According to Buzzfeed, anti-gay activist "Porno Pete" LaBarbera was invited to a rally in Jamaica where he encouraged the country to keep its anti-gay law (against "buggery") illegal.
The article said he and another spokesperson at the rally made much use of the discredited claim that homosexuality and pedophilia are connected:
LaBarbera, a longtime activist opposing LGBT rights in America, said he was working on a book on the connection between “homosexual activism and pedophiles.” He said that after winning rights like marriage and protection for gay kids in schools, U.S. activists were now championing the rights of MAPS, or “minor-attracted persons.” “Homosexuals are always on offense,” he said. “It’s another secret that American activists don’t like to tell is that NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy Love Association, used to march in gay pride parades.”
If LaBarbera is truly working on a book - rather than boosting his credentials by claiming to be "working on a book" - one could only guess what information he would use to connect homosexuality and pedophilia. Several medical groups, including the American Psychological Association, have proven that the two aren't connected.
However, as the above audio interview from 2010 demonstrates, LaBarbera has been known to not only ignore information that doesn't match his worldview, but also embrace information that backs up his beliefs no matter how discredited the source. In an interview with Concerned Women for America's Martha Kleder, LaBarbera freely admits to using the discredited research of Paul Cameron in order to demonize the lgbt community.
Cameron is a researcher who has made a name for himself by creating studies designed to demonize the lgbt community. These studies for the most part have been published in "vanity" or "pay-for-publish" journals and they are not "peer-reviewed" in the normal sense. No "peer" who objects to Cameron's work has the right to remove it from the journal.
He is a major proponent behind many wild arguments such as gays will molest their fellow soldiers in the military, lesbians get into more car accidents, gay men stuff gerbils up their rectums, and - of course - the false link between pedophilia and homosexuality.
He has also been discredited and censured by many group and individuals on the left, the right, and in the middle due to his bad research techniques. Several of his studies have been criticized for such errors as having small sample sizes, showing an anti-gay bias in interviews, and not having enough responses to establish a suitable analysis.
Even Barbera's claim in the interview that another researcher proved Cameron's thesis about children in same-sex households is also incorrect. LaBarbera failed to mention that the researcher, Walter Schumm, used the same bad methodology Cameron used to come to his original thesis.
Of course who needs facts when you are "working for Jesus," right Peter? LaBarbera obviously doesn't care about stoking the fires of homophobia in a Jamaica, a country where lgbts are viciously attacked and murdered by anti-gay mobs, so why should he care that the information he uses to stoke those fires is wrong.
If LaBarbera is truly writing a book, then it deserves to be in the fiction section.
Does NAMBLA still exist? Did it ever exist? I have always thought that it was a fake group created by folks like LaBarbera to discredit gay guys. If it did march in any parades it has been prohibited from doing so for more than 30 years. And yet it still seems to be the only gay group that many a hetero can name.
ReplyDeletePeter uses old and antiquated nonsense. NAMBLA has NEVER been nor WILL IT EVER BE a gay organization.
ReplyDeleteIn the early 1980s I corresponded with novelist Wallace Hamilton, who had been involved in founding NAMBLA. The original aim was sexual liberation of young gay people, whose supposed innocence was being protected and enforced up to age 21. Young people today coming out as gay or transgender in high school or middle school are realizing that early vision. Wallace withdrew from NAMBLA as it was taken over by some who wanted to open the market of eight-year-olds to sexual exploitation.
ReplyDeleteI was taught in school that the legal age of consent for gay sex was older than that of straight sex. That and in the case of gay sex both parties were committing crime so a person under 18 would be jailed where as if they were 16 and having straight sex with another person under 18 it was fine. Of cores as far as I know now no such law ever existed in Indiana.
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