PFOX, (Parents and Friends of eX-Gays), would have you believe it's different from P-FLAG, (Parents and Friends of Gays), in that PFOX supports people who are "struggling with homosexuality" and P-FLAG does not.  But that's not it. 

Here's the difference:

Anti-Gay Distortions of Research

Take a look at this story at OneNewsNow, which begins:

Quoting a recent study, Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays (PFOX) is warning of the increased risk of suicide that is linked with young people who identify themselves as homosexuals before achieving full maturity -- a process encouraged by many homosexual high school clubs.

The study in question, as it turns out, is a seventeen year old work published in the Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, back in June 1991.  Not exactly recent...but never mind.  What PFOX is saying there is that supporting gay teens as they come out to themselves puts them at risk of suicide.  Their solution?   

Schools should not be encouraging teens to self-identify as gays, bisexuals or transgendered persons before they have matured. Sexual attractions are fluid and do not take on permanence until early adulthood. Rather than affirming teenagers as 'gay' through self-labeling, educators should affirm them as people worthy of respect and encourage teens to wait until adulthood before making choices about their sexuality. If teens are encouraged to believe that they are permanently 'gay' before they have had a chance to reach adulthood, their life choices are severely restricted and can result in depression.

So says PFOX Executive Director Regina Griggs.  Note the doublespeak there about affirming them as "people worthy of respect".  But how much respect is it, to tell a kid gay kid they don't have to be gay if they don't want to?  Look again, at what came slyly out of the other side of her mouth there...

Sexual attractions are fluid and do not take on permanence until early adulthood.

Thats religious rightspeak for There Is No Such Thing As A Homosexual.  Don't believe me?  Look again...

If teens are encouraged to believe that they are permanently 'gay' before they have had a chance to reach adulthood, their life choices are severely restricted and can result in depression. 

Permanently 'gay'.  Note both the quotes around the word gay and the word permanently preceding it.  You don't have to be gay if you don't want to.  Change is possible.  This is what PFOX wants teachers to tell the gay kids that come out to them, and/or to their peers.  Griggs is sliding that under the radar their, in a cotton candy cloud of PFAUX respect.  But in today's hostile school environment, where the word Gay has itself become a generic put-down among school kids, a kid who comes out, almost certainly already knows how impossible change actually is for them.

And that has consequences.

But leaving aside the fact that a 17 year old study was cited as "recent" and was cited as evidence against the existence of GSA clubs, which didn't exist at the time of the study, this argument also makes a causal claim that can't be justified by the study itself (see the full text of the study here).

First of all, they make no distinction at all between correlation and causation. If a higher percentage of those who self-identify as gay or bisexual early attempt suicide compared to those who self-identify later, is that a causal relationship or might both factors be effects of some other cause? Griggs makes no attempt to analyze this, it is enough for her that there is a correlation.

It never occurs to Griggs that those who attempt suicide soon after self-identifying as gay do so because that is when they first become aware that their identity is in such stark conflict with societal expectations. As any gay person can tell you, the initial coming out period is the most difficult because it often leads to serious conflicts with friends and family (and that was even more true in 1991 than it is today). She also ignores all of the other far more important risk factors that are obviously more likely to be causal. The study notes:

In 44% of cases, subjects attributed suicide attempts to "family problems," including conflict with family members and parents' marital discord, divorce, or alcoholism. One third of attempts were related to personal or interpersonal turmoil regarding homosexuality. Almost one third of subjects made their first suicide attempt in the same year that they identified themselves as bisexual or homosexual. Overall, three fourths of all first attempts temporally followed self-labeling. Other common precipitants were depression (30%), conflict with peers (22%), problems in a romantic relationship (19%), and dysphoria associated with personal substance abuse (15%).

There are far more serious risk factors for suicide in the study, all of which are ignored by Griggs and PFOX. For instance, 61% of those who attempt suicide were sexually abused, while only 29% of those who did not attempt suicide were sexually abused. There's an obvious causal factor. Those who attempted suicide also reported much higher rates of friendship loss due to being gay, drug use and having been arrested. Again, these are far more rationally viewed as causal factors in suicide than the age at which one self-identifies. Griggs ignores all of this because it doesn't fit her ideological preferences.

