News & Politics
Not Just Milo: Childhood Sexual Abuse Often Precedes Gay Lifestyle
Two viral videos of famous men casually discussing being molested as teenagers this week is no aberration but rather a common experience for many engaged in a homosexual lifestyle.
And a leading expert on the issue says the far left is not horrified by pedophilia but has actually worked to mainstream the sexualization of children for a long time.
The issue exploded earlier in the week when former Breitbart Tech Editor Milo Yiannopoulos lost a book deal and was disinvited from delivering the keynote address at the Conservative Political Action Conference after video surfaced of him refusing to name pedophiles in Hollywood while also discussing how he engaged in sexual relations with adult men – including a priest – while he was a young teenager.
Just days later, interviews done by”Star Trek” actor George Takei flooded the internet. An outspoken gay activist, Takei revealed that he had his first homosexual experience with an adult when he was just 13 years old and attending a summer camp.
Yiannopoulos and Takei are not alone.
“It is fairly common among men who identify as gay in their adulthood. I think this is one argument for homosexuality being a product of circumstances. It’s not something you’re born with,” said Americans for Truth About Homosexuality President Peter LaBarbera.
Decades of research and confronting the LGBT agenda convince him this is one of the driving factors in men turning to homosexual lifestyles.
“I’ve been doing this for 25 years and I now see that I really underestimated this factor. I think it’s extremely high. I think it could be upwards of half the men or even much higher than that,” said LaBarbera.
He says the research backs that up. LaBarbera cites a 2016 study in The New Atlantis which concludes that “compared to heterosexuals, non-heterosexuals are about two to three times as likely to have experienced childhood sexual abuse.”
LaBarbera says molestation was also a factor in the orientation of gay activism icon Harvey Milk, a homosexual political figure from San Francisco who was murdered in 1978. President Obama later honored Milk with a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom and named a U.S. Navy ship after him. Milk was sexually assaulted as a boy in a New York City theater after his mother sent him there alone.
“He went on to become a homosexual activist who also liked to date so-called younger men, even a teenager once. There was a 16 or 17-year old boy whom Milk had a sexual relationship when he was 33,” said LaBarbera.
LaBarbera says the key issue is the premature sexualization of children can happen in many forms, including exposure to pornography at an early age.
“Something happens when you expose a child prematurely to sexuality or abuse and dysfunction. There’s other factors, but this is clearly a major factor in male homosexuality and also among some lesbians,” said LaBarbera.
And that is why LaBarbera is horrified at the Boy Scouts of America for opening its doors wide open for homosexual scouts and leaders.
“The Takei thing is fascinating because it was a camp counselor. Here we have the Boy Scouts of America are now allowing openly homosexual – not just boys – but openly homosexual men. That means you’re going to have homosexual men taking boys on camping trips. We know from history that is not a good thing and a lot of abuse comes out of that, including in the Boy Scouts,” said LaBarbera.
But why would the trauma or confusion of being assaulted by a man convince boys they are homosexuals?
“Some of these boys, and it’s very, very tragic, they believe when they are recruited or seduced by an older man that somehow confirms they were homosexual. They blame themselves and it’s very, very tragic,” said LaBarbera.
He says the impact is similar to other abusive relationships.
“It’s sort of like the girl who is a abused by a boyfriend or a relative. Then she seeks out other abusive men,” said LaBarbera.
LaBarbera urges deeper research to be done into the issue but he’s not expecting it to happen anytime soon.
“A fascinating study would just be famous homosexuals. Just take people like George Takei, who are well known as homosexual and look at their backgrounds. I think you would find an amazing amount of abuse, neglect, dysfunction in childhood, parent alienation,” said LaBarbera.
“These things should be studied, but of course, in academia, they’re not because the rigid political correctness says you have to be pro-gay,” he said.
It’s not just academia. LaBarbera says the media also turns a blind eye even though some – like CNN anchor Don Lemon – suffered abuse as kids.
“There’s a lot of examples of this but the for the media it’s not a politically correct topic, because when you start raising questions like this, people say, ‘Well, maybe this is a contributing factor to homosexuality,” said LaBarbera.
“That’s the problem with this debate. We focus on the gay rights-civil rights aspect, which I believe is fraudulent. We don’t talk about these negative causes and factors,” he added.
