Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 11:59 am
Peter LaBarbera
Peter LaBarbera, of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH), which has been identified as a hate group by the SPLC (LaBarbera says, “If you are not on the SPLC hate list, you are not doing enough.”), is upset that religious bigots like him are losing the holy war against the United States Constitution’s guarantee of equality. How dare people approve of something he finds immoral!
So LaBarbera, whose organization embraces lies and stereotypes, not truth, has some resolutions to put some steel in the spines of those, who like many Americans, are coming to realize that gay people are people too, and deserving not only of our love and respect, but equal treatment under the law – including, especially, marriage.
He is not alone in this; David Barton is proudly proclaiming that “hate is a virtue” and “we’re going to be intolerant of liberalism.” At least, for once in his life, Barton is being honest about his hate and intolerance, not to mention his fucked-up worldview:
So we’ve got to get to the point where tolerance is seen as a sin because we’re tolerating a lot stuff that destroys our families, that destroys our own character and we can’t tolerate that stuff. We have to get back to the point where hate is a virtue, at least certain kinds of hate. The fear of the Lord is to hate evil and we need to have a hatred of things and get off this fence of having no passion about anything. You know, I tolerate anything, I’m not going to have a passion good or bad, I’m not going to hate anything … We just can’t do that and we’ve got to get back to that same type of intolerance, that we’re going to be intolerant of liberalism.
An that is pretty much what LaBarbera is preaching in his “20 Resolutions for Pro-Family Advocates Battling the Homosexual-Transgender Agenda in 2013,” minus the admission that he is full of hate:
1) Get OFF the defense, and back on offense – (get rid of that false guilt and incapacitating ambivalence; YOU are defending Truth; homosexual activists are promoting immorality, self-deception and lies).
This is an interesting charge from a man and an organization that peddles in nothing but lies itself. Notice too the use of the inevitable capital-T Truth, a real slap in the face of actual facts-on-the-ground, scientific truth: a clear signal that BELIEF triumphs over FACT in the halls of the AFTAH.
2) Follow God and not man (shore up your biblical beliefs) – do you fear God or the reaction of people?
LaBarbera like other fundamentalists is hung up on fear of the divine. In other words, listen to what I tell you God wants because he will fuck you up if you don’t. What LaBarbera will not mention is God’s other injunctions, which bear equal weight to that against man-love: namely, shaving, shellfish, mixing fabrics, etc. LaBarbera is not only a liar but a hypocrite, and what he really wants you to follow is not God, but his own specious interpretation of God.
3) “Question Authority”: Don’t trust elites – even “conservatives” — on the homosexual issue(e.g., Newt Gingrich’s recent capitulation urging a GOP accommodation on “marriage equality”). [See Numbers 9 and 12.]
Question authority, he says, the guy who is trying to establish himself as an authority in a very authoritarian movement – the Religious Right. If people actually questioned authority there would be no Religious Right. Be careful what you wish for, LaBarbera.
4) Get back to the BEHAVIOR and its consequences (try Googling “MSM [men who have sex with men], CDC [the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], HIV” or “MSM, CDC, Syphilis”…)
This is hilarious. This is LaBarbera’s attempt to get you to ignore science, painting homosexuality as behavior rather than something as natural as heterosexuality. He would have you think syphilis and HIV are “gay” problems but they are people problems. LaBarbera is all about presenting homosexuality as an “unclean” lifestyle. This is in keeping with what his website says, that being gay is a “lethal behavior addiction,” and a “dangerous” practice.” According to LaBarbera, being gay is “neither normal nor benign.”
5) Get off the opponents’ playing field: it starts with restoring honest language in the debate. (e.g, counterfeit homosexual “marriage” is not equal to the real deal, so the “gay” term “Marriage Equality” is spurious).
Another hoot here, from a man who deals in dishonesty. Marriage Equality as a term is precise: equality in marriage. In fact, you cannot get more precise, since equality is exactly what liberals aim for. And for the record, Peter (and excuse the tautology), marriage is marriage. If you’re married, you’re married. One person is not less married than another person simply because their partner is of the same sex. The only thing spurious or counterfeit here is your reasoning. Another point that must draw attention is the high divorce rate among those engaged in so-called “traditional” marriages. According to the APA, “about 40 to 50 percent of married couples in the United States divorce.” Nor do heterosexuals do any better the second time around: ”The divorce rate for subsequent marriages is even higher.” And we all know that Evangelicals lead the way where divorce is concerned.
