This segment aired on Friday night, June 14, when we were all still anticipating possible Supreme Court rulings this morning, but Rachel does a really good job illustrating the strange disconnect happening between the majority of the country and the GOP’s decision to continue pandering to its base on the issue of gay rights. She points out that, with the coming Supreme Court rulings, and with the coming vote on ENDA, this is no longer abstract, and the GOP is actually going to have to answer to the rest of the country, as opposed to just talking to their base.
Worth watching in its entirety:
Monday, June 17, 2013
Sunday, June 16, 2013
The Gay Debate: The Bible and Homosexuality
Every Biblical Argument Against Being Gay, Debunked Biblically
from UpWorthy:
This is Matthew Vines. The New York Times is writing about him, thanks to his amazing work. He has a sermon you need to watch. It's long. And 350,000 other people have already watched it (that's how good it is.) But I can't begin to tell you how important his ideas are.
At 9:05, he pulls at the heartstrings of anyone who has them. At 24:12, he demolishes all arguments based on Leviticus, and he explains something you'll never forget about Old Testament "abominations" at 29:12. At 35:37, he unpacks the thorniest New Testament passage, burying the "unnatural" argument once and for all at 47:06.
At 58:48, he makes one of the most effective Bible-based arguments for gay marriage you'll ever hear. And at 1:03:32, he closes with a plea for acceptance that's been melting the hearts even of dyed-in-the-wool Southern Baptists.
Friday, June 14, 2013
Religious Liberty Is Not A License To Discriminate
by Julian Bond - Politico - June 12, 2013:
By the mid-1960s, the civil rights movement had made significant cultural, legal and political progress in advancing the cause of racial justice and equality under the law — a struggle that continues to this very day. This was a rapidly evolving, heady time in American history.
It was a time when individual men, women and, yes, children came together to literally bend the moral arc of their nation in the direction of justice.
In our current day, we have approached a very similar point in the struggle for basic fairness and equality under the law for our lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender brothers and sisters. The incredible progress this community has made over the past four decades is remarkable on many levels and is a testament to what is possible when everyday people come together to make real the promise of America.
Today, gay and lesbian people are widely visible in popular culture, increasing numbers of elected officials are “coming out” in support of fairness and equal treatment, and landmark cases related to marriage for same-sex couples are pending at the Supreme Court. This barrier is even starting to be broken in professional sports.
We did not arrive at this point by happenstance. It took a great deal of courage and decades of advocacy and activism on the part of many.
However, as LGBT people have gained greater equality under the law, we are hearing similar objections to the ones I heard in response to the civil rights gains of African-Americans in the 1960s. We hear people asking for exemptions from laws — laws that prohibit discrimination — on the ground that complying would violate their religious beliefs.
I heard this argument in Maryland last year when working to secure the freedom to marry for committed and loving same-sex couples. And now we are hearing it in Congress with respect to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, critical federal legislation introduced in Congress in April that would prohibit employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in most American workplaces.
ENDA follows in the mold of life-changing civil rights laws that, for decades, have prohibited employment discrimination based on race, sex, national origin, age and disability. However, there are some who feel that ENDA must allow religiously affiliated organizations — far beyond churches, synagogues and mosques — to engage in employment discrimination against LGBT people.
We haven’t accepted this in the past, and we must not today. In response to the historic gains of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, opponents argued that their religious beliefs prohibited integration. To be true to their religious beliefs, they argued, they couldn’t serve African-Americans in their restaurants or accept interracial marriages.
Indeed, during consideration of the landmark Civil Rights Act in 1964 (and again in 1972), there were attempts to provide religious organizations with a blank check to engage in discrimination in hiring on the basis of race, sex and national origin — like the one now proposed for ENDA — and both times we said no to those efforts. We weren’t willing to compromise on equality. We weren’t willing to say that African-Americans were only mostly equal. Today’s struggles are similar in that we shouldn’t accept only partial equality for LGBT people.
Let me be clear. Religious liberty is one of our most cherished values.
It guarantees all of us the freedom to hold any belief we choose and the right to act on our religious beliefs. But it does not allow us to harm or discriminate against others. Religious liberty, contrary to what opponents of racial equality argued then and LGBT equality argue now, is not a license to use religion to discriminate.
Today, discrimination against individuals based on their race, sex, national origin, age or disability is almost universally viewed as unacceptable. That is because people of goodwill came together to make it so. At this critical moment in history, we should also come together to make clear that our LGBT brothers and sisters deserve full equality under the law, not just 80 percent. I believe in America’s promise of equality under the law for all. I hope that Americans from across the political spectrum will stand with me.
Julian Bond is chairman emeritus of the NAACP and a professor at American University.
By the mid-1960s, the civil rights movement had made significant cultural, legal and political progress in advancing the cause of racial justice and equality under the law — a struggle that continues to this very day. This was a rapidly evolving, heady time in American history.
In our current day, we have approached a very similar point in the struggle for basic fairness and equality under the law for our lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender brothers and sisters. The incredible progress this community has made over the past four decades is remarkable on many levels and is a testament to what is possible when everyday people come together to make real the promise of America.
Today, gay and lesbian people are widely visible in popular culture, increasing numbers of elected officials are “coming out” in support of fairness and equal treatment, and landmark cases related to marriage for same-sex couples are pending at the Supreme Court. This barrier is even starting to be broken in professional sports.
We did not arrive at this point by happenstance. It took a great deal of courage and decades of advocacy and activism on the part of many.
However, as LGBT people have gained greater equality under the law, we are hearing similar objections to the ones I heard in response to the civil rights gains of African-Americans in the 1960s. We hear people asking for exemptions from laws — laws that prohibit discrimination — on the ground that complying would violate their religious beliefs.
I heard this argument in Maryland last year when working to secure the freedom to marry for committed and loving same-sex couples. And now we are hearing it in Congress with respect to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, critical federal legislation introduced in Congress in April that would prohibit employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in most American workplaces.
ENDA follows in the mold of life-changing civil rights laws that, for decades, have prohibited employment discrimination based on race, sex, national origin, age and disability. However, there are some who feel that ENDA must allow religiously affiliated organizations — far beyond churches, synagogues and mosques — to engage in employment discrimination against LGBT people.
We haven’t accepted this in the past, and we must not today. In response to the historic gains of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, opponents argued that their religious beliefs prohibited integration. To be true to their religious beliefs, they argued, they couldn’t serve African-Americans in their restaurants or accept interracial marriages.
Indeed, during consideration of the landmark Civil Rights Act in 1964 (and again in 1972), there were attempts to provide religious organizations with a blank check to engage in discrimination in hiring on the basis of race, sex and national origin — like the one now proposed for ENDA — and both times we said no to those efforts. We weren’t willing to compromise on equality. We weren’t willing to say that African-Americans were only mostly equal. Today’s struggles are similar in that we shouldn’t accept only partial equality for LGBT people.
Let me be clear. Religious liberty is one of our most cherished values.
It guarantees all of us the freedom to hold any belief we choose and the right to act on our religious beliefs. But it does not allow us to harm or discriminate against others. Religious liberty, contrary to what opponents of racial equality argued then and LGBT equality argue now, is not a license to use religion to discriminate.
Today, discrimination against individuals based on their race, sex, national origin, age or disability is almost universally viewed as unacceptable. That is because people of goodwill came together to make it so. At this critical moment in history, we should also come together to make clear that our LGBT brothers and sisters deserve full equality under the law, not just 80 percent. I believe in America’s promise of equality under the law for all. I hope that Americans from across the political spectrum will stand with me.
Julian Bond is chairman emeritus of the NAACP and a professor at American University.
Seneca Man Convicted of Raping 11-year-old Girl
from ExploreVenango.com:
OIL CITY, Pa. (June 13, 2013) – A 53-year-old Seneca man has been found guilty in connection with the 2012 rape of an 11-year-old girl.
53-year-old Stuart James Proper was arrested in October 2012 in connection with the rape of an 11-year-old girl at a location on Oil City’s North Side. Police say Proper had sexual contact with the victim on two separate occasions, once in late August 2012 and once in early September 2012.
Proper was a live-in boyfriend of the victim’s mother, according to police.
In Venango County Court of Common Pleas on Tuesday, Proper was found guilty on the following felony charges:
- Rape of Child Guilty
- Invol. Deviate Sexual Intercourse W/Child
- Agg. Ind. Assault of Child
- Indecent Assault Person Less than 13 Years of Age
- Corruption Of Minors
According to court documents, Proper is awaiting sentencing.
OIL CITY, Pa. (June 13, 2013) – A 53-year-old Seneca man has been found guilty in connection with the 2012 rape of an 11-year-old girl.
53-year-old Stuart James Proper was arrested in October 2012 in connection with the rape of an 11-year-old girl at a location on Oil City’s North Side. Police say Proper had sexual contact with the victim on two separate occasions, once in late August 2012 and once in early September 2012.
Proper was a live-in boyfriend of the victim’s mother, according to police.
In Venango County Court of Common Pleas on Tuesday, Proper was found guilty on the following felony charges:
- Rape of Child Guilty
- Invol. Deviate Sexual Intercourse W/Child
- Agg. Ind. Assault of Child
- Indecent Assault Person Less than 13 Years of Age
- Corruption Of Minors
According to court documents, Proper is awaiting sentencing.
Thursday, June 13, 2013
Gays Feel More Accepted But Still Stigmatized, Pew Research Center Survey Finds
by Carol Morello - Washington Post - June 13, 2013:
With some trepidation, Tammy Smith returned to her tiny home town in rural Oregon last year, shortly after she was named a brigadier general in the Army reserves.
Folks there had known her as a tomboy active in the Future Farmers of America when she was growing up, and Smith wasn’t sure how they would receive her and her new wife, Tracey Hepner.
But at a reception the town threw for Smith, old men from the Veterans of Foreign Wars post wanted their pictures taken with her, often insisting that Hepner join the photo. One woman gave the couple a wedding present, a small sculpture of two kissing doves that graces their living room in Arlington. The local newspaper called Smith’s promotion one of the most positive news items to hit the town of less than 1,000 people that year.
“There was a sense of pride that Oakland, Oregon, had produced somebody who not only was a general, but someone prominent who is out,” said Smith, 50, the first openly gay officer of flag rank in the military. “It was an amazing and unexpected response.”
The welcoming embrace that Oakland showed Smith and Hepner is becoming increasingly common in the United States. In a new poll by the Pew Research Center released Thursday, nine in 10 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adults said that society had become more accepting of them in the past decade and that they expected it to be even more open to them in the years ahead.
However, only 19 percent said there is “a lot” of acceptance for gays, while 59 percent chose to characterize it more softly, as “some” acceptance, and 21 percent said there was little to none. More than half said they had been subjected to slurs or jokes about gays, and sizeable numbers said they had been rejected by friends or family, threatened with physical attack or made to feel unwelcome at a house of worship.
The Pew survey of 1,197 LGBT adults, exploring many aspects of their lives, is the first of its kind by a major polling organization.
It asked them when they realized they weren’t straight, when they came out to family and close friends, and how they have been stigmatized in society. It also found that only small minorities of gay people have anything positive to say about the military, professional sports leagues or the Republican Party. Compared with the general public, Pew said, gays and lesbians are more liberal, more Democratic, less religious, less happy with their lives, yet more satisfied with the direction the country is headed.
“For the LGBT population, these are the best of times,” said Paul Taylor, executive vice president of the Pew Research Center. “But that does not mean these are easy times or their lives are uncomplicated. Many are still searching for a comfortable, secure place in a society where acceptance is growing but still limited. That is part of the drama of their lives.”
Pew and many of the gay people it polled link much of the growing acceptance to the fact that more people personally know someone who is gay. In an earlier Pew poll of the general public, almost nine in 10 people said they have a gay friend or relative, up from six in 10 only a decade ago.
The gay people polled by Pew said they think lesbians are welcomed more in society than gay men are. One in four said there is a lot of acceptance of lesbians. Just 15 percent characterized it that way for gay men. A third said bisexual women are accepted a lot, compared with just 8 percent of bisexual men. And only 3 percent of those polled said transgender adults meet a lot of acceptance.
One striking finding of the Pew poll is the young age at which many gay people say they realized they weren’t straight.
The median age at which gay men said they had their first inkling was 10, and they knew for sure by 15. For lesbians, the median age when they first thought they might not be straight was 13, and they were certain by 18. The median age when they first divulged their secret to someone was 18 for gay men and 21 for lesbians.
