You see, back when the SPLC was primarily concerned with the most overt racists among us, it was fine, because Matt Barber was not weaned in a time when it was socially acceptable to wear one’s racism on one’s sleeve. Now that the SPLC has broadened its scope to include other vicious, hateful, dishonest groups like the Family Research Council and his friend Porno Pete’s Americahs for Truth on their list of hate groups, it’s not okay, because they’re espousing an “extremist left-wing agenda.” You know what else used to be an “extremist left-wing agenda?” That’s right, the Civil Rights Movement.

Same dishonest, bigoted arguments, from the same people, different minority.

So this happened today, apparently. Porno Pete brought all his worldly friends together to go down to the SPLC and cry:

A coalition of African American pastors and pro-family Christian and Jewish leaders is holding a press conference at noon tomorrow (the day after Martin Luther King Day) outside the headquarters of the Southern Poverty Law Center — to protest the SPLC’s smearing of pro-family groups that oppose homosexual activism as “hate groups”:

Ooh, Porno Pete got to go on vacation! Of course, the SPLC doesn’t brand groups as “hate groups” simply for opposing gay people. They have to be known liars and slanderers. Porno Pete = one of those.

Scheduled speakers:

Peter LaBarbera, Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH), Chicago, IL (the SPLC has smeared AFTAH as a “hate group”);
Dr. Patrick Wooden, pastor, Upper Room Church of God in Christ (COGIC), Raleigh, NC;
DL Foster, founder, Gay Christian Movement Watch, Atlanta, GA;
Matt Barber, Director of Cultural Affairs, Liberty Counsel, Lynchburg, VA;
Tim Johnson, Fredrick Douglass Foundation, Washington, D.C.;
Rachel Conner, representing Abiding Truth Ministries (smeared by SPLC as a “hate group”)
Pastor Glen Sawyer, New Mt. Zion Church of God in Christ, Elizabeth City, NC
Pastor Wil Nichols, Victorious Praise Fellowship COGIC, Durham, NC
Pastor Jon Robinson, Kingdom C.O.M.E. Ministries, Clairton, PA
Pastor Kenneth Jefferson, Greater Harvest COGIC

The following pro-family leaders and groups will issue supporting statements:

Rabbi Yehuda Levin, Rabbinical Alliance of America;
Laurie Higgins, Illinois Family Institute (smeared as “hate group”)
Arthur Goldberg, author, “Light in the Closet: Torah, Homosexuality, and the Power to Change”;
Linda Harvey, Mission America, Columbus, OH
Brian Camenker, Mass Resistance, (smeared as “hate group”)

Awwwww, Porno Pete got to go on vacation and Matt Barber was there! Did the wives come along? Just curious. Let’s see…so Rachel Conner was there, representing the most vicious, dishonest male anti-gay hatemonger in the country, Scott Lively. D.L. Foster, the purported “ex-gay”  who blames gay kids for their own depression and suicide, was there. I’m not familiar with the others, but my thinking is that the only thing the SPLC was confronted with today was the integrity of their own work.

Looking at the supporting cast, we have ol’ Yehuda Levin, probably the most unhinged rabbi in the United States, Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Association, who would be the most vicious, dishonest female anti-gay hatemonger in the country if Linda Harvey would ever step aside and let her talk, convicted felon Arthur Goldberg, and Brian Camenker, who holds the title of Peter LaBarbera’s Jewish Friend.

These are the leaders of your anti-gay movement, ladies and gentlemen. Quite a stellar cast of characters. I will say, though, that we should appreciate their work, in a way, because we wouldn’t be gaining quite as much public support as we are if people like those above weren’t spreading their hate around on a daily basis. Sadly, their work does embolden some of the most violent, uneducated hicks in this country, which leads to a higher gay teen bullying/suicide rate, but normal people hear the words of the people at that press conference today and it nudges them a little bit closer to our side.

Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans For Truth, which is sponsoring the press event, recently interviewed Pastor Wooden, who said that the SPLC’s gambit of labeling mainstream pro-family groups that oppose homosexual activism as “hate groups” is seriously damaging the SPLC’s credibility.

No it isn’t.

Wooden also debunked the “civil rights” analogy used by “gay” activists, saying it is wrong to compare “my beautiful blackness” with homosexual perversion.

I simply cannot make that quote better.

LaBarbera said the SPLC is engaged in a thinly-veiled, one-sided campaign to demonize adherents of traditional Judeo-Christian morality. He noted that despite the considerable hatred and anti-Christian bigotry emanating from homosexual activists (e.g., Dan Savage’s vile hate-site, Santorum[dot]com), the SPLC has never labeled a “gay” organization or website as “hateful.”

