Fox News Chicago Sends Undercover Agents to Anti-Gay Fundraiser

Can’t watch it, sorry. Feel to sick

So, all in all, I’m pleased. Definitely the most surreal moment was the “Maria Pahl ACTION SHOT! Walking to the interview!” moment, which my little sis gave me a good-natured ribbing over. 🙂

I’m most pleased that they stressed that this sort of speech is what leads to an environment where gay children feel the need to take their own lives. That was definitely the scariest thing about the conference – hearing the kind of stuff I heard in my high school hallways every day, when my friends would get pushed into lockers or have cans thrown at them from moving cars.

You don’t change timeless truths because of one personal experience”.

Nope, you just change them if the ruling monarch decides they need to be changed, or you create entirely new timeless truths.

Being gay was never an issue until religion came along. Not exactly a timeless truth there.

The only timeless truth is that we all must die.

When the one moron stated “if we had adultery pride parades people would say wait a minute that is wrong” I wanted the interviewer to remind him that adultery is illegal, being gay is not. At least, not yet.

Really? Wow, journalism isn’t a word I’d use to describe our Fox affiliate. (WFXT Boston) When something happens in Massachusetts, if it’s a scandal Fox25 and channel 5 (ABC affiliate) show up. If it’s actually news, you get 4 & 7 (CBS and NBC affiliates, respectively).

Anyway, thanks for the info. I didn’t know that.

Fox local affiliates are pretty variable; a lot of them retain some of their pre-2000 character, before the dominate-the-conservative-market strategy became the company’s main shtick.

In Denver, Fox 31 is actually the major television sponsor for our gay pride parade/festival/thing.

I love how the bigots are exposed as such and try to justify their bigotry with the bible. Well I’ll bet that some gay friendly Christians could use the bible to justify the exact opposite.

Can’t watch it, sorry. Feel to sick [2]

Maria, you did a great job. Though let your sister rib you. The walking down the street “action” shot was hokey but that was the newsteam’s fault not yours.

I actually think my local Fox news in Albany, NY is decent though I probably wouldn’t expect them to run this story. But that’s the thing. I wouldn’t expect them to run it the opposite way, praising the haters. They are pretty neutral and actually rather unbiasedly report the news, leaning neither right nor left. That’s a precious rarity these days.

Sbeissy, and don’t forget the bible says so too..
That’s stupid on a massive scale that they should be treated as lesser beings which is what you’re essentially saying.

She was right about the anti-gay rhetoric creating an environment that fosters bullying and suicide.
The homophobes want to get people fired up about the evils of homosexuality and then not take any responsibility for things like the Uganda murders.

They are ok with gay people living their lives as long as they don’t have sex/get into relationships/raise children/have equal rights…in other words…they have problems with homosexuals LIVING.

If I weren’t an atheist I would ask them why they think God makes mistakes. Aren’t they all “children of god” and all that?

I’d have thought it was obvious by now that extreme homophobes like La Barbera are repressing their own homosexuality.

I realize that this will be unpopular among the liberals here

Most libertarians and many fiscal conservatives would also disagree with you.

science tells us that, through evolution, homosexuality IS “lesser than” heterosexuality

Evolution does not get to dictate our moral values to us. If it did, we would all feel compelled to have tons of children to spread our genes far and wide. But evolutionary success is, de facto, not a driving concern in most people’s lives.

Besides which, evolution doesn’t talk about what traits are “less than” others; it merely notes that some traits are better at spreading themselves than others, and those tend to predominate. There is some debate over whether psychopathy has evolutionary benefits. It appears that, as long as most of the population is empathetic and altruistic, a small percentage can thrive as con artists and cheats, which psychopaths are often quite successful at being, at least for a time. This does not compel us to think of being a successful con artist or cheat as OK, just because it has evolutionary benefit.

I wonder why this condition is being passed off as innate

Because we do have extremely good evidence that at least some of the major influences on sexual orientation are prenatal (via twin/adoption studies of genetics and birth order effects), whereas there is not yet definitive evidence for any particular postnatal influence. For many people, it seems that it really is innate.

You wouldn’t say that a clinically depressed state is equal to a state of bliss, would you?

Clinical depression inhibits people from being productive and causes them and the people around them significant pain and distress. These are obvious problems. Being gay doesn’t necessarily have any such effects, except in a homophobic environment.

It’s not enough to note that something is different or unusual or evolutionarily disadvantageous to call it a psychological disorder; you have to show that it’s a significant disability or danger to individuals or the people around them. Is it a psychological disorder if someone simply doesn’t enjoy the company of children and decides not to have any?

I don’t expect all or even most gays to change if they’re happy the way they are.

That’s an understatement. Think about being in love with someone. Think about living with that person and building a life together for years, decades. Being told that you only have that feeling due to a psychological disorder is not exactly a welcome message.

And in fact it’s quite ridiculous. Many disorders are diagnosed, not merely on the basis of psychological traits, but on the likelihood that those traits will cause a sufficiently strong risk pain, distress, or danger. To make into a disease some trait that hurts no one, and in fact is a source of great joy, meaning, and social support, is a ridiculous idea.

But gays also need to take responsibility for their irregularity, and the effect they and their demands will have on society.

What “responsibility” do gays have? What negative “effect” does a demand for equal rights have on anyone else?

However, I’ve never met anyone who prescribes to the homosexual lifestyle who didn’t do so out of abuse or distress as a youngster or personal weakness.

