Newsbusters's accusation of 'religion bashing' deserves rebuke

The site Newsbusters tries very hard to be a conservative version of the popular Media Matters. The site would do better to be compared to a member of the Olympic gymnastics team because of the way it twists and manipulates logic in unbelievable angles in efforts to either defend right-wing wrongs or make the case that those of us on the left are a bunch of mean bullies.

The newest column tries to make the case that the Huffington Post is creating a religion blog  whose aim is to bash Christians. The writer of the piece, Carolyn Plocher, gives a few examples of writings on the Huffington Post as proof.

And one of the examples is a recent piece I wrote:

Other articles attempted to paint Christians as intolerant radicals by hyping abstract stories about individuals, such as Janet Porter, the president and founder of Faith2Action, praying for the "Christian takeover" of the media. Alvin McEwen wrote he'd be "remiss" if he didn't point out that Porter said this prayer "in front of a huge multitude during one of those dreary we have to save American values from the forces of secular evil conferences which religious right organizations seem to hold more often than World Wrestling Entertainment hosts wrestling pay-per-views."

For the record, I was not aware that the Huffington Post was considering creating a religious blog and regardless, my piece was not a part of that. Furthermore, I don't think I need to paint Porter or anyone who supports her as an "intolerant radicals." Seems to me when someone prays to God to take something away from someone else and give it to them, I don't necessarily think that person can be described as following the Golden Rule.

But for the sake of conversation, you be the judge on whether or not Porter and those who support her (and coached her loudly during this prayer) come across as "intolerant radicals:"



What galls me is the fact that someone actually thinks this sort of madness needs to be defended and that somehow calling attention to what Porter did during a huge event attended by other noted religious right dignitaries - hardly "abstract" - is somehow bashing Christianity.

If Porter's arrogance is considered a form of Christianity which needs protection from criticism, then we have serious problems with the concept of Christianity in America.

And that was not rhetorical statement because I do believe in fact that we have a serious problem with some who consider themselves Christians in this country.

Through my piece on Porter, I was pointing this out.  I was not bashing Christianity but the bastardization of Christianity by Porter and the rest of the religious right, i.e. the ugly way in which they pervert God's message of love for the sake of cliques and grubby human concepts of conquest. Generally, when people go about the business of conquest, they don't do it in honest ways. This is definitely seen in how the religious right has demonized the gay and lesbian community through the use of stereotypes, junk science, and anecdotes taken out of context.

Whenever I hear Porter or anyone on the evangelical right go on about "winning the nation for Christ," I always cringe. Seems to me that if God had enough power to create Heaven and Earth, he can win America all by himself. He certainly doesn't need help from me, the Huffington Post, and certainly not Janet Porter or Newsbusters. And he definitely doesn't need help from conference halls full of people motivated through phony fear stories of prison camps, their children being "homosexualized," or visions of "their right to pray being taken away."

But the thing is that some on the evangelical right can't seem to grasp that fact. They also can't seem to grasp the concept of humility and respect for a higher power. They have replaced the image of God with one of  themselves. In their world, not forcing others to pray publicly the way they want is "persecution" and having to acknowledge the simple fact that America is a diverse (not Christian) nation ranks with being fed to lions or being crucified.

To hear them talk, Jesus apparently said "pick up your cross and follow me and I will give you a nice car, a nice house, 2.5 children, and a Republican president and Legislature every four years."

Strangest thing though, that passage doesn't appear in any Bible I have read.

But if that implication is how some people want to define Christianity, then more power to them. However, they shouldn't whine or infer persecution when someone else calls attention to the fallacies in that definition.

Bisexual pro wrestler, President Obama and DADT, and other Thursday midday news briefs

Video: By 'the record,' Molotov must mean those outdated round things that have little public support - Calling out cowards who support the Ugandan anti-gay bill but won't talk about what it actually says as far as the death penalty for gays and lesbians.

Sinead O’Connor v. Bill Donohue on the Catholic Child Rape Scandals - Remember when people gave Sinead O'Connor hell for tearing up the picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live? To paraphrase rapper Kool Mo Dee, how ya like her now?

News video: Is Obama backtracking on DADT? - I support President Obama but sometimes I swear he does things to intentionally drive folks on the left and right crazy so he can sit back and watch the carnage.

Hurley: Iowa Gay Marriage Anniversary A Celebration Of 'Eternal Death' - Yes, the eternal death of loneliness and ignorance.

Pro wrestling's first openly bisexual wrestler hits the air this Monday - Even though this was publicly known after the wrestler, Orlando Jordan, had left the WWE, the climate of the entire thing should be very interesting.

