Model on Va. 'Ex-Gay' Billboard Is Gay, Not a Twin

The man featured on a billboard in Richmond, Va., claiming to show twins and proclaiming that "nobody is born gay" is not only not a twin — he's an out gay man living in South Africa. 

After reporting on the controversial billboard placed above Interstate 95 in Richmond — paid for by antigay nonprofit Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, a.k.a. PFOX —earlier this week, local TV station WWBT was contacted by the man featured on the billboard. 

Kyle Roux, a South African man who modeled for the the stock image more than a decade ago, told WWBT that he was "obviously quite shocked" when friends sent him a link to the story about the billboard that featured his face — twice — as the literal poster boy for the "ex-gay" group, which claims that sexual orientation is a choice anyone can decide to avoid. 

That's because Roux is not a twin, and he happens to be gay. 

"It just seems like there no place in today's world for an organization that is promoting this as being some kind of deviant or distasteful lifestyle, because I've lived my life openly gay and happy for my entire life," Roux told WWBT via Skype. 

"It's actually quite a big thing that there is this kind of discrimination and borderline hate speech going on, you know," he continued, explaining why he felt it necessary to contact the local news network a world away from his home. 

As for PFOX, a representative of the group told WWBT that the "issue isn't the photo on the billboard, it's the actual science."

The group's executive director, Regina Griggs, defended the billboard's claim that "twins research shows nobody is born gay" in a statement Monday, claiming, "Identical twins have the same genes or DNA. They are nurtured in equal prenatal conditions. If homosexuality is caused by genetics or prenatal conditions and one twin is gay, the co-twin should also be gay. … Because identical twins are always genetically identical, homosexuality cannot be genetically dictated. No one is born gay."

But LGBT advocates — and even the man featured on the billboard — contend that PFOX, labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center as "the ex-gay movement's answer to PFLAG," has a gross misunderstanding of the science behind existing research about the sexual orientations of twins. 

"PFOX's billboard underscores the groups scientific illiteracy and shows that 'ex-gay' activism is about demagoguery and marketing, rather that truth and results," said pro-LGBT group Truth Wins Out executive director Wayne Besen in a statement Wednesday. "In reality, twin studies prove that there is a genetic link to sexual orientation. It is stunning that PFOX would pay for a billboard to showcase its ignorance and incompetence." 

Even the company which owns and operates the billboard understood that PFOX was twisting the science behind research about sexual orientation. The vice president of governmental relations at Lamar Advertising told The Advocate Wednesday that PFOX's original copy claimed "twins research shows nobody is born gay," but the advertising agency required the group to add the words "we believe" to the statement, because the company's policy that ads be factual and accurate meant "we wouldn't allow [PFOX] to state it as a fact."

PFOX is a nonprofit organization which claims that people can choose not to be gay, stating on its website that "people deserve to know the truth about the many men, women, and children who have made the decision to change their lives" and "overcome same-sex attraction." Founded in 1998, PFOX proudly announces it "was created specifically to be an alternative to the misinformed gay family groups which insist that parents only prove their love for their gay child if they support gay rights and affirm their child's self-proclaimed gay identity. PFOX teaches parents that it's ok to love their children without placing any conditions on that love."

Watch WWBT's report, featuring a Skype interview with Roux, below.

Hell Freezes Over: Fox ‘News’ Catches War Criminal Dick Cheney Lying About The Torture Report Live on TV!

In the wake of the torture report, Dick Cheney has been pulling double duty — presumably powered by dark, necromantic forces at this point — defending the Bush administration’s actions on the mainstream networks. While most of these interviews are standard Cheney obfuscation, his Fox interview deserves special attention. It appears as if Fox, of all networks, has caught Cheney in the middle of a lie.

Early in the interview, Bret Baier noted that “The Feinstein report suggests that President Bush was not fully briefed on the program and deliberately kept in the dark by the CIA.”

