LaBarbera Award: Rep. Louie Gohmert

Jim Burroway

October 7th, 2009

Some have been given the LaBarbera Award for comparing gay relationships child molestation. Others to necrophilia. And others still to Nazism. And we’ve even seen gay people blamed for the economic crisis. It takes a rare bird to say all of these things in the span of just a few minutes, but that’s exactly what Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) did last night in speaking out against the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Bill.

We fought over this hate crimes bill in committee and on the floor and over and over. We made amendments, offered amendments because we could see that the definition of sexual orientation is wide open to all kinds of interpretation. And some someday, some court somewhere will say you know what? Sexual orientation means exactly what those words mean. If you’re oriented — and I hope this doesn’t offend, but this is part of the law. It’s laws in most states or has been certainly in many states. If you\’re oriented toward animals, bestiality, then, you know, that\’s not something that can be used, held against you or any bias be held against you for that. Which means you\’d have to strike any laws against bestiality, if you\’re oriented toward corpses, toward children, you know, there are all kinds of perversions, what most of us would call perversions. Some would say it sounds like fun, but most of us would say were perversions. And there’ve been laws against them. And this bill says whatever you’re oriented towards sexually that cannot be a source of bias against someone.

Well that’s interesting. And someone said surely they didn’t mean to include pedophiles or necrophiliacs or what most of us would say is perverse sexual orientations. I’ve heard some people say that if you question our president because he happens to be black, that gee, you must be a racist. Well, that’s kinda tough for me because because I voted for Alan Keyes back in 1996. I never told Sen. Graham, but I liked the way Alan Keyes was able to articulate things that I believed him. I thought he was a fantastic candidate and would have made a great president back at that time.

[edit]And I go back to what our friend Chuck Colson had pointed out earlier this year, and that is when you lose morality in a nation, you create economic instability leading to economic chaos. And when you have economic chaos, it is tragic but people have always been willing to give up their liberties, their freedoms in order to gain economic stability. It happened in 1920 and 1930\’s Germany. They gave up their liberties to gain economic stability and they got a little guy with a mustache who was the ultimate hate monger. And this is scary stuff we\’re doing here when we take away what has traditionally been an important aspect of moral teaching in America.

Rep. Gohmert is still pushing a version of the “thirty sexual orientations” lie, which we examined last May. Not only is sexual orientation clearly defined by the APA, but it is also clearly defined in law.

Rep. Gohmert gets bonus points for his strange sidelong self-defense that he’s not a hateful person because he voted for Alan Keyes. What voting for a Black homophobe is supposed to say about Gohmert’s homophobia is anyone’s guess. There are some things that just cannot be untangled.

Bill S

October 8th, 2009

Wow.
Just…wow.
I cvan barely pick my jaw up off the floor.
It’s almost as if he were some kind of double-agent who was trying to destroy the credibility of anti-gay activism from within.
Except that asntigay activists never HAD any credibility, and there are people bigoted enough-and stupid enough-to believe this crap, and say it out loud, and NOT have the slightest clue what it makes them sound like.

Bill S

October 8th, 2009

why do I never notice the typos until AFTER I post my comments?

Christopher Waldrop

October 8th, 2009

Bill, don’t worry about the typos. A lot of us prefer to focus on the message. And I agree, a lot of people who say this stuff out loud have no idea what it makes them sound like. They’ve never taken the time to think about the actual implications of what they’re saying.

It’s a tendency that’s sad in most people, but in the case of an elected representative it’s frightening.

Nevada Blue

October 9th, 2009

Wow…is there anyway you could multiply that award? What a creepy, blithering idiot.

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