The Family Research Council has updated its website. This is how the conservative group now describes homosexuality:
SOURCE: Homosexuality [FRC]
Let's consider what they are saying here. They claim that gay people are threats to ourselves and to society. They deny that homosexuality is a natural component of the human experience, and admit that they don't want it to ever be seen as comparable to heterosexuality. They frame the gay experience as a "struggle" and admit that they want us to "overcome" our attractions (regardless of the danger that is agreed upon by the entire medical community). And last but not least in terms of our interests: FRC says that homosexuality can never be "affirmed," which shuts out all further conversation on the subject.
If this were an organization that merely held this point of view, that would be one thing. However, the FRC is something else entirely. This is a very connected political organization (the Republican vice presidential candidate spoke at their 2012 conference; the GOP presidential candidate sent a video) whose in-house voices the national news media routinely books for participation in on-air debates about LGBT people, our civil rights, and the politics surrounding the conversation. From short cable news hits to lengthy panel discussions on respected programs like Face The Nation, any number of pro-equality lawyers, politicans, scholars, and assorted allies have been tasked with having a televised conversation with Tony Perkins, Peter Sprigg, or any of the other FRC pundits. Almost always, these debates are presented as two-sided, "left versus right," equally-footed, let's "agree to disagree" kinds of chats.
But just look at what FRC is spelling out for us. Gays are harmful to society? Gays need to "overcome"? Gays are defined as "unnatural"? Gays cannot ever be "affirmed"? These are incredibly incendiary statements that cut right into the human person!
These are not mere political positions or pundityr fodder—these are indictments of who we are as people! When it comes to disliking homosexuality and going against the LGBT person, it is virtually impossible to go further than these statements (*but if you want to see the hatred and literal demonization that lies behind these statements, look at some of the other stuff FRC staffers have said about us).
Everyone who works at FRC and who speaks for FRC on LGBT issues is beholden to its organizational mission statement on homosexuality. This means it is journalistically necessary for the mainstream media to hold these same FRC staffers accountable for their own guiding principles.
Tony Perkins, Peter Sprigg and their cohorts will continue to get booked for segments on LGBT matters, this much is clear. When playing host to FRC's mouthpieces, producers must display the above image on the screen and the anchor should read every last word of it, the same way a news program would display the rhetoric of any other group, accusing any other minoirty population of such horribles. And if anyone from FRC makes one of these claims on the air, hosts must be ready to ask for evidence - and ready to knock that evidence down as thoroughly debunked; which literally all of it has been.
In fact, with FRC being so bold as to put these beliefs right out there for all to see, it is at this point downright negligent to ignore the flag under which FRC is marching. At this point, they are all but daring people to hold them accountable.