Cheney, however, denied it:

Not true. Read his book. He talks about it extensively in his memoirs. He was, in fact, an integral part of the program. He had to approve it before we went forward …. We did discuss the techniques. There was no effort on our part to keep him from that.” Cheney goes on to declare that “the men and women of the CIA did exactly what we wanted to have them do in terms of taking on this program.

Later in the interview, Baier points towards some of the more depraved tactics used by American’s own Stasi: “At one point, this report describes interrogators pureeing food of one detainee and then serving it in his anus.” Baier then asked “something the agency called ‘rectal rehydration.’ I mean, is that torture?”

I don’t know, dear readers, what else would you call force-feeding an individual through their colon?

Aside from proof that stupid questions can exist, Baier asked if either Bush or Cheney knew about it, and whether or not it was “exactly” what the CIA had been asked to do.

Cheney, however, claimed to have no idea what was going on:

The Republican Party and the Great Conservative Long Con

Something I often like to do in my interactions with Republicans is make them defend their ideologies. It’s like a recent piece I wrote where I asked conservatives what the Republican party has actually done for them. It’s easy for conservatives to regurgitate talking points that have been spoon fed to them by the right-wing media, but to quantify those talking points is much more difficult.

But what the Republican party is really doing is selling their voters a “long con.” The truth is, nearly everything they promise will happen based on their ideological stances, never does.

This is the party that constantly claims to be “fiscally conservative,” yet hasn’t had a president from their party balance the budget since Eisenhower in the 1950′s. Even their “conservative icon” Ronald Reagan, the man on which modern day conservatives seem to validate their conservativeness, nearly tripled our national debt during his eight years. George W. Bush, who promised Americans his tax cuts would balance the budget within a decade, not only destroyed a budget surplus that he inherited (from Democrat Bill Clinton) – but he doubled our national debt during his administration.

So where’s this “fiscal responsibility”? It’s been nearly 60 years since a Republican president balanced the budget. To the conservative voter I ask, how many decades need to pass where a Republican president doesn’t balance the budget, before you’ll admit your party is full of crap?

Reality Check for Democrats: Republicans Sell Lies Better Than You Tell the Truth

In the days after every election, I avoid the political media as much as possible. During this time all these “experts” will go back and forth trying to overcomplicate the “whys and why nots” of what happened, just like they have this election. Even though the truth is glaringly obvious: Republicans sell lies better than Democrats tell the truth. 

All I’ve heard since Tuesday night is how “serious” Mitch McConnell is about working with the president to end the gridlock in Congress.

Really? McConnell is “eager” to end our perpetual gridlock in Congress and work with the president? The man who once famously declared, with a smile on his face no less:

“Our [Republicans] top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term.”

That is the individual Republicans are “promising” will work with the president to end congressional gridlock?

Pew study finds Rush Limbaugh least trustworthy news source

A new survey from Pew Research finds that Rush Limbaugh is America’s least-trusted news source. And who does America trust most?

CNN.

Thirty-nine percent of respondents to the Pew poll say they don’t trust Limbaugh, a bombastic conservative radio voice. Fox News follows closely with 37 percent saying they don’t trust the network. Glenn Beck ranks third, with 24 percent of respondents saying they distrust Beck.

The Pew survey was conducted March 19-April 29.

The five major news networks top the trust spectrum, with 54 percent of respondents saying they trust CNN, 50 percent saying they trust ABC and NBC, 46 percent saying they trust CBS and 44 percent saying they trust Fox News.

Forty-four percent of respondents say they get their news from CNN.

PunditFact is tracking the accuracy of claims made on the five major networks using our network scorecards. By that measure, 61 percent of the claims fact-checked on Fox News have been rated Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire, the most among any of the major networks.

As for the rest:

• 45 percent of the claims made on NBC and MSNBC rate Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire;
• 38 percent of the claims made on CBS rate Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire;
• 36 percent of the claims made on ABC rate Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire;
• 22 percent of the claims made on CNN rate Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire.

