Hmmm -- Aren't The Right-Wingers Always Saying It's "The Gays In The Military" That Will Destroy "Unit Cohesion?"

The Great Shame

by Bob Herbert for The New York Times:

I had a conversation several weeks ago with a former Army officer, a woman, who had been attacked in her bed a few years ago by a superior officer, a man, who was intent on raping her.

The woman fought the man off with a fury. When she tried to press charges against him, she was told that she should let the matter drop because she hadn’t been hurt. When she persisted, battalion officials threatened to bring charges against her.

“They were talking about charging me with assault,” she said, her voice still tinged with anger and a sense of disbelief. “I’m no longer in the Army,” she added dryly.

Tia Christopher, a 27-year-old woman who lives in California and works with victims of sexual assault in the military, told me about the time that she was raped when she was in the Navy. She was attacked by another sailor who had come into her room in the barracks.

“He was very rough,” she said. “The girls next door heard my head hitting the wall, and he made quite a mess. When he left, he told me that he’d pray for me and that he still thought I was pretty.”

Ms. Christopher left the Navy. As she put it: “My military career ended. My assailant’s didn’t.”

Rape and other forms of sexual assault against women is the great shame of the U.S. armed forces, and there is no evidence that this ghastly problem, kept out of sight as much as possible, is diminishing.

New data released by the Pentagon showed an almost 9 percent increase in the number of sexual assaults reported in the last fiscal year — 2,923 — and a 25 percent increase in such assaults reported by women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Try to imagine how bizarre it is that women in American uniforms who are enduring all the stresses related to serving in a combat zone have to also worry about defending themselves against rapists wearing the same uniform and lining up in formation right beside them.

The truly chilling fact is that, as the Pentagon readily admits, the overwhelming majority of rapes that occur in the military go unreported, perhaps as many as 80 percent. And most of the men accused of attacking women receive little or no punishment. The military’s record of prosecuting rapists is not just lousy, it’s atrocious.

Louise Slaughter, a Democratic congresswoman from upstate New York, said: “I know of women victims, women in the military, who said to me that the first response they would get if they tried to report a rape was, ‘Oh, you don’t want to ruin that young man’s career, do you?’ ”

Ms. Slaughter has been trying for many years to get the military to really crack down on these crimes. “Very, very few cases result in court-martials,” she said, “and there are not that many that are even adjudicated.”

The Department of Defense has taken a peculiarly optimistic view of the increase in the number of reported sexual attacks. The most recent data is contained in the annual report that the department is required to submit to Congress. The report says that “the overall increase in reports of sexual assault in the military is encouraging,” and goes on to explain:

“It should be noted that increased reports of sexual assault do not reflect a rise in annual incidents of sexual assault. Sexual assault is one of the most under-reported crimes in the United States. Estimates suggest that only a small percentage of sexual assaults are ever reported to the police. The department suspects that the same is true for military society as well. An increase in the number of reported cases means that the department is capturing a greater proportion of the cases occurring each year.”

How’s that for viewing hideous statistics through rose-colored glasses? If the number of reported cases of rape goes sky-high over the next fiscal year, that will mean that the military is doing an even better job!


The military is one of the most highly controlled environments imaginable. When there are rules that the Pentagon absolutely wants followed, they are rigidly enforced by the chain of command. Violations are not tolerated. The military could bring about a radical reduction in the number of rapes and other forms of sexual assault if it wanted to, and it could radically improve the overall treatment of women in the armed forces.

There is no real desire in the military to modify this aspect of its culture. It is an ultra-macho environment in which the overwhelming tendency has been to see all women — civilian and military, young and old, American and foreign — solely as sexual objects.

Real change, drastic change, will have to be imposed from outside the military. It will not come from within.

Good News for a Good Neighbor -- West Virginia Gets First Statewide GLBT Advocacy Organization

by Will O'Bryan for MetroWeekly:

Regardless of what the superstitious might say, Friday the 13th was a very lucky day in West Virginia.

''Today, in the State Senate, we passed ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act),'' Stephen Skinner said March 13, referring to Senate Bill 238, now facing a House battle to protect West Virginians against housing or employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. ''We sort of timed our public announcement to coincide with this.''

That public announcement is the one telling everyone that West Virginia now has a statewide organization fighting for GLBT equality: Fairness West Virginia.

Adding that Fairness has already been up and running behind the scenes -- ''zeroing in on lobbying like a laser'' -- Skinner, founder and president of Fairness, says there is more to this new organization than getting things done in the state capital, Charleston.

''To have people who have deep roots in West Virginia self-identify as gay is going to have a huge impact,'' he says. ''That goes back to the politics of being out. If a [gay] 13-year-old sees doctors [and] lawyers being out, then we have made a difference.''

Whatever differences Fairness may make, there is no doubting that there is interest in the nascent organization. A pledge to have 1,000 supporters registered within three weeks of going live has been well surpassed, at least in terms of Facebook buddies.


A more tangible measure of this new force may be its 12-member board of academics, attorneys, entrepreneurs, philanthropists and veterans, many of whom have ties to Washington. Skinner, 40, is among them, maintaining an apartment in the District, though he practices law at his family's firm in Charles Town and resides primarily in Shenandoah Junction, W.Va.

''Part of the reason I wanted to come back was to make a difference in West Virginia,'' says Skinner, who returned to West Virginia in 2004, after years in D.C. and New York City. With roots in West Virginia at least 250 years deep and a family business to support, there was an obvious pull for Skinner. But he says he's also hoping that Fairness will get a big boost from outside the state as well, offering a nod to former West Virginians who've made their fortunes elsewhere.

Adam Smith, who lived all his life in the same Parkersburg, W.Va., home until he left for college in North Carolina, fills the bill. Today, he's living in D.C., working as the Web-content editor at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. He's also a member of the Fairness board.

''I know a lot of gay and gay-friendly people who still feel really tied to the state. We all feel really connected to West Virginia,'' Smith says of his fellow transplants, adding that he also feels a responsibility to not just advance equality in West Virginia, but to work for those who he feels certain did not have as easy a time as he did coming out a decade ago. He was 16.

''I did not have a lot of problems,'' he says. ''I got a few sneers. People would say things, but I was never scared. That's why I'm so interested in Fairness. I was lucky, but I think others aren't so lucky.''

Amanda Marano King, a Charleston attorney, has a somewhat different perspective than Skinner or Smith, or any of her fellow board members for that matter. She may also have her Washington ties -- Georgetown University class of '99 -- but unlike the rest, she's straight.

''I had a second cousin who was gay and struggled with his family,'' King, 32, recalls from her West Virginia youth. ''I remember that being an issue with some of my parents' family.''

King says she was brought onboard through her relationship with a gay student at West Virginia University College of Law, with whom she studied transgender legal issues. That fellow student was Kevin Waldo, who also serves on the Fairness board.

''As a woman, people fought for my rights. There should be no difference,'' King reasons. ''[GLBT equality] is an important, basic, human right. It's of top importance. ... There are West Virginians who've had to leave West Virginia because they don't feel like they have a place in the state.''

While Smith may be one of the state's emigrants, though he makes it back to visit family regularly, it's obvious that like Skinner and King he may one day return to his home state.


''I love West Virginia,'' he confirms. ''The people there are the nicest you'll ever meet. I know all the West Virginia jokes. They're obnoxious, but we take it in stride. We're nice people -- and it's a beautiful state.''

The Coming Evangelical Collapse

from The Christian Science Monitor:


Editor’s note: Over the years, we've run dozens of pieces dissecting the influence of the evangelical Christian movement on American political culture. Most have been critical of its influence -- its leaders' desire to destroy the wall between church and state and turn the U.S. into a "Christian state" -- and virtually all have been written by analysts outside the movement. The piece that follows is a departure. Written by Michael Spencer, who describes himself as "a postevangelical reformation Christian in search of a Jesus-shaped spirituality," this essay, which was adapted from a series on his blog, InternetMonk.com, is from the perspective of an insider, a "true believer." We hope you’ll find Spencer’s take informative.

We are on the verge -- within 10 years -- of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.

Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the "Protestant" 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.

This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.

Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I'm convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close.

Why is this going to happen?

1. Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.


The evangelical investment in moral, social, and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses. Being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of Evangelicals can't articulate the Gospel with any coherence. We fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith.

2. We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.

3. There are three kinds of evangelical churches today: consumer-driven megachurches, dying churches, and new churches whose future is fragile. Denominations will shrink, even vanish, while fewer and fewer evangelical churches will survive and thrive.

4. Despite some very successful developments in the past 25 years, Christian education has not produced a product that can withstand the rising tide of secularism. Evangelicalism has used its educational system primarily to staff its own needs and talk to itself.

5. The confrontation between cultural secularism and the faith at the core of evangelical efforts to "do good" is rapidly approaching. We will soon see that the good Evangelicals want to do will be viewed as bad by so many, and much of that work will not be done. Look for ministries to take on a less and less distinctively Christian face in order to survive.

6. Even in areas where Evangelicals imagine themselves strong (like the Bible Belt), we will find a great inability to pass on to our children a vital evangelical confidence in the Bible and the importance of the faith.

7. The money will dry up.

What will be left?

• Expect evangelicalism to look more like the pragmatic, therapeutic, church-growth oriented megachurches that have defined success. Emphasis will shift from doctrine to relevance, motivation, and personal success -- resulting in churches further compromised and weakened in their ability to pass on the faith.

• Two of the beneficiaries will be the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions. Evangelicals have been entering these churches in recent decades and that trend will continue, with more efforts aimed at the "conversion" of Evangelicals to the Catholic and Orthodox traditions.

• A small band will work hard to rescue the movement from its demise through theological renewal. This is an attractive, innovative, and tireless community with outstanding media, publishing, and leadership development. Nonetheless, I believe the coming evangelical collapse will not result in a second reformation, though it may result in benefits for many churches and the beginnings of new churches.

• The emerging church will largely vanish from the evangelical landscape, becoming part of the small segment of progressive mainline Protestants that remain true to the liberal vision.

• Aggressively evangelistic fundamentalist churches will begin to disappear.

• Charismatic-Pentecostal Christianity will become the majority report in evangelicalism. Can this community withstand heresy, relativism, and confusion? To do so, it must make a priority of biblical authority, responsible leadership, and a reemergence of orthodoxy.

• Evangelicalism needs a "rescue mission" from the world Christian community. It is time for missionaries to come to America from Asia and Africa. Will they come? Will they be able to bring to our culture a more vital form of Christianity?

• Expect a fragmented response to the culture war. Some Evangelicals will work to create their own countercultures, rather than try to change the culture at large. Some will continue to see conservatism and Christianity through one lens and will engage the culture war much as before -- a status quo the media will be all too happy to perpetuate. A significant number, however, may give up political engagement for a discipleship of deeper impact.

Is all of this a bad thing?

Evangelicalism doesn't need a bailout. Much of it needs a funeral. But what about what remains?

Is it a good thing that denominations are going to become largely irrelevant? Only if the networks that replace them are able to marshal resources, training, and vision to the mission field and into the planting and equipping of churches.

Is it a good thing that many marginal believers will depart? Possibly, if churches begin and continue the work of renewing serious church membership. We must change the conversation from the maintenance of traditional churches to developing new and culturally appropriate ones.

The ascendency of Charismatic-Pentecostal-influenced worship around the world can be a major positive for the evangelical movement if reformation can reach those churches and if it is joined with the calling, training, and mentoring of leaders. If American churches come under more of the influence of the movement of the Holy Spirit in Africa and Asia, this will be a good thing.

Will the evangelicalizing of Catholic and Orthodox communions be a good development? One can hope for greater unity and appreciation, but the history of these developments seems to be much more about a renewed vigor to "evangelize" Protestantism in the name of unity.

Will the coming collapse get Evangelicals past the pragmatism and shallowness that has brought about the loss of substance and power? Probably not. The purveyors of the evangelical circus will be in fine form, selling their wares as the promised solution to every church's problems. I expect the landscape of megachurch vacuity to be around for a very long time.

Will it shake lose the prosperity Gospel from its parasitical place on the evangelical body of Christ? Evidence from similar periods is not encouraging. American Christians seldom seem to be able to separate their theology from an overall idea of personal affluence and success.

The loss of their political clout may impel many Evangelicals to reconsider the wisdom of trying to create a "godly society." That doesn't mean they'll focus solely on saving souls, but the increasing concern will be how to keep secularism out of church, not stop it altogether. The integrity of the church as a countercultural movement with a message of "empire subversion" will increasingly replace a message of cultural and political entitlement.

Despite all of these challenges, it is impossible not to be hopeful. As one commenter has already said, "Christianity loves a crumbling empire."

We can rejoice that in the ruins, new forms of Christian vitality and ministry will be born. I expect to see a vital and growing house church movement. This cannot help but be good for an evangelicalism that has made buildings, numbers, and paid staff its drugs for half a century.

We need new evangelicalism that learns from the past and listens more carefully to what God says about being His people in the midst of a powerful, idolatrous culture.

I'm not a prophet. My view of evangelicalism is not authoritative or infallible. I am certainly wrong in some of these predictions. But is there anyone who is observing evangelicalism in these times who does not sense that the future of our movement holds many dangers and much potential?

Michael Spencer is a writer and communicator living and working in a Christian community in Kentucky. He describes himself as "a postevangelical reformation Christian in search of a Jesus-shaped spirituality." This essay is adapted from a series on his blog, InternetMonk.com.

Local Screening of MILK the movie

His life changed history, and his courage changed lives.

Winner of two Academy Awards, Milk brings to the big screen the story of activist, politician, fighter and icon, Harvey Milk. The film chronicles the last eight years of Milk’s life and his struggles in becoming California’s first openly gay elected official.

See it at the Mary D'Angelo Performing Arts Center, Mercyhurst College, Erie, PA Wednesday, March 25, 2009 - 2:15 p.m. & 8 p.m.

Click HERE for More Info

What Are You Going To Do To End The Silence? 4/17/09!

Time To Get Ready!

Check Out Day Of Silence Info and Materials HERE.

A Wish - for Those of Us in Venango County Too!

Being Gay Is A Gift From God

from Bloggernista:

Being gay is indeed a gift from God. And, the fact that not one, but two, ministers affirmed this on Oprah is amazing.

We too often hear religious leaders denigrating LGBT and attempting to scapegoat us for everything they see wrong with the world.

To have these men state clearly and unequivocally that being gay is a gift from God is something that gay and straight people need to hear again and again.

Pennsylvania Gays Rock The Dome!

Hundreds of LGBT Pennsylvanians and allies gathered Tuesday at the state capitol to demand passage of a bill that would bar discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in employment, housing, or accommodations.



The Value All Families Coalition sponsored the rally, held in the Harrisburg capitol rotunda. Rep. Babette Josephs, chair of the house’s State Government Committee and a longtime gay rights supporter, delivered an impassioned speech in support of the legislation.

"I bet 10 percent of my colleagues in the House don't think they have a single gay constituent," she said. "Over the next few weeks, we're going to show them just how wrong they are."

Josephs also said that given the economic crisis, "the last thing anyone needs is to get fired for being gay."

Joseph’s committee approved the bill 12-11 in a party line vote, with all Republicans opposing the measure. Next, it faces a tough but winnable fight in the house. While Democrats have a small majority, many come from socially conservative parts of the state. The bill's prospects, however, are not good in the Republican-controlled Senate, but Democratic Gov. Edward Rendell would likely sign the legislation if passed.

Supporters, including religious leaders, union activists and politicians, described the bill as a guarantee of basic human rights for all Pennsylvanians and an important message of tolerance to potential residents and investors.

The bill was reintroduced by Rep. Dan Frankel, who brought similar legislation to the house in 2007. Frankel says the bill now stands a better chance of passing because "a lot has happened in Pennsylvania politics. We've gone from a red-leaning state, to a battleground state, to a blue-leaning state." Frankel said the shift is in part due to the increasingly right-wing positions of the state Republican Party, which has alienated some moderate supporters.

This year, the bill has 79 co-sponsors, nine more than the last time around, including five Republicans.

Lost in the crush of media attention over same sex marriage is the fact that, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, only 20 states protect against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Although a number of Pennsylvania municipalities already have such ordinances on the books, "nearly 80 percent of the state’s 12 million residents live or work in communities that do not provide these protections," according to Equality Advocates Pennsylvania.

Harrisburg City Councilman Daniel Miller, the city's first openly gay councilor, says that he decided to run for office "because George Bush was president and Rick Santorum was our senator." But Miller was also motivated to run because of his first-hand experience facing discrimination.

Miller worked as an accountant for a company for five years, only to be fired when his boss found out that he was gay. He says that it took him years to recover economically and emotionally, and that anti-discrimination legislation will ensure that no other young LGBT person has to go through a similar experience. "It's basic civil rights. So many people are afraid to be out on the job. It impacts how you live."

Opponents of the bill say that the protections would force religious institutions to hire gay people against their will and that the law would be the first step down a slippery slope toward same-sex marriage. The Pennsylvania Family Institute sent supporters an action alert asking that they call legislators to oppose a "radical gay-rights bill" and, as a backup measure, to pray for its defeat.

According to the Institute, "laws like this one that are being used as hammers to force Christian ministries and charities to either operate in ways contrary to their faith and doctrine, face fines and/or prison, or cease the ministry work. It will force business owners and landlords to violate their faith and conscience."


But in a statement, Pennsylvania ACLU legislative director Andy Hoover says that the religious right's objections are a smoke screen. "Federal case law, state case law, and the PHRA itself exempt religious institutions from civil rights laws when following the law violates a tenet or belief of the faith."

Neighboring states, like New Jersey, Maryland, and New York, already offer some protections. But the passage of such legislation in Pennsylvania, a state with strong pockets of Christian conservatism, would show that that the nation's political tide is truly shifting in support of LGBT rights.

We Shall Overcome

Groups rally to support state anti-discrimination bill

by Tom Barnes for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

HARRISBURG -- They sang "We Shall Overcome," a song made famous during the civil rights marches of the 1960s.


But this time, the several hundred demonstrators gathered in the Capitol rotunda weren't seeking equal rights for African Americans, but equal rights in jobs, housing, public accommodations and other areas for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people, a group sometimes called GLBT.

"It's time to end this last vestige of discrimination in Pennsylvania," shouted Rep. Dan Frankel, D-Squirrel Hill, sponsor of House Bill 300, which would extend employment and housing rights to those four groups.

"We must show that Pennsylvania is tolerant and diverse," he said.

Rep. Babette Josephs, D-Philadelphia, said, "Many legislators don't think that they have any GLBT constituents, but over the next few weeks we will show them how wrong they are."

She urged members of the group to contact legislators and urge support for the bill.

People shouted, "End discrimination now." A little girl held a sign, "My 2 Mommies Deserve Equal Rights."' A man held a sign, "Would Jesus Discriminate?"

Rep. Ron Waters, D-Philadelphia, chairman of the legislative black caucus, said, "We will fight for all God's people."

The group was encouraged by the narrow approval last week of Mr. Frankel's bill, on a 12-11 vote by the House State Government Committee. However, all 12 proponents were Democrats and all 11 opponents were Republicans. Three other Democrats on the committee didn't vote.

The issue really isn't a partisan issue, but if Republicans stay opposed, the bill could have a difficult time in the Senate, which is controlled 30-20 by Republicans. Many of them come from smaller towns and rural areas where many people of conservative politics and religious backgrounds live and they tend not to be strong supporters of gay rights.

Pittsburgh Councilman Bruce Kraus was present and said he'll work to get the bill approved by the Legislature. He said Pittsburgh took similar steps to ban bias on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation in the 1990s.

"It's long overdue" on a statewide basis, he said.

An Unlikely Leader

Wouldn't It Be Wonderful If Venango County Became A Leader In Pennsylvania, Or Pennsylvania A Leader In the Country, In Promoting And Protecting GLBT Rights?

