We mourn the loss of Tom Murray, whose death today from a heart attack was announced by partner Vince on Tom’s Facebook page.
Murray was an award-winning documentary filmmaker who focused on stories exploring the LGBT experience. His recent projects examined “the variety of ways people find spirituality in our community.” His films included “Farm Family: Rural Life in Gay America,” “Fish Can’t Fly,” “Almost Myself,” “Tell,” “A Portable Tribe,” and “Amancio: Two Faces on a Tombstone.”
His 2005 documentary Fish Can’t Fly was a full-length exploration of the lives of people of faith who have endured and survived the spiritual and emotional traumas that are inflicted upon gay and lesbian people and their families by the “ex-gay” movement.
The film was instrumental in making religious audiences aware of the spiritual lives of LGBT people — and in alerting these same audiences to the religious and mental-health fraud that is Exodus International.
According to Murray’s website:
Tom Murray openly admits to getting a late start in life with filmmaking. Having studied filmmaking in his college years, and long term fan of documentary films, it was only in his “50+” years that he tackled his first feature length work. Inspired by his upbringing on a dairy farm in northern Illinois, “FARM FAMILY…in search of Gay life in rural America” was voted Best Feature Length Documentary at the Philadelphia Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in 2004 and has been acquired by Viacom as part of the initial acquisitions for LOGO TV, the new Gay and Lesbian cable channel. Now a resident of the Gulf coast of Florida, in 2005 Tom completed his second feature, “FISH CAN‘T FLY” which takes a look at the way in which Gay people of faith go about putting their spirituality and sexuality in harmony.
Murray continued to refine his filmmaking skills with subsequent efforts, and this year he was planning to complete work on a film exploring spirituality in the LGBT community.
Burdened by two scandals, the ex-gay activist group Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality has changed its name.
The change occurred recently without fanfare on the organization’s web site. The new name: “Jews Offering New Alternatives to Healing”
Despite the name change, JONAH’s mission remains largely the same:
Deny the existence of sexual orientation, a predominant state of sexual attraction to a particular gender
Promote the myth that homosexual attraction is caused not by biology or brain chemistry, but by a Freudian deficiency of “masculinity” in men that is caused by bad parenting or abuse
Receive substantial aid from conservative Christian evangelical organizations which teach that faith in Jesus Christ offers the only path out of homosexuality
And its credentials and practices are as scandalous as ever.
Far from “healing” its clients of any sexual confusion or self-doubt, JONAH has a reputation for supplying its clients with Christian evangelical books and subjecting them to unethical abuses that would never be tolerated among true mental-health professionals. And its counselors’ abuses aren’t “new alternatives,” they are century-old snake-oil remedies.
JONAH’s leader, Arthur Abba Goldberg, is a convicted Wall Street con artist who looted millions of dollars from poor communities. Goldberg has no professional credentials in the mental-health sciences
JONAH’s senior trainer, Alan Downing, likewise has no professional credentials and stands accused by two former clients of sexual misconduct
JONAH and its counselors refuse to keep accurate and comprehensive records about their clients, lest such records fall into the hands of objective scientists and be used to measure actual rates of success or failure
Recent protests in Albany and Providence spotlighted a stark difference in strategies among supporters of marriage equality.
Having lost civil public debates over the supposed merit of its immoral bigotry, the antigay National Organization for Marriage resorted this summer to a low-budget bus tour to state capitals: a tour whose sole intent appears to be to muster self-pity and victimhood among bigots who believe that discrimination, heterosexual adultery, and conservative Catholic pedophilia qualify as “Christian values.”
At one of the tour’s stops in Albany, New York, state and local equality advocates coordinated a creative counterdemonstration featuring rainbow umbrellas and white shirts with heart symbols that expressed the love that is at the core of the quest for marriage equality.
Days later, a larger and more energetic counterdemonstration featured one of the state’s smaller, more aggressive activist groups working with out-of-state allies. (The state’s largest equality group, Marriage Equality Rhode Island, did not participate.) Demonstrators confronted the antigay bigots with shouting matches and with noisemaker bottles that were filled with pebbles.
After the Albany protest, NOM humiliated itself with the feeble complaint that a rainbow umbrella had blocked one bigoted woman’s view. After the Providence protest, however, it seemed that NOM had exactly what it wanted: Video footage of uncivil homosexuals intimidating supposed victims of marriage equality.
Michael Crawford of Freedom to Marry on July 23 voiced concerns about the result of the Providence protest.
With their anti-gay summer tour, NOM is hoping to add to their false narrative of victimization. By holding events in communities across the country, NOM is hoping to evoke outrage and confrontation with supporters of the freedom to marry. Their latest propaganda video as a perfect example:
We can’t let anger get the best of us and feed into NOM’s false narrative that they will then use against us in court rooms and legislatures across the country. We must funnel our anger against anti-gay forces like NOM into constructive actions that will educate the public and move marriage forward.
Given the uncivil and untruthful tactics that NOM and its allies have used against equality advocates, anger and intimidation by equality advocates may seem justified.
However, in the struggle for the right to love equally, does it make sense to fight NOM’s deceit with anger rather than love? Is it wise to fight for our freedom by shouting down others the same way we have been shouted down by Exodus International and its allies in the past?
Is there a way to combine the energy of the Providence protest with the optimism and hope of the Albany protest?
Backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. government aid and millions more from U.S. evangelical churches, the nation of Uganda is waging direct attack against the human rights of gay and lesbian people elsewhere across Africa.
Uganda’s New Vision reported on July 22 (via allAfrica.com) that “Uganda has opposed the pending recognition of a South African gay rights group, Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL), as an official observer at all African Union conferences, and to contribute to the NGO’s forum.”
The article quotes Ugandan ambassador Rosette Nyirinkindi as saying equal application of human rights to all is “alien to our culture and values. We shall continue to resist and fight them because common sense dictates against them. They are outlawed in Uganda and most African countries.”
In 2009, the United States committed nearly $300 million in supposed federal anti-AIDS funding in Uganda. At least $5 million of that was to be dispensed for military ventures through the U.S. Department of Defense; millions more in military aid were budgeted through other channels. Meanwhile, tens of millions of dollars annually from the federal anti-AIDS budget are being laundered through conservative Catholic and evangelical organizations that promote antigay, abstinence-only education programs which have resulted in a resurgence of HIV/AIDS in Uganda since 2004.
RH Reality Check criticized U.S. funding for anti-scientific, abstinence-only programs in an article today. The article blasts the government’s token efforts at “comprehensive” prevention:
If you give condoms only to groups thought of by society as “promiscuous,” what do you think will happen to a woman who insists on condom use with her husband that she suspects of cheating? If you do not provide information about using female and male condoms to young people, even if they successfully delay sex for years, how do you expect them to know how to use them once they start having sex?
“Comprehensive prevention” is not a country-level concept—it is an individual-level concept. Everyone has the right to, and the need for, full information about how to be healthy. That’s the only way it makes sense.
Each and every person served by PEPFAR prevention programs should receive full information about how to use condoms, and should have access to female and male condoms. Instead of pouring scarce resources in programs we know don’t work, we have got to start only funding true comprehensive prevention.
Millions of dollars that are not being spent on true comprehensive prevention are instead being invested in antigay evangelical campaigns to stigmatize and criminalize same-sex orientation.
Related:
The head of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, Eric Goosby, defends the Obama administration’s dismal handling of international HIV/AIDS relief.
Archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu asks Obama to reconsider his commitment.
A youth group warned Canyon Ridge Christian Church on Sunday that its members will be held accountable for bloodshed resulting from its support of antigay genocide and U.S.-sponsored theocracy in Uganda.
According to Prof. Warren Throckmorton’s article at Salon.com, the group — led by organizer Chase Cates — said that ”if this bill was passed and people were executed or criminalized in any way, Canyon Ridge Christian Church in turn would be held responsible for financing Ssempa who so overtly pushed the bill.”
The populist megachurch has openly supported Uganda pastor Martin Ssempa, who is a leading advocate for the nation’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill drafts of which call for the execution of HIV-positive homosexuals; imprisonment of family members, doctors, and clergy who fail to report gay relatives and patients to the authorities for execution; and the suppression of educational or scientific materials which discuss homosexuality without stigma or stereotype.
We congratulate upstate New Yorkers today for their phenomenal demonstration of love and peace in contrast to the fear and prejudice of the National Organization for (Heterosexual Christian-Only) Marriage.
Approximately 70 supporters of marriage equality rallied at the government center adjacent to the state Capitol in Albany, and then held a silent vigil surrounding NOM’s declaration of political warfare against the state’s gay couples.
Instead of countering NOM’s fear and anger with more of the same, our side held rainbow umbrellas held aloft and wore shirts which boldly asked, “Do you see our love?”
Please thank — and support! — the following organizations for this creative and positive expression of affirmation for marriage equality:
Marriage Equality New York
In Our Own Voices
Capital District Gay & Lesbian Community Council
Albany Queer Rising
HomoRadio on WRPI 91.5fm
Empire State Pride Agenda
Freedom to Marry
Courage Campaign
Social Responsibilities Council of the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Albany
Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood
Eleanor Roosevelt Democratic Club (ERDC)
New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) Capital Region Chapter
Albany Law School Civil Liberties Union
Choices Counseling & Consulting/The Institute for Gender, Relationships, Identity & Sexuality
GAES Magazine: Gay Arts, Entertainment & Lifestyle
The Women’s Building
Christians Responding with Equality, Diversity and Openness (CREDO) of the Capital District
National Organization for Women (NOW) Albany Area Chapter
Capital District Area Labor Federation
Gospel music on a Sunday afternoon? Sounds like a great idea.
But no city-supported music festival should preach prejudice against youths, nor promote ostracism and family strife in the name of God.
Yet notorious homophobe Donnie McClurkin, who has called gay people “vampires,” is appearing at Boston’s city-funded Gospel Fest on City Hall Plaza, on July 18.
Join the Impact MA, Truth Wins Out, and the Anti-Violence Project of Massachusetts are planning a counter-protest. McClurkin’s bigotry, his hostility toward LGBT people of faith and their families, his unhealthy contempt for sexual honesty, and his harassment of gay and lesbian youths — all are unwelcome in the cradle of liberty.
Sunday, July 18, 2010 at 5 p.m.
Boston City Hall Plaza at Government Center
Claims to be “saved,” “sanctified,” and “delivered” from homosexuality
Admits he is still same-sex attracted, comparing his orientation to diabetes: “I don’t eat sugar, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t want sugar.”
What Donnie McClurkin has said and done:
Incited crowds in Barbados, where homosexuality is illegal
Says about young lesbians, “They can hide … but there are some evil young hard butch girls.”
Calls openly gay, well-adjusted young men “broken and feminine.”
Calls sexual honesty a “curse,” calls gay people “vampires”
Of fellow gay gospel singer Tonex, McClurkin says, “God did not call young people to such perversion.”
Projects his lies about his own orientation onto those who live honestly: “Anybody who has a lying problem: They get to the point where they hate having such a lack of character that they make a change.”
In 1995, Sophie B. Hawkins sang a wistful ballad in memory of her father. “As I Lay Me Down” went on to top the Adult Contemporary charts for six weeks. Hawkins was subsequently honored by GLAAD in 2000.
In a shameless attempt to fill space on a holiday weekend :-) we are posting this music video in memory of loved ones.
Feel free to discuss anything in the comment section below.
Thanks to Shazam for helping me recognize and identify the song.
Following in the footsteps of a doctor who sexually mutilated girls and then tested their sexual response to sex toys, pediatric endocrinologist Maria New and her collaborator Heino F. L. Meyer-Bahlburg, of Columbia University, have gained notoriety this week for allegedly contemplating drug-based tampering with unborn girls — possibly without the informed consent of the parents.
Outrage over New’s conduct is focused upon her alleged off-label misuse of the steroid dexamethasone. New’s off-label use of the drug to treat congenital adrenal hyperplasia was already controversial: The drug is thought to cause negative side effects in mothers, and it may cause birth defects as well as prevent them. But New and Meyer-Bahlburg, their critics say, do not fully disclose risks to experimentees patients or perform followup.
