“He was encouraging me, ‘It’s okay, Ben, you can take your shirt off’ … Here was a man that was much older than me, and I was around 20,” said Ben Unger. “At that point, I was just staring at a mirror with my shirt off and he was right behind me staring at the mirror with me at my body. Then telling me to look at my body and feel my body. It was weird.”

“While I was standing there without my clothes on, he asked me to touch my genitals,” says Chaim Levin. “Once again, I communicated that I was not comfortable with it. And he was like, you know, ‘Just feel yourself. Just feel it for a second. So, you can grasp your masculinity physically.’”

Ew. These are from the testimony of two former clients of a reparative therapy “life coach,” Alan Downing. Downing, the lead therapist for an “ex-gay” group called JONAH, admits that in spite of his years of being “ex-gay” he still “struggles” with gay feelings. No kidding; maybe that’s because he’s gay. And instead of being who he was created to be and living with wholeness and integrity, he’s creepily acting out his repressed sexuality on the minds and bodies of confused young men unwittingly handed over to him by their families.

One might think that a technique of having clients undress and touch themselves in front of a mirror while the therapist watches is unusual, but it’s actually not in the twisted world of self-hating gay life coaches trying to create others like themselves. As Wayne Besen reports the story, these practices are all based on the “touch therapy” developed by the discredited and expelled Richard Cohen, in which, just to be clear, “he places a male client between his thighs and caresses him.” Cohen, in turn, “learned his creepy methods from the Wesleyan Community Christian Church, a cult that practiced nude therapy, including adult women breast-feeding men in a church sanctuary.”

If I might make a humble suggestion to the “American Family Association”: Young people are being placed in the care of dishonest, damaged, sexually perverted charlatans who abuse them, all because their families have the false idea that they shouldn’t be who they are. Why don’t you busy yourselves doing something about that?

The horror! Then, Home Depot spokesman Stephen Holmes had the nerve to respond to AFA’s demands with this: “The bottom line is, [ending our participation in Pride events] just runs counter to our inclusive culture…and that’s where we stand.”

The increasingly droll Box Turtle Bulletin provides a timeline on the basis of past boycott attempts:

1. AFA will auto-email Home Depot pre-fab letters from their member list declaring that they will not shop at Home Depot.

2. Home Depot’s stock will go up. (I still haven’t figured out why this happens)

3. At some point Home Depot will agree to some tiny concession of no material concern.

4. AFA will declare victory and call off the boycott.

Rinse, repeat.

Chuck Colson is upset, there’s no doubt about it. The tide has turned. The Rubicon has been crossed. People are “starting not to notice” when celebrities come out of the closet. What was once seen as a defiant and courageous act is now “no big deal,” just part of the fabric of life. A new Gallup poll shows that “a majority of Americans—53 percent—believe that gay and lesbian relationships are morally acceptable,” a 13-point increase since 2001, and it’s mostly due to shifting attitudes among younger men.

Gosh darn it, “these results were to be expected—given the relentless barrage of pro-gay media coverage and the overwhelmingly positive depiction of same-sex relationships in popular culture.” What Chuck recommends is more anti-gay media coverage and some good ol’ negative depictions of same-sex relationships. By golly, he’s certainly been doing his part, but he needs help. “We’ve got to start making a better case. You can come to the Colson Center [a subsidiary of Prison Fellowship Ministries] and get all kinds of resources to winsomely present our arguments,” says Chuck.

You can see a hilarious illustration of the problem Chuck is addressing here. It just isn’t safe anymore to go to a party and behave like an anti-gay hooligan - oh, pardon me; I meant “a person with moral qualms about homosexuality.”

Also, marriage equality “would probably reduce the proportion of homosexuals who marry persons of the opposite sex and, thus, would likely reduce instances of marital unhappiness and divorce.”

So testified a key expert witness in the Proposition 8 trial.

You are probably assuming that this was a witness for the plaintiffs suing to overturn Prop 8. If so, you are wrong. This is the testimony under cross examination of David Blankenhorn, witness for the proponents of Prop 8.

The closing arguments are today, and are being live-blogged at prop8trialtracker.com

Bye, Marshall-Newman. It’s been fun.

FRC’s Peter Sprigg was practically wetting himself with joy that they could showcase Blankenhorn - in particular, he was gleeful that they had a speaker who is adamant about being a liberal with gay friends.

