MassResistance, a vehemently anti-LGBTQ group, has published a nearly 600-page tome called “The Health Hazards of Homosexuality: What the Medical and Psychological Research Reveals,” which it promoted and sold at last weekend’s Values Voter Summit. In the foreword, MassResistance leader Brian Camenker calls it “a unique resource on an untouchable subject.”
In 2015, Camenker spoke at an anti-gay gathering and said that conservative Christians need to view the fight against the LGBTQ movement “as a war, not a church service.” God, he said, has a “very brutal” set of rules “for people who want to tear down society, who want to push immorality, who want to tear down the moral structure of society”: they “must be destroyed.”
In the new book, Camenker is clear that he views it as a political weapon in his war against homosexuality: “We hope that the information in this book will encourage our society to take a step back, understand what the normalization of homosexuality has brought in its wake, and reconsider the course we’re on.” From the introduction:
The American public is not being told how dangerous homosexuality is to the physical and mental health of its practitioners, as well as to our larger society. Rather, homosexuality is now generally presented as normal, respectable sexual expression which can be engaged in safely.
In fact, this normalization of sodomy and other dangerous practices requires our society to engage in mental gymnastics which severely distort our social, commercial, and legal interactions. Approval of homosexuality is a capitulation to irrationality which profoundly affects our society.
That’s why Camenker publishes so many graphic, near-pornographic, descriptions of various sex acts and kinks—because he wants people to feel disgust and direct that disgust toward gay people:
Demands for “gay rights” or “LGBT rights” or “gay marriage” should be answered not only with arguments citing morality, religious freedom, and parenting standards, but by noting the unnatural, unhealthy, and repugnant character of GLB sexual practices and associated public behaviors.
The first “expert” quoted in the book is Joseph Nicolosi, the longtime advocate for conversion therapy who died in March. It also quotes anti-gay activist Scott Lively: “An anti-discrimination law based upon sexual orientation is the seed that contains the entire tree of the homosexual agenda with all of its poisonous fruit.”
The book devotes hundreds of pages to sexuality, sex practices and sexually transmitted diseases, with about 100 pages of footnotes meant to lend an air of scientific authority. Included along with statistics are culture war assertions such as:
- “Homosexuality is really about sodomy.”
- “Homosexuality is rooted in perverted practices which defy nature and bring ill health.”
- “Homosexuality is a mental health disorder.”
- “Transgenderism is a mental disorder.”
- “Sodomy and homosexuality defy nature.”
In recent years, MassResistance has, like other Religious Right groups, been expanding its footprint abroad, establishing chapters in other countries and sending its publications to be used in anti-equality campaigns around the world.