For the record, 82 percent of the claims we've checked from Limbaugh have been rated Mostly False, False or Pants on Fire.

More from the Pew survey:

Pennsylvania’s GOP Governor Has Black Friends, and He Has the Photoshopped Images to Prove it

If you were suspicious of the GOP’s outreach strategy towards minorities, this latest episode in conservative dissonance will raise your other eyebrow.

A photo on Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett’s campaign website has been made a laughing ‘stock’ – because of a stock images that were photoshopped in, giving the impression that Corbett has a diverse base of supporters.

Of course, the Internet is having a field day.

Speaking to BuzzFeed, Corbett’s campaign admitted that the “whole website footer graphic is a work of Photoshop.”

They went on to clarify that “the graphic has both stock photos and actual photos in it.”

But BuzzFeed did a particularly good job in showing how blatant the mocked up photo is:

Here’s the picture in question that appears at the bottom of Corbett’s campaign website.

The relentless lies of Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback

All politicians spin. They exaggerate and make selective use of facts and data. These are tricks of the trade.

But I have never seen a public official lie as easily and as relentlessly as Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback.

That sounds harsh, and it is possible that Brownback actually believes his own mythology. But much of what he has told the citizens of Kansas is flat out wrong.

Brownback has lied about the fiscal conditions he inherited. He spins a fantasy about a low-tax utopia even as his state is exhausting its budget reserves, staring at more cuts in education, and not experiencing the promised economic rebound. He has salted his administration with sycophants who tell lies of their own.

Where to begin?

7 Facts Republicans Hope Conservative Voters Never Think About

One of the things I most enjoy doing in politics is presenting conservatives with their own talking points, then exposing the absolute nonsense behind them. Because it’s easy for any conservative to parrot what they hear on Fox News or some other right-wing media source, but it’s amazing how many of them can’t explain why they support that information.

And the ironic part is, the Republican party doesn’t even try to hide their true intentions. They just know that critical thinking isn’t a strong point for the typical conservative voter. So it’s not a matter of saying anything that makes sense, it just has to be what the typical conservative wants to hear. Facts really don’t matter a whole lot.

Well I thought I’d lend a helping hand and expose 7 facts Republicans really don’t want conservative voters to think about.

Let’s begin.

1) Republicans are purposely sabotaging our government: Just think about this for a moment. Republican politicians run on the premise that “government is bad.” So, why would they ever try to help make government more efficient and effective? They wouldn’t. In fact, they go out of their way to ensure that the government operates as poorly as possible so they can campaign on the notion that government is bad – so that they’ll get elected to that very same government. They’re literally causing the very problems in our government that they use to stir up anti-government sentiment among conservatives to get elected. Sadly, most conservatives fail to see this.

2) Republicans want our country to fail: Conservatives hate President Obama. And they know that the only way they stand any chance in 2016 to reclaim the White House is to do everything they can to stall any possible progress and sabotage any kind of economic recovery. Their true hope is that by doing so our nation will spiral into such chaos that we’ll elect a Republican as a response. They would gladly stand by while millions of Americans suffered as long as it won their party the presidency in 2 years.

3) Conservatives are always on the wrong side of history: It’s like I’ve pointed out before, if you go back to the Civil War and see which states fought to keep slavery, they’re the same states that: opposed women’s suffrage, interracial marriage, civil rights, desegregation and currently oppose gay marriage and abortion rights. And that’s not a coincidence.

4) Nine of our last ten economic recessions occurred while a Republican was in the White House: Pretty much speaks for itself.

5) The Republican party is owned by big oil: Just think about it, what benefits big oil the most?

