LGBT Wellness Roundup: Jan. 9
Each week HuffPost Gay Voices, in a partnership with blogger Scout, LGBT HealthLink and researcher Michael G. Bare, brings you a round up of some of the biggest LGBT wellness stories from the past seven days. For more LGBT Wellness visit our page dedicated to the topic here.

www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/10/lgbt-wellness-jan-9_n_6445936.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

Peter LaBarbera’s 10 Craziest Claims About Homosexuality

Flop-sweating Peter LaBarbera has been spouting nonsense about LGBTs since the early ’90s, such as his recent and completely absurd Dr. Seuss-inspired poem about the danger of Michael Sam kissing his boyfriend on live television. Yet for some reason he hasn’t completely self-marginalized himself — or been completely marginalized by the media.

As evidenced by his ridiculous appearances on radio shows throughout last year, there are still bookers out there willing to put him on the air, as if he had some credibility as a speaker.

Poor Peter’s struggled to make a name for himself as a serious antigay critic ever since a friend at the Christian Coalition invited him to denounce gays in a publication called The Lambda Report. Since then, he’s snuck around at gay events with a camera and tape recorder, hoping to catch someone in the act of being lewd so he can crow about how gross gay people are. He’s also “researched” more gay porn than most gay men we know. And to think we don’t get paid to do it.

These days he runs Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, which is basically a stale blog where Peter & friends lament these troubling times. After refusing to provide required financial data to the IRS, the government revoked the group’s nonprofit status several years ago.

So let’s be clear: Peter LaBarbera has no idea what he’s talking about, makes stuff up, and is completely wrong about everything. Yet he still gets invited to appear on “mainstream” news and opinion shows.

Just to remind all those lazy television and radio producers out there, here’s a delightful walk down memory lane of some of his greatest (aka worst) hits:

Quote #1: When he saw happy gay soldiers reunited with loved ones, he had this to say: “Only a decaying society pretends that homosexual relationships are morally equivalent to normal, male-female couples.”

Rebuttal: This really gets to the heart of Peter’s problem, and why he’s just so irretrievably crazy: somewhere along the line, he’s become convinced that gays are just fundamentally bad, and the happier we are the angrier he gets.

Quote #2: Speaking to terrified wig-stand Janet Mefferd on her radio show last year, he said, “God detests homosexual practice and so we should expect that, since this is a sin movement, we should expect that they lie and are often nasty.”

Rebuttal: This was part of a long, rambling diatribe in which Peter presumed to know exactly what God thinks. The phrase “this is a sin movement” is particularly colorful.

Quote #3: He told an audience in Jamaica, where LGBTs are routinely beaten and tortured and killed, that they must retain laws criminalizing homosexuality.

Rubuttal: Good idea!

Quote #4: Complaining about his organization’s listing as a hate group by the SPLC in 2010, he claimed that most child molestation victims and abusers are male.

Rebuttal: That’s not true, obviously.

Quote #5: “It’s almost as if homosexual sodomy was created to spread disease,” he told another radio show.

This is a common religious right refrain, that gay sex is riskier than straight sex. Even if that were true, which is is most decidedly not, if he was really concerned about mortality, why not go after, say, cliff jumping or drunk driving or smoking?

Quote #6: When Ben & Jerry’s temporarily changed the name of “Chubby Hubby” to “Hubby Hubby” to celebrate marriage equality in Vermont, LaBarbera freaked out that the ice cream company was neglecting to “talk about the dangers of the lifestyle.”

Rebuttal: This is like expecting every commercial featuring a husband and wife to feature a warning about accidental pregnancy.

Quote #7: He asked of homosexuality, “More Dangerous than Smoking?” Presumably he did not ask this question because he thought the answer was “no.” Later, he clarified, “In fact, I think some ‘gay’ behaviors like sodomy are more dangerous than cigarettes.”

Rebuttal: We are delighted to hear him make this statement, because it is so completely false. Nope, not more dangerous than cigarettes. Not even close. Unless you are being sodomized by a giant cigarette, in which case, maybe.

Quote #8: He posted a claim from a woman saying, “From my work I have learned that repeated sodomy (or anal sex) results in a condition called anal laxity (looseness) that requires surgery or a colostomy bag in order for the bowels to function properly.”

Rebuttal: Right, and if you do too many bench presses your arm muscles will become lax, too! Can you even imagine if that was actually true?

Quote #9. Barack Obama is “anti-christian,” apparently, and gays Christians aren’t really Christians.

Rebuttal: Saint Peter gets to decide who can belong to what religion.

Quote #10. After Illinois passed marriage, he said, “No matter what happens through the law or what politicians do, two men will never really be married.”

