Hatred is myopic

Prominent hatemonger Peter LaBarbera offers this amazingly myopic argument:

A little over a year ago, Amanda Collette became the ultimate victim of homosexuality when Wimberly shot her in the back at school. As the Miami Herald reported, “Collette, 15, a star dancer on the school’s hip-hop dance squad, had rejected romantic advances from Wimberly in the days before the shooting.” Minutes after the shooting, Wimberly cried in a call to the 911 operator: ”I didn’t want to kill her so I shot her in the back . . . I just wanted to give her the pain she gave me.”

Regardless of what other factors were involved in this tragedy, it is not unreasonable to assert that Collette would be alive today were it not for the modern GLBT activist movement, which aggressively seeks to mainstream sexual deviance and immoral gay/lesbian “relationships” as normal and acceptable — most tragically among young people.

Yes, Virginia, there was a time in America when young women did not have to worry about sexual harassment and sexual advances from other young women. And the GLBT movement is first and foremost to blame for the rising number of youth who are embracing homosexual behaviors and considering destructive “gay,” lesbian, bisexual, or “transgender” self-”identities,” at younger and younger ages. We ask you to pray for the families of both Collette and Wimberly, and pray for the Christian conversion of Teah Wimberly as she awaits sentencing.

Let’s stop and think about this for a moment:

If one murder committed by a homosexual teenager caught up in the confusion of love, lust, and hormones, is an indictment of homosexuality, what do the thousands of rapes, murders, and beatings between heterosexuals say of heterosexuality?

American politics generally overlooks an important matter of implications. That is, political rhetoric sounds more and more like comedy routines. One of my favorite “Seinfeld” jokes was not, as far as I know, actually told by Jerry Seinfeld. Rather, it was a cartoon parody, with a Seinfeld-looking comedian onstage in a club, asking, “You ever wonder how they keep the glue from sticking to the inside of the bottle?” Sure, it might make for a mildly funny point, but any kid who’s ever used Elmer’s has already learned that the stuff doesn’t stick to plastic. It says so on the bottle. This isn’t hard to figure out.

In politics, as with punch lines, the focus is on the sound bite. Does it sound good? Witty? Even a little vicious? Does it insult, denigrate, or otherwise attack the opponent? This is all to the good.

But is it accurate? Doesn’t really matter. What are the implications if we take the particular and apply it generally? Again, doesn’t really matter.

Because it seems that what is important to LaBarbera and his fellow bigots is that people stick to the roles ordained millennia ago by the Bible. That is, men are men, women are women, they only fit together one way, and, damn it, women should be properly harassed, assaulted, and courted by men, the way a shoebox-sized God apparently demanded once upon a time.

LaBarbera’s crowd, though long empowered legally and morally, finds itself in a modern era in which they might be subject to (gasp!) equality. Remember that for the most part of humanity, equality is a step up in the world. For those who are members of the exclusive group widely denounced as privileged, elite, or otherwise, equality is a step down; they lose their presumption of supremacy. And, as we all know, these folks are never treated equally unless they are regarded as legally, morally, and intellectually superior.

Thus, LaBarbera laments the “most vicious manifestation of homosexual hatred that occurred this year”. Notwithstanding that he called Teah Wimberly’s conviction as the manifestation of homosexual hatred—we know what you mean, Peter, but come on—a couple of things stand out:

• Really? That’s it? I mean, murder is serious, indeed, but adolescent confusion, emotions amok, and stupid decisions resulting from pubescent lust and hormonal doses is “the most vicious manifestation of homosexual hatred that occurred this year”? Good heavens; a heterosexual woman murdered her friend and stole the fetus from her womb. Should I count this insane woman’s crime as a vicious manifestation of heterosexual hatred? In truth, I would hope to be more reasonable and honest than that. But, hey, if you hold to a primitive outlook on humanity, as LaBarbera and his fellow homophobes do, I can see how superstition and self-righteousness are going to trump reason and honesty any day.
• This is about victimhood for the hatemongers. The only way they can justify their fight is a pretense of persecution. That is, their message is so hateful, authoritarian, and constricting that the only way they can make it sound otherwise is to pretend that they are fighting back against oppression. As in, “Equality! O! Horrible equality!” Take a look at the layout in his blog post. The first picture you see is the propaganda cartoon (above); smaller, and lower down on the page, is a photo of the late Amanda Colette. It’s pretty easy to see what is more important to LaBarbera; he doesn’t give a damn about Amanda Colette. Rather, what is important to him is preserving the “equality” that keeps all the horrible, yucky gays in the closet where they can wait until touchy-feely molesters can “cure” them of their homosexual affliction.

The desperation of LaBarbera’s appeal is hard to miss. After all, we live in the United States of America, where rapes, murders, and other assorted brutality occurs on a regular basis for myriad reasons. And out of all that, “the most vicious manifestation of homosexual hatred” he could come up with was a confused teenager making an idiotic, tragic decision? Really? Even I would have thought there was something more obvious out there.

Sure, these hateful Christians feel persecuted. It’s the only thing they can feel; it’s part of the Christian heritage, and the nearest thing to a justification for their bigotry they have left. And like LaBarbera’s idiotic “truth”, that justification lacks certain vital elements: honesty, decency, and intellect.