According to wingnut “pastor” Mark Driscoll, that is:

First, masturbation can be a form of homosexuality because it is a sexual act that does not involve a woman. If a man were to masturbate while engaged in other forms of sexual intimacy with his wife then he would not be doing so in a homosexual way. However, any man who does so without his wife in the room is bordering on homosexual activity, particularly if he’s watching himself in a mirror and being turned on by his own male body.

So there you have it: anytime a male — even a heterosexual one — masturbates alone, he risks engaging in homosexuality.

Simply astounding.

John Smid has been evolving in his public views of homosexuality ever since he stepped down as the leader of Love In Action in Memphis. He began apologizing last year, which was welcome news for many, but we at Truth Wins Out remained understandably skeptical, waiting to see whether the “evolution” would continue. It would seem that it is. He’s not all the way there yet, but in a post on the blog for his ministry, picked up by Ex-Gay Watch, Smid has a lot to say:

So often people will say someone needs to “repent” from homosexuality. It is something that actually cannot be repented of! People are, or they are not, homosexual. It is an intrinsic part of their being or personally, my being. One cannot repent of something that is unchangeable. I have gone through a tremendous amount of grief over the many years that I spoke of change, repentance, reorientation and such, when, barring some kind of miracle, none of this can occur with homosexuality.

Wow. He admits it. Now, of course, the Religious Right, which props up the “ex-gay” industry in order to show how much they love gay people, will not accept this, because it has never been about individual people with them, but rather about their narrative.

Yes, there are homosexuals that make dramatic changes in their lives as they walk through the transformation process with Jesus. I have heard story after story of changes that have occurred as men and women find the grace of God in their lives as homosexual people. But, I’m sorry, this transformation process may not meet the expectations of many Christians. I also want to reiterate here that the transformation for the vast majority of homosexuals will not include a change of sexual orientation. Actually I’ve never met a man who experienced a change from homosexual to heterosexual.

You hear that, Porno Pete? He said never. The former leader of the flagship model of the “ex-gay” industry, who was there quite a long time, never met a man who changed from gay to straight. Here, John describes his own personal experience, but could pretty much be describing the experience of any fundamentalist Christian who has considered the question of homosexuality:

I have now gone around the world listening to Him, listening to the stories, seeing the tears of rejection in some, and the peace of God’s love in others. This is so different than I always thought in my small world of ex-gay ministry. And yes, it was a small world because I made it small. I was completely unwilling to hear anything that didn’t fit my paradigm. I blocked out anyone’s life story or biblical teaching that didn’t match up with what I believed.

I have often said on this blog, usually in a snarky way, that fundamentalists don’t live in reality, and that’s what this is about. When everything has to go through a filter of dogma and preconceived notions in order to be accepted as true or untrue, you end up believing quite silly things indeed. See also: Creationists.

This is just sad:

I stand to lose some very close friends because I have chosen to unconditionally love gay people and to support them now without pressuring them to “change.”

If you do, they weren’t your real friends in the first place, John. That’s something I learned when I came out twelve years ago.

Here is where he admits that he, himself, John Smid, is a homosexual:

I used to define homosexuality or heterosexuality in terms describing one’s behavior. I thought it made sense and through the years often wrote articles and talked from that perspective.

Today, I understand why the gay community had such an issue with my writings. My perspective denied so many facets of the homosexual experience. I minimized a person’s life to just their sexuality but homosexuality is much more than sex.

[...]

As to the question at hand, I would consider myself homosexual and yet in a marriage with a woman.

[...]

I am homosexual, my wife is heterosexual. This creates a unique marriage experience that many do not understand.

This is pretty big stuff. As I said, he’s not all the way there — still looking at sexuality in terms of sin and repentance and trying to decide whether a committed gay couple is any more “sinful” than a person who has been married five times — but he’s making serious progress, folks. I would encourage readers to check out Peterson Toscano’s comment on the subject, as well, as he sort of puts in perspective where this falls on the spectrum of “Smid’s evolving views.”

