The loving, spiritual gay-bashers of the Family Research Council have sent yr. Wonkette another of their insufferable emails. This one, though, rather than merely sayinggay Boy Scouts are gross or that math does not count in polls anymore, takes a step far, far further into the debate over whether we should burn homosexuals at the stake, or just chop 'em up in the town square.
They are criticizing stories in the New York Times and Washington Post, horrible rags that they are, for having the nerve to report on the most recent surge in military sexual assaults... and not blaming it on the gays.
"What could have possibly brought about such a surge in sexual assaults?" the email asks. "Could the radical social policies pushed by the Obama Administration onto the military be a factor?"
Spoiler: NO PROBABLY NOT.
The FRC's only evidence here is that there was a noted 35 percent increase in sexual assaults over the past two years, and "two years ago was when the 1993 law against open homosexuality in the military was repealed." They appear to be under the impression either that there were no gay people in the military before the law was repealed, or that Don't Ask, Don't Tell was the only thing keeping them from waging wiener-war on the straights.
The reports on the 35% increase are based on survey data that included a 33% increase in men reporting "unwanted sexual contact" (almost all of which comes from other men). FRC was mocked in 2010 for noting that same-sex assaults the year before were roughly three times higher than the rate of homosexuality in the general population--and for predicting that those rates would rise if the 1993 law were repealed. The Pentagon's report released yesterday said that male victims were now 12% of all victims making "unrestricted" reports, and 13% of those making "restricted" (confidential) reports--both higher than in FY 2009.
TL;DR: They're full of shit.
You can read the whole report. It's on the internet. Page 80 is the one that says women make up 88 percent of assault victims, and three pages later is the one that says women make up 2 percent of the suspects. One would think it impossible to look at that pie chart and say "Gay men are running amok," but alas, here we are, three years later, listening to the same story about how Obama is enabling gay rapists, and the story-teller with all the numbers isn't showing his work.
Weirdly enough, though, they seem to acknowledge that this argument is kind of awful:
Of course, since the vast majority of people are heterosexual, so are most sexual assaults--like that allegedly committed over the weekend by Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski. This was a particular embarrassment to the Pentagon, since Krusinski was in charge of sexual assault prevention for the Air Force!
That is true! The problem is most certainly a military culture that is overwhelmingly permissive of sexual assault! You are getting this one right, you guys!
It is ironic that the Air Force, which is plagued with sexual assault problems, has been preoccupied with suppressing religious expression.
Oh, goddammit.
They would do well to dust off the advice of the first Commander-in-Chief, George Washington, who warned those who want morality without a moral code. Washington wrote in his farewell address to the nation, "...let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion."
Ok, first of all, this whole "Air Force hates religion" thing is actually — believe it! — actually the complete opposite thing. The most recent argument is related to changes to regulations seven years ago that protected the rights of superior officers to impose their religion on subordinates. Evangelical groups fought to allow proselytizing in the Air Force and prayers at official functions, and now that one guy named Mike is objecting it's a WAR ON JESUS. (The FRC has not raised any questions about the correlation between THAT regulation change and the rise of sexual assaults.)
This anti-Christian statement from ONE GUY at an organization immediately exploded into the conservative echo chamber when a counter-petition was put out by... the Family Research Council, which was fighting an Air Force directive that didn't exist because, again, they invented it for the petition, based on a quote from some dude.
It so didn't exist that the Department of Defense had to issue a statement saying "don't pay attention to these blogs please, they are totally making it up, etc."
Still, the FRC would like to blame men raping men on Obama, and men raping women on a fictionalized anti-Christian crusade in the Air Force, and the solution is not increased education and enforcement, but more Christianity and less gayness. Remember, they're all waiting there, with their unwanted sexual contact, in statistically insignificant numbers.
As for ol' George Washington, there's a reason his advice needs dusting off — he died 215 years ago and presided over a country in which women were property. Who gives a rat's ass what he said. Well, other than the people determined to live a few hundred years in the past.
[FRC]
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