Media Matters has already noted today that David Barton “has twice spoken to groups affiliated with the racist and anti-Semitic Christian Identity movement” according to the Anti-Defamation League.
In other Barton related news, on his radio show this week, Glenn Beck's favorite Christian nationalist pseudo-historian wondered aloud why the federal government doesn't “regulate homosexuality,” comparing gay men and lesbians to trans fats, fast food, cigarettes, hard liquor, and salt.
Boy, that conservative movement is really warming up to the LGBT community.
From the October 5, 2010 edition of Wall Builders Live with David Barton and Rick Green:
Transcript After The Jump
You can find a list of stations carrying Barton's show here or contact the show here.
h/t Towleroad
Barton: We're a health-conscious people, no question …
Green: We are, very.
Barton: We have a Department of Health and Human Services; we have health care bills; we have health insurance and we're really trying to stop all unhealthy things so we're going after transfats and we're going after transparency in labeling to make sure we get all the healthy stuff in there. And we're going after school lunch programs and we're trying to get juices in schools and Cokes out of schools and snack machines out of schools. And we're trying to tell McDonalds what they can use and how they can cook their french fries because it's unhealthy. And we've got cigarettes and you know, trying to get them off and raising the taxes so high that nobody will smoke them, 'cause that's unhealthy. And hard liquor; that's unhealthy, we can't do that. And salt, man, we've got to have salt-free diets, and so we have to post the potassium, salt and all the different types of salt … just everything, obesity, overweight, we are so doggone health conscious because we want to live healthy because, among other things, it makes your health care a whole lot cheaper. You live a healthy life, no question it's a lot cheaper. So, here --
Green: Which is typically the excuse for the Federal Government claiming we have the responsibility here, or we have the authority I should say …
Barton: … to tell you how to live a healthy lifestyle. So if I got to the Centers for Disease Control and I'm concerned about health, I find some interesting stats there and this should tell me something about health.
Homosexual/bi-sexual individuals are seven times more likely to contemplate or commit suicide. Oooh, that doesn't sound very healthy.
Homosexuals die decades earlier than heterosexuals. That doesn't sound healthy.
Nearly one-half of practicing homosexuals admit to five hundred or more sex partners and nearly one-third admit to a thousand or more sex partners in a lifetime.
Green: Wow.
Barton: That doesn't sound very healthy.
Homosexuals have an HIV prevalence sixty times higher than the general population.
Homosexuals have Hepatitis B virus five to six times more often and Hepatitis C virus infections about two times more common than the regular population.
Homosexuals are less than three percent of the population but they account for sixty-four percent of the syphilis cases.
Decades, I mean, you go through all this stuff, sounds to me like that's not very healthy. Why don't we regulate homosexuality?
Green: I was about to say, now wait a minute, they want to either regulate or outlaw things like transfats and all those things you mentioned earlier …
Barton: I got news for you, salt doesn't have the same life -- won't cut decades off your life. But we regulate salt. And transfats are not going to cut decades off your life, but we'll regulate that.
Green: But here they do the opposite, they promote it.
Barton: Oh wait a minute, this will cut decades off your life? Let's get this taught in kindergarten and on up … wait a minute, I thought we were into being health conscious? This is so oxymoronic and it really is dangerous.
There is a piece I want to read out of an 1814 legal work on why – and this is without all of the medical evidence back there – but this is why homosexuality was not promoted in this society --
Green: Wait, what date did you say there?
Barton: 1814.
Green: 1814. See, a lot of people thing this is an issue that has not been dealt with before. I've heard you talk about George Washington dealing with it in the military …
Barton: 1778 …
Green: 1778 so, this goes --
Barton: This is an 1814 legal work on why we didn't promote homosexuality. Here's what it says:
If we reflect on the dreadful consequences of sodomy to a state, and on the extent to which this abominable vice may be secretly carried on and spread, we cannot, on the principles of sound public policy, consider the punishment as too severe. For if it once begins to prevail, not only will boys be easily corrupted by adults, but also by other boys; nor will it ever cease; more especially as it must soon lose all its shamefulness and infamy and become fashionable and the national taste; and then national weakness, for which all remedies are ineffectual, national weakness must inevitably follow; not perhaps in the very first generation, but certainly by the third or fourth generation. Whoever, therefore wishes to ruin a nation, as only to get this vice introduced, for once its introduced it is extremely difficult to remove it where it has taken root because it can be propagated with secrecy and when we perceive that once it's got a footing in any country, however powerful and flourishing that country may be, we may venture as politicians to predict the foundation of its future decline is laid, and that within a hundred years it will no longer be the same powerful country it was at present.
Green: Wow.
Barton: 1814.
Green: And, I've actually seen you give statistics on what happens in nations that adopt homosexuality and homosexual marriage and how quickly that nation does deteriorate.
Barton: Now this was 1814, but there was a study done back in the 1920s and it said, it looked at eighty-some odd nations and those rejected sexual regulation and rejected sexual regulation, like with homosexuality, none of them lasted past the third generation from the time that they embraced it.
Green: Wow.
Barton: So, you know, 80 out of 80 or 86 out of 80, how ever many it looked at confirmed --
Green: -- confirmed exactly what that study in 1814 said.
Barton: Exactly, exactly, and that's a century later. And now here the CDC is saying “here's a really unhealthy lifestyle” and we're saying, “Oh great, let's promote it in schools and lets protect it in law.”
Green: Unbelievable.