Disturbing news out of my home state of Wisconsin: Yesterday in the central Wisconsin town of Waupaca, 71-year-old former bus driver Delton Gorges was sentenced after being convicted on multiple counts of sexual assault of a child. Waupaca County Circuit Court Judge Philip Kirk made the following remarks from the bench while delivering the sentence:

I was looking for it here, Mr. Gorges, in one of the three reports I got, I couldn’t find it, but it described you as, or your self-description, as a heterosexual. That’s about the only piece of information in these three reports that I would correct as patently incorrect. Listening to all this stuff, it seems to me that… if you give [a] $10 bill to somebody and you buy $4 worth of goods, you ask for 2 threes back or one six. I think you were born gayer than a sweet-smelling jock strap, and I think that if anyone believes that in the last 10 years or 15 years, all of a sudden you developed an interest in homosexuality and young boys, then, uh, I must have looked ravishing in my prom dress this year. It is just wrong.

I don’t even know where to start with this one. “Gayer than a sweet-smelling jock strap?” Judge Kirk doth protest too much, methinks. The image is so vivid that I can’t help but wonder how often visions of sweet-smelling jock straps sassily sashay through his honor’s subconscious. How many hours of research went into his sweaty, stereotype-filled statement?

Kidding aside, Judge Kirk’s homophobic comments were unprofessional and inexcusable. In addition, they show that the spurious conflation of homosexuality and pedophilia remains so thoroughly embedded in popular culture that even an ostensibly well-educated circuit court judge has internalized the myth. As Equality Matters points out, this roundly-discredited meme is “one of the most cherished smears” of anti-gay groups like NARTH, the Family Research Council, Porno Pete’s AFTAH, and the American Family Association (and even the Vatican!). We at Truth Wins Out are all too familiar with these organizations — we spend a huge amount of time fighting back against their pernicious propaganda, so we find it incredibly disturbing that Judge Kirk would use the bully pulpit of the bench to spread their lies, regardless of whether or not he intended to do so.

Finally, many have rightly pointed out that Judge Kirk went on to make seemingly sympathetic remarks about the plight of gay people forced by society to remain closeted. That’s all well and good, but in our fervent search to find a silver lining, let’s make sure we don’t forget the facts: Delton Gorges is a convicted child molester. Homosexuality and child molestation are not connected. Kirk should never have linked the two in the first place. Saying that his later, friendlier remarks somehow mitigate the earlier, offensive ones, or taking them as evidence that Judge Kirk “means well,” makes just about as much sense as putting lipstick on a pig or gold plating on a pile of dung.

Joe has an amazing quote from Tom DeRosa, the executive director of the Creation Studies Institute.  Read it slowly, and maybe out loud in a funny voice [Foghorn Leghorn?], so you can take it all in:

“From the patriarchal days of Sodom and Gomorrah to the Law of Moses to the New Testament, God’s Word consistently declares that homosexuality is sin and warns of the condemnation it brings to the individuals who practice it and to societies that promote it. Indeed, the rampant teaching of evolution in our schools that is effectively undermining belief in God and absolute moral standards is not only creating an atmosphere of ‘tolerance’ for homosexuality, but for just about anything.

“As the truism goes, ‘Without God, everything is permissible.’ So, in reality, there’s nothing to prevent the same rationale being used today to justify homosexuality and homosexual marriage from being used tomorrow to sanction polygamy or pedophilia or, as one very honest evolutionist wrote a while back (a piece that quickly disappeared from public view), if evolution is true, then rape is a very valid and/or efficient way for a man to spread his genes. After all, why not? It’s the survival of the fittest. Of course, in a purely evolutionary world, homosexuals would naturally be bred out of existence, as well. But you won’t hear that from pro-evolution advocates.”

You see, teaching evolution, even though it is established scientific fact, creates an “atmosphere” that makes it okay to be gay.  Also, slippery slopes and false claims about morality coming from God, etc.  Tie it up with a truly stupid statement which shows just how little this “creation science” guy understands evolution, his personal boogeyman, about homosexuals being “bred out of existence” — as if science is that simple — and you have one of the best wingnut quotes I have ever seen, at least this week.  But it’s only Monday.

Justin Bieber has come under fire…

Guys.  That first line should never happen in an article, anywhere.  But if I must do this…

Justin Bieber has come under fire for saying stupid things about abortion and homosexuality:

Fresh from winning a Brit award, teenage pop sensation Justin Bieber has suggested that homosexuality is a choice and that abortion is wrong even when pregnancy is caused by rape.

In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, he appeared to label homosexuