The modern lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movement for equality and safety has gained acceptance gradually through this century. The momentum accelerated greatly in the past 30 years since the Stonewall Rebellion in the summer of 1969 when our community refused to tolerate police harassment and misconduct at the Stonewall Inn in New York.

The national anti-gay campaign launched by former Miss America and Florida orange juice industry spokeswoman, Anita Bryant galvanized the LGBT community to fight the growing public defamation of LGBT people and the attack on our civil rights.

Due to the AIDS pandemic and the Internet, LGBT people, their relationships and stories have become mainstream discussion. Yet these discussions of sexual identity remain highly controversial, dividing families, churches and political parties. The major thrust of the opposition to LGBT equality and safety comes from conservative fundamentalist organizations, and religious institutions who seem to care more about the life of a fetus than that of law-abiding, tax-paying LGBT people.

Historically, the closer oppressed groups get to equality, the more vicious the public backlash. This oppression has ranged from genocide to slavery, disenfranchisement, unequal law enforcement, hate crimes and discrimination. Over time, the oppressed group(s) gain more attention, acceptance and support for their demands for equality.

As the oppressed group begins to win public support,oppressors employ lies and misinformation to confuse or stir up fear against the oppressed group. Violence begins to erupt against the oppressed group because of the increased climate of hatred toward that group. This has been the case against racial, ethnic and religious minorities and women in many countries. It is a cycle we have become all too familiar with in the U.S.

Conservative Christian Organizations
The reason the LGBT community has become so organized and visible is because we were fighting attacks on our lives and livelihood. Conservative Christian activists, for example, learned early on that an effective way to excite conservative voters and stir emotions is to focus on two or three issues that they felt they could win. While a majority of the public disagreed with the conservatives, the public remained silent. These areas are abortion, “pornography” and homosexuality.

Unlike abortion or pornography, which were attacked for the practice, gays and lesbians were attacked as people living their lives as homosexuals. Those personal attacks elevated people’s personal religious beliefs about sin to a national campaign against any demands made by the

LGBT community for equality. It is easy to fundraise around these issues. Many Conservative Christian organizations do not often wage national campaigns against lying, adultery or even murder.

These groups are receiving much less support than ever before in their campaign against LGBT people, so they have perpetuated a number of lies to reinvigorate attention to their manufactured “homosexual agenda.”

The religious right has argued that LGBT people and our relationships are sinful, that LGBT people are mentally ill, perverted, dangerous, diseased, a threat to national security, a threat to the morale of military troops, a threat to children and a threat to every institution that people cherish, like democracy and the American nuclear family.

Their tactics deceive, demonize, distract, divide and destroy LGBT equal rights and our families, under the guise of being “pro-family.” They also use a tactic known as “easier to nauseate than to educate.” This allows them to talk about specific homosexual sexual acts, which they know many people find distasteful.

• A growing number of religious leaders are speaking out against the notion that homosexuality is sinful, and many biblical scholars argue that the Bible does not condemn what we know today as homosexuality.

• Pentagon reports have shown that their own rationales for discriminating against gays and lesbians are flawed.

• The American Psychological Association removed homosexuality from its list of metal illnesses in 1973. Since then mental health professionals who consider homosexuals mentally ill are on the fringein their profession.

•  Fears that LGBT people are child molesters are baseless. 97% of child molestation cases are heterosexual. These offenders do not identify as gay.

Case Study: “Ex-Gays”?
"Ex-gay" ministries are religious-based schemes that argue that all persons are innately and naturally heterosexual. Their missions therefore, are to “correct” what they perceive as an unnatural affliction through prayer, therapy and other methods. Theirs is a political, not a religious mission.
Conversion therapy is the secular counterpart of "ex-gay ministries" which seeks to “correct” homosexuality, and has asserted it to be a psychological defect, mental illness or character flaw. Conversion therapy typically asserts that homosexuality is a learned response to childhood sexual trauma, or the result of psychological misidentification with a parent.

No major religious denomination supports the mission or methods of ex-gay ministries, and respected mental health organizations all dispute that ex-gay ministries and conversion therapy are either effective or necessary.

In fact, the APA considers attempts at conversion therapy to be unethical and potentially damaging. “Exgay” ministries and conversion therapists do not track their success because they cannot. The most they can argue is that many of the gays and lesbians who go through this procedure may choose abstinence or may get married, but few ever state that their homosexual attraction has changed.
The truth is that the “ex-gay” campaign, which is relatively new, is a form of “calculated compassion” that purports to “love the sinner, but hate the sin.”

The campaign is designed to convince the American public that homosexuality is chosen, and therefore gays and lesbians are not true minority and not deserving of civil rights protections. Pathologizing gays and lesbians allows people to try and medicate and counsel LGBT people as if they are mentally ill.

Other Hate Groups
Many “hate” groups exist in Michigan and throughout the country. There are hundreds of groups that wish to stir up hatred or violence against women, minorities, immigrants, LGBT people and/or the federal government. Hate groups work to vilify minority groups or people they dislike in the hopes of building public support for their campaign against them. Many white supremacist organizations are also anti-LGBT.