In January 2011, Truth Wins Out will begin to hold multi-media educational seminars to offer college students and LGBT advocates the tools they need to counter the dangerous lies peddled by the “ex-gay” industry.
Instead of going where we can make the most money, Truth Wins Out is traveling to regions where our powerful and insightful information is most needed. In the coming year, we will focus on proactively bringing our vital message to “Red States” where the myths and stereotypes peddled by “ex-gay” activists remain an obstacle to equality.
Truth Wins Out will kick off the new year by taking its powerful, fact-based presentation to; Fargo, ND; Minneapolis, MN; Milwaukee, WI; Des Moines, IA; Lincoln, NE; Kansas; Oklahoma City; Little Rock, AR; Chicago, IL; and Alabama.
We will no longer simply respond to “ex-gay” conferences, but move forward to take the initiative and educate America so people will understand that “ex-gay” programs are dangerous and ineffective.
However, none of this can happen without your generous financial support. Please consider the costs of our “Pray Away the Gay?” tour – and help us with an end of year tax-deductible contribution.
How about sponsoring an individual city on our tour for $500 or a state for $1,000? If this is beyond your means, please consider helping our efforts with $100, $50, $25, or $10.
Seeking donations is by far the most difficult part of my job. I’d much rather be engaging in activism or conducting research. However, I ask for your kind consideration today because I believe so strongly in the crucial mission of Truth Wins Out. We simply cannot fight religious extremism and the “ex-gay” myth without your continued support and generosity.
With Truth Wins Out, a little bit of help can go a long way in our efforts to challenge anti-gay religious extremism and the “ex-gay” industry.
Let’s wrap up this quiet week a little bit early and then ring in the new year, okay? We’ll be back to our normal posting schedule next week.
For our starter song this week, I’ve been listening to Joan Osborne’s old stuff, as in, pre-”One of Us” stuff, and this song “What You Gonna Do” done struck me. Joan is a blues singer at heart, and you can really hear it here. Also check out her amazing cover of “Son of a Preacher Man” if you haven’t heard it. So the song, “What You Gonna Do,” hit shuffle, see where we are ten songs later, and then we go. More videos after the jump! Be safe this weekend, everybody!
1. Wicked – Original Broadway Cast Recording – “A Sentimental Man” [sung by Joel Grey]
2. Shout Out Louds – “Man On The Moon” [R.E.M. cover]
3. Amy Millan – “Bruised Ghosts”
4. Brandi Carlile – “Until I Die”
5. Nick Drake – “River Man”
6. The Zinnias – “Kings” [The Zinnias were the high school band of Stephin Merritt, of Magnetic Fields fame]
7. Air Supply – “All Out Of Love”
8. My Morning Jacket – “Lowdown”
9. Neko Case – “Polar Nettles”
10. Katie Herzig – “Oh My Darlin’”
But the politically correct attitude not only insists that heterosexual and homosexual relationships are equivalent, but also erases differences between relationships between two women and relationships between two men. If men and women are profoundly different-and both science and common sense tell us they are- then an all-female couple is even more different from an all-male couple than either homosexual bond differs from a heterosexual union. This distinction helps explain the oft-noted quirk in public attitudes that sees stronger opposition and denunciation, in the Old Testament and elsewhere, to a physical relationship between two males and intimacy between two females. A physical connection between a female couple, like a physical connection between man and woman, is based primarily on acts of affection. The most common sexual practice between two men involves an act of aggression —inflicting more pain than pleasure for at least one of the parties. Even decisions by Congress, equating homosexual and heterosexual relationships, or erasing distinctions between the interaction between lesbians on the one hand and gay males on the other, cannot repeal politically incorrect realities.
Apple has again rejected a revised app version of the “Manhattan Declaration,” a document written and signed by various leaders in the conservative-christian community, according to a report from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). Apple originally approved, then rejected the app earlier this month in response to petitions and criticism from gay and progressive groups. The new version was rejected for the same reasons as previously given, the company’s belief that the app would “expose a group to harm” and that the intent of the app is to be “objectionable and potentially harmful to others.”