• Deregulating the EPA
• More domestic drilling
• Opening up national parks for drilling
• The belief that climate change is fake
• Ensuring that we have poor public transportation systems
• Opposition to green energy alternatives

And guess which side of every one of those issues the Republican party supports…

6) The truth about Ronald Reagan is very different from the lies Republicans tell about him: During Reagan’s eight years in the White House, unemployment shot over 10%; our national debt nearly tripled; he passed amnesty for illegal immigrants; the number of illegal immigrants coming into the United States was higher than we’ve seen during the Obama administration; he negotiated with terrorists and raised taxes several times.

7) Tax rates have almost nothing to do with job creation or wages: I’m not going to go into my usual “trickle-down economics is a scam” rant. Though I will say that job creation isn’t a problem, but wage stagnation is. That being said, our tax rates are almost at the very same levels George W. Bush (and his fellow Republicans) promised us in the early-2000′s would eliminate our debt and usher in economic prosperity. So, if those rates were low enough back then, then why now are many of these same Republicans saying that taxes are too high? Though, let’s not fool ourselves. Middle class incomes being stagnant isn’t just a “last eight years” issue. It’s been going on for over decades.

I’ll wrap it up there, though I could easily keep going. Maybe I’ll do a “part two” here sometime soon. But in the meantime, comment here and let me know what you think, or if you have any other suggestions I might want to include in a second edition.

Tom Cotton and the era of post-truth politics

A couple of years ago, Mitt Romney developed a bad habit. As part of his national campaign, the Republican nominee would attack President Obama over some perceived failing. Then the attack would be fact-checked and be proven wrong. Romney, confronted with proof that he was lying, would repeat the claim anyway, convinced that it didn’t matter whether he told the truth or not. It happenedover and over and over again.

It underscored a dangerous development: the era of post-truth politics.

Two years later, the phenomenon hasn’t gone away. In Arkansas last week, Rep. Tom Cotton (R), his party’s U.S. Senate nominee, was caught in one of the most brazen lies of the 2014 campaign season. The right-wing congressman claimed he voted against this year’s Farm Bill because President Obama “hijacked” it, “turned it into a food-stamp bill,” and added “billions more in spending.”

As a factual matter, literally none of this is even remotely true, and fact-checkers came down hard on such shameless dishonesty – all of which might matter if Cotton gave a darn. But as Peter Urban reported, the congressman just doesn’t care about getting caught.

Rejecting criticism of its latest TV ad, Republican Senate hopeful Tom Cotton plans to keep running the “Farm Bill” message beyond its current ad buy. 

“We’ve gotten such great feedback from farmers, taxpayers, and supporters that we’re actually going to increase the size of the ad buy,” said David Ray, a spokesman for the Cotton campaign.

In a local interview this week, Cotton said he’s “proud” of his demonstrably dishonest commercial, adding that the fact-checkers didn’t spend time “growing up on a farm,” so he knows “a little bill more about farming than they do.”

As defenses go, Cotton’s argument is gibberish. One need not grow up on a farm to recognize the basic tenets of reality. The congressman told a lie, he knew it was a lie, he got caught telling a lie, and instead of doing the honorable thing, Cotton has decided he likes this lie.

The public discourse isn’t supposed to work this way. Under traditional American norms, politicians could be expected to spin, dodge, and slice the truth awfully thin, but there was an expectation that a candidate who got caught telling a bald-faced lie to the public was likely to end up in real trouble.

Cotton seems to believe those norms no longer apply – he can get caught lying and pay no real price at all.

In other words, Tom Cotton sees American politics in a post-truth era. He can say what he pleases, without regard for honesty, because there won’t be any meaningful consequences for deceiving the public on purpose.

Is he right? This didn’t work out too well for Romney, but Cotton’s in a much better position to prevail in Arkansas.

Once the standard is set that lying will be rewarded, what incentive will politicians have to be honest?

Unbelievable! John McCain Flat-Out LIES About US Casualties in Iraq

It is often difficult to admit that we are no longer competent to do our jobs and that it is time to move on and leave the work to someone more capable, but we all must face that moment sooner or later. That time has arrived for John McCain. The only other explanation for his comments on the developing crisis in Iraq is that he is intentionally attempting to mislead in order to attack the current administration.

