Matt Barber crosses another anti-gay plateau

Anti-gay Liberty Counsel figure Matt Barber has just crossed another plateau. He wrote a book.

No doubt it will repeat his distorted tale of being fired from AllState because he wrote an anti-gay column (which utilized the discredited work of Paul Cameron) "on his own time."

The tale is a distortion because Barber used company equipment to write the columnn and he also identified himself as an employee of AllState; two facts that always seem to be excluded from the religious right telling of the story.

This book leaves me conflicted for two reasons:

1. I don't want to wish any ill will on anyone, especially someone who is working hard on a book. Having had to self-publish one myself, I know how difficult it is to do such. Barber didn't have to work as hard as I did because he worked his connections. And I admire that just a little. Barber parlayed his AllState factoid into a cushy position at Concerned Women for America, the Liberty Counsel, and now a book with mentions by Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee.

You have to admire his chutzpah; that is if you ignore his basic disregard for truth.

2. Far be it from me to make comments on someone's personal appearance, but I have to say it. Barber looks like a Las Vegas lounge singer.

Oh come on. Can't you just picture him in a sleazy dive somewhere off of the Vegas strip singing some off-key version of a Frank Sinatra song with a phony Italian accent in front of a bevy of half naked female dancers where he will be followed by an awful comedian whose top pops off in the middle of her routine?

This is the guy who is fighting a culture war for the preservation of so-called American values? A guy who looks like a rejected character from Showgirls?

Seriously though, I'm sure the book will get lots of attention. And this isn't a good thing because Barber doesn't bring anything new to the table. He is yet another phony religious right expert who will exploit the Christian beliefs for his own purposes via peddling the same old lies.

Case in point, a recent One News Now article which inaccurately claims that he debunked a recent study which proved that children in lgbt households suffer no adverse effects:

Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel tells OneNewsNow that the conclusions are totally false. He points to another massive study conducted by homosexual researchers at the University of California.

"The preponderance of studies shows that girls raised by lesbian so-called 'parents' are more sexually adventurous or less chaste. They're more likely to experiment and try lesbianism to self-identify as lesbians," Barber notes. "[And] boys raised by homosexual men have a fluid concept of gender roles and are more likely to engage in the homosexual lifestyle."

How in the world does Barber conclude that the pro-lgbt parenting study is false? Not only does he not give proof of this but he also doesn't give the name of the study which he says refutes it.

I emailed Barber asking which study he was referring to and of course I didn't receive an answer.

But after a little research, I discovered which study he was referring to; a 2001 study conducted by researchers Judith Stacey and Timothy Biblarz.

And I think the reason why Barber didn't give any information regarding the study is because the way he distorted it has been debunked on numerous occasions by Stacey herself, as this link will show.

And as far as his other claims regarding "domestic violence" and a "short lifespan," those are lies peddled by the religious right for the past 30 years and have been easily refuted by so many others, me included.

But why in the heck should Barber care about truth? He has a book deal and more prominence.

That's all that matters, right?

Related posts:

How religious right groups distort legitimate research to demonize the gay community

Dissecting a One News Now article

Brian Camenker, Matt Barber create anti-gay hot mess

People for the American Way has clips from last weekend's Take Back America conference.

The clips are interesting to say the least. Most particularly interesting are the clips from the Countering the Extremist Homosexual Movement seminar co-moderated by Brian Camenker of the hate group Mass Resistance and Matt Barber of the Liberty Counsel.

First let's take a look at Camenker:



He does project a certain aura of creepiness, doesn't he? Is it just me or is Camenker practically drolling while enthralling the audience with pseudo-salacious material about the transgender community.

And here I thought Peter LaBarbera was spooky.

Now let's look at Matt Barber:



Barber is no slouch in the weird department as his rapid fire delivery of lies is just incredible. He seems to be going through his routine with the urgency of a good actor who realizes that he is trapped in a abysmal film.

And he also makes it a point to call President Obama “a secular humanist, a radical socialist moral relativist.”

Perhaps it would have been more to the point for Barber to have taken a page from former wrestler Dusty Rhodes and say something like "he doesn't like Obam or his mama."

For the record, despite what Barber says, remember three things:

Adding sexual orientation to hate crimes legislation does not give lgbts an unfair advantage. Both the heterosexual and lgbt orientation will be protected.

No employer should have the right to fire a capable employee even if said employer has a "deeply held belief" that homosexuality is wrong.

No researcher or physician has ever called homosexuality a "dangerous lifestyle." Someone should tell Barber that Paul Cameron doesn't count.

But making bad generalizations about the lgbt community is nothing new to Barber as this piece regarding him and lgbt families proves.

What are these people? Dedicated students to the National Organization for Marriage's School of self sabotage?

All I can say that if these are the folks who have been picked to adequately teach others how to attack lgbts, then let's not waste any time grinding them in the dust.

I don't believe in the concept of playing with your prey.

Related posts:

The anti-gays are encouraged to get more militant and disgusting

Mike Huckabee and Congressional leaders to attend conference with hate group

Dissecting a One News Now article

Anti-gay One News Now distorts study on gay mental health counseling

Lately, the phony news service One News Now was so focused on denigrating President Obama and spreading lies about his health care reform that I, as a member of the lgbt community, was beginning to feel left out.

It usually makes us the subject of its one-sided messes masquerading as news articles.

Well I no longer feel omitted, thanks to an article published today:

A new study shows that homosexuals and lesbians seek mental health counseling far more than heterosexuals.

The UCLA School of Public Health found that to be true in California, but there have been other studies with similar results. Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality says homosexuals usually respond that they would not have so many problems if society would simply accept their behavior as normal.

"You can't just keep going back to homophobia and societal stigma to account for this huge difference between straights and homosexuals with regard to various pathologies," he contends. "First of all, we're talking about California, where there's a much greater tolerance for homosexuality -- so you can't keep pointing to the stigma."

That's basically the gist of the article. A lead in talking about the UCLA study and then Peter LaBarbera rambling on as he does about us "nasty, evil, sinful homosexuals."

Now a credible news service would give more information about the study.

But then again we are talking about One News Now, the supposed Christian news service which used to be a sounding board for Paul Cameron's discredited studies when it was known as Agape Press.

But speaking of the UCLA study, I found some facts which were omitted from the One News Now article. This is from a UCLA press release:

Researchers collected data on 2,074 people, who were first interviewed in the California Health Interview Survey, in a new survey known as the California Quality of Life Survey. They found that 48.5 percent of lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals reported receiving treatment in the past year, compared with 22.5 percent of heterosexuals. Overall, lesbians and bisexual women were most likely to receive treatment, and heterosexual men were least likely.

While men and women, regardless of sexual orientation, who had an alcohol and/or drug disorder showed no significant differences in treatment rates, the study found that lesbian and bisexual women who had not been diagnosed with mental and drug disorders were more likely to seek mental health counseling than heterosexual women. This is consistent with emerging findings from national surveys showing that many individuals who receive mental health treatment do not have a diagnosable disorder but may have other symptoms, such as psychological distress or impairments in functioning, that lead them to seek care.

The researchers considered several factors that may explain these findings. Discrimination, violence and other stressful life events may be greater among sexual and gender minorities, they said, and homosexuality and issues associated with it may be construed as mental health problems — particularly among racial and ethnic minorities — which may encourage people to seek treatment. Further, in gay and lesbian communities, therapeutic services are considered appropriate places for coping with the stresses associated with being a sexual minority.(Editor's note - I highlighted that part to show what One News Now omitted.)

So three things to remember:

1. The study never said that homosexuality is a mental disorder (but watch how some folks will misconstrue this point).

2. The researchers did say that discrimination (i.e. stress caused from discrimination) may play a part in their findings, and One News Now omitted this part.

3. You would have better luck with trying to get Rush Limbaugh and Hilary Clinton together as a couple than finding truth in a One News Now article.

Related articles:

Dissecting a One News Now article

Repost: Dissecting a One News Now article (smacking down religious right lies on gay adoption)

This is one of my favorite posts. In Marh of this year, I was able to dissect the words of Liberty Counsel's Matt Barber and show that neither him nor anyone else in religious right groups have a clue when it comes to gay adoption and gay parenting in general.

When put up against the experts in the field of childcare, their silly hysterical arguments fizzle:

Liberty Counsel's Matt Barber is angry that Florida State Senator Nan Rich has filed a bill repealing the 1977 law banning gay adoption in the state. Rich filed a a second bill to give judges the authority to determine adoptions based exclusively on the best interest of the child.

One News Now gives Barber room to vent without the courtesy of presenting the other side. So I thought I would add the other side from another article which took a more objective view of children raised by gay parents:

Matt Barber:

"The actions here by Senator Nan Rich are clearly without merit, and she has the audacity to say that she is considering what is in the best interest of children. Well that defies logic, reason, and science."

Post-Gazette article:

A number of professional medical organizations -- including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychiatric Association -- have issued statements claiming that a parent's sexual orientation is irrelevant to his or her ability to raise a child.

For the most part, the organizations are relying on a relatively small but conclusive body of research -- approximately 67 studies -- looking at children of gay parents and compiled by the American Psychological Association. In study after study, children in same-sex parent families turned out the same, for better or for worse, as children in heterosexual families.

Moreover, a 2001 meta-analysis of those studies found that the sexual orientation of a parent is irrelevant to the development of a child's mental health and social development and to the quality of a parent-child relationship.

Matt Barber:

"Frankly the studies have shown clearly that it is in the best interest of children to have a mother and a father."

Post-Gazette article:

The problem with the research cited . . . is that it compares children of heterosexual couples only with those of single parents and not with children of same-sex parent families, said Gary Gates, a senior research fellow at the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law and an expert on census data involving gay and lesbian households.

"There are virtually no studies that make a direct comparison with same-sex parents," he said, noting census data show one in four same-sex couples are raising a child under the age of 18.

Editor's note - Gates was speaking about research cited by James Dobson. However, Dobson was making the same claims as Barber - "the majority of more than 30 years of social-science evidence indicates that children do best on every measure of well-being when raised by their married mother and father."

The lesson here is clear - Barber doesn't know what the hell he is talking about. But that's business as usual with him.

Dissecting a One News Now article

First, I neglected to put the time in which I appear on the Gay Agenda tonight.

It will be 8 p.m. EST.

Now on to the post

Liberty Counsel's Matt Barber is angry that Florida State Senator Nan Rich has filed a bill repealing the 1977 law banning gay adoption in the state. Rich filed a a second bill to give judges the authority to determine adoptions based exclusively on the best interest of the child.

One News Now gives Barber room to vent without the courtesy of presenting the other side. So I thought I would add the other side from another article which took a more objective view of children raised by gay parents:

Matt Barber:

"The actions here by Senator Nan Rich are clearly without merit, and she has the audacity to say that she is considering what is in the best interest of children. Well that defies logic, reason, and science."

Post-Gazette article:

A number of professional medical organizations -- including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychiatric Association -- have issued statements claiming that a parent's sexual orientation is irrelevant to his or her ability to raise a child.

For the most part, the organizations are relying on a relatively small but conclusive body of research -- approximately 67 studies -- looking at children of gay parents and compiled by the American Psychological Association. In study after study, children in same-sex parent families turned out the same, for better or for worse, as children in heterosexual families.

Moreover, a 2001 meta-analysis of those studies found that the sexual orientation of a parent is irrelevant to the development of a child's mental health and social development and to the quality of a parent-child relationship.

Matt Barber:

"Frankly the studies have shown clearly that it is in the best interest of children to have a mother and a father."

Post-Gazette article:

The problem with the research cited . . . is that it compares children of heterosexual couples only with those of single parents and not with children of same-sex parent families, said Gary Gates, a senior research fellow at the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law and an expert on census data involving gay and lesbian households.

"There are virtually no studies that make a direct comparison with same-sex parents," he said, noting census data show one in four same-sex couples are raising a child under the age of 18.

Editor's note - Gates was speaking about research cited by James Dobson. However, Dobson was making the same claims as Barber - "the majority of more than 30 years of social-science evidence indicates that children do best on every measure of well-being when raised by their married mother and father."

The lesson here is clear - Barber doesn't know what the hell he is talking about. But that's business as usual with him.