Peter LaBarbera

Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality appeared on VCY America’s Crosstalk yesterday to discuss the recent decision by the Boy Scouts to include openly gay members under the age of 18 and the upcoming vote on marriage equality legislation in the Illinois State House. Understandably, LaBarbera was quite despondent and even resigned to increasing gay rights victories, warning that “God is giving us over to our sin.”

LaBarbera: I’ll tell you, I fear for our country, I believe God is giving us over to our sin. It seems that way to me, I don’t have a red phone to the Lord but it just seems that America is on such a precipitous decline, you know God seems to be saying: ‘You want homosexuality? You want abortion? Here, go ahead and have it.’ We’re a free society. The culture war on this issue alone is frightening, how much more resources and money the pro-sin side—which would be the homosexual side, that’s a sin—how much more resources they bring than to the side of righteousness and in a free society the people who bring the most organization, resources, money and people win and that’s what’s happening.

During the program, host Jim Schneider read Michael Swift’s obviously satirical “Gay Manifesto,” the 1987 essay which facetiously talks about gay “private armies” that will “conquer the world” and defeat the “hetero swine,” as if it was a serious political treatise, lamenting that “we are seeing item by item virtually everything that he has laid out here to be fulfilled today.”

LaBarbera called Swift’s piece “demonic” and “shockingly evil,” while even he admitted that it “may have been a satirical essay.”

Schneider later claimed that “same-sex assaults that are taking place in the military are just drastically on the increase” since the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy was lifted.” As we have already pointed out, however, CNN has reported that the current sexual assault rate among active duty men has “remained unchanged” from 2010, the year before Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was repealed.

Schneider: That was a quarter century ago, I recall when we first read this back many years ago that people hooted and hollered, they said oh that’s just one wacky individual, but we are seeing item by item virtually everything that he has laid out here to be fulfilled today.

LaBarbera: It’s shocking. It’s shockingly evil, just the demonic price that essay is just stunning. Absolutely. This may have been a satirical essay but it’s shocking, it’s amazing how so much of that came true. I think about the characters on TV, how many people these days tell you every time you turn on the TV set there’s a favorable depiction of an openly homosexual character, it’s like the good guys are the homosexuals and the bad guys are heterosexuals. We see this again and again. Basically, homosexual power has grown exponentially in our culture and a lot of the things that essay talked about are actually happening.

Schneider: Here he talked about the army bunkhouses and just a week ago we saw about the increase in the sexual assaults occurring in the military, especially since the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy was lifted and same-sex assaults that are taking place in the military are just drastically on the increase. Certainly line by line the family unit, they say, is going to be annihilated.

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• Bryan Fischer continues to speculate that the military blocked the Southern Baptist Convention's website out of some sort of hostility toward Christians despite the fact that even the SBC says that was not the case.
• Peter LaBarbera is not happy with news that the LDS church supports a proposal to drop the ban on gay Boy Scouts: "Look, this is a church which is outside of Christendom. Mormons can change their core beliefs and call it a divine transformation. They did it with polygamy; they did it with racism – and now I'm afraid, I'm very afraid, that they're going to do it with homosexuality.”
• Finally, the AFA's Ed Vitagliano is also a little worked-up over the prospect that the Boy Scouts may soon allow gay scouts: "For the tolerance gurus there is a secular morality that is just as absolute as that preached by any Bible-thumper behind a pulpit. It is a pagan sexual ethic rooted in moral relativism with the taproot deeply embedded in Darwinian evolution. Its teachers have their own unbending laws cut into stone and pronounced from on high. Their prophets hurl jeremiads at the unrepentant, who are relegated to a this-worldly hell consisting of the drying up of corporate funding, the disdain and downright persecution of the civil state, banishment to the fringes on university campuses, and the sneering mockery of Hollywood. For these pioneers of the brave new world, people who practice sodomy are the saints and Christians are the sinners. And humanist stormtroopers have spent the last 60 years hunting down and driving out the infidels."

Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality spoke to “Coach” Dave Daubenmire last week, telling Daubenmire that he finds it “reassuring” that the gay community is impacted by STIs and violence as it confirms to him that “God believes [homosexuality] is an abomination.”

