Last night’s episode of the Rachel Maddow Show featured a segment in which Maddow discussed the implications of Dr. Robert Spitzer’s historic retraction of and apology for his infamous 2001 study that claimed certain “highly motivated” homosexuals could go from gay to straight. Rachel pointed out that defenders of California’s Proposition 8 base a good deal of their argument against marriage equality on the supposed “fact” sexual orientation is not an immutable characteristic. And what did those marriage discrimination proponents cite at trial — repeatedly — in order to back that assertion up? You guessed it: the 2001 Spitzer study. Dr. Spitzer’s renunciation of that study significantly undermines the case for upholding Prop 8.
In the segment, which you can view below, Maddow mentions Truth Wins Out by name (at around the 5:10 mark), saying “Kudos and thanks to TruthWinsOut.org for being first to publish the content of Dr. Spitzer’s letter.” She also displays a screen shot of TWO’s exclusive article in which we published Dr. Spitzer’s apology for the first time, and talks about why pushing back against anti-gay and “ex-gay” junk science — you know, a big part of the work we do at TWO — is so important:
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It is also worth mentioning that in Maddow’s show, Dr. Lisa Diamond, a researcher from University of Utah, was mentioned. In the recent defense of DOMA by House Speaker John Boehner, Diamond’s work was cited in support of the ridiculous claim that LGBT people don’t deserve the freedom to marry because they can simply turn straight. Of course, this was a complete distortion of her work. And how did the lawyers on our side know this? Because of the following video released by TWO. Diamond was tracked down and spoke out against the use of her work in the DOMA case:
If you didn’t already know, the TWO team are big fans of Rachel Maddow for her in-depth, fact-based journalism, especially on LGBT-related issues like Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” bill and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Given last night’s awesome shout out and the fact that Wayne has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show several times, it looks like Rachel Maddow might also be a fan of Truth Wins Out. We think that’s pretty cool.
John and Wayne with Rachel Maddow in the MSNBC green room, July 2011