Bible-Based Family Values? - Hate Begets Hate

Right-wing extremist organizations in Venango County, such as the American "Family" Association of Pennsylvania, "Christian" radio station WAWN, Fishermen's Net, and Lighthouse Ministries of Franklin, can’t preach hate and then not accept responsibility for the way that hate is manifested.

New York Times editorial:

Uganda’s government, which has a shameful record of discrimination against gay men and lesbians, is now considering legislation that would impose the death sentence for homosexual behavior. The United States and others need to make clear to the Ugandan government that such barbarism is intolerable and will make it an international pariah.


Corruption and repression — including violence against women and children and abuse of prisoners — are rife in Uganda. According to The Times’s Jeffrey Gettleman, officially sanctioned homophobia is particularly acute. Gay Ugandans are tormented with beatings, blackmail, death threats and what has been described as “correctional rape.”

The government’s venom is chilling: “Homosexuals can forget about human rights,” James Nsaba Buturo, who holds the cynically titled position of minister of ethics and integrity, said recently.

What makes this even worse is that three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” gays and lesbians have been widely discredited in the United States, helped feed this hatred. Scott Lively, Caleb Lee Brundidge and Don Schmierer gave a series of talks in Uganda last March to thousands of police officers, teachers and politicians in which, according to participants and audio recordings, they claimed that gays and lesbians are a threat to Bible-based family values.

Now the three Americans are saying they had no intention of provoking the anger that, just one month later, led to the introduction of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009. You can’t preach hate and not accept responsibility for the way that hate is manifested.

We don’t have much hope that they will atone for their acts. But right now the American government, and others, should make clear to Uganda that if this legislation becomes law, it will lose millions of dollars in foreign aid and be shunned globally.

Death for Gays ?

The following article from the New York Times provides a look at the world as it might be if Venango County extremists Jane Richey (below left) of "Christian" radio station WAWN and Diane Gramley (below right) of the American "Family" Association of Pennsylvania had their way.




Richey's and Gramley's efforts regularly promote one of the anti-gay organizations (Exodus International) and many of the anti-gay tactics mentioned in the article that have led to a call for the death penalty for gays in Uganda!

It's Time To End The Hate!

After Americans Visit, Uganda Weighs Death for Gays

By Jeffrey Gettleman for the New York Times:

KAMPALA, Uganda — Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived here in Uganda’s capital to give a series of talks.


The theme of the event, according to Stephen Langa, its Ugandan organizer, was “the gay agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda” — and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family.

For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”

Now the three Americans are finding themselves on the defensive, saying they had no intention of helping stoke the kind of anger that could lead to what came next: a bill to impose a death sentence for homosexual behavior.


One month after the conference, a previously unknown Ugandan politician, who boasts of having evangelical friends in the American government, introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, which threatens to hang homosexuals, and, as a result, has put Uganda on a collision course with Western nations.

Donor countries, including the United States, are demanding that Uganda’s government drop the proposed law, saying it violates human rights, though Uganda’s minister of ethics and integrity (who previously tried to ban miniskirts) recently said, “Homosexuals can forget about human rights.”

The Ugandan government, facing the prospect of losing millions in foreign aid, is now indicating that it will back down, slightly, and change the death penalty provision to life in prison for some homosexuals. But the battle is far from over.

Instead, Uganda seems to have become a far-flung front line in the American culture wars, with American groups on both sides, the Christian right and gay activists, pouring in support and money as they get involved in the broader debate over homosexuality in Africa.

“It’s a fight for their lives,” said Mai Kiang, a director at the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, a New York-based group that has channeled nearly $75,000 to Ugandan gay rights activists and expects that amount to grow.


The three Americans who spoke at the conference — Scott Lively, a missionary who has written several books against homosexuality, including “7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child”; Caleb Lee Brundidge, a self-described former gay man who leads “healing seminars”; and Don Schmierer, a board member of Exodus International, whose mission is “mobilizing the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality” — are now trying to distance themselves from the bill.

“I feel duped,” Mr. Schmierer said, arguing that he had been invited to speak on “parenting skills” for families with gay children. He acknowledged telling audiences how homosexuals could be converted into heterosexuals, but he said he had no idea some Ugandans were contemplating the death penalty for homosexuality.

“That’s horrible, absolutely horrible,” he said. “Some of the nicest people I have ever met are gay people.”

Mr. Lively and Mr. Brundidge have made similar remarks in interviews or statements issued by their organizations. But the Ugandan organizers of the conference admit helping draft the bill, and Mr. Lively has acknowledged meeting with Ugandan lawmakers to discuss it. He even wrote on his blog in March that someone had likened their campaign to “a nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda.” Later, when confronted with criticism, Mr. Lively said he was very disappointed that the legislation was so harsh.

Human rights advocates in Uganda say the visit by the three Americans helped set in motion what could be a very dangerous cycle. Gay Ugandans already describe a world of beatings, blackmail, death threats like “Die Sodomite!” scrawled on their homes, constant harassment and even so-called correctional rape.

“Now we really have to go undercover,” said Stosh Mugisha, a gay rights activist who said she was pinned down in a guava orchard and raped by a farmhand who wanted to cure her of her attraction to girls. She said that she was impregnated and infected with H.I.V., but that her grandmother’s reaction was simply, “ ‘You are too stubborn.’ ”

Despite such attacks, many gay men and lesbians here said things had been getting better for them before the bill, at least enough to hold news conferences and publicly advocate for their rights. Now they worry that the bill could encourage lynchings. Already, mobs beat people to death for infractions as minor as stealing shoes.

“What these people have done is set the fire they can’t quench,” said the Rev. Kapya Kaoma, a Zambian who went undercover for six months to chronicle the relationship between the African anti-homosexual movement and American evangelicals.

Mr. Kaoma was at the conference and said that the three Americans “underestimated the homophobia in Uganda” and “what it means to Africans when you speak about a certain group trying to destroy their children and their families.”

“When you speak like that,” he said, “Africans will fight to the death.”

Uganda is an exceptionally lush, mostly rural country where conservative Christian groups wield enormous influence. This is, after all, the land of proposed virginity scholarships, songs about Jesus playing in the airport, “Uganda is Blessed” bumper stickers on Parliament office doors and a suggestion by the president’s wife that a virginity census could be a way to fight AIDS.

During the Bush administration, American officials praised Uganda’s family-values policies and steered millions of dollars into abstinence programs.

Uganda has also become a magnet for American evangelical groups. Some of the best known Christian personalities have recently passed through here, often bringing with them anti-homosexuality messages, including the Rev. Rick Warren, who visited in 2008 and has compared homosexuality to pedophilia. (Mr. Warren recently condemned the anti-homosexuality bill, seeking to correct what he called “lies and errors and false reports” that he played a role in it.)


