Infighting! Alan Chambers, due to the fact that he’s been telling a bit of the truth for the past year, and especially due to the fact that he’s acknowledging that so-called “reparative therapy” doesn’t work and that people who go through “change” programs don’t actually, ahem, change, is experiencing what it’s like to be on the receiving end of his own cohorts’ hatred. Linda Harvey bemoaned Alan’s truth-telling last week, encouraging him to go back to lying for Jesus full-time, and this week, she’s basically calling him a faggot. Seriously. If you ever find yourself wondering if our opponents are motivated by anything more than juvenile animus, just look at Linda’s latest against Alan:
For Exodus, as a position led by Alan Chambers and he’s not the only one in leadership there that are really misled, for them to pull the plug on kids and just abandon them, this is just the stereotype of men who are not being men, shall I just go there, because that’s what it is. Just don’t defend anything, just let people run right all over you. Well the people running over you are the homosexuals, how ironic is this? How ironic is this that the ones with the real guts are the ones who are the more effeminized or non-masculine males who aren’t embracing their real, God-given masculine identity.
I get the feeling Linda Harvey has never met a gay man in her life, or doesn’t realize it. I understand when Matt Barber and Porno Pete run around doing their juvenile schoolyard taunt thing about girly-men — it has to do with their own insecurities with their own masculinity, and they really hate it when you point out that, for instance, the gay Marines who fight for their freedoms to be wingnuts are stronger, more valiant and more manly than they’ll ever be. When a woman such as Linda Harvey does it, I’m just not sure how to interpret it. Like, seriously, has she ever met a gay man? Does she really think we’re all limp-wristed stereotypes [NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT, BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT HERE]? I feel like somewhere in her words, there is intense rejection and sadness, and a sort of worship for the idealized heterosexual masculine hero who may never have shown up. For comparison, read Kathryn Jean Lopez, and it’s the Catholic version of that.
But the ex-homosexuals, supposedly, or the leadership there, won’t stand up. Come on, you are our best witness out there. If you won’t stand for this and you will just let kids be corrupted in this way all by buying into this phony notion that in order to have ‘no climate of hate’ in schools you can’t say anything bad about homosexuality; no, to have a ‘no climate of hate’ in schools you need to be telling kids the truth, giving them real hope. I didn’t get to the other issues I was going to cover today but this one is important enough.
I hope folks that you would pray for Exodus, stand up for those people who are disaffiliating from the current regime but maybe they’ll change. Pray that Alan Chambers and the other folks there in leadership with these false and very damaging ideas and this horrendous witness that they are giving to America and to American Christianity will change their heart and come back to the Lord and repent in their own lives, they will stop dishonoring their own families and embarrassing and humiliating and hurting them, come back to the Lord and publicly repudiate all of this and be healed.
She actually seems to be telling Alan Chambers, who has trafficked in “ex-gay” lies for so much of his life that he’s the most prominent face of the movement, that he needs to “repent and be healed.” He’s sitting there saying, “you know, Linda, all that crap? It’s not true, really,” and she’s just weeping and gnashing her teeth about it. He’s not even being pro-gay! He’s still calling it sin and blah blah blah. He is simply acknowledging that the whole “change your sexuality” thing really doesn’t happen. Linda, this is not coming from us. This is not coming from the pro-humanity, pro-gay side of things. I know you think we’re evil and from the debbil and just oh so mean why are we so mean. This is the leader of the movement you’ve been promoting. And trust me, he knows more about it than you do!
When I say she’s “weeping and gnashing her teeth,” I’m not kidding. I’m not embedding the clip here, but it’s at Right Wing Watch, and she actually sounds like she’s about to cry toward the end. What on earth?
“I get the feeling Linda Harvey has never met a gay man in her life,”
Have you seen her hair? I am pretty sure you’re right.
I love it when they turn on each other.
Harvey writes, “How ironic is this that the ones with the real guts are the ones who are the more effeminized or non-masculine males who aren’t embracing their real, God-given masculine identity.”
Please note that there is nothing here about homosexuality, but plenty of insinuations about social roles. This is a common assumption, one that leads to the assumption that “you can always tell” if someone is gay, but it is false.
This often stems from a belief that God set down roles for men and women for evermore, Amen. Men must work outside the home, women must not. Women must care for small children, men must not. Men are assertive, women are submissive. Men care for the cars and rain gutters, while women care for the kitchen and food preparation. Of course, the man is allowed to cook slabs of meat over charcoal on the grill, and we know this as the Backyard Barbecue Exception.
This is one of the objections to homosexuality, that is just isn’t the way a man is supposed to be. What this reveals is how deeply embedded and vigorously defended our ideas about manhood are. Any schoolboy on a playground knows he can annoy another boy by questioning his masculinity. Harvey has done the same thing here, and it is a familiar attack, but to anyone with a truly adult view of men and women’s roles, it is no more sophisticated than that playground taunt.
Have a little sympathy, will ya? This poor woman’s box is in a knot. She’s like a wounded animal; she’s just reacting to the pain!
