Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyOctober 28th, 2009
Brian Camenker of MassResistance, one of only eleven anti-gay hate groups identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center, held a rally and press conference in the Hall of Flags at the Maine State House in Augusta. He will be joined by two other anti-gay extremists, Peter (“Porno Pete“) LaBarbera and Paul Madore of the Maine Grassroots Coalition.
According to the group’s press release, “Speakers at the press conference will expose the hidden aspects of the radical homosexual agenda, and will reveal how Maine is being manipulated into voting No on 1.”
Brian Camenker certainly has a knack for making the news. Last October, he an an accomplice, Michael Olivio, were chased by Andover, Mass., police who were responding to 911 calls from parents who were concerned about two men taking pictures at a middle school. For some reason, Olivio thought it would be smart to begin stripping his clothes while running through neighbors’ backyards during the chase:
We don’t know what his intention and purpose was around the school and the kids,” said police Lt. James Hashem.
But Michael Olivio’s employer has come forward to back up his story. Olivio, 48, works for the anti-gay rights group MassResistance.org. Brian Camenker, head of the group, said Olivio mistakenly went to West Middle School Tuesday to snap pictures instead of the high school.
Camenker said Olivio was to get pictures of the high school because the state Commission on Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual and Transgendered Youth held a meeting there Monday night.
“I figured I would do a write-up for the Web site and I wanted a picture of the high school,” Camenker said.
All three extremists have plenty of buffoonery in their history. Peter LaBarbera is particularly responsible for publishing among the most vile anti-gay tracts in the entire movement. He has long defended the discredited research of Paul Cameron, who has advocated the quarantining and medical extermination of gay people; he has deep connections with Holocauset revisionist Scott Lively, who insists that Nazism was, at its core, a homosexual movement; and he has openly defended White Supremacists when they assault LGBT people.
This press conference comes squarely on the heals of Stand for Marriage Maine’s attempt to project a softer and kinder image. Jeff Connely Jesse Connolly, Campaign manager for Protect Maine Equality issued a press release denouncing the true face of the anti-gay crowd:
This is not the new face of the Yes campaign, it’s been there all along. They can swap out their TV ads from attacks that have been called baseless by the Maine Attorney General and Maine newspapers across the state, to a gentler, softer approach, but the result is the same. They don’t believe in treating all Maine families equally and these national and local spokespeople represent some of the most vitriolic, anti-gay voices in the country.
“They can’t have it both ways — to pretend to back civil rights, yet stand behind a group like Mass Resistance which is one of only 11 designated anti-gay hate groups listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center. And they can’t stand behind Peter LaBarbera who has attacked Ben & Jerry’s, supported rescinding women’s right to vote and believes we should return to the Old Testament where gay people were stoned. And they can’t stand behind Paul Madore and the Maine Grassroots Coalition which is behind some of the most anti-gay hate speech over the last 20 years.
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Alex
October 28th, 2009
I thought that was an excellent response from Protect Maine Equality.
SharonB
October 28th, 2009
Petey and the Pervs had about 9 supporters at their rally, according to PHB. There were more reporters. And more who opposed them!
BWAH! Loozerz.
Regan DuCasse
October 28th, 2009
La Barbera complains that their activity and organizations are compared to the most historically anti civil/human rights campaigns in the past. He cites Joe Solomese and essentially tries to paint HRC and NGLTF as anti Christian.
The hypocrisy seems to know no limits with massresistance or AFTAH.
Their complaint about how much and where any equality groups get their money is laughable.
As is their persecution complex and constant and consistency in words like ‘homosexual activists’ and ‘radical/militant homosexuals’.
I have asked members of the opposition, over and over again: how can things that heterosexuals are applauded and considered heroic for doing, are suddenly threatening and inconsistent with moral values and standards when gay people do it?
Because gay people don’t ask permission? Because gay people outclass straight people for doing it because there are no legal tethers? Because gay people, in being open, give moral heft to honesty and truth that people like Barbera would rather hide?