Many Africans view homosexuality as an immoral Western import, and the continent is full of harsh homophobic laws. In northern Nigeria, gay men can face death by stoning. Beyond Africa, a handful of Muslim countries, like Iran and Yemen, also have the death penalty for homosexuals. But many Ugandans said they thought that was going too far. A few even spoke out in support of gay people.

“I can defend them,” said Haj Medih, a Muslim taxi driver with many homosexual customers. “But I fear the what? The police, the government. They can arrest you and put you in the safe house, and for me, I don’t have any lawyer who can help me.”

A Call For Inclusion

from In The Life:

"Sinful" is how conservative preachers and politicians describe, demonize, and justify opposition of full equality for LGBT people. Progressive religious leaders provide a vital counterweight, preaching full LGBT inclusion to their congregations, threatening an establishment that would prefer policy come from the pulpit. In our lead story, we profile Emily Eastwood, an elder of the LGBT-faith movement and Interfaith Alliance President, Rev. Dr. Welton Gaddy, both, leading the call for tolerance, inclusiveness and religious freedom for all.

Is Venango County's Ambassador To The World Obsessed With Gay Sex?

So, Who Is Venango County's Own Diane Gramley Following Around The Country To Learn The Tricks Of Her Trade From?




Look No Further Than The Infamous Peter LaBarbera.

By Wayne Besen for Truth Wins Out:

Peter LaBarbera Ignores ‘Kinky’ Hetero Banker To Fixate On Gay Men

Peter LaBarbera (a.k.a. Porno Pete) is a self-styled “moral” crusader who has made a career out of going undercover to gay sex clubs and events. His goal is to make LGBT people look bad, so he can advocate for discriminatory laws. It has been pointed out on this website that he never investigates similar heterosexual events, even though they are more numerous.


Porno Pete likes to play the victim, saying that he is attacked unfairly by gay activists, such as myself. However, it is clear that he is entirely deserving of criticism, as a result of his myopically bizarre fixation on male homosexuality. (strangely, he has little interest in lesbians) Here is an excerpt from his website:

“Porno Pete” is Besen’s proud creation, intended to mock me for exposing vile “gay” events like San Francisco’s annual depraved and nudity-filled “Folsom Street Fair” — and Chicago’s “Queer Prom” (sponsored by a gay bathhouse). We expose these events as often as possible because most Americans have no clue how radical the “gay” movement really is — and the threat it poses to kids [check out this gay youth flier] — and the liberal media will never tell them.

Interestingly, on the same day LaBarbera wrote this post, The New York Post had a huge headline about a heterosexual scandal that read: “VIP’s a Kinky Sex Brute”. According the the text:

A hotshot investment banker who rubs shoulders with celebs like Larry King and Tommy Hilfiger is secretly an abusive maniac who gets his jollies through violence, power trips and kinky sex, his newlywed wife charged in court papers yesterday.

Jason Meyers allegedly subjected his now-estranged spouse to months of “physical and psychological abuse” that included brutal beatings and demands for unusual sex acts that “she did not want to do,” according to her explosive suit.

The sordid details include a claim by Miryam Meyers, 29, that her 42-year-old hubby “called her a ‘bitch’ and ejaculated on her face” after she refused his order to “tell him that she was his ’slave’ and that he was ‘the most powerful man in the world’ ” while they were getting it on.

After another incident in which he allegedly slapped her face and pulled her hair in public, Jason Meyers admitted “that seeing her upset turned him on,” her Manhattan federal court suit says. She also claims to have once found a photo of Jason and his ex-wife, in which “his ex-wife was wearing a very short black leather dress and holding a whip, and Jason had a mask with metal chains around his body.”

I visited LaBarbera’s website and there was not a single word written about an allegedly “kinky” and abusive heterosexual love-spat that was featured in one of Americans largest newspapers. Where is Porno Pete when he is needed to protect America’s children, the sanctity of marriage, the American family and wholesome values? Where is he to expose the underbelly of the “heterosexual lifestyle”?


Of course, he is missing in action, because he has a single-minded obsession with gay people having sex – particularly if they are wearing leather. There is a word that describes the work of one who deliberately goes to hard-to-find, out-of-the-way gay sex spots, while ignoring blaring headlines in a major newspaper featuring heterosexual malfeasance. That word is “propaganda”.

Peter LaBarbera is no victim and he is no Christian martyr. He is a phony hypocrite with a prurient mind oddly addicted to observing gay men having sex. What his true motivation may be is between him and his shrink (or the shrink he desperately needs to hire). However, unflattering commentary of his bizarre habits thinly veiled as “work” are completely fair and justified.

When Porno Pete stops whining and gives up his crude circus act of a career, he will get better reviews in the LGBT media and advocacy sites.

Obama Makes History, Appoints Trans Woman

Oh No! What Will Right Wing, Fear-Mongering, Extremists In Washington Who Need To Use The Bathroom Do Now?

By Michelle Garcia for The Advocate:

Aerospace and defense veteran Amanda Simpson has been appointed to the Department of Commerce as a senior technical adviser.


Simpson, who is transgender, will be working in the Bureau of Industry and Security.

"I'm truly honored to have received this appointment and am eager and excited about this opportunity that is before me," she said in a press release by the National Center for Transgender Equality, an organization for which she has served on the board of directors. "And at the same time, as one of the first transgender presidential appointees to the federal government, I hope that I will soon be one of hundreds, and that this appointment opens future opportunities for many others."

Simpson was most recently the Deputy Director in Advanced Technology Development at Raytheon Missile Systems in Tucson, Arizona. A flight instructor and test pilot, Simpson also holds degrees in physics, engineering, and business administration.

Pennsylvania Beware -- It's Time To Get Organized For Fairness & Equality For All

by David Knowles for The Sphere:

(Dec. 30) -- On Monday, two Argentinian men became the first gay couple in Latin America to legally wed. But even as advocates celebrate that milestone, opponents of gay marriage are digging in to blunt the movement's global momentum.


The wedding between Jose Maria Di Bello and Alex Freyre in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina's southernmost province, was by no means an isolated victory for gay rights groups in Latin America.

In 2002, Buenos Aires became the first Latin American city to permit same-sex civil unions. In 2007, Uruguay legalized civil unions for gay and lesbian couples. Ecuador did so in 2008. Colombia's Constitutional Court ruled this year that gay couples must be afforded all of the same rights as straight ones, and last week, Mexico City became the first Latin American capital to pass a law legalizing gay marriage.

