Let's go now to North Carolina, once known as the more sensible Carolina. But that was then, and this is now, and a debate over whether to bar the state's charter schools from discrimination based on sexual orientation seems to have gone a bit off the rails after the speaker pro tem distributed a handout supposing that pedophilia, bestiality, prostitution and a litany of other things
were all "sexual orientations" too.
Advocates for gay and lesbian North Carolinians are calling on House Speaker Thom Tillis to explain his position on LGBT issues after inflammatory remarks on the House floor debate Tuesday by Tillis' second-in-command, Speaker Pro Tem "Skip" Stam. [...]
Stam's handout [distributed during the debate] was from the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published in 2000, summing up its chapter on paraphilias (sexual attractions). It listed pedophilia, bestiality, necrophilia and prostitution as "sexual orientations."
Or rather Skippy here listed them as such. The
DSM-IV, which Stam was citing,
does no such thing.
[Stam] cited the DSM-IV, which was published back in 2000. And though all of the terms he listed do appear in the outdated book, the conflation that they are “sexual orientations” is his own.
Which is what you get when you try very hard to speak science-talk but then give up halfway through and just start slappin' something together. No, the APA does not consider gay sexuality to be equivalent to pedophilia or bestiality, not even back in the ancient bad days of twenty aught aught, and printing out a flyer saying so does not actually make it true.
Stam's stunt raised the ire of many of his fellow representatives, and they're pissed off not just at him, but at his immediate boss, Speaker Thom Tillis. Tillis' other day job is being the GOP candidate running against incumbent Democratic Sen. Kay Hagen, so he has to balance appeal to the frothy base, aka the Stam contingent, with not look like a madman, aka big election coming up. So he's being a bit mealy about it.
Tillis issued a response late Tuesday via campaign spokesman Daniel Keylin: "Rep. Stam's comments were not helpful to the respectful approach we ought to be taking on a policy matter that will ultimately improve educational opportunities for students across North Carolina."
Not helpful, indeed.