What you’ve said here is really important, and I agree with you completely, I really do.
But, please, please, please would you stop insulting psychiatrised people (some of whom are LGBT people) to make your point?

I get that you’re saying that people like LaBarbera are irrational, and that they (or their ideas) ought to be constrained and ridiculed, and I totally agree with you there, but it’s not okay to trivialise the experience of being held in restraints (such as a straitjacket, which you’ve pictured LaBarbera wearing). Many psychiatric patients have been injured (physically and psychologically) as a result of having been placed in restraints, and some have even died because of this practice. Making light of an abusive, rights-depriving psychiatric treatment is kind of an odd thing for a gay rights blogger to do. I read your excellent series on the “sissy boy experiments,” so I know you know that LGBT people have historically been subjected to abusive psychiatric treatment, and I know that you know how such treatment can completely destroy people’s lives.

I also think that it is not okay to define comments like those made by Perkins as “crazy.” Characterising disgusting people like LaBarbera and Perkins as “crazy” only intensifies the stigma associated with having contact with mental health services, which is really quite problematic in the context of this post. I mean, the subject is Perkins’ abhorrent response to the It Gets Better *suicide prevention* project, and it seems obvious to me that that many people who contemplate or attempt suicide do end up in the mental health system (whether or not we want to be there, and whether or not this is an appropriate course of action).

What happens to the gay kid who wakes up in a psychiatric ward after his suicide attempt fails? He then has to cope with the stigma of being “crazy” as well as “queer,” right? Why would you want to make this even harder for him?

I’m sorry this comment is so late. It’s taken me a bit of time to sort out how to express my thoughts about this. I care about it a lot because I’m a lesbian, I was bullied as a teenager, and I was one of the ones who ended up in a psychiatric ward. I’m also doing a dissertation on the topic of the experiences of LGBT people who have had contact with the mental health system, so I think about this issue a lot.

Thanks for reading this.

funny how that sorta goes together..

If the quack ducks…er, I mean if the duck quacks…

and i giggled – out loud.

This is Tony Perkins. No, not the actor who played Norman Bates in Alfred Hitcock’s Psycho. This Tony Perkins is much, much scarier. This Tony Perkins makes blood spiraling down a bathtub drain look like a cup of cherry Kool-Aid spilled at a Girl Scout fundraiser.

…

Every single time I think of Tony Perkins and this letter, nothing more interesting or edifying comes to my mind than a block of feelings that, broken down, runs about like this:

This animal. This cretin. This travesty. This demon. This parasite. This blight. This twisted purveyor of evil. This insidious enemy of everything for which Christ stood. This sickening mule. This heartless charlatan. This shameless huckster. This vile opportunist. This creator of human suffering. This trafficker in pain. This braying bully. This puffing affront to decency.

This preening, flag-waving goon.

This grinning, slavering creature who, in exchange for money, induces children to commit suicide.

This odorous, rotten chum pretending he’s nourishment.

This lover of hate.

If you’re a Christian who actually understands and cares about Christ, please tell anyone who will listen that Tony Perkins is to Christianity what a slimy, chewing worm is to a perfectly wonderful apple.

BTW, I went back and checked. Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council now have three LaBarberas between them, putting them in second place behind Bryan Fischer (four) and ahead of Mike Huckabee (two). No-one else, not even Scott Lively, has more than one.

My Dad was kicked off the platform at the church where he was Minister of Music due to my mother starting some shit when he got arrested once.(Guess why? He’s still in complete denial.) He was given six months to live back in 2007. He’s still here.

Looked at one way, the biblical Job ain’t got shit on me. How much ‘suck’ can there be? Every time I got close to suicide myself, something stopped me. I talked to no-one about it. I had no support group. It can be done.

I work in the music ministry in my big gay church now among other things.

I do not apologize for being an optimist.

It got better for me.

And since my faith offers nothing to convert to or from and has no niceness requirement I’ll go right ahead and say it.

Hey Prya, your experience may be real to you. I claim the same. Fuck off.

As homophobic bigotry becomes less and less acceptable I can’t imagine who Perkins will turn his hate cannon on next.