"At the start of the decade, if you were gay and wanted to get married, you couldn't do it anywhere," said Hayley Gorenberg, the deputy legal director of Lambda Legal, a U.S. advocacy group for gay rights. "If you look at the progress since then, it's striking."

A quick survey of the globe illustrates Gorenberg's point. In Canada, the House of Commons made gay marriage legal nationwide in 2005. South Africa became the first country in Africa to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples in 2006. In Europe, the decade saw gay marriage legalized in The Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Norway and Sweden.

"I think that you're seeing an international movement, and if we who want to defend traditional marriage want to be successful, we're going to need to organize on that level as well," said Maggie Gallagher, syndicated columnist and the president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, an anti-gay-marriage group.


In the United States, gay and lesbian couples will be able to wed five states in 2010 -- Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont and New Hampshire -- as well as in the District of Columbia.

Still, Gallagher sees the tide shifting against the further expansion of U.S. gay marriage rights in 2009, In particular, she cites November's vote in Maine, in which voters repealed a law passed in the legislature that gave gays and lesbians full marriage rights, and December's action by the New York State Senate, rejecting a bill allowing gay marriage.

"The last few months were encouraging," Gallagher said. "We've put an end to the notion of inevitability."

As for 2010, Gallagher sees opportunity to "take back territory" in states like Iowa through voter referendums. She also hopes to pass new restrictions on gay marriage in states like Pennsylvania, Indiana and West Virginia.

Gorenberg says Lambda Legal is also ready for the fight and knows that voter referendums will play an integral part of what comes next. "I think the ballot box defeats show that minority groups are still vulnerable," Gorenberg says. "But now it's no longer a foregone conclusion that we will lose. Ten years ago it would have been unthinkable that an unpopular minority could have had such success."


Meanwhile, while Di Bello and Freyre were celebrating their nuptials in Argentina, another first in the fight for gay marriage rights has not, so far, turned out as happily. In Malawi, where homosexual acts are punishable with a prison sentence of up to 14 years, Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza defied that statute by publicly announcing their intent to marry with an engagement ceremony. As a result, the two have been arrested and charged with gross indecency.

How to Really Make Change Happen

Successful political movements do not spring fully formed. They require long-term, nuts-and-bolts organizing.

By Mark Rudd, CounterPunch

Since the summer of 2003, I've crisscrossed the country speaking at colleges and theaters and bookstores, first with The Weather Underground documentary and, starting in March of this year, with my book, Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen (William Morrow, 2009). In discussions with young people, they often tell me, “Nothing anyone does can ever make a difference.”


The words still sound strange: it's a phrase I never once heard forty years ago, a sentiment obviously false on its surface. Growing up in the Fifties and Sixties, I – and the rest of the country – knew about the civil rights movement in the South, and what was most evident was that individuals, joining with others, actually were making a difference. The labor movement of the Thirties to the Sixties had improved the lives of millions; the anti-war movement had brought down a sitting president – LBJ, March 1968 – and was actively engaged in stopping the Vietnam War. In the forty years since, the women's movement, gay rights, disability rights, animal rights, and environmental movements have all registered enormous social and political gains. To old new lefties, such as myself, this is all self-evident.

So, why the defeatism? In the absence of knowledge of how these historical movements were built, young people assume that they arose spontaneously, or, perhaps, charismatic leaders suddenly called them into existence. On the third Monday of every January we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. having had a dream; knowledge of the movement itself is lost.

The current anti-war movement's weakness, however, is very much alive in young people's experience. They cite the fact that millions turned out in the streets in the early spring of 2003 to oppose the pending U.S. attack on Iraq, but that these demonstrations had no effect. “We demonstrated, and they didn't listen to us.” Even the activists among them became demoralized as numbers at demonstrations dropped off very quickly, street demonstrations becoming cliches, and, despite a big shift in public opinion in 2006, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan droned on to today. The very success of the spontaneous early mobilization seems to have contributed to the anti-war movement's long-term weakness.


Something's missing. I first got an insight into articulating what it is when I picked up Letters from Young Activists: Today's Rebels Speak Out, edited by Dan Berger, Chesa Boudin and Kenyon Farrow (Nation Books, 2005). Andy Cornell, in a letter to the movement that first radicalized him, “Dear Punk Rock Activism,” criticizes the conflation of the terms “activism” and“organizing.” He writes, “activists are individuals who dedicate their time and energy to various efforts they hope will contribute to social, political, or economic change. Organizers are activists who, in addition to their own participation, work to move other people to take action and help them develop skills, political analysis and confidence within the context of organizations. Organizing is a process – creating long-term campaigns that mobilize a certain constituency to press for specific demands from a particular target, using a defined strategy and escalating tactics.” In other words, it's not enough for punks to continually express their contempt for mainstream values through their alternate identity; they've got to move toward “organizing masses of people.”

Aha! Activism = self-expression; organizing = movement-building.

Until recently, I'd rarely heard young people call themselves “organizers.” The common term for years has been “activists.” Organizing was reduced to the behind the scenes nuts-and-bolts work needed to pull off a specific event, such as a concert or demonstration. But forty years ago, we only used the word “activist” to mock our enemies' view of us, as when a university administrator or newspaper editorial writer would call us “mindless activists.” We were organizers, our work was building a mass movement, and that took constant discussion of goals, strategy and tactics (and, later, contributing to our downfall ideology).

Thinking back over my own experience, I realized that I had inherited this organizer's identity from the red diaper babies I fell in with at the Columbia chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, SDS. Raised by parents in the labor and civil rights and communist or socialist movements, they had naturally learned the organizing method as other kids learned how to throw footballs or bake pineapple upside-down cakes. “Build the base!” was the constant strategy of Columbia SDS for years.

Yet, young activists I met were surprised to learn that major events, such as the Columbia rebellion of April 1968, did not happen spontaneously, that they took years of prior education, relationship building, reconsideration on the part of individuals of their role in the institution. I.e., organizing. It seemed to me that they believed that movements happen as a sort of dramatic or spectator sport: after a small group of people express themselves, large numbers of bystanders see the truth in what they're saying and join in. The mass anti-war mobilization of the Spring 2003, which failed to stop the war, was the only model they knew.

I began looking for a literature that would show how successful historical movements were built. Not the outcomes or triumphs, such as the great civil rights March on Washington in 1963, but the many streams that eventually created the floods. I wanted to know who said what to whom and how did they respond. One book was recommended to me repeatedly by friends, I've Got the Light of Freedom: the Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle by Charles M. Payne (University of California Press, 1995). Payne, an African-American sociologist, now at the University of Chicago, asked the question how young student organizers of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC, had successfully organized voter registration and related campaigns in one town, Greenwood, Mississippi, in the years 1961-1964. The Mississippi Delta region was one of the most benighted areas of the South, with conditions for black cotton sharecroppers and plantation workers not much above the level of slavery. Despite the fact that illiteracy and economic dependency were the norm among black people in the Delta, and that they were the target of years of violent terror tactics, including murder, SNCC miraculously organized these same people to take the steps toward their own freedom, through attaining voting rights and education. How did they do it?

