Photos: Scientifically-discredited, deeply offensive junk science presented as truth as #VVS14

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09/29/2014

by Jeremy Hooper

The Family Research Council's Values Voter Summit is probably the most anti-LGBT political conference on the calendar. That is not news. Everyone who knows politics knows how exceedingly hostile this annual conference is; anyone who suggests otherwise is being willfully disingenuous. Despite its ability to keep pulling in mainstream conservative figures, VVS is an event that considers the mission of happy, accepted, protected gay people to be its antithesis.

This is why, year after year, you will find all kinds of "ex-gay" propaganda on hand, right alongside the Republican politicians who hope to be your next president:

[PRA]

[Elise Foley]

Let's be clear: There is no equivalent on the Democratic side. There is no progressive movement that dismisses scientific consensus as it pushes its goal of "fixing" a minority population. There is certainly not a movement like that which manages to make its way into speeches and exhibit halls and the common teachings of the host organizations.

If there were such movement, I'm fairly certain that any conference that shared in its vision would be a no-starter conference for most, if not all, Democratic politicians of good faith. And yet Values Voter Summit, year after year, reels in top Republican Senators, Governors, members of Congress, and every nominee or eventual nominee for the GOP presidential and vice presidential ticket (McCain, Palin, Romney, and Ryan have all spoken at VVS; in presidential election years, the whole GOP primary slate shows up to speak). How can we ignore that? And why should we?

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