Five Anti-Gay Activists Added to Commentator Accountability Project
GLAAD, America's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) media advocacy and anti-defamation organisation, today announced the addition of several Minnesota-based anti-LGBT activists to the Commentator Accountability Project (CAP).
The project aims to educate the media about the extreme rhetoric of many of those who are often interviewed or quoted in opposition to LGBT people and the issues that affect their lives, especially in stories about marriage equality. CAP gives journalists critical context and information about these voices.
With Minnesota voters set to decide on a constitutional ban on marriage equality in November, and the issue promising to be front-page news until then, GLAAD today published the profiles of Tom Prichard, John Helmberger, Bradlee Dean, Chuck Darrell and Barb Anderson.
“At a time when some anti-gay activists, who make careers out of hurting LGBT families, are claiming that our community wants to silent them, this project aims to highlight their previous remarks about our community,” said GLAAD President Herndon Graddick.
- Anderson, who was featured in a lengthy Rolling Stone article about the rash of LGBT suicides that have plagued her local community, says Gay Straight Alliances “affirm sexual disorders.”
- Darrell opposes LGBT-inclusive sex education because he says being gay is “a killer.”
- Helmberger has told Minnesota voters that they must vote to constitutionally ban marriage equality in order to “restrain evil.”
- Dean once claimed that gay people “On average, molest 117 people before they’re found out*” and says that gay people “are subverted and condemned by their own hand. Why? Because they’ve set themselves against the right-Giver.” (*Dean has removed this link from YouTube.)
- Prichard says being gay “is more dangerous than alcoholism” and that gay youth are more likely to attempt suicide because they “live in conflict with how we are made.”
“Media should share the facts about what banning marriage would mean for same-sex couples and their families in Minnesota. It’s important that Minnesotans know that these activists are not experts on marriage, or advocates for religious liberty, but mouthpieces for anti-gay animus.”
The GLAAD Commentator Accountability Project was first launched in March of 2012 with over 30 profiles of extreme anti-LGBT commentators.
”Accountability” does not necessarily mean keeping anti-gay people out of the media. But if a reporter is interviewing someone who believes their position on an issue is necessary in order to “restrain evil,” it’s the reporter’s journalistic responsibility to put that person’s opinion in perspective.
Visit the GLAAD Commentator Accountability Project at glaad.org/cap and follow the Twitter hashtag #GLAADCAP.