What Payne uncovers through his investigation into SNCC in Greenwood is an organizing method that has no name but is solidly rooted in the traditions of church women of the rural South. Black churches usually had charismatic male ministers, who, as a consequence of their positions, led in an authoritarian manner. The work of the congregations themselves, however, the social events and education and mutual aid were organized at the base level by women, who were democratic and relational in style. Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Council, SCLC, used the ministerial model in their mobilizing for events, while the young people of SNCC – informed by the teaching and examples of freedom movement veterans Ella Baker and Septima Clark – concentrated on building relationships with local people and helping them develop into leaders within democratic structures. SNCC's central organizing principle,” participatory democracy,” was a direct inheritance from Ella Baker.

Payne writes, “SNCC preached a gospel of individual efficacy. What you do matters. In order to move politically, people had to believe that. In Greenwood, the movement was able to exploit communal and familial traditions that encouraged people to believe in their own light.”

The features of the method, sometimes called “developmental” or “transformational organizing,” involve long-term strategy, patient base-building, personal engagement between people, full democratic participation, education and the development of people’s leadership capabilities, and coalition-building. The developmental method is often juxtaposed to Alinsky-style organizing, which is usually characterized as top-down and manipulative.

For a first-hand view of Alinsky organizing – though it’s never named as such – by a trained and seasoned practitioner, see Barack Obama’s book, Dreams from My Father (Three Rivers Press, 1995 and 2004). In the middle section of the book, “Chicago,” Obama describes his three years organizing on the streets and housing projects of South Chicago. He beautifully invokes his motives – improving young people's lives – but at the same time draws a murky picture of organizing. Questions abound: Who trained him? What was his training? Who paid him? What is the guiding ideology? What is his relationship to the people he calls “my leaders?” Are they above him or are they manipulated by him? Who are calling whose shots? What are the long-term consequences? It's a great piece to start a discussion with young organizers.


While reading I've Got the Light of Freedom, I realized that much of what we had practiced in SDS was derived from SNCC and this developmental organizing tradition, up to and including the vision of “participatory democracy,” which was incorporated in the 1962 SDS founding document, “The Port Huron Statement." Columbia SDS's work was patient, strategic, base-building, using both confrontation and education. I, myself, had been nurtured and developed into a leadership position through years of close friendship with older organizers.

However, my clique's downfall came post-1968, when, under the spell of the illusion of revolution, we abandoned organizing, first for militant confrontation (Weatherman and the Days of Rage, Oct. 1969) and then armed urban guerilla warfare (the Weather Underground, 1970-1976). We had, in effect, moved backward from organizing to self-expression, believing, ridiculously, that that would build the movement. At the moment when more organizing was needed to build a permanent anti-imperialist mass movement, we abandoned organizing.

This is the story I tell in my book, Underground. It's about good organizing (Columbia), leading to worse (Weatherman), leading to horrible (the Weather Underground). I hope it's useful to contemporary organizers, as they contemplate how to build the coming mass movement(s).


Mark Rudd lives and teaches in Albuquerque, N.M. He can be reached at www.markrudd.com.

Just How Racist Is the Tea Party Movement?

The activists behind the Tea Bag movement in Venango County are the same extremists fighting against the rights and visibility of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people here and everywhere. And they are, you guessed it, the American "Family" Association of Pennsylvania, "Christian" Radio Station WAWN, Fishermen's Net, Lighthouse Ministries of Franklin.

By Bill Berkowitz for IPS:

Are the openly-racist elements within the Tea Party movement an aberration, or are they more firmly entrenched than tea partiers would care to admit?

It began with Apr. 15 Tax Day protests as thousands rallied in a number of cities across the country.


It continued on into the summer with raucous town hall meetings and gun-toting anti-Barack Obama demonstrators, and appeared to reach its apex with a Sep. 12 march on Washington, which drew nearly 100,000 participants.

Now, however, some in the so-called Tea Party movement are turning their attention toward becoming a force during the 2010 congressional elections.

Several reports on the Sep. 12 event noted it was a nearly all-white crowd and some demonstrators carried an assortment of "homemade" anti-Obama posters, declaring that "The Anti-Christ Is Living in the White House", and calling the president an "Oppressive Bloodsucking Arrogant Muslim Alien".

Despite the fact that it doesn't have a clear identity, and serious questions about the movement's character remain to be answered, the Tea Party movement has been one of the most intriguing political developments of the past year.

Is it a grassroots movement, or has it been organised and funded by Washington-based conservative groups? Could it be both? Is it mainly concerned with economic issues (government spending, taxes, deficits) or are the Christian Right's traditional social issues (abortion, same-sex marriage) of interest to tea partiers?

Are there several -- possibly competing -- ideological tendencies within the movement?

While tea partiers made a lot of noise this past summer, doing their best to put the kybosh on health care reform, is there a future for the movement?

A recent Rasmussen Poll suggests that there very well might be.

In theoretical three-way congressional races between a Democrat, Republican and Tea Party candidate, the Tea Party candidate outpolled the Republican. Democrats attracted 36 percent of the vote; the Tea Party candidate received 23 percent, and the Republican finished third at 18 percent, with 22 percent undecided.

(According to the Rasmussen Reports website, "survey...respondents were asked to assume that the Tea Party movement organized as a new political party. In practical terms, it is unlikely that a true third-party option would perform as well as the polling data indicates. The rules of the election process - written by Republicans and Democrats - provide substantial advantages for the two established major parties.)

Interestingly enough, in an effort to build the movement, some Tea Party organisers have taken to "studying the grassroots training methods of the late Saul Alinsky, the community organizer known for campus protests in the 1960s and who inspired the structure of Obama's presidential campaign," the San Francisco Chronicle recently reported.

Tea Party groups are also using "Tea Party: The Documentary Film" as an organising tool. In a pre-premiere press release, the filmmakers claimed that the film would deal with the "allegations of racism".

And that indeed appears to be the issue that could stymie the movement's growth.

While Tea Party events have become a safe haven for people carrying racist anti-Obama signs, people of colour have stayed away in droves. Members of white nationalist organisations openly participate in Tea Party events and view the movement as a fertile recruiting ground.

Questions about the overlap between tea partiers and anti-immigration activists might be answered when an immigration reform bill is taken up next year.