But to call it 'ideological' ennobles it.  This isn't ideology, it's hate.  A hate so bottomless it will cheerfully let children kill themselves rather then allow them to have the support they need at that critical moment in their lives.  What Griggs is saying there to kids, stripped of its PFAUX respect, is that thinking you are gay will make you kill yourself.  That is, seriously, the message they want kids who are just coming into puberty and feeling same sex desire for the first time in their lives to hear, and internalize.  These feelings are going to make me kill myself.  And when they can't stop themselves from having those feelings, feelings they've never had before, feelings that seem to come out of nowhere whenever an attractive classmate walks by, feelings that they have no control over whatsoever, what do you think is going to happen?

Here's what: Griggs will cheerfully blame those of us who want gay kids to feel good about themselves when those kids take Griggs message, that thinking you are gay makes you want to kill yourself, to heart and actually do it. 

And there is the essential difference between P-FLAG and PFOX.  One group supports gay people.  The other, ex-gays.  And it doesn't get any more ex then dead.

[Edited a tad for clarity...] 

Explanation Here.

So I'm in Portland for the fifth year in a row at the OSCON Open Source Developer's Conference.  And as in prior years, the Institute has put me up in the DoubleTree just a couple blocks away from the convention center.   That's do-able largely because of the deep discount the hotel gives to OSCON convention attendees. 

The rooms I've had have ranged widely from the small to the large.  Last year they put me in a really nice deluxe room.  This year it's one of their smallest.  What's going on I found out, is that the hotel basically fills in the blanks with conference goers.  We get, at a very nice rate, whatever the hotel couldn't book at the regular rate.  And I am not complaining.

DoubleTree beds are decadent.  I'll reliably stay at a DoubleTree whenever I can afford it for the bed.  I get, hands down, the best sleep ever on these beds.  The chain has them custom made to their own specs, and you can actually buy one yourself.  Swear to god one of these days I will...but they are not cheap.

It's not just the mattress and box springs, it's a whole system including a cushioned mattress cover, box baffled down blankets and triple sheets plus lovely jumbo down pillows.  I was so looking forward to getting to my hotel after a long day's flight, crammed into a tiny passenger jet seat, and lay down in one of these lovely beds.  It's been two nights of heaven so far.

Every time someone mindlessly parrots the notion that gay people have shorter lifespans then heterosexuals, the religious right gives a nod of thanks to Paul Cameron.  Ever since the Reagan years, Cameron has been chugging out a torrent of bogus research aimed at demonizing gay people in the public mind.  Where Falwell, Dobson and Robertson waved the bible at gay people, and social conservatives waved family values, Cameron became a fountainhead, a one-stop shopping center for anti-gay junk science.  From his often used claim that gay people have shorter lifespans, to his claim that lesbians are more likely to be involved in car accidents, Cameron gave their cheapshit hatreds a gloss of dispassionate science. 

Cameron was eventually thrown out of the American Psychological Association for distorting the work of other legitimate researchers.  But to the anti-gay right, which builds museums to creationism and attacks the teaching of science in schools, real science was always the enemy.  Cameron is gold coin to them.  But in recent years, as more and more of mainstream America learns what a charlatan Cameron is, they've had to take more care not to put Cameron's name in their pamphlets.  Some years ago, William Mr. Book Of Virtues Bennett got caught parroting Cameron's lifespan claim he had to backtrack.  First he claimed someone else had said it too, but when it turned out that person had cited Cameron too, Bennett mumbled something about not trusting that figure anymore and went back to his favorite casino.  I've heard though, that lately Mr. Book Of Virtues has been citing it again.

But in the end, Cameron's biggest contribution to the Kultur Krieg may well be not his bogus statistics, but his method.  Jim Burroway over at Box Turtle Bulletin, has uncovered a new scam by the Family Research Council in their fight to repeal California's same sex marriage law, that has the trademark Cameron technique but apparently was entirely a homegrown effort.

They cite the "Dutch Study" Stanley Kurtz bastardized some years ago for their claim that gay relationships don't last very long and are never monogamous.  Burroway did a wonderful job some time back of debunking this, and all I'll say about that now is that when you look at the data from a study that excludes monogamous couples, don't be surprised when you don't see any monogamy in the data.

But it's the follow-up claim that's interesting here.  FRC is claiming that same sex couples are inherently more violent, more prone to domestic abuse...

