Box Turtle Bulletin

LaBarbera Award: Pat Robertson

Jim Burroway

January 13th, 2010

Pat Robertson richly deserves the LaBarbera Award for this one:

“Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French … and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.’ True story. So the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’”

“Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after another,” Robertson said, referring to the country’s poverty.

Robertson was speaking on the Christian Broadcast Network during a drive by the network, which he founded, to raise money for disaster relief.

Usually, when we award someone with the LaBarbera Award, we post commentary explaining why the winner merits the honor. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then here’s a far more eloquent essay than I could ever hope to write:

LaBarbera Award: Cliff Kincaid

Timothy Kincaid

January 5th, 2010

Cliff Kincaid is not, to my knowledge, a relative. But he is the editor of Accuracy in Media, a watchdog group that “critiques botched and bungled news stories and sets the record straight on important issues that have received slanted coverage.” What that means is that anything that isn’t presented from the perspective of an ultra-conservative worldview is denounced and “corrected”.

Cliff is not one to mince words. He is bold, he is strong, and at times so extremist that he makes good comedy.

Take, for example, this “un-slanted” description of the Stonewall Riots.

What they did was attack the police when officers conducted a lawful raid.

The police raided the bar because it was operated by the Mafia and illegally serving alcohol. It was a “Mafia-run, Christopher St. bar,” noted the New York Daily News. This information is easily ascertained through a basic Google search.

But Obama and his homosexual backers in and out of the media want to perpetuate the myth that Stonewall is a symbol of an unprovoked police attack on homosexuals, not a symbol of a sleazy lifestyle.

Hmmm. No slant there.

Or consider the bias he observed in the 2004 media coverage over the failed attempt to pass a federal amendment to the US Constitution to bar gay couples from obtaining equal protection under the law:

A supporter of the proposal says, “A two-thirds vote is a difficult margin to achieve in the current Senate on anything even remotely controversial.” But if and when it goes down to defeat, the outcome should be attributed at least in part to a vicious and nasty “outing” campaign against closeted gays in the House and Senate, including members and staffers.

The Washington Post ran a matter-of-fact story about this campaign, never once using the terms “bribery” or “blackmail.”

As the LaBarbera Award is given for the most outrageous, offensive, malevelent, crazy or excessive statement or claim, Cliff’s comedic rants should have long since earned him recognition. Bizarre statements about how gay Republicans (included elected officials) might be “a Democratic Party dirty trick” or that George W. Bush was a pseudo-socialist.

But it is not the wacky or the laughable that has earned Cliff Kincaid our attention. Rather it is a claim that is shocking in both its irrationality and in its callousness.

Cliff has been for months now waging a mostly-ineffective war of smear, accusation, and insinuation on Kevin Jennings, the gay Department of Education official currently being targeted by the right wing. Cliff has been stating the litany of accusations (most proven false) and ranting and wailing when main stream media doesn’t run with his conspiracy theories or claims of guilt by association by association.

But now he has crossed the pale.

Today in an article titled, NAMBLA-gate: The Strange Case of Kevin Jennings, Part One, Cliff concocts a reason why he thinks that no one is giving any attention to his efforts to connect Kevin Jennings to NAMBLA by means of mention of admiration for Harry Hay: too much attention is given to the Anti-Homosexuality bill in Uganda.

But the controversy over Jennings, which had been growing since his appointment in May, has been skillfully deflected by some journalists and commentators who have been attacking the government of Uganda for considering a law that would toughen laws against homosexual behavior that threatens public health and children. “Uganda wants to execute people for being gay,” lesbian commentator Rachel Maddow asserted on her MSNBC program on December 2. She called it the “kill-the-gays bill” and demanded that Christians in the U.S. denounce it.

Jumping on the story, the New York Times has claimed the bill would “impose a death sentence for homosexual behavior.”

These claims are flat-out disinformation.

Dr. Scott Lively, who visited Uganda in March of 2009 to encourage efforts to protect traditional family values, says the proposed death penalty in the bill, just one of many provisions, is for “aggravated homosexuality,” which is actually pederasty, pedophilia, homosexual parent/child incest, homosexual abuse of a disabled ward, and knowingly spreading AIDS. Dr. Lively is the author of The Pink Swastika and the president of Abiding Truth Ministries.

You’d think that someone interested in correcting slant and bias would bother to read the bill. Either Cliff Kincaid couldn’t be bothered or he has no regard for accuracy. Yes the death penalty is but one provision but it targets more than he claims. It also sends a “repeat offender”, so broadly defined as to include anyone who has had a relationship with more than one person or who had sex with the same person more than once, to death by hanging.

So yes, the provisions included in this bill would be a death sentence for virtually every gay man or woman were this the law in the Western World.

But not content to broadcast flat lies about the Ugandan bill, Cliff Kincaid makes an arrogant assertion that is staggering in its presumptions and callous disregard for life.

It would appear that the purpose of the orchestrated controversy over the proposed law in Uganda is to divert attention from the real scandal involving Obama Education Department official Kevin Jennings and his praise for the founder of the modern gay rights movement, Harry Hay, a supporter of adult-child sex.

No. Our efforts to stop gay men and women from being slaughtered in Uganda are not in response to Cliff Kincaid’s attacks on Kevin Jennings. Indeed, Box Turtle Bulletin has been following the Uganda situation since before Jennings was appointed or his slur campaign began.