Are the openly-racist elements within the Tea Party movement an aberration scorned by most Tea Party participants as John Hawkins, who runs a website called RightWingNews, insists, or are they more firmly entrenched than tea partiers would care to admit?

"The tea parties themselves are made up of a diverse bloc of different political elements, and white nationalists have chosen to make a stand inside the tea parties," one expert, Devin Burghart, told IPS.

For the past 17 years, Burghart has researched and written on virtually all facets of contemporary white nationalism. He is currently vice president of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, which monitors and publishes on the activities of white nationalist groups.

"The exact extent of the racist element inside the Tea Parties is difficult to quantify, because they are not a static phenomena, and it depends on who shows up," he explained. "That said, it's enough of a factor to attract the attention of a significant portion of the white nationalist movement."

"It's not a matter of how many African-American or Latino/a folks show up at these tea parties, it's about the content and character of the arguments made at them," Burghart added.

Not only have "tea partiers have turned up with overtly racist signs and slogans" at rallies from coast to coast, he said, but also many participants "cling to the belief that our first African-American president is not only un-American, he was not even born in the country".

Unfortunately, Burghart noted, "There's little evidence to indicate that tea party leaders are doing anything to address the racism in their ranks."

Burghart said that he was not surprised that "tea party activists would deny their racism". After all, "racists have been denying their racism even before pro-secessionist bigots couched their arguments in bogus claims about states' rights".

However, he added, "To anyone with any degree of sensitivity to the issue, the tea parties have clearly shown themselves to be racist, in the lineage of George Wallace - who when he campaigned up North eschewed talk of racial segregation in favour ranting against 'elites.'"

In an article at the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights' website, Leonard Zeskind, the organisation's president and author of the recently published "Blood and Politics: The History of White Nationalism from the Margins to the Mainstream", pointed out that the anti-Obama "opposition" contains "many different political elements".


These include "ultra-conservative Republicans of both the Pat Buchanan and free market variety; anti-tax Tea Party libertarians from the Ron Paul camp; Christian right activists intent on re-molding the country into their kind of Kingdom; birth certificate conspiracy theorists, anti-immigrant nativists of the armed Minuteman and the policy wonk variety; third party 'constitutionalists'; and white nationalists of both the citizens councils and the Stormfront national socialist variety."

If Tea Party activists can ferret out racists and white nationalists from their ranks – and not become a mouthpiece for Christian Right ideologues - it could become a legitimate force on the U.S. political landscape.

Meanwhile, a host of groups, operating under assorted Tea Party banners, are working to influence the 2010 mid-term elections.

Out In The Country

What is life like for young gay men and women who don't live in the city?

NPR affiliate KERA Dallas found out in an interview with Mary L. Gray, author of the book "Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America" (NYU Press, 2009).

Listen to the Podcast HERE.

Icon of Right Wing Traditional Values Divorces Second Wife - Pathetic

Karl Rove, the "architect" of the George W. Bush presidency and strategist behind dozens of same-sex marriage amendments in the 2004 elections and Bush's ill-fated fated attempt at a Federal Marriage Amendment, wants us to respect his "privacy" because he just divorced his second wife of 24 years. The job was just too stressful, reports The New York Times:


When Mr. Rove resigned from his senior position at the White House in 2007, he said he owed it to his family to return it to a sense of normalcy that was impossible to maintain in his high-pressure, high-profile job. A friend, who spoke about the Roves only on condition of anonymity out of respect for their privacy, said the couple maintained an amicable relationship but the rigors and challenges of Mr. Rove’s time at the White House had clearly taken their toll.

Former White House press secretary Dana Perino—who recently claimed there was never a terrorist attack under Bush—released this statement: "Karl Rove and his wife, Darby, were granted a divorce last week. The couple came to the decision mutually and amicably, and they maintain a close relationship and a strong friendship. There will be no further comment, and the family requests that its privacy be respected."

Gay Students Are Bullied More Than any Other Group

Schools are full of all kinds of students - smart kids, popular kids, athletes - gay and lesbian students too. And experts say they are targeted by bullies more than any other groups.

See the interview excerpt with Louie Marven, Director of the LGBT Center Coalition of Central Pennsylvania:

A Tireless Crusader For Justice

"We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers." -- Bayard Rustin



A master strategist and tireless activist, Bayard Rustin is best remembered as the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, one of the largest nonviolent protests ever held in the United States. He brought Gandhi's protest techniques to the American civil rights movement, and helped mold Martin Luther King, Jr. into an international symbol of peace and nonviolence. Despite these achievements, Rustin was silenced, threatened, arrested, beaten, imprisoned and fired from important leadership positions, largely because he was an openly gay man in a fiercely homophobic era. Five years in the making and the winner of numerous awards, BROTHER OUTSIDER presents a feature-length documentary portrait, focusing on Rustin's activism for peace, racial equality, economic justice and human rights.

Small Town Sissy Boys

The documentary Sissyboy captures the short-lived gender-bending drag troupe that thrived for three years in mid-1990s Portland, OR. Not your traditional drag queens, and hardly drag queens at all, the members of Sissyboy strived to bring humorous but always challenging social messages to their audience. The Sissyboys wrote original songs about topics like abortion and Matthew Shepard and created lavish staged shows where their unique esthetic of drag-meets-punk-meets-circus-performance found a loyal audience and made them a Portland institution. Sissyboys follows the troupe for their final year of performances and firsttime director Katie Turinski delves deeply into the personal lives of the performers, which makes for a compelling documentary about an important piece of LGBT history.

Sissyboy

Spirit of Catholicism? Erie Diocese Donates To Fight Marriage Equality in Maine

by Deb Spilko for the Erie Gay News:

The National Catholic Reporter notes that the Erie Catholic Diocese was one of 50 Catholic dioceses in the country that contributed to the campaign to strike down Maine’s law extending civil marriage rights to same-sex couples. In the Nov. 3 referendum, voters rejected marriage equality 53 percent to 47 percent.


Bishop Malone of the Portland Maine diocese had called on bishops from dioceses around the country to contribute to fight marriage equality. Bishops contributed a total of $550,000 to the campaign.

The Erie Times-News contacted Erie Bishop Donald Trautman, who replied in an e-mail. “Bishops have the responsibility to teach, to shepherd and to sanctify, and as any top administrator, I do have access to resources that can be used as I see fit,” Trautman said.

“We believe marriage was created by God as a sacrament between one man and one woman.“ he said. “The church in America exists in a democracy. We have not only the right, but also the responsibility to be active citizens, to participate in our democracy and to make our views known to the legislators who represent us.”

