Liberty Counsel's Barber smears GLSEN, cites obsolete study

In a column published at Townhall and the Media Research Center's CNSNews.com, director of cultural affairs for the right-wing Liberty Counsel (and anti-gay activist) Matt Barber smears the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network, claiming that GLSEN members "promote sexual anarchy and tacitly work to normalize the criminal practice of pederasty." Barber goes on to assert: "GLSEN's primary purpose is to push dangerous and even deadly homosexual and cross-dressing behaviors in our government schools on children as young as five."

Barber also cites an outdated study to further attack gays:

Multiple studies have established, for instance, that homosexual conduct, especially among males, is considerably more hazardous to one's health than a lifetime of chain smoking. 

One such study -- conducted by pro-"gay" researchers in Canada -- was published in the International Journal of Epidemiology (IJE) in 1997.

While the medical consensus is that smoking knocks from two to 10 years off an individual's life expectancy, the IJE study found that homosexual conduct shortens the lifespan of "gays" by an astounding "8 to 20 years" - more than twice that of smoking.

Barber doesn't mention that this study is irrelevant to gay behavior today. The study examined data "obtained for a large Canadian urban centre from 1987 to 1992," and the life expectancy differential was specifically attributed to deaths "due to HIV/AIDS." But the first antiretroviral drug to treat HIV was not introduced until 1987 and was only partly effective and, thus, arguably had no significant effect on mortality rates during the time period of the study. It was not until the mid-1990s -- well outside the window of the study -- that more effective treatments became available.

Claiming that mortality rates among gays 20 years ago, when there were no effective HIV drugs, are reflective of gay behavior today is misleading and deceptive. But Barber seems to hate gays more than he respects the truth.