Anyway, David Blankenhorn does not like to be portrayed as anti-gay. He sent a letter to the editor to the New York Times objecting to two recent items in which he was linked, by virtue of his testimony in favor of denying the rights and responsibilities of marriage to gay and lesbian couples, to the Family Rentboy Council - and specifically, George Rekers.

This matter is particularly important to me, since in my report to the court, as well as in my testimony on the stand, I clearly and emphatically rejected the anti-gay views that Mr. Rekers has apparently expressed.

Jonathan responded to the posting of the letter on the recently resurrected Institute for American Values blog:

David,

You can’t deny that you have collaborated with Dr. George Rekers’ Family Research Council. My husband and I met you at FRC headquarters when you lectured on your book “The Future of Marriage”. While you were certainly the most GLBT friendly person in the room, the association with the the FRC is undeniable.

As a husband and a father, you know how precious your marriage is. I can attest that my marriage is the most valuable thing in my life, and it has been that way for twenty-seven years. You may “reject anti-gay views”, but your political work aids and abets the anti-gay/Christianist groups and it harms families like mine. Ideas have consequences.

Blankenhorn didn’t like this. So much so that in his response, he kind of lost his head a little. In part:

You say that you were in that room that day. If you were, doesn’t that mean that you in fact “collaborated” with FRC? If you did not wish to “aid and abet” FRC by participating in one of their events, why didn’t you just stay away? Wouldn’t that have made your point more effectively? Don’t you think it’s true that, by virtue of your collaboration with FRC in swelling their attendance at such events, you are in fact facilitating and participating in the anti-gay movement in America? Further, you seem to know that Rekers is affiliated with FRC (something I didn’t know). Doesn’t your involvement with FRC mean that you in fact support Rekers, regardless of what you say now?

I’m going to replace the snarky thing I just wrote and deleted with this: No, David - it doesn’t. Because for us to attend a hostile event created to deny our equality as a couple in order to observe and report on it is not the same thing as your behavior in participating in that event as the featured speaker and advocating for that same goal, to deny our equality as a couple. That is known as collaborating. However much you might value your gay friends and acknowledge their dignity and worth, your objective at that event was the same as FRC’s, to advocate against marriage equality.

Here’s the thing: If you are going to extol the wonderfulness of marriage, and talk about how healthy and beneficial it is for society and families and individuals, and then argue that this one category of people shouldn’t be able to have it, you are going to be perceived as hostile to that category of people.

There’s a group of clergy in Iowa right now, petitioning the state legislature to forcibly divorce the same sex couples in that state. They say they don’t hate gay people either; “just because you disagree with someone, it doesn’t mean that you hate them.” Here’s what Box Turtle Bulletin’s Timothy Kincaid has to say in response:

If I petitioned that you (or people like you) should be treated as inferior to me, I think you would find it difficult to locate the compassion in my efforts. And if I were to do so in the context of fighting the “People like [You] Lobby”, you might even identify animus in my motivations.

Yesterday, David Blankenhorn corrected the record to say that he did in fact read a document by George Rekers provided by the pro-Prop 8 attorneys, and confirmed that he had read it in his deposition. A minor issue in context, and we appreciate the clarification. I actually think that Blankenhorn is a good man, that he is sincere in his belief that he can be both anti-marriage equality and pro-gay rights, and that it really does cause him anguish to make common cause with such monsters as one encounters at FRC. And that means he has a dilemma.

* previously known as the Family “Research” Council until George Rekers suggested this much less misleading name.

This is an interesting one from Chuck Colson (of Prison Fellowship Ministries; read more about them here). In case you’re not aware, PFM operates a tax-free multi-million dollar headquarters located in Ashburn, and founder Chuck Colson produces both a daily radio and email commentary, broadcast nationwide. His topics rarely have anything to do with ministering to prisoners; rather, they represent salvos in the Republican/Christian nationalist-manufactured “culture war,” and reliably telegraph the talking points we can expect to hear from the rest of the Republican noise machine on any given issue.

Today’s commentary concerns the coming repeal of the disastrous “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. According to Colson, “unless something is done,” military chaplains will be drummed out of the service en masse when gay and lesbian servicemembers no longer have to lie about this important part of their humanity in order to serve their country. Why? Because the hypothetical chaplains will have to “confront a profoundly difficult moral choice” between providing spiritual support to all servicemembers who ask for it, and…what? Refusing to do that? It seems that a military policy that actively encourages people to lie has not created any moral dilemmas for these hypothetical chaplains, but never mind.

