual minorities you hate.”

Robert VerBruggen Sets Up a NOM-like, Anti-Gay Smear

On July 18, VerBruggen asked to interview me apropos of my Complaint against Regnerus, filed with the University of Texas. That Complaint now is the basis of an on-going inquiry.

I responded to VerBruggen’s e-mailed questions. In my responses, I specified that the Regnerus study is not valid, because it is a “test-group/control-group” study, yet makes no valid comparison between its test group and its control group. I also specified to VerBruggen that I allege that Regnerus and NOM officials are in seeming collusion, that they seem to have produced the study intending it to have a ‘”fixed” outcome defamatory of gays, and that they seem to continue in collusion, promoting the invalid study as a gay-bashing political weapon.

I have requested full documentation of all communications about the Regnerus study between 1) Regnerus and his study team; 2) UT; and 3) Regnerus’s NOM-linked funders at The Witherspoon Institute and elsewhere.  Those parties have refused to release the documents. UT petitioned Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot, a Republican, for exemptions, allowing the parties to keep their documentation related to the fraudulent Regnerus study secret.  The American Independent, too, wants this documentation, yet UT is seeking exemptions to their Freedom of Information Act document requests as well.

If there is no political collusion between the parties on the fraudulent Regnerus study — which is being used politically to gay-bash around the country and beyond — then what could there possibly be to hide in that documentation?

In his July 19, National Review article, VerBruggen tried to manipulate his readers into believing that my allegations are baseless.

He says “Rose does not allege serious ethical misconduct, such as plagiarism or falsifying data.”  Actually, I do. Not making any effort even to determine whether a survey respondent’s parent is gay or lesbian — as is the case with Regnerus — but then going ahead to label them as “lesbian mother” or “gay father” in a study that is said to measure how young adults “raised by same-sex parents fare” is falsifying evidence. Falsifying evidence is very rarely accidental and is usually done to support a hypothesis, i.e., in the case of the Regnerus study, the NOM hypothesis that homosexuals are dangerous to children.

For emphasis: “Data falsification” occurs when research is manipulated in any way that changes or omits data. Regnerus changed his data, by not determining whether a respondent’s parent was gay or lesbian, but then going on to label respondents’ parents as “gay fathers” or “lesbian mothers” in his published study. UT’s Population Research Center’s site for Regnerus’s “New Family Structures Study” falsely claims that the study measured how young adults “raised by same-sex parents” fare. That same University of Texas, NFSS site claims that Regnerus’s is the first large-scale study of “young adults who have spent time in households with two parents of the same sex.”

Regnerus’s study did not do that. Of his respondents whose parents got misleadingly labeled as “lesbian mothers” or “gay fathers,” almost all were products of broken heterosexual marriages. The study subjects’ “parents” therefore, were their mother and father pairs. If a 15-year-old’s heterosexual parents divorce, and then when the adolescent is 17, he is living with his mother, and she invites a woman to live in the home with them for four weeks, that second woman is not the 17-year-old’s “parent” in any sense. Yet that is exactly the ridiculous thing which Regnerus is presenting as a “fact” about his data.

Falsifying evidence is an ultimate form of scientific misconduct.

One thing VerBruggen’s did in his article — after not addressing Regnerus’s falsification of data — especially sticks in my craw.

Conflating homosexuals with pedophiles, a known falsehood, is a NOM anti-gay-bigotry specialty.

As irrefutably described in the AMA brief, Regnerus did not do anything to determine whether his young adult survey respondents from broken heterosexual marriages had lesbian mothers or gay fathers. He nonetheless went ahead and labeled the parents of these offspring of broken marriages lesbian or gay, on the basis of having asked them whether either of their parents had ever had a “romantic relationship with someone of the same sex.” That means of classifying somebody as gay or lesbian is as ludicrous as would be calling them Catholic because they had ever been inside a Catholic cathedral.

Surprise, surprise; Regnerus, in seeming collusion with his NOM-linked funders, found that children of — (falsely-labeled) —  “lesbian mothers” and “gay fathers” suffered more childhood sex abuse than children of “intact biological families.”