Rebuttal: Haha, sorry, actually yes they are! Married married married. Look, it’s a piece of paper that says “married” on it. Guess what that means! (Hint: married.)

matt baume

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/aWfH_Swx0bA/peter-labarberas-10-craziest-claims-about-homosexuality-20150110

A 'Massive' Look Inside the World of Gay Japanese Manga: VIDEO

Charles Pulliam-Moore

www.towleroad.com/2015/01/massive-prepares-its-first-english-primer-on-gay-japanese-manga-video.html

WATCH: Does Don Lemon's Question to Muslim Lawyer Reach New Insensitive Heights?

Out CNN reporter Don Lemon seems to be doing his best to secure a repeat of his 2014 victory, when he was named the year’s worst journalist.

read more

Sunnivie Brydum

www.advocate.com/politics/media/2015/01/10/watch-does-don-lemons-question-muslim-lawyer-reach-new-insensitive-heights

I'm a Lesbian Married to a Man
At 50, I was finally able to admit to myself that I was a lesbian. I have been married for over 25 years and have a daughter, 15. My marriage has been a martyrdom, as I have no desire.

I have always been attracted to women, but never had the courage to accept it. Then came the religious prohibitions that have caused distress to my sex life. Since adolescence, my first experiences with sex were with men, but they were never good. I thought it was because there was no passion. At 16, I had a different kind of relationship with a co-worker. She pleased me, we were always together, and there was a lot of affection, but we never touched each other. There was the desire, but there was also a great fear, because, in my mind, if you liked women you were a dyke, butch, and I’ve always been very feminine. I did not understand the lesbian world.

I ended up getting married, more for convenience than for passion. To have a little pleasure, close my eyes and imagine myself having sex with a woman. To dream often of being able to experiment, because just by looking at an interesting woman, I could tell the sex with her would be complete, fulfilling. My husband does not understand why I don’t seek him out or why I don’t feel joy in our sexual relationship. In the other areas of our life, we get along well. He is a great husband and I feel guilty for not being able to feel pleasure with him. But I don’t have the courage to speak up.

The only time I spoke with someone about this was on Brazilian blog BlogSouBi (Blog I’m bi), because I knew I would not be rejected there. I’m too scared to face the world, my family. I’ve thought about divorce, but the fear is too great and I end up just leaving things as they are. I wonder how long I will be able to bear this secret. Getting it off my chest feels good.
The fear, the impositions of family and the judgment of society can lead one to make that kind of choice: to pretend to be happy.

“The time of plural truths is over. Now we live in the time of the universal lie. We have never lied so much. We live a lie every day,” wrote the Portuguese writer José Saramago. And this “now” has already lasted a long time.

This article was originally posted in BlogSouBi and published on BrasilPost; it was translated into English.

www.huffingtonpost.com/amanda-c/im-a-lesbian-married-to-a_b_6374668.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

Right-Wing Pundit Compares Gay Activists To French Terrorist Murderers

You could see this coming. Right-wing pundit Erick Erickson, who never met a crackpot opinion he didn’t like, thinks that gay activists are the equivalent of the terrorists in France who murdered 12 employees of a satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and then engaged in a rampage in the Jewish neighborhood of Paris.

How do we rate this comparison? We objected to Kevin Cochran, the fire chief in Atlanta, for self-publishing a book that describes gay people as “vile,” “vulgar,” and “perverts.” Cochran was canned by Mayor Kasim Reed for violating city policy and proving that Cochran lacked the “judgment and ability to manage the department.”

Apparently, to Erickson that’s the equivalent of turning automatic weapons on innocent citizens.

Gay activists “believe that the views they want to silence are not worthy of ever being spoken…and so they must be punished, they must be vanquished, and everyone must know it’s going to happen to them as well,” Erickson said on his radio show, appearing to barrel toward a denunciation of the Paris attackers.

“And so they did the only thing they could do, the only thing they knew to do,” he continued. “They went to the mayor of Atlanta and demanded he fire the chief of the fire department for daring to mock them.”

Erickson explicitly linked the activists’ objections (otherwise known as the expression of free speech) to the terrorist activities in France (otherwise known as murder).

“The terrorists did what had to be done to publicly destroy and ruin the offender…and the terrorists won in Atlanta,” Erickson insisted.

Erickson is always looked for non-existent connections to stir up outrage. Not that long ago, he was blaming the lack of an Ebola vaccine on fat lesbians. He’s a little wobbly in his ideological understanding, though. He used to just compare us to Nazis. Only in Erickson’s imagination would Muslim terrorists and Nazis be one and the same.

JohnGallagher

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/g4IghgBwamw/right-wing-pundit-compares-gay-activists-to-french-terrorist-murderers-20150110