When reading Linda’s transcript, I keep hearing Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out For a Hero” playing…in her head. I wonder how emasculated her husband has become after years of living with crazy? After all of this time focused on hate it seems obvious she is simply a shell of a human being. I feel a little sadness for her. I wonder if she remembers happiness or if she has ever felt it at all?
Kevin, I have wondered the SAME thing! Not only does she come off as a bit unhinged, she seems to be a ball of hatred, anger, loathing and fear. Even most of our opponants do not seem to be this…warped. ( a few seem semi decent…just sincerely wrong) There is no joy or happiness in this woman, only anger and self righousness and a sense of self pity. I feel sad for her also! I mean, I find her loathsome and hurtful to a lot of young GLBT people, but, I STILL feel pity for her!
She is starting to remind me of Veronica Cartwright in “The Witches of Eastwick.” Any day now she’s going to start throwing up cherry pits!
At least Linda has embraced her *own* ‘real God-given masculine identity’.
Yo, Linda! Pleeease won’t you show us the secret to being masculine. You make it look so easy!
I have no sympathy for her. She has created this imaginary world, let her live and die in it. I do have sympathy for any young person who has to have any type of interpersonal contact with her. What an arrogant, self-centered _ _ _ _ _.
Sorry, but no one gets that weepy and histrionic over anything unless it affects them on some personal level. So if it’s not an act, then there’s some kind of unfinished business in her past connected with someone gay. Maybe her father come out and left her mother. Maybe it was her own husband who came out. Maybe her high school crush preferred the quarterback over her. THERE’S ALWAYS A PERSONAL CONNECTION that drives the wingnuttery.
“How ironic is this that the ones with the real guts are the ones who are the more effeminized or non-masculine males who aren’t embracing their real, God-given masculine identity.”
Also note that by the time she eventually got to the end of this over-long sentence, she’d forgotten that it was supposed to be a question.
Also, she misspelled “feminized”. Thanks for pointing that one out, SpellChek!
There’s nothing wrong with Linda Harvey that straddling Joe Mangianello and riding him like a hobby horse wouldn’t fix.
The one thing the immoral anti-gay lobby cannot stand, will not stand, will NOT TOLERATE is the truth. Anyone on their side who tells the truth must be chopped down to itsy bitsy bits. The only “morality” guiding the anti-gay crowd is: The end justifies the means. So much for Jesus’ commandments!
These are merely the barely coherent ravings of a certifiable lunatic.
The best course of action here is to pay her no heed, and hope that the men-in-white-coats catch up with her sooner rather than later.
Peter, I disagree. Linda Harvey’s a weed and the worst thing you can do with weeds is ignore them. We should be aware what they’re saying.
I’m with you Daniel. Its a mistake to abandon the stage and let people like Harvey pontificate without challenge and convince people she’s telling the truth.
Peter, I must agree with Priya and Daniel. I think you are in the UK, where such folk get a lot less “airplay”. Here, there are still to many people who listen to her and think she is an “expert” on OUR lives. We have to watch what she says and counter it, otherwise, some poor folk might think her unchallanged words are the truth.
I can understand how people in some of the more rational countries would dismiss Linda as, obviously, a “certifiable lunatic.” But the thing they may not realize is that here in the USA we have millions of people who view people like Linda as truth-speakers. If you want a taste of that depressing reality, I suggest you sample the comments at the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow.
It is rather depressing that the likes of Rush Limpballs and Bryan Fisher each reach around 12 million listeners with their on-air diatribes, but I was under the impression that in comparison, loony Linda was very small-fry indeed.
Does she have a particularly large following? If so, then I stand by my previous post in principle (if only because I wish it was that easy), but in reality I do concede that she must be monitored, and countered at every opportunity.
I think I assumed she was less than significant because her proclamations are so out there and ridiculous, that I could not believe that more than a very small amount of people would ever take her seriously (though in retrospect, and considering the likes of Fischer et al, this was a poor assumption).
Daniel, she truly is an insidious weed, so bring on the Round-Up!
I *wish* we could ignore the rants of people like Linda. I truly do. Their claims are so ridiculous, so *evil* that I’d like to just shut out the clamor and go on with my life… and I do my best to do just that. But…
This is just my opinion, but I think a *lot* of people seriously underestimated the Tea Party/Evangelical movement/GOP’s rampant homophobia in the 2010 elections. Whether it was lack of press, or research, or whatever, too many people weren’t paying attention to what was being said, sat at home on election day – and the past two years, we’ve been horrified at the vile rhetoric (not to mention legislation) coming from elected officials in the highest positions of American government… people who swept into power and have spent the past two years spouting off the same kind of anti-anything-but-our-ideology that Linda Harvey and her ilk gleefully spews to an audience of millions.
I give major props to Wayne, to Jeremy Hooper at GoodAsYou, and other bloggers who monitor this insanity on a daily basis. The service they provide, making sure the overheated hatred is broadcast as widely as possible, is invaluable.
I don’t mind saying it – it’s exhausting. But it has to be done. We underestimated the animus driving Prop H8… and we underestimated the animus driving the 2010 mid-term elections… but we can’t underestimate our opponents anymore. Which means we can’t ignore them.