This suggests to me that you either haven’t met many gays, or that you have managed to fit every gay or lesbian person you’ve met into an odd stereotype. Of the dozens of GLBs I’ve met, very few showed any sign of “abuse or distress as a youngster”, and many had very pleasant childhoods. I’m a bisexual person who was never abused or traumatized as a child, whose childhood, in fact, was mostly tranquil and content, at least when I didn’t get bored or fidgety and annoy the adults, or get involved in typical sibling rivalry. Yet I was noticeably attracted to the same sex nearly as soon as puberty began.

As for personal weakness, I don’t even know what you mean by this. What “weakness” is present in gay people that has no equivalent in heterosexuals? If you mean that they succumb to the “temptation” of gay sex, in what way is this different from the “temptation” of straight sex? This use of the phrase “weakness” seems to beg the question; it assumes that one’s natural sex drive is something dangerous to be resisted. While undoubtedly people should have enough self-control not to be rapists and pedophiles, why should anyone “resist” consensual sex that they enjoy, and why should failing to do so be a “weakness”.

The “abuse” hypothesis for the origin of homosexuality is basically just a conservative stereotype backed up by pseudoscience (particularly Paul Cameron’s outright deceptions). Most gay people did not have unusually troubled childhoods except when they were under fire specifically for being gay. I’m sorry that these deceptions, anecdotes, and confirmation bias have led so many people to see homosexuality as a “wound” or disease, but they are still completely wrong.

Pretending it’s an equal lifestyle – one that is even possible as a result of personal strength – is a delusion.

We presume equality until it’s disproven. Given two groups of people, considering them equal is the null hypothesis. Even noting that gay and straight people are demographically different, it’s improper to assert that there’s a moral difference without evidence of harm done. And, in fact, being openly gay does sometimes require personal strength, much more in the past than now, and more in conservative regions. It’s not trivial to hear the people around you that homosexuality is a sin worthy of death, and then come out anyway. You may not think it’s a good thing, but whether or not you approve, that act under those circumstances does absolutely require at least a basic degree of self-confidence and courage.

There’s another sense in which homosexuality is equal to heterosexuality, which is that they involve essentially the same basic feelings and emotional spectrum. Contrary to popular conservative opinion, homosexual attraction is not any more self-centered or less loving, neither more or less committed than heterosexual attraction (I can absolutely affirm this in my own case at least). Both gay and straight people can have really great relationships or really dysfunctional ones. In this sense, a gay couple is absolutely the same thing as a similarly-situated straight couple, and the assertion that somehow they are very different, just because gay couples don’t produce children, while God or evolution or some other illegitimate source of morality requires everyone to engage in constant baby-making, this assertion is ridiculous.

Congratulations for exposing LaBarbera and his lunatic, repetitive hate machine.

@Sbeissy Even *if* homosexuality was a psychological disorder, telling gays to stop living that lifestyle is akin to telling clinically depressed people to “just cheer up.” As a sufferer of major depression, I can tell you that this simply isn’t possible.

Anyway, I think Sean Santos had it right on by saying that psychological disorders are based on whether the condition is harmful to self or others. Therefore, pedophilia is a disorder, homosexuality is not.

Sbeissy: I would like to add my name to the (growing) list of LGB people who do not, as you say, prescribe to the homosexual lifestyle “out of abuse or distress as a youngster or personal weakness”.

Also, what precisely is the homosexual (or bisexual, in my case) lifestyle? Anecdata I know, but comparing the lifestyles of the straight people I know with the non-straights, you don’t get much, if any, difference. My lifestyle hasn’t been seen to change depending on the gender of who I’ve been involved with at a given time. I might be more (or less) likely to be publicly affectionate or to go to frequent places I know to be gay-friendly, perhaps? But that’s less a function of my relationship than of simply keeping safe.
Also, coming out as a sign of personal weakness? Are you kidding me? Coming out- as a member of any maligned/misunderstood/etc group- is a thing that takes a hell of a lot of guts. You have to be willing to roll with the punches, know that you’re likely to lose close relationships, know that you’re going to have to deal on a daily basis with an awful lot of crap you would otherwise avoid. You’ve gotta know that and still have the personal strength to deal with it. If you’d like to explain how that is a sign of weakness, I (and, for that matter, anyone here who’s openly atheist in a less-than-friendly area) would be delighted to hear your arguments. And I, for one, would like a side of citations with those.

Anyone who’s commented in opposition to my contribution and said that they’re an example of a person who’s bi or gay and not out of abuse or weakness – Says who? Have you each been professionally evaluated? Those sound like personal evalutations to me, and of course, out of personal bias, you’re not going to label yourselves as defective or disordered in any way. I don’t have a moral objection to anyone’s sexuality. I simply pointed out that biologically and evolutionarily, it’s an abnormality. I have a gay parent, and I’m not just talking out my ass when I discuss this issue. I also have a PhD. Obviously, from my example, gay parents don’t negatively effect academic accomplishment (in my case anyway), but they can and do negatively effect a child emotionally. Argue all you want but you won’t effect my view on my own life as a result of my parents. I’m an expert where evolution is concerned, and while bisexuality is easily natural, exclusive homosexuality is not. And whether the APA designates it as a psychological disorder is effected by many things, including where they get their funding from and where popular politics is standing at the time. I’m not a homophobe. I love my mother – but despite my love, I also am intelligent enough to understand that her lifestyle is chosen and in opposition of psychological soundness.