Hate group leader Peter “Porno Pete” LaBarbera, who made his name in anti-gay wingnuttery by repeatedly posting lots of pictures taken at fetish festivals of various kinds, gay, straight and all points between, and then using those pictures to condemn the entire LGBT community, has something to say to the nation of Israel, and it’s not “Mazel Tov!”

A pro-family activist who works to expose the truth about homosexuality says it’s outrageous that the Israeli government is going out of its way to recruit “gays” and lesbians as unofficial envoys.

In what it calls a bid to boost its international image, Israel’s Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs has established a cadre of diverse volunteers to speak about Israel around the world. And on its website, the ministry is encouraging members of the homosexual community to step forward.

One spokesman says the goal is to highlight Israel’s diversity.

[...]

But Peter LaBarbera, founder and president of Americans for Truth about Homosexuality (AFTAH), sees nothing intolerant about opposing a deviant lifestyle.

“This is a very sad development because Judaism is responsible for our moral condemnation of homosexual and all deviant behaviors,” he notes. “And so for Israel now to be proclaiming itself friendly to homosexuality is a repudiation of Israel’s own heritage and the God of Israel.”

Oh GREAT Peter, blame the Jews for your own pigheaded bigotry. That’s new and different.

Though I’m quite sure Israel’s Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs breathlessly follows the articles at OneNewsNow, especially those quoting Porno Pete, I have a feeling Israel, which is miles ahead of the United States when it comes to supporting LGBT people, knows what it’s doing and really, really doesn’t need Pete’s help. I’m also quite sure they know a bit more about Judaism than Pete does.

Sky Not Falling Dept.:

Here’s an interesting little article about boys with “girls’ names” and vice versa in Israel.

It’s hard work keeping up with my four-year-old’s social life…it’s so difficult to identify his friends.“Can you see Rotem?” he asks during morning drop-off at kindergarten. I look at each of the girls, believing I’ve already met her and risking his wrath because I have forgotten what she looks like, but no, this Rotem — though it’s a traditional girls’ name — is a boy. A couple of days later, a woman chats to me at the kindergarten gate. “I’m Natanel’s mom,” she says, positive that I know Natanel (the Hebrew form of Nathaniel). The name rings a bell, so out of politeness I say I know how much my son enjoys playing with him. Cover blown: Natanel is a she.

In an effort to make sure that all Orthodox Jews fulfill the Biblical commandment to have children, gay Jewish organization Kamoha and Rabbi Arele Harel of Israel’s West Bank now run a matchmaking service to help gay and lesbian Jews marry–each other. The rabbi tells the folks he’s been setting up that they will learn to love each other once the children arrive. And how are the happy couples doing? None would talk to the media, apparently. But one guy trying the service told the AP he might talk to his future wife about continuing to date men. According to the rabbi, this is okay:

Harel said as long as both parties are aware the other is dating, it would not be adultery in such a union. He said the same would not be true for a straight couple because they are sexually compatible* and have no reason to look elsewhere. Jewish law forbids adultery.

Interestingly, the rabbi’s plan is being criticized by other rabbis because he isn’t encouraging gays and lesbians to change their sexual orientations. Kamoha’s website almost but doesn’t quite take a stand on that strategy:

In order to prevent a situation in which after several years of marriage, one of a couple’s spouses goes through a change in sexual orientation…(those) suitable for this project are those who are not in the process of trying out a new sexual orientation, but rather for those who have accepted themselves as being gay or lesbian….We assist couples, whose desire it is to establish a family, and who have already accepted the fact that they will never be able to alter their orientations. (emphasis in original text)

Not only is a same-sex wedding impossible in Israel, but so are civil weddings. The theocratic Israeli law in this regard requires that all weddings involving Jews be signed off on by Orthodox leaders, so many Israelis go to Cyprus or elsewhere to tie the knot. There are few options for gay couples wanting to raise children, though some, presumably non-Orthodox, choose surrogacy or adoption of a partner’s child.

The  kludgy Kamoha-Harel response to the inconvenient truth of Orthodox homosexuality reminds me of the eruv, a ceremonial fence usually consisting of a wire strung between telephone poles that allows observant Orthodox Jews to carry things on their person on Shabbat. By making a public space ritually private, the eruv attempts to reconcile the religious illegality of carrying things in public on Shabbat with the fact that people need to be able to push baby carriages and carry house keys if they want to step outside their homes on Friday nights and Saturdays. There are some social upsides to the eruv–for one thing, it can render a neighborhood cozy when one’s social group has moved to homes inside the boundary–but it can also lead to ridiculous situations, as when people won’t step past it to finish walking home a friend who doesn’t live within it, since completing the stroll would require them to leave their carried belongings. To people with this cast of mind, ditching someone at the boundary is the lesser of two evils, just as to Harel it’s apparently better to commit to a passionless marriage as long as you do as the Torah commands and create children. I wonder how he reconciles this with onah, the Jewish law that requires a husband to sexually satisfy his wife?

* Which would mean this rabbi assumes any straight man and any straight woman are sexually compatible solely by dint of their straightness–a view of human sexuality that’s inaccurate at best. According to the AP, Harel also believes some gays and lesbians can change their sexual orientations.

I just don’t know what to do with this story, so I’ll let commenters hash it out:

Rabbis from the religious Zionist community have launched an initiative to marry gay men to lesbian women – with some surprising successes.

So far, 11 marriages have been performed. Haaretz conducted an email interview with one such couple, Etti and Roni (not their real names ).

Etti and Roni, both religious, were married five years ago. Though they were honest with each other about their sexual orientations from their first meeting, to the outside world, they portray themselves as a normal heterosexual couple. Today, they have two children, and are thrilled with the results.

So, they’re building sexless marriages, by design, which I can’t imagine is healthy in the long-term for any committed couple. On the other hand, they’re not lying about it like Christian fundamentalists do. Score one for some kind of halfway-there version of integrity?

Gay-lesbian marriages have long been practiced among the ultra-Orthodox, but the current initiative is different in that it stems not from an effort to sweep the issue under the carpet, but from a growing acknowledgment of homosexuality, prompted in part by four organizations for religious homosexuals: Havruta, Bat Kol, Hod and Kamocha.

Harel explained that while secular homosexuals see gay marriage as the solution, religious homosexuals are often unwilling to violate the halakhic prohibition on homosexual sex, and are thus seeking other solutions.

“Most of the couples agree not to have relationships with members of their own sex, but if there are ‘lapses’ once every few years, they don’t see this as a betrayal,” he said. “Generally, it’s between them and their Creator.”

I’d have to say that this falls under the heading “To Each His Own,” but it’s still sad the way that people will allow religious dogma to deny them the fullness of life, including a true, intimate relationship with another human being. The piece mentions that Roni attempted conversion therapy, but of course, it didn’t work, because conversion therapy never works.

Oh, and:

Two of the couples Harel married are now in the process of divorce. And he said he is very worried about whether the children of these experimental marriages will end up suffering.

Yeah. Unsurprising.

It technically doesn’t, as marriage is unfortunately controlled by religious authorities in Israel.  However, in certain key ways, Israel has blown past the United States in terms of equal rights for gay couples.  In a new video for VJM, journalist Yermi Brenner introduces us to how gay couples work it out in Israel.  There’s a class issue involved here:  for those couples who can afford to travel abroad to get married, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled several years back that the nation would recognize marriages performed abroad, including those of same-sex partners.  And for those who can’t afford it, an organization has stepped up to help couples get the protections and rights that they need as couples.  Interesting stuff.

Of course, WordPress is being difficult, so I can’t seem to embed the video here, but by all means, hop over to the Huffington Post to watch.

According to the BBC, a senior rabbi from a party within Israel’s coalition government has called for Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to “vanish from our world”.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef expressed the wish that “all the nasty people who hate Israel, like Abu Mazen (Abbas), vanish from our world”. He went on to say: “May God strike them down with the plague along with all the nasty Palestinians who persecute Israel.”

