(Editor's note - This flashback post piggybacks on my last two posts (which I hope you have read and shared) about how negative images and narratives play a huge role in dehumanizing LGBTQ people. The following is from January 15, 2012. It was during a North Carolina referendum on marriage equality, which we lost. The amendment was later struck down in federal court in 2014, a year before SCOTUS legalized marriage equality. But enough background. The gist of this post had to do with one of the pastors who conducted outreach for the amendment. From what I understand, he is still a pastor (oop! I mean "Bishop") located in the North Carolina area)
If the National Organization for Marriage and Vote for Marriage NC - the organization it helped to create to push for an anti-marriage equality referendum in the state - truly want to have a meaningful and dignified discussion on the amendment as they have claimed, then someone from either group needs to muzzle Raleigh pastor Patrick Wooden.
Wooden will be doing outreach in the African-American community for the amendment.
Last week, he claimed that gay men have so much sex that they require surgery and diapers.
Today he just topped it in the second part of an interview with anti-gay activist aptly named "Porno" Pete LaBarbera:
Wooden: I do not back off or back down from my statements at all. I was giving anecdotal examples that I am personally aware of that have happened as a result of men who have given themselves over to this lifestyle. One man passed away, a friend of mine shared this information with me, that where what used to be his anus had become a gaping hole and he literally died in diapers, he literally lost control of himself. There are examples of men who have stretched their anuses, their sphincter muscles so that they could fit objects into themselves that once the sphincter muscle is stretched too much it will not contract. Because the truth is, despite the anger of the homosexual community, the anus is not a vagina. A vagina, a woman can give birth, God so designed it, the hips release can give birth to babies and things return back to normal. The anus doesn’t work that way; this is one of the reasons why many male homosexuals place larger and larger objects in their rectums.
. . . I know of a case where in a hospital a homosexual male had a cellphone lodged in his anus and as they were operating on him the phone went off, the phone started ringing! There’ve been instances where men have put bats, baseball bats, in their rectums!
. . . Even the homosexual lobby knows, those who are pro-homosexual, they know that they cannot win the argument describing what it is that these people actually do to each other, the objects, the animals in certain cases, the little gerbils; thank God I’m a human being! Because if you talk about what it is that these people actually do, they can’t win the argument.
One has to wonder three things. First, was Wooden on any medication which he may have abused before that interview? Secondly how the heck does one put a cell phone up one's behind and thirdly, does it ring if lodged up there?
Wooden is obviously lying and not just about the cell phone. The "gays have dangerous sex" lie is as old as the hills. Take a gander at this 1985 comic (endorsed by anti-gay group Concerned Women for America) called Deathstyle:
It's almost comical until you realize that Wooden will most likely be repeating that mess to get African-Americans to vote for the amendment.
And of course neither NOM nor Vote for Marriage NC will comment on Wooden's words, even though they will be in full use of his services. And their silence will emphasize the fact yet again that those who seek to stop marriage equality are willing to do it by any mean necessary even while they whine about being "unfairly" labeled as bigots.
Of course the grand irony of the entire thing is that Wooden was one of the pastors who took part LaBarbera's recent silly protest against Southern Poverty Law Center. SPLC claims that certain anti-gay groups - including LaBarbera's - are actually hate groups because they spread hurtful propaganda about the gay community.
I would say conducting an interview with a pastor who claims that gay men wear diapers because they molest brooms, gerbils, and cell phones makes LaBarbera into a first class hypocrite.
Don't you?
Editor's note - On his webpage, LaBarbera prefaces the interview with the following:
LaBarbera references a Wikipedia entry on “fecal incontinence” that cites this 1993 study on the ill effects of anal sex. They talk about the SPLC’s racist-tinged release on the AFTAH protest. And when Wooden brings up the heinous “gay” sex practice of “fisting,” LaBarbera recalls the 2000 Massachusetts “Fistgate” scandal at a conference sponsored by the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network – in which homosexual youth were given verbal “how-to” instructions by adults on “fisting” (hand-arm-rectal “sex”). LaBarbera notes that GLSEN never issued a sincere, strong apology for the incident — and the media double standard that excuses and ignores scandals on the Left.
Of course LaBarbera never lets anyone know that the study in question was a convenience sample study which looked at gay AND heterosexual men. He also doesn't give the entire story of the phony Fistgate controversy. For that, read 'Fistgate' and President Obama - religious right pushes a pitiful attempt of guilt by association
