Instead of engaging in true conversation through schools’ Gay-Straight Alliances or the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network’s annual Day of Silence, Exodus continues to con its youth groups into a phony, egocentric conversation amongst themselves.
Exodus’ DOT website now hosts two new videos featuring what it calls “man on the street” interviews at an unidentified school:
The interviewees are reasonably diverse, but ignorant of antigay violence and bullying — and kept ignorant by Exodus. Besides sidestepping the focus of the Day of Silence, the videos also perpetuate Exodus International’s relativist habit of encouraging people to define reality to be whatever they want it to be — not what medical, statistical, and psychiatric facts dictate.
Besides fact-deficient videos, the DOT offers:
a “survey” in which antigay youths and faculty are encouraged to invent their own reality.
a “supplies” store where people can buy posters, shirts, and cards that, again, are free of any troubling doses of factual reality.
Until Exodus supports and interacts with existing channels such as GSAs and GLSEN, its DOT must be regarded as a campaign to deliberately suppress public awareness of antigay violence, to sidestep real conversation, and to insulate self-identified “Christians” from reality.
The National Association of Social Workers of Uganda (NASWU) argued “there is justification for Uganda to put in place appropriate legislation to comprehensively prohibit homosexuality” by killing the nation’s homosexuals through a “process that even other countries will want to emulate.”
In response, Exodus International President Alan Chambers criticized the NASWU but gives the organization too much credit:
Although the NASWU seems genuinely concerned in helping those struggling with same-sex attraction, the organization fails to see that Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009–as any legislation that criminalizes homosexuality–does more to hurt than help homosexuals.
Genuinely concerned? Nonsense. One does not help people by silencing and killing them.
Exodus fails to support human rights or freedom for any Ugandans; instead, Exodus merely suggests that evangelical churches patronize the unfree masses by offering “hope and healing” to those who surrender to the U.S. fundamentalist ideology that these churches have imported.
Focus on the Family blasts the Day of Silence — GLSEN’s annual antiviolence vigil and conversation-starter in schools — as a sinister manifestation of the “homosexual agenda.”
Focus is alarmed that the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network encourages schools to acknowledge the existence of LGBT youth — such acknowledgment being an obvious prerequisite to stopping violence against those youth.
Instead of acknowledging that gender- and orientation-variant youth exist and should not be assaulted and intimidated with impunity, Focus claims that the ex-gay activist group Exodus International offers “redemptive truth” as an alternative to nonviolence.
Exodus’ Day of Truth, purposely scheduled one day prior to the Day of Silence, condemns LGBT youth to hell and urges “Christian” youths to view their LGBT-tolerant classmates as inferior prior to any “conversation” about violence that the Day of Silence might otherwise prompt.
Violence does not concern Focus; “lesbian, gay and bisexual materials in the classroom” do.
Focus and Exodus are purposely ignorant of the New Testament’s repeated admonitions against violence toward ethnic and gender minorities; and where Focus and Exodus claim to be knowledgeable, the knowledge is false. “The biblical truth for sexuality” — as interpreted by their mentor James Dobson — isn’t Biblical at all. It is a 1950s TV sitcom fantasy of heterosexual marriage at age 18 followed by premature child-raising and lives of suffocating gender-role conformity. This myth of white suburban Americana rejects the Bible’s conflicting affirmations of celibate evangelism, polygamy, rape, and same-sex relationships; ignores the ethnicity and modest living standards of Biblical characters; and applauds the Bible’s ignorance of crucial scientific and historical facts.
Do Focus or Exodus offer Biblical truth? No. Redemption? No. Freedom from violence? Absolutely not. What they do offer is little more than a cocoon of smug self-satisfaction, ethnic and sexual ignorance, and the sort of hypocritical moralizing and intimidation that Jesus of Nazareth reputedly condemned.
Tony Perkins spoke tonight in Memphis at an event at Bellevue Baptist Church. I jokingly live-blogged it from the future using my truly heinous psychic powers, because I knew exactly what was going to happen at that event. The rally was called “Stand for the Family,” and it featured Perkins and Bishop Harry Jackson. It was organized by a group with the adorable name “FACTn,” which stands for Family Action Council of Tennessee, in response to the fact that inclusive nondiscrimination ordinances are passing in the Memphis area. In other words, the “pro-family” forces are scared.
Turns out my live-blog was pretty darned accurate. I wasn’t there, but in an effort to be two places at once, a friend was helping me follow tweets from another friend with GetEqual who decided to brave the malignant air inside Bellevue. The words “homosexual” and “crossdresser” were thrown around quite a bit. There was lots of fearmongering about undefined “threats” to the “family.” Tony Perkins even said “abortion” two whole times, which, hello, look at #5 in my live blog from this morning. I knew it would be brought up, because it’s their other boogeyman, but I had a feeling it would be an afterthought. No, hating LGBT people was for dinner at Bellevue. But no, I didn’t attend. I was down the street at another event at another church called “Stand for ALL Families,” organized by the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center.
Point:
Tony Perkins and Harry Jackson on a stage reciting the same claptrap anti-LGBT talking points for the fearful masses under the guise of “protecting the family”…
Counterpoint:
A pastor in her mid/late 50′s who also happens to be a lesbian speaking authentically about her life, her wife, and her experience of God. A young mother with a second child on the way who spoke, sometimes tearfully, of the things she and her husband take for granted, about how she was blindsided by how much deeper their relationship became when they got married, and about how she was speaking up because she wants her kids and their friends to be able to take those same things for granted, no matter who they love. A multi-racial lesbian couple who looked FAR too young to be raising a teenager, talking about just how mundane their “lifestyle” really is, as they go about raising a family together. A straight Catholic mother of two sons, who just about brought the house down as she related her experiences fighting for ALL children in the face of insane bigotry, hatred, and institutional religious discrimination. An African-American lesbian couple who married a couple of years ago, stepping forward to encourage more African-American LGBT people and allies to speak up for themselves and each other.
And so on.
Which one of these things is truly “pro-family”?
One speaker made the point that, for Tony Perkins and Harry Jackson (and, I would add, Linda Harvey) and the fundamentalists congregated in the theater seats of the megachurch down the road, this was a game where, in order to protect their worldview, someone had to lose. They cannot protect their worldview…it has nothing to do with their “families”…without tearing us down. We are their negation. Meanwhile, as we sat and had fellowship together, straight, gay, black, white, Christian, atheist, and every other permutation you can imagine, we stood for all families. In fact, we stood for the families at the Tony Perkins rally. Because our equality takes nothing away from them. In fact, in a world where all families are allowed to exist peacefully, more families will thrive. The dirty little secret that Tony Perkins won’t acknowledge is that WE were in the room with him that night. Every family in that room had a gay relative, a gay neighbor, a gay son, daughter…whether they know it or not. But Tony Perkins and Harry Jackson don’t actually support families, because in order to do that, you have to support all members of all families, even the ones who don’t conform to your unscientific and wholly disproven ideas of gender and sexuality.
There was indeed a pro-family rally in Memphis tonight. It was lovely.
The embarrassment of the New York Times, Ross Douthat, seems to think that liberals are at least partially to blame for the fact that Catholic priests have been raping the hell out of children for decades:
Liberal Catholics, echoed by the secular press, insist that the whole problem can be traced to clerical celibacy. Conservatives blame the moral relativism that swept the church in the upheavals of the 1970s, when the worst abuses and cover-ups took place.
In reality, the scandal implicates left and right alike. The permissive sexual culture that prevailed everywhere, seminaries included, during the silly season of the ’70s deserves a share of the blame, as does that era’ overemphasis on therapy. (Again and again, bishops relied on psychiatrists rather than common sense in deciding how to handle abusive clerics.) But it was the church’ conservative instincts ‚Äî the insistence on institutional loyalty, obedience and the absolute authority of clerics ‚Äî that allowed the abuse to spread unpunished.
Wait, when in the 1970′s was child rape part of the “permissive sexual culture”? Just curious!
No.
Here’s why this is happening:
1. Enforced celibacy is not only weird, it’s completely unnatural. Hetero- or homo-, we have bodies and brains that are wired for intimacy with other consenting human beings. Normal human beings can go through non-sexual dry spells, but that’s entirely different from “You may not have intimacy with another person.”
2. Because of the rape culture environment of the Catholic church, people are pressured and shamed into relegating their sexuality to the strictures of, oh what do you know, celibate men:
Rape culture crops up when male power over women and children is exalted, when sexuality is demonized, and when men are encouraged to think of women (and children’) bodies as their property. All these aspects of patriarchy aren’t only part of the Catholic church, they’re celebrated. The exuberant love of male dominance that is the Catholic dogma is going to turn men into rapists who get a rise out of sexually dominated people they believe are lesser than them.
Duh.
(…)
Rape culture specifically likes to make big distinctions between different kinds of rape. Part of this is innocent enough—attacking children is a special kind of horror, after all. But when we put rape of women in one category and rape of children in another and rape of men in another, we’re discouraging people from seeing the connections. But there is a line between tolerating the abuse of women and tolerating the abuse of children. In a culture where male sexuality is assumed to be domineering and debasing, then some men will, for various reasons, skip right past raping women on to raping children.
3. Likewise, because sexuality, and along with it, sexual paraphilias and disorders, are taught to be good and evil and, again, in need of reconciliation with the ruling men in dresses and fancy hats, those with psychosexual issues often end up signing up for the only life they think might protect them from themselves: the celibate priesthood. The underlying issues, however, remain unaddressed.
4. Finally, this thing has festered for decades because the dominance of the Catholic church is hanging on by a thread in the developed world, and they care much more about protecting the church than they do about any pesky 10 year old rape victims. Educated people are leaving the church in droves, and though the church is having some success in recruiting starving people in the third world by giving them false hope for a better life, they’re also doing their part to kill those very same people with their discredited, sex-shaming policies on HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention. So the faster it becomes public knowledge just how widespread the Catholic child rape problem is, the more people (including their own parishioners) will realize that the jig is up and that they really don’t need to be opening their souls and their pocketbooks to men in white frocks who just might have been diddling their children thirty minutes ago.
So there you have it. Maybe one day the Times will realize what a disastrous mistake they made when they hired Douthat, but I’m not holding out hope.
Even as human rights activists across the globe urge a reconsideration of aid to Uganda following the introduction of the malevolent “Anti-Homosexuality Bill”, the United States of America is delivering key support to the current homophobic regime of Yoweri Museveni.
The New York Times reported on Sunday that the U.S. “is providing the Ugandan Army with millions of dollars worth of aid — including fuel, trucks, satellite phones, night vision goggles and contracted air support”, to hunt down fighters of a rebel group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The Times describes the effort as “one of the signature programs of Africom, the new American military command for Africa, which is working with the State Department…”
The LRA is an evil cult led by Joseph Kony (pictured) who believes that he can channel a spirit that can change stones into hand-grenades. For more than two decades, the LRA has waged guerilla warfare from jungle hideouts and plans to overthrow Museveni and replace him with a government based on the 10 Commandments. The LRA has abducted tens of thousands of children and forced them to serve as soldiers, porters and sex slaves.
Most recently, the New York Times reports that the LRA has slaughtered “hundreds of villagers in a remote corner of Congo and kidnapped many more, marching them off in a long human chain.”
It is fair to say that civilized people everywhere would like to see the LRA destroyed. There is no place on earth for such butchers to roam free and ruthlessly slaughter innocent people.
However, it is difficult to see a profound difference between the LRA and the Ugandan clique the U.S. is funding. It seems that religious fundamentalist autocrats who want to impose their violent sectarian views run both sides.
In the case of the LRA, the victims are villagers in Northern Uganda who are part of the death cult’ terror campaign to consolidate power. What Museveni’ government is attempting to do is only different by degree and choice of victims. Members of his party are singling out LGBT people to scapegoat, imprison, emigrate and even murder.
Musevini, as far as we know, is not as sadistic or insane as Kony — a madman with a Messiah complex. Still, it is fair to question what strategic interest is served by undermining one religious fanatic whose violence is widespread, to bolster the power of another religious extremist whose victims are more targeted and less popular.
I’m not convinced that propping up Musevini is the best use of United States tax dollars in a time of recession. What guarantees are there, that once his opposition is vanquished, he won’t use his unchecked power to round up and punish LGBT people? What will stop his undemocratic regime from using U.S. issued night vision goggles to hunt down gay people? What assurances are in place to prohibit his henchmen from using our satellite phones to coordinate their anti-gay campaigns?
Also, it is important to note the extreme hypocrisy of Uganda’ government and its theocratic allies in the United States. When groups like mine, Truth Wins Out, condemn the “kill the gays” bill, we are accused of imposing Western values. A perfect example is Mission America’ Linda Harvey who gave an anti-gay speech in Michigan last week and said:
“The fact they [Uganda] are re-criminalizing homosexuality is (a) their business, (b) it is patronizing for white Westerners to be telling these folks…Western homosexuals coming in and trying to get involved in Uganda.”
Of course, Harvey conveniently ignores her claim that she had worked on the Anti-Homosexuality bill in Uganda. Um, Linda, how it is not Christian colonialism and classic interference for an Ohioan to be writing homophobic legislation in Kampala?
For his part, Musevini complained that Western governments were placing too much pressure on his administration: “When I was at the Commonwealth meeting, the Prime Minister of Canada came to see me about gays. [British] Prime Minister Gordon Brown came to see me about gays, Carson [U.S. Assistant Secretary of State] rang me about Somalia and gays and Mrs. Clinton rang to talk to me about gays.”
The Obama administration should make it clear that for Uganda to procure U.S. guns it must protect gays from tyranny. If the current Ugandan regime and their American right wing apologists insist on persecuting LGBT people in the name of the Lord, than perhaps we should let Musevini fight the Lord’ Resistance Army on his own. US taxpayers should not be supporting theocracy or subsidizing the subjugation of minorities in Uganda.
Continuing its insane strategy of harassing corporations, the hate group Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX) is urging PepsiCo shareholders to vote in favor of Shareholder Proposal No. 4 — the Charitable Contributions Report. While PFOX claims to represent ex-gays, they have virtually none in the organization, strongly suggesting they are a political and legal front group.
The nutty PFOX resolution demands that PepsiCo to explain its standards for donations. PFOX is upset because it claims PepsiCo is contributing to Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). This is a group that helps families accept loved ones who happen to be gay.
“Why does PepsiCo fund organizations like PFLAG which issue religious publications urging readers to undermine other religions with which PFLAG disagrees?” asked Regina Griggs, executive director of PFOX. “Is this the best use of PepsiCo funding?”
“In response to a similar proposal last year, PepsiCo claimed that it is “committed to diversity and inclusion without imposition of personal judgment.’ So why does PepsiCo continue to fund organizations which hate the ex-gay community?”
“The PepsiCo Shareholder Proposal No. 4 asks PepsiCo to divulge its standards for funding and account for how the Company’ charitable contributions are actually used, a reasonable request,” said Griggs. “PepsiCo’ actions adversely affect its public image, goodwill, and stock value.”
PFOX is once again playing victim and angry (aren’t they always?) that PFLAG refers to so-called “ex-gay” conferences as “anti-gay”. Well, maybe because they portray gay relationships as sinful, counterfeit and as sexual brokenness. Any reasonable person would conclude that such depictions of an entire group of people are, indeed, anti-gay.
Once again, PFOX is coming across as unglued and divorced from reality by pursuing a bizarre strategy of portraying so-called “ex-gays” as hapless victims. In reality, PFOX is an aggressively dishonest organization that singles out LGBT people for ridicule and persecution.
PFOX was founded in the late 1990′s by Anthony Falzarano, with political and financial backing from the Family Research Council. He was replaced by Richard Cohen (pictured with tennis racket), the discredited therapist who was expelled for life from the American Counseling Association. The group also has close ties to Arthur Abba Goldberg – the founder of JONAH and a former Wall Street con artist who served hard time for bilking investors.
Radio host, ‘Christian’ activist met by crowd of 200-plus LGBT people in Michigan appearance
She Applauds Holocaust Revisionist Scott Lively and Claims To Have Worked On Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill
By Todd A. Heywood
GROSSE POINTE, Mich. — Linda Harvey, leader of Mission America, claims legislation pending in Uganda , the anti-homosexuality bill, does not include a death penalty provision for homosexuality. Instead, Harvey says, the bill was designed to stop “Western homosexuals” from exploiting Uganda children.
“This has been mis-portrayed– and please clear this up. Uganda is criminalizing rape of children, and I think that a lot of people would say hmmm maybe death penalty for rape of children — heterosexually or homosexually,” Harvey said in an interview following the speech in Grosse Pointe, Michigan.
“The fact they are re-criminalizing homosexuality is (a) their business, (b) it is patronizing for white Westerners to be telling these folks — they are seeing George Soros funded gay groups going into Uganda. They are all through the schools, lots of promotion to kids. Poor kids, poor kids are being offered money and favors and gifts to have sex. That’s exploitation. That’s sex trafficking. And it’s being done mostly homosexually. By Western homosexuals coming in and trying to get involved in Uganda.”
The actual bill includes a death penalty provision for “aggravated homosexuality,” which is described in part as “serial homosexuality” or multiple convictions. There is nothing in the legislation which specifically addresses the alleged “exploitation” and “sex trafficking” Harvey claimed.
Harvey said the Southern Poverty Law Center was wrong when it recently classified several anti-gay groups, including Scott Lively’s Abiding Truth Ministries, as “hate groups.”
“I can’t stand the Southern Poverty Law Center. They are such a hypocritical organization. They don’t cover any of the violence that happens to any of the conservatives.I love what they do with the Klu Klux Klan and racial issues, . They need to go back stay out of this other stuff. They need to get out of classifying hate groups, family groups. I mean I am a normal ordinary person I just happen to have conservative values. I don’t hate anybody. I don’t go on anybody’s websites. I don’t picket funerals. I can’t stand Fred Phelps. I think he is funded by the gays,” Harvey said. “I think he is.”
She said she and Lively have both worked on the anti-homosexuality bill in Uganda, and that she “loves” Lively.
Harvey also launched into a spirited defense of abstinence-only education. She said such programs did work — even though nearly every study has shown otherwise — and that they did not discriminate against gay youth. When confronted with the fact the message is abstain from sex until marriage was in itself discriminatory to LGBT youth, as most are not allowed to be married in the United States. She said that was untrue.
“They can still marry some one of the opposite gender,” Harvey said.
In addition, Harvey painted a picture of gays as being disease riddled. Specifically, she focused on CDC numbers. She used the following quote from a recent CDC report on HIV cases in the U.S.
“The data, presented at CDC’s 2010 National STD Prevention Conference, finds that the rate of new HIV diagnoses among men who have sex with men (MSM) is more than 44 times that of other men and more than 40 times that of women.”
What Harvey did not mention, or discuss, was that same study’s conclusion about why the HIV numbers in men who have sex with men are so high.
“Research shows that a range of complex factors contribute to the high rates of HIV and syphilis among gay and bisexual men. These factors include high prevalence of HIV and other STDs among MSM, which increases the risk of disease exposure, and limited access to prevention services. Other factors are complacency about HIV risk, particularly among young gay and bisexual men; difficulty of consistently maintaining safe behaviors with every sexual encounter over the course of a lifetime; and lack of awareness of syphilis symptoms and how it can be transmitted (e.g., oral sex). Additionally, factors such as homophobia and stigma can prevent MSM from seeking prevention, testing, and treatment services.”
Harvey also touted the number of men dead in California from HIV, a number she put at 69,000. Asked what role the Reagan administrations failure to act on the HIV epidemic in the first six years and its impact on those numbers, Harvey brushed that off and focused on new infections– which do not necessarily translate to deaths with improved medications and understanding of HIV infections.
Harvey came to Grosse Pointe from her Ohio home on Thursday to speak to a Christian group called Point of Relevance. Her speech was billed as a discussion on the gay agenda. But when local activists and groups got wind of her appearance, they launched a Facebook campaign to fill the War Memorial room where she was speaking. Nearly 200 pro-LGBT activists showed up. But Harvey and Point of Relevance decided that with so many LGBT people in the audience, they were better off witnessing to the group, then proceeding with the program as advertised.
For her part, Harvey stood up and told how she went from being a liberal to a conservative, how she had worked for Planned Parenthood, and her work in the health care field as an advertising and marketing executive as the AIDS epidemic ratcheted up. She was questioned several times by audience members about presenting her powerpoint presentation, “Homosexuality: Is the Debate Over,” and she said she didn’t think it was right for “this audience.”
Harvey and Point of Relevance explained to the audience that they change in program was because they were “moved by the Holy spirit.”
After nearly two hours of delay — including 30 minutes of music worship — Harvey finally launched into her powerpoint, speeding through it and only presenting a portion of the entire hour long program. She ended on a slide introducing the Day of Silence, saying “I am sure you all know what that is.”
The dialog Point of Relevance had advertised for the evening consisted of three questions from the audience.
“Southern Poverty Law Center does amazing work and they should keep their eye on people like her,” said Alicia Skillman, executive director of Triangle Foundation, an LGBT rights group in Michigan. “I think it’s horrible that she is working in Uganda on the bill for the killing of LGBT people.”
Skillman said, “Her argument was basically change then we’ll love you.”
This evening Tony Perkins and Bishop Harry Jackson will be descending upon Memphis’s largest church, Bellevue Baptist, for a “Stand for the Family” rally. In the interest of not wasting people’s time, I will now liveblog this event FROM THE FUTURE:
1. The family is under attack!
2. It is all the gays’ fault!
3. All of you people with families, you are under attack! Right now!
4. By the gays!
5. Also, abortion?
6. And what happens when a man in a dress decides to use the ladies’ room at your local Hobby Lobby? All hell breaks loose, that’s what!
7. Gays are so powerful that they will take the entire military down with one disco ball!
8. Did I mention that all of you people are under attack? Take cover due to partly cloudy with a 100% chance of gays!
9. Did you hear about the time
a. a New Mexico photographer was forced to abide by the laws of her state?
b. kids in Massachusetts had to learn to read books that reflected reality?
c. a wedding pavilion that was open to the public was forced to be open to PUBLIC GAYS?
d. the liberal media attacked Carrie Prejean worse than 9/11 when they time traveled and convinced her to make a sex tape?
10. We’re victims!
Here’s the flyer, which looks like a page from a coloring book. So Jeremy Hooper colored it.
The event is being sponsored by the adorably named FACT (Family Action Council of Tennessee).
Meanwhile, around the corner, the Memphis Gay & Lesbian Community Center will be hosting a rally called Stand for ALL Families:
Says MGLCC director Will Batts: “MGLCC stands for all types of families because we value the unconditional love that builds those relationships. Many of the kids we assist have been hurt by traditional families that see only rigid, limited ways of expressing love.”
Like the ones being supported and promoted at Bellevue Baptist this evening.
The LRA is an evil cult led by Joseph Kony (pictured) who believes that he can channel a spirit that can change stones into hand-grenades. For more than two decades, the LRA has waged guerilla warfare from jungle hideouts and plans to overthrow Museveni and replace him with a government based on the 10 Commandments. The LRA has abducted tens of thousands of children and forced them to serve as soldiers, porters and sex slaves.
In the case of the LRA, the victims are villagers in Northern Uganda who are part of the death cult’ terror campaign to consolidate power. What Museveni’ government is attempting to do is only different by degree and choice of victims. Members of his party are singling out LGBT people to scapegoat, imprison, emigrate and even murder.
Continuing its insane strategy of harassing corporations, the hate group Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX) is urging PepsiCo shareholders to vote in favor of Shareholder Proposal No. 4 — the Charitable Contributions Report. While PFOX claims to represent ex-gays, they have 
Radio host, ‘Christian’ activist met by crowd of 200-plus LGBT people in Michigan appearance
The actual bill includes a death penalty provision for “aggravated homosexuality,” which is described in part as “serial homosexuality” or multiple convictions. There is nothing in the legislation which specifically addresses the alleged “exploitation” and “sex trafficking” Harvey claimed.
“The data, presented at CDC’s 2010 National STD Prevention Conference, finds that the rate of new HIV diagnoses among men who have sex with men (MSM) is more than 44 times that of other men and more than 40 times that of women.”
Harvey came to Grosse Pointe from her Ohio home on Thursday to speak to a Christian group called Point of Relevance. Her speech was billed as a discussion on the gay agenda. But when local activists and groups got wind of her appearance, they launched a Facebook campaign to fill the War Memorial room where she was speaking. Nearly 200 pro-LGBT activists showed up. But Harvey and Point of Relevance decided that with so many LGBT people in the audience, they were better off witnessing to the group, then proceeding with the program as advertised.
