Ok, if you were to stumble across a website full of red, white and blue, with a logo that used the Statue of Liberty, you’d assume that you’d found something good, wholesome, and, well, maybe just truthful?
The first thing that drew my attention to the fact that this web site wasn’t what I expected was the picture on their leading news story.
At first, I thought that little white box might have been one of those little “click here” things you see sometimes on links that play video files, but no, it’s really just a little white box.
The caption under the picture on their website stated “We have blocked the kiss for decency’s sake.”
The full title of the web site is “Americans for Truth about Homosexuality”, and it is apparently run by one Peter LaBarbera. unsurprisingly, the Southern Poverty Law Center has placed his organization on their list of hate groups.
I’ve always known that there are ultra-right-wing groups out there, but I thought that most of them were centered in upper Idaho and consisted of shaved-head near-homeless young men who idolized Hitler and were mostly all about keeping the race “pure and white.”
I’ve also had to deal, even within my family, with right-wing evangelistic christians who at least have had the decency to leave the room when I enter rather than risk a tongue-lashing should they start spouting their nonsense, but under the hood I always assumed that since they were family, at least they weren’t likely to be dangerous.
This guy and his organization are working out of Illinois, and his website seems to have come online back in 2006. LaBarbera used to be associated with the Illinois Family Institute, and perhaps has some rather dodgy financing as their 501(c)3 tax-exempt status was revoked in August of 2011 by the IRS after failing to file the proper forms for 3 years in a row. The last such form they filed indicates that LaBarbera took most of the donations as his salary.
It’s actually hilarious that he has on his site a section called “Not in my Backyard”, which is supposedly a listing of places near you that gay men cruise for sex. I’m not too sure how he goes about gathering his information though – does he wander into random restrooms and observe for a few hours while taking notes? Does he sit in cars parked in parking lots for days, counting up the number of single men who wander up to his door?
When I used his site to look up such cruisy spots in Denver, the first thing I see is a picture of the main atrium at Denver International Airport, with a side note that there are two “cruisy” restrooms at the airport where men go to have ‘anonymous, deviant sex with other men (think Sen. Larry Craig). There’s also a mention of the county park that I drive by every day to and from work that is near the Bronco’s practice fields. Yes, there are cars parked there during the day, but it’s also right across the street from the Arapahoe county sheriffs department, just down the street from the Arapahoe county jail, and is a fairly decent spot for people to take their lunch and eat under the trees. It’s a hilarious exercise if you have 20 minutes to waste digging through his site to see what is going on in your neighborhood. (Or used to – as nothing seems to be dated later than 2008)
Equally funny is the way he describes various sex acts between men, using words that, at least to me, generally convey “icky.” Well, sex is icky. Man on man, woman on man, woman on woman, pretty much everything one does as a sex act involves something “icky” if your brain hasn’t flipped over onto “high” because you are actually doing it instead of reading about it.
I guess I just get riled when I see something that is so obviously one-sided. Like Fox News for example. Perhaps I’m just naive, but is it really possible for intelligent human beings to delude themselves into being that way? Is it possible that people who are so one-sided just think it’s a funny way to fool someone into believing that they are that way? Maybe I’m just too logical to see it, but how can you be that way and still like yourself?
Every issue has two sides, and both sides have some sort of truth on their side. No issue is so black and white that a few declarative sentences can describe it fully and completely.
For example, as much as I dislike the AFTAH website and the organizations president, I did see an article that I had some agreement with. On their “issues” list, under celebrities, there is an article about the Liberty Counsel filing a complaint about the televised performance of Adam Lambert on the American Music Awards show back in 2009.
I thought his performance a bit vulgar myself. I would have thought it equally vulgar had the crotch in the face been between a man and a woman or two women. It just didn’t belong on national television on a program for all audiences. I don’t have anything in particular against “erotic art” or even outright pornography, just that it has its place, and its place is probably not on prime-time television. It has nothing at all to do with homosexuality or heterosexuality.
However, Mr. LaBarbera has to make it all about the gays instead of protesting about it from a more general and accepted point of view.
Mr. LaBarbera also appears to have a sore spot regarding Dan Savage, and has even dedicated a button on his website menu to it, labeled “Savage Hate”, which I suppose is a mockery of Savage’s critically acclaimed sex-advice column in a Seattle area newspaper that he calls “Savage Love”. I think Dan Savage is a hero, he and his partner started the “It gets better” campaign that attempts to let bullied gay teens know that as they get older, life gets better. I’ve read quite a few of his columns, and I think a lot of them are roll-in-the-aisle funny, as well as usually containing spot-on advice.
I object to vitriol for the sake of vitriol. I’m sure that Mr. LaBarbera merely wants to raise his family in an environment that he considers healthy and wholesome. That’s really all anyone wants. Gay, straight, black, white, rich or poor, we all want to have a home, share a life with someone we love, and be able to drive to the supermarket without fear that we’ll be mugged, car-jacked or have our house cleaned out while we are gone.
We really need to learn to embrace what we find in common with one another instead of focusing on the differences. The world would be ever so much better for it.