In more than twenty years of activism, I can honestly say that the anti-gay organization, Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX), is by far the most immoral, bizarre and dishonest organization I have come across. It is a cynical, homophobic knock-off of the wonderful group, Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). It is run by a mother, Regina Griggs, who has rejected her own gay son’s sexual orientation, and urges other parents to do the same.

So much for family values…

PFOX also has this odd strategy, where it fakes or stages hate crimes to make it appear that so-called “ex-gays” are victims. When GLBT people innocently come up to a PFOX booth at an event, the anti-gay activists provoke confrontations, and then, sneaks that they are, call the police to pretend they were harassed or attacked.

In some cases, this batty organization just makes up tales out of thin air. For example, on the group’s blog, it has a story about me with the misleading headline, “Wayne Besen Attacks a Church. “It goes on to identify my as a member of a group, “Bash Back”. PFOX also shows video footage of me supposedly screaming into megaphone directed at a church. I must respond to these perfidious calumnies:

1) The church in question was not “attacked”. This is an outright fabrication. A couple dozen protesters did, however, protest an “ex-gay” meeting in Boston. The action occurred on public property. The police were on-hand and not a single ticket was given, nor was anyone arrested. So, the alleged attack never actually took place, although it makes for a great story if you are a right wing nut who wants to feign persecution. If PFOX has a problem with protests on public property and the First Amendment, the group’s leaders should leave America. Despite PFOX’s best efforts, we are still a free country.

2) Contrary to the PFOX report, I have never been a member of the organization “Bash Back”. I do have a book that I wrote named, “Bashing Back: Wayne Besen on GLBT People, Politics and Culture.” I can only assume PFOX’s Greg Quinlan, Richard Cohen and Regina Griggs conflated the two in a slimy effort to smear me, or they were too obtuse to know the difference between the book and the group. In any case, PFOX ought to do its homework before it issues false and misleading public statements. To do otherwise is unchristian.

3) PFOX identifies me in a video as “the man in the orange shirt holding the bullhorn up against the church’ window to disrupt the ex-gay meeting.” Newsflash: the person in the video with the bullhorn is NOT ME and I have been intentionally misidentified for the purposes of PFOX’s sleazy propaganda. I am proud to say, however, I did take a turn at the bullhorn and led the chant, “Uganda,” to remind Exodus International of its prominent role in the persecution of GLBT citizens in this African country. I am very proud that I stood up for human rights in Boston. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

PFOX is run by lunatics who should be institutionalized. Don’t take my word for it, just take a peak at the video below featuring PFOX’s former President Richard Cohen. Judge for yourself.

Finally, I find it sad that an organization that claims to be Christian has such an easy time bearing false witness. Shame on PFOX for their outright lies and fanciful fiction. Apparently, the work of Truth Wins Out must be having an impact, or they would not feel the urge to resort to such slime and skulduggery.

Michael Jones over at Change.Org has a post up wondering if same-sex marriage will be the next thing Catholic Bishops will start threatening to deny Catholic politicians over. He riffs off recent news that Rhode Island’s Rep. Patrick Kennedy was told by Bishop Thomas Tobin that he is no longer welcome to receive Communion during Mass at any church in the entire state…

The announcement by Bishop Tobin to control Communion like a mafia leader stems from debate during the 2004 election, when Sen. John Kerry (himself a Catholic) was running for President. During that year, conservative U.S. Catholic leaders put together what they considered a list of “non-negotiable” issues that they said Catholics could not waver on.

It was a narrowing of Catholic theology to strip issues like poverty and social justice from the forefront of the Church, and replace them with opposing abortion, gay marriage, and stem cell research.

This reminded me once again of how the Manhattan Declaration begins with a stirring recounting of historical Christian work for social justice and against tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering. But like right wing authoritarians wrapping themselves in the U.S. flag and declaring themselves to be the heirs to the American revolution of liberty and justice for all, right wing clergy tend to wrap themselves in the robes of Jesus Christ, who taught that the greatest commandment of all was to love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.

But that loving your neighbor stuff isn’t exactly what they’re about. The Bishops of Pope Benedict can threaten to withhold communion from politicians who support abortion rights and declare they’re doing it to protect the life of the unborn. Fine. But politicians who condone torture? Deny health care to poor children? Support detention without trial? Preemptive war? Oh goodness no…

You really do have to wonder, considering the Manhattan Declaration, if same-sex marriage will be the next thing to put Catholic politicians in the doghouse. But its important to bear in mind when the religious right talks about their deeply held religious beliefs, that simply because they call those beliefs “Christian” it doesn’t mean they’re in the same communion with anyone who actually fought for social justice and reached out to comfort the poor and oppressed, let alone loved their neighbor. Apparently you can smack the poor and oppressed across the face and still call yourself a Christian in good conscience.

So, I’m perusing the wingnutty wares at ClownHall, and what do I find? I find Star Parker, anti-gay “writer” and “thinker,” tossing up a veritable word salad of Sad and Fail! So let’s read it, together:

Sodom in the nation’s capital

Oh, this must be a piece about road-weary travelers looking for food and a night of rest after traversing the hinterlands of Virginia! DuPont Circle, you should be ashamed of yourself, let those people in! Oh wait, it’s about something else entirely:

According to DC’s HIV/AIDS office, three percent of the local population has HIV or AIDS. The Administrator of this office notes that this HIV/AIDS incidence is “…higher than West Africa…on par with Uganda and some parts of Kenya.” And the principal way that HIV is transmitted continues to be through male homosexual activity.

Okay. This is a problem, we can all agree. But something tells me Star interprets this information differently from the way that normal humans do.

Amidst this dismal picture, the DC City Council, perhaps on the theory that serving up another glass of wine is the way to help a drunk, is scheduled to vote on December 1 to legalize same sex marriage in America’s capital city.

Star’s right. Because when straight people get married, they get a lot more AIDS.

George Washington’s America was one in which the point of freedom is to allow Man to rise to what he can become. To do this, the greatest challenge he faces is conquering himself. To rise above his baser instincts, to rise above the many temptations that lead him astray. And to achieve this end, as Washington said, “religion and morality are indispensible supports.”

Everyone applaud Star’s use of Wikipedia in finding a random quote by a random founding father to use as the next ingredient in her salad. What-oh-what will she do with it?

It is tempting to look at DC’s realities and just call this a black thing. And by and large it is.

But instead let’s blame gay marriage, ‘kay?

…[I]n a recently published volume, Brookings scholars Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill point out the centrality of the traditional family to the American dream of opportunity and the centrality of family breakdown to poverty.

Reporting data showing the general breakdown of the traditional American family, they say, “Some claim that anyone who is concerned about these trends is simply out of touch with modern culture; we respond that, if that be the case, then, “modern culture is out of touch with the needs of children.”

I thought we were talking about how gay marriage causes AIDS, Star. So, let’s see, where is this going? Breakdown of family = bad. Strengthening all family units, including gay ones = even worse. Glad to know that wingnut logic is as consistent as ever.

The Catholic Archdiocese of DC announced that legalization of same sex marriage would make it impossible to continue its relationship with the DC government and require termination of the social services it provides to some 68,000 of the city’s poor — including about one third of its homeless.

Ach, we’re talking about Catholics now? Star, PICK A TOPIC!

Also, same sex marriage wouldn’t make it “impossible” for the Catholics to keep helping the poor. The higher-ups in the Catholic Church simply are infantile, and they don’t care enough about the poor to keep serving them, even if they don’t get their way on every single issue.

So, blah blah blah, it’s mean old David Catania’s fault, he’s the one who hates the poor, just because he wants to bring civil marriage equality to the District. The fact that the first and only organization to bring up denying aid to the poor, on this completely unrelated topic, is the Roman Catholic Diocese…but anyway, we’re in wingnut rubber-glue territory, and no amount of reason or logic will reach these people.

Okay, Star, tie it all together, prove your point:

It should concern every American as we watch our nation’s capital city transform officially into Sodom.

WHAT?! I know this is wingnut logic, and I know this is Clown Hall, and I know this is the “pro-family” movement, but have any of them ever passed 11th grade English? Ms. Parker, for future reference, if you want to write a persuasive piece, you ought to:

1. Pick a topic. No, seriously, just one. Baby steps.

2. Maybe put forward a thesis. That’s always helpful.

3. Outline your supporting points, and make sure that they relate to the topic at hand.

4. Try to resolve it in a way that proves #2, at least for the audience you’re trying to reach.

I hope this is helpful.

Anyway, for the rest of you, I hope you enjoyed your Star Parker word salad. I gave my portion to the dog, but sssshhhhhh, I don’t want to hurt Star’s feelings.

H.L Mencken’s observation that theology is an attempt to explain the unknowable in the terms of the not worth knowing kept coming back to me as I slogged repeatedly through the six pages of The Manhattan Declaration over the weekend. A large part of the difficulty is in it’s urgent need to deceive the reader. It wants you…it Needs you to know that it isn’t a mere justification of an invidious prejudice against gay people. Just that gay people are…well…you know…immoral, and their sexually barren counterfeit relationships are incapable of any deep devotion or spiritual meaning. But we Love them. Really.

It’s thick, ugly heap of claptrap theology slathered over the same old well worn religious right slogans about gay civil rights, marriage and culture. In retrospect I had to wonder why The Manhattan Declaration was dumped out into the public on a Friday, the traditional day for releasing news its sources would rather see forgotten over the weekend. In Washington they call it the Friday News Dump. My hunch is that the target audience of The Manhattan Document would be kept well aware of it regardless of when it was released to the public, while at the same time a Friday Dump would mean it got less critical scrutiny from the mainstream press.

The excerpt on my Google news page this morning read: “The document outlines the group’s three most pressing issues, two of which deal with gay rights: abortion, marriage and religious liberties.” That’s one way of putting it. Another is that the three most pressing issues were opposing same-sex marriage, and defending the right of bigots to deny goods and services to gay Americans. Oh…and…uh…abortion. No. This is a manifesto on opposition to gay equality. The rest of it is window dressing.

What’s remarkable about the document in fact, is the amount of effort put into the window dressing. Right from the beginning of it, careful attention is given to defending its authors from the charges of bigotry they have a hunch will be forthcoming…

Christians are heirs of a 2,000-year tradition of proclaiming God’s word, seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering…

…and so on and so forth. What a bunch of swell folks. Christians I mean. The ones who actually do all of that seeking justice, resisting tyranny, reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering stuff. But these are not those people. Reading that stirring preamble to the document, listing all the ways Christians have fought over the centuries for democracy, women’s rights and social justice, you almost forget that. What part of “The great civil rights crusades of the 1950s and 60s” could you imagine Dinesh D’Souza, Gary Bauer and Tony Perkins having a part of? What part of seeking justice and reaching out with compassion to the oppressed have James Dobson, let alone Peter J. Akinola ever played a role in?

In a document purporting to take a stand against a “culture of death”, there are no calls to oppose war or pledges to work for peace among peoples and nations. There is no condemnation of hunger or poverty, no challenge to act on making clean water, uncontaminated food, and accessible health care available to the world’s needy, let alone a call to work against institutionalized greed that impoverishes millions. There is no call to stand against nationalism, ethnic and racial hatred. Other then the oppression of Christians (by their definition) no call to action is made concerning the oppression of other religious communities.

Oh some of this is indeed noted in passing as regrettable facts of life nowadays, but that’s the extent of it. The signers even confess a few times here and there that they haven’t done enough to oppose some of the evils of the world. Where it takes a stand in favor of protecting the weak and vulnerable against violent attack, it does so for the unborn. The living it seems, had best look out for themselves. But this document, ostentatiously standing firm against the culture of death, does not concern itself with that fight. And, surprise, surprise, there no clarion call to stand against hate motivated violence against gays, lesbians and the transgendered. There is only a “call on the entire Christian community to resist sexual immorality, and at the same time refrain from disdainful condemnation of those who yield to it.”

As if disdainful condemnation were all gay people had to deal with. No…the gauntlet is thrown down against gay citizens, and in particular same-sex couples. Abortion, the right’s other foundational Christian dogma, is given just slightly more then one page of notice in the document or one-sixth the total verbiage. The defense of Marriage as a heterosexual prerogative is given two, or one-third of the total text. But this all by itself is misleading. Practically all of the section on religious liberty seems preoccupied with the threat posed by gay equality, and the entire document itself is a manifesto that seeks to provide a religious basis for defiance of civil rights laws that its signers, all leaders as near as I can tell in various religious right communities, claim religious opposition to.

It is ironic that those who today assert a right to kill the unborn, aged and disabled and also a right to engage in immoral sexual practices, and even a right to have relationships integrated around these practices be recognized and blessed by law‚Äîsuch persons claiming these “rights” are very often in the vanguard of those who would trample upon the freedom of others to express their religious and moral commitments to the sanctity of life and to the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife.

We see this, for example, in the effort to weaken or eliminate conscience clauses, and therefore to compel pro-life institutions (including religiously affiliated hospitals and clinics), and pro-life physicians, surgeons, nurses, and other health care professionals, to refer for abortions and, in certain cases, even to perform or participate in abortions. We see it in the use of anti-discrimination statutes to force religious institutions, businesses, and service providers of various sorts to comply with activities they judge to be deeply immoral or go out of business. After the judicial imposition of “same-sex marriage” in Massachusetts, for example, Catholic Charities chose with great reluctance to end its century-long work of helping to place orphaned children in good homes rather than comply with a legal mandate that it place children in same-sex households in violation of Catholic moral teaching. In New Jersey, after the establishment of a quasi-marital “civil unions” scheme, a Methodist institution was stripped of its tax exempt status when it declined, as a matter of religious conscience, to permit a facility it owned and operated to be used for ceremonies blessing homosexual unions.

Notice the weight given here to the abortion issue, verses the issue of gay civil rights. This document raises both abortion and homosexuality as evils the signers say they will not abide, even if the law requires them to. But clearly it is intensely preoccupied with one, and gives only routine notice to the other.

Two well worn religious right lies are put forth here in defense of the proposition that Christians face persecution if homosexuals are given equal rights. First, in Massachusetts the Catholic Charities were doing their work, much as they are in Washington D.C., on the government’s dime. A similar Mormon Adoption agency is still, so I am told, working in Massachusetts, free to discriminate to its heart’s content, because it is privately funded by the LDS church. The Catholic church could take a similar route if it wanted to, but apparently it would rather play martyr to The Homosexual Menace then help needy children find homes. They have likewise threatened to stop feeding the homeless in Washington D.C. Likewise the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association had agreed to allow the public use of its boardwalk pavilion in exchange for a tax break, did allow many couples, Christian and otherwise to use it, then balked when a same sex couple applied to use it.

But notice this: The lawsuit had nothing to do with the fact of same-sex civil unions in New Jersey. It was an equal access case based on an anti discrimination law that predated same-sex civil unions in that state. With or without same-sex civil unions, The Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association would have lost their tax break for denying gay people equal access to a public accommodation. The slippery way the signers of The Manhattan Declaration make their case is telling here. They are asserting a right not simply to defy legal same sex marriage, but the entire scope of civil rights laws painfully won over the course of decades for all Americans. But they’d rather you saw it as a case against same-sex marriage, not the entirety of existing civil rights law.

But the meat of the document is in the section on Marriage.

The impulse to redefine marriage in order to recognize same-sex and multiple partner relationships is a symptom, rather than the cause, of the erosion of the marriage culture.

So the document in one breath declares that same-sex marriage is but a symptom of larger evils. And then proceeds to spend two pages attacking the symptom.

We confess with sadness that Christians and our institutions have too often scandalously failed to uphold the institution of marriage and to model for the world the true meaning of marriage. Insofar as we have too easily embraced the culture of divorce and remained silent about social practices that undermine the dignity of marriage we repent, and call upon all Christians to do the same.

To strengthen families, we must stop glamorizing promiscuity and infidelity and restore among our people a sense of the profound beauty, mystery, and holiness of faithful marital love.

Sounds great until you realize further down that beauty, mystery, and holiness is something only heterosexual couples are capable of. No, I’m not exaggerating. What sort of beauty dehumanizing a small minority of their fellow human beings is going to bring to heterosexual marriages is anybody’s guess but I suspect it gives a lot of folks in the right a profound sense of their own holiness.

In a document that rests its entire case on the procreative potential of heterosexual sex, no call is made to shield children from the effects of poverty, feed and cloth them, give them health care, and an education. Whatever Christ said about those who would harm the little children, it is no concern of the signers provided they’ve already been born. What seems to worry them greatly isn’t that families may fall into poverty and divorce or that children may go hungry or die of preventable illnesses, but that gay citizens might gain equal marriage rights.

And their case against same-sex marriage would seem to rest on one thing: procreation. Except it doesn’t.

Marriage is what one man and one woman establish when, forsaking all others and pledging lifelong commitment, they found a sharing of life at every level of being…the biological, the emotional, the dispositional, the rational, the spiritual…on a commitment that is sealed, completed and actualized by loving sexual intercourse in which the spouses become one flesh, not in some merely metaphorical sense, but by fulfilling together the behavioral conditions of procreation. That is why in the Christian tradition, and historically in Western law, consummated marriages are not dissoluble or annullable on the ground of infertility, even though the nature of the marital relationship is shaped and structured by its intrinsic orientation to the great good of procreation.

Okay…look at it: Heterosexual coupling fulfills the behavioral conditions of procreation and when procreation cannot occur that’s why heterosexual marriages are not dissoluble or annullable. Wait…what?

Let’s simplify this passage: Only heterosexuals can naturally procreate but even when they can’t they’re still heterosexuals and you’re not. Yes…this is exactly what they’re saying. And make no mistake…it’s more then just the ability to procreate that the signers of this document deny gay people are capable of.

Read it again:

…forsaking all others and pledging lifelong commitment, they found a sharing of life at every level of being…the biological, the emotional, the dispositional, the rational, the spiritual…on a commitment that is sealed, completed and actualized by loving sexual intercourse in which the spouses become one flesh, not in some merely metaphorical sense, but by fulfilling together the behavioral conditions of procreation….

Absent that biological reproductive component, the infertile heterosexual couple would seem to be exactly on the the same footing as the same sex one. Their “sharing of life” is just as “merely metaphorical” without that physical actuality of procreation. Yet, the signers insist the heterosexual couple is still “fulfilling together the behavioral conditions of procreation”. But what behavior? Both the same sex couple and the infertile opposite sex couple are behaving exactly the same way. At least, to the eye that is willing to see in a same sex couple, two people in love. That’s the problem.

To the signers of this document, the same-sex couple is not only lacking the biological sharing of life, but also “the emotional, the dispositional, the rational, the spiritual” too. It is bedrock, absolute bedrock in the anti-gay pews that homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. See it over and over again in this document as it makes references to “fashionable ideologies” and a “right to engage in immoral sexual practices”. See it here in the airy theological claptrap they use to point out the difference between same sex couplings verses opposite sex ones. They’re not just talking about biology. Even taking into account their mutual infertility, same-sex couples are regarded by the signers as profoundly deficient on the spiritual level as well or this statement that the heterosexual’s behavior is completed and actualized in a way the same-sex couple’s isn’t simply makes no sense. It’s not just that same sex couples cannot biologically reproduce, but that their behavior does not reflect that “sharing of life at every level of being”. They are constitutionally incapable. The depth of their commitment to one another, the spiritual union between them, isn’t regarded by the signers as a real thing, but only as “fashionable ideologies”. But this is something the signers are loath to say bluntly. So the dress it up in a fashionable theology that says that homosexuals don’t love they merely imagine they do while engaging in “immoral sexual practices”, without saying it in so many words.

And for those readers who find it repulsive to see their gay and lesbian neighbors treated as hollow imitations of human beings, tragic souls imprisoned in sin whose sexual bondings have zero spiritual qualities and no romantic content whatsoever, the signers have an answer for them too…

It [same-sex marriage] would lock into place the false and destructive belief that marriage is all about romance and other adult satisfactions, and not, in any intrinsic way, about procreation and the unique character and value of acts and relationships whose meaning is shaped by their aptness for the generation, promotion and protection of life.

The section on marriage ends thusly:

And so it is out of love (not “animus”) and prudent concern for the common good (not “prejudice”), that we pledge to labor ceaselessly to preserve the legal definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman and to rebuild the marriage culture.

In case you missed it there…they’re pledging to labor ceaselessly to make sure humanity stops regarding a couple’s love as the bedrock of their marriage…out of love. Because they love us, they want us to understand that marriage isn’t about love. Because they love us they are going to rebuild the marriage culture with love perhaps functioning as an afterthought to the process of having children. Maybe. So long as we don’t all get too caught up in our destructive belief in romance. With enemies like this a culture of death doesn’t need friends.

This is not a religious manifesto. It is a political one, written and signed by a group of right-wing political activists, many of whom happen to be clergymen. But it would be a mistake to dismiss it as more of the same junk rhetoric. Some days ago, following the passage of the Matthew Shepard – James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a group of anti-gay ministers put on a show in front of the Department of Justice building in Washington D.C., daring the Feds to come out and arrest them for preaching against the evils of homosexuality. Like the Declaration, it was less an act of street theater and more a warning to both the government and the gay community, our families and friends, that bigotry isn’t going to just roll over when civil rights laws are passed. It didn’t back in the 1960s either.

And then you realize there is an audience out there in the pews just drinking all this in and getting more and more fearful and angry and defiant with every serving. With a black democrat in the white house, and democrats controlling both houses of congress, all it seems the religious right can do at the moment to advance its policies is whip up the pews for the next election, with sickeningly little concern for the consequences. In July of 2008, Jim Adkisson walked into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, carrying a sawed-off shotgun and burning with hatred toward “ultra liberals” who “worship the god of secularism” and “embrace every pervert that comes down the pike”. He opened fire in a room full of people watching their children put on a play, killing two. Culture of death.

A Rutland, Vermont, Family Court judge ruled Friday that “ex-gay” activist Lisa Miller, who absconded with her daughter Isabella in 2004 and violated numerous visitation orders since then, must transfer custody to her ex-spouse Janet Jenkins.

The Rutland Herald reported, “In a 21-page order, Judge William Cohen granted sole custody of 7-year-old Isabella Miller to her nonbiological but court-recognized parent, Janet Jenkins.” The transfer will take effect Jan. 1. Jenkins will allow Lisa to visit Isabella and to take Isabella to church events.

Lisa’s complete loss of custody shocked “ex-gay” activist Debbie Thurman, who favors a supposed right of states to harbor deadbeat parents in the name of Christianity — but it should have shocked no one.

For five years, Miller violated court rulings in Vermont and Virginia that agreed upon Vermont’s jurisdiction in the case and therefore affirmed Jenkins’ visitation rights as a co-parent. Had Lisa not made her daughter a pawn in fundamentalist cultural warfare conducted by Jerry Falwell’s Liberty Counsel, and had Lisa simply permitted visitation as required under law, she would have retained custody.

Unfortunately, Lisa, Thurman, and the Liberty Counsel intend to continue using Isabella as a pawn.

The Herald says the LC’s Mathew Staver plans to fight on two fronts:

appealing Cohen’s decision to the Vermont Supreme Court while continuing a battle in the Virginia Court of Appeals regarding the state’s authority to enforce Vermont orders that conflict with Virginia’s laws.

In short, Thurman holds out hope that a Virginia court will violate nationally agreed-upon protocols for the resolution of family-law disputes and continue to allow the state to harbor Isabella against the wishes of Vermont, which holds jurisdiction over the family.

Carl Tobias, University of Richmond professor of law, told The Herald that he didn’t think appeals courts in either state would overturn the decision.

“They’ve already been to that court a couple times now,” he said referring to Virginia’s court of appeals. “There’s a point at which every court gets tired of people litigating when they have no valid case to make.”

The FBI said Monday that reports of antigay hate crimes rose 11 percent from 2007 to 2008. The FBI survey defines a hate crime as a conviction for a crime ranging from intimidation and simple assault, to murder.

African-Americans and Latinos continue to be singled out for violent racial attacks, and Jews continue to be singled out for violent religious attacks.

The total number of violent violent hate crimes crept closer to the 10,000 mark: from 9,500 to 9,700, according to Agence France-Presse (via Raw Story).

Underreporting of violent crime persists, as more than 80 percent of 13,690 participating law-enforcement jurisdictions reported no hate crimes.

A New York appeals court ruled last week that legislators must allow same-sex couples residing in New York, that have been married in other states, to receive equitable government benefits.

Focus on the Family objected.

Bruce Hausknecht, a judicial analyst with Focus on the Family Action, said that civil marriage should be defined by voters, not by legislators or a constitution.

Voters, of course, do not generally act according to the will of any particular god — or, necessarily, any constitution. According to what once was conservative Christian and representative-republican dogma, voters acting as a group often act according to short-lived, poorly educated, or worldly passions — not high ethical or legal principles.

Focus on the Family wishes for voters to elect the nation’s married couples — not the couples themselves, nor the couples’ chosen places of worship, nor any constitutional principles of personal or religious freedom.

Obsessed with sex and disinterested in the Gospels, a conservative Lutheran faction misnamed the “Lutheran Coalition for Renewal” (CORE) is encouraging schism from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Focus on the Family applauded this split on Nov. 19.

The Rev. Mark Chavez, a CORE director, is quoted by Focus as saying one’s beliefs about the narrow topic of sexuality are key to determining whether one accepts the “authority of God’s Word and especially the authority of the Bible.”

It turns out, however, that CORE accepts neither.

The Bible assumes traditional marriage to be solely an arranged affair between a man, and an obedient and uneducated woman whom he has never met. CORE redefines marriage quite differently.

In condemning all religions except Judaism, some portions of the Bible seem to reject freedom of religion. Here, I confess, CORE is in agreement with those particular Bible passages.

In texts portraying God as ordering Biblical heroes to battle against religious and cultural infidels, portions of the Bible affirm rape and genocide against innocents in wartime. CORE is silent about its position regarding war crimes.

In the texts that are so frequently misquoted to justify genocide against sexual minorities, the Bible condones incest in Lot’s family and polygamy in the family of David. CORE is silent about its position regarding incest, and CORE disagrees with the Bible regarding polygamy.

Portions of the New Testament, meanwhile, require pacifism in response to assault — and define the Christian lifestyle solely in terms of a nomadic celibate life in which all possessions must be given away in order to evangelize about Jesus of Nazareth. CORE says nothing about pacifism, and little if anything about celibacy, charity, nomadism, or divorce.

That requirement of apostles to dump one’s possessions is issued in contradiction to other texts which affirm landowners’ keeping of slaves, provided that they are treated with a token degree of humanity.

CORE is certainly entitled to create splinter churches if it wishes. But its claim to be Biblical is transparently false. Focus on the Family’s approval of CORE’s claim suggests that Focus, too, is unbiblical in its “worldview.”

