'Porno' Pete LaBarbera accuses SPLC of using 'shoddy ' research

As you all may have already guessed, I am home from work today recovering from a nasty bout with a cold. But leave it to folks on the religious right to warm up my temperature. After all, it is said that heat reduces a cold.

This war that members of the religious right are waging against the Southern Poverty Law Center is reaching the point of pitiful absurdity. Earlier today, I talked about the Family Research Council's ridiculous Start Debating, Stop Hating campaign designed to portray those designated as anti-gay groups  as victims.

But I think in the case of naked audacity, our friend "Porno" Pete LaBarbera takes the cake.  From the People for the American Way (who may start charging me for referring to them so many times) comes a interview between he and Martha Kleder from Concerned Women for America - an organization not named by SPLC as a hate group but was profiled nevertheless for its anti-gay bias..

During the interview, LaBarbera repeats the ridiculous and very much discredited idea that a man who molests a young boy is gay and therefore homosexuality and pedophilia are linked.

But that inaccuracy pales to his next comment:

We need to ask the new Congress to investigate the links of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to the SPLC. We know it's research is shoddy.

This is Peter LaBarbera - the same man who, through his organization Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, endorses any, and I mean any research that makes lgbts the bad guys even if that research is by discredited sources, such as  Paul (gays stuff gerbils up their rectums) Cameron or Ugandan "kill the gays" bill supporter and author of a factually-challenged book linking gays to the Nazi Party Scott Lively:

AFTAH is notable for its posting of the utterly discredited work of Paul Cameron  . . . who has claimed that gays and lesbians live vastly shorter lives than heterosexuals. Among the Cameron propaganda published by AFTAH are 2007 claims that gays and lesbians in Norway and Denmark live 24 fewer years than heterosexuals. Reviewing that claim, Danish epidemiologist Morten Frisch found that it had no scientific basis. LaBarbera himself, in 2002, compared the alleged dangers of homosexuality to those of “smoking, alcohol and drug abuse.” Similarly, AFTAH’s website carries essays describing homosexuality as a “lethal behavior addiction,” a “dangerous” practice that is “neither normal nor benign.”

In 2007, LaBarbera claimed there was “a disproportionate incidence of pedophilia” among gay men — yet another false assertion. The same year, he posted an open letter to the Lithuanian people from long-time gay-basher Scott Lively . . . who has made a series of false claims about gays running the German Nazi Party. In the piece posted to the AFTAH website, Lively said homosexuals are trying to take away free speech from all opponents of gays and to silence all religious opinions on the matter.

LaBarbera accusing anyone or any group of using shoddy research is like the Devil himself accusing Osama Bin Laden of being unfriendly. No one in their right mind should believe anything LaBarbera says, even if he remarked about hot weather during a heatwave.

But I say let him continue to talk. The more LaBarbera runs his mouth, the more he makes a liar of not only himself but also the Family Research Council and other religious right groups when they claim that they are being attacked for voicing a "mere" objection to homosexuality.

As far as I am concerned, the true face of the religious right is not the calm, controlled manner of speaking lies that we see with FRC's Tony Perkins or Peter Sprigg, but the irrational and obviously paranoid delusions of LaBarbera.

The trick is to make everyone else see this true face.