That Regnerus study “finding,” not supported by Regnerus’s data, is especially heinous, by virtue of it being an established, favorite NOM anti-gay smear, effectively, “Let children anywhere near homosexuals, and you increase the likelihood that they will be sexually abused.” Regnerus repeated that smear when he talked about his invalid study on ABC-TV.

In his published article, VerBruggen repeated the lie that children of gay parents are “more likely to experience sexual victimization,” and then he went on wrongly to allege the smear to be  “a statement that is consistent with Regnerus’s data.”

Well, no, it is not, but what do you expect from a heterosupremacist?

VerBruggen’s History of Enabling Those Bigoted Against Sexual Minorities

At Northwestern University, VerBruggen was editor-in-chief of the reactionary Northwestern Chronicle.  On Verbruggen’s editorial watch, J. Michael Bailey, an anti-trans bigot was allowed to trans-bash, and an individual was unjustifiably smeared.

Significantly, in an article – Robert Verbruggen and J. Michael Bailey — VerBruggen is said to have allowed Bailey “to post a rambling defense of his questionable research and ethics.” At the time, VerBruggen wrote, “To my knowledge, it is the first professor-written article we’ve ever run. There are of course conflicts with this setup, especially in that he is both a source and a writer.”

The summary continues: “Bailey’s work  described gender variance in metaphors of disease and impairment, said to be an extension of Bailey’s belief that homosexuality is an evolutionary mistake and a developmental error. Bailey’s writing on homosexual eugenics and his belief that male bisexuals are liars echo his thinking on trans issues as well.” The summary of the Bailey scandal, partially enabled by VerBruggen, notes that Bailey’s work was “tainted with charges of academic misconduct, practicing without a license, fabricating data, and sex with a research subject.”

In 2004, the Southern Poverty Law Center published a history of Bailey’s connections to hate groups. Bailey eventually resigned from Northwestern University in disgrace.

Though VerBruggen intended an ethical defense of Regnerus, he inadvertently gave his article a title that describes the Regnerus study to a “T”: The Gay Parenting Witch Hunt.

New York City-based novelist and freelance writer Scott Rose’s LGBT-interest by-line has appeared on Advocate.com, PoliticusUSA.com, The New York Blade, Queerty.com, Girlfriends and in numerous additional venues. Among his other interests are the arts, boating and yachting, wine and food, travel, poker and dogs. His “Mr. David Cooper’s Happy Suicide” is about a New York City advertising executive assigned to a condom account.

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'HELPING NORMALIZE A NAZI'

Musk’s Twitter Is ‘Welcoming With Open Arms’ a ‘Full-Fledged Nazi’ – and Recommending Users Follow Him: Reports

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December 2, 2022

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Elon Musk‘s Twitter on Friday allowed Andrew Anglin, the neo-Nazi behind the infamous Daily Stormer website to return to the social media platform after a nine-year ban. Several Twitter users reported the social media platform is now recommending they follow him.

“Anglin has publicly indicated that the goal of his operation and adherence to white nationalist ideology is to ‘ethnically cleanse White nations of non-Whites and establish an authoritarian government. Many people also believe that the Jews should be exterminated,'” reported Rolling Stone on Friday. “Anglin is a staunch supporter of Nazi ideology and regularly espouses Holocaust denail. In 2018, Anglin wrote that he ‘[hates] women. I think they deserve to be beaten, raped and locked in cages.'”

WUSA 9 investigative reporter Jordan Fischer tweeted a screenshot of the Twitter recommendation.

READ MORE: Anti-LGBTQ Slurs on Twitter Up Over 800% as Musk Allows Thousands of Previously Banned Users Back: Reports

As did other Twitter users.

Last month veteran journalist Nick Martin, who investigates hate and extremism, reported that “Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene shared a thread calling on Elon Musk to reinstate an array of racists, conspiracy theorists and serial harassers. The list includes fugitive neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin, white supremacist David Duke and British neo-Nazi Mark Collett.”

At the top of that list is Milo Yiannopoulos, a right wing extremist and provocateur who has advocated for older men having sex with underaged teen boys. Yiannopoulos is also Greene’s intern who was reportedly part of the Kanye West–Nick Fuentes dinner with Donald Trump.

