Tori Amos is doing promo interviews for her new record Night of Hunters, and in her talk with PrideSource, she addressed a few topics we deal with quite frequently around here.
On legislation banning marriage for gays and lesbians in North Carolina:
If anybody calls themselves a Christian, I don’t see how you can ban consenting adults. I just don’t understand how you can see yourself as Christian and have no compassion for another person’s path. It goes against the Christ-like energy and light that I was brought up with.
My mother and father, they’re both Southern, have opened up, especially my dad. He had to really stretch as a Methodist minister, but he’s embraced the idea that gay people deserve rights. I’m really proud of him that, as a Methodist minister, he was able to make that shift and see that he did need to see it differently.
He took me to a gay bar when I was 13. He’s come a long way, so let’s put it that way. So I think there’s hope for people who are judgmental, but what they have to say themselves is, how can they call themselves a Christian and then insist that gay people don’t have the right to be married? Then gay people shouldn’t have to pay taxes in the state of Carolina!
On bullied gay teens and teen suicide:
[I]t is the end of the world to them. When you are being bullied because of who you are, the shame of that is so great that it does seem like the end of the world and like they’re not accepted in this world – and they’re not being accepted by part of this world. And yet, the people that are not accepting them and bullying them call themselves Christian, and that is a lie. You are not a Christian if you treat people like that. I don’t care what office you’re running for. You just are not. That is not the definition of walking the Christ-like path.
When artists say it’s not the end of the world, I don’t know if that’s the approach. I think the approach is acknowledging what they’re feeling and hopefully creating a space where people feeling bullied can go to.
This next election, it’s so important the gay community become very aware of what’s going on and be very proactive about your rights as human beings. The fact that gay people are not treated as if they’re human beings by some of these people who are running for office, it’s barbaric. Whatever you think I am, I would like to be in a society where we’re enlightened, and I just find it all very primitive and that we’re regressing mentally.
She knows what she’s talking about.
Here’s my [current] favorite song from her new record. Go buy it.
Linda Harvey is one of the most sanctimonious, poorly educated, hateful Fundamentalist leaders in Christendom. Kathy Baldock is a nice Christian woman who has a particular heart for trying to find the human side of LGBT issues in the church, and is a fierce advocate for LGBT equality. Kathy thought she would reach out to Linda as a possible guest on Linda’s radio show, for the purposes of at least having a conversation. Linda Harvey’s abscessed mind responded the usual way, by leaking in Kathy’s general direction. Fun was had by all. Here is part of Kathy’s description of what had happened was:
Not unlike a two-year old, Linda Harvey is covering her eyes and gay people have gone away in her world.
[...]
She has recently said some really awkward things:
“They (the gays) all hate Jesus Christ and his followers.”
“There’s one big fact that’s not backed up. There is no proof that there’s ever anything like a gay, lesbian or bisexual or transgendered child, or teen or human.”
Haha, I love Kathy’s spirit. And my god, Linda is so stupid. So anyway, Kathy reached out and got this response from Linda:
“Kathy:
I do appreciate your writing me. After reading your blog, I have to tell you, we are not going to agree, mainly because your writings reveal you have adopted essentially the world’s view on this and not what is expressed in Scripture as God’s.
There are not “gay” people; there are people involved in homosexuality, but they are not a biologically different human type than Joe hetero on the street. So please stop using that inaccurate term, one that also belies your lack of faith in what God has told us.”
Let us review for a second. Linda Harvey is not a scientist. She probably believes that the earth is 6000 years old. She also probably thinks that the English translations of the Bible are the most reliable, because hello, those are the only ones Linda knows how to read.
Even if she were an expert on Hebrew and Greek [ha ha], she is so blinded by her sad, sad bigotry that she wouldn’t be able to perform any sort of exegesis on the texts, even if her life depended on it. So when she tries to “correct” Kathy on her terminology, she is talking directly out of her…well, you know.
Here is another Harvey gem:
“There are some ex-homosexuals who have this (being celibate and no longer homosexual) testimony.”
As Kathy points out, it is quite inconsistent for Linda to believe that “homosexuals” aren’t real, but that “ex-homosexuals” are.
Now we will move on to Kathy’s commentary:
Linda, the game of peek-a-boo is over. You are a grown Christian woman now. What would Jesus do if He encountered His gay neighbor? Would He cover His eyes or stick His fingers in His ears like a child practicing avoidance?
Linda’s version of Jesus probably would. Her version of the Christian god is a weak schoolmarm with pursed lips.
