LaBarbera helps us even if he doesn't mean to

I talk a lot about Peter LaBarbera and his group, Americans for Truth for good reason. He can be, at times, our biggest help in this so-called culture war.

His idiocies make us look good.

A perfect example is his defense of Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively's attendance at an anti-gay conference in Uganda as well as Uganda's anti-gay laws (which sentences gays to life imprisonment):

At AFTAH, we preach Christian mercy and have denounced Talibanesque capital punishment for homosexuals in countries like Iran. But we also believe that if states and localities here in America (and governments abroad) wish to ban sodomy, they have every right to do so . . .

I wonder if that cover Jamaica, where groups have been known to hunt gays down in the streets.

No one is so naive to not realize that LaBarbera means gays when he says "sodomy." And this isn't the first time he has stood in the corner of someone who doesn't deserve any defense:

We find it sad that more scientists have not joined Paul Cameron in assessing the extreme health risks of homosexual behavior, just like the scientific establishment researches obesity, smoking and other serious health issues.

Illinois Family Institute would support a nonpartisan federal research campaign into the health risks of homosexual behavior to further investigate Cameron's work.

Both Lively's and Cameron's organizations have been deemed as official hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center not because of their stance against homosexuality, but because of how they lie to stigmatize the lgbt community.

Which brings me back to Peter. We are always talking about famous people and movements in history but sometimes we forget the "foils," or the folks whose stance against these people and movements actually benefitted them.

The African-American civil rights movement had Bull Connor, Bill Clinton had Newt Gingrich, and now we have Peter LaBarbera.

With James Dobson gone, the best thing for our community would be for LaBarbera to get a more active role in the religious right. Dobson evoked an image of the morally straight grandfather. LaBarbera evokes the image of the strange uncle who can't keep his mouth shut.

I did not agree with Dobson but at least he had a certain style in his attitude- a certain methodology that demonstrated an intelligent mind.

LaBarbera doesn't seem to care who he supports or what it makes him look like.

And that can only be a plus for us.

Because right now, LaBarbera is the living embodiment of the anti-gay movement and the religious right in general - spiritually empty, psychologically bloated, and willing to subvert reality and truth to make his own position more palpable to the American public.

But sooner or later reality has a habit of coming through. The flowery language of traditional values and the sweet rhetoric of faith and family is permeated by an odor of corruption, arrogance, and hatred.

And no matter how you try, you can't cover stink.

More on Scott Lively and the Uganda conference is at Box Turtle Bulletin.