The Jennings stories have no legs because they a weakly constructed weapons in a Culture War and the public, saturated by radical extremism, sees through them. The Uganda story, on the other hand, is a reporting of true evil. And unlike Cliff Kincaid, decent people are less concerned about contrived baseless controversies than they are about an attempt to scapegoat a subset of the population and threaten them with death.

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.

LaBarbera Award: Dan Riehl

Jim Burroway

September 28th, 2009

Bill Sparkman’s decomposing naked body was found hanging from a tree in eastern rural Kentucky with the word “Fed” scrawled on his body. He’s a part-time census worker, leading many to believe he fell victim to some of the more virulent anti-government rhetoric emanating from the extreme right-wing. (Rhetoric which, I might note, coming from people who would be screaming “treason!” if others had said it just a year ago. What a difference an election makes — but I digress.) I grew up in Appalachia, and can say that there are many other possible reasons for Bill’s murder. This is a part of the country where people are extremely suspicious at outsiders poking around, especially in places with very few jobs and pot is a lucrative cash crop. A friend of his, a retired state trooper, warned Sparkman to “be careful.”

Right-wing extremist Dan Riehl has another theory about what’s happened, but he’s not about to even contemplate blaming the murderers. He goes after the dead man himself, and accuses him (okay, technically he’s ‘”simply speculating”) of being a child molester — and a gay one at that. And what is his evidence for this accusation?

Nothing but thin air and a wild imagination. Both of which make up the entire contents of his frontal lobe:

The executive functions of the frontal lobes involve the ability to recognize future consequences resulting from current actions, to choose between good and bad actions (or better and best), override and suppress unacceptable social responses, and determine similarities and differences between things or events. Therefore, it is involved in higher mental functions

A man is dead — someone whom neither Riehl nor anyone else has ever heard of before — his family is grieving, and Riehl tries to score political points by calling him the worst of the worst kind of criminal. And then when others call out on his despicable, he celebrates his renewed burst of  notoriety while simultaneously shutting down comments on his original post.

When the truth comes out about this murder, don’t count on Riehl apologizing for this. Non-humans, sociopaths and people with thin air for frontal lobes are incapable of remorse.

LaBarbera Award: Laurie Higgins

Jim Burroway

August 25th, 2009

The Nazis, of course, were notorious for having murdered an estimated six million Jews, along with another six million undesirable Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Hungarians — and let’s not forget homosexuals — for good measure. We all know that; that’s why you can say “Nazi” or “Hitler” without having to describe the abject evil they represent. And Laurie Higgins, of the Illinois Family Institute, thinks that Hitler’s atrocities are on par with homosexuality.

In an article she penned last July, Higgins says the “church should fight homosexuality like it did Nazism,” a confusing title given that she goes on to lament the church’s failure to fight Nazism as a parallel to today’s affirming churches:

What is alarming about the account of the German Evangelical Church’s reprehensible failure is its similarity to the ongoing disheartening story of the contemporary American church’s failure to respond appropriately to the spread of radical, heretical, destructive views of homosexuality. Don’t we today see church leaders self-censoring out of fear of losing their positions or their church members? Don’t we see churches criticizing those who boldly confront the efforts of homosexual activists to propagandize children and undermine the church’s teaching on homosexuality? Aren’t the calls of the capitulating German Christians for “a more reasonable tone” and a commitment to “honor different views” exactly like the calls of today’s church to be tolerant and honor “diversity”? Don’t pastors justify their silence by claiming they fear losing their tax-exempt status (i.e. government assistance)? Don’t they rationalize inaction by claiming that speaking out will prevent them from saving souls?

…I’ve asked this question before and I will ask it again: How depraved does the behavior have to be and how young the victims before the church, starting with those who have freely chosen to assume the mantle of pastor or priest, will both feel and express outrage at the indecent, cruel, and evil practice of using public money to affirm body and soul-destroying ideas to children?

Higgins asks, “where is the outrage?” Well I have some outrage for her. Virtually every question she asks is a strawman. First, is it even possible for Higgins to portray LGBT people less humanely than this? Nowhere is there even a hint that gay people are people, let alone fellow citizens, neighbors, parents, children, families, co-workers, care-givers, soup kitchen volunteers, or anything else remotely human. Instead, she equates her fellow citizens with the vile racism behind slavery and the horrific anti-Semitism of the Holocaust. Is that not, too, an outrage?

And further, how can she overlook massive numbers of evangelical, Catholic and Mormon churches which have actively fought to demonize LGBT people at every turn, including blaming gays for all sorts of natural disasters, economic crises and other evils in the world. They’ve accused LGBT people of conspiring to molest your children, abolish Christianity, and generally destroy civilization. They’ve collectively spent millions — probably even billions when it is all counted — to permanently render LGBT people as second-class citizens. I’m not one to draw parallels, but since she brought it up, I can’t help but notice that second-class citizenry was a tactic employed by the Nazis against a reviled minority back then.

Some Christians who think that being gay is a sin will say, in moments of pious reflection, that homosexuality is no worse a sin than any of the other sins and, heck, we’re all sinners. But Higgins is not that kind of Christian. She thinks being gay is a much worse kind of sin, a special Hitler-and-Nazi-Germany kind of sin. Higgins needs to bone up on her history and closely observe the consequences of labeling a hated minority with that kind of evil. And accept responsibility for her part in it.

