Getting past awareness and totally into exhibitionism

Peter LaBarbera is a strange dude. And it's getting to the point where I can no be in shock at his tactics because they crack me up so much.

Take for example, his again attacking the Gay and Lesbian Task Force on whom they give their Leather Leadership Award to:

The Task Force presented Graylin Thornton, the co-owner of a company that sells homosexual porn videos, with its “leather” award at Creating Change, an annual conference for grassroots activists advocating the following sexual misbehaviors: male homosexuality; lesbianism; bisexuality; transsexuality; sadomasochism and other fetishes; prostitutes (”sex workers”); and “polyamory/nonmonogamy” (multiple-partner and open relationships).

Thornton runs Grey Rose Video Productions, which states on its website: “As active members of the BEAR, LEATHER, and AFRICAN AMERICAN communities, both Graylin and [business partner Chris Meister] are dedicated to continuing a standard of excellence in the production of videos featuring the hot, hung, hunky and hairy ‘real men’ that represent those communities.”

LaBarbera is trying to recreate a mess he nearly started with last year's Creating Change conference. Last year, he said that the Gay and Lesbian Task Force was presenting its “Leather Leadership Award” to Guy Baldwin, an advocate of “erotic” and “consensual slavery.”

His angle at that time was attacking the Democratic Party for donating to this conference. LaBarbera claimed that they advocated slavery.

Ironically his angle backfired when Rush Limbaugh picked up the story and, with his usual omission of truth, said that the entire Creating Change conference was a S&M event.

Hugely embarrassing, not for the Gay and Lesbian Task Force, but for LaBarbera.

But like a trooper, he soldiers on in another attempt to slur Creating Change.

For the record, Creating Change is the one and only time each year that more than 2,000 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights advocates from every corner of the country converge to strategize, socialize and mobilize for LGBT equality.It features top-level trainings, workshops, networking sessions and action-planning with our movement’s best thinkers and brightest innovators — oh yeah, there’s also tons of opportunities for socializing, meeting up with old friends and making lots of new ones.

It's funny and infuriating at the same time how LaBarbera tries to pick out one thing and brand the entire conference as some sex session. So I guess that every year, we can count on LaBarbera going through the Creating Change brochure and picking out things he can exploit and misrepresent.

He manipulates workshops to make it look as if lgbts are not only engaging in madness, but are trying to "indoctrinate children."

But anyone wanting to see an actual version of the workshops taking place (without LaBarbera's commentary) can go here.

Also, about the awards, Creating Change gives them to a wide variety of people. The list includes former South African President Nelson Mandela, Mrs. Coretta Scott King, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Ted Kennedy, former Sens. Carol Moseley Braun and Tom Daschle, Bishop Gene Robinson, film producer Bruce Cohen, actors Wilson Cruz, Alec Mapa, Sir Ian McKellan and Mathew St. Patrick, comedian Margaret Cho, and the Indigo Girls.

What is so comical is how Peter tries to play on the shock about the award given to Thornton. On his webpage are pictures of the videos coming from Thornton's company.

Now I have to ask, was those pictures necessary, especially that last one?

I am not a psychoanalyst but I really don't think posting those pictures weren't for anyone's benefit but his own.

Take what you can out of that statement.

The entire nonsense over last year's conference is here, particularly in the Feb. 8 and 11th entries.