Claim: A South Carolina couple put their 16-year-old daughter up for adoption after learning she is gay.
Example: [Collected via e-mail, April 2013]
There's a new story circulating via Faceboook claiming that a 16 year old girl named April Chadwell was placed for adoption by her
parents because she is gay. The story claims the family is in "Southern Carolina" and decided to offer her for adoption after much prayer and advice from their church.
Origins: An article published on the purported web site of "youth leader Tyson
A Southern Carolina couple have made national news by being the first parents to put their child up for adoption due to their sexuality. Usually parents give up their children because they can't raise them due to finances or because they are young and don't have the mental ability to bring up a child. Kids are also usually given up for adoption at a young age, but April Chadwell is barely
Tyson Bowers III is not a real person, however, but rather a pen name employed by Bryan Butvidas, one of the founders of the satirical web site ChristWire.org. The web site of the fictional Tyson
As the New York Times wrote of ChristWire in 2010:
Oh, by the way: ChristWire is all one big joke. Not the readership, but the content, the opinions and the fake authors who write the stuff. Neither of the two founders is a conservative Christian. They are just like-minded 28-year-olds who met on the Internet, have never seen each other in person, and until this week had never given their real identities to a reporter.
Since 2008, ChristWire.org has emerged as the leading Internet site for ultraconservative Christian news, commentary and weather reportage.
New York magazine also reported that the site's founders "write to see how far we can get people to believe our nonsense":
"see what Glenn Beck is talking about and then make it ten times worse." "We're not trying to promote hate, we want to show how fake the world really is," he said. "We write to see how far we can get people to believe our nonsense. People believe anything they read on the Internet." Do readers get the joke? Just like with the media, not always. Butyidas, who usually pens columns under the name Tyson Bowers III, said some of the people who leave vituperative comments don't get the irony. "People have these preconceived notions about how certain people are supposed to act, so if a conservative Christian has a website, there are certain things you expect to see," he said. "No matter how many times you say it's satire, people will still buy it."
Christwire owners Bryan Butvidas and Kirwin Watson, after fielding press queries and book offers for months, have finally decided to go public. In an interview with New York, Butvidas said the site's basic concept is to
Last updated: 8 April 2013
 | Sources: |
Oppenheimer, Mark. "A Niche of the Unreal in a World of Credulity." The New York Times. 3 September 2010. Pasick, Adam. "The Guys Behind Christwire, Creating Parody from 'Glenn Beck on Steroids.'" New York. 3 September 2010.
