Don’t get sucked in (or sucked off) by this guy.
“There are few more informed than I am.”
- Dr. Tom Stevens, “Objectivist” and Idiot
Image from stonewalllibertarians.org.
Meet Dr. (of what?) Tom Stevens, executive director of the group Stonewall Libertarians. (He’s the one who, thankfully, is wearing a shirt.) He really wants gay people to vote for him, so he awkwardly poses with shirtless gay men and puts the pictures up online.
However, he’s not our friend. He started a new political party called the Objectivist Party on the heels of the Ron Paul craze with the intention of creating a political organisation that laps lovingly at Ayn Rand’s vagoo harder than the Libertarians. He also believes our kids should smoke crack.
He speaks fairly well about why we need to do away with DOMA (Defence of Marriage Act) and DADT (Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell), but if you push the subject with him, he will reveal that:
- he does not believe that being gay is a biological trait;1
- he believes that gay people are be “conditioned” to be gay;2
- he believes that some people choose to be gay;3
- he believes it is logically “sick” for gay people to believe that they are normal people;4
- he believes the idea that being gay is something determined by genetics, hormone development in-utero and brain wiring is not scientific, rather it is a lie perpetuated by gay rights activists;5
- and he believes that because he is a lawyer and an “educator”, he obviously knows everything about homosexuality that there is to know, and anyone who disagrees with him does so because they are ignorant and won’t bow to his vastly superior authority on the issue.6
All of these quotes are from Tom Stevens in the comments on a Facebook note by Charles Wentling and from a private conversation between the two, made public here. They correspond with the above bullets.
1 – “Blindly-stupid, hypocritically minded, etc etc.
All because you think being gay is 100% biological and I disagree.
Testimonials will not help since a person is not fully aware of all the forces, cultural programming, personal experiences and thoughts that were reinforced with the reward of pleasure over the years.”
2 – “each person has little choice because the conditioned responses are so powerful.” “People who like girls with large breasts or small ankles, or midgets, or men with hairy legs or fur, etc. etc. are not born with those turn-on and sexual attractions. They are conditioned and reinforced by early experiences to develop those likes. One is not BORN bi, straight or gay and no ‘science’ proves that including twin studies and all the other crap science that shows effects and not causes.”
3 – “You make a classic error when you argue that no one would choose to be gay given society’s discrimination”
4 – “You desperately want to be ‘normal’ and so if you were born gay, in your sick logic, it was not your ‘fault’ that you deviated from the norms of society.”
5 – “Had you said there was no moon landing, then you clearly would be a kook but since you think this issue of homosexuality is settled, it shows me you cannot see past the desire to activists who wish to make it an inherent trait in order to promote their agenda.”
6 – “and as for not knowing about the ‘biology’ of homosexuality, you forget that I teach this issue and have for many years. There are few more informed than I am. You are truly the ignorant one here.”
Is it good that he’s fighting for gay rights? Yes, I think it is. Should gay people respect him and follow his leadership when he makes no effort to understand what makes a person gay? Absolutely not. He is fighting for gay rights because that is what’s “vogue” in social libertarian circles at the moment. He clearly has no respect for gay people and just wants to secure the gay voting block.
As I wrote to the Mormon, Devin Jessup, president of the Kentucky chapter of Tom Stevens’ Objectivist party,
Devin, it is a great thing when a political party in the United States stands up against the ignorant horde to say, “No, we will not accept the majority view that the minority should be suppressed, no matter whose god demands it of us.”
However, it is a patronizing and disgusting thing when a party promises to say just that in order to secure a voting block because the leaders of that party (You, a member of the unabashedly anti-gay Mormon faith, and Tom, a nimrod with no knowledge, or want of knowledge, about biology and genetics) want to replace the dying Elephant in the room [The Republican Party], and can’t do it without the votes of a politically neglected minority. I don’t want a Mormon and a dipshit fighting for my rights, thank you. I don’t want to owe you cretins anything.
The right of gay men and women to get married will be won by people with a legitimate interest in equality and a true understanding of what it is, and what it is like, to be gay. It will not be won by a party of vote-whores who cling to an unproven and unstable philosophy set down by a mediocre fiction author.
Wake up, children! The struggle that we gays are going through to gain equal protection and equal recognition under the law is not a toy for you to play with, nor is it a flag for you to attract attention to yourselves with. It is my freedom, and I would like to secure it honestly.
On an incredibly bizarre note, the Stonewall Libertarian website is hosted, for some reason, on Randy Langkraehr’s Missouri gubernatorial campaign website. All of the Stonewall Libertarian pages are hosted in randyforgovernor.com/stonewall/. When you go back to Randy’s main website, randyforgovernor.com, all of the sidebar buttons (Home, About, Events, etc.) direct to pages hosted under randyforgovernor.com/jcrtl/, the website for the anti-abortion group Johnson County Right to Life. And this is who Tom Stevens associates with.