Because we don’t:

1. Lie about you people. We let your words speak for themselves.
2. Advocate for denying you wingnuts your constitutional rights, and instead defend your right to believe whatever bullroar you want, as embarrassing as it must be for your ancestors.
3. Embolden people who would want to hurt bigoted Christian wingnuts — indeed, it’s widely recognized that our side is STILL the only one with a bodycount in this “culture war.”

We do:

1. Report your words verbatim.
2. Make fun of you sometimes. Grow up.
3. Correct the constant, alternate-reality lies perpetuated by extremist religious fanatics who are unwilling to live as adults in a world where not everybody is the same as they are.

The wingnut reaction to Hillary Clinton’s historic speech on international LGBT issues has been predictably lame, so it’s no surprise that Porno Pete has decided to weigh in, expressing his heartfelt support for the most homophobic nations on earth and their right to discriminate against gay people however they see fit. Here, let us comment on his latest emanation, and then move on to making fun of the WorldNetDaily column Peter posted along with it:

With their new escalation of promoting homosexual behavior to other nations through U.S. foreign policy, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have raised America’s defiance toward her Creator to a new level — while needlessly alienating nations less morally compromised than our own. Not content to keep our decadence between our shores, the United States – through aggressively pro-“gay” Democratic administrations – now demands that other countries sink to our level by embracing homosexuality as a “human right.”

Nations “less morally compromised than our own” = places like Iran and Uganda. Those countries didn’t stop killing pr wanting to kill gay people just because it wasn’t “cool” anymore.

Who knew that when President Ronald Reagan spoke idealistically about America becoming a “shining city on the hill,” that city would turn out to be Sodom? Hillary earned plaudits from the Left with her U.N. speech on international “gay rights,” but her words were an affront to our Declaration of Independence, which appeals to “Nature and Nature’s God.”

Americans gang rape angels? [Pssst, Porno Pete: if you don't get that joke, it's because you're not smart enough to read the Sodom and Gomorrah story for what it actually says, rather than what your homophobic twit brain needs it to say.]

By redefining “human rights” to include the normalization of same-sex behaviors and gender confusion, Obama and Clinton have turned God’s natural moral order on its head. There are many countries – including Muslim-dominated nations and major powers like Russia – that reject homosexuality. By pushing sexual deviance on these nations, we only confirm their perception of America as a corrupt and declining – and very arrogant — superpower.

And wingnuts are so well known as crusaders against American imperialism and colonialism.

America, rooted in the Bible, historically embraced anti-sodomy laws, but now we are in the grip of an unprecedented moral and spiritual crisis that blackens our reputation worldwide. As one Muslim tweeted in reaction to Obama’s international “gay rights” plan: “There is a great divide between the Founding Fathers and the pro-gay regime ruling America [today].”

“One Muslim tweeted.” Well, that sounds like a consensus to me!

Aberrant sexuality is not a fundamental liberty, and defending morality is not hateful “bigotry.” Hillary claims, “Being gay is not a Western invention, it is a human reality.” But homosexuality is about changeable behavior – not intrinsic, innate identity – as evidenced by countless men and women who now live happy lives apart from homosexuality, despite once considering themselves “gay” or “lesbian.”

Actually, Hillary is right and Porno Pete needs to stick to fetish photography. Meanwhile we’ll keep on keepin’ on trying to keep track of all the “ex-gay” leaders who are coming out of the closet, again.

(There are no “Adultery Pride Parades” or “Porn-Users Pride Months.”)

Well, Pete, considering what you post on your “family blog,” maybe you should lobby for the second one. Might bring a few more hits to the old AFTAH site.

All Americans who love God and respect His wonderful design for mankind should be ashamed of Obama’s and Hillary’s campaign to force a deeply flawed sexual ideology on innocent nations that do NOT want to emulate American decadence.

That’s the end of his press release, and I feel like it’s missing an “Allahu akbar!”

Anyway.

So Pete links to another wingnut called Bob Unruh, who wrote about the same thing. Let’s make fun of him for a minute. First, the headlines:

Obama offers plan for U.S. to be global LGBT sex cop

Wait, have we moved onto the Bob Unruh guy? Because that sounds like something from Americans For Truth or some other similar kinky sexytime website. Sub-headline:

Wants to import homosexuals with special asylum privileges

Well that’s just crazy. Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council hate group told us several years ago that gays should be an “export,” NOT an “import.” [It's because our currency is weak.]

And, you know, honestly, having read Unruh’s article, there’s nothing in there that remotely tops those two headlines. Oh sure, there’s mewling from Matt Barber and Randy Thomasson — Unruh basically called the first three third-rate wingnuts in his rolodex, I guess — but nothing that interesting.

In summary, anti-gay wingnuts have looked at this issue and decided that it’s best to side with nations like Iran, where they still hang people for being gay.

I wouldn’t expect any better from them, and neither should you.

Surprise, everybody, it’s The Holidays [I just victimized a buncha Fundamentalists right there, I sure did], which means that while the normal people of America are gearing up for some sort of The Holidays festivities [even Christmas!], wingnuts have reached the point in their liturgical calendar where they pause their usual whining and give thanks give to the poor simply stop yammering for five minutes to give the other 85% of the country a moment of respite ratchet up their whining about one particular fake issue: the liberals and atheists and gays and educated people who supposedly want to steal Christmas from them. Matt Barber decided to get a head start:

One conservative attorney says he has no sympathy for the atheists who have launched a holiday advertising campaign to promote their stance and attack Christians.

The billboard and newspaper ads that read “Bias Against Atheists is Naughty, Not Nice” are being placed in towns where atheists have made an effort to push religion out of the public arena.

“I have very little sympathy for atheists, the ones who are perpetrating anti-Christian bias,” admits Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel Action. “And when they receive a little push-back and people point out the reality that we are a Christian nation, they get in a huff.”

Let us break down his stupidity in three easy sentences:

1. Christians are a majority in this country, and atheists are simply making their voices heard. This is not, in and of itself, a crime against Christianity.

2. The billboards in question actually directly reference Christmas, which Matt Barber may be surprised to find out that many if not most atheists celebrate.

3. No, the United States is a secular nation which happens to be majority Christian, though those numbers are slipping every year. Only the willfully ignorant actually believe this is a “Christian nation.”

One more thing:

“It kind of falls on deaf ears when they start to play the victim card here, when atheist organizations across the United States like the ACLU and People for the American Way have religious liberty in their crosshairs,” the attorney contends.

Oh, those mean terrible atheists, who want to prevent Fundamentalist Christians from exercising rights that the Constitution never actually granted them in the first place. I mean, to backwards yokels like failed Allstate employee Matt Barber, it is a God-given [and therefore Constitutional, because they don't really understand how America works] right to freely discriminate against and exercise bigotry against anyone who is different from them, and that decidedly includes atheists.

Anyway, welcome to The Holidays, Truth Wins Out readers, and please be aware that by enjoying them, however you enjoy them, you are making wingnuts like Matt Barber burst out of their suspenders in rage-filled jealousy and bitterness, as they just aren’t very happy people.

On October 12, Peter LaBarbera (Porno Pete) upbraided blogger Joe Jervis for pointing out that the Ku Klux Klan agreed with LaBarbera on a particular issue. In a typical tizzy, Porno Pete had this to say:

I jest, of course. But Joe is serious–that’s the sad part. (Apparently he didn’t get the memo that the first one to call the other guy a “Nazi” in a debate is the automatic loser)

Actually, it was the Klan, not the Nazi Party. However that’s just a minor detail with the main point being that Porno Pete has a big issue with Nazi comparisons. (Although Porno Pete goes surreptitiously into gay leather events with his camera to smear an entire community, precisely the same way the Nazis filmed in the Polish ghetto for the movie “The Eternal Jew.”)

It is clear that Porno Pete believes that Nazi comparisons are for losers.

This is interesting because as Evan pointed out, Porno Pete’s buddies at the Liberty Counsel compared gay activists to Nazis on the radio this week. They did so after a cement block was thrown through a window — allegedly by LGBT activists — where Porno Pete was honoring Scott Lively, another hate group leader.

Staver: Well, when you go out and label somebody a hate group you think of the KKK …

Barber: It emboldens these people …

Staver: It also, it begins, you know, it’s the same thing that happened in the Nazi Holocaust where they start to just demonize and stigmatize and then at some point in time you don’t even think that someone’s human and then, you know, we look at it and our consciences are shocked but if you look at how it ultimately began where they began to just demonize and dehumanize them, that’s what’s happening with this labeling of hate groups.

So, where is Porno Pete? Why isn’t he denouncing the analogy made by Staver? His hypocritical silence is deafening.