Of course, what everyone really wants to know, is why the Rabbi is dressed like the late pop singer Michael Jackson in the picture used by the BBC today?

To no ones surprise, this guy has issues with all kinds of people.

The 89-year-old former chief rabbi of Israel has been at the centre of controversy before, with comments about Arabs, secular Jews, liberals, women and gays. In 2001, during a Palestinian uprising, he called for the annihilation of Arabs and said it was forbidden to be merciful to them. He later said he was referring only to “terrorists” who attacked Israelis.

Rabbi Yosef does a pretty good impression of a nutty imam offering up fatwas, doesn’t he? How about this gem:

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, a former chief rabbi and the spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas movement, once said that Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for U.S. President George W. Bush’s support for Israel’s Gaza pullout.

“It was God’s retribution. God does not shortchange anyone,” Yosef said during his weekly sermon.

And how about the rabbi’s thoughts on Gay Pride?

A leaflet published by the ultra-Orthodox community titled “Jerusalem is on fire” included statements by leading rabbis against the parade. The leaflet said plans are being made for a mass rally in protest of the “abomination parade in Jerusalem.”The leaflet quoted Rabbi Shalom Elyashiv, leader of the ultra-Orthodox Lithuanian community, as saying “This (parade) will not take place. We must do everything to banish this disgrace from the Holy city.”

The ultra-Orthodox community fears that holding the Gay Pride Parade in the capital would expose religious youth and children to homosexuality. Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch, head of the ultra-Orthodox community’s religious court, said “this parade poses a real threat to the citizens of Israel,” while leading haredi Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky suggested holding the parade in Sodom. His metaphoric suggestion was backed by Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.

As for this week’s comments, the lovely rabbi spoke out as Middle East talks are poised to begin in Washington. The United States condemned the remarks as “deeply offensive”. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu distanced himself from the comments with a statement saying that his government wanted peace with the Palestinians.

What bothers me more than the offensive remarks is the fact that mainstream Israeli political parties have given this nut and his religious right party a platform. By selfishly doing so, for the sake of political power, they are responsible for the damage caused by Yosef’s comments. This reminds me of the way the Republican Party in the United States has elevated extremists, such as the late Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Rick Warren and Doug Coe (The Family) to positions of influence and power — at a great cost to America.

It is time that mainstream political parties across the world stop giving the veneer of credibility and respectability to violent and irrational religious leaders or parties. When they make common cause with such dangerous groups or individuals, they bring down the level of dialogue, serve as barriers to peace, and divide societies.

For the world to progress in the 21st Century, responsible politics must prevail, and this means avoiding coalitions with people and parties that dogmatically adhere to inflammatory and divisive ideologies.

Appropriately enough:

JERUSALEM — Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox deputy mayor plans to march 50 donkeys through the streets of the Holy City to coincide with a gay pride parade on Thursday, his office said.

“This expresses what we think — that this is a beastly act,” Rabbi Yitzhak Pindrus, who represents the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party on the city council, told the Ynet news website.

His spokesman Menahem Zaide declined to link the donkey march to the parade, saying only: “Donkeys also have rights to be recognised as couples.

“We are in favour of donkey rights,” he told AFP.

So basically, they’re replicating NOM’s bus tour with animals.

[h/t Joe.My.God]

Ever since the widely reported flotilla incident, people of good will have been having vociferous disagreements on whether what Israel did was right or wrong, the legality and morality of the Gaza blockade, the safety of Israeli families, and the like. In fact, Wayne Besen and I have been having an academic match on the subject for the past week. The key word there, of course, is academic. It’s not a reflection of biases against Israelis or Palestinians or anything of the sort.

That being said, this is stupid and completely beside the point:

Organizers of Madrid’s pride parade, scheduled for the beginning of next month, have announced that they are cancelling the invitation of Israeli representatives slated to appear there, Ynet learned Monday.

The Israeli delegation, made up of members of the LGBT association and the Foreign Ministry, was scheduled to run an Israeli “bus” in the parade, for the first time since its establishment.

But the delegation has recently received hints from Spain that their arrival may cause anger among local pro-Palestinian groups, which may require excess security and, more importantly, cause a lot of embarrassment.

