A Question for the (Venango County) Republican Party?

by Faith In America:

An ad that appears today in the Raleigh News and Observer as part of Faith in America’s current billboard campaign asks the question: “Is the Republican Party the party of religion-based bigotry?”


The answer is no in respect to the ideals upon which the GOP was founded upon. The Republican Party when founded in the later 1800s by people opposed to slavery, certainly set forth at its origination ideals that are in direct conflict to treating a group of people as inferior and undeserving of human dignity.

However, the influence of anti-gay religious organizations during the previous 30 years has branded the Republican Party as a political party that fully embraces religion-based stigma and hostility toward gay and lesbian Americans. Such an embrace has been a powerful force of oppression. It has been one of the key ingredients in the mortar mixture that has held in place a wall of prejudice, misunderstanding and discrimination. Most importantly yet sadly, is has aided and abetted the destruction of young lives.

When certain conservative religious organization in the early 1980s began to identify opposition to LGBT equality as a political tool to recruit new members and motivate existing constituencies, they turned the Republican Party to fortify those efforts. Sara Diamond, an author who has written several acclaimed books on the history of the Religious Right, describes in “Not By Politics Alone” how the GOP had by that time already formed a foundation for such a alliance through its support of other Religious Right causes – mainly desegragated church schools and the Equal Rights Amendment for women. The Religious Right’s terribly oppressive message that gay and lesbian Americans – because of their “homosexual lifestyle” – were a threat to society began to be injected into the rhetoric of Republican candidates seeking to capture votes at the behest of the Religious Right. The marriage between the Christian Right and GOP has been tenuous at times and still today but no one can dispute how hostility toward gay Americans has been used in Republican political rhethoric and as a tool to garner votes.

We still see remnants of the prejudices toward other minorities that were involved in that early history of the Religious Right’s alliance with the Republican Party.

Just last week, Republican Oklahoma lawmaker Sally Kerns said she apologized “for my statements last night about African Americans and women.” Here in North Carolina, Republican State Senator James Forrester last year was quoted in a Statesville Landmark article to say “slick city lawyers and homosexual lobbies and African-American lobbies are running Raleigh.” Kern is best known for saying gay folks are the “biggest threat our nation has” at a 2008 gathering of Republicans. Forrester introduced an anti-gay marriage initiative this year in the N.C. General Assembly – as he has done numerous times in the past.

As an organization whose mission is to bring awareness and understanding about the harm caused by religion-based bigotry, Faith in America is compelled to address how this awful form of bigotry has been widely promoted through the political discourse.

It is incumbent of both Republicans and Democrats to stand against the harm that is unleashed on LGBT individuals and society by such an oppressive force. LGBT youth literally are ending their lives because of a societal climate of stigma and hostility – a climate that has been both justified and promoted through anti-gay religious organizations’ influence within the Republican Party.


The Associated Press reported on April 17 that suicide attempts by gay teens — and even straight kids — “are more common in politically conservative areas where schools don’t have programs supporting gay rights, a study involving nearly 32,000 high school students found. Those factors raised the odds and were a substantial influence on suicide attempts even when known risk contributors like depression and being bullied were considered, study author Mark Hatzenbuehler, a Columbia University psychologist and researcher, was quoted to ay in the article.

It is not difficult to understand how such bigotry is making its way into the minds of our children. It also is not difficult to understand how such stigma and hostility affects gay and lesbian youth in such a hurtful way.

Imagine the 13-year-old gay teen in Raleigh reading a newspaper in the school library in which Mecklenburg Republican County Commissioner Bill James was quoted to say the purpose of the proposed anti-marriage amendment is “to put a big letter of shame on the behavior. We don’t want them here. We don’t want them marrying.”

The messages to gay youth being promoted by the anti-gay religious groups and their political cohorts are: You deserve to be shamed by society, you are a threat to your family and society as a whole, and you are not wanted.

There can be no doubt about the emotional and psychological harm that such messages inflict on LGBT people, youth and their families and on a community as a whole.

No political party should ever embrace putting a group of American citizens, especially young kids, in the path of such harmful bigotry, prejudice and discrimination.


We ask Republican lawmakers, dedicated to the ideals on which their party was founded, to stand against religion-based bigotry toward North Carolinas gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender citizens. We ask Democratic lawmakers to stand with their Republican colleagues in this effort.

We sincerely believe such a stance will be in keeping with the majority of North Carolinian Republicans and nationwide as well, as evidenced by a recent poll that showed 51 percent of Republicans favor legal recognition of same-sex couples’ relationships. We have no doubt that trend will continue as that same poll found greater support from Republicans under age 50.

As new voices of social justice and equality are being heard around the world, we are hopeful North Carolina lawmakers will raise their voices against religion-based bigotry and the injustice and inequality it seeks to promote against this state’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender citizens.

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.”

A Step In Faith

Evangelical Christian Brent Childers explains his journey from believing that homosexuality was an abomination to marching in a pro-gay march on Washington.

By Brent Childers | Newsweek

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans are a diverse, extraordinary, resilient, and passionate group of forgiving men and women. I wouldn't be standing beside them demanding full and equal treatment under the law and speaking out against the harm caused by religion-based bigotry at the National Equality March in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 11 if I thought they were not created in God's image the same as myself, same as my family, as we all are—we are all God's children.


And I know better than anyone, since six years ago I was one of those bigots. At that time it would have seemed abominable to even consider attending a "gay-rights" event. To me, these would have been the people tearing apart the very seams of our culture and our country.

Today, it is a natural expression of who I am. Some might call that a miracle.

So what it is that would bring someone from a place where he once declared himself a "Jesse Helms Republican," a man who condemned homosexuality as a threat to children and society, told his own son that being gay is a ticket to hell, to travel from Hickory, N.C., to the West Lawn of the Capitol building on Oct. 11, 2009? How can one travel from the seemingly impossible road of bigotry to one of acceptance and love for our LGBT brothers and sisters? The answer is one that I hope religious leaders such as Pat Robertson and James Dobson (and most importantly, their followers) will hear.

It's because something deep inside told me that I needed to step out in faith onto a bridge of knowledge and understanding. I didn't know where this bridge would take me but something was telling me it was a path I needed to walk. My own mother challenged me in 2003 to look at my beliefs and the true intent behind the teachings I held in blind faith. "Do you think your views are Christ-like?" she asked me. Her question was dead on: once I walked away from the Church's teachings of rejection and condemnation, my relationship with God transcended to a higher spiritual plateau. I realized an unparalleled sense of spiritual clarity when I opened my heart and mind to a genuine expression of love, compassion, and acceptance of all sexual orientations and gender identities.

This new voice—Christ's voice—became the core principles of my faith: love, compassion, and respect. That voice I now realize was desperately wanting to be heard, a voice no longer comfortable with the place in which I had chose to confine it for so long—a place of bigotry, prejudice, fear, and misunderstanding.

The walk across that bridge wasn't very strenuous but it was at times painful. The pain came as I began to realize for the first time that I had been using my faith to bring harm to others. That's not a pleasant realization for anyone who marches under a Christian banner of love, respect, and compassion.

During the past four years I have looked into the faces of those I once caused harm to with religion-based bigotry and prejudice. And while I may have never inflicted a physical blow, I know today that my words indeed caused deep wounds—perhaps at some point deeper than I care to dwell upon.

They are the faces of individuals like young Sean Kennedy, who died in Greenville, S.C., in 2007 after being struck by a person who considered Sean a "faggot"; Pat and Lynn Mulder of Auburndale, Fla., whose gay son also died as a result of a hate crime; Jared Horsford of Texas who carved derogatory words into his flesh because he thought it would help control the demon he was told lived there; Nicholas White who was relentlessly berated by fellow 4-H peers at camp this summer as other 4-H campers stood behind the tormentors in silence; or the mother I met recently in North Carolina who grieved over her dead son—a child that had been rejected because he was gay and thought peace could only come through suicide.


There are many, many others I have met in my work with Faith in America, as we try to bring awareness and understanding to the pain and trauma caused to LGBT people, especially youth, when church teaching is misused to justify and promote a societal climate of rejection, condemnation, and discrimination. This environment fosters suicide, hate crimes, an epidemic of antigay bullying in our schools against all kinds of children gay and straight, legal workplace discrimination against LGBT citizens in 20 states, military service members forced to serve in silence or discharged for being honest about who they are, lesbian and gay parents unable to protect their children without the legal structure of federally recognized civil marriage, and lesbian and gay couples unable to provide security for their partners in the absence of federally recognized civil marriage. This is what we march for on Oct. 11 and every day. Every person coming to Washington—whether they are religious or not—does share one faith, and that is faith in America. We can and must do better. As the progress of history has shown, Americans will prove themselves able to see beyond religion-based bigotry to the promises of equal treatment for all. Those who use religion-based bigotry to persecute and discriminate against LGBT people are on the wrong side of history, just as they were with slavery, interracial marriage, the treatment of women, and so many other issues.

I remember the first time I met Sean Kennedy's mother, Elke, sitting in her family's living room just months after she had lost her precious son as the result of a senseless and hate-filled act of violence. And I will never forget that momentary look on her face when I explained to her that I once was someone whose attitude had helped perpetuate the societal climate in which her son lived and died. It was a moment in which I realized the depths of the wounds I may have inflicted upon a gay teen contemplating suicide or a perpetrator looking to justify hate violence. It is a moment that commands me to continue to march, to speak out, and help others experience the spiritual blessing that comes from unshackling the chains of religion-based bigotry and prejudice.

Brent Childers is the executive director of Faith in America. After changing his views on homosexuality, he left the Southern Baptist Church and now attends both a local Pentacostal and a nondenominational church in Hickory, N.C.