Tag: matt barber

Matt Barber Invokes Jerry Sandusky to Mislead Public About SB 1172

I get it. Matt Barber thinks gays are disordered and he opposes CA SB 1172.
Agree with the bill or not, one should not exploit a tragedy in order to mislead people about what the bill says.
Barber says the bill prevents counselors from helping kids who have been sexually abused. He writes at WND:

The critical importance of stopping SB 1172 and similar legislation springing up elsewhere becomes especially clear when one considers that such sexual confusion is frequently caused by sexual molestation at the hands of homosexual pedophiles like Jerry Sandusky (hence the moniker: “Jerry Sandusky laws”).

First of all the general link between homosexuality and child abuse he attempts to make is spurious. The Tomeo study he refers to (Archives of Sexual Behavior determined in a 2001 study…) is not accurate and the second author has acknowledged this.  That study or any other one finding a correlation between abuse rates and orientation can tell us nothing about causation.  If Liberty Counsel makes that argument in court, I hope the court gives them a lesson in research methods.
Second, the new law does not prevent counselors from helping kids who have experienced such tragedy. Here is what the law says:

(o) Nothing in this act is intended to prevent a minor who is 12 years of age or older from consenting to any mental health treatment or counseling services, consistent with Section 124260 of the Health and Safety Code, other than sexual orientation change efforts as defined in this act.

Treatment for sexual abuse recovery is not prohibited.  One does not need to tell kids that they can change their sexual orientation by healing from sexual abuse in order to treat the effects of sexual abuse.
Furthermore,

(b) (1) “Sexual orientation change efforts” means any practices by mental health providers that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation. This includes efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.
(2) “Sexual orientation change efforts” does not include psychotherapies that: (A) provide acceptance, support, and understanding of clients or the facilitation of clients’ coping, social support, and identity exploration and development, including sexual orientation-neutral interventions to prevent or address unlawful conduct or unsafe sexual practices; and (B) do not seek to change sexual orientation.

Barber also falsely says:

[The law] would have forced counselors to violate their oath to “do no harm,” compelling them to advise sexually confused children to adopt a “gay identity” they reject.

The law does not require a counselor to advise any clients, sexual confused or otherwise, to adopt a gay identity. The law simply says that counselors may help clients explore their their identity but does not prescribe an outcome. This law does not prevent clients from deciding they are gay or not gay. It simply prevents therapists from applying interventions that are explicitly designed to changed their sexual orientation.
It seems obvious that Barber’s objection here is based on the fact that he doesn’t understand the proper role of a counselor. Counselors don’t tell clients what identities they should adopt. Such paternalistic approaches would probably put a counselor at risk for a disciplinary action even without SB 1172.
I am not sure the law will pass constitutional muster and will depend in part on how the court rules on the professional-client speech issues. For this post, the merits of the law are not the point. Rather, an accurate description is at issue. Furthermore, exploiting one of the most heinous cases of our time is irresponsible.

Reading list for those who are dominionism deniers

As a public service for those Christian pundits who are having trouble seeing the dominionists in their midst, I am constructing a reading list of online reources. Since they sometimes partner with the authors and groups mentioned here, surely this list will help them spot the tell-tale signs of Christian folks who want to impose biblical law on those who do not believe in biblical law. My suggestions are provided in no particular order and I will add to them as I find suitable resources. Here is my first entry:
Ruler of Nations by Gary DeMar – Gary DeMar runs American Vision, a group that last year put on a worldview conference, sponsored in part by Liberty Law School. In his book 1992 Ruler of Nations, Gary DeMar wrote about the D-word:

The loss of dominion by Christians did not just happen. A study of our nation’s history will show that there was a time when the majority of the people were self-consciously Christian in their outlook. Even those who did not acknowledge Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord still looked upon Christianity as the cornerstone of a Christian civilization. Over time, the idea of a Christian civilization waned. What was gained was soon lost, not by a military coup, but simply by the passivity of Christians. Dominion will not return through magic or even through a barrage of miracles. We cannot wait on dominion. It will not drop in our laps from heaven. There must be a starting point. Faithfulness is the word. (pp. 213-214)

DeMar does not call for violent overthrow of the government. Rather, he hopes like-minded people will run for office and vote to limit the size of government which will lead to a more biblical society. He explains:

Christians should run for office, in order to get power in the
various government hierarchies. Then they should vote against
every expansion of power and every tax hike and every bond
issue. The State must be cut back.
This is the battle: the belief that the State is the only important
government. As self-governed Christians, we must work to cut
back the unbridled power and authority of the State. Dominion in
the area of civil government does not mean that we desire the
escalating power base available to those who seek and hold office.
Rather, we should run for elected office to pull on the reins of
power, to slow the growth of power run wild.
But Christians must also recognize that we need a peaceful
transfer of power to a new Bible-based system of multiple authorities. They must recognize that God will drive out our enemies little by little, over many years (Exodus 23:29, 30). We are not to become revolutionaries. We are not to impose a top-down tyranny to ram the Bible down people’s throats. The goal is to use every means available to educate voters, and only then to transform their increasingly Biblical outlook into legislation. Mostly, it will be legislation abolishing past legislation. (p. 217).

The D-word shows up all over this book, and here are some steps to take to get it.

The first step in overturning the messianic State is to place ourselves under God’s law. We must meditate on the law. We must make the 119th psalm our hymn of obedience.
The second step is to teach our children the law (Deuteronomy 6:6, 7). We must demonstrate to them by our actions that we are self-governed by the law.
Third, we must proclaim the law to others. We must abandon the false theology that New Testament Christians are in no sense obligated to obey God’s Old Testament law. We obey the sacrificial law by baptizing people and eating the Lord’s Supper. We obey Biblical laws against murder, adultery, and many other capital crimes in the Bible.
Fourth, we must elect public officials who say they will vote for Biblical laws. First and foremost, this means voting to prohibit abortion. While few Christians are willing to go this far, the long term goal should be the execution of abortionists and parents who hire them. If we argue that abortion is murder, then we must call for the death penalty. If abortionists are not supposed to be executed, then they are not murderers, and if they are not murderers, why do we want to abolish abortion? In short, Christians must learn to think consistently. (pp. 217-218).

Believe me, most pro-life people would like to see abortion restricted but we don’t want the state to kill anyone. There is a tell-tale sign of a dominionist. Wherever the Bible invokes death, they want to do that now; like for gays, disobedient children, blasphemers, idolatry and so on.
Actually, this isn’t the first book on the list. I already examined a 2011 by Stephen Che Halbrook, titled God is Just: A Defense of Old Testament Civil Laws. Halbrook completed a shorter version of his book for his master’s thesis at Regent University. There are chapters defending the death penalty for gays, adulterers, blasphemers, disobedient children, etc., as well as descriptions of how one should set up stonings and burnings.
This is only a beginning. I will put up some more links soon.

AACC is not larger than the APA

Yesterday, Right Wing Watch pointed to a broadcast  from Liberty Counsel and a tweet from the same group saying that the American Association of Christian Counselors is larger than the American Psychological Association. Here is the still-uncorrected tweet:
As RWW pointed out, that is simply not true. The non-profit APA has “more than 154,000 members” and the for profit AACC has said they have “nearly 50,000 members” for several years.
There is another aspect to the claims made by Liberty Counsel that should be pointed out. Mat Staver said on the broadcast that the AACC has produced “the most definitive, most recent research that’s come out that says change is possible.” I assume he is talking about Jones and Yarhouse’s study of Exodus participants (and even there the changes were minimal and not in keeping with the claims made by Staver). However, the Liberty lawyers should also know that a more recent study published in Edification, a journal of the AACC, found that a group of heterosexually married sexual minorities reported no change on average in homosexual attractions.
I pointed this out in this post.

The SPLC hate list and the Nazi card

Last week, the Southern Poverty Law Center published several articles devoted to identifying groups who perpetuate stereotypes and falsehoods about gays. In one of the articles, the SPLC articulated a list of ten myths about gays which they claimed the groups identified as hate groups willfully promote. Elsewhere, the SPLC updated the list of what they term anti-gay hate groups, adding several groups, some of which are well known social conservative organizations.

The reaction was slow but has started to emerge from the groups identified by the SPLC.  One such reaction comes from Matt Barber, Liberty University adminstrator and board member at AFTAH, who wrote an op-ed for the Washington Times, titled “SPLC: The wolf who cried ‘hate.‘

The SPLC criteria for inclusion as a hate group were at one time somewhat vague.  Now, with the ten-myth criteria, it becomes easier to identify the types of public statements which the SPLC views as promoting bias toward gays. One myth I have written about is the Scott Lively inspired claim that gays animated the Nazi party. In fact, the SPLC referred to a couple of posts on this blog by my friend and colleague, JonDavid Wyneken, history professor at GCC (part 1 & part 2). Referring to claims made in Lively’s book, The Pink Swastika, SPLC’s Evelyn Schlatter and Robert Steinback wrote:

The Pink Swastika has been roundly discredited by legitimate historians and other scholars. Christine Mueller, professor of history at Reed College, did a line-by-line refutation of an earlier (1994) Abrams article on the topic and of the broader claim that the Nazi Party was “entirely controlled” by gay men. Historian Jon David Wynecken at Grove City College also refuted the book, pointing out that Lively and Abrams did no primary research of their own, instead using out-of-context citations of some legitimate sources while ignoring information from those same sources that ran counter to their thesis.