(Weekly Column)

It is time to admit that the gay community has a gigantic Pope problem. Under the leadership of Benedict XVI, the Vatican has become an implacable foe of liberalism, modernity and basic rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. Rome has eagerly jumped with both feet into America’ culture wars and is working on a global scale to punish or purge ideological dissenters within the church. This aggressive activism presents a formidable new front in the fight for parity — one with considerable political clout and financial resources.

Last week, a coalition of totalitarian religious activists and radical clerics joined forces to unveil the “Manhattan Declaration” at Washington’ National Press Club. This rambling manifesto, written by former Watergate felon Chuck Colson, called for “Christians” to disobey laws they didn’t fancy and to ignore civil rights laws that protected GLBT people from discrimination. It was a dishonest document filled with historical revisionism that promoted theocracy, encouraged anarchy and supported the dissolution of the rule of law. It falsely portrayed right wing Christians as victims, even as they pledged to work tirelessly to deny equality to those who would not adhere to their sectarian church rules.

An extreme manifesto of such breathtaking cynicism and insincerity is no surprise coming from what passes for “leaders” in today’ evangelical circles. It was striking, however, that more than 15 key American Catholic leaders signed on to the “Manhattan Declaration”. Signatories included heavyweights such as Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York and Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, DC. This was clearly a call to arms and a powerful signal that the Roman Catholic Church is taking the gloves off to fight political battles in America.

This hands-on involvement from Rome has passed the “trend” stage and appears to be official policy. Consider the significant involvement the Catholic Church had in stripping marriage rights away from GLBT couples in a Maine referendum held earlier this month.

In the same manner, on June 11, the Washington, DC Archdiocese threatened to abandon the homeless and quit charity work in the District if it had to comply with anti-discrimination laws. Catholic Charities had the audacity to believe it was entitled to collect $8.2 million in tax dollars meant to serve all DC residents, and then still get to handpick whom it deems worthy of assistance.

Catholic involvement with arch-conservative politics is growing by the day. In May, Catholic groups tried to stop President Barack Obama from speaking at a Notre Dame commencement ceremony because of his pro-choice position.

Earlier this month, Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin put the clamp on Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), banning the lawmaker from communion because he is pro-choice. This was reminiscent of The St. Louis Archbishop refusing to give communion to John Kerry during his presidential campaign.

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has suddenly begun to steer GLBT Catholics to 12-step programs that promise to “cure” homosexuality or support them in a lifelong celibacy. The Catholic Diocese in Sioux Falls, South Dakota urged its 128-thousand members to oppose an attempt to bring legalizing embryonic stem cell research to a public referendum. (I guess the sacrosanct “people’ right to vote” on controversial social issues only applies to same-sex marriage)

In fighting back, we must remember that the Vatican is launching these attacks from a position of weakness. It has yet to recover its moral authority from public exposure of rampant child sexual abuse scandals that cost the Church billions of dollars in legal settlements.

The Vatican appears to be acutely aware it is losing its worldwide market share. It is basically defunct in the Middle East, where the religion began, and on life-support in Western Europe, where it once prospered. In Africa, Rome competes with Islam and Anglicanism for a shrinking slice of the pie. (Who can forget that while in Africa the Pope said condoms could make the AIDS crisis worse.) South America, one of its few remaining strongholds, is losing Roman Catholics to evangelical faiths by the millions.

Instead of competing against the conservative evangelical brand, Pope Benedict has decided to embrace it, shaping a conspicuously political Catholicism that embraces extremism and drives out dissenters. The Vatican has become so doctrinaire that it recently launched an invasive probe into the lives of America’s 60,000 nuns to enforce anachronistic rules. In January, Benedict welcomed back excommunicated Bishop Richard Williamson who denied that millions of Jews died in Nazi death camps.

Fortunately, Benedict is a cold, unsympathetic figure and the majority of American Catholics often ignore his edicts. The strategy for the GLBT community should be to stand up to Rome and help mobilize mainstream Catholics to fight back against an authoritarian Pontiff who is hell-bent on making the Catholic Church as unpopular and unappealing as His Holiness.

crossposted on Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters