Conservative Group ALEC in 1985: S&M Accidents Cause 10 Percent of San Francisco’s Homicides

Courtesy of People for the American Way

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Gay people recruit small children in public schools and S&M accidents are a leading cause of death in San Francisco, according to a 1985 newsletter from the American Legislative Exchange Council, the national, corporate-funded conservative group best known for pushing Stand Your Ground laws and union-busting bills.

The report was dug up and highlighted by the liberal watchdog group People for the American Way, which is organizing a protest of this week’s ALEC conference in Washington, DC. Titled “Homosexuals: Just Another Minority Group?” the report reads today like the script for a bizarre nature channel program on gay people. In it, ALEC outlines six primary types of gay people: “the blatant”; “the secret lifer”; “the desperate”; “the adjusted”; “the bisexual”; and “the situational.” (The “blatant” homosexual “is the obvious ‘limp-wristed’ individual who typifies stereotype of the ‘average’ homosexual.”)

According to the report, 10 percent of all homicides in San Francisco at one point in the 1980s were “a result of S&M accidents among homosexuals.”

The newsletter also serves as a cheat-sheet for gay men or women looking to meet like-minded people. “If a bar scene is preferred, the ‘Gayellow Pages,’ helps the homosexual find appropriate meeting places for socializing with other homosexuals,” the report says. If that doesn’t work, the newsletter discusses “public restrooms” and “massage parlors” as havens for “the desperate homosexual.” Gay people even had their own language: “The homosexual’s vocabulary is another part of their culture that separates them from the heterosexual mainstream.”

The ALEC newsletter asserted that homosexuality was not only a choice (“the homosexual makes the conscious choice to pursue members of his/her own sex”), but one that its practitioners often came to regret. “Tom Minnery, who writes for Christianity Today, has written about homosexuals forsaking their homosexuality upon becoming Christian,” the newsletter notes. “He says, ‘the fact is, many people are experiencing deliverance from homosexuality. The evidence is too great to deny it.'”

But those who refused to abandon their homosexual urges were a risk to public health and children, according to ALEC. “Whatever the type of homosexual, one of the more dominant practices within the homosexual world is pedophilia, the fetish for young children,” warned the newsletter. The reason for this was simple. “What is important to remember here is the fact that homosexuals cannot reproduce themselves biologically so they must recruit the young.” And gay people came at a significant cost to the taxpayers, in the form of research for infectious diseases and tax-exempt status for LGBT nonprofits. “In addition to federal funding of AIDS research, the federal government has been active in funding the homosexual movement.”

The report even took aim at the early stages of gay rights legislation, which the ALEC newsletter warned would force conservatives into uncomfortable and perhaps dangerous situations. Under new anti-discrimination laws for some public employees, “[p]arents will no longer be able to keep their children out from under the tutelage of homosexuals.” Bans on LGBT discrimination in housing would mean “landlords will be forced to rent their property to a homosexual couple even if the landlord’s family shares the same building.” But the most ominous piece legislation concerned a proposal to end LGBT discrimination in immigration: “This bill would permit known homosexuals from other countries to become citizens of the U.S.”

The horror.

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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