Here, Colson approvingly quotes some retired chaplains quoting Colson, from his own “Manhattan Declaration”:

We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.

Consider: Are the armed forces of the United States “Caesar’s,” or are they “God’s”? What are the implications of this (I assume) hasty and unexamined admission by Chuck Colson that he thinks military service is not in the realm of service to our nation, but is instead something to be rendered unto his God? And why are we, the taxpayers of Loudoun, supporting this anti-democratic nonsense?

The Loudoun County Republican Committee has invited Bishop Harry Jackson of D.C. anti-marriage fame to speak at their “Ronald Reagan Lecture Series”.

Here are the details of the event.

The Role of Faith in Public Life
“If we ever forget that we are one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under”.
– Ronald Reagan

Bishop Harry Jackson, Senior Pastor, Hope Christian Church
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
7:30 p.m.
Our Savior’s Way Lutheran Church
43115 Waxpool Road
Broadlands, VA 20148
(at the corner of Claiborne Parkway and Waxpool)

“The Virginia Republican Creed states that “we believe that faith in God, as Recognized by our Founding Fathers is essential to the moral fiber of the Nation”.

If you’d like to be nauseated and insulted by nonsense like “you can’t equate your sin with my skin,” or if you’d like to experience the tight coupling that still exists between the Republican apparatus and the virulently anti-gay Christian nationalist “worldview” movement, you may want to attend the lecture.

There is a good deal of public domain information about Bishop Jackson. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) featured him in its Spring 2007 Intelligence Report. The report says that while Jackson associates with hate groups like Lou Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition and borderline hate groups like Rod Parsley’s Ohio-based megachurch he uses “softer language”, like this from the Washington Post article:

“I believe that the Bible teaches that same-sex marriage is an oxymoron,” he says. “If you redefine marriage, you have to redefine family. You’d have to redefine parenting. I’m looking at the extinction of marriage. And black culture is in a free fall.”

The SPLC also claims that he supports civil unions, a claim I find to be about as believable as his claim to be a registered Democrat.

People for the American Way (PFAW) has a detailed write up on Jackson, see Peter Mongomery’s “Harry Jackson: Point Man for the Wedge Strategy”. PFAW shows how Jackson portrays GLBT activists (and liberals in general) as “enemies of faith, family and religious liberty”. Jackson follows the program laid out by Chuck Colson in his book Evangelicals and Catholics Together to unite the Black Church with the white Evangelicals. He campaigned hard against Barack Obama in 2008, and while he failed to get Black Americans to vote for John McCain, he was successful in anti-gay ballot initiatives like California’s Proposition 8 in his “primary strategy for building a multi-racial Religious Right: using attacks on gay rights and abortion as a wedge between African American churchgoers and their political allies in the civil rights and progressive communities.”

As for the “softer language” to which the SPLC speaks, I have a hard time finding it. Sometimes I think the SPLC goes out of its way to give haters the benefit of the doubt. Here are some examples of Jackson’s quotables.

“We’re not going to sit back…you and I can bring the rule and reign of the cross to America and we can change America on our watch together.

Family Rentboy Council’s 2005 Justice Sunday event”

“God’s looking for a SWAT team …. He’s looking for a team of Holy Ghost terrorists!

2007 Pentecostal conference in Virginia“

GAYS AS SATANIC
Shortly before the 2004 election, Jackson outlined a strategy for defeating the “gay agenda,” writing, “Gays have been at the helm of a fourfold strategy for years, but the wisdom behind their spiritual, cultural, political, and generational tactics is clearly satanic.” In 2007, he blamed the advance of hate crimes legislation on the fact that “the authority of the evil one in the nation has continued to ascend and get stronger and bolder.” And at the Jamestown celebration that year, he said, “And so what we are dealing with is an insidious intrusion of the Devil to try to cut off the voice of the church, and I for one am not going to let that happen.”

“you can’t equate your sin with my skin.”

Larry King Live

Jackson is a skilled politician, i.e., a political opportunist and demagogue. For example, the Washington City Paper wrote about Jackson’s O’Reilly Factor blow up. Apparently, Jackson rented a one-bedroom condo in order to register to vote in D.C. After the Washington Blade reported on the registration - which is a matter of public record - Jackson accused the Blade of “hacking into his records”. He then appeared on The O’Reilly Factor where he and O’Reilly reveled in a 5-minute victim-fest. Never did they explain why Jackson, his wife and daughters would choose to live in a one-bedroom condo, nor did they mention that none of Jackson’s condo neighbors has ever seen the Jackson family. Sound familiar?