“Andrew Anglin is the founder of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website, which takes its name from the gutter Nazi propaganda sheet known as Der Stürmer,” the Southern Poverty Law Center has reported. “True to that vintage, Anglin is infamous for the crudity of his language and his thinking, a contrast to his sophistication as a prolific internet troll and serial harasser. Anglin’s organizing and harassment on the Daily Stormer led to lawsuits, and courts have awarded millions of dollars in damages to plaintiffs suing Anglin in recent years. But with his whereabouts unknown, Anglin has so far escaped full accountability for his actions.”

READ MORE: 15-Year Old Campaigning Door-to-Door for Raphael Warnock Shot Through Door– ‘No Indication’ Politically Motivated: Police

Indeed, just last month a federal judge issued an arrest warrant for Andrew Anglin, who is “accused of ignoring a $14 million judgment against him for orchestrating an antisemitic harassment campaign against a Montana woman’s family,” The Billings Gazette had reported.

SiriusXM host Dean Obeidallah responded to Anglin’s return to Twitter by reminding him he still owes him “$4.1 million dollars for sending your Nazis to kill me. Do you have the $?! I want to donate it groups that counter the very hate you spew!”

“Musk is helping normalize a Nazi,” he adds.

Amy Spitalnick, the executive director of Integrity First for America (IFA) called Anglin “a full-fledged Nazi who runs the Daily Stormer and, among many other things, was found liable for the Charlottesville violence in our lawsuit. A perfect example of the vile, violent extremists Musk is welcoming with open arms.”

Image: Elon Musk, photo by NASA/Aubrey Gemignani via Flickr

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RIGHT WING EXTREMISM

Anti-LGBTQ Slurs on Twitter Up Over 800% as Musk Allows Thousands of Previously Banned Users Back: Reports

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December 2, 2022

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In the wake of the Colorado Springs hate crime mass shooting last month at an gay nightclub’s drag show event that left five people dead, the anti-LGBTQ slur “groomer” and other anti-LGBTQ hate speech posts on Twitter skyrocketed, “peaking at 885% over their highest level before the shooting,” NBC News reports.

“Barely 24 hours after the Colorado Springs hate crime attack,” Salon reported last week, “Elon Musk’s new Twitter responded to the massacre by reinstating the account of James Lindsay, the right-wing activist responsible for popularizing the anti-LGBTQ slur ‘OK groomer,’ which over the last 10 months has been used to imply that demands for LGBTQ rights or representation are tantamount to child molestation. In August, Lindsay was banned from Twitter for using a variation on the term, which under Twitter’s old regime was prohibited as a form of hateful conduct. But by Monday night, not only was Lindsay back, but ‘OK groomer’ was trending on the platform under its new ownership.”

Slurs against gay men on Twitter have increased by a daily average of 58% in the weeks following Elon Musk taking the critically influential social media platform private, firing its board, and welcoming back thousands of previously-banned accounts, according to information from NBC News and The New York Times.

“Travis Brown, an independent software developer in Berlin who tracks Twitter suspensions and screen name changes as part of a project studying extremism,” NBC News reports, shared data “that showed a wide variety of far-right accounts had been reinstated since Musk’s announcement” of a so-called “general amnesty.”

READ MORE: 15-Year Old Campaigning Door-to-Door for Raphael Warnock Shot Through Door– ‘No Indication’ Politically Motivated: Police

“In that time, Brown has logged an estimated 12,000 reversals of past bans, in a set that, while not a definitive list of reversals, provides a window into the types of users being welcomed back to the platform and leaving experts alarmed.”

In addition to “spammers, copyright rule-breakers, adult-content creators and high-profile accounts, Twitter has reopened the door to a growing and emboldened community of trolls, white nationalists, conspiracy theorists and extreme right-wing activists,” NBC adds.

Musk’s general amnesty “has restored hundreds of accounts of right-wing activists and QAnon adherents, according to data reviewed by NBC News. The reinstatement of far-right accounts has coincided with a series of bans of left-wing accounts, leaving users unsure of how the company is now applying its rules.”

The New York Times adds, “Before Elon Musk bought Twitter, slurs against Black Americans showed up on the social media service an average of 1,282 times a day. After the billionaire became Twitter’s owner, they jumped to 3,876 times a day.”

