End Bigotry in Venango County

Which Side Are You On Venango County?

2012-01-27T14:00:00.002-05:00

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

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

Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice

2012-01-27T03:12:00.009-05:00

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

by Stephanie Pappas, Senior Writer for LiveScience.com:

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

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

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

Controversy Ahead

The findings combine three hot-button topics.

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

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

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

Brains and Bias

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Study of Averages

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Simple Viewpoints

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm Christian, Unless You're Gay

2012-01-25T22:18:00.002-05:00

by Dan Pearce on Single Dad Laughing:

Hate Across The State

2012-01-25T16:15:00.005-05:00

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

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

Leave Gay-Straight Club Alone

York Dispatch Editorial

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They might very reasonably take it as harassment and intimidation.

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

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

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

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

Now there's a thought.

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

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

Why 'Born This Way' Doesn't Matter

2012-01-24T04:02:00.004-05:00

by Tracy Baim for The Huffington Post:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Washington State Republicans Bravely Break With Party on Marriage Equality

2012-01-23T14:55:00.005-05:00

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

from The Advocate:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2012-01-23T03:36:00.002-05:00

Don't Forget: Google Santorum

Do You Remember When?

2012-01-23T02:21:00.000-05:00

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

2012-01-23T02:06:00.004-05:00

The political movement is “revenge”-based,

rather than rooted in any particular Christian philosophy.

by Richard Fricker for AlterNet:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2012-01-21T05:16:00.002-05:00

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

from HIVPlus Mag:

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

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

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

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

Watch the video below:

Religious Zealotry Deadly for Gays

2012-01-20T17:09:00.003-05:00

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

Gay "Honor Killing" Movie Shakes Turkey Up

from Reuters:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LOOKING FOR A "CURE"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PREJUDICE

The film has not been welcomed in conservative circles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MILITARY PRACTICES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Letter of Love to Two Gay Dads

2012-01-19T04:56:00.003-05:00

Adopted by Two Gay Dads After a Tumultuous Upbringing,

15-Year-Old Zac Shares a Letter of Love

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

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

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

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

To my Family,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Zac

Extensive Survey Looks at Bullying in Elementary Schools

2012-01-18T15:59:00.003-05:00

from The Advocate:

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

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

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

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

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

But the everyday reality of being bullied get less attention.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Teachers (And Principals) Who Bully

2012-01-18T02:29:00.004-05:00

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

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

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

Addressing Teacher Bullies

by Teaching Tolerance:

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

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

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

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

"Our Job Today" -- Bayard Rustin

2012-01-16T15:01:00.004-05:00

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

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

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

Why American Teens Should Go Dutch with Sex and Drugs

2012-01-16T04:18:00.004-05:00

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

By Simon Kuper for the Financial Times:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Voice of an LGBT Rights Ally in Uganda

2012-01-14T01:11:00.007-05:00

from the Washington Blade:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Separate Is Not Equal

2012-01-14T01:00:00.001-05:00

Sh*t Homophobic People Say

2012-01-13T18:10:00.003-05:00

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

And if you need a little reminder:

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

2012-01-13T00:28:00.003-05:00

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

Suicide claims another LGBT youth: Trevor Project intern Eric Borges

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our condolences to the family and friends of EricJames.

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

Update:

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

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

Clobbering "Biblical" Gay Bashing

2012-01-09T23:06:00.000-05:00

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

"Clobbering "Biblical" Gay Bashing"

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

Christianity and “Biblical” Hatefulness

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hate By Any Other Name

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

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

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

The Bible As A Sex Manual

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

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

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

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

Making Choices

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

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

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

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

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

The Clobber Verses

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

Genesis 19:1-11

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leviticus 18:22 & 20:13

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Romans 1:26-28

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clobbered

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

Christian Bullshit

2012-01-09T20:10:00.000-05:00

Changing the Game for LGBT School Students

2012-01-07T03:06:00.005-05:00

By Chris Murray, social studies teacher and baseball coach, for The Huffington Post:

As a high school teacher and coach in Bethesda, Md., I have found our school to be a generally safe and wonderful place for our 2,500 students and faculty. However, like any community of this many people, there is a wide range of views and opinions in terms of acceptance for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) issues. But three specific and upsetting instances at school this year caused me to take action.

In September I had an idea for every teacher to display an equal sign in their classroom in order to show faculty support for all of our students. When I proposed this idea to the sponsor of our high school's Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA), she questioned how many teachers would actually put them up. She added that the student club had tried this activity before and was met with resistance.

I was bewildered. It had never crossed my mind that a teacher would not be accepting of a student because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Why would an educator bring their personal beliefs into the classroom when we're supposed to support the needs of each student?

Later, in December, I had the opportunity to meet two representatives from the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) at a social studies conference in Washington, D.C. During our conversation I mentioned that it seemed as if things had been getting better for LGBT people in the country. The look that I received was one of absolute astonishment, as if I were from another planet.

And really, I was. As a straight, white, upper-middle-class male, I have not had to face or endure any true injustice because of the personal characteristics that make me who I am. It was after listening to these representatives that I realized that the D.C. metropolitan area has come a long way but is still far from perfect in the level of acceptance of LGBT issues compared with the rest of the country and world.

But the latest instance was an eye opener and what pushed me to do something for LGBT students. It did not come from a fellow teacher, or a GLSEN representative, but from a member of our student body. I will call her "Emily." I have known Emily as a student for a while, but I never had the chance to sit down and listen to her story. I was astounded by what she had to say.

Thanks to Emily's courage to address the entire staff and administration of our school, she relayed to us with vivid detail what it means to be a gay student in high school. Emily shared the hurtful words and acts that often sprout up, making sure that we all understood that pretending away or ignoring the anti-gay jokes and comments heard in school was not only unacceptable but sending a negative message to all students. Emily made the point that our lack of intervention was telling students that it is not OK to be gay and that it is acceptable for a student to be hateful toward another student who is.

At that moment I knew I had to do more for students like Emily. I realized being a silent bystander was not only hurting people but in essence giving the green light to allow bullying and hatred to continue in my school. I thought a lot after hearing this 17-year-old girl pour her heart out to people in both educational and administrative roles. I couldn't help but ask myself if this really was the kind of world that I wanted my own son to grow up in.

What troubled me even more was that some of my colleagues, mentors like me, didn't applaud Emily for her courage in coming forward. They didn't stand for the ovation at the end of her story and, more strikingly, didn't even acknowledge her speaking. They instead focused on their smartphones.

I am a teacher, a husband, a father, a role model, and a mentor. I am also a coach. I know that my actions in each of these roles influence and affect hundreds of people. That is why I decided to take action and become an ally for students like Emily who are victims of bullying and harassment.

At our high school I am now encouraging all of my school's teams and coaches to take the Team Respect Challenge, a part of Changing the Game: The GLSEN Sports Project. As a coach, I understand that this pledge recognizes the differences that strengthen both our school and community. Our teams have now become the role models by letting other students know that they will not stand by and allow their peers to be bullied or harassed because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, or, more importantly, because a student is different.

I want to thank all my students and players who have begun to accept people's differences as part of what makes our school, community, and the world a better place. It takes a lot of courage to stand up for something that may be unpopular or not cool. But we will give a voice to our LGBT peers so that students like Emily won't have to come forward and ask for something that every student should be offered without hesitation: a safe and affirming school in which to grow and discover their potential.

The Christian Thing To Do

2011-12-28T00:10:00.004-05:00

Why Millennials Are Leaving the Church

by Derek Penwell for Provoketive Magazine:

The church where I serve made a decision this past year to support its ministers in refusing to sign marriage licenses until the rights of marriage could be conferred upon LGTBQ couples. The decision brought national attention–the overwhelming majority of which was positive.

One group in particular who responded to the decision surprised me. I never saw it coming. Some of the most gratifying reactions came from the adult children of some of the older members of our congregation, which is to say, from young people who had dropped out of church a long time ago. From across the U.S. I got word from these displaced folks. They emailed, called, messaged me through social media, and, the ones who still live close by, button-holed me on the street. Their comments shared one thing in common: “I’m so proud to tell my friends that the church that did this cool thing is the church I grew up in.”

Then, a couple of them proceeded to say something that was hard to hear: “I never thought I’d see a church do something so Christian.”

Embedded in that response, I think, is something worth hearing about the way an increasing number of young people experience the church. According to a recent article on Sojourners Blog, Millennials are headed for the exits–even among Evangelicals. Why? According to the article, which cites research by the Barna Group, “Research indicates younger people are not only departing from their elders on ‘social issues,’ such as same-sex marriage and abortion, but on wealth distribution and care for the environment, as well.”

One way to look at the difference Millennials represent on these kinds of social issues is that they’ve been seduced by an increasingly secular society. From the time they were young, this thinking goes, the culture has offered Millennials a vision of human life that is often at odds with the vision claimed by churches, one focused less and less on God. Politically, “liberals” have successfully appealed to youthful passion and idealism, rendering them dewey-eyed woolgatherers who know little, either about God or about how the world “really” works. As a consequence, Millennials come to their convictions about the purpose of human life and its just embodiment either as a result of theological ignorance or theological rebellion. The implication is that if they really new about Christianity, they wouldn’t believe such outrageous things about marriage and economic equality and environmental responsibility.

There are a couple of different responses that come to mind, if this is the way you frame the problem of the disappearance of young adults. On the one hand, you could just tell young people they’re wrong, and they need to get right. In many cases, this was the strategy employed by the Greatest Generation when Baby Boomers started questioning organized religion in the 1960s and 70s. For those who think this kind of “unvarnished truth” strategy is the way to go, it might be helpful to contemplate its success when used on an earlier generation–take a look at The Big Chill, for instance.

On the other hand, you might look at the exodus of Millennials as a failure of relevance. Churches got sidetracked, started focusing on stuff Millennials found pointless–stuff like bigger buildings, keeping up social appearances for the country club set, right wing politics, etc. If you interpret irrelevance to be the reason young people don’t want anything to do with the church, you have an easy way to address the issue … be more relevant. Find cool looking people to play cool sounding music. Say “dude” a lot. Make sure you know the difference between a cappuccino and a latte. Easy.

There are couple of different branches of über relevance available, too. If you’re sympathetic to the whole mega-church movement, sprinkle some Jesus over the top of ordinary stuff young people like, and voilà, instant relevance. Christian rock climbing. Christian aerobics. Christian skateboarding. Christian Screamo bands. The possibilities are endless.

If you find an emergent emphasis more to your liking, you’ll need another set of accoutrements. Tattoos are good. Piercings and ear gauges add a nice touch. Make sure to do some outings in a pub, with lots of locally micro-brewed fare. Relevance isn’t too far off.

And while I happen to think the emergent movement is much more theologically interesting for a whole host of reasons other than just those things that accessorize it, like the mega-church stuff, if it’s just a marketing strategy for obtaining relevance, I think it’s doomed to drive Millennials away. Millennials have been socialized to be amazingly aware of being marketed to, and they react poorly to such poses adopted solely for the purpose of “winning” their spiritual “business.”

I find all of these ways of reading the departure of young adults from the church dismissive, sharing a common misconception that what’s wrong, what’s driving Millennials away from the church, resides somewhere outside the church (either with Millennials themselves or with the culture that produced them)–or that if it is the church’s fault, the problems are merely cosmetic, easily remedied by superficial tweaks here or there.

There’s another way of reading the generational tea leaves, however, one that places responsibility on the church not for failing to be relevant, but for failing to be faithful to the Jesus found in the Gospels. Maybe the problem is that Millennials hear about Jesus and then take him at his word. Maybe they really believe that stuff Jesus says st the beginning of his ministry in Luke:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Then, they go to church, and instead of hearing about how to live with those who’ve been kicked to the curb, how to be Christ to a world caving in on itself, they hear about how the church’s job is to maneuver itself into positions of power, respectability, relevance, etc. They hear about committee meetings and deficit budgets and why it is imperative that we “keep Christ in Christmas.” They hear a baptized politics that exhorts them to be good moral “individuals” who seek a “personal relationship with Jesus,” but their relationship to the poor and the powerless, their relationship to an economic system designed to serve the interests of those already on top at the expense of those on the bottom, their relationship to a government that starts preemptive wars based on a conceit, their relationship to God’s creation–these are largely matters of indifference to the church. These young people go to church and hear why (if they happen to be at a conservative church) gay people are going to hell, or (if they happen to be at a more “progressive” church) why it might upset the ecclesiastical apple cart if we were to say that gay people are created in the image of God–exactly the way God wanted them.

All of which is to say: Maybe it’s not Millennials who’ve left the church, so much as that the church has left Jesus–and Millennials are the only ones brave enough to recognize that the emperor has been parading about without the benefit of clothes. If that’s the case, the church would do well to quit worrying so much about whether Millennials are leaving the church, and start investing time and effort and resources into looking more like Jesus. Then Millennials might finally see something for which it would be worth sticking around.

“I’m so proud to tell my friends that the church that did this cool thing is the church I grew up in” isn’t the same as, “How do I sign up to get back into church?” For any number of really important reasons, though, it’s a step in the right direction.

Spirituality and Gifts from God

2011-12-27T15:02:00.000-05:00

American Hate Groups Export Homophobia

2011-12-23T14:03:00.007-05:00

Venango County-based Hate Group, American Family Association of Pennsylvania, is just one of the many organizations misusing religion to promote bigotry, discrimination and violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Africa and around the world. SHAMEFUL!

Gay and Vilified in Uganda

By Frank Mugisha for The New York Times:

When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced this month that the United States would use diplomacy to encourage respect for gay rights around the world, my heart leapt. I knew her words — “gay people are born into, and belong to, every society in the world”— to be true, but in my country they are too often ignored.

The right to marry whom we love is far from our minds. Across Africa, the “gay rights” we are fighting for are more stark — the right to life itself. Here, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people suffer brutal attacks, yet cannot report them to the police for fear of additional violence, humiliation, rape or imprisonment at the hands of the authorities. We are expelled from school and denied health care because of our perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. If your boss finds out (or suspects) you are gay, you can be fired immediately.

People are outed in the media — or if they have gay friends, they are assumed to be “gay by association.” More benignly, if people are still single by the time they reach their early 20s, what Ugandans call a “marriage age,” others will begin to suspect that they are gay.

Traditional culture silences open discussion of sexuality. I am 29. I grew up in a very observant Catholic family in the suburbs of Kampala. From the time I was old enough to have romantic feelings, I knew I was gay, but we weren’t supposed to speak of such things.

When I was 14, I came out to my brother. Later, when others close to me asked if I was gay, I didn’t deny it. Though some relatives accepted me, I came out to the rest of my family slowly. Some simply chose to ignore the fact that I was gay, or begged me not to tell anyone, fearing I’d shame our family name. Others stopped speaking to me altogether.

Many Africans believe that homosexuality is an import from the West, and ironically they invoke religious beliefs and colonial-era laws that are foreign to our continent to persecute us.

The way I see it, homophobia — not homosexuality — is the toxic import. Thanks to the absurd ideas peddled by American fundamentalists, we are constantly forced to respond to the myth — debunked long ago by scientists — that homosexuality leads to pedophilia. For years, the Christian right in America has exported its doctrine to Africa, and, along with it, homophobia. In Uganda, American evangelical Christians even held workshops and met with key officials to preach their message of hate shortly before a bill to impose the death penalty for homosexual conduct was introduced in Uganda’s Parliament in 2009. Two years later, despite my denunciation of all forms of child exploitation, David Bahati, the legislator who introduced the bill, as well as Foreign Minister Henry Okello Oryem and other top government officials, still don’t seem to grasp that being gay doesn’t equate to being a pedophile.