(…)

Community reps expressed their deep disappointment by Madrid’s decision. Chairman of the LGBT Union in Israel, Mike Hamel told Ynet, “We regret the fact that the pride organizations in Madrid have decided to focus on issues that have nothing to do with the community. The Union was invited as a non-political organization. This is a missed opportunity for dialogue.”

Regardless of one’s opinions on the flotilla incident, let’s be clear: One of the things Israel has going for it is that it is indeed the bastion of tolerance and liberalism in the region, as it pertains to the LGBT community. In fact, Israel runs circles around the United States when it comes to their progress on gay rights.

Also, of note: the Israeli participation was from the Tel Aviv Municipality, as part of their push to shine a light on their progressive, gay friendly city. This is not the Netanyahu government’s project. This would be like disinviting San Francisco from an international event because the Obama administration did something the organizers didn’t like. It has absolutely nothing to do with the greater point of the pride celebration, and it does nothing to further the cause of equality for LGBT people.

One of the themes that’s come up in the conversations I’ve had with people since the flotilla incident is nuance. Obviously some of the groups involved in Madrid pride have serious problems with what Israel has done in the past few weeks. That’s okay. There are ways to express that in appropriate places without blacklisting Israelis as people. However, for a freaking PRIDE EVENT, which is premised on the idea of “everyone is welcome and accepted as they are,” people should be able to do that without also feeling the need to throw the Israeli gay community under the bus. It’s especially stupid, considering the fact that, in the world of Israeli-Palestinian relations, Israel’s gay community is at the forefront working within their country to provide aid, advocacy and protection to Palestinians, and more specifically, to LGBT Palestinians:

All three organizations that advocate and support homosexual Palestinians are headquartered in Israel. On an individual level, the Israeli gay community often hides gay Palestinians from the Israeli authorities, for fear that they will be sent back to their home communities where they are ostracized and threatened for their sexual preferences. From the website GlobalGayz.com:

Since Palestine is a very homophobic culture many Palestinian gays and lesbians are forced against their cultural and religious will to hide in Israel where homosexuality is much more acceptable and, indeed, protected.

Like their counterparts worldwide, the Israeli gay community is one of the most progressive and left-wing in the country. One Israeli gay rights organization, Black Laundry, describes itself as “a direct action group of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders, and others against the occupation and for social justice.”

The organizers of Madrid’s pride celebration should be ashamed of themselves. If it requires more security, get more security. It’s not as if gays have ever dealt with situations like that before. (/sarcasm)

As I said before, people of good will and honest intentions can disagree on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and will continue to do so until either the conflict is resolved or the end of time, whichever comes first. But the very spirit of the movement for LGBT equality is endangered when nations which are extremely friendly to LGBT people are punished for unrelated political reasons. He’s free to speak for himself and correct me, but I have a feeling that, though we disagree on many other things about that part of the world, Wayne would agree with me on this one.

(h/t Dan Blatt, who is actually also mostly right about this.)

Peter caught me making a comment on here about Linda Harvey, and he wrote a big mad “Evan is so mean” post about it. But I’ll do you the courtesy of getting everybody up to speed on where the comment came from, and then I’ll explain it further. This press release is from a talk Linda gave wherein, among other things, she defended her friend and SPLC-certified hate group leader Scott Lively, he who went to Uganda to spread the pernicious lie that gays were responsible for the Rwandan genocide:

Harvey said the Southern Poverty Law Center was wrong when it recently classified several anti-gay groups, including Scott Lively’ Abiding Truth Ministries, as “hate groups.”

“I can’t stand the Southern Poverty Law Center. They are such a hypocritical organization. They don’t cover any of the violence that happens to any of the conservatives.I love what they do with the Klu Klux Klan and racial issues, . They need to go back stay out of this other stuff. They need to get out of classifying hate groups, family groups. I mean I am a normal ordinary person I just happen to have conservative values. I don’t hate anybody. I don’t go on anybody’ websites. I don’t picket funerals. I can’t stand Fred Phelps. I think he is funded by the gays,” Harvey said. “I think he is.”