The third point the brochure is built on is this:

Intimate partner violence: homosexual and lesbian couples experience by far the highest levels of intimate partner violence compared with married couples as well as cohabiting heterosexual couples. Lesbians, for example, suffer a much higher level of violence than do married women

They base this claim on the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Violence Against Women Survey (PDF: 62 pages/1,475 KB) If you want to see how they construct this particular distortion, I encourage you to download the report yourself and we’ll go through it step by step. Believe me, it’s worth it because this is a classic example.

It is.  You should go read Jim's entire debunking of it to get the whole stinking rotten smell of it.  But I'll give you the executive summary here.  Basically, they took the data for individual victims of domestic violence who were in, or had ever been in, same sex relationships and compared that to the data for victims in opposite sex relationships. But much of the violence against people who were in same sex relationships was committed by an opposite sex partner.  In the case of the men who were or had been in a same sex relationship, almost half of the incidents were attacks on them by wives, former wives or girlfriends.  In the case of the women who had been or were in same sex relationships, as I read the figures, about three out of four incidents were attacks on them by husbands or boyfriends.

Dig it.  The FRC took incidents of straight on gay violence, and included them in its total figure for gay domestic violence.  In point of fact, if you look at the data for Couples, as opposed to individuals, what you find is that a gay man is statistically safer living with a male partner, then a heterosexual woman is living with a male partner. 

This is what passes for traditional values over at the Family Research Council.  If there is a devil in Hell below, then he is smiling proudly at the runt at FRC who came up with that one.  And Paul Cameron is probably smiling proudly too.  He taught them how.

One thing you tend to forget about when you take a yearly cross-country road trip is jet lag.

(It's What time???)

As it turns out, turbulence while taking off is even more nerve wracking then turbulence while landing.

(Safely in Portland)

...and the OSCON Open Source Developer's Conference therein.   This'll be my fifth year at this particular conference and I really enjoy the company of so many fellow computer revolutionaries.   My all time favorite T-Shirt slogan is from last year's:  In A World Without Fences, Who Needs Gates?

I'm flying out from Baltimore first thing tomorrow, with neighbors and Brinks looking after Casa del Garrett while I'm gone.  And I'll be real busy at the conference so posting may be a tad infrequent until I get back.  I'll try to post some photos of the scenery out there when I can.  Some of it is just lovely.  And Portland's not bad either...

This isn't your grandfather's war soldier...

Terrorism Funds May Let Brass Fly in Style
Luxury Pods for Air Force Debated

The Air Force's top leadership sought for three years to spend counterterrorism funds on "comfort capsules" to be installed on military planes that ferry senior officers and civilian leaders around the world, with at least four top generals involved in design details such as the color of the capsules' carpet and leather chairs, according to internal e-mails and budget documents.

Production of the first capsule -- consisting of two sealed rooms that can fit into the fuselage of a large military aircraft -- has already begun.

Air Force officials say the government needs the new capsules to ensure that leaders can talk, work and rest comfortably in the air. But the top brass's preoccupation with creating new luxury in wartime has alienated lower-ranking Air Force officers familiar with the effort, as well as congressional staff members and a nonprofit group that calls the program a waste of money.

Air Force documents spell out how each of the capsules is to be "aesthetically pleasing and furnished to reflect the rank of the senior leaders using the capsule," with beds, a couch, a table, a 37-inch flat-screen monitor with stereo speakers, and a full-length mirror.

The effort has been slowed, however, by congressional resistance to using counterterrorism funds for the project and by lengthy internal deliberations about a series of demands for modifications by Air Force generals. One request was that the color of the leather for the seats and seat belts in the mobile pallets be changed from brown to Air Force blue and that seat pockets be added; another was that the color of the table's wood be darkened.

These are the guys who are massively against letting gays serve in their military.  Because...you know...that would damage moral and stuff...

When adding a few flowers around the house fails to improve the scenery...

Flowerpot's spontaneous combustion blamed for fire

MENDOTA HEIGHTS, Minn. - Fire investigators said a fire that destroyed a Mendota Heights home last week was caused by a flowerpot. Fire Chief John Maczko said a flowerpot on the home's deck spontaneously combusted.

While rare, spontaneous combustion can happen to pots with the right mixture of soil, moisture and heat.

Homeowner Dan Stoven said it's hard to believe, but said he's just glad his 17-year-old daughter was able to escape when passers-by entered the home to wake her up.

Investigators said the soil was in a plastic pot that had become hot after several days of high temperatures and humidity. It ignited July 8, and wind helped the fire grow and spread to the deck and then to the house.

Next time I go shopping for flowers I need to check their flame retardant rating.

