Once upon a time in a land far away (Naperville, Illinois) a pretty pretty princess was just minding her own business, conducting witchhunts against doctors of Bible at faraway universities and uploading pictures of dudes in assless chaps onto the intertubes. You know, princess stuff. When at her castle appeared an invading group called the “Southern Poverty Law Center” who crossed the moat into her peaceful solitude by suggesting that her website was actually, you know, a hate website. (Because, duh?)
But she feared not, for she knew that riding just behind on some sort of rabid donkey was her knight, Matt of Barber, carrying his signature right-hook (from oily man-wrestling days of yore) to defend her dignity:
Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel tells OneNewsNow the SPLC had done a fair job during the civil rights thrust in America in identifying and labeling neo-Nazi hate groups, ones that truly fall within the definition of hate.
“They have instead turned into what amounts to a leftist, extremist, partisan, Democrat organization, and they use the credibility that they’ve built up over the years as a weapon against people who have an opposing worldview, particularly to oppose biblical Christianity,” Barber explains.
Boo hoo. Perhaps what’s actually happening is that the SPLC is starting to notice that espousers of tradishnul values like Barber and LaBarbera are actually just bilious bigots, just like neo-Nazis? I mean, hell, at one time in this country, Jim Crow laws were tradishnul values. Sometimes tradishnul values have to be replaced by better values as the human race evolves.
In another “right hook,” Barber adds the following:
“But seriously,” continued Barber, “If AFTAH is a “hate group,’ then so is Liberty Counsel, Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, American Family Association, the Southern Baptist Convention and the Roman Catholic Church.
Okay.
“I can’t speak for the organizations with which I’m affiliated and, of course, I hate absolutely no one,” concluded Barber. “Nonetheless, I’d like to officially request that the SPLC add my name to its spurious “anti-gay hate list.’ It’ good for one’ biblical bona-fides.”
(Matt Barber currently, and proudly, sits on the board of Americans for Truth.)
Okay.
He asked nicely, after all. I had forgotten (for a brief moment) that Matt was on the board of AFTAH. So now we can officially talk about him as an affiliate of an SPLC-certified hate site.
Cheerio!
(h/t Right Wing Watch)
No doubt some years ago members of the KKK and Neo-Nazis decried the fact that they were being labeled hate groups. Now such groups are automatically considered such. Within a few decades people will wonder how so-called “pro-family” groups could have been considered anything but hate groups, much as they currently wonder how people were snookered as to the real intent of the KKK, Neo-Nazis, etc.
I agree that these are hate groups and I don’t think they deserve to have that pointed out gently. But do the women of the world really deserve this comparison? Is being female really less than being male?
“But seriously,” continued Barber, “If AFTAH is a “hate group,’ then so is Liberty Counsel, Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, American Family Association, the Southern Baptist Convention and the Roman Catholic Church.”
Now you’re starting to clue in Barber.
Actually, Karen, I was just being silly because the two of them approach the world like lovers, and it’s always Bam Bam who’s swooping in like the archetypal prince to defend his scorned Peter.
reading evan hurst’s column and the following
comments, I can see that I was right. You guys
won’nt be happy until every group that has an
opposite view than you so is labeled a hate group
and eliminated, and I thought you liberal gay rights
people were supposed to be the tolerant ones.
I think not. I have read enough comments from
liberal gay bloggers on the net to know that the
gay community has produced some of the most vile intolerant, hateful people ou there, so I would
advise those in the gay community to take the log
out of thier own eye before judging others
Not “opposite view.” Anti-human, hateful views are what we’re after. You apparently consider your views pro-family, but then again, so did the crusaders and white racists during the Jim Crow days. Oh, and, haha, they all thought God was telling them to be that way.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
And I’m not “intolerant,” unless you have no concept of words. I have no desire to take anything away from YOUR life. I hope to never meet you, in fact! But Christian extremists like yourself want to reshape society in the image of what you think your god wants, at the expense of the majority of the country that are not Christian extremists. There is a huge difference.
I’m not sure what Barber means by ‘biblical Christianity’, what other type is there?; Koranic Christianity? Of course he means those who take everything in the Bible literally and factually, which has always been a HERESY (yes barber), until the devolution of fundamentalism infected the religion.
He also seems shocked that anyone could *possibly* consider the roman catholic church a hate group. Hmmm, ask all the Jews, Native Americans, heretics and Witches who were persecuted and murdered by them. And, I’m not just talking about the Middle Ages. My father, who went to elementary school in the 1920s told me that the church was constantly trying to get them to hate the Jews, by drilling ‘the Jews killed Christ’ into their heads. Of course, after the Holocaust, which they played no small part in causing, their level of consciousness went up about 1 centimeter and they don’t (as far as I know) do that anymore.
BTW–dont call brad anderson a Christian—he’s anything but! He’s the type of hypocritical religionist that Jesus railed against.
Brad said “I have read enough comments from
liberal gay bloggers on the net to know that the
gay community has produced some of the most vile intolerant, hateful people ou there.”
You obviously haven’t read much if you’re going to make an absurd statement like that. Read the recent comments by Patrick Brown in this thread:
http://www.truthwinsout.org/blog/2010/03/7741/#comments
You don’t see gay people talking like that to the bigots. We see this type of thing from the people on your side day in and day out – nobody hates like the anti-gays
Yes, Brad, now that you come to mention it, we don’t have a very sympathetic or tolerant attitude to those who try to inflame prejudice and hatred against us and who want to interfere with our lives and impose their mean-minded, anti-gay agenda on us, do we? Very nasty and hateful of us, isn’t it? We should be far more co-operative, shouldn’t we?
Right William – how dare we be intolerant to those who want to demonize us, evict us from our homes, fire us from our jobs, and deny us the right to marry.
[...] * The exception may be Porno Pete and his hate group. [...]
Brad, here’s another example of the attacks from your side on gays:
http://www.goodasyou.org/good_as_you/2010/03/video-decapitation-is-less-than-what-should-happen.html#comments
You need to scroll up a bit to see the video. The gay community has nothing remotely as vile, intolerant, and hateful as what’s coming out of your side.
[...] on the very platform God told him to avoid. A person who would openly defy God to appear on a hate group’s radio show in the dead of night (with an audience you can count on one hand) is the definition of a [...]
pryia
the examples you gave do not represent the views and
beliefs of christians like myself. To begin with
niether if those people can be considered christians
judging by thier video and post. Also no conservative
who really follows the bible and Christ’s teaching
would advocate violence on gays. believeing that
the Bible condemns homosexuality does not automatically
make one a hater. For example, I would not approve
of anyone firing someone because they are gay, or oppose allowing them hospital visitation rights, etc.
so, having said that, I ask you to please stop lumping
those of us who are conservative christians in with
true haters like those two men in your examples, and
fred phelps, etc.
I love how Christians always b***h and moan about how the people who embarrass them the most aren’t “true Christians.” It’s a constant exercise of moving the goalposts, because most fundamentalists are indeed such embarrassing people.
Brad, those people are christians just like you in that they oppose gays just like you do. They are on your side and they refute your absurd claim that the most vile, hateful, and intolerant people out there are liberal bloggers. Obviously the most vile, intolerant, and hateful people out there are on your side, not ours.
Brad-Most of the people who condemn gay people and make our lives as difficult and unpleasant as possible do so on the basis of their religious beliefs, and they will usually admit it. First, of course, is that just because someone says that something is his religious belief does NOT make that a true statement. Religion has always been used to rationalize existing prejudices. Gid is what these people use to justify what they cannot justify by any other means. And even if true, that they rely on their current reading of the bible neither justifies it nor makes it right.
More important is the question of religious freedom, which means nothing if there is not freedom FROM religion as well. I have no objection to these so-called Christians believing whatever they please within the confines of their homes and churches. I thoroughly object, however, to their religious beliefs being made into public policy, and the coercive power of the state used to enforce those religious beliefs on people who do not share them.
The hypocrisy is most obvious here. As a Jew, I totally reject the notion that God sits in heaven judging us for sins of his devising, that he had a Son, and that believing (whatever THAT means) in this Son will save us all from eternal damnation. As a Jew, my civil rights are protected from discriminatory action and behavior on the part of Christians who seem to have no problem–at least in public–with my rejection of their entire theology. But nothing gets them more upset than the thought that I might be violating a minor prohibition in a mostly ignored book of the Old Testament.
Good Christians used to torture and burn suspected witches (and Jews, heretics, and other Christians) with exactly the same certainty that they were doing and expressing God’s will with which they now attack, pursue, and ocndemn gay people, and with about as much justification, biblical or not.
We don’t believe in witches any more, right?
What part of Judge not Lest Ye Be Judged does NOT apply to good Christians such as yourself?
john 7:24…”judge not according to the appearance,but judge righteous judgment”.
Which pretty much proves my point. you pick the parts of the bible that agree with your particular agenda at the moment, and ignore the parts that don’t.
Which is it: judge not or judge?