Through Bishop Malone, the Portland Maine diocese contributed $286,000,even though it has been experiencing dire financial difficulties for the past several years. The bishop made the decision to donate $ 180,000 of the Portland diocese’s money, and then took up a second collection.


Boston Skeptics blogger Maggie wrote in September, “The Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland Maine is gambling that you won’t bother to express outrage at this tax-exempt religious body dabbling in politics — despite this being something they are explicitly barred from doing. . . Changing, influencing or creating laws are political actions. And IRS code 501(c)(3) governing tax exempt organizations expressly forbids this.

“If the church wants access to our government, there’s a price. If not, then their best move would be to return that money to their parishioners or donate it to a wholly unrelated charity. This is our government, not the Pope’s.”

!! Lima, Ohio Adds Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity As Protected Classes !!

If It Can Be Done In Lima, It Can Be Done Anywhere, Including Here In Venango County!

from LimaOhio.com:

LIMA — Finishing what cropped up in the city’s review of its charter, City Council approved Monday an anti-discrimination ordinance that includes sexual orientation.


“I think this is exactly the right thing to do,” said Councilman Tom Tebben. “In a perfect world, this legislation wouldn’t be necessary, but it isn’t a perfect world.”

Tebben said during the charter review process that there was no provision that included sexual orientation as a protected class. Initially, an addition was going to be included in the charter changes, which were put before voters in November. But in June the council decided to take up the issue as an ordinance instead.

It passed by an 8-0 vote.

In addition to sexual orientation, the ordinance prohibits the city from favoring or discriminating against employees or potential employees because of race, color, religion, gender, gender identity, military status, national origin, disability, age, or ancestry.

Tebben said he was glad to see government catching up to what has been done in the corporate world for quite some time.

Brett Shingledecker, who has been a vocal proponent of the changes, said he was pleased with the outcome.

“This is a big step in the right direction and a proactive and inclusive measure that will serve the city and its employees well,” he said.

Moving the Agenda: Expanding Gay Rights in Pennsylvania

2009 Pennsylvania Political Leaders Fellow Brian Sims Leads the Road to Greater Equality for the LGBT Community in the State

When you first meet Brian Sims, you see the all-American “guy’s guy”: a handsome, popular, well-mannered former football star from a military family. What you may not know, however, is that he was the first openly gay captain of an NCAA football team and a passionate outspoken advocate for gay rights.


Brian’s story isn’t the typical story of coming out as a young person, especially as a star athlete, but it is the uniqueness of his story that makes him an incredible advocate for LGBT rights and equality.

A Not-so-Likely Story
While Brian was a student at Bloomsburg University, he led his football team to a championship victory as their starting defensive tackle and team captain. Midway through the 2000 football season, Brian chose to tell the rest of his teammates that he was gay. At first, Brian was worried about how it would affect his friendships, fearing that he’d be ostracized by his team. To his surprise, his teammates accepted him and his sexual orientation, and for the rest of the year did not hear one negative comment about his sexuality. He found unlikely supporters in his teammates and colleagues, making his story very different from the coming out stories many people may be familiar with.


“I didn’t come out to my team,” Brian says when reflecting being an openly gay college football player in a recent Outsports.com article. “My team came out to me.”

Brian’s story is not one of defeat but one of hope. “I don’t have a story [that involves] being ostracized or wronged,” he says, which is a common thread in many facets of identity politics. “When I talk to people about LGBT issues, my story allows me to go into a room advocating for equal rights under the law because it’s the right thing to do. If my team was able to rally behind me, then imagine how I can influence other groups.”

Protecting Gay Rights in Pennsylvania
A 2009 CPL Political Leaders Fellow, Brian is now a lawyer, serving as general council of the Philadelphia Bar Association. He first became actively involved with LGBT issues when Dan Anders, a 2006 candidate for the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, asked him to serve as Finance Chair for his campaign.

Anders went on to become the first openly gay elected official in Pennsylvania, and Brian became more involved with LGBT advocacy, becoming an active member of Gay Democrats. But Brian’s main motivation for becoming more involved was the power gap he observed in many facets of LGBT leadership. “When I first started, there weren’t very many young people fighting for gay rights,” he explains. “[LGBT] issues needed someone [my age] involved, and that person was not in the room.”

Brian now serves as President of the Board of Directors at Equality PA, the only statewide organization that works to achieve equal rights for LGBT Pennsylvanians through policy reform.

Along with the campaign to pass anti-discrimination legislation in the state, Brian is leading the way in expanding the base by opening new offices and building the capacity of LGBT organizers and smaller advocacy groups across the state. “We’ve been very active in Harrisburg and the surrounding areas,” he said. “We held a summit to bring together LGBT leaders and volunteers to teach them how to contact legislators and push for municipal anti-discrimination bills in their cities and townships.”


As the President of the Board of Directors, one of Brian’s main responsibilities is identifying board members that are reflective of the state of Pennsylvania. “I have a devotion to racial and ethnic diversity, so I’m hoping to build a board that includes men and women of color and transgendered people as well,” he says. “People deserve to hear from other people who know them—who understand their struggle and share the same background that they do.”

Brian believes in the strength of the “unexpected ally”—a spokesperson for an issue who many may not believe is affected by the same oppression they are trying to fight. In many cases, banning gay marriage is painted as an issue that only white gay males care about. Because of this, Brian makes finding a diverse group of leaders a priority to send the message that discrimination against gays affects everyone regardless of ethnicity, class, or gender.

Finding His Voice
The Center for Progressive Leadership has helped Brian become comfortable with telling his story and connecting it to his values—an important part of a successful progressive political campaign. “CPL really helped me figure out what my message is better than ever before. I can speak from my heart and my head and I now know how to do that in a room of experts.”



Brian gained more as a CPL Political Leaders Fellow, including skills he can take with him as he continues his political career.“We have a need for gay rights laws in Pennsylvania, But in order for that to happen we have to have LGBT people in its state legislature who will fight for us.”

Erie Peace Initiative Vigil in Meadville - Sat., Jan. 2

Join the Erie Peace Initiative as we travel to Meadville to support the Women In Black-- "a world-wide network of women committed to peace with justice and actively opposed to injustice, war, militarism and other forms of violence."

Date: Saturday, January 2, 2010
Time: 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Location: Diamond Park (Meadville)


The Erie Peace Initiative is a gathering of people from Erie and Crawford counties who are concerned that the US war on terrorism has become a permanent global war. We are committed to education and action to stop this "War on Terrorism." We want to stop the escalation and spread of such war and to work for true justice and peace.

