Tea Party Group Founder Calls For Class Action Suit Against Homosexuality
By David Badash
October 18, 2013
Rick Scarborough, the founder of Tea Party Unity, thinks homosexuality is worse than smoking, and is calling for a class action lawsuit against homosexuality — just like attorneys general of 46 states brought against the top four tobacco manufacturers in the 1990s. No word yet on who the manufacturer of homosexuality is, but given that Scarborough is a self-described “Christocrat,” it’s a pretty good guess that serving papers will be an other-wordly experience.
Scarborough spoke on a nationwide Tea Party conference call yesterday with anti-gay hate group leader Peter LaBarbera, and floated the ridiculous idea.
“Peter,” Scarborough said, “the whole issue of a class action lawsuit, you and I have talked about this a little bit. I just wonder if you’ve explored that, talked to anyone about it. Obviously, statistically now even the Centers for Disease Control verifies that homosexuality much more likely leads to AIDS than smoking leads to cancer. And yet the entire nation has rejected smoking, billions of dollars are put into a trust fund to help cancer victims and the tobacco industry was held accountable for that. Any thoughts on that kind of an approach?”
Of course, LaBarbera liked that idea a lot. “Yeah I think that’s great. I would love to see it.” Because what would be better than declaring homosexuality illegal, and… what, throwing every gay person in jail, perhaps?
How very “Christian.”
But that’s not even the worst part of the conversation, because, face it, Scarborough’s idea is just plain stupid and easily dismissed.
LaBarbera went on to say, “We always wanted to see one of the kids in high school who was counseled by the official school counselor to just be gay, then he comes down with HIV.”
Yes, he said that.
Even if it was a, “Hey, this would be an awesome marketing campaign thing” comment, it’s one hundred percent disgusting. This is a grown man who is a father saying that he “always wanted to see” a high school kid come down with AIDS.
Sick.
But it’s important to remember that Scarborough is a radical right wing religious extremist. He’s surrounded himself with other religious and conservative extremists, like disgraced former House Republican Majority Leader and now acquitted convicted criminal Tom Delay, who is on Scarborough’s Tea Party Unity steering committee.
Delay was charged and convicted of criminal election law conspiracy, and the prosecutor is appealing the acquittal.
Also on Scarborough’s steering committee are Don Feder of the World Congress of Families, and Robert Knight, a draftsman of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Feder in 2011 likened the Democratic Party, and Obama especially, to Hitler’s Nazi Party, and the Occupy Wall Street Movement to Hitler Youth in an op-ed, ”Top 10 Ways Democrats Are Like Nazis.”
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