Anti-Gay Protest in DC

Turns out yesterday there was a big anti-gay demonstration right here in our back yard, in front of the Human Rights Campaign's building on Rhode Island Avenue. And by "big," I mean that approximately six to eight people turned out for it, according to observers. Some of the biggest names in the anti-gay movement spoke at it, including the founder and president of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality "Porno Pete" LaBarbera, Liberty Counsel's Matt Barber, and Mission America's Linda Harvey.

Here's the video of their speeches. Below is the rollicking commentary offered by Truth Wins Out.


TWO's comments are priceless:

0:10 Porno Pete says the “escalation of homosexual power” is bad for America.

0:45 Porno Pete also says that you could fill a small book with the hate crimes that have been “faked” over the years. Apparently the FBI and other organizations compiling statistics on hate crimes are part of the conspiracy?

1:00 ”Nature itself discriminates against homosexuality.” This is true, because in the thousands of species were homosexuality has been observed, there are also thousands of Porno Petes Of Land And Sea, with webbed feet and cloven hooves, flippers and prickly fur, standing by themselves in a corner, communicating by whalesong, howling at the moon and everything in between, about how gross their species-mates are for being gay.

1:40 Gay activists “meanly dismiss” the “reality” of ex-gay people. Usually, when we do that, it’s because we caught them in gay bars, etc.

2:00 Matt “Bam Bam” Barber speaks. He is quite boring.

2:55 Linda Harvey claims that there is only one standard for what is and what isn’t “sin,” which must be why the entirety of Christendom agrees on absolutely everything.

3:00 She then claims that we want people to “celebrate” the “stress and anxiety” of “gender confusion,” adding, “how wicked!” Actually, we want people to be able to live as they are, without fear, and when confronted with said anxiety, be met by a chorus of supportive voices, rather than the voices of fundamentalists like Linda Harvey telling them that what they are feeling is something they should be ashamed of and change.

3:15 Diane Gramley of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania with some boring, recycled words about “unnatural homosexual sex.”

3:57 Here is something truly insane. We are used to anti-gay activists claiming that there are thousands of “former homosexuals,” but yet they never can produce anyone for an interview who isn’t currently on the payroll of an anti-gay organization. It seems being “free from homosexuality” only sort of works when there is a paycheck attached. But Patrick Mangan of Citizens for Community Values of Indiana makes a truly insane claim when he suggests that “it is estimated that there are more that have come OUT of [homosexuality] than are in it.” Really? Estimated by whom, please?! Please provide source material for this suggestion that there are millions of straight people walking around the suburbs who “used to be gay.”

4:57 Finally, we have Eric Holmberg of Apologetics Group, doubling down on the crazy. You see, Americans are being sold a “bill of goods” on homosexuality. Listing off standard fare talking points about how gays aren’t born that way, Holmberg suddenly lists as a “fallacy” the idea that “homosexuals are not attracted to straight people.” Um, what? People are attracted to people. Sometimes straight people are attracted to gay people. (Raise your hand if you are a straight woman who dated a gay guy before he came out of the closet.) Sometimes gay people are attracted to straight people. I suspect that his statement is related to the Religious Right freak-outs over things like communal showers in the military, though, and the underlying suggestion that gay people are predators. The truth, of course, is that people have nothing to worry about in communal showers, as the same standards still apply: trying to have sex with someone who doesn’t want it is assault. It does not matter if the perpetrator is gay or straight. Otherwise, normal, well-adjusted people see people they think are hot all the time, and somehow refrain from trying to force sex on them. It is always strange to me, though, that the people who freak out over such things tend not to be very attractive, themselves.

I wonder how long the funding will hold up for this sort of thing.