If you are concerned that the LCRC has suddenly moved to the right with the election of Mark Sell, the new “Delgaudioist” chair, think again; this is a problem with a much longer history. Bishop Jackson is actually to the left of last year’s speaker, Liberty Council’s Mat Staver, author of the “death panel” fib. Staver is (unsurprisingly) linked to the Family Rentboy Council through the Florida anti-adoption case and his offer to defend Dr. George Rekers. He’s also associated with the Help Save Christmas® campaign and the, ahem, Day of Purity™.

Will the LCRC ever stop associating itself with these haters? How is an amoral bomb-thrower like Bishop Jackson a good example of “faith in public life”? The question for both Jackson and the LCRC is: What is it, exactly, that you want to do? How do you want to “exercise your faith in public life” that makes you feel restricted and under “attack” by the mere existence of our community?

The Loudoun Times-Mirror this week published a very peculiar interview with Eugene Delgaudio. The first thing that jumps out at you is the incompetence. There is video, from which the reporters (the task required two of them) extracted the most coherent parts for inclusion in the story:

Q: What do you say to the statement that Kincora would force the county to take on a huge amount of debt?

A: I think that the debt issue is false because for a long time we have had a companion debt that no one has heard about. No one in Loudoun has ever once mentioned, factually, the [Community Development Authority] debt from Dulles Town Center. The facts are staff is playing to the ideological liberal elite that is statist in nature and anti-prosperity and essentially wants to enslave the 80 percent that pay the residential taxes. So the residents of Loudoun will see economic slavery forever if they’re fearful of a debt that doesn’t exist.

Keep in mind, this would be the part of the answer to question 3 that made the most sense. The debt “doesn’t exist”? I bet the county administrator and the rest of the board will be happy to hear that.

This answer isn’t even the most damning example. The rest of the interview is very much like this; incoherent denials of reality, devoid of serious policy content, studded with self-promotion and ideological buzzwords. See if you can make any sense of this one:

Q: Your concern regarding the immigrant community seems to be rooted on crime issues. What is your objection to the gay community?

A: Similar. It’s in their best interest that there not be federal legislation marking them. As a supervisor, we passed a law that no one understands and how can they implement it?

I can tell you that the defamatory, dehumanizing language Mr. Delgaudio uses to spread fear about these two targeted communities is “similar,” but I still have no idea what he means by this answer. His objection to the gay community is in some way “rooted on crime issues”? Mr. Delgaudio has commented here before; perhaps he can clarify for us what he was thinking. As for the statement that “it’s in their best interest that there not be federal legislation marking them,” the only thing this could mean is that he fundamentally does not understand the principle of the Fourteenth Amendment - or at least that is what he wants us to think. There is federal civil rights legislation that prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion, and that mandates the reporting of violence directed at people because of their religion. Which religious community is “marked” by these laws? Catholics like Mr. Delgaudio? Obviously not; these laws don’t “mark” people of a particular faith. Laws that make reference to “sexual orientation or gender identity” work exactly the same way. It’s one thing to make a casual error by referring to a marginalized group instead of to the general characteristic (”religion,” “sexual orientation,” “political affiliation”), but to actually claim that such laws apply only to a specified community reveals either profound ignorance or profound dishonesty.

Then there’s “we passed a law that no one understands.” Again, this reveals what would seem to be just a lack of basic competence in policy matters. An amendment to the county EEOP is not a “law.” It’s an amendment to a policy which the board has the legal authority to create. And it really does suggest a high degree of narcissism for someone to believe that because he doesn’t understand something, “no one understands” it. The policy wording is very simple to understand; the county government is prohibited from making employment decisions on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, which it obviously shouldn’t be doing, and from all accounts wasn’t doing anyway.

What is noticeably absent from the interview is the kind of abusive and defamatory language Mr. Delgaudio uses from the dais and in his constituent letters, not to mention in his day job activities. Some might be tempted to think this shows that he doesn’t really mean it - and that’s actually the problem. My question is why would that be better? What it means is that the use of “hyperbole,” as he describes his hate speech and emotional outbursts, is calculating and cynical.