By now, you know the story. A few weeks ago, Porno Pete got twelve or thirteen of his closest bigots together for a Spaghetti-O’s dinner of some sort out in the Chicago suburbs, for the purposes of honoring super-bigot Scott Lively, the main proponent of the lie that gays caused the Holocaust. Scott Lively, of course, had a huge hand in Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” legislation. Anyway, some ne’er-do-well gay “activists,” or possibly Porno Pete’s own people [who knows?] decided to make a pathetic situation more pathetic by throwing a couple of bricks through the window of the establishment where the soiree was to be held. This is, of course, worse than 9/11 and Pearl Harbor and Carrot Top, combined. At first Peter was crying that it was a “hate crime,” which it isn’t, as bigotry is not actually a protected class under hate crimes laws. It’s a simple, stupid, misguided act of vandalism. Oh, but  now, craving more attention from the ordeal, he is calling it a “terror-attack.”  Really. Here he is, setting up a video from his butchest friend, Matt “Bam Bam” Barber, the one he can always rely on to be his manly defender when people hurt his feelings:

Note that at the time of this recording, Barber was relying on early reports coming from the Oct. 15th terror-attack on Christian Liberty Academy, in which it was feared that the pro-homosexual assailants had entered the building and perhaps created water damage. Actually, they did not enter the building, and the vandalism that did occur was created by large paver bricks thrown through the glass doors and windows of CLA (accompanied by notes threatening further violence).

Yeah, bricks thrown through a window when nobody is around do not constitute an act of “terrorism.” Sorry. I’m in complete agreement that whoever did it — and if it was gays of ANY sort, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves for being such grade-A dumbasses — was in the wrong, but this melodrama really gets under my skin, especially when I have to report seemingly every week on some gay kid who killed himself because he was bullied so badly by his schoolmates, family, church or community into feeling he had nothing to live for. Considering that those sorts of messages start with people like Porno Pete and Scott Lively and their perverted interpretation of the Bible, and then trickle down to those kids, I’m just having a hard time writing about this “terror-attack” with a straight face.

The video Porno Pete was setting up is from the Liberty Counsel, and features a really pathetic, fearful conversation between Matt Barber and Mat Staver. They discuss the incident, and then go on to ratchet up the victim mentality by saying that the Southern Poverty Law Center, by labeling them hate groups [for their vicious anti-gay bigotry, and also the fact that they are pathological liars], is doing the same thing to them that the Nazis did to the Jews.

Seriously. I would cry them a river, but my eyes are too busy rolling into the back of my skull. Why do wingnut men always come across as such sissies?!

Here’s the text of that exchange, via Right Wing Watch:

Staver: This aggressive homosexual agenda is not about tolerance, it’s about dominance. And the more emboldened they get, the more laws that they get, the more vocal they become, the more hostile they become, the more aggressive they become, and the more violent, in this particular case, they become.

Barber: Americans for Truth, as well as Liberty Counsel for that matter, is one of those flashpoints, they have been unfairly labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a hard left-wing extremist organization that uses smears in order to label Christian organizations that take a principled stand on the biblical model of sexual morality in love, speak God’s truth in love, they label them hate groups. But really, they are fanning the flames of this kind of violence with their rhetoric, by labeling organizations a hate group. And they’re partly responsible for this, indirectly, I’m not going to say they’re directly responsible …

Staver: Well, when you go out and label somebody a hate group you think of the KKK …

Barber: It emboldens these people …

Staver: It also, it begins, you know, it’s the same thing that happened in the Nazi Holocaust where they start to just demonize and stigmatize and then at some point in time you don’t even think that someone’s human and then, you know, we look at it and our consciences are shocked but if you look at how it ultimately began where they began to just demonize and dehumanize them, that’s what’s happening with this labeling of hate groups.

WHINE! Okay, I’m done. Music post comes next.

I can only presume that Bam Bam is really upset about being passed over for the new season of Dancing With The Stars in favor of Chaz Bono, because he is full metal emo today about how much Christians are “persecuted” by mean old gays:

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it right now. The sexual anarchist lobby, this radical, militant lobby, wants three things in this order: they want to see those of us who hold traditional values and have a biblical view of sexual behavior and sexual morality; they want to see us behind bars. Absent that, if that doesn’t work, they want to see us discredited, our licenses, my law licenses revoked, unable to teach in schools and so forth. They want us completely discredited and marginalized to the fringes of society. Finally and included in that is the inability, they want to see people like us not able to make a living. And that’s why they’re going after these organizations and they’re using economic terrorism, for lack of a better phrase.

I’ll say it right now, in this order:

1. No, you twit, we don’t want you behind bars. Stop whining and be a man.
2. Discredited, yes. You, and by “you,” I mean the institutional Christian Right, are pretty much proven liars, and also you inject an inordinate amount of hate into the public discourse, and by “inordinate,” I mean, “an inordinate amount for a group whose numbers are going down faster than a Republican senator showing his butthole on Grindr.”
3. That’s right, we want to deny you the right to make a living. Give me one link from a gay organization that proves that scurrilous assertion, or even suggests that we want to deprive you the right to make a living, or shut up.

