EDGE on the Net

Online anti-gay pundits seeking to exploit a horrific story of child sexual abuse for political purposes have begun to blast the mainstream media for what they claim is a failure of news agencies to play up the fact that an adoptive father accused of raping his five-year-old son is gay.

Those same outlets have held up the story to another sensational news item concerning rape--a false allegation, as it happens--that the anti-gay Web outlets claim received "beyond bonkers" coverage.

Both stories have a connection to Duke University where, in 2006, three lacrosse players were falsely accused of raping a stripper.

A July 1 article at Christian site World Net Daily was typical of the reportage concerning the case from anti-gay sites.

The WND story recounted the most chilling details in the case: Duke University’s Health Inequalities Program associate director Frank Lombard, who is gay, faces charges that he raped his five-year-old adopted son and attempted to sell the boy to an undercover officer for sex.

Lombard also allegedly performed sexual assault against the child using a Web cam.

Lombard’s alleged pedophiliac assault against the boy has been overshadowed in the anti-gay press by Lombard’s sexuality and the fact that he and his male partner are the young victim’s adoptive fathers.

Attempting to use the case to promote a generalized view of gays as pedophiles, anti-gay pundits have begun accusing the mainstream media of glossing over Lombard’s sexuality.

Such sites also use the story to sell products. At WND, a blurb in the middle of the story read, "Don’t believe today’s deceptive media. See what God REALLY says about sex and homosexuality in ’Shocked by the Bible: The Most Astonishing Facts You’ve Never Been Told’--personally autographed!"

At anti-gay site Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, bold red text in a July 3 story demanded, "Where’s the media frenzy?"

The site, which had been among the first to leap onto the case in an attempt to smear all gay families with Lombard’s alleged pedophiliac attacks, expanded the scope of its attempts to link the Lombard case with "liberal" political issues, with a headline asking the question, "Would exposure of the Lombard case hurt Obama’s pet cause of homosexual adoption?"

Wrote AFTA President Peter LaBarbera, "Homosexuals may not yet have achieved full ’protected class’ status in the law, but they sure have achieved it in the media."

Three days after Lombard’s June 26 arrest, a June 29 Christian News Wire article titled "Lombard Demonstrates Why Gays Should Not Be Able to Adopt" reported the broad outlines of the story and promptly used the case to decry, in equally broad terms, adoption by same-sex couples, taking the occasion to promote a purported study reportedly done by discredited anti-gay researcher Paul Cameron.

A June 28 story at American Thinker.com played the story less as an attack on gays in general, and pondered the question of whether the outcome of the earlier rape story at Duke might have made the media gun-shy.

Wrote Thomas Lifson, "A new and even more scandalous rape allegation has surfaced at Duke University. Yet the usual media and campus PC crowd are keeping mighty quiet.

"Identity politics apparently trumps all sense of outrage.

Added Lifson, "Of course, after the disgraceful media and university reaction to the phony allegations against Duke Lacrosse team members, it is wise avoid jumping to conclusions, but the comparative silence on the current case is nonetheless remarkable, considering how many particulars of the case were left out of the main AP account."

Noted Lifson, "The allegations are stunning and sickening."

Because the accused child molester is gay and white, and his adopted son is African American, Lifson went on to postulate that, "...as far as the media and academic communities are involved, it is not the crime itself that matters, but rather whether the alleged perp is a member of an ’oppressor’ group.

"Although white," Lifson continued, "Lombard is gay, so in the interest of avoiding unpleasant stories involving homosexual adoption, the media is anxious to shut down public interest in the affair."

Lifson did not mention that pedophilia and homosexuality are distinctly different things, with pedophilia being viewed as an incurable pathology.

Homosexuality, on the other hand, has not been viewed by most responsible health care professionals as a mental illness for over thirty years.

Statistics indicate that well over 90% of pedophiles identify themselves as heterosexual. However, anti-gay groups frequently attempt to identify gays and pedophiles as interchangeable groups.

The story had scarcely broken when anti-gay pundits were hailing Lombard’s alleged misdeeds as proof positive for why all gay couples would make for inadequate prospective parents.

Meantime, pundits expressed equal anger at the accusations that the media and Duke University faculty seemingly took at face value when it came to the ordeal that the three lacrosse players went through three years ago, after being untruthfully accused by a black stripper of rape.

Wrote columnist Mike Adams in a June 28 Townhall.com item, "If this case goes to trial, it could be an interesting one to watch.

"But it will be just as interesting to watch the Duke faculty respond to these allegations. It didn’t take them long to respond when several white Duke Lacrosse players were accused of raping a black stripper."

Noted Adams, "A whopping 88 professors signed a statement accusing the players of both racism and rape. Such was their regard for the presumption of innocence."