This post from John Shore is a few weeks old, but I hadn’t seen it, so I figured y’all might not have either. In it, he goes directly to the heart of why so many fundamentalists are so virulently anti-gay. It, of course, has nothing to do with the Bible, no matter how much they protest that it does — that’s all a smokescreen that they use to convince themselves and others that something much deeper isn’t going on. This is also why the word “homophobia” is so excessively appropriate to describe the condition exhibited by anti-gay activists:
The reason is power. It’s all about power. The problem Christians and others have with homosexuality isn’t about sex. Nobody cares that much about what consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedrooms. Sure, it says in the Bible that homosexuality is bad. And of course that matters. As a Christian, what the Bible says certainly matters to me. But the Bible also says that slavery is good, and that women shouldn’t speak in church, and that Christians should never eat shellfish, and on and on an on. We’ve long ago made our peace with the idea that sometimes we have to modify our understanding of Biblical texts—especially when (as is true with the Pauline proscriptions of homosexuality), there are sound reasons to question the way the text has been translated.
You see, fundamentalist Christians have no trouble finding easy rationalizations for the Bible verses they don’t personally like or that don’t fit in with their own worldview. Indeed, if you browse John’s comments section, you can easily find ten examples of fundamentalists doing just that. John goes on to explain what he means by “power”:
And the answer to that question is simple: they threaten the traditional power base of men.
Here’s the basic run of it inside a man’s brain/heart/subconscious:
I may not be much. But I’m a man. And that entitles me to a lot.
Two women together? That’s kind of cute—sexy, even. But it doesn’t scare me. Because neither of those women can threaten my power. They can’t undermine the truth that, as a man, I’m still (figuratively and literally) on top. Two women together doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a man’s world.
But two men together? Yikes. That’s a problem for me. That’s when all the walls in my world begin to crumble.
Each of those men is my equal, my peer; they’re my kind. If it’s okay for them to be romantic with each other, then, for me, everything gets upended. [Oh, will you just stopalready?!] Because where the heck does that leave me?
I’m a man. I get to be a man. That means I’m … the man! I’m in charge. I’m at the head of the table. I make the money. I have the muscles. I build the castles. I’m number one! But I can’t be number one without people below me to be number one over. You’re not a boss unless you have subordinates. My whole organization—my entire power structure, everything that keeps me being The Man—absolutely, 100% depends upon me—and, by extension, upon my kind—being in charge.
And what we’re in charge of is women.
Hello? Muscles. Castles. Food on the table. Conquering hero.
Swinger of clubs. Thruster of weapons.
Head of household.
That’s how it’s been. That’s how it’s supposed to be. That’s my goddamn right as a man. And if you try to take that from me, I will do everything in my power to make sure that you fail.
And we’re not joking now. I’ll beat you. I’ll make sure my kids learn to hate you.
I’ll have no pity for you when you commit suicide. I’ll happily supply the gun for that. Or the pick-up truck and the rope, if you’re having a problem with gettin’ her done.
You’re screwing with my life now, you see? And I will see you in hell before I’ll sit back and let that happen.
And that’s how that goes. That’s how that’s always gone.
This is a point that feminists have been making for decades, and it’s refreshing to see it stated so bluntly by a straight, Christian man. [It also suggests that John Shore is more secure in his manhood than many of his co-religionists.]
It all goes back to the simple question of “Who am I better than? What do I control?” Deeply ingrained in our society is the notion that Christian men are The Deciders, and many of these men, having embraced this status through no merit of their own, are deeply fearful that one day the emperor will be shown to be quite naked, indeed, and that their fragile pedestal will crumble to the ground, forcing them to exist on the same level as everyone else. So they are indeed threatened by the idea of men who disrupt their patriarchal power structure, on whatever side of the spectrum it’s happening; they might be deeply threatened by a man, straight or gay, who is deeply in touch with his feelings/his “feminine” side [see: sneering about "metrosexuals"], and they might be even more threatened by a gay man who is very obviously stronger and more masculine than they are.
But it’s not just gay people that set them off in this way. When Republican politicians scream out “baby killer!”, most rational people can tell that they’re not really talking about babies. The entire idea of reproductive rights for women essentially says to these men, “You no longer have the final say over what does and does not happen to women’s bodies.”
Another piece chips away from the pedestal.
When teabaggers wail about “wanting their country back,” as they make up truly bizarre fantasies about who the president really is, where he really came from, what he really is, what he really wants to do — it’s disrupting their white, male patriarchal power structure.
And so on. It’s no coincidence that the virulently anti-gay are also virulently anti-choice, and often “want their country back,” etc. On a deeper level, they’re yearning for a time when women, gays, minorities, etc., knew their place. On an even deeper level, these straight men [and the women who, as John Shore points out, are often just as tied up in that structure as their men are] are yearning for a time when they knew their own place, and were secure in it.
