Asterisk

A couple days ago, the fabulous Right Wing Watch reported that Truth* Academy Instructor Matt Barber said this on his radio show:

Kids who are engaging in homosexual behavior often look inward and know that what they are doing is unnatural, is wrong, is immoral, and so they become depressed and the instances of suicide can rise there as well.

Of course, this angered anyone who has two brain cells to knock together, and now Barber’s back for a second round. Today, Right Wing Watch reported on a follow up interview he did with Truth* Academy’s Peter LaBarbera. As you might have guessed, Barber had no intention of backing down.

Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel

Right, as you know I’ve never been one to mince words or sugarcoat things. That’s how God hardwired me. I also shared my opinion that many of those caught-up in the homosexual lifestyle intuitively know that such conduct is sin – that it’s both immoral and unnatural behavior. Objective truth is objective truth. God has written His laws on the hearts of every man, woman and child. We’re all spiritual beings created in the image of our sovereign Lord. We are also all sinners. Scripture says that not one of us is righteous. When we sin, we create separation between ourselves and God.

God’s word also says that when we sin sexually, it’s particularly egregious because our bodies are the temple of Christ. This separation from God – a natural result of sexual sin – can lead to depression and even despair. It’s a no brainer. I pointed out that such despair and inner conflict can logically be one factor that might contribute to teen suicide. It’s absolutely heartbreaking to witness, but it’s a very painful reality.

Scripture warns that ‘the wages of sin is death.’ Homosexual behavior is demonstrably destructive physically, emotionally and spiritually. The answer is never to take one’s own life. Life is God’s alone to give and to take away. The answer is to repent, make every effort to stop sinning and to find Life.

1. If realization of “sexual sin” (which doesn’t include being gay, in the opinion of many) were a major cause of suicide, rates of LGBT people would be the same as non-LGBT people. It’s not. LGBT youth are three to seven times (depending on environment) more likely to die by suicide.
   
   UPDATE 04/01/2011: Newer studies show even more alarming statistics. LGBT youth are four times more likely to attempt suicide than their straight peers (Massachusetts Youth Risk Survey, 2007). LGBT youth from rejecting families are 8.4 times more likely to attempt suicide than other LGBT youth (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2009).
2. What Barber means by “destructive physically” is undoubtedly diseases such as HIV/AIDS. As I and many others have said before, gays having sex doesn’t cause HIV/AIDS, nor does gays having sex innately spread the disease. What spreads HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, both in gay and straight communities, is unprotected sex.
   
   It’s no shock that this is a bigger problem in the gay community. Sex education in schools is federally limited to abstinence-until-marriage, leaving gay boys and girls completely in the dark to a much greater degree than straight boys and girls. Homophobia and stigma related to being gay have also been shown to put LGBTs at greater risk than their straight peers.
3. We have to remember that when Barber and company use the terms “homosexual lifestyle” and “homosexual behavior,” they mean sex. Carl Hoover wasn’t having sex before he completed suicide. Jaheem Hererra wasn’t having sex before he completed suicide. Eric Mohat wasn’t having sex before he completed suicide. Stuart Matis wasn’t having sex before he completed suicide. Neither, for all we know, were Billy Lucas, Cody Barker, Asher Brown, Seth Walsh, or Raymond Storm Chase. It’s not about sex.
4. Considerable research has been done on the higher rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide among LGBT people. None of it points to God or “sin” on the part of an LGBT person. All of it points to the rhetoric of hate like Matt Barber’s. All of it.

Then there’s the part that incenses me the most, as a gay man and even more so as a Christian. It’s the part that led to the title of this post.

Scripture warns that ‘the wages of sin is death.’ Homosexual behavior is demonstrably destructive physically, emotionally and spiritually. The answer is never to take one’s own life. Life is God’s alone to give and to take away.

Don’t rush by that statement. Don’t skim it. This is important. Really dig into it and see the visceral, vengeful hatred coming from this Religious Right leader.

In this context, what Barber is saying is not that gay kids shouldn’t commit suicide because God loves them and doesn’t want them to die. What he’s saying is that gay kids shouldn’t commit suicide because it’s God’s job to kill them.

