A New Fundamentalist Term for Gays and Lesbians: Aberrosexuals

Last updated on July 2nd, 2012 at 10:05 am

Aberrosexuals: those who engage in biologically aberrant sexual behavior.

-       Judy Meissner

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Aberrochristians: those who engage in aberrant religious behavior.

-       Hrafnkell Haraldsson

It is time to start using the term aberrochristian, folks. Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH), has fallen in love with Judy Meissner’s term aberrosexualist, which he says isis certainly more accurate than ‘gay’ and more comprehensive than homosexual.” If that is true, aberrochristian is far more accurate when referring to bigots like LaBarbera than the term Christian.

LaBarbera is hung up on “aberrant and immoral behavioral choices” but this is only because of his own aberrant religious choices. Look at what this guy believes. He thinks equal rights is an “activist agenda”. And if you can find a single spot in the New Testament where Jesus obsesses over gay sex, please let me know. Even the Old Testament, which hurls fire and brimstone at almost everyone, barely mentions it and when it does talk about man-love it waxes poetically homoerotic.

I suspect Jesus would say this: “Why are you wasting your time on this with the end of the age at hand?” right before launching into the whole log in your own eye and casting the first stone spiel. Jesus could get worked up about things. I mean, he could throw things around. I suspect he would be worked up now: not at gays but at LaBarbera and Meissner.

Meissner’s target of attack is Suze Orman, the Emmy Award winning television host USA Today calls ”a force in the world of personal finance” and a “one-woman financial advice powerhouse” but who Meissner the aberrochristianist calls an aberrosexualist. Meissner wants Orman, who came out to the New York Times Magazine in 2007,  to “get real”, saying “Suze Orman, you are too smart to declare with a completely straight face that you ‘are not treated equally’ because you cannot marry a person of your same sex.”

To which we could reasonably answer, “C’mon, Judy Meissner, you are too smart to declare with a completely straight face that Suze Orman is not treated equally because she cannot marry a person of the same sex.” Or maybe I give her too much credit because she actually asserts that “Inequality means not being permitted something another citizen is permitted under the same, equal terms and conditions.”

This is the kind of reasoning you might expect from somebody who almost passed the third grade but Meissner seems to genuinely embrace it:

Suze, you can marry anyone under the same, equal terms and conditions as every other American. no one in America is allowed to marry under different, unequal terms and conditions as you seek, incredibly, in the name of “equality.” What you are proposing, Suze, is not “marriage equality,” but marriage inequality!

Meissner is being playfully ignorant…I hope. Though Meissner begs Orman, “Do not attempt to insult our intelligence, or yours, for that matter,” it is clear whose intelligence is being gratuitously insulted: ours.

Meissner is free to marry the person she loves; Orman, significantly, is not. This false definition of equality is a sham and it’s not even convincing. It is merely another attempt to sell the claim of “special rights” when in fact it is heterosexuals like Meissner who are the ones enjoying special rights, rights they refuse to share with gays and lesbians.

Aberrosexualists (partisans, whether aberrosexual or not, of the extremist ideology pushing for the “normalization” of biologically aberrant sexual behavior) mock the very notion of equality by demanding “equal marriage rights” for themselves while conveniently refusing it to everyone else in a “loving and caring relationship.”

This would be hilarious if only it was funny. Homosexuality is not biologically aberrant sexual behavior since there is abundant evidence of it in nature, evidence Meissner willfully ignores. Nor are gays and lesbians demanding rights for themselves that would be denied others: Meissner, were marriage equality the law of the land, would also be free to marry somebody of the same sex, if she chose, as would Peter LaBarbera. It really is difficult to imagine Meissner can advertise her flawed thinking with a straight face. She has to be joking right?

No, sadly not. She chooses instead to assert the conservative fallback position: false equivalency.

What about those who want to so-call “marry” their blood relatives, minors, multiple partners, or even their lovable, adorable pets? That’s right, Suze! If you can leave your entire estate to your beautiful Labrador retriever, why shouldn’t you be able to marry him (or her?) as well? Shouldn’t “Marriage Equality” apply to these Americans as well?

Of course, marrying members of the same sex has nothing to do with marrying children or pets or with incest. Neither does Meissner’s belief system have anything to do with Christianity, let alone common sense or even reality itself. Meissner claims that “Aberrosexualist extremists pushing so-called ‘Marriage Equality’ need to come clean. They need to be consistent at the very least! They can’t advocate ‘Marriage Equality’ for a chosen few, while hypocritically denying it to those who may want to ’marry’ (so-called) multiple partners or their grandma so they can be covered by her insurance or inherit her great pension benefits. Otherwise, they must stop pretending to stand for ‘Marriage Equality’ at all!”

Talk about shrill. And absurd. Meissner would not last five minutes in a college philosophy class – or in any class demanding a modicum of rationality. The absurdity of her position is clear when you consider the fact that she and her concept of “traditional marriage” are also denying the right of people to marry children, animals and blood relatives. Why is it so outrageous that proponents of marriage equality would be denying these rights but it’s perfectly acceptable that proponents of “traditional marriage” to do so?

Yet again, with a presumably straight-face she concludes that “Americans in all 50 states already enjoy ‘Marriage Equality.'”

Regardless of their alleged sexual preference, everyone in America has the right to marry a member of the opposite sex on the same equal terms and equal conditions. That’s what true marriage equality is all about: an equality that equals reality.

“An equality that equals reality” – really? Meissner’s entire case is built up around a rejection of our shared reality. Meissner’s absurdist logic will no doubt appeal to those who feel rather than think, as we all know it is meant to do. So too will LaBarbera’s, who adds this hate-infested gem of aberrochristian thinking:

“Suze, stop pretending that all lifestyle choices are equal. Lesbianism is immoral, per thousands of years of human history. Thankfully, many women who once thought they were ‘lesbian’ — like many men who once called themselves “gay” — are now living healthier lives in accordance with the natural design of their bodies and the moral laws of their loving Creator. You can, too!”  

LaBarbera and Meissner are not going to convince any educated person with her reasoning powers but she is not hoping to convert those with above room temperature IQs. She is appealing to the aberrochristian Republican base after all, which is not at all the same thing.



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