In May, following criticism from the West and President Yoweri Museveni, the bill was shelved. But the current parliament has revived it and could send it to the floor for a vote at any time. Meanwhile, the bill’s influence has been felt in Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon, all of which have recently stepped up enforcement of anti-gay laws or moved to pass new legislation that would criminalize love between people of the same sex.

Not all Ugandans are homophobic. Some say there are more pressing issues to worry about than gay people and believe we should have the same rights as anyone else. But they are not in power and cannot control the majority who want to hurt us.

A veil of silence enforced by thuggish street violence and official criminalization is falling over much of Africa. Being a gay activist is a sacrifice. You have to carefully choose which neighborhood to live in. You cannot go shopping on your own, let alone go clubbing or to parties. With each public appearance you risk being attacked, beaten or arrested by the police.

I remember the moment when my friend David Kato, Uganda’s best-known gay activist, sat with me in the small unmarked office of our organization, Sexual Minorities Uganda. “One of us will probably die because of this work,” he said. We agreed that the other would then have to continue. In January, because of this work, David was bludgeoned to death at his home, with a hammer. Many people urged me to seek asylum, but I have chosen to remain and fulfill my promise to David — and to myself. My life is in danger, but the lives of those whose names are not known in international circles are even more vulnerable.

Still, I continue to hope. There are encouraging times when my fellow activists and I meet people face to face and they realize we aren’t the child-molesting monsters depicted in the media. They realize we are human, we are Ugandan, just like them.

Standing on David’s shoulders, we are no longer alone. Political leaders like Mrs. Clinton and religious leaders like Archbishop Desmond Tutu are willing to publicly state that being gay is just one of many expressions of what it means to be human. I call on other leaders — particularly my African-American brothers and sisters in politics, entertainment and religious communities — to come to Uganda, to stand with me and my fellow advocates, to help dispel harmful myths perpetuated by ignorance and hate. The lives of many are on the line.

Frank Mugisha, the 2011 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award laureate, is the executive director of Sexual Minorities Uganda.

Gays Apologize To Adulterous, Anti-Gay Lawmaker for Ruining Her Traditional Marriage

2011-12-22T15:37:00.003-05:00

from Truth Wins Out:

OH, funny! Amy Koch is the erstwhile Senate Majority leader in Minnesota who resigned after admitting an “inappropriate relationship” with a staffer, all while being traditionally married. She is also an anti-gay politician, having been a leader of the effort to write marriage discrimination into Minnesota’s constitution. Realizing that gay and lesbians, and our marriages, are the cause of most traditional marriage problems, some of the gays in Minnesota have decided to apologize to Koch for ruining her marriage. Here is their letter:

An Open Apology to Amy Koch

on Behalf of All Gay and Lesbian Minnesotans

Dear Ms. Koch,

On behalf of all gays and lesbians living in Minnesota, I would like to wholeheartedly apologize for our community’s successful efforts to threaten your traditional marriage. We are ashamed of ourselves for causing you to have what the media refers to as an “illicit affair” with your staffer, and we also extend our deepest apologies to him and to his wife. These recent events have made it quite clear that our gay and lesbian tactics have gone too far, affecting even the most respectful of our society.

We apologize that our selfish requests to marry those we love has cheapened and degraded traditional marriage so much that we caused you to stray from your own holy union for something more cheap and tawdry. And we are doubly remorseful in knowing that many will see this as a form of sexual harassment of a subordinate.

It is now clear to us that if we were not so self-focused and myopic, we would have been able to see that the time you wasted diligently writing legislation that would forever seal the definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman, could have been more usefully spent reshaping the legal definition of “adultery.”

Forgive us. As you know, we are not church-going people, so we are unable to fully appreciate that “gay marriage” is incompatible with Christian values, despite the fact that those values carry a biblical tradition of adultery such as yours. We applaud you for keeping that tradition going.

And finally, shame on us for thinking that marriage is a private affair, and that our marriage would have little impact on anyone’s family. We now see that marriage is more than that. It is an agreement with society. We should listen to the Minnesota Family Council when it tells us that marriage is about being public, which explains why marriages are public ceremonies. Never did we realize that it is exactly because of this societal agreement that the entire world is looking at you in shame and disappointment instead of minding its own business.

From the bottom of our hearts, we ask that you please accept our apology.

Thank you.
John Medeiros
Minneapolis MN

We at Truth Wins Out are also super sorry.

Home Depot Tells Anti-Gay Hate Group AFA What They Can Do With Their Petition

2011-12-22T05:16:00.003-05:00

from LGBTQ Nation:

Executives at The Home Depot gave a cool reception to representatives of the anti-gay hate group American Family Association at the company’s annual shareholder’s meeting in Atlanta this week.

The AFA recently called for a nationwide boycott against The Home Depot because it says the home improvement retailer continues to “promote the homosexual agenda.”

AFA Executive Vice-President Buddy Smith, and Director of Special Projects Randy Sharp, said they were rebuffed by Home Depot Chairman Frank Blake and other company executives for challenging their “corporate endorsement” of marriage equality and LGBT rights.

“We presented to the shareholders and to the chairman and the board of directors over 470,000 signature petitions asking them to remain neutral in the culture war, specifically when it addresses gay marriage and homosexual activist groups,” Sharp tells OneNewsNow.

The reception was cool, adds the AFA spokesman. Blake thanked AFA for the petitions but again, as in the past, reiterated the company’s support for “diversity,” which includes same-gender “marriage.”

Atlanta-based Home Depot promotes diversity-oriented organizations, including “Out and Equal Workplace Advocates,” an LGBT advocacy group that supports workplace diversity, marriage equality, and activities such as Transgender Remembrance Day. The Home Depot is also a supporter of the Human Rights Campaign.

“For several years, The Home Depot has given its financial and corporate support to open displays of homosexual activism on main streets in America’s towns,” said the AFA, in a statement. “The Home Depot has chosen to sponsor and participate in numerous gay pride parades and festivals. Most grievous is The Home Depot’s deliberately exposing small children to lascivious displays of sexual conduct by homosexuals and cross-dressers, which are a common occurrence at these events.”

The AFA has been designated as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Most recently, Bryan Fischer, the AFA’s director of analysis for government and policy, has referred to gays as Nazi’s, and also called gays the “#1 perpetrators of hate crimes in America.”

Family Values? - "Families Often Reject Gay Children"

2011-12-14T10:51:00.003-05:00

Those who preach "family values," such as the Venango County-based Hate Group, the ironically-named American Family Association of Pennsylvania, sadly don't really know much about family or values.

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Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Kids Struggle on the Streets

From ABC News:

Tiffany "LIFE" Cocco has been homeless for seven years, living on park benches, stoops and New York City's A train.

Her parents died of AIDS in the 1980s and so Cocco was raised by an aunt and uncle who disapproved of how she dressed and led her life -- as a lesbian.

"I was kicked out of the house at 15," said Cocco, a poet whose chosen middle name means "literary, intelligent, forward, engaged."

She dropped out of high school after being bullied, rebelled and was forced to keep her sexuality a secret. Cocco slipped into a depression so deep she nearly killed herself on an overdose of pain killers, NyQuil and Tylenol PM.

"I didn't trust anyone at all," said Cocco, who is now 24. "I tried to tell myself I was strong, but deep down inside I was falling apart."

A report released this week by the National Center on Family Homelessness, "America's Youngest Outcasts," finds one in 45 American children 18 and under -- 1.6 million -- live on the street, in homeless shelters, motels or with other families last year.

That number is up 33 percent from 2007. The numbers come from the Department of Education and do not include unaccompanied youth.

"But those youth are a very important issue," said John Kellogg, vice president of the national center.

About 20 to 40 percent of youth who leave home like Cocco to live on the streets identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT), according to National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

In one study, 26 percent of teens who came out to their parents were told they must leave home. Others said they were physically, sexually or emotionally abused. The task force added that LGBT youth also reported that they are threatened, belittled and abused at shelters, not only by other residents, but by staff, as well.

Resources for homeless LGBT youth are scarce and shelters are at capacity, especially in New York City where the Ali Forney Center (AFC), estimates 3,800 youth are homeless, about 1,600 of them LGBT.

But they have only 250 beds for youth like Cocco, and state and city funding has been drying up.

This month, AFC launched a Web series, "Homeless for the Holidays," that makes an appeal those who struggle on the street as winter approaches. Cocco is one of the featured youths.

"My lowest point of trying to make it on the streets was three weeks ago," she says in her story. "My girlfriend and I had to sleep on the roof of a building in the Bronx. It was raining cats and dogs. I let her sleep, and stayed awake to make sure we were safe."

But today, Cocco is on a new path because of the support she got from AFC and another smaller shelter, Green Chimneys.

With a permanent roof over her head and a place to shower and keep her belongings, she has been able to earn her GED and now works at a vegetarian store with her domestic partner.

Cocco also wants to go to college to study writing or media communications . "While we are in the shelters, my wife and I are saving up our money to get our own place," she said. "We want to do it on our own. No Section 8 and no welfare."

AFC is the largest serving LGBT youth in the nation. Only two other major shelters, one in Los Angeles and the The Ruth Ellis Center in Michigan serve this population.

"LGBT kids are eight times more like than straight youth to be homeless," said founder Carl Siciliano.

The most common cause of homelessness is family rejection.

"We just live in a very divided society," said Siciliano. "In New York State, 54 percent are willing to support marriage equality, but that still means 46 percent don't."

"Even in a progressive state there is an incredible unwillingness to accept gay people as members of society," he said. "And if politicians and religious leaders go around saying it's unacceptable, and people give credence to that, how do they accept their gay kids?"

The center, founded in 2002, was named for Ali Forney, a gay 22-year-old who was murdered by a shot in the head on Dec. 2, 1997. He had been homeless since the age of 13, thrown out by his mother, and beaten up in foster care and group homes for his feminine behavior.

"Back then, there were no shelters and kids were stranded on the streets," said Siciliano. "They survived on prostitution and were addicted to drugs and infected with HIV. But most disturbingly, every few months kids were murdered on the streets."

Cocco has had close calls with assaults. One night riding the subway, her backpack was grabbed with such force that she was thrown from her seat.

"New York City is the birthplace of the gay rights movement and has a powerful gay community here," said Siciliano. "It's just so wrong that these kids are suffering."

The center runs two drop-in centers and a mental health clinic that also provides free medical treatment, as well as two housing programs, one for emergencies and another transitional facility.

They rely federal, state and some city funding, which has been substantially cut back during the down economy, and on private donations.

One gift -- $100,000 from gay activists Frank Selvaggi and Bill Shea -- arrived on the 14th anniversary of Ali Forney's death. They hope to raise even more funds for more shelter beds.

The couple saw a recent news special on homeless youth.

"It was completely devastating to see how these bright young kids had to fend for themselves," said Selvaggi, 52.

After meeting Siciliano, they made their decision to divert donations from Selvaggi's high school and to donate to AFC in 15 minutes.

"There's an urgent need for these kids, especially in New York City, where they are sleeping in the subways, rooftops and selling themselves for sex," said Selvaggi, a CPA. 'It's heartbreaking."

"We didn't know the facts and horror stories," said Shea, 52. "It blew our minds and we've got to wake up the community."

The couple, who were married seven years ago, said they found it hard to comprehend the cruelty of parents who reject their children.

"Frank and I were very lucky in our lives when we came out," said Shea, who the director of creative services for Autism Speaks. "Our parents were great. I am part of his family and he mine."

Cocco said that with a more stable life, she has now reconnected with her own family. And being part of the "Homeless at the Holidays" project has given her new hope.

"All these interviews [with homeless youth] inspired me to make a difference," she said, "to let people know that the kid sitting next to you on the train is probably homeless. Don't be fooled just because they don't smell like pee and wear nice clothes."

The House of (Hateful) Cards is Falling

2011-12-14T01:06:00.004-05:00

As usual, the brilliant minds at the Venango County-based Hate Group, the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, are way behind the curve.

The High Cost of Political Gay-Bashing

by Michelangelo Signorile for the Huffington Post:

I'm not exactly ready to say we've reached the end of the line for political gay-bashing in presidential election campaigns. But Rick Perry's widely-ridiculed "Strong" ad, in which he attacks the idea of gays serving openly in the military, surely shows we're getting there.

The ad has over 650,000 "dislikes" on YouTube as opposed to just under 21,000 "likes" and has been parodied mercilessly - and often hilariously. George Takei pointed to Perry's wearing the same jacket as Heath Ledger in "Brokeback Mountain," and the Harvard Political Review notes the music was inspired by or lifted from gay composer Aaron Copland. The ad only seems to show how much gays are woven into the fabric of American culture even as Perry laughably seeks to marginalize them. It's a "fail" on all counts.

Whatever uptick Perry may get in the polls among the evangelical base, the question is: Was it worth the high cost of political gay-bashing in 2011? The answer is clearly no. Rifts erupted in his campaign over the ad - with Perry's own top pollster calling the ad "nuts" - causing a distraction in the media. Perry got heckled by activists at an event in Iowa and there's likely to be more. The usually highly accommodating gay Republican group, GOProud, whirled itself into a tornado of rage, demanding that Perry's top pollster, Tony Fabrizio - the one who called the ad "nuts" - step down, claiming he's a gay sell out. This was somewhat ludicrous coming from a group that only a few weeks ago said it would support Michele Bachmann if she won the nomination. But that only underscored the anger that the ad inspired.

When conservative activist Andrew Breitbart quit the GOProud board in response to the supposed outing (yes, more irony, watching Breitbart expressing concern about revelations that might harm political figures' careers), it only brought more attention to the issue: Even FoxNews.com named Fabrizio.

It might now dawn on some evangelical voters to ask: If Rick Perry truly believes open gays shouldn't serve in the military why does he appear to believe they can serve so close to him in his own campaign? And it's not like he's the only choice for the hard-core antigay crowd, as true believers Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are vying for their votes as well. It's true that evangelicals have been stereotyped as being driven by one issue, and, like everyone else, the economy appears to be a driving factor in their election decisions too. No candidate is going to get by on "family values" alone.

But it's also true that the gay issue is no longer as potent for GOP politicians because more and more GOP moderates and independents aren't willing to go along with the antigay line. A few years ago the same kind of political gay-bashing Perry has engaged in worked like a charm for the GOP. When George W. Bush, ramping up for the 2004 election, pushed a federal marriage amendment - claiming we needed to "protect" marriage - it brought in the religious right crowd while obviously not disgusting moderates in the party enough to scare them off.

But now, Ken Mehlman, the man who orchestrated that strategy as both chair of the Republican National Committee and head of Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, is out of the closet and working in the party to gain support for marriage equality.

The majority of Americans opposed marriage equality in 2004 and even in 2008, unlike today when in most polls a slim majority favors it. And on "don't ask, don't' tell," - one of the issues that Perry decided to stake his campaign on - almost 80% favored repeal last year when Congress voted on it.

Back in October, weeks before the "Strong" ad, I wrote an essay for The Advocate in which I noted how the decades-long antigay strategy in the GOP could finally come back to haunt the party this year. In 2011 all the candidates in fact steered clear of LGBT issues until they were either called on it (Santorum was actually questioned by Chris Mathews on "Hardball" earlier in the summer about why he wasn't bringing up gay marriage) or got desperate, as in the case of Bachmann and now Perry.

