Brad Dacus

The New York Times on Saturday covered Dr. Robert Spitzer’s retraction of his 2003 study on the supposed effectiveness of ‘ex-gay’ reparative therapy, concluding that it “failed the test of scientific rigor” and was irredeemably flawed. Reparative therapy, also known as sexual orientation conversion therapy, has been deemed ineffective, harmful, and unethical by leading medical groups, including the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Association of Social Workers, the American Counseling Association, the American School Counselor Association and the Pan American Health Organization (a division of the World Health Organization).

But that doesn’t stop Religious Right activists from parroting blatant falsehoods about reparative therapy, as Brad Dacus of the Pacific Justice Institute told talk show host Janet Mefferd on Friday that the effectiveness of such therapy is “at least over 80%,” citing discredited “therapist” Joseph Nicolosi. Speaking about a bill in the California state legislature that would place limits on reparative therapy, Dacus claimed that if the legislation passes it will mean that “many hundreds of thousands or millions of youths who will be led down a path of death and destruction.”

Mefferd: Brad, is there overwhelming evidence that reparative therapy is a fraud?

Dacus: Actually it’s contrary, there’s overwhelming evidence that reparative therapy actually works. It’s not 100% because you have individual will and every person has their own issues. But Dr. [Joseph] Nicolosi and other famous psychiatrists who have treated this, thousands and thousands of patients, report a very high success rate, I know it’s at least over 80%, I believe it’s 80-85% success rate. These are people who leave the lifestyle, get married to people, have children, and enter heterosexual relationships. It’s a big mass of deception that they are trying to carry out at the expense of many hundreds of thousands or millions of youths who will be led down a path of death and destruction, unfortunately, if they get away with this.

Dacus, who earlier called the bill a “gross and outrageous violation against humanity,” also dubbed the bill “diabolical” and maintained that being gay is a result of child abuse or strained parental relationships, and that gay men have “an average lifespan of the age of 40.”

Dacus: This attempt to politicize this issue is going to leave a huge number of casualties and victims in its wake in the form of children and even adults.

…

Dacus: It’s very diabolical, it’s undermining parents. The assumption of those who are pushing this lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual movement, is that the average parent out there is ignorant, is harmful, is dangerous to children when they don’t affirm the child’s sexual orientation. Of course parents want what’s best for their children, parents love their children, and parents know that the homosexual lifestyle gives for boys an average lifespan of the age of 40. It’s worse than being a chain cigarette smoker. Parents who love their children are going to want to do everything they can, especially in the developmental, preadolescence, to steer them in the right direction. In fact, the majority of children work it through. But when you have children who have been sexually abused or youth who have not had any kind of bonding with their father or affirmation of their father, they are very subject to this and are in need of counseling.

One of the sessions at the recent Values Voter Summit featured a showing of a new half-hour video produced by the American Family Association called “Divorcing God: Secularism and the Republic.” (Back in the summer it was being promoted as "Divorcing God: Secularism, Sexual Anarchy, and the Future of the Republic.") The video features an array of Religious Right leaders and academics, whose argument can be summarized this way:  America, whose greatness is decaying because the country has turned its back on the God who inspired the founding fathers, is doomed if it continues to allow secularists to push religion into the closet.  It's time for Christians to fight back.

And just to be clear, the God in “one nation under God” isn’t any old generic God, but the same Christian God who made western civilization possible.  It’s familiar to anyone who has followed the Religious Right’s “Christian nation” rhetoric, filled with founders’ quotes about religion and  attacks on the Supreme Court’s rulings on church-state separation.

Among the stars of the video is Princeton University’s Robert George, the Religious Right’s favorite intellectual. George, a leader of the National Organization for Marriage, is one of the authors of the Manhattan Declaration, whose signers fancy themselves potential martyrs for opposing abortion and LGBT equality in America. Others include Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute; Michael Farris, homeschooling advocate and chancellor of Patrick Henry College; and Matthew Spalding, of the Heritage Foundation. The founders clearly believed that God punishes nations, says Dacus, and when countries allow their societies to become amoral, there’s a price to be paid, not just by those individuals but society as a whole.  The video suggests that the current fight between secularists and those who want to preserve the country’s divine foundation is the last stand for the future of freedom on planet earth.

