Sent By The Gods - True Family Values

A Native Hawaiian Recalls Queer Life Before Westernization

from I'm From Driftwood in The Huffington Post:

NovaLei was born and raised in Hawaii and knows from old stories what being queer was like back when Hawaii was still an independent country: "The LGBT person, in ancient times, was actually revered, and thought to be blessed and sent by the gods... There was a place for them in our society." NovaLei felt that he was gay his entire life, and he was very accepted and loved by his family. He was thought to be special. For those who were born and raised in traditional Hawaiian culture, these views are still strong.

Unfortunately, as Western culture encroached on Hawaii's native culture, things started to change, and queer people were viewed differently. NovaLei recalls, "I remember going to school one day and getting beaten up and called a sissy, and a queer. At the time, I was staying with my grandfather. I remember coming home and saying I wanted to kill myself." Needless to say, his grandfather was concerned, asking why he was so upset. NovaLei explained that he didn't want to go back to school, that he wanted to kill everyone there and himself, because no one liked him, simply because he was gay. His grandfather sat there in silence for a while, and NovaLei finally asked if he was going to respond. He did when prompted, imparting wisdom upon NovaLei that would change his life: "If you never remember anything I ever tell you, I want you to remember this: that because of who you are, there will be enough people in your lifetime to love you for exactly who you are, that you'll never have to worry about the ones who don't."

From then on, whenever NovaLei faced hard situations with people criticizing him, he would remember his grandfather's words: "I would see him looking at me, and I would realize, 'OK, you may not like me, but...,' I would then start thinking, in my mind, of all the people that do."

Which Side Are You On Venango County?

This is an important question for leaders in Venango County, home base for the most notorious hate group in the state: the American Family Association of Pennsylvania.

Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney Contributes to 'Pray Away the Gay' Groups

Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice

This article presents some very important ideas for the leadership in Venango County, home-base for the Hate Group, the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, to mull over as they struggle to move the region forward in challenging times.

by Stephanie Pappas, Senior Writer for LiveScience.com:

There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.

The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. (Pictured: Diane Gramely, President of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania.) Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.

"Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood," he said.

Controversy Ahead

The findings combine three hot-button topics.

"They've pulled off the trifecta of controversial topics," said Brian Nosek, a social and cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia who was not involved in the study. "When one selects intelligence, political ideology and racism and looks at any of the relationships between those three variables, it's bound to upset somebody."

Polling data and social and political science research do show that prejudice is more common in those who hold right-wing ideals that those of other political persuasions, Nosek told LiveScience.

"The unique contribution here is trying to make some progress on the most challenging aspect of this," Nosek said, referring to the new study. "It's not that a relationship like that exists, but why it exists."

Brains and Bias

Earlier studies have found links between low levels of education and higher levels of prejudice, Hodson said, so studying intelligence seemed a logical next step. The researchers turned to two studies of citizens in the United Kingdom, one that has followed babies since their births in March 1958, and another that did the same for babies born in April 1970. The children in the studies had their intelligence assessed at age 10 or 11; as adults ages 30 or 33, their levels of social conservatism and racism were measured.

In the first study, verbal and nonverbal intelligence was measured using tests that asked people to find similarities and differences between words, shapes and symbols. The second study measured cognitive abilities in four ways, including number recall, shape-drawing tasks, defining words and identifying patterns and similarities among words. Average IQ is set at 100.


Social conservatives were defined as people who agreed with a laundry list of statements such as "Family life suffers if mum is working full-time," and "Schools should teach children to obey authority." Attitudes toward other races were captured by measuring agreement with statements such as "I wouldn't mind working with people from other races." (These questions measured overt prejudiced attitudes, but most people, no matter how egalitarian, do hold unconscious racial biases; Hodson's work can't speak to this "underground" racism.)

As suspected, low intelligence in childhood corresponded with racism in adulthood. But the factor that explained the relationship between these two variables was political: When researchers included social conservatism in the analysis, those ideologies accounted for much of the link between brains and bias.

People with lower cognitive abilities also had less contact with people of other races.

"This finding is consistent with recent research demonstrating that intergroup contact is mentally challenging and cognitively draining, and consistent with findings that contact reduces prejudice," said Hodson, who along with his colleagues published these results online Jan. 5 in the journal Psychological Science.

A Study of Averages

Hodson was quick to note that the despite the link found between low intelligence and social conservatism, the researchers aren't implying that all liberals are brilliant and all conservatives stupid. The research is a study of averages over large groups, he said.

"There are multiple examples of very bright conservatives and not-so-bright liberals, and many examples of very principled conservatives and very intolerant liberals," Hodson said.

Nosek gave another example to illustrate the dangers of taking the findings too literally.

"We can say definitively men are taller than women on average," he said. "But you can't say if you take a random man and you take a random woman that the man is going to be taller. There's plenty of overlap."

Nonetheless, there is reason to believe that strict right-wing ideology might appeal to those who have trouble grasping the complexity of the world.

"Socially conservative ideologies tend to offer structure and order," Hodson said, explaining why these beliefs might draw those with low intelligence. "Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute to prejudice."

In another study, this one in the United States, Hodson and Busseri compared 254 people with the same amount of education but different levels of ability in abstract reasoning. They found that what applies to racism may also apply to homophobia. People who were poorer at abstract reasoning were more likely to exhibit prejudice against gays. As in the U.K. citizens, a lack of contact with gays and more acceptance of right-wing authoritarianism explained the link.

Simple Viewpoints

Hodson and Busseri's explanation of their findings is reasonable, Nosek said, but it is correlational. That means the researchers didn't conclusively prove that the low intelligence caused the later prejudice. To do that, you'd have to somehow randomly assign otherwise identical people to be smart or dumb, liberal or conservative. Those sorts of studies obviously aren't possible.

The researchers controlled for factors such as education and socioeconomic status, making their case stronger, Nosek said. But there are other possible explanations that fit the data. For example, Nosek said, a study of left-wing liberals with stereotypically naïve views like "every kid is a genius in his or her own way," might find that people who hold these attitudes are also less bright. In other words, it might not be a particular ideology that is linked to stupidity, but extremist views in general.

"My speculation is that it's not as simple as their model presents it," Nosek said. "I think that lower cognitive capacity can lead to multiple simple ways to represent the world, and one of those can be embodied in a right-wing ideology where 'People I don't know are threats' and 'The world is a dangerous place'. ... Another simple way would be to just assume everybody is wonderful."


Prejudice is of particular interest because understanding the roots of racism and bias could help eliminate them, Hodson said. For example, he said, many anti-prejudice programs encourage participants to see things from another group's point of view.

That mental exercise may be too taxing for people of low IQ.

"There may be cognitive limits in the ability to take the perspective of others, particularly foreigners," Hodson said. "Much of the present research literature suggests that our prejudices are primarily emotional in origin rather than cognitive. These two pieces of information suggest that it might be particularly fruitful for researchers to consider strategies to change feelings toward outgroups," rather than thoughts.

I'm Christian, Unless You're Gay

by Dan Pearce on Single Dad Laughing:

Hate Across The State

Venango County-based Hate Group, the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, and other anti-LGBT bigots are spreading lies and trying to stir their ugly brand trying to stir homophobic bullying and discrimination at a York, Pa. high school. But the local newspaper is having none of it.

Here's what civic leadership looks like in the face of hate:

Leave Gay-Straight Club Alone

York Dispatch Editorial

Carroll Tignall could be the poster boy for Dallastown Area High School's Gay-Straight Alliance club.

The former school board member epitomizes the need for such groups, which promote diversity and acceptance of gay and lesbian teens.

Tignall apparently doesn't approve of homosexuality, and he's up in arms about the club's screening tonight -- at the high school -- of "Out in the Silence," a documentary dealing with the bullying of a gay student.

It's a sign, Tignall believes, the district is "covertly" promoting homosexuality -- and he's been trying to rally other concerned residents to attend the screening.


We're not sure why, if Tignall disapproves so strongly of gays and lesbians, he would want to attend a Gay-Straight Alliance club. (There are probably going to be some gay people there, after all.)

It seems a better approach would be to attend a school board meeting and confront the members and administration about their sinister plot to create homosexuals.

Tignall and whoever else he manages to enlist might think their attendance at the screening is a sign of protest against their imagined threat.

Of course, the students in the club might not see it that way.

They might very reasonably take it as harassment and intimidation.

Unfortunately, those are things many gay and lesbian students are all too familiar with.

According to the It Gets Better Project, nine out of 10 gay, lesbian and transgender students have experienced harassment at school, and they're bullied two to three times as much as straight kids. A third of them have attempted suicide, and they're four times as likely to attempt suicide than their straight peers.

"Out in the Silence" focuses on a gay student from Oil City, Pa., who is being tormented at school because of his homosexuality. His mother reaches out to a local filmmaker, who recently put an ad in the local newspaper announcing his marriage to another man, to try to help her son.


"The aim of 'Out in the Silence' is to expand public awareness about the difficulties that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people face in rural and small town America and to promote dialogue and action that will help people on all sides of the issues find common ground," according to the film's website.

Now there's a thought.

Tignall ought to stay home tonight and think of a better way of expressing his opinion.

But if he's dead set on attending the club's screening, we hope he takes a seat and pays attention.

Why 'Born This Way' Doesn't Matter

by Tracy Baim for The Huffington Post:

Cynthia Nixon is in hot water with some gays for comments she made to The New York Times about whether she "chose" to be gay, or was "born that way." Here is an excerpt of what the Sex and the City star said:


"I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line "I've been straight and I've been gay, and gay is better." And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice. And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it's not, but for me it's a choice, and you don't get to define my gayness for me. A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if it's a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesn't matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not."

This nature-vs.-nurture argument has been debated in the LGBT movement for decades.

I can say that I am pretty much a Kinsey 6 when it comes to measurement scales. But having covered the LGBT community since 1984, and having identified as lesbian since my teen years in the late 1970s, I have always been intrigued by who gravitates to the nature argument, and who to nurture.

To generalize, it seems that more men go with "born this way," while more women see either a combination of nature and nurture, or all "choice." Add in the new field of epigenetics (which posits there are some triggers that do change our inherited genetic code, and which might be a reason sexuality actually could change over a person's lifetime) and we throw an even bigger wrench into the equation.

While some argue that women are more prone to the "nurture" side because of a more fluid sexuality, I don't think it is as simple as that. I think women, starting in the 1970s, took a very political approach to identity politics, and it was empowering to believe we control "our bodies, ourselves." For men, because of the pressure to be masculine and fit a male stereotype, it was easier to place the power elsewhere, with Mother Nature, not mother nurture.

The bottom line is that those who hate us, want to cure us, or even kill us don't really take the time to understand these nuances. Yes, if we were "born this way," that might make some people think it was an immutable characteristic and that therefore there might be no "cure." But honestly, this does not make anyone love us any more. In fact, there are many inherited characteristics upon which people discriminate (physical abilities, for example), or, at the very least, cause people to feel sorry -- or want to cure. That doesn't make these people think they are worthy of civil-rights protections. Ask African Americans if they think being "born that way" helped during the hundreds of years they fought for equal rights, or ask women about being born that way and how that helped get the right to vote or other rights.

And on the opposite side of this debate, religious choice is a protected category, and yet it is not something we are born with. The right-wing understands protecting religious "choice," just not gender or sexuality "choice." If they hate us, they hate us, and how we got this way just doesn't compute in their narrow minds.

Yes, there are some who advocate a "nature made us this way" argument to help us accept ourselves. But others still try to get gays to suppress their sexuality, or transgender people to suppress their gender identity, no matter how they got that way.

I empathize with people who believe that Cynthia Nixon may in fact simply be bisexual, and thus that being with women may represent making a "choice" between the two genders to which she is already attracted. But this identification of our sexuality is rather artificial. Likely, no one is genetically created to love a specific body part. There are probably many things we inherit and also experience once we are created (in the womb and outside of it) that flip our triggers -- it could be gender, but it could also be dozens of other things. Why do we like someone with dark hair, or someone who is short, or tall, or with blue eyes, or male, female, or transgender?

I am not "fluid" in my sexuality, and neither are most of my lesbian friends. But I do know some women and men who identify as gay or lesbian who have changed back and forth in their identity, and sometimes identify as bisexual. Why should it matter what we call ourselves? If the haters don't give a hoot about why or how we got this way, we should never try to limit who gets to fit into our community.

I also do not believe we should base our quest for civil rights on an argument that we "can't help ourselves" because of our genes. This is a very dangerous and slippery slope. There have been fictional books and films made about this topic: if there is a gay gene, should it be eliminated, or a child aborted, if it's found? Science fiction isn't usually very far removed from science.


I welcome the diversity of opinion between Cynthia Nixon and John Aravosis and others on this topic. But I don't think Nixon is wrong to "choose" how she defines her own life. If the right wing does use her words as a way to attack our community, I don't think it will be any more vile than what they already do. They try to "cure" us and deny our civil rights no matter what the basis of our true selves. We have a common enemy here, and it is not Cynthia Nixon, or those like her who come out as proud in their own unique identity.

Yes, some of us may be born this way, and if you believe this, more power to you. But I welcome anyone into our big tent, regardless of their genitals and the genitals they love.

Tracy Baim is publisher and executive editor, Windy City Media Group

Washington State Republicans Bravely Break With Party on Marriage Equality

Here's what life looks like outside the hate group bubble of the Venango County-based American Family Association of Pennsylvania:

from The Advocate:

Two Republican senators have made waves in Washington State after announcing their support for a marriage equality bill proposed earlier this month by Gov. Christine Gregoire. And one told The Advocate he's not afraid of the retaliation promised by antigay groups.

Washington is poised to become the seventh state in the country, plus the District of Columbia, to allow same-sex marriage. Introduced last week, the measure is expected to easily pass the House but needs one more vote in the state Senate. As of Thursday, 24 members of the 49-strong body have pledged their support, but the bill needs 25 votes to pass. Democrats control both chambers.

Five members of the Senate remain undecided — two Republicans and three Democrats — and there is a solid group of 20 “no” voters (including two Democrats).


Steve Litzow was the first Republican in the Senate to endorse Gregoire’s proposal and has since been praised for his decision to step outside party lines. The Seattle Times recently published an editorial praising Litzow’s support as “outstanding” and “commendable.”

“Litzow is a profile in courage, a freshman lawmaker willing to act on conviction,” the Times wrote.

The senator is much more modest. He said when the governor first brought up the idea of statewide marriage equality late last year, he knew it was the right thing to do.

“It’s really consistent with the fundamental tenets of individual freedom and personal responsibility,” he said in an interview with The Advocate. “It’s all about people getting to live the life they want to live without the government getting involved. It’s a core principle of the type of Republican I am.”

Less than a week later, fellow Republican senator Cheryl Pflug joined Litzow. Pflug couldn’t be reached for comment due to ongoing power outages across the state brought on by heavy snow and ice storms.

Litzow, up for reelection in November, said reaction so far has been “overwhelmingly positive,” and his endorsement wasn’t influenced by the end of his term. He shrugged off a recent pledge by the antigay National Organization for Marriage to put up $250,000 to challenge any Republican Washington senator who supports the bill.

“I am very comfortable with my position in the Senate, and I’m willing to take on any and all competitors,” Litzow said. “The games have started. ... I continue to say if they want to [play them], let’s go. Game on.”

Zach Silk, campaign manager for Washington United for Marriage, said the views of Republicans like Litzow and Pflug are increasingly in line with those of mainstream voters statewide and nationally. The two represent what Silk calls “Evans Republicans” (named after Republican Dan Evans, a former U.S. senator and three-term governor of Washington), who are fiscally conservative but socially moderate — the type of Republicanism that’s been prevalent throughout the state for the past century.


Even though it looks as if marriage equality has a good chance of passing, Silk said his organization is preparing to defend the bill at the ballot box. Washington has a fairly low bar regarding the number of signatures needed to put the measure on the ballot — it’s slightly over 120,000 for this bill — but Silk is optimistic that even if it heads to the voters, it’ll still pass.

An October poll out of the University of Washington found 55% of voters were in favor of marriage equality. Washington also made history in 2009 when voters passed Referendum 71, which upheld a legislative action that made the state the first in the country to extend relationship rights and “everything but marriage” to LGBT couples.

“It’s a daunting challenge,” he said. “But with the kind of coalition we’re building with moderate Republicans, we can battle and win at the ballot box too.”

Thalia Zepatos, Freedom to Marry’s director of public engagement who’s based in Portland, Ore., said if the measure passes in Washington, the drive for marriage equality could easily spread south.

“That will be a huge message for Oregon — the states are so linked in that Northwest identity that it could come up and pass very quickly in the next couple of years,” she said. “These things don’t happen in a vacuum.”

Hearings for the bill start today, and Litzow hopes it will come to the Senate floor shortly after — but he does expect the vote will be close.

“I think it will pass by one or two votes,” he said. “It’ll probably be a 24-25 or a 23-26 vote.”

But Litzow said he’s firmly on the side of marriage equality and has been for years, no internal debates about it.

“Quite frankly, this has been a very easy decision,” he said.

Even on Fox News, Western Pa. Native Rick Santorum is an Offensive Moron

Don't Forget: Google Santorum

Do You Remember When?

Why the Christian Right Becomes More Extreme As America Grows More Tolerant

The political movement is “revenge”-based,

rather than rooted in any particular Christian philosophy.

by Richard Fricker for AlterNet:

The rigidity of Christian Right politics has been a complicating factor in governing the United States for the past several decades, stripping away flexibility needed to negotiate on issues as diverse as policies in the Middle East, abortion, health care and the federal budget.


Gone is the more practical approach of assessing government actions based on what might help the country the most – and compromising with those who have differing opinions. Everything, it seems, gets measured by some Christian fundamentalist yardstick of what’s right and wrong.

Adding to this religious style of politics has been a deep sense of victimhood among right-wing Evangelicals, as if Christians were some persecuted minority in the United States, threatened by all-powerful Muslims imposing Sharia law or secular humanists banning Christmas.

Repeated endlessly on right-wing talk radio, these paranoid messages have become real to millions of these religiously inspired voters. So, political adversaries must not only be bested, but crushed. After all, they represent strategies of the anti-Christ.

What happens next with this religious/political phenomenon could dramatically influence the future direction of the United States, a nation founded on principles of religious tolerance and respect for free debate and political diversity.

Martin Palmer, Secretary General of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC), sees hope in the shifting of some American Evangelicals away from hard-right anger in favor of life-affirming environmentalism. In an interview, Palmer notes that Evangelical environmentalists are the fasting growing part of American’s “green” movement.

However, Palmer accepts that American Evangelicals have been a key factor in creating today’s political acrimony. He describes the political movement as “revenge”-based, rather than rooted in any particular Christian philosophy.

Palmer, whose group interacts with religious leaders of all faiths on a global basis to develop environmental programs, is also a theologian and regular commentator on the BBC on ethics, religion and the environment.

The American Evangelical-political leaders, according to Palmer, are upset at not retaining the White House consistently after the presidency of Ronald Reagan. They see evil and the devil as the forces preventing them from creating a faith-based government.

At this point, the Evangelical Right wants the entire administrative structure of the secular state torn down in order to create a “New Jerusalem” and to hasten the Apocalypse.

To understand how this Christian Right movement evolved, Palmer said, one must look back at catastrophes that struck Christian Europe some eight centuries ago.

The Plague created disillusionment with the Church’s ability to protect the faithful. To counter those doubts, a school of thought emerged insisting that some other forces must be at work, with the devil and his agents doing battle with the Church, with goodness and with God.

This fear of the devil gave rise to witch trials and images of a cloven-hooved demons selecting victims and recruiting co-conspirators. It became common for populations to blame “evil” for virtually any failure of an endeavor, bad crops or disease. To eliminate these Satanic forces, the devil’s suspected agents were burned at the stake as witches.

After Europe lost its taste for witch burnings in favor of more scientific explanations, Evangelicals turned their religious passions toward converting heathens in distant lands, like China, India and Africa. The missionary movement came into full flower in the late 1800s.

But Evangelicals never entirely lost their obsession with the devil. In effect, Palmer explained, they found new devils among populations about whom they knew precious little.

“One of the reasons for the re-appearance of the devil or evil in those early missionary days came about through disappointment,” Palmer said. “The missionaries, when they went to China — China had more missionaries than the whole rest of the world put together — they found people really weren’t interested” in the Christian message.

“The dilemma facing the missionaries, primarily Protestants, … was that they were not terribly literate people. They were very much people who came out of working-class backgrounds who had had a dramatic conversion experience.

“That experience had given them an intense sense of the love of God and they felt ‘called’ to go to the mission field. Often they had never traveled more that thirty-five miles outside their home town, and now found themselves on a boat to China or to India. These were people who felt God had called them to leave everything and go to these strange countries.”

The missions were slow getting off the ground and the number of converts tiny. That was deeply contrary to the expectations of the missionaries who thought that the inhabitants of these dark lands would be profoundly grateful to receive the light of the gospel.

“And, that didn’t happen,” Palmer said. “It so didn’t happen on such a monumental scale that this raised huge questions. The missionaries were left with only three possible answers: that no one was interested,” which was unthinkable.

“The second one was that somehow they had failed,” Palmer said. “They were not able to communicate the gospel, and were failing Jesus. Quite a few of them had monumental nervous breakdowns. … The average life of a missionary in inland China in the second half of the Nineteenth Century was just two years.

“Many of them just fell apart and had to be shipped home and were basically wrecks thereafter, because they felt they personally had failed their commission.”

Or the missionaries could see the challenge in a way less disparaging of the Christian message or their own abilities.

“The third option was … the devil,” Palmer said. “They were not dealing with ordinary human beings who were not accepting the gospel. They were dealing with the devil. And, the devil in the form of anything you wanted, in the form of statues of other gods, Taoist, Hindu shrines or holy men who wandered the countryside, it didn’t really matter.

“These forces of evil were actually blocking the poor people who all wanted to convert but the devil was in the way.”

In Palmer’s analysis, a similar phenomenon has been occurring in America. With the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, the Christian Right foresaw a national conversion, with Americans accepting the Bible in the way fundamentalist Christians interpreted its teachings. With America providing that light onto other nations, Christianity would be on a triumphant march.

However, that failed to happen. Despite right-wing gains in terms of tax policy and other benefits for the rich, the nation has continued its gradual evolution toward a more tolerant and a more secular society. For instance, polls show growing acceptance of homosexuality and gay marriage, two hot-button issues for Christian fundamentalists.

The American Evangelicals felt that after Reagan, they were entitled to power, Palmer said. That is why, they couldn’t understand the election of Bill Clinton. In the Evangelical mind, Clinton was an interloper to “their” White House.

The election of Barack Obama, America’s first black president, came as a particular shock to many white Evangelicals, especially because of his Muslim father and his Muslim name. This resistance to accepting Obama as a “legitimate” president was part of what fueled the hysteria over his supposedly forged birth certificate.

“Obama,” Palmer said, “left them bewildered,” thus the non-negotiating position taken by the right-wing Evangelicals on almost all of the administration efforts.

“I think what you are now witnessing, and it’s not among the majority, is a group of people that thought they were within grasp of taking power and making America once again a holy country, a holy city, the new Jerusalem,” Palmer said.

Their failure would be a rejection of God and must not be tolerated. However, Palmer said, in reality, “this was not the rejection of Christianity, but rather the rejection of this rather narrow kind of Christianity. I think it has driven them to ask why.”

So, the search for the devil continues, with Obama filling the bill and his allies – liberals and Democrats – serving the role that witches once did. There can be no thought of negotiating with these forces of “evil,” as far as the Christian Right is concerned.

“Any manifestation of contemporary society that they feel does not fit their vision of how the world should be is the work of the devil,” Palmer said.

Yet, Palmer believes the Christian Right does not see all obstacles as equally evil:


“I think you need to distinguish those who are active agents of the devil, such as Islam, over those whose misguided compassion is exploited by the devil. For example homosexuality itself is wrong, but homosexuals do not necessarily have to be wrong: they can be saved.”

Put in simple terms, Palmer said Evangelicals see, “A cosmic struggle for the world. The apocalypse is always next. History is irrelevant. … Time is temporal. All you need is the Bible. There is always a conspiracy against God and a weakening of the white family.”

Given the evil perceived by the extreme Evangelical Right, the only solution for the U.S. is to “strip the government to the bone and start over,” Palmer said.

However, Palmer thinks the hard-core Evangelical movement will eventually “burn itself out” because of its unwillingness to search for compromise solutions.

Palmer believes, the movement will “go to sand” as more and more Evangelicals focus their efforts on environmental issues. According to Palmer, “Quite a lot of people in that movement have disavowed themselves from the socio-evangelical political goals … and gone off and become active in the environmental movement.”

Palmer and fellow religious environmentalists will be meeting at the White House in December to discuss the religious approach to preserving the environment.

Palmer is a regular contributor to several BBC programs on ethics and religion, most specifically “In Our Time” hosted by Melvyn Bragg. He explained the evolution of the devil, evil and the missionary movement in a segment, “The Devil.”

AFA Spokesman Says AIDS Is Caused by Promiscuity and Party Drugs, Not HIV

Bryan Fischer, prominent national spokesman for the Venango County-based hate group, the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, says AIDS Is Caused by Promiscuity and Party Drugs, Not HIV:

from HIVPlus Mag:

One of the leaders of the antigay movement said recently that HIV did not cause AIDS. Instead, Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, claimed that high levels of sexual promiscuity and the use of alkyl nitrites, commonly known as poppers, are the cause of the virus.

In a video reposted by Right Wing Watch, the AFA's director of issue analysis for government and public policy gives unverified homosexual sex statistics involving large numbers of partners amongst gay men, as well as the use of poppers for stamina. However, according to dancesafe.org, the effects of poppers typically last from one to two minutes. The inhalant relaxes muscles around blood vessels and causes the heart to speed up.

"Now, in the homosexual community, the average homosexual has hundreds of sexual partners over the course of a lifetime," Fischer said during his Focal Point radio show on the AFA Channel.

Fischer says during his show that this promiscuity, along with the use of alkyl nitrites "causes the human immune system to break down."

Watch the video below:

Religious Zealotry Deadly for Gays

Is this a preview of what extremists at hate groups like the Venango County-based American Family Association of Pennsylvania want to see in the U.S.?

Gay "Honor Killing" Movie Shakes Turkey Up

from Reuters:

ISTANBUL - On a hot summer's day in 2008, 26-year-old physics student Ahmet Yildiz was shot dead when he popped out from his Istanbul apartment to buy ice cream.

The main suspect in the killing, a fugitive still wanted by Turkish police, is Yildiz's father, who could not accept that his only son was in a homosexual relationship.

The case, widely believed to be Turkey's first gay "honor killing", has inspired a movie "Zenne", which opened on January 13 and explores gay sexual identity and prejudice in overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey.

"We had the movie idea in mind right after our dear friend Ahmet was killed," said Caner Alper, writer and co-director of the movie. "His story needed to be told."

Yildiz was born into a wealthy religious family in the ancient city of Sanliurfa, in Turkey's impoverished and conservative southeast, but moved to cosmopolitan Istanbul during his university years, seeking more freedom as a gay man.

In Istanbul, Yildiz started a new life and made new friends; he also began a gay relationship and eventually moved in with his boyfriend, who witnessed Yildiz's murder from the window of their apartment on the Asian side of the city divided by the Bosphorus Strait.

In the movie, Yildiz's character is encouraged to come out of the closet by a male belly dancer, or zenne, and a German photographer who has moved to Istanbul after a personal crisis in Afghanistan, where he accidentally caused the death of several children during a photo shoot. Both are fictional characters.

In real life, Yildiz's coming out as a gay man was seen as an affront in his deeply patriarchal and tribal family, even though his parents adored him, a cousin, Ahmet Kaya, told the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey.

LOOKING FOR A "CURE"

Yildiz's father had urged him to return to their village and to see a doctor and an imam to "cure" him of his homosexuality and get married, but Yildiz refused.

