Our lucky 13th loon is Matt Barber. Barber is a columnist at Worldnetdaily (where do they find these people, seriously?). Also policy director for cultural issues at DC-based Concerned Women for America (an anti-gay organization), and spokesman for Liberty Legal Alliance. Very, very concerned about gay people, convinced gay marriage is unconstitutional and that there is a gay conspiracy out there (and Obama is in on the conspiracy because the Supreme Court didn’t quite agree about the unconstitutionality (yes, that’s the reasoning)). Barber has absolutely no insight into how the legal system works, which does not prevent him from commenting on it with brazen confirmation bias, fact-twisting and outright lies. Argues for taking children away from gay parents. Like so many of his ilk, Barber is also a moral relativist when it suits his purposes. Also has a serious persecution complex and is worried about gay jihadists.
A (typical) quote in advance of the 2008 election: ”If Bill Clinton was the first black president, Barack Obama, if elected, will be the first "gay" president. No, I don't mean he'll personally decorate the West Wing, open a bathhouse in the Rose Garden or take up with Barney Frank. I mean he'll be the most radically pro-homosexual, anti-family president in history. He's very quietly pledged as much to the homosexual "Human Rights Campaign" and other fawning members of his homofascist fan club” (note the interesting characterization of Obama voters in the last sentence).
Trivia: try to find the logical structure of the argument presented here.
Diagnosis: Moron; paranoid lunatic with a severe persecution complex; probably little impact beyond the group who already agrees with what he says (i.e. no power to persuade anyone).
Where the hell do these people come from? Someone needs to filter and shock the gene pool....then get a bouncer/ lifeguard.
ReplyDeleteThey come from... America! Yay us!
ReplyDeleteHow do you recommend a loon? I think Rentboy Rekers is more than deserving. Well, whatever lifts your luggage, as the kids are saying.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.edgeboston.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=&sc2=news&sc3=&id=105745
Rentboy Rekers is definitely under consideration. However, dishonesty and desperate backpedalling isn't itself quite sufficient to qualify. In any case, he wouldn't appear before "R", and that's relatively far into the future given the pace of this blog.
ReplyDeleteRekers' lifelong work (promoting "conversion therapy" and working to prevent gay adoptions, etc) by itself would have made him someone to consider; I think the staggering hypocrisy brought forth by the "luggage boy" fiasco seals the deal. But as you say, we have quite a ways until we get to the R's.
ReplyDeleteAye. Fair enough. He's in.
ReplyDeleteOh, and just to emphasize: even if this is an old post, we haven't forgotten about Barber. He is as repugnantly insane as ever
ReplyDeleteYou can see Peter LaBarbera and Matt Barber discuss the New Gay World Order here.
ReplyDeleteAnd here's Barber denying that he is a Dominionist - he just want fundamentalist Christians in all positions of power and the Bible to replace the Constitution (though he doesn't really recognize the distinction between the Bible and the Constitution).
ReplyDeleteOk, Here we go again.
ReplyDeleteHey ho ... looks like Barber is in a predicament.
ReplyDeleteAt least he knows how to run with a slippery slope.
ReplyDeleteThis one sounds like a poor comedy scene, and would have been rather amusing as such.
ReplyDeleteThere really, truly is no limit. Breathtaking.
ReplyDeleteAnd if you want to see Barber going batshit insane due to his fuming, directionless hatred of the SPLC ...
ReplyDeleteHis most recent excursion into making shit up and passing it off as something resembling truth is ripped to shreds here. Would you believe it, but Barber is actually caught lying!
ReplyDeleteHere's Barber and Staver claiming that failing to overturn obamacare is judicial activism through omission. You cannot make this shit up.
ReplyDeleteEvery day Barber cranks up the crazy just a little bit. We cannot deal with every piece of delusional insanity, but I suppose we have a duty to check in every now and then. This is where he's at May 2, 2012. Ordinary sane people may not easily conceive of a way to top this one, but I am sure that Barber will continue to impress.
ReplyDeleteMore here.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes folks, this is a guy who considers himself a fighter for morality and decency.
ReplyDeleteAt least the world becomes much easier to deal with when you have only one single enemy.
ReplyDeleteNo, Matt, we haven't forgotten you. Here you are, once again trotting out the long-falsified myths supposed to support your persecution complex.
ReplyDeleteBarber seems to have some problems with being honest again. And with being a decent human being. Neither of which is particularly surprising.
ReplyDeleteHere's Barber & Staver staying reasonable in response to developments in reality again.
ReplyDeleteOnce again, Barber fails at comprehension. And decency.
ReplyDeleteMore standard SPAGG wingnuttery from Barber here. Apparently those who care about, you know, civilty, equality and freedom have made God really mad again.
