From Wayne Besen:
Today, disgraced “counselor” Richard Cohen has once again gone off the deep end with insane attacks against me. My crime – informing America on the bizarre methods this witchdoctor uses on clients.
Ouch!
The PFOX president’s offense against Besen: A lengthy string of personal putdowns in his newsletter. Besen responds to Cohen, point-by-point.
Read it — you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll don a flak jacket, you’ll ask PFOX to refund your donation.
Setting aside the question of how accurate anything Richard Cohen said about Wayne Besen is or isn’t, for Besen to describe Cohen’s attacks on him as ‘insane’ is much more offensive than anything Cohen said.
I like Wayne Besen, and I respect him for his work to combat anti-gay forces; however, I do have a problem with his presentation sometimes (such as in his last book). His language is frequently exaggerated. I wish he would be more objective and tone down his writing. His info is correct, but it is often covered in hyperbolic statements.
ab, Cohen saying Besen is “one of the most broken and bitter men I have ever met.” isn’t far off being just as offensive.
Its despicable for Cohen to suggest any gay is at fault for failing to achieve an unreasonable goal – i.e.:
“Wayne also sucks power from failure. Over and over again he states, ‘I traveled the country listening to stories of people hurt by conversion therapies and ministries.’ Wayne is a collector of people’s failures and feeds off their negative energy.”
As the Spitzer study suggested the vast majority of people who attempt to change orientation fail and for Cohen to suggest all those gays are at fault for failing to change is profoundly ignorant or hateful, if not an insane attack.
Comparing being gay to being alcoholic creates the false impression that its always a bad thing to be gay – that’s pretty low of Cohen too. Certainly heterosexuals are just as likely to be sex addicts as gays and I don’t hear Cohen comparing all heterosexuals to alcoholics. In my opinion its insane for anyone to blindly suggest my relationship with my boyfriend is a bad thing – he couldn’t be better for me.
According to Besen Cohen lobbies for the passage of discriminatory laws and in that context Cohen’s statements aren’t rational and they are an attack – far more offensive and dangerous than anything Besen said.
“It is evident that Wayne was deeply abused as a child” etc.
No, that was the most offensive thing said. Baseless. Slanderous. And calculated to be hurtful to people who have said and done nothing to Cohen.
Insane? Well, let’s just say Cohen is not sane. Perhaps that’s the same thing. He’s certainly not rational.
And then there’s the ever promised and never delivered…
I could introduce hundreds of men and women who have changed and come out straight
Richard — who or what’s stopping you?
After reading Wayne’s response I made a donation to his new organization.
ab said:
Setting aside the question of how accurate anything Richard Cohen said about Wayne Besen is or isn’t, for Besen to describe Cohen’s attacks on him as ‘insane’ is much more offensive than anything Cohen said.
In other words ignore one side of the equation entirely so we can attack the other out of context? You may have a job waiting for you at a number of ex-gay groups.
Since you proposed it, the adjective insane seems fairly accurate in this instance. The non-medical (and arguably the more common connotation) of insane is “so senseless as to be laughable,” with the close synonyms absurd, foolish, idiotic, preposterous, etc. Thesaurus.com’s first listing defines it as “foolish” with similar synonyms to those above. Most everything that comes out of Cohen’s mouth fits this description in my opinion.
David Roberts
Randi,
If I were forced to make the choice, I would rather be broken and bitter than insane. Brokenness and bitterness I can stand, but actual, clinical insanity is really too much. The suggestion that your relationship with your boyfriend is bad may be wrong, but it isn’t insane. Accusing people you disagree with of insanity does not get you anywhere.
David,
I suspect most people do use the word ‘insanity’ to mean insanity, and not foolishness. So I stand by my observation about Besen’s greater offensiveness.
ab said:
I suspect most people do use the word ‘insanity’ to mean insanity, and not foolishness. So I stand by my observation about Besen’s greater offensiveness.
When someone does something outlandishly stupid or foolish, we often exclaim “you’re insane!” or “this is insanity!” but we don’t mean they have a mental illness. It is the colloquial use of the word, at least in the US.
This entire exchange is probably worthless anyway because I strongly suspect you were not offended by the term at all but simply said so in an attempt to go against the general opinion just for the sake of causing conflict. That is the action of a troll which more and more you quite honestly appear to be.
David Roberts
David,
Calling me a troll is getting off the subject, which was supposed to be Besen’s offensive comments about Cohen. I am genuinely offended by them. I also think that they are possibly counter-productive, in that they make gay activists seem kind of over-intense, if you know what I mean.
That Besen can be “over the top” is hardly a secret, that this is sometimes counter productive is a valid point, but this doesn’t appear to be one of those cases. Calling Cohen’s attack insanity was quite proportional considering his original comments to Besen and the popular definition of that word. This is why you can’t just ignore half the issue, as you did by setting aside everything that Cohen said from the beginning, and calling attention only to Besen.
Reviewing your comments to date reveals a pattern of argument for argument’s sake. That is certainly germane to the value of the argument you are making here. If you don’t want to be recognized for that, don’t do it.
It’s past time to bury this horse.
David Roberts
I for one like Besen’s gumption. We are all human, not omnipotent, so everything we do has a counterproductive component. The question is does it outweigh the good we do.
In Besen’s case, I say no. He is a breath of fresh air in our movement. No offense to those trying to “change hearts and minds” but a dose of good old fashioned white hot anger and take no prisoner attitudes is sometimes what we need to inspire our people. Sometimes seeing someone out there defending who we are and taking no guff from those who lie on us goes a longer way than someone trying to channel Gandhi.
a. mcewen said:
Sometimes seeing someone out there defending who we are and taking no guff from those who lie on us goes a longer way than someone trying to channel Gandhi.
I’m not into the Gandhi stuff much myself but I think your comment there isn’t fair to those who take that view. We need more than one approach and seriously, I’ve not known gay rights advocates in general to be the shy, silent type 😉
Besen definitely serves a useful purpose, but I don’t agree with all of his methods. I think you can be forceful and vocal and still not use some of the language he uses. In the instance above, as I stated, I think he was restrained and quite proportional in his response.
I’m all for standing up to the bullies, as long as we don’t become bullies in the process.
David Roberts
ab said “The suggestion that your relationship with your boyfriend is bad may be wrong, but it isn’t insane. Accusing people you disagree with of insanity does not get you anywhere.”
But it does get me somewhere ab, it explains how I feel. Knowing as I do how warm and wonderful this relationship is and how profoundly good it is for me the idea that it should be blindly opposed is definitely insanity to me. It may not be to you but I’m just telling you how it honestly strikes me – so dramatically removed from an accurate perception of reality that the believer’s ability to reason is so impaired as to cause deeply dysfunctional behavior. Like attempting to pass legislation that punishes those who hurt no one but help each other and ultimately society.
David,
“Besen definitely serves a useful purpose, but I don’t agree with all of his methods.”
Me too. And that’s why there is his site and there is our site. We appeal to different audiences (just read those who comment at Wayne’s site and you’ll see what I mean). While I don’t often employ Wayne’s rhetoric, I respect his commitment and passion.
ab,
“Accusing people you disagree with of insanity does not get you anywhere.”
Wayne did not accuse Cohen of insanity. He said the attack was insane. He accused Cohen, himself, of wackiness and I doubt that you anyone disagrees with that.
“Calling me a troll is getting off the subject, which was supposed to be Besen’s offensive comments about Cohen.”
Well, no. The subject was actually Cohen’s offensive comments about Besen.
ab, as best I can tell from your posts, you are one of those people who do not use argument as a tool to get to the truth, but you use argument as a tool to confuse, obscure, twist, or change the subject in order to push your opinion.
I’m not saying that this makes you a troll. I’m simply saying that it appears that you value being a culture warrior more than you value honesty and objective truth.
If I’m wrong, I appologize. But that is how your posts appear. Perhaps you should re-read your thoughts while they are in preview to see if they are directed toward seeking objective truth (not truthiness) or whether they are just arguments to try and “win”.
David and Timothy,
I would rather not enter into a discussion specifically about me and my motivations. It’s annoying, and I would have thought off subject for this page. Since it seems impossible to argue about what the page is supposed to be about, I have nothing more to contribute here.
ab said:
I would rather not enter into a discussion specifically about me and my motivations. It’s annoying, and I would have thought off subject for this page.
Unfortunately, you tend to make every thread to which you post “about you” which just illustrates the point being made here. As Timothy points out, you were off topic with your first post. It is laudable that you are concerned about the topic once your motivations come into the light – I imagine that could indeed be very annoying.
We all get carried away at some point with an argument about which we are passionate. But when the pattern of posts shows that, in almost every single instant, one has taken the opposing view and argued that into the ground – that does not reflect a desire to add to the discussion but simply to argue for argument’s sake. There are sites that welcome this kind of aimless contention, XGW is not one of them.
David Roberts