LaBarbera Award: Steven L. Anderson

Jim Burroway

August 21st, 2009

It’s been a while since we’ve given one of these awards out. Maybe I’ve become so jaded that nothing much shocks me anymore. But then something like this comes around and all I can do is shake my head. The latest LaBarbera Award winner comes from just up the road from where I live. Meet pastor Steven L. Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist church in Tempe, AZ:

You want to know who the biggest hypocrite in the world is? The biggest hypocrite in the world is the person who believes in the death penalty for murderers and not for homosexuals. Hypocrite. The same God who instituted the death penalty for murderers is the same God who instituted the death penalty for rapists and for homosexuals – sodomites, queers! That’s what it was instituted for, okay? That’s God, he hasn’t changed. Oh, God doesn’t feel that way in the New Testament … God never “felt” anything about it, he commanded it and said they should be taken out and killed.

And why should all of these sodomites and queers be killed? Because they’re recruiting:

How are they multiplying? Do you not see that they’re multiplying? Are you that blind? Have you noticed that there’s more than there were last year and the year before, and the year before that? How are they multiplying? They’re reproducing right? No, here’s a biology lesson: they’re not reproducers, they’re recruiters! And you know who they’re after? Your children… They’re being molested by the sodomites. I can tell you so many stories about people that I know being molested and recruited by the sodomites.

They recruit through rape. They recruit through molestation. They recruit through violation. They are infecting our society. They are spreading their disease. It’s not a physical disease, it’s a sin disease , it’s a wicked, filthy sin disease and it’s spreading on a rampage. Can’t you see that it’s spreading on a rampage? I mean, can you not see that? Can you not see that it’s just exploding in growth? Why? Because each sodomite recruits far more than one other sodomite because his whole life is about recruiting other sodomites, his whole life is about violating and hurting people and molesting ‘em.

So how many sodomites is one sodomite going to produce? A lot, and that’s why it’s just exploding. The only way to stop it, you say “how do we stop it?” … You want to know why sodomites are recruiting? Because they have no natural predators.

Jeremy Hooper found the audio, and Right Wing Watch has a transcript. There are more bon mots from this guy at Pam’s House Blend.

LaBarbera Award: Rep. Virginia Foxx

Jim Burroway

April 29th, 2009

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) is our latest winner of the LaBarbera Award for her explanation of why she opposed the The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, otherwise known as the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act. That bill passed the House this afternoon.

During the debate leading up to the vote, Rep. Foxx lambasted the bill and the young man for whom the proposed legislation is named. While Matthew’s mother, Judy Shepard watched the debate from the House gallery, Foxx called Matthew’s hate crime murder a “hoax”:

The hate crimes bill that’s called the Matthew Shepard Bill is named after a very unfortunate incident that happened where a young man was killed, but we know that that young man was killed in the commitment of a robbery. It wasn’t because he was gay. This — the bill was named for him, hate crimes bill was named for him, but it’s really a hoax that that continues to be used as an excuse for passing these bills,” Foxx said from the floor of the House of Representatives.

A hoax? Really? That’s not what Laramie investigators found:

…[D]etectives dismissed the idea that the murder was the mere result of a robbery gone bad.

“Far from that!” scoffed Sgt. Rob DeBree, the chief investigator in the case. “They knew damn well he was gay … It started out as a robbery and burglary, and I sincerely believe the other activity was because he was gay.”

…[Convicted killer Russell] Henderson provided a detailed account of that plan. The killers identified Shepard as a lonely homosexual, an easy mark, and retreated to the bathroom to hatch their plot. Henderson made the first advance by whispering a come-on in Shepard’s ear, and “McKinney tried to feminize his voice to continue the lure,” DeBree said.

Laramie’s detectives and prosecutors had no doubts whatsoever that Matthew Shepard’s murder was a hate crime, and that he was specifically targeted because he was gay. The only hoax here is the reprehensible comment by Rep. Foxx. Making those comments in front of Matthew’s mother is beyond all measures of human decency. Which is exactly the sort of behavior we expect from a LaBarbera Award winner.

LaBarbera Award: Four Guys In Minnesota

Jim Burroway

March 18th, 2009

Our latest LaBarbera Award goes to a collective effort in Minnesota consisting of four fundamentalist leaders with the Minnesota Family Council. They held a press conference to explain what would happen if Minnesota doesn’t pass a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships:

“If everyone is a gay, this world will cease to exist in 10 years,” said Ikram ul-Huq, the imam and religious director of the Muslim Community Center of Bloomington.

“Homosexual unions are forbidden and cannot be licensed with the term marriage,” said Rabbi Moshe Feller, Shliach of the Rebbe to the Upper Midwest, a Chabad-Lubavitch sect of Hasidic Judaism.

“We see this as a pivotal issue to life, not just for our nation but the life we have known for 3,000 years,” said Tom Parrish, administrative pastor of Hope Lutheran Church. Parrish represents Hope Lutheran Church, whose senior pastor, Tom Brock, raised some eyebrows in 2003 when he insisted the 9/11 attacks were God’s wake-up call.

“That’s a lifestyle that God says is sinful,” Brock said of homosexuality in 2003. “Something happened to this nation in the ’60s,” he continued. “It’s just become more and more godless. I think God is going to judge us. I think 9/11 might be a wake-up call from God, saying America needs to repent.”