“If it really is a detestable behavior as God says, you’d expect it to be linked disproportionately to disease, we see lots of gay-on-gay violence, domestic violence,” LaBarbera said. “There’s no logic to the liberal left, they are all about doing whatever the homosexual movement wants, it is like spoiled children but nobody wants to say no them.”

Listen:

UPDATE: Peter LaBarbera has posted an “explanation” of his remarks on his website.

Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality appeared on The Janet Mefferd Show yesterday where he told Mefferd that gays and lesbians “hate God’s law and therefore they do hate God.” He lamented that people like themselves are put “in the category of hater” while “homosexual activists” show “real, objective hate.” “If you want to understand the homosexual movement,” LaBarbera added, “it’s a movement at war with nature, with God and with truth.”

I think ultimately that the deep philosophical answer is they hate God’s law and therefore they do hate God. I mean if you hate what God stands for, you hate God. I think the problem is that they define hatred ideologically, because you disagree with their belief system, they put you in the category of hater. As opposed to us, we can have somebody who disagrees with us but we don’t call them a hater, but then we do see objective hate which is like all the hate mail we receive from homosexual activists and all the terrible things they call us; that’s real, objective hate.

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They have the media, they have academia, they have Hollywood, but they lack the truth. They are really at war with the truth. If you want to understand the homosexual movement, it’s a movement at war with nature, with God and with truth.

He argued that the gay rights movement has succeeded by using “psychological manipulation” and the “manipulation of emotions,” which has consequently led to God’s judgment on America.

LaBarbera: You know think about how the agenda has moved forward. It’s all this sort of psychological manipulation: you know me, I’m openly gay, therefore you must be pro-gay. There’s no logic there, there’s no reason; it’s a lot of manipulation. We’ve seen it with so many people, you know Candace Gingrich, the Cheney’s. It’s certainly not the basis upon which to decide public policy and huge cultural shifts like this and yet that’s the tactic that they’ve used because they know it works, it’s sort of a manipulation of emotions.

Mefferd: It is. As we’re looking at this whole situation, the Supreme Court cases both today and tomorrow, from a Christian perspective, how do you think we ought to be praying? How have you been praying? How should we continue to petition the Lord over this issue?

LaBarbera: I guess I take a somewhat cynical view that we’re being judged as a nation. God is leaving us up to our own devices and what I’ve been praying is there would be that remnant of truth, the truth-tellers who no matter would not bow the knee to the idol of the secular left, whatever the issue is, and on homosexuality we know this is a tough issue. One way we know is because we see things going the right way on the life issue and yet even some pro-lifers are pro-homosexual. That tells me that there’s a lot of misunderstanding and misinformation out there. So what I’m praying is that we will have an army of truth-tellers who will never cave in.

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• Peter LaBarbera has launched "Pedo-File," a "project exposing [the] gay-pederasty connection"

In an interview with the American Family Association’s news affiliate Instant Analysis (formerly OneNewsNow), Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality condemned the large group of corporations that joined legal briefs asking the Supreme Court to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and Proposition 8.

LaBarbera blasted the corporations for “pushing homosexuality on the American public,” calling the amicus brief “a tool of repression against Christians and people of faith who simply want their right to not support homosexuality.” He claimed that if the Supreme Court rules against Prop 8, “that will be a sad day for American freedom” and “a disaster,” as deciding who should have the freedom to marry “should be left up to citizens.”

Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality acknowledges that corporations are at liberty to do what they want privately, such as adopting pro-homosexual policies.

“... But when you start pushing homosexuality on the American public using the government, that's another matter,” he offers. “Then it becomes a tool of repression against Christians and people of faith who simply want their right to not support homosexuality.”

According to the family advocate, the Prop. 8 case before the nation's high court is essentially the “Roe v. Wade” of the homosexual movement.

“If the court steps in and overrides the decision of the people of California not to support homosexual so-called marriage, that will be a sad day for American freedom,” he tells American Family News. “All across the nation citizens have spoken on this issue – [and] at the very least it should be left up to citizens.

“If the court imposes national homosexual marriage, that will be a disaster – and it will fuel the culture wars for decades to come.”

Of course, it is absurd to argue that a Supreme Court decision against DOMA or Prop 8 actively represses or takes away the rights of marriage equality opponents. But the Religious Right is often inconsistent in its arguments. Another AFA news item, however, explicitly rejects paying any attention to how the public feels, contradicting LaBarbera’s argument.