LaBarbera says Yiannoupoulos inadvertently pulled the mask off one of the dark secrets of homosexuality and the exposure may do some good.
“I don’t think he intended to, but he has educated a lot of people about homosexual ideation,” said LaBarbera.
However, he doesn’t expect much help from the far political left in the U.S. LaBarbera says there has been a persistent effort over the years to remove the stigma from pedophilia. Figures ranging from Bill Maher to liberal academics are on the record defending it or trying to explain it.
“It is gaining traction. There is actually a movement which is redefining pedophilia as MAPS – Minor-Attracted Persons. I was reading the [American Psychological Association] manual on mental disorders. They called pedophilia an orientation,” said LaBarbera.
“The idea that being attracted to children is an orientation. That is already officially out there, and that’s pretty scary,” said LaBarbera.
And he says the far left end game is clear.
“The radical left wants to achieve the normalization of pedophilia, defining the age of consent down and treating children as sexual objects,” said LaBarbera.
But LaBarbera says there is hope for anyone engaged in a homosexual lifestyle or is badly damaged from childhood sexual abuse.
“The good news is people have come out of homosexuality. My good friend Stephen Black was abused as a boy. But he is now ex-gay. He came out of the homosexual lifestyle. He’s married with children. The good news is you can come out of these awful circumstances,” said LaBarbera.
Three Martini Lunch 2/23/17
Greg Corombos of Radio America and David French of National Review applaud the Trump administration for rescinding Pres. Obama’s demand that all public schools embrace transgender accommodation and leaving the issue to states or local school districts. They also slam the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for ruling that any gun can be banned if it’s “useful for military service.” And David vents about the one of the worst trades in NBA history.
‘No Campus for White Men’
The vast majority of college campuses have been liberal bastions for decades, but those politics have now morphed into a “victimhood olympics” that threatens people not affiliated with an allegedly oppressed group and even puts the future of our nation in doubt.
Colleges are making headlines on a regular basis for reasons unrelated to the curriculum. Efforts by minority students to rename buildings, demand safe spaces, and intimidate free speech seem to be an every day occurrence.
“There is a case of this happening at nearly every college campus,” said Daily Caller Deputy Editor Scott Greer, author of the new book “No Campus for White Men: The Transformation of Higher Education into Hateful Indoctrination.”
“You can look at pretty much any campus and there is a major microaggression that started protests,” said Greer, who says campus activism is essentially a competition among aggrieved minorities to prove they are the most oppressed.
“The reason why all these students are rushing to compete in this victimhood olympics is that on college campuses there is a new moral culture arising called victimhood culture,” said Greer.
“In this culture, people are not assigned status and value based on being very honorable and having a lot of accomplishments or simply the dignity that comes from being an American citizen or a human being. It comes from who can demonstrate they’ve been the most oppressed, who’s been the biggest victim,” said Greer.
Greer says this is a sharp contrast to the typical liberalism found on campus for many years.
“Colleges have always been historically home to pretty crazy leftism, but now the angle on all these protests is very racial in nature. It’s getting more anti-white in its character as well,” said Greer.
Greer traces the issue back more than 50 years to the dawn of Affirmative Action instituted under President John F. Kennedy. He says the policy made a lot sense at the time as many colleges and universities were blatantly slamming their doors in the faces of black applicants.
But over time, says Greer, efforts to help students based on race colored their perceptions of their own identities.
“This encourages students to think in a way that doesn’t see themselves as an American or that they’re being judged on the content of their character, but that they’re being judged on their skin color and their ethnic background,” said Greer.
“That encourages them to gravitate towards that identity for the rest of their four years. If they got this benefit of getting into college based on racial identity, why not carry it on for the four years and see what happens,” said Greer.
However, he says the movement is that often pushing for special rights rather than equal rights.
“We saw last week at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where students are now advocating for free tuition for African-Americans and other minorities. It seems against the American character and American values, where they’re judged by the content of their character,” said Greer.
As the protesters make their demands, a common cycle plays out where college administrators initially resist the protests but ultimately cave in to the students. Greer says there are multiple reasons for the weak resolve of those leaders, starting with ideological sympathy for the demonstrators.
