Tag: david Barton

Did the leading association of pediatricians say schools are forcing kids to be gay?

David Barton says they did (via Right Wing Watch).
On his radio program Friday, August 5, Barton told his co-host Rick Green that the “leading pediatric association in America” wrote a letter to the superintendents of all the nation’s public schools warning them to stop indocrinating students in homosexuality. Barton said the pediatricians told the educators:

If you’ll just let this develop naturally, they’ll end up being heterosexual unless you force them to be homosexual.

The only part of this narrative that is correct is that school superintendents got a letter from some pediatricians about homosexuality. Everything else is wrong.
First, the only group that sent a letter to school superintendents with this kind of information was the American College of Pediatricians, a small group of socially conservative pediatricians and other interested people. In 2003, the group broke away from the 60,000+ member American Academy of Pediatrics due to disputes over homosexuality and abortion.
On their website, ACPeds says they have members in 47 states and five countries. I cannot find any information about how many members they have and others I know who have asked them the number say they have not gotten a response.  If the group reports their membership dues income properly, then the number of pediatrician members is very small, probably less than 200.
ACPEDS IRS 990 form reports $38,380 in membership dues and assessments for 2009, the most recent year for which a 990 is available on Guidestar. According to the ACPeds website, the dues is $225/year.  If all members were pediatricians and paid that fee, then ACPEDS would have around 170 members. However, because ACPEDS probably has various member categories including people who pay nothing (honorary, student, etc.) and some who pay only $100 (associate health professionals who are not physicians), I guess they had between 200-25o members in all categories in 2009. 
In contrast, as noted above, the American Academy of Pediatrics (the real leading pediatric  association in America) has 60,000 members. Barton and Green clearly portrayed a false situation; namely, that the AAP recently sent a letter to school superintendents saying that same-sex attracted teens will grow out of it if only schools wouldn’t indoctrinate them with pro-gay propaganda.
Right Wing Watch has much of what Barton and Green had to say about the letter (which actually was sent in April, 2010, not recently) but I am providing even more context because I want to demonstrate just how misleading this segment is. Barton and Green had just expressed pleasure about how the state legislature in TN overruled an ordinance in Nashville which would have banned discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. He follows this by blaming the National Education Association for indoctrinating kids with pro-gay material. Then, at about 17:40 into the show, Barton sets the stage for his segment on the ACPeds letter:

Barton: What’s interesting is, you know medical groups do not tend to be very conservative. Any professional medical group, the American Psychiatric Association, the association of psychologists, even the American Medical Association is a particularly friendly conservative group, they’re not a pro-life group and what’s really interesting is the American College of Pediatricians; now think about that, is that a conservative group?
Green: You’d think they would be, looking out for the kids, right?
Barton: But yeah, don’t spank your kid, don’t touch your kid, you know, and think of the way pediatric stuff has gone, and you don’t want to help shape these kids, let ’em be what they want to be. And so, all that anti-parental influence, and it’s remarkable that you have the American College of Pediatricians, who has just, they sent a letter to all 14,800 school superintendents in the United States and it’s a letter warning about what’s happening in the schools and the American College of Pediatricians is cautioning educators about what they do with same-sex attraction or symptoms of gender identity confusion in schools.
Green: You’re kidding, this is the pediatric association?
Barton: Got it, get this. The letter reminds school superintends that it is ‘not uncommon for adolescents to experience transient,’ that’s a big word, ‘transient confusion about their sexual orientation,’ and is telling 14,800 superintendents that ‘most students will ultimately adopt a heterosexual orientation if not otherwise encouraged.’ And they’re saying, guys, back off. This indoctrination you’re doing—

You can read the rest at Right Wing Watch.  Listening to this, there seems to be only two possibilities. One, Barton really thinks the ACPeds is the American Academy of Pediatrics and is so misinformed that he doesn’t really understand that the ACPeds is a tiny breakaway group; or two, he knows the difference but wants to make his listeners think that mainstream pediatricians would give that kind of advice to school leaders.
A reader who tipped me off to this story wrote Barton for an explanation and I will report which one of these options is the accurate situation if Barton answers.
For now, it is apparent that Barton badly misled his audience, some of whom are going to oppose anti-bullying programs because they trust Barton to pass along good information. Everybody makes mistakes but I think we should expect more from an adviser to Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Perry. I shudder to think about Barton advising them as GOP candidates or one of them as President on school policy relating to bullying or sexual orientation.

John Adams to Rick Perry: Don't meddle in religion

This morning, Religion Dispatches published my article with advice for Rick Perry from our second President, John Adams.  
David Barton is right about one thing: John Adams was a religious person. Adams twice called for national days of prayer and fasting during his presidency and attended many churches of different views. Although Adams had no patience for Calvinists or Catholics, Adams had immense respect for Jesus as an enlightened teacher.  
Knowing this, Benjamin Rush lamented to Adams in an 1812 letter, just prior to war with Great Britain, that his Presbyterian church voted down a petition to call on the government for a day of fasting and prayer. Rush must have expected Adams to agree. Instead, Adams did not and said that his national fasts had caused the loss of the presidency.
Essentially, Adams said meddling with religion by political leaders can lead to all sorts of mischief, including people worrying that the leaders favor one religion over another in national affairs.  Adams wrote to Rush:

That assembly has allarmed and alienated Quakers, Anabaptists, Mennonists, Moravians, Swedenborgians, Methodists, Catholicks, protestant Episcopalians, Arians, Socinians, Armenians, &c, &c, &c, Atheists and Deists might be added. A general Suspicion prevailed that the Presbyterian Church was ambitious and aimed at an Establishment as a National Church. I was represented as a Presbyterian and at the head of this political and ecclesiastical Project. The secret whispers ran through them [all the sects] “Let us have Jefferson, Madison, Burr, any body, whether they be Philosophers, Deists, or even Atheists, rather than a Presbyterian President.” This principle is at the bottom of the unpopularity of national Fasts and Thanksgiving. Nothing is more dreaded than the National Government meddling with Religion.

Note to Rick Perry and the AFA: the opposition and criticism you are getting over The Response is not of necessity the sign of an America in moral decline. Complaints about government leaders meddling in religion go back to the beginning of the nation.
Go over to RD and read the entire piece.

David Barton misleads Focus on the Family on death penalty case

Last week, Focus on the Family produced a series of broadcasts titled the Founding of America, featuring David Barton. In one of them, Barton told the audience that the Supreme Court overturned a murder conviction because the prosecutor used a Bible verse in his closing arguments. Here is Barton’s version of the case:

I mean, you do something religious in the courtroom and you’re in a lot of trouble, as evidenced by the case that we had at the Supreme Court not long ago, called Commonwealth v. Chambers. And that case came out of Pennsylvania. A man named Carl Chambers was convicted by a jury for taking an axe handle and brutally clubbing to death a 71-year-old woman to steal her Social Security check.
Not only was he convicted by the jury, he was sentenced to death by that jury. And yet, the Court overturned his conviction, because they pointed out that despite all the evidence and all the witnesses and all the testimony, something terrible had happened in the courtroom. They said that in a statement of less than five seconds, the prosecuting attorney had mentioned seven words out loud from the Bible. And the Court said, “We can’t have that. So, despite the evidence, despite the brutal nature of this crime, you mentioned a Bible verse, now we’ve got to reverse the murder sentence of this brutal murderer, because you mentioned a Bible verse in the courtroom.”
You see, today law and religion are enemies. They don’t get along, but back then, they were like two yoke of oxen, pulling in the same direction, never to be separated.

This description is quite misleading. Barton makes it seem as though a brutal murder went unpunished because the Supreme Court (Pennsylvania’s) penalized the prosecutor for citing the Bible. The facts of the case paint a completely different picture.
First, here are the facts Barton got right. In 1987, Karl Stephenson Chambers was convicted of robbing and killing Anna Mae Morris in 1986. The evidence was circumstantial but convincing to the jury and they found Chambers guilty of robbery and murder. During the sentencing phase, the prosecutor referred briefly to the Bible. The jury then rendered a sentence of death. Chambers appealed and based on the Bible reference, the PA Supreme Court vacated the death sentence.
At this point, the facts diverge from Barton’s rendition. Barton says the “Court overturned his conviction,” leaving the clear impression that the court let a guilty man go free. However, the conviction, or as Barton also framed it — “murder sentence” — was not overturned. The initial sentence of the death penalty was set aside so that a new sentencing hearing could be held. That hearing was held and that jury came back with the same sentence of death. So Barton’s contention that “the Court overturned his conviction, because they pointed out that despite all the evidence and all the witnesses and all the testimony, something terrible had happened in the courtroom” is simply not true.
Eventually, Chambers death sentence was set aside in favor of life in prison, but this change had nothing to do with the use of the biblical reference. In 2005, attorney William Hangley argued before a York (PA) County judge that Chambers could not be executed because Chambers is mentally retarded. In 2002, the US Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that executing a mentally impaired person was “cruel and usual punishment.” Chambers scored a 60 as a middle school student and 74 as an adult inmate leading the Court to convert his death row fate to life in prison. The federal court agreed which took Chambers off death row. Attorney Bill Hangley confirmed to me in an email that Chambers is still serving his life sentence.
Having established that Barton embellished the situation to make it seem as though the PA Supreme Court was prejudiced in the extreme against religion, let me come back to what the prosecutor said and the rationale of the Court for their ruling. In making a case for the death penalty, York County prosecutor Stan Rebert told the jury, “Karl Chambers has taken a life. As the Bible says, `and the murderer shall be put to death.'”
Why did the PA Supreme Court have a problem with that? Essentially, they argued that the prosecutor improperly appealed to a law other than civil law. Note that the Supreme Court allows some references to the Bible in court but they objected to this one for specific reasons. Here is the section on point from Commonwealth v. Chambers:

Finally, Appellant [Chambers] argues that the prosecutor overstepped the permissible bounds of oratorical flair in his closing argument by referring to the Bible. The record shows that the prosecutor stated, “Karl Chambers has taken a life.” (R., p. 1201). “As the Bible says, `and the murderer shall be put to death.'” (R., p. 1201). Defense counsel objected. The trial court immediately noted this objection and gave a curative instruction to the jury…
Here, the prosecutor argued, “As the Bible says, `and the murderer shall be put to death.'” This reference is substantially different than the references tolerated in Henry and Whitney where the prosecutor allegorically likened the Defendant to the Prince of Darkness mentioned in the Bible to establish that he was an evil person. More than allegorical reference, this argument by the prosecutor advocates to the jury that an independent source of law exists for the conclusion that the death penalty is the appropriate punishment for Appellant. By arguing that the Bible dogmatically commands that “the murderer shall be put to death,” the prosecutor interjected religious law as an additional factor for the jury’s consideration which neither flows from the evidence or any legitimate inference to be drawn therefrom. We believe that such an argument is a deliberate attempt to destroy the objectivity and impartiality of the jury which cannot be cured and which we will not countenance. Our courts are not ecclesiastical courts and, therefore, there is no reason to refer to religious rules or commandments to support the imposition of a death penalty.
Our Legislature has enacted a Death Penalty Statute which carefully categorizes all the factors that a jury should consider in determining whether the death penalty is an appropriate punishment and, if a penalty of death is meted out by a jury, it must be because the jury was satisfied that the substantive law of the Commonwealth requires its imposition, not because of some other source of law.
Because the prosecutor’s argument in favor of the death penalty reached outside of the evidence of the case and the law of this Commonwealth, we are not convinced that the penalty was not the product of passion, prejudice or an arbitrary factor and, therefore, pursuant to our Death Penalty Statute, we must vacate the sentence of death and remand this matter for a new sentencing hearing. 42 Pa.C.S. § 9711(h)(4).
Accordingly, the conviction of murder of the first degree and the conviction and sentence imposed for robbery are affirmed, the sentence of death is vacated and the matter is remanded to the Court of Common Pleas of York County for a new sentencing hearing.

I think the reasoning of the PA court does not indicate hostility toward religion per se. On point, the money quote from the Commonwealth v. Chambers is this:

Our courts are not ecclesiastical courts and, therefore, there is no reason to refer to religious rules or commandments to support the imposition of a death penalty.

This was not a situation where the Court discriminated against religious speech. The prosecutor invoked Mosaic law instead of the governing statute – the laws of PA. In conservatively religious York County, PA, I can understand why such directions may generate biased responding by a jury. Furthermore, there are many outcomes envisioned by various religions about what would be proper in cases of murder. The courts cannot include persuasion which appeals to authority other than the statutes which cover all citizens.
David Barton offers this case as evidence that “if you do something religious in the court room,” “you’re in a lot of trouble.” That may or may not be true in certain situations, but, in this case, it seems to me that his concern could be stated more accurately, “if you attempt to implement a pro-death penalty interpretation of Christianity in court as a means of deciding a case, then you are in trouble.”
There are religious traditions that oppose the death penalty on religious grounds. Some of those people might argue the fact that Karl Chambers is alive but in prison today is the best religious outcome. It is certainly possible that those opposed to the death penalty on religious grounds are glad that the PA Supreme Court restricts religious speech calling for the death penalty based on the Old Testament. By inaccurately citing the Chambers case, it seems to me that Barton is not complaining that the PA Court disrespected religion in some general way, he is troubled that the court failed to privilege his religion.
Note: The entire legal history of the Chambers case is available in this District Court decision.