Sam Rohrer, a former Republican lawmaker in Pennsylvania and head of the Pennsylvania Pastors’ Network, tells the AFA that the public’s view on marriage equality doesn’t matter because judges should rule according to “moral law” established by God as “the base of the Constitution and the individual rights guaranteed by it are based on the Bible.”

The Christian Post reported on Monday that The Washington Post has published two polls that show "Americans are done with DOMA." But the Pennsylvania Pastors' Network (PPN) contends that the results are "likely skewed."

PPN president Sam Rohrer believes that polls are worth about the amount it cost to conduct them - particularly when they are financed by organizations that advocate for the destruction of marriage, including the Respect for Marriage Coalition.

"When they use polls to try to substantiate and/or to prove an acceptance of a position that has not been historically sound, I'm saying [that] is an inappropriate use of polls," Rohrer submits. "And any judge that looks to the poll as a determination of how they may or may not judge and rule on this case is to embrace moral relativism rather than moral law."

That is especially relevant now, as the U.S. Supreme Court is to hear arguments on the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act next month; the resulting ruling is expected near the end of June.

The Coalition's poll results show that 83 percent of Americans, "regardless of their personal opinion on the issue," believes same-sex "marriage" will be legal nationally "in the next five to ten years." But that can only happen if the federal Defense of Marriage Act is repealed by the Supreme Court or Congress.

And a national survey conducted on behalf of the Center for American Progress (CAP) and Gay & Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) reportedly reveals that 59 percent of registered voters "oppose" Section 3 of DOMA, which defines marriage as between one man and one woman and a spouse as someone of the opposite gender.

The PPN president asserts that the purpose of the recent polls is to influence public opinion and the courts.

"What the Pastors' Network is saying is that when making a decision, a moral decision where you're talking about an institution created by God, God doesn't need public opinion polls; so neither should a judge consider what polls may or may not be," Rohrer contends. "It's a moral decision, and moral decisions ought to be made based on what God says -- not what some poll may or may not say."

Part of the oath of office high court justices take is to support and defend the Constitution. And as Rohrer points out, the base of the Constitution and the individual rights guaranteed by it are based on the Bible -- not the popular view of the culture.

Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality is unsurprisingly outraged that the Boy Scouts of America may drop the national ban on gay membership, and yesterday appeared on The Janet Mefferd Show to call on the group to resist any shift in policies. He said that pressure on the BSA from gay rights advocates proves that they are “the most intolerant people on the planet ... maybe up there with the jihadists” and are on “the vanguard of restricting religious freedom.”

Mefferd: We are seeing this massive—as you said, this is becoming the issue, and we say this huge march in Paris a few weeks ago where you had over 1.5 million people marching against same-sex marriage in France of all places. In America, where are all the activists? Where are all the people on the right side of this issue? They exist, why are they being so quiet?

LaBarbera: I think a weird version of Christianity is creeping in, you know, ‘who are we to judge’ and that whole tolerance thing. Look, the most intolerant people on the planet are the gay activists, maybe up there with the jihadists. They are not tolerant and they are really seeking to redefine Christianity. If more pastors understood how homosexual activists want to redefine the word of God and redefine morality itself, maybe they would encourage people to get involved.

Mefferd: It would be nice, wouldn’t it? You could use some more company.

LaBarbera: Yeah because I think people don’t understand that this movement is in the vanguard of restricting religious freedom.

Elsewhere, while speaking to VCY America’s Jim Schneider on Crosstalk, LaBarbera warned that a change in policy in favor of “deviant sexuality” will lead to more incidents of sexual abuse as “so-called gay boys [begin] coming out of the closet in their Scout troops, telling other boys in the unit about their homosexuality or their bisexuality.”

Americans For Truth has called on the Scouts to release all their files, their so-called perversion files, of predatory cases. These should involve both men-on-boys and also these very sad cases where a Scout would molest another Scout, there’s that possibility too. We have to remember with this that if we have open homosexuality in the Scouts you’re talking about so-called gay boys coming out of the closet in their Scout troops, telling other boys in the unit about their homosexuality or their bisexuality. Do we really want that in the Scouts or should we just keep sexuality out of the Scouts? It doesn’t belong there, especially deviant sexuality, which is the homosexual activist movement.

