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02/15/2010

Video: Dean Barber takes the 'oh sh*t that speech is due tomorrow!' path to preparedness

by Jeremy Hooper

This weekend, Liberty University held a conference all about how to defeat us gay folk. No, we're not joking: Fomenting homo-hostility was the sole subject. Because apparently heart-shaped boxes of chocolates have become passé in social conservative circles.

We've already shown you Alan Chambers' signature on the two-day anti-Valentine that these lil' Cupids chose to send the LGBT community. Now we can show you a portion from Matt Barber's chunk of bunk, wherein Mr. "one man violently cramming his penis into another man’s lower intestine and calling it ‘love’" gives the same kind of tired shpiel that's made him almost as boring as he is hyperbolic. Seriously -- Matt's become so predictable in days of recent that even his patented over-the-toppedness makes us open our mouths primarily for the purposes of yawning, not screaming.

Although the most notable/humorous aspect of Matt's rehashed V-Day weekend speech is not the played-out subject matter itself. No, no -- our "ha ha" takeaway is instead the fact that he, a dean at the very school where he is appearing before the student body, takes the most intellectually lazy approach to public speaking that one can possibly assume, lifting at least 85% of his little diatribe directly from a piece that he penned for Concerned Women For America back in 2008. Enjoy it again for the first time:


Dean J. Matt Barber speaking at Liberty University School of Law Symposium [YT: user hollywood7]

Note to all Liberty students: Next time you have an assignment and don't want to do it, just take something you wrote two years ago and that already received a failing grade with all objective academics, then resubmit it to your L.U. teacher. After all, if Dean Barber can do it, why not you?

Or on second thought: Considering that the '08 article from where Matt lifted his "new" speech is itself largely based around a 1989 book (and even has elements that date all the way back to 1972), perhaps you current students should just go ahead and submit your kindergarten finger paintings for educational review. Both the beauty and the verbiage would certainly be greater.

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Your thoughts

If that failing grade on the paper occurred while in high school, then it probably has a good chance of getting a passing grade at LU. Especially if the other faculty members are equally as intellectually(??) lazy.

Posted by: Dick Mills | Feb 15, 2010 10:54:52 PM

@Dick: For a paper dealing with gay issues, I imagine that receiving a failing grade from a "liberal" public high school teacher is considered proper prep work.

Posted by: G-A-Y | Feb 15, 2010 11:06:20 PM

JH, that would be the paper that you submitted as your essay for admission to LU! So, they would probably already have it on file, but would be too lazy to check... so you're probably right!

Posted by: Dick Mills | Feb 15, 2010 11:33:22 PM

Barber has been a lazy anti-gay advocate. Maybe it's just me but years from now, Barber is going to come out and say he never took what he said seriously and he was only doing it for the paycheck.

Posted by: a. mcewen | Feb 16, 2010 9:13:34 AM

I think it is fascinating that Barber and many, many other right-wingers continue to cite this mysterious document called the 1972 Gay Rights Platform. I have searched everywhere on the net for any proof that this document existed. What I find is a classic internet echo chamber, with one rightwing site after another (CWFA, FRC, Stormfront, Newsbusters) all citing to it, all uniformly focusing on a provision calling for the repeal of age of consent laws. But I don't find a single gay website or a single website housing historical archives that mentions it. It all seems to originate with a strange website called robertlevinson.com, which posts the "platform". I emailed them to ask them where the document came from, but of course I received no reply. The "platform" was apparently first posted here: http://www.robertslevinson.com/gaylesissues/features/collect/onetime/bl_platform1972.htm

I think this is a fraud on 2 levels. First, there is no evidence that this document ever existed. Second, even if it existed, how would this in any way reflect the political views of gays in 2010? It is telling that these people have to go back nearly 40 years to an obscure document and can't cite any of the thousands of policy statements generated by gay groups annually.

Posted by: Tom | Feb 16, 2010 2:26:11 PM

I am just amazed by this whole conference. I honestly think that if these people were to spend Valentine's weekend with their spouses at a nice bed and breakfast, or just have a "date night", it would do far more to preserve their marriages than conferences devoted to expressing how much they hate LGBT people. Truly perverse and sad.

Posted by: GreenEyedLilo | Feb 16, 2010 4:03:55 PM

Liberty University displays dinosaur fossils, it claims, are no more than about 3,000 years old. That should say it all: the institution has a world view based on superstition and nonsense. So what Barber is an ignorant moron, who pretends evolution did not happen. So it isno surprise that he would utter such nonsense as in his Feb 13th speech.

Posted by: A.T | Feb 16, 2010 6:46:08 PM

I like how they had a "Homosexuals or Homo Sapiens: Who Deserves Protected Class Status?" panel, so gays aren't even human now?

Posted by: ja | Feb 16, 2010 11:42:09 PM

Tom, that "gay rights platform" was apparently published in "The Homosexualization of America", Dennis Altman, 1982. It is where the radical religiots apparently get it from. I have never read, or even seen, a copy of it, but when they list a reference for it, it is that book. Interesting that this "convention" occurred (supposedly) in 1972, but the only documentation of it appears to be in a book published a decade later. There are many surviving copies of the book, which can be purchased for between $2 and $10 if anyone feels the need to research it.

I suppose that there would have been "gay rights" organizations in 1972 (3 years after stonewall). But I find the claim that 495 of them existed, and that all of them were invited to a "convention" in 1972, and that 200 representatives actually showed up, all to be a bit incredulous. Though, I suppose that it is possible.

Levinson's version doesn't include the final sentence that some of the anti-gay hategroups add (which again I can't confirm whether it actually is in the book or not):

"The greatest single victory of the gay movement over the past decade has been to shift the debate from behavior to identity, thus forcing opponents into a position where they can be seen as attacking the civil rights of homosexual citizens."

It just sounds a bit purposefully fabricated, and doesn't sound like a sentiment that would have been appreciated back in 1972, though I suppose that even it is possible. Or it's more possible that Altman added it in 1982, a decade after the supposed confab.

Posted by: Dick Mills | Feb 17, 2010 1:13:01 AM

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