I loathe the idea of commenting on the Foley scandal here in the XGW; however; Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth commented on the scandal, and his comments apply to this forum.
This is from the Concerned Women For America (CWA) website:
Over the weekend, news broke about Rep. Mark Foley’s (R –Florida) predatory email exchanges with teenage Congressional pages. It took a full news cycle for mainstream news organizations to specify that those pages were teenage boys. While many are in shock, Peter LaBarbera, President of Americans for Truth, says that Congressman Foley’s sexual orientation was no secret in Washington, D.C. LaBarbera uncovered this news for CWA in 2003. While questions remain about whom in Washington might have been guarding Rep. Foley’s secret, there is no question that the Log Cabin Republicans are now actively distancing themselves from him. Click here to listen.
The audio is a little over seven minutes long. A Peter LaBarbera quote from the audio (5:00 – 5:47):
…[B]ut even his homosexuality, as we know Martha — we want these guys to get out of this lifestyle. It’s not a healthy lifestyle. It does tend toward promiscuity. There is a higher element of this…the word is “pederasty,” which is adult…ah…sexual contact, or wanting of these…ah…adolescent male boys. We’ve…we’ve seen this throughout the world of homosexuality — We’ve saw it in the Catholic Church scandal with they…the priests, and actually…ah…runs in the whole history of…of male homosexuality, going back to Greece. So, …ah…it’s not really…ah…it doesn’t do anything to deny it and say this problem isn’t there. This is a component. This doesn’t mean that every…this is a component of male homosexuality. This doesn’t mean that every male, homosexual adult is…is doing this sort of behavior, but there is, I think, a higher preponderance of it compared to the rest of society.
If anything, what we’re seeing isn’t part of “the world of homosexuality”, as in open gay culture, but the weird, narrow, insular world of the closet. Who gets in this kind of trouble? Semi-closeted conservative Republican representatives, priests for a homophobic sect, “good family men” who teach or lead Boy Scout troops, rabidly homophobic mayors…
Whereas we very, very rarely see out gay men in these circumstances. Out gay men tend to be with…other out gay men. Adults, not boys.
Hopefully, eventually, America will smarten up about these things, despite CWA’s and Porno Pete’s best efforts to prevent it.
Yeah, Linda Harvey of “Mission America” is on the same tear – but she claims this shows that gay men should not be elected to office! I guess the recent school shootings in Colorado and Pennsylvania prove that straight men should not be around young girls, lest they molest and murder them.
I also think Jayelle is right on the money – when people have been involved in these gay sex scandals – Studds in 83, Barney Frank in the mid-90s, Mayor West of Spokane, WA, Ed Schrock of VA – they tend to be closeted, not out and open. I don’t hear about Jim Kolbe or Tammy Baldwin getting into this kind of trouble (or Barney Frank either, since he’s been out).
Events like these should be opportunities for gay rights group to stand up and say “This is what happens when we are forced to live in closets.”
Isn’t National Coming Out Day just around the corner?
Hmmm…
Did LaBarbera offer any stats or sources to substantiate his opinion, or did he just vent uninformed animosities?
For that matter, what studies have been done by mainstream sexual abuse experts to measure same-sex vs. opposite-sex abuse, and what studies have found any link between sexual abuse and self-repression?
A pedophile is a pedophile…….it has nothing to do with being an “out” gay or one that is repressed. It has everything to do with control and manipulation. Orientation is not the issue. Peter LaBarbera is using this opportunity to spread misinformation concerning gay men and lesbians. Shame, shame Peter……get a life.
I agree that organizations should speak up. Like the APA, the AMA especially.
They have already, just not around individual events or scandals.
PFLAG and HRC should weigh in.
Singular commentators like Andrew Sullivan posted an opinion about it several days ago.
But CPT Doom makes an excellent point. Two of the last school shootings involved grown men and the abuse of girls.
And then murdering them.
The Wisconsin school shooting stemmed from a boy being abused with anti gay epithets.
Most often, the roots to all kinds of violence and mayhem are based in homophobia, sexism, misogyny.
Our culture extols brutality and confuses sex and love and the role of gender in all of it.
Unrealistic, or low expectations play a part too.
Foley is scum, to be sure. And he’s being duly criticized for abusing his position of power.
However, straight men have made all the rules and are surely reluctant to make their own pay the price as they should.
Foley is paying with his career and credibility, if not his freedom.
And I don’t know if he actually had sex with a youngster.
And this entering rehab thing is so trite and weak.
To keep things in perspective, all the roads that lead to sexual exploitation and violence aren’t hard to understand.
It’s just that people like LaBarbera don’t want to really to know how to concern themselves with the most effective solutions to it.