Once they see that whatever help it gets them in the polls isn't worth the high cost of gay-bashing today, GOP politicians and their strategists may drop this ugly strategy once and for all.

The Big Business of Bigotry & Hate

2011-12-12T10:41:00.006-05:00

The anti-gay industrial complex, including Venango County-based Hate Group, the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, is a big, multi-million dollar, business.

This article about one of the nefarious organizations that operates in this shadowy world that uses religion as its cover ought to spur a close examination of who supports and who benefits from such efforts in Venango County.

National Organization for Marriage
Financial Records Raise Questions

from The Washington Independent:

In 2010, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), a tax-exempt nonprofit trying to thwart the legalization of same-sex marriage throughout the U.S., reported the highest individual donations it has received since its inception in 2007, according to NOM’s most recent income disclosures to the Internal Revenue Service, recently obtained by The American Independent. Per NOM’s numbers, just two individuals contributed more than $6 million to the organization’s political arm – accounting for about two-thirds of NOM’s 2010 revenue, while single donations below $5,000 covered only 8 percent of reported revenue.

This revelation is not extraordinary for NOM, whose existence from the very beginning has been dependent upon large contributions from a small pool of big-money, mostly anonymous donors. But what’s different about this past funding cycle is how much narrower the margin is between $100 contributions and $1 million contributions. And based on NOM’s annual financial reporting to the IRS over the past four years, it appears as though that gap has narrowed over time.

In fiscal year 2009, NOM’s contributions above $5,000 made up about 78 percent of all the contributions received, according to its 2009 Form 990 (PDF). One year later, contributions above $5,000 made up roughly 92 percent of NOM’s contributions, which in turn represented the majority of NOM’s total revenue for that year. The very nature of NOM’s funding structure has made critics chide its self-description as a “grassroots organization.”

Since the very beginning, NOM has fought tooth and nail to avoid disclosing the names of donors specifically and its financial records generally. The group is embroiled in various legal battles in different states (recently in Minnesota) to avoid disclosure of its political campaign records.

A closer look into the organization’s federally mandated financial disclosures (embedded below) reveal other discrepancies. TAI contacted NOM for comments and clarifications – as we have on many occasions in the past – but the organization declined to respond.

Vague reporting

On July 22, former NOM board chair Maggie Gallagher sent TAI an email in response to a question for a story about NOM’s fundraising. “Nom raised and spent $13 million last year,” Gallagher wrote, referring to 2010. She also told TAI that NOM’s projected revenues for 2011 is close to $20 million. “Our fundraising target evolve [sic] as our needs evolve, which is partly a result of our goals, and partly what we need to respond to pro-SSM [same-sex marriage] goals.”

But according to what NOM reported to the IRS for 2010, the organization claims it raised about $9.6 million and spent about $10.7 million.

TAI questioned Gallagher, via email, about the discrepancy between her quote and what is listed in NOM’s 990, but Gallagher declined to respond.

NOM reported spending large chunks of its budget on advertising and promotion ($3 million); employees’ wages, benefits, and taxes ($1.2 million); and on grants and assistance to other organizations ($600,000).

But the largest portion – $4 million, or 38 percent of NOM’s expenditures in fiscal year 2010 – was classified on its federal tax form as “other.”

NOM’s treasurer, Neil Corkery, described its general expenses on the form this way: “The Organization developed and distributed via radio, television, mail, email, telephone, and the world-wide web, a series of advertising and outreach promoting traditional marriage.”

What NOM reported spending on “legal” ($313,746) and “political expenditures” ($206,509) are surprisingly small, given that in 2010 the organization participated in several lawsuits and state-based political campaigns. The Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) shows that in 2010, NOM was involved in at least six different federal lawsuits. NOM has also set up political action committees in various states throughout the country. Last month TAI reported that NOM was one of the top political spenders in Iowa’s 2010 election cycle, making more than $721,000 in independent expenditures.

What NOM did report was contributing to the political campaigns of D.C. Council candidates Delano Hunter ($450) and Anthony Motley ($950); D.C. mayoral candidate Leo Alexander ($1,950); New Hampshire gubernatorial candidate John Stephen ($1,000); and a political action committee for Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli ($2,179). (Only Cuccinelli was successful.) Additionally, the organization reported spending the majority of its political expenditures — $200,000 — on its California-based political action committee.

NOM reported giving grants – ranging from $10,000 to $200,000 – to 11 organizations dedicated to preventing the legalization for same-sex marriage. Two of the donations were for organizations affiliated with NOM: Stand for Marriage DC, a PAC that shares NOM’s mailing address and was created to reverse the legalization of gay marriage in the nation’s capital, and a $200,000 grant to its California PAC (so either NOM gave two separate $200,000 payments to the PAC, or it recorded it twice).

Other grant beneficiaries: American Principles Project, Proposition 8 Legal Defense, Family Research Council Action, Stand for Marriage Maine, Education for All, Catholic Vote Action, Family Policy West Virginia, Indiana Family Action, and Minnesota Family Action.

About 96 percent of NOM’s total revenue came from donations. Of the remaining $368,513, $139 reportedly came from investment income; the rest was attributed to “other revenue.”

In 2010 the organization had a 17-member staff and no volunteers, and yet only four are listed as being paid: president Brian Brown ($212,500), then-board chair Gallagher ($152,500), treasurer Corkery ($25,000), and Jennifer Morse ($116,667). Morse is listed on the form as simply “employee,” but she is actually the founder and president of the Ruth Institute, which is a project of NOM’s 501(c)3, the NOM Education Fund – though Morse’s name does not appear on the Form 990 for this fund. Additionally, the Ruth Institute is a separate entity with its own 501(c)3 status. In the Ruth Institute’s 2009 Form 990, Morse was listed as nonsalaried, but TAI has not seen Ruth’s disclosures for 2010.

Who funds NOM and its activities?

Under IRS rules regarding nonprofit entities with 501(c)3 and (c)4 status, all donations above $5,000 must be disclosed. Of the 22 contributions NOM’s (c)4 was obligated to list, all but five were greater than $5,000.

The top five contributions to the National Organization for Marriage, Inc.:

$3,416,000
$2,940,000
$750,000
$600,000
$400,000

NOM regularly sends out fundraising emails and mailers – usually addressed “Dear Marriage Supporter” – asking for donations of $5, $10, $100, maybe $1,000. Occasionally, NOM will offer to match donations, thanks to a generous million-dollar donor. The Donate! page on NOM’s website includes the following disclaimer:

Contributions or gifts to the National Organization for Marriage, a 501(c)(4) organization with QNC status [this is a typo for CNC status – “currently not collective"], are not tax-deductible. The National Organization for Marriage does not accept contributions from business corporations, labor unions, foreign nationals, or federal contractors; however, it may accept contributions from federally registered political action committees. Donations may be used for political purposes such as supporting or opposing candidates. No funds will be earmarked or reserved for any political purpose.

Back in July, Gallagher told TAI that NOM has 50,000 donors. But many of NOM’s critics believe the organization is funded by a few wealthy donors.

“The National Organization for Marriage is primarily a shell group that exists to funnel funding from secret anti-gay donors,” said Evan Wolfson, the founder and president of Freedom to Marry, a national campaign started in 2003 whose mission is to legalize marriage for gay and lesbian couples nationwide. “[NOM] undermines and tries to overturn campaign finance and disclosure laws in states all over the country. They have proven themselves to be untrustworthy.”

In September 2010, The Washington Independent, TAI’s predecessor, reported that Catholic charity group the Knights of Columbus donated $1.4 million to NOM in 2009, an amount that did not appear of NOM’s Form 990.

Concerns about NOM’s secretive nature led to the launch of Nom Exposed, a project developed by the D.C.-based Human Rights Campaign and the California-based progressive alliance called the Courage Campaign.

Courage Campaign founder and President Rick Jacobs told TAI that the Courage Campaign and HRC trailed NOM on its summer 2010 “One Man, One Woman” bus tour across the eastern United States to protest same-sex marriage, and he said that many times the counter-protesters outnumbered NOM’s protesters.

“Most of the time they actually just had one man and one woman show up,” Jacobs said.

Perhaps the man who trusts NOM the least is Fred Karger – least known for his long-shot GOP presidential campaign as the first openly gay candidate, but best known for exposing the Mormon Church’s extensive financial involvement in California’s Proposition 8 campaign that overturned the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2008.

After obtaining classified Mormon documents from an anonymous source, Karger has maintained his belief that the National Organization for Marriage was set up by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) as a front group to funnel money for political campaigns against the legalization of same-sex marriage. Ever since, Karger has been tailing NOM’s every move – ready to file a complaint each time it funds a political campaign and fails to register or disclose its donors.

This year Karger started hounding NOM for its 990s a month before they were due. He told TAI that in late October he sent one of his campaign staffers to NOM’s D.C. headquarters on K Street, who came back empty-handed. He then mailed an accusatory letter to recently named NOM chairman John Eastman, which soured the staffer’s ability to collect the forms on a subsequent visit to NOM’s office on Nov. 16.

(TAI first visited NOM’s D.C. office looking for its 2010 990s in early November and was told by executive assistant Paul Bothwell that the forms were due to the IRS on Nov. 15 and would be published on NOM’s website. On Dec. 2, TAI returned to NOM’s office, and Bothwell promptly printed out the records. The forms indicate that NOM will not be making the records available online.)

Karger, who launched an ethics investigation against NOM in California and in Maine and closely tracks the group’s legal cases, told TAI that based on NOM’s legal activities alone, he suspects the organization’s budget is higher than what they are reporting.

Though Karger still believes that the Mormon Church is in league with NOM, Jacobs said he thinks it’s unlikely, due to all the attention and scrutiny the Mormon church faced after Proposition 8.

“I would be very surprised if the Mormon Church gives anymore,” Jacobs told TAI. “I think they’re done.”

(Earlier this year TAI was told by a documentary filmmaker covering Maine’s gay-marriage battle in 2009 – which NOM was involved in – that Mormon money had been promised but not delivered to the campaign trying to ban same-sex marriage.)

Wolfson said he believes the “Roman Catholic hierarchy” is NOM’s primary funding source.

TAI contacted the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the LDS church – neither organization responded to requests for comment.

Over the years, NOM has received extensive funding from evangelical Christian organizations such as Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, and NOM Exposed has linked NOM to the anti-gay-marriage grant-making groups the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the Arlington Group.

NOM’s charitable arm

In 2010, the NOM Education Fund reported raising about $1.3 million and spending $1.4 million. Eight anonymous contributions were reported – ranging from $30,000 to $500,000 – for a total of about $971,000 – 75 percent of the NOM Education Fund’s total reported contributions that year.

The group reported spending its money primarily on grants to anti-same-sex-marriage organizations ($345,733), including Stand for Marriage DC, the Proposition 8 Legal Defense Fund, and the Iowa Family Policy Center; fundraising ($153,693); and “other expenses” ($994,793).

Groups with 501(c)3 status are, under IRS rules, prohibited from explicitly endorsing candidates for public office. Last year, The Washington Independent reported that the Ruth Institute’s President Jennifer Morse was publicly endorsing unsuccessful California Republican U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina, in potential violation of IRS rules.

No specific mention is made of the Ruth Institute in the NOM Education Fund’s disclosure to the IRS; though, as TAI noted above, NOM’s 501 (c) 4 reported Morse’s salary as an organizational expense.

The future of NOM

Earlier this year, in supporter emails, on its blog, and in advertisements, NOM appeared to be energized by a last-minute derailment of a bill to legalize same-sex marriage in Maryland. However, the passage of marriage equality in New York, the overturning of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, NOM President Brian Brown being laughed at for his arguments against gay marriage on a Fox show, and the revelation that NOM doctored and misrepresented images to inflate opposition to same-sex marriage in New Hampshire have resulted in more urgent messages from the NOM camp.

A fundraising email from Brown from early November begins:

Dear Marriage Supporter, I’m beginning to worry.

We have won victory after victory for marriage. California. Maine. Maryland. Rhode Island. Gay marriage is inevitable? Apparently, voters across America missed that memo. But NOM is fighting on so many fronts right now our resources are being spread thin. [Emphasis NOM's.]

Then Brown accuses the “same-sex marriage lobbyists” of being supported by “massive contributions from the usual Hollywood celebrities, huge foundations and wealthy billionaires. What do we have? Millions of Americans just like you, friend.” [Emphasis NOM's.]

It’s essentially the same argument that the “same-sex marriage lobbyists” use against NOM. HRC, the country’s largest LGBT-rights lobby group, in fiscal year 2009 (PDF) reported $21.4 million in contributions and grants to its political arm. The organization reported 256 contributions above $5,000 – most of them below $20,000.

“There certainly are people opposed to the freedom to marry [for gay and lesbian couples], but they are not the people that support NOM.” Wolfson said. “NOM is supported by a small group of secret donors; we’ve seen no evidence o the contrary. And they are a threat. Not so much NOM, but the anti-gay founders behind NOM. Money still is power.”

Karger told TAI he wants the federal government to investigate NOM’s finances and political activities. Though the political activist himself could be subject to scrutiny, depending on who occupies the White House in 2012. This summer, GOP presidential candidates Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum signed NOM’s “Marriage Pledge,” which calls for the creation of a presidential commission to “investigate harassment of traditional marriage supporters.”

“I’ve called for an investigation of NOM from day one,” Karger said. “And I’ll continue – until I’m gone – to call for an investigation. We need the federal government to look into their activities.”

Out In The Silence Youth Activism Award Winners

2011-12-10T22:33:00.009-05:00

Highlighting and honoring courageous young people who are speaking out to end anti-LGBT bullying, bigotry and discrimination in their schools and communities, the winners of the First Annual Out In The Silence Award for Youth Activism for 2011 are:

Grand Prize ($1,500): Farrington High School Gay-Straight Alliance, Honolulu
Impact Award ($750): Oregon Student Equal Rights Alliance, statewide
New Group Award ($500): Equality Club-Arapahoe Community College, Littleton, Co

FROM FILM TO CAMPAIGN TO NATIONAL AWARD
by Joe Wilson & Dean Hamer, Out In The Silence Campaign

Two years ago, as stories about the alarming rates of anti-gay bullying and youth suicide were beginning to receive national attention, we started traveling to small towns and rural communities across the country with Out In The Silence, our PBS documentary about the brutal bullying of a gay teen and his family's courageous call for accountability in Venango County, to raise awareness about the problems and help people develop solutions.

While the campaign revealed that tremendous challenges remain for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in cities small and large, it also introduced us to the vibrant new, youth-led equality movement that was emerging - with little or no recognition or support from established advocacy groups - to push for change at the community level in powerful and exciting new ways.

Inspired by these bold efforts, we launched a new national Award for Youth Activism to encourage, highlight and honor creative and courageous young people and their work to call attention to bullying and harassment and promote safe schools and communities for all.

The award competition was announced this past June in partnership with GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network. In no time, more than 100 student, youth and ally groups, coast-to-coast and beyond, registered to participate by committing to hold free public events throughout the month of October, which marks LGBT History Month, Ally Week and National Coming Out Day. The events included a wide range of activities - from film screenings, town hall forums and information fairs to art exhibitions, spoken word and original musical performances.

