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Just A Marriage Advocacy Group

By Fannie

In an article about the dimmed prospect of LGBT progress now that Republicans have taken control of the House, look how a recent Boston Globe article presented one of the nation's most virulently anti-gay organizations:

"Americans for Truth, an Illinois-based advocacy group for heterosexual marriage, is hailing the new Republican majority control in the House as a huge victory that it hopes will put the brakes on further progress toward what it calls 'taxpayer-funded homosexuality.'

'My hunch is the Republicans will try to avoid these issues; they won?t allow them to progress,?' said Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth." (Emphasis added)

First of all the full name of the organization is Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH), a moniker which underscores its president's singular fixation on opposing Everything Gay and its perpetuation of misinformation and stereotypes about homosexuality and LGBT people.

The mission of this organization is oh-so-much more than mere advocacy "for heterosexual marriage." If any organization deserves its place in the Southern Poverty Law Center's (SPLC) list of anti-gay hate groups, it is AFTAH.

Peter LaBarbera, as anyone who pays the least bit of attention to LGBT issues knows, is a long-time foe of LGBT rights and equality and has allied himself with notorious anti-gay Holocaust revionist Scott Lively. His organization, as the SPLC notes, has utilized the discredited anti-gay "research" of Paul Cameron and tries, without much apparent success, to host "Truth Academies" to spread the "truth" about how evil and unnatural homosexuality is. Even a cursory visit to the organization's website reveals a bizarre obsession, replete with undercover "exposes," with homosexuality and with gay male subcultures and sex practices in particular.

Is AFTAH really the "other side" of the same-sex marriage debate, as this Boston Globe article suggests?

If so, I wonder how all of those civil, nice "marriage defenders," like the 7 million definitely-not-bigoted California folks who voted for Prop 8, feel about Peter LaBarbera being the symbol for... them.

Full post as published by Fannie's Room on January 11, 2011 (boomark / email).