Via Good As You...  It's not that Hollywood can't come up with any new ideas, it's that it would rather not pay for the creative talent to come up with them.  Thus, the "reality" shows.  But on MTV's pioneering Real World the point really was to have a dispassionate camera eye view on how people interact with each other.  Most "reality" made since Real World are really just another kind of game show.  And in fact, Real World has itself added some game show elements in recent years. 

But with TV audiences getting bored with all the "reality" out there, the Networks are trying to revive some actual game shows.  From Good As You I read that they're now making The Newlywed Game once more.  Can you spot the "Heterosexuals Only" sign buried in the game show eligibility rules...?
 

Eligibility Requirements

The following are the eligibility requirements for contestants ("Contestants") on the television show currently entitled "The Newlywed Game" (the "Program"), which is being produced by Manhouse Productions, Inc. (“Producer”). In order to be selected as a Contestant on the Program, and to be eligible for any prize ("Prize"), you must meet the following eligibility requirements:

A. Employees, officers, directors and agents of Manhouse Productions, Inc., Diplomatic, Embassy Row LLC, Sony Pictures Television Inc., Game Show Network, LLC (“GSN”), Liberty Media Corp. and/or of any of their respective licensees, assigns, parents, affiliated and subsidiary companies and the immediate family (spouse, mother, father, sister, brother, daughter or son, regardless of where they live) or members of the same households (whether related or not) of such employees, officers, directors and agents are not eligible to be Contestants on the Program. In addition, any person closely acquainted with any person connected with the production or administration of the Program is not eligible, if in the Producer’s sole discretion, the person’s participation could create the appearance of impropriety.

B. Contestants must be at least 18 years of age at the time of application.

C. Contestants must be legal residents of the fifty (50) United States or the District of Columbia.

D. Each newlywed team of Contestants must be legally married to each other (legal marriage defined as one that is legally valid in all 50 states of the United States) and, upon Producer’s request, must be able to provide proof of marriage (i.e. a marriage certificate) that shows that Contestants are legally married to each other. As of the tape date of the Program, Contestants must still be newlyweds (which is defined as the period of two (2) years after the date of Contestants’ original marriage to each other).

E. Contestants may not be candidates for public office and may not become candidates before the broadcast of their appearance on the Program, or until one year from the date of their taping of the Program.

F. Producer reserves the right to change any of the eligibility requirements at any time and is the sole judge of the eligibility criteria.

Here...let me help you with it:  "...legal marriage defined as one that is legally valid in all 50 states of the United States..."

It's a safe bet that clause wasn't in the old rules.  You see...same sex couples can legally marry in Massachusetts and California, and even if California's same sex couples are divorced-by-referendum come November, there will still be at least one state in the Union where same sex couples can legally marry.  So in order to keep the homos off the set you can't just say the contestants have to be legally married anymore. 

The last game show I ever really enjoyed was the old Concentration.  Way back when I was a kid I'd watch that thing raptly whenever I was home that it was on (it was a daytime show).  It was a memory game...you had to build a mental image of where all the little prize pairs were inside a grid and at the same time figure out a rebus as it was slowly being revealed.  I think part of the appeal to my budding young geek self was also trying to figure out how the mechanical game board worked.  That thing just fascinated me.  It was the only game show I ever really paid attention to...although these days I'll watch Jeopardy whenever I happen across it.  I glanced at a few episodes of The Newlywed Game in the 1970s and every time I did I quickly became uncomfortable with it. 

Something about the idea of watching young couples in love being made to embarrass each other on TV where the entire nation could watch just didn't appeal to me.  And for each couple that won, three others lost.  Part of the intended fun for the audience was to watch the loosing couples have fights during the show.  It was horrible.  Even the Roman Circuses weren't that gratuitously cruel.  I've often wondered how many divorces resulted from that show. 

So, in a sense, I'm not altogether unhappy that same sex couples are banned from this atrocity.  A couple's love should be nurtured, not humiliated for laughs and ratings.  And same sex couples have it hard enough in this country.  But on the other hand, here's how prejudice will keep its claws in our lives to the absolute very end.  Year upon year, decade upon decade, inch by inch by painful bitter inch, we have worked to get it's taint out of our lives.  And for every inch it looses, hate adopts, adapts and improves, and keeps working with what it has to work with.  Okay...so now you can be legally married....Ha!...but Not In All Fifty States...!  Got you There didn't we!