"Intellectual" Architect of the Extreme Right

This article echoes many of the questions and concerns that swirl around the activities of local Venango County anti-gay extremists like Diane Gramley of the American "Family" Association and Jane Richey of "Christian" Radio station WAWN and the Fishermen's Net "ministries."

from Truth Wins Out:

A feature article in this week’s New York Times Magazine refers to Princeton professor Robert P. George as the “intellectual architect” of the extreme right. This is hardly an honor, considering the main competition for “Values Valedictorian” is Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter and Mike Huckabee. One also has to consider admiration comes from the likes of George W. Bush and FOX instigator Glenn Beck, who calls George “one of the biggest brains in America.”


George’s primary accomplishment has been denying gay couples the right to marry, by forming an unholy political union between conservative Catholics, like himself, and Evangelical Christians. He is the chairman of The National Organization for Marriage, the group that most recently worked to strip marriage rights from LGBT couples in Maine.

Quite frankly, I’m hardly impressed with George’s cognitive abilities. If one looks at the numbers in Maine, his allegedly intellectual arguments against same-sex marriage failed miserably in cosmopolitan Portland and in Orono, home of The University of Maine. His primary talent, it seems, is to trick the unschooled and easily fooled. Given this reality, George is more back woods propagandist than deep professorial thinker.

Indeed, one of the simplest ways to succeed in America is to rabble rouse and scapegoat. It takes no brains to peddle belligerence and play the gay card by pandering to people not playing with a full deck. George exploited an undereducated constituency and fed them red meat, which is no more than a cheap shortcut for those incapable of the more difficult task of bringing Americans together. In a diverse nation paradoxically frightened by diversity, demagogues such as George are a dime a dozen and unworthy of praise.

What George offers is sophistry disguised as scholarship. For example, his opposition to gay people having sex or marrying rests on his version of “natural law”, allegedly based on “practical reason.” In the Times Magazine article, Philadelphia Cardinal Justin Rigali parrots George’s idea of “natural law” at a press conference, with George at his side, cheering on his protégé.

“Sexual relations outside the marital bond are contrary not only to the will of God but to the good of man,” said Rigali. “Indeed they are contrary to the will of God precisely because they are against the good of man.”

The “good” of which men (and women) might Rigali and George be referring to?

Is it the teenage boys who were molested in the Catholic Church because such conservative ideologues insisted on turning gay men into sexually repressed and emotionally stunted shells and then placing them in the priesthood?

Is it “good” for the gay youths who commit suicide in disproportionate numbers because men like George and Rigali tell them their love is inferior?

Perhaps, they can illuminate how such “practical reason” was “good” for Welsh rugby legend Gareth Thomas who came out of the closet this weekend after hiding his sexual orientation for two decades.


“Sometimes I felt so alone and depressed,” said Thomas. “I’ve stood on so many cliff edges. I used to go to the cliffs overlooking the beach near our cottage in St Brides Major and just think about jumping off and ending it all…I was like a ticking bomb. I thought I could suppress it, keep it locked away in some dark corner of myself, but I couldn’t. It was who I was, and I just couldn’t ignore it any more.”

Maybe George can explain how his philosophy was somehow “good” for Gareth’s wife Jenna, who is about to be divorced?

If “practical reason” has proven one thing, it has shown the closet, particularly for the Catholic Church, to be destructive on so many levels. George has demonstrably failed to articulate how openly gay people harm heterosexuals or how living a lie helps homosexuals be more productive members of society. His entire presentation is a ruse meant to rally the rubes.


Interestingly, George believes in restricting marriage because, in his view, only a husband and wife can experience, “comprehensive unity” and become a “one-flesh union.” He blatantly ignores that millions of people can achieve this state only through homosexual relations. By forcing GLBT people to conform to his views and presumably marry the opposite sex, he is creating the conditions to achieve the polar opposite of what he claims is necessary for a healthy marriage.

George is equally disingenuous in claiming that marriage is based on procreation. These days, the vast majority of people marry for love. Many couples choose not to have children, while others are unable to. To suggest otherwise is to proffer an incoherent and intellectually dishonest view of modern marriage.

George is an intellectual lightweight without an original idea in his head. His claim to fame is organizing like-minded conservatives and providing a veneer of education to mask his goal of discrimination. This is not the pride of Princeton, but a paean to prejudice.

Make The Yuletide Gay

Our Christian friends are often quite surprised at how enthusiastically we Pagans celebrate the 'Christmas' season. Even though we prefer to use the word 'Yule', and our celebrations may peak a few days BEFORE the 25th, we nonetheless follow many of the traditional customs of the season: decorated trees, carolling, presents, Yule logs, and mistletoe. We might even go so far as putting up a 'Nativity set', though for us the three central characters are likely to be interpreted as Mother Nature, Father Time, and the Baby Sun-God. None of this will come as a surprise to anyone who knows the true history of the holiday, of course.


In fact, if truth be known, the holiday of Christmas has always been more Pagan than Christian, with it's associations of Nordic divination, Celtic fertility rites, and Roman Mithraism. That is why both Martin Luther and John Calvin abhorred it, why the Puritans refused to acknowledge it, much less celebrate it (to them, no day of the year could be more holy than the Sabbath), and why it was even made ILLEGAL in Boston! The holiday was already too closely associated with the birth of older Pagan gods and heroes. And many of them (like Oedipus, Theseus, Hercules, Perseus, Jason, Dionysus, Apollo, Mithra, Horus and even Arthur) possessed a narrative of birth, death, and resurrection that was uncomfortably close to that of Jesus. And to make matters worse, many of them pre-dated the Christian Savior.

Ultimately, of course, the holiday is rooted deeply in the cycle of the year. It is the Winter Solstice that is being celebrated, seed-time of the year, the longest night and shortest day. It is the birthday of the new Sun King, the Son of God -- by whatever name you choose to call him. On this darkest of nights, the Goddess becomes the Great Mother and once again gives birth. And it makes perfect poetic sense that on the longest night of the winter, 'the dark night of our souls', there springs the new spark of hope, the Sacred Fire, the Light of the World, the Coel Coeth.


That is why Pagans have as much right to claim this holiday as Christians. Perhaps even more so, as the Christians were rather late in laying claim to it, and tried more than once to reject it. There had been a tradition in the West that Mary bore the child Jesus on the twenty-fifth day, but no one could seem to decide on the month. Finally, in 320 C.E., the Catholic Fathers in Rome decided to make it December, in an effort to co-opt the Mithraic celebration of the Romans and the Yule celebrations of the Celts and Saxons.