“Slurs against gay men appeared on Twitter 2,506 times a day on average before Mr. Musk took over. Afterward, their use rose to 3,964 times a day,” The Times reports. “And antisemitic posts referring to Jews or Judaism soared more than 61 percent in the two weeks after Mr. Musk acquired the site.”

READ MORE: ‘Another Happy Jobs Day’: Economists Thrilled With ‘Amazing’ Report as Jobs Growth Beats Expectations, Wages Increase

Significantly, antisemite Kanye West‘s restored Twitter account was suspended Thursday night, hours after – but not because – the far right rapper told Alex Jones of his support for Adolf Hitler.

“I see good things about Hitler,” West told Jones. “Every human being has something of value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler.” 

Musk apparently personally had West’s Twitter account suspended when the artist who goes by “Ye” posted an image of a Jewish six-pointed star embedded with a Nazi swastika. The account, at least for now, remains suspended.

The Times reporting, which includes information from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the Anti-Defamation League and other groups, calls the increase in hate speech on Musk’s Twitter “unprecedented.”

“Accounts that Twitter used to regularly remove — such as those that identify as part of the Islamic State, which were banned after the U.S. government classified ISIS as a terror group — have come roaring back. Accounts associated with QAnon, a vast far-right conspiracy theory, have paid for and received verified status on Twitter, giving them a sheen of legitimacy,” The Times reveals.

Musk himself set the stage. At the end of October he retweeted a false, anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theory involving Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s husband, who had recently been bludgeoned in a “near death” attack in their San Francisco home, allegedly by a man who has promoted far right extremism. He later removed that retweet.

Just last week Bloomberg News reported Musk was “restoring a string of accounts previously suspended for harassing transgender people, rolling back protections for the LGBTQ community as the country confronts the aftermath” of the Colorado Springs mass shooting. “Advocates say the shooting… highlights the potential real-world violence that can stem from rhetoric against the trans community. They noted that anti-trans abuse has been mounting on the platform since the shooting.”

READ MORE: Chasten Buttigieg Stunned as Nicolle Wallace Reports New DHS Warning Lists LGBTQ People as ‘Targets of Potential Violence’

As Musk welcomes back thousands who were banned for various reasons, from hate speech to disinformation to spamming to attacks on minorities and more, NBC’s reporting makes clear that left wing activists are finding their accounts suspended for apparently no legitimate reason.

“Chad Loder is an independent journalist in Los Angeles with more than 137,000 followers whose reporting on the Jan. 6 riot has been cited in Justice Department charging documents. Loder, who uses they/them pronouns, recently had their account suspended, briefly reinstated and then suspended again without a clear reason.”

For his part, Musk took to Twitter to refute reports hate speech has increased dramatically.

 

Image: Elon Musk by Duncan.Hull via Wikipedia

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CRIME

15-Year Old Campaigning Door-to-Door for Raphael Warnock Shot Through Door– ‘No Indication’ Politically Motivated: Police

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December 2, 2022

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A 15-year old boy campaigning door-to-door for U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) was shot by a 42-year old man through the front door, according to Savannah Police who claim “there is no indication the shooting was politically motivated.”

The man was arrested after police responded to the shooting on Thursday around 5:35 PM, “and discovered a 15-year-old male victim suffering from a gunshot wound to the leg.”

His injuries are not life threatening.

IN OTHER NEWS: Chasten Buttigieg Stunned as Nicolle Wallace Reports New DHS Warning Lists LGBTQ People as ‘Targets of Potential Violence’

“According to the preliminary investigation, the teen was campaigning for Raphael Warnock for the upcoming run-off election when the incident occurred. While at the front door of one of the residences on Hartridge Street, the suspect fired a shot through the closed door, striking the teen,” according to the Savannah Police statement.

The 42-year old man “was booked into the Chatham County jail on charges of aggravated assault and aggravated battery.”

“I am saddened to learn about this incident,” said Sen. Warnock, who faces off against Herschel Walker in the U.S. Senate runoff Tuesday, as WSAV-TV reports. “I am praying for the victim and their family and wish them a full recovery.”

Watch the video from WSAV below or at this link.

 

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