Janelle Thomas remembers feeling “different” when she was in second grade and looked forward to math lessons. In retrospect, she realizes that was because she had a crush on the female math teacher.
She said she had boyfriends in high school in Southern Maryland, but it was only when she went to college and met other lesbians that she realized who she is.
“I got into a very dark place where I didn’t feel I was myself,” said Thomas, now 27 and a Web content coordinator for the federal government who lives in the District with her wife, a D.C. police officer. “It just came to me. Oh, that’s probably what it is. I suddenly felt better.”
Older gays, who came of age in less accepting times, often recall their dawning realization as a time of struggle — with themselves, society at large and those who love them, such as parents and siblings. And they came out later in life. In the Pew survey, two in three gay men and lesbians younger than 30 said they came out to close friends and family before age 20. That was true of less than half those who are 30 to 49 and barely a third of those who are 50 and older.
Matt Cloniger, a 40-year-old government consultant who lives in the District, was confused by his lack of attraction to girls while he was in high school during the 1980s. But as the son of a Pentecostal minister at a time when the AIDS epidemic was depicted as a gay disease, he said he could not acknowledge, even to himself, that he wasn’t straight.
“In wrestling with this attraction I had and all the confusion, there’s many a night I remember sitting in my bedroom praying and crying and begging God to take away these feelings and give me feelings that would be normal or straight,” he said.
He was in college, on a Christian leadership scholarship at Southern Methodist University, before he came to grips with his sexuality and came out to a few co-workers at an off-campus restaurant. His father confronted him after he moved into an apartment with a gay friend, asking him flat out whether he was gay.
Cloniger said that although he has never doubted his parents’ love for him, he knows that his sexuality has caused them agony. The night before his 2008 wedding in San Francisco, Cloniger said, his father called in tears to say he could not attend. Cloniger said his nieces and nephews have never met his husband, and though he has told his brother he is gay, they never discuss it.
A senior warden at St. Thomas Episcopal Church near Dupont Circle, Cloniger said his family has grown more comfortable around him and his husband, but only to a degree.
“It’s certainly hard being comfortable with myself and seeing where my family is,” he said, “going to family reunions where my spouse is not necessarily welcome. My parents have come to love and accept Brett. But with the rest of the family, no one wants to say anything about it.”
In the Pew poll, about seven in 10 gay men and lesbians have told their mothers about their sexuality, and roughly half have told their fathers. But a third haven’t passed the milestone of telling Mom and Dad.
Gary Gates, a Williams Institute demographer of the gay community, said it underscores the stigma still attached to homosexuality.
“There’s definitely this notion that it does get better, and it has gotten better for most people,” he said. “But there are a lot of people who are sufficiently concerned that they don’t feel comfortable coming out.”
With some trepidation, Tammy Smith returned to her tiny home town in rural Oregon last year, shortly after she was named a brigadier general in the Army reserves.
Folks there had known her as a tomboy active in the Future Farmers of America when she was growing up, and Smith wasn’t sure how they would receive her and her new wife, Tracey Hepner.
But at a reception the town threw for Smith, old men from the Veterans of Foreign Wars post wanted their pictures taken with her, often insisting that Hepner join the photo. One woman gave the couple a wedding present, a small sculpture of two kissing doves that graces their living room in Arlington. The local newspaper called Smith’s promotion one of the most positive news items to hit the town of less than 1,000 people that year.
“There was a sense of pride that Oakland, Oregon, had produced somebody who not only was a general, but someone prominent who is out,” said Smith, 50, the first openly gay officer of flag rank in the military. “It was an amazing and unexpected response.”
The welcoming embrace that Oakland showed Smith and Hepner is becoming increasingly common in the United States. In a new poll by the Pew Research Center released Thursday, nine in 10 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adults said that society had become more accepting of them in the past decade and that they expected it to be even more open to them in the years ahead.
However, only 19 percent said there is “a lot” of acceptance for gays, while 59 percent chose to characterize it more softly, as “some” acceptance, and 21 percent said there was little to none. More than half said they had been subjected to slurs or jokes about gays, and sizeable numbers said they had been rejected by friends or family, threatened with physical attack or made to feel unwelcome at a house of worship.
The Pew survey of 1,197 LGBT adults, exploring many aspects of their lives, is the first of its kind by a major polling organization.
It asked them when they realized they weren’t straight, when they came out to family and close friends, and how they have been stigmatized in society. It also found that only small minorities of gay people have anything positive to say about the military, professional sports leagues or the Republican Party. Compared with the general public, Pew said, gays and lesbians are more liberal, more Democratic, less religious, less happy with their lives, yet more satisfied with the direction the country is headed.
“For the LGBT population, these are the best of times,” said Paul Taylor, executive vice president of the Pew Research Center. “But that does not mean these are easy times or their lives are uncomplicated. Many are still searching for a comfortable, secure place in a society where acceptance is growing but still limited. That is part of the drama of their lives.”
Pew and many of the gay people it polled link much of the growing acceptance to the fact that more people personally know someone who is gay. In an earlier Pew poll of the general public, almost nine in 10 people said they have a gay friend or relative, up from six in 10 only a decade ago.
The gay people polled by Pew said they think lesbians are welcomed more in society than gay men are. One in four said there is a lot of acceptance of lesbians. Just 15 percent characterized it that way for gay men. A third said bisexual women are accepted a lot, compared with just 8 percent of bisexual men. And only 3 percent of those polled said transgender adults meet a lot of acceptance.
One striking finding of the Pew poll is the young age at which many gay people say they realized they weren’t straight.
The median age at which gay men said they had their first inkling was 10, and they knew for sure by 15. For lesbians, the median age when they first thought they might not be straight was 13, and they were certain by 18. The median age when they first divulged their secret to someone was 18 for gay men and 21 for lesbians.
Janelle Thomas remembers feeling “different” when she was in second grade and looked forward to math lessons. In retrospect, she realizes that was because she had a crush on the female math teacher.
She said she had boyfriends in high school in Southern Maryland, but it was only when she went to college and met other lesbians that she realized who she is.
“I got into a very dark place where I didn’t feel I was myself,” said Thomas, now 27 and a Web content coordinator for the federal government who lives in the District with her wife, a D.C. police officer. “It just came to me. Oh, that’s probably what it is. I suddenly felt better.”
Older gays, who came of age in less accepting times, often recall their dawning realization as a time of struggle — with themselves, society at large and those who love them, such as parents and siblings. And they came out later in life. In the Pew survey, two in three gay men and lesbians younger than 30 said they came out to close friends and family before age 20. That was true of less than half those who are 30 to 49 and barely a third of those who are 50 and older.
Matt Cloniger, a 40-year-old government consultant who lives in the District, was confused by his lack of attraction to girls while he was in high school during the 1980s. But as the son of a Pentecostal minister at a time when the AIDS epidemic was depicted as a gay disease, he said he could not acknowledge, even to himself, that he wasn’t straight.
“In wrestling with this attraction I had and all the confusion, there’s many a night I remember sitting in my bedroom praying and crying and begging God to take away these feelings and give me feelings that would be normal or straight,” he said.
He was in college, on a Christian leadership scholarship at Southern Methodist University, before he came to grips with his sexuality and came out to a few co-workers at an off-campus restaurant. His father confronted him after he moved into an apartment with a gay friend, asking him flat out whether he was gay.
Cloniger said that although he has never doubted his parents’ love for him, he knows that his sexuality has caused them agony. The night before his 2008 wedding in San Francisco, Cloniger said, his father called in tears to say he could not attend. Cloniger said his nieces and nephews have never met his husband, and though he has told his brother he is gay, they never discuss it.
A senior warden at St. Thomas Episcopal Church near Dupont Circle, Cloniger said his family has grown more comfortable around him and his husband, but only to a degree.
“It’s certainly hard being comfortable with myself and seeing where my family is,” he said, “going to family reunions where my spouse is not necessarily welcome. My parents have come to love and accept Brett. But with the rest of the family, no one wants to say anything about it.”
In the Pew poll, about seven in 10 gay men and lesbians have told their mothers about their sexuality, and roughly half have told their fathers. But a third haven’t passed the milestone of telling Mom and Dad.
Gary Gates, a Williams Institute demographer of the gay community, said it underscores the stigma still attached to homosexuality.
“There’s definitely this notion that it does get better, and it has gotten better for most people,” he said. “But there are a lot of people who are sufficiently concerned that they don’t feel comfortable coming out.”
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Family Values - Jonathan Allen - America's Got Talent
Jonathan Allen was kicked out of his house on his 18th birthday for being gay, he then was unemployed and decided to pursue his dream of singing by going on Americas Got Talent
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Religion and the Mystery of God
"The Church Doesn't Like the People to Grow Up."~ Bishop John Shelby Spong
John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopal bishop from Newark, N.J., interviewed by Keith Morrison on Dateline, NBC, 8-13-2006
John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopal bishop from Newark, N.J., interviewed by Keith Morrison on Dateline, NBC, 8-13-2006
Saturday, June 8, 2013
It's the 'Gay Agenda' in Public Schools (And It’s Fabulous)
by Mr. Arturo Avina, kindergarten teacher at Olympic Primary Center in the Los Angeles Unified School District:
Oh. My. God. Conservatives were actually right on this one. The "gay agenda" is infiltrating our public schools! And you know what? It's absolutely fabulous.
My talented kindergarteners at Olympic Primary Center in the Los Angeles Unified School District—who found online success earlier this year with their outstanding film adaptation of the beloved book "Miss Nelson is Missing"—celebrated the end of an eventful school year by performing Cyndi Lauper's classic anthem, "True Colors." In the video above, you can see how as they sing, they use American Sign Language while the audience reflects on the statements "You Are Good" and "You Are Perfect." Combine that with rainbows, messages of love, and a great pop song and you have a touching performance that represents what my students have learned.
The lesson: love yourself, and always show love, kindness, and respect towards others no matter who they are. Regardless of ethnicity, sex, gender, religious creed, or sexual orientation, EVERYONE is worthy of love.
So, why this song? Well, why not? Although children can do no wrong with whatever they sing, I wanted to send them off for the summer with a song I genuinely loved that at the same time had a positive message for them. And I didn't want them to just recite a song, I wanted them to understand it.
After a few weeks of rehearsal and learning lyrics, I asked, "What do you think the song is about?" One student replied, "God doesn't like the world to be black and white, so he made many colors to make it beautiful." Yes! His thinking was on the right track and I was elated to hear that the message was getting through.
In a writing assignment given to them the day after the performance, I posed the same question. Even though I still got some answers that were quite literal. "It is about red. I like red," one student replied. "We sang 'True Colors' because we all deserve love. I love this singin!' " I was grinning from ear to ear. Mission accomplished.
I did not need to push any specific "agenda" or single out any particular group of people when I discussed the meaning of this song with my students—it wasn't necessary. Addressing diversity isn't anything new in my classroom, and if the song's message really made it through to my students and they truly internalized the importance of universal love and respect, then that should automatically translate to inclusivity. If they're taught to love unconditionally, then they should understand that there is not one group of people that is the exception to the rule. As these children go on to first grade (and beyond), what better message is there than that?
In the end, our show is open to interpretation. Most people may see this as a precious performance full of love and sweetness. Others might find it especially poignant at a time when the country is on the brink of marriage equality. Inevitably, there will be some detractors that may find it appalling—we had a few with last year's "Vogue" performance—due to our use of an innocuous rainbow coupled with a radical message of love. So be it. If this is what the "gay agenda" looks like in public schools, let's bring it on. It's breathtakingly beautiful.
Friday, June 7, 2013
Harvey Fierstein Talks About Anti-Gay Religious Advocates
We generally refrain from using the word fierce, but sometimes it's totally warranted.
Case in point: The following sound byte from Harvey Fierstein, who could soon bring home a Tony for his libretto for the Broadway hit "Kinky Boots" and who recently dropped by MSNBC to chat with Thomas Roberts about a variety of topics, including anti-gay religious advocates:
"Can you imagine if I was on a school board and I came in and I said, 'you know, I don't want any Jews or Christians teaching my kids, because they believe in people living inside whales, and they believe in slavery, and stoning women who have had an affair, so I just don't want any of those Christians or Jews.' Can you imagine? But they feel just absolutely free to say that about gay people."
