The column that follows is about anal sex.
Some friends have urged me against writing it, not because readers find frank discussions of anal sex "icky," but because the offending comments' source-Peter LaBarbera-is unworthy of serious attention.
In one sense these friends are quite right. But for reasons I hope to make clear, LaBarbera's most recent ugliness needs answering.
LaBarbera is the president of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH), one of the nastier anti-gay groups. In a recent letter at his website, he discusses how Matt Barber at Liberty Counsel (a right-wing legal group) is threatening to boycott the Conservative Political Action Conference unless CPAC drops the gay conservative group GOProud as a co-sponsor.
LaBarbera writes, "It boils down to this: there is nothing 'conservative' about - as Barber inimitably puts it - 'one man violently cramming his penis into another man's lower intestine and calling it love'."
Don't say I didn't warn you.
LaBarbera's post led Liberty Counsel to deny that Barber had ever said such a nasty thing, prompting a sharp rebuttal from LaBarbera, followed by Barber's admission that he had indeed made the comment privately years ago (and had given LaBarbera permission to quote it). This back-and-forth was interspersed with some barbs between LaBarbera and Randy Thomas, executive VP of the ex-gay group Exodus International, at Thomas's Exodus blog. (Thanks to Pam's House Blend for exposing the imbroglio.)
I'll focus here on LaBarbera, since he was the one who saw fit recently to post Barber's words and to defend them repeatedly, calling them "a brutally honest and necessarily accurate description of homosexual sodomy." He also challenged Thomas to "cite chapter and verse in the Bible" explaining why their use of these words is wrong.
Chapter and verse? Let me try.
Exodus 20:16: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." (Hint: it's one of the Ten Commandments, and it boils down simply to "Don't lie.")
Look, Peter-and I know you're reading this-NOBODY calls it love when a man "violently cram[s] his penis into another man's lower intestine." Nobody.
We sane people call that rape.
Indeed, the "violent cramming" of a penis into any bodily orifice, male or female, is rape. Not love. The description is not merely uncharitable (about which we could both cite many verses), it's a blatant falsehood.
Frankly, I'm not surprised you missed this simple, obvious point, because when it comes to homosexuality, you wouldn't know truth if it violently crammed itself into your-oh, never mind.
Now one might argue that we shouldn't bother with LaBarbera. Indeed, a Christian friend of mine told me just that, stating that LaBarbera's comments are "no more worth writing about than the graffiti on men's room walls."
And I wish I could ignore them. I really, really do. If only the sentiments underlying them weren't so pervasive and harmful.
I've been defending gays and lesbians against heterosexist distortions for two decades. And one of the things that has saddened and angered me most is our opponents' continued tendency to reduce our lives, our commitments, and our intimacy to bare mechanical descriptions-and false ones at that.
Why do they do this? Perhaps it's because of a fundamental lack of empathy (a trait that forms the core of The Golden Rule, another biblical principle).
Or perhaps it's because they know that dehumanizing us in this way is an extremely effective tactic. As LaBarbera himself writes at the Exodus blog, his and Barber's "colorful and dismissive" language are precisely geared to "re-stigmatize shameful homosexual behavior."
Stigmatize, it surely does.
By spreading their lies about "violent cramming" and such, LaBarbera, Barber and their ilk have visited needless suffering upon countless LGBT people, particularly LGBT youth.
Among the unspoken casualties of such stigmatization is that it makes it harder for us to have frank conversations about the relative risks of various sexual practices, for fear of feeding such nastiness. The upshot is more silence, and shame, and-paradoxically-risk.
All of which LaBarbera and Barber can answer to their Maker for, when and if Judgment Day should come. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me" (Matthew 25:40).
