Gay journalist: LGBT media outlets use ‘fake news’ to advance movement

Pro-LGBT media outlets and activists groups have been “emotionally manipulating and even entirely misleading LGBT people” with misleading or even entirely false reports of persecution by a "homophobic" government and culture, according to a recent column by Federalist contributor Chad Felix Greene.

Greene, a self-described “conservative” who is himse, f homosexual, used his September 14 piece to highlight six stories that garnered significant traction in LGBT circles, but misrepresented their subject matter with unsupported claims, omitted details, and misplaced emphasis.

His first example was legislation introduced in July by Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-SC, to forbid U.S. embassies from flying any flag other than the American flag, which outlets such as the Washington Blade characterized as specifically targeting rainbow “pride” banners. But as LifeSiteNews covered at the time, while some embassies promoting LGBT “pride” has been a source of controversy, the bill did not target any specific flags.

"The United States flag is the single greatest symbol of freedom the world has ever known, and there’s no reason for anything but Old Glory to be flying over our embassies and posts around the globe," Duncan said at the time.

Greene’s second example is a story from Attitude UK about Seth Owen, an 18-year-old high school co-valedictorian who was supposedly “kicked out by his parents when they discovered he was gay.” As NBC reported and Greene details, however, Owen’s parents actually discovered his attraction at age 15, and after a brief attempt at counseling, he continued living with them for more than two years.

“When he was 18 years old, Owen and his father got into a dispute over the family policy of attending church,” Greene explains. “Owen disapproved of the conservative views his parents’ Baptist church expressed and no longer wished to attend. His father told Owen either he would attend church with everyone in the family or need to move out.”

Next, Greene highlights a report from Queerty about a New Zealand woman named Laura Jean Landon who in 2016 used the Grinder app to arrange a meeting with a homosexual man under false pretenses. Along with two other men, Landon threatened the man with a bat and gun, shouted slurs at him, performed sex acts with each other, and sexually assaulted him. They also stole his money, credit cards, jewelry, and car upon leaving.

Landon was sentenced to four and half years in prison, and the disturbing story is real, but Greene faults Queerty for “headlining a single homophobic act fitting a narrative of ignorance and bigotry” instead of “emphasizing the seriousness of this violent crime.” The website used the headline, “Woman breaks into a gay man’s home, forces him to watch her perform a sex act as ‘example’ of how to ‘behave.’”

Greene’s fourth example is another Blade story, this time concerning the Religious Liberty Task Force announced this summer by Attorney General Jeff Sessions at a Justice Department summit on religious liberty. The story accused the department of “tout[ing] anti-LGBT views” at the event, but its only example was Sessions’ reference to the Masterpiece Cakeshop case. The shop’s owner Jack Phillips fought for the freedom not to create cakes endorsing same-sex “marriage,” but maintained all along he was “happy to sell a cake to anyone, whatever his or her sexual identity.”

Next came a Huffington Post column arguing that the “Religious Right Appears Intent On Criminalizing Gay Sex Again.” But Greene notes that the piece was pure speculation built on “comments by several Christian conservative leaders, some more than a decade old, regarding the nature of homosexuality and the influence of legally recognizing homosexual behaviors”; and that “no one today is even hinting at such an agenda.”

Finally, Greene cites an LGBTQ Nation story that initially ran under the headline, “The State Department is retroactively revoking passports for trans citizens.” It was based on the claims of two men “identifying” as women who claimed their passports renewals were denied over their “gender markers.”

Notably, however, the National Center for Transgender Equality soon admitted that “the longstanding passport gender marker policy has not changed,” and “the incidents we have seen involved unusual circumstances and bureaucratic mistakes by the passport agency.” Within roughly a day of publication, LGBTQ Nation changed its headline to read, “Advocates say fears about trans people’s passports are overblown.”

“A political movement should not have to rely on emotional outrage from truly fake news to be successful,” Greene concluded.