This is presumably not a joke:

My name is Peter LaBarbera. I am a 47-year-old, happily married father of five living in Naperville, and I am asking for your vote to serve as Republican State Central Committeeman for the 13 Congressional District of Illinois.

I entered this race as a strong fiscal and social conservative in the model of Illinois’ own Ronald Reagan. I believe that the IL-GOP is badly in need of reform and that we can be better served than by our current leaders – including my opponent, Roger Claar — who have put power over principle and lost sight of the greatness that a conservative Republican Party can achieve.

As a Reagan Republican, my dream for the Illinois Republican Party is that it would return to the standards of conservatism, decency, integrity and high principle of the man who grew up here, in Dixon, and who as President restored American greatness and accomplished what many said was impossible: to force the demise of Soviet Communism, an “Evil Empire” (as Reagan called it) and the most murderous political system ever created.

He tacks through his “beliefs” or whatever, and somehow doesn’t see fit to share all the amazing work he’s done over the years going to leathersex festivals and taking hundreds of pictures for his personal collection!  And honestly, I think that’s important!  The constituents of the Illinois 13th should know about Peter’s mad skillz as a nude male photographer!  Also, he is an expert on military themed gay porn!  Who knows, maybe the denizens of Illinois 13 have been having trouble finding military themed gay porn!  Well, here you go! Peter knows where it is!  And if you have a friend or family member who’s gay and getting married, Peter will write them an insane personal letter condemning their love.  How many people in America would do that to for a person they’ve never met?  Peter will.  That’s the kind of guy he is.

Anyway, exciting!

Exodus International is the nation’s foremost organization claiming to use Christianity to turn LGBT people into “ex-gays.”

And while Exodus says it “loves” gay people, the Gay Liberation Network says Exodus’ fake attempts to change gays into straights is rooted in their “hatred of gay people.” GLN points out that Exodus opposes all civil rights for LGBT people; in just the past few months, Exodus has taken extreme actions to oppose the human rights, health, and safety of same-sex-attracted people.

In March, Exodus board member Don Schmierer traveled to Uganda to keynote a conference which declared that life imprisonment for homosexuals is too lenient and that tougher laws should be accompanied by involuntary detention in ex-gay re-education camps. More recently, Exodus joined the religious-right “Freedom Federation” which promotes the myth that conservative Christian freedom requires that liberal and non-Christian Americans be denied their own freedom and equality under the law. Exodus opposes laws that would require that violent crimes against gay and transgender persons be punished just as harshly as violent crimes committed on the basis of the victim’s race or religion; Exodus claims that the punishment of violent crime threatens the “freedom of speech” of antigay pastors, even though such laws contain safeguards for religious speech. Finally, Exodus refuses to publicly oppose ex-gay exorcisms performed against a 16-year-old youth by an amateur pentecostal church in Connecticut.

Every major professional mental-health association has denounced Exodus’s efforts to suppress and lie about individuals’ sexual orientation as potentially very damaging to the very people Exodus claims to “help.”

As the American Psychiatric Association notes: “The potential risks of ‘reparative therapy’ are great, including depression, anxiety and self destructive behavior, since therapist alignment with societal prejudices against homosexuality may reinforce self hatred already experienced by the patient. Many patients who have undergone ‘reparative therapy’ relate that they were inaccurately told that homosexuals are lonely, unhappy individuals who never achieve acceptance or satisfaction. The possibility that the person might achieve happiness and satisfying interpersonal relationships as a gay man or lesbian is not presented, nor are alternative approaches to dealing with the effects of societal stigmatization discussed.”

GLN invites Midwesterners to help expose the “ex-gay” fraud, and help show young LGBT people that there is an alternative to the damaging quack “therapy” that Exodus International promotes.

The Gay Liberation Network is organizing a protest against the opening of Exodus International’s annual “Freedom [from Gay Equality] Conference” and it invites you to join them:

6:30 PM
Tuesday, July 14
Wheaton College
500 College Avenue
Wheaton, Illinois
Related Facebook group

GLN is organizing transportation from Chicago to the protest, and may be able to offer it from some suburban locations. If you need transportation or are willing to offer it, please email LGBTliberation@aol.com.

Until the 19th century, marriages in the West were, for the most part, unromantic contracts arranged by relatives.

Liberals and the industrial revolution changed all that; the Jewish-themed musical Fiddler on the Roof offers a nostalgic look back at that radical shift in the nature of marriage and the struggle of a devout religious family to catch up with the trend toward romantic unions.

A century later, Focus on the Family became one of the world’s largest Christian organizations by championing the liberal industrial redefinition of marriage as if it were conservative.

Changing times are again calling for a change in marriage. But this time around, Focus on the Family — having earned hundreds of millions of dollars per year from the last redefinition of marriage — now hopes to make hundreds of millions more by stopping marriage in its tracks and crippling the ability of marriage to evolve with humanity’s changing needs.

FOTF’s latest action against marriage: A false declaration that God redefined marriage the last time around, and an assertion that God wants Illinoisans to be imprisoned in FOTF’s romance-novel version of marriage as a union of one football-playing Protestant man and one obedient, makeup-wearing Protestant woman.

Several hundred people protested in front of the Renaissance Hotel this evening in downtown Chicago against the Radio Hall of Fame for inducting Focus on the Family’s James Dobson. Focus on the Family had spent $800,000 on Proposition 8 to stop gay people form marrying in California.

It is mind-blowing, that the Radio Hall of Fame honored a leader of Proposition 8. Dobson put his Media Empire and vast amounts of money into the service of denying equal marriage rights for same-sex couples. And, the Radio Hall of Fame reacted by giving this demagogue a trophy. Truth Wins Out and the Gay Liberation Network thank all who attended the rally this evening.

The demonstration made national news.