Another DVD being handed out at the Values Voter Summit hit similar themes about the importance of the nation’s foundation on biblical principles.  It features a 2010 “State of the Nation” speech delivered by Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis at the Creation Museum in Kentucky.  Ham argues that the nation is threatened by the teaching of evolution and by the Supreme Court. “There really is no such thing as separation of church and state,” says Ham, who warns that “Christianity in this nation is becoming outlawed more and more in various quarters.”  Ham blames the decline more on church leaders than on secularists.  The Bible is the “absolute authority,” he says, but too many Christians have undermined the authority of scripture by compromising on the truth of the 6,000 year-old earth and great flood described in Genesis.  And that means quoting the Bible in policy debates on abortion and gay marriage has lost its effectiveness.

Meanwhile, French scholar Denis Lacorne has just published Religion in America: A Political History (Columbia University Press, 2011), in which he examines two competing narratives about American identity.  One derives from the secular values of the Enlightenment and reflects a desire to preserve liberty by freeing it from the power of an established church.  The second ties American identity to the Puritans and Protestantism.  These two narratives are reflected in competing notions of church-state separation evident today in our politics and on our Supreme Court.  At a presentation at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. this week, Lacorne suggested that what he calls the neopuritan narrative was developed in the first half of the 19^th century by historians who wanted to resurrect the influence of the Puritans, who he says were generally ignored by the founding fathers in their debates over religious liberty and whether or not to make the Constitution an explicitly Christian document.  (They chose not to.)

The Pacific Justice Institute is not a particularly well-known group.  In fact, it is quite likely that most people who read this blog don't even recognize the name ... but they probably recognize this video:

That is Brad Dacus, PJI 's President, explaining before the 2008 election how failure to pass Prop 8 in California would be akin to failing to stop Hitler.

But just because PJI is less well-known than many of the other right-wing legal groups, that doesn't mean that it doesn't have some rather high-profile supporters, like Karl Rove and James Dobson:

Addressing a group of roughly 600 people, a senior advisor to former president George W. Bush recently spoke on the importance of faith, family and freedom -- the "timeless values of America."

At the Pacific Justice Institute's 2010 Celebration of Justice Banquet in Anaheim, California, Karl Rove exhorted listeners to defend these values and to make an "argument" for them in all communities. He praised the family as the source that defines America and molds its individuals, saying, "It's in the family where hearts and minds of children are shaped. If society loves and cherishes life, it is because families love and cherish life."

...

He exhorted the audience to continue taking a stand for the values in which they believe, concluding that "if we stay in the fight, we will win the fight. If we love our country, we need to defend our country."

Other gala speakers included PJI attorney Brad Dacus, Dr. James Dobson, and Father Frank Pastore of Priests for Life.

For those that are interested, the East Bay Express ran a good profile of Dacus and PJI last year:

Religious convictions have compelled Dacus to take on such cases as a fight to allow Bakersfield students to opt out of a homosexual teacher's class, a tussle with a Utah public school that he claims was peddling a book "promoting witchcraft" via the Scholastic Book Club catalog, and — while employed by the conservative Rutherford Institute — the defense of the family of a teenage Nebraska boy who, with his parents' help, had his girlfriend arrested for seeking an abortion. For the courts to find in favor of the girl, Dacus told Time in 1994, would have had "a chilling effect" on free speech.

• The Huffington Post reports that Sen. Lindsey Graham tried to make the case for a more diverse and open GOP to the South Carolina Republican Party convention - it did not go well.
• Steve Benen remembers back when Sen. Mitch McConnell believed filibustering a president's judicial nominee was just about the worst thing a senator could do - but those days are over.
• Howie Klein notes that not only did Arkansas state Senate's GOP Kim Hendren call Sen. Charles Schumer "that Jew," but Doyle Webb, the state Republican chairman, called a Democratic legislator "that lesbian."
• FireDogLake reports that parents, with the assistance of Brad Dacus of the Pacific Justice Institute, are fighting to keep "And Tango Makes Three" out of school curriculum.
• AU weighs in on the news that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s daily top-secret briefings to former President George W. Bush during the early part of the Iraq War in 2003 featured covers festooned with photos of soldiers praying or in action in Iraq accompanied by Bible verses.
• Finally, Jeffrey Toobin profiles Chief Justice John Roberts:

After four years on the Court, however, Roberts’s record is not that of a humble moderate but, rather, that of a doctrinaire conservative. The kind of humility that Roberts favors reflects a view that the Court should almost always defer to the existing power relationships in society. In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff. Even more than Scalia, who has embodied judicial conservatism during a generation of service on the Supreme Court, Roberts has served the interests, and reflected the values, of the contemporary Republican Party.