Biblical Marriage Not Defined Simply As One Man, One Woman: Iowa Religious Scholars Say
By Meredith Bennett-Smith in The Huffington Post - June 6, 2013:
A trio of Iowa-based religious scholars penned an op-ed in a local paper this week, reminding readers that despite popular opinion, the Bible does not simply define marriage as between one man and one woman.
The joint editorial was written by Hector Avalos, Robert R. Cargill and Kenneth Atkinson and published in the Des Moines Register on Sunday. The men teach at Iowa State University, University of Iowa and University of Northern Iowa, respectively.
"The debate about marriage equality often centers, however discretely, on an appeal to the Bible," the authors wrote. "Unfortunately, such appeals often reflect a lack of biblical literacy on the part of those who use that complex collection of texts as an authority to enact modern social policy."
The Bible's definition of marriage can be confusing and contradictory, noted the scholars. They stated in their column that a primary example of this is the religious book's stance on polygamy, a practice that was embraced by prominent biblical figures Abraham and David. Furthermore, Avalos, Cargill and Atkinson point out that various Bible passages mention not only traditional monogamy, but also self-induced castration and celibacy, as well as the practice of wedding rape victims to their rapists.
In an interview with The Huffington Post, Iowa University Professor Robert R. Cargill said the column was the brainchild of his colleague Hector Avalos, who suggested local scholars put together an "educated response" to the often-touted claim that the Bible defines marriage as solely between one man and one woman. "[T]hat's not the only thing the Bible says," Cargill told HuffPost.
He explained that it is obvious to scholars (and some religious leaders) that the Bible endorses a wide range of relationships. But he noted, however, that professors are "terrified" of the potential backlash that might result from opening a dialogue about these relationships. Cargill also noted that the initial response to the Register column has included its fair share of vitriol.
Ultimately, said Cargill, a Biblical "argument against same-sex marriage is wholly unsustainable. We all know this, but very few scholars are talking about it, because they don't want to take the heat."
He suggested that academics who continue to be cowed by a strident opposition do a disservice to their communities.
"Most people aren't dumb, they want to make an informed decision" on religiously charged questions, Cargill said. "If scholars aren't talking to them, they have to rely on talk show hosts and pundits, and that's not the most reliable source of information."
Cargill also realizes that there are some people he may never be able to convince.
Many politicians have made a career out of using the Bible to justify opposition to hot-button topics like same-sex marriage or abortion. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), for example, told a crowd of evangelicals in April that Americans cannot "retreat from our values and fail to make the case on issues like marriage -- because it is one man, one woman -- because God said it is."
Cargill said Bachman and her like-minded colleagues use a strategy he calls "cherry picking" to appeal to their base.
"Politicians who use the Bible aren't necessarily interested in the truth or the complexity of the Bible," he said. "They are looking for one ancient sound bite to convince people what they already believe."
Anyone who argues that "the Bible speaks plainly on one issue, especially something as complicated as marriage ... haven't take the time to read all of it," he added.
A trio of Iowa-based religious scholars penned an op-ed in a local paper this week, reminding readers that despite popular opinion, the Bible does not simply define marriage as between one man and one woman.
The joint editorial was written by Hector Avalos, Robert R. Cargill and Kenneth Atkinson and published in the Des Moines Register on Sunday. The men teach at Iowa State University, University of Iowa and University of Northern Iowa, respectively.
"The debate about marriage equality often centers, however discretely, on an appeal to the Bible," the authors wrote. "Unfortunately, such appeals often reflect a lack of biblical literacy on the part of those who use that complex collection of texts as an authority to enact modern social policy."
The Bible's definition of marriage can be confusing and contradictory, noted the scholars. They stated in their column that a primary example of this is the religious book's stance on polygamy, a practice that was embraced by prominent biblical figures Abraham and David. Furthermore, Avalos, Cargill and Atkinson point out that various Bible passages mention not only traditional monogamy, but also self-induced castration and celibacy, as well as the practice of wedding rape victims to their rapists.
In an interview with The Huffington Post, Iowa University Professor Robert R. Cargill said the column was the brainchild of his colleague Hector Avalos, who suggested local scholars put together an "educated response" to the often-touted claim that the Bible defines marriage as solely between one man and one woman. "[T]hat's not the only thing the Bible says," Cargill told HuffPost.
He explained that it is obvious to scholars (and some religious leaders) that the Bible endorses a wide range of relationships. But he noted, however, that professors are "terrified" of the potential backlash that might result from opening a dialogue about these relationships. Cargill also noted that the initial response to the Register column has included its fair share of vitriol.
Ultimately, said Cargill, a Biblical "argument against same-sex marriage is wholly unsustainable. We all know this, but very few scholars are talking about it, because they don't want to take the heat."
He suggested that academics who continue to be cowed by a strident opposition do a disservice to their communities.
"Most people aren't dumb, they want to make an informed decision" on religiously charged questions, Cargill said. "If scholars aren't talking to them, they have to rely on talk show hosts and pundits, and that's not the most reliable source of information."
Cargill also realizes that there are some people he may never be able to convince.
Many politicians have made a career out of using the Bible to justify opposition to hot-button topics like same-sex marriage or abortion. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), for example, told a crowd of evangelicals in April that Americans cannot "retreat from our values and fail to make the case on issues like marriage -- because it is one man, one woman -- because God said it is."
Cargill said Bachman and her like-minded colleagues use a strategy he calls "cherry picking" to appeal to their base.
"Politicians who use the Bible aren't necessarily interested in the truth or the complexity of the Bible," he said. "They are looking for one ancient sound bite to convince people what they already believe."
Anyone who argues that "the Bible speaks plainly on one issue, especially something as complicated as marriage ... haven't take the time to read all of it," he added.
Monday, June 3, 2013
What Cosmology Can Teach Us About Morality
by Joel Primack - Big Think:
Morality is a complicated subject because it depends so much on human traditions and human understanding of how we live and how we interact with each other. Cosmology, as the term is used by anthropologists, represents the big picture of the world and how we humans fit into it. We scientists use the word, “cosmology” to refer essentially, exclusively to the science of the whole universe, its origin, evolution, structure and composition. But in the larger sense, cosmology is the big picture that we humans all live in.
Now one of the problems of morality has been that a crucial part of traditional moralogy is an “us versus them” attitude. That there’s the "in crowd" and then there’s the outsiders. And the rules that apply to us are very different than the rules that apply to them and to our interactions with them. So, for example, in the Bible, in the Ten Commandments, the “Thou shalt not kill,” obviously doesn’t apply to the enemies of the Hebrews who were killed with abandon and, in fact, God commands that they all be annihilated under certain circumstances. So that’s because that, “Thou shalt not kill,” really only applies to us, in this case the Hebrews.
Now, the problem is, that as the world has become more and more integrated and when things that happen in one place don’t stay in that place, but affect the whole world, this us/them mentality has to break down. We have to start to see “us” as being all humanity, and in fact, maybe all life on Earth or Earth itself. And, cosmology can help us do that because cosmology makes it clear that Earth is a gem of the cosmos; it’s an extraordinary planet. We’ve now discovered more than a thousand planetary systems. There isn’t any that resembles our own.
And in many respects, our planetary system is truly extraordinary. And Earth is, in some ways, the most extraordinary planet of them all. It’s been in what we call the habitable zone around the sun for its entire lifetime and will continue to be in the habitable zone for a long time. And it’s the only planet that has been.
And if we can simply preserve the good features that we’ve inherited on Earth, Earth can become, can remain, the Eden of the universe, at least, the known universe. And it’s very important that humans understand that we are more closely related than almost any species is. We humans seem to have come through at least one bottleneck where there were a very small number of humans, something like 50,000 years ago, and we’re all descended from that small number of humans.
Genetically, we humans are more closely related to each other than almost any other species is related. And we all face many problems, which are essentially the same across the world. So to the extent that modern cosmology, the understanding of our origin and evolution, can give us this understanding that we’re all in this together, we can break down that crucial column of traditional morality of the “us versus them” and see it all as “us.” And I think that that could be one of the most important achievements of humankind, especially over this critical transition at the end of our exponential inflation on our home planet.
Morality is a complicated subject because it depends so much on human traditions and human understanding of how we live and how we interact with each other. Cosmology, as the term is used by anthropologists, represents the big picture of the world and how we humans fit into it. We scientists use the word, “cosmology” to refer essentially, exclusively to the science of the whole universe, its origin, evolution, structure and composition. But in the larger sense, cosmology is the big picture that we humans all live in.
Now one of the problems of morality has been that a crucial part of traditional moralogy is an “us versus them” attitude. That there’s the "in crowd" and then there’s the outsiders. And the rules that apply to us are very different than the rules that apply to them and to our interactions with them. So, for example, in the Bible, in the Ten Commandments, the “Thou shalt not kill,” obviously doesn’t apply to the enemies of the Hebrews who were killed with abandon and, in fact, God commands that they all be annihilated under certain circumstances. So that’s because that, “Thou shalt not kill,” really only applies to us, in this case the Hebrews.
Now, the problem is, that as the world has become more and more integrated and when things that happen in one place don’t stay in that place, but affect the whole world, this us/them mentality has to break down. We have to start to see “us” as being all humanity, and in fact, maybe all life on Earth or Earth itself. And, cosmology can help us do that because cosmology makes it clear that Earth is a gem of the cosmos; it’s an extraordinary planet. We’ve now discovered more than a thousand planetary systems. There isn’t any that resembles our own.
And in many respects, our planetary system is truly extraordinary. And Earth is, in some ways, the most extraordinary planet of them all. It’s been in what we call the habitable zone around the sun for its entire lifetime and will continue to be in the habitable zone for a long time. And it’s the only planet that has been.
And if we can simply preserve the good features that we’ve inherited on Earth, Earth can become, can remain, the Eden of the universe, at least, the known universe. And it’s very important that humans understand that we are more closely related than almost any species is. We humans seem to have come through at least one bottleneck where there were a very small number of humans, something like 50,000 years ago, and we’re all descended from that small number of humans.
Genetically, we humans are more closely related to each other than almost any other species is related. And we all face many problems, which are essentially the same across the world. So to the extent that modern cosmology, the understanding of our origin and evolution, can give us this understanding that we’re all in this together, we can break down that crucial column of traditional morality of the “us versus them” and see it all as “us.” And I think that that could be one of the most important achievements of humankind, especially over this critical transition at the end of our exponential inflation on our home planet.
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Heterosexual Family Values On Display in Coudersport, Pa.
from the Coudy News:
Our local community continues to mourn as further information surfaces surrounding the shooting death of Northern Potter music teacher Darlene Sitler at the First United Presbyterian Church in Coudersport on Sunday.
According to witness accounts released by State Police officials, 52-year-old Greg Eldred entered a rear door of the church behind the choir and shot his ex-wife, who was seated at the church organ. Eldred then allegedly exited the church and went to his truck, where one witness stated he placed a handgun on the hood.
Witnesses then say Eldred came back to the church’s side door along 4th Street and demanded to see Sitler. Eldred allegedly told church members, “I want to see her,” and “I want to finish this,” before re-entering the church.
Members of the church attempted to prevent Eldred from re-entering, but according to witnesses he threatened to shoot anyone who got in the way.
Greg Eldred. (Photo from Southern Tier Symphony)
Eldred is then accused of returning to the organ pit and shooting Sitler again, who was believed to still be alive at the time.
Members of the congregation were then able to wrestle the gun from Eldred, but not before another round went off into the pews.
Eldred was held by members of the congregation until Trooper Delp of the Coudesport-based State Police arrived and took the defendant into custody.
Police said they recovered (1) .40 caliber FNX handgun; (4) .40 caliber spent casings; and (3) discharged rounds – one of which was located in a wooden back of a pew in the rear of the church. Another round was found on a pillow next to the victim’s head.
Sitler died as the result of gunshot wounds to the head and chest, according to police.
CoudyNews is working to obtain more information in the matter, including verifying or debunking the well-circulated rumor that federal investigators were at the Coudersport school on Friday investigating Mr. Eldred.
Our local community continues to mourn as further information surfaces surrounding the shooting death of Northern Potter music teacher Darlene Sitler at the First United Presbyterian Church in Coudersport on Sunday.
According to witness accounts released by State Police officials, 52-year-old Greg Eldred entered a rear door of the church behind the choir and shot his ex-wife, who was seated at the church organ. Eldred then allegedly exited the church and went to his truck, where one witness stated he placed a handgun on the hood.
Witnesses then say Eldred came back to the church’s side door along 4th Street and demanded to see Sitler. Eldred allegedly told church members, “I want to see her,” and “I want to finish this,” before re-entering the church.
Members of the church attempted to prevent Eldred from re-entering, but according to witnesses he threatened to shoot anyone who got in the way.
Greg Eldred. (Photo from Southern Tier Symphony)
Eldred is then accused of returning to the organ pit and shooting Sitler again, who was believed to still be alive at the time.
Members of the congregation were then able to wrestle the gun from Eldred, but not before another round went off into the pews.
Eldred was held by members of the congregation until Trooper Delp of the Coudesport-based State Police arrived and took the defendant into custody.
Police said they recovered (1) .40 caliber FNX handgun; (4) .40 caliber spent casings; and (3) discharged rounds – one of which was located in a wooden back of a pew in the rear of the church. Another round was found on a pillow next to the victim’s head.
Sitler died as the result of gunshot wounds to the head and chest, according to police.
CoudyNews is working to obtain more information in the matter, including verifying or debunking the well-circulated rumor that federal investigators were at the Coudersport school on Friday investigating Mr. Eldred.
Court Documents Detail Proclivities of Heterosexual Couple Charged in NH Student’s Death
By Associated Press, May 26, 2013:
DOVER, N.H. — Lizzi Marriott left a message saying she’d be home by midnight.
Five weeks into her first semester at the University of New Hampshire, the sophomore planned to attend a Tuesday night lab class that would end at 9 p.m. She wouldn’t have to hurry — she was staying with her aunt and uncle only about a half-hour drive from the campus where she’d transferred to study marine biology.
At 8:55 p.m., the 19-year-old sent a text saying she was going to visit a new friend, a co-worker at a department store near campus.
Less than two hours later, the former prom queen died with a rope around her neck.
The man charged with killing Marriott in October says her death was an accident during a night of consensual sex. Prosecutors call it murder. Either way, Marriott’s body is gone — dumped in a river that pours into the Atlantic Ocean.
The circumstances of Elizabeth Marriott’s death remain a dark mystery involving a couple who authorities say trolled fetish websites in search of sex slaves.
Thirty-year-old Seth Mazzaglio (right) was a 2006 graduate of UNH with a degree in theater and a fourth-degree black belt in karate who taught at the dojo he started attending as a child in Kittery, Maine. Nineteen-year-old Kathryn McDonough (below right) is a former honors student who dropped out of high school in February of last year.
Authorities describe them as bondage enthusiasts who frequented fetish sites — him under the monikers “DarkKaiser” and “Enigmatic Shadows” and her as “Rouge Temptress.”
The appeared together in a play — “Last Rites” — in July 2011 at a theater in Portsmouth. Eventually, they moved in together, sharing an apartment in Dover.
Police affidavits describe a text message Mazzaglia sent to McDonough in August. It described in lurid detail a bondage sexual encounter and suggested McDonough include a friend, someone to “offer” to him.
Authorities believe Marriott may have been that offering, lured to their apartment after class on Oct. 9 — not long after McDonough met her at work.
Marriott’s disappearance set off a full-scale search in the seacoast region that is home to the UNH campus. But it didn’t take long before Marriott’s last text message — telling a friend she was going to “Kat’s” — had investigators looking hard at McDonough and Mazzaglia.
Recently released court documents describe the couple’s interviews with police starting three days after Marriott disappeared. First Mazzaglia said Marriott had never made it to their place that night — he had gone out for a run, hurt his ankle and was slow returning to the house. McDonough told police she went to a nearby cemetery in hopes of capturing images of ghosts with her digital camera.
But Mazzaglia’s story soon began to change.
In an interview later the same day, he talked of bondage and sadomasochism. He implicated McDonough and another couple in harming Marriott, saying when he arrived home Marriott had a ligature mark around her neck. He suggested another man had done something terrible, but he wouldn’t say what.
Finally, police said, Mazzaglia admitted he was involved. He and McDonough were playing strip poker with Marriott and that led to intercourse. Mazzaglia said he was having sex with Marriott — and tightening a rope around her neck — when she had a “seizure.”
Mazzaglia told investigators neither he nor McDonough tried to revive Marriott or summon help. Instead, he told them, he put a grocery bag over her head and tied it at the neck.
A police affidavit describes interviews with another couple McDonough called the night Marriott died.
Roberta Gerkin said McDonough sounded “shaken” when she called asking Gerkin to come over at 10:49 p.m. When Gerkin and her housemate arrived, they both told police they saw a white female lying on the floor, a grocery bag tied over her head.
Gerkin told investigators when she used a box cutter to remove the bag, the woman’s face was blue. Gerkin and her housemate told investigators they overheard the couple talking about “dumping the body.”
Mazzaglia told investigators he and McDonough used Marriott’s 2001 Mazda to take her body to Peirce Island in Portsmouth, where they threw it and her cellphone into the Piscataqua River. When Marriott’s torso remained above water, he said, McDonough went into the water and pushed it under, making a joke about “Davy Jones’ locker.”
The pair then drove Marriott’s car to UNH, left it in a student lot and discarded her belongings in trash bins, authorities allege.
Mazzaglia was arrested Oct. 13 — a day after he was interviewed — and McDonough on Christmas Eve. He is being held without bond, charged with first-degree murder. She has been indicted on charges of conspiracy and hindering prosecution. She was released on $35,000 bond on the condition she live with her parents in Portsmouth.
Trial dates haven’t been set for either defendant.
Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney John Lewin, who has secured five first-degree murder convictions in all five “no-body” homicides he’s tried, said such cases can sometimes give prosecutors greater latitude at trial to explore the character of the victim — showing how she wouldn’t voluntarily leave family, friends and career behind.
While he would not discuss the Marriott case, he said defendants often convict themselves by giving multiple stories of what happened.
“You only have so much credibility,” Lewin said. “You can’t come in and argue five different things. But I want a jury to believe him because, when they find out half an hour later from his own mouth that he’s a liar, it’s three times as bad.”
Attorneys for Mazzaglia and McDonough did not return calls seeking comment, nor did a lawyer for McDonough’s parents.
Marriott’s family has declined to discuss her death. Through a family spokesman, they have railed at that notion she died during consensual sex with Mazzaglia. Prosecutors say there was nothing consensual about Marriott’s death but won’t say what evidence they have to back up their contention.
Family members describe Marriott as “gullible” — someone who easily could be taken advantage of because of her trusting nature. One family friend from Westborough, Mass., where Marriott grew up, called her naive.
“She was just a good girl. That’s probably what got her in trouble,” Dawn Downey said. “She was too trusting and she was beautiful. Those two things will kill you.”
DOVER, N.H. — Lizzi Marriott left a message saying she’d be home by midnight.
Five weeks into her first semester at the University of New Hampshire, the sophomore planned to attend a Tuesday night lab class that would end at 9 p.m. She wouldn’t have to hurry — she was staying with her aunt and uncle only about a half-hour drive from the campus where she’d transferred to study marine biology.At 8:55 p.m., the 19-year-old sent a text saying she was going to visit a new friend, a co-worker at a department store near campus.
Less than two hours later, the former prom queen died with a rope around her neck.
The man charged with killing Marriott in October says her death was an accident during a night of consensual sex. Prosecutors call it murder. Either way, Marriott’s body is gone — dumped in a river that pours into the Atlantic Ocean.
The circumstances of Elizabeth Marriott’s death remain a dark mystery involving a couple who authorities say trolled fetish websites in search of sex slaves.
Thirty-year-old Seth Mazzaglio (right) was a 2006 graduate of UNH with a degree in theater and a fourth-degree black belt in karate who taught at the dojo he started attending as a child in Kittery, Maine. Nineteen-year-old Kathryn McDonough (below right) is a former honors student who dropped out of high school in February of last year.Authorities describe them as bondage enthusiasts who frequented fetish sites — him under the monikers “DarkKaiser” and “Enigmatic Shadows” and her as “Rouge Temptress.”
The appeared together in a play — “Last Rites” — in July 2011 at a theater in Portsmouth. Eventually, they moved in together, sharing an apartment in Dover.
Police affidavits describe a text message Mazzaglia sent to McDonough in August. It described in lurid detail a bondage sexual encounter and suggested McDonough include a friend, someone to “offer” to him.
Authorities believe Marriott may have been that offering, lured to their apartment after class on Oct. 9 — not long after McDonough met her at work.
Marriott’s disappearance set off a full-scale search in the seacoast region that is home to the UNH campus. But it didn’t take long before Marriott’s last text message — telling a friend she was going to “Kat’s” — had investigators looking hard at McDonough and Mazzaglia.
Recently released court documents describe the couple’s interviews with police starting three days after Marriott disappeared. First Mazzaglia said Marriott had never made it to their place that night — he had gone out for a run, hurt his ankle and was slow returning to the house. McDonough told police she went to a nearby cemetery in hopes of capturing images of ghosts with her digital camera.
But Mazzaglia’s story soon began to change.
In an interview later the same day, he talked of bondage and sadomasochism. He implicated McDonough and another couple in harming Marriott, saying when he arrived home Marriott had a ligature mark around her neck. He suggested another man had done something terrible, but he wouldn’t say what.
Finally, police said, Mazzaglia admitted he was involved. He and McDonough were playing strip poker with Marriott and that led to intercourse. Mazzaglia said he was having sex with Marriott — and tightening a rope around her neck — when she had a “seizure.”
Mazzaglia told investigators neither he nor McDonough tried to revive Marriott or summon help. Instead, he told them, he put a grocery bag over her head and tied it at the neck.
A police affidavit describes interviews with another couple McDonough called the night Marriott died.
Roberta Gerkin said McDonough sounded “shaken” when she called asking Gerkin to come over at 10:49 p.m. When Gerkin and her housemate arrived, they both told police they saw a white female lying on the floor, a grocery bag tied over her head.
Gerkin told investigators when she used a box cutter to remove the bag, the woman’s face was blue. Gerkin and her housemate told investigators they overheard the couple talking about “dumping the body.”
Mazzaglia told investigators he and McDonough used Marriott’s 2001 Mazda to take her body to Peirce Island in Portsmouth, where they threw it and her cellphone into the Piscataqua River. When Marriott’s torso remained above water, he said, McDonough went into the water and pushed it under, making a joke about “Davy Jones’ locker.”
The pair then drove Marriott’s car to UNH, left it in a student lot and discarded her belongings in trash bins, authorities allege.
Mazzaglia was arrested Oct. 13 — a day after he was interviewed — and McDonough on Christmas Eve. He is being held without bond, charged with first-degree murder. She has been indicted on charges of conspiracy and hindering prosecution. She was released on $35,000 bond on the condition she live with her parents in Portsmouth.
Trial dates haven’t been set for either defendant.
Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney John Lewin, who has secured five first-degree murder convictions in all five “no-body” homicides he’s tried, said such cases can sometimes give prosecutors greater latitude at trial to explore the character of the victim — showing how she wouldn’t voluntarily leave family, friends and career behind.
While he would not discuss the Marriott case, he said defendants often convict themselves by giving multiple stories of what happened.
“You only have so much credibility,” Lewin said. “You can’t come in and argue five different things. But I want a jury to believe him because, when they find out half an hour later from his own mouth that he’s a liar, it’s three times as bad.”
Attorneys for Mazzaglia and McDonough did not return calls seeking comment, nor did a lawyer for McDonough’s parents.
Marriott’s family has declined to discuss her death. Through a family spokesman, they have railed at that notion she died during consensual sex with Mazzaglia. Prosecutors say there was nothing consensual about Marriott’s death but won’t say what evidence they have to back up their contention.
Family members describe Marriott as “gullible” — someone who easily could be taken advantage of because of her trusting nature. One family friend from Westborough, Mass., where Marriott grew up, called her naive.
“She was just a good girl. That’s probably what got her in trouble,” Dawn Downey said. “She was too trusting and she was beautiful. Those two things will kill you.”
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Two Lesbian Moms Raised a Baby in Nevada, and This is What Happened
Nevada is the most recent state to take steps towards legalizing gay marriage. On Thursday, the state assembly passed a resolution that would keep gay marriage on the table in future legislative discussions. The tally was 27 – 14, the latter of which were all Republicans. While the process of legalization will still require another vote of the assembly and a ballot voted on by the residents of Nevada, this represents an important turning point for the state, which prohibited same-sex marriage by popular vote in 2002.