Another Christian pastor said life itself is at stake if same-sex marriage isn’t banned permanently. “This is not a political issue, or an issue of choice or rights. It is an issue of life,” said Andre Dukes, pastor of Shiloh Temple Ministries in Minneapolis.

Four guys from Minnesota, with a fifth from 2003 thrown in as a bonus.  My obvious favorite is Imam Cease-To-Exist. The others are pretty light weight in comparison, although Rev. Wake-Up-Call from 2003 is pretty good. That’s what you would call and oldie but goodie.

Maybe we should help them out. You can add your shocking predictions of what will happen in the comments. Here’s mine: Same-sex marriage will cause a run on fine china, leaving straight couples to pick from among the uglier, less desirable patterns.

LaBarbera Award: Igor Panarin

Jim Burroway

March 4th, 2009

A Russian “scholar” has some remarkable predictions for the U.S. in the coming years. President Barack Obama will order martial law, the U.S. will split into six rump-states by 2011, and Russia and China will emerge as the new superpowers of a new world order. He’s been predicting the U.S.’s demise for more than a decade, but he’s pretty sure he has it nailed this time. Why?:

Paranin argued that Americans are in moral decline, saying their great psychological stress is evident from school shootings, the size of the prison population and the number of gay men.

Paranin isn’t just some ordinary loon. He’s a former spokesman for Russia’s Federal Space Agency and reputedly a former KGB analyst. He is currently the dean at the Foreign Ministry’s school for future diplomats, and he makes regular appearances on Russia’s state, err, “guided” TV channels.

Panarin also thinks that Alaska is destined to revert back to Russian control. If that happens, Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin character will definitely see Russia from her front porch.

LaBarbera Award: Mat Staver

Jim Burroway

February 27th, 2009

Liberty Counsel chairman Mat Staver spoke before the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) where he charged that allowing same-sex marriage would lead to an epidemic of criminality:

Same-sex marriage sets forth a fatherless policy. It will deprive children of ever having the opportunity of being raised in an environment where mom and dad are present. You don’t have to read thousands of sociological research studies to know that marriage matters and moms and dads and genders do matter to the well-being of children. You can go to any violent jail or crime area within the jail or a prison, and go to the men’s section of the prison or the jail and ask where the violent offenders are housed. And when you go there, ask them one question. And the one question is this: what was your relationship with your father? Universally, the answer will come back “I had no father.” There is a correlation between fatherlessness and and why these young men are behind bars for committing violent crimes.

If that were true, then I guess we shouldn’t allow lesbians to marry. But men on the other hand, who would provide two fathers, would double-inoculate their children against criminality.

But of course, this is nonsense. Staver says “you don’t have to read thousands of sociological research studies,” but he should perhaps read a few of them rather than remain in willful ignorance. Because none of those studies comparing families comprising of two lesbian parents or two gay men as parents to families headed by two heterosexual parents have been able to discern any measurable differences in the general outcome of children — and most certainly not in the criminality of children.

In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics — who know a thing or two about children — conducted a wide ranging review of the vast professional research literature, and they concluded that:

A growing body of scientific literature demonstrates that children who grow up with 1 or 2 gay and/or lesbian parents fare as well in emotional, cognitive, social, and sexual functioning as do children whose parents are heterosexual. Children’s optimal development seems to be influenced more by the nature of the relationships and interactions within the family unit than by the particular structural form it takes.

In other words, good parents, very broadly speaking, make for good children. Inadequate parental relationships or adverse family dynamics lead to a greater risk for negative outcomes. And that’s true regardless of the parental makeup.

So we award this latest LaBarbera Award to Mat Staver, because no one needs to remain mired in willful ignorance rather than acknowledging what the research actually says.

LaBarbera Award: CO State Sen. Dave Schultheis

Jim Burroway

February 25th, 2009

One might conclude that Colorado GOP state Senators have become jealous over all the attention being paid to the abundance of anti-gay shenanigans over in neighboring Utah, How else can we explain this two-fer in three days?

On Monday, we had some serious nuttiness from Colorado State Sen. Scott Renfroe (R-Greeley). Now just two days later, we have another state Senator from the Rocky Mountain state making an award-winning bid. Colorado State Sen. Dave Schultheis (R-Colorado Springs) thinks that having an HIV-positive baby is just punishment for its mother’s promiscuity:

“What I’m hoping is that, yes, that person may have AIDS, have it seriously as a baby and when they grow up, but the mother will begin to feel guilt as a result of that,” he said. “The family will see the negative consequences of that promiscuity and it may make a number of people over the coming years begin to realize that there are negative consequences and maybe they should adjust their behavior.”

That’s what Schultheis said to the Rocky Mountain News when asked if he really meant what he said when he spoke in opposition to a bill on Wednesday requiring all pregnant women to be tested for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. If the virus can be detected early enough in the pregnancy, the unborn baby can be treated to prevent the transfer of the virus.

Schultheis however believes that leaving babies untreated and increasing the risk twelve-fold that they will become infected is just what the doctor ordered. Speaking form the Senate floor, Schultheis said:

Colorado State Sen. Dave Schultheis (R-Colorado Springs)

“I’m trying to think through what the role of government is here. And I am not convinced that part of the role of government should be to protect individuals from the negative consequences of their actions.