“A lot of the administrators and professors cave in because all of them believe, ‘Oh, as a white person, I inherit all these bad things from the past. Even though my ancestors weren’t even in the United States, I’m still responsible for slavery and colonialism and all these other terrible things that have happened in the past,” said Greer.
Greer says the next problem is administrators don’t know what to do when the demands come pouring in.
“Secondly, they’re spineless because they have a very easy job. It’s the part of the job they don’t want to deal with because it’s the most difficult. It’s a very easy job being a college administrator. You have a two-hour lunch break. You really just sit in meetings all day. It’s not a difficult job,” said Greer.
Finally, he says administrators give in because the campus liberals are the only ones in their faces.
“They’re the only pressure group they have to deal with in their job. They don’t have to deal with conservative students [complaining about not having more conservative speakers]. They don’t have to deal with because conservative students typically ask politely and go through the proper methods. Campus leftists will barge in their office and start screaming and shouting for an hour,” said Greer.
“They have to deal with that so they just cave in,” he added.
With liberals have a stranglehold on the vast majority of college campuses, Greer says it’s up to conservative politicians to make sure the liberal students aren’t the only voice in the ear of administrators.
“They control the purse strings. They can demand – when administrators do something stupid like mandating white privilege courses for all students – to come before a committee hearing and explain themselves as to why they’re pushing this ridiculous and harmful ideas on students,” said Greer.
Greer says reversing the trend is essential because the race-based victimhood culture on campus is no longer a fringe but the dominant culture on most campuses.
“These are very well going to be your next senators, your next judges and maybe even your next president,” said Greer.
“It would be a terrible path for our country where we have congressmen, sitting on the House floor, competing over who is the bigger victim and determining public policy based on these silly notions. But that well could happen unless we change. This is definitely the path we’re going to go down unless something happens to change course in higher education,” said Greer.
Three Martini Lunch 2/22/17
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are glad to see Americans more optimistic about the nation’s direction than they have for a long time. ‘Morning Joe’ co-host Mika Brzezinski is worried that Pres. Trump is trying to control what people think because that’s her job. And they discuss MSNBC’s Katy Tur having no idea what a GOP congressman was talking about when he said Pres. Obama promised greater flexibility with Russia once his re-election was over.
House Conservatives Push Quick Action on Obamacare
The conservative House Freedom Caucus is pushing for quick congressional action to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and says the plans it supports will mean better coverage, lower costs and more control for patients.
And House Freedom Caucus Chairman says if Republicans don’t follow through on their promises to repeal and place the law, voters ought to send them packing next year.
“I am confident we can do that, and I am confident that if we don’t do that, everybody should send us home and they would have every right to send us home if we don’t deliver on a real promise to make it affordable,” said Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., who leads the House Freedom Caucus in the current Congress. “We promised to do that. We’ve got to deliver.”
Reports vary widely as to how soon Congress may tackle the repeal, with some lawmakers wanting to get it done in President Trump’s first 100 days and others thinking repeal and replacement may not be completed until later this year or even early 2018.
Meadows says the GOP consensus is to get this done quickly, but a debate is brewing about whether to repeal now and replace later or pass the two bills at the same time.
“It’s that replacement plan that really is providing a great anxiety among some of the Republican members, what it should include and what it shouldn’t include. There’s still some disagreement there but I’m optimistic that we will go ahead in the next 30-45 days and vote on something in the House and the Senate and move this along,” said Meadows.
“If it waits until next year, it won’t get done, so [Americans] need to weigh in with their member of Congress to say, ‘We want them to act now,'” said Meadows.
Meadows also rejects the idea of allowing the current system to fester for another year as a means of building public demand for repealing and replacing current law.
“I can tell you from a principle standpoint, to suggest that we allow it to continue to spiral down so that more people are hurt is not something that would be prudent,” said Meadows.
But Meadows also dismisses the alarm from Democrats that repealing Obamacare will means tens of millions of Americans will lose their coverage.
“The Affordable Care Act, the way it is now, is not sustainable. A lot of those people who may have gotten coverage won’t be able to keep their coverage on the current trend,” said Meadows.
Many of those Americans who now have coverage got it through the expansion of Medicaid. Meadows admits that will be one of the thornier issues to navigate.
“It is a critical component that we have to address in some shape, form, or fashion. But whether they get this done with block grants on a per capita basis or some other mechanism, I believe that we can come up with a workable solution that doesn’t leave anybody behind and provides an adequate safety net,” said Meadows.
Last week, the House Freedom Caucus threw its support behind legislation from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., that is designed to repeal the current law and simultaneously replace it with legislation that will patients much more freedom in choosing their coverage. Paul is fiercely urging GOP leaders not to blow a hole in the deficit by repealing the law and only then getting to work on a replacement.
Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., is offering a companion bill in the House that Meadows says goes a step farther than Paul’s approach in the effort to break up monopolies in the insurance market.
Meadows says there are some must-haves for conservatives in any replacement legislation.
“It’s one of the few plans that is out there that won’t blow a hole in the deficit, actually will bring down costs, and hopefully will not only address the concerns about pre-existing conditions that many of my constituents and people across America have been concerned about, but do it in a way that actually drives the cost of health care down,” said Meadows.
Meadows says the final legislation needs to require insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions and forbid carriers from cancelling policies when people get sick. He also wants more flexibility and freedom for people in their Health Savings Accounts, but is shying away from mandating that children be allowed to stay on their parent’s policies until they are 26 years old.
“We think the private sector can actually address that probably better than making it a mandate,” said Meadows, who also strongly endorses a plan from Sen. Paul to provide tax deductions for doctors who work a lot with low income patients.
“They don’t get to write that off now, so this will actually be an incentive to provide health care on a more philanthropic basis,” said Meadows.
Meadows says the cooperation between the White House and Congress has been excellent and that GOP leaders are showing respect for conservative ideas and strategies. At the same time, Meadows expects an intra-party clash over tax credits.
“Probably the biggest stumbling block right now is the leadership’s desire to use an advanceable, refundable tax credit, where a number of us probably don’t feel that’s the best approach to address it,” said Meadows.
Meadows urges his fellow Republicans to move intelligently but swiftly towards their top legislative priority. He says lawmakers need to stand on principle and let the political chips fall where they may.
“I think it’s more important that we act now to put forth not only a repeal but a replacement of all of it and make the tough decisions. As members of Congress, if we make the right decision and it sends us home, so be it,” he said.
Three Martini Lunch 2/21/17
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America discuss the almost unanimous praise of Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster to be Pres. Trump’s new national security adviser. They also discuss how the free speech debate ought to be less about Milo and more about liberals bent on destroying the careers of anyone they disagree with politically. And Jim mulls Singapore-style caning for whoever defaced three monuments in Washington over Presidents’ Day weekend.
Three Martini Lunch 2/20/17
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America react to ‘Face the Nation’ host John Dickerson admitting the media are responsible for their own credibility problem by getting things wrong and engaging in “hysterical” coverage. They also groan as the nation’s largest gathering of conservatives gives the highest-profile speaking slot to Milo Yiannopoulos before rescinding it in a swirl of controversy. And they examine C-SPAN’s rankings of all former presidents and find several curious decisions.
Why Are Feminists and Islamists Uniting?
Liberal feminists and Islamists don’t have a lot in common but they are now strong partners in the fight against President Trump, but a leading terrorism analyst says the feminists are nothing but “useful idiots” in a movement that would truly oppress them if the Islamists achieve their goals.
“What’s happening in the West is we think if we just show them how much we love them and how much we respect their way of life, they’re going to respect our way of life. This way, I do what I want. You do what we want and we live happily ever after,” said Brigitte Gabriel, president of Act for America and author of “They Must Be Stopped.”
The unlikely alliance was on full display at the women’s march in Washington on Jan. 21. Most of the headlines focused on women proclaiming their right to abortions, but Linda Sarsour, the woman leading the protest, has a very different history of activism.
“She’s an Islamist through and through. She wears the hijab. She comes from a Palestinian background. Half her family members are in Israeli jails involved in terrorism,” said Sarsour.
Gabriel says it’s mind-boggling to watch liberal American women march under the banner of a woman who has no problem with how Muslim society treats women.
“She praises Saudi Arabia and their Sharia law. This is a nation state where women cannot drive. They are beaten. They are stoned. They are flogged for having relations with another man or even seen with another man who is even a distant relative,” said Gabriel.