Good lord. It’s funny because one of their own [Bryan Fischer] suggested recriminalizing homosexuality yesterday, and we all know about that time Peter Sprigg suggested gays be “exported” from the United States. Oh, and the fact that these theocratic goons support laws that allow employers to fire people for being gay.

I don’t think these people would know the truth if it slapped them in their whining jowls.

Peter is engaging in some slapfight with Alvin McEwen over the firing, six years ago, of his longtime favorite boxer and overall studmuffin, Matt Barber, from Allstate Insurance.  Though I have no desire to get into the details of it — for one thing, it is boring, and for another, if Matt had been a valued or liked employee in the first place, I doubt they would have canned him over writing pig ignorant articles full of medieval bigotry on the weekends — I will respond to this one thing:

Alvin is a bitter fellow who — although purporting to factually correct alleged pro-family falsehoods — regularly dishes them out himself (go HERE to see him viciously slander me as “Porno Pete”).

God, what a whiner. Being called a silly name — a name he got [FROM US] due to his strange obsession with fetish sex, an obsession shared by few gays and lesbians, and his bizarre need to post pictures of fetish sex events on his supposedly family friendly blog — is “vicious slander” and a “falsehood”?  Grow a pair, dude. I mean, you’ve got a hate group to lead. I know that most wingnuts have absolutely absurd victim complexes, but you’d think they’d at least try to play the part.

One more thing. In Porno Pete’s defense of his shining knight in boxing gloves, he says this:

Matt immediately was called in on a Friday afternoon. Ironically, he was told that Allstate “celebrates diversity,” and that his (traditional) values did not reflect those of Allstate.

For what will surely not be the last time, as we are not dealing with intelligent people: “tolerance” and “diversity,” by their very definitions, do not include tolerance for rank bigotry.  Why?  Because the rank bigotry espoused by the Christian Right in the United States is, in preschool terms, the equivalent of a “poor” rating on the “plays well with others” section of the report card.  If they simply held their dumb*ss beliefs in private, without feeling the need to vomit them at the rest of the population all day long, every day, and if they didn’t feel the need to try to use their influence to make life worse for the rest of the population, then we would be dealing with something different.  Instead, they hurt people, they inject hate into the discourse, and innocent kids are dealt hands of depression and suicidal thoughts at their hands.

So, you know, Christian Right, please continue to whine about how you’re not being “tolerated.”  The more you talk, the more people turn their backs on you.  In that way, you do our jobs for us.

Totally funny story from Think Progress:

The debt ceiling deal has left the Tea Party more disliked than ever, as a recent New York Times poll shows. In April, 2010, 21 percent of Americans approved of the Tea Party while 18 percent disapproved of it. Now, 20 percent approve while a stunning 40 percent disapprove of it. Ironically, the conservative movement is now more unpopular than two often-marginalized groups it sometimes rails against — Muslims and atheists — and is the least popular of the 23 groups the poll asked about.

Ha ha ha, let’s go to the original source piece and twist the knife a little bit:

But in data we have recently collected, the Tea Party ranks lower than any of the 23 other groups we asked about — lower than both Republicans and Democrats. It is even less popular than much maligned groups like “atheists” and “Muslims.” Interestingly, one group that approaches it in unpopularity is the Christian Right.

HAHAHAHA, YAY, so anyway.

Dear Christian Right: America hates you. Hates you, hates you, hates you. Does not consider you representative of “American values” or “traditional values” or anything else. Hates you. Doesn’t want to live next to you, because property values are already sucky as it is.

Gays raise property values in neighborhoods, but you don’t. Anyway.

What a funny story to start our Thursday!  Say it again!  Real, actual Americans like Muslims and Atheists more than Teabaggers or Linda Harvey or Maggie Gallagher or Peter LaBarbera or Matt Barber or any of their other ideological trans fat substitutes.  Muslims and atheists!  I love polls!

The pollsters have also taken time to find out what really drives Teabaggers:

They are overwhelmingly white, but even compared to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do.

More important, they were disproportionately social conservatives in 2006 — opposing abortion, for example — and still are today.

Just old bigot racists in Hoverounds, as we always suspected. Whatever.

There have been a few articles in the past day or so, dissecting the fact that the Teabagging movement, which seemed so upright and powerful in the last several years, is basically flaccid these days.  Why?  Well, you see, The Price Is Right is on…

*actual rate of herpes popularity not sampled, but just making a point.