Update on the Terry's:

Here us a fascinating pair of interviews of Jamiel and Randall Terry. One comment: While I clearly side with the gay son in this battle, I also feel that people’s religious convictions based on long-standing traditions ought to be respected (and they should be respected as long as they remain in the private sphere of life; they are not valid bases upon which public policy ought to rest). However, there is a WORLD of difference between honestly possessing religious convictions that may seem very harsh to some, and spreading outright lies about a group of people in order to stigmatize them. The former is defensible in a civil society, the latter is not (and it is accurately categorized as “hate”).

What am I referring to? Randall Terry states, (as have many others on the religious right), “The average death age of a male homosexual is 42 years old because of disease, because of suicide, because of alcoholism, because of drugs, because of violence. It's just not a good world. It's a self-abusive, self-destructive sexual addiction.”

This is a flat out lie. And it has been debunked years ago, among other places, here, here, and here. It comes from a gay hating crank and altogether fraud Paul Cameron.

You know, there are junk statistics proffered by all sides of the political spectrum. And I accept that some exist on the pro-gay side too. For instance, I don’t accept the Kinsey “10% of the population are gay” figure. But the folks on the religious right who are first to most vociferously criticize Kinsey turn around and cite one Paul Cameron, whose shoddiness and downright fraudulence Kinsey never approached.

I would remind such religious conservatives who would continue to cite Paul Cameron of two provisions of scripture: First, what Jesus said about looking for the speck in your neighbor’s eye while ignoring the mote in your own, and second, the 9th Commandment.