Please understand: When I use the term incompetence, I’m speaking of policy and governance, not politics. One of the commenters on the LTM site has it right: Mr. Delgaudio is “a gifted politician,” meaning, unfortunately, someone who can speak of his concern for “the best interests” of people he has openly accused of sexual crimes against children and called perverted, filthy, disease-ridden, deviant, dangerous, a less-than-human “it;” in other words, people he regularly lies about and invites violence against. I no longer think that Mr. Delgaudio believes a word of his hate rhetoric; it is simply a part of his business model. These are the words of a charlatan who likely has a sociopathic personality disorder and sees nothing wrong with using such “hyperbole” to get attention and money. He buys direct mail marketing lists, crafts his appeals to a certain silly, fearful slice of the populace (see, for example, the much-ridiculed recent fundraising letter written in the style of bad pulp fiction that actually begins “One stormy night..”), and generates a monetary return. He runs his permanent political campaign the same way. There’s no law against what he’s doing, it’s just immoral.

Here’s what is even more reprehensible, though: Others who know exactly what he is and don’t care. His only Republican colleague on the board, Lori Waters, supported his venomous tirade against transgender people by repeating some of his insults herself, so don’t bother expecting moral courage from her. Self-styled “moderate” (!) Frank Wolf endorsed him. I’m not aware of a single Republican office holder who has stepped up to say that this sort of rhetoric goes too far. In addition to Frank Wolf, Mr. Delgaudio bragged of endorsements by Delegates Tom Rust and Joe May, County Treasurer Roger Zurn, Sheriff Steve Simpson and County Clerk Gary Clemens. That was in 2003. Will any of them now step up and say no? If not, then what will it take? Gentlemen, this is what doing the right thing looks like:

The purpose of Loudoun Progress is to provide a county-focused online community for Democrats and progressives; although the blog is not affiliated with the Loudoun County Democratic Committee, all four of us are members, and Loudoun Progress is an unabashedly partisan blog. The Equality Loudoun blog, of course, is driven by issues advocacy, and is expressly non-partisan. That will continue to be the case. Variability in sexual orientation and gender identity doesn’t follow party lines, and people of any or no party are potentially advocates for equality.

I’m happy to have three colleagues who know a lot about different aspects of politics and policy in Loudoun, and grateful to have this venue to write about some things that are less narrowly focused on GLBT issues. I invite readers here to come over and visit.

And here’s the family he was employed to destroy.

The children arrived…on the evening of December 11, 2004. John, the elder sibling, arrived with his four-month old brother wearing a dirty adult sized t-shirt and sneakers four sizes too small that seemed more like flip-flops than shoes. Both children were suffering from scalp ringworm. Although John was clearly suffering from a severe case of ringworm, the medication brought from John’s home to treat his scalp was unopened and expired. James, too, suffered from an untreated ear infection, as evidenced by the one-month old, nearly unused, medication. John did not speak and had no affect. He had one concern: changing, feeding, and caring for his baby brother. It was clear from the children’s first evening at the Petitioner-Roe home that the baby’s main caretaker was John, his four year old brother…

For the first few months, John seemed depressed and presented a void, unresponsive demeanor and appearance. Upon arriving at the Petitioner home, John did not speak a word for about one week. After two weeks, he began to mumble imperceptible utterances. After about one month, John finally began speaking. Petitioner quickly learned that John had never seen a book, could not distinguish letters from numbers, could not identify colors and could not count. He could not hold a pencil. He had never been in an early childhood program or day care. Nevertheless, John’s potential for educational development was apparent. Although he had not had any formal education, John could sing and pick up lyrics very quickly. Early on, Petitioner and Roe noticed that John hoarded food by requesting additional servings at the start of dinnertime and later hiding the extra food in his room. John eventually grew out of this behavior, due in part to a tactic employed by Petitioner and Roe of showing John, in advance of mealtime, the more than sufficient amount of food on the stove prepared and available for the family.

James was a very happy baby and was content with anyone, even strangers. After approximately two months, James began to exhibit signs of attachment to his primary caregivers, Petitioner and Roe. John, however, took about two years to fully bond. At one time, John shunned hugs from Petitioner and Roe. However, in his own time, John developed bonding and today, initiates goodbye hugs each morning before going to school.