All the straight men I know retain an attraction to adolescent girls but the same is not true for any of the gay men I know (admittedly few). The gay men I’ve come across all are sexually submissive and seek a partner to take the dominant role and an adolescent boy simply isn’t suitable. Just like most straight women they want a MAN and someone much younger than them just isn’t attractive as a sex partner. I’m also attracted to younger women (as well as my age) but the thought of being with a man that isn’t my age or older is just ick.
This isn’t the first time that Peter LaBarbera was willing to make statements that are not substantiable.
You may recall the brohaha when Guy Adams claims that there was a new trend for gays having sex with infants.
https://exgaywatch.com/blog/archives/2006/08/guy_adams_of_re.html
One thing that wasn’t really emphasized enough was where Guy heard that disgusting claim.
In Guy’s words about his trip to Chicago to protest the Gay Gaymes:
“One of the ladies we were with on the first day, her daughter is a lesbian and, and found information out from that, I am trying to remember it. We talked to a number of homosexuals in the area and ex-homosexuals as well and um there are plenty of ex-homosexuals. But I think that some of these people have kind of taken it out of context.”
https://www.joebrummer.com/Harp-Adams.htm
Come on. We know who was there. The “mother of a lesbian” was Janice Couture. The “plenty of ex-homosexuals” were James Hartline, Linda Jernigan, and Greg Quinlan. And they were all led and organized by Peter LaBarbera and joined by Linda Harvey and a handful of others. It is without question in my mind that this group of anti-gay activists were the filthy minds that came up with Guy Adams’ evil lie.
https://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=69281
Peter LaBarbera has no shame. He doesn’t care in the slightest if what he says has any basis in fact. He has proven that over and over.
Is there anyone else just waiting for the next news break that makes it VERY relevant to the purpose of this site?
Foley has supposedly been admitted to a treatment center for alcoholism.
Foley has now admitted he’s gay.
Foley now claims he was abused as a teenager by a catholic priest.
How long until Foley checks into an ex-gay program?
Hmmm…
Did LaBarbera offer any stats or sources to substantiate his opinion, or did he just vent uninformed animosities?
For that matter, what studies have been done by mainstream sexual abuse experts to measure same-sex vs. opposite-sex abuse, and what studies have found any link between sexual abuse and self-repression?
As usual, Dr. Gregory Herek at UC Davis has information on at least your first question – on orientation and molestation (https://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_molestation.html). Long and short of it is that no scientific evidence exists to support the idea that gay men are any more likely to molest children than straight men (and lesbian molestation is almost unheard of).
Of course, the reasoned approach shown here, in which a man who molests a boy but is married to an adult woman is not considered “gay,” is anathema to the “Christian” right. IIRC, their logic goes something like “One-third of child molestation victims are male, but only (fill in some low percentage here)% of the population is gay, so therefore gay men molest more often than straight. ” Because of course all those molesters of boys must be straight men (Paul Cameron argues that gay men will also molest girls, but not vice versa, but consider the source).
The interesting thing is that even those numbers don’t add up – because they often also argue (based on statistics I can only remember vaguely) that gay men have more victims than straight men when we molest (like 26 to 4 ratio). Well, if that were true, then the math would be something like – 500,000 total molestation victims, 1/3 male. So that’s 166,666 male victims, but only about 6,400 molesters (at 26 victims a pop). If the numbers are true, it would take more than 10X that number of heterosexual molesters to account for all the female victims. So there’s a 10:1 ratio of straight men to gay men as molesters, or gays are about 10% of the molestation pool. In other words, close to our representation in society, and certainly within the Kinsey statistics.
Even when the “Christian” Right lies they often don’t get it right.
More on people exploiting this to tie homosexuality with pedophilia (not that what Mr. Foley did was necessarily pedophilia):
“I also think Jayelle is right on the money – when people have been involved in these gay sex scandals – Studds in 83, Barney Frank in the mid-90s, Mayor West of Spokane, WA, Ed Schrock of VA – they tend to be closeted, not out and open. I don’t hear about Jim Kolbe or Tammy Baldwin getting into this kind of trouble (or Barney Frank either, since he’s been out).”
Actually, Barney Frank came out in 1987, and the scandal concerning him was a ploy devised by a former friend, Steve Gobie, and using his congressional powers to clear Gobie’s parking tickets. Gobie ran prostitution ring in Frank’s domicile, although Frank did kick him out once he discovered the entire operation.
He did however payed Gobie for sex in 1985, two years before he came out, so I guess you can add that to your list of scandals, yet at least he came out of the closet before it blew up.
Sexual fascism and the Mark Foley scandal
https://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52244
(may need to cut and paste the link into your browser — WND apparently doesn’t accept direct links from XGW.)
By Linda Harvey
WorldNetDaily.com
Posted: October 3, 2006
Apparently the TVC has learned the word pederasty from LaBarbera et al, and the TVC has drawn broader, unfounded conclutions about pederasty and homosexuals:
Pederasty Part Of Homosexual Lifestyle