The political right propaganda machine doesn’t only make outrageous claims unfounded in reality. Much of their efficacy comes from what they don’t say. Legitimacy is often given arguments of false equivalence by failure to point out that some arguments presented to the public just don’t have two sides.
Examples of this phenomenon include giving Creationism equal footing with Natural Selection. One is science based on over one hundred fifty years of observation of nature subject to rigorous testing and retesting. The other is a set of opinions bolstered by false authority in superstition and magical thinking. One is based on interpretation of reality based fact; the other is founded on guesswork opinions and suppositions, tradition and hearsay.
Rightwash campaigns redefine reality for political gain. The recent debt ceiling crisis is a case in point. The facts are that the government has to take short term loans and issue government bonds to meet obligations made long since by Congress. Congress has routinely held its nose and raised its self imposed borrowing limits regardless of economic circumstances because the full faith and credit of the government is an issue very different from budgets, entitlements, pork barrel spending and fiscal responsibility.
Cutting government spending wholesale leads to lost government jobs. It is the worst thing you can do in a recession. Fewer government jobs means less money circulating in the economy which lowers consumer demands which leads to less manufacturing, product transport and private sector jobs. It’s a real domino effect. Delaying guarantees of government debt services erodes bankers’ confidence in getting their capital repaid. This uncertainty forces a rise in interest rates which, in this instance, is costing this government $1.7 Billion more than had raising the debt ceiling two weeks earlier would have. That’s 57,000 teachers, police and fire-fighters. Gone. For nothing. Into the pockets of bankers, the very people who created the financial meltdown we’re in the middle of and from which we’re trying so desperately to recover. How many miles of highway repair, bridges built or renewable energy infrastructure now languishes even further out of reach? Where is the fiscal responsibility in that? Who among the Republican Tea Party Caucus is crowing about how bravely they’ve cost their children and grandchildren an extra one thousand, seven hundred million dollars in interest to prove how short sighted their obstructionist intransigence has been? Where is the virtue in that?
These issues go on and on: Elevating the administrative infraction of undocumented foreigners to the status of a crime, ignoring undocumented residents’ contributions to society, the taxes they pay, and the levels of undocumented immigration rates at the lowest it’s been for decades. Just ask the Georgia farmers whose crops have rotted in the field because punitively draconian, Republican rhetoric driven, xenophobic laws created catastrophic farm worker shortages. How’s that helping the economy? Who is going to help out those farmers with their spoiled crops and their families’ devastated finances?
The culture wars are manufactured crises brought to bear by myopic, perennial malcontents who would reshape America into a mythical Leave-It-to-Beaver utopia, where mom stays home to wash the breakfast dishes in her smart suit and sensible pearls, the kids go to school to learn life’s lessons to the extend appropriate for instruction outside the home, free from imposed sex education, social equality for gays or integration of minorities, and without proscriptions from enforcing uniform declarations of the superiority of “our” faith on the one hand, or the formation of medieval style feudal dystopia run by a divinely entitled few who lord effective ownership of the voiceless many by controlling every aspect of their lives to better extract wealth from the sweat of their brow and the strain on their backs.
That’s about the size of it from the perspective of the erstwhile Conservative populists who populate political rallies, man the phone banks, and fill their churches, and the wealthy, self entitled elite who bankroll and call the shots behind the curtain of ersatz grassroots PACs.
It’s been over thirty years of setting the stage that allows so many to substitute reality for opinion and replace fact with assertion. Americans have long been trained to accept without question the authority of God and the interpretation by select exponents of that message’s meaning. Even if you don’t’ agree with the interpretations by the pastor down the block, you just don’t speak up because that would be disrespectful of their faith and injurious of their freedom to worship. Religious tolerance.
Conservatives have taken this armour against critique by bringing evangelicals and their organized blocks of votes to bear. Imposition of their godly edicts upon the entire population is the price of their support of rampant corporate deregulation, special tax breaks and the lowest tax rates for the wealthy in over half a century, that low taxes increase Treasury revenue and stimulates job creation. Add the manufactured cultural issues that service undermining women’s reproductive rights, demonized government service workers, teachers unions and the social safety net, painting immigrants – the basic foundational element of our population – and gays as a threat to marriage, family, children and democracy. What we end up with is the black-is-white, up-is-down, progress-is-devil’s-work delusion of current American conservatism: Rightwash.
It’s all about redefining perceptions of reality to conform to false declarations based on hearsay, unsubstantiated opinion, non-provable assertions and outright fabrications. The goal is to keep the most gullible and the undecided electorate scared and angry with distractions built to confuse attention away from those grabbing money and power. There are many, many issues to choose from. Let’s examine one of the most emotionally irrational and easily manipulated issues, the denial of gay rights equality and destruction of homosexuals’ full citizenship.
It’s not only what they say, it’s what they don’t say.
The right maintains that same sex headed households harm children. Some cite studies that say children fare better when reared in a home led by both a mother and a father. What they don’t’ say is that the study they cite compared two parent households with single parent households. They don’t mention that none of the families in the study were same sex couple families. Rightwash.
Recently, Focus on the Family spokesman Tom Minnery spoke at a Congressional hearing citing a Dept. of Health and Human Services study in support of theDefence of Marriage Act. The study said that children fare better in a family where the parents are married and all the children are either biological or legally adopted. Minnery wanted to say that the study proves only heterosexual parented families work well. What he didn’t say is that the study didn’t differentiate between opposite sex headed families and same sex headed families. What he didn’t say is that the study actually indicates children born to or adopted in a same sex couple headed family enjoy the same securities and benefits as their opposite sex parented counterparts. That’s exactly opposite to what Minnery would have had the Senate inquiry believe. Rightwash.
According to the blog, Antigay Lies and Liars, “The following researchers, physicians, and Ph.D.s have complained about how the anti-gay industry has misused their work:
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A. Nicholas Groth, along with other psychologists cited among anti-gay assertions, charged Paul Cameron, the disgraced anti-gay junk scientist, with distortions of their work Upon subsequent investigation, the American Psychological Association and other mental health professional societies have expelled, repudiated or condemned Cameron for misrepresentation of others’ work and use of unsound methods in his own studies. October 1994. Undaunted by scientific consensus, anti-gay groups continue to cite Cameron’s fraudulent work in support of their narratives.
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Robert S. Hogg,Stefan A. Strathdee, Kevin J.P. Craib, Michael V. Shaughnessy, Julio Montaner, and Martin T. Schehter, the six researchers of a Canadian study published in the International Journal of Epidemiology on the gay and bisexual life expectancy in w:st=”on”>Vancouver in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Their claim is the paper has been misrepresented by“homophobic groups [that] appear more interested in restricting the human rights of gay and bisexuals rather than promoting their health
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Dr. Robert Garofalo (see Gays as Diseased) complained an anti-LGBT ad campaign citing his work was a “a complete misrepresentation” of his research regarding high-risk behavior, including substance abuse, leading to suicide. Anti-gay groups claimed the death came from the corruption of homosexuality itself rather than from the alienation gay teens confront in a “culture that is often unaccepting” which Garofalo described as “the complete opposite conclusion of what the paper actually concluded.”
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Lisa Waldner, repudiated (p. 15) the Family Research Council’s mischaracterization of her non-scientific, out-of-date, study, made as an undergrad student, on Gay and Lesbian sexual practices within a non-random, closed circle of friends among her acquaintances.
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Patrick Letellier, whose unscientific research on gay domestic violence was cherry picked by Gary Glenn of the American Family Association of Michigan, ignoring a dozen years of subsequent, actual scientific research finding contrary conclusions. “Culture and Family Institute and Focus on the Family resurrected Glenn’s fabrications and rebroadcast them as evidence that hate crimes are committed by homosexuals against homosexuals, not by gay-bashers. [Gary Glenn is considering a Republican Senate challenge of Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)]
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Dr. Kyle Pruett, of the Yale School of Medicine, declared James C. Dobson, the Focus on the Family leader, “cherry picked” his work.
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Dr. Joanne Hall (citation 2b), complained of the distorted findings of her 35 subject study as a ‘fact sheet’ regarding the fabricated dangers of gay adoption, rather than “the description of health care interaction and patterns of perception by Lesbians already in recovery” based on anecdotal evidence. (section 6, pp.17)
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Dr. Elizabeth Saewyc, Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, stated on national Canadian TV that her research into teen Lesbian suicide “has been hijacked for somebody’s political purposes or ideological purposes and that’s worrisome” and “she was “baffled” by the conclusions the organization drew from her research … which showed that lesbian teenagers were more likely to attempt suicide. Reacting to survey results, Focus on the Family blamed the very people trying to help teens enter a more accepting society. June 2006
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Carol Gilligan, PhD repudiated Focus on the Family leader, James C. Dobson, for misrepresenting her research in Time Magazine, Dec 2006
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Dr. Robert Spitzer, Professor of Psychiatry, w:st=”on”>Columbia University, complained right wing groups, particularly Focus on the Family, misrepresented his work on reconversion therapy. February 2007
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Dr. Francis Collins, refuted statements made by Greg Quinlan, working with the New Jersey Policy Council in an interview published by American Family Association’s One News Now website, attributing noted geneticist Francis S. Collins as untrue — including descriptions of Collins’s work on the human genome project to indicate, and subsequently claimed as fact, that homosexuality derives with absolutely no genetic component and is 100% nurture. September 2008
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Gary Remafedi, professor of pediatrics at University of Minnesota, accused Parents and Friends of eXgays (PFOX) of manipulating and misrepresenting his research, demanding PFOX immediately remove his study from their website. July, 2008
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Professor Michael King, responded to Box Turtle Bulletin when asked about an article by Kathleen Gilbert on two anti-gay websites, LifeSiteNews and the American Family Association that cited Dr. King’s work but left “little resemblance between it and the claims of AFA and LSN,” actually drawing conclusions opposite from Dr. King’s findings. September 2008
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Professor Lisa Diamond, Associate Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies University of Utah, called out the National Association of Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) for “willful misuse and distortion of my research. Not an academic disagreement. Not a slight shading of the truth. It’s wilful distortion. And, it’s illegitimate and it’s irresponsible and you know that. And you should stop.” November 2008
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Judith Stacey, Professor of Sociology , New York University, , via SoulForce produced YouTube video describing misrepresentation of her research, with Dr. Timothy Biblarz, into Lesbian and gay parenting by Focus on the Family’s James Dobson
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Angela Phillips, wrote to Focus on the Family leader, James C. Dobson for “seriously misrepresenting” her work “The Trouble With Boys,” asking him to “prominently” publish her letter on Focus on the Family’s website, December 2006
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Professors, Ron Stall, and Ronald O. Valdiserri, authors with Richard J. Wolitski of the book Unequal Opportunity: Health Disparities Affecting Gay and Bisexual Men in the United States Cited multiple instances where Exodus International and Focus on the Family, on their web magazine CitizenLink authored by Jeff Johnson “misrepresented findings in the book to suggest that childhood sexual abuse causes male homosexuality” as “inaccurate and, in our opinion, a distortion of the scientific literature.” June 2009
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This is but an abbreviated list of characters who abuse reality based on ideology and advancing their political cause regardless of contrary proof or reason. The most prolific among these reality distorters above are James Dobson of Focus on the Family (Family Radio Network) and the American Family Association that publishes the reactionary One News Now and broadcasts Bryan Fischer’s Focal Point radio show. But, they’re by no means solitary players. They work toward common cause with dozens of other organizations, ideologues and politicians.
This past weekend, Gov. Rick Perry held his The Response prayer rally of which Dobson was an honorary co- chair, along with Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, another rabidly anti-gay group, The Family Research Institute (Paul Cameron), The Family Research Council (Tony Perkins), Americans for Truth about Homosexuality (Peter LaBarbera) and the American Family Association (Bryan Fischer) are all designated hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center based on criteria that includes “… beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for immutable characteristics.” Hate group activities run the gamut among speeches, marches, rallies, meetings, published materials and distribution, and criminal acts such as violence, though, according to the SPLC, not all groups on their hate groups list go so far as to employ criminal activity.
DavidBarton, the revisionist, self-identified expert, pseudo-historian, founder of WallBuilders, consulting designer of history school books in Texas and California, embraces Seven Mountains theology, also known as the Dominion Mandate, Dominion Imperative and several other similar monikers. This movement’s eschatology blueprints the Christian fundamentalist evangelical takeover of the seven structures that define and drive western culture:
In their own words here, and here, and some relevant moderate commentary here, with sceptical critique here and here.
The last few years has seen an upsurge of Dominionists raising their heads out of the shadows to merge openly Religious Right politics with Dominionist theology. Among them are the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins at its center, Lou Engle, founder and president of the Call to Conscience, Rick Joyner of the Oak Initiative, Jerry Boykin, Janet Porter, and Frank Turek. According to Right Wing Watch, Joyner, Boykin, Turek and Perkins have already joined in calling for Christians become more involved in (read: take over all levels of) politics. They claim biblical commands to recover “all that we’ve lost…in a fellowship called 300…We have enough people… This country has a Judeo-Christian heritage … that is being robbed from us… We are retreating no further.”
The likes of Reps. Michele Bachman (R-MN), Randy Forbes (R-VA), Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), Gov. Sam Brownback (R-KS) have joined for events with open Dominionists Lou Engle (The Call, International House of Prayer), Tony Perkins (Family Research Council), Jim Garlow (Skyline Church pastor) and Harry Jackson (High Impact Leadership Council) in December 2009 for a “prayercast” seeking supernatural intervention, as organized by the Family Research Council, against passage of the Affordable Healthcare Act. Many among this group were speakers at Rick Perry’s The Response gathering last weekend. Huckabee, who would force Americans to listen to historical revisionist David Barton at gunpoint, first embraced Dominionists and then backed off when he got some heat for it.
These people aren’t messing around. They won’t be happy until they’ve “returned” to a feudal holy theocracy where everyone is forced to at least pretend to agree with their delusions of the supernatural and their attendant superiority. You have seen relatively minor examples documented above how these people will create whichever narrative they wish to force false equivalencies upon fabricated issues injected into the public square. They have advanced by bullying the most vulnerable, marginalized groups such as immigrants, (poor) women and pseudo-Americans such as liberals, apostates, blasphemers, Muslims and any other non-apostolic/non-evangelical believers/dissidents/non-believers, non-English speaking naturalized immigrants, and everybody else they say are unworthy of the benefits of living in America. They currently focus especially on (inherently corrupt and evil, undeserving, abominable, unsympathetic and just plain ickey) gay Americans to stifle diversity, eliminate equity and fairness and crush dissent. These are true believers who ignore history, dismiss reality and actively seek to undermine the Constitution whenever and wherever it’s convenient. They are organized and are rallying to create a theocratic Dominion. They actively collude with politicians and corporations to hoard money, amass influence over the populace and grab power. They have corporate backing and deep pockets. They must be called out and exposed at every turn. What they’re not telling you is that you would be left without a choice: Rightwash.
©Nathan Garcia 2011 All International Rights Reserved.
Furtherreading:
Roads of Deception: The Religious Right’s War of Lies on Gay America
Groups Cook the Books on Gay Domestic Violence
JONAH – Another ex-gay group pushing bad science
Homophobic ‘researcher’ Paul Cameron in all of his repulsive glory
Top six religious right distortion techniques used to defame the lgbt community
The ‘Complete’ Words of love?
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