Those days are gone. We’re a better society for it, but that’s, at heart, what scares the everloving shit out of the Bryan Fischers and Tony Perkinses of the world. There was a time in Bryan’s life, and probably in Tony’s father’s life [and certainly within his worldview], when men like they had the last word and it was unquestioned, no matter how stupid or ignorant it was. These days a smart, overqualified, more outspoken woman, gay person or minority can look guys like that in the face and tell them to go to hell, and then carry out the ultimate revenge by having a happy, fulfilled life that, by its very existence, negates the worldview they use as a blanket for their deep insecurities. I imagine it’s hell, because such people have been raised with a privilege they did not earn, and that they do not deserve. But to have privilege ripped away like that, to have society roll its eyes a little more each and every day at such provincial thinking? Damn.
I’m glad there are straight Christian men like John Shore who are willing to step up and state the frightening truth to their own compatriots.
Remember that, though, when you’re dealing with people who have nothing of any substance to say to you beyond “It sez in the Holy Bubble!” or some derivation of that. It has nothing to do with the Bible, and everything to do with deep insecurities and fear.
Peter sat down and did an interview with disgraced and dishonorably discharged former Navy Chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt the other day. If you want to listen to it, and why would you, knock yourself out. [Apparently Klingenschmitt talks about the time he performed an exorcism on a lezbeen! This is hilarious, because Fundamentalist Christians think their religion is for grown-ups, when it is obviously little more than a particularly bizarre precursor to Dungeons and Dragons, only with more childish fear in the mix.] I only seek to call attention to the fact that Peter is likely well aware of the fact that Klingenschmitt has been lying for years about why he was discharged, but in Jesus’ name, Peter continues to pretend the lie is true. Here is what really happened to Gordon Klingenschmitt, according to his former boss:
“I was the dishonored ex-chaplain’s supervisor for the past 2 years,” Holcomb wrote in his message. “I found him to be totally untruthful, unethical and insubordinate.He was and is contemptuous of all authority. He was not court martialed for praying in Jesus’ name. I sent him out in uniform every week to pray at various ceremonies and functions. He always prayed in uniform and in Jesus’ name. He was never told that he could not pray in Jesus’ name. In fact, the issue of prayer had nothing at all to do with his dismissal from the Navy. He disobeyed the lawful order of a senior officer. I am sure that you understand that Navy Regulations forbid any of us, regardless of rank or position, to appear in uniform in support of any political or partisan event.”
Holcomb goes on to say, “He appeared in direct support of a political event, demonstrating contempt for the order of his Commanding Officer and Naval Regulations that we all swear that we will abide by…. The ex-chaplain is a man without honor and you have accepted his story and in doing so you have had ‘the wool pulled over your eyes.’
Chaps is founder of the “Pray in Jesus’ Name Project,” named after his much-publicized struggle to pray in Jesus’ name in public and without restrictions as a U.S. Navy Chaplain — which cost him his career in the service.
Nope! Liar, liar pants on fire. It’s too bad wingnuts are so focused on five or six Bible verses they think are about homosexuality, when the commandment against lying is so clearly staring them in the face. Disturbed and dishonest…that’s a winning combination. It’s also why we’re winning.
Lots of my favorite people are tearing this Jonah Goldberg piece apart, and for some reason, I just can’t bring myself to mess with it. Jonah Goldberg is always, consistently, one of the worst writers and least capable minds on the internet, and this is no exception. So instead, I’m going to take the lazy way out, highlight some other great writers making fun of this piece, and be done. Because the piece really has been fully ripped apart at this point. Okay? Okay. I’ll let Alex Pareene set it up for you:
Jonah Goldberg has a doozy of a syndicated column today arguing that the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the inevitability of gay marriage are both Officially Good News for Conservatives, because they are Bad News For Liberals, because now the gays are bourgeois. As we all know, what liberals have always actually wanted is not “equality” or “equal rights,” but for our radical bohemian values to undermine society until it crumbles and we can erect a glorious anarchic state built on free-gay-child-love. But gay marriage will ruin our plans!
A smart person could write a good column about the trajectory of the gay rights movement, the long journey from Gay Liberation to NOH8, the story of how America deals with radical movements by eventually allowing formerly marginal minorities to join mainstream society. But Jonah Goldberg is not a smart person and this is not a good column.