By Brad Sears, UCLA School of Law:

When comparisons about gay rights are made between the United States and other countries, they are most often drawn between the U.S. and Europe. While many countries in Europe have leapt ahead in protecting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, a region of the world much closer to home is now taking the lead: Latin America.


Latin America's emergence as a global leader in LGBT rights was apparent last December, when Argentina led 66 nations in affirming the extension of international human rights protections to the LGBT community in a statement to the United Nations General Assembly. Twelve of those 66 countries were from Latin America. The U.S. declined to sign the statement.

Latin America's role at the U.N. Assembly was not surprising. In June 2008, the 34 members of the Organization of American States unanimously approved a similar declaration.

Latin America's international leadership on LGBT issues is built on a number of advances in individual countries. By the time the U.S. Supreme Court declared the remaining U.S. state sodomy laws unconstitutional in 2003, all but two Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America had already done so, some decades earlier. The two outliers of the region, Nicaragua and Panama, have since repealed their sodomy laws.

Unlike the U.S., Costa Rica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Uruguay and Venezuela all have national laws prohibiting employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The new constitutions of Ecuador and Bolivia explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. If the U.S. Congress takes up Employment Non-Discrimination Act again this year, it will be joining Brazil and Chile in considering anti-discrimination legislation.

Uruguay, Ecuador and Colombia also provide national recognition to same-sex couples, as do states in Mexico, Argentina and Brazil. While a number of states in the U.S. also recognize same-sex couples, the U.S. has no federal law protecting gay couples.

Of course, things are not perfect for LGBT people in Latin America. Transgender individuals, in particular, continue to face high levels of discrimination and there remain insufficient protections for LGBT parents. As is the case in the United States and Europe, legal protections also do not always match the level of social acceptance. Especially outside of larger cities, LGBT people continue to suffer from acts of hate and violence.

This week, leading advocates, scholars and public officials are exploring LGBT rights in Latin America during a four-day international conference hosted by UCLA's Williams Institute. The Global Arc of Justice conference includes free public events in West Hollywood and at UCLA that bring together high-profile Latin Americans fighting on the frontlines for LGBT equality.


Last fall, just over half of California Latino voters supported Proposition 8 and opposed marriage equality. This week's conference brings home the reality that the struggle for LGBT equality is not an agenda item unique to the Anglo-white community. Rather, it is a very real part of the greater Latino family in the Western Hemisphere. Having a greater understanding of this reality will make a difference to LGBT people in our communities, and might make a difference if we are called on to vote on LGBT rights again.

Brad Sears is the executive director of the Williams Institute and an adjunct professor at UCLA School of Law, where he teaches courses on disability law and sexual orientation law.

Coming Soon To Venango County?

The folks in this video are talking about New Hope, a town in Eastern Pennsylvania. But will the same be said of Oil City, Franklin, and other communities in Venango County someday?

We hope so! Soon!



Embraceable You explores the town’s diversity, and the ability of its residents to live in a peaceful, open community.

Geri Delevich was so inspired by New Hope’s Gay Pride Weekend, that she decided to capture the town she loves on film. An elementary school teacher for 33 years, Delevich knows the power of communication, and decided to share the magic of New Hope in a medium she hopes will change lives.

“I was watching the Gay Pride Parade and I was so touched to see so many people inspired by the parade,” said Delevich. “It literally brought tears to my eyes, watching straight and gay people sharing this moment together, and ultimately celebrating diversity and inclusion,” she said. “New Hope is such a special place because we all have mutual love and respect for one another, and we really all do get along.”

Delevich, who is in her tenth year as a New Hope Borough Council member, said that the documentary is also meant to inspire other cities and towns across the country that are struggling with violence, discrimination and hopelessness. “We were the first borough in the state to establish an ordinance that says you can’t discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. In New Hope, straight and gay people truly accept one another and feel secure and safe, and in our world today, that is a great accomplishment,” she added.

Embraceable You will capture the magic of New Hope’s vibrant, accepting culture, and hopefully, pass that magic on to others who want to create a life where all are accepted for their innate beauty.

Reminder: Rock the Dome in Harrisburg on Tuesday, March 17

Did you know that in most areas across Pennsylvania it is completely legal to fire someone from their job because of their sexual orientation or gender identity or expression?

Join us in the Pennsylvania Statehouse on Tuesday, March 17, 2009 to raise our voice and pass legislation to protect LGBT Pennsylvanians against discrimination!

The agenda for the day:
11:30- FREE lunch and Mini-Lobbying Training at St. Michael's Church (118 State Street, Harrisburg)
1:00- RALLY in the ROTUNDA
1:30- Lobbying your State Legislators

Buses will be leaving from both Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in the morning, and will return that evening.

FREE bus ride, FREE lunch, FREE lobby training, and AWESOME rally. This rally is being sponsored by the Value All Families Coalition-- a coalition of statewide, regional, and local organizations across Pennsylvania dedicated to achieving equality for LGBT people in the state.

As we confirm more details for the buses, we will post them here. Seats will be first-come, first-serve, so if you'd like to take the bus PLEASE message Jake Kaskey on here, or e-mail him at jkaskey@equalitypa.org. Please let me know how many seats you are reserving and from which city you're leaving from.

Involved with your student group on campus? FIELD TRIP! Involved with other groups on here? Send them this event! Please forward this information around to everyone interested in fairness and equality for LGBT people.


We have a momentum to really pass this important legislation that will affect thousands of LGBT people across the entire state. Together lets stand up, speak out, and make a difference in Pennsylvania!

Time for Equal Rights in Pennsylvania

By Matthew Major for the Public Opinion editorial board, Chambersburg, PA:


It's long been considered a fundamental American value not to discriminate against racial, ethnic and religious minorities, so much so that states across the nation enshrined that enlightened principle into law.

After all, America is a place where everyone has the right to be judged according to their merit and character, and not by the color of their skin, the size of their wallet, or their means of worship.

Unless, of course, you happen to be gay. If you're gay, you can be denied housing, work and access to public accommodations, unlike the folks who cite their protected religious beliefs to justify denial of similar protections to others.

Those are the people griping the most about legislative action Wednesday in the Pennsylvania House of Representations, where a committee narrowly passed a bill to extend the same anti-discrimination protections to gay men and women that have long been the law for racial, ethnic and religious minorities.

Pennsylvania law provides basic legal protections against discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, age, national origin and disability. According to the bill's supporters, 20 states have already extended similar protections to gays and lesbians, as have 13 cities and towns covering about one-fifth of Pennsylvania's population.

The anti-discrimination bill passed the State Government Committee in the Pennsylvania House on a 12-11, party-line vote, with Democrats in support and Republicans opposed.

It now goes for consideration by the full House but remains a long shot, especially the Republican-controlled Senate.

The important thing to remember about anti-discrimination measures is they are primarily meant to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority, and they make no distinctions as to circumstances that create those minority groups.

Do gay people choose to be gay? We doubt it, but no one has proven the point either way.


Even if they do, arguing on moral grounds that one choice (religious preference) should be protected while another (sexual orientation) should not amounts to gross hypocrisy.

And if they don't, then this anti-discrimination bill represents a chance to do right by a segment of American minority that has been denied one of the bedrock benefits to American citizenship for far too long.

The So-Called "Moral Majority" Is On The Decline

The Culture Warriors Get Laid Off

This is Good News for All in Venango County Who Are Working For Dignity, Respect, Fairness and Equality for All. But Local Extremists Will Surely Not Go Quietly into the Night.

By Frank Rich for The New York Times:

SOMEDAY we’ll learn the whole story of why George W. Bush brushed off that intelligence briefing of Aug. 6, 2001, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” But surely a big distraction was the major speech he was readying for delivery on Aug. 9, his first prime-time address to the nation. The subject — which Bush hyped as “one of the most profound of our time” — was stem cells. For a presidency in thrall to a thriving religious right (and a presidency incapable of multi-tasking), nothing, not even terrorism, could be more urgent.

When Barack Obama ended the Bush stem-cell policy last week, there were no such overheated theatrics. No oversold prime-time address. No hysteria from politicians, the news media or the public. The family-values dinosaurs that once stalked the earth — Falwell, Robertson, Dobson and Reed — are now either dead, retired or disgraced. Their less-famous successors pumped out their pro forma e-mail blasts, but to little avail. The Republican National Committee said nothing whatsoever about Obama’s reversal of Bush stem-cell policy. That’s quite a contrast to 2006, when the party’s wild and crazy (and perhaps transitory) new chairman, Michael Steele, likened embryonic stem-cell research to Nazi medical experiments during his failed Senate campaign.

What has happened between 2001 and 2009 to so radically change the cultural climate? Here, at last, is one piece of good news in our global economic meltdown: Americans have less and less patience for the intrusive and divisive moral scolds who thrived in the bubbles of the Clinton and Bush years. Culture wars are a luxury the country — the G.O.P. included — can no longer afford.

Not only was Obama’s stem-cell decree an anticlimactic blip in the news, but so was his earlier reversal of Bush restrictions on the use of federal money by organizations offering abortions overseas. When the administration tardily ends “don’t ask, don’t tell,” you can bet that this action, too, will be greeted by more yawns than howls.

Once again, both the president and the country are following New Deal-era precedent. In the 1920s boom, the reigning moral crusade was Prohibition, and it packed so much political muscle that F.D.R. didn’t oppose it. The Anti-Saloon League was the Moral Majority of its day, the vanguard of a powerful fundamentalist movement that pushed anti-evolution legislation as vehemently as it did its war on booze. (The Scopes “monkey trial” was in 1925.) But the political standing of this crowd crashed along with the stock market. Roosevelt shrewdly came down on the side of “the wets” in his presidential campaign, leaving Hoover to drown with “the dries.”

Much as Obama repealed the Bush restrictions on abortion and stem-cell research shortly after pushing through his stimulus package, so F.D.R. jump-started the repeal of Prohibition by asking Congress to legalize beer and wine just days after his March 1933 inauguration and declaration of a bank holiday. As Michael A. Lerner writes in his fascinating 2007 book “Dry Manhattan,” Roosevelt’s stance reassured many Americans that they would have a president “who not only cared about their economic well-being” but who also understood their desire to be liberated from “the intrusion of the state into their private lives.” Having lost plenty in the Depression, the public did not want to surrender any more freedoms to the noisy minority that had shut down the nation’s saloons.

In our own hard times, the former moral “majority” has been downsized to more of a minority than ever. Polling shows that nearly 60 percent of Americans agree with ending Bush restrictions on stem-cell research (a Washington Post/ABC News survey in January); that 55 percent endorse either gay civil unions or same-sex marriage (Newsweek, December 2008); and that 75 percent believe openly gay Americans should serve in the military (Post/ABC, July 2008). Even the old indecency wars have subsided. When a federal court last year struck down the F.C.C. fine against CBS for Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” at the 2004 Super Bowl, few Americans either noticed or cared about the latest twist in what had once been a national cause célèbre.

It’s not hard to see why Eric Cantor, the conservative House firebrand who is vehemently opposed to stem-cell research, was disinclined to linger on the subject when asked about it on CNN last Sunday. He instead accused the White House of acting on stem cells as a ploy to distract from the economy. “Let’s take care of business first,” he said. “People are out of jobs.” (On this, he’s joining us late, but better late than never.)

Even were the public still in the mood for fiery invective about family values, the G.O.P. has long since lost any authority to lead the charge. The current Democratic president and his family are exemplars of precisely the Eisenhower-era squareness — albeit refurbished by feminism — that the Republicans often preached but rarely practiced. Obama actually walks the walk. As the former Bush speechwriter David Frum recently wrote, the new president is an “apparently devoted husband and father” whose worst vice is “an occasional cigarette.”

Frum was contrasting Obama to his own party’s star attraction, Rush Limbaugh, whose “history of drug dependency” and “tangled marital history” make him “a walking stereotype of self-indulgence.” Indeed, the two top candidates for leader of the post-Bush G.O.P, Rush and Newt, have six marriages between them. The party that once declared war on unmarried welfare moms, homosexual “recruiters” and Bill Clinton’s private life has been rebranded by Mark Foley, Larry Craig, David Vitter and the irrepressible Palins. Even before the economy tanked, Americans had more faith in medical researchers using discarded embryos to battle Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s than in Washington politicians making ad hoc medical decisions for Terri Schiavo.

What’s been revealing about watching conservatives debate their fate since their Election Day Waterloo is how, the occasional Frum excepted, so many of them don’t want to confront the obsolescence of culture wars as a political crutch. They’d rather, like Cantor, just change the subject — much as they avoid talking about Bush and avoid reckoning with the doomed demographics of the G.O.P.’s old white male base. To recognize all these failings would be to confront why a once-national party can now be tucked into the Bible Belt.

The religious right is even more in denial than the Republicans. When Obama nominated Kathleen Sebelius, the Roman Catholic Kansas governor who supports abortion rights, as his secretary of health and human services, Tony Perkins, the leader of the Family Research Council, became nearly as apoplectic as the other Tony Perkins playing Norman Bates. “If Republicans won’t take a stand now, when will they?” the godly Perkins thundered online. But Congressional Republicans ignored him, sending out (at most) tepid press releases of complaint, much as they did in response to Obama’s stem-cell order. The two antiabortion Kansas Republicans in the Senate, Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts, both endorsed Sebelius.

Perkins is now praying that economic failure will be a stimulus for his family-values business. “As the economy goes downward,” he has theorized, “I think people are going to be driven to religion.” Wrong again. The latest American Religious Identification Survey, published last week, found that most faiths have lost ground since 1990 and that the fastest-growing religious choice is “None,” up from 8 percent to 15 percent (which makes it larger than all denominations except Roman Catholics and Baptists). Another highly regarded poll, the General Social Survey, had an even more startling finding in its preliminary 2008 data released this month: Twice as many Americans have a “great deal” of confidence in the scientific community as do in organized religion. How the almighty has fallen: organized religion is in a dead heat with banks and financial institutions on the confidence scale.

This, too, is a replay of the Great Depression. “One might have expected that in such a crisis great numbers of these people would have turned to the consolations of and inspirations of religion,” wrote Frederick Lewis Allen in “Since Yesterday,” his history of the 1930s published in 1940. But that did not happen: “The long slow retreat of the churches into less and less significance in the life of the country, and even in the lives of the majority of their members, continued almost unabated.”

The new American faith, Allen wrote, was the “secular religion of social consciousness.” It took the form of campaigns for economic and social justice — as exemplified by the New Deal and those movements that challenged it from both the left and the right. It’s too early in our crisis and too early in the new administration to know whether this decade will so closely replicate the 1930s, but so far Obama has far more moral authority than any religious leader in America with the possible exception of his sometime ally, the Rev. Rick Warren.

History is cyclical, and it would be foolhardy to assume that the culture wars will never return. But after the humiliations of the Scopes trial and the repeal of Prohibition, it did take a good four decades for the religious right to begin its comeback in the 1970s. In our tough times, when any happy news can be counted as a miracle, a 40-year exodus for these ayatollahs can pass for an answer to America’s prayers.

Watchdog Groups Demand 'Ex-Gay' Organization Dismiss Leader, Alan Chambers, After Exodus International Participates In Anti-Gay Hate Conference

Exodus Under Fire After Group Remains Silent As Speakers At Ugandan Event Seek To 'Wipe Out' Homosexuality And Imprison Gays

"Ex-Gay" programs are promoted regularly here in Venango County by Jane Richey of radio station WAWN and Diane Gramley of the American Family Association.


from Truth Wins Out:

NEW YORK - The three leading watchdog organizations that monitor "ex-gay" ministries today called on the largest such group, Exodus International, to fire its leader, Alan Chambers. The coalition charged in a letter to Bob Ragan, chair of the Exodus Board of Directors, that Chambers allowed the organization to be used and give credibility to a conference that promoted human rights abuses against gay and lesbian people.

Representatives from Ex-Gay Watch, Box Turtle Bulletin and Truth Wins Out signed the letter, which stated:

We, the undersigned organizations, have monitored the ex-gay industry for more than a decade. To our great horror, prominent members of the ex-gay organization Exodus International participated last week in a conference in Uganda that promoted shocking abuses of basic human rights. This included draconian measures against gay and lesbian people such as forced ex-gay therapy, life imprisonment for people convicted of homosexuality and the formation of an organization designed to "wipe out" gay practices in Uganda. The conference also featured Scott Lively, a Holocaust revisionist who at the event also blamed the 1994 Rwandan genocide on gay Pink Swastikaeople.

"Alan Chambers has shown a serious lack of leadership by allowing Exodus to become part of such a horrible event," said David Roberts, Editor of Ex-Gay Watch. "The participation of board member Don Schmierer in the Ugandan anti-gay conference undermines any credibility they may have had, and puts them right in the middle of serious human rights abuses. What on earth were they thinking?"

"I'm outraged that Don Schmierer used his position with Exodus to legitimize calls for further criminalizing and forced 'therapy' for gays and lesbians," said Jim Burroway, founder and editor of Box Turtle Bulletin. "Exodus' failure to speak out against the conference's recommendations and denounce the Holocaust revisionism of Scott Lively is inexcusable. Those who allowed this to happen must be held accountable."

"Exodus has turned a deaf ear to the violence committed against Ugandan sexual minorities," said Truth Wins Out's News Director, Mike Airhart. "Worse, it stood in public solidarity with those who are responsible for vigilante violence and state-sanctioned denial of freedom."

"Alan Chambers has consistently taken Exodus International in unsavory directions that have brought great shame on the organization," said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. "Exodus' participation in the Ugandan conference only confirms that it is time he is removed from his position of leadership."Uganda Map

The coalition's letter went on to say:

The facts incontrovertibly show that Alan Chambers, President of Exodus International, was aware of the list of speakers and abhorrent content prior to the conference. Exodus board member Don Schmierer, who spoke in Uganda, made no objections to the radical and dangerous platform offered. Instead, these mortal threats to the lives of gay and lesbian people were met with a deafening silence. Exodus, in effect, gave this insidious conference its tacit approval.

The coalition also called on Exodus to take the following steps:

* Remove Board member Don Schmierer (Pictured Right) for speaking at a hate conference that promotes physical harm and psychological torture against GLBT people

* Boldly articulate Exodus' policy against human rights abuses including forced therapy

* Promise to end future participation in all conferences that call on the persecution and criminalization of gay and lesbian people

Ex-Gay Watch is a group of writers who monitor the actions of ex-gay organizations. The result of this work appears at exgaywatch.com where civil debate and comment are welcome.

Box Turtle Bulletin is an online watchdog effort by a group of writers who specialize in news, analysis and fact-checking of anti-gay rhetoric. It is available at www.boxturtlebulletin.com

Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that defends gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people from anti-gay lies. TWO also counters the "ex-gay" myth and educates America about gay life. More information can be found at www.TruthWinsOut.org.

See the Open Letter HERE

Religion and Republicanism Losing Converts

Are Radicals Ruining The Image Of Christianity? And Are Local Extremists Ruining The Image of Venango County?

from Wayne Besen:

In pandering to the fanatical and the fearful - both religion and Republicanism may have compromised their future.

First, the Republican Party seems in an awfully big rush to implode with Rush Limbaugh as its mercurial mouthpiece. The GOP's other savior, Michael Steele, is just a big mouth who seems more suited to Limbaugh's talk show gig than chairman of the Party. The GOP's first African American leader, Steele, promised a "hip hop makeover" that would attract even "one armed midgets." It is Steele, however, who is the incredibly shrinking chairman, with his promised "Big Tent" turning into a circus act.


This carnival of "conservatives" has led the once-mighty Republican Party to O.J. Simpson-like popularity levels. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll this past week put Republican approval at just 26 percent, compared to Barack Obama's 68 percent.

The state of the modern GOP was best captured on CNN's D.L. Hughley Show, when the host interviewed Frank Schaeffer. A former member of the Religious Right and author of Crazy For God, Schaeffer said the GOP had created a "hard-assed neo fascist kind of direction in America."

He went on to say, "The Republican base is now made up of religious and neoconservative ideologues and the uneducated white underclass with a token person of color up in front of the TV to obscure the all-white, all reactionary, all backward, and there is no global warming, rube reality."

The Republicans Schaefer is referring to have lately come out of the woodwork in Utah, where State Sen. Chris Buttars called GLBT advocates, "the meanest buggers". A right wing organization, America Forever, placed full-page ads in the Salt Lake dailies comparing gay men and lesbians to "druggies" and "hookers." Of course, Utah Republicans might know about these things. A new study reveals that the conservative state leads the nation with 5.47 Internet pornography subscribers per thousand.

Similar to the Republican Party, religious organizations have catered to the crazies for far too long. The "ex-gay" organization, Exodus International, is a perfect example. It travels the world to proclaim its "love" for homosexuals. Yet, a Board member, Don Schmierer, spoke at a Ugandan conference that pledged to "wipe out" gay practices. Schmierer joined Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively to urge Uganda to continue its persecution of gay people, including life prison sentences for the "crime" of homosexuality.

Last week, the Vatican defended the excommunication of a 9-year old Brazilian girl's mother and doctors, who helped abort the pregnant child's twins. The procedure was recommended because delivering these babies might have killed the 80-pound girl. The local Archbishop, Jose Cardosa Sobrinho, justified this despicable decision by saying, "God's law is above any human law."

Such transparently vindictive versions of "love" is why Christianity has lost followers in Europe and is now draining them in the United States. A new survey by researchers at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. documents that the percentage of Americans identifying as Christians has dropped to 76 percent of the population, down from 86 percent in 1990. Fifteen percent of Americans now say they have no religion at all.

It may be that socially conservative churches and their anti-gay pastors are directly responsible for much of the erosion of Christianity. Sure, their mega-churches may be growing. But, for every new person they attract, they likely turn off ten others to all religion with their vituperative sermons.


Focus on the Family's "ex-gay" road show, Love Won Out, is a perfect example of how the radicals are ruining the image of Christianity. The conference may lure a few self-loathing dupes who briefly claim they have "prayed away the gay." But, for every temporary convert (It rarely, if ever, lasts a lifetime) they turn off thousands of gay people to all religious belief. How does Focus on the Family justify this as a "win"?

Even as the Religious Right rapidly contracts, conservatives are foolishly demanding that Republicans veer further right. Come to think of it, Rush Limbaugh may be the perfect leader for a party intent on alienating the majority while talking endlessly and aimlessly to itself.

Life's Short, Have An Affair

Adultery, not same-sex monogamy, is the real threat to marriage

By Deroy Murdock for the NH Union Leader:

TRADITIONAL-MARRIAGE defenders claim that gay marriage jeopardizes husbands and wives. It’s as if when two Massachusetts men wed, they exchange 24-karat-gold crowbars, all the better to pry straight couples apart.

Former Senator Rick Santorum (R - Pennsylvania) has said that same-sex marriage “threatens my marriage. It threatens all marriages.” Mixed-sex-matrimony guru Maggie Gallagher wrote on Townhall.com last June 20, “If the word ’marriage’ can be redefined as a civil rights imperative, why balk at lesser ideas like ’monogamy’ or ’fidelity’?”

But as outspoken as these and other social conservatives are about Allen and Steve’s clear and present danger to Adam and Eve, they have held their peace about an enterprise that profits from adultery.

AshleyMadison.com calls itself a “dating site specifically designed to help married people cheat on their spouses.” Its slogan is “Life’s short. Have an affair.” It boasts 3.5 million registered users, among whom some 400,000 active members each pay up to $249 quarterly. Participants post photographs and profiles and seek other husbands and wives itching for extra-marital copulation.

“We made tens of millions of dollars” last year, company president Noel Biderman says from its Toronto base. “We are very profitable and successful.”

Surely AshleyMadison.com has enough shame to conduct its shady business in the shadows. Wrong! AshleyMadison.com advertises on CNN, ESPN, NBC, and even the conservative-leaning Fox News Channel.

Its current TV ad features a lady in a restaurant whose monstrous dinner companion yaps into his cell phone, hushes her when she tries to talk, ogles another woman, and eventually says, “Happy anniversary, honey,” before sauntering alone out the door. This disenchanted wife eyes a sympathetic gentleman on a barstool and smiles alluringly at him.

This woman clearly is empathetic. Her boorish husband deserves to have his cell phone pulverized with the chef’s rolling pin.

If this ad discouraged spousal self-absorption, it would be a home run. Ditto if it promoted marriage counseling, or suggested that everyone exercise extreme caution before picking a spouse. But something completely different is for sale.

Even a business this depraved should remain free to operate. But it should be humiliated, and shunned. Viewers should ask TV networks that broadcast this website’s ads if they are proud to share in the spoils of infidelity.

Socio-cons should stop theorizing about gay marriage’s supposed danger to straight matrimony and instead denounce this insidious assault on that institution.

Even if same-sex marriage undermined conventional marriage, this would be by unintended consequence, not deliberate broadside. Straight-marriage advocates’ obsession with gay marriage versus their quietude about AshleyMadison.com is like declaring war on toasters that might malfunction and ignite, but ignoring arsonists who toss lit flares around Malibu during a Santa Ana wind.

According to the Nexis database, key gay-marriage foes are mum about AshleyMadison.com.

Over the last six months, for example, Rick Santorum appeared in 22 stories that mention “gay marriage,” but in zero citing AshleyMadison.com. Maggie Gallagher materialized in 41 gay-marriage stories and zero on AshleyMadison.com. Former governor Willard Mitt Romney’s, R-Mass., numbers are 276-0, respectively. For Focus on the Family, the score is 389-0. All of the above were absent from the 67 Nexis-archived stories on AshleyMadison.com between September 5, 2008 and March 5, 2009.

Clearly, straight-marriage fans fret about what two men wearing wedding bands might do to a man and women with rings on their fingers. Whether this concern is scientific or superstitious, surely they must acknowledge that seeing Bob and Steve together in a porch swing is trivial compared to Adam mounting his new AshleyMadison.com adulteress as Eve waits at home, watches dinner grow cold, and wonders why he’s so late.

Conversely, if Adam caught Eve cavorting on the kitchen counter with her new AshleyMadison.com buddy, that would not be a blow for marriage.

AshleyMadison.com is a genuine threat to traditional matrimony. That’s where those who claim to defend that institution should aim their fire.

Deroy Murdock is a columnist with Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University. E-mail him at deroy.Murdock(at)gmail.com.

