Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Anti-gay 'historian' David Barton demonstrates how the religious right distorts the truth, then plays the victim

David Barton (Glen Beck's favorite historian) is claiming that he is being picked on by "hypersensitive" gays and the folks at MSNBC.

If there's a group in America that is hypersensitive, it is homosexuals. I mean, they got a short fuse on everything. You're a homophobe, you're a whatever and anything you say or do, they interpret as coming after them.

And so they really have a short fuse and a great example is, remember back a few weeks ago we had Pastor Hutcherson on and remember that article he did in Townhall and WorldNetDaily - "Transexual, Transgender, and Transfast" - and he's talking about how the government thinks it should regulate that bad for our health, well it needs to read its own website and look what it says about homosexuality and how bad that is for health and yet they encourage that, they don't regulate it.

Well I now found out that we have a number of people who listen to "Wallbuilders Live" who I didn't know about: Alan Colmes and Keith Olbermann and MSNBC and all these folks. Because when we said that, they came after me in unbelievable ways.

MSNBC called and they had me posted on the front page and they were doing programs on what I said - I'm repeating Hutcherson, you know, I'm just reading an article. But it was so funny. They wanted me to come on NBC and appear on ... but I didn't want to talk to their twelve viewers so I left that.

 It's obvious that Barton's rendition of recent history is as bad as his rendition of old history.

For the record, the radio show he alluded to was where he did repeat Hutcherson's column (written in August by the way), making all sorts of inaccurate claims regarding the lgbt community as proof that "gay sex" should be "regulated." Barton used the piece to claim that if the government did not do this, then the country would eventually be destroyed.


On the radio show in question, Barton made claims that gays:

die decades earlier than heterosexuals,

have over 500 to 1,000 sexual partners in a lifetime, and

made generalized claims about gay health problems while omitting that homophobia plays a huge part in causing these problems.

Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC called out Barton on his inaccurate claims by citing an article in The Huffington Post which refuted them.

And I know this for a fact, because I was the author of that piece.

My guess is that Barton didn't want to come on MSNBC because he couldn't prove the veracity of his comments.

But beyond that, his claim of being picked on is the very height of audacity.

It seems to me that when someone makes absolutely vicious claims about the lgbt community without any proof, he or she should expect some type of verbal blowback. And he or she needs to be adult enough to respond to this blowback instead of playing the victim.

Barton labeling gays "hypersensitive" simply because we questioned his errors is akin to calling African-Americans hypersensitive over segregation.

Or calling women hypersensitive over being sexually harassed.

Perhaps Mr. Barton would do well to heed the words of the overused term and "man up."

If you truly believe what your words, Mr. Barton, then you should have defended them.

After all, that's what a "real Christian" would have done.

Hat tip to People for the American Way.


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