Homophobia creates strange bedfellows

As the Crystal Dixon controversy slowly makes it way through the right-wing of the blogsphere, the scuttlebutt seems to be that the anti-gay industry is trying to make this into a case of yet another "innocent Christian" who has been targeted by the invisible gay empire.

As chronicled here and here, the case is not so simple.

But it amazes me what I read.

One News Now has covered the situation with its usual attention to bias. Interestingly enough, Matt Barber of Concerned Women for America claims that the university violated its own policy in suspending Dixon. Of course he does not go into detail. Typical Barber; hyperbole instead of truth.

But if you want to talk about irony, consider that our friend Peter LaBarbera has weighed in on the Crystal Dixon situation.

Apparently in an email version of the story (that's not posted on his site), LaBarbera incorrectly said that Dixon was fired. He has corrected the error.

And he also published a letter from a Professor Robert Gagnon defending Dixon's comments. The very long letter reads in part:

Ms. Dixon is absolutely right that sexual orientation is not akin to race or sex. Unlike a homosexual orientation, race and sex are 100% congenitally predetermined, cannot be fundamentally changed in their essence by cultural influences, and are not a primary or direct desire for behavior that is incompatible with embodied structures.

Amazing how Peter tries to distract the argument. How scientifically Gagnon can prove that homosexuality and race is not alike is not the point.

The point is that Ms. Dixon was hired to look over equity and diversity at Toledo State University. Now there are legitimate questions as to how she can do her job in light of the fact that she has demonstrated a potential bias against a group of students.

But believe it or not, that's not the crux of this irony.

Peter has also been pushing the case of one Brett Vanasdlen. This “strapping, clean-cut, All-American looking young man” (Peter's words, not mine) has been accused of a hate crime in an altercation with another young man.

Guess whose side Peter is taking, even to the point of making it seem that Vanasdlen and his family are somehow under siege.

Peter originally got the information about Vanasdlen from Ted Pike, someone he calls a "pro-family" advocate.

But there is another side to Pike. According to Box Turtle Bulletin:

David Duke, onetime Louisiana legislator and Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, has a website where like-minded individuals proclaim their beliefs. They rant about the corrupting influence of Jews, how civil rights laws lead to black men raping white women, how European countries need to keep their ethnic identity free from the dilution of immigration, and radical hispanics want to return the Southwest to Mexico. Rev. Ted Pike is a regular writer who specializes in anti-Semitic screeds (he loves Jews in the same way that LaBarbera love gays).

Box Turtle Bulletin also said that Pike posted the article about Vanasdlen on this website. This is true because the article is right here under the teaser of another article that reads Zionist Sponsored “Hate” Legislation Railroading Christian Teenagers in Illinois

Other very interesting articles by and quoting Ted Pike, that "pro-family" advocate, are here. The title of one - Jewish Media Corrupts Teen Girls - gives you all you need to know about just what type of "family" Pike is interested in protecting.

Now in LaBarbera's defense, he did not get Pike's article from Duke' site. But it still speaks to Peter's character (or lack thereof) that he calls Pike a "pro-family" advocate.

In the past, LaBarbera has been very vocal against lgbts allegedly "highjacking the civil rights movement."

How ironic that he canonizes someone whose mindset made it necessary to have a civil rights movement.

Ironic but not unexpected.

In the future, African-Americans who ally themselves with the anti-gay industry would do themselves a service to pay attention to the "friends" of their "friends."

It may give them the right answer as to exactly who is trying to "highjack the civil rights movement."

Big thanks to Box Turtle Bulletin for help with this post.