Audio: 'American College' aggressively offers wrong kind of BS

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04/06/2010

by Jeremy Hooper

Last night we showed you how the Family Research Council is confusing impressionable readers into believing that the far-right-created American College of Pediatricians is a credible, unbiased body of science, and using them to tell gay teens that they can and should "change." Now Focus on the Family is getting in the game, continuing to act as if this group, along with their fellows at NARTH, are nothing more than researchers with a scientific method, even though they are in fact political activists with an anti-scientific agenda. Listen in:

*Source: Pediatrics group on same sex attraction [FOF]
**Letter to School Officials ["Facts About Youth"]

Now, for those of us who know what NARTH is, and who have taken the time to research this fringe ACOP group, we understand what this is all about. But unfortunately, we constitute a teeny tiny portion of the world. The vast majority will hear words like "College" and "Pediatricians" and "National Association For Research" and think to themselves, "oh, this must be genuine." Because why wouldn't they? Those who don't understand "culture war" political shenanigans would have no reason to think that grown adults would create shell "science" groups for the primary purposes of fostering their faith-based "love the sinner, hate the sin" stances. Plus they might assume the groups like Focus on the Family, who put their faith front and center, would be too honest to ever pretend like these groups are simple bodies of science. We envy that innocence, actually.

But that innocence, while covetous to us weary activists, is exactly the reason why we must keep slogging through this mire in order to defeat it. For every piece of misinformation they put on the intertube-i-webiness, we must put out ten times as many posts and videos and whatnots. They have the upper hand here, because the casual, easy position would be to accept what they are saying at face value. So we must be unwaveringly diligent in our refusal to let deliberate disingenuity go unchecked.

***

*Oh, and the unbelievable attempt to reshape actuality doesn't end with this audio. Check out FOF's headline to the print piece that accompanies this audio:

Doctors Say Schools May Be Spreading Misinformation About Homosexuality

They are the ones sending around letters from groups that have no backing from any credible body of science, and yet those schools who pass on information from groups like the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychiatric Association are supposedly the ones who are spreading misinformation?! And we on the pro-equality side are the ones who supposedly "indoctrinate children"?

Someone, please: Shut off this constantly rerunning "Twilight Zone" episode!

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