I'm Not Worth the Fuss

The dude on the left is a Christian blogger and sometimes boxer who has an ax to grind with the gays. J. Matt Barber has outlined the gay community's plan of attack for corrupting America in a column titled "Unmasking the Gay Agenda" today for Catholic Online; the plan, according to Barber, is for gays to use their influence and affluence to normalize their "deviant" sexual behavior and "indoctrinate" Americans into accepting gays' "sin."

With meticulous detail, Barber outlines steps the gays have taken to legalize pedophilia (Note to Catholics: stay away from the P word when making a case for moral uprightness, k?), homosexualize Jesus and sell AIDS as just a cold.

Clearly, Barber hasn't met my theatre group - not only can we not agree on which Dem to support, we can't even agree on where to go to dinner post-show. But I guess there are more militant, demagogue queers out there that pick up the slack.

What Barber has met, however, is a lack of support for his obsession with countering "the gay agenda." He was fired from his job at Allstate Insurance in 2005 for blogging his anti-gay beliefs (on his own time, though how his affiliation with the gay-friendly insurance company came to light is uncertain, he says he didn't divulge that info on his bio). Now, as a blogger myself, I think it's unfair for a corporation to fire someone for writing about their personal beliefs on their own time. Unless they're blogging about how they're going to blow up the office in 90 days or something of that life-threatening-nature, I still believe in freedom of speech, even for fundamentalist Christians.

Barber isn't really saying anything new, and in fact, I'm encouraged by his slander. As the Extreme Right loses its Talibanic grip on Americans, it's only fitting for them to resort to scare tactics: visions of children being snatched from the nuclear family by lecherous gays, only to die of the gay plague -- err, AIDS.

But Barber is right about one thing: We gays are indeed on a mission to legitimize our place in society. Yes, we're vocal in our nation's political discourse, we support artists who show us love, and we are going to continue to fight for fair treatment - at work, at school, wherever. We're part of this country, too, and we're proud of that.

As for indoctrination and "Everyman" tactics, whereby gays try to sell themselves as just the fun-loving folks next door. Well, I'm guilty of that, too. I just got back from Colombia where I went to make peace with my grandma and other members of my family who I thought weren't down with the whole gay relative thing. After they saw that Davicito hadn't really changed at all -- well, the mentioned that I looked bigger, thanks NYHRC -- we spent an amazing week together. In the end, grandma even apologized, saying she was sorry if in her ignorance she ever made me feel as if I wasn't loved. Coming from a stalwart Christian like her, that's all the comeuppance I need.

Sadly, not everyone is going to have this sort of revelation. While Barber's column smacks more of paranoia than hate, let's not forget how easy it is to turn panic into mayhem. Grr, I'm guilty of another one of Barber's charges - equating Christianity with hatred. The Crusades? Inquisition? Slavery? Holocaust? To associate the Church with these events in history would be, oh yeah, true.

So I'm gonna keep an eye on Barber, all the while doing what I always do every night, Pinky, try and take over the world.