Stop Legal Discrimination in Pennsylvania!

from Keystone Progress:

The bad news:

There is no Pennsylvania law preventing discrimination in employment, housing or accommodations because of a person's sexual orientation or gender identity or expression. If you are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered, you can be fired from your job, refused service, or denied housing without any recourse under PA law.

The good news:

Pennsylvania took the first step on March 11 toward making that discrimination illegal.

HB 300, legislation prohibiting discrimination on the bases of sexual orientation and gender identity or expression in housing, employment, and public accommodations passed the State Government Committee in the PA House of Representatives today. Current Pennsylvania law provides basic legal protection against discrimination on the bases of race, color, religion, ancestry, age, national origin, handicap or disability, education and the use of a guide dog. HB 300 offers the same anti-discrimination protections to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people that are offered to other Pennsylvanians.

The work before us:

Governor Rendell has promised to sign anti-discrimination legislation if it reaches his desk, and a majority of the Senate and House will vote to pass it. We just need to get Leadership to schedule a vote.

That's where you come in. Take a moment to sign our e-petition to House and Senate Leadership asking them to schedule votes on this vital legislation as soon as possible.

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The American "Family" Association of Pennsylvania, based here in Venango County, is pushing churches to cross church / state legal boundaries by promoting a vote against this legislation from the pulpit. To get a look at the church bulletin insert, click HERE

Caution in viewing is advised, however, since bigotry and discrimination can be harmful to the heart and mind!

Silencing The Christians -- Huh? TAKE TWO

from our friends at Good As You:

Blogger Addie Stan has come across a new robocall that the American "Family" Association is using to support their hostile, fallacy-filled propaganda piece, "Speechless: Silencing the Christians." Listen in:

So wait a minute. They make a documentary with scene after scene focusing on how wicked LGBT normalcy supposedly is:



They set up a dedicated website where folks can watch the hurtful nonsense. They push to get it on any TV or computer screen that will have them. They solicit funds to get the damn thing aired. Then they issue a national robocall in support of the whole endeavor. Yet WE'RE the "radical" ones who are pushing an "agenda"? Riiiiiiiiight, Timmy.

AFA robocalls: Making drunk dialers, crank callers, and even the most pesky of telemarketers seem pleasant in comparison.

Silencing The Christians -- Huh?

This gem comes from Dave White by way of The Advocate and refers to a new film being promoted by our friends Diane Gramley of the American "Family" Association of Pennsylvania and Jane Richey of "Christian" radio station WAWN:

In my last column I wrote about a special that aired on one of my cable system’s religious channels called "Speechless ... Silencing the Christians" and was all excited to watch the follow-up special on the “radical, militant, homosexual rights activists” called, oddly enough, simply "Silencing the Christians." Unfortunately I missed it. So I went hunting online and found that you can watch the entire one-hour special on your computer. I also found out that lots of stations refused to air the damn thing, so blithely unconcerned about my entertainment that they forced me to watch it via a tiny laptop YouTube-size box.

On this show I learned that there’s some magical book out there called "After the Ball" that lays out a blueprint for the radical homosexual takeover of American culture. (I looked it up on Amazon and it’s conveniently out of print so that all references to it on this special are difficult to fact-check unless you happen to own a copy yourself.)

A female host with one of those mean-matron smiles spends the hour telling the audience that gays are committing violence against Christians but that there’s no proof that gays have ever suffered violence from bigoted Christians themselves; that gays are awful to the “ex-gays” (“Why doesn’t the tolerance work both ways?” pleads one “ex-lesbian” who came out of “the lifestyle” after finding herself playing for an all-female church softball league. I know, amazing); that stopping being gay is like quitting smoking; that reading the picture book King & King to any child will cause that child to develop a permanent frowny face (proved by a montage of really upset-looking kids who just had to learn that gays exist); and that anti-gay bullying in schools actually turns little kids gay, but measures to stop anti-gay bullying are discriminatory against Christians.

If you have a spare hour to waste, you should totally watch this one. It’s The Gay Agenda for a new generation.

BIG NEWS: House State Government Committee Passes Legislation to End Discrimination

Will Venango County's Own Rep. Scott Hutchinson Stand On The Side Of Fairness & Equality For All?

from Equality Advocates Pennsylvania:

(Harrisburg, PA) – Members of the Pennsylvania House State Government Committee today passed legislation out of their committee prohibiting discrimination on the bases of sexual orientation and gender identity or expression in housing, employment, and public accommodations by a vote of 12 to 11.


“Thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people across Pennsylvania thank members of the State Government Committee for their commitment to basic fairness,” said Jake Kaskey, policy and outreach coordinator of Equality Advocates Pennsylvania. “This legislation has broad support from all corners of Pennsylvania, so we look forward to the bill moving to the floor of the State House for a vote.”

Rep. Dan Frankel (D-Allegheny County) introduced the bill, House Bill 300, which would amend the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity or expression” as protected classes, on March 4 with a record 79 co-sponsors from both parties and from across the commonwealth.

“I'm very pleased committee members took the first step in providing basic protections for all Pennsylvanians,” Frankel said. “Pennsylvania is at a competitive disadvantage when it does not protect all of its citizens against discrimination, and I look forward to the entire House voting to pass this important legislation.”

House State Government Committee Chairperson Babette Josephs (D-Philadelphia) held public committee hearings on similar legislation in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Erie last session. “I'm excited that the committee has finally passed this important legislation,” Josephs said. “Ensuring every citizen of this state has the opportunity to work, and retain housing, is a core principle of fairness for all Pennsylvanian.”

House Bill 300 will now move to the entire House of Representatives for a vote.

“We are very encouraged to see this important legislation successfully passed through the State Government Committee,” added Andy Hoover, legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. “We hope the full House takes up this bill quickly and deliberatively.”

Current Pennsylvania law provides basic legal protection against discrimination on the bases of race, color, religion, ancestry, age, national origin, handicap or disability, education and the use of a guide dog. Thirteen Pennsylvania municipalities have already enacted civil rights laws including protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression, but nearly eighty percent of the state’s twelve million residents live or work in communities that do not provide these protections. Twenty states in the country have similar laws, including our neighboring states of New Jersey, Maryland and New York.

Pennsylvanians from every corner of the state are meeting in the Capitol Rotunda at 1:00pm on Tuesday, March 17, to rally in support of House Bill 300.

The Value All Families Coalition is comprised of diverse statewide, regional, and local organizations that support equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Pennsylvanians.


For More info Contact:
Jake Kaskey, Equality Advocates Pennsylvania, 215-731-1447 x14 (o) 215-407-5313 (m)
Andy Hoover, ACLU-PA, 717-236-6827 x13 (o), 717-514-2747 (m)