My friend sent me this link. I find this astounding. We gays are really busy people. We destroy heterosexual marriages, not to mention the sacred institution of marriage itself. We corrupt the military with our fabulousness. We recruit children into our deviate lifestyle. We systematically silence and oppress fundamentalist Christians. We erode the very moral fabric of society itself. PLUS, we're apparently behind HALF of all murders in large cities. All without missing a single episode of Glee.
Where do we homosexuals find the time?
On November 15, Thomas Vineyard, the Senior Pastor at Windsor Hills Baptist Church in Oklahoma City, stood before City Council in opposition to a bill adding sexual orientation to Oklahoma City's anti-discrimination law. The bill, by the way, passed, 7-2. But Vineyard was going to be damned if he was going to let the bill pass without spreading absurd and malicious lies about the LGBT community. Follow me below the fold, if you have the stomach.
Here are some of Vineyard's best nuggets:
While only two percent to three percent of the population are homosexuals, they account for sixty percent of all syphilis cases. Homosexuals account for a disproportionate number of hepatitis cases in North America. Seventy to eighty percent in San Francisco, sixty-six percent in New York, fifty-six percent in Toronto, forty-two percent in Montreal. I don't think that's what we're looking for when we're looking to other cities to keep up with them.
Questionable statistics aside, I'm not sure how syphilis and hepatitis relate to employment non-discrimination. Oh, but it gets better.
...thirty-nine to fifty-nine percent of homosexuals are infected with intestinal parasites, common in Third World countries.
Wow...syphilis, hepatitis, and intestinal parasites? Nobody told me that when I signed up.
Here's the real doosie:
Judge John Martagh, Chief Magistrate of the New York City Criminal Court, stated, "Homosexuals account for half of murders in large cities." Again, is that what we're looking for?
It's unclear from the quote alone whether Vineyard is claiming that gays are the murderers or the murdered. But, taken in context, the only way to really read it is that gays are the ones responsible for the murders.
Stephanie Zvan of the blog Almost Diamonds made it her mission to find this mysterious John Martagh. Here's what she found:
According to Google, the information comes from New York City Chief Magistrate John “Martaugh.” So it looks like a judge probably did say it, but who is this judge?
Except…essentially all the hits returned under that name are from religious sources providing the same bogus statistic – about 17,000 of them. Hmm. A random sampling suggests that they’re citing a 1992 letter to the editor from anti-gay activist and evangelical Jerry Kaifetz. And Google wants me to look up Judge John Murtagh instead. So I do that.
That’s when I find that Murtagh was chief magistrate until 1960. That’s when I discover that he was an anti-”pervert” crusader in the early 1950s. That’s when I see he’s the guy who ran Lenny Bruce’s obscenity trial straight into a conviction.
So, what am I left with after my digging? A 1992 claim that a judge who wanted “perverts” out of his city said something (maybe) back in the 1950s without any reference so that we can check it out ourselves, as we might want to do when we find the basics of the claim, like the judge’s name, are incorrect. But that’s what the people who want to be able to discriminate have (i.e., shadows of nothing), so that’s what they give us.
I expect this from the liars for Jesus. The sad part is that I got it from the press as well.
But Duncan Osborne of Gay City News forwarded the following to Joe Jervis of Joe My God. According to this, the Murtagh claim was about suicide, not murder (it's still false, of course).
(Image courtesy of Joe My God)
Bottom line: Vineyard is full of shit.
He then went on to recycle the same tired talking points equating gay people with child molesters, even invoking NAMBLA, calling it a "child-molesting homosexual group."
Captain William Riddle of the L.A. Police Department said that 30,000 of the sexually abused children in Los Angeles were the victims of homosexuals. Again, is that what we're looking for? Homosexuals commit more than thirty-three percent of all the reported child molestations in the US. Many homosexuals openly admit that they are pedophiles. Because they cannot actually reproduce, they resort to recruiting children.
Watch all four minutes of his rambling hate speech. At the end, the room bursts into thunderous applause. The Oklahoman reported that he received a standing ovation.
If you're interested in reading the letter he sent to City Council, here it is
. I suspect you've had enough already, though.
Kudos to the City Council for passing the bill and protecting LGB people from discrimination. But the fact that a fuckhead preacher like this can spout a claim that gay people are behind half of all urban murders and go unchallenged, and even receive a standing ovation, is more than a little sobering.