"Ahmet loved his family more than anything else and he was tortured about disappointing them," Kaya was quoted as saying in the foundation's report.

After he was killed, the family did not claim Yildiz's body for a proper Islamic burial -- an indication of the deep shame the family felt and that they had ceased to consider him one of their own. He was buried instead in a "cemetery for the nameless."

"The one scene I wasn't able to distance myself from the character I played as an actor was when Ahmet apologized to his father for being gay on the phone after coming out," Erkan Avci, a young actor who played Yildiz, told Reuters.

"It's such a great tragedy, so cruel and inhumane that anybody has to apologize for who he is."
Avci drew parallels between Ahmet's situation and his own as a Kurd from Diyarbakir province in a country whose Kurdish minority has long complained of discrimination and inequality.

"It would have been immoral for me to turn down this role, as a man who had to apologize for years for being Kurdish," he said.

"Zenne", which won five awards at Turkey's most prestigious film festival, the Antalya Golden Orange, has received a huge amount of attention in mainstream media and is reported to be having reasonable success at the box office.

With a $1 million budget, including financial support from the Dutch embassy, it opened in a luxury movie theatre in one of Istanbul's most fashionable neighborhoods.

Gays are normally depicted in Turkish movies as colorful and exaggerated secondary characters who add a comic element - hardly the main character of a story.

"Zenne" tackles head-on such sensitive issues as gay society, prejudice and equal rights for Turkey's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.

"'Zenne' is a very special film for us. It brings to the screen some of the important issues for the LGBT cause such as hate crimes, the complications for gay men to forego the mandatory military service and coming out," said Umut Guner, spokesman for the Ankara-based Kaos GL, a LGBT group.

PREJUDICE

The film has not been welcomed in conservative circles.

Islamist daily Vakit called it "homosexual propaganda" by a gay lobby bent on "legitimizing perversion through their so-called art."

Despite being the only suspect, Yildiz's father is still at large and is being tried in absentia.

Friends and activists, who have attended some of the hearings wearing masks bearing Yildiz's portrait, say the authorities lack the will to find the perpetrator.

Alper and Mehmet Binay, co-directors of the movie and together as a gay couple for 14 years, said they heard their friend Yildiz receive death threats from his family over the phone.

Yildiz filed an official complaint but failed to receive any protection, they said.

"Honor killings," or crimes carried out against mostly women and young girls seen to have tainted the family's name, are not uncommon in Turkey, particularly in poor and rural areas.

The European Union, which Turkey wants to join, has repeatedly urged Ankara to take a tougher stance against such crimes.

MILITARY PRACTICES

Turkey is often held as an example in the Middle East for marrying Islam and democracy, but Turkish gay activists say Ankara's human rights record is far from perfect.

One practice particularly abhorred by rights groups is the method by which gay men can be exempted from the required 16-month military service: they have to prove their homosexuality in medical tests and are compelled to provide photos of them having sex with other men.

In the movie, two characters undergoing one such examination are forced to wear make-up and dress in women's clothes, while doctors perform anal examinations.

According to Article 17 of the health regulations of the Turkish Armed Forces, homosexuality is considered a "psychosexual deviance."

"Turkey is going through a democratization process, and the army needs to enter this phase, too," said Binay.

"We don't live in a dream world and we don't expect it to happen all of a sudden in such a deep-seated institution, but at least they could stop the humiliating practices against gay men."

Turkish rights groups reported 24 killings of gay and transsexual individuals in the last two years. In most cases, courts reduced the sentences or the perpetrators were not found.

In a report last year, Amnesty International urged Ankara to draw up laws preventing discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and to punish perpetrators of homophobic attacks.

The EU in a separate report also last year said lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons in Turkey "continued to suffer discrimination, intimidation and violent crimes".

LGBT activists say they get little sympathy from the AK Party, in power for a decade, which has its roots in political Islam and is known for its socially conservative stance.

Selma Aliye Kavaf, Turkey's former Women and Family Affairs Minister, made waves in 2010 when she said homosexuality was "a biological disorder, a disease that needs to be treated".

The current interior minister accused an outlawed armed organization with "engaging in every kind of immorality, including homosexuality".

Director Binay said he hoped the movie would help to change views both among government officials and the wider society, but believed that would not happen overnight.

"These movies will be made in Turkey as long as those from different identities refuse to learn to live together."

A Letter of Love to Two Gay Dads

Adopted by Two Gay Dads After a Tumultuous Upbringing,

15-Year-Old Zac Shares a Letter of Love

by Patrick Wallace, founder of A Note To My Kid:

This past Christmas, Zac decided to read the following note to his dads, Arturo and Dave (lovingly referred to as "Dad" and "Dadio"), and his adopted brothers, Nick and Derrick, before they opened their presents.

Zac's note tells the story of his tumultuous upbringing, the anger and destructive behavior that resulted from the negative experiences he endured as a child, and, ultimately, the appreciation and love he has for his two dads, not to mention his adopted brothers, Kevin and Derrick.

With the permission of his fathers, we share Zac's heartfelt letter with you.

To my Family,

This is the first Christmas letter that I have ever written. I feel like since I am getting older, I should start writing a letter to the family or just talk about how I thought the family's year has gone until Christmas.

Ever since I ended up in this family people have told me that I was lucky. I have always known that I am lucky, especially when I have two dads that love me so much as Dad and Dadio. My family is very special to me. Even when we fight and even when we argue, I know they will always love me. Yes I am a lucky boy to have ended up here after spending so many years in foster care and not knowing if I would ever have a family.

I didn't grow with a dad. My birthmom had many boyfriends and she did a lot of drugs and partying. My sisters and me were taken from her on my eighth birthday. It was not fun to have police in my room on that day. It made me sad and this sadness I carried for many years and it got me in a lot of trouble. Then I landed in a great foster home after having lived in 12 different homes in three years. It was when I lived there that both my foster mom and social worker told me there was a family that wanted me. There was a catch: it was two dads!

Honestly, it didn't matter to me. I told them, "well, I never had a dad, now I get to have two!"

The start was tough and rough, and I put them through hell and back. I did awful and nasty things to them both. I stole their credit card and spent thousands of dollars online. When we went on my first vacation out of the country, I stole stuff from a souvenir stand - they found out and made me go back to the shop to return the souvenirs and made me pay the lady who owned the shop for the stolen property which then I had to give to a local kid. I didn't get it and thought they were being mean.

When I stole their American Express and maxed it buying stuff online I was only 12 years old. They were very upset, but Dad made sure I got the message of how serious this was. He took me to our local police station and reported me to the police captain for having stolen again. I was taken to an interrogation room and talked to by three police officers. All the time there I only wanted my Dad to come in and bring me home. I wanted to turn time back to before my stealing so I would not be there and I would not have hurt my parents so much. I learned my lesson and NEVER stole again!

But Dad and Dadio brought not just me into this family. They also added my brother Derrick. What I can say about Derrick is that he is really cool, he is funny, he is an awesome gay guy, he is a one of a kind guy, he is my bro. Next they added Nick. Nick can get on my nerves sometimes, but in the end he is pretty cool. He is a fast leaner when it comes to math and multiplying numbers. And with that said, I will go to the roots of the family.

Dad and Dadio. They are my parents and they are always here when I need them.

When it is dark they are the light,
When I feel frightened and chills,
They are the warmth I feel.
When I am hungry they cook my meals.

I did not put a lot of time into the poem, but in the poem you see my parents. The people that show me the light. The people that warm my heart when it gets dark. The people that cook my meals. If I could only ask for anything for Christmas I would only ask for my family.

By Zac

Extensive Survey Looks at Bullying in Elementary Schools

from The Advocate:


The problem of antigay bullying is widespread even in the early years of elementary school, according to an extensive national survey conducted by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network and released today.

The survey asked more than 1,000 students and 1,000 teachers about what they see in schools. And while 26% of both groups reported hearing homophobic remarks such as "fag" or "lesbo," the percentage almost doubled for "that's so gay" or "you're so gay." Some 49% of teachers said they'd heard students frequently use "gay" as an insult.

Of the kids who are getting called names, 23% are boys who often act or look "too much like a girl" or vice versa, according to teachers.

GLSEN executive director Eliza Byard warns that bullying "can affect students' educational outcomes and personal development at every grade level." And 47% of teachers agreed that bullying in some form was a very or somewhat serious problem at their schools.

The problem can ultimately manifest in one of the worst possible ways — suicide. The parents of Jeffrey Fehr said their son had been bullied starting in the third grade, and they ultimately blamed a lifetime of taunts for his suicide on New Year's Day at the age of 18. Reports of young people killing themselves haven't stopped despite successful public awareness campaigns like It Gets Better or constant support from the Trevor Project's lifeline, which can be reached at (866) 488-7386.

But the everyday reality of being bullied get less attention.

Bullying victims were less likely to say they got good grades, with a rate of 57% versus 71% for the rest of students. They were less likely to say they get along with their parents. And just 33% of bullied students said they have plenty of friends versus 57% for others.

The bottom line is that bullied children have an unhappy life at school, with just 34% reporting being happy at school versus 69% for others. A third went so far as to say they are afraid to go to school because they don't feel safe.

Teachers are often criticized for letting harassment continue in classrooms and hallways. But 66% of teachers report intervening when they hear "gay" used as an insult, and more than 60% said they jump in when students are attacked for appearing too feminine or masculine.

More than 80% of teachers said they'd already been trained in combating bullying.

One of the real problems at play appears to be a lack of discussion about gay and lesbian people. A quarter of teachers said they would feel uncomfortable answering a student's question about LGBT people. Fewer than half said they'd be OK with it. The GLSEN report points out that the training they received probably omitted any discussion of gay and lesbian families, with just 23% of teachers saying they'd had any professional development instruction about LGBT families.

And while students said they had been taught not to bully and to respect those who are different, fewer than two in 10 students had heard anything about families with two moms or two dads.

The report concludes that when "students and families are respected and valued in elementary school" it would "lay the groundwork for safe and affirming middle and high schools."

Teachers (And Principals) Who Bully

"Out In The Silence" is a documentary film about the brutal bullying of a gay teen in Venango County's Franklin High School and the courageous battle the teen and his mother wage against anti-LGBT bigotry, harassment, violence, and discrimination in this conservative rural area.


While the film deals most directly with peer-to-peer bullying, the making of the film revealed that the root of this violence grows from the biggest and most cowardly bullies in the high school, Principal George Forster (pictured at far left) and his protectors on the Franklin Area School District Board.

These problems in Franklin and throughout Venango County will only end when a concerned public addresses them head-on and seeks true accountability and justice.

Addressing Teacher Bullies

by Teaching Tolerance:

When schools implement anti-bullying programs, the focus is usually centered on student-to-student bullying. However, students aren’t the only bullies in school. Teachers sometimes earn the label when they employ questionable disciplinary and management practices. Addressing Teacher Bullies is a presentation intended to help educators assess and reflect on their classroom management style and learn more about how inappropriate displays of teacher power can impact student learning.

Teaching Tolerance designed this presentation for teacher leaders, professional learning groups, staff development coordinators and other educators interested in engaging their colleagues around issues of teacher behavior and classroom climate.

Using the presentation in a small group setting allows participants to learn from each other through discussion and collaboration. The included audio narration assumes a small group environment. However, educators working independently may choose to turn off the audio component.

The presentation can be played directly from the Teaching Tolerance site or can be downloaded for use offline. Please be sure to move your mouse over the slide window to advance the animation and video.

"Our Job Today" -- Bayard Rustin

“The job of the gay community is not to deal with extremists who would castigate us or put us on an island and drop an H-bomb on us. The fact of the matter is that there is a small percentage of people in America who understand the true nature of the homosexual community. There is another small percentage who will never understand us. Our job is not to get those people who dislike us to love us. Nor was our aim in the civil rights movement to get prejudiced white people to love us. Our aim was to try to create the kind of America, legislatively, morally, and psychologically, such that even though some whites continued to hate us, they could not openly manifest that hate. That’s our job today: to control the extent to which people can publicly manifest antigay sentiment.”

~~Bayard Rustin (1912-1987; civil rights activist and gay man who advised MLK Jr and organized the 1963 March on Washington)

As home base for the Hate Group, the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, this powerful call from Rustin is the work of all those in Venango County who profess a concern for inclusion, fairness and equality for all, including LGBT people.

Why American Teens Should Go Dutch with Sex and Drugs

Dutch Parents Treat Teen Sex Much as Dutch Society Treats Drugs: Permit It, Hug It Close, Control It

By Simon Kuper for the Financial Times:


When I was 12 years old, growing up in the Netherlands, a woman came to school to give us sex education. She was grey-haired, tough and unsmiling. I recognised the type: my grandmother had taught sex ed at my mother’s school.

We boys and girls sat in the classroom embarrassed. But I also remember wondering: what could this woman teach us? We’d already been taught all about sex at primary school. “I won’t teach you about sex,” she began, “because you know all that. Instead, we’ll talk about relationships.”

Living across the road from me back then was an American teenager called Amy Schalet. Later she returned to the US, and discovered a different world. Many American teens, she noticed with surprise, got pregnant. Some had received scarcely any sex education. Their parents often tried to ban teenage sex, just as American lawmakers try to ban marijuana and prostitution.

Schalet is now a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and she has just published Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens and the Culture of Sex (University of Chicago Press). Her book starts in the adolescent bedroom, and ends up explaining why the US is so conservative on social issues and the Netherlands so liberal.

The book opens with a question that Schalet put to “white, secular or moderately Christian” middle-class Dutch and American parents. Would they allow their teenagers – typically aged about 16 – to spend the night with a girlfriend or boyfriend in the parental home? Nine out of 10 American parents responded, in the phrase of one mother: “No way, José.” Nine out of 10 Dutch parents said they’d allow or at least consider it.

You might think this finding supports foreign clichés of Dutch permissiveness. Yet that isn’t quite right. Dutch parents aren’t hands-off at all. By allowing the sleepover, they gain great control over their children’s sex lives. As one Dutch boy told Schalet: “If it happens at home, at least they [his parents] know where I am.”

The parents can put their daughter on the pill beforehand. The sex happens practically under their noses. The partner – whom they probably already know – might be summoned for family breakfast the morning after. If they don’t like him, they can subtly start ousting him. If they do, he is adopted as a kind of son-in-law, expected to show up for obligatory Dutch family gatherings like great-aunts’ birthdays. Often the teen sex evolves into a bland mini-marriage. When we were young, a Dutch friend told me he couldn’t dump his girlfriend because his parents would be upset.

In short, Dutch teenage sex happens under parental control. It’s a zone of order. No wonder Dutch teenage girls are nearly five times less likely than American girls to get pregnant, and less than half as likely to have an abortion, even though they can get abortions without parental consent.

Dutch parents treat teen sex much as Dutch society treats drugs or prostitution: permit it, hug it close, control it. The Dutch know that some people will take drugs. They just make sure this happens in a zone of order. As John Travolta explains Amsterdam’s marijuana cafés in the film Pulp Fiction: “I mean, you just can’t walk into a restaurant, roll a joint and start puffin’ away. They want you to smoke in your home or certain designated places.” And Dutch marijuana cafés – like prostitutes – pay taxes.

By contrast, Americans banish these activities to zones of disorder. American parents forbid sleepovers, and so teen sex typically happens without contraception, in places like the backseats of cars. Kids have to “sneak around”, something that Schalet calls “an important ritual of American adolescence”. In fact, sneaking around enhances the thrill. When I took my English college football team on tour to Amsterdam 20 years ago, my teammates insisted on spending every night in marijuana cafés. One night, our American goalkeeper dreamily reflected that he was glad he’d grown up with everything banned. “We had the fun of sneaking around buying beer with fake IDs,” he said.

American society tries to enforce good behaviour through the institutions of marriage, church and prison. This doesn’t work well. If you just ban, you create unsupervised zones of disorder. The US is trapped in a vicious cycle. Because Americans create so many zones of disorder – inhabited by single mothers, drug gangs and other poor people – American anxiety over disorder stays high. And so Americans keep prohibiting, which only pushes more people into zones of disorder. Of course these zones fascinate teenagers. That may be why American teens take more drugs than Dutch teens, who, as I recall, can be quite snooty about marijuana cafés. One reason Dutch politicians are now closing many drugs cafés is “drugstoerisme”: foreigners wrongly think the cafés are countercultural havens and come flocking.

The Netherlands has done everything humanly possible to make teen sex and drugs seem dull. American social conservatives should try it out.

Voice of an LGBT Rights Ally in Uganda

from the Washington Blade:

These are challenging times for LGBT people and their allies in Uganda. Fanned by anti-gay rhetoric from American evangelicals working in the country, Ugandan politicians are trying to resume debate on the infamous Anti-Homosexuality Bill first introduced in 2009, just as Republican presidential candidates are bringing anti-gay rhetoric to the primary campaign.

Although homosexual acts by both men and women are already illegal in Uganda and punishable by up to 14 years imprisonment, this bill seeks to step up enforcement and increase penalties against gays and lesbians and their straight allies. “Repeat offenders” would be subject to the death penalty. Individuals and companies promoting LGBT rights would be penalized. Ugandan citizens would be required to report any homosexual activity within 24 hours or face a maximum penalty of three years imprisonment. Ugandan citizens living abroad would be subject to extradition for having same-sex relations outside of the country. Similar sanctions would apply to HIV-positive people.


One of the leaders in the fight against the Anti-Homosexuality Bill is Rev. Mark Kiyimba, minister in exile of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Kampala, Uganda’s capital. Kiyimba, a straight ally, has been forced to leave Uganda because of threats against his life. He has received numerous death threats and was brought in for police questioning for “recruiting homosexuals at his church.” The minister is currently touring the United States speaking out against the Anti-Homosexuality Bill and the American evangelical pastors who support it. He has left his wife and child behind in Uganda, but plans to return to them soon.

As part of his tour, Kiyimba will be speaking at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Silver Spring Tuesday, Jan. 17 at 7:30 p.m. Senior minister Rev. Elizabeth Lerner Maclay is proud to host.

“Rev. Mark Kiyimba is one of the most courageous, compassionate and visionary religious leaders in the world today,” Maclay says. “The peril he and his congregation are facing remind us why equal rights and protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people are essential the world over — including here in Maryland. We’re sure a lot of people will want to hear about the remarkable work he and his congregation are doing in the face of incredible danger.”

Kiyimba and Maclay are quick to point out that the Ugandan bill has strong links to American politics and the effort to export the American culture wars to Africa, where it is finding fertile soil, especially in conservative sub-Saharan countries. The Anti-Homosexuality Bill was introduced in October 2009 on the heels of a two-day conference led by American pastors Scott Lively, Don Schmierer and Caleb Lee Brundidge who asserted that homosexuality is a direct threat to the cohesion of African families. Lively, a former state director for Focus on the Family, said the conference, which was attended by thousands, including prominent Ugandan politicians, was like “a nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda.”