And it’s not just in Saudi Arabia. Gabriel says even the most moderate Islamic nations do not come anywhere close to the freedoms women enjoy in the West. She says her home nation of Lebanon, which has shifted dramatically from Christian to Muslim in recent decades, is suffering from the demographic shift.
“I know a 29-year-old Christian businesswoman from my hometown. The social police showed up at her door, took her for investigation and arrested her simply because she had a meeting with another man who is not related to her outside of her home without the supervision of her parents. They are enforcing these rules on Christian families, not only Muslim families,” said Gabriel.
“I’m not talking about Indonesia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh. You assume things like this happen in these types of countries. But to think that even in a country like Lebanon, that something like this can happen to a Christian woman, that goes to show you the oppression of women in Islamic-controlled countries,” said Gabriel.
So how did Islamic activists win over the feminists as allies? Gabriel says Sarsour was very clever.
“Somehow, she found a way to appeal to the feminist movement inside the United States saying, ‘We’re all women together here. We all are oppressed.’ She is basically using the emotions to try to lure them into coming with her and standing together with President Trump. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and that’s where they are right now,” said Gabriel.
And despite the glaring differences in the goals of the two movements, Gabriel says this alliance will likely continue for some time.
“I think it’s going to be a very long-term working relationship between the both of them because they have a common enemy that they hate much more and that is President Trump. They hate that much more than they hate their differences,” said Gabriel.
Sarsour is already cashing in on the alliance by getting groups like Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America and the Human Right Campaign to write big checks in support of the march.
“We are already seeing how leftist organizations are not only standing with her and the Islamist movement in the United States to oppose Trump, but they are actually funding her movement. So now we are seeing the left and the Islamists coming together , not only working together but exchanging money,” said Gabriel.
According to Gabriel, the feminist groups know very little about the long-term goals of Sarsour and her Islamist allies.
“We shouldn’t be surprised. What people like Linda Sarsour are doing are basically following to the letter the instructions of the Muslim Brotherhood and their plan, which later became known as ‘The Project,’ on how to work within western nations in order to recruit like-minded people who share similar goals,” said Gabriel.
And it’s not just liberal women’s groups aligning with Islamists. Gabriel says it’s happening more and more with the liberals seemingly oblivious to what their lives would be like if people like Sarsour get their way. One example is the ACLU working hand-in-hand with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR.
“You scratch your head and you think to yourself, ‘How can these two people have anything in common?’ But the ACLU, just like the feminists in this country are being used as useful idiots at the hands of Islamists like Linda Sarsour who have an end goal. They are using them simply to get to that goal,” said Gabriel.
In recent weeks, female politicians in Sweden made headlines in two very different ways. First, they mocked President Trump’s signing of a pro-life executive order while surrounded by mostly men with a picture of an all-female signing ceremony. Yet, just days later, female Swedish politicians wore hijabs without protest while visiting Iran.
Gabriel says Swedish leaders, of all people, ought to know the price of Islamic appeasement.
“Because of the immigration of majorities from Islamic nations, how they are treating feminists. In Germany, for example, look at the rapes on New Year’s Eve. Look at the rapes in Sweden. Sweden has become the rape capital of the world,” said Gabriel.
Gabriel says western nations are also eroding their own interests by allowing Muslim Sharia law to hold sway in formal court proceedings. Her organization is doing something about it.
“We at Act for America have introduced bills across the country called ‘American Laws for American Courts,’ which says no foreign law, which includes Sharia law, will be allowed to be used in any American courtroom. Only the Constitution should be the highest authority in the land,” said Gabriel.
She says it’s happening in the United States a lot more often than many people realize.
“People wonder sometimes why we have to pass such a law. We have documented over 140 cases in America where Sharia law was used instead of the Constitution of the United States in 22 states in American courtrooms,” said Gabriel.
More information on the ‘American Laws for American Courts’ effort can be found at actforamerica.org.
Three Martini Lunch 2/17/17
Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America discuss reports that intelligence officials and the FBI have not found any criminal activity thus far by Mike Flynn after reviewing transcripts of his call to Russia and testimony to the FBI. They also react to Thursday’s high-octane press conference as Trump and the media clashed again. And they rub their hands with glee as Ted Nugent says he’s considering a run for Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat.