How Dennis Hastert Demonized Gays as Predators While He Was the True 'Super-Predator'

No, it wasn't African-American young men of the '90s -- supposedly feral, "fatherless" and "godless" urban youth hell-bent on mayhem and murder -- who were "super-predators," a myth since exposed and which was created by the Princeton political science professor John DiIulio (who later became George W. Bush's first director of the Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives) based on junk science.

The same twisted ideas that led to the "super-predator" myth, which we've seen raised and debunked again during the current Democratic primary race amid discussion of the 1994 crime bill, have been used by anti-LGBT religious conservatives to argue against marriage equality. They promoted the notion that gays would destroy "traditional marriage," which supposedly would contribute to a breakdown in the family, causing deviant and dangerous consequences.

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