Speak Compassion

While I long for the day when I don’t have to write about Peter LaBarbera or Americans for Truth, sadly I choose to write about them because of my need for safety for myself and others like me. I realized today, while reading one of Peter’s latest posts how disinterested in the truth Americans for Truth is. Today, Peter is writing about Stephen Bennett a man who claims to have gone from gay to straight and is now married with kids. To start with this is not some huge deal as Peter would have you believe. Gay men and lesbian women have spent lifetimes married to opposite sex partners, that didn’t make it honest or right. Some stayed married forever and others decided they couldn’t do it any longer and came out as gay. Others, like me, have no attraction whatsoever to the opposite sex and just couldn’t have pulled off the married fake thing even though I wanted to, and I tried to. Deborah has finally forgiven me, I think.

Peter’s post talks about only one man who claims to have gone straight and then claims:

“So if we already know that men and women can leave homosexuality behind, why isn’t this phenomenon studied in the academy? What are “queer” activists afraid will be discovered”

I was angry when I read this, but also curious. What is the image Peter really has of us. He speaks of “queer activists” like we are some KGB organization in cold war Russia. He speaks of us as if we are not human beings, but those evil spy characters from a novel. Everyone fears the KGB and would have used force to stop them. That is what you do with the enemy. You stop them at any cost using all means available. That is how we have been conditioned to think by society. It would be hard for Peter to deny that.

His question also ignores some information of which we know for fact Peter LaBarbara has been made aware. Lots of people spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to “leave” homosexuality and the so called “change” he speaks of just never happen. People like Peterson Toscano, Christine Bakke or all the others whose lives where almost destroyed by trying to change their sexuality. Just because one man named Stephen Bennett, who has refused to prove he was ever gay in the first place, claims he is now straight and no longer has same sex attractions is no proof that all gays and lesbians could or should try to change their sexuality at the risk of harm. The evidence against “ex-gay therapies” and their dangers is well documented to be not worth the risk. They are ALL based on religious conviction, not scientific FACTS!

It is Peter’s tone, his choice of presentation about gays and lesbians painting us as the enemy that make his efforts hate speech. It is the enemy images he has and wants others to have of gays that scare me. Today, Good As You pointed me to a video of a girl who violently beat another girl and posted it on YouTube because the girl was a gay rights advocate. The local news reported:

The suspects told police the girl was a gay-rights advocate and that she was trying to impose her views on them. They didn’t like it, and they told police they didn’t see anything wrong with what they did.

The fight was clearly premeditated. In surveillance video, police told 24 Hour News 8 the suspects are seen pulling back their hair and getting ready. It’s also clear they say other people knew about the attack because of the number of people who were congregated around watching the fight.

What Peter LaBarbera has yet to understand is that he did contribute to this climate of violence. Peter has not heard us when we explain to him that when you paint gays and lesbians as the enemy who must be stopped, people will feel justified in using violence to stop us. Peter may not be promoting violence directly, but he is promoting the justification for it. I am not sure what it would take for him to see this, but I for one know that as long as I read things written in the tone Peter writes them, I am going to be afraid that people will use violence and justify it with the arguments Peter gave them. I would challenge Mr. LaBarbera anyday to show me just what it is he is working towards. What is his end game and where are people like me in that picture? I believe the reason he won’t answer it is because the answer proves what he is doing is hurting more people than it is helping.