It’s time for an afternoon game, everybody! Which one of these things is the DIFFERENTone?
1. A couple of weeks ago, a gay couple was walking hand in hand in Portland when they were assaulted by several men for being gay. Even in Portland.
2. A ring of assailants tortured three men in the Bronx last fall, simply for being gay. They “sodomized, burned and whipped” them, according to the New York Times. City council member Christine Quinn said it was one of the worst hate crimes she had ever encountered.
3. In 2009, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, aged 11, hung himself after being bullied for being gay. In September of 2010 at least nine young people took their lives due to bullying over their actual or perceived sexuality.
4. In 1999, Matthew Shepard was beaten, brutalized, hung on a fence and left to die over his sexuality. [Yes, according to all reasonable authorities, it was because of his sexuality. There is no debate on this.] The brutality of the attack captivated the nation and was perhaps the first anti-gay hate crime to receive such attention. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the last, as there are lists upon lists of LGBT people around the world being beaten, maimed and killed simply for who they are.
5. Peter LaBarbera is bitching because a gay person took a big piece of paper from a gay-hating wingnut and TORE IT UP! That was the wingnut’s big piece of paper! He wrote the big, stupid, hard words on it all by his-self! HATE CRIME!
Matt Barber is over at OneNewsNow today, trying to brush off the connections between extremist Christian anti-gay rhetoric like that being employed in Uganda and incidents such as the murder of Ugandan gay activist David Kato.
Liberals and homosexuals are speaking out in response to Ugandan police reports about homosexual activist David Kato being bludgeoned to death at his home in a country where government leaders have called for the death penalty against homosexuals. According to Matt Barber, director of cultural affairs for Liberty Counsel, the news fits a pattern.
[...]
“Somewhere in the world, violence occurs, [and] liberals rush to blame conservative and Christians’ — quote — ‘incendiary rhetoric’ for the violence,” he reports. “And then later, that rhetoric is proven to be irrelevant, and the left ends up kind of playing the fool with egg all over their face.”
He says that is the case in Uganda, where police have arrested a man who lived with Kato and has confessed to murdering him for not paying for sexual favors. So Barber decides the narrative that hate and anti-homosexual rhetoric were somehow responsible for the cruel murder has crumbled around liberals.
“Once again, they have overreached to the point where they have exposed themselves for the propagandists that they are and have really damaged their credibility in the mainstream public eye,” the Liberty Counsel cultural affairs director notes.
That’s sort of pathetic. It would be less pathetic if there was really a chorus of people who agreed with Matt Barber, but really, it’s just a few anti-gay wingnuts who are rushing to cover their asses and avoid responsibility, just as it was with the spate of gay teen suicides related to bullying. You can be sure that they will never take responsibility for anything bad that happens to a gay person. They really still think that Elizabeth Vargas’s 20/20 report on Matthew Shepard’s death told “the real story.” Sad, but true.
You’ll remember that we really don’t know the full story on the Kato murder; the story the Ugandan police are telling is fascinating in that it is exactly the same “gay panic” story that the Religious Right loves to embrace in the United States. Moreover, there is no reason to trust the police in a corrupt nation such as Uganda, especially one which has been on an anti-gay tirade for the past couple of years.
But don’t worry. Bam Bam will continue to sleep like a baby.
At a time which should consist of serious reflection and a wake-up call to the consequences of their words and actions over the years, the Religious Right is, unsurprisingly, doubling down, sticking their fingers in their greasy ears, and insisting that they have NOTHING to do with creating the climate that leads gay kids to commit suicide. For example, the Minnesota Family Council:
The Minnesota Family Council (MFC) is pushing back against efforts to improve the climate for LGBT students in the Anoka-Hennepin School District, where community members are mourning suicides by four LGBT students in the last year. The real issue is “homosexual indoctrination,” not anti-gay bullying, says MFC’s Tom Prichard, who says the students are dead because they adopted an “unhealthy lifestyle.” MFC’s campaign against anti-bullying education comes as national religious right groups mount a similar campaign in the aftermath of nearly half a dozen suicides by LGBT students around the country in the last month.
Prichard asserts that the suicide death of 15-year-old Justin Aaberg was not due to anti-LGBT bullying. Aaberg took his life in July, and his mother and friends say anti-LGBT bullying played a factor Prichard claims that “homosexual activists” are “manipulating” his death to get homosexual indoctrination programs into the school district.