The column encapsulates Goldberg’s pathetic conservatism: It’s a philosophy defined entirely by opposition to whatever those stupid liberals want. There’s no principle beyond the adolescent desire to be contrary.
Oy. John Cook at Gawker continues, re: Jonah’s arguments about DADT repeal:
Which is why letting them serve in the military is a good thing. That’s what normal people do, and conservatives like normal people. Until now, all gays were hellbent-for-leather freaks on leashes. Now, though, they show up on TV shows like Modern Family, which, Goldberg writes, is the number one sitcom among Republicans and features a “hardworking bourgeois gay couple.” It’s like the gay version of The Cosby Show, which taught Goldberg that there are black people who don’t talk jive.
And in the same vein, Roy Edroso comments on Jonah’s sudden discovery that there are jus’ folks gay people, and how he tries to make this a conservative thing:
Goldberg can’t claim that America, exhausted by the Great Orgy of 1990, has fallen in love with marriage all over again — in part because marriage rates among young people have actually dropped. So he falls back on the standard rightwing idea that getting hitched makes you wealthy, leaving us to wonder why the poor haven’t caught on to this money-making secret and how a bunch of rich people having weddings constitutes a conservative social revival. Maybe getting married is the new Going Galt?
Yeah, it’s a really, really stupid column, and taken in light of the rest of Goldberg’s body of work, that’s sayin’ something. For the full effect, click all of the above clickys, and you will see that, as I said before, there is simply no need for me to spend time tearing this one apart. It’s done fer.
Peter LaBarbera, of course, runs a very small hate group called Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, and this video was made by a member of another hate group, the very small shopping center outpost known as “Faithful Word Baptist Church,” pastored by the biblically illiterate Steven Anderson. It’s notable that, in the flurry of fist-shaking and tantrum-throwing that’s come in the wake of the Family Research Council and American Family Association being added to the SPLC’s list of hate groups, no one of any note has stepped up to defend either Peter’s or Steven’s organization. They are that marginal, even among their own ideological compatriots.
My favorite thing about the video though, is that the guitar is very Indigo Girls, but not Indigo Girls now, but more like the day they picked up their guitars, but not in a world where the Indigo Girls had hands, but instead something more akin to paws. But it’s clear where the songwriter gets his inspiration. Baby, you ain’t never gonna be Closer to Fine.
The song’s author is a regular poster on Free Republic (of course) and in typical chickenshit fashion has cloaked the ownership details of his URL: GodGunsGutsGlory.com. But here’s his YouTube channel, if you wanna have some fun over there.
Anyway, I hope the author had a really merry Christmas, filled with nightmares about homosexuals, of course!
Gather ’round, children, and listen to a tale of the Good Old Days, as told by Pope Benedict nee Ratzinger. He’s a Man of God, so he obviously wouldn’t lie! You’ll remember that when we left off, he was about to tell us that
paedophilia wasn’t considered an “absolute evil” as recently as the 1970s.
Oh, you have got to be kidding me.
In his traditional Christmas address yesterday to cardinals and officials working in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI also claimed that child pornography was increasingly considered “normal” by society.
“In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorised as something fully in conformity with man and even with children,” the Pope said.
BY WHOM?
[By the way, it should tell you how stung the Catholic Church is over its loss of moral authority when the Pope is making excuses, in his Christmas address, for the fact that the corporation over which he is the CEO has become, in the words of Sara Benincasa, "the world’s oldest and largest child-fuckery concern."]
Moving on…
“It was maintained — even within the realm of Catholic theology — that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a ‘better than’ and a ‘worse than’. Nothing is good or bad in itself.”
When, pray tell, was this taught in any orthodox corner of Christendom? Please, senile former Hitler Youth child-rapist protector man in flowing robes and pretty headdress, ‘splain some more how back in the good old days, child rape was simply ”not the best option,” but certainly not evil.
The Pope said abuse revelations in 2010 reached “an unimaginable dimension” which brought “humiliation” on the Church.
I know, I know, it’s so embarrassing when people find out about this huge child raping problem the Church has, I mean, it was such a surprise and all, not least of which to the Pope. Oh wait. My memory’s not failing me completely yet, so let’s all remember another story.
ONCE UPON A TIME there was a priest in Wisconsin named Lawrence Murphy! He used his position of power to rape over 200 children, but there’s a twist! These children were deaf. When the abuse came to light, at least in the inner sancta of the Roman Catholic Church, they of course defrocked him immediately and made sure he was never near a child again. HA HA, JUST KIDDING:
Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.
The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.
The documents emerge as Pope Benedict is facing other accusations that he and direct subordinates often did not alert civilian authorities or discipline priests involved in sexual abuse when he served as an archbishop in Germany and as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer.
The Wisconsin case involved an American priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a renowned school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974. But it is only one of thousands of cases forwarded over decades by bishops to the Vatican office called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led from 1981 to 2005 by Cardinal Ratzinger. It is still the office that decides whether accused priests should be given full canonical trials and defrocked.
But, you see, it only became shocking, embarrassing and humiliating in 2010. Why? Because the child-rapists got caught, and Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope, is having to answer for the fact that he, in an official capacity, did everything in his power to protect what is apparently the holy right of priests to have sex with the kids in their parishes.
Here’s what the Church is doing in Wisconsin to make amends for distract local Catholics from the inconvenient facts about the 200 deaf children and the rape and whatnot:
Well, the Vatican has finally found it in its black (but gold-plated!) and shriveled husk of a heart to do something for Wisconsin: they’ve blessed a ghost sighting as genuine. Woo hoo! That’ll fix everything right up!
The church has declared that a sighting in 1859 of a blond Mary hovering between two trees was real and worthy, and the local Catholic church is now busily expanding their parking lot to cope with the expected influx of gullible suckers pilgrims who will flock to the site to imagine a floating cheerleader for Jesus.
…[O]n October 9, 1859, the Queen of Heaven manifested herself to Adele Brise in Champion (Robinsonville), Wisconsin, USA.
[...]
“As they approached the hallowed spot, Adele could see the beautiful lady, clothed in dazzling white, with a yellow sash around her waist. Her dress fell to her feet in graceful folds. She had a crown of stars around her head, and her long, golden, wavy hair fell loosely around her shoulders. Such a heavenly light shone around her that Adele could hardly look back at her sweet face. Overcome by this heavenly light and the beauty of her amiable visitor, Adele fell on her knees.
” ‘In God’s name, who are you and what do you want of me?’ asked Adele, as she had been directed.
“ ‘I am the Queen of Heaven, who prays for the conversion of sinners, and I wish you to do the same. You received Holy Communion this morning, and that is well. But you must do more. Make a general confession, and offer Communion for the conversion of sinners. If they do not convert and do penance, my Son will be obliged to punish them’
“ ‘Adele, who is it?” said one of the women. ‘O why can’t we see her as you do?’ said another weeping.
“ ‘Kneel,’ said Adele, ‘the Lady says she is the Queen of Heaven.’ Our Blessed Lady turned, looked kindly at them, and said, ‘Blessed are they that believe without seeing. What are you doing here in idleness…while your companions are working in the vineyard of my Son?’
Oh, for god’s sake. The woman was either hallucinating or lying. Or on drugs. She certainly wasn’t laying the foundations for the the Vatican to, 150 years later, distract all the faithful morons from the fact that 200 DEAF CHILDREN WERE RAPED BY A PRIEST. PZ Myers ties this little fairytale up with a bow:
That settles it. It must have been a magical manifestation if it was invisible. Invisible and blond, just like I always imagined a Middle Eastern Semitic peasant woman. And the statement that you’re blessed if you believe without seeing is pitch-perfect Catholicism.
Dear, dear Catholics: Stop. Just stop. I know many of you are fervent in your desires to change the Catholic Church from the inside out, but until and unless the entire patriarchal institution — the celibate priests, the secretive power structure, the lack of women in any positions of power, and all the rest — is changed, this will continue.
As it stands, the Church, for this and many other reasons, is one of the most evil forces on God’s Green Earth, and no one with a sense of morality or dignity should support it.
Potty words! Children will never hear potty words otherwise! They certainly will never hear them on television, at school, in movies, from their friends, blah blah blah, etc.
Those jackasses never will comprehend the true meaning of the word “hate,” will they? Again, for the slow children in the class [looking at you, Ms. Srivastav and Ms. Brown]: your worldview is hateful. You believe an entire segment of the population should be denied our constitutional rights. We are merely exercising our constitutional rights to call you hateful morons. And we will continue to do so.
My stars…introducing children - mere children! – to naughty words! I mean, they’re old enough to handle concepts like demonizing the gays, but come on.
Gather ’round, children, and listen to a tale of the Good Old Days, as told by Pope Benedict nee Ratzinger. He’s a Man of God, so he obviously wouldn’t lie! You’ll remember that when we left off, 