Kathy then exhorts her Christian readers thusly:
If you want her to know she does not speak for you or, if you are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender and do indeed exist, here is her e-mail address that is public information: lpharvey@missionamerica.com
Truth Wins Out readers are free to do that as well. Or if you just want to sign her up for all kinds of mailing lists, you can do that too. I dun’ really care.
I’ll leave you with Linda’s final self-righteous reply to Kathy:
Kathy:
Sorry–I encountered such obfuscation in seminary. It’s all baloney, frankly, all meant to prop up sin. If I believed this, I’d discard God’s truth and go back to being a rationalizing liberal.
We’re talking about the PC(USA) here, obviously, as opposed to the fringe conservative sects of the Presbyterian Church. John Shore has a piece up today about Scott Anderson, the first openly gay man to be ordained as a minister in the Presbyterian Church. Thing is, Anderson was an ordained minister years ago until he was outed by his church and essentially forced out. After over a decade of working in different organizations and on different issues, he found himself back on the front lines fighting for a change in the Presbyterian ordination rules, which did eventually come around, allowing openly gay and lesbian people to serve as pastors in their churches. So this weekend he will be ordained.
Regardless of whether or not you’re a believer, news like this happening within the Church is important, because it draws the line ever clearer between those in that world that hate us and those who do not, and every new development like this from within helps to further marginalize the religion-motivated bigots, both inside the church and also in the public square.
Michael Brown, hatemonger and busybody extraordinaire, who recently invaded Charlotte Pride with his red-shirted horde of bigots [slogan: "Free water! God hates fags!"] in order to “dialogue” with all the gays about how they’re going to burn in hell, is very upset with Wayne right now. You see, Wayne and I both understand that Brown’s calling card is to pretend to love gay people, to seek “dialogue” and common ground, while preaching Peter LaBarbera levels of hatred against the LGBT community. So he has an entire post up today, attacking Wayne for trying to “redefine Christianity”:
WHEN A GAY JEWISH LIBERAL TRIES TO REDEFINE CHRISTIANITY
Uhhhhh. Yeah, that’s the headline, and that’s why my headline says what it says.
Wayne Besen is a passionate gay activist and non-religious, liberal Jew who has dedicated himself to opposing the idea that homosexuals can become heterosexual.
Wayne Besen is guilty of spreading facts, and facts have a well-known liberal bias. Also, Jew.
he is never at a loss for words, especially when it comes to the “religious right.” In that spirit, he has graced me with several articles, including the not so subtly-titled, “Michael Brown Is an Anti-Gay Monster”
And….. (?)
In that article, Wayne claims that my “game is to try inciting followers to possible violence against LGBT people, while innocently maintaining that he loves homosexuals and simply wants them to meet his militant and perverted version of God.” He calls me “a slick dude,” a “sick and cynical” person, someone with “a messiah complex [who] is a diabolical individual who aims to manipulate impressionable followers to launch some sort of holy war,” noting however, that, I’m “too much of a coward to start the war” myself.
Well, Brown does seem to want a confrontation, and he does have a messiah complex. I think his victim complex is funnier though.
God bless dear Wayne! He certainly has a way with words. After all, it’s not every day that you get called a pathological monster, a slick, sick, cynical, diabolical madman with a messiah complex, as well as get accused of trying to incite a bunch of unstable thugs “to engage in a violent physical clash with LGBT people.” (For what I actually advocate, namely, a totally non-violent, moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution, click here.)
Really? Days go by when people don’t call Michael Brown those things? He must not be listening very hard to the other side of the “dialogue” he wants. For the record, a “spiritual revolution” which includes eradicating gayness [in the real world, to eradicate gayness, you have to eradicate gay people...when the fundamentalist wellspring of denial on that issue dries up, watch out] is by its very nature violent.
Wayne even weighs in again in his own comments section, calling me an “ego-maniac”…
Omigod, it’s surprising Brown didn’t show up in the comments of that piece, such an attention-starved loon he is. As anyone who’s ever encountered him will tell you, Michael looooooves to yammer on and see his name in print.
while other commenters follow in his footsteps with sophisticated posts like these: “I would not be surprised if ‘Mein Kampf’ were to be found on his nightstand.” (This was followed by other comments too vulgar to print.) What a delightful, thoughtful bunch!
This is me, slapping you all on the wrists for hurting Michael’s fee fees. Don’t do it again, unless, y’know, you want to.
But I am only one of Wayne’s targets. In his most recent attack, “Mainstream Christians Must Stand Up to the Religious Right” (September 19, 2011), he reviles the hundreds of Christians with whom I attended the recent gay pride event in Charlotte, claiming that we “confronted and harassed festival attendees with [our] arrogant slogan ‘God Has A Better Way.’” He refers to us as “despicable bullies” and speaks of our “fanatical behavior,” although, for the record, our group of roughly 400 consisted of grandparents, moms, dads, kids, and college-age singles who handed out about 2,500 free bottles of water (labeled “Jesus Loves You”) and engaged in civil and respectful conversation with any who cared to talk with us. Oh, the horror!
To tell them they are going to hell and need to abandon a core part of who they are in order to find favor with Michael Brown’s sick deity of choice. Also, Kathy Baldock was there and counted just over 200 people on the Red Shirt team. Why must wingnuts always inflate their numbers? Is it to bolster their fledgling self worth? Kathy also points out in the comments of Michael’s whiny piece that his decision to bring children to the event is questionable, by his own [nonexistent] standards:
I think it is interesting that a decision was made to bring so many children (maybe 1/10 were under 12 ish.) when the words used to describe Pride Charlotte in your own pre-event media warned “expect this to be a challenging day as sexual immorality, wickedness, and rejection will abound.” I would have used a bit more judgment as a parent. Of course, that was NOT the case, none of that was bounding or a bounding. BUT, had I been on the GHABW team, I would have found a sitter for my kids.
Anyway, back to Michael crying “look at me!”
All this, however, is the backdrop for Wayne’s heartfelt appeal. He is desperately concerned that religious “extremists” like me, Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, and Michelle Bachman will “defile America – and permanently define Christianity.” Instead, Wayne wants the “Religious Left” to rise up and show America what Christianity really is. He writes, “It is time to stand up, speak out, and give voice to our values. If not now, when? Are we going to wait until it is too late and we have lost our country?”
The problem, of course, is that the “Religious Left” has rejected most of the fundamental tenets of the historic Christian faith, denying the authority of Scripture, espousing religious pluralism, defending abortion, and championing homosexuality.
Whereas Michael Brown longs for the good old days of the Crusades and the Inquisition, back when people knew their place. Oh, nostalgia.
Could this be why these so-called “mainstream” churches are in such numerical decline while conservative churches are growing exponentially in many parts of the world?
Well, for one thing, religious belief is on the decline in the US, in general. Yes, many conservative churches are growing in other parts of the world, because fundamentalists go where they can be effective predators. Since the educated, developed first world has less and less patience for the medieval bigotry of people like Michael Brown, they see hungry people in the Third World and exchange food for people’s souls. It’s rather simple…
Wayne himself is not optimistic about the prospects, writing, “This reluctance to stand up and speak out has created a hazardous vacuum where only the shrill and unreasonable voices of fundamentalism are heard. Instead of the dialogue that many progressives of faith claim to desire, this perceived weakness creates a lopsided right wing monologue, which is having a deleterious effect on our nation and the world.”
The reality, of course, is that the “Christianity” Wayne calls for bears little resemblance to the faith of the Scriptures or the faith of history, but that should not surprise us.
Wayne is not “calling for” any new kind of Christianity, you dingbat. It already exists. He and I are simply calling upon the millions upon millions of non-wingnut Christians to speak up a little louder and stop letting their faith be hi-jacked in the public square by self-congratulatory bigots like Michael Brown.
After all, what else should we expect when a non-religious, gay Jewish liberal tries to redefine Christianity?
Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew, said Michael Brown.
And again, Wayne is not “redefining Christianity,” and neither is the Christian left, which is simply trying to live out a faith wherein having the name “Christ” in its title is a feature rather than a bug, as it seems to be for modern day fundamentalists. Focusing on the teachings of the guy the religion is named after, rather than on one’s pitifully uneducated understanding of five or six minor Bible verses, which are then used as a convenient bludgeoning device to be deployed against LGBT people, is really not all that radical of an idea.
John Shore has a couple of essential posts up on the subject of Christianity and its fundamentalist contingent’s connection to the bullying and suicide of gay teens. They are both required reading, but let’s start with his explanation, as a Christian who affirms the dignity of LGBT people, of that connection:
In the conversations centered around such tragedies as the recent Jamey Rodemeyer suicide, we very often find conservative Christians defending themselves against the accusation that the theology in which they believe–and specifically their belief that homosexuality is a sin against God—ultimately contributes to that which informs, motivates, and encourages the bullying of gay teens. I thought I would make this video as a way of illustrating for such Christians how the reasoning by which they absolve themselves of all responsibility for gay teen suicides and the bullying of gay teens tends to sound to those who do not share their religious convictions.
