Linda Harvey’s Non-Condemnation of Tel Aviv Anti-Gay Violence

Timothy Kincaid

August 3rd, 2009

Linda Harvey of Mission America is one of those anti-gay activists that live at the extreme end of bias and animus. There are few things which Harvey would find too vile or outrageous to say. Nor would she ever let basic decency stay her hand or common sense slow down her all-encompasing need to spew bile and venom on gay people.

Today decent people in Israel and around the world are mourning a horrible crime, a mass murder that seems at this time to likely be based on hatred towards gay people. While the world seeks to discover whether this attack on gay youth was a terror message based on the murderer’s homophobic religious zeal, Linda thinks this is a good opportunity to spout her own religious anti-gay rhetoric.

Now Linda knows that she can’t exactly say, “They deserved what they got.” That wouldn’t sit well with even her most ardent supporters, none of whom like to think of themselves as motivated by hatred. So Linda starts her press release saying, “We are deeply saddened by this violent act and the deaths of these young people, and pray for the perpetrator to be found and brought to justice.”

Now I’m sure she thinks no one will notice that she didn’t exactly condemn the action. She’s “saddened” and prays for justice, but doesn’t quite say that what was done was deplorable. What she does find deplorable, however, she’s not slow to state:

At the same time, it is deplorable this incident is already being used by the homosexual community to blame this act on those holding a traditional moral viewpoint.

These are Linda’s values: machine gun attack on gay youth, “saddening”; condemnation of homophobia, “deplorable”.

She also defends “those who bravely stand up against the deviance of homosexuality” and considers it bigotry to blame them for crimes like the one in Tel Aviv. And her sadness for the two who died extends only to the fact that they will now have no chance to be ex-gay (though one wasn’t even gay).

She doesn’t mention those who were wounded. She speaks of not wanting harm to come in the lives of the young people, but a closer look reveals that to Linda “harm” is not bullets, but homosexuality.

I will not call Linda’s statement an “endorsement.” She does not commend the shooter – specifically – or call for more violence. But the consistent message in Linda’s press release is that the kids at the center shouldn’t have been there, they were engaging in deviancy, and that those who oppose such deviancy are brave and moral.

It doesn’t take much imagination to know where Linda’s sympathies lie.

SharonB

August 3rd, 2009

I guess to Ms Harvey, the only crime that the shooter committed was in having a little too much zeal for the cause, which is not really too much of a crime to her, probably.

Burr

August 3rd, 2009

So let me get this straight (pun intended)..

It’s okay to blame gays for 9/11 and Katrina.

It’s not okay to blame homophobes for homophobic violence directly affecting gays.

Ooooookaaaayyy..

Penguinsaur

August 3rd, 2009

I bet James Dobson threw a party when he heard about the shootings. Anyone actually surprised at these bigots cheering on violence has never done any research on them.

Candace

August 3rd, 2009

They think they make Baby Jesus happy with their hatred and prejudice against gay people. It’s their way of getting brownie points so maybe god won’t fly a plane into a building while they’re in it.

It must be terrible to live in such fear.

homer

August 3rd, 2009

Every time I hear something about this Harvey “person” I am disgusted. You wonder what happened to her to fill her with such wickedness.

TomChicago

August 3rd, 2009

Although she may be using a seemingly mild-mannered phrase like “traditional moral viewpoint” to avoid the more heartfelt foaming at the mouth we usually hear, we still must point out that there is nothing particularly virtuous about the merely traditional view. Slavery and the debasement of women have for centuries been justified on the grounds that they are traditional views.

Brieuse

August 3rd, 2009

If it comes about that it was a hate crime. Then I’ll hold her and people like her personally responsible.

If it were a hate crime then she’s effectively saying that she’s saddened by the murders but that she believes that people should be allowed to defend their beliefs with automatic weapons.

----

August 4th, 2009

I would rather be killed immediately by bullets than having my spirit and integrity die a slow death due to “ex-gay” doctrine.

William

August 4th, 2009

“Those who have same sex attractions should see them as a sinful disorder, yet one that can be overcome. … Our greatest hope for all youth is that they live long and healthy lives. These kids’ chance to do that has been stolen from them.” – Linda Harvey

It is kids who are told things like this whose teenage years are being stolen from them, as I realise that mine were. At a time when their straight peers are learning to come to terms with their natural sexuality and, hopefully, to express it responsibly, gay teenagers are being morally bullied to repress theirs and to engage in a futile and harmful attempt to get rid of it.

As life slowly slips away, I find myself ever less tolerant of pernicious statements like Linda Harvey’s.

Christopher Waldrop

August 4th, 2009

While it’s accurate that Harvey doesn’t say “they deserved what they got”, she does make a pretty sickening accusation when she says, “this incident is already being used by the homosexual community to blame this act on those holding a traditional moral viewpoint.” In posts here and elsewhere there’s been a great deal of sympathy expressed for the victims, but also qualifications that the gunman’s motivations aren’t known at this point. While this attack seems to have targeted openly gay and lesbian people, it’s been stated here that we can’t conclude that. The attack occurred at an LGBT center, so it’s logical that many of those who are closest to the victims are either LGBT people or friends and family members of LGBT people. So why then does Harvey have a problem with the expressions of sympathy and outrage? Why does she have a problem with people who, understandably, make assumptions about the gunman’s motive even if his identity isn’t even known yet?

