About Americans for Truth and Founder Peter LaBarbera

Peter Peter LaBarbera, 47, is president of Americans For Truth (about Homosexuality, or AFTAH), a group dedicated to exposing the homosexual activist agenda. Founded as a part-time venture in 1996 but reorganized in August 2006, AFTAH seeks to apply the same single-minded determination to opposing the radical homosexual agenda and standing for God-ordained sexuality and the natural family as countless homosexual groups do in promoting their harmful agenda.

Americans For Truth is a rare single-issue national group on the other side of this critical “culture war” issue. Meanwhile, there are over a dozen national American “gay” groups with annual budgets ranging from just under $1 million to over $30 million working to advance this agenda — which threatens to criminalize Christian opposition to behavior that most Americans believe is wrong.

To reach LaBarbera and Americans For Truth, call 630-717-7631 or e-mail: [email protected]. Fax: 630-839-0799. Regular mail: Americans For Truth, P.O. Box 5522, Naperville, IL 60567-5522.

LaBarbera and Americans For Truth are often accused by homosexual militants with being “obsessed” about homosexuality (and LaBarbera has been falsely accused of being a repressed homosexual more times than he can remember), but he points to the many homosexual and related organizations that are well-financed and focused like a laser beam on normalizing homosexuality in the culture. To name the most influential:

AFTAH has come under steady and sometimes fanatical attack from homosexual activists and bloggers worldwide. In one instance, a troubled South Dakota activist published LaBarbera’s address on a radical lesbian’s website, and after noting that it is across from a park (it is actually a grade school), he wrote these ominous words: “Snipers, take note!” The activist later apologized to LaBarbera and received a warning from police.

The reorganization of Americans For Truth as a full-time organization with a dynamic new website is the culmination of LaBarbera’s 22 years of professional and media experience — ranging from Washington Times reporter to conservative critic of the homosexual activist movement. He has done over a thousand interviews on the subject and written extensively on most aspects of the homosexual, bisexual, and “transgender” agenda –– with special focus on the inroads that the pro-homosexuality movement has made among America’s youth.

LaBarbera has debated the top homosexual advocates while appearing on hundreds of TV and radio news programs, including FOX’s Hannity and Colmes, CNN’s “The Larry King Show” and CNN’s “Crossfire,” C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” and Bill O’Reilly’s and Alan Colmes’ nationally syndicated radio programs. He has been quoted on homosexuality-related issues in newspapers across the nation, including The New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, Chicago Sun-Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, as well as by Associated Press and Reuters.

LaBarbera and Americans For Truth are frequently cited by Christian and conservative media. He has been interviewed by Dr. James Dobson on his national “Focus on the Family” radio program, American Family Radio, the late D. James Kennedy’s “Coral Ridge Hour,” “Point of View” (including by the late, great Marlin Maddoux), and hundreds of other local radio shows. He is a regularly interviewed by “Family News in Focus” (produced by Focus on the Family), Janet Folger’s “Faith2Action” radio show, Vic Eliason’s WVCY “Crosstalk” radio show, OneNewsNow (American Family Association), Cybercast News Service, USA Radio News, and SRN News (Salem Radio Network).

As one who rejects the notion of inborn “gay” identity (“orientation”) and who believes that homosexual practice is always wrong but that people can leave the homosexual lifestyle, LaBarbera does not fit the liberal caricature of the angry “homophobe,” even as some homosexual activists try to portray him as such. He debates the issue with civility—even when his homosexual opponents refuse to do so—and has appeared on numerous homosexual broadcasts such as the Michelangelo Signorile Show. He is regularly interviewed by the homosexual press, and has noted that often homosexual reporters are often fairer to pro-family conservatives than the secular “mainstream” media, which has largely assumed the role of “cheerleader for the gay cause.”

For the record, LaBarbera also has been smeared and denounced by Fred Phelps of “God Hates Fags” notoriety, after criticizing the Kansas pastor’s unChristian message. (Phelps questions whether men and women can leave homosexuality behind, as many have, most by becoming born-again Christians.)

From 2003-2006, LaBarbera served as executive director of the Illinois Family Institute (IFI). He came to IFI from Washington, D.C., after 18 years as a writer and conservative commentator on issues ranging from communism in Central America to the growing controversy over “gay marriage.” At the Family Research Council (FRC), a leading pro-family think tank, he served as a policy analyst on homosexuality and gender issues while editing FRC’s popular weekly publication, CultureFacts.

LaBarbera also has had two stints working at Beverly LaHaye’s Concerned Women for America (CWA), another leading pro-family organization based in Washington. He credits Mrs. LaHaye with being “more fearless in the defense of God’s truth than 95 percent of the men in Washington.” In his first employment with CWA, LaBarbera edited their monthly magazine, Family Voice. Later he worked as a Senior Policy Analyst under Robert Knight at CWA’s Culture and Family Institute, where he wrote and commented extensively on the homosexual issue from a Christian and conservative perspective.

In Illinois, as Executive Director of the Illinois Family Institute (IFI), LaBarbera emerged as a leading critic of the homosexual activist agenda coming out of Chicago, and led the push—which continues today—for an amendment in Illinois preserving marriage as between one man and one woman. He has appeared on major TV and radio news programs in Chicago, including WTTW’s Chicago Tonight, and across the state, and has been quoted on pro-family issues in Illinois newspapers ranging from the Chicago Tribune and the Daily Southtown in Chicago to the The Southern Illinoisan in Carbondale.

LaBarbera also sits on the Board of Protect Marriage Illinois, a group launched by IFI that is now independent and seeks to permanently protect the definition of marriage in Illinois against those who would radically redefine it.

LaBarbera’s concentration on the homosexual agenda began in 1993, when he founded The Lambda Report, a newsletter that used firsthand sources and reporting to reveal the aims of the organized “gay” movement. (The Greek letter Lambda is a homosexual activist symbol.) LR’s biggest story was to expose that an international homosexual umbrella organization (the International Lesbian & Gay Association) counted pedophile groups including the notorious NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association) among its members. This led to passage of a U.S. law that makes American funding of international organizations conditional on the absence of any links to pedophile advocacy.

Later, as an outgrowth of Lambda Report, LaBarbera founded Americans for Truth, which played a key role in exposing the 2000 “Fistgate” scandal in which the Boston affiliate of GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network) was found to have sponsored a “youth only” seminar in which three homosexual activists (all Massachusetts state employees) engaged in highly inappropriate sexual banter with students — with one man verbally instructing minors on how to perform the perverse “gay” sex act including “fisting.”

AFTAH exposed another reckless GLSEN act only a few months after Fistgate, at the organization’s annual conference in 2000, held in the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights. There, GLSEN allowed the distribution of a Chicago “gay guide” that contained ads for homosexual bathhouses, leather bars, and pornographic phone-sex—despite the presence of many teenagers at the conference.

In spite of these highly irresponsible actions corrupting youth, GLSEN to this day retains privileged partner status with many American schools, public and private.Prior to his work on social issues, LaBarbera was a reporter for The Washington Times, where he covered the crisis over communism in Central America, among other issues. In 1990, he left the Times to report freelance from Nicaragua and was one of the only international journalists to predict the stunning victory of Violeta Chamorro over the Marxist Sandinista regime’s candidate, Daniel Ortega. (The late ABC News anchor Peter Jennings was among those who, just prior to the election, predicted confidently—relying on biased polls taken in a Communist-dominated country—that a Sandinista victory was imminent.)

From such experiences LaBarbera learned that the liberal media often run in politically correct packs, and remain in them even if the whole pack is missing a big or fascinating story. Such is the case today with the media’s reluctance to pursue any story that might hurt the “GLBT” (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) activist movement.

LaBarbera began his public policy career with Reed Irvine’s Accuracy in Media, and he considered it a privilege to have worked under Irvine, a great American and conservative icon who was the first man to seriously and systematically confront modern liberal media bias. LaBarbera also was a contributing editor at the conservative national weekly, Human Events.

LaBarbera graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.A. in Political Science in 1985. He says he knew he was a conservative when, after President Reagan launched the American liberation of Grenada, he watched as leftist U of M students rushed to the streets to protest Reagan and U.S. “imperialism” before they even knew the facts on the ground. Grenadians today can be thankful that Reagan — and not an anti-American leftist — was leading the free world, or a Cuba-styled totalitarian regime might have taken hold in that Caribbean nation.

Of course, Reagan’s victory in Grenada only presaged his and America’s stunning triumph over the “evil empire” of Soviet Communism, achieved in large part through his ability to ignore the American Left and the left-leaning media — to win freedom for millions under the banner, “Peace through Strength.”

LaBarbera lives in Naperville, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, with his wife Cristina and their five children.

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AFTAH Political Campaign Policy

Americans For Truth has adopted the following Political Campaign Policy:

  1. In accordance with its Articles of Incorporation, the Corporation shall not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distribution of statements) any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for public office.
  2. The Corporation shall not carry on any other activities not permitted to be carried on (a) by a corporation exempt from Federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 (or the corresponding provisions of any future United States Internal Revenue Law) or (b) by a corporation, contributions to which are deductible under section 170(c)(2) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 (or the corresponding provisions of any future United States Internal Revenue Law).
  3. The Corporation shall not endorse or oppose either directly or indirectly any candidate for public office.
  4. The Corporation shall not donate corporate funds to a candidate’s campaign or participate in or engage in political fund raising events or otherwise soliciting contributions on behalf of a candidate for public office.
  5. The Corporation shall not distribute statements for or against a particular candidate for public office.
  6. The Corporation shall not engage in any activity that favors or opposes a candidate for public office.

Board of Directors, Americans For Truth About Homosexuality
October 15, 2007

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LaBarbera to Leave IFI to Re-launch Americans for Truth as a Group Devoted Solely to Countering ‘Gay’ Movement

This is a modified version of a release sent out in August 2006 announcing AFTAH’s re-launch as a full-time organization:

Naperville, Illinois, August 2006-Peter LaBarbera, the founder of Americans for Truth (about Homosexuality, or AFTAH), has resigned from Illinois Family Institute to assume full-time duties re-launching AFTAH as a national organization devoted solely to confronting the homosexual activist agenda. “I am delighted that soon I will be able to devote my full time and energies to Americans for Truth and its goal of educating citizens on the threat that the powerful and well-funded ‘GLBT’ (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) movement poses to children, marriage and freedom,” said LaBarbera, who will be staying on at IFI for several weeks leading up to the November election to help with the transition.

“Homosexual, bisexual, and transsexual groups spend tens of millions of dollars every year to market and normalize their aberrant lifestyles, yet after all these years there are still only a handful of advocates working solely to expose and counter their agendas,” he said.

“It’s time for Americans to unapologetically resist the demands of this lobby, and to counter the lies upon which it is built-the foremost being that certain people are inherently or ‘born’ homosexual and that this is a civil rights issue.”

Americans for Truth, which is based in Naperville, Illinois, outside of Chicago, was formed in 1996 but has been dormant for years. Under the reorganization plan, a team of volunteer leader-activists will be working with AFTAH across the country, including:

Matt Barber, AFTAH Board Member; Barber gained national attention when he was fired by Allstate Insurance Company after writing an online column critical of “gay marriage.” He once served as AFTAH’s Corporate Outreach Director but has since joined the staff at Concerned Women for America as Policy Director for Cultural Issues, where he is a leading writer and commentator against the homosexual lobby; he remains a Board Member of Americans For Truth.]

Mike Heath, AFTAH Board Chairman; Executive Director, the Christian Civic League of Maine; Heath is a veteran pro-family activist who twice led a successful grassroots effort to overturn a “sexual orientation” law in Maine. Said LaBarbera: “Mike is a pro-family hero, and he and his talented wife Paulie are two of the kindest people I have ever met. Yet both have been vilified and demonized (sometimes cruelly; see this AFTAH story) by Maine’s homosexual activists and allied liberals. They project their own hate on to us. If all pro-family leaders were like Mike, America would be in a lot less trouble.”

Donna Miller, AFTAH Special Projects Coordinator, North Carolina. Miller has focused on children’s issues and has helped expose the lewd, vulgar, pro-lesbian, feminist play, “Vagina Monologues,” which has been staged on college campuses across the nation, and is now reportedly coming to high schools. The original “VM” play written by Eve Ensler includes a lesbian pedophile rape scene in which an adult woman plies a 13-year-old girl with alcohol and then seduces her. The girl becomes a happy lesbian, so essentially the book’s message is: raping girls is bad unless it’s done by an adult lesbian.

Allyson Smith, Americans For Truth Researcher/Writer, San Diego, California. Smith has written extensively for pro-family organizallyson_smith_nlgja.jpgations such as Concerned Women for America, in addition to various Catholic and conservative media outlets such as California Catholic Daily and WorldNetDaily.com. She attended a National Lesbian and Gay Journalists conference in San Diego in August 2007, and covered the notoriously raunchy and nudity-filled “Folsom Street Fair” in San Francisco [WARNING: GRAPHIC PHOTOS] with LaBarbera the next month. Smith is also a dedicated pro-life activist and has been known to boldly confront wayward politicians at town meetings.

Said LaBarbera: “AFTAH’s goal is to become a leading resource for Americans seeking to confront the homosexual agenda. We will operate in a spirit of love and truth commanded by God, who is holy and yet gracious and compassionate.”

“The reality we face is that the same ‘gay’ movement that has reached unparalleled power and influence also aims to redefine traditional Judeo-Christian sexual mores as ‘hatred,’ ‘bigotry,’ and ‘phobic’ prejudice on a par with racism,” he said. “Most Americans are simply unaware of the tremendous threat to freedom and morality that this radical ideology poses to society and especially to committed people of faith.”

LaBarbera said that AFT will affirm the truth: homosexual behavior is always wrong and yet it is changeable as evinced by the thousands of former ‘gay’ men and lesbians who have overcome homosexual desires and are now living contented lives across the nation.

“I sincerely believe that nobody has to be ‘gay,’” he said.

Americans for Truth will publish regular informational e-mails (a weekly digest version will also be available). To sign up for these free publications, please click HERE. AFTAH can be reached at 630-717-7631 or by e-mail. Make online, tax-deductible donations using your VISA or Mastercard HERE, or go HERE for the option of using Paypal or Discover Card or American Express.

Regular mail and tax-deductible donations can be sent to:

Americans for Truth
P.O. Box 5522
Naperville, IL 60567-5522
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