Here at Truth Wins Out, the epidemic of LGBT teen suicides in Minnesota’s Anoka-Hennepin school district has been on our radar for a longtime.
Nonetheless, you need to head over to Rolling Stone and read this article about what LGBT kids go through in Michele Bachmann’s district every day, largely because local evangelicals have waged an all-out war on the area’s LGBT population. This blatant bigotry only serves to intensify the bullying that’s par for the course for LGBT teenagers at schools across the country. In Anoka, homosexuality is forbidden from even being discussed. Teachers and administrators do not intervene when LGBT students are harassed by their peers because they fear being fired for violating a district policy requiring them to stay “neutral” on, and banning positive references to, LGBT people and issues. And the culture of shame and fear that “Christian” fundamentalists (many of them from the same conservative church that Bachmann attended until just last year) have created around lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender identities is so pervasive that LGBT teens feel scared and unsafe within the walls of their schools.
And they’re killing themselves because of it. So many, in fact, that the state of Minnesota declared the Anoka-Hennepin school district a “suicide contagion area.” After one of the suicides — that of Sam Johnson in 2009 — students in the district’s GSAs participated in the Day of Silence. In this GLSEN-sponsored event, participants spent the day in silence to illustrate the silencing effect of the anti-LGBT bullying that led to the loss of several of their peers. The response? Local evangelical churches organized a so-called “Day of Truth” event; their kids showed up at school wearing shirts telling their peers they could pray away the gay and engaged in anti-gay proselytizing in the hallways. (At that time the “Day of Truth” events were sponsored by Exodus International; it’s now been shifted to Focus on the Family and re-branded as a so-called “Day of Dialogue” in a transparent attempt to soft-pedal anti-gay bigotry.)
The way local evangelical “Christians” have doubled down on– not merely shown coldhearted indifference to, but doubled down on — the persecution of LGBT people, even in the wake of so many suicides, is pure evil.
Read, too, about Tammy Aaberg. Her son Justin was an Anoka High School student who committed suicide in 2010 due to anti-LGBT bullying, and his death turned her into an activist. Readers who know me know I have a soft spot in my heart for equality moms (including, I’m proud to say, my own). Hell hath no fury like a mom fighting for her LGBT child. But I have nothing short of awe for moms like Tammy Aaberg and Judy Shepard who fight for a child whom they’ve lost. I don’t know how they do it, but I admire their strength.
This is why the fight for our equality is so important. Slowly but surely, we’re building a world where no more Judy Shepards have to bury a child murdered for being gay, where no more Tammy Aabergs have to discover their baby boy dead in his bedroom because he couldn’t take another day of being bullied for his LGBT identity.
Not funny at all. I don’t think Focus evengets the point of Super Bowl ads.
So there you have it. A bunch of kids spouting off a Bible verse about inclusivity on behalf of an organization that tears apart the families of gay people for sport. Cool.
Radical fundamentalist activists are meeting at a ranch outside Houston today and tomorrow hoping to line up behind a Republican presidential candidate that isn’t that dreaded Mormon guy. Currently their loyalties are divided between the peanut, the walnut, the Brazil nut, and the nut-job (Santorum). Such indecisiveness is giving Romney a decisive advantage in South Carolina.
The clandestine meeting has been endorsed by Focus on the Family co-founder James Dobson, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Richard Land and will likely be attended by American Values’ Gary Bauer, the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, the American Family Association’s Donald Wildmon, and Skyline Church’s Rev. Jim Garlow.
If the extremists can’t decide on one nut to rally behind, they will discuss how to extort promises and blackmail Mitt Romney at the expense of America. According to the New York Times:
The evangelical leaders say they will also prepare for the strong possibility that Mr. Romney wins the nomination. In Texas, they expect to discuss what promises — in the party platform, in the choice of a vice-presidential candidate and in judicial appointments — they should seek from Mr. Romney in return for their enthusiastic support.
It seems this collection of crazies is overreaching and inadvertently aiming to make Romney unelectable. Their message to Romney: “If you are not really one of us, pretend that you are and succumb to our demands or we will whine and stay home on Election Day.”
Of course, expect Romney to bow at their feet. It seems that the shape-shifting, oleaginous Romney will say or do practically anything to win the support of these dangerous zealots.
Look, it’s Wingnuttia’s favorite football player, Denver Bronco and Focus on the Family spokesperson Tim Tebow, sharing a loving and enthusiastic kiss with Demaryius Thomas on the field:
Casting itself as a defender of religious freedom, Focus on the Family warned on Friday that a federal commission for religious freedom faces dissolution.
But the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom is not an advocate for religious freedom at all.
The USCIRF was founded by U.S. evangelicals to shield the foreign activities of right-wing Christian missionaries, not religious minorities. The commission has advocated for military interventions, not to defend religious diversity and freedom of individual religious expression, but rather to advance Christian missionary objectives.
In Egypt, Coptic Christians have accused USCIRF of antagonizing their Muslim neighbors in a politically motivated effort to smear Egypt.
And federal religious-freedom “ambassador” Robert Seiple criticized USCIRF’s emphasis on the punishment of (anti-Christian) religious persecution over the promotion of religious freedom.
Given USCIRF’s betrayal of non-evangelicals, its anticipated dissolution next month can’t come soon enough. Focus on the Family’s defense of special rights for evangelicals — at the expense of other Christians and the world’s non-Christian religious minorities — is another indication of that organization’s disingenuous selfishness.
Fundamentalist Christian Misogyny 101. Ladies need to get their heads out of “emo-porn,” you see. What is “emo-porn?” Welllllll:
Loneliness strikes at the heart of both husbands and wives, but tends to plunge deeper into the emotional expanse of women. This is one reason why wives are seduced by “emo-porn,” virtual infidelity that is more emotionally satisfying before it physically pleases. But like salt water, it creates a worsening thirst. With emo-porn, fantasy men perform stunningly between the sheets of conversation, emotional understanding, and emotional dexterity. Most mortal men cannot deliver such behavior, the way men do in soap operas and romance novels. Just as wives rightly complain when compared to the artificially created women of Internet porn, men should complain when compared to the artificial men of daytime television. Interesting, isn’t it, how they have such exciting jobs—no Joe The Plumbers. In the real world where real men burn through a lot of emotional battery life to make a real living, being expected to behave like men who don’t exist is more than wrong. It’s cruel.
Emo-porn creates caricatures in the minds and hearts of wives. Most men just aren’t and cannot be that attentive, especially in marriage where responsibilities to provide weigh heavy upon them. Husbands are quietly deemed unresponsive and uncaring when compared to emotionally dexterous hunks of daytime lore, chat rooms, celebrity rags, and romance novels. Thus a secretive and snowballing form of marital discontent is born and nurtured.
First of all, this was written by a dude. Stupid ladies, listen to the man trying to teach you the stuff about things!
Um, so yes, what Paul Coughlin seems to be saying here is that silly womenfolk get all caught up by the “nice, romantic men” they read about in the Harlequin romances and watch on the Days of our Lives, when what they really should be doing is staying home and being grateful for the chauvinist shitass Godly Christian Man the Lord Hath Blessed Them With.
Boys aren’t supposed to feel emotions or be thoughtful! Crazy ladies, what are you thinking, wanting men who treat you like human beings? That is not the fundamentalist Christian way, and you know it.
It’s the job of every good Christian Fundamentalist parent to teach their children how to stick their fingers in their ears, their heads in the sand, and deny reality at every turn. If kids go to school and are confronted with the real world, what will happen?!
Alvin McEwen has a great, very important petition at Change.org that you should all check out. In it, he is petitioning the United States Congress to subject Religious Right testimony on LGBT issues to a high level of scrutiny, based on their pattern of cravenly distorting actual research in order to further their anti-gay agenda:
In June of this year during a Congressional hearing on the Defense of Marriage Act, Sen. Al Franken exposed Focus on the Family’s Tom Minnery’s attempt to inaccurately cite a study to defame same-sex households.
Earlier this year during another Congressional hearing on DOMA, National Organization for Marriage’s Maggie Gallagher committed the same distortion – i.e. inaccurately citing a study to defame same-sex households. Gallagher’s group (NOM) has also been called out twice by the Pulitzer Prize winning site Politifact for inaccurate negative statements it has made about the gay community.
The Family Research Council was declared as an official anti-gay hate group last year by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its tendency to spread propaganda about the gay community such as gays molest children at a high level and same-sex households harm children.
However, the head of the Family Research Council – Tony Perkins – is frequently called as a Congressional witness on many occasions from discussing issues of gay equality to the selection of Supreme Court justices.
That’s just three examples. Alvin points out at his blog that, though Tom Minnery was called out, Maggie Gallagher and Tony Perkins got away with it, and that this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Religious Right distorting the work of real, honest researchers. That petition, again, is at Change.org, so check it out and sign it.
The other petition comes from Kathy Baldock, and focuses on the pride celebration in Charlotte, North Carolina. If you’re not familiar with Kathy, she is a straight, evangelical woman who spends her days fighting for dignity and respect for LGBT people within the church. At Charlotte Pride, as usual, the vehemently anti-gay activist Michael Brown has planned a counter demonstration called “God Has A Better Way.” Brown has a distinct pattern of pretending that he is reaching out in love to LGBT people, and somehow managing to send some of the most grotesque, hateful messages possible to the gay community. Kathy explains a bit more about the message of the God Has A Better Way people:
The stated beliefs of the backers of GHABW * with respect to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are:
Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are a deviation from God’s best, God’s intentions and His design.
Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people can change orientation and be heterosexual with no negative effects.
If they do not succeed in orientation change, they should remain celibate in order to identify as Christians.( “Gay Christian” is always placed in quotation marks to dismiss the existence of gay Christians.)
The majority of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are inherently unhappy, unhealthy, sexually immoral or rebellious to the will of God.
Transgender people would best follow God’s plan by using hormonal therapy, prayer and counseling to overcome the issue of gender identity. Sexual reassignment surgery should never be used as an option.
Acting on same sex attraction is sinful and indicative of non-submission to God.
Same-sex attraction is a behavior, not an orientation.
In your face hateful, as usual. These people, of course, claim that they are bringing this message in “love,” but Michael Brown has shown repeatedly that his concept of “love” is warped at best.
Sign Kathy’s petition to ask the group to cancel their nasty little counter rally here.
I mentioned a few minutes ago that Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family admitted in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on DOMA this morning that kids of same-sex couples are put at a disadvantage by laws that discriminate against their parents. This exchange led by Sen. Al Franken is must-see teevee, as Al calmly produces one of the studies that Focus has cited to support their belief that same-sex parents are inferior, explains that it doesn’t remotely say what Focus claims it says, and ends by asserting that based on such misrepresentations, Minnery’s entire testimony is suspect. This is what happens when the Religious Right goes under the microscrope, y’all!
Here at Truth Wins Out, the epidemic of LGBT teen suicides in Minnesota’s Anoka-Hennepin school district has been on our radar for a long time.
Radical fundamentalist activists are meeting at a ranch outside Houston today and tomorrow hoping to line up behind a Republican presidential candidate that isn’t that dreaded Mormon guy. Currently their loyalties are divided between the peanut, the walnut, the Brazil nut, and the nut-job (Santorum). Such indecisiveness is giving Romney a decisive advantage in South Carolina.
