NOM is very concerned about what is happening in New Zealand. No…not same-sex marriage…
“An earthquake is beginning: If ‘gay is like black,’ then ‘Christian is like racist.’ The early warning signs are now taking place all over the globe. In New Zealand, Exodus Ministries was just stripped of its tax-exempt status, on the grounds that helping gay people lead Christian lives is not a charity.”- National Organization for Marriage
If you are wondering now what the charitable status of ex-gay ministries has to do with marriage, you’ve been taking that National Organization for Marriage name a tad too seriously. NOM you have to understand…well, NOM’s secret bank rollers…aren’t specifically worried about the value society places on marriage. Their concern is the value society places on gay people. We’re not supposed to have any value.
The marriage thing is just the hook they’re hanging that on. NOM does not exist to promote traditional marriage. It exists to promote traditional bigotries. Ex-gay ministries and the gays choose to be gay so ergo they also choose to be persecuted rhetoric that comes out of them have been very useful in that fight for the traditional values of bigots…which is how the charitable status of ex-gay ministries is important NOM.
So can we, at long last, be honest here. Call them what they are. Not the National Organization for Marriage, but the National Organization against Gays.
Ummmm, glbt people *can* lead Christian lives if they so choose. It’s just not NOM’s twisted, corrupted version of it.
If only every other country would now follow that lead.
I yearn for the day that the US wakes up and starts revoking the tax exempt status of all these organizations that work at stripping equality away from us on a daily basis. It needs to happen NOW!
This is just sad, very sad. The stigma attached to anyone or anything that is different is basically a killer. Being gay, christian, straight is just a label to me because we are all humans. Maybe we can begin to deal with labeling and end bigotry in other ways.
By the way, I am a man that loves another man and we are both humans, outside of that, well it is all a personal choice for me and not a controlled choice of anything.
Yes, but “labeling” will always be around because it is the cornerstone of language. Without labeling, we could not even have a basic conversation.
Spot-on as regards the analysis of NOM. It’s not marriage they want to defend, so much as to exclude GLBT people from it. They hate us and will do anything they can to demonise us, dehumanise us and make our lives generally hell.
Labeling may be inherent to communication, but imperfection is inherent to humanity. Therefore, simplistic labels are inherently inaccurate. “Christian” is used to self-describe a wide variety of people — from very liberal Unitarians (approximately 10% of their members consider themselves Christian) to ultra conservative fundamentalists who condone violence against homosexuals and other “non-believers” in their particular brand of religiosity. Such variations in beliefs and practices run the gamut from acceptance to rejection of others’ life choices, self expression and determination, and opinions and beliefs. The label doesn’t aid in communication when it is so inaccurate and misleading. The only alternative to the long, slow process of a societal change in a label’s meaning is individual changes in designation and affiliation. Many of us have chosen to leave organizations that. no longer represent our values (e.g., the Republican Party or the Southern Baptist Church) — and others of us have begun to disassociate ourselves from the term “Christian” for similar reasons. It is no longer a helpful designagtion or descriptor for the values of Jesus as we understand and believe them. As in politics, I may choose terms such as “independent” or “green” to try to describe my position — but vote with Democrats against Republican positions that are obstructive of isocial justice. In the sane way, I often find myself siding with and supporting of secular or humanist positions that favor inclusiveness and human dignity over those of supposedly “Christan” groups that do not further such values (and often actively seek to teR down and destroy them). I believe all of this must be considered when dealing with labels and other semantic distinctions. To quote old proverbs, “you can’t tell a book by it’s cover” and “the proof of the pudding is in the eating.”
I absolutely agree. But there will always be labeling, no matter how imperfect.
I am a Christian gay man and my faith is between me and God, not some fraudulent “ex-gay” group telling me that if it just say, “Dude” and talk about football, I’ll magically turn into a heterosexual.
The false doctrine that shrill anti-gay pressure group NOM promotes is that homophobia is a legitimate “religious belief.” It is not. The argument is not with Christianity, it’s with the sin of homophobia masquerading as Christianity.
We would probably be making better headway with our quest for equal rights if we focused more on politics rather than semantics and philosophical discussions about the meanings of words. There is nothing wrong with labels as long as they are accurate. Let us continue to label groups like Exodus and NOM as wrong and spend less time trying to stand language on its head. I am not being oppressed by words; I am being oppressed by bigots!