8 Comments for “Violent Distortions”
posted by TS on
Sad, sad thing. Although my favorite part of the whole sordid affair is how Mr. LaBarbera pretends to be civil sometimes.
posted by BobN on
I have to say that the first time I saw that quote I thought to myself, “cramming”? “Sticking” makes sense. “Cramming”, to me at least, has a sense of stuffing, that is, pushing something ungainly into a space, like an elephant through a small door, or trying to stuff a bunch of floppy things into a suitcase. The word seems quite unsuited to the insertion of something rigid into an orifice.
I have to wonder what Mr. Barbera’s reference points are. One assumes he hasn’t watched porn, gay or straight, morally upright man that he purports to be. I’m left with the conclusion that he “crams” when he has sex. Not into anyone’s bowels, of course (well, except when he was younger). Perhaps he has an erectile dysfunction.
posted by Pat on
My guess is, as far as LaBarbera is concerned, he is irrationally repulsed by any act of homosexual sex. So he is going to paint it in the worst light. And I’m sure this is also intended as a strategic way to get ignorant people to follow their propaganda and dribble. I’ve seen it work with some homosexuals who also buy into the dribble, as if LaBarbera et al, are not talking about them. But their denouncement of GOProud says otherwise.
posted by Bobby on
LaBarbera is an interesting case, he will send his minions to gay events all over America, they will take pictures of sex, guys in leather, etc, and then scream about it. I find it sad that someone so involved in our community has nothing good to say about us.
posted by Tavdy79 on
BobN: “One assumes he hasn’t watched porn, gay or straight, morally upright man that he purports to be.”
Peter LaBarbera is generally recognised as something of an expert (dare I say afficionado?) on gay porn, particularly hard-core, kinky porn. He’s a regular attender at San Francisco’s Folsom Street Fair, one of the planet’s largest annual BDSM events.
The man’s a clown but, like John Corvino said, the sentiments underlying his comments and actions aren’t limited to him alone. If you need to deal with them in an article like this, he’s an obvious person to choose for some useful soundbites. In fact he’s one of a couple of our opponents whose existence actually works in our favour a lot of the time.
posted by Throbert McGee on
One assumes he hasn’t watched porn, gay or straight, morally upright man that he purports to be.
On the contrary, I assume that he’s watched plenty of gay porn — because “one man violently cramming his penis into another man’s lower intestine” strikes me as a more or less fair description of how anal sex is modeled in gay porn — where HARD, FAST, DEEP THRUSTING!! is the norm. (And of course, this is in porn made BY and FOR gay men.)
posted by Pat on
where HARD, FAST, DEEP THRUSTING!! is the norm. (And of course, this is in porn made BY and FOR gay men.)
Throbert, I’ve seen gay and straight porn in my day. And that description also applies to the straight sex that I’ve seen. I disagree with you that “violently cramming” is a fair description in gay or straight porn, but putting that aside… if LaBarbera is using gay porn to describe what he believes is “love” between two men, it doesn’t appear that he is doing the same for heterosexual “love.” Perhaps he only watches gay porn. Even so, I don’t think that LaBarbera has a less unfavorable opinion of gay men who don’t engage in anal sex, but do engage in other gay sexual activities. Or two women. As a side note, my understanding is that a significant portion of the men in gay porn or not gay.
posted by Michigan-Matt on
John, I’m not too sure your faked sense of concern over using LaBarbera’s “strong” words about anal sex between men isn’t another case of drama queen gone a’writing. Whipping up the gayLeft much lately? My God, I’ve heard far worse at local gay activist meetings with clergy present.
Come on, the real story isn’t about LaBarbera… it’s about CPAC, the leading national conservative political convention, standing up for GOProud (a group with strong orgnaizational ties to a real gay conservative blog, gaypatriot.net) and not bowing to the anti-gay bigots you liberals think populate the entire conservative movement.
But then, that would impeach the conventional gay Left “wisdom” that all conservatives want us dead, all GOPers are religious zealots fresh from the indoctrination camps of the SkyPeople and conservatives gays are akin to Jews selling out to the Nazis. Better to go with alarmist scratches and faked outrage… with a touch of faux sensitivity to gay sensibilities tossed in.