In a recent report on the anti-gay movement, the Center's Intelligence Project exposed the role of Christian Right groups in fomenting hatred against homosexuals. Three of the dozen singled out are designated hate groups.

Fundamentalist leaders' attacks on gays have grown increasingly vicious since the 2003 Supreme Court Lawrence v. Texas decision that struck down state sodomy statues. The attacks were further propelled by the 2004 election, when 11 states voted on anti-gay marriage amendments as Christian Right groups spent millions on ad campaigns and get-out-the-vote efforts featuring anti-gay crusaders demonizing their opponents.

Never has the anti-gay movement had the momentum it has now, and never has it been so close to achieving its larger, ultimate goal, which in the words of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, is to win a "second civil war" for control of the U.S. government.

As the report, published in the spring issue of the Intelligence Report, shows, these anti-gay messages are nothing new for this movement. For almost 30 years, since the gay rights movement was launched in New York after the 1969 Stonewall riots, the religious right in America has employed a variety of strategies, inside the courtroom and outside, in its efforts to beat back the increasingly confident gay rights movement.

Many of its leaders have engaged in the crudest type of name-calling, describing homosexuals as "perverts" with "filthy habits" who seek to snatch the children of straight parents and "convert" them to gay sex. They have continually bandied about disparaging "facts" about gays that are simply untrue — assertions that are remarkably reminiscent of the way white intellectuals and scientists once wrote about the "bestial" black man.

Exhibit number one in demonizing homosexuals is the Christian Right's Paul Cameron, a leading "scientist" on the evils of homosexuality who heads the hate group, Family Research Institute. Cameron's work, which has been cited both by the Christian Right and prominent Republicans, falsely claims that gay people are disproportionately responsible for child molestation, for the majority of serial killings, and for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

"Of all the vices," Cameron concluded in one pamphlet, "only homosexuality constitutes a conspiracy against society." Cameron's "science" echoes Nazi Germany in that these disparaging descriptions of homosexuals are reminiscent of themes found in the ugly history of anti-Semitism, where Jews were historically associated with disease, filth, and child stealing. Cameron has been thrown out of legitimate professional organizations for his crackpot and inhuman science.

The anti-gay movement really hit its stride in the 1990s with passage of Colorado's Amendment 2, intended to ban "special" rights for homosexuals. The U.S. Supreme Court later overturned the amendment. Starting in 1994, more than 30 state and national anti-gay leaders frequently convened in secret meetings at the headquarters of Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs to strategize on how to fight the "evil" gay agenda.

Particularly worrisome is that the Christian Right's demonization of homosexuals has the potential to increase violence against gays and lesbians. Hate crimes against homosexuals are already more common than any other type of hate-motivated violence, as gays, as noted above, are twice as likely to suffer violent hate crimes as blacks, the next most victimized group.

The anti-gay crusade is having its intended negative effect on public opinion. Just five months after Lawrence, the Pew Research Center found that opposition to gay marriage had climbed from 53 to 59 percent. A new majority of Americans, 55 percent, now characterize gay sex as a sin. Thirty years of anti-gay crusades has begun to pay off.

SPLC Report
June 2005