And kill them God will, to hear Barber talk about it. He’s recently argued that gays having sex should be criminal, that it should be punishable by imprisonment, and that it should be considered domestic terrorism.

None of these are hyperbole on my part; that’s just what he said. He’s also made it clear that he sees HIV/AIDS as a just sentence for being gay.

I could give a whole angry screed on how Matt Barber is wrong and how what he’s doing is connected to the deaths of LGBT people. I could, but Julia Sugarbaker did it for me 24 years ago when a fictional character said almost exactly what he said this week.

[full episode here]

Only two days left till the Truth* Academy. Matt Barber will be there to spread his vitriol in the House of God. If you’re in Ohio or surrounding states, I hope you’ll join me in protesting what he and his compatriots do to our community and our kids.

We have less than a week before hate group Americans For Truth brings their second Truth* Academy to Columbus, Ohio. Now that we have detailed backgrounds for each of the anti-gay industry representatives, I thought it might be helpful to bring their distilled messages together in one post to see how each instructor’s message will work with the others to create an over-arching theme.

To be honest, I was a little surprised at how well they dovetail into each other.

• Robert Gagnon reduces being gay to “you’re doing sex wrong.”
• Rena Lindevaldsen says that the United States government shouldn’t have the power to decide whether people have sex unless those people are gay, in which case the government must imprison them.
• Greg Quinlan is just glad he isn’t “a flaming faggot” (his term) and says that people have the right not to have gay sex…but they don’t have the right to have gay sex. Because gay people have AIDS.
• Peter LaBarbera uses long-disproven rhetoric disguised as research to demonize LGBT people as mentally ill sexual predator “fascists.”
• Linda Harvey says that LGBT teachers will molest children, and that gays in the military want to bring the nation down. Also, she says HIV/AIDS and other diseases are part and parcel of gay sex.
• Matt Barber agrees with them that gays are sexual predators, but he says we want to molest soldiers. He also calls gays “fascists,” not unlike friend Scott Lively does when he claims that gays are responsible for genocide in Nazi Germany and Rwanda.
• David Kupelian wraps it all up by declaring (falsely) that Christians in America are being persecuted and thrown in jail for not liking gay people very much.

This is the message they spread. All of these speakers make their living in the anti-gay industry and will gasp in shocked amazement if you point out their handcrafted environment that promotes hatred and violence against LGBT people.

The Truth* Academy will be held on April 1-2, 2011 in Columbus, Ohio. Protest details at this link. Please join us.

LaBarbera and company are definitely fringe figures. But their message is dangerous, and it must be countered with actual truth.

On April 1-2, 2011, Mission America and Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH) will be cosponsoring the second Truth* Academy in Columbus, Ohio. I thought it might be helpful to see what tone and substance attendees can expect from each of the instructors before the conference begins. You can find all of my Truth* Academy posts at this link.

Linda Harvey of Mission America

First of all, Linda is a columnist for World Net Daily.

I’m tempted to just stop there, what with World Net Daily (WND) being the home of ultra-ultra-right-wing nutjobs, most notably including the birthers. But in the interest of information sharing, I’ll continue, taking her WND activities last.

Linda is the founder of Mission America, which I’m convinced has a staff of exactly one. The organization is pretty much an also-ran in the anti-gay industry, and also advocates against non-conservative Christian churches, non-Christian religions, and feminism.

Her Mission America radio show is broadcast on WRFD-AM, an ultra-conservative christian radio station in Columbus, Ohio. Just to give you a flavor of her show, here’s audio from the show this past Monday (2/21/11) when she interviewed hate-monger Scott Lively, steering well clear of the fresh Ugandan blood on his hands.

Linda Harvey Interviews Scott Lively

So that’s Linda’s one-woman organization and 22-minute radio show. Let’s turn our attention to her column at WND.