If same sex marriage was legal all across the Union they'd find some other way to cull out the homos.  Perhaps recasting the show as a contest between genders...er...Birth Genders...who incidentally and merely to heighten the excitement of the game play, have to be newly married also.  As I said, I'm not all that unhappy that same sex couples are being kept off this atrocity of a game show.  But I emphatically object to the name.  It is not The Newlywed Game.  There are gay newlyweds, and have been even before same sex marriage was legal.  Same sex couples have been getting married for ages, whether or not their government or their communities recognized them.  Our relationships exist.  Our households exist.  Our unions exist.  We exist.  It is not The Newlywed Game if only heterosexual couples are allowed to be contestants.  It is The Heterosexual Newlywed Game.

At the same time I'm reading this...I also came across this little news item from The Netherlands, which has had same sex marriage now for years...

Dutch replace 'maiden name' with 'birth name' to spare gay blushes

The Dutch civil service has developed a new name for "maiden name" so married gay men won't feel awkward.

"Geboortenaam" translates to "birth name". It will replace maiden name on official forms, radio Netherlands reported on Wednesday.

The Dutch Language Union hopes it will save married gay men from any embarrassment when taking their spouses surname.

Despite its liberal reputation, Amsterdam and the rest of the Netherlands have been facing a rise in homophobic attacks over the last few years.

The government has committed to millions of Euros to fighting homophobia in the country.

A recent European poll found the Dutch to be the strongest supporters of same-sex marriage in the EU, with 82% in favour

I'm a tad surprised they didn't already have a term for "birth name" in Dutch.  But never mind.  Over there they are trying, really trying, to be inclusive of same sex couples.  And this was such an easy one.  Just say "birth name" on the form instead of "maiden name".  That works too, and doesn't deny anyone, gay or straight, the dignity of taking their spouse's name if that's what they want.  Meanwhile, over here in the land of the free and the home of the brave it's "...legal marriage defined as one that is legally valid in all 50 states of the United States..."

Wow...  It's really Work trying to draw this bad... 

...don't ask.

The catalogs are coming in all of a sudden.  In the mail today I received an L.L. Bean catalog for all these guys:

1. Bruce Garrett
2. Bruce A. Garrett
3. Bruce Garnet
4. Bruce Garret

I had no idea I had so much company here.   Maybe this is why my tequila keeps disappearing. 

But wait...there's More!  Ladies and gentlemen...introducing the Williams Sonoma...

...Veg-O-Matic.  Swell.  That'll go great with my Wüsthof Ginsu knife.  They should have made it entirely of stainless steel though.  How much would you pay Now..?

I have a pair of nesting catbirds in the Japanese maple in my front yard.  For a couple months now I've watched them setting up house and listening to their occasional mewing.  At the same time of course, they were watching me.  I knew where they were, they knew where I was. 

This morning, as I packed my car for a trip to the Goodwill clothing bins (re: this post), they were screaming in my face like they'd just then figured out there was a human in the neighborhood.  I'd bring a load out to the car and one of them would perch on the limb closest to my front door and yell at me.  As I walk to the car it would follow from one branch to the next.  By the time I got back to my front door they were both there yelling at me.

I've no idea how many eggs they had in the nest but I figured one of the younglings had fallen out and was probably hiding somewhere in the azalea by my front steps.  The screams got louder the closer I was to my front door and the azalea is the only place there where a small bird can hide.  So after I got the car loaded I paused on the front steps and, not moving, scanned the bush beside them with my eyes while the catbirds screamed at me.  There it was, keeping still and quiet.  It still had most of its down, but a few feathers had already grown in.  Its wings however, were no where near flight capable.  Problem is, I need to use my front door every now and then. 

We have cats in the neighborhood, so I don't know if the little youngling is going to make it, but at least it wasn't advertising its whereabouts like a mockingbird youngling will (and I've never figured that out), so maybe it can keep hidden until it's wings grow in.  In the meantime, I've got a couple of catbirds that don't want me using my front porch anymore.  There was a nice summer shower just now and with it a slight cooling breeze and I wanted to sit out on the front porch with a drink and enjoy it and I couldn't because the catbirds kept screaming at me.  Oh well.  Better catbirds then mockingbirds.  Were they mockingbirds I'd have been getting pecked as well as screamed at.

Note to self:  When putting your shirts in the wash, remember to remove those mini-cigars you put in the pocket of one of them before going down to the bars last Friday first.