The program exceeded all expectations, and today, International Human Rights Day 2011, we're excited and honored to announce the winners of the first annual:

Out In The Silence Award for Youth Activism

The $1,500 GRAND PRIZE AWARD goes to the Farrington High School Gay-Straight Alliance of Honolulu, HI for "Going Loud," an October 21st student-led program, attended by more than 200 people, that included a day-long art showcase, live music, spoken word performances, ethnic food fair, film screening and discussion, launch of a "Safe Space Program" outreach campaign, and featured presentations by Farrington High School students and Principal Al Carganilla, Hawai'i Supreme Court Justice Sabrina McKenna, Family Court Judge Paul Murakami, and popular Hawaiian comedian Augie T.

Not only did "Going Loud" organizers manage to bring together an incredible array of community sponsors and supporters to help amplify the event's message during two months of online and community outreach, promotion, and education, they re-invigorated a dormant peer-to-peer support group at the high school and succeeded in involving local middle school students, the Boys and Girls Club of Hawai'i, and members of a large conservative Evangelical church. Perhaps most importantly, they used the film, and their extraordinary voices and creativity, to demonstrate that homophobic and transphobic bullying, harassment and discrimination are experienced by, and must be addressed across, all ethnic, racial, class, gender, geographic, and religious groups. Youth in the Rainbow Nation are on the move!

The $750 Impact Award goes to the Oregon Student Equal Rights Alliance, which coordinated film screening, discussion and speak-out events throughout October on campuses all across the state - including Southern Oregon University Ashland (pictured), University of Oregon Eugene, Eastern Oregon University La Grande, Lane Community College Eugene, Western Oregon University Monmouth, and Portland State University - "to call attention to the day-to-day lives of LGBTQ students, educate the public about issues faced by LGBTQ youth, and call people to take action on campus and in communities for inclusion, equality, and access to higher education for LGBTQ students in Oregon."

The events reached hundreds of college and high school students, community and campus leaders, and administrators, parents, and allies. And the best part is, these events were just the beginning. OSERA is committed to using momentum generated by the events to continue promoting justice for the LGBTQ community, changing diversity and tolerance trainings to help prevent gender discrimination, and strengthening state anti-bullying legislation.

The $500 New Group Award goes to the Equality Club at Arapahoe Community College in Littleton, CO, for a National Coming Out Day event that brought more than 250 people together to see and hear, like never before on this conservative small town campus, the faces, voices and concerns of LGBT students and their allies. Spearheaded by a young military veteran and his organizing team, the events included film screenings and powerful coming out stories and discussions, a panel about discrimination and its effects by former armed services members, the formation of a new campus "Safe Zone" program, and a celebratory public balloon release to help people let go of their fears and announce a new era of visibility and equality for all in the region.

To these three extraordinary groups,
CONGRATULATIONS and THANK YOU for your hopeful activism!

In addition to the award winners, several other groups that participated in the program and did amazing work on their campuses and in their communities deserve an Honorable Mention:

Naugatuck Valley Community College Gay-Straight Alliance - Waterbury, CT
Queer Action at Virginia Commonwealth University - Richmond, VA
Hammond High School Gay Straight Alliance - Columbia, MD
Community College of Baltimore County Rainbow Club & Honors Program - Essex, MD
Ringling College of Art & Design Gay Straight Alliance - Sarasota, FL
West Chester University's LGBTQA Services - West Chester, PA
St. Xavier University Alliance - Chicago, IL
Broward College Gay Straight Alliance - Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Aragon High School Gay Straight Alliance - San Mateo, CA
Blackburn College Common Ground - Carlinville, IL

Thank you all and stay tuned for announcements about how to support and participate in the 2012 Out In The Silence Award for Youth Activism.

The New Evangelicals

2011-12-09T18:23:00.005-05:00

Here's to the day that the "new evangelicalism" begins to emerge in Venango County, home base for the viciously anti-gay hate group, the American Family Association of Pennsylvania.

by Marcia Pally for the New York Times:

Though public support for both major political parties is very low, one group of voters is usually exempted from this malaise: evangelicals. It’s assumed that at least these “values voters” are getting what they want. But we should look more carefully.

A sizable portion of evangelicals have left the right, so to speak, in what the theologian Scot McKnight called “the biggest change in the evangelical movement,” nothing less than the emergence of “a new kind of Christian social conscience.” These new evangelicals focus on economic justice, environmental protection and immigration reform — not exactly Republican strong points. The religious right remains a potent political force, but where once there was the appearance of an evangelical movement that sang out in one voice, there is now a robust polyphony.

In numbers, that means Christians who don’t think of themselves as part of the religious right come to roughly 24 percent of the population, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Subtract the Catholic left and you’ve got some 19 percent of the population distributed among the ‘60s evangelical left; younger, emergent progressive churches; and red-letter Christians, who focus on Jesus’ words in scripture (printed in red) and who lean towards progressive activism. Others have quietly broadened the activism associated with the religious right.

These “new evangelicals” are quick to say (correctly) that all this is not new but consistent with tradition. Evangelical emphasis on individual moral responsibility made them, from the colonial era to World War I, politically anti-authoritarian and economically populist — anti-banker and anti-landlord. Before the Civil War, they created many of the associations that helped build the country and, in the North, were crucially important to the abolitionist movement. After the war, they fought for labor against robber-baron capitalism and supported William Jennings Bryan three times for president on a pro-worker, pro-farmer platform. Even the Fundamentals pamphlets, circulated between 1910 and 1915 as a conservative call to evangelicals, included a section on the benefits of socialism.

In the 20th century, evangelicals became associated with the right, especially after World War II. So why another shift in the 21st? One reason is generational, with idealistic youth rejecting the politics of their parents. Another is that views about sex, the environment and global connectedness have shifted nationwide, including among evangelicals. In their self-critique, “Unchristian,” evangelicals David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons title their chapters: Hypocritical, Sheltered, Too Political, Judgmental and Antihomosexual. Ouch.

In a group that takes ethics seriously, still another reason for the change is new thinking about what matters most. The cavalier militarism and the justification of torture during the Bush years, along with the strident in-group-ism of the last four decades, prodded many evangelicals to re-examine themselves and their actions. George W. Bush may have fractured the Christian coalition that elected him.

Richard Cizik, president of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, describes the movement as a “slow earthquake.” A developing grassroots movement won’t have one overarching policy position, but the new evangelical concerns collect in a few areas. One is an embrace of church-state separation. “Let it be known unequivocally,” declared the 2008 Evangelical Manifesto, signed by over 70 evangelical leaders, “we are firmly opposed to the imposition of theocracy on our pluralistic society.”

Another is participation in civil society through public education, lobbying and coalition-building. New evangelicals have been working through their churches on substance abuse, care for the homeless and the elderly, prison ministries, and affordable housing, and they have been developing projects overseas on environmental protection, disease reduction and education.

These programs, which have some overlap with those run by the religious right, are staffed largely by volunteers, who raise much of the money to fund them as well. But forget bake sales. These are sophisticated operations, expertly run NGOs really, based on nuanced policies and listening to others. The point here is not only alms-giving but the restructuring of opportunity through education, health care and job training.

A third concern is critique of government. Since all governments are human and therefore corruptible, new evangelicals understand the vigilance needed to keep politics honest. This is the church’s “prophetic role” — not to become the government but to “speak truth to power.” Recently, the National Association of Evangelicals called on its members — over 40,000 churches — to protest Republican cuts in programs for the needy. “Approximately one percent of the federal budget is devoted to helping the poorest people around the world,” one call for advocacy in the organization’s legislative action center began.

“In 2011, our international assistance budget was cut by 11 percent. For 2012, the House of Representatives has recommended a further 30 percent reduction. While saving money and reducing the federal deficit is very important, this is the wrong place to cut. We did not get into the fiscal mess we are in by spending too much on the world’s poor.”

Evangelical concern about Republican policies has been evident for some time. In 2006, over a quarter of white evangelicals (27 percent) voted Democratic in the midterm elections — and nearly 40 percent of evangelicals who attend church less than once a week. In 2008, there were evangelical PACs working for Obama, and once again over a quarter of white evangelicals voted Democratic (34 percent of less frequent church-attenders). Obama earned nearly a third of the votes of white evangelicals under 30 years old, regardless of church attendance.

This growing political independence poses a conundrum. On the one hand, opposition to abortion along with their traditional preference for self-reliance has made evangelicals a Republican bloc. But if the new evangelicals are less suspicious of Mormonism, they might be less put off than the religious right if Romney heads the Republican ticket. At the same time, their support for economic justice and environmental protection strains their allegiance to the Republican party.

When Rudolph Giuliani was still a contender for the Republican nomination in 2008, Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, pointed out that if abortion were taken “off the table, other issues would get oxygen, issues where evangelicals are not nearly as certain that Republicans offer the best answer.”

In the meanwhile, our 19 percent — that’s a lot of votes — don’t have a candidate they love: someone who will help the poor, protect the planet, and dramatically reduce the need for abortion, someone who will help both secular and faith-based organizations to do this work. That’s a political void, and those are votes that are up for grabs.

The impact of new evangelicals, however, goes beyond voting. The real work of politics happens not during elections but between them when policies are developed and when groups lobby their representatives and run their own programs that change the way we live. Even if most new evangelicals remain Republican, were they to move the party toward economic justice, immigration reform and environmental protection, that would be a very large achievement.

Marcia Pally’s most recent book is “The New Evangelicals: Expanding the Vision of the Common Good.”

Gays, Guns & God

2011-12-09T12:12:00.003-05:00

Unbeknownst to the Venango County-based Hate Group, the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, "conservative orthodoxy is badly out of step with emerging majority support for full citizenship rights of gays."

by Timothy Egan for the Opinionator:

How do you praise the sanctity of traditional heterosexual marriage when the best-known nuptials of the year, between a Kardashian and a basketball player, lasted all of 72 days? Or, for that matter, when a possible Republican nominee for president, Newt Gingrich, cares so much about marriage that he’s tried it three times?

You don’t. The above mockeries of marriage are just the latest reasons one of the most potent wedge issues of American politics — the banner of gays, guns and God — will have little impact next year.

This trio is usually trotted out in big swaths of the West, in rural or swing districts and in Southern states at the cusp of the Bible Belt. The proverbial three G’s was the explanation in Thomas Frank’s entertaining book “What’s the Matter With Kansas” for why poor, powerless whites would vote for a party that promises nothing but tax cuts for the rich.

It’s misleading to think people will vote against their economic interests simply because a candidate doesn’t mouth the same pieties as they do. But the cultural cudgel works to a point. I’ve certainly seen the three G’s launched late in a campaign, to great effect. Jim Inhofe won a Senate seat in Oklahoma in 1994 using the three G’s as an overt slogan.

At the same time, I’ve watched smart politicians, like Montana’s two-term Democratic governor, Brian Schweitzer, blunt the attack by showing off their guns and waving away the God and gay questions as none-of-your-business intrusions.

But this year I think we’ve reached a tipping point on these heartless perennials. When George W. Bush won re-election in 2004, political sophisticates were stunned by a national exit poll in which 22 percent of voters picked “moral issues” from a list of things that mattered most — more than any other concern. This was heralded as the high-water triumph for evangelicals.

Later analysis showed that the phrase “moral issues” was being used rather broadly by voters, from concern about character to worry over poverty. It was a catch-all. Still, the ranking of moral issues as the top reason to pick a president came as a surprise.

Now look at this week’s New York Times/CBS News Poll of likely Republican caucus-goers in Iowa, about as conservative a cohort of voters as anywhere in the country. Iowa, for Republicans, is where gays, guns and God will grow in political fields long after corn is no longer planted for ethanol subsidies.

Topping the list of voter concerns was the economy and jobs — picked by 40 percent of respondents, followed by the budget deficit at 23 percent. Social issues came in a distant third, with 9 percent. And the candidate who polled highest as the one who “most represents the values you try to live by,” Michele Bachmann, has nothing to show for that rating in the overall race, where she is in fifth place.

But the decline of the three G’s hasn’t stopped a few of the dead-enders in the Republican field from raising the flag. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, last seen trying to find a verb to follow “oops,” is out this week with a very specific culture-war ad in Iowa, vowing to end “Obama’s war on religion,” whatever that is.

“I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Christian,” says Perry, in a folksy drawl. “But you don’t need to be in a pew every Sunday to know that there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military, but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.” The surprise here is that he actually completed several sentences, though it may have required a number of takes.

Perry and Rick Santorum, another badly wounded culture warrior, blasted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this week for saying that the United States would assist human rights groups fighting for tolerance in countries where people have been imprisoned, and even killed, for their sexual orientation.

“This administration’s war on traditional values must stop,” said Perry, siding, apparently, with mullahs living in caves.

This is Perry’s last gasp; in desperation, he shows how this particular balloon has run out of hot air. Poll after poll has found that Americans now overwhelmingly favor letting gays serve openly in the military — a sentiment backed even by a sizable majority of Republicans.

The gay marriage issue is moving in the same direction. Earlier this year, Gallup reported that, for the first time in its tracking of the issue, a majority of Americans believe same-sex marriage should be legal. In 1996, only 27 percent felt that way.

Which brings us to guns. President Obama has done nothing to curb gun use. If anything, he’s expanded gun rights. There are probably a dozen Democrats in Congress from the West who know more about guns than Mitt Romney or Professor Newt Gingrich. That dog, as they say, will not hunt — not this year.

The irony is that two of the G’s could actually hurt Republicans in 2012. Conservative orthodoxy is badly out of step with emerging majority support for full citizenship rights of gays. And with religion, some Republicans have already made an issue of Romney’s Mormonism, and Gingrich’s switch to Roman Catholicism. In Gingrich’s case, questions have been raised about how a multiple-married man could win the favor of high-ranking Catholic clerics who usually look askance at people who ditch their wives.

Do we dare expect these two fine men to be the ones, at long last, to bring an end to the gays, guns and God wedge issue, even if it’s by accident?

Another Teen Bullied To Death; Another Reason for a New Christianity

2011-12-08T10:16:00.003-05:00

By John Shore in Christian Issues:

Another kid has been bullied into killing himself. His name is Jacob Rogers. He went to Cheatham County Central High School, in Ashland City, TN. Apparently he’d been being pretty severely bullied for four years. It got so bad that around Thanksgiving he quit going to school.

A friend of Jacob’s told reporters, “He started coming home his senior year, saying ‘I don’t want to go back. Everyone is so mean. They call me a faggot, they call me gay, a queer.’”

Yesterday Jacob took his own life.

You can read more via MSNBC. (An important detail not mentioned in that MSNBC story comes from from KingstonSprings.org: “Dr. Tim Webb, Director of Cheatham County Schools [said] that his almost all-new staff at the high school only knew of one incident of bullying and confronted the accused over the bullying. However, Dr. Webb also noted that because staff were new to the school, they were perhaps not aware of the extent of bullying that Jacob had endured in years past.”)

I’ve done a fair amount of writing on these sorts of tragedies (see this past Saturday’s Tell Me, Christian, That You Hear this Boy, Christians and the Blood of Jamey Rodemeyer, and My Gay Christian Cousin Committed Suicide, to name just three). And so I have no doubt that some will claim that the primary reason Jacob killed himself is not because he was bullied. They’ll say that we don’t know the whole story. They’ll point to the fact that Jacob lived with his grandmother, that his family is poor (not, God knows, that poverty is any sin)—that it’s safe to assume this kid had problems beyond being bullied.

