Repeating a Falsehood Doesn’t Make It True

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47 Comments for “Repeating a Falsehood Doesn’t Make It True”

  1. posted by rusty on

    Here are some of the statements and positions Pence had has related to LGBT issues:

    He said gay couples signaled ‘societal collapse’

    In 2006, as head of the Republican Study Committee, a group of the 100 most-conservative House members, Pence rose in support of a constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage as between a man and a woman. Citing a Harvard researcher, Pence said in his speech, “societal collapse was always brought about following an advent of the deterioration of marriage and family.” Pence also called being gay a choice and said keeping gays from marrying was not discrimination, but an enforcement of “God’s idea.”

  2. posted by rusty on

    “To have somebody leading the delegation that’s directly attacked the LGBTQ community, and a Cabinet in general that just sort of stands against us and has tried to do things to set us back, it just seems like a bad fit.”

    The Trump administration has faced criticism for anti-LGBTQ policies, like President Trump’s attempt to block transgender people from enlisting in the military. The Justice Department also reversed a policy on transgender employee protections.

    Pence has long clashed with the LGBTQ community. As governor of Indiana, he signed a religious freedom law that was criticized as a pathway to legal anti-LGBTQ discrimination, and as a congressman, Pence supported a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between one man and one woman.

    http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/372529-gay-olympian-pence-is-a-bad-fit-to-lead-us-delegation

    • posted by Jorge on

      All of which is an excellent exposition of why it’s a REALLY bad idea to lie about Mike Pence’s record.

      I think Mr. Rippon owes the Vice Presidence an apology.

    • posted by Matthew on

      It is hypocritical to criticize Mike Pence out of one side of your mouth while saying el-jibbity out of the other side. Trans is anti-gay conversion therapy, too.

  3. posted by JohnInCA on

    The whole gay conversion thing has dogged Pence for years. He’s had plenty of opportunities to deny it.

    Now before anyone says it, yes, normally a lack of a denial is not the same as a confirmation. But when something has been credibly dogging you for close to two decades, through elections for three different positions, and made national news multiple times, the lack of denial is clearly a calculated move.

    So at best you can argue that while he doesn’t personally support conversion therapy, he finds political gains in letting folks think he does.

    And if Pence is okay with his evangelical supporters thinking he does, then he should be okay with his LGBT detractors thinking he does too.

    Or to put it in other words: Mr. Miller, you care far more about Pence’s honor then he does. It’s not persuasive.

    • posted by Jorge on

      The whole gay conversion thing has dogged Pence for years. He’s had plenty of opportunities to deny it.

      I fail to see how is the accused’s responsibility to deny something that the accuser fails to prove. It is the accuser who bears the guilt.

      • posted by JohnInCA on

        Please see paragraphs two and three where I clearly address your concern.

        • posted by Jorge on

          Clearly, maybe. Convincingly, no.

          And as an aside, I’ll call out that word “credibly” in your post as little more a carefully crafted load of BS. There is nothing credible about the accusation–if it were then the burden of proof would switch. Not before.

          To address your argument, what impacts one person publicly has an impact not just on that person, but it may encourage or discourage the actions of others who witness the event. It may be well and convenient for someone as powerful as the Vice President to take the high road, but for those who are less powerful and self-assured, that does not mean the rest of us should take leave of our senses.

          So I think there is some value to honesty. Mr. Rippon is either a deceiver or a fool, and his actions deserve little better than ridicule.

    • posted by Matthew on

      Transcultism is gay conversion therapy for the left and you are complicit in gay erasure if you support it.

      I warned everyone who would listen that when fascism came to this country, it would be from more than one side. You ignored me, projected your prejudices and personality problems onto me, and kept on pushing the q-word and el-jibbity word salad crap onto gay youth. Now teenage lesbians are cutting off their breasts and extremely-likely-to-be-gay boys are being medicalized younger and younger for wanting to play around in mommy’s closet. And it is the left that normalized it with their support-everything-or-you’re-a-bigot mentality. No, I think mature, sane, and intelligent people can support the legitimacy of civil rights movements based on immutable characteristics such as race, sex, and sexual orientation, without supporting this. Even the inventor of the English word “transsexual,” David Oliver Cauldwell, did.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Oliver_Cauldwell

      Tl;dr: JUST SAY GAY.

  4. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Actually, Pence never endorsed conversion therapy, as the skater, echoing LGBT left activists, claims.

