One of the lead religious right groups, the American Family Association is again promoting the work of a known hate group, a group that has been put in the same group as the Klan and white supremacists by the Southern Poverty Law Center. That group is the Family Research Institute, run by quack "doctor" Paul Cameron, who was kicked out of various medical professional societies over twent years ago for his embrace of quackery.
This is amazing. Christian fundamentalists are cavorting with groups who are akin to the KKK and white supremacists. That kind of embrace is pretty damn suspicious, especially nowadays. Imagine any other multi-million dollar organization trying to help raise the profile of a known hate group like the Klan, do you think that organization would get a visit from the Justice Department?
Cameron has a new "study" - this guy ALWAYS has new "studies" - this time showing how gays cost Americans hundreds of billions of dollars a year.
Perhaps someone government official, perhaps Homeland Security of the FBI, should do a "study" of groups that enable known hate groups. That's a study I'd love to see. I'm quite serious - someone ought to offer an amendment to the FBI appropriations bill, earmark some funds for the FBI to track organizations who enable known hate groups. If the fundies are innocent, they should have problem with it.
This today from the American Family Association's propaganda organ:
...A Family Research Institute spokesman says a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reveals some interesting facts about what homosexuals and smokers cost the American taxpayer in terms of health-care expenses. The Institute's Dr. Paul Cameron has taken the CDC numbers and broken them down to an individual level. By his calculations, smokers cost U.S. taxpayers $156 billion a year. "For direct medical costs, days at work lost, all the indirect cost of fires and whatever, it figures out to a little over $3,000 per smoker, per year," he says. But on the other hand, Cameron notes, homosexuals cost American taxpayers $102 billion a year. And since there are so few homosexuals as compared to smokers, he says the individual cost is more than $25,000 per homosexual per year. This calculation is based on the AIDS factor alone, without taking other unhealthy aspects of the homosexual lifestyle into consideration, such as transmission of other sexually transmitted diseases or the high incidence of depression and attempted suicide among homosexuals. [Bill Fancher]And now I quote the Southern Poverty Law Center writing recently about the Family Research Institute:
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.Cameron's science echoes Nazi Germany - did you catch that? The American Family Association is helping promote a known hate group that publishes science that echoes Nazi Germany.
"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.
Paging Homeland Security.
