The Threat Down: Top Threats to Stephen's Heterosexuality

Threat #2: The Ex-Gay Movement

"As a straight man, I should never be told that same sex attraction can be cured. Because if it can, what's stopping me from taking a dip in that end of the pool? The hot, salty end? And then, when I've had enough, I can just read Leviticus and — presto! — I'm cured! The idea that it's temporary makes it all too tempting."

Happy Grillers in the Mist Day

Dequick Debunk

As if the self congratulatory screed that is the DL Fister Show needs yet one more example of how far removed from reality the author is, he has an entry relating his triumphant return from Washington, D.C. where he campaigned for the Federal Marriage Amendment. He's fairly brimming with excitement when he writes, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, liberals are convinced that they have once again beat back the advancing hordes of 'conservative homophobes'. Whatever."







"Even though I'm ex-gay I still like a finger up my ass during sex."





Whatever indeed. The "pastor" is much more interested in the souvenirs that he brought back. Like a renewed sense of outrage over gay rights which he's afraid besmirches the reputation of other civil rights movements, "like a drag version of civil rights." Something he has in common with LaShawn the Barbarian who recently wrote in a comment on her blog, "As black person, it offends me when homosexuals try to use our fight to be treated as first class citizens to argue that perversion is also a civil right. It’s nauseating, actually."

Bad Reporter by Don Asmussen


The shiny bauble that DL holds so dear is a piece written for the Weakly Standard that he calls a "blistering deconstruct" of gay rights as civil rights. There's only one teensy small problem with it. A large part of the argument hinges on the canard that "the claim that the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman constitutes discrimination is based on a false analogy with statutory prohibitions on interracial marriages in many states through much of the 20th century." As I showed a few months back, not only do gay marriage advocates draw this connection, but it is also recognized by those arguing for traditonal marriage. Here's a brief recap from the marriage case argued in New Jersey:

Justice Virginia Long: "Why is that an interest? The interest in maintaining marriage 'as it has been'?"

Patrick DeAlmeida: "Because it is such a fundamental institution in society that it is a reasonable thing that the legislature not change it radically. There are some things that make up our society that are so fundamental that a change in them is something that belongs to the elected representatives of the people."

Justice Barry T. Albin: "Didn't Virginia argue that in the Loving case? When they tried to support banning interracial marriage -- in fact criminalizing them?"

DeAlmeida: "They did."

DL may not have brought home an STD as a memento of his trip, but that certainly would have been preferable to what he did bring back. A "brilliant" paper by Dr. John Diggs called "The Health Risks of Gay Sex," in which the "doctor" draws inappropriate and inacurate conclusions. But don't take my word for it. The authors of the Vancouver study cited in Diggs's paper had a public rebuke for those who would misuse the information.

Over the past few months we have learnt of a number of reports regarding a paper we published in the International Journal of Epidemiology on the gay and bisexual life expectancy in Vancouver in the late 1980s and early 1990s. From these reports it appears that our research is being used by select groups in US and Finland to suggest that gay and bisexual men live an unhealthy lifestyle that is destructive to themselves and to others. These homophobic groups appear more interested in restricting the human rights of gay and bisexuals rather than promoting their health and well being.

[...]

It is essential to note that the life expectancy of any population is a descriptive and not a prescriptive measure. Death is a product of the way a person lives and what physical and environmental hazards he or she faces everyday. It cannot be attributed solely to their sexual orientation or any other ethnic or social factor.

[...]

In summary, the aim of our work was to assist health planners with the means of estimating the impact of HIV infection on groups, like gay and bisexual men, not necessarily captured by vital statistics data and not to hinder the rights of these groups worldwide. Overall, we do not condone the use of our research in a manner that restricts the political or human rights of gay and bisexual men or any other group.

For all their blathering about "truth" it really is the thing DL and his ilk are least interested in.

Update: LaShawn the Barbarian repeats the phony "interracial marriage is nothing like gay marriage" argument.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who recently sent fund raising party invitations shaped like a cowboy's crotch and that only opened after one undid the cowboy's belt, said that a vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment could happen as soon as June 5.

Click on the following links to send a message to your senators telling them that if they vote for the measure, they will be on the wrong side of history.

The ACLU.

The Human Rights Campaign.

This post will remain at top until June 10 or the vote is taken, whichever happens first.

How Pathetic is the Religious Right?

Protect Marriage Illinois has submitted some 345,000 petition signatures to the state legislature in order to get a referendum banning gay marriage on the November ballot. The referendum would not be legally binding for lawmakers, however it could be used as ammunition for more aggressive marriage amendment tactics.

One of the groups affiliated with PMI is the Illinois Fascist Institute. One Peter Labarbera is the executive director. (Which leads to a little side-thought I had. What if the Language Fartist were to marry him? "LaShawn Barber Labarbera." Perfect!)

Peter Labarbera is quite a character. He came to Chicago a couple of years ago to visit the International Mister Leather event in order to gather "evidence" (of what he never says). "As you can imagine, this idea didn’t go over too well with my wife," said Labarbera in a description of his little shopping spree.

I paid my two-dollar entrance fee and passed by a femmy “leather” guy who was happily greeting visitors with the line, “Welcome to the WalMart of porn!” At the vendors’ area, I found booth upon booth--there were over a hundred--selling whips, handcuffs, electric “torture” devices, leather “hoods,” etc., a veritable cornucopia for the deviant. The man was right: there was also tons of the most disgusting pornography imaginable for sale at reduced prices, right there are at the glitzy Hyatt Regency!

[...]

Perhaps I will send some of my evidence to the Tribune Company’s executive staff, so they can see what they promoted to the public.

And perhaps he did just that. Or — just perhaps — he held on to the "evidence" and, under his wife's disapproving eye, pretended to box it up and put it in the basement on a convincingly hard-to-access shelf but exactly where he knew he could pry the lid open just enough to extract some of his favorite evidence on those long weekends when the wife visits the inlaws...

But I digress. The Chicago Free Press reports that Fair Illinois, the group checking the signatures on the marriage petition "say their objective of keeping the referendum off the ballot is well within reach. As a rule, about 70 percent of the signatures filed on voter petitions are legitimate. The rest are invalid for various reasons—they are duplicates, for instance, or the signers aren’t registered to vote or list incorrect addresses." As it turns out, even this optimistic estimation leaves the petition 41,611 signatures short. But it gets better.

So far, volunteers are finding a rate of accuracy that is far below 70 percent. “If 40 percent of these names are valid, I’d be surprised,” said Rick Garcia, political director of Equality Illinois. His organization joined forces with Lambda Legal and the ACLU to create Fair Illinois.

[...]

“These petitions are so phony,” said Cathy Calderon, who ended a 20-month hiatus from volunteering in order to be part of the Fair Illinois effort. She held up an invalid petition that was circulated by a person who used two different names—one a man’s name, one a woman’s.

“The gall of these people,” Calderon said. “They think they’re going to put one over on us. It’s not going to happen.”

Which, I'd say, finds PMI at the end of their rope. Their members are proven liars who must cheat in order to force their views on all, the remnants of a disgraceful movement in its final gasp, their names forever on record as endorsing this failed rapture of bigotry, to the everlasting shame of their descendants.

Oh yeah — and I think Chimpy McSmirksalot chimed in today on the matter of gay marriage, too.