    From Snopes:

    The allegation dates back to 2000, when Pence was running for Congress. His campaign web site at the time touted his call to add a stipulation to the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act, a 1990 law providing funding for HIV/AIDS treatment for patients living with the disease lacking either the income or the necessary insurance to pay for it on their own:

    Congress should support the reauthorization of the Ryan White Care Act only after completion of an audit to ensure that federal dollars were no longer being given to organizations that celebrate and encourage the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus. Resources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.

    Although he didn’t say so outright, the position has been widely interpreted as signaling Pence’s support for “gay conversion” therapy, which seeks to “cure” patients of being attracted to members of the same sex.

    The 2000 statement does not explicitly mention conversion therapy, but it does not exclude conversion therapy, either. The statement could refer to government-funded efforts to promote abstinence or promote condom use and other “safter sex” practices as a way of reducing HIV/AIDS risk, or it could refer to conversion therapy.

    The question of whether the Vice President “endorsed conversion therapy” or not depends of how the 2000 statement is interpreted. Stephen has no more basis on which to conclude that the Vice President didn’t endorse conversion therapy than Rippon does to conclude that the Vice President did endorse conversion therapy. It is as likely that Stephen’s statement is a “falsehood” as that Rippon’s statement is a “falsehood”.

    If the Vice President is or was concerned about the allegation that the 2000 statement was made in support of conversion therapy and that he supports or supported conversion therapy, the remedy is both simple and obvious: Issue a statement that he does not support conversion therapy and that the 2000 statement (“Resources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.”) referred to whatever else it referred to.

    The Vice President has had 18 years in which to correct the record. He has not done so, for whatever reason. He could do so today. He should do so today. A clear statement would end the controversy that has existed for almost two decades and remove a cloud from his record.

  5. posted by MR Bill on

    From the New York Times: “Mr. Lotter said the vice president-elect had been calling for federal funds to “be directed to groups that promoted safe sexual practices” during his 2000 congressional campaign, and he said it was a “mischaracterization” to see the statement as a reference to conversion therapy.

    But he declined to explain which organizations Mr. Pence had wanted to lose their federal funding or what Mr. Pence meant when he referred to groups that “celebrate and encourage” activity that spreads H.I.V. Gay and transgender groups see that language as a reference to their community.

    “That is very specific language — some might call it a dog whistle — that has been used for decades to very thinly cloak deeply homophobic beliefs,” Ms. Carey said. “Particularly the phrase ‘seeking to change their sexual behavior,’ to me, is code for conversion therapy.” and “The Republican Party and Conversion Therapy

    Conversion therapy was tacitly endorsed in the Republican Party platform for the first time this year in a line that supported the “right of parents to determine the proper medical treatment and therapy for their minor children.”

    Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican Party and the incoming White House chief of staff, told reporters that the language did not refer to conversion therapy, but gay and transgender groups did not believe him.

    Gregory T. Angelo, the president of the Log Cabin Republicans, an L.G.B.T. conservative group, said in an interview the nod to conversion therapy was included at the urging of Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, which has been called an anti-L.G.B.T. extremist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.”
    https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/30/us/politics/mike-pence-and-conversion-therapy-a-history.html

    • posted by Matthew on

      And that’s why I won’t give one red penny to Log Cabin: they refuse to say gay.

      Where is the actually Gay Gay Republican group?

  6. posted by MR Bill on

    It’s sort of ‘If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas’: Prince been the running buddy and political representative of the worst of antiGLBT folks for years. His actions have worked against GLBT equality. We don’t need to prove a thing.
    And the weaseling refuge into “he didn’t mean it like that” is contemptible…

  7. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    And the weaseling refuge into “he didn’t mean it like that” is contemptible …

    Yes, it is. The 2000 statement was a dog whistle, loud and clear to the conservative Christian base.

    If “he didn’t mean it like that …” he’s had 18 years to explain what he did mean, and hasn’t.

    Next thing you know, Stephen will be trying to sell Pence as “gay supportive”.

    • posted by Matthew on

      Meanwhile, Canada’s Eric Radford is the real first openly gay man to win a figure skating medal, and he’s much less of an embarrassing showoff.

  8. posted by Lori Heine on

    It was indeed a dog whistle. Pence is a typical politician. He cares about power, and little else. Had he the courage of any genuine “religious” convictions, he would certainly have issued a definitive statement long ago to clear up any confusion.

    He didn’t, because confusion borne of obfuscation is the politician’s friend.