The passing of this resolution was helped in no small part by the testimony of high school senior, Riley Roberts, who spoke about his childhood being raised by lesbian mothers. His touching speech was peppered with tears, anger, and even laughter, but above all, Roberts repeated that his life was “amazing” because of his “two loving parents.” His childhood was no different than any of his friends, and he had all the opportunities, love, and stability that any other family could provide. Most of all, Roberts stressed that marriage equality wasn’t a matter of tolerating supposedly deviant behavior, but of agreeing to provide the “rights, freedoms, and ability to be full and equal citizens of the United States of America” to everyone in the country.
In the words of Roberts himself, “What issue? I see no issue.”
Watch the full video of his testimony below:
The passing of this resolution was helped in no small part by the testimony of high school senior, Riley Roberts, who spoke about his childhood being raised by lesbian mothers. His touching speech was peppered with tears, anger, and even laughter, but above all, Roberts repeated that his life was “amazing” because of his “two loving parents.” His childhood was no different than any of his friends, and he had all the opportunities, love, and stability that any other family could provide. Most of all, Roberts stressed that marriage equality wasn’t a matter of tolerating supposedly deviant behavior, but of agreeing to provide the “rights, freedoms, and ability to be full and equal citizens of the United States of America” to everyone in the country.
In the words of Roberts himself, “What issue? I see no issue.”
Watch the full video of his testimony below:
Thursday, May 23, 2013
How Long Will Venango County Remain Silent About Being Home To Its Own Purveyor Of Hate, the American Family Association of Pennsylvania?
What Is the Endgame of the Anti-Gay Movement?
by Wayne Besen, Truth Wins Out - The Huffington Post, May 23, 2013:
As if intending to justify the need for the International Day Against Homophobia, a vicious mob of more than 20,000 homophobes attacked 50 gay rights advocates who were commemorating this event in Tbilisi, Georgia. According to The New York Times, the attack was "led by priests in black robes" who "surged through police cordons" and "swarmed the busses" where the gay activists ran so that they could be evacuated.
"They wanted to kill all of us," said Irakli Vacharadze, the head of Identoba, the Tbilisi-based gay rights advocacy group that organized the event.
After the initial horror of the attack, I felt a powerful sense of relief. Finally, the world saw the unscrubbed underbelly of religious persecution against LGBT people in broad daylight. In Tbilisi, there were no sophisticated church PR gurus drafting saccharine statements to hide the hideousness of depraved minds and wicked hearts. There were no insincere attempts to spin the spite by laughably claiming to "love the sinner" but "hate the sin." What the world saw was a rare glimpse of would-be killers for Christ unplugged in their full glory.
We should be grateful for this peek at unfiltered prejudice, because most indoctrination and incitement takes place in the shadows. What people often fail to comprehend is that a colossal industry exists to demonize gay people, including numerous attempts to create conditions where homosexuals are imprisoned, assaulted and even murdered.
It is not just at the fringes of Christianity where calls for violence occur but in organizations that are considered mainstream. In January, for example, Campus Crusade for Christ (which recently rebranded itself with the hipper-sounding name Cru) sponsored an evangelism conference in Lagos, Nigeria. At the event, Dr. Seyoum Antonios, the head of United for Life Ethiopia, incited the crowd to frenzy, shouting multiple times that "Africa will become a graveyard for homosexuality!"
Antonios can't simply be dismissed as a renegade speaker, because two high-ranking vice presidents in the Campus Crusade international organization, Bekele Shanko and Dela Adedevoh, organized the conference. They invited Antonios to speak even though it was widely known that he led a movement to legislate the death penalty for LGBT people in Ethiopia.
The question is why an American organization that is currently on 1,600 college campuses, with extensive outreach within the U.S. military too, is giving a platform to an aspiring murder. It seems that the policy for groups like Cru is to persecute homosexuals to the full extent that a country allows them to get away with. Of course, this raises the question of what they would do to gays in America if given free rein.
If this is just a misunderstanding, then Cru should send a powerful message by apologizing for hosting Antonios and immediately cutting ties with Bekele Shanko and Dela Adedevoh. If advocating persecution and murder of LGBT people in Africa is indeed part of Cru's mission, then college administrators and military officials should strongly reevaluate whether this organization belongs in their institutions.
Of course, unlike the barbarians who bared their teeth in Tbilisi, we fully expect Cru to disingenuously split hairs and say that the organization did not promote violence, because it advocated a "graveyard for homosexuality" and not homosexuals.
That's an interesting concept; it's much like claiming that a campaign to wipe out Judaism won't harm Jews. I'd love to know the last time homosexuality was convicted of a crime and sent to jail while the gay person walked out of the courthouse free. I'd love Cru to show me tombstones dedicated to homosexuality that do not also have the rickety bones of a slain gay man or lesbian resting six feet below.
We can look at foreign anti-gay violence and discrimination and blithely conclude, "It could not happen here." However, the dehumanization of LGBT people, on a smaller scale, happens every single day in America. (Pictured at left, Diane Gramley, President of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania.)
It occurred last week when a thug shot and killed Mark Carson in Greenwich Village for being gay. It happened when Edie Windsor was slammed with a $363,053 inheritance tax bill after her partner of 42 years, Thea Clara Spyer, passed away. (A straight surviving spouse would not have had to pay.)
We witnessed injustice in Columbus, Ohio, this week after Carla Hale, a lesbian gym teacher at a Catholic school, was fired after 18 years of service because her mother's newspaper obituary had outed her by mentioning her partner. We can see the vindictiveness in the senators who threaten to derail immigration reform if it includes gay couples, which would essentially ruin lives and tear families apart.
People can only perpetrate such vile deeds when they consider homosexuals to be inferior. In most of these cases, there is a sadistic joy of inflicting pain and punishment on LGBT individuals when they are already suffering, such as after a parent or partner's death.
Until religious leaders stop portraying the LGBT population as subhuman, we can expect more atrocities, whether in Tbilisi, Lagos or Greenwich Village.
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
The Problem's Not "Gays in the Military," It's MEN in the Military! -- West Point Sergeant Accused of Filming Female Cadets
Women Were Secretly Filmed At West Point, the Army Says
from The New York Times - May 22, 2013:
WASHINGTON — A sergeant first class on the staff of the United States Military Academy at West Point has been accused of videotaping female cadets without their consent, sometimes when they were undressed in the bathroom or the shower, according to Army officials.
The Army is contacting about a dozen women to alert them that their privacy may have been violated by the suspect, identified as Sgt. First Class Michael McClendon, and to offer support or counseling, officials said.The allegations at West Point, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious military academy, come in the midst of growing outrage in Congress, at the Pentagon and from President Obama over reports of sexual harassment and assault in the armed services. They also come as the Army has begun integrating women into combat positions, bringing added demands for fair and equal treatment of those in uniform.
The revelations are especially startling at West Point, which has had problems with sexual assault but also has many progressive faculty members and prides itself on having an environment of discipline and respect. Women have been enrolled at the two-century-old institution, on a commanding bank of the Hudson River in upstate New York, for nearly 40 years.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who is to deliver the commencement address at West Point on Saturday, was briefed on the case Wednesday morning. Pentagon officials described him as “concerned and disturbed” by the allegations.
Sergeant McClendon, of Blakely, Ga., faces charges under four articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, for indecent acts, dereliction in the performance of duty, cruelty and maltreatment, and actions prejudicial to good order and discipline. Sergeant McClendon, who had been assigned to the academy since 2009, was transferred to Fort Drum, N.Y., before charges were filed on May 14, Army officials said.
During his tenure at West Point, Sergeant McClendon served as a tactical noncommissioned officer, a position described in academy personnel documents as a staff adviser “responsible for the health, welfare and discipline” of a company of 125 cadets. The person in the position is expected to “assist each cadet in balancing and integrating the requirements of physical, military, academic and moral-ethical programs.”
The student body at West Point numbers about 4,500 cadets. Slightly more than 15 percent are female, and senior Army officials pledged immediate action to try to regain their trust.
“The Army is committed to ensuring the safety and welfare of our cadets at the Military Academy at West Point — as well as all soldiers throughout our Army,” Gen. John F. Campbell, the Army vice chief of staff, said on Wednesday. “Once notified of the violation, a full investigation was launched, followed by swift action to correct the problem. Our cadets must be confident that issues such as these are handled quickly and decisively, and that our system will hold those responsible accountable.”
Officials said some of the videos were taken in the showers or the bathrooms, and some elsewhere on campus. Documents in the case indicate that in some instances Sergeant McClendon entered women’s bathroom and shower areas without knocking.
The number of sexual assaults reported at the military’s service academies has been steadily rising in recent years. In the 2011-12 academic year, there were 80 reports of sexual assault, compared with 65 in 2010-11 and 25 in 2008-9. The Defense Department is required by Congress to track sexual assault reports at the military academies.
The Army made no announcement of the charges against Sergeant McClendon, but it provided details after The New York Times learned of the inquiry from people with ties to West Point who said they were alarmed by the allegations and wanted to learn of the academy’s plans to investigate and prevent future violations.
George Wright, an Army spokesman, said the service and West Point would “rebuild trust” through their response. He said the Army was committed to “providing the full range of support to those whose privacy was violated,” as well as “keeping them updated on the case.”
“The Army will ensure the military justice system works through to its proper conclusion,” Mr. Wright said.
According to military service records, Sergeant McClendon joined the Army in 1990 and trained as a combat engineer. He deployed to Iraq from 2004 to 2005 and from 2007 to 2009 and was awarded a Bronze Star.
In recent weeks, allegations of sexual harassment and assault against women in the military have prompted vows from the Pentagon’s highest officials that they will confront the problem.
“It is time we take on the fight against sexual assault and sexual harassment as our primary mission,” Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff, wrote in a message to all of his service personnel last week. “It is up to every one of us, civilian and soldier, general officer to private, to solve this problem within our ranks.”
These acts, General Odierno wrote, “violate everything our Army stands for.”
“They are contrary to our Army values,” he added, “and they must not be tolerated.”
Mr. Obama last week summoned the Pentagon’s senior leaders to the White House, telling them that the levels of sexual assault across the armed services were a disgrace that undermined the trust essential for the military to carry out its mission.
At the White House on Wednesday, Jay Carney, Mr. Obama’s press secretary, said the president had “zero tolerance for sexual assault in the military.”
“Those who participate in it dishonor the uniform they wear,” Mr. Carney said, and “those who are victims of it and who wear the uniform should know that the commander in chief has their backs.”
See New York Times Video report HERE.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Crowd Led by Priests Attacks Gay Rights Marchers in Georgia
by Andrew Roth for The New York Times, May 17, 2013:
MOSCOW — A throng of thousands led by priests in black robes surged through police cordons in downtown Tbilisi, Georgia, on Friday and attacked a group of about 50 gay rights demonstrators.
Carrying banners reading “No to mental genocide” and “No to gays,” the masses of mostly young men began by hurling rocks and eggs at the gay rights demonstrators.
The police pushed most of the demonstrators onto yellow minibuses to evacuate them from the scene, but, the attackers swarmed the buses, trying to break the windows with metal gratings, trash cans, rocks and even fists.
At least 12 people were reported hospitalized, including three police officers and eight or nine of the gay rights marchers.
“They wanted to kill all of us,” said Irakli Vacharadze, the head of Identoba, the Tbilisi-based gay rights advocacy group that organized the rally.
Nino Bolkvadze, 35, a lawyer for the group who was among the marchers, said that if they had not been close to the buses when the violence began, “we would all have been corpses.”
Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili of Georgia condemned the violence in a news release Friday evening, as the police urged the mobs to leave the city’s central avenue.
The attack comes amid an increase in antigay talk in Russia and Georgia, whose Orthodox churches are gaining political influence.
In a statement Wednesday, the leader of the Georgian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Ilia II, compared homosexuals to drug addicts and called the rally a “violation of the rights of the majority” of Georgians.
Conservative-minded Georgians traveled from other cities to condemn the gay rights demonstrators, and one told a television station that she had come to “treat their illness.”
“We are trying to protect our orthodoxy, not to let anyone to wipe their feet on our faith,” said Manana Okhanashvili, in a head scarf and long skirt. “We must not allow them to have a gay demonstration here.”
In a telephone interview, Mr. Vacharadze of Identoba said that priests from the Georgian Orthodox Church had led the charge that broke through a heavy police corridor.
“The priests entered, the priests broke the fences and the police didn’t stop them, because the priests are above the law in Georgia,” he said.
Ms. Bolkvadze, the lawyer with Identoba, speaking by telephone from a safe house in the city, said that despite promises from the police that there would be “unprecedented” protection for the rally, the riot police were unprepared.
“They didn’t have helmets,” she said. “They didn’t have the right equipment.”
MOSCOW — A throng of thousands led by priests in black robes surged through police cordons in downtown Tbilisi, Georgia, on Friday and attacked a group of about 50 gay rights demonstrators.
Carrying banners reading “No to mental genocide” and “No to gays,” the masses of mostly young men began by hurling rocks and eggs at the gay rights demonstrators.The police pushed most of the demonstrators onto yellow minibuses to evacuate them from the scene, but, the attackers swarmed the buses, trying to break the windows with metal gratings, trash cans, rocks and even fists.
At least 12 people were reported hospitalized, including three police officers and eight or nine of the gay rights marchers.
“They wanted to kill all of us,” said Irakli Vacharadze, the head of Identoba, the Tbilisi-based gay rights advocacy group that organized the rally.
Nino Bolkvadze, 35, a lawyer for the group who was among the marchers, said that if they had not been close to the buses when the violence began, “we would all have been corpses.”
Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili of Georgia condemned the violence in a news release Friday evening, as the police urged the mobs to leave the city’s central avenue.
The attack comes amid an increase in antigay talk in Russia and Georgia, whose Orthodox churches are gaining political influence.
In a statement Wednesday, the leader of the Georgian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Ilia II, compared homosexuals to drug addicts and called the rally a “violation of the rights of the majority” of Georgians.
Conservative-minded Georgians traveled from other cities to condemn the gay rights demonstrators, and one told a television station that she had come to “treat their illness.”
“We are trying to protect our orthodoxy, not to let anyone to wipe their feet on our faith,” said Manana Okhanashvili, in a head scarf and long skirt. “We must not allow them to have a gay demonstration here.”
In a telephone interview, Mr. Vacharadze of Identoba said that priests from the Georgian Orthodox Church had led the charge that broke through a heavy police corridor.
“The priests entered, the priests broke the fences and the police didn’t stop them, because the priests are above the law in Georgia,” he said.
Ms. Bolkvadze, the lawyer with Identoba, speaking by telephone from a safe house in the city, said that despite promises from the police that there would be “unprecedented” protection for the rally, the riot police were unprepared.
“They didn’t have helmets,” she said. “They didn’t have the right equipment.”
Friday, May 17, 2013
The War on Gays: American Christian Zealots Promote Bigotry Abroad
from The Economist - May 4, 2013:
IT MIGHT seem only a nasty coincidence. As gay rights advance in the West—France and New Zealand are the latest countries to legalise same-sex marriage—homophobia is on the rise elsewhere. But these apparently contradictory trends may be related. Confounded at home, a crusading squad of American conservative Christians are taking the fight abroad.
In an unusual case, brought under the Alien Tort Statute, a judge in Massachusetts is pondering a claim by Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), a gay-rights group, against Scott Lively, a preacher and co-author of “The Pink Swastika” (which argues that Nazism was fuelled by homosexuality). Mr Lively visited Uganda in 2009, meeting politicians, appearing on television, and sharing his theories about homosexuals’ recruitment of youngsters.
Shortly afterwards a Ugandan MP introduced a parliamentary bill that would stiffen existing penalties for homosexual behaviour; among other drastic measures it mandated the death sentence for “aggravated” homosexuality. Amid a burst of anti-gay vitriol, and headlines such as “Hang Them, They Are After Our Kids”, a gay activist was murdered. SMUG alleges that, on this occasion and previously, Mr Lively conspired to persecute Ugandan homosexuals. He says he advocated therapy and prevention, not harsh punishments.
This episode is part of a wider campaign. Other preachers, such as Lou Engle, a fundamentalist pastor at a megachurch in Kansas, have also been to Uganda. A new documentary, “God Loves Uganda”, depicts co-ordination between the visitors, resident missionaries and American-trained Ugandan priests. Offshoots of the American Centre for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a group founded by the televangelist Pat Robertson, in Kenya and Zimbabwe, are said to have resisted gay-friendly changes to their constitutions. (The ACLJ insists it “does not export an agenda”.)
In Africa campaigners adopt the language of anti-colonialism, portraying gay rights, and even homosexuality itself, as Western impositions; opponents counter that the criminalisation of gay sex is itself largely a legacy of empire. But the rhetoric and tactics are flexible. The Americans are happy, when necessary, to co-operate with like-minded Roman Catholic and Orthodox believers, which barely count as Christian in the eyes of extreme Protestants. Hardline Islamists are tacit allies too.
In the former Soviet Union, where homosexuality has mostly been legalised, the emphasis is on preventing its “promotion”. Here, says Julie Dorf of the Council for Global Equality, a lobby group based in Washington, DC, American efforts are feeding prejudice and anti-gay legislation.
Two bills trundling through Ukraine’s parliament, for example, would criminalise gay “propaganda” (a similar bill is on the stocks in Russia’s Duma). To be sure, indigenous hostility (sometimes violent) towards homosexuality abounds. But Jim Mulcahy, a retired priest now ministering to gays in Ukraine, thinks the anti-gay lobby’s resources and multimedia techniques bespeak American involvement.
Both Paul Cameron, an American psychologist who likens homosexuality to drug use, and Mr Lively, have toured eastern Europe. Gay activists in Moldova say that outsiders’ influence helped to reduce the prominence of sexuality in a recent anti-discrimination law. In Latvia Mr Lively fraternised with a church whose members have harassed gay-pride marches.
A third front is the Caribbean and Central America. Caleb Orozco of UNIBAM, a gay-rights group in Belize, is arguing in court that its criminalisation of homosexual sex violates the constitution. According to Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Centre, an American civil-rights watchdog, a coalition of churches resisting the move is supported by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), another American outfit. (The ADF, like Mr Engle, could not be reached for comment.) Belize’s most prominent anti-gay cleric is American; his church is affiliated to a ministry in Arizona, whose leader has urged believers to raise the dead in morgues. Mr Orozco has been threatened and attacked with a bottle.
Collateral Damage
The American fundamentalists see themselves as defending biblical values and stemming degeneracy. Abroad, the policies they advance in that cause are often more extreme than those they espouse at home (though Mr Lively would like to “re-criminalise adultery, fornication and homosexuality” in America, too, albeit as minor misdemeanours). Several would like to usher in a global theocracy.
In America exponents of such ideas are liable to be dismissed as cranks and bigots; for their part they regard their own country as morally lost. But on their travels abroad they receive a respectful hearing, addressing parliaments and appearing on mainstream television.
That sort of reception boosts morale, but can offer practical benefits, too. Influence, visibility and access, in countries where (as the faithful see it) righteousness remains unvanquished, all help with fund-raising. The activists often traverse the same circuit, in what could be seen as a kind of competition.
The arguments they deploy make the connection between the changes in the West and the pushback elsewhere explicit. Anti-discrimination laws and other liberalising reforms are evidence of a worldwide secular conspiracy, against which Africa, or eastern Europe, or the Caribbean must fortify themselves. Occasional rebukes by the American government about persecution of gays abroad only prove the conspiracy’s power. Some clues suggest that the itinerants’ real focus is elsewhere. Their sound and fury about issues such as gay marriage and adoption may resonate in America, yet have little relevance in countries where even private homosexual acts are illegal.
Kapya Kaoma, an Anglican priest from Zambia who works for Political Research Associates, a liberal think-tank in Boston, observes that the campaigners face a powerful progressive lobby at home, but in east Africa their adversaries are isolated and weak. The suffering of homosexuals in such places, he says, is “collateral damage” in America’s culture wars.
IT MIGHT seem only a nasty coincidence. As gay rights advance in the West—France and New Zealand are the latest countries to legalise same-sex marriage—homophobia is on the rise elsewhere. But these apparently contradictory trends may be related. Confounded at home, a crusading squad of American conservative Christians are taking the fight abroad.
In an unusual case, brought under the Alien Tort Statute, a judge in Massachusetts is pondering a claim by Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), a gay-rights group, against Scott Lively, a preacher and co-author of “The Pink Swastika” (which argues that Nazism was fuelled by homosexuality). Mr Lively visited Uganda in 2009, meeting politicians, appearing on television, and sharing his theories about homosexuals’ recruitment of youngsters.
Shortly afterwards a Ugandan MP introduced a parliamentary bill that would stiffen existing penalties for homosexual behaviour; among other drastic measures it mandated the death sentence for “aggravated” homosexuality. Amid a burst of anti-gay vitriol, and headlines such as “Hang Them, They Are After Our Kids”, a gay activist was murdered. SMUG alleges that, on this occasion and previously, Mr Lively conspired to persecute Ugandan homosexuals. He says he advocated therapy and prevention, not harsh punishments.
This episode is part of a wider campaign. Other preachers, such as Lou Engle, a fundamentalist pastor at a megachurch in Kansas, have also been to Uganda. A new documentary, “God Loves Uganda”, depicts co-ordination between the visitors, resident missionaries and American-trained Ugandan priests. Offshoots of the American Centre for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a group founded by the televangelist Pat Robertson, in Kenya and Zimbabwe, are said to have resisted gay-friendly changes to their constitutions. (The ACLJ insists it “does not export an agenda”.)
In Africa campaigners adopt the language of anti-colonialism, portraying gay rights, and even homosexuality itself, as Western impositions; opponents counter that the criminalisation of gay sex is itself largely a legacy of empire. But the rhetoric and tactics are flexible. The Americans are happy, when necessary, to co-operate with like-minded Roman Catholic and Orthodox believers, which barely count as Christian in the eyes of extreme Protestants. Hardline Islamists are tacit allies too.
In the former Soviet Union, where homosexuality has mostly been legalised, the emphasis is on preventing its “promotion”. Here, says Julie Dorf of the Council for Global Equality, a lobby group based in Washington, DC, American efforts are feeding prejudice and anti-gay legislation.
Two bills trundling through Ukraine’s parliament, for example, would criminalise gay “propaganda” (a similar bill is on the stocks in Russia’s Duma). To be sure, indigenous hostility (sometimes violent) towards homosexuality abounds. But Jim Mulcahy, a retired priest now ministering to gays in Ukraine, thinks the anti-gay lobby’s resources and multimedia techniques bespeak American involvement.
Both Paul Cameron, an American psychologist who likens homosexuality to drug use, and Mr Lively, have toured eastern Europe. Gay activists in Moldova say that outsiders’ influence helped to reduce the prominence of sexuality in a recent anti-discrimination law. In Latvia Mr Lively fraternised with a church whose members have harassed gay-pride marches.
A third front is the Caribbean and Central America. Caleb Orozco of UNIBAM, a gay-rights group in Belize, is arguing in court that its criminalisation of homosexual sex violates the constitution. According to Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Centre, an American civil-rights watchdog, a coalition of churches resisting the move is supported by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), another American outfit. (The ADF, like Mr Engle, could not be reached for comment.) Belize’s most prominent anti-gay cleric is American; his church is affiliated to a ministry in Arizona, whose leader has urged believers to raise the dead in morgues. Mr Orozco has been threatened and attacked with a bottle.
Collateral Damage
The American fundamentalists see themselves as defending biblical values and stemming degeneracy. Abroad, the policies they advance in that cause are often more extreme than those they espouse at home (though Mr Lively would like to “re-criminalise adultery, fornication and homosexuality” in America, too, albeit as minor misdemeanours). Several would like to usher in a global theocracy.
In America exponents of such ideas are liable to be dismissed as cranks and bigots; for their part they regard their own country as morally lost. But on their travels abroad they receive a respectful hearing, addressing parliaments and appearing on mainstream television.
That sort of reception boosts morale, but can offer practical benefits, too. Influence, visibility and access, in countries where (as the faithful see it) righteousness remains unvanquished, all help with fund-raising. The activists often traverse the same circuit, in what could be seen as a kind of competition.
The arguments they deploy make the connection between the changes in the West and the pushback elsewhere explicit. Anti-discrimination laws and other liberalising reforms are evidence of a worldwide secular conspiracy, against which Africa, or eastern Europe, or the Caribbean must fortify themselves. Occasional rebukes by the American government about persecution of gays abroad only prove the conspiracy’s power. Some clues suggest that the itinerants’ real focus is elsewhere. Their sound and fury about issues such as gay marriage and adoption may resonate in America, yet have little relevance in countries where even private homosexual acts are illegal.
Kapya Kaoma, an Anglican priest from Zambia who works for Political Research Associates, a liberal think-tank in Boston, observes that the campaigners face a powerful progressive lobby at home, but in east Africa their adversaries are isolated and weak. The suffering of homosexuals in such places, he says, is “collateral damage” in America’s culture wars.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Heterosexuals in the Classroom: Butler County Teacher Faces Felony Charges of Soliciting Sex from Students
Where's the American Family Association of Pennsylvania When We Need 'Em?
from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - May 14, 2013:
Since 2009, a high school English teacher in Butler County has inappropriately touched and communicated with five female students, state police said.
Jonathan M. Crum, 26, of Slippery Rock faces 26 criminal charges and is being held in the Butler County Prison.
State police wrote in a criminal complaint filed today that on various occasions, Mr. Crum, a Moniteau High School teacher, would grab female students' backsides and breasts, or rub their inner thighs and genitals through their pants.
A student performed oral sex on Mr. Crum at least five times, some of those instances during her lunch period or after school, police said. Twice, Mr. Crum told the student to take topless photos of herself, police said.
He told another student, both in person and via text message, he wanted to have sex with her in his classroom immediately after her graduation ceremony, police said.
Mr. Crum counted down the days until another girl would turn 18, police said. She told police that during his class once, he texted her and said "I want to bend you over my desk."
Mr. Crum faces 14 felony counts of intercourse or sexual conduct with a student; five felony counts of corruption of minors, defendant age 18 or above; two felony counts each of child pornography and criminal solicitation of child pornography; and three misdemeanor counts of indecent assault.
from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - May 14, 2013:
Since 2009, a high school English teacher in Butler County has inappropriately touched and communicated with five female students, state police said.
Jonathan M. Crum, 26, of Slippery Rock faces 26 criminal charges and is being held in the Butler County Prison.
State police wrote in a criminal complaint filed today that on various occasions, Mr. Crum, a Moniteau High School teacher, would grab female students' backsides and breasts, or rub their inner thighs and genitals through their pants.
A student performed oral sex on Mr. Crum at least five times, some of those instances during her lunch period or after school, police said. Twice, Mr. Crum told the student to take topless photos of herself, police said.
He told another student, both in person and via text message, he wanted to have sex with her in his classroom immediately after her graduation ceremony, police said.
Mr. Crum counted down the days until another girl would turn 18, police said. She told police that during his class once, he texted her and said "I want to bend you over my desk."
Mr. Crum faces 14 felony counts of intercourse or sexual conduct with a student; five felony counts of corruption of minors, defendant age 18 or above; two felony counts each of child pornography and criminal solicitation of child pornography; and three misdemeanor counts of indecent assault.
Sunday, May 12, 2013
When Did You Choose to Be Straight?
Street interviews conducted by Travis Nuckolls and Chris Baker in Colorado Springs prove that asking the right question can be more important than anything you can tell someone.
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Archival Footage on U.S. Government’s “Lavender Scare”
"If we discover homosexuals in our department, we discharge them,"
said former Secretary of State Dean Rusk
from Salon.com:
Towle Road has released footage from an upcoming documentary about the United States’ gay “witch hunts” of the 1950s and ’60s, in which government agencies covertly investigated the sexuality of federal employees.
The footage, as described by “Lavender Scare” filmmaker Josh Howard, is a clear indication of how far America has come on gay rights – and how much further there is to go:
In 1965, Frank Kameny and Jack Nichols organized the first gay rights demonstrations the nation had ever seen. With a handful of others, they picketed the White House and other government buildings to protest the on-going ban on hiring gay and lesbian workers. On August 28th, they picketed the State Department. At a news conference the day before, Secretary of State Dean Rusk was asked about the protest. The derisive laughter from the press corps and Rusk’s dismissive response to the protest is chilling and hard to believe when seen from today’s perspective.
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Peter Sprigg And The Values Victim Caucus
by Wayne Besen, Truth Wins Out:
Wine may represent the blood of Jesus in church, but whine is the Religious Right’s drink of choice these days.
Having lost the culture war, their latest tactic is to falsely cast themselves as martyrs who are defending the faith and free speech against an increasingly totalitarian majority. Perhaps the biggest crybaby is the Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg. He seems to believe that anyone who stands up to his vitriolic hate speech and toxic lies is guilty of intolerance.
However, what professional victims like Sprigg really object to, are people who are no longer cowed into silence and finally standing up to bullies. There was a time, not too long ago, when Sprigg could spew misinformation and get away with it. He could demonize gays and dehumanize atheists and there was little opposition.
Thankfully, this dynamic has changed. Sprigg and his fanatical fibs are regularly met by facts that expose his ugly bigotry. As a result, support for his incoherent and irrational positions on social issues has eroded. He sees this as a great conspiracy against fundamentalist Christians, rather than acknowledging that the American people have soundly rejected his bogus arguments.
A CNN article by John Blake summarizes the paranoia of the Values Victim Caucus:
"We’ve heard of the “down-low” gay person who keeps his or her sexual identity secret for fear of public scorn. But Sprigg and other evangelicals say changing attitudes toward homosexuality have created a new victim: closeted Christians who believe the Bible condemns homosexuality but will not say so publicly for fear of being labeled a hateful bigot."
Sprigg is not a victim, but an aggressive victimizer. The only reason he is labeled a hateful bigot is because he has engaged in hateful and bigoted speech. Laughably, the FRC spokesman couches his disdain for gay and lesbian people in the language of love.
According to the CNN article:
"Sprigg, from the Family Research Council, says his condemnation of homosexual conduct does not spring from intolerance but a desire to protect gays from harmful conduct."
The extreme right seems to forget that the Internet exists and their quotes are recorded for posterity, which make them look like a horses posterior. If Sprigg is so concerned about the health of my family, why did he tell MSNBC host Chris Matthews in 2008 that he wanted to “export” LGBT people from the United States of America? Why did he say on the same show, “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions on homosexual behavior.”
How is persecution and banishing people from the country where they were born, or imprisoning them, good for their physical or mental health? Such inconsistency and insincerity is why people have rejected the message of fake Christians like Sprigg.
If one wants to see real Christians who are attacked for their beliefs, look at those who are bold enough to stand up for LGBT equality. Pastors who act on their moral consciences and stand with their gay parishioners are often castigated and lose their churches. Anyone who doesn’t adhere to the party line is attacked or excommunicated.
For example, former Green Bay Packers safety LeRoy Butler tweeted his support for Jason Collins, the NBA player who came out as gay. His gesture of Christian love cost him $8,500 in fees from a church who pulled the plug on an upcoming speaking gig.
Why isn’t Sprigg defending the free speech of this particular Christian? Were Butler’s words not conservatively correct enough for Sprigg’s taste?
Last September, Maryland Rep. Emmett Burns wrote the owner of the Baltimore Ravens and demanded they silence linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo, who spoke out in favor of marriage equality.
Where was Sprigg when Ayanbadejo’s free speech was under attack?
In a column that discusses the marginalization of mainstream Christians, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni asks an important question:
"But what about the morals and the God of people whose religions exhort them to be inclusive and to treat gays and lesbians with the same dignity as anyone else?
…there’s a religious center. A religious left. There are Christian moderates and Christian liberals: less alliterative and less dogmatic, but perhaps no less concerned with acting in ways that reflect moral ideals. We should better acknowledge that and them….And we should stop equating conventional piety with certain issues only and sexual morality above other kinds."
People like Sprigg aren’t satisfied simply being one of a cacophony of voices in the public square. They believe it is their God-given right to have dominion and their opinions are more important than everyone else’s. Such complainers are not victims of less speech, as they falsely claim. They are simply on the losing end of more speech, with the vast majority of people rejecting their debunked theories and archaic ideas.
Wine may represent the blood of Jesus in church, but whine is the Religious Right’s drink of choice these days.
Having lost the culture war, their latest tactic is to falsely cast themselves as martyrs who are defending the faith and free speech against an increasingly totalitarian majority. Perhaps the biggest crybaby is the Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg. He seems to believe that anyone who stands up to his vitriolic hate speech and toxic lies is guilty of intolerance.
However, what professional victims like Sprigg really object to, are people who are no longer cowed into silence and finally standing up to bullies. There was a time, not too long ago, when Sprigg could spew misinformation and get away with it. He could demonize gays and dehumanize atheists and there was little opposition.
Thankfully, this dynamic has changed. Sprigg and his fanatical fibs are regularly met by facts that expose his ugly bigotry. As a result, support for his incoherent and irrational positions on social issues has eroded. He sees this as a great conspiracy against fundamentalist Christians, rather than acknowledging that the American people have soundly rejected his bogus arguments.
A CNN article by John Blake summarizes the paranoia of the Values Victim Caucus:
"We’ve heard of the “down-low” gay person who keeps his or her sexual identity secret for fear of public scorn. But Sprigg and other evangelicals say changing attitudes toward homosexuality have created a new victim: closeted Christians who believe the Bible condemns homosexuality but will not say so publicly for fear of being labeled a hateful bigot."
Sprigg is not a victim, but an aggressive victimizer. The only reason he is labeled a hateful bigot is because he has engaged in hateful and bigoted speech. Laughably, the FRC spokesman couches his disdain for gay and lesbian people in the language of love.
According to the CNN article:
"Sprigg, from the Family Research Council, says his condemnation of homosexual conduct does not spring from intolerance but a desire to protect gays from harmful conduct."
The extreme right seems to forget that the Internet exists and their quotes are recorded for posterity, which make them look like a horses posterior. If Sprigg is so concerned about the health of my family, why did he tell MSNBC host Chris Matthews in 2008 that he wanted to “export” LGBT people from the United States of America? Why did he say on the same show, “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions on homosexual behavior.”
How is persecution and banishing people from the country where they were born, or imprisoning them, good for their physical or mental health? Such inconsistency and insincerity is why people have rejected the message of fake Christians like Sprigg.
If one wants to see real Christians who are attacked for their beliefs, look at those who are bold enough to stand up for LGBT equality. Pastors who act on their moral consciences and stand with their gay parishioners are often castigated and lose their churches. Anyone who doesn’t adhere to the party line is attacked or excommunicated.
For example, former Green Bay Packers safety LeRoy Butler tweeted his support for Jason Collins, the NBA player who came out as gay. His gesture of Christian love cost him $8,500 in fees from a church who pulled the plug on an upcoming speaking gig.
Why isn’t Sprigg defending the free speech of this particular Christian? Were Butler’s words not conservatively correct enough for Sprigg’s taste?
Last September, Maryland Rep. Emmett Burns wrote the owner of the Baltimore Ravens and demanded they silence linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo, who spoke out in favor of marriage equality.
Where was Sprigg when Ayanbadejo’s free speech was under attack?
In a column that discusses the marginalization of mainstream Christians, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni asks an important question:
"But what about the morals and the God of people whose religions exhort them to be inclusive and to treat gays and lesbians with the same dignity as anyone else?
…there’s a religious center. A religious left. There are Christian moderates and Christian liberals: less alliterative and less dogmatic, but perhaps no less concerned with acting in ways that reflect moral ideals. We should better acknowledge that and them….And we should stop equating conventional piety with certain issues only and sexual morality above other kinds."
People like Sprigg aren’t satisfied simply being one of a cacophony of voices in the public square. They believe it is their God-given right to have dominion and their opinions are more important than everyone else’s. Such complainers are not victims of less speech, as they falsely claim. They are simply on the losing end of more speech, with the vast majority of people rejecting their debunked theories and archaic ideas.
Saturday, May 4, 2013
Vince Lombardi: A Champion of Gay Rights
Vince, Whose Brother Hal Was Gay, Would've Been Proud of Jason Collins
by Ian O'Connor for ESPN - 5/4/13:
Vince Lombardi would have loved Jason Collins, and everything about him. Collins is bright, professional, respectful, team-centric, and proud to be gay. Right in Lombardi's wheelhouse.
Long before it was fashionable, Lombardi was a champion of gay athletes, if only because he was a champion of all athletes, at least those who helped him score more touchdowns than the other guy. It didn't matter if they were white or black, or if they dated men or women or both, or if they dated interracially or not.