“Whatever the exact reason for Justin’s suicide it’s an enormous tragedy that shouldn’t be manipulated for ideological purposes which is what’s being done now,” he wrote on Thursday. “I’ll of course be accused of being unloving, hateful, etc. But is the loving thing to encourage and promote unhealthy and harmful behaviors and practices?”
I would agree that youth who embrace homosexuality are at greater risk, because they’ve embraced an unhealthy sexual identity and lifestyle. These alternative sexual identifications or lifestyles deny the reality that we are created male and female. To live or try to live in conflict with how we are made will invariably cause problems, e.g. emotional, psychological and social. Notwithstanding gay activist assertions to the contrary, people aren’t gay, lesbian, transgender, etc. by God’s design or nature. We are male and female with sexual expression designed for a lifelong union between a man and a woman. Denying or fighting against this reality is the reason alternative forms of sexual expression, whether homosexual or heterosexual, will put people at greater risk. To assert otherwise is to deny reality and involves “kicking against the goad” to use a biblical analogy.
How sick. He’s blaming the children. And this ignorant toad is continuing to assert that which is nothing more than Religious Right Diarrhea of the Mouth: that nobody is REALLY gay, that all people were “designed” — by a magic, invisible designer! — for “lifelong union between a man and a woman,” even though all the credible scientific literature basically says that he’s an idiot, when you reduce it to its simplest form.
Anyway, no, Tom Prichard, you repugnant tumor, people ARE gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender, and these kids would have no reason to hate themselves if people like you didn’t waste the only lives they’re ever going to get trying to hurt these kids, their parents, their friends, their families, etc.
Their pigheaded assertions to the contrary, in a world without religious bigotry, gays don’t just “naturally” feel bad about who they are.
Brian at Right Wing Watch also points out that this Prichard character still believes the lie, which only was around for about twelve minutes before it was discredited completely, that Matthew Shepard’s death had nothing to do with his sexuality:
The manipulation of this tragedy is reminiscent of the Matthew Shepard tragedy. Shepard a homosexual was brutally murdered by two men who robbed him. It was asserted that Shepard was murdered, because he was homosexual. It turns out that wasn’t the case. No matter. Shepard’s tragic death served an important ideological purpose for homosexual activists.
Yeah, and it was such an important ideological purpose that his freaking mother decided to change the course of her entire life to educate people on anti-gay bigotry. She was all part of the eeeeeeeeeevil plan.
This Prichard dude is a supreme moron.
When will these people discover a hint of self-awareness? Will it hit them like a ton of bricks, or will they go to their graves blissfully unaware of the fact that they’re the bad guys? Because I don’t think they want to be bad guys. Their sense of morality and reality is just skewed too far into DSM-IV territory, due to their religious brainwashing.
The other day, I wrote about Tim Ravndal, the Tea Party leader in Montana whose Facebook wall played host to a little good old fashioned anti-gay “humor,” when Ravndal and one of his friends joked about taking care of the gays by hanging them up for “decoration,” like Matthew Shepard. Lots of other people wrote about it too.
The right people got the message, it seems, because Ravndal has been fired:
The Big Sky Tea Party Association removed its president, Tim Ravndal, after inflammatory comments from his Facebook page surfaced in national blogs and local media.
In a press release, Board Chair Jim Walker of the Tea Party group based out of Helena, called Ravndal’s comments “unacceptable,” and said that the group learned about them Saturday, when an article about the comments was published in the Tribune.
The exchange between Ravndal and another Facebook user named Dennis Scranton was originally posted on July 23 on Ravndal’s personal Facebook page.
“The discussion in that Facebook conversation is entirely outside the position of the Big Sky Tea Party,” Walker said in the statement. “We continually make it known that we will not tolerate bigoted dialog, behavior or messages at our functions, our meetings or within our ranks.”
Roger Nummerdor, a former president and current member of the association’s board or directors, said Ravndal’s statements were “completely” outside the Big Sky Tea Party’s mission statement, which he said focuses on such principles as limited government and fiscal accountability on a government level.
Since we’re talking about Montana here, where the strains of libertarianism and conservatism that would inform their Tea Party movement have long had more of a Western “You Kids Get Off My Lawn Ranch” flavor, I’m inclined to believe Ravndal’s peers probably were genuinely disgusted.
I could be wrong, and if this were Alabama, I’d probably be saying “way to save face!” Time will tell, then. We’ll see if Ravndal pops back up, having been shuffled to a different place of leadership in Greater Teabaggistan, or whether he’s shut out for good.
