The Truth Hurts

Last weekend on MSNBC, I had the opportunity to face-off with Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth, an organization “devoted solely to confronting the homosexual activist agenda.”

The news segment focused on a freshman orientation program at Deerfield Park High School in Illinois, where for a number of years students who are a part of the school’s Straight & Gay Alliance have shared their experiences with their peers. Citing complaints from a few parents of incoming freshmen, LaBarbera decided to launch a coordinated attack against the program, whipping up their usual media frenzy about “homosexuals infiltrating America’s public schools.”

The stint on national television was a great opportunity to once again expose the right wing’s lies and misinformation. As I said in the beginning of the MSNBC interview, there are two important points that need to be made about the contrived “controversy” over Deerfield Park High School’s freshman orientation program.

First, the LGBT students who are sharing their experiences openly and honestly with their peers are simply responding in part to the epidemic of anti-LGBT harassment and violence in America’s public schools. For example, the 2005 GLSEN School Climate Survey of more than 1,700 middle- and high-school students found that more than 60 percent had been verbally harassed and nearly 20 percent had been physically assaulted because of their sexual orientation. You can read more about this epidemic and the impact it is having on LGBT youth in our publication, Education Policy: Issues Affecting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Youth.

Second, by stirring up a media frenzy around this issue and using it as a platform to spread lies and misinformation about LGBT people, LaBarbera and his friends in the religious right are helping to create the anti-LGBT climate that leads to more harassment and violence in schools. As I said in the interview, not only is this a tragedy, it’s also gravely immoral.

LaBarbera’s response to these two points was fascinating. Not surprisingly, he completely ignored the statistics, instead replying that my accusation was a “terrible thing to say.”

Sorry Pete, but sometimes the truth hurts.

After the news anchor didn’t let him get away with referring to the orientation program as a “curriculum,” where there actually is none, LaBarbera fell back to the argument that there needs to be “objectivity” and that it isn’t right for only the “pro-homosexual” side to be shared.

The religious right has been using this argument to support disseminating information about the “ex-gay” movement in public schools, and I was glad to have the opportunity to remind LaBarbera that we have an obligation to teach real science in schools. The fact is that homosexuality is not a mental illness that needs to be or that even can be “cured” — there is no “other side” that needs to be shared. In addition, parents are given the opportunity to opt out of their child’s participation in the program.

For far too long, LaBarbera and his right-wing cronies have been espousing egregious lies and outlandish fictions about gay people for political gain. In this case, they’re doing it on the backs of young people.

We’re saying “No more” and sharing the simple truth that all young people, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, deserve to go to a school that is at the very least safe.

Anything less is unacceptable.

See Jason's face-off with Peter LaBarbera

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