We call them bigots because they act like bigots

Utah State Senator Chris Buttars has been on my mind lately. Mainly because of this comment he made last week:

In recent years, registering opposition to the homosexual agenda has become almost impossible. Political correctness has replaced open and energetic debate. Those who dare to disagree with the homosexual agenda are labeled “haters,” and “bigots,” and are censured by their peers. "

Or as Peter LaBarbera put today in an attack on Georgia Log Cabin Republican head James Ensley:

Once again, the hypocrisy of the claims of homosexual groups’ commitments to tolerance is laid bare in all its ugliness in Mr. Ensley’s letter . He has charged Mr. LaBarbera and anyone else who shares the orthodox Christian, mainstream, historical view of homosexual behavior as immoral with being bigoted, anti-American, anti-Christian, fringe, radical, extremist domestic terrorist.

This tendency to feign innocence and claim victimhood is a common tactic of religious right groups and their supporters. “Why are we being attacked when we are simply expressing our Biblical opposition to the radical homosexual agenda.” “It’s the homosexual activists who are intolerant. They attack everyone who oppose their agenda by calling them ‘haters’ or ‘bigots.’”

In his attack on Ensley, LaBarbera included a column from fake lgbt expert Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Council. What was interesting about it was this part:

The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines a bigot as a person who is “obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially: one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.” Clearly, there is a distinction between bigotry and moral views. Bigotry cannot simply refer to holding opinions or being in possession of moral precepts, for if it did, everyone but sociopaths would have to be considered bigots because everyone but sociopaths holds certain behaviors as moral and others as immoral. Moreover, “prejudice” refers to “an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason.”

So apparently LaBarbera, Higgins and Buttars think that they and others who share their beliefs about gays are unfairly being called bigots?

Well rather than a long expository on why this is not correct, allow me to let these folks speak for themselves. Using the definition of bigot laid about by the Webster dictionary (by way of Higgins), what do you think?:

Homosexuals cannot reproduce, so they must recruit. And to freshen their ranks they must recruit the youth of America." - Anita Bryant from a 1970s Save Our Children statement

For the sake of our children and society, we must OPPOSE the spread of homosexual activity! Just as we must oppose murder, stealing, and adultery!" says one such recent fundraising letter. "Since homosexuals cannot reproduce, the only way for them to 'breed' is to RECRUIT! And who are their targets for recruitment? Children!" - American Family Association direct mail appeal

"[O]ur poor boys on the front lines will have to face two different enemies, one from the front and one from the rear." - the late Jerry Falwell On President Clinton's proposal to lift the ban on gays in the military.

And speaking of calling people Nazis:

'Hitler and his supporters were Satanists and homosexuals. That's just a true statement.' He added, 'The notion that is involved in homosexuality, the unbridled sort of satisfaction of human passions' leads to 'totalitarianism,' 'Nazism,' and 'communism.' " - Alan Keyes , People for the American Way, "Hostile Climate," 1997, p.26.

“If you look at the footage from Operation Rescue, um, vigils outside abortion clinics, you will see that the anti Operation Rescue demonstrators invariably have a pink triangle on and they are usually pretty big heavy set women who look like they’ve been over working October Fest for the last six years . . .” - Robert Knight, Reclaiming America For Christ Conference, “Homosexuality” panel, February 28, 1999

“If you isolate sexuality as something solely for one’s own personal amusement, and all you want is the most satisfying orgasm you can get—and that is what homosexuality seems to be—then homosexuality seems too powerful to resist. The evidence is that men do a better job on men, and women on women if all you are looking for is an orgasm.” - discredited researcher Paul Cameron, Rolling Stone, March, 18, 1999

The “alphas” in homosexual relationships, be they men or women, are many times recruiting younger partners. A vast percentage of those who enter the homosexual life do so after having been sexually initiated by an older person of their sex—be it consensual or not—it usually has the feel of enticement or seduction. - Town Hall columnist Kevin McCullough, The ‘Gay’ Truth, May 30, 2003

"I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I'm gonna be blunt and plain: if one ever looks at me like that, I'm gonna kill him and tell God he died." - Jimmy Swaggart in a September 2004 evangelism television broadcast

“You really think that a pool of people (homosexuals) where 45% of them eat feces from the rear end of another male is “normal”? If you do, you are frankly nuts. A lifestyle where one of their past times is buying gerbils and hamsters from the pet store and cramming them up
their rears in an activity called feltching? - Mecklenberg County Board Commissioner Bill James, 2005

“The newest thing in Chicago, it’s becoming a trend, and you’re gonna find this hard to believe . . . sex with infants . . . It’s not enough that they have . . . you know when you engage in perversion, and homosexuality is perversion, we don’t hate the gays mind you, we don’t hate them, we hate what they’re doing . . . pretty soon that perversion is like addiction,
it’s not enough, so you need to graduate to something else. You need to move on. So now they’re having sex with animals, a small group that’s getting bigger, sex with infants, sex in the street in Chicago out in the open, it’s just getting more and more perverted.” - former Renew America columnist Guy Adams, August 2, 2006

“Sodomites and perverted ones,” - Traditional Values Coalition head Lou Sheldon when asked at a 2006 conference what designation should “Christians” use to describe gays.

“God hates soft men” and “God hates effeminate men. . . If I was in a drugstore and some guy opened the door for me, I’d rip his arm off and beat him with the wet end.” - Rev. Ken Hutcheron, 2008

“What is the morals of a gay person? You can’t answer that because anything goes . . . “They’re probably the greatest threat to America going down I know of.” - Utah State Senator Chris Buttars, 2009

And one more from our friend LaBarbera. Since he likes to complain about being called names, check what he said last year about the Gay Mens Health Crisis receiving federal funding (bold emphasis added by me):

"One of the recipients was the Gay Men's Health Crisis [Center]," notes LaBarbera. "[The Crisis Center] is a typical, radical, homosexual activist/AIDS organization that opposes abstinence and supports homosexual funding and subsidizing -- effectively, promotion of homosexual sex acts."

Bear in mind that I haven’t even touched the constant use of discredited studies ala Paul Cameron or the distortion of legitimates studies by LaBarbera and others on his side of this so-called cultural war.

But I will say this: seems to me that if something walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it should wear the designation of being a duck without argument.

Hat tip to the Southern Poverty Law Center and Wired Strategies.