Last week the Courage Campaign unveiled a new ad highlighting the millions of dollars the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has poured into the California campaign to strip marriage rights from gay and lesbian couples.  As KUTV explained the ad:

A new commercial against proposition 8 in California is expected to fuel the fire of an already heated debate over gay marriage.
 
The commercial depicts two Mormon missionaries invading the home of a same sex couple.

In the commercial they knock on the door, say they are from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and tell a lesbian couple “we are here to take away your rights.”

They enter the home take the women’s rings, ransack the house looking for their marriage license, find it, and then tear it up. 

At the end, the missionaries was away saying, “that was too easy, yeah, what should we ban next?”

The ad itself is here:

Needless to say, the Yes on 8 folks are none too pleased with the ad and are now screaming “religious bigotry”

"This ad reaches new lows of religious bigotry and intolerance," said Yes on 8 Chairman Ron Prentice. "We hope that the leadership of the No on 8 campaign - including Senator Feinstein, Mayor Newsom and Superintendent O'Connell -- as well as all Californians regardless of their position on Proposition 8, will not only condemn the ad but join us in asking television stations to refuse to air it. After all, the No on 8 campaign has been running their own television commercials saying we must all oppose discrimination and intolerance whenever we see it. The bigotry this ad shows to members of the LDS church demands action now."

The California Catholic Conference is likewise outraged:

Bishop Stephen Blaire, the President of the California Catholic Conference decried the new advertisement from opponents of Proposition 8 as "a blatant display of religious bigotry and intolerance." He expressed dismay that any public media outlet would give it an airing. "The YES on 8 campaign is not about discrimination and intolerance; it is about restoring the traditional definition of marriage for the good of society and children," said Bishop Blaire. "All individuals and groups, whether religious or not, have both a right and a responsibility to participate in a civil debate about this important issue. From the beginning of this campaign the Catholic Conference has stressed the importance of mutual respect and denounces this type of religious bigotry."

Of course, when footage surfaced last week of Brad Dacus of the Pacific Justice Institute telling a rally of Prop 8 supporters that failure to pass the amendment was akin to failing to stop Hitler, they uttered not a peep.

Mike Huckabee gets active in the Proposition 8 campaign - on the “yes” side, naturally – and explains that the “purpose of marriage is not for you to be happy:”

Changing the definition of marriage would be like making Mona Lisa blond or touching up her smile, former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said Sunday morning in Newbury Park.

The former Arkansas governor and Southern Baptist preacher spoke from the pulpit of Calvary Chapel Thousand Oaks in two services focused on Proposition 8, a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. He told about 1,000 people that marriage was created and defined by God, just as the Mona Lisa was created by Leonardo da Vinci.

"God doesn't want me to take my brush and paint over his masterpiece," he said … "The purpose of marriage is not for you to be happy," Huckabee said. "The purpose of marriage is so God can teach us how to love, like he loves us."

Speaking of couples who are not happy about the current state of marriage in California,

Last month, Rachel Bird exchanged vows with Gideon Codding in a church wedding in front of family and friends. As far as Bird is concerned, she is a bride.

To the state of California, however, she is either "Party A" or "Party B."

Those are the terms that have replaced "bride" and "groom" on the state's new gender-neutral marriage licenses. And to Bird and Codding, that is unacceptable.

"We are traditionalists – we just want to be called bride and groom," said Bird, 25, who works part time for her father's church. "Those words have been used for generations and now they just changed them."

Bird says her crusade is “personal – not religious,” but she getting solid support from her father, Doug Bird, pastor of Roseville's Abundant Life Fellowship, who is now sending out letters to his congregation and fellow pastors urging them to join the fight:  "I would encourage you to refuse to sign marriage licenses with 'Party A' and 'Party B. If ever there was a time for the people of the United States to stand up and let their voices be heard – this is that time."

Why exactly is Bird so upset about the change?

"We just feel that our rights have been violated," she said.

To some, the couple's stand may seem frivolous. But others believe "bride" and "groom" are terms that are too important for the state to set aside.

"Those who support (same-sex marriage) say it has no impact on heterosexuals," said Brad Dacus of the Pacific Justice Institute. "This debunks that argument."

So there you go:  treating gays equally must be stopped in the name of protecting the more important rights of straight people to be referred to as “bride” and “groom” on their legal paperwork.