She said she and Lively have both worked on the anti-homosexuality bill in Uganda, and that she “loves” Lively.

Ms. Harvey then showed up in the comments section of that press release, and she was shocked, shocked (shocked!), that anyone could have a problem with her dear friend Mr. Lively (there is video at the above link of Lively speaking, by the way):

And how is Scott Lively a “Holocaust revisionist”? Don’t get that one. Are you trying to imply anti-semitism that does not exist? Listen to my daily radio show and hear my support for the state of Israel, much more than you’ll get from most of the left these days, including the Obama administration.

How is Scott Lively a “Holocaust revisionist,” asketh The Linda.

Let us explain this: Scott Lively wrote a book called The Pink Swastika, which argued that the Third Reich was, at its core, a homosexual movement. Indeed, the SPLC (Peter’s personal boogeyman now, apparently) handily disposed of the book’s malevolently asinine thesis in 2005:

In 1995, a book calledThe Pink Swastika made similar claims about the Nazis’ treatment of homosexuals during the Holocaust.

Written by fundamentalist activists Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams, The Pink Swastika says that rather than being victimized by the Nazis, gay men in Hitler’s inner circle actually helped mastermind the Holocaust.

“While we cannot say that homosexuals caused the Holocaust, we must not ignore their central role in Nazism,” write Lively and Abrams. “To the myth of the ‘pink triangle’ ‚Äî the notion that all homosexuals in Nazi Germany were persecuted ‚Äî we must respond with the reality of the ‘pink swastika.’”

Historians agree that this “reality” is utterly false. But many anti-gay crusaders have used the “gay Nazi” myth as proof that gay people are immoral and destructive.

(…)

In fact, while the number of homosexuals who died in the Holocaust does not approach the number of Jewish or Gypsy victims, the historical record shows that between 50,000 and 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality (or suspicion of it) under the Nazi regime. They were routinely sent to concentration camps and marked with a pink triangle on their prison garb.

They were not systematically exterminated. But huge numbers are believed to have died in the work camps, along with an untold number of homosexual Jews, Gypsies and other “defectives” who were sent to extermination camps.

The myth that Nazis condoned or promoted homosexuality sprang up as a slander against Nazi leaders by their socialist opponents in the 1930s. Only one of the half-dozen leaders in Hitler’s inner circle, Ernest Rohm, is believed by credible historians to have been gay.

The “gay Nazi” slander stuck, though, partly because German laws against homosexuals remained in place for a quarter of a century after World War II ended. That effectively silenced many homosexual victims of the Holocaust from telling their stories. A landmark survivor’s memoir, The Men With the Pink Triangle, began to break that silence in 1972.

Read that whole piece, please. I’ll wait. And then you tell me whether or not Scott Lively is a Holocaust revisionist, Ms. Linda.

Now. Holocaust revisionism is anti-Semitism. Here’s the comment I made:

Oh, and Linda, “Holocaust revisionism” does not only apply to direct anti-semitism. Of course, it could be argued that Scott Lively is anti-semitic since he co-opts the Holocaust in order to lie about gay people, to satisfy whatever mental illness he suffers from. In fact, yes, now that I think of it, his work IS anti-semitism, because it belittles the reality of the Holocaust in order to score points. And by supporting him, you are supporting that strain of anti-semitism.

(Then again, all fundamentalist Christians are anti-semitic at their core, considering the fact that they actually believe their apocalyptical horseshit.)

And you just parrot right along with it, because you’re too virulent to see that if your Jesus was here, he’d probably lay you out like the Pharisee you are.

Let’s get this out of the way: There is one word in that comment I would change. I would remove the word “all.” Because, quite frankly, it was late, and I popped off. Because the truth of the matter is that many fundamentalist Christians do not realize that some the beliefs they are taught, and some of the beliefs which they espouse about the state of Israel are profoundly anti-Semitic. So it’s a mistake to say that they “all” are, because I’m quite sure that many who hold the beliefs I’m about to explain have never taken the time to reflect on the inherent anti-Semitism contained therein.

But that’s one word in a larger train of thought, which I will now flesh out, for the record: A particular and prominent belief system in Fundamentalist Evangelical Christianity is known as “Christian Zionism,” which is inspired by “pre-millenial dispensationalist” eschatology. (Think: Left Behind; Rapture Ready, etc.) In its simplest form, this means that these Christians believe that for Christ to return, the Jewish people must set up a state in Israel. (Done.) At which point:

Uri Avnery, is the leader of Gush Shalom, an Israeli peace group. He was discussing the theology of many Fundamentalist and other Evangelical Christians in a 2002-JUN essay, and wrote: “According to its theological beliefs, the Jews must congregate in Palestine and establish a Jewish state on all its territory so as to make the Second Coming of Jesus Christ possible…the evangelists don’t like to dwell openly on what comes next: before the coming [of the Messiah], the Jews must convert to Christianity. Those who don’t will perish in a gigantic holocaust in the battle of Armageddon. This is basically an anti-Semitic teaching…” 1 This teaching implies that Jews who remain true to God’s covenants in the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) will be all exterminated in a massive genocide that may be more numerous than the Nazi Holocaust.

This theology is most popular (and growing) in extremely conservative, fundamentalist churches, from Pentecostal to Southern Baptist to non-denominational, etc.

It is an anti-Semitic belief system. Period! It takes all of the humanity away from the Jewish people and instead makes them pawns in the biggest “screw you” ever doled out by a (supposed) deity in human history! It ends the story that Fundamentalists believe started in the Garden of Eden by exterminating the race God called his “chosen.”

It is helpful to understand this, because often you will see fundamentalist Christians (John Hagee, etc.) expound on their deep, deep “support” for Israel. Indeed, in Peter’s “big mad Evan Hurst is so mean” post, he says this:

Surely Hurst is not unaware of the fact that the “fundamentalist” Christians he so obviously despises are historically a bastion of support for the State of Israel.

No, Pete. Evan Hurst is all too aware, and is just as cynical as many Jewish Americans about the supposed “support” Christian fundamentalists have for Israel. Because this belief system is not inspiring them to “support Israel” out of love for the Jewish people. It’s, rather, about propping up Israel so that Jesus will come back and take his final revenge on everybody they don’t like. Jews, gays, Muslims, you-name-it. Read Revelation 20. This is the moment of triumph in the premillenial dispensationalist Christian Fundamentalist worldview, which, again, is extremely popular in those circles. This is the moment where Jesus comes back and just cold kicks everybody’s ass. They project all of their perceived victimization onto this imaginary moment in the future where their white warrior will come back and avenge everything they claim to have suffered at the hands of, you know, whoever is upsetting them that day.

Could I have fleshed out that comment more at the time? Sure. Maybe I should’ve. Well, now I did!

But, Peter LaBarbera, for perhaps the first and last time, you’re right about one solitary thing: I shouldn’t have said “all.”

The rest of it stands.

At least Truth Wins Out has a comments section where people can air their views on things, as opposed to AFTAH, where freedom of thought, expression, and even occasionally poorly worded popping off is deemed far too threatening.

(Oh, and Peter does announce, finally, that he suddenly remembered to award the Gay Grinch award to Wayne! He forgot to do it for three months, because, well, you see, what had happened was…)

RELATED: Peter earlier issued a quote-unquote challenge to me, to Wayne, and to Jeremy Hooper, Joe Jervis and Rea Carey to answer a question that this site and Good-As-You have already answered at length: Should other groups like the Catholic Church and the Family Research Council also be classified in the same SPLC-certified hate-boat upon which Peter now sets sail? There is a simple answer: that the SPLC has very specific guidelines for what crosses over into “hate” territory, which they use to decide who is indeed a force for genuine hatred in this country. That’s the simple answer. For a more fleshed out answer, may I recommend that you visit Good-As-You because Jeremy took the ball and ran with that question.

UPDATE: Joe.My.God has also now responded to Peter’s Hate Challenge Wolverine Wankfest or whatever it is.