More recently Bryan Fischer, speaking for another newly added hate group the American Family Association, said

Homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews.

These are false claims which have been addressed multiple times by experts and primary sources. These are the kinds of claims which led the SPLC to place the AFA on their list.

And so it is stunning to see one of Matt Barber’s arguments in defense of the groups recently named to the hate group list. In fact, the argument is the big finish to the Washington Times column I referred to above. He says:

So, center-right America: If you happen to believe in the sanctity of natural marriage and that, as a culture, we’re best served by honoring the Judeo-Christian sexual ethic of our forefathers, you’re now an official “hater.”

Of course, the tired goal of this silly meme is to associate in the public mind’s eye mainstream conservative social values with racism, white supremacy and neo-Nazism. The ironic result, however, is that, as typically occurs with such ad hominem and hyperbolic attacks, the attacker ends up marginalizing himself and galvanizing his intended target (I’m rubber, you’re glue and all that).

Hence, beyond a self-aggrandizing liberal echo chamber, the SPLC – and by extension the greater “progressive” movement – has become largely, as it stews in its own radicalism, just another punch line.

It’s often said that the first to call the other a Nazi has lost the argument.

Congratulations, conservative America: They’re calling you a Nazi. Carry on.

Exactly. By Barber’s reasoning, then, the AFA and Scott Lively have lost the argument since the Nazi card has been played repeatedly by members of the SPLC’s hate list.

There is another strange twist in Barber’s op-ed. He says this:

The ironic result, however, is that, as typically occurs with such ad hominem and hyperbolic attacks, the attacker ends up marginalizing himself and galvanizing his intended target (I’m rubber, you’re glue and all that).

The groups which now populate the SPLC list specialize in ad hominem and hyperbolic attacks. Claims that gays die 20+ years early, that they are child abusers, that they are inherently diseased, and responsible for the Holocaust are the kinds of ad hominem and hyperbolic attacks which lead thoughful people, liberal and conservative, to question the credibility of those making the claims.

Christian groups should care about nuance and bearing honest witness. They should avoid misleading stereotypes and strive for accuracy in fact claims. When they don’t, they hurt the church and the good work that others are doing. Being designated a hate group is a serious matter and one which should cause reflection about the charges and not reckless defensiveness.

For more posts debunking the thesis advanced by the American Family Association and The Pink Swastika, click here…

PFOX: What’s good for the District of Columbia is not good for the nation

In 2002, the Christian support ministry, Parents and Friends of Ex-gays (PFOX) applied to the National Education Association for a booth in their annual convention exhibit hall. Despite having space at the convention and initially cashing the PFOX check for the application fee, the NEA rejected the PFOX application. The NEA said PFOX’s views of sexual orientation were at odds with those of the NEA.

Given that the NEA is based in Washington DC, PFOX filed a discrimination complaint against the NEA with the DC Office of Human Rights. The basis of the alleged discrimination was the sexual orientation of the members of PFOX. To support its action, PFOX relied on the fact that in DC, sexual orientation is included in the Human Rights Act. The definition of sexual orientation in the DC HRA is

“Sexual orientation” means male or female homosexuality, heterosexuality and bisexuality, by preference or practice.

In May, 2005, the DC OHR ruled that there was no discrimination in the NEA action. However, with an appeal from PFOX, the OHR allowed a review. After another denial, PFOX filed suit in the Superior Court of DC in May, 2008. On June 26, 2009, Judge Maurice Ross affirmed the decision of the DC OHR that there was no probable cause for PFOX’s discrimination complaint. According to Ross, the NEA had not unlawfully discriminated against PFOX by excluding the group from the NEA exposition hall.

Despite losing the case, PFOX issued a press release claiming victory. In his ruling, Judge Ross evaluated the claim of discrimination in light of the DC statute. Ross found that ex-gays are covered by the DC law due to the inclusion of sexual orientation. Ex-gay as a term did not need to be included in law since the term, however defined, relates to an adult sexual practice or preference. Continue reading “PFOX: What’s good for the District of Columbia is not good for the nation”