NOM’s Robert George “OK” With Beating-the-Gay Out of Young LGBTers
November 18, 2012
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NOM’s Robert George “OK” With Beating-the-Gay Out of Young LGBTers
By: Scott Rose Thursday April 19, 2012 6:31 PM
The notorious gay-bashing bigot Pastor Ken Hutcherson is in league with NOM in Washington State, spreading anti-gay lies, attempting to strip gay human beings of rights, and inciting to anti-gay violence.
Hutcherson recently told KCTS television that just as two parents with belts can beat the criminal gene out of their offspring, “discipline . . . Removes the gay gene.”
For a pastor to promote domestic violence is horrifying. When you consider how hard some people work trying to stop domestic violence, and to attempt against the odds somehow to restore the shattered lives of the victims, many of whom suffer from severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, it is surreal that a hate-mongering pastor would, on television, promote domestic violence.
Hutcherson smiles like the smug bigot he is when he is prescribing anti-gay domestic violence. But consider this; In 2005, the three-year-old Ronnie Paris, Jr.’s father beat him to death because he believed he was going to turn out gay.
Domestic violence anti-gay murder is only one negative possible result of NOM’s associate Hutcherson’s public promotion of domestic violence against gay family members.
Do not fail to notice the sheer obnoxious idiocy of Hutcherson’s reasoning. In the interview — (his segment begins at about the 37 minute mark) — Hutcherson first says that there is no proof that gay people are born gay, but then he instructs parents to remove “the gay gene” by beating homosexual offspring with belts.
Domestic violence is not acceptable. Beating a gay person does not remove “the gay gene” from them, as Hutcherson fraudulently and hatefully alleges.
And, of course, when school-age anti-gay bullies hear an adult saying that it is possible to beat “the gay gene” out of somebody, those anti-gay bullies are motivated to carry out violent attacks against students actually gay and/or perceived to be gay.
I spoke with Ken Hutcherson for this article. He started by alleging that the TV interview had been spliced, to make it appear he was saying things he had not actually said. However, in alleging that, he was being duplicitous. The grotesque anti-gay bigot is so blinded by his gay-bashing ignorance, that he is not even able to understand how ignorant he is. He plainly feels fully justified in his bullying non-acceptance of gay human beings. He re-iterated his statements made in the TV interview, likening criminals and gay people. I attempted to get a clear statement from him that he does not advocate violence against gay people. At one point, he said “You can talk with any of my children. They may have gotten little raps from a belt, but they were never beaten; it was just to keep them in line. Now, that does not mean that they can not choose for themselves. If they want to choose the homosexual lifestyle, they can do that, they can choose unbiblically, but they will not be welcome in our house, because we do not accept sin in our home.” I then explained to Hutcherson that he was reinforcing, not lessening the impression that he thought that threats of violence, and/or actual violence against gay people are acceptable. I told him that it is psychological violence for a parent to reject a gay child, and that to intensify the psychological anti-gay violence with physical violence is barbaric. I told him that such brutal parental rejections explain disproportionate homelessness among gay youth. Hutcherson then launched into a ludicrous off-topic diatribe about how he has gay friends, and how no church in the country has as many people who have “left the homosexual lifestyle” as his. I told him that I had heard quite enough. I had received confirmation that he does indeed think that you can and should hit a gay child with a belt, and that by hitting the child with a belt, to reinforce the psychological aspects of anti-gay domestic violence, the child won’t be gay.
This sadistic bigot is a monster and a pig, promoting anti-gay domestic violence. He meant exactly what he said during the television interview; nobody had spliced his gay-bashing meaning into it. Let us spell out, for clarification, what a gay child in Hutcherson’s house would experience. The sexual minority child would understand that the parents considered him to be a “sinner” and like a criminal, because of the way in which s/he was different. The child would understand that any evidence that they were a member of a sexual minority could and indeed, would result in psychological and then physical violence, and that if the physical violence did not prevent them from somehow again manifesting that they were a member of a sexual minority, they would be tossed out of the house, no matter their age or ability to survive, to have housing and food. An eventual gay child in the Hutcherson house would be forced to try to survive in a reign of domestic terror, with a bullying, tyrannical theocrat father alleging celestial authority for keeping the child living in that state of fear, only because s/he was a sexual minority. As with all forms of domestic violence, anti-gay domestic violence is not love; it is a crime. An abuser’s justifications — (God said I should psychologically and physically abuse my lesbian daughter) — and victim blaming (You as a lesbian are like a criminal, therefore, you deserve for your father to abuse you) — while characteristic of abusers, are in themselves, part and parcel of the abuse, and never valid.
Because the National Organization for Marriage is collaborating with Hutcherson in Washington State, and frequently posts his gay-bashing statements approvingly on NOM’s blog, NOM, if it will not condemn his calls for domestic violence against LGBTers, is complicit in those calls for domestic violence.
I requested comment from NOM’s Founder, Chairman Emeritus, and mastermind the Princeton Professor Robert George. I received no reply. The e-mail was copied to NOM’s Maggie Gallagher, Brian Brown and John Eastman. Additionally, it was copied to Princeton President Shirley M. Tilghman, who permits George to publish gay-bashing lies with the Princeton name attached, even though doing so violates Princeton’s Code of Conduct.
It is crucial to understand that, definitively; 1) the gay-bashing religious right, and 2) the Republican establishment are inseparable powers.
Romney signed Robert George’s NOM’s anti-gay pledge. George wrote a Supreme Court brief saying that gays should be thrown in jail for their intimacy. George also is on the Board of the Family Research Council, an SPLC-certified anti-gay hate group. When a congressman proposed a resolution against the “Kill the gays” law in Uganda, Robert George’s FRC spent $25,000 lobbying against the resolution, on the grounds it constituted “pro-homosexual promotion.” NOM sponsors anti-gay hate rallies, where NOM-approved speakers tell mobs that homosexuals are “worthy to death.” George’s NOM is pushing a Starbucks boycott in the Middle East, fanning hostilities against gay human beings there with no regard for their safety.
So it is hardly surprising that NOM’s Robert George will not denounce Pastor Ken Hutcherson for promoting anti-gay domestic violence.
But it should be out there — as a topic of consideration — that NOM’s Robert George is OK with, not just praying away the gay, but additionally, with beating away the gay. If George wants to clarify his position on anti-gay domestic violence, he knows how he can e-mail this reporter.
John Boehner recently appointed NOM’s Robert George to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. I interpret that appointment as Boehner’s signal of intent to expedite the NOM pledge, should Romney win, and to devastate LGBT rights worldwide. On Bush’s watch, in 2007, Hutcherson attended an anti-gay-rights conference in Latvia.
No child deserves to be beaten — by their own parents — because they are gay. Hutcherson is making a direct incitement to anti-gay violence. In his hateful fatuousness, he says that he was born black, but gay people were not born gay. What he might consider, is that black people have been beaten only because they were black, and he now is instructing parents to beat their children only because they are gay. What Hutcherson is saying is a lie. No matter how much a parent might beat a gay child, their gay child will still be gay. The gay child, beaten, might live in fear, and never talk about the reality of their orientation; but a gay child absolutely can not be made heterosexual through a beating.It is not OK for parents to beat gay children.
It is not OK for Romney and Boehner to be politically and materially supporting an anti-gay movement whose leader, Robert George, is directly allied with a major, appallingly ignorant anti-gay bigot who promotes anti-gay domestic violence.
