Monthly Archives: March 2009

The George Weber Murder and the Sad and Spiteful World of Peter LaBarbera

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For most people on the right Peter LaBarbera is simply a fringe element tolerated yet ridiculed the way “Paulnuts” or NAU truthers are. As long as they aren’t too much of a bother, no one pays much attention to what they get up to until they do something that reflects badly on the right as a whole, but otherwise their myopic vehemence about some ultimately inconsequential cause is little more than the source of some amusement, or more correctly bemusement, by most of us on the right who don’t spend our waking days consumed with conspiracies, petty bigotry or the overwhelming fear that somewhere two men may be kissing.

Until recently the only thing I knew about LaBarbera is that Pam Spaulding, the auntie tom who sat back and laughed while White liberals on Pandagon called me a race traitor for being Bi-racial and not tongue bathing them every day, allowed a death threat against him and his family credible enough for the F.B.I. to become involved to sit in her comments section. That was a little over a year ago and I never covered it because this was frankly a case of two rank bigots with too much time on their hands and not enough compassion in their hearts running afoul of each other in that poetic way that seems to prove there is a divine hand at work that is both just and and a dry wit.

But yesterday my fellow blogger Trench Reynolds sent me a link to this Killian Melloy article about the coverage of the George Weber murder where I am mentioned. Pleased with myself in the way only smug people can be, I opened the link and was immediately appalled by the quotes in the article by LaBarbera who ghoulishly began using the Weber murder to push the agenda of his web scam, I mean Internet based activist organization, Americans for the Truth about Homosexuality, which is running lurid and ham-handed editorials about how gays are more likely to perpetuate violence against other gays than heterosexuals (unlikely given the small percentage of the population they are) and how gays have a hook-up culture on Craigslist that is somehow different from the hook-up culture on Craigslist among straight people.

Of course, none of this would be relevant to the Weber murder even if it were true. Weber, as I said before, is not responsible for his death. He didn’t take responsibility for his safety, which people need to, but that isn’t to say he deserved or caused his murder. Weber’s death was caused by three things:

  1. New York’s anti-self defense culture
  2. The naivety of big city liberalism when it comes to crime
  3. The acceptance of sexual violence which exists in the general culture and isn’t specific to gays

In other words any cultural criticism that comes from the Weber murder applies to society as a whole, not a sub-group of it. New York has a legal environment where proactively tending to your safety is impossible and criminality is explained away in college freshman level sociological terms. This creates victims who do not understand how criminals think and cannot defend themselves when they are targeted. There has been a shift in adult entertainment where sexual violence is becoming mainstream and because of the reach of the Internet “rough sex” (which is really sadomasochism) is becoming an accepted “kink” that many people believe is safe and harmless to indulge in. All these things apply to heterosexuals as much if not more so than they do to gays, but LaBarbera dishonestly claims the problems are the province of gays alone.

It is as wicked as it is dangerous because he has convinced his followers and anyone who takes him seriously that they themselves would be safe on Craigslist as long as they aren’t looking for gay sex, which is a false assumption that creates hundreds of victims, as sites like CraigsCrimeList detail. Seeking strangers as sex partners is dangerous enough (perhaps its allure) but seeking strangers who are looking to abuse people compounds that danger, especially if you aren’t willing or capable of defending yourself if things go wrong. This applies equally to gays and straights. LaBarbera is just smart enough to know that, but has spent his time using his bully pulpit to paint this tragedy as something it isn’t, which is a crime that is specific to gays.

But for LaBarbera, all roads lead to the gays, and I suspect that if I spend enough time on his site I may discover that 9/11 was actually perpetrated by gays, a secret gay lobby controls our foreign policy and Al-Qaeda wants to restore a world-wide caliphate because they want to make LaBarbera their gay concubine. I suspect that would you attempt talk to LaBarbera about anything besides homosexuality, the conversation would be short to say the least.

Like a jilted lover, LaBarbera and his fellow crusaders seem incapable of simply not caring about what gays, who are adults who can make their own decisions, do with their lives. I understand that Christians have theological arguments against the practice of homosexuality, and I certainly can agree that it is offensive at best when gays interrupt memorials to Martin Luther King to prove a point, which I assume is that there are gays so tone deaf and self involved that they think spitting on the memory of King will get Black people to support gay marriage. But I have no interest, and neither should you, in the personal life of any consenting adults.

American gays have the same right you and I have to be left alone and live their lives as they, not some Communist like LaBarbera, sees fit. It is telling that almost all of LaBarbera’s arguments against homosexuality are Christianized versions of Marxist anti-gay propaganda. Not being a Christian myself, I can’t speak for them, but I was under the impression that Christ tells Christians to hate the sin but love the sinner. LaBarbera isn’t acting very Christian in this respect since he isn’t lovingly inviting gays to join him in fellowship, instead he sounds like a street corner Marxist reading out accusations of capitalist decadence from his badly xeroxed copy of Worker’s World Daily, pining away for the day when Comrade Jesus sends gays to re-education camps the way Saint Castro did.

LaBarbera is a spiteful, sad shadow of the “patriot” that he tries to pass himself off to be. In reality, he’s a parasite clinging to the right while slowly eroding the essential values of conservatism. I’m an old-school Reaganite, I believe in limited government, maximum personal freedom, low taxes and a strong military. Other than that, I’m not interested in weighing in on other Americans’ lives. LaBarbera is, and that is antithetical the Founding Fathers’ dream of a country where every citizen has their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness protected by a Republican government which stands between minorities and the tyranny of the majority. I thought he might have learned that when he was threatened with death last year by zealots as driven as he seems to be.

Blood Fetishism and the Travis White Murder

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The Pagan Temple has a post up rightfully pointing out that the reporting on the Travis White Murder includes the assuredly erroneous assumption that because a couple of the six people charged in the crime and its cover up “claim to be Vampires” that Witchcraft (and in some people’s minds Wicca though the two are actually separate and distinct practices as any honest Wiccan will tell you) is somehow involved. I’ve found little evidence that any sort of Witchcraft was involved but there are references that the murderers, ranging in age from 14-years-old to a 27-year-old man, met playing a Vampire Role-Playing Game game which they discussed online at MySpace.

Reports like this seem to conflate Witchcraft and “Vampirism” as alike and both playing a part in the crime:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-TDKKmtnKk[/youtube]

The problem of course is that aside from their morbid interests there is little enough to go on to claim that Witchcraft was involved at all. I frankly doubt the murderers were affiliated with gangs either. But I think I might disagree with The Pagan Temple in the assessment that “vampirism” or more correctly blood fetishism, isn’t part of the crime.

I first came across the idea of blood fetishism in books like Olga Hoyt’s Lust for Blood and Something in the Blood by Jeff Guin and Andy Grieser which were little more than ethnographies of people who fetishized blood letting and blood consumption, often using Gothic punk style vampire mythology to create a sub-culture where their paraphilia can be indulged. Blood fetishism is often sexual, or the product of sexual dysfunction, and is not the purview of goths only.

This profile fits in with what we know of the story. The initiator of the murder was a 14-year-old girl who was being shared as a lover by two of the accused. This is clearly an unusual arraignment, given that it was apparently known and accepted by both her paramours. She claimed she had been raped by the victim, a charge she later recanted, and lured Travis White to her home where her two friends, 27-year-old Brian Golsby and 21-year-old Kasey Dodson spent hours beating, stabbing and cutting the victim. Friends of the group stopped by during the attack, reporting that the heard the victims piteous screams but claim they did nothing. They later helped dispose of White’s body.

The blood fetishist is a sadist, attracted to the vampire image because of the inherent sado-masochism of the vampire/victim relationship where the victim wants to be hurt by the vampire. As Hoyt and Guinn illustrate, the blood fetishist is not often a stereotypical “goth” though they are of course attracted to the same themes and entertainment.  Blood fetishists seek others who share their interest, either “donors” who are predated by the fetishist or other fetishists themselves, and in this case the core actors of the group have seemingly organized themselves into a group using the role-playing game they played (most likely White Wolf’s Vampire games) as a template.

The murder itself involved sadism most people aren’t used to hearing about, and which again supports the idea of this crime being committed by blood fetishists. The brutality is hard to speak of, suffice to say they victim was attacked with a bat, crescent wrench and a knife. He was struck at least 31 times by the blunt objects, stabbed 27 times (until the knife broke) and had “gang symbols carved in his stomach. It would have been a blood soaked affair indeed. I should clarify that I am not claiming the assailants drank the blood of the victim, but there is an element of “blood play” here, a reveling in the bloodletting few of us could stomach.

As more information is released I would not be surprised however to hear of blood drinking. The police are coy about why they place so much emphasis on the supposed vampirism of those on trial, but simply wearing similar necklaces doesn’t usually make the news. One news report claims the two murderers were “acting as vampires” during the killing, which sans literal vampirizing the victim would be a strange phrase to insert into a murder story the mourning family might read.

In the same vein, while the group are certainly not Wiccans, ritual blood letting, ala Alfonso de Jesus Constanzo isn’t something I’d rule out with this group. Whether it’s fair if that happened to call it Witchcraft would depend on your definition and understanding of both practices.

Russia: ACTA Agreement Proves Obama’s Kind of a Fascist (Obama Responds with Fascism)

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After watching the report it’s hard to disagree.

ACTA will apparently allow some security guards in the airport to access and copy whatever is on your laptop, leading to embarrassment and awkwardness indeed if you happen to promote the wrong Internet model, like say Indy Wrestler/fetish diva Tara Bush, who runs a classy operation that’s reasonably priced but may be an, ahem, acquired taste.

Regardless, why should a struggling blogger have to explain to some rent-a-cop what promotional offers pay for his visits to New Orleans? According to Barry O, it’s because some of you nerds are illegally downloading music off the web. His answer? An invasion of privacy so egregious if Bush had done it there would have been riots in the streets. No wonder the ACTA agreement has been shrouded in secrecy.

Here’s the video:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHzKxtwuGzo[/youtube]

Surreal.  Gateway Pundit has more. Here’s a .pdf concerning ACTA, courtesy Wikileaks. Read it and weep Obamunists.

Speaking of fascism, Atlas has a report up about the Obama administration summoning Dr. Bob Basso, the Thomas Paine guy making those awesome videos, to the White House to discuss the “the nature of these disturbing videos” and demanding that Basso not tell anyone. Assuming this is credible, why the secrecy?

The better to silence him? I’m just asking questions!

But seriously, if Bob Basso dies some time soon it’ll be civil war, I guarantee it. Patriots vs Obama’s army of college sophomores. It’ll be a massacre.

The Death of Manliness: The Acceptance of Masochism and the George Weber Murder

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It isn’t my intention to cast aspersions on the character of murder victim George Weber. And please don’t try to call me a homophobe because everyone knows I’m pro-gay rights. I am not convinced however, as some may argue, that the website Craigslist bears the majority of the responsibility for his gruesome death. What is at fault is a larger culture of depravity and self-loathing, drug use and abdication of responsibility, particularly the responsibility for your own safety.

First the facts of the case. George Weber connected with 16-year-old Anarchist/Satanist/Sadist John Katehis when the minor responded to Weber’s Craigslist ad looking for a partner for rough sex. The two rescheduled a March 18th rendezvous to the following Friday, where Weber is believed to have paid Katehis $60 to engage in S&M and bondage with him. Weber was to be the “bottom” for Katehis. At some point the 47-year-old Weber, hands and feet bound with duct tape, was stabbed around 50 times by Katehis.

Much has been made about Katehis’s MySpace which clearly showed him to be potentially dangerous. It is unlikely Weber came across that however.What we do know is that the 47-year-old Weber invited a strange young man (and I believe Weber assumed he was 18 since Katehis has an online history of lying about his age) to his house for a rough sex session prefaced by the two drinking vodka and snorting cocaine. If while reading this it seems blatantly obvious that this would end badly then you are apparently ahead of the game. Weber is not alone in posting ads looking for this same thing and as far as I know no friend of the broadcaster has even expressed shock at what 30 years ago would be considered a death too unseemly for comment.

Weber was a masochist who wanted to be choked while performing oral sex on a young man. In today’s society we simply shrug at this as if there is nothing wrong with the pathological compulsion to be sexually humiliated and abused even though in this case the reasons such a thing shouldn’t be condoned is staring us right in the face. The sadists who make up the S component in S&M are not simply people with a “kink” who want to party with you. They are people for whom pain and suffering, and death, are more arousing than the sex itself. Masochism at it’s very base it a desire to be abused or re-enact abuse, so by its very nature it attracts abusive, dangerous people.

Not to mention the cocaine. Cocaine users are unpredictable at best, and again while I wouldn’t claim Weber is responsible for his own murder, he was responsible for his own safety. And at the risk of being insensitive here the facts are this: George Weber met a strange teen and got him drunk and coked up with the intention of allowing that teen to bind him with duct tape and abuse him while he performed oral sex the teen. Express this desire to a psychiatrist and that person may feel sufficiently fearful for your safety that you’ll be committed. In the aftermath of a murder it is considered in bad taste to mention that this compulsive abuse seeking is a recipe for personal disaster.

New York is full of people who not only condone, but encourage this sort of death-seeking and worse, have convinced each other it isn’t unsafe at all. The most basic responsibility a man has is his own safety and the safety of his loved ones. It’s an old fashioned concept but it is true, and when we live in a state of blissful naivete and abdicate that basic responsibility to ourselves and others we invite people into our lives who will take advantage of that. When we allow our inner demons to drive us to Caligula-like depravity, and consciousness numbing substance abuse, we consign ourselves to a hell of our own making where the demons are very real, and very evil.

Make no mistake, only John Katehis is responsible for George Weber’s murder, but it is a society that produces “men” who don’t have the slightest hint of the self-preservation instinct, who are unaware of the dangers of allowing strangers to physically dominate them, who fill their off hours in drugs and sexual activities that would have gotten him arrested if not for Katehis’ savage disregard for human life, that is responsible for his death.

When I lived in New York for so many years, I witnessed the effeminization of men (and infantilization of women) being lauded as a more modern and progressive cultural alternative to “Red State” ideas of being a Man’s Man. I met many people who sneered in disgust at the idea that you should always be prepared to defend yourself or your family. The idea that you are the only person responsible for you, that you need to guarantee your own safety and learn to avoid danger was considered wild-eyed insanity. But in a city where men and women are regularly preyed on by people just like John Katehis, what drives men to stick their heads in the sand and not take responsibility for their own safety?

We’ll never know, but I would suggest that when our culture began to look down on the concept of manliness we began our slide into perpetual sexualized adolescence, which in turn creates an illusion of safety that entraps those people who, like Weber, are driven to push themselves to the limit to satisfy some inner compulsion. As more people blame the site where Weber and Katehis met we’ll perpetuate that illusion, until the next George Weber when we’ll need to point the finger at yet another symptom of our own decline.