The notoriety grew considerably with exposure of Meyer-Bahlburg’s comments seemingly promoting the drug as a potential means to inhibit personality traits in girls that are deemed by social conservatives to be reserved for men or lesbians.
The claims were announced in several venues:
an article in Time magazine which noted the permanent damage that dexamethasone has done to unborn lab animals. as well as potential misuse of the drug to bypass parental and social phobia toward gender-variant children rather than to treat any genuine disorder in the children
a related article published by Alice Dreger, Ellen K. Feder, and Anne Tamar-Mattis at the Hastings Center Bioethics Forum, criticizing what they say is New’s unauthorized and unsupervised experimentation upon girls, and calling for federal government investigation.
Dreger and her concerned colleagues warned that proponents of off-label use of dexamethasone have failed to perform rigorous follow-up studies for aftereffects of the drug. They further cite Meyer-Bahlburg’s comments about the drug’s potential to alter girls’ personality as lacking in ethical responsibility.
If the accusations are accurate, then the contemplated misuse of the drug to treat personality would represent a bold extension of the mental-health abuses already committed by antigay and conservative Christian activists against orientation- and gender-variant persons.
Off-label uses of drugs can be life-saving. But like ex-gay ideologists, some doctors and their pharmaceutical sponsors stand to profit from (mis)use of a treatment, particularly when no effort is made to monitor aftereffects and provide followup care that is free of bias.
Like the ideologues of NARTH, New allegedly promotes risky treatment as if it is safe and effective. NARTH counts upon a timid medical establishment to refrain from standing up and condemning its malpractice; are New or Meyer-Bahlburg possibly doing the same?
And critics are alarmed that, again like the ex-gay movement, Meyer-Bahlburg might be using medicine to promote social disorder — specifically, bigotry and discrimination against innocent gender- and orientation-variant people — by treating the innocent and natural as if they are diseased, and by treating unnatural social ignorance and prejudice as if they are innocent and beyond dispute.
In recent years, some among the ex-gay industry leadership at Exodus International have occasionally crept away from the absolutist insistence that sexual orientation is solely defined by bad parenting and abuse. To the limited extent that Exodus has done this, it has held out an unethical hope to bigoted churches that any biological origins for sexual orientation might one day be artificially manipulated by politically correct (evangelical) doctors.
In Meyer-Bahlburg and New, if their professional critics are correct, we may be witnessing a case where medical professionals are willing to dismiss important dangers, mislead parents, and possibly alter the gender and sexuality of the innocent, in pursuit of social or religious objectives that are contrary to sound health.
Apart from concerns about the alteration of politically incorrect personality traits, the controversy over treatment of CAH also touches somewhat upon the distinction between healthy and “disordered” intersex/transgender biology.
Some bloggers have compared this case to that of Nazi physician Josef Mengele. But a more apt and worrisome comparison might be made to the era yet to come: The era of Gattaca, in which — absent any ethical consideration — the unborn are medically manipulated to conform to ostensibly health-oriented social demands.
The 1997 movie Gattaca was considered by many to be the best science-fiction movie of its decade. The movie warned of what would happen to people who failed, as unborns, to be submitted to re-engineering — and who therefore would fail to conform to social expectations: These people — labeled “de-gene-erates” — were to be discriminated against and exiled from society.
That potential epoch of the master race seemed decades away, 13 years ago — but absent strong social and professional resistance and supervision, it may come sooner than anyone thought possible.
Murray was an award-winning documentary filmmaker who focused on stories exploring the LGBT experience. His recent projects examined “the variety of ways people find spirituality in our community.” His films included “Farm Family: Rural Life in Gay America,” “Fish Can’t Fly,” “Almost Myself,” “Tell,” “A Portable Tribe,” and “Amancio: Two Faces on a Tombstone.”
We congratulate upstate New Yorkers today for their phenomenal demonstration of love and peace in contrast to the fear and prejudice of the National Organization for (Heterosexual Christian-Only) Marriage.
Please thank — and support! — the following organizations for this creative and positive expression of affirmation for marriage equality:
Gospel music on a Sunday afternoon? Sounds like a great idea. 
The claims were announced in several venues:
