So, while wearing very dark glasses to protect against San Diego's very bright, spring sun, I tweeted the following:
Clik here to view.
And thus began an twitter exchange with Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality.
Clik here to view.
Seriously. This is bewildering needling that began from a benign tweet regarding a routine medical procedure that I'd recently had.
It's pretty obvious that Peter LaBarbera wants to know my previous male name so he can stop referring to me as Autumn...or should I say stop referring to me as "Autumn." You know, because the quotation marks around my legal first name are important for Mr. LaBarbera to use in his attempt to deny any recognition my gender identity, and deny my name really is legally Autumn.
Put another way, Mr. LaBarbera wants to weaponize my former male name against me. So exactly why would I want to hand him a communicative weapon? Did he honestly expect I would respond to his tweet with my old male name?
Apparently, this twitter exchange is what passes for Christian love and New Testament encouraged golden rule behavior within Mr. LaBarbera's mind -- I can't decide whether Mr. LaBarbera's behavior is entertainingly amusing or simply pathetic.
Bizarrely, Peter LaBarbera identifies lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community members as haters, but doesn't see himself as a homophobic and transphobic hater. Nor does his American's For Truth About Homosexuality website deserve the identification by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate site.
Really. I find that Mr. LaBarbera's belief that he isn't a homophobic and transphobic hater just a tad hard to believe.
And seriously, WTF? I honestly just can't figure out what he got out of this exchange.