Sexual promiscuity, we know, causes a lot of problems in our state, one of which, obviously, is the contraction of HIV. And we have other programs that deal with the negative consequences – we put up part of our high schools where we allow students maybe 13 years old who put their child in a small daycare center there.

We do things continually to remove the negative consequences that take place from poor behavior and unacceptable behavior, quite frankly, and I don’t think that’s the role of this body.

As a result of that I finally came to the conclusion I would have to be a no vote on this because this stems from sexual promiscuity for the most part, and I just can’t vote on this bill and I wanted to explain to this body why I was going to be a no vote on this.

Former Republican Gov. Bill Owens stated the obvious: “It’s extremely inconsistent for any person who is pro life to oppose this effort to potentially save the life of a child.” Every other Republican in the state Senate supported the bill. But despite this latest embarrassment, Senate minority leader Josh Penry said, “It’s not my job to go around and censor people and tell them what to say.”

But there’s something else that’s not being said. It’s the reaction on learning that someone is HIV-positive: that the person is without morals and somehow deserves his or her infection. A person can have sex only once and still contract AIDS. That sexual act can be consensual — it can be the result of having sex with her legally-wedded husband who is infected — or the “sex act” could nonconsensual, whether it’s rape or molestation.

This blame-the-victim mentality so emphatically articulated by Schultheis, the assumption which springs so automatically whenever the subject of HIV and AIDS is broached, that is the very same mentality which hinders efforts to curb the epidemic — all to the detriment of mothers and their unborn children. And other sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, spouses and partners, and all the others who become infected every year.

This latest controversey came on the heels of another embarrassing outburst by a fellow Colorado State Senator. On Monday, State Sen. Scott Renfroe (R-Greeley) spoke out against a gay-rights bill comparing homosexuality to murder. This was just after reading aloud a verse from Leviticus 20:13, which mandates the death penalty “if a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman.”

LaBarbera Award: CO State Sen. Scott Renfroe

Jim Burroway

February 24th, 2009

Okay, so maybe homosexuality isn’t like terrorism. Maybe it’s really more like murder:

Debating a gay-rights bill on the floor of the state Senate on Monday, a Republican lawmaker took the rhetoric to new heights by equating homosexuality as a sin with murder.

“I’m not saying this (homosexuality) is the only sin that’s out there,” said Sen. Scott Renfroe, R-Greeley. “We have murder. We have all sorts of sin. We have adultery. And we don’t make laws making those legal, and we would never think to make murder legal.”

The gay rights bill in question would allow state employees to provide health insurance for their same-sex partners. Last I checked, that move would possibly save lives, not kill them. The bill passed an initial vote in the state Senate.

Meanwhile, Utahns are relieved it’s somebody somewhere else for a change.

LaBarbera Award: Utah State Sen. Chris Buttars

Jim Burroway

February 18th, 2009

This is what LGBT people in Utah and in the Mormon church are up against. Utah State Senator Chris Buttars has joined Oklahoma State Rep. Sally Kern in citing gays as the greatest threat to America, in a comment he made in an upcoming documentary about Proposition 8. In late January,

Buttars sat for an interview with documentary maker and former ABC4 (KTVX, Salt Lake City) reporter Reed Cowan, in which he cited gays as possibly the greatest threat to America, and compares LGBT leaders to radical Muslims:

Homosexuality will always be a sexual perversion. And you say that around here now and everybody goes nuts. But I don’t care.”

…”They’re mean. They want to talk about being nice. They’re the meanest buggers I have ever seen.”

And just seconds later, Buttars draws a comparison between some gays and radical Muslims. “It’s just like the Muslims. Muslims are good people and their religion is anti-war. But it’s been taken over by the radical side.”

…Buttars: “What is the morals of a gay person? You can’t answer that because anything goes.”

And finally, this is how senator Buttars refers to the “radical gay movement.” “They’re probably the greatest threat to America going down I know of.”

Butters also claimed credit for killing every gay rights bill in the state legislature for the past 8 years.

Just one year ago, Buttars became the center of controversy when, during a debate over an education bill, he said, “This baby is black…this is a dark, ugly thing.” That drew condemnation from the NAACP. In this interview, he wasn’t much better, saying “the ACLU — bless their black hearts…”

Buttars was the director of the Utah Boys Ranch, (now West Ridge Academy), a Mormon reeducation camp located in West  Jordan, Utah, for fifteen years before retiring in 2005. Described by critics and former staff members as a Mormon Gulag, the LDS-affiliated camp has come under charges of sanctioning and promoting abuse among its inmates — err, clients:

Upon arrival, children are changed out of their regular clothes and into either a wool blanket – to be worn like a dress, with a rope leash to be tied around the waste – and t-shirt, or a t-shirt and Army pants. They are then delivered to what is called the “work crew” which, interestingly enough, is entirely missing from the Gulag’s marketing material and program description.

On Work Crew, despite the name, a lot of the time is spent standing completely still, facing a wall. Talking of any kind is certainly out of the question, as is moving – including scratching your nose – without permission. When children aren’t being forced to stand with their noses against a wall, they are often led around the facility – those donning Army surplus store wool blankets are led by their rope leashes – to do inane, demeaning types of labor. For example, gathering hundreds of rocks and boulders in a pile – just to move the pile to another location immediately after. Or digging ditches, and filling them back in, with plastic spoons.

Once a child is released from work crew – which could be weeks or months – they are given a pair of blue jeans to go with their green t-shirt. As a “green shirt” there is a considerable amount of time that is no longer spent facing the wall, but there is still no talking whatsoever. In order to earn the privilege of monitored verbal communication a child must carefully read the first book of the Mormon scriptures – First Nephi – and prove they have done so by “passing it off” to one of the Mormon missionaries on staff.

The child must also confess their sins to a Mormon Bishop in a “bishop’s interview” before changing into a “blue shirt” – which is as good as it gets in the Gulag. Green shirts are not allowed to sit on furniture or read anything besides Mormon canon.

Among specific allegations:

Chris Buttars ordered two large men to violently rip my clothes off, shave my head bald and made me walk around naked (my underwear was torn in struggle) with nothing but an army blanket for 2 weeks. My room mates whom I was locked in with were there for sexually molesting their younger brothers. I was 13 and I never recovered from my experiences there.

It was much worse than that but I can’t stand to describe it. I’d give anything to ask him ‘why?’

He allowed mentally ill children to grow up without any psychological treatment (mental illness in the boys ranch was defined as “the crazy act for attention”) He also turned a blind eye to prison justice against these kids in his boys ranch.

Update: We have the entire transcript of Buttars’ award-winning remarks here.

LaBarbera Award: Scott Lively

Jim Burroway

January 27th, 2009

It doesn’t get any more disturbed than this:

Repealing the ban on open homosexuals serving in the U.S. military would be a mistake of historic proportions.” warns a Massachusetts attorney and pastor who authored a book on homosexuality in Nazi Germany….

Certainly there would be a mass exodus of normal men from a homosexualized military,” said [Scott] Lively, “probably leading to the reinstatement of compulsory service. (Watch the anti-war Lefties become supporters of the draft when it’s used to remedy “homophobia”) And yes there would be severe morale problems for normal men forced to live as the objects of sexual interest of other men with whom they share close quarters. However, the much bigger, longer-term problem is the threat of a homosexual takeover of the military branches.

Most people don’t realize that male homosexuality does not always lean to the effeminate. Historically, male homosexuality was much more often associated with hyper-masculine warrior cults which were usually very brutal and very politically aggressive. The most recent example was in Germany. Hitler’s initial power base when he launched the Nazi Party was a private homosexual military force organized and trained by a notorious pederast named Gerhard Rossbach.

We usually use this award to mock and laugh at the crazier things that are said about us. But unlike LaBarbera, Scott Lively is no mere buffoon. His influence is actually quite dangerous.

Scott Lively is the author of The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party, in which he claims that “the Nazi Party was entirely controlled by militaristic male homosexuals throughout its short history.” In other words, it was gay people who brought World War II to Europe and killed twelve million people in the gas chambers. This book has been particularly popular among the Slavic immigrant communities of Sacramento, San Francisco and the Pacific Northwest, and it is gaining influence in Russia as well.

Scott Lively is one of the co-founders of the virulent hate group Watchmen On the Walls, along with Seattle pastor Ken Hutherson, Latvian pastor Alexey Ledyaev, and Sacramento anti-gay agitator Vlad Kusakin. Lively’s message has been received especially well among audiences in the former Soviet Union, many of whom are eager to blame gays for the horrible suffering many of their relatives faced during the Nazi invasions of their communities in World War II.

The Watchmen’s rhetoric has been particularly violent, tinged with the talk of war and the influences of evil forces. At a Watchmen conference in Latvia, Lively described gays as “followers of the Father of Lies.” He further described gays being sick, claiming that we don’t want to be gay but that the militant homosexual leadership has us somehow in their grip. When the Watchmen On the Walls held a rally in Novosibirsk, Scott Lively excused Satander Singh’s murder in Sacramento. Singh was a gay man from Fiji who was murdered by Russian immigrants. Lively went on to describe the broader confrontation between “civilization and homosexuals” as the design of the Devil to destroy civilizations:

There is a war that is going on in the world. There is a war that is waging across the entire face of the globe. It’s been waging in the United States for decades, and it’s been waging in Europe for decades. It’s a war between Christians and homosexuals. … Now, the homosexual movement has been winning this war in the United States, and it has been winning this war in Europe. And we’re looking at the future collapse of Western civilization.

Lively’s style fits in well with other Watchmen figures. Vlad Kusakin evoked Nazi imagery during a Watchmen meeting in Sacramento, saying that California’s anti-discrimination laws “opened furnaces which are even worse for our children” than those of Nazi Germany. Latvian Pastor Alexey Ledyaev lent his support to demonstrators who pelted Riga Gay Pride attendees with rotten food and feces. At the Watchmen conference in Latvia, Ledyaev prayed, “let a stone, without the assistance of a hand, come off the rock and hit this homosexual idol right on its legs!” Several members of the Latvian government are members of his New Generation evangelical church.

LaBarbera Award: Gary Cass

Jim Burroway

January 17th, 2009

We’ve talked about Gary Cass before. He’s the Christian Reconstructionist who has a computer keyboard he calls the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission. He’s put out another doozy of a press release, warning parents that — gasp! — President-elect Barack Obama’s Inauguration will be among the “most perverted in history”:

Barack Obama’s inauguration will have the dubious distinction of being the most perverted in our nation’s history. Obama is not being subtle about either. One of America’s most radical and destructive homosexual activists, “Bishop” Vickie Eugene Robinson of New Hampshire, in official inaugural activities will be offering the invocation at the Lincoln Memorial.

Oh dear, and the “perversion” doesn’t end there. There’s the parade:

To ensure no one misses the perversion, the Inaugural parade will include a homosexual marching band with their rainbow flags flying proud with millions of our nation’s children watching. This is the same band that proudly advertises that it will march in the homosexual Southern Decadence parade, known for its vulgarity and lewd acts in public.

This is where His Pornstachiness lets his fantasies get the better of him:

“In order to be consistent in using this kind of reasoning, Obama ought to have a stripper lead off the inaugural parade followed by the Hell’s Angel’s Motorcycle Drill Team followed by the Crips Precision Handgun Corp. and the Transvestite Fashion Police. Just because something exists in society does not mean it is good and is to be paraded in front of everyone, especially children,” said Dr. Cass.

LaBarbera Award: Firpo W. Carr

Jim Burroway

December 12th, 2008

Have you heard of him? It didn’t register with me. But if his name is familiar to you, it might be because he was once the spiritual adviser to Michael Jackson. He’s a columnist for the Los Angeles Sentinel, one of the oldest and most influential African-American newspapers in the Western United States.

He signs is name “Dr. Firpo W. Carr,” although I have no idea what kind of a doctor he is supposed to be. He’s certainly not a medical one. That should be evident with this column which appeared just yesterday:

Lesbian Legacy: There is discussion masquerading as debate as to whether or not lesbians get the virus that causes AIDS. Here’s what makes it a pseudo argument: prostitutes infected with HIV have in turn infected their johns through vaginal fluids, especially if menstrual blood is present. Now, if this same HIV-infected prostitute was to service a female client through vagina-to-vagina sex, and menstrual blood was present in the prostitute, bingo, the female client is exposed to and may well have been infected. Don’t let anyone tell you that lesbians cannot get HIV/AIDS from each other.

In my previous article published last week I listed some diseases associated with gay men. Well girls, it’s your turn this week. The following is a list of “lesbian” maladies and infections and the practices that spread them. Thrush: A disease where there is an overgrowth of yeast causing vaginal itching and soreness, often with a white discharge. It is contracted through lesbian sex, both vagina-to-vagina and oral sex. Bacterial Vaginosis (Gardnerella): This disease is characterized by an overgrowth of vaginal bacteria causing a smelly discharge, which lesbians often experience, some believe exclusively. Genital Warts: These are unsightly bumps or warts on the vulva, in the vagina, on the cervix or round the anus. They can be passed through lesbian sex, and by touching, rubbing or sharing “sex toys.” It is possible that non-genital warts on the hands of one female can be transferred to the vagina of another during fondling. HPV (Human papillomavirus) causes genital warts in both men and women.

Good lord, he goes on and on, listing all of these diseases which actually are quite common among heterosexual women. The medical literature is filled with examples.

And what about that “previous article last week”? Well in addition to his list of “diseases associated with gay men” (the vast majority of which are actually illnesses which were associated with AIDS before effective treatment became available in the mid 1990’s), he included this incredibly paranoid gem:

Domestic violence among gay men is particular heinous and cruel as compared to their heterosexual counterparts. Oh, and let’s not leave out lesbians. Law enforcement agencies are struggling with a new phenomenon. “Butch” lesbians who physically abuse “lipstick” lesbians can easily penetrate the defenses of women’s shelters where victims seek refuge since they, too, are women. The original purpose of the shelters was to provide safe haven for women abused by men.

Where does he get this stuff?

Jasmyne Cannick gave Carr the Negro Please Award (Notice: her web page has embedded sound, to the tune of “If I Only Had A Brain”):

I don’t know which is worse, racist white gays or Bible thumping homophobes who are intellectually challenged like Dr. Carr.

Dr. Carr, you are my official ‘Negro Please Award’ recipient of the week…and believe me, you earned it with this one.

We don’t have that award at BTB, but we do have the LaBarbera Award which is just as appropriate. And believe me, he earned that one as well.

[A very big hat tip with a sweeping bow: Pam Spaulding]

LaBarbera Award: Rabbi Nachum Shifren

Jim Burroway

December 10th, 2008

We’ve been predicting that somebody, somewhere would compare the peaceful, First Amendment-protected protests against the passage of California’s Proposition 8 to the Nazis and the Holocaust. Well, here it is:

We are dealing with the equivalent of a moral takeover of the country that has as its bedrock a belief in G-d and His promise for humanity. They don’t want civil rights! What they desire is quasi Gay/Lesbian hegemony, where a huge “bookburning,” reminiscent of the Nazis, will purge any remnants of the “Christian, White, mainstream America” that has given ALL AMERICANS the most profound scope of freedom, liberty, and justice that Mankind has yet to experience.

People have perhaps wondered: why the Mormons? Answer: they are a small, yet vocal Christian minority. They have been selected by the mobs as vulnerable, a group that might not have such massive support among America’s Christians.

We who are friends of the Mormons, their patriotism, their family values, will not falter in our continued support of these dear Americans. Let us recall the Christian minister Niemoller, whose admonition during those dark years of Nazi Germany moved us to our core:

“When they came for the gypsies, I said nothing, because I wasn’t a gypsy. When they came for the homosexuals, I said nothing, because I wasn’t a homosexual. When they came for the Jews, I said nothing, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I said nothing, because I wasn’t a Catholic……then they came for me, and there was no one left to defend me.”

That was penned by Rabbi Nachum Shifren in a piece he titled “We are all Mormons.” Jeremy Hooper was especially puzzled by Rabbi Shifren’s recognition in the last quoted paragraph that gays have, in fact, been persecuted:

But the really interesting thing for us? That Niemöller poem that Rabbi Shifren quotes did not, in its original form, even mention gays, yet here he has made a point of including homosexuals as one of the persecuted groups. Does he not see anything odd about that? Here he is going ballistic about the “immoral” gays and their “licentiousness,” yet he fully admits they have been (/still are) a persecuted minority? It just seems odd.

Very odd indeed. And it’s that strangeness which makes Rabbi Shifren a perfect candidate for the LaBarbera Award.

[Hat tip: Good As You]

LaBarbera Award: Seamus Hasson

Jim Burroway

December 10th, 2008

Yesterday we gave the LaBarbera Award to Pat Boone for comparing the peaceful protests against Prop 8 to Mumbai terrorists who killed 163 people in what is now being referred to as India’s 9/11. That was the day after the Becket Fund placed a full-page ad in the New York Times falsely characterizing these same peaceful protests — protected by the First Amendment’s peaceful assembly clause — as “mob violence.” Now we have a new LaBarbera Award winner in Seamus Hasson, the founder and chairman for the Becket Fund itself.

On yesterday’s “The Morning Show” on KPFA, host Aimee Allison spoke with Hasson about the New York Times ad, and asked him about the broad brush characterization of the movement as violent:

Aimee Allison: So, Rev. Russell was commenting, there may be a few individuals, but not a movement. Seamus Hasson, your response to that: if there are individuals, why are anti-Prop 8 movement folks being painted with that broad brush?

Seamus Hasson: Well, whether it’s an organized movement like Al Qaeda or whether it’s the Al Qaeda-like, um, inspired acts of terrorism elsewhere, people are right to be concerned about, um, radical Islamist violence –

First it was Mumbai terrorists, now we’re Al Qaeda-like. You know, the people who flew planes into buildings and killed more than three thousand people. That Holocaust analogy is just around the corner…

[Hat tip: GLAAD Blog]

LaBarbera Award: Pat Boone

Jim Burroway

December 9th, 2008

Pat Boone has definitely gone over the edge. In his latest outrage at WorldNetDaily, Boone tut-tuts the recent massacres at Mumbai, and draws a direct line of connection between that terrorist operation and demonstrations against Prop 8:

Thank God, it couldn’t happen here. Could it?

Look around. Watch your evening news. Read your newspaper.

Are you unaware of the raging demonstrations in our streets, in front of our churches and synagogues, even spilling into these places of worship, and many of these riots turning defamatory and violent? Have you not seen the angry distorted faces of the rioters, seen their derogatory and threatening placards and signs, heard their vows to overturn the democratically expressed views of voters, no matter what it costs, no matter what was expressed at the polls? Twice?

… Assuming you have become aware of all this, let me ask you: Have you not seen the awful similarity between what happened in Mumbai and what’s happening right now in our cities?

When terrorists launched their attack on Mumbai two weeks ago, they killed 163 people in a shocking carnage which is now being referred to as India’s 9/11. Contrast that to the demonstrations which have broken out all across American against the passage of Prop 8 — not riots, as Boone calls them, but demonstrations — which have all been remarkably peaceful. In fact, I challenge Boone to name a single riot on American soil since election day.

Boone isn’t the first to falsely characterize these peaceful protests as “violence” and “riots,” but he is the first well-known figure to claim that peaceful marchers are equivalent to militant Islamists with automatic weapons and grenades. Boone succeeds in raising the false “violence” charge to a whole new and disgusting level. All that’s missing now is a holocaust analogy. I’m sure we’ll see that before too long.

LaBarbera Award: Mike Huckabee

Jim Burroway

November 18th, 2008

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee is our latest LaBarbera Award winner for suggesting that gays haven’t been beaten enough to earn the right to marry.

Huckabee appeared on ABC’s “The View,” where he had this exchange with host Joy Behar about same-sex marriage:

HUCKABEE: It’s a different set of rights. People who are homosexuals should have every right in terms of their civil rights, to be employed, to do anything they want. But that’s not really the issue. I know you talked about it and I think you got into it a little bit early on. But when we’re talking about a redefinition of an institution, that’s different than individual civil rights.

BEHAR: Well, segregation was an institution, too, in a way. It was right there on the books.

HUCKABEE: But here is the difference. Bull Connor was hosing people down in the streets of Alabama. John Lewis got his skull cracked on the Selma bridge.

Huckabee appears to suggest that civil rights must meet some sort of minimum violence test. If so, then gays and lesbians certainly meet that test, all too sadly. In the most recent set of hate crime statistics released by the FBI, there were nine murders logged as hate crime incidents in 2007. Of those, five were attributed to sexual orientation, two to race, and two to ethnicity/national origin.

And that toll continues unabated this year with the murders of Lawrence King, Simmie Williams, Jr., Tony Randolph Hunter, and Angie Zapata. Just last Friday Moses “Teish” Cannon was shot and killed with a .22-caliber rifle.

It is beyond outrageous and disgusting for Huckabee to suggest that violence is a determining factor on whether any group deserves equal rights. Which is why he is now a two-time winner of the LaBarbera Award.