Comments on: Folsom Street Fair Organizers Make Questionable Claim Against Americans For Truth

By: Johno

Johno — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:29:28 +0000

I do remember that. My feeling at the time (and still) was disappointment. Because regardless of what it was replaced with, her picture was taken down, which is exactly what her absurd empty-threat letter requested. A lawyer is not required to fight this kind of threat, just a wastebasket. You can bet Peter LaBarbera is not going to take down the letter, or replace it with a fake one.
I do agree that Folsom lawyers have made a mistake wasting any energy on an attention-whore like LaBarbera, but the truth is that these threats are sent out with the frequency and value of toilet paper by every aged lawyer and public figure in the world who has not yet caught up with technology.

By: Timothy Kincaid

Timothy Kincaid — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 18:43:33 +0000

Johno,

If you recall, I mocked their request. I replaced the picture of Linda Harvey with a cartoonish caricature of Linda which looked like she’d been made up by an enthusiastic drag queen in the dark.

http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2008/05/27/2098

By: Johno

Johno — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 17:20:56 +0000

Lawyers make these kind of empty threats on a daily basis. The website Something Awful has practically made a living off finding ways to get threatened in this manner to the delight of their anti-authoritarian readership. It’s common knowledge to anyone of a certain age who is moderately fluent in internet culture that these threats mean nothing and are sent out routinely, often to the embarrassment of the sender.
It’s true that Peter will blow it up into something it isn’t, but that’s his MO. And seeing as with his very limited influence, he isn’t worth more than a laugh on a slow news day, which this isn’t…I find it hard to care about this or be scandalized by Folsom’s actions. Even if the shoe were on the other foot I wouldn’t blink at this; which it was once right here — my only reaction then was extreme disappointment that BTB actually chose to honor a fundie author’s request for picture removal when it was completely uneccessary to do so.
I hope you’ll take it as constructive criticism when I say that it seems like sometimes in BTB’s quest to be a recognized voice of legitimacy, fairness and accuracy, you miss the boat completely.

By: a. mcewen

a. mcewen — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 03:14:28 +0000

Ugh. I cringe to think how much mileage Peter is going to get out of this. We just had a pride in South Carolina (with the mayor of Columbia and RuPaul) and it was a family friendly event. We had a lot of families with their children attending our event.

But Peter insists on focusing on subcultural events and some people are going to follow up on his nonsense.

By: B. John

B. John — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 02:30:17 +0000

Daniel, I’ve worked in the Records Management industry for over 20 years, and am the former records manager for a city in North Carolina. Public Record laws differ from state to state of course, but you can be fairly confident that a letter, signed by the Mayor (acting as the Mayor) and on City Stationary meets pretty much any standard as a public record, and is therefore wholly in the public domain.

Maybe someone at Folsom thinks they could have a case if they could prove that LaBarbera scanned the image from their program, but I would still consider that a stretch. First, it would only be a small percentage of a total program, therefore still falling within the bounds of Fair Use…but the overriding legal construct here is that it is a public record, and I can’t reproduce a public record and then claim ownership of the contents of the record.

Folsom made an error here, and I don’t understand how their attorney went along with this.

By: revtj

revtj — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 01:00:27 +0000

The fact that public [gay] sex and S&M [gay] sex is viscerally repulsive to Peter to the point that he is using pictures of it as a fundraiser is a bit Freudian to me. Even San Francisco knows the Leather Community doesn’t represent mainstream homosexuality. But it always seems to grab the photo-ops for mainstream homophobia.

Peter should know that heterosexuals have similar S&M public sex festivals. It just makes me sick to think he missed that. There’s a reason all gay people don’t protest heterosexuality based on the straight S&M clubs. It would be stupid logic.

The bottom line is who has sovereignty over their human body — the state, the city, the church…or the individual? Tell Peter to read Michel Foucault and then get back to his issues in therapy.