When Truth Wins Out sounded the alarm on Kimberly Daniels, the anti-Semitic “demon-buster” who ran for and won a seat on the Jacksonville, Florida, city council, we weren’t kidding. Based on her past quotes, about everything from the evils of Halloween candy to her claims that “Jews own everything,” to the fact that she was on record saying she is thankful for slavery, it was obvious that this is not a woman fit to hold elected office. Now that she’s in office, she’s showing no signs of slowing down, taking time this week to go on a word salad-esque rant against both gays and the city’s human right’s commissioner in council chambers:
Councilwoman Kimberly Daniels went on a rant about human rights issues during the early morning hours today as the city council worked to finalize the city budget.
Daniels, at-large councilwoman for Jacksonville, made some comments regarding homosexuality, then linked city Human Rights Commissioner Parvez Ahmed with terrorists.
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“Some groups want more than equality, they want favoritism. There are laws especially, if someone was to get in a fight with a homosexual they would get more time simply because that person was a homosexual,” she said.
She then accused Ahmed of having ties with someone who cut his wife’s head off. Reached for comment, Ahmed said, essentially, “Huh?”
Ahmed said today of the speech that he didn’t “know what she is talking about.”
“We don’t want to fight yesterday’s battles today. We should respect past decisions. It is clear the city wants to move forward.,” said Ahmed.
Weird. It’s unsurprising that, as is so often the case with unhinged anti-gay rants, this tirade came as a complete non sequitur while the council was working on the city’s budget. I’ve come to believe that deep-set bigotry is sort of like Tourette’s Syndrome, in that it just comes out at the strangest times.
El Paso Pastor Tom Brown is never afraid to voice his opinion on gay issues. But one of his most controversial claims is that he can convert gay people back to being straight.
Some people say his teachings are harmful and dangerous. But News Channel 9′s Monique Griego spoke with one man who said he’s been cured by him.
“Some people.” God, when will the media grow up? ALL CREDIBLE EXPERTS say “ex-gay” teachings/methods are harmful and dangerous. It is not biased to say so.
“As far as homosexuality do you think your cured?” asked Monique Griego.
“Yeah I’m not going that route. No.”
But there was a time when “Joe”— as he would like to be called— did go that route. For several years in his 20′s, he was gay and openly slept with men.
“It was like drugs, sex, and rock and roll were all tied into this lifestyle,” said Joe.
Joe compares the urge he had to be with men to the need a drug addict has for a fix. Then, after nearly a decade of being gay, Joe quit the lifestyle— cold turkey.
“I was able to put my foot down and say forget it step away from it,” said Joe.
How’d he do it? Joe said he found God and Pastor Tom Brown.
Anyway, as usual, the pastor acknowledges that some of his devotees admit they still are sexually attracted to their own gender, but says he considers them “cured” if they no longer act on their feelings. That, ladies and gents, is called “moving the goalposts.”
There’s video at the above link if you want to see how fey Tom Brown is. Luckily, the news station has the decency to consult an actual psychologist in order to rebut the witch doctor’s pastor’s claims.
David Pakman said this interview was a stunner, and he wasn’t kidding. Quick recap on disgraced liar and former Navy Chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt: he is a wingnut martyr for the extremist Christian right who received a dishonorable discharge from the Navy for simple insubordination. He, however, lies and claims that he was forced out of the Navy because they wouldn’t allow him to “pray in Jesus’ name.” This has been debunked thoroughly and his allies know it, but fundamentalist mouths don’t mind lying when it serves their purposes. In short, Klingenschmitt fits right in.
David interviewed Klingenschmitt for this week’s David Pakman Show, and it was amazing. It starts with a normal human-to-wingnut discussion of DADT repeal, but then the wingnut goes off the rails, completely and thoroughly. Check it: he advocates EXORCISM as the one true way to “cure” homosexuality, and then goes off on a long tangent about how gay men are lying when we say we’re gay, and that saying we’re gay is the same thing as claiming we are women! This is yet another example of the close correlation between a hatred of gay people and a deep hatred of women, as this sort of statement, from a man who doesn’t strike me as the epitome of “manliness” in the first place, must be taken in the context of their belief that women are inherently inferior. But it’s truly amazing in the year 2011 to hear religious extremists refer to “diseases” being caused by “demons.” Is Klingenschmitt aware of scientific advancement in the past 500 years, or is his Dungeons and Dragons belief system just more important to him than reality?
Also, there is a point where he describes a creepy ceremony he held with a lesbian sailor, but I won’t spoil that fer ya.
The video is below, or if you want, you can download the podcast. I thoroughly enjoyed the first ten minutes of the show, and I think y’all will too.
I sure hope Klingenschmitt got to keep whatever helmets the military issued him, because he obviously needs them.
Citing a shortage of priests who can perform the rite, the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops are holding a conference on how to conduct exorcisms.
The two-day training, which ends today in Baltimore, is to outline the scriptural basis of evil, instruct clergy on evaluating whether a person is truly possessed, and review the prayers and rituals that comprise an exorcism. Among the speakers will be Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, archbishop of Galveston-Houston, Texas, and a priest-assistant to New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan.
“Learning the liturgical rite is not difficult,” DiNardo said before the conference, which is open to clergy only. “The problem is the discernment that the exorcist needs before he would ever attempt the rite.”
Signs of demonic possession accepted by the church include violent reaction to holy water or anything holy, speaking in a language the possessed person doesn’t know and abnormal displays of strength.
The full exorcism is held in private and includes sprinkling holy water, reciting Psalms, reading aloud from the Gospel, laying on of hands and reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Some adaptations are allowed for different circumstances. The exorcist can invoke the Holy Spirit then blow in the face of the possessed person, trace the sign of the cross on the person’s forehead and command the devil to leave.
Hmm, just like that — PRESTO — the church reentered Medieval times. How, exactly, is this church still relevant on moral issues? And, do we really need more Catholic priests blowing people…in the face.
If you ask me, I’d say the Catholic Church is in need of a serious exorcism.
Because Satan can only be so many places at once, you see.
“The devil tempts everyone — people in politics, in economics, in sport. And naturally, he tempts, above all, the religious leaders, so you shouldn’t be surprised if the devil tempts those in the Vatican. That’s his job.”
Father Gabriele Amorth isn’t speaking metaphorically when he says that. The 85-year-old priest means people can be tempted and literally possessed by Satan.
(…)
And as the chief exorcist of the Roman Catholic Church, it’s his job to expel the devil when someone is possessed. Amorth, the founder of the International Association of Exorcists, has performed more than 70,000 exorcisms in his career, he estimates.
But there is a difference between possession — where the devil takes hold of someone’s body and actions — and temptation, where Satan lures a person into doing evil, he said.
As a child abuse scandal sweeps across Europe, with accusations being made against priests in Ireland, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, Amorth said the pedophiles are tempted, not possessed.
He has never done an exorcism on a child molester, he said.
“I have carried out exorcisms on some priests who had been molested by the devil,” he said, without going into details.
“But cases of pedophilia exorcised, no. … Pedophiles are not possessed by the devil, they are tempted by the devil,” he said.
Setting aside the utterly insane idea that people’s bodies are possessed or inhabited by invisible evil spirits for just a moment…
So, this exorcist (oh, to be paid throughout life for doing nothing) has done his monkey business on priests who have been “molested by the devil”?
I wasn’t aware the devil was into guys.
Any-hoo, I think it’s great that the Roman Catholic Church continues to talk about these things, because they just keep saying crazier and crazier things! And none of it is moving an inch toward exculpating the thugs! As far as I can see, it’s having the opposite effect, and each day and each new grotesque revelation are doing their part to continue chipping away at the moral authority of the Catholic Church, and the faster that happens, the better off the world will be.
Pam Spaulding breaks the situation down with her usual excellence and candor:
A black teen-ager who was verbally assaulted and “exorcised” by his pentecostal church earlier this year tells a skeptical Tyra that he is cured of his sexual orientation.
Basically my feelings are this: Unless the black community comes to grips with the fact that lgbts of color exist and talk with us instead of looking at us as outsiders, expect more nonsense like this.
While Exodus International maintains a don’t-support-don’t-oppose policy, some ex-gay activists have spoken out against the ex-gay exorcist church in Bridgeport, Conn.
Rev. D.L. Foster, who heads Gay Christian Movement Watch, an Atlanta-based “ministry” that opposes the acceptance of homosexuality in the church, posted [the video] on his Web site.
“I thought what I saw in the video was bizarre and I don’t think [the practice depicted] is biblical,” Foster says. “There is a sense of spiritual coercion. You have a young man on the floor being stepped on, being videotaped.” He says he has seen incidents like this (he doesn’t condone them), but “this is extreme.”
Truth Wins Out has been monitoring the unfortunate news of a Connecticut church that performs ex-gay exorcism; Exodus International has refused to explicitly oppose the practice.
A minister and trusted source of Rod 2.0 reports the 16-year-old boy no longer attends the church and has found an LGBT “inclusive and affirming” church.
McKinney suggested to CNN that her church may exorcise people for many reasons: “It’s not just the homosexuality spirit. It could be the alcohol spirit, the crack cocaine spirit, the adultery spirit. Everything carries a spirit.”
McKinney’s church remains under investigation by the Connecticut Department of Children and Families.
Truth Wins Out reported earlier this week on Manifested Glory Ministries, a “church” in Connecticut that performs ex-gay exorcisms.
We immediately called upon Exodus’ member church in Connecticut, New Life Church in Meriden, to comment on the exorcism. The church did not respond. Today, however, MSNBC quotes Exodus International in Orlando stating that it does not support exorcism — but does not oppose exorcism, either.
And a fringe group called the “Christian Anti-Defamation Commission” has declared the abuse of gay youths and young adults by so-called churches to be an exercise in “religious liberty” and, strangely, a response to white racism. (Perhaps the demons of homosexuality are white?) Hat tip: Ex-Gay Watch.
A Bridgeport, Conn., church called Manifested Glory Ministries posted a controversial video on YouTube that raises concern about the unregulated abuse of children by church-sponsored ex-gay programs.
The video features church elders performing an exorcism of so-called “homosexual demons.”
The video shows leaders of the Manifested Glory Ministries in a frenetic scene, screaming, “Right now I command you to leave!”
At the same time a teen writhing on the ground as the adults around him implore so called “homosexual demons” to get out.
The leaders yell at the boy on the ground saying, “Right now in the name of Jesus, I call the homosexuality, right now in the name of Jesus.”
For 20 minutes it continues with the boy in a near seizure, even vomiting.
Robin McHaelen runs a mentoring program for gay teens, True Colors, and tells Fox 61 that she knows of five other teens in Connecticut who’ve been subjected to “demon casting”:
What really freaked me out is the people who did that to that child wasn’t because they were trying to hurt him. They thought they were trying to help him, but I think that they murdered his soul.
The church has since taken down its YouTube account, but not before its videos were replicated by other YouTube users.
Exodus International has one member church in Connecticut, New Life in Meriden. Truth Wins Out contacted the church for comment but has not received a response.
