Peter Loves Peter

  During the week, I happily stumbled across our local NBC news affiliate airing a special report on the recent homecoming court at Buffalo Grove high school:

The choice that students made, however, is attracting attention and causing controversy.

Davlantes said it may not shock people that a jock and a cheerleader were chosen as homecoming king and queen at Buffalo Grove High School, but what surprises some and concerns others is what's different about the two students and what it might say about their generation.

Jen Wohlner and Ryan Cooperman are popular leaders at the school. They're also openly gay, Davlantes said.

The video is worth a watch. Average, happy, smiling kids having an average, happy high school experience. Jen and Ryan's excitement is as heartwarming as a puppy.

Then the news report cut to Peter LaBarbera.

I hate Peter LaBarbera.

Peter was not pleased the homecoming king and queen consisted of a queen and king:

"Something that was once sort of universally regarded as a sin, is now becoming sort of cool in high school," he said. "It's easy for an adult to say, 'Oh wow, I'm doing the compassionate thing by telling this teenaged boy that he's gay,' but they won't be there when the boy becomes a man and comes down with HIV or hepititis B and C."

Any thoughts on the lesbian, Peter? Of course not. Peter, you see, is absolutely obsessed with hot male-on-male action. The NBC affiliate actually cut him off after the hepatitis remark. If past experience is any guide, the viewers were spared rimming lessons. Peter knows more about male homosexual sex than I do. His descriptive reports on S&M culture serve as a lasting guide for curious sexual intrepids.

I'm not sure what Illinois has done to deserve his presence. Perhaps it's our proximity to Indiana. Once a major figure in conservative evangelical organizations like Concerned Women for America and the Culture and Family Institute, Peter has come to the Chicago area to clean us heathens up. It goes without saying that he's a grade A, homosexual conspiracy theorist. Sure, he may hate Fred Phelps, but it's for a terribly interesting reason:

Politically and culturally speaking, Phelps and his protesters serve as a crude caricature of pro-family traditionalists who oppose the normalization of homosexuality. Fred makes an easy target for the media and secularists who are tempted (partly by their own prejudices) to paint any opposition to "gay rights" as hateful. For this reason, I have sometimes wondered if Phelps and his lawyerly clan are "gay plants."

Damn. He got us. A'right, Fred. That's enough. Peter LaBarbera, family activist and crackerjack detective, has foiled us yet again.

So, aside from going after high school students and unmasking us gay folk in true Scooby Doo fashion, what is Peter's latest major campaign? A failed protest and boycott of Walgreens:

A conservative Illinois Christian group is once again chastising a corporation for sponsoring the 2006 Gay Games in Chicago.

The Illinois Family Institute in Glen Ellyn is squaring off against Walgreen Co. for its $100,000 contribution to Olympic-style games to be held in July. Walgreens joins PlanetOut Inc., which runs an online network for the gay community and the national gay television network Q Television, as a Platinum-level sponsor of the event.

The Illinois Family Institute recently attacked Harris Bank and Kraft Foods for each contributing $25,000 to the Gay Games VII.

"The Gay Games are about homosexuality, and I think it's wrong for Walgreens to sponsor it," said Peter LaBarbera, executive director of the Illinois Family Institute. "They've taken the step of becoming an official sponsor, which is putting the Walgreens name to endorsing this event."

LaBarbera wants Walgreens to rescind its funding; otherwise he will encourage members of his group to consider boycotting the drugstore chain.

Peter, this is Walgreens. Primarily known as a pharmacy in the Chicago area, Walgreens told it's pharmacists to go fuck themselves when they attempted a three week strike. Now that's testicular fortitude of the corporate kind. Somehow, some third rate, two-bit "family" organization doesn't seem terribly likely to budge the local behemoth.

Besides, Walgreens stands to make a killing from gay folk like me who plan on rifling through dozens of disposable cameras when Gay Games '06 comes to town. Gay athletes. Num nums.

I'm sure, despite his great opposition, Peter will be attending the festivities next July.

Just to keep an eye on things and register his disappointment, you understand. Especially with those hot, hot, hot gymnasts.

Comments

[North Dallas Thirty]

Um.....Robbie, while I love your prose and hold no huge love for Peter LaBarbera myself, why on earth are you writing posts strongly against outing on the one hand, then posts insinuating that someone is gay on the other?

We can do better in dealing with Peter by exposing his accusations, not his sex life.

For example:

"It's easy for an adult to say, 'Oh wow, I'm doing the compassionate thing by telling this teenaged boy that he's gay,' but they won't be there when the boy becomes a man and comes down with HIV or hepititis B and C."

Actually, Peter, the gay community as a whole sponsors the largest network of health care and youth resources specifically geared to helping those, both gay and straight, who are either dealing with infection themselves or would like to avoid it. Examples here in Dallas alone include the AIDS Resource Center, Legacy Counseling Center, Youth First Texas -- all of which are fully inclusive for both straight and gay individuals -- and Bryan's House, a home for children with HIV infection and their families. The annual support provided for these groups alone, which tend to literally thousands of people, runs into the millions annually in terms of dollars and hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours.

Now, Peter, could you outline for us how much time your organization spends taking care of heterosexual individuals, especially children, who have been infected with HIV through no fault of their own?

(Can you tell I've done this before?) :)

[Robbie]

(Can you tell I've done this before?) :)

LOL. I am being a little tongue in cheek. I don't think he's really gay. I simply remember reading his articles just as I was coming out, when I was 18, 19, 20, and they were these in depth pieces on S&M describing things I had never even heard rumors of.

It was so disconsonant to read about these things on an evangelical site, it used to crack me up.

[torrentprime]

Thanks for posting this. I told several people last night--it was some good news to share.

[Mike Rogers]

Glad to see you've come around on the whole idea of outing. As your post shows, our only dsagreement is where exactly we draw the line.

[Robbie]

Aw, Mikey, you don't know how to read. That's so adorable.

I actually have it on pretty decent authority that LaBarbera isn't gay. Not that I went snooping. His sex life really isn't that fascinating to me.

I have my own. Usually nips that kind of obsessive curiosity in the bud.

[Jack]

The link to the video seems to go to a dead page now, but this one works: http://www.nbc5.com/video/5127132/index.html