This is a nice way to wake up on Friday morning. ViaAndy Towle, we learn that Tim Ravndal is the president of Montana’s Big Sky Tea Party Association. This happened on his Facebook page:
In case you can’t read the text, the original post is a whiny, victimized statement about Tradishnul Murge, which says:
“Marriage is between a man and woman period! By giving rights to those otherwise would be a violation of the Constitution and my rights.”
The poor grammar of the teabagging leader is completely unexpected, of course, as Tea Partiers are usually such wordsmiths. Note the malcontent mindset wherein if another person has equal rights, the teabagger’s rights are being violated. Far too few people understand that the political “philosophy” (to use the term very loosely) of the Tea Party movement is basically I’m White And I’ve Got Mine.
Moving along. Tim Ravndal’s friend “Dennis Scranton” then leaves a comment which says:
“I think fruits are decorative. Hang up where they can be seen and appreciated. Call Wyoming for display instructions.”
Haha! Because Matthew Shepard was murdered in Wyoming and hung on a fence to die! Haha! Teabaggers are totally normal people!
Then (haha!) Tim Ravndal replies back, in an equally awkward version of the English language as his original posting:
“Where can I get that Wyoming printed instruction manual?”
Haha! Maybe Wyoming has a how-to guide for killing faggots! Haha!
A note on language:
Dear Teabaggers,
English is the language of the United States of America. Either learn it and assimilate or leave.
That is all. Oh, and “Ravndal” sounds kind of foreign, so maybe somebody should check his papers. He certainly doesn’t act like an American citizen.
As you can see, below we are making light of the bald-faced hypocrisy of homosexual activists, who demand tolerance for themselves even as they maliciously attack and victimize their critics ‚Äî and falsely accuse them of “hate.” However, we are not including the most vicious manifestation of homosexual hatred that occurred this year: the recent murder conviction of Teah Wimberly, a lesbian student who shot and killed Amanda Collette, her 15-year-old classmate at Ft. Lauderdale’ Dillard High School ‚Äî because Collette refused Wimberly’ same-sex romantic advances.
This is no joking matter, so Wimberly (courtroom photo below left) is not on our list. Needless to say, her conviction for the murder of the talented and beautiful Collette (pictured below right) ‚Äî a murder directly tied to homosexuality ‚Äî has not received anything close to the national media attention that made homosexual murder victim Matthew Shepard a household name. (Recall that the much-touted “anti-gay-hate-crime” motive for Shepard’ murder was later cast into serious doubt by ABC’ 20/20.)
A little over a year ago, Amanda Collette became the ultimate victim of homosexuality…
That’s right, Peter. Blame homosexuality. Because never in history has anyone ever been murdered over the rejection of heterosexual advances. Never. Not once. Perish the thought!
Good lord. How stupid, empirically, would one have to be to be swayed by such a suggestion?
Also? No one with any credibility doubts that Matthew Shepard’s murder was an anti-gay hate crime. In fact, simple common sense says that the very gruesome nature of the murder suggests that there was a lot more going on there than a simple “robbery gone bad.”
So anyway, for those keeping score:
Times in one post Peter LaBarbera needlessly co-opted the tragedy of two murders, and the suffering borne by those who loved the victims, in order to attempt to score a cheap point: 2
The rest of the post is basically “OMG I hate Wayne Besen and bunch of other people so much, Rachel Maddow GRRRR so mean, wanted to throw a pie at Princess Sarah of the Great White North hate them hate them hate them hate them hate them they are all Grinches I dunno why, I guess ’cause it’s Christmas…”
It has been 10 years since Matthew Shepard was savagely murdered. Shepard was the University of Wyoming student who was brutally beaten and left to die on a fence in a frozen Wyoming field – simply because he was gay. Truth Wins Out Executive Director Wayne Besen was the featured speaker at a memorial rally in Chicago hosted by the Gay Liberation Network. The march drew an estimated 400 people and it was covered by the local NBC and ABC television stations.
“This senseless violence does not happen in a vaccum,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. “There is a multi-million dollar anti-gay industry that dehumanizes us every day. They pump millions of dollars into making GLBT people appear to be moral monsters and then act surprised when hate crimes occur. We marched to speak out against this poisonous rhetoric that has harmed so many families.”
Besen amd GLN’s Andy Thayer were also on the popular “Feast of Fools” podcast to discuss the march.
With a gift of $35 to Truth Wins Out, you can receive an autographed copy of "Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth."
