Far-right group attacks GLAAD media guide (11027)

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation is the latest target of an antigay campaign from the Traditional Values Coalition, the far-right lobbying group run by Lou Sheldon and his daughter, Andrea Sheldon Lafferty. Posted on the TVC Web site this week is an alert to members to oppose any use of GLAAD's annual Media Reference Guide, a document intended to educate reporters and editors about gay and lesbian lives in order to improve the accuracy of their reporting.

GLAAD "is a national organization with one goal in mind: To control what Americans see and read about homosexuals in newspapers, magazines, Internet, and in Hollywood movies," the TLC posting reads. "In GLAAD's view, most organizations such as TVC, [the 'ex-gay' ministry] Exodus International, Family Research Council, or the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality [a discredited antigay psychiatric think tank] are considered defamers of homosexuality because we tell the truth about homosexual diseases, mental health problems, death rates, and other unpleasant truths about homosexual behavior."

TVC urges its supporters to contact their local media outlets to urge them to ignore GLAAD's guidelines for fair and balanced coverage of gay and lesbian issues and people. "If your local paper or TV station is using the GLAAD manual for its reporting on homosexual issues, it is misreporting and should be held accountable for allowing its news judgment to be colored by an activist homosexual organization," states the Web site.

Supporters should "urge [media outlets] to access TVC's Web site for reliable--and unspun--news about homosexuals."

"TVC chair Lou Sheldon and his daughter Andrea Sheldon Lafferty share a peculiar obsession with homosexuality," responded GLAAD's director of communications, John Sonego. "They are a lot like celebrity stalkers who obsess about imagined connections that have no basis in reality. Hopefully, their experience studying GLAAD's Media Reference Guide will give them and other professional homophobes the reality check they so desperately need."