The field of contemptible anti-gay activists has long been overcrowded, like a room full of teenagers frenetically rushing a concert stage. In this cacophony of crazy, it is quite a feat to rise above the din. Yet radio host and Mission America President Linda Harvey is making a name for herself by fast becoming the most homophobic woman in the nation.
Unlike her more sophisticated counterparts, Harvey is a zealot without a filter who appears unable to finesse her fanaticism. She is outright paranoid of an imagined gay menace that in her mind is lurking to corrupt children on every street corner. For example, Harvey's latest screed warns naïve mothers about the "threat" of openly gay doctors and nurses treating their children:
There are a few homosexual doctors treating kids, there are far more nurses, LPNs, technicians and other health care workers in these lifestyles so you may want to consider writing a letter that you file with your pediatrician that should your child ever be hospitalized, you do not want your child to be treated or cared for by one of these members of the Children's Hospital gay employees group except in the case of an emergency situation.
Harvey is also opposed to openly LGBT schoolteachers and claimed on her website that "[t]hese teachers then become role models, in-house activists, and possible confidants for students who want to start homosexual behavior. Student molestation becomes a real risk."
The Mission America leader is so obsessed with bashing LGBT people that she even took a swipe while commenting on the mortgage crisis: "But back to our main point, probably few such households are homosexually-headed, because few homosexuals want to settle down to any kind of permanence." (Has she seen the latest census figures or actually met any gay couples?)
Harvey is so extreme that she believes she has the right to control the lives of LGBT people: "Our President has launched a broad scale attack on traditional values," Harvey said on her radio program. "If homosexuals and transgenders are allowed to live and love as they see fit, we would have a whole societal mess on our hands, which is already starting to happen in some areas."
Exactly what does Harvey mean when she says, "If homosexuals and transgenders are allowed to live and love as they see fit?" Is Harvey suggesting that she and her fundamentalist friends have the right to dominion over our existence? Does she think that she has the authority to deny us life, liberty, and freedom?
Harvey answered these questions at a March 2010 speaking appearance in Grosse Pointe, Mich. At the event she flat-out lied about Uganda's "Kill the Gays" bill and even expressed her support for the deadly legislation: "The fact they are re-criminalizing homosexuality is a) their business, b) it is patronizing for white Westerners to be telling these folks -- they are seeing George-Soros-funded gay groups going into Uganda. They are all through the schools, lots of promotion to kids. Poor kids, poor kids are being offered money and favors and gifts to have sex. That's exploitation. That's sex trafficking. And it's being done mostly homosexually, by Western homosexuals coming in and trying to get involved in Uganda."
It is absolutely abominable and shameless that Harvey peddled such unsubstantiated propaganda about LGBT Westerners coming to Uganda to exploit children. In reality, the Westerners who are actually going to this nation are fundamentalist Christians who are exporting homophobia in an effort to take over Uganda though business contracts and the funneling of U.S. taxpayer money into this repressive, rogue state.
More disturbing, it seems that Harvey thinks it's OK to terrorize, imprison, and even murder LGBT people in any country that would allow it. One wonders if she would deem it a local matter if the legislation in Uganda were called the "Kill the Christians" bill. And one also questions if her support for such brutal punishment would apply to American states had they the ability to pass such punitive anti-gay laws.
Finally, Harvey is so mean-spirited that she even gives succor to school bullies by attacking Dan Savage's laudable It Gets Better campaign: "It's supposed to encourage kids, that's great," says Harvey. "Encourage kids, say, 'You know, if you're having trouble, you're getting bullied, you feel despaired, don't give up.' That would be a worthy goal if they stop there. But no, they tag onto it approval of homosexuality and the implication that anybody who objects is just like those bullies out there, and they're leading you or others into suicide. That's just wrong, it's evil, it's dark..."
If one wants to witness evil and darkness, look no further than the ignorant, cruel words of Linda Harvey.
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South End of a North Traveling Horse, Homophobic, Carbon Monoxide Breathing "Meadow Muffin Head"!
Bet she's got a pictures of Marcus Bachmann in all of the rooms of her house.
The BAD Thing is that she's "Spewing" this "Hate Speech"!
lindaharvey v. to drive children to suicide by spreading mean spirited lies intended to destroy their self esteem
Yet, everything that he wrote was QUOTES that Linda Harvey said publicly and that can be easily verified.
That's how twisted this woman is. She wants to sue for defamation for having her very own words quoted in an article?????
Shouldn't the LGBT community file a defamation lawsuit against Linda Harvey? Can that be done? I would SO be down with that.
"Manic/Depressive" or at least "Bi-Polar" to Me.
"Wrong, evil and dark." Smacks a bit of demonization, but after all - she speaks for God.
Because being "allowed to live and love" are important to me.
Especially the living part.
And saying someone shouldn't be allowed to live tends to send the wrong message.
I think her rhetoric is inflated, but she may actually be loony from the constant fear. And that sort of thing tends to lead to suicidal ideation.
Like those children killing themselves.
Oh, damn . . . back on topic.
Linda's not just loony.
She slightly paranoid (and her "white Westerners telling 'these folks' bit was bizarre - it was a sort of Jesse Helms moment she channeled).
And she NEVER mentioned the lesbians. Just "the homosexuals" (and the transgenders got a nice mention, too" for a change). I guess some of the "nurses, LPNs, technicians and other health care workers" are both men and women. And bisexuals (excluded again).
But the "lifestyle" they're living is mainly late hours, stress, and surliness from the ER (and then looking after the kids at home) - not from late night conspiracy meetings.
Pathetic, really.
I (and all of my LGBT brothers and sisters) should not have to live my life being publicly degraded and demonized in a country I contribute to just as much as everyone else.
And who raised these people? Barn animals? Seriously. To speak publicly in the manner Linda Harvey speaks about gay citizens, one would imagine she grew up in a bail of hay and raised by billy-goats.
What she is doing is desperately dangerous and your hypothesis depends on reasonable and neutral people being sufficiently numerous and empowered. I don't know there is evidence of that.