What I think sickens me most about her statement is that she’s making a preemptive strike, saying that the gunman’s motive doesn’t matter. She might as well come right out and say “they deserved what they got” because that’s what she’s implying.

AdrianT

August 4th, 2009

Her article is obscene. Linda Harvey cynically used the massacre of innocent people – one of whom was a young, straight teenager – as a cheap attempt to sell the ex-gay message, and get some column inches. Cheap, tawdry, spiteful – it’s beneath contempt. Why not write your press releases in their blood and have done with it, Mrs Harvey?

And no Linda Harvey, being gay is NOT a choice. The whole of the scientific community thinks your opinions on the matter to be nonsense. Instead of wallowing in self pity and whining about persecution – as she is doing on her latest blog, on her ludicrous website, it’s high time she realized that she must expect ridicule for her beliefs, since she is not qualified to comment.

cmh

August 4th, 2009

Linda “It’s not the bullet but the gay that kills” Harvey. claaasy lady.

Regan DuCasse

August 4th, 2009

She’s behaving as if we can’t read, can’t interpret her inference or implication.
Her words are VERY clear to us. Her message is clear, and it’s ongoing and going and going…

What makes her think we were wrong, or misunderstood HER!?
What makes her think that we don’t know what she really means or is determined to say?

These young people were meeting in peace and fellowship. They were friends, they were doing no harm, nor plotting to.
They represented love and support, not clandestine activity they shouldn’t have been engaged in.
We know EXACTLY what she’s saying.

She just doesn’t like how ugly it is when WE hold up the mirror.

William

August 4th, 2009

I’ve just been on Mission America’s website. Mission America appears to be a “Christian” fundamentalist organization whose overriding obsessions are homosexuality and New Age beliefs and practices.

If Linda Harvey were consistent she ought to praise and applaud such attacks on gay people. Fundamentalists insist that the prohibitions of homosexual behaviour in the Mosaic Law are binding on modern Christians. (They justify such ad hoc selection from the Mosaic Law by inventing a fraudulent distinction between “moral”, “ceremonial” and “national” laws, ignoring the clear and repeated reminders throughout the Book of Leviticus that ALL the laws are commands of God and that ALL are to be observed.) And Leviticus 20:13 could not be clearer:

“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”

Fundamentalists insist that the story of Sodom in Genesis is historical and that Sodom was destroyed, not for violent inhospitality or for attempted homosexual mass rape, but for homosexual practices per se. So surely anyone who murders gays is to be commended for following God’s example. As Queen Mary of England said in justification of the burning of Protestants, “As the souls of heretics are hereafter to be eternally burning in hell, there can be nothing more proper than for me to imitate the divine vengeance by burning them on earth.”

Furthermore, fundamentalists also insist that Romans 1:26-32 is about homosexual behaviour tout court and that we are still constrained today by St Paul’s very limited understanding of homosexuality. So what does St Paul say?

“Who knowing the judgment of God, that they who commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.”

Why doesn’t Linda Harvey just come out with it honestly and say, “Look, IF that gunman was deliberately targeting gays then he did a damn good job. The only thing that he can perhaps be criticized for is acting ultra vires; but he wouldn’t have had to do that if the Israelis had followed the word of God and instituted the death penalty for homosexual behaviour”? Because I suspect that she knows perfectly well – although she probably hasn’t reasoned it out in such explicit terms – that if she did, a huge proportion even of those who invoke the authority of an “infallible” Bible in their condemnation of gays would be startled into re-thinking their attitudes.

David C.

August 4th, 2009

…a huge proportion even of those who invoke the authority of an “infallible” Bible in their condemnation of gays would be startled into re-thinking their attitudes.—William

Call it P.C. hate mongering, and outrage in the absence of it would not be confined to the class of individuals who consider the Bible the inerrant word of God. A mainstream awareness of the true nature of anti-gay activism would ultimately be the undoing of Linda Harvey, Mission America, and the whole of the RRW attack on civil rights.

That awareness cannot come too soon.

Bill S

August 4th, 2009

Hmm. So Queen Mary was a sociopath.
The jury is still out on Harvey, because she’s hiding her nastiness just enough to almost appear sane. She’s always on the verge of letting her true awfulness spill out.
I hope when it does, it’s on a widely watched, nationally televised program for EVERYONE to see.

ravenbiker

August 12th, 2009

Bull-oney!

Linda Harvey has and does endorse this vile act! I linked up to her “denouncement” and found as she writes:

“…it is deplorable this incident is already being used by the homosexual community to blame this act on those holding a traditional moral viewpoint. Israelis, just as anyone else on earth, should still have the right to oppose homosexuality for religious or other reasons without being called accessories to murder.”

Allow me ask an obvious question: besides anti-gay propaganda that brings out hate filled people to the polls of Prop 8, how else would one interpret having the “right to oppose” homosexuality?

The answer is violence. Far as I’m concered, Ms. Harvey didn’t condemn anything—just the LBGT community, once again. And yes, she IS an accessory to murder!

Jack

August 28th, 2009

I don’t understand how we could have read the same statements. You are reading things into the story that Mrs. Harvey clearly did not say. But rarely does anyone deal with her objectivly and fairly.

I don’t know why I expected, that would happen here.

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