The Rude Pundit (as a member of the super duper prayer team) gets an email from Tony Perkins at the Family Research Council taking credit for having the webpages on the Department of Health and Human Services site devoted to LGBT pride, diversity and health scrubbed:
“We’ve reported to you on the homosexual website at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). When some of you wrote to HHS to criticize this misuse of taxpayer dollars, you received anonymous, abusive, and even threatening responses. I protested this vigorously in a letter to HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt. Recently, I received a call from Rick Campanelli, legal counsel to Leavitt. He acknowledged that the website had been taken down and that the unidentified contractor employee responsible for the abusive replies had been fired. “
The Rude One did a little digging, because he hadn’t heard of this before, and came across Pam Spaulding’s posts at Pandagon about it. The pages were noticed by FRC on January 11, 2006 and were scrubbed nine days later. On January 27, Perkins sent a thank-you note to HHS Secretary Leavitt for taking down the pages.
But he wasn’t satisfied, and told his super duper prayer team members:
That’s fine–as far as that goes. But Mr. Campanelli did not explain how HHS became involved in promoting the unhealthy homosexual lifestyle in the first place. We had pointed out the medical inaccuracies that were promoted by the website. Nor did Mr. Campanelli explain to me how HHS could allow a contractor to speak for the largest federal department on such a vital matter. To be fair, many of the replies received to your expressions of concern were civil and respectful–if noncommittal.
“What this episode shows us is that even under a friendly, pro-family administration, the bureaucracy can run amok. As a former elected official, I understand the importance of public servants truly serving the public in both word and deed. I share the outrage of those who received the abusive responses from HHS. I can assure you, FRC will not turn a blind eye to the abuse of tax dollars or tax payers.”
“The bureaucracy can run amok.” As chilling as that is, it’s even more chilling that complaints by a Christian organization resulted in the very quick and thorough scrubbing of health-related links from the US government’s health department. And that they feel that they deserve even more obeisance. The Rude Pundit again:
Indeed, so well-scrubbed (or going through “revision,” according to the replacement page) that virtually none of the links that would dare tell LGBT people to be proud of their existence or inform the public of things that might have created “tolerance” and “understanding” remain. However, you know what? Fuck the FRC.
Here’s a Google cache of the “Who Is Gay” page, the “Youth and Suicide” page, the “Substance Abuse” page, the “Why Celebrate” page, the “Substance Abuse Treatment” page, the information page on “Social Support and Violence Prevention.” There’s a lot more cached you can find to see the ludicrously uncontroversial and mild suggestions for a peaceful, non-hating society that HHS would dare to try to help create.
And, sssh, HHS didn’t take down the page on “Social Support and Violence Prevention”. It teaches you how to “celebrate diversity” when a friend comes out to you. They didn’t take down the page that links to gay male stories. There’s others, but, most importantly, HHS didn’t take down the Resources page. Don’t tell Tony Perkins or he might, you know, go psycho.
Culture of life, indeed. Why is it that the government allowed itself to be pressured into taking down references to vital physical and mental health resources for a population known to have increased rates of suicide, substance abuse and other issues, by a group of Christian conservatives who objected because they think homosexuality is unhealthy and should be punished? What possible good can it do to a person who’s suffering from rejection to the point of suicide to once again tell him that he’s sinful and wrong and not deserving of being treated like a human?