    Politicians, with very little exception, are slimy and reprehensible excuses for human beings. It doesn’t matter which party they represent. Their real religion is power–and power alone. Truth–the primary concern of a genuine Christian–is no concern of theirs.

    I can completely understand why an Olympic athlete would refuse to meet with a creep like Mike Pence. The problem is that the media–which cheers him on in this instance–is constantly beating the drum that we SHOULD trust politicians on the other team.

    We can’t trust them, either. Both IGF and its opponents are right. Yet both are also absolutely wrong.

    • posted by Matthew on

      I would meet with Mike Pence only after he converted to Judaism. If he loves Jesus so much, he should actually be Jewish, like Jesus would have been if he had actually been real.

  9. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Gus Kenworthy, the freeskier, put it better, I think, by framing the issue more generally: “To have somebody leading the delegation that’s directly attacked the LGBTQ community, and a Cabinet in general that just sort of stands against us and has tried to do things to set us back, it just seems like a bad fit.”

    • posted by Matthew on

      Using the phrase “LGBTQ community” instead of saying gay is an act of divide-and-conquer. Trans is a choice. Gay isn’t.

      Adam and Gus are the true Uncle Toms, and so is everyone who refuses to JUST. SAY. GAY.

      • posted by Doug on

        Being transgendered is no more a choice than being gay. Ignorance is a choice.

        • posted by Matthew on

          Trans is a choice: a choice to deliberately ignore the immutable reality of physical sex. Race, sex, and sexual orientation are immutable characteristics that deserve legal protection. Trans is not an immutable characteristic, but a sexist, homophobic cult of self-mutilation rooted in sexual stereotypes.

          Stop projecting your ignorance and bigotry onto those who can see the emperor’s lack of clothes.

        • posted by Matthew on

          Try being openly gay in Iran, Syria, and Pakistan and see what your choices are: trans or death (click on my name for the story). There is nothing “progressive” about the transcult or any kind of jenn-durr propaganda in any way, shape, or form. Gays need to oppose it because it can and has been used as a form of ex-gay therapy.

  10. posted by Doug on

    It takes a lot of hutzpah to accuse the ‘left’ of using the ‘rights’ favorite rhetorical device, Repeating a Falsehood To Make It True, used to demonize the LGBT community for decades. The ‘right’ has repeated lie after lie after lie after lie about LGBT community. The bottom line is Mike Pence is an anti-gay bigot. Period, end of story.

    • posted by Matthew on

      And so are you for perpetuating the lie of el-jibbity.

  11. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    As the games commence, the Vice President’s scowls become irrelevant.

    • posted by Matthew on

      I bet Pence also uses the q-word under his breath.

  12. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Mr. Rippon is either a deceiver or a fool, and his actions deserve little better than ridicule.

    Perhaps. What do you think that the Vice President was referring to in the 2000 statement:

    Congress should support the reauthorization of the Ryan White Care Act only after completion of an audit to ensure that federal dollars were no longer being given to organizations that celebrate and encourage the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus. Resources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.

    What institutions were those, and what assistance did they provide to those seeking to change their sexual behavior?

    In the period in question (1995-2000) a significant number of organizations promoted “safer sex” practices (such invariable condom use for anal sex), and I suppose a change from bareback to sheathed constitutes a change in sexual behavior. I wonder, though, whether the Vice President, a rock-solid conservative Christian with a long record of religious objection to any male-male sexual gratification, had that change in mind, particularly since conservative Christian organizations typically opposed government funding of “safer sex” programs on the grounds that “safer sex” promoted male-male sex.

    So I don’t think the Vice President’s statement referred to government funding of “safer sex” programs.

    I suppose that the Vice President could have been referring to organizations that promoted total abstinence, but few such organizations existed at the time other than churches, and the government didn’t start funding churches directly until the Bush administration instituted the faith-based initiative program a few years after the 2000 statement.

    So I don’t think that the Vice President had that in mind. If is more plausible than support of “safer sex” funding, but not a lot more plausible.

    So, if he wasn’t referring to those things, what is left?

    The only other “change in behavior” organizations that existed in any number during the period in question were organizations promoting/providing conversion therapy. At the time, conversion therapy had not yet be discredited, and many religious conservatives latched onto the bandwagon.

    So my guess is, as I noted above, that the Vice President was dog whistling to those conservatives about conversion therapy. I could be wrong about that, of course, because the 2000 statement is ambiguous, but it seems to me to be the most plausible explanation for the statement.