And here’s what their world turned into — the world Rekers wanted to kick them out of:

On weekdays, the household wakes up at about 6:30 a.m. Petitioner usually prepares breakfast, permitting each child to assist with an assigned kitchen duty. Each morning, the family eats together without distraction from the television. As each child finishes his breakfast, he puts his dish in the sink and proceeds to the bathroom to brush his teeth and hair. Petitioner and Roe purchased a Ford minivan, which Petitioner jokes was not his dream car, however, to accommodate the family size, is the most feasible. Tom Roe, Jr. is dropped off at school first. Afterwards, Petitioner takes John and James to school, walking them into their classrooms and usually speaking to their respective teachers. In the afternoon, after Petitioner picks the boys up from school, they generally go to the park for tennis lessons. At the conclusion of their lessons, the family heads home for dinner. At mealtime, the family blesses the food together and takes turns sharing the highlights of their day. Phones are not answered and the television is off during dinner. After the children are excused from the table, the older children load the dishwasher.

After dinner, the children spend one hour doing their homework. Although James does not have homework, he spends time at the table pretending to do homework. John requires more supervision and one-on-one interaction to complete his homework. If a child finishes his homework early, the remaining time is spent reading. After homework is completed, the children are allowed to watch television. At bedtime, the boys retreat to their separate beds. By morning, however, James seems to always find his way into John’s bed.

The family attends a non-denominational Christian church and have as pets, a dog, rabbit and kitten. John and James refer to Petitioner and Roe as “papi” and “daddy” respectively. John and James have lived in the same neighborhood, attended the same school, day care and aftercare since their arrival in the Petitioner-Roe home. As a result, each child has created friendships from school and in the neighborhood. John and James are closely bonded to Tom Roe, Jr., and their extended family. The boys consider Petitioner and Roe’s parents, brothers and sisters their grandparents, uncles and aunts. The extended family sends the boys gifts for their birthdays and the holidays. Roe’s mother, who lives in Tampa, visits the family regularly.

No Good Christian Heterosexual couple volunteered to take these two damaged youngsters in.

None have done so since.

If separated from their parents, they will be sent to separate state institutions.

Dr Rekers testified under oath that even if they’d have been with their new parents for ten years, it would still be in the children’s best interests to split them up and institutionalise them.

Rekers is also behind - lo and behold - that activist front group calling itself the “American College of Pediatricians” that recently sent to every school district in the country a campaign of misinformation called “Facts about Youth.” They were banking on distracted educators confusing them with the legitimate American Academy of Pediatrics, and the program entitled “Just the Facts about Sexual Orientation and Youth: A Primer for Principals, Educators, and School Personnel.” The AAP published a statement on their website that politely sets the record straight: “[The fake group’s] campaign does not acknowledge the scientific and medical evidence regarding sexual orientation, sexual identity, sexual health, or effective health education.”

Zoe also gives us the information that Rekers, along with director Jay Grimstead, Patrick Henry College/Home School Legal Defense Association’s Mike Farris (this article is from 1993, when Farris was running for Virginia Lt. Governor), and other activists, was one of the authors and steering members of the Coalition on Revival. Here is an excerpt from one of the policy papers, co-authored by Rekers, that make up the COR Manifesto, a kind of blueprint for a pre-constitutional theocratic
America:

42. We affirm that sexual abuse and parents’ willfully depriving their children of shelter, clothing, food, sleep, or essential medical care, thus endangering their lives and physical health, should be treated as unlawful assault or attempted murder and the offenders punished accordingly by civil government and disciplined by the Church. We deny that the state has a right to impose unrealistic standards on families; that the so-called offenses of “emotional neglect,” “emotional abuse,” “educational neglect,” etc., which form the bulk of substantiated reports of “child abuse and neglect,” are in fact crimes against children; that the state has any right to administer criminal penalties or usurp custody in neglect cases except when a child’s life or physical health is obviously endangered; and that the state should ever administer criminal penalties or usurp custody in cases where the only accusation concerns mental health, since the state should not mandate what particular beliefs and attitudes are healthy or acceptable. We further deny that involuntary circumstances should ever be treated as a crime, and that even sinful families are helped more by the threat of removing their children rather than by prayer, godly instruction, and loving assistance.

Sure - because parents and their assistants should be free to torture children emotionally with no pesky interference. Who’s to say that a child’s belief that s/he’s an abomination and would be better off dead isn’t “healthy”? It’s for their own good; the “doctor” said so. You should really just go read Zoe’s entire post.