1) IML is one of the best times you could have. If you’re ever in Chicago Memorial Day weekend you have to stop by and walk through the Leather Market (truly unbelievable) and the actual IML competition, essentially a the Miss American contest for Leather Men… they even give speeches.

2)Peter LaBarbera is an interesting character. While I think it’s a small possibility, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a raging, repressed closet case. He might also have figured out an easy way to make a living and get out of the house. A few years ago when the Gay Games came to Chicago I attended a press conference set up by Pete for all his 3rd string homophobic friends. During the press conference he was all arch-conservative and quick to anger. But afterwards he was friendly and approachable and seemed to sincerely apologize to a couple gay (journalists or bloggers, it was hard to tell). His actions and interactions after the TV cameras left was much like an actor after the play. I’m not saying he’s not a potentially dangerous nut job (albeit, one who has a hard time getting the choir to pay attention when he preaches), but there’s definitely something interesting and unexplained going on with Pete. Just not sure what it is.

In all fairness, there was an annual bears conference that met once a year in Chicago. They disbanded a couple years partly because every year they needed a different hotel because no previous hotel would put up with their outlandish behavior. The Be All, however, a transgender woman’s conference in Chicago gets glowing reviews from their hosts.

Peter LaBarbera runs Americans for Truth. So nobody will call upon him to explain his real motives. It’s his operation. He is/was a registered lobbyist with the State of Illinois.

News media here in Illinois avoid this guy like the plague. And so do national conservative leaders like Tony Perkins, James Dobson and Pat Robertson. They all know he’s a freak.

He did work for the Family Research Council in Washington DC (“culture facts”), a column that was obsessed with homosexuality, due to him.

From there he came to Illinois to run the Illinois Family Institute, which again had a higher percentage of gay-related articles while he was there.

With AFTAH, it’s all homosexuality, all the time– just the way he likes it. (He says very little about lesbians.)

See, he’s feeding his pathology and miserable existence. If he wanted to get away from all this, he could move to Arkansas. But he won’t, because deep down inside he’s got a fire in his belly that just won’t go away.

In the end, Americans for Truth will go belly up financially and he’ll have no excuse to come into the City (by that I mean Chicago– he lives in the suburbs) and conduct “research” in a Paul Cameron style.

Eventually we’ll all read about this guy getting arrested with his pants down around his ankles at some truck stop. He’ll slink off into oblivion just like Ted Haggard.

And Pete’s wife and 5 kids will have to endure a broken family, simply because their husband and father has a self-loathing obsession with men who love other men.

There are billboards all over my neighborhood advertising ‘gentlemen’s clubs’. And there is an Erotica Expo coming up in early June.
I don’t have to go to either place to know what’s happeneing there.
Not my scene, not my interest.

But if I kept going to those places all the while saying it’s not my interest, but I’m just here to check out the fire exits….would any of you question my motives and integrity?
‘Course ya would!

So why isn’t Americans for Truth calling on LaB’s motives and intergrity for REALLY going?

Those are two odd, odd men. Especially LaBarbara.