}

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Taking Down an Anti-Gay Infomercial


In the video above, Matt Baume takes on the virulently anti-gay “Family” Research [sic] Council’s new video. The group puts out anti-gay propaganda videos all the time, and all of them say absurd things. “F”RC needs to be held accountable for what it says.

The “F”RC video, according to the YouTube description for Matt’s video, is “about how the gays are going to ruin everything with all their pesky marrying and doing business and existing. The video's full of crazy claims, half-truths, and homophobia, and worst of all builds to a sneaky sales pitch at the end.”

So, Matt takes the video apart point by point, and it’s embarrassing for the “F”RC. As always, this has nothing to do with the anti-gay group’s opinions, it’s about facts alone: Everyone, even homophobes, are entitled to hold whatever opinions they want—but they’re not entitled to their own facts.

This is the sort of takedown I wish I had the patience and calmness to do, because there’s so much chicanery in the far right anti-gay industry that needs to be exposed as the bovine excrement it is.

But, I don’t have the patience and calmness to do that. Well, not usually. So, I’m glad that Matt did and I hope he continues to do it. This video is an example of how to do it.

However, there was one thing that made me chuckle: Matt criticised Tony Perkins for turning his propaganda video into a commercial at the end, and then Matt did that at the end of his video. However, Matt’s podcast is free, unlike Tony’s DVDs, so it’s different—and kinda funny.

But after such dark topics in that video, it was also kind of nice to have something to smile about at the end.

All in all, a good video, and I think Matt did a great job.

2 comments:

rogerogreen said...

I had not heard that Reagan quote near the end about Negroes. Classic!

Arthur Schenck (AmeriNZ) said...

I hadn't either—and it goes to show how anyone can evolve over time. But I don't think it's not surprising the radical right never mention it: Just like something else they frequently quote, they've probably never read everything in it, but, even if they have, they always pick and choose things to quote, always using things that conveniently happen to reinforce whatever current political point they're trying to score.