McCain has been making the rounds of the cable news shows this week to condemn the administration for creating the atmosphere which has allowed the conflict between Sunnis and Shiites to once again reach a fever pitch telling The Guardian on Thursday:

“The president should get rid of his entire national security team, including the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and bring the team in who won the conflict in Iraq in to turn this situation around, but it’s going to be extremely difficult to do so.”

On Friday, during an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, John McCain compared leaving a residual force to maintain order in Iraq to those left following other conflicts in Japan, Korea and Bosnia.

McCain told Chris Cuomo on CNN’s New Day on Friday:

“It’s important for us to note that in other wars and other conflicts, we have left residual forces behind, not in a combat role, but a stabilizing role. Whether it be Korea, Japan, Germany. We still have forces in Bosnia from that conflict. We had it won, and we needed to have a residual force.”

It is quite a stretch to compare Iraq and Bosnia in any way, in Iraq we had over 4,500 fatalities as opposed to 18 in Bosnia in a conflict that was driven by ethnic divisions which are always much easier to resolve than religious divisions.

McCain then made the most telling statement, the one that proves he has lost all contact with reality:

“We had literally no casualties there in Iraq during the last period after the surge was over, and by leaving a vacuum, then that was obviously filled.”

Literally? It would seem that the Senator has forgotten the meaning of the word since we did, in fact, take casualties including 66 fatalities and 297 wounded in the year following the surge before our final troops left the country in December of 2011. The Senator might be forgiven for saying that we sustained few casualties, since it was by comparison to other years in the war a low number but to claim that there were absolutely none is just not true.

Watch McCain’s absurd remarks in the video below.

Doctor In Ron Johnson's Anti-Obamacare Story Refutes Claim

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has long attributed his inspiration for entering Washington politics to a mission of repealing the Affordable Care Act. A common thread in the tea party-backed senator's calls for repeal is a story involving a reconstructive heart surgery that saved his infant daughter’s life 30 years ago, during the freer health system before Obamacare. 

But the doctor Johnson credits with the lifesaving heart surgery seems to disagree, according to progressive news blog Uppity Wisconsin.

In numerous speeches and op-eds, Johnson claimed the work of Dr. John Foker would not have been possible under the Affordable Care Act and its stifling regulations. If his family had lacked the freedom to access doctors qualified to reconstruct his daughter’s heart, Johnson argued, his baby wouldn’t have survived. 

In a 2012 interview with CNS News, Johnson said:

I would not have run for the U.S. Senate had Obamacare not been passed. … Our story has a happy ending because we had that freedom. … That’s what this health care law is all about, it’s an assault on our freedom. It’s going to lower the quality of our care. It’s going to lead to rationing. The types of medical innovation that saved my daughter’s life [and] that saves millions of Americans -- I won't say it’s going to come to a grinding halt, but it’s going to be severely limited.

According to Uppity, however, Foker is not only “generally supportive” of the Affordable Care Act, but contends that President Barack Obama’s landmark health care law does not go far enough.

Politifact To Religious Right: You’re Lying About ENDA

ENDA just got a major boost from the fact checkers at Politfact. The controversial journalists made big news last week and were heralded by conservatives and Republicans upon awarding President Barack Obama the “Lie of the Year” for his “you can keep your doctor” Obamacare claim.

But now, Politifact is likely back in the GOP doghouse after handing religious conservatives, including the president of the conservative anti-gay certified hate group, Traditional Values Coalition (TVC), a “false” rating for her comment attacking Democratic Senator Mark Pryor over ENDA.

“There’s a reason why Pryor is attempting to run as a Christian in Arkansas,” TVC’s Andrea Lafferty had said in a fundraising email. “It’s because Pryor has voted for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) in Washington, a bill that discriminates against Christian daycare, Christian parents, Christian business owners, and the rights of religious freedom.”

