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News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbySeptember 21st, 2010
Christine O’Donnell, the Delaware Republican Senatorial candidate whose Tea Party-backed campaign upset the GOP’s favorite in the primaries, has parroted the ex-gay line with regard to gay people as recently as 2006. In an interview with the Wilmington News Journal reporter Victor Greto, O’Donnel said:
“People are created in God’s image. Homosexuality is an identity adopted through societal factors. It’s an identity disorder.”
Calling homosexuality an “identity disorder” is a classic feature of the ex-gay lexicon. O’Donnell undoubtedly picked up that line from her own association with the ex-gay movement in the 1990’s, when she ran a ministry called “The Savior’s Alliance for Lifting the Truth” (SALT). The ex-gay spokesperson for SALT, Wade Richards was one of the “success stories” to come out of the Memphis-based ex-gay residential program Love In Action. It was also through O’Donnell that Richards also worked with Peter LaBarbera for a while. (Finding out that LaBarbera’s office was filled with porn and leather bondage gear, ostensibly for “research”, shook him up quite a bit.) Richards finally came to understand that the ex-gay myth was a dead end. He came out in 2000:
“What helped me really come to grips was that [O’Donnell’s] sister is an open lesbian and was living in L.A. and was in a long-term relationship and was working with a youth organization,” he says. “By hanging out with her, I saw, wow, she has a pretty normal life.” Being gay, he started to realize, needn’t condemn him to a life of seedy anonymous hookups, drug abuse, and nihilism.
After he came out, he never heard from O’Donnell again:
After that, he says, O’Donnell “totally turned her back on me. I never heard from her ever again. That’s been my experience with the Christian community in general. The minute I was struggling and saying, ‘Hey, listen, I don’t know really where I am with this,’ that’s when everyone really turned their back on me.”
This appears to be a common experience among ex-gay survivors, especially those who had served as spokespersons for the movement. Once they even begin to express doubts, they are completely disowned.
Meanwhile, O’Donnell’s vilification of gay people would continue. In 1997, O’Donnell said that the government was spending too much money on AIDS, calling homosexuality “a lifestyle which brings about this disease.” In 2000, she told Fox’s Hannity & Colmes that gays get away with too much: “They’re getting away with nudity! They’re getting away with lasciviousness! They’re getting away with perversion! …They’re getting away with blasphemy!” And in this year’s primary campaign, she engaged in a bit of gay-bating against her Republican opponent, Mike Castle. She hired a firm that released an ad that accused Castle of cheating on his wife with a man, a charge that carried no evidence whatsoever. She also accused Castle of “un-manly tactics” and told him to “put his man-pants on.” I predict it won’t be long before we start hearing about pedophilia and bestiality as the campaign wears on.
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Matt
September 21st, 2010
She’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Soren456
September 21st, 2010
I’ve often thought that one reason straight men can be so anti-gay is because we “get away with” so much that they (as males) would do if only they could. They are jealous.
beachewtoy75
September 21st, 2010
So where did Ms. O’Donnell get her degree in Psychology?
Gays get away with nudity? Apparently Ms. O’Donnell has never heard of Bourbon Street or Girls Gone Wild.
Timothy Kincaid
September 21st, 2010
FOX Poll this morning… she’s 15 points behind. And this to a guy who once joking referred to himself as a “bearded Marxist”.
Coons would have lost to Castle by double digits. O’Donnell is the jackpot, the lucky strike, the windfall, the unexpected Christmas gift that Coons could never have dared let himself hope for.
Ted
September 21st, 2010
I’m so depressed with all of this right now. Nothing good is going to happene for us gays. Even if we get our wish and the tea-bagger candidates lose to the dems, nothing good will come of it. Our interests will continue to be in the fridge, far away from the backburner.
Maurice Lacunza
September 21st, 2010
Identity Disorder…Masturbation; who needs me in the picture? Witchcraft…blood on the satanic alter…what next? I know, i left some things out.
Here is her campaign email address to let her know what you think.
info@christine2010.com
Lindoro Almaviva
September 21st, 2010
And this is the woman whose lesbian sister defends and campaigns for? Is anyone making sure that she is reading these?
Rob San Diego
September 21st, 2010
So she has a lesbian sister, too bad she is not fighting her sisters hateful words for us.
Richard Rush
September 22nd, 2010
Apparently, my comment from Tuesday afternoon was deemed to be too risque for delicate BTB readers. ;-)
John
September 22nd, 2010
:…They’re getting away with blasphemy!â€
This seems the real source of O’Donnell’s position. The rest of it is simply the usual far right garbage.
customartist
September 22nd, 2010
THANK YOU TEA PARTY ! ! !
and Beachy,
My thoughts exactly. Straight vulgarity goes unaddressed, but let the gays put on a thong and All Hell breaks loose.
darkmoonman
September 22nd, 2010
Ms. O’Donnell suffers from the inability to differentiate myth (religion) from fact.
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