6) Recognize, dismiss and counter homosexual activists’ lies and propaganda (e.g, defending morality is neither “hate” nor bigotry).
Defending morality is not hate or bigotry, he says. But defending science, apparently, is hate and bigotry. Refusing to live your life according to a minority of people who are increasingly out of the mainstream is “hating on” people like LaBarbera but forcing others to live according to what you say is right or wrong is not hate and bigotry. For a guy who claims to defend the capital-T Truth, relativism seems to be the standard under which he marches.
7) Understand that this debate is really about homosexuality, not just “defending marriage.”
Again, the message that homosexuality is evil. LaBarbera is on reacord as saying, “We need to stop conceding the moral high ground in a fearful bid to appear “tolerant”: one pro-family group, Protect Marriage Maine, asserted that ‘same-sex couples are entitled to respect’ – a claim at odds with historic Scriptural teaching. While Christians should respect all persons as made in God’s image, we must never ‘respect’ behaviors and relationships grounded in sexual sin.” What LaBarbera ignores is all the millions of people who are not Christian and to whom, therefore, what the Bible says is meaingless. He is entitled to follow it himself, but in the United States, he absolutely does not have the right to force others to do so.
8) [Corollary] Stay principled; take the pledge: I will NEVER say or do anything that affirms homosexual, bisexual or gender-confused (“transgender”) behavior as acceptable.
LaBarbera hates nothing so much as conservatives who seem to betray his values. Last year he said that “organized evil” (enter Satan and demons) and “homosexuality-embracing conservatives” are responsible for dragging “America into a cultural pit.” Laughably, these misguided conservatives are more harmful “to the cause of Truth than a thousand burly men in high heels strutting down Main Street.” LaBarbera doesn’t want to be the only hater in the room. He wants company.
9) Don’t rely on the Republicans or put their agenda before God’s – but instead push them to LEAD and do what’s right (and you moral Democrats need to fight evil within your party). [See #3.]
Talk about a blatant call to retain control of the GOP as a religious, not a political party. This is nothing new: we’ve lived with this reality since the rise of the Religious Right starting in 1964 with Goldwater’s defeat. It’s a shame that LaBarbera cannot see that his own authoritarian movement is what is truly evil in this country, bent as it is on destroying the United States Constitution and replacing it with a spurious Ten Commandments.
10) Embrace and rally behind common sense; send political correctness packing (e.g., do transsexual men with fake breasts and real penises really belong in girls’ locker rooms?).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite as funny as when religious conservatives talk about common sense as if it is anything they are even remotely in contact with. The simple fact is that the human race is, and always has been, far more sexually fluid than conservatives like LaBarbera will ever admit. People are not all one thing or another. There are always people occupying those gray areas because that is where nature put them. LaBarbera’s gripe is with his “God of nature,” not with the mere humans who are left to cope with the results. In other words, we are what his God made us, the logical, common sense conclusion to be drawn, is the last conclusion the authoritarian LaBarbera wants to be drawn.
11) STOP assuming “gay” victories are inevitable and not reversible (and don’t succumb to the media’s intense pro-homosexual bias).
Yet another comedic moment here by LaBarbera. The media has an “intense” pro-homosexuality bias? Is he reading the same media I am? The MSM gives bigots like LaBarbrera a free ride. If more people knew what extremist bigots like him thought, he’d be out of business.
12) [Related to #3] Think for yourself and don’t rely on FOX News to defend the Truth on homosexuality (e.g., did you know that Bill O’Reilly has pretty much switched sides?).
The last thing LaBarbera wants you to do is to think for yourself. He wants to think for you. He wants you to think what he thinks. If you thought for yourself, you’d likely not be a conservative in the first place, and THAT is a scientific fact. What LaBarbera is really upset about here is that people don’t simply repeat his lies about homosexuality without questioning them. That is, ultimately, an authoritarian outlook. Look in the mirror, Peter.
13) Call out the liberal media and educational establishment on their routine pro-homosexual and anti-Christian bias.