In response to this, Kiyimba said there is a moral obligation for his church to oppose the anti-gay bill.

“Because the bill was started by evangelicals,” he says during a Blade interview this week, “we thought it necessary for our church to counter those negative attitudes. We must do everything we can to stop this bill.” He organized an LGBT conference in Kampala that was attended by about 200 activists and his church hosted an event called “Standing on the Side of Love: Reimaging Valentine’s Day” last February. Kiyimba also founded the New Life Children’s Home and the New Life Primary School, an orphanage and school for children who have lost parents to AIDS or who themselves are HIV positive.

Kiyimba, who has a strong record as an advocate for both women’s rights and gay rights, feels it is important for progressive evangelicals to stand against the hate-filled rhetoric of some American right-wing pastors.

“It was started by Focus on the Family,” he says. “They started spreading hate among the people here. They are the ones who started it by coming to Uganda and holding seminars and workshops and telling people that homosexuality cannot be healed and telling people that there is a homosexual agenda to destroy the family and that the government needs to do something — that governments all over the world need to take a strong stand against homosexuality.”


Kiyimba also noted that there are links between the debate on the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda and the Republican primaries. “Politicians such as Michelle Bachmann and (Pennsylvania's own) Rick Santorum are linked to the American evangelical pastors who went to Uganda. There is no difference. They use the same language to discuss homosexuality and the traditional family, but in Uganda they are calling to kill the gay people.”


The timing of Kiyimba’s talk in Silver Spring is noteworthy because it comes right before the one-year anniversary of the murder of Ugandan activist David Kato. Since the bill was introduced, Ugandan media have issued calls for harsher punishments for “immoral” behavior. Organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have reported an increase in detention and torture of those suspected of having homosexual relations, and one newspaper published a list of Uganda’s 100 “top” gays and lesbians, along with their photos and addresses, and the command “hang them.” Many on the list have been threatened, beaten and ostracized. One of them, David Kato, Uganda’s most prominent gay activist, was found bludgeoned to death last January. Police investigating the crime have called it a robbery.

Asked why American gays and lesbians and their allies should be concerned about the fight in Uganda, Kiyimba says, “People should join us and understand that we are a global village now. We are all one. If I am hurt, at the end of the day, you are also hurt. We want our friends in the West to take some responsibility to speak to the government here and in Uganda so that they can have an open mind on homosexuality. It is not a vice that people choose. We need to have an international voice to speak for those voiceless people in Uganda,”


Maclay shares two more reasons why locals should attend Kiyimba’s talk. First, she notes, “We need to pay attention — stay informed, talk to our legislators, write letters to the editor, contribute funds. This is an opportunity for people in the area to learn first-hand about the situation in Uganda. We are dealing with the same issues here, issues of respect and safety, in very different, but still very significant ways.”

But more importantly, she adds, our attention to the issue could help save Kiyimba’s life. “He is going back to Uganda at the end of the month. He can be kept safe by our awareness and concern. American input has a big impact on Ugandan society. It can be an impact that spreads hatred and intolerance or we can turn it around and reach out with compassion and respect. It is my absolute belief we can turn it around. It is my great hope that our care for him and his congregation and the children they care for will keep him safe.”

Separate Is Not Equal

Sh*t Homophobic People Say

Meet the Kooky Cousins of the Venango County-based Hate Group, the American Family Association of Pennsylvania:





And if you need a little reminder:

Suicide Claims Another LGBT Youth - It's Not Getting Better Yet

"Listen to the words of EricJames Borges, who sadly took his life yesterday in the Central Valley of California. This youth speaks to our societal harms - when we allow faith, schools and community to be the bully and don't adequately protect. He speaks to the harm of government sanctioned homophobia, that allow such hatred to be tolerated. We must *make it better* now, not when we can get to it or when the time is right. RIP EricJames, may your soul finally realize the peace it was always meant to have ..." - Robin McGehee, Get Equal

Suicide claims another LGBT youth: Trevor Project intern Eric Borges

Eric James Borges, 19, of Visalia, Calif., succumbed to suicide Wednesday, January 11, 2012. Known as EricJames to his friends, he was an intern with The Trevor Project, and a Supplemental instructor at the College of the Sequoias.

Word began spreading late Wednesday among shocked and saddened friends and acquaintances. Not accepted by his birth family, EricJames was striking out on his own, trying to deal with his personal situation, but also wanting to help others.

Sadly, even involvement with the Trevor Project was not enough to help him navigate the turbulent waters of young adulthood.

A young film maker, EricJames posted this video on November 10, 2011, in which he also appears — the subtext of his video was described as “love is universal.”

EricJames also made a “It Gets Better” video, and posted it in December of last year.



I met EricJames recently, at the launching of My LGBT Plus, a youth oriented resource site, based in Fresno, California. A brief introduction left me with the impression of a fine young man, and I regret that I did not get to know him better.

Friends have begun planning a memorial, details will be updated here as they become available.

Our condolences to the family and friends of EricJames.

If you are finding it difficult to deal with the issues of being LGBTQ, The Trevor Project is available, with peer counselors available to talk to you about problems you may be facing.

Update:

Laura McGinnis, Communications Director at The Trevor Project released this statement:

We are deeply saddened to hear about the tragic death of EricJames Borges, and our hearts go out to his family and friends, and his community. EricJames was a dedicated, trained volunteer. Our main concern right now is that those affected by his death feel supported and can get the care they need. If you or someone you know needs support, please don’t hesitate to call the Trevor Lifeline at 866-488-7386.

Clobbering "Biblical" Gay Bashing

This piece, from The God Article, is a small retort to Venango County-based Hate Group, the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, and its subjects, who do the thing they do best: misinterpret the Bible and ruin lives with it.

"Clobbering "Biblical" Gay Bashing"

This is a bit long for a blog post, but some may find it to be a helpful resource. I wrote the piece for another project and it just wasn't a good fit. Honestly, if you are well read on the issue of the Bible and its take on homosexuality (or lack thereof), there is nothing new in here. For you, I hope this can be a quick reference. If you are not well read on such things, this may be a bit of a bumpy ride, but bumpy rides can be a lot of fun. Either way, I hope I was able to take what is sometimes thick reading, albeit important reading, and make it at least bearable and mostly straight forward.

Christianity and “Biblical” Hatefulness


We Christians are good at a lot of things. Helping others. Dressing up on Sunday. Quoting scripture. Pot luck meals. Taking care of church members. Weddings. Funerals. Worship. But perhaps the thing at which we are the most persistently exceptional is misinterpreting the Bible then running amuck in the world because of it. Honestly, mad skills. And history backs me up on this one.

We have used the Bible to support, promote and act upon some pretty un-Christian things: slavery, holocaust, segregation, subjugation of women, apartheid, the Spanish Inquisition (which, no one ever expects), domestic violence, all sorts of exploitation and the list could go on and on. Oddly, if you ask theologians to pick one biblical theme to rule them all, most of them would say “love”... well, love and grace. Okay, love, grace and forgiveness. Fine. They probably would not specifically agree on a single term, but they would most likely name something that is, in every way, the opposite of the oppression, belittlement, hatred and marginalization represented by the numerous atrocities committed by the Christian Church.

More times than not, these atrocities are the result of trying to play God, pretending as if one group of people has complete knowledge of God's will and is more blessed or chosen by God. Not surprisingly, the people who see the world this way are always exactly the people who also happen to belong in the group they believe to be the uber-blessed. Lucky them.

Time and time again, Jesus made it clear that we should not put ourselves in the place of playing God and that, unlike far too many humans, God welcomes and loves us all equally. Period.

But we keep doing it. We keep doing it even though each time after we argue, name-call, suppress others and fight for centuries, falsely playing the role of heavenly judge and jury, we slowly realize that we got it wrong. We realize that, in fact, Paul was not promoting slavery. We learn to contextualize his statements and letters. We become more skilled at interpreting the original Greek and, over time, we decide to stop quoting the Bible to support slavery (or the subjugation of women, or racism, etc.) because we finally come around to realizing that, as Rob Bell's book points out, biblically love wins. Always.

And so we find ourselves here again. Doing the thing we do best: misinterpreting the Bible and ruining lives with it. We are, once again, ignoring the biblical bias for those who are marginalized, abused, belittled and negatively judged. Ignoring the biblical directive to show all the children of God love (and grace... and forgiveness).

Hate By Any Other Name

Oh sure, this time around we have “softened” our approach, saying things like “hate the sin, love the sinner,” but we fail to recognize that what we are calling a “sin” and the person we are calling a “sinner” are one and the same. A person whose sexual orientation is homosexual, or bi-sexual, or queer can no more separate themselves from their sexuality than a heterosexual person can. It's like saying “hate the toppings, love the pizza.” It's just not the pizza without the toppings. We just aren't loving the person if we don't love the whole person.

I suspect the “softening” of the language we use has everything to do with making us feel better and very little with making LGBTQ folk feel better, because it certainly doesn't make them feel any better. As a matter of fact, the love/hate (emphasis on hate) relationship that the Church continues to push on this group of people only serves to push them into closets and into even darker places, which sometimes leads to suicide. The Church and its approach to this issue are at fault for most of the hurt, anguish, self-doubt, abuse and death associated with being LGBTQ. Not very loving. Not very grace filled. But it certainly leaves us in need of forgiveness.

