This guy is turning out to be almost as bad as Paul Cameron. For those who don't know, he is a "Concerned Woman For America" who used to work in the insurance industry until he got fired for writing antigay columns on his own time, off work, which although the decision to fire him was perfectly legal, it was also, in my opinion, a lame thing for his bosses to do.
He now works as a professional antigay activist at Concerned Women For America.
Ed Brayton has the goods on one antigay article from WorldNetDaily which quotes Barber. The article is entitled Lesbian demands control over Christian's daughter, which should tell you all you need to know about it. Now Barber pens his own article for WND entitled Surgeon General's Warning: Gay sex kills where he goes off the deep end. He thinks he's informing WorldNetDaily readers of "Just the facts, Ma'am" and proclaims "[i]t's time to shatter the silence with truth." Well, he should know that informed readers like yours truly, Ed Brayton and others read WorldNetDaily and expose the lies and distortions that alas are often contained therein. The following is Barber's lie:
In fact, multiple studies have established that homosexual conduct, especially among males, is considerably more hazardous to one's health than a lifetime of chain smoking.
Wrong, in fact no studies show this. Only two sets of studies in the medical literature have attempted to measure gay lifespans. One set was done by the notorious fraud Paul Cameron, which Barber wisely avoids, lest he end up with egg on his face. [If you ever hear someone say that gay male lifespan is somewhere between 39-43 years, you know they are referring to Paul Cameron's fraudulent data.]
And the other was done by the the International Journal of Epidemiology, or IJE, in 1997 which Barber cites. That one study that examined urban gay males in one metropolitan Canadian city in the mid-1990s, was, as far as I can tell, credible. And it concluded that because of AIDS, gay or bisexual males living in that city had a reduced lifespan of by 8 to 20 years. This was also during the worst period of the AIDS crisis, before the newer lifesaving medications had been introduced. Those of us old enough remember the days when many gay men died too often too young. And thankfully, that was a relatively short period of time in modern history (from the early 80s to the mid-90s).
Barber pretends like gay men are still dropping dead like flies from AIDS. The problem is that it isn't true. Protease inhibitors and "cocktail" drugs have turned AIDS into a chronic disease like diabetes, no longer a death sentence within 10 years. But apparently Barber longs for the day that large numbers of gay men die young from AIDS such that he pretends it's still occurring.
But he knows better. Stating the authors of the IJE study were "[u]nder tremendous pressure," trying to do damage control, Barber quotes them: "[W]e do not condone the use of our research in a manner that restricts the political or human rights of gay and bisexual men or any other group." That quotation was actually taken from a statement by the authors in 2001 entitled Gay Life Expectancy Revisited. The statement was made, of course, years later, after newer life saving AIDS medications had been introduced and it notes:
In contrast, if we were to repeat this analysis today the life expectancy of gay and bisexual men would be greatly improved. Deaths from HIV infection have declined dramatically in this population since 1996. As we have previously reported there has been a threefold decrease in mortality in Vancouver as well as in other parts of British Columbia.4
In other words, the 8-20 statistic is no longer valid. To knowingly cite that figure today as though it were is in essence a lie. It's like citing the value of gold in 1996 and pretending it's still the same today. And Barber, because he quoted from Gay Life Expectancy Revisited, knows this. In short, Barber is lying and knows it. I guess breaking the 9th Commandment is fine if it's in pursuance of the "greater good."
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