…than “turning gay”.  Raging homophobic bigot Peter LaBarbera went on the air attacking gay men.  He claims that men “turn gay for the cheap orgasm”:

Peter LaBarbera, a self-confessed opponent of gay rights and founder of anti-gay group Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, was a guest on the James David Manning’s radio show (8 July).

Manning, a pastor who regularly rallies against the LGBTI community, and LaBarbera also claimed US president Barack Obama is obsessed with gay people.

LaBarbera said he thinks homosexuals are not ‘real men’, because they cannot be bothered to date, marry and have children with a woman so instead they choose the easier gay life.

‘I think homosexuality is one sense offers to men, if I can say this on your program, it offers the cheap orgasm,’ he said.

 

There is so much wrong with this.

1. Homosexuality doesn’t “offer” anything.  It’s a type of sexuality.  It’s the capacity to have erotic experiences and emotions involving members of the same sex.  It’s not a light switch. You don’t wake up one day and decide out of the blue “I’m going to sleep with a member of the same sex”.
2. LaBarbera has this strange notion that gay people are all about sex.  Dude, you clearly haven’t had a conversation with a gay person.  We’re just as human as you are (and many of us are much better humans than you are).  We laugh and cry. We walk our dogs. We play Tetris.   We use laser pointers to play with our cats (an amusing activity for both the human and the feline).  We enjoy going to amusement parks (Six Flags FTW!)  We vote for public officials.  We work at restaurants and dentists’ offices.  We have shaved heads and dreadlocks.  We drink Cosmopolitans and Jager Bombs.  We own homes and rent condos.  We have a range of human experiences just like everyone else.  Hell, we even put on our socks one foot at a time.  And yes, we also have sex.  With people of the same sex.  Because we are attracted to people of the same sex. But that is not all we do.  Gay people don’t spend every waking day of our lives thinking about and having sex.  There’s more to our experiences than that.
3. As for your problems with homosexuality–morality is concerned with conduct codes that determine the distinction between good/bad & right/wrong behaviors in human interactions.  Being gay is not a human interaction-there is no moral component to someone being gay (or heterosexual or bisexual).  No one is harmed simply by being gay.  Any harm a gay person suffers is a result of external factors– i.e. someone else who hates gay people and chooses to beat them or society denying gay people the right to marry.  These are forces that act upon a gay person.  They are not forces that are inherent to gay people.
4. LaBarbera has a very poor opinion of men.  That they cannot find a way to have an orgasm without {somehow} turning gay.  Given his religious beliefs, perhaps he doesn’t know there’s something called masturbation.  It’s a fun activity that most people on the planet enjoy.  It doesn’t have to involve anyone, and can be done quick, easy, and cheap.  Y’know, if one is looking for a ‘cheap orgasm’.
5. LaBarbera concept of manhood is informed by toxic masculinity. His thinking is rigid gender essentialism at its worst.  In his world, there’s a right way to be a man. There are things men are supposed to do and supposed to be.  Men who deviate from these rigid gender roles are messed up-somehow wrong in his eyes. He can’t accept that there are a wide range of roles and activities that are available for humans, not just one gender or the other.  That I, as a gay man, does not have a desire to marry a woman and raise a family with her does not change the fact that I’m a man.  It just means that my experience as a man is different from men who do make that choice. It’s not a wrong choice, unless you adhere to rigid ideas of what men or women are supposed to do:  like Peter LaBarbera.
6. The “gay life” isn’t easier than being heterosexual.  The only reason he thinks this is the case is because he thinks that gay men are all about sex.  If he would actually talk to gay people, he’d see that they struggle through life.  Hell, I’ve been fired 3 times in the last 3 years.  That’s not fun. As Buffy said in ‘Earshot’: “my life happens, on occasion, to suck beyond the telling of it”.  Do I have it worse than some people? Yes.  Do I have it better than some people? No.  I recognize that people out there have horrible shit happen to them and I hate that.  It doesn’t change the fact that sometimes I’ve had horrible shit happen to me too.  Most people on the planet do, whether they are homo- or hetero- sexual.  There’s nothing inherent to being gay that makes life easier.  Hell, people like LaBarbera fight tooth and nail to prevent us from gaining equal rights.  People like him struggle to keep gay people from having the same basic rights accorded to every human being.  That’s not an “easy life”.
7. I really wish these bigots would realize that lesbians and bisexual people exist.  LaBarbera, like so many others fails to acknowledge that LGB* means more than homosexual men.  The experiences of lesbians and bisexual people are real, and just as valid as mine, or LaBarbera’s.  Not discussing them when you’re talking about gay people does nothing but make them invisible.  Stop doing that.

I’m sure there’s more to unpack here (if anyone wants to take a whack at it, by all means, do), but these are the major points I wanted to touch on.

*I deliberately left out the ‘T’ from the acronym.  Transpeople experience tremendous amounts of discrimination and oppression.  I daresay they have it worse, on average than gay, lesbian, or bisexual people (though I haven’t looked that up…yet).  LaBarbera was discussing homosexuals specifically though, and while transgender individuals are included in LGBT, one can be trans and not be homosexual, so I didn’t feel it was appropriate to include them in this specific discussion.