Many Christians have lost their way in this twisty, turny maze of how to practice our faith. We would much rather reinforce the things we want to believe than believe the sometimes difficult teachings of Jesus. Who, on a side note, never said a word about homosexuality but did tell us to gouge out our lustful eyes. Which seems to me is more likely to leave us all blind than the “eye for and eye” thing.

The Bible As A Sex Manual

So, as others have pointed out before, we use the Bible as if it is a sex manual, telling us what is and isn't acceptable in the eyes of the Lord your God. Thereby delineating out those whom it is okay for us to judge, and toward whom it is okay to direct all kinds of nastiness and holier-than-thouisms.

The reality is that the Bible is not a sex manual. I know, shocker. Right? Actually, it's a good thing (depending on your particular level of sexual prudishness – personally, compared to the Bible, mine is pretty high). You see, the Bible not only promotes marriage between a man and a woman, but it insist that that marriage be within the same faith. Not only should a wife be subordinate (Ephesians 5:22), but she should also prove her virginity... lest she be stoned (Deuteronomy 22:20-21). Oh, and the whole thing would probably be much better if it were arranged (Genesis 24:37-38). And that's just the warm up act.

According to the Bible, if a woman's husband dies and she hasn't had a son, she must marry his brother and have intercourse with him until she has a son (Mark 12:18-27). Sometimes, biblically wives are good, but concubines are better. Many of the “men of God” were not only married, but at least three of them had more than one concubine (Abraham, Caleb, Solomon) and they remained “men of God.” But like I said, “biblically wives are good” and there's no such thing as too much of a good thing. Right? So, why not have may wives? God frequently blessed polygamists (Esau, Jacob, Gideon, David, Solomon, Belshazzar).

As far as sexuality and the Bible's perspective on woman as property and as slaves... well, as you can imagine, it does not get any better.

Making Choices

The point is this: most of us have matured enough theologically to recognize that we need to contextualize the writings of the Bible, and because of it we have moved passed using these examples as the end-all-be-all on acceptable practices of sexuality. However, somehow, we have not managed to apply the very same understanding to the Bible verses that have become known as the “clobber verses” in the Bible. “Clobber" because they are the verses most used to clobber people who are gay or who support gay rights.

That is really interesting when you consider that, of all the topics I just mentioned, sexual orientation is the only one that is not a choice. Polygamy, concubines, marrying your brother's widow? All choices, and we have decided to “get over” the biblical directives for them. Sexual orientation? Not a choice. (There are those who still argue otherwise, but the science is clear, so I'm not even having that discussion). So many Christians just aren't able to get past that one. Equally interesting to consider: it is actually more of a choice to judge and marginalize people over being homosexual, or, bi-sexual, or queer; than it is a choice to be homosexual, or, bi-sexual, or queer. Yet we judge them and not ourselves.

Since we clearly have a difficult time letting go of the clobber verses, let's take them one by one and very briefly consider what is really going on in them. It should help us arrive at a clearer picture of what the writers of these scriptures were trying to tell us. What we will find is this: as we get caught up in judging others over what we want the verses to say, we miss the opportunity to understand how to be the people God is calling us to be.

As we get started, we all need to be on the same page on one thing. When the Bible was written, the earth was flat, the sun orbited the earth and the idea of a person having a sexual 'orientation' was completely foreign. There is some debate about who actually kick-started the understanding of sexual orientation (Heinrich Hoessli or Karl Heinrich Ulrich - personally, I am on Team Heinrich), but it is clear that the concept of people having a sexual orientation was first introduced in the 1800's making it a thoroughly modern construct.

Clearly, there are a few Bible verses that involve same-sex acts (and of those, almost all of them are male-male sex), but given the modern advent of recognizing the existence of sexual orientation, we must accept the reality that the writers of those verses were in no way trying to, let alone capable of, acknowledging, understanding and addressing homosexual orientation. What then, might they have been trying to tell us in the clobber verses? Let's take a look.

The Clobber Verses

Let me just say right off the top, three of the verses that are sometimes considered clobber verses have nothing to do with the question of homosexuality. Putting Genesis 2:21-25, Deuteronomy 23:17 and Jude 1:6-7 in the category of anti-gay verses is nothing more than an attempt to beef up the number of verses that are supposedly “against” homosexuality. They have nothing to do with it. So, I am simply going to ignore them. If someone attempts to use them as proof of the “abomination” of homosexuality, I suggest you simply ignore them as well.

Genesis 19:1-11

The great thing about defending the Bible against people who want to use Genesis 19:1-11 to gay bash is that you really don't have to do any work. The Bible does it for you. For better or for worse, this is also the verse with which the general population is probably most familiar in terms of what they think of as verses about homosexuality. Even the term “sodomy” is linked to this Bible passage.

It is the story of two travelers (messengers from God) being given shelter by Lot and his family. Hospitality was a very big deal in those days. In this story, the men of Sodom decided to approach Lot's home and to make less than hospitable demands on him and his guest. To get a sense of how important hospitality was, when the men of the town say they want to force themselves (most likely sexually) on Lot's guest, Lot actually offers up his daughters instead. Despicable, deplorable, a great way to permanently damage your relationship with your daughters and the rest of your family (to say the least), but a sure sign that hospitality was a big deal.

In the end, the men of the town did not get what they wanted. They wanted to exert their dominance of the guests. They wanted to humiliate them, as warriors after conquering a foe might do in those days, sexually putting another male into the position of a woman (who after all was thought of as property, as weak, and as soft and therefore less than a man).

Even though the men never actually exerted their power over Lot's guests in a male-male sex act, people still insist on using this text as proof that homosexuality is an “abomination.” Well, like I said, “the great thing about defending the Bible against people who want to use Genesis 19:1-5 to gay bash is that you really don't have to do any work. The Bible does it for you.”

Sodom is referenced multiple times in the Bible as an example of great sinning. And what might that sin be?

In Isaiah 1:10-17 it is thought to be injustice, not rescuing the oppressed, defending the orphan, pleading for the widow. In Jeremiah 23:14 it is adultery. In Ezekiel 16:48-49 it is the sin of not aiding the “poor and needy.” In Zephaniah 2:8-11 the sin is bullying, boasting and pride. In the Wisdom of Solomon it is “the bitter hatred of strangers.”

The sin is not about being gay. It is not about non-straight sexual orientation. The sin of Sodom was lacking hospitality, not being just, bullying, hating strangers, not caring for those marginalized. Funny, they are all things Churches (and individuals for that matter) sorely need to keep in mind and be better at practicing when it comes to how we do or do not welcome LGBTQ folk into our lives. After all, in today's society, who is more marginalized, more bullied, more treated like a “stranger,” than them? Come to think of it, not so funny.

Leviticus 18:22 & 20:13

If someone were to canonize a buzz-kill, it would look remarkably, and uncomfortably, like the book of Leviticus. Honestly, this three-thousand plus year old holiness code is not exactly a big ball of fun. For starters, just try reading it. On second thought, I like you, so don't. Fortunately for you, I've done it for you. (I know, nice. Right? I'm just that kind of guy).

Among the jewels you'll find in it are a mandate to kill disobedient children, a dietary restriction to not eat shellfish (God Hates Shrimp!), a law that would prevent bowl-cuts (or “rounding off the side-growth of your heads” – and to think I liked the Beatles), direction to not touch or eat the flesh of a pig (no bacon and cheddar soup for you!), and a prohibition on the rhythm method of birth control (you know who you are!). Oh, and presumably, gay sex (which, of course, is why I bring it up).

The section of Leviticus where we find the clobber verses is often called the Purity Code. “Purity” was mostly about two things. First, it was about keeping things the way they “should” be. “Should” is in quotes because the guidelines they used for what should and shouldn't be were mostly made up. Said differently, they arrived at their conclusions in a time that didn't have any science or at least not science like we have today. Which is to say, they didn't have any science.

What they had was mostly superstition based on observation. A big part of this purity code was the idea that the world is consistent or follows particular preset rules. For the Israelites this meant things like: all fish have fins, animals with divided hooves chew cud, and male sperm contains the whole of life (women provided the incubation chamber). When things didn't adhere to this particular three-thousand year old way of understanding the world, they were considered an abomination or more precisely impure.

The second thing the purity code did was define the Israelites as purely not Canaanites. That is, much like many Christians receive the mark of a cross on their forehead on Ash Wednesday or give something up for Lent, the codes in Leviticus helped define the people of Israel as the people of Israel. For the Israelites it was particularly meant to define them as not Canaanites. Basically, it's a way of showing “we are not them.”

It is true that there are other reasons for many of the laws (just like there are many other reasons to give something up for Lent), but these are two of the larger ones, and they are ones that most directly apply to these clobber verses.

So what do we, presumably enlightened Christians of a scientific age, do with this code? Clearly shrimp are good to eat (for most of us). For that matter, as far as I'm concerned, to borrow from an old Benjamin Franklin quote, they are proof that God loves us* – that's just how darned delicious they are.

What we do is recognize Leviticus for what it was: a good thing for the people of God based on how they understood the world some three-thousand years ago. Interestingly enough, when it comes to things like shellfish, eating and touching pigs, cutting our sideburns and beards, and stoning children who mouth off to their parents, we have already managed to do exactly that. Why? Because we understand that they are just flat out silly laws. Not all “fish” have fins. Some come in the shape of pink commas and are delicious with a nice Riesling. Because not all split hooved animals chew cud. Some roll around in the mud and make breakfast just that much better. For that matter, wrap them around a shrimp, throw them on the grill. I promise you, God will not smite you and once you bite into them you'll agree, they are not an abomination (they might, however taste slightly “impure” if you do not devein them well).

What many people have not been able to do is extend that simple understanding to these clobber verses. We have already established that it would have been impossible for these texts, or any biblical text, to be about sexual orientation. However, they do clearly describe a male-male sex act (sorry ladies, this one's just for the guys). But what we have to begin to understand is that the issues which these specific laws presumed to address within their society, much like the other laws I've mentioned here, are no longer recognized as true.

Scholars have pointed to various reasons for ancient Israel's seeing male-male sex as taboo in Leviticus. It may be the same reason the rhythm method was thought to be wrong in the eyes of God, which presumably is that, as I have mentioned, they thought sperm contained the whole of life (how typically male-dominated-society of them). Therefore, in their way of seeing it, “Every sperm is sacred. Every sperm is great. If a sperm gets wasted, God get quite irate.” On the other hand, it may be that they thought it was taboo because it went against their understanding that mixing of kinds, just like the mixing of two kinds of cloth was taboo. Male-male sexual relationships, in that way of seeing things, mixes up their understanding of gender roles.

Whatever the reason, the perspective in these clobber verses were based on an understanding of sex and sexuality that was just as misinformed as their understanding of the earth in relationship to the sun, of fish, of pork and of reasons for stoning children. In our scientific age, it is time to let go of archaic perspectives and start recognizing the things that are truly an abomination in the eyes of God: lacking in compassion and love, exercising judgment against others, and practicing and encouraging hate.

(*The actual quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin is, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” Sadly, while Ben most probably enjoyed a mug of beer from time to time, the actually quote is, “Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine, a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.” In a happy coincidence, the same rains nourish the barley and hops that are changed into beer. In an even happier coincidence, wine and beer both pair exceptionally well with shrimp. God is good).

Romans 1:26-28

Good news ladies! Up until now, all of this clobbering has been about the guys. In Romans, you get to join in. Lucky you.

Romans is the one place the Bible speaks specifically about a female-female sex act. If you listen to Bible Thumpin' Gay Bashers, you'd be surprised to learn that, while the counts vary on how many places the Bible directly address heterosexual relationships, it is a lot. Then again, compared to the precisely one verse the Bible has about female-female sex, even two is one hundred percent more.

The number of heterosexually oriented verses isn't exactly clear. One thing is really clear, there's plenty of them and, much like the Levitical purity code, we've managed to ignore many of them. So, if you aren't also denouncing the divorced, then get off your lesbian judging high-horse, because otherwise you are just picking and choosing who to judge out of your own accord, and then quoting the one Bible verse that seems to support your choice. And even then, as we will see, it doesn't actually support your argument. It actually does just the opposite.

In Romans, we have the most extensive discussion of same-sex intercourse in the Bible, a whole two seemingly specific verses – astounding.

There are plenty of approaches to understanding what Paul is trying to teach us in these texts. Any good exegesis ultimately points to the reality that what Paul is talking about and what people who use these verses as clobber verses want Paul to be talking about aren't the same thing. That is, this is not about homosexual people having consenting homosexual relationships.

One convincing analysis of these texts looks at the fact that one of the most prevalent forms of same-sex sex in the Greco-Roman world was male prostitution which frequently involved boys. In that analysis, the texts become a condemnation of pederasty and prostitution, things of which most Christians (conservative to liberal) disapprove even today. There is also the perspective that Paul's pointing to same sex intercourse as being idolatrous could be referring to the practices of priests and priestesses of Mediterainian fertility gods who regularly practiced that type of prostitution but elevated it, within a religious context, to the state of idolatry. Those approaches are valid and mostly convincing perspectives, but they do require a small leap of logic to arrive at their conclusions. Much less of a leap of logic, mind you, than believing that these texts are about something of which people at that time had absolutely no comprehension, but slight conjecture all the same.

The analysis that I find the most convincing concerns itself with the word “natural.” It is the word that has led many to speak of LGBTQ behavior as “unnatural” acts even though they occur throughout nature (in one study they were found in more than fifteen-hundred species).

As it turns out, the word is actually not “natural.” Not surprisingly, Paul did not speak English. While Paul performed a number of miraculous things, speaking English (which wasn't around even in its earliest Prehistoric Old English form yet) was not one of them. Not to bore you too much, but the word Paul used was the Greek word, physikos. (Now that didn't hurt too much, did it?).

It's important to know the word in Greek because when it is translated into English, it loses a little of its original meaning. Without even knowing it, Lady GaGa has provided a better modern and contextual translation of physikos than the frequently used translation of “normal.” We will get to that in a minute. It doesn't mean “natural” or “nature” so much as it means “produced by nature.” Those who use these verses as clobber verses tend to understand “natural” to mean something closer to “normal” than “produced by nature.” Not surprisingly, they also then define what is and isn't “normal” based on their personal biases rather than on science or the reality of the world around them (e.g.: “I think gay people make me feel creepy, so I henceforth do hereby dub it as an act of not-natural.”).

In reality, physikos has more to do with how things naturally occur in God's Creation. At this point, you may have begun to guess that physikos is based on the same root word from which we get the word “physics” which is, of course, the study of the realities of nature. Conveniently, the way Paul uses physikos here in Romans, it also means something very similar to “the realities of nature.” It is concerned with what is of our nature and not with what is defined as acceptable. That is to say, Paul is concerned with how God created something or someone to be. He is concerned with people going against their nature or in the words of Lady GaGa herself, if they are “born that way” he's concerned with them behaving as if they were not.

That is the sin here in Romans, acting against the very nature of who God created you to be. In this case he seems to be addressing the idea of a same-sex sex act in which at least one of the two are not attracted to someone of the same sex; they just are not born that way.

Understood this way, it would be equally sinful for someone who is only attracted to someone of the same sex to have sex with someone of the opposite sex. It goes against their nature; they just weren't born that way. Ironically, those telling LGBTQ folk that these verses mean they have to stop being LGBTQ folk are actually telling them to commit the very sin against which these verses warn, going against their nature. God has a wicked sense of humor.

Because these texts have been used so much to address homosexuality, it was important to address the issue directly, but the worst thing we could do is to think it is primarily about homosexuality. It is not.

Immediately following verse 28, Paul provides an extensive list of sins. It is so extensive that we all fall into at least one of the categories. “So there you have it,” says Paul, “we all sin. Don't try to deny it.” And let's face it, we all go against who we know we were created to be. How many times have you done something, felt guilt or shame, and then said, “I shouldn't have done that. That's not who I am.”?

As Paul says in the very next chapter, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” As he also says to start that chapter, “Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.”

1 Corinthians 6:9-10 & 1 Timothy 1:9-10

So, remember back a few paragraphs ago when we talked about a Greek word? And remember how it didn't even hurt one little bit? Good. We are going to do it again.

I have put the 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy clobber verses together because they both use a particular Greek word in a particularly similar way. The word is arsenokoitēs and it means “male prostitute.” (Behold the Greek scholarship. See that it is good and rejoice). Actually, it could also mean “the customer of a male prostitute,” or “boy molester” or “someone who abuses themselves with a man” or “using sexual manipulation to acquire money” or … (eh hem, “Behold the great and powerful Greek Interpretation!” ).

So, the word in these two verses, that is frequently interpreted as “homosexual” (which is absurd because, in Greek, it is clearly only a word referring to men) or “sodomite” (which is absurd, among other reasons, because that was not the sin of Sodom, as we have already discussed), is really difficult to translate. Why? In part, because it is only found in these two places and also, in part, because it is entirely possible that it is a made up word. It is very likely that Greek speaking Jews created this word to port a Hebrew word to Greek and over time the meaning has been lost. So, it is just hard to translate. So difficult, in fact, that scholars can't agree on a single best translation. What most biblical Greek scholars can agree on is that it is not meant to be a blanket statement about a male-male sex act. Moving on.

There is another word used in 1 Corinthians 6:9: malakos. The good news about this word is that it is found in lots of literature, so there are plenty of references about its typical intended meaning. It literally means “soft.” Some say it means “soft” as in “effeminate, but not in terms of sexual orientation.” Others, say it is connected with being wasteful of sexual and financial resources. Still others convincingly point to it singling out a particular type of male prostitution involving young boys. Also in the list of contenders: sexual perverts, sodomites, weaklings, the self-indulgent. (“Behold the great and powerful Greek Interpretation!” ). Like with arsenokoitēs there really is no expert consensus on this.

Malakos was a word that could be used to refer to things as diverse as men who were weak in battle (or who were “soft”), to men who lived extravagant and pampered lives (or who were... well, “soft”). It was not specifically about sexual relationships. If Paul was actually trying to describe something about a submissive male in a male-male relationship (which is still not the same as homosexuality as we understand it today), it's very likely that he would have used kinaedos, which was frequently used to describe that very relationship. But he didn't. So, stop acting like he was.

Clobbered

In summary of my look at the Christian Church's use of the clobber verses, if you want to call homosexuality a sin, go ahead. But you are going to have to admit that it is not biblically a sin. Which means you are also going to have to admit that you are calling it a sin simply because that's what you want to do. Because of that, you are going to have to admit that you are a sinner for using God's name for false pretenses (it's a little thing we like to call using God's name in vain). And then, Paul has something to tell you, “...you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.” (Romans 2:1).