    But what do you think the Vice President meant? What organizations do you think he was referring to? You obviously feel very strong about this (“Mr. Rippon is either a deceiver or a fool, and his actions deserve little better than ridicule.) and I’m curious about what you think and why you think it. If you are going to call a man a liar, you have an obligation to explain why.

    • posted by Jorge on

      Perhaps. What do you think that the Vice President was referring to in the 2000 statement:

      Abstinence.

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      It isn’t as if everyone with half a brain didn’t already know that the Vice President thinks that gays shouldn’t have sex, given his religious views, so I wonder what was so horrible about making a statement supporting government-funded abstinence programs that the Vice President has had to keep secret what he meant by the 2000 statement for 18 years.

      In any event, your guess is as good as mine, I guess, since the Vice President seems determined not to enlighten us.

      • posted by Matthew on

        I think ONLY gays should be allowed to have sex.

  13. posted by MR Bill on

    Honi soit qui mal y Pence…

  14. posted by MR Bill on

    A responsible opposing viewpoint: ““Andrew Sullivan’s latest missive in New York Magazine opining on how transgender people are ruining everything for good gays like himself is part of the ongoing effort by conservative LGB people to get LGBT organizations to abandon transgender people and the issues affecting them.
    In the process of trying to make his case that we’d be so much better off as a movement if everyone looked and sounded exactly the way society expects us to, he repeatedly betrays a blindness towards transgender issues and a profound lack of analytical rigor.
    First among Sullivan’s errors is his interpretation of the fourth annual Harris poll on LGBT acceptance in the United States. This poll showed that acceptance dropped for the first time in 2017. There are many possible explanations for this.
    It could be a statistical “hiccup” or outlier rather than a trend. Indeed, a single result is by definition not a trend. Support for marriage equality did not go up every year, yet we now know what the long-term direction of popular opinion was.“ https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2018/01/andrew-sullivans-screed-lgbt-movement-everything-thats-wrong-good-gays/

    • posted by Matthew on

      Sullivan is right about the trans-parasites. They have got to go. They are no allies. Allies don’t murder black lesbian families. Allies don’t advocate the mutilation of children and teenagers for rejecting sexual stereotypes.

  15. posted by Jorge on

    Man, oh, man.

    Generations X and Y of the Trumpkin gang (Donald Trump Jr. and Bristol Palin) sure have their claws out for Mr. Rippon, and they took their sweet time taking them out, too. I don’t approve. When the Vice President took the high road, it lifted the discourse. Why are they undermining that?

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      Generations X and Y of the Trumpkin gang (Donald Trump Jr. and Bristol Palin) sure have their claws out for Mr. Rippon, and they took their sweet time taking them out, too. I don’t approve. When the Vice President took the high road, it lifted the discourse. Why are they undermining that?

      Because they can’t stand the fact that a worthless little faggot is speaking out about the Kool-Aid. It’s simple enough.

      Its going to get worse shortly, because Rippon is doing well and has become something of an Olympics darling, and the other one, Gus Kenworthy, is speaking out, too, and apparently plans to boycott the Olympic TrumpFest at the White House:

      No. I mean, when we have people elected into office that believe in conversion therapy and are trying to strip trans rights in the military, and do these things that are directly attacking the LGBT community, I have no patience. I am so proud to be from the US, and to be from a country where you are able to voice your political opinions and stand up for what you believe in, and I think that when you have a platform, you have to use it, especially when you feel strongly about something.

      The full interview is worth a listen, because Kenworthy talks about the difficulties of coming out and the importance of gay athletes being out to kids struggling for acceptance.

      • posted by Jorge on

        The full interview is worth a listen

        Well I’m glad one of us will listen to it and apply its lessons toward reasonable and wise ends because as far as I’m concerned that little exposition you quoted is worth less than electronic toilet paper. I happen to think when someone has a platform, he has a responsibility not to make a fool of himself by mixing up rumors and grievances, or at least act with a bit of humility. Strong feelings are a legitimate excuse for stupidity, but only if you recognize the crap that comes out of your mouth for what it is.

      • posted by Tom Scharbach on

        I happen to think when someone has a platform, he has a responsibility not to make a fool of himself by mixing up rumors and grievances, or at least act with a bit of humility.

        You might want to address this comment to the President. I see that he’s attacking Mueller again this afternoon.

        The Vice President’s 2000 statement (“Resources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.“) is not a rumor. It is a fact. The only question is what the Vice President meant by the statement. It wouldn’t hurt him to clarify the statement, even after an 18 year lapse.