For LaBarbera, of course, declining to be indoctrinated, declining to acquiesce meekly to the Religious Right’s authoritarianism, is “anti-Christian” bias. There is no liberal media – the MSM, if it has a fault from a conservative perspective, is that it is not conservative enough. LaBarbera’s black/white thinking isn’t suited to the facts on the ground because the world is not black and white.
14) Educate a libertarian – on the clear and present threat that all pro-LGBT laws (including legalized homosexual “marriage”) pose to civil liberties and religious freedom.
Educate a libertarian? Equality is a threat to freedom? Does he even listen to himself? I somehow don’t think so. He certainly hasn’t though these slogans out. Religious freedom means equal freedom to everybody, not special freedoms for the Religious Right and less freedoms for everybody else. LaBarbera has stuck his head up his ass and can’t get it out. I vote we don’t help him. I think he likes it there.
15) Educate a pro-lifer about the threat of the far-reaching homosexual-bisexual-transgender agenda (many pro-lifers are naive or ignorant about the homosexual agenda and its many parallels to their core concern).
LaBarbera talks about spurious and counterfeit terms (#5 above) and here he uses an old favorite: “pro-life.” If you actually read the Bible, you see that YHWH is anything but pro-life. We have illustrated this point here many times over and there is no need to cite biblical passages again to prove it. READ the damn book for yourself. The God of Abraham delights in slaughter. He is the God of Genocide. Nobody who demands the death of the mother has the right to call themselves pro-life.
16) Be a thoughtful, truly compassionate Christian (tough, godly love and friendship require that you uphold biblical sexual values and firmly guide your loved one away from embracing sinful, destructive — and changeable — behaviors).
I’m not sure how he can even say this with a straight face, and perhaps he didn’t. He might have been laughing manically as he typed this. Compassion has nothing to do with LaBarbera’s particular form of Christianity, nor do I think his should be termed Christianity, absent as Jesus is from his thinking.
17) Be a Happy Warrior and understand the big picture: defending Truth is VIRTUOUS, and besides: it’s not our truth, it’s God’s (and don’t play into our opponent’s stereotype of Christians as self-righteous, angry prudes).
This is the most destructive thought in the entire history of Christianity, and it goes back to Paul of Tarsus, that what Christians believe is what everybody must believe, that their truth is OUR truth. Even the Jews of the Old Testament recognized that it was not OUR truth and that in fact, we had no right to it at all, a fact Jesus also recognized (do not throw pearls before swine, do not give unto dogs what is holy).
18) Don’t be lazy: THINK!…then act (refuting “gay” myths, shibboleths and talking points is not rocket science).
No, it is certainly NOT rocket science, or a low grade intellect like LaBarbera would not be doing it. It is simply the act of making shit up and presenting it as the truth. Any idiot can do it and LaBarbera is living proof of that.
19) Patiently engage a young person on the “H” issue: are they entitled to reinvent centuries of Judeo-Christian tradition and teaching on love, relationships, family, and marriage? (Answer: no, but we first need to understand the cultural zeitgeist through which they view the world — and the steady stream of LGBT misinformation they are imbibing — before we can respond to it).
There is no Judeo-Christian tradition. This is an ideological construct constructed not by a Jew but by a Christian. Christianity rejects Judaism. At least Ann Coulter is honest enough to admit to wanting to “perfect” Jews. LaBarbera pretends Christian attitudes toward homosexuality have never changed, but nothing could be further from the truth. In other words, the truth is that there is no Truth.
20) Reserve your greatest outrage for those who affirm homosexuality in the name of God – i.e., religious “gay” advocates (“gay Christianity” is a sham and they must be held to a higher standard).
There is an old adage that nobody hates a Christian like a Christian. As soon as they were done with the Pagans, the Christians turned on each other with renewed ferocity (nor did they even wait for the last Pagans to die away to begin the process). It’s that old “heresy” thing, in other words, “choice” – a bogeyman for authoritarians if there ever was one. Choice is holy water, my fellow liberals. It kills conservative ideology dead and its no wonder LaBarbera reserves special hatred for it. His “Christianity” is the only “Christianity.” Gosh, where have we heard that before…yeah, starting with Paul and with too many names to name in the 2,000 years that have followed. The reasons the Founding Fathers left God out of the Constitution and adopted the First Amendment entirely escape clueless bigots like Peter LaBarbera.
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