LaBarbera compared the Boy Scouts to the military following the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, which he maintained “negated” their proclamations “about nobility and truth.” Later, he said the BSA was becoming “Obama’s Scouts” and accused Obama of “bringing down the morality of this country.”

Parents don’t want homosexuality, open homosexuality, promoted in their scout troop; they don’t want to send their son out camping with an open homosexual, that’s a bad role model. Homosexual practice is wrong. Our hearts go out to people who struggle with homosexuality, we want them to accept Christ, to leave that lifestyle as many people have, but proudly defending and celebrating homosexuality is wrong. So if you stand before God, the [Scout] oath says ‘the duty to God,’ our duty to God is to stand with righteousness, with God’s righteousness. If they end up embracing homosexuality they might as well throw that creed out the window. Just like our national military, you know our military is all full of lessons about nobility and truth and now they are promoting homosexuality in the military. They’ve negated their own proclamations by caving in to this sin movement.

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In a way this is sort of a version of Obama’s Scouts. You know Obama is setting the tone for this country and it seems like all the boundaries are going. Just recently Obama gave a video presentation at a national homosexual organization which advocates even beyond homosexuality, even sadomasochism, and he endorsed that conference, it’s called Creating Change, put on by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Obama is bringing down the morality of this country and I think the progressives are excited and the homosexual activists and every other sin-movement are excited and they want to press for change very aggressively and they’re winning.

The Religious Right continues to push back against the Boy Scouts of America’s decision to reconsider their sweeping ban on gay members, many resorting to unfounded claims that homosexuality is tied to child abuse.

Talk show host Janet Mefferd pointed to a major sex scandal and cover-up in the BSA as a reason to maintain the prohibition on gay membership, and then agreed with a caller who compared letting gays serve as troop leaders to “letting the fox watch the hen house.” 

Later, Mefferd attacked LGBT rights advocates for “trying to silence and trying to shame” supporters of the anti-gay policy and said that any shift in position will “decimate the Boy Scouts.”

WorldNetDaily’s David Kupelian wrote that “a little bit of America will die” if the Boy Scouts rescind their sweeping ban on gay members, and warned that the Scouts will lose the trust of the public and God. He also pointed to the Catholic Church as an example of how open homosexuality leads to sexual abuse, which is an odd choice seeing that the church, like the BSA, already has a prohibition gays in positions of authority.

Now the big question in all this, of course, is the following: With these sex-abuse cases within the Boy Scouting organization, just as those within the Catholic Church, are we dealing with actual “pedophiles” or with predatory homosexuals?

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America is in a time of great crisis on many fronts, and much that is good we are in danger of permanently losing. The Boy Scouts of America is one of the most important and loved and truly valuable organizations in American history. It is literally a sacred trust between one generation and the next. The Supreme Court is on their side. Public opinion is on their side. God is on their side.

Why on earth would they trade all this away by giving in to pressure from people who detest them and everything they stand for?

A little bit of America will die if the Boy Scouts organization gives in to the pressure and makes this decision. You might want to let them know how you feel. You can reach the Boy Scouts of America at 972-580-2000. Tell them how much you appreciate them – and tell them to stand strong.

Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality accused the Boy Scouts of “capitulating to immorality” and promoting “deviant sexuality among the boys.”

"If you take all that and you still come out strong, that's a victory," he says. "But if you allow all of that pressure to then change your values -- which is what they're doing here -- to accommodate homosexuality, then you've given in. You've let the bad buys win."

"It's very sad to see the Scouts cave on this," he continues. "If you capitulate to the homosexual lobby, you're capitulating to immorality; and you're not being morally straight as the Boy Scout creed says."

According to LaBarbera, parents do not want homosexual Scoutmasters going with their boys on campouts. "And you don't want homosexual Boy Scouts either because you don't want to have one homosexual Scout going around telling everybody about his homosexuality and how he's out and proud and everything. You don't want that influence of deviant sexuality among the boys itself."

"... Parents need to contact the Scouts and say Stick to the original policy ... Keep the Scouts morally straight."