In the post just prior to that video, he speaks directly to fundamentalists who love their dogma more than they love people:
If you’re a Christian who believes that being gay is a morally reprehensible offense against God, then you share a mindset, worldview, and moral structure with the kids who hounded Jamey Rodemeyer, literally, to death. It is your ethos, your convictions, and your theology that informed, supported, and encouraged their cruelty.
We Christians who believe that God created gay people as much in His own image as he did straight people are begging you to reconsider your theology — to do nothing more than be open to an alternative, fully credible, scholastically sound interpretation of one or two lines from Paul.
How can you be unwilling to do something so simple, when you see the horrible ultimate cost of that refusal?
Christ died so that you could love more. And now you’re part of a system that allows that same Christ to be used as a moral justification for the most vile kind of abuse. How could that have happened? How could something so right have gone so wrong?
Turn, friend.
People who affirm LGBT people have the moral high ground, whether atheist, Christian, Jewish or whatever else. This is not bragging — it’s a simple fact. It’s particularly powerful and refreshing, though, to hear a Christian speak so firmly to those of his own religion who inflict so much harm [whether they realize or admit it], for the sake of a couple of Bible verses they love to misunderstand. Keep on, John Shore.
This will probably make you retch if you are a thinking person, so if you happen to be eating lunch right now, I am sorry. But PZ and severalothers found this letter from a devout Reformed Baptist man, describing his marriage to his wife, and let’s just say that if this is what anti-gay bigots are talking about when they extol “traditional marriage,” well, then, there’s a reason divorce rates are so high in more fundamentalist states and communities.
Disclaimer: yes, we know, this is not what all Christians are like. Indeed, these are Reformed Baptists, which, as a recovered Reformed Presbyterian (they’re not that far apart), I happen to know something about. It’s a strange theology, and a cruel one, wherein humans have no say in whether or not they were created in order to be sent to paradise or a fiery hell by their benevolent god. Thanks, John Calvin! As many of the most vehemently anti-gay bigots out there are Calvinists of some stripe or another, I find this relevant.
So anyway, this seems to be a note from a Reformed Baptist man to the guests of his wedding feast to the wife he has procured [you will need to click to embiggen it, probably]:
Okay! So let’s break this down a bit, so we can learn about the qualities of, apparently, some Reformed marriages, which are viewed by these people as The Real Thing, whereas same sex marriage is “an abomination.”
As Bible-believing Baptists who hold to reformed theology, X and I believe that God is sovereign in choosing who will or will not believe in him, having chosen his people before the foundation of the world (see Ephesians 1), and that his selection is unbreakable and irresistible. If marriage is to mirror this principle, we believe that a woman has no right to select a husband for herself, but that she is to be chosen by a man and marriage is to be an unbreakable arrangement between the man and her father. Based on this reasoning, we have shunned a standard proposal and wedding ceremony, because if I had asked her to marry me (which I did not) then I would have given her the decision to marry me rather than selecting her and taking her myself. Furthermore, if we had exchanged conventional marriage vows, our union would have been based on X’s will and consent, which are not Biblical factors for marriage or salvation. Instead, I asked X’s father for his blessing in taking her hand in marriage. When he gave his blessing, X and I considered ourselves to be unbreakably betrothed in the sight of God. While we had initially intended to consummate our marriage after today’s symbolic ceremony, we instead did so secretly after private scripture reading, prayer, and mutual foot-washing.
Yes, in Reformed theology, humans have no say in the matter. Therefore, as a logical extension, since “marriage” is a picture of the relationship between Christ and his church, it would follow that that sort of marriage would be essentially a transaction between a man and his new chattel’s daddy. And really, she’s just a woman. It’s not like she’s a person or anything! This is, of course, a rather childish understanding of Reformed Theology, not that I expect any more from its typical adherents. In point of fact, if this devout Reformed Baptist man had a wedding and marriage that really went according to the Calvinist “plan of salvation,” there are few details missing. Yes, they believe that their god chooses who will and will not be saved and that humans have no say in the matter. However, they also believe that, by the very act of being called upon by their god, humans come to “salvation” irresistibly. In other words, only those who are chosen are called, and by their god “changing their hearts,” they are impelled, but happily, to freely come to a “saving faith.” Those who are not chosen are simply not called and thus remain hardened or deaf or whatever the hell they’re calling it these days.