Let the child be 'a single lady' if he wants to

I couldn't resist posting this. Apparently while driving in the car, a family put the Beyonce song "All the Single Ladies."

When the three-year-old boy joined his sisters in singing it, his father told him that he wasn't a single lady, thereby totally destroying the little guy.

But it does have a happy ending. The father apologized and this morning, they were on CBS's This Morning where the little boy - who is sooo cute - was humming the song. Also the father said he now lets the boy sing the song all he wants to.

No mean comments, folks. But it does remind me of when I was a child and I would hear a good song by a female and took it upon myself (because of peer pressure) to substitute feminine pronouns for the masculine ones so it would seem that I was talking about my "girlfriend" rather than my "boyfriend."

Ain't it a drag when silly little fears like that ruin a good experience like singing a fun song?

Why just offend gays when you can offend Irish people too?

Geez Bill Donohue. Claiming that "Like the Irish and alcoholism, "there's a connection between homosexuality and sexual abuse of minors," is no way to defend the Pope and the Vatican against the charges of knowledge of sexual abuse.

This interview just defies description.

partial transcript courtesy of ThinkProgress

SANCHEZ: Well, let me just stop you right there, because immediately as you say that, there are people watching this show, and I can hear them saying this, Bill Donohue, shame on you. Are you saying all gays are pedophiles?

DONOHUE: As I said in the ad, which I wrote, most gay priests are not molesters, but most of the molesters have been gay. And I also said, that there’s no such thing as a — that homosexuality does not cause predatory behavior. Let me give you a quick example. I’m Irish. Everybody who has half a brain knows that the Irish have a bigger problem with alcoholism than the Italians or the Chinese, for example. Does that mean because you’re an Irishman, therefore, you are driven to become an alcoholic? Of course, not.

What it means, though, if your group is overrepresented in a particular problem area, you ought to explore it. Yes, there’s a connection between Irish and alcoholism, and, yes, there’s a connection between homosexuality and sexual abuse of minors.


Related posts:


With defenders like Bill Donohue and the Catholic League, the Pope is in trouble

Religious right 'Day of Truth' peddles same old lies to youth

April is here which means it's time again for the Day of Silence (April 16), the event held by GLSEN in which participating high school students nationwide do not talk during an entire school day in protest of the problems faced by lgbt students.

It's also time again for religious right groups to push their sad counterpart, Day of Truth, in which other students are encouraged to dissuade the supposed gay agenda.

Let's be honest. The Day of Silence has been a huge success every year while the Day of Truth has been a flop. I guess this is a case where the young has more sense than adults when it comes to accepting their lgbt peers.

So this year, the Day of Truth seems to have gone through a change in an attempt to seem hip and appeal to the young.

Its webpage is really cute and there seems to be a "we just want to start a conversation" vibe going on.

And of course there is that semantic claim that the Day of Truth preaches true tolerance for "those who make not agree with the homosexual agenda."

But don't be fooled. Like all other vestiges of the religious right, the Day of Truth is peddling inaccurate information about the lgbt community and the majority of it is contained in its resource guide page.

There is a pdf file from written by "Mike," a supposedly former gay young man, called Homosexuality isn't the answer. This is some of the things he says:

Many researchers have studied how gay-identified people live. The research has convinced me that embracing homosexuality is not the satisfying dream-come-true that society makes it out to be, even for those who are exclusively attracted to the same sex. Let’s look at how.

Research has shown that many gay-identified men, over their lifetime, have a lot of partners. In the 1980’s, two researchers named Mattison and McWhirter studied 156 male couples over a period of five years. Out of all these couples, only seven claimed that they were sexually monogamous while they were together, and none of these were long-term. Of the couples who stayed together more than 5 years, none were monogamous.

And this isn’t biased research from a religious or conservative group. Mattison and McWhirter were openly gay men.

It's interesting that a young man would have the gumption to look up a study that was published in 1984.  It's also interesting that "Mike" referred to the Mattison and McWhirter study without mentioning the part in which they said their work couldn't be considered an adequate representation of all gay couples:

“We always have been very careful to explain that the very nature of our research sample, its size (156 couples), its narrow geographic location, and the natural selectiveness of the participants prevents the findings from being applicable and generalizable to the entire gay male community.”

"Mike" also says:

More recently, in 2003 a Canadian professor named Barry Adam released a study about gay men. He reported that only 25% of the men he interviewed claimed to have been in monogamous relationships at some point, and these were mostly younger men in relationships shorter than three years.

Of course "Mike" omits several things about the study. According to a Washington Blade article:

Adam recruited the men for his study through ads in gay publications and leaflets distributed at gay organizations and bars in Ontario. To qualify for the study, the men had to be in a relationship for at least a year. The relationship of one couple spanned 23 years.

The sample of 70 men - including both members of 10 couples and 50 other men - included 41 Caucasians, 16 Asians, five men from African and Caribbean descent, seven Latinos and one Canadian Aboriginal.

The article also says:

Adam's research team did not calculate the average length of non-monogamous relationships. It was not clear if partners became non-monogamous over time, or if they agreed to be in an open relationship from the beginning, Adam said.

The study sample was diverse but may not be representative of gay men as a whole, because "genuinely random samples of gay and bisexual men are virtually unachievable," Adam said.

I doubt that "Mike" is who he says he is. Most likely, he is a Day of Truth staffer dressing up distorted studies as a "personal story of freedom from homosexuality."

Peter LaBarbera compares me to Tiger Woods and other Wednesday midday news briefs

I'm not one for political correctness or falsely making cries of racism, so I will let you all be the judge of this comment by Peter LaBarbera responding to the email I sent him with this morning's post:

. . .Being accused of "naked stridency" by Alvin McEwen is like being accused of sexual excess by Tiger Woods. . .

Yes Peter is aware of the fact that I am a black man but I'm not offended (although I am acting that way in the email exchange with LaBarbera in order to goad more comments from him. He is so easy to provoke.) Granted, it may seem juvenile, but remember THIS is the man who the so-called Christian publication One News Now goes to when it needs a comment for one of its biased anti-gay articles and he professes to be a leader in the anti-gay movement. So it is good for folks to see the full flow of LaBarbera's vapid mindset. This is the man that some folks actually thinks is an "expert" on the gay community. Other than being a right-wing circus clown, LaBarbera again shows why he perfectly represents the emptiness of the religious right.



Okay enough for silly indulgences. On to news briefs:

Trinity Broadcasting Network Settles Harassment Lawsuit - Is "Christian dirt" an oxymoron?

Video: It's an A & B conversation, they just wanna C everyone outta homosexuality - It's almost April which means it's time for that phony Day of Truth.

Council Approves Same Sex Benefits for Employees' Partners - This is good news.

Maryland: Impeachment Threat Over Gay Marriage - This is so stupid.

Hate site label has Peter LaBarbera running scared

I usually check out Peter LaBarbera's anti-gay Americans for Truth web page for either a good laugh or information for a good post. LaBarbera's eager plunges into homophobia has given me plenty to write about over the years.- so much so that I venture to say that LaBarbera's naked stridency has done more to help the lgbt community demonstrate the hatred and utter hypocrisy of religious right groups and their supporters.

But today, I am noticing a tone on his page which I haven't seen before - fear.

Ever since the Southern Poverty Law Center designated his web page as a hate site (a long time overdue), LaBarbera has been on what be called as a psychological bender, devoting six posts over the past week to pleading his case.

It's unbelievable to contemplate but the SPLC has actually taken LaBarbera's mind off of gay sex, at least for a while.

From challenging the SPLC's Mark Potok to a debate to whining about how SPLC is ignoring gay blogs which he claims preach hatred (and he lists his favorite whipping boys - Joe.My.God. and Truth Wins Out), LaBarbera seems to be disturbed (more than usual that is) that his "Christian assessment" of the lgbt community is receiving so much criticism.

He has even taken to posting comments from pro-gay blogs in an attempt to smear the blogs in general. Evan Hurst of Truth Wins Out was the unfortunate victim of such a smear.

Then again, I take that back. If I know Evan, the only unfortunate party was LaBarbera for daring to take him on.

It amazes me that a man who has made his life's work the demonizing of an innocent group of people can suddenly whine that he is the victim when his attempts garner him the attention he truly deserves.

Amazing, yes but oh so fun to watch.

The fact of the matter is no matter how he tries to disguise his homophobia as basic Christian beliefs, no one is buying LaBarbera's whines (except for the truly ignorant - yes that means you, Linda Harvey). SPLC's designation  and his labored defenses of his position represents another depth which LaBarbera has sunken in his campaign to vilify the lgbt community.

And it represents the plain sad fact (well not so sad to some of us) that while LaBarbera has long since lost all credibility as an anti-gay activist, he is gaining credibility for a new designation - circus clown.

Related posts:

Wayne, Evan, Joe, Rea: Do any of you mind if I go first?

10 reasons why Americans for Truth is a hate site

Peter LaBarbera - the self-destruction of an anti-gay activist