10 reasons why Americans for Truth is a hate site

Peter LaBarbera has finally responded to the Southern Poverty Law Center declaring his Americans for Truth web site as a hate site. He claims that his site is getting smeared.

He also links to a defense from fellow right-winger Matt Barber. However based on his past statements, Barber defending LaBarbera against charges of being anti-gay is like Idi Amin defending Josef Stalin against charges of being a dictator.

But let's take a critical look at the charge. Now according to Matt Barber (who sits on the board of Americans for Truth - so much for objectivity):

AFTAH is a Christian organization that promotes biblical morality . . .

I guess that "biblical morality" includes:

1. Smearing gays via a CDC report on an increase on HIV while intentionally downplaying the part of the report which clearly places the blame on this increase on homophobia (while at the same time implying that the report "dispels the homophobia causes AIDS propaganda")

2.  Defending a bill which would lead to the imprisonment and possible genocide of Ugandans simply for being gay or lesbian.

.3. Going to subcultural leather events and using the "racy" behavior of gays attending to stigmatizing the entire lgbt community while ignoring the behavior of heterosexuals at the same events.

4. Making ugly comments about a "transgender quota" in the Obama Administration simply because the president appoints a (very, very qualified) transgendered woman to an office in his administration.

5. Instigating a  highly inappropriate comment about gays, lesbians, and sexual intercourse; a comment so ugly that it led to a feud between three religious right groups. And by the way, Barber was heavily involved in this one too.

6. Continuously citing the work of the discredited researcher Paul Cameron, even when made aware of his dubious history of getting kicked out of medical groups, censures and rebukes.

7. Aiding and abetting Conservapedia spread lies about gay health using the fictional term "gay bowel syndrome."

8. Freely admitting to errors when it comes to claims against the gay and lesbian community but not taking responsibility for them.

9. Falsely accusing the Democratic National Convention and the Gay and Lesbian Task Force of putting on a sadomasochistic event.

10. Attempting to imply that a staph infection was the new HIV and then lying about his implications when caught.

Those are just 10 reasons gleaned from my interactions with LaBarbera and I'm sure they only scratch the surface.

Earlier when talking about this situation, I claimed that LaBarbera's reaction would remind me of the Aesop fable of the dog and the bell. It goes like this:



A DOG used to run up quietly to the heels of everyone he met, and to bite them without notice. His master suspended a bell about his neck so that the Dog might give notice of his presence wherever he went. Thinking it a mark of distinction, the Dog grew proud of his bell and went tinkling it all over the marketplace. One day an old hound said to him: Why do you make such an exhibition of yourself? That bell that you carry is not, believe me, any order of merit, but on the contrary a mark of disgrace, a public notice to all men to avoid you as an ill mannered dog." 

Notoriety is often mistaken for fame. 

I think that says it all.

Teabaggers vs. Proposition 8 protesters: a change in angry people brings out the hypocrisy in the right

Watch CBS News Videos Online

These are the threats made against Democrat Bart Stupak after Sunday's health care reform vote. They are chilling on their own but the fact that they emanate from folks who claim to be "pro-life" gives an extra batch of ice to the chill.

And of course some on the right have trivialized incidents like these, which is totally the opposite of the aftermath of the 2008 Proposition 8 vote when gays and lesbians protested in anger.

Remember how Michelle Malkin wept and cried with pseudo disgust over us "gay bullies" who supposedly attacked people via protests and boycotts?

Nowadays she is taking to personally attacking a Congressman who dare call attention to the excesses of the anti-healthcare protests. Quite a hypocritical switch but business as usual for  Malkin.

Remember how Mike Huckabee told only one side to the Phyllis Burgess incident (i.e. the anti-gay protester who was pushed and her styrofoam cross taken from her after she elbowed her way through crowd of anti-Proposition 8 protesters so that she could get on camera). Remember how the religious right portrayed the lgbt community on the whole as thugs who were allegedly threatening people, vandalizing churches, and shouting people down?

We were inundated with story after story of how gays and lesbians were "beating up" on "innocent" Christians and those stories were connected with earlier phony stories about gays and lesbians supposedly assaulting people. It got so bad that I wrote a post calling for us to get a handle on the lies told.
 
And remember this comment:
 

Of course, activists say they are merely utilizing their political freedoms and rights, but, the fact is, I see a lot of sore losers who are intolerant of any outcome but the one they desire. Some are acting like toddlers who throw a temper tantrum until they get their way. Are they fighting for their rights or at last showing true colors of intolerance against anyone who believes contrary to them?

That was  actor Chuck Norris speaking about the Proposition 8 protesters. As far as I know, he has been silent about the teabaggers threatening Congressmen and their children.

Meanwhile the publication in which he ran that piece of vile, World Net Daily, is now in a surfeit of stories about "socialism," how Obama is trying to destroy the United States, how he is not a United States citizen etc. etc.

And on other right-wing blogs and such comes even more shallow defenses of the threats and violence we are seeing.
 
Apparently to some on the right it doesn't matter whether the protests are truly violent or not. It's all about whether the supposedly "true Americans" are protesting rather than the "undesirables."

That conundrum is as annoying as Republicans seeking court aid in overturning health care reform after years of accusing judges of being "unelected" and "activists."

But that is another column for another time.

Anti-gay Pope Benedict implicated in cover up of molestation of deaf children

For a man who castigates the lgbt community, Pope Benedict seems to have some ugly skeletons in his closet:

From the New York Times:

Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.

The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.

The documents emerge as Pope Benedict is facing other accusations that he and direct subordinates often did not alert civilian authorities or discipline priests involved in sexual abuse when he served as an archbishop in Germany and as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer.

The Wisconsin case involved an American priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a renowned school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974. But it is only one of thousands of cases forwarded over decades by bishops to the Vatican office called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led from 1981 to 2005 by Cardinal Ratzinger. It is still the office that decides whether accused priests should be given full canonical trials and defrocked.

In 1996, Cardinal Ratzinger failed to respond to two letters about the case from Rembert G. Weakland, Milwaukee’s archbishop at the time. After eight months, the second in command at the doctrinal office, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, now the Vatican’s secretary of state, instructed the Wisconsin bishops to begin a secret canonical trial that could lead to Father Murphy’s dismissal.

But Cardinal Bertone halted the process after Father Murphy personally wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger protesting that he should not be put on trial because he had already repented and was in poor health and that the case was beyond the church’s own statute of limitations.

“I simply want to live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood,” Father Murphy wrote near the end of his life to Cardinal Ratzinger. “I ask your kind assistance in this matter.” The files contain no response from Cardinal Ratzinger.

The New York Times obtained the documents, which the church fought to keep secret, from Jeff Anderson and Mike Finnegan, the lawyers for five men who have brought four lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. The documents include letters between bishops and the Vatican, victims’ affidavits, the handwritten notes of an expert on sexual disorders who interviewed Father Murphy and minutes of a final meeting on the case at the Vatican.

You can read the entire story here. It's just too ugly for me. It's a shame that this man didn't attack true crimes against children with the same fervor in which he attacked the lgbt community.