John Shore has a great piece up on whether, as a Christian, he should go to his friends’ gay weddings. To tackle this question, he decided to ask the age-old question “WWJD?” and here’s what he found:
When I next went looking for anywhere in the Bible where Jesus says anything — and I mean anything — about homosexuality, I learned that Jesus spent about as much time talking about gays and/or lesbians as I spend talking about button collecting and/or sea horses: none. Of course, it’s entirely possible that Jesus did say crucial things about homosexuality, but that when he did (curse the luck!) no one around him just then happened to have handy an ostrich feather, sappy stick, or whatever it was they used for pens back then. Which would make sense, actually. If you’ve spent any time at all reading the New Testament, you know that Jesus’ disciples weren’t exactly Johnnies-on-the-spot. They were just normal, everyday guys.
Kind of the whole point! Jesus most surely did love him some everyday people.
Throughout the New Testament, the only kind of people with whom Jesus consistently took frightful exception were the very “teachers of the law and Pharisees” we see him dressing down in the passages above. One thing that often gets lost in our considerations of Jesus is the degree to which he is exactly the wrong person to piss off. And you don’t have to spend a lot of time in the New Testament before you understand that the only kind of people who seem to ever truly anger him are those who put religious dogma above what he most stood for, which was God’s compassionate will.
Around Jesus you can whine, lie, shift your loyalties, be late, be greedy, be too ambitious, be stupid, be a coward, be a hypochondriac, constantly complain, fall asleep at every wrong moment — you can do nothing right, and it won’t in the slightest way seem to offend him. But you put dogma ahead of empathy? You transmogrify God’s law into a justification for denying God’s grace?
Then … yikes, man. Then you’ve got yourself a problem no one wants.
Please do read the whole thing.
I’m not a religious believer, but I find it encouraging to read the words of a believer who actually seems to comprehend his chosen religion. That’s the most obnoxious thing about arguing with the Religious Right, actually: they’re essentially biblically illiterate! They simply pick whatever phrases confirm their biases and bigotries and repeat them ad nauseam. Or they pick phrases that have absolutely nada to do with their arguments and yet claim that they magically DO bolster their arguments! And then when they get shown up by atheists and agnostics in biblical knowledge (repeatedly), they hide behind that verse that says “Even the debbil kin quote scripcher” (possibly not an exact transcription of the KJV). Yeah, well, the Devil may be able to quote scripture, but the verse says nothing about the Devil understanding scripture better than you, so get a new argument.
GLSEN’s Day of Silence is still a month-and-a-half away, but Exodus International is already mobilizing antigay teens in schools across North America with Exodus’ misnamed “Day of Truth” campaign.
The DOT mobilizes antigay churches and students to harass LGBT students and their friends, and — under the guise of so-called “conversation” — to lobby schools to exclude LGBT students from schools’ antibullying policies.
In a press release last week, Exodus applauded its past successes in convincing antigay youths to be ignorant, misinformed, and sanctimonious toward their lesbian and gay “friends.” (If you’re wondering why Exodus doesn’t mention transgender students, it’s because the organization effectively denies the existence of people who are not conventionally male or female, equating them with drag queens.)
“One girl in particular asked me if it was hard because I have a friend that is a lesbian. I told her that “yes” it is hard, but I’m not going to give up on her. I think that God has so many awesome plans for that girl and for the rest of us. The Day of Truth is something that is so awesome!” – A high school freshman in Arizona
“I was so glad to hear about the Day of Truth. My daughter is a freshman.. and we have both been in shock that the school counselor would promote a club to encourage gay lifestyles. We need to pray for these kids and people encouraging this sinful and deadly lifestyle and give our kids a voice to proclaim the truth.” – Pam, a parent
“I still disagree with your views, and I always will. However, you’ve expressed your views in a polite and forthright manner, without being confrontational, and I wanted to tell you that I very much appreciate that.” – An adult who does not support Exodus International’s views on homosexuality
Please note that Exodus lacked sufficient integrity to identify these people for purposes of confirmation; that none of these people indicate any knowledge of specific truths about their friends and children; none of them acknowledge the violence and harassment that is happening against their LGBT classmates; none of them admit the truth that Exodus ex-gay counseling programs are a dismal failure; and that the two antigay poster-persons view the task of having gay friends or relatives as a chore — or worse, a threat. That’s Exodus-style “love” for you.
Truth Wins Out urges schools and GSAs around the country to become alert to Exodus’ possible formation, in coming months, of affiliate student groups that intend to harass and ostracize religious and sexual minorities — and to sabotage nascent efforts by parents and friends of assaulted youths to make schools safer for LGBT students.
This is the funniest, campiest 700 Club clip I’ve ever seen. The melancholy music. The close-up shots of the little boy wearing high heel shoes. The credulous narrator. And that’s all in the first thirty seconds! I found it over at Rich’s FourFour blog, where he had this to say about it:
I’m of two minds regarding the ex-gay thing. Because I believe that no one is a better expert on my emotions than I am, it seems hypocritical to turn around and tell someone that what he’s saying he feels is not what he actually feels. Being “cured” of homosexuality flies in the face of what I consider to be innate and acceptable (Whoooo! I don’t need no cure! I don’t need no cure!), on top of it supporting the ludicrous “choice” argument made by the hateful and unsympathetic (homosexuality is a choice in the same way that going out to get food so that you don’t starve is a choice), but if Tony Spears wants to put on broad, five-minute theater to convince us he’s banging chicks now, well, whatever! I love the ultimate implication that you can be cured of desire, but that the gay sensibility is resistant to prayer. Reassuring!
Maybe if the way to “cure” homosexuality is through prayer, the way to cure homophobia is through laughter. I’m so sick of being depressed by shit that it’s worth a try.
I like the way he compared it to eating to fend off starvation. The only difference is that, while swearing off food is deadly, celibacy probably won’t kill you. But it won’t change the fact that your biology draws you toward a certain kind of person, a certain gender, etc.
Anyway, here’s Tony Spears talking about how he once was gay, but now he’s banging one very special lady named Felicia! Also, he only had the gayness because he didn’t know his Paw Paw. Riiiiiiight. Oh, and Pat Robertson gets so excited at the end! He’s rocking back and forth in reaction to the gayness that went away by the power of prayer!
Yay, they’ve convinced 40,127 starving, homeless people to pray a special prayer!
Now, um, how about their actual needs?
And no, this is not about religious belief, this is about priorities. However much time it took to give 40,127 starving, homeless people the religion spiel and close the deal so that they’d utter the magic words for salvation, could have been spent better with a hammer and a freakin’ nail.
Bryan Fischer is about six hours and one bad stool away from declaring that Christians are victims of a new holocaust at the hands of the homosexicals. Truly, he’s that hysterical. It’s sort of funny to watch:
As a culture, we must choose between the homosexual agenda or the Constitution because we can’t have both.
Further proof comes from the abjectly pathetic decision of the chaplains’ office at Andrews Air Force Base to rescind a long-standing invitation to Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council. Perkins had been invited to give a non-political talk at a prayer luncheon on the base yesterday, but was abruptly dis-invited for one simple reason: he supports the current law which makes homosexuals ineligible for service in the United States military.
(…)
The days of Dred Scott have returned. Christians now are the ones are being confined on the plantation, and warned about being too uppity … McCarthyism has now struck the U.S. military with a vengeance. The question now that the military is asking is this: “Are you now, or have you ever been, a supporter of traditional morality?” If the answer is yes, you go on our blacklist, and we deprive you of your freedom of religion, speech and military service.
Uhhhh.
Who, exactly, is suggesting that Christians can’t join the military? Or can’t practice their religion freely? And um, I thought Tony Perkins was a pastor/talking wingnut, not a member of the military.
Anyway, why rebut all of this when there’s a handy picture available to expose Bryan Fischer’s unnecessarily soiled undies in all their glory?
Folks, Peter LaBarbera has taken to posting right wing e-mail forwards. In this case, it’s a letter, written by a Navy captain who served starting in 1947, when homosexuality was not understood, when knowledge wasn’t readily available, before gays started coming out…in other words, back in the days when pesky reality didn’t interfere with the biases of a man like Peter LaBarbera. Oh, for the world to be ignorant again! Anyway, the letter was written to Admiral Mike Mullen, by a man named Lawrence “Jim” Jefferis. Here are a few quotes, along with what emotional needs the quotes fulfill for Peter.
This quote allows Peter LaBarbera to continue believing that he’s a stronger man than the valiant gay and lesbian servicemembers who could, in actuality, overpower him physically with one hand tied behind their backs:
During my enlisted service, homosexuals seemed to be a clumsy lot. They had a tendency to repeatedly fall headfirst down an engineroom ladder. Some were even known to trip on deck and “fall” overboard.
This quote allows Peter LaBarbera to pretend that being gay is somehow a limiting factor, like lack of education or a criminal record, and keeps him from confronting the fact that gay and lesbian West Point graduates like Dan Choi not only could physically overpower him with one hand tied behind their backs, but also could intellectually overpower him in the first seconds after they wake up, before they’ve even had their coffee:
The Navy, today, does not willingly accept GED [General Equivalency Diploma] holders for enlistment. Minor criminal records are a bar to enlistment. Visible tattoos and piercings are not permitted. Are these aberrations more damning than sodomy? Personnel may be denied reenlistment if they fail to meet obesity standards. The young men and women denied naval service because of these exclusionary conditions may also want to defend their country and might also be able to satisfactorily operate a radar, or a gas turbine, or a gun. But you are only advocating the acceptance of homosexuals! Why is that, Admiral?
This quote allows Peter LaBarbera to make the lazy, dishonest comparison of homosexuality to pedophilia. Strangely, the writer thinks that pedophiles would be better servicemembers than gays. That was a glance into the man’s psyche that I frankly did not need:
If we get to pick and choose which laws we uphold, which laws are next on the line to ignore? Carnal Knowledge? I would think a service man or woman who has sex with a minor (Carnal Knowledge) could perform military duties as well, if not better, than a homosexual.
This quote allows Peter LaBarbera to continue promoting strange right-wing myths that most or all gays actually want to change genders. I have never understood this bizarre myth. I suppose it’s just another way to scare their stupid sheep:
And have you considered the likelihood that some of the homosexuals will request sex-change procedures? I know for a fact that a significant percentage of my Law School class was undergoing sex-change therapy or surgery.
“A significant percentage”?! Ah yes, the famous transgender class of Hastings College, where 1 out of every 2 students was undergoing gender reassignment therapy.
WTF, Peter? Are you really willing to believe anything a right-wing nutjob tells you?
This quote allows chickenhawk Peter LaBarbera to believe he understands military stuff better than actual military leaders:
I hope that you recognize that we are irreconcilably opposed on this issue, but I think I have given it more thought than you.
And finally, this quote allows Peter to gaze at the words “anal fixation” for hours on end without his wife questioning his “research”:
In retrospect, I now realize that of all the officers I served with on active duty, Naval Academy graduates were the most tolerant of homosexuals. It may only be coincidence, but was there something in the curriculum that created such tolerance? I am aware that there have been numerous scandals regarding drug use, academic cheating, and heterosexual misconduct, but had never before given much thought to their acceptance of homosexual behavior, despite my awareness that there was a tendency toward an anal fixation.
Anal fixation, Peter. Anal Fixation. Anal fixation. Anus anus anus anus anus.
I think we all know that there is only one side in this argument that truly has an anal fixation.
“I’m not surprised that Miss Beverly Hills, Lauren Ashley, opposes gay marriage — after all 45 percent of young Californians voted for Prop 8, as did 7 million Californians generally,” the organization’s president, Maggie Gallagher, told us. “But I have to say, I am impressed with her courage in coming forward and for speaking up for Carrie. The elected officials of city of Beverly Hills are not demonstrating tolerance or kindness by continuing the avalanche of hatred against supporters of Prop 8.”
“The Bible says that marriage is between a man and a woman. In Leviticus it says, ‘If man lies with mankind as he would lie with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death and their blood shall be upon them.’ The Bible is pretty black and white.
In a time when anti-gay hysteria seems to be sweeping the African continent, when gay people are being set upon in nation after nation by mobs hopped up on the genocidal rhetoric of religious fundamentalists and political extremists, some vacant beauty pageant wannabe starts waving Leviticus around and Maggie Gallagher immediately, Immediately rushes to praise her for her…courage…of all things, without the slightest shred of thought to any consequences for gay people that this Their Blood Is Upon Them thing might possibly have. The danger to gay people clearly, obviously, sickeningly, never crossed her mind. And seriously…if you thought it might, you have not been paying attention.
Can we please dispense now with all this love the sinner hate the sin claptrap. There is no love in Maggie Gallagher for gay people. None. There is not a shred of regard in that barren wasteland she calls a conscience for our lives, let alone love. In her novel The Charioteer, the author Mary Renault described Gallagher’s kind, and Ashley’s, precisely…
Not wicked, he thought: that’s not the word, that’s sentimentality. These are just runts…They don’t sin in the sight of heaven and feel despair: they only throw away lighted cigarettes on Exmoor, and go on holiday leaving the cat to starve, and drive on after accidents without stopping. A wicked man nowadays can set millions of them in motion, and when he’s gone howling mad from looking at his own face, they’ll be marching still with their mouth’s open and their hands hanging by their knees, on and on and on…”
Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel said, The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. See it there in Gallagher’s reflexive solidarity with anyone willing to denounce same-sex marriage regardless of that little Their Blood Is Upon Them thing. She’s not ignoring it. She didn’t even see it. It did not register. The threat to our lives her crusade rouses in the mob does not concern her one iota. No, it is not hate. It is indifference.
Indifference…
They have no instinctive sense of sympathy. Their moral compass only points inward. They are unmoved…indifferent…
…utterly, starkly, shockingly, indifferent…
These are the ones who, in another time, in another place, could live right friggin’ next to the concentration camps and say later, with horrifically genuine sincerity, “We heard the rumors but we didn’t believe them…”
Courage. Courage is taking your lover’s hand in yours in a world where moral thugs praise beauty queens who use their moment in the spotlight to tell the world: Their Blood Is Upon Them.
Truth Wins Out’s research team revealed today that an alleged split in July 2009 between Exodus International and Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX) may only be cosmetic. While PFOX is no longer listed as an Exodus referral agency on Exodus’ website, the groups appear heavily enmeshed.
Wisconsin’s Reclamation Ministries, South Carolina’s New Song Ministries, Oklahoma’s First Stone Ministries, New Mexico’s LifeMor ministries, Missouri and Illinois’ Pure Heart Ministries, and Florida’s Family Ties Ministries.
“Despite their public divorce, Exodus and PFOX appear to be very much in bed together,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out.”These groups should be honest and admit the true extent of their working relationship.”
There is one other possibility. PFOX may be falsely listing Exodus ministries as PFOX chapters in order to mislead the public into thinking the organization is larger than it actually is.
In July 2009, Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX) broke away from Exodus International – or perhaps it was the other way around. The details remain murky. They were supposedly split over strategy, with PFOX couching its bizarre arguments in civil rights language.
For example, they want “ex-gays” to be included in laws that protect people from discrimination based on sexual orientation. Exodus, simply wants gay people not to be covered by such laws. There was also Exodus’ concern over PFOX’s judgment in placing quack “therapist” Richard Cohen on television.
Remember that beauty pageant star…”Mrs Beverly Hills”? The one who said that she’s against same-sex marriage? The one who reminded everyone that the bible says homosexuals should be put to death and their blood is upon them? The one who said “I feel like God himself created mankind and he loves everyone, and he has the best for everyone. If he says that having sex with someone of your same gender is going to bring death upon you, that’s a pretty stern warning, and he knows more than we do about life”…? The one who said the bible is pretty black and white…? That Mrs. Beverly Hills?
Seems the city of Beverly Hills would like to have a word with her about…er…bearing false witness…
In a statement Wednesday, the city said it was “shocked” by Ashley’s description of herself as “Miss Beverly Hills.” The city “does not sponsor a beauty pageant and has no association with Miss California USA,” the statement said. “As such, there should be no individual claiming the title of Miss Beverly Hills.”
But Wait…There’s More…
The city’s statement said Ashley lives in Pasadena and “does not represent Beverly Hills in any capacity.”
Well that’s pretty black and white. Remind me…where in Leviticus does it say Thou shalt strut around stage on national TV in a tiny little bikini and high heels while lying through your teeth about who you are and who you represent.
Australian former ex-gays explain on national television how U.S. evangelicals and their Australian affiliates sought to damage them, their spirituality, and their families.