ReplyDeleteApart from that, Barber has lately been particularly obsessed with the recent California law that bans the use of sexual orientation conversion therapy on minors, and it is somewhat fascinating to see how he’s becoming gradually more unhinged - not that his approach was particularly hinged at any point anyways.
See Barber see the larger picture here.
ReplyDeleteGuess who Barber thinks is behind the suggestion to allow gays in the boy scouts (Hint: not Obama … or, I suppose, it might be Obama as well). Also discussed here. More on marriage equality and religious freedom here, though I suppose most people can see where it is going just from the topic. According to Barber, when the constitution was written homosexuality was a crime against nature punishable by death, which is false, and it is unclear what the statement is supposed to be an argument for anyways.
In other news, Barber has claimed that the 2012 election was a Marxist coup, and now the IRS will start throwing pastors in jail, invading churches and shooting parishioners (evidence? Barber wanted a different election result).
More lack of self-awareness displayed here.
Time for another update on Barber's ongoing campaign against honesty, reality, integrity, compassion and sanity:
ReplyDeleteFirst off, it may be possible to detect an element of hyperbole (and confusion) in Barber's claim that marriage equality is the same as criminalization of Christianity. The religious right is no strangers to hyperbole, but one wonders whether Barber doesn't, in fact, believe the shit that falls out of his mouth.
At least he tries to make it clear that he doesn't like gays, going as far as praising Martin Ssempa, the guy behind Uganda's draconian anti-gay bill. Here he attempts to claim that the "homosexualization" of the military leads to "marxist persecution", but I am wary of awarding the incoherent yelling with the status as a "claim".
A similar level of lack of coherence is found in Barber's attempts at conspiracy theory, though he tries it relatively often (for instance claiming that Obama must have been in collusion with judges who ruled against him. Because, I suppose, Obama is just evil ... or something).
Barber tries his hand at science, and it is hard not to laugh until you remember that this guy is actually a faculty member at an institution that counts itself as an educational facility (it is nothing of the sort, of course).
ReplyDeleteDespite claiming that it is easy to be a conservative Christian because he is just speaking the truth, here is more howlingly hyperbolic conspiracy theories about Obama and his relationship with Christians - he is apparently trying to "purge them from the military". Liberals in general, and Obama in particular, are also to blame for a new strain of drug resistant gonorrhea.
And his honesty and down-to-earth reasonability is clearly on display in his assertion that Satan is trying to get the government to approve sin through gay marriage.
Barber thinks Satan is behind the Obama administration's gay rights efforts, and that these efforts will bring America back to the days of Noah. Though we are used to this kind of buzz, keep in mind that there is really so much wrong with that hypothesis that it should be staggering. Then he lies a bit.
ReplyDeleteWow, that kind of shit makes me wonder if Matt Barber is actually a brilliant stealth parody of fundamentalists loonies.
DeleteThough I doubt that it can be called “news”, at least here Barber asserts that Obama’s presidency has been an utter failure, and that Obama is acting “less and less like the elected executive of a constitutional republic and more and more like the self-appointed dictator or king in a banana republic.” What’s the occasion? The employer mandate provision in the health care reform legislation. How that makes Obama like a self-appointed (!) king is anyone’s guess.
ReplyDeleteNor might it be particularly surprising that Liberty Counsel has been caught supporting the death penalty for gays. But that’s just freedom, I suppose.
And here he is being (moronically and hyperbolically) wrong about the separation of church and state again.
NOTHING WRONG WITH THIS:
ReplyDeleteBarber: Let me just dovetail off that, just for a moment, something that recently occurred to me. If I asked everyone in the room, if I say “what is the opposite heterosexuality?” what pops into your head?
For most people, it’s homosexuality.That’s by design. That myth has been created. The opposite of heterosexuality is not homosexuality. The opposite of heterosexuality is asexuality, is no sexuality.
Heterosexuality is normative – they can be politically correct all they want, but it is biologically correct. Homosexuality is one among a litany, as Andrea was just talking about, of sexual deviances. It is a deviation from the norm, that’s why you call it “deviant sexual behavior.” It’s not a pejorative. We’re not saying “you’re a deviant.” We’re saying “your sexual behavior is deviant.”
So homosexuality is not the opposite of heterosexuality. It is one of many deviations of natural sexuality, one of many aberrant, unnatural deviations from natural sexuality. Andrea was going through the list of some of them and it shocks the conscience to hear a lot of this, a lot of people don’t even want to imagine the mechanics involved in homosexual conduct, must less strive, as Andrea, myself, Rena, and others do to defend against the wholesale promotion of that same conduct.
Oh, and as for "natural"? Homosexuality is found in many, many species in nature, I. Abou the same ratio as found in humans in many cases. Most "higher" species have it - cetaceans, primates, birds, many mammals.
ReplyDeleteIf you believe a God made all species, that God must love gay, as it made a lot of it.