The topic of health care is on everyone's lips, and Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, "a group dedicated to exposing the homosexual activist agenda," is no exception.
Granted, most folks are focused on things like America's large number of uninsured or the rising cost of caring for the sick and injured. LaBarbera has a much more limited scope: the gays. Specifically, gay men and sex and how it's bad and the government must stop it.
Speaking July 24 at the 2009 Reclaiming Oklahoma For Christ Conference, LaBarbera called for a government study of the dangerous of homosexual sex. Because, you know, priorities.
"When it comes to combating cigarettes, the government not only restricts, taxes and bans smoking, it also funds and encourages anti-smoking messages and advertisements," reads Americans for Truth's Web site.
"Given the immense health risks of male homosexual sex, shouldn't the federal government do a comprehensive study on the matter, tax sodomitic establishments and educate the public and especially young people about the dangers of 'gay' sex?"
One wonders just how LaBarbera thinks the government should restrict, tax and ban gay sex. Given his obsession with the subject, my guess is he'd be happy to take on the volunteer title of gay sex enforcer, much like those old guys who stand on the Texas border with shotguns looking out for illegal immigrants.
It is also worth noting the fact that Americans for Truth about Homosexuality advocates educating "young people" about the horrors of gay sex. Keep in mind, this is a group that believes that LGBT activists are infiltrating schools and corrupting children. So it's OK to talk to kids about homosexuality if the topic is gay sex=bad, but not OK if the topic is, say, anti-gay bullying.
Also, the cigarette analogy is not a new one. Anti-gay groups have long been batting around the claim that men having sex with other men is more dangerous than smoking. That there has been no valid data indicating as much doesn't seem to matter. Science is, after all, the providence of secular heathens.
So what is fueling LaBarbera's clarion call for such a study is information from the FDA's Web site about gay men donating blood in the United States. While LaBarbera acts as if this information is new and revelational, the policy has been in place since 1983.
In fact, the policy, which lumps gay and bisexual men in with hookers and junkies and bans them from donating blood for life, has been widely criticized. The Red Cross has called it "medically and scientifically unwarranted." The executive vice president of America's Blood Centers has publicly expressed his disappointment over the policy.
Martin Algaze, spokesman for Gay Men's Health Crisis, has called the policy "archaic and discriminatory because it falsely assumes that all gay men are HIV-positive regardless of their sexual behavior. At the same time, it allows heterosexuals to donate blood even if they have participated in risky sexual or drug-use behavior."
But hey, never mind that. Let's do a government study of hot man-on-man action, because LaBarbera needs something to replace his dog-eared and tattered copy of the Starr Report.