        • posted by Jorge on

          You might want to address this comment to the President. I see that he’s attacking Mueller again this afternoon.

          You would not believe how gratifying it is for someone who loves hearing himself talk about the brain-dead news of the day to have Donald Trump as the current president.

          The only question is what the Vice President meant by the statement. It wouldn’t hurt him to clarify the statement, even after an 18 year lapse.

          It certainly wouldn’t hurt to ask him, rather than by making far-fetched assumptions. That he is not asked is something of a puzzle, a contradiction, if you will. And the simplest way to resolve this contradiction for me is to conclude that the people who are in the best position to ask have concluded they are better served by not asking, and telling a story that sounds good instead.

          There isn’t quite enough evidence for me to judge that Adam Rippon declining the Vice President’s invitation to have a conversation where he could get that kind of clarity directly means that he too is one of the liars (now if Pence had issued the invitation after he had finished competition), but it’s a near thing.

        • posted by Tom Scharbach on

          It certainly wouldn’t hurt to ask him, rather than by making far-fetched assumptions. That he is not asked is something of a puzzle, a contradiction, if you will.

          Oh for Christ’s sake, Jorge. The press has been asking him and his office about it for 18 years.

  16. posted by MR Bill on

    I have perhaps mentioned being in a relationship for some years with a self-described libertarian, the guy who informed me we didn’t have a relationship, and then told me he was planning a dinner party he needed my help with. He was, in fact a bog standard and money loving Oog Cabin Republican with a tast (and ultimately a jones) for cocaine.He once got furious with me suggesting Trans was a legitimate category and field for rights activism..”I in no way resemble those freaks!””Dude, the haters can’t tell the difference between a macho cuss like you and RuPaul..you’ll not get your rights without them having their rights.”
    Thus, the Trump Administration: The Trump administration soon after taking office also moved to change the agency’s LGBT-related health data collection, a window into health status and discrimination. Last month it established a new religious liberty division to defend health workers who have religious objections to treating LGBT patients.

    The changes at the Department of Health and Human Services represent “rapid destruction of so much of the progress on LGBT health,” said Kellan Baker, a researcher at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health who worked with HHS on LGBT issues for nearly a decade. “It’s only a matter of time before all the gains made under the Obama administration are reversed under the Trump administration, for purposes that have nothing to do with public health and have everything to do with politics.”

    The policy reversals also come after President Donald Trump repeatedly pledged during his campaign that he would support LGBT causes. “Thank you to the LGBT community!” Trump tweeted in June 2016. “I will fight for you while Hillary brings in more people that will threaten your freedoms and beliefs.” https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/19/trump-lgbt-rights-discrimination-353774?cid=apn

    • posted by Matthew on

      “Dude, the haters can’t tell the difference between a macho cuss like you and RuPaul..you’ll not get your rights without them having their rights.””

      In other words, support male genital mutilation or be doomed to second-class citizenship. Not too far removed from Iran, where your options are trans or die.

      With or without drugs, your friend was and is right.

  17. posted by MR Bill on

    Grr..y’all need an edit function, and I need a proof reader. “Log Cabin”, not Oog Cabin

    • posted by Jorge on

      “Log Cabin”, not Oog Cabin

      Hey, if the shoe fits 😀

      “It’s only a matter of time before all the gains made under the Obama administration for purposes that have nothing to do with public health and have everything to do with politics are reversed under the Trump administration.”

      Now that sounds a little more like it.

      Look, funny people, the Obama administration overreached in just about every domestic policy area for political purposes, and it was drop dead obvious to everyone right of left. With the marked exception of health care reform, the Obama administration didn’t much in the way of public relations campaigning in explaining why this or that act of taking sides benefited the aggregate rather than a partisan slice of the country. That’s because it didn’t have to. The majority of progressive changes under the Obama administration were carried out by executive policy.

      So it is to me not very surprising when the following administration takes the position of the Obama administration–that these were executive decisions made for purely partisan political reasons–and runs with it. You don’t like it? Maybe next time elect a Democrat because of how smart and honorable he or she is instead of how many faction boxes or astronomical signs you check off.

      • posted by Matthew on

        “So it is to me not very surprising when the following administration takes the position of the Obama administration–that these were executive decisions made for purely partisan political reasons–and runs with it. You don’t like it? Maybe next time elect a Democrat because of how smart and honorable he or she is instead of how many faction boxes or astronomical signs you check off.”

        If they did that, then they wouldn’t be Democrats in the first place.

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