And I will respond with what I always say: that certainly there are always myriad causes behind the suicide of any person. But that that does not alter the fact that the root cause of tragedies like the Jacob Rogers story is that strain of Christianity which continues to insist that homosexuality is an evil affront to God.

If Christians would actually read the Bible, instead of daring to insist that three or four isolated phrases within it justifies a theology that has no more to do with Christ than Fred Phelps has to do with Welcome Wagon, we would arrive at a popular Christianity that is not, as so much of our Christianity is today, a pure affront to anyone with half a conscience.

And that Christianity would dissipate the motivation of those kids who bully in the name and spirit of condemning homosexuality. Quickly and inevitably, that particularly noxious train would come to a halt. Because there wouldn’t be left any enduring reason for anyone to ever condemn gay people at all.

Then gay people would just be … people. You know: that thing God made in his own image.

Homophobic? Re-Read Your Bible

2011-12-08T00:49:00.003-05:00

An Op-Ed Classic by Peter J. Gomes, an American Baptist minister and professor of Christian morals at Harvard who passed away in March 2011. The article was published in the New York Times on August 17, 1992.

Homophobic? Re-Read Your Bible

Opposition to gays' civil rights has become one of the most visible symbols of American civic conflict this year, and religion has become the weapon of choice. The army of the discontented, eager for clear villains and simple solutions and ready for a crusade in which political self-interest and social anxiety can be cloaked in morality, has found hatred of homosexuality to be the last respectable prejudice of the century.

Ballot initiatives in Oregon and Maine would deny homosexuals the protection of civil rights laws. The Pentagon has steadfastly refused to allow gays into the armed forces. Vice President Dan Quayle is crusading for "traditional family values." And Pat Buchanan, who is scheduled to speak at the Republican National Convention this evening, regards homosexuality as a litmus test of moral purity.

Nothing has illuminated this crusade more effectively than a work of fiction, "The Drowning of Stephan Jones," by Bette Greene. Preparing for her novel, Ms. Greene interviewed more than 400 young men incarcerated for gay-bashing, and scrutinized their case studies. In an interview published in The Boston Globe this spring, she said she found that the gay-bashers generally saw nothing wrong in what they did, and, more often than not, said their religious leaders and traditions sanctioned their behavior. One convicted teen-age gay-basher told her that the pastor of his church had said, "Homosexuals represent the devil, Satan," and that the Rev. Jerry Falwell had echoed that charge.

Christians opposed to political and social equality for homosexuals nearly always appeal to the moral injunctions of the Bible, claiming that Scripture is very clear on the matter and citing verses that support their opinion. They accuse others of perverting and distorting texts contrary to their "clear" meaning. They do not, however, necessarily see quite as clear a meaning in biblical passages on economic conduct, the burdens of wealth and the sin of greed.

Nine biblical citations are customarily invoked as relating to homosexuality. Four (Deuteronomy 23:17, I Kings 14:24, I Kings 22:46 and II Kings 23:7) simply forbid prostitution, by men and women.

Two others (Leviticus 18:19-23 and Leviticus 20:10-16) are part of what biblical scholars call the Holiness Code. The code explicitly bans homosexual acts. But it also prohibits eating raw meat, planting two different kinds of seed in the same field and wearing garments with two different kinds of yarn. Tattoos, adultery and sexual intercourse during a woman's menstrual period are similarly outlawed.

There is no mention of homosexuality in the four Gospels of the New Testament. The moral teachings of Jesus are not concerned with the subject.

Three references from St. Paul are frequently cited (Romans 1:26-2:1, I Corinthians 6:9-11 and I Timothy 1:10). But St. Paul was concerned with homosexuality only because in Greco-Roman culture it represented a secular sensuality that was contrary to his Jewish-Christian spiritual idealism. He was against lust and sensuality in anyone, including heterosexuals. To say that homosexuality is bad because homosexuals are tempted to do morally doubtful things is to say that heterosexuality is bad because heterosexuals are likewise tempted. For St. Paul, anyone who puts his or her interest ahead of God's is condemned, a verdict that falls equally upon everyone.

And lest we forget Sodom and Gomorrah, recall that the story is not about sexual perversion and homosexual practice. It is about inhospitality, according to Luke 10:10-13, and failure to care for the poor, according to Ezekiel 16:49-50: "Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy." To suggest that Sodom and Gomorrah is about homosexual sex is an analysis of about as much worth as suggesting that the story of Jonah and the whale is a treatise on fishing.

Part of the problem is a question of interpretation. Fundamentalists and literalists, the storm troopers of the religious right, are terrified that Scripture, "wrongly interpreted," may separate them from their values. That fear stems from their own recognition that their "values" are not derived from Scripture, as they publicly claim.

Indeed, it is through the lens of their own prejudices and personal values that they "read" Scripture and cloak their own views in its authority. We all interpret Scripture: Make no mistake. And no one truly is a literalist, despite the pious temptation. The questions are, By what principle of interpretation do we proceed, and by what means do we reconcile "what it meant then" to "what it means now?"

These matters are far too important to be left to scholars and seminarians alone. Our ability to judge ourselves and others rests on our ability to interpret Scripture intelligently. The right use of the Bible, an exercise as old as the church itself, means that we confront our prejudices rather than merely confirm them.

For Christians, the principle by which Scripture is read is nothing less than an appreciation of the work and will of God as revealed in that of Jesus. To recover a liberating and inclusive Christ is to be freed from the semantic bondage that makes us curators of a dead culture rather than creatures of a new creation.

Religious fundamentalism is dangerous because it cannot accept ambiguity and diversity and is therefore inherently intolerant. Such intolerance, in the name of virtue, is ruthless and uses political power to destroy what it cannot convert.

It is dangerous, especially in America, because it is anti-democratic and is suspicious of "the other," in whatever form that "other" might appear. To maintain itself, fundamentalism must always define "the other" as deviant.

But the chief reason that fundamentalism is dangerous is that, at the hands of the Rev. Pat Robertson, the Rev. Jerry Falwell and hundreds of lesser-known but equally worrisome clerics, preachers and pundits, it uses Scripture and the Christian practice to encourage ordinarily good people to act upon their fears rather than their virtues.

Fortunately, those who speak for the religious right do not speak for all American Christians, and the Bible is not theirs alone to interpret. The same Bible that the advocates of slavery used to protect their wicked self-interests is the Bible that inspired slaves to revolt and their liberators to action.

The same Bible that the predecessors of Mr. Falwell and Mr. Robertson used to keep white churches white is the source of the inspiration of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the social reformation of the 1960's.

The same Bible that anti-feminists use to keep women silent in the churches is the Bible that preaches liberation to captives and says that in Christ there is neither male nor female, slave nor free.

And the same Bible that on the basis of an archaic social code of ancient Israel and a tortured reading of Paul is used to condemn all homosexuals and homosexual behavior includes metaphors of redemption, renewal, inclusion and love -- principles that invite homosexuals to accept their freedom and responsibility in Christ and demands that their fellow Christians accept them as well.

The political piety of the fundamentalist religious right must not be exercised at the expense of our precious freedoms. And in this summer of our discontent, one of the most precious freedoms for which we must all fight is freedom from this last prejudice.

Gay Rights Are Human Rights Are Gay Rights

2011-12-06T19:57:00.006-05:00

This is a speech that should be delivered by a leader, any true leader, in Venango County, home of the Pennsylvania state affiliate of the American Family Association, a viciously anti-gay hate group that spreads homophobia and transphobia around the country and around the globe.

Secretary Clinton's Landmark LGBT Speech
Shows Importance of Electing Pro-Equality Candidates

by John Becker for The Huffington Post:

Today is truly a momentous day in human rights history. This morning President Barack Obama issued the first-ever executive memorandum dealing with the subject of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights worldwide and directing federal agencies working overseas to "promote and protect the human rights of LGBT persons." Later, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered a landmark address on LGBT rights in recognition of International Human Rights Day at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. (Watch below.)

After acknowledging that America's own record on human rights for LGBT people is "far from perfect," Clinton told those gathered, "Like being a woman, like being a racial, religious, tribal, or ethnic minority, being LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights." The Secretary went on to condemn laws, violence, and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression, calling them violations of human rights. She specifically rebuked the false notion, popular in many religiously conservative nations, that homosexuality is some kind of Western phenomenon. Clinton condemned religion-based anti-LGBT bigotry, saying that "while we are each free to believe whatever we choose, we cannot do whatever we choose, not in a world where we protect the human rights of all." And she announced the creation by the United States government of a $3-million Global Equality Fund that will support the work of organizations working on LGBT rights issues worldwide.

Many LGBT activists, including me, write and speak constantly about the importance of electing LGBT people and allies to political office, and today's historic speech should put an end to any skepticism about that point. After all, Secretary Clinton is articulating the official policy of the United States of America under a pro-equality administration. There's absolutely no way she would have delivered a groundbreaking address to the United Nations, exclusively devoted to LGBT rights worldwide, had she not been specifically authorized to do so at the highest level of the executive branch.

Today's speech should also serve to both galvanize the American LGBT community and throttle us out of any apathy we might feel about throwing our enthusiastic support, checkbooks, blood, sweat, and tears into electing pro-equality candidates.

Members of our nation's LGBT community should make no mistake: apathy at the ballot box, or anything less than a full commitment to providing the maximum amount of support possible -- of all kinds, on all fronts, and at all levels -- to political leaders who explicitly support LGBT rights inadvertently helps to hand the country over to people who have specifically and repeatedly promised to do everything in their power to make sure advances like this are stopped for as long as possible, by any means possible, regardless of the consequences to millions of LGBT people around the world.

Secretary of State Delivers Historic LGBT Speech in Geneva

Heaven and Hell

2011-12-05T09:02:00.000-05:00

When Did You Choose To Be Straight?

2011-12-01T01:27:00.000-05:00

Monumental Cryptography Discovery Reveals Homosexuality Not Forbidden in Bible

2011-11-30T23:55:00.005-05:00

by Kevin Farrell:

We don’t necessarily run in cryptography circles here at UB, but even we have to admit that “internationally acclaimed cryptographer” Michael Wood’s publishing on the Apostle Paul’s teachings on homosexuality piqued our attention.

Apparently Paul’s paradoxes laid out in the book of Romans in the Bible have plagued theologians and historians for thousands of years. A classic argument against cultural permissiveness toward homosexuality stems from Romans, in which Paul appears to say homosexuals need not apply for an all-inclusive pass to Heaven – because they will be denied.

But Wood’s discovery has turned the entire scripture upside down, and it appears that the Bible has had a welcome mat out for the gays all along.

“Michael Wood’s discovery is remarkable because it solves a colossal paradox regarding Paul’s Greek that has baffled scholars for 2,000 years,” says Dr. William Berg, who taught Greek and Roman Classics at Stanford University.

Paul’s only unequivocal reference to homosexuality is found within Romans 1:18-3:20, a Biblical passage that has mystified scholars for two millennia. “The interpretation of Romans1:18-3:20 has been notoriously difficult for almost every commentator,” Richard Longenecker, the Distinguished New Testament Scholar at Wheaton College, writes in his book Studies in Paul. “Earlier interpreters such as Origen, Jerome, Augustine, and Erasmus wrestled with this issue and it continues to plague commentators today.”

The passage is riddled with paradoxes. It says that “only the doers of the law will be vindicated by God,” and “by the works of the law no one will be vindicated.” The passage also mysteriously separates idolatrous, homosexual orgy fests from transgressions worthy of spiritual death. “In finding the definitive solution to Paul’s legal paradox, I inadvertently discovered why he separated the idolatrous, same-sex orgies from the things he considered worthy of spiritual death,” said Wood.

Wood’s solution is definitive, elegant, and verifiable. Romans 2:13-26 teaches: Only the doers of the “Justices of the Torah” will be vindicated before God. Romans 3:20 says, “By the ‘Jobs of the Torah’ no one will be vindicated.” Not only is there no contradiction, but the two teachings have always been simple restatements of each other; the “Great Paradox” is no paradox at all!

This legal solution fully explains Paul’s treatment of homosexuality. Paul’s passage excludes idolatrous, homosexual orgy fests from things which he considered worthy of spiritual death, things such as “bad-mouthing others,” “deceiving,” and “inflicting pain.” Those engaged in idolatrous, homosexual orgies weren’t violating the Justices. (They weren’t violating the precept “Love your neighbor as yourself.”) Therefore, Paul was obliged to separate this from his list of things which did violate the Justices.

The finding is significant because it documents that Paul purposefully separated the same-sex acts; it was a conscious, deliberate decision consistent with the rest of the passage. In fact, it was demanded by the rest of the passage. The resolution of the paradox empirically proves that Paul’s view on homosexuality was very different from what Christians had thought for 2,000 years.

Although Romans 1 contains the only unequivocal reference to homosexuality, anti-homosexual statements have been introduced into other passages in newer versions of the English Bible. As for these modern changes to the Biblical text: “Michael Wood has gone the extra mile in being faithful to Paul’s Greek,” said Dr. Berg. “He shows, time and again, that the words traditionally mistranslated as ‘homosexual,’ ‘effeminate,’ ‘impure,’ and so forth, are really targeting selfish, unloving, unjust activity and have nothing to do with sexual orientation. He shows that once again Paul was condemning those who violate the Justices of the Torah, and nothing more.”

Wordy, we know. But how about them apples? Real talk, we’re full grown, non-robotic, autonomous adults capable of making our own decisions regarding morality here at UB, thankyouverymuch – but it’s always nice to hear that those who promote the idea of an all-loving God that hates some of the things He created have been reading their Bibles the wrong way all this time.

What say you about this biblical development?

The Homosexual Lifestyle -- Rated PG

2011-11-28T23:09:00.000-05:00

The Gospel According to Hypocrisy

2011-11-28T12:37:00.004-05:00

by Domenick Scudera, Professor of Theater and Chair of the Theater and Dance department, Ursinus College, for The Huffington Post:

And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him,

And maketh no mistake, these single male followers were not homosexuals,

And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,

"Blessed are the negative in spirit: for they shall find fault with just about everyone and everything.

"Blessed are they who judge others: for they are entitled and superior.

"Blessed are the intolerant: for they most rightfully deny the humanity of others.

"Blessed are the ignorant: for they shall equate homosexuality with pedophilia and shall promote other equally specious arguments.

"Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall tell everyone else what to do with their lives.

"Ye are the light of the world and ye shall shine brightly over all those who do not live by your code or standards.

"Think not that I am come to destroy the law. I want you to do that. Change all the laws of the land through ballot measures so that people will only live the way that ye think is right.

"Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt not commit adultery:

"But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman or an intern lustfully shall make sure that any activity is well hidden and not documented:

"Be warned that the wide web of the world, and liberal news media, will exploit your personal deviant behavior against you.

"It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement:

"But I say unto you, That whosoever shall divorce his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry a divorced woman committeth adultery.

"And I also say unto you, That you may ignore this last piece of advice if it is not convenient for you. Marry and divorceth whomsoever you wish, as many times as you wish, and do not worry about it. Just make sure that the homosexuals do not ruineth everything by taking husbands.

"Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy:

"And I say unto you, That sounds pretty good. Some of those enemies are horrible. Blessed are you who curseth them whenever you can. Do evil unto them who hate you.

"For if ye love them which love you, you may be perceived as homosexual. Make not this mistake.

"Salute your brethren only. Why do something for others?

"Be ye therefore perfect. And everyone else is not.

"Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth. Masturbation must be denied.

"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

"No, I take that back. Ignore that last one. Pray and preach as loudly as you can. Let everyone see and hear you. I realizeth now that hypocrisy is a good way to be respected and still allow you to do whatever you want.

"Use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do:

"Unless your words are 'talking points.' Repeat these as often as you can, so that ye may drill your opinions into the minds of the masses.

"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal.

"But lay up for yourselves treasures in righteous politicians and causes.

"For wherever your treasure is, there will lieth your political power.

"Judge not, that ye be not judged [LOL!]

"Enter ye in at the strait gate. Strait meaning straight.

"Therefore whosoever interpreteth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock."

And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine:

For he did not seem very Christian.

"Hope Will Never Be Silent" - Harvey Milk

2011-11-27T17:14:00.004-05:00

On this day in 1978,
Harvey Milk was assassinated in San Francisco.
His are one set of shoulders on which we stand.

Harvey Milk, Hero and Martyr
(May 22, 1930 - November 27, 1978)

For an entire community, Harvey Milk is remembered as a hero,
a martyr to a cause.

After three unsuccessful campaigns, Harvey Milk was elected to the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors. His election was a landmark event. The reason? Harvey Milk was gay, and his election was the first of an openly gay elected official in the United States. To win the election, Milk had to gain the support of all segments of his district. On election night, Harvey Milk reminded his supporters: "This is not my victory -- it's yours. If a gay man can win, it proves that there is hope for all minorities who are willing to fight."

Harvey Milk was born in 1930 in Woodmere, Long Island, New York. He graduated from New York College for Teachers, served four years in the US Navy, taught high school mathematics and history on Long Island and worked in finance in New York City. When he moved to San Francisco in 1972, he opened a camera store on Castro Street.

Milk's friends and associates remember him as an outgoing person with a keen sense of humor. A brilliant speaker and neighborhood leader, he was soon referred to as "the Mayor of Castro Street." He entered San Francisco politics by campaigning for supervisor as an openly gay candidate in 1973; he lost but won an impressive 17,000 votes. Milk then established the Castro Village Association of local merchants. He ran for supervisor in 1975 and lost again but Mayor George Moscone appointed Milk to the Board of Permit Appeals, making him the first openly gay commissioner in the country.

In 1977, after district elections replaced citywide elections, Milk ran again for the post of supervisor and won. The first openly gay elected official, he was aware of the tremendous discrimination and prejudice that confronted gays and lesbians. Under his urging, the city council passed a Gay Rights Ordinance in 1978 that protected gays from being fired from their jobs. Milk championed the cause of those with little power against downtown corporations and real estate developers, campaigning especially hard for the rights of senior citizens.

Milk knew that his position as a San Francisco Supervisor advocating gay rights placed him in danger. Hate mail began to pour into his office. With chilling foresight Milk made a tape recording on November 18, 1977, with instructions to have it read only if he died by assassination. In it he says, "If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door." On November 27, 1978, Supervisor Milk and Mayor Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, a former police officer who had clashed with Milk over gay issues. After shooting the mayor, White entered Milk's office and shot him five times at his desk.

At the trial, White's attorney used the "Twinkie" defense -- that too much junk food affected White's reasoning abilities. The jury found him guilty of voluntary manslaughter. He was sentenced to seven years, eight months for the two murders. Many San Franciscans were outraged at his light sentence. Demonstrations at City Hall erupted into riots on May 21, 1979 (the eve of what would have been Milk's 49th birthday), which became known as "White Night."

Harvey Milk left a legacy. He profoundly influenced gay and lesbian politics, and was also a champion of human rights. Milk once said, "...you've got to keep electing gay people...to know there is better hope for tomorrow. Not only for gays, but for blacks, Asians, the disabled, our senior citizens and us. Without hope, we give up. I know you cannot live on hope alone, but without it life is not worth living. You and you and you have got to see that the promise does not fade." His martyrdom is a painful reminder of the length and difficulty of the journey to freedom.

The Einstein Of Sex

2011-11-26T23:39:00.005-05:00

Speaking of the effects of homophobic and transphobic bigotry, Magnus Hirschfeld said:

"The time will come when such tragedies will be no more, for knowledge will conquer prejudice, truth will conquer lies, and love will triumph over hatred."

Magnus Hirschfeld (May 14, 1868 - May 14, 1935) was a German physician and sexologist. An outspoken advocate for sexual minorities, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, which Dustin Goltz called "the first advocacy for homosexual and transgender rights.

Learn more at GLBTQ.

Common Sense

2011-11-26T23:02:00.002-05:00

Role Models and other Glimpses of Self

2011-11-23T13:02:00.007-05:00

A Message from Betty Hill, Executive Director of the Persad Center, the nation’s second oldest licensed counseling center specifically created to serve gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) community:

Barbara Grier, lesbian-themed novelist and publisher, died this week. She and 3 other women founded Naiad Press in 1973 which she is quoted as saying “to publish books about lesbians who love lesbians and where the girl is not just going through a phase.”

She was overwhelmed by the volume of orders for her books. While she was surprised at the demand, I am not. Think about the thrill of a young lesbian who finds a story that reflects how she thinks and feels and loves in the world in the midst of a lifetime of stories and books where she is out of place and cannot relate.

It speaks to me about the need for evidence and reflection that is hungered for by a population of people who are made invisible in their world.

Heterosexism is institutionalized isolation. In heterosexism, it isn’t just that GLBTQ people are a minority and so you don’t run into them as much as heterosexual people; there is deliberateness about omitting any signs of the minority population’s existence. It sends the message that there isn’t just fewer of you, “we wish there weren’t any of you.”

GLBTQ people are seeking signs of their existence and of their realities. You figure out who you are in the world by seeing signs of yourself in others and in aspiring to bring into life what sparks as a glimmer of you in people you admire. Barbara Grier brought stories of lives that were glimmers of hope to the reality and existence of women who love women.

We need visible signs and safe spaces to sort out our way of relating in the world.

This can happen in small and everyday ways where we acknowledge and name the relationship between a family member and his partner, or where we include the possibility that some kids may want bring a same-sex partner to the school dance, or while we watch “Dancing with the Stars” that we talk about the challenges of being transgender, and we make information available to young people about sexual or gender orientation.

Persad works with organizations to help them eliminate institutional heterosexism and homophobia. We can conduct on-site assessments of environments, policies, practices and staff /worker attitudes and understanding, as well as to assist in achieving goals to improve diversity and inclusion.

Hypochristians

2011-11-21T23:56:00.005-05:00

by Laurence Watts for The Huffington Post:

More learned people than I claim that William Shakespeare originated more than 1,000 words of the English Language. The fact that Shakespeare (c. 1564-1616) predated Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of The English Language (published in 1755) undoubtedly helped cement his reputation in this regard. Nowadays it's much harder to create a new word that catches on.

Huffington Post blogger and author Mark Simpson succeeded in this regard when in 1994 he coined the term "metrosexual," a term once reserved for the likes of David Beckham, but which can now be used to describe almost every man in every mall the world over. It's one of those things that I wish I'd thought of. It seems so obvious with hindsight, and yet to have spotted the trend, coined the phrase and watched it go viral requires pinpoint accuracy and not a small amount of luck.

In 2003, Dan Savage famously created the word "santorum." If you're not familiar with its meaning, I'll let you look it up rather than describe it here. In doing so he has effectively neutralized one of America's most enduring homophobes. It was a masterstroke that still fills me with awe.

My most recent why-didn't-I-think-of-that moment came recently while watching Comedy Central's The Colbert Report. During a scathing report covering ridiculous Republican amendments to the Michigan Senate's anti-bullying bill (SB 137), Stephen and his writing team coined the phrase "hypochristian" as a joke. The report was clever and scathing, but the word "hypochristian" hit my ears like a kipper soaked in rubbing alcohol being slapped across my face. What an amazingly powerful word! What a great invention.

"Hypochristian," derived from "hypocrite" and "Christian," is a word I would encourage you all to use in future. If I may, I would like to provide you with my proposal for its definition:

"A hypochristian is someone who claims to be Christian but fails to follow the principal teachings of Jesus Christ (hereby summarised as love, tolerance and forgiveness), preferring for selfish, cultural or political reasons to selectively emphasize passages from the Old Testament instead."

Allow me to give you two examples so you'll know how to spot a hypochristian in future. Let's start with Newt Gingrich.

Newt Gingrich claims to be a Roman Catholic. He opposes same-sex marriage, believing that marriage should only be between a man and a woman. As Speaker of the House he pushed the Defense of Marriage Act through the House of Representatives in 1996 when it looked like marriage equality might be won in Hawaii. Despite opposing marriage for same-sex couples, he has taken full advantage of his right to marry: he has married three times.

Gingrich married his first wife, Jackie Battley, in 1962. In 1980 he had his first affair with a woman called Marianne Ginther. He divorced Battley in 1981 and married Ginther, who became his second wife. Not having learned his lesson, he then began an affair with Callista Bisek in the mid 1980s. He finally divorced Ginther in 2000 and married Bisek, who then became his third wife. Not only did Gingrich clearly misunderstand Jesus when he said, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," but he also appears to have ignored what the Bible says about adultery. Without a shadow of a doubt, Gingrich is a hypochristian.

Texas Governor Rick Perry also claims to be a Christian. Yet in spite of being "pro-life," he is a strong supporter and celebrator of the death penalty. This may very well be in accord with the Old Testament's "an eye for an eye" view of crime and punishment, but it's hard to believe that Jesus Christ would have allowed 234 people to be executed by the state of Texas had he been governor. It's also worth emphasizing that "thou shalt not kill" covers criminals just as much as it covers their victims. Oh, and before anyone points out, I'm well aware that the people of Texas would never actually elect Jesus Christ as governor. Perry is undoubtedly a hypochristian.

I, for one, am fed up with hypochristians denying gay men and women their human rights in the name of "God" through some kind of selective amnesia of what Christianity is about. These people are taking the Christ out of Christianity and replacing him with their own right-wing agenda. Put simply: Jesus did not preach hate. Those who use his name to justify their own hate and ignorance need to be called out. We now have the perfect word with which to do so.

Is Homophobia Natural?

2011-11-21T19:26:00.002-05:00

Preach Love Not Hate

2011-11-19T10:23:00.005-05:00

One Day, The Voices of Those in Venango County Who Have Lived Too Long in the Shadows, In Fear and Isolation, Due to Anti-LGBT Bigotry, Harassment, and Discrimination Will Also Rise Up Against Those Who Promote Division and Hate.

So, While Watching This Video, Imagine, Just Imagine, That Moment by Substituting Vengango County's Own Hate Group, the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, in the Place of this Video's Target, Scott Lively and his Abiding Truth Ministry.

"Scott Lively is one of the most outspoken leaders of the anti-gay movement both nationally and internationally. He is more than just hateful rhetoric; he has played a major role in legislating the criminalization of homosexuality here in the U.S. and in Uganda. Today Occupy Springfield marched on his "Holy Grounds" coffee shop demanding a stop to this hatred. It is appalling that this bizarre little hate cult is operating right on State St across from STCC! Check out the video as we run into Lively and his oddball collection of confused Tea-hadists who put their Libertarian routine aside for a day to get in a little old fashioned homophobia,& Beck following nuts who ironically think everyone left of lunatic right is with the defunct ACORN. A few garden variety kooks with the direct line to Jesus round out the squad. Hopefully you'll be as outraged as we are after hearing his "sermon" of violent hatred today."

Children are the Real Victims of Anti-LGBT Laws and Stigma

2011-11-01T14:56:00.005-04:00

by Michael Cole-Schwartz for The Huffington Post:

One of the oft-repeated arguments for excluding gay and lesbian couples from marriage is that it will somehow "protect children." People like Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage want Americans to believe that if only we lock the doors to marriage and don't let anyone but straight couples in, children will be healthy, happy and safe from harm. But a new report from our movement colleagues at the Center for American Progress, the Family Equality Council and the Movement Advancement Project makes clear that children are actually the victims of the laws and stigma that disadvantage lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adults.

First, it's critical to acknowledge that LGBT people are parenting in large and growing numbers. Studies estimate that 2 million children are being raised by LGBT parents in nearly every county in the country. Interestingly, same-sex couples in the South are most likely to be raising children, and LGBT families are more likely to be racially and ethnically diverse. When you hear the Maggie Gallaghers of the world talk about doing what's best for children, remember that 2 million of this country's children are being denied what children of other families get.

One of the chief obstacles to children of LGBT families being protected is the federal Defense of Marriage Act. By limiting marriage to only one man and one woman for federal purposes, DOMA denies 1,138 rights, responsibilities and benefits to legally married same-sex couples and their children. These are things like the ability to take family and medical leave, receive social security survivors' benefits or take advantage of numerous tax provisions aimed at strengthening families. This is true even for families in the six states and D.C. where same-sex couples can legally marry.

Even opponents of marriage or other relationship recognition for same-sex couples agree that discriminating against gay parents hurts their children. During this summer's landmark hearing on the Defense of Marriage Act, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy got Focus on the Family's Tom Minnery to admit under oath that when you have some families with fewer rights than others, it disadvantages kids.

This week we heard from Chairman Leahy that he is continuing to push this issue with a markup next month. In early November, the full committee will consider the Respect for Marriage Act -- the bill to repeal DOMA and level the playing field for all families. If you want to do what's actually best for the children of this country, tell Congress it's time to end discrimination against LGBT parents.

More Lies from the American Family Assoication of Pennsylvania

2011-10-27T10:42:00.009-04:00

The American Family Association of Pennsylvania is the Venango County-based affiliate of the American Family Association, a nationally recognized Hate Group headquartered in Tupelo, Miss.

While the lies that such groups use to demonize and dehumanize lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have been well documented, including in a recent report from the Southern Poverty Law Center titled "The Propagandists: Bryan Fischer, the American Family Association, and the Demonization of LGBT People," it's also important to see and document how the delusional adherents of these hate groups persistently spread such mendacious and harmful propaganda at the local level.

Here in Venango County, for example, Diane Gramley (at right), mouthpiece for the AFA of PA, recently posted this blatant lie on its web site:

afaofpa says:
October 27, 2011 at 12:55 am

In 2003, the International Human Genome Consortium announced the successful completion of the Human Genome Project, which, among other things, identified each of the approximately 20,000-25,000 genes in human DNA. The press release read: “The human genome is complete and the Human Genome Project is over.”

While this accomplishment was widely reported, almost no one reported the words of Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the project. Collins, arguably the nation’s most influential geneticist, said, “Homosexuality is not hardwired. There is no gay gene. We mapped the human genome. We now know there is no genetic cause for homosexuality.”

THE TRUTH has actually been documented by Grove City College professor, Warren Throckmorton:

What Did Francis Collins Really Say About Homosexuality?

In his book, "The Language of God: A scientist presents evidence for belief," Francis Collins has this to say about homosexuality on page 260:

An area of particularly strong public interest is the genetic basis of homosexuality. Evidence from twin studies does in fact support the conclusion that heritable factors play a role in male homosexuality. However, the likelihood that the identical twin of a homosexual male will also be gay is about 20% (compared with 2-4 percent of males in the general population), indicating that sexual orientation is genetically influenced but not hardwired by DNA, and that whatever genes are involved represent predispositions, not predeterminations.

On the web, there are a number of sources who have quoted the OneNewsNow report that Francis Collins said the following:

‘Homosexuality is not hardwired. There is no gay gene. We mapped the human genome. We now know there is no genetic cause for homosexuality.’”

The problem is – Dr. Collins did not say this. As I noted here, Dr. Collins confirmed to me that he did not make this statement. He did say this:

It troubles me greatly to learn that anything I have written would cause anguish for you or others who are seeking answers to the basis of homosexuality. The words quoted by NARTH all come from the Appendix to my book “The Language of God” (pp. 260-263), but have been juxtaposed in a way that suggests a somewhat different conclusion that I intended. I would urge anyone who is concerned about the meaning to refer back to the original text.

The evidence we have at present strongly supports the proposition that there are hereditary factors in male homosexuality — the observation that an identical twin of a male homosexual has approximately a 20% likelihood of also being gay points to this conclusion, since that is 10 times the population incidence. But the fact that the answer is not 100% also suggests that other factors besides DNA must be involved. That certainly doesn’t imply, however, that those other undefined factors are inherently alterable.

Your note indicated that your real interest is in the truth. And this is about all that we really know. No one has yet identified an actual gene that contributes to the hereditary component (the reports about a gene on the X chromosome from the 1990s have not held up), but it is likely that such genes will be found in the next few years.

Note this part of the quote: “That certainly doesn’t imply, however, that those other undefined factors are inherently alterable.” Sexual attractions may come from the operation of several factors, in different ways for different people. The nature of the cause however, does not directly lead to understanding of how alterable the attractions might be. Perhaps attractions develop with some mix of environment and pre-natal factors. However, once set, attractions for most people seem to be pretty durable.

How Long Will Venango County Be A Safe Harbor For and A Silent Partner in the American Family Association of Pennsylvania's Harmful Propaganda War Against LGBT People?

THE PROPAGANDISTS: Bryan Fischer, the American Family Association and the Demonization of LGBT People

2011-10-12T21:58:00.007-04:00

The Pennsylvania chapter of the American Family Association, the Mississippi-based Hate Group that is the focus of a disturbing new Intelligence Report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, summarized below, is based in Venango County. (The AFAofPA's activities are chronicled in the Emmy Award-winning film "Out In The Silence.")

It is from Venango County where vicious attacks against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are broadcast (on the airwaves of American Family Radio station WAWN, 89.5 FM, Franklin), and it is from Venango County where the AFA of PA's president, Diane Gramley (pictured), launches vitriolic attacks and smear campaigns against LGBT people and their allies across the state.

Until Venango County's elected representatives, opinion leaders, and other voices of influence publicly denounce this organization's hateful and harmful activities, it must be assumed that they condone them.

In this case, cowardly silence must be seen as support.

THE PROPAGANDISTS:
Bryan Fischer, the American Family Association & the Demonization of LGBT People

Executive Summary

The American Family Association (AFA) is one of most powerful religious-right groups in the nation, with a $20 million budget, a network of 200 radio stations and two Internet television channels. Its spokespersons have appeared on all major networks and cable news channels, and in leading print and radio media. It is also one of the leading purveyors of lies about LGBT people and homosexuality.

The AFA has come under fire repeatedly over the years since it was founded in 1977 by the Rev. Donald Wildmon, who was sharply criticized in the 1980s for suggesting that obscene content on television and in the movies is largely due to the media being con- trolled by Jews. It once demanded that an openly gay Arizona congressman be barred from speaking at the Republican National Convention and suggested that he be arrested under a state law criminalizing sodomy. It regularly attacked corporations like Disney, which it described as a “two-faced” company that “welcomed hordes of homosexuals to celebrate their sexual perversions.”

But in the last three years, since hiring a radical Idaho preacher named Bryan Fischer (pictured) as its director of issue analysis, the AFA has gone even further. Since moving to Mississippi to join the group, Fischer has declared that “homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler … the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews” — a complete falsehood, as any historian knows. He has suggested that gay sex be recriminalized. He has routinely claimed that gay men molest children at rates far higher than those of heterosexual men — another falsehood, as all the relevant professional scientific associations have long agreed. Fischer has said that President Obama “nurtures a hatred for the white man” and suggested that welfare incentivizes black “people who rut like rabbits.” He has said that non-Christian religions “have no First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion,” claimed that the “sexual immorality of Native Americans” was part of what made them “morally disqualified from sovereign control of
American soil,” and suggested that the best way to deal with promiscuity would be to kill the promiscuous.

Words like these have consequences. While the AFA would certainly deny it, it seems obvious that its regular demonizing of members of the LGBT community as child molesters and the like creates an atmosphere where violence is all but inevitable. And that violence is dramatic. A study by the Southern Poverty Law Center found, based on an analysis of 14 years of FBI hate crime data, that LGBT people were by far the American minority most victimized by such crimes. They were more than twice as likely to be attacked in a violent hate crime as Jews or black people, and four times as likely as Muslims. And that doesn’t take into account the anti-gay bullying that has resulted in so many recent teen suicides.

Based on the foregoing and other evidence, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) last year began listing the AFA as a hate group. The listing, as was said at the time, was based on the group’s use of known falsehoods to attack and demonize members of the LGBT community — not, as some have gratuitously claimed, because the organization is Christian, or because it opposes same-sex marriage, or because it believes that the Bible describes homosexual practice as a sin.

Many thoughtful Christian commentators have said as much. Warren Throckmorton, a respected professor and past president of the American Mental Health Counselors Association, wrote last year that the AFA and other “newly labeled hate groups” were seeking to “avoid addressing the issues the SPLC raised, instead preferring to attack the credibility of the SPLC.” Reviewing an SPLC list of myths propagated by anti-gay religious-right groups, he said many are “provably false” and “rooted in ignorance.” The criticisms, Throckmorton concluded, are “legitimate and have damaged the credibility of the groups on the list. Going forward, I hope Christians don’t rally around these groups but rather call them to accountability.”

We hope public figures will do the same.

The Naked Bigotry of the American Family Association

2011-09-30T00:40:00.004-04:00

Venango County is headquarters for the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, the state affiliate of the Tupelo, Mississippi-based Hate Group known as the American Family Association (AFA).

People for the American Way says this about the AFA's national spokesperson, Bryan Fischer, whose program airs on Venango County's "Christian" Radio Station, WAWN Franklin:

“Bryan Fischer’s stunning record of public bigotry would make him a pariah in any sane political movement. But his long record of hate speech doesn’t seem to bother the supposed ‘mainstream’ GOP politicians."

When will Venango County's public leaders stand up and say enough is enough?

People for the American Way Urges GOP Candidates To Condemn Fischer

We reported [1] yesterday that American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer will not only be speaking at the upcoming Values Voter Summit but will immediately follow Mitt Romney. Today, People For the American Way released a statement [2] urging Romney and fellow Republican presidential candidates Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and Rick Santorum to condemn Fischer’s unmitigated bigotry [3] rather than lending it legitimacy by appearing with him:

• Fischer, the chief spokesman for the AFA, has insisted that American Muslims have no First Amendment [4] rights, has said that Muslims should be banned from the U.S. military [5], and has called for a ban on the building of new mosques [6] in the U.S.

• Fischer has written that “gay sex is a form of domestic terrorism [7],” thinks gays and lesbians should be “disqualified from public office [8],” claims that gays are responsible for the Nazi Party [9] and that gay people today will “do the same thing to you that the Nazis did to their opponents in Nazi Germany [10].”

• Fischer has insisted that Native Americans are “morally disqualified [11]” from controlling American land and insists that American Indian communities are “mired in poverty and alcoholism” because not all have converted to Christianity [11].

• He has written that African American welfare recipients “rut like rabbits [12].”

• Last year, Fischer insulted Medal of Honor winner [13] Sal Giunta, who saved the lives of two fellow soldiers under heavy fire in Afghanistan, saying “we have feminized the Medal of Honor” because "we now award it only for preventing casualties, not for inflicting them."

People For the American Way president Michael Keegan urged Romney and his fellow presidential candidates to denounce Fischer’s bigotry before appearing with him at the event.

“Bryan Fischer’s stunning record of public bigotry would make him a pariah in any sane political movement,” Keegan said. “But his long record of hate speech doesn’t seem to bother the supposed ‘mainstream’ GOP politicians like Mitt Romney and Rick Perry who are sharing the stage with him at an event sponsored by his employer. Candidates don’t have to agree with the views of everyone they appear with – but they should be wary of lending legitimacy to those who peddle hate and fear of their fellow Americans.

“If Mitt Romney wants to appeal to mainstream audiences, he should publicly disassociate himself from Fischer’s bigotry before handing him the podium.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And, of course, this, from Venango County's own Diane Gramley, President of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania:

Call for LGBT Rights & Equality in Hate Group's Home Town

2011-09-22T12:55:00.008-04:00

Tupelo Coalition Announces Day of Events for Gay Rights & Equality

GIVE HATE A HOLIDAY
Tupelo, Mississippi – October 10, 2011

Tupelo, MS – A very special series of events will take place in Tupelo on Monday, October 10, to help raise public awareness about the lives and concerns of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in Mississippi and throughout the South and to help build support for ongoing local, state, and regional efforts to make our communities more just, inclusive, humane, and safe for LGBT and all people who call them home.

In line with recent high profile public debates about bullying and youth suicides, safe schools, family equality, military service, racial intolerance and other civil and human rights concerns, there will be an emphasis on the perspectives and needs of LGBT youth, as well as efforts to help bridge the gaps that have divided families, friends, churches and communities on these issues for far too long.

Tupelo holds special significance as the setting for these events as headquarters for the American Family Association (AFA), a national organization recently designated as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center for the “thoroughly discredited falsehoods and demonizing propaganda it pumps out about homosexuality and other sexual minorities.” (Venango County is home to the Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Family Association.)

The Give Hate A Holiday events will begin with an 11:00 AM press conference at Tupelo's Link Centre, featuring coalition representatives, to offer statements and answer questions about its purpose and goals. Mark Potok, Director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project will also unveil a highly anticipated new Intelligence Report on Bryan Fischer, the AFA's prominent, and controversial, spokesperson. Additionally, Southern Clergy for Inclusion will release “A Southern Proclamation” in which they proclaim God’s love for all, including LGBT persons and publicly apologize where they have been silent.

The public events start at 12:00 Noon with a peaceful and colorful public gathering outside the Link Centre where participants are invited to demonstrate, with signs, chants and other creative forms of public witness, their commitment to the struggle for inclusion, fairness and equality and to call out to others to join the movement and take a stand in their community.

At 2:00 PM, in the Link Centre Concert Hall, there will be a Free Public Screening of OUT IN THE SILENCE, the acclaimed, hopeful and entertaining documentary film about courageous local residents confronting homophobia and the limitations of religion, tradition and the status quo in their conservative small town, followed by a dynamic Town Hall-style Public Forum aimed at engaging the audience in an action-oriented dialogue about inclusion, fairness, and equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and all people in Mississippi, throughout the South, and across the country. Filmmakers Joe Wilson and Dean Hamer will be on-hand to help lead the discussion, and the public is invited to participate and to share their perspectives and ideas for promoting positive change with the audience. (There will be a Repeat Film Screening and Town Hall Forum at 7:00 PM for those unable to attend the afternoon showing.)

Following the film screening and town-hall forum, participants are invited to continue the conversation in the Link Centre's Reception Hall and to visit with representatives of local groups and organizations to learn about their work and about how to get more involved and take action. (Groups or organization that would like to set-up an information table should contact Melanie Deas at: mdeas@link-centre.org)

Co-sponsors of the Give Hate a Holiday event include: Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Tupelo -- Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Oxford -- All Saints' Episcopal Church of Tupelo -- PFLAG Tupelo -- PFLAG Oxford/North Mississippi -- Gulf Region PFLAG -- University of Mississippi Gay-Straight Alliance -- OUTlaw at The University of Mississippi -- Mississippi Workers' Center for Human Rights – ACLU of Mississippi – Unitarian Universalist Mid South District -- Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations "Standing on the Side of Love" Campaign – Believe Out Loud – Americans United for Separation of Church and State -- Tennessee Equality Project -- Georgia Equality -- Equality Federation -- Out Now Youth (Springfield, MA) -- GetEQUAL.

Venango County Minister, Substitute Teacher, Admits Seeking Sex with 13 Year-Old Girl

2011-09-10T01:23:00.008-04:00

Diane Gramley (pictured left), and the Venango County-based Hate Group she heads, the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, pump out demonizing propaganda trying to link lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people with pedophilia in the public's mind.

In this case, however, one of their own proves them wrong:

Ex-Trooper, Minister, Substitute Teacher
Admits Seeking Sex with 13-year-old

from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

A retired state trooper who also worked as a substitute high school teacher has pleaded guilty to charges that he traveled from his home in Venango County to the Pittsburgh area because he hoped to meet a 13-year-old girl for sex.

State prosecutors say 61-year-old Lawrence McElroy, of Cooperstown, had actually been chatting online with an undercover officer prior to the meeting in Canonsburg in April, where he was arrested.

Mr. McElroy has served as a minister at three Western Pennsylvania churches since retiring from the state police in 1993 and was a substitute teacher in several Venango County high schools when arrested. Prosecutors say he made three calls from one of those schools to the undercover agent.

When arrested, Mr. McElroy had Viagra, a new computer web cam and a silver necklace he planned to give to the "girl."

American Family Association says: "Criminalize Homosexuality"

2011-08-30T14:24:00.004-04:00

On his Aug. 29 radio program, Focal Point, Bryan Fischer, a spokesperson for the Venango County-based HATE GROUP, American Family Association of Pennsylvania, called on all fifty states to "criminalize homosexuality."

Will other more reasonable voices in Venango County ever speak out publicly to counter this type of demonizing and dangerous rhetoric and offer alternative, more welcoming and inclusive, points of view for area lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender residents to see and hear that they are not alone?

Census Reveals Gay People are Shockingly… Normal

2011-08-30T00:02:00.005-04:00

By Candace Chellew-Hodge for Religion Dispatches:

According to new census figures, the number of people reporting that they are living with a same-sex partner has risen 52 percent in the last decade. That’s almost 902,000 people who are living all across the United States. Even here in my own incredibly conservative state of South Carolina, the number of same-sex couples increased and a quarter of them are raising children.

It’s those kinds of facts that have right-wing media like the Christian Post scratching their heads, with headlines like this that rival anything over at The Onion:

“Gay Couples Spread in U.S., Behave Like Straight Couples”

Um, yeah, well, duh. What exactly are gay couples supposed to act like? Wild hyenas? The story that follows that headline would be just as funny if it didn’t signal the death knell for the religious right’s jihad against gays and lesbians.

The article marvels that:

According to the research, many same-sex couples are doing something straight couples have been doing for generations: getting older, having kids, and moving to the suburbs...

These trends, both the spread of gay people living openly, and of gay populations mirroring trends in the straight population, are playing out nationwide.

That makes gays and lesbians seem somehow, oddly, oh, I don’t know, human. We age, we have kids, we move to the suburbs! Who knew?

And this is where it gets sticky for anti-gay religious leaders. As this article points out, they have no interest in letting the facts get in the way of a good lie and have vowed to continue their efforts to keep discrimination against gay people in place.

Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan, addressed the same-sex marriage issue during an interview on the CBS program 60 Minutes, urging policymakers not to tamper with the definition of what he termed “authentic marriage.”

“I love my mom, but I don’t have the right to marry her,” said the archbishop, whose national public profile as a spokesman for church values rose last year, when he was elected president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Dolan could have a point if those census figures, or any other research, showed that gay people were even slightly interested in marrying their parents. Heck, most gay people would just love to have a relationship with their parents, but many of them remain estranged because of anti-gay crusaders like Dolan who have spread the lie that being gay is somehow akin to wanting to marry a parent, a dog, or a piece of furniture.

But, as more and more lesbians and gay men raising children move into the neighborhoods of suburbia, the more “normal” gay and lesbian relationships will be. The census shows this is already happening and that more and more gay and lesbian people are feeling comfortable enough to come out on a government form and be counted.

What it proves is that more and more people are catching on to the lies being told by the religious right. Gay and lesbian people don’t want to “redefine” marriage—they want the same kind of marriage everyone else has, complete with kids, a dog, and a nice neighborhood. Weird, right?

Oil City Grace United Methodist Church Promotes Hate Group's Lies

2011-08-28T10:27:00.009-04:00

Several readers have written recently to draw attention to the fact that Oil City's Grace United Methodist Church has the following bulletin (shown below) linked on the front page of its web site under the title: How The Hate Crimes Bill May Affect You

The source of this outdated bulletin is the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, a state affiliate of the Tupelo, MS-based American Family Association, the controversial national organization recently designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for the “thoroughly discredited falsehoods and demonizing propaganda it pumps out about homosexuality and other sexual minorities.” (Pictured above, right, is Diane Gramley, President of the Venango County-based American Family Association of Pennsylvania.)

(An analysis about the religious-right's lies is printed below the bulletin.)

Under 'action steps," the bulletin recommends contacting Sen. Arlen Specter, who was replaced as Pennsylvania's Senator by Pat Toomey on Jan. 3, 2011. Why Grace United Methodist Church is circulating outdated hate group lies now is an important question.

More importantly, what are more reasonable voices in Oil City doing to counter such lies and to make sure that local lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender residents, and all people, feel welcome and safe in the region?

(Click on image to enlarge.)

Pastors In Prison?: Religious Right Spreads Lies About Hate Crimes Bill

by Rob Boston for Talk to Action (4/21/09):

Legislation that would target hate crimes is expected to start moving in Congress soon. The Religious Right is going bananas.

The legislation, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 (H.R. 1913), is intended to do a few key things: It would allow the U.S. Justice Department to offer assistance when a crime that results in death or serious injury is committed against any American because of the victim's race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

The federal government could even prosecute such cases if local officials were unwilling to do so. This section of the proposed bill reflects statutes from the Civil Rights era that gave the federal government a greater role in battling crimes against African Americans in the Jim Crow South and also allowed the Justice Department to address the denial of voting rights. It's nothing new.

The bill also would also make some federal money available to for law enforcement training. It would help police officers recognize bias-motivated violence and combat it, especially among young people.

The bill penalizes assault and physical violence, not speech. In fact, the legislation makes it clear that free speech is protected. Section 10 states, "Nothing in this Act, or the amendments made by this Act, shall be construed to prohibit any expressive conduct protected from legal prohibition by, or any activities protected by the free speech or free exercise clauses of, the First Amendment to the Constitution."

Nevertheless, here's what the Family Research Council told pastors in a recent bulletin: "Let's say you preach from Genesis 19 or Romans 1, referencing the homosexual agenda or lifestyle. Your sermon could be heard by an individual who applies it in a way prohibited by a hate crimes law. Not only would the offender be prosecuted under this law, but you could also be prosecuted for conspiracy. Consequently, hate crimes laws would radically impact our freedom of speech as Christians."

Wrong.

As Becky Dansky, federal legislative director for the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, told the Washington Blade, such claims by the Religious Right are "completely inaccurate, unless their priest or reverend or religious leader is physically assaulting someone based on their sexual orientation while they're giving that sermon."

Yet Religious Right leaders keep playing the "your-pastor-will-go-to-jail" card.

"An offended homosexual could accuse a pastor, Sunday School teacher of broadcaster of causing emotional injury simply by expressing the Biblical view that homosexuality is sinful," blares the Rev. Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association in an e-mail alert.

Over at the Traditional Values Coalition, Andrea Lafferty warns, "Your pastor could be prosecuted for conspiracy to commit a hate crime if it passes and become law. This so-called `hate crimes' bill will be used to lay the legal foundation and framework to investigate, prosecute, and persecute pastors, business owners, Bible teachers, Sunday School teachers, youth pastors - you name it - or anyone else whose actions are based upon and reflect the truth found in the Bible."

What is the Religious Right's evidence for these extravagant claims? It doesn't have any.

The FRC is fond of citing the case of Ake Green, a pastor in Sweden who was sentenced to a month in jail in 2004 after he delivered a sermon attacking gays that he later distributed to local newspapers.

There are two things wrong with this: Green's case happened in Sweden. Sweden is not part of the United States. It does not have our First Amendment. Secondly, Green's conviction was later overturned on appeal.

Many members of the clergy are debunking the Religious Right's claims and support the bill (as does the ACLU). Hundreds of religious leaders endorsed the measure in 2007.

"This law," the clergy coalition wrote to senators, "does not criminalize or impede religious expression in any way. Rather, the bill specifically addresses violent acts by those who act on their hate to terrorize entire communities."

The text of H.R. 1913 is online at Thomas.gov. Anyone can go there and read it.

I sure wish the Religious Right would. But I suppose I'm being silly to think that would make a difference. Truth long ago became irrelevant to that gang.

Traditional Family Values in Northwestern Penna. - "Man Jailed Over Unwelcome Toilet Break in Ex-Wife’s Home"

2011-08-27T12:51:00.003-04:00

from The Oil City Derrick:

GIRARD (AP) — A northwestern Pennsylvania man is jailed on charges he took an unwelcome toilet break in his ex-wife’s home.

Police in Girard say 24-year-old Nathan Wingerter broke into his ex-wife’s home on Aug. 1, threw her photo identification cards into the toilet and then defecated on them. Police say the woman walked in to find Wingerter on the toilet.

The Erie Times-News reports that police issued a warrant for Wingerter and arrested him days later in Painesville, Ohio.

He was returned to Erie County to face charges of burglary and criminal mischief on Wednesday.

Online court records don’t list an attorney for Wingerter. Erie County Prison officials say he remained incarcerated there on Friday.

Gay Marriage Opponents Need to Get the Facts About Homosexuality

2011-08-26T23:39:00.005-04:00

This article from The Baltimore Sun speaks to the lies about LGBT people propagated by the Venango County-based hate group, the American Family Association of Pennsylvania.

Comparisons of Gay Marriage to Polygamy and Worse
Belie a Lack of Understanding about Homosexuality

By Lori W. Hollander for The Baltimore Sun:

A state delegate from Virginia recently wrote on this page that "Sexual orientation is not limited to same- or complementary-sex attractions but includes attractions to children, prostitutes, multiple wives (polygamy), dead persons (necrophilia), animals, inanimate objects and others that could not printed in the Baltimore Sun out of deference to readers." Not only is this statement erroneous and misleading, it demonstrates a reckless disregard for the gay community.

As licensed marriage and relationship therapists in practice with straight and gay couples for 23 years, my husband and I have seen firsthand the relationships of gay and lesbian couples. Their partnerships are no different than yours or ours; only they have the additional burden of being discriminated against by people who don't know the facts.

The following facts were copied verbatim from the website of the American Psychological Association, the leading advocate for psychological knowledge and practice informing policymakers and the public to improve public policy and daily living:

• What is sexual orientation? Sexual orientation is an enduring emotional, romantic, sexual or affectional attraction toward others. Sexual orientation exists along a continuum that ranges from exclusive heterosexuality to exclusive homosexuality and includes various forms of bisexuality.

• Is sexual orientation a choice? No, human beings cannot choose to be either gay or straight. For most people, sexual orientation emerges in early adolescence without any prior sexual experience. … Psychologists do not consider sexual orientation to be a conscious choice that can be voluntarily changed.

• Can therapy change sexual orientation? No; even though most homosexuals live successful, happy lives, some homosexual or bisexual people may seek to change their sexual orientation through therapy, often coerced by family members or religious groups. ... The reality is that homosexuality is not an illness. It does not require treatment and is not changeable.

• Is homosexuality a mental illness or emotional problem? No. Psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals agree that homosexuality is not an illness, a mental disorder, or an emotional problem. More than 35 years of objective, well-designed scientific research has shown that homosexuality, in and of itself, is not associated with mental disorders or emotional or social problems.

• Can lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals be good parents? Yes. Studies comparing groups of children raised by homosexual and by heterosexual parents find no developmental differences between the two groups of children in four critical areas: their intelligence, psychological adjustment, social adjustment, and popularity with friends. It is also important to realize that a parent's sexual orientation does not indicate their children's.

Another myth about homosexuality is the mistaken belief that gay men have more of a tendency than heterosexual men to sexually molest children. There is no evidence to suggest that homosexuals or bisexuals molest children at a higher rate than heterosexuals.

• What can be done to overcome the prejudice and discrimination that gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals experience? Research has found that the people who have the most positive attitudes toward gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals are those who say they know one or more gay, lesbian or bisexual person well, often as a friend or co-worker. For this reason, psychologists believe that negative attitudes toward gay people as a group are prejudices that are not grounded in actual experience but are based on stereotypes and misinformation.

• Why is it important for society to be better educated about homosexuality? Educating all people about sexual orientation and homosexuality is likely to diminish anti-gay prejudice. Accurate information about homosexuality is especially important to young people who are first discovering and seeking to understand their sexuality, whether homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual. Fears that access to such information will make more people gay have no validity; information about homosexuality does not make someone gay or straight.

These are the same positions taken by the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association, Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, National Association of Social Workers, American Counseling Association, American Academy of Marriage & Family Therapists and American Academy of Physicians Assistants.

A simple computer search would have easily revealed all of this.

Statements and beliefs based upon individual morality are one thing. But a delegate who holds the public trust and serves the community — which includes people who are straight and gay, adolescents and young adults who are becoming aware of their sexual orientation, families of gay children, and gay parents of children — also has a moral and ethical obligation to know and put forth established scientific knowledge.

Lori W. Hollander is a licensed clinical social worker and therapist in Owings Mills.

It Gets Better - Even in Pennsylvania

2011-08-25T14:55:00.003-04:00

An important message from an elected official in Southwestern Pennsylvania. When will such representatives and other community leaders in Venango County break their silence and add their voices to this important cause?

The Nature of Hate

2011-08-24T14:34:00.002-04:00

Venango County is home to a notoriously anti-gay hate group known as the American Family Association of Pennsylvania.

This important new film from In The Life media looks at hate-speech spewed from such organizations and whether, in a nation lacking legal protections for LGBT people, it motivates violence against the LGBT community.

U.S. Evangelicals Export Hate - Promote Genocide in Uganda

2011-08-09T23:42:00.005-04:00

In 2009, the Ugandan Parliamentary proposed an anti-homosexuality bill that would impose the death penalty on serial offenders of homosexual acts. Inciting fear and sanctioning homophobia, the bill has caused LGBT Ugandans to be hunted in their communities and forced into exile. IN THE LIFE focuses on the evangelicals behind the bill, and exposes the political and financial influence used by powerful conservatives in the U.S. to export their anti-gay agenda overseas.

"The Response," Sponsored by the American Family Association, "Is A Divisive, Fringe Event"

2011-08-05T08:56:00.005-04:00

(The Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Family Association, the viciously anti-gay hate group behind "The Response," is based in Venango County. The local version of The Response is being held at the Oil City Community Alliance Church on Sat., Aug. 6.)

Rick Perry's Religious Revival Sparks A Holy War

from NPR:

Rick Perry, the longest-serving governor of Texas, is a Methodist by tradition who, with his wife Anita, now attends an evangelical megachurch in Austin. He is open about his deep Christian faith.

On Saturday, Perry, who is widely expected to enter the race for the White House, is hosting a religious revival in Houston to pray for what he calls "a nation in crisis."

While the governor claims it's nothing more than a Christian prayer rally, the event has touched off a holy war among critics, who claim it is Jesus-exclusive and political.

'We Need God's Help'

Late last year, shortly after he won his third term, Perry, a Republican, began to envision the event that is now called "The Response."

"With the economy in trouble, communities in crisis, people adrift in a sea of moral relativism, we need God's help," he said. "And that's why I'm calling on Americans to pray and fast like Jesus did."

An event spokesman, who is a former Perry speechwriter, says the daylong affair will be filled with prayer, inspirational messages, Scripture readings and praise music. More than 8,000 people have registered for the prayer rally, which is being held in the 71,000-seat Reliant Stadium, normally used for rodeos and NFL games.

Perry invited all his fellow governors. The only one to accept was Sam Brownback of Kansas, but he is now backing away. His office says Brownback is "on vacation," and if he goes, "it's at his discretion and on his dime."

Among prominent religious leaders expected to speak: James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. Perry is not scheduled to address the crowd.

'The Fringe Of The Fringe'

Other names on the list of coordinators and endorsers have raised eyebrows.

"I mean, when you talk about the religious right, this is the fringe of the fringe here," says Dan Quinn, communications director of the Texas Freedom Network, an Austin-based watchdog group that tracks the far right in Texas.

"This is clearly, when you look at it, religious extremism and naked partisan politics," Quinn says. "I think it's one of the most cynical displays of using faith as a political tool we've seen in a long time."

The event is being paid for by the American Family Association, which describes itself as being "on the frontlines of America's culture war." The Southern Poverty Law Center characterizes the AFA as a hate group because of its fierce anti-gay agenda.

Other participants include:

—John Hagee, a San Antonio evangelist whose endorsement was rejected by John McCain in 2008 because of Hagee's anti-Catholic statements.

—Mike Bickle, a founder of the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, Mo., who's called Oprah Winfrey a "pastor of the harlot of Babylon."

—Alice Patterson, founder of Justice at the Gate, in San Antonio, has written that there is "a demonic structure behind the Democratic Party."

—And then there's John Benefiel, head of the Oklahoma-based Heartland Apostolic Prayer Network, who once said this about the Statue of Liberty: "You know where we got it from? French Freemasons. Listen, folks, that is an idol, a demonic idol right there in the middle of New York Harbor."

A Rush To Judgment?

The gathering in Houston appears to some observers as an early attempt to line up the support of conservative evangelicals for Perry's expected presidential run. The event's executive committee includes religious/political activists David Lane and Jim Garlow, as well as Wayne Hamilton and David Barton, both former officials of the Texas Republican Party.

But wait, organizers say: Don't condemn an event before it happens.

"We do need to come together, and pray, and to seek the Lord on behalf of our nation," says Doug Stringer, who runs a Christian world outreach ministry in Houston called Somebody Cares. "If we can do that without being against anything, then I [am] pleased to be a part of it."

Stringer says he agreed to be an organizer if they guaranteed there will no long-winded sermons or political speeches.

"And so as a result, they've allowed me to be a prayer captain, and if anything goes off-track to where I feel it should be focused on the Lord and prayer and worship, I can come to the microphone and kind of give redirection to it."

Yet "The Response" remains divisive.

Earlier this week, 50 Houston religious leaders, led by the Anti-Defamation League, signed a letter expressing their concern that the Texas governor, and possible presidential candidate, is "sending an official message of religious exclusion" to non-Christian Texans.

An event spokesman insists that everyone is welcome.

Listen to the story HERE.