Politifact rightly says that claim is “false”.

The Traditional Values Coalition’s ENDA disapproval is shared by other Christian groups, like the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. They expressed their view in an Oct. 31 press release:

“The USCCB continues to promote the dignity of both work and marriage and to oppose unjust discrimination on any grounds, including those related to homosexual inclination or sexual identity. But we cannot support a bill, like ENDA, that does not justly advance the dignity of all workers and authentic non-discrimination.”

Politifact then slams home the actual facts:

Churches and other institutions with religious purposes (like schools and daycares) are exempt from the ENDA rules, just as they are from the religious discrimination portion of the Civil Rights Act of 1964’s Title VII.

Under Title VII, and therefore under ENDA, religious organizations, which need not be church-run, would be exempt. Additionally, all businesses with fewer than 15 employees are exempt, whether they’re religious or not.

The bill’s religious exemption indicates that churches, church-run initiatives and other religious businesses need not comply by employing people of all sexualities and gender identities. And there’s no special negative treatment for Christians. Businesses of any religion could qualify for the exemption. Individuals of any faith who oppose sexuality would have to abide by the law, so no religion is singled out.

Politifact did their homework, but they should have gone further, examining the anti-LGBT hate and lies about ENDA spewed from other anti-gay hate groups, like the Family Research Council and the American Family Association.

Catholic Group Leader: Obama ‘Doesn’t Celebrate Christmas With His Own Family’

Just two days before Thanksgiving this week, Fox News decided to do a segment supposedly exposing how America has become less-religious. “Is There an Effort to Remove God From American Culture?,” was the segment Gretchen Carlson hosted. Of course, Bill Donohue, head of the Catholic League, had a few words of hate to share.

After reading from President Abraham Lincoln’s 1864 call for a national day of thanks — what we today call Thanksgiving — complete with, as Carlson repeatedly reminded her audience, “eight references to God,” Donohue took that as his cue to slam President Barack Obama.

“There is a problem with this man,” the 66-year old Catholic warrior proclaimed. “It’s not just a linguistic problem. He is not exactly religion-friendly. It’s his business that he doesn’t celebrate Christmas with his own family. It’s my business, as a Catholic leader, to call him out when he shows an animus.”

Obama “doesn’t celebrate Christmas with his own family”? Really?

Which is why in a few days you’ll start to read dozens of right wing reports about how there are too many Christmas trees in the White House, and about all the money the taxpayers will be spending on the Obama’s annual Christmas vacation to Hawaii.

Where, apparently, the Obamas will ignore December 25, treating it as just another Wednesday.

2011: Right Wing Decries Obama White House Christmas: Not Sufficiently Austere
2012: Obama Using 54 Christmas Trees To Wage White House War On Christmas

So, we demand some proof, from Mr. Donohue, please!

All we could find on the Obama “doesn’t celebrate Christmas with his own family” claim is statement in an interview with the Obama family in July of 2008, that suggested the Obamas don’t lavish presents on their children for birthdays and for Christmas. In “Obama leaves the gifting to Santa,” Politico reported “Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) tells People magazine in the issue out Friday that he and his wife, Michelle, do not give Christmas or birthday presents to their two young daughters.”

But wait, there’s more.

Obama tells the magazine’s Sandra Sobieraj Westfall in a seven-page cover story that he and his wife follow the unusual practice because they “want to teach some limits.”

In the interview earlier this summer, Obama noted that they do spend “hundreds” of dollars on birthday slumber parties.

Michelle Obama told People: “Malia says, ‘I know there is a Santa because there’s no way you’d buy me all that stuff.’ ”
Wink.

Get it?

Whose parents didn’t wrap presents for them and sign them “Santa”? Mine sure did!

Donohue is bloviating — something he is paid very, very well to do.