Wednesday, July 13, 2016

GOP platform committee member David Barton lies about past homophobic statements

Barton lies about his anti-lgbt statements.
There is one good thing about the GOP's vindictively homophobic platform - it's bringing much needed attention to the hate and awful propaganda the supposed religious members of that party constantly rain on the head of the lgbt community.

The Daily Beast is shining a light on this madness and like cockroaches, these "Christians" are running away from the brightness of truth:

Donald Trump may be the most gay-friendly GOP presidential nominee of all time. The committee writing the platform on which he’s supposed to run is filled with anti-gay bigots. The committee, which is currently meeting in Cleveland, is charged with crafting an overarching document that describes the general principles of the party. Until mid-week, they will be voting on America’s tax policies and the party’s orientation toward LGBT issues—but there are legitimate questions about their previous words and deeds.

For example, Cynthia Dunbar of Virginia once compared the gay rights movement to efforts “in pre-Holocaust Germany, as far as propaganda and presentation and swaying the whole mindset of a nation.”

Hardy Billington, of Missouri, took out an ad in a local paper saying that homosexuality is killing people at “two to three times the rate of smoking.”

According Right Wing Watch (who brought this article to my attention), GOP platform member  David Barton pretty much lied to The Daily Beast when confronted with his homophobia:

It seems that just about every time a Religious Right activist is asked by the press to comment on some outrageous thing that Right Wing Watch has caught them saying, they respond by simply asserting that those comments were "taken out of context" without ever explaining how our reporting supposedly misrepresented their statements or bothering to explain how understanding the real context would have in any way changed the meaning of what they said.

 And this is exactly what David Barton, a member of the Republican National Convention's platform committee and a longtime Religious Right activist, did when the the Daily Beast asked him to comment on two of the many offensive statements he has made about LGBT people, both of which were first reported by Right Wing Watch:
And David Barton, a committee member from Texas, believes that God is preventing the medical profession from finding a cure for HIV/AIDS, and claimed that gay people die “decades earlier” than others and have more than 500 partners apiece in their lifetimes. Barton told The Daily Beast that these statements did not represent his views, and this was “an example of something taken out of context and mischaracterized. I’m an advocate for faith-based conservative values, which include love, grace, and truth, focusing on traditional family values.” 

Unlike some folks on the right when they make charges (particularly against the lgbt community), Right Wing Watch has the goods. The site points to a recording in 2010 of Barton telling lies about gays and their alleged sex partners and gays "dying early." And the statements don't sound like they could be mischaracterized in any form or fashion.

Also, I'm personally involved in this situation because I wrote a piece in The Huffington Post back then refuting Barton's claims and that piece was used by MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell to call out Barton.When O'Donnell raised the alarm about his lies, Barton claimed that the lgbt community was being "hypersensitive."

Barton is sadly typical of religious right spokespeople who lie with abandon about lgbts but then play the victim when caught.

They make sure to play the victim with equal abandon.