What is so f*cking radical about the selflessness and courage required to commit to parenting, a significant other and risking life and limb voluntarily in service of one’s country in uniform?
It’s radical to the likes of Brian Camenker because they have a firm belief in supremacist values. Which WOULD put them in the realm of Nazis and the Klan and therefore on the wrong side of history.
If one does look at any groups formed specifically to eliminate the human and civil rights of another, particularly a minority, this is precisely what hate enabled groups do.
LaB and Camenker cannot point AT ALL to any of THEIR rights OR compromise to ANYTHING they are doing that gay people would have the power to destroy or even render unstable.
Except their ability to maintain systemic discrimination.
Here they are, in public as always, consistently complaining and denegrating gay people by calling them perverts, supporters of pedophilia and whose agenda is destructive.
Yet, none of the security officers or any other law enforcer has showed these men they face even so much as censorship for what they say and do.
Even the PHELPS’s haven’t been arrested for what they SAY, but trespassing, which has nothing to do with gay people, but local civic laws.
I suppose the less support LaB gets for HIS agenda, the more he’ll complain the reason why is gay people gaining on him, and not the fact that HIS agenda is nastier, stupid and has no profit in it for anyone but himself.
What’s even funnier is that a person with a brain should wonder why even with all their hard earned dollars being donated to LaB and Camenker: they keep saying the opposition has more and more power and a stronger and stronger agenda?
It’s like they are asking for more money to fight a cause that’s consistently AMORPHOUS and with little real substance to back up their complaints.
So what if Joe Solomese compared them to Nazis?
Guess they can’t let THAT roll off their backs without money, right?
When the whole of gay people are compared to murderers, pedophiles, thieves and the mentally ill, we can say that Lt. Dan Choi and many other competent gay soldiers lost their careers, young boys like Jaheem Herrera, Carl Walker Hoover or Lawrence King lost their lives.
What has LaB lost, street cred and monetary support?
He and Camenker are SUCH candy a**es, all of those courageous people of faith who know and embrace the human progress that being gay and hetero allied together represents, leave these two cowards (and anyone who counts on their rhetoric) in the dust.
Regan DuCasse
October 28th, 2009
What ‘hidden’ aspects? I’d really like to know what’s so hidden?
What haven’t HRC or any other supportive group NOT put out in the open for all to know?
What exactly can LaB point to that’s SO RADICAL?
Saying that something is hidden, denotes conspiratorial and sinister.
I’d like to know also, what EXACTLY have the results been of marriage equality in say, Massachusetts, where Camenker is from, that directly involves a trend in destroying marriage or families?
And I DO mean DIRECTLY.
I don’t want to hear about what happened in the Netherlands or Sweden, but what’s happened in MA.
Or even Canada, a country that shares a border and similar culture and language to our own.
Claims are not evidence. How has the scary agenda of the gay people become manifest beyond anecdotes and how married gay couples are actually causing what you claim.
I wonder how many people who have donated to his cause have gone through a divorce, custody problems or been denied adopting a child out of foster care because of the radical gay agenda?
LaB and Camenker don’t ask gay people anything, nor are in direct talks with anyone gay. Nor expect to be questioned by those they say they are defending.
I know what questions I’d be asking: hey Brian and Pete, now that you have our attention, how does saying all this against gay people save anything?
From where I’m sitting, divorce, child abandonment and domestic violence are very tangible and destructive to whole families.
So…how can gay people getting married or NOT, serve the purpose of defending people in that situation?
And why should YOU be getting paid if there is no difference in that outcome?
If NOM paid over a million dollars to KEEP gay people from getting married, shouldn’t the Catholics and Mormons put that money towards families and children in crisis, rather than against gay headed families that ARE NOT?
I did try to ask Brian Brown AND Pete that question.
They pretty much pretended like I didn’t ask it. Or insulted them if I did.
Nothing that answers that more than a non answer!
John
October 28th, 2009
I guess there were no leather events for Mr. L. to attend…
hb
October 29th, 2009
It’s Jesse Connolly, not Jeff Connely.
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