SOURCE: Wikipedia, captured 2020-07-22
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Mentioned here [2017-10-23]: Christian Right tips to fight transgender rights: Separate the T from the LGB
Hands Across the Aisle sent a letter to Ben Carson, Director of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, speaking out against the inclusion of trans women at single-sex women's shelters. Revealingly, the letter's co-signers (which include Meg Kilgannon) also include Michelle Cretella, the current President of the American College of Pediatricians, an anti-LGBT hate group that pumps out junk science on LGBT people, including attempts to link homosexuality to pedophilia or claims that LGBT people are a danger to children.
In November 2010, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins was asked about Family Research Council's Senior Researcher for Policy Studies, Peter Sprigg's comments regarding the criminalization of same-sex behavior: Perkins responded that criminalizing homosexuality is not a goal of Family Research Council.
Perkins repeated FRC's association of homosexuals with pedophilia, stating:
"If you look at the American College of Pediatricians, they say the research is overwhelming that homosexuality poses a danger to children."
Perkins' statements have been contradicted by mainstream social science research, and the likelihood of child molestation by homosexuals and bisexuals has been found to be no higher than child molestation by heterosexuals. As Newsweek put it, "for decades, the FRC has smeared homosexuals in its publications, insinuating that gay people are more likely to sexually abuse children" and an analysis by John Aravosis concluded that the FRC "cherry-picks and distorts evidence as part of a deliberate campaign to smear the LGBT community."
Some scientists whose work is cited by the socially conservative advocacy group the American College of Pediatricians -- which was created following the American Academy of Pediatrics' endorsement of adoption by same-sex couples and to which FRC points for evidence supporting its positions -- have said the organization has distorted or misrepresented their work and the organization has been criticized by Psychology Today for making "false statements ... that have the potential to harm LGBT youth."
As a response to FRC's promotion of such widely rejected claims about LGBT people, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) designated FRC as a hate group in the Winter 2010 issue of its Intelligence Report. Mother Jones reported that "The Southern Poverty Law Center's classification of FRC as a hate group stems from FRC's more than decade-long insistence that gay people are more likely to molest children ... Research from non-ideological outfits is actually firm in concluding the opposite."
[anti-LGBT+ hate group] Family Research Council
The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) is a socially conservative advocacy group of pediatricians and other healthcare professionals in the United States. The group was founded in 2002. In 2005, it reportedly had between 150 and 200 members and one employee; in 2016 it reportedly had 500 physician members.
ACPeds' primary focus is advocating against abortion and the adoption of children by gay or lesbian people. It also advocates [widely discredited] conversion therapy.
The organization's view on parenting differs from the position of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which holds that sexuality has no connection with the ability to be a good parent and to raise healthy and well-adjusted children. ACPeds has been listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for "pushing anti-LGBT junk science." A number of mainstream researchers, including the director of the US National Institutes of Health, have accused ACPeds of misusing or mischaracterizing their work to advance ACPeds' political agenda.
The group was founded in 2002 by a group of pediatricians, including Joseph Zanga, a past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), as a protest against the AAP's support for adoption by gay couples. ACPeds reports its membership at "over 500 physicians and other healthcare professionals."
ACPeds has vehemently condemned the American Psychological Association as a "gay-affirming program" which "devalues self-restraint," and supports "a child's autonomy from the authority of both family and religion, and from the limits and norms these institutions place on children." ACPeds also has adopted positions strongly opposed to parental affirmation and medical interventions in support of non-traditional or transgender gender identities in children.
In response to the publication by the medical and professional organization American Academy of Pediatrics of "Just the Facts," a handbook on teen sexual orientation aimed at a school audience, ACPeds issued its own publication, "Facts About Youth," in March 2010, accompanied by a web site. "Facts About Youth," along with a cover letter, was mailed to 14,800 school superintendents on behalf of Tom Benton, president of ACPeds.
"Facts About Youth" was challenged as not acknowledging the scientific and medical evidence regarding sexual orientation, sexual identity, sexual health, or effective health education by the American Academy of Pediatrics.The ACPeds letter to the superintendents primarily addressed same-sex attraction, and recommended that "well-intentioned but misinformed school personnel" who encourage students to "come out as gay" and affirm them as such may lead the students into "harmful homosexual behaviors that they otherwise would not pursue." The ACPeds letter to the superintendents also stated that gender dysphoria will typically disappear by puberty "if the behavior is not reinforced" and similarly alleged that "most students (over 85 percent) with same-sex attractions will ultimately adopt a heterosexual orientation if not otherwise encouraged."
Some scientists have voiced concerns that ACPeds mischaracterized or misused their work to advance its political agenda.
Gary Remafedi, a pediatrician at the University of Minnesota, wrote ACPeds a public letter accusing them of fundamentally mischaracterizing his research in their publications to argue that schools should deny support to gay teenagers.
Francis Collins, a geneticist and director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), issued a statement through the NIH accusing the ACPeds of misleading children and parents on its Facts About Youth website.
Warren Throckmorton, a therapist who specializes in sexual orientation issues, similarly stated that his research had been misused, saying of ACPeds: "They say they're impartial and not motivated by political or religious concerns, but if you look at who they're affiliated with and how they're using the research, that's just obviously not true."
In an amicus brief regarding the removal of a child from the foster home of a same-sex couple (Kutil and Hess v West Virginia) the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) described ACPeds as a "small and marginal group" which was "out of step with the research-based position of the AAP and other medical and child welfare authorities."
The LGBT advocacy organization PFLAG categorizes the ACPeds as an anti-equality organization, describing the group as a "small splinter group of medical professionals who do not support the mainstream view of the American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) that homosexuality is a normal aspect of human diversity."
The American College of Pediatricians has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a "hate group," and a "fringe group" which closely collaborates with the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) with "a history of propagating damaging falsehoods about LGBT people, including linking homosexuality to pedophilia."
In response to an ACPeds brief, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wrote that ACPeds is a fringe group that has acted to promote "unscientific and harmful 'reparative therapies' for LGBTQ students."
Surgical oncologist David Gorski has said that statements from ACPeds have been used by quack sites like Natural News to push anti-vaccine agendae. Gorski has pointed out that organizations spreading misinformation regarding HPV vaccine often cite ACPeds.
Gorski states, "Antivaccinationists have a special hatred for Gardasil. That hatred seems to be based on the fact that HPV vaccines are used to prevent a sexually-transmitted virus, the rationale somehow being that the use of such a vaccine will "encourage promiscuity." It's even been called the "promiscuity vaccine." Never mind that the evidence is quite clear that this claim is simply not true. Never mind that anyone who remembers their own adolescence clearly would know that fear of catching HPV and then developing cervical cancer 20 or 30 years down the road is not a major concern among teens as their hormones rage. None of this matters to the people making these claims, however."
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