In the past few months, Linda has published the following articles:

• Find sodomy repulsive? Don’t ask, don’t tell, in which Linda laments the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, citing servicemembers’ loss of “their rights to disgust” and draws the bizarre if predictable conclusion that “the rights to freedom of association, to freedom of religion and the rights to privacy of our troops will be sacrificed on the altar of sodomy.” Linda also references the “lavender military” and “lavender special interests.”
• San Fran: Loves sodomy, hates Happy Meals, in which Linda has a problem with a potential San Fransisco law banning Happy Meal toys, not because of any constitutional freedoms issues but because The Homosexuals live in San Fransisco. She also makes the common mistake of correlating high HIV infection rates among gay men in San Fransisco with gay sex (in the butt) rather than risky sex (without correctly using a condom), as well as the fact that LGB kids are completely left in the dark by a “abstinence-only-until-marriage” curriculum. Also, Linda thinks that The Homosexuals shouldn’t be allowed to be around kids because The Homosexuals will molest them.
• Goldman Sachs’ real sin, in which Linda takes the Goldman Sachs people to task for :gasp: contributing to GLSEN, which she calls a “child-corruption network” that “promotes sexual deviance to children,” which, of course, isn’t what GLSEN does at all.
• Is ‘gay’ agenda to blame for teen suicides?, in which Linda despicably mis-attributes last fall’s alarming rise in reported suicides by LGBT teens to The Homosexuals encouraging kids not to hate themselves. In so doing, she quite conveniently absolves herself and other anti-gay propagandists of any guilt.

There are a few more recent articles, and I could go back beyond just the last few months, but I think you get the point. Linda Harvey probably wouldn’t say any of these things to the press if they were to show up at Truth* Academy this April 1st or 2nd. No, it just wouldn’t do to have the general public hear these things from her mouth.

But next time you hear her name, remember that behind her “we don’t hate anybody, perish the thought” public face is a big fat sack of hurtful, untrue, and destructive hate.

This morning, virulently anti-gay quasi-religious group “The Family” sponsored the National Prayer Breakfast, a long-standing tradition in Washington D.C. National Media paid special attention to the Prayer Breakfast this year because The Family has also been credibly linked to the proposed law in Uganda that would demand the killing of gay Ugandans.

In response to the Prayer Breakfast, a coalition of civil rights groups has begun the American Prayer Hour, which had its first press conference yesterday. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has released video from the press conference.

Speaking were Rev. Elder Darlene Garner of the Metropolitan Community Church, Bishop Gene Robinson of the Episcopal Church, and Harry Knox, Director of Religion and Faith for HRC.

But most importantly, a gay Ugandan identified as “Moses” spoke before the cameras. Fearing for his life, Moses concealed his identity in front of the cameras. He talked about his fears and what life is like for a gay Ugandan.

It’s the most frightful speech I’ve seen in a very long time.

Rev. Elder Darlene Garner

Bishop Gene Robinson

Harry Knox

Hopefully this explains why the LGBT community goes to red alert when American conservatives spread fear and call for the criminalization of homosexuality. It’s only one step away.

Yesterday, people with HIV/AIDS were barred from entering the United States. Yesterday, people with HIV/AIDS had to apply for waivers to visit friends and family members before coming home. Yesterday, people with HIV/AIDS were subjected to prejudicial treatment based on outdated views and disproven fears.

Today, the world changed.

From Immigration Equality Communications Director Steve Ralls:

Later today, a plane from The Netherlands will arrive at JFK Airport in New York and two passengers onboard will, for the first time in more than two decades, be able to step safely onto U.S. soil. The arrival of Clemens Ruland and Hugo Bausch will also signal the end of a shameful and discriminatory policy that has exacted a heavy price on our country’s reputation in the scientific community and kept countless individuals – both straight and gay – separated from their loved ones.

Beginning today, the United States’ decades-old HIV Travel and Immigration Ban will be a relic of the past, and the stigma and discrimination it has engendered around the world will, with any luck, begin to fade, too.

The ban, which was put into place due, in large part, to the efforts of former Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, whose action resulted in an unconscionable policy of separation for families, spouses and children who were literally torn apart because of the law. It was, as President Obama remarked when announcing its demise, “a decision rooted in fear, rather than fact.”

Good riddance to a horrible reminder of America’s bigotry.