So for Reformed Baptist Dude to really make his wedding a mirror of his understanding of the relationship between Christ and the Church, he needs to have coerced her in some way into believing that she has no other choice but to do what he commands, which in this case is marrying him. She must first be bamboozled into believing on her own that she has literally no choice in the matter. I assume that the wife’s father probably helped with that.
Moving, on, his words about how his god hates gays. This, in a letter about his own marriage, again, presumably to his wedding feast guests:
X and I have obtained a marriage license in Hall County, GA to gain recognition from the state, but their recognition does not make us married. The recognition of a civil government cannot marry any two people in the sight of God, and this should be obvious from the state’s recent confusion in “marrying” same-sex couples engaged in the sin of sodomy.
Uh. Yeah, millions upon millions of people know differently. But of course, his statement is essentially arguing with itself, as wingnuts so often do. OF COURSE they want the civil benefits of being “married in the eyes of god!” They want the goodies, because they were chosen, you see! This dude and his chattel’s father were chosen together to trade a particular member of the wimminfolk race from one generation to another, and they’ll be damned (well no, they won’t, as they are chosen) if you’re going to keep gubmint benefits from them. But they want the secular civil government to conform its idea of marriage to their weird notion of matrimony. By this definition, of course, most other Christian couples aren’t really married, and neither are Jews or Muslims or atheists, even if they all have penis-vagina marriages! But you’ll never see this breed of wingnut argue to take marriage rights away from straight couples who don’t believe in the medieval crap they espouse. Something in them knows that’s just a bridge too far. But, you know, gays are bad.
The rest of his letter, as you can see, is about how she’s wearing white and he’s wearing a red shirt, representing blood, or something. Sounds like the wedding party looked like hell.
Anyway. So there is a portrait of one kind of biblical marriage. To most sentient beings, it’s pretty disgusting. But that is what at least some of the bigots are defending from the marauding hordes of evil gays.
Kristin Chenoweth has made the news for being both Christian *and* loving her LGBTQ neighbors as herself. Really? She agrees with Jesus, a guy who professed compassion for people with less power, but not with other Jesus followers who stomp Teh Gays in the face [or fail to condemn such stompings]? Go figure!
ABC News breathlessly reports on her interview with The Advocate, headlining it “Kristin Chenoweth: Christian and Gay Rights Supporter” and opening with
Kristin Chenoweth is a study in contradictions.
The diminutive songstress who played a high school dropout on “Glee” and originated the role of Glinda in “Wicked” is just as comfortable talking about her Christian faith as she is her support for gay rights.
Two things. First of all, bigots in North Carolina are trying to push through a constitutional amendment banning marriage or any other legal arrangements for gay couples. If you’ll remember from your geography classes, North Carolina is in the South. Guess what? A majority are opposed to said amendment:
According to a Public Policy Polling survey released on Wednesday, 55 percent of respondents would vote against the proposed amendment, 30 percent would vote for it, and 15 percent said they were not sure.
Oh crap. That’s gotta give some North Carolina wingnuts tremors.
Another recent poll shows how much ground the hate group set has lost among their own offspring:
The poll, released in late August by the Washington-based Public Religion Research Institute, found that nearly half (44 percent) of young evangelicals between the ages of 18 to 29 favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry.
By contrast, the white evangelical community as a whole (even counting those relatively liberal young adults) is solidly opposed to same-sex marriage, by slightly more than 80 percent.
More broadly, the poll found “at least a 20-point generation gap between millennials (age 18-29) and seniors (65 and over) on every public policy measure in the survey concerning rights for gay and lesbian people.”
The poll also found that a slight majority of all Catholics (52 percent) favor same-sex marriage, despite the energetic teaching of their church to the contrary.
Ouch. More pain for the wingnuts! A majority of Catholics support equality, which I’m sure chaps the behinds of the Catholic front group known as the National Organization for Marriage. But even more than that, this poll basically shows that among Evangelicals, the fight is lost as soon as the older generations hand the torch to the younger ones. Those younger Evangelicals are only going to get more liberal, and those who are not yet 18 will be more liberal than the current 18-29 set.
Wingnuts need to give it up and do something with the remainder of their lives, I think.
Michael Brown, hatemonger and busybody extraordinaire, who 