"Like the saying goes," Susan Lombardi said by phone, "my father treated them all the same. Like dogs."
Actually, Vincent Thomas Lombardi treated his Green Bay Packers and Washington Redskins as anything but. No, winning wasn't everything, or the only thing. In Lombardi's playbook, winning placed a distant second to simple human decency.
In 1969, the year before his death, the only year he coached the Redskins, Lombardi worked with at least five gay men -- three players and two front-office executives, including David Slattery, who would come out in 1993. In his defining biography, "When Pride Still Mattered," author David Maraniss described the scene of Lombardi charging an assistant to work with one of the gay players, a struggling back named Ray McDonald. "And if I hear one of you people make reference to his manhood," Lombardi is quoted as saying, "you'll be out of here before your ass hits the ground."
This was 44 years before Collins, a 12-year NBA veteran, made history this week as the first active player among the four major American team sports to publicly reveal he is gay. This was 44 years before a basketball coach at Rutgers University was fired, in part, for degrading players with homophobic slurs, and before another coach was accused of using homophobic slurs at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. Lombardi's Green Bay.
"My father was way ahead of his time," Susan Lombardi said. "He was discriminated against as a dark-skinned Italian American when he was younger, when he felt he was passed up for coaching jobs that he deserved. He felt the pain of discrimination, and so he raised his family to accept everybody, no matter what color they were or whatever their sexual orientation was.
"I think it's great what Jason Collins did, because it's going to open a lot of doors for people. Without a doubt my father would've embraced him, and would've been very proud of him for coming out."
Richard Nicholls, 75-year-old resident of Rohnert Park, Calif., agreed with the thought. For more than four decades Nicholls was partners with Harold Lombardi, Vince's gay brother, who died in 2011 knowing that he had Vince's unconditional love and support.
Nicholls and Harold met in 1970, the year Vince succumbed to cancer at 57. Ultimately Nicholls hoped to get married, but Harold was a devout Catholic, just like Vince. "He was old school," Nicholls said by phone. "He knew the church wouldn't approve."
Nicholls called his longtime partner "Hal," and said he was a private man. "He loved Vin very much, and was very proud of him even though he wasn't much of a football man," Nicholls said. "We once had a conversation where Hal said, 'I appreciate that Vin treats gays so nicely. He probably does it because of me.'"
But Nicholls believes Lombardi, a coach he'd never met, would've been just as supportive of his gay co-workers and players had his brother been straight.
"Through Hal and in what I'd read and seen, Vin was always fair in how he treated everybody," Nicholls said. "I just thought he appeared to be a great man who accepted people at face value for what they were, and didn't judge anybody. He just wanted you to do the job."
That's the way Dave Kopay remembers it, too, as a running back with Lombardi's Redskins. In a 1975 newspaper interview, three years after he retired, Kopay became the first major team-sport athlete to come out as gay.
He never discussed his sexuality with Lombardi, but remains fairly certain the coach knew. Kopay said he had a relationship with Washington's star tight end, Jerry Smith, who never came out but was widely acknowledged to be gay; Smith died of complications from AIDS in 1986.
"Lombardi protected and loved Jerry," Kopay said by phone. The retired running back said he was "absolutely, 100 percent sure" his coach knew that two Redskins executives, including Slattery, were gay "because he was so close to both of them it would've been impossible for Lombardi not to know."
Kopay said he tried to convince Smith that the two of them should come out together. "But back then gay people were almost thought of as deviant," Kopay said. "It was really terrible at the time."
But Lombardi created an atmosphere of inclusion at work, running the ultimate NFL meritocracy. He'd won his five championships in Green Bay, so he arrived as something of a rock star in D.C.
"Supreme Court justices would come out to Saturday morning practices," Kopay said, "just to be around Lombardi. He was something else."
Kopay would write a best-selling book about his experiences as a gay athlete, and he believes the public discourse about his sexuality cost him opportunities in coaching. He received some hate mail. He said the Washington Star, the paper that published his 1975 interview, received a lot more.Like Jason Collins, Kopay said he was a tough, physical athlete who never shied from contact. In fact, he recalled, "I was so aware of trying to run over people rather than run around them, to prove how tough I was, that it screwed me up and I ended up not playing as much for Lombardi as I thought I would."
And that's quite all right.
"Vince Lombardi had so much humanity, I was just lucky to have been around him," Kopay said. "He would've responded to Jason Collins just like Doc Rivers and these other coaches have. Lombardi would've really been in his corner, let me tell you."
Vince Lombardi Jr. could tell you a thing or three about that. A retired, 71-year-old motivational speaker, Lombardi is a dead ringer for his old man. One day a young Green Bay assistant named Tom Coughlin heard a knock on an office door at the Packers' facility, and looked up to find the very face of the iconic coach staring back at him through a small window.
Coughlin did a double take. It was Vince Lombardi Jr., not a ghost.
The son sounds like the father, too, especially when he speaks of treating everyone with dignity.
"My father had been discriminated against, and his faith was also a major part of his life and something that was reflected in the way he dealt with his players," Vince Jr. said. "With [Jason Collins] coming out, I think my father would've felt, 'I hope I've created an atmosphere in the locker room where this would not be an issue at all. And if you do have an issue, the problem will be yours because my locker room will tolerate nothing but acceptance.'"
Of course, the same was true of Lombardi's locker room in Green Bay, where he wouldn't let his Packers frequent any restaurant, bar or hotel that denied the same services to black players normally offered to white players. And when a black defensive end, Lionel Aldridge, revealed his plans to marry his white girlfriend, Lombardi blessed the union at a time when some around Green Bay, and around the league, were less than enthusiastic about it.
"I take a great deal of pride in the fact that, at a time when this was still cutting-edge stuff, my father was able to see through all of that and treated people as they deserved to be treated," Vince Jr. said. "He saw everyone as equals, and I think having a gay brother was a big factor in his approach."
As he has often seen on film stomping and shouting on the sideline, with spittle flying through his gap-toothed grimace, Lombardi represents the enduring symbol of NFL toughness and manliness. He was the winning coach in the Ice Bowl for a reason.
"He'd call you out in a variety of ways," Vince Jr. said. But even during his coaching prime, in less enlightened times, Vince Sr. would never run down a player with the kind of homophobic slurs still heard around some of today's playing fields.
"That's not one of the ways my father would've done it," Vince Jr. said.
His legacy should find room for his acceptance of all, right next to the titles in Titletown. Vince Lombardi would've turned 100 years old next month. Too bad he wasn't alive this week to congratulate Jason Collins.
Saturday, April 27, 2013
York Daily Records Publishes Beautiful Editorial on Transgender Prom King Controversy
Kings and Queens and High School Prom Ballots
York Daily Record/Sunday News editorial - April 25, 2013
Once upon a time in the land of Red Lion...
No, this isn't a fairy tale, but it is a story about kings and queens - of the prom.
Once upon a time there was girl who knew in her heart and mind that she was really a boy.
He knew he was a prince, not a princess, and one day he decided to start living his life as such.
There was no magical transformation. No kissing of frogs. No spells to overcome, other than the spell of misunderstanding that still afflicted the land of Red Lion - and all the neighboring kingdoms.
He simply changed his name and appearance and lived his life as himself. The land of Red Lion espoused freedom - and so he should be free to do just that. And he dreamed of the day when modern medical science would make his body match his heart and mind.
In some ways, though, it was hard.
Some people didn't understand. Many felt uncomfortable with this transformation. Many were ignorant of the science and psychiatric research on transgender individuals.
But others were accepting - first, and most importantly, his parents.
They supported their son's refusal to live what he felt in his very cells to be a lie. They wanted the best for him and were mostly concerned for his well-being and safety in a land where enlightenment spreads slowly - as enlightenment so often does, on issues of race and equality and human rights.
Friends were also accepting. And some teachers, too - though some might have been uncomfortable with the change.
But life was going well - at least heading in the direction of "happily ever after."
He gained confidence - enough confidence that, as the annual ball approached, he decided to run for prom king.
He made fliers with little slogans.
Would he win? Who knows - and really, who cares? This annual tradition is just a light-hearted amusement - unimportant in the grand scheme of things. In some ways, it is more of an anachronism in this day and age than a fairy tale. Really, it's just a popularity contest.
But to a person who had struggled with his identity, it was an important step to feel free and safe enough to come forward as a candidate for "king."
But then the ballots were published, and he was not among the candidates for king. She - his former identity - was listed among the candidates for queen, using his old name.
Apparently school leaders felt uncomfortable including the biological female on the ballot with biological males.
Some supported that decision. Administrators are responsible for the school. They had a tough decision to make and came down on the side of current biology. It was a legally defensible decision. The transgender person was not excluded from the ballot, after all. If the person was elected, he could be a prom queen in a suit.
There was much debate in the mystical realm of Facebook.
Would possibly having a prom king who was technically a female make people uneasy? Would the person chosen as prom queen feel uncomfortable if the "king" was biologically another female?
But what about our would-be king? What about his discomfort at feeling as if he was being forced to pretend to be something and someone he is not?
Did school administrators' discomfort really require stepping in and transforming a he back into a she - for something as inconsequential as a prom court ballot?
Could the officials not simply let the students choose? It's their ball, after all. They were under no obligation to vote for a transgender king.
Could school leaders not see the importance to that individual simply to feel the freedom - and courage - to place himself on the ballot that reflected who he knows himself to be?
Some day - perhaps even in the not-too-distant future - we'll look back on these kinds of stories as we do on fairy tales, reflecting a world that no longer exists, utterly transformed into a world where we are all free to be who we are.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Do Racism, Homophobia, Conservatism, and Low I.Q. Go Hand in Hand?
Lower Cognitive Abilities Predict Greater Prejudice Through Ring-Wing Ideology.
by Goal Auzeen Saedi, Ph.D. - Psychology Today:
This morning as I logged onto Facebook, I came upon this image. Having followed the Boston marathon and MIT shooting coverage initially, I lost some interest when it came down to the “hunt.” As much as justice matters to me, so does tact and class, and the sensationalism of manhunts always leaves me uncomfortable. I also knew it would be a matter of time before the political rhetoric would change from the victims and wounded to the demographic factors of the suspects—namely race and religion. And alas, it has.
However, what struck me most about this image posted above was the Facebook page it came from, “Too Informed to Vote Republican.” I wondered about this, recalling an old journal article I’d come across when studying anti-Islamic attitudes post 9/11. The paper referenced a correlation between conservatism and low intelligence. Uncertain of its origin, I located a thought-provoking article published in one of psychology’s top journals, Psychological Science, which in essence confirms this.
Hodson and Busseri (2012) found in a correlational study that lower intelligence in childhood is predictive of greater racism in adulthood, with this effect being mediated (partially explained) through conservative ideology. They also found poor abstract reasoning skills were related to homophobic attitudes which was mediated through authoritarianism and low levels of intergroup contact.
What this study and those before it suggest is not necessarily that all liberals are geniuses and all conservatives are ignorant. Rather, it makes conclusions based off of averages of groups. The idea is that for those who lack a cognitive ability to grasp complexities of our world, strict-right wing ideologies may be more appealing. Dr. Brian Nosek explained it for the Huffington Post as follows, “ideologies get rid of the messiness and impose a simple solution. So, it may not be surprising that people with less cognitive capacity will be attracted to simplifying ideologies.” For an excellent continuation of this discussion and past studies, please see this article from LiveScience.
Further, studies have indicated an automatic association between aggression, America, and the news. A study conducted by researchers at Cornell and The Hebrew University (Ferguson & Hassin, 2007) indicated, “American news watchers who were subtly or nonconsciously primed with American cues exhibited greater accessibility of aggression and war constructs in memory, judged an ambiguously aggressive person in a more aggressive and negative manner, and acted in a relatively more aggressive manner toward an experimenter following a mild provocation, compared with news watchers who were not primed” (p. 1642). American “cues” refers to factors such as images of the American flag or words such as “patriot.” Interestingly, this study showed this effect to be independent of political affiliation, but suggested a disturbing notion that America is implicitly associated with aggression for news watchers.
Taken together, what do these studies suggest? Excessive exposure to news coverage could be toxic as is avoidance of open-minded attitudes and ideals. Perhaps turn off the television and pick up a book? Ideally one that exposes you to differing worldviews.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)