There was never much pretense that the date they finally chose was historically accurate. Shepherds just don't 'tend their flocks by night' in the high pastures in the dead of winter! But if one wishes to use the New Testament as historical evidence, this reference may point to sometime in the spring as the time of Jesus's birth. This is because the lambing season occurs in the spring and that is the only time when shepherds are likely to 'watch their flocks by night' -- to make sure the lambing goes well. Knowing this, the Eastern half of the Church continued to reject December 25, preferring a 'movable date' fixed by their astrologers according to the moon.

Thus, despite its shaky start (for over three centuries, no one knew when Jesus was supposed to have been born!), December 25 finally began to catch on. By 529, it was a civic holiday, and all work or public business (except that of cooks, bakers, or any that contributed to the delight of the holiday) was prohibited by the Emperor Justinian. In 563, the Council of Braga forbade fasting on Christmas Day, and four years later the Council of Tours proclaimed the twelve days from December 25 to Epiphany as a sacred, festive season. This last point is perhaps the hardest to impress upon the modern reader, who is lucky to get a single day off work. Christmas, in the Middle Ages, was not a SINGLE day, but rather a period of TWELVE days, from December 25 to January 6. The Twelve Days of Christmas, in fact. It is certainly lamentable that the modern world has abandoned this approach, along with the popular Twelfth Night celebrations.


Of course, the Christian version of the holiday spread to many countries no faster than Christianity itself, which means that 'Christmas' wasn't celebrated in Ireland until the late fifth century; in England, Switzerland, and Austria until the seventh; in Germany until the eighth; and in the Slavic lands until the ninth and tenth. Not that these countries lacked their own mid-winter celebrations of Yuletide. Long before the world had heard of Jesus, Pagans had been observing the season by bringing in the Yule log, wishing on it, and lighting it from the remains of last year's log. Riddles were posed and answered, magic and rituals were practiced, wild boars were sacrificed and consumed along with large quantities of liquor, corn dollies were carried from house to house while carolling, fertility rites were practiced (girls standing under a sprig of mistletoe were subject to a bit more than a kiss), and divinations were cast for the coming Spring. Many of these Pagan customs, in an appropriately watered-down form, have entered the mainstream of Christian celebration, though most celebrants do not realize (or do not mention it, if they do) their origins.

For modern Witches, Yule (from the Anglo-Saxon 'Yula', meaning 'wheel' of the year) is usually celebrated on the actual Winter Solstice, which may vary by a few days, though it usually occurs on or around December 21st. It is a Lesser Sabbat or Lower Holiday in the modern Pagan calendar, one of the four quarter-days of the year, but a very important one. This year (1988) it occurs on December 21st at 9:28 am CST. Pagan customs are still enthusiastically followed. Once, the Yule log had been the center of the celebration. It was lighted on the eve of the solstice (it should light on the first try) and must be kept burning for twelve hours, for good luck. It should be made of ash. Later, the Yule log was replaced by the Yule tree but, instead of burning it, burning candles were placed on it. In Christianity, Protestants might claim that Martin Luther invented the custom, and Catholics might grant St. Boniface the honor, but the custom can demonstrably be traced back through the Roman Saturnalia all the way to ancient Egypt. Needless to say, such a tree should be cut down rather than purchased, and should be disposed of by burning, the proper way to dispatch any sacred object.

Along with the evergreen, the holly and the ivy and the mistletoe were important plants of the season, all symbolizing fertility and everlasting life. Mistletoe was especially venerated by the Celtic Druids, who cut it with a golden sickle on the sixth night of the moon, and believed it to be an aphrodisiac. (Magically -- not medicinally! It's highly toxic!) But aphrodisiacs must have been the smallest part of the Yuletide menu in ancient times, as contemporary reports indicate that the tables fairly creaked under the strain of every type of good food. And drink! The most popular of which was the 'wassail cup' deriving its name from the Anglo-Saxon term 'waes hael' (be whole or hale).


Medieval Christmas folklore seems endless: that animals will all kneel down as the Holy Night arrives, that bees hum the '100th psalm' on Christmas Eve, that a windy Christmas will bring good luck, that a person born on Christmas Day can see the Little People, that a cricket on the hearth brings good luck, that if one opens all the doors of the house at midnight all the evil spirits will depart, that you will have one lucky month for each Christmas pudding you sample, that the tree must be taken down by Twelfth Night or bad luck is sure to follow, that 'if Christmas on a Sunday be, a windy winter we shall see', that 'hours of sun on Christmas Day, so many frosts in the month of May', that one can use the Twelve Days of Christmas to predict the weather for each of the twelve months of the coming year, and so on.

Remembering that most Christmas customs are ultimately based upon older Pagan customs, it only remains for modern Pagans to reclaim their lost traditions. In doing so, we can share many common customs with our Christian friends, albeit with a slightly different interpretation. And thus we all share in the beauty of this most magical of seasons, when the Mother Goddess once again gives birth to the baby Sun-God and sets the wheel in motion again. To conclude with a long-overdue paraphrase, 'Goddess bless us, every one!'

Soulful Power

Author, therapist and spiritual guide Christian de la Huerta recently sat down with Rick Borutta to talk about gay "archetypes" or roles that we as LGBT-identified people play in our lives today, and have played throughout world history among many of the Earth's cultures. Christian's book, Coming Out Spiritually was a breakthrough for many of us who needed an eye-opener to our sacred and honored past in order to reclaim parts of our inner-selves that we had ignored

Christian has a new website: Soulful Power and soon, a new book entitled The Soul Of Power, which he says will focus on women, empowering women, but also empowering the divine feminine in all of us, male and female, gay or straight. He believes that the male hierarchy has been out of balance for far too long and that LGBTs play a special role in helping the Divine Mother regain her footing to realize the Tao, or balance in all things, of yin and yang.

Winter Solstice Celebration In Oil City

On Monday, December 21st at 7pm in Oil City's beautiful National Transit Building there will be a celebration of the Solstice with light yoga, music by Me and You, and artwork.

This is a Free and LGBT-friendly event. Please Join Us!



The National Transit Building is on the corner of Seneca and Center Streets in Oil City, PA. The National Transit Building was built in 1890 across from the bustling Oil Exchange at a cost of $90,000. The building housed John D. Rockefeller’s subsidiaries of Standard Oil Company, one of the most powerful corporations of its time. Its features include oak paneling, marble floors, a circular wrought iron fire escape, pneumatic messenger tubes, vaults on all floors, Civil War cannon ball doorknobs, newel posts, wrought iron and brass fixtures and a hydraulic open-cage elevator. In 1978 the National Transit Building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1997 a non-profit agency, the Institute for Civic Renewal, donated rent and utilities for the first floor of the building toward the creation of Oil Valley Center for the Arts. Using grant funds and hundreds of hours of donated labor, The building has been restored to its original splendor.




Check out the Oil Valley Center for the Arts!