News

By now you probably have seen Lambda Legal’s two-minute video Sh*t Homophobic People Say, which went viral last week and has been viewed 1.2 million times and counting. (If you haven’t seen it yet, watch it now and share it with your friends and family.) As the blog Queerty put it, the video “turns the ‘Sh*it People Say’ meme on its head” by forgoing actors and staged situations in favor of real news clips.

Of course, we’re excited that more than a million people have seen our video, many of whom might not know about the work we do. But the true impact of the video lies in those clips.

These are real public figures, commentators and religious leaders, saying unbelievably bigoted and hateful things. Some repeat offenders, like radio host Bryan Fischer, have a receptive but limited audience among the far-right wing. Others, however, find a much bigger platform for their antigay screed on mainstream news organizations.

Here’s but one example: According to Media Matters, the Family Research Council’s president, Tony Perkins, has appeared on the three major cable news channels more than 34 times since his organization was classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2010—a distinction it shares with Fischer’s American Family Association. In fact, according to Equality Matters, Perkins went on MSNBC nine times in the last two weeks.

Free speech is essential to a democracy, but reputable news organizations should not provide a bully pulpit for hatred and prejudice nor let flawed statistics and junk science go unchallenged. That’s irresponsible and it's a disservice to viewers and to democracy.

We’re glad that more than a million people got to see first-hand what people in the LGBT and HIV communities face every day. Now more than ever, we’re conscious of the corrosive effects that hate has on our society, and how much more work still needs to be done to fight ignorance and hatred throughout the country.