Tuesday, May 13, 2014

'Liar-for-Jesus' Todd Starnes' new book a mishmash of homophobia, paranoia

Fox News personality and liar-for-Jesus Todd Starnes has a new book out and with a name like God Less America, you can just guess that it's more of the same false stories about anti-Christian persecution from Starnes.

Check out this choice morsel, courtesy of Media Matters:

Todd Starnes
I grew up in a much simpler time - when blackberry was a pie and dirty dancing meant somebody forgot to clean out the barn for the square dance. It was a time when father still knew best - when the girls were girls and the men were men. I grew up in a time when a rainbow was a sign of God's promise, not gay rights.

Good taste precludes me from making the easy joke here.

According to Media Matters, Starnes' book is a mishmash of paranoia, homophobia, and attacks on President Obama. But mostly homophobia:

But the bulk of God Less America is devoted to propping up the defining feature of Starnes' worldview - his acute persecution complex when it comes to LGBT equality. The longest chapter in the book is bluntly titled "Gay Rights vs. Religious Rights," but several others focus on LGBT topics like Chick-fil-A, Duck Dynasty, and the Kinky Boots performance at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. All are meant to reinforce the right-wing myth that any progress towards LGBT equality must come at the expense of liberty for Christians. We're not far from a day, Starnes predicts, when pastors will be "brought up on charges of hate speech against homosexuals."

 . . . When he's not using scare tactics to warn about basic protections for the LGBT community, Starnes' discussions of LGBT people are marked by stereotypes as stale as the Southern country boy trope with which he hits readers over the head.  Gay men are Dolce & Gabanna-obsessed, body hair-grooming, sissies who can't appreciate manly men's men like Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson, who notoriously compared homosexuality with bestiality and equated gay people with "drunks" and "terrorists." According to Starnes, GQ,  the magazine in which Robertson made his infamous remarks, is the kind of publication typically read by "men who prefer body waxing and manicures," not the Robertsons' down-home homophobia.

Like Phil, Starnes thinks that the gays could be putting us on a slippery slope to bestiality, writing an entire chapter that envisions a Supreme Court ruling legalizing bestiality by 2025.

Starnes' transphobia is just as rabid as his homophobia. When discussing transgender people, he misgenders them and suggests - despite all evidence - that transgender people pose public safety dangers if they're allowed to restrooms that match their gender identities. Such ugly, bigoted remarks make clear that when Starnes complains about how this is no longer the America he grew up in, what he's really upset about is that it's an America where long-oppressed groups are beginning to assert their basic rights.

All in all, Starnes' book sounds like its filled with dreck so bad that you constantly have to check to see if you soiled yourself while reading it.

In other words - especially when one takes into account the conservative scheme of bulk-buying - it's a sure hit in paranoia land.

4 comments:

BJ Jackson Lincoln said...

When I was growing up, the only black person I saw was the one boy who went to my grade school. He sat alone and took a lot of crap from the other kids.
Girls wore skirts and boys got away with rape.
The only "gay" thing I ever heard was boys calling each other name but I didn't know what it meant. I did not have a word for myself until I was a Jr. in high school.
No one talked about sex abuse or domestic violence so we all grew up thinking it was normal even when our feelings told us it was very bad.
Those were the days!

Anonymous said...

Waaaaaaait a minute. Listen to the way this guy talks. "blackberry was a pie and dirty dancing meant somebody forgot to clean out the barn for the square dance"... what decade are you picturing? Like, the 1930's, right? But he can't be older than 45 or so, right, meaning he grew up in the 1970's? Those were not "simpler times".

badVlad said...

As obsessed as Toddy is with gayness, it appears that he's a self-loathing frustrated closet case.

badVlad said...

Looks like Toddles attempted a publicity stunt to promote his new book.
http://www.newshounds.us/20140403_whoops_he_did_it_again_todd_starnes_gets_caught_lying_to_promote_book_sales