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crossposted on Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters
As we remember major lgbt stories in 2009 like Maine and Carrie Prejean, let's not forget the so-called minor stories.
One in particular I would like to point out because it was a victory for the lgbt blogging community.
Remember Peter Vadala?
He was the former employee of Brookstone (a Massachusetts retailer store) who was fired for supposedly expressing his Christian beliefs.
As we learned more about Vadala, it turned out that him “expressing his Christian beliefs” amounted to telling a lesbian employee that she is a “deviant” for simply talking about her upcoming wedding. Gay marriage, by the way, is perfectly legal in Massachusetts.
At first glance, the incident looked like a perfect cause celebre for the religious right. A young Christian attacked by the supposedly intolerant and invisible homosexual lobby – a perfect fundraising tool if there ever was one.
But it flopped.
What made Vadala's story different than say the story of Repent America when a supposed religious group was arrested at Philly Pride in 2004 or the group of city workers who filed a lawsuit against the city of Oakland when they were told to remove an anti-gay flyer from their workplace?
These were two incidents that the religious right exploited years after they took place.
Like Vadala, both of these incidents looked like cases of Christians being treated unfairly and both contained extenuating circumstances which contradicted that claim.
But unlike Vadala, the earlier stories had time to gain traction. They were spread around right-wing circles before the lgbt community had a handle on the situation and thereby the religious right controlled the arguments regarding these incidents.
Not so with Vadala.
Bloggers and the lgbt community in general were on to him from the start, making sure that the entire story behind his firing was told before religious right circles had time to truncate it.
Also, Vadala himself didn't exactly make a good spokesperson. This interview on Fox News is the worst I had ever seen:
Even with his awful interviewing skills someone like Vadala could have still parlayed his controversy into a cushy job with a right-wing group (hello Matt Barber).
But the lgbt bloggers nipped that one before it could take off.
So while we look back and regret the fact that some of our attempts for forward progress failed, there is nothing wrong with noting that we have become more vigilant and steadfast in beating back lies.
And I think that's a good thing to celebrate.
Related posts:
Fired employee, religious right groups want lgbts to follow different rules at the workplace
Should the right to call a fellow employee 'a deviant' be protected under law?
20 Comments
I forgot all about the week we had with Peter! He really did get beat back down as quickly as he appeared, didn’t he?
“So-called” finance! Oh, Peter, we hardly knew ye!
Our lives are not fetishesWhen are Christians going to realize that when we talk about our lives, we are not talking about our behavior? Since when is loving someone of the same sex a lifestyle? I didn’t here Vadala say anything about the co-worker talking about what went on in her bedroom. And you know he would have no problem bringing that up if she did.
Seems like she was talking about her fiance and her upcoming wedding – something we evil gays hear about every single day at our workplaces from our automatically morally-superior, heterosexual co-workers.
It comes down to this: Christians are a-okay with gays as long as we stay in the closet and hate ourselves. Oh, they are also a-okay with lesbians as long as they are young, hot and make out on network or cable television.
The Christian Lifestyleis in the end dangerous, intellectually limiting, and dangerous to society.
It needs to be discouraged
with lovei feel convicted to lovingly tell you i think your so called life is bad stuff and god and i hate you.
wow, he just oozes love.
Lesson learned?Those who control the message control the perception. For far too long, the LGBT community hasn’t had control of its message, merely responding – largely ineffectually – to momentary crises.
When we take charge of the message and when we initiate the discussion, when we have both grassroots and lobbyists in place and working efficiently, the public and the politicians tends to agree with us.
After all, desiring to live our lives as full, productive members of the community is hardly a scandalous pursuit. And opponents to us and our rights under the law know this.
I don’t watch Faux but just couldn’t turn away from this trainwreck. These christians are so put upon. I think I will start a cross-making factory so they can really go all out with the martyrdom fetish.
You’re absolutely right, Maura.Because, as they so often like to tell us, it is a choice, after all.
Maybe we should try to bargain with them, if only for the sake of argument: You quit being Christian, and I’ll stop being gay. Deal?
I wonder how far we’d get with that.
If you put that line on a shirtI’ll buy it.
Reparative Therapy can cure Christianist EvangelicalismHRC needs to support evangelical cult deprogramming at Camp Sappho
There must be something on cafepressI’d so buy it too. Does PHB have a cafepress account?
Totally forgot about this loser, too.Morons believe that if something is “controversial” or “hot-button” for them, it is for anyone else, too. No. For other people, it’s called “reality” and “normal”.
Never watched this interview before and could barely manage skipping through the first half. You wouldn’t think it would be so hard to find well-spoken, mediagenic and cuddly people who are only famous for hating people who are in love. This idiot can’t even string three words together, let alone an entire sentence. And he’s so creepy, he’s someone you’d move away from on the bus.
His store must have been thrilled to find a good reason to get rid of him. You know they had to have been looking for one for ages!
This is just me…but if I saw peterboy walking down the street, I’d be wondering whether he was top or bottom
this is so patheticthis not-too-articulate nutbag goes on and on about this co-worker being “unhappy in her lifestyle”. is he talking about the same coworker who would not stop bragging about about her upcoming nuptuals?
of course,he was raised to believe that all homosexuals are unhappy and we need to be “saved” no matter how happy , productive and successful lives we live.
i think the interviewer found him embarassment and cut short the interview.
This mindset is all too familiar to me.My childhood friends and relatives in small towns where everyone is beyond miserable all assume that, if you move to a city and you’re queer, then you’re doomed to more misery than they’ll ever know. I understand it’s because that’s all they’ve ever been told and I take it in stride. I have astonished — utterly astonished — more than a few people when I tell them that not only am I fine, but I’m fine, in part, specifically because I don’t live in a small town and I’m queer.
This creep proves you don’t have to live in a small town to be ignorant or believe lies. And I never use assumption of gayness as an insult, but, yeah, he’s so obviously a repressed self-hating gay man that it is screaming from his every pore. Eew.
He is so totally a bottom.He really wants it up the bum.
Reparatve therapy, nothing.It hardly takes anything so ambitious. A good, solid grade school education can cure Christian fundamentalism.
The problem isthat would take a good, really effective central (i.e. national) organization. Pity we don’t have one.
Neither……Little Peter just likes to watch.
Heh heh heh.
Not only that…I hear they recruit and indoctrinate children, too! OH, THE HORROR!!!
Berkeley is outbecause it does require a bit of exposure to the sciences