As a WorldNetDaily reporter, Peter LaBarbera has been doing WND-like things, from portraying a murderer as a victim to shilling for Tucker Carlson to being an apologist for the violent Proud Boys to promoting the presidential campaign of anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist Robert Kennedy Jr. But at his core, LaBarbera is a homophobe — he founded the virulently anti-LGBTQ Americans for Truth About Homosexuality — and anti-LGBTQ is a big part of his WND work. (As we’ve noted, LaBarbera is likely working for WND because hating people through AFTAH is no longer as lucrative as it was, though it’s unclear how much money he might be making from WND given its own financial issues.) Here are some recent examples of that content:
- An April 19 article demanded the release of the alleged manifesto of Audrey Hale, ” the ‘trans’-identified mass-murderer of three children and three adults at a Nashville Christian elementary school.”
- A May 8 article whined that “transsexual ‘chest reconstruction’ surgeries – radical procedures performed on healthy bodies and designed to make gender-confused people feel and look more like their opposite-sex ‘gender identity’ –” were paid for by insurance.
- A May 17 article hyped claims by Christopher Rufo issuing a transphobic attack on a children’s hospital. LaBarbera called Rufo a “respected researcher,” even though his actual history is one of making false and misleading accusations.
- A May 26 article repeated false claims that Target was marketing tuck-friendly swimwear to children and that a designer of LGBT-related items for Target is allied with Satan. That was followed by a June 1 article touting a decline in Target’s stock price due to the manufactured controversy.
As Pride Month arrived in June, LaBarbera ramped up the anti-LGBT hate. He devoted two articles to attacking “anti-Christian gay activist” Harvey Milk after the Navy veteran was highlighted by the military, calling him “a promiscuous homosexual who had a sexual taste for young men” — and, thus, seeming to try and justify his 1978 murder. That was followed by a June 10 article raging that the military no longer hates LGBT people as much as he does:
The United States Air Force is celebrating LGBT “pride month” with a serviceman ‘saluting’ the activist homosexual-bisexual-transgender-“queer” “rainbow” flag.
The Air Force published a tweet Wednesday reading: “June is #PrideMonth! The Department of the Air Force proudly recognizes and celebrates generations of LGBTQI+ service members and their contributions to our #AirForce & #SpaceForce.”
Tweeted Mike Garcia: “As an AF veteran, this is pathetic & embarrassing. You should focus on winning wars & not social or political issues. Disgusting.”
[…]Several people tweeted in response to the message that they will discourage their children from signing up to serve in this military, seemingly confirming widespread criticism that Biden’s “woke” Pentagon policies are tied to sagging recruitment efforts.
LaBarbera did not explain why the military must spew hate at LGBT people the way he does.
A June 13 article regurgitated right-wing outrage over “the latest LGBT spectacle” in which “transsexual activists flashed their fake, opposite-sex chests at President Biden’s official ‘Pride celebration’ on the White House south lawn Saturday.” In fact, LaBarbera cited only one person “shaking his fake breasts in front of the White House,” not the several he claimed there were. An editor’s note at the top of the article proudly declared that it would misgender people: “Unlike most other media, WND does not use trans-activist pronouns that falsely describe people as the opposite of their true, biological sex.”
LaBarbera used a June 14 article to complain that Fox News didn’t hate LGBT as much in real life as it did on air:
Fox News, already reeling from its ejection of popular anchor Tucker Carlson, has come completely out of the closet, as it were, using its programming and on-air talent to celebrate LGBT “Pride Month” like never before.
The self-styled “fair and balanced” network, based in heavily gay-populated New York City, has long supported homosexual advocacy behind the scenes through its annual contributions to an LGBT “journalists association.”
But in the last two years, Fox began celebrating “pride” in June in earnest by running pro-LGBT “puff-pieces” that are every bit as one-sided as those produced by left-leaning networks like CNN and ABC. Fox even ran an uncritical “Pride Month” feature story on “AIDS activist” Rev. Dr. Stephen Pieters, who espouses gay-positive “Christianity.”
LaBarbera went on to complain that “One of the stunning aspects of Fox News’ executives’ now very public embrace of homosexual/transgender ‘pride’ is that it directly undermines some of the talking points of their own conservative talk-show hosts.” He didn’t explain why homophobia is a “brand” Fox News (and LaBarbera) should be proud of — nor did he consider the possibility that its anti-LGBT schtick is all an act. He followed this with a June 17 article claiming to show how Fox News “is pushing a radical LGBT agenda on its employees.”
A June 26 article by LaBarbera raged against pride parades in “heavily homosexual big cities” where, allegedly, there were “men exposing their genitalia, women baring their breasts, proud sadomasochists, and vulgar chants and outfits – all with children observing along the parade route.” A July 29 article came to the defense of a pharmacist who refused to do his job:
Roscoe Rike, a woman identifying as a trans man, cussed out a pharmacy employee at an Oakland Walgreens store last week for refusing to dispense her cross-sex hormones. The pharmacist said it would violate his religious beliefs.
Rike then went on to condemn religious people as always having “the most [f—king] hate in their hearts.”
The Daily Mail reported Monday: “Currently transitioning from female to male, Rike says he has been a customer at the store for years – picking up his HRT [hormone replacement therapy] medication to move along his conversion. … That changed Monday when he was denied that medication by the pharmacist on staff, on the basis that giving him the pills would violate his religious beliefs.”
LaBarbera didn’t explain why it was OK for the pharmacist to use his religion as an excuse for denying someone medication they have been taking for years.
LaBarbera spent a June 30 article promoting a political attack on research he didn’t like:
A new study finds that the mean age when people are diagnosed with “gender dysphoria” has plummeted from a median age of 28 in 2017 to 24 in 2021, and that girls experiencing severe gender confusion seek professional help at earlier ages compared to boys.
Conservatives aren’t buying the lead academic’s explanation for the proliferation of gender aberrance in children and the sex disparity: an average age of 11 for girls compared to 13 for boys, according to the study, authored by Ching-Fang Sun, a psychiatry resident physician at Virginia-Tech’s Carilion Clinic, School of Medicine.
LaBarbera featured righrtwing activist Bethany Mandel asserting that being transgender is “a fad, driven by social media, that tells young people – particularly girls – that transgenderism is cool, far more common that it really is, and changing your gender is a snap.” In fact, research has shown that the increased number of transgender people isn’t being driven by social contagion — something LaBarbera failed to mention.
Then again, biased and incomplete reporting is what WND hired LaBarbera to do.