Southern Baptist Convention vice president Sing Oldham claimed that the Boy Scouts are “spelling their own death knell.” SBC president Fred Luter warned that churches may withdraw their sponsorships of BSA troops:

"If that is what the leadership is doing, then I think it will be a sad day in the life of the Boy Scouts of America," Luter told Baptist Press. "This is a tradition that so many of us across the country grew up in. We were in Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts in elementary school, and this organization has always stood for biblical principles -- all the things that grounded our lives as a young kid growing up. To now see this organization that I thought stood on biblical principles about to give in to the politically correct thing is very disappointing."

Luter also said he believes the Boy Scouts will "lose a whole lot of our support," with Southern Baptist churches choosing instead not to sponsor a unit.

"A lot of them will just pull out," Luter said. "This is just something we don't believe in. It's unfortunate the Boy Scouts are making this decision."

Oldham even said that the SBC is ready with a replacement for the Boy Scouts, called the Royal Ambassadors:

"Churches of all faiths and denominations, including Southern Baptist churches, will be forced to reevaluate whether they can, in good conscience, continue to host Scout troops given that the Scouts appear poised to turn their backs on this clear biblical and moral issue," Oldham said. "If the Scouts adopt these changes, I anticipate the SBC Executive Committee will issue a statement at its February board meeting expressing its deep dismay at this decision of the Scouts. This move may result in a boost for the convention's Royal Ambassador program as churches scramble for an alternative boys organization that remains grounded in a consistent, biblical worldview."

The American Family Association in an action alert for members asserted that any policy change “will destroy the legitimacy and the security of this iconic institution.”

Next week, the Boy Scouts of America will decide on whether it will keep a long standing policy of not allowing homosexuals to serve as volunteer leaders, or to change that policy and allow open homosexuals to participate in the scouting program. See our story at OneNewsNow.

If the BSA departs from its policies on allowing homosexual scoutmasters and boys in the program, it will destroy the legitimacy and the security of this iconic institution.

While news articles conclude the latter as a forgone conclusion, the final decision has not been made.

For decades, the gay community and its allies have been doing incredible work combating HIV/AIDS and providing care for people with the virus, but according to anti-gay activists Janet Mefferd and Peter LaBarbera, gay rights supporters have tried to whitewash the epidemic and show little compassion to HIV-positive people.

While discussing LaBarbera’s “20 Resolutions for Pro-Family Advocates Battling the Homosexual-Transgender Agenda in 2013” on her radio show, Mefferd said that the Religious Right had an opening to exploit the issue of HIV/AIDS “because we’ll say, we care about people who are having terrible diseases because of the behavior and where is the compassion on your side for these people who have these illnesses?”

Of course, Mefferd and LaBarbera have both defended efforts to criminalize LGBT status, which only exacerbates the spread of HIV.

LaBarbera: Boy, about fifty years ago the whole issue of homosexual behavior was taboo. Now, they are basically running society, they are deciding which issues get covered on the news, which people get to speak at inaugurals, I mean wow, this country is really de-Christianizing fast.

Mefferd: That’s right. One of the things you’ve mentioned and this is one of your resolutions as well, but you mention the fact that we don’t talk very much at all anymore about the health consequences of the behavior. It used to be in the ’80s when then AIDS crisis was at its peek peak at the time, when Elizabeth Taylor and everybody came out and they had the red ribbons at every awards show and everything, everybody wanted to raise money and solve the AIDS crisis; people aren’t talking about AIDS anymore and yet it is still an issue, isn’t it? We still have venereal diseases and all kinds of bad health consequences to this, how are they successful and able to get this whole subject to be something we don’t talk about anymore?

LaBarbera: Well, it’s just the media, they have the media in their pocket and so the media is like a massive affirmative action program for the gay agenda, the media does not want to talk about the obvious connection between homosexual behavior and sexual diseases, especially for men. I put in my point four on my list, you know getting back to the behavior, try Googling ‘MSM, ‘CDC’ and ‘HIV,’ and you get this laundry list of articles about the strong, disproportionate connection between men who have sex with men and sexual diseases like HIV.

Mefferd: And on that point we could really make a lot of progress because we’ll say, we care about people who are having terrible diseases because of the behavior and where is the compassion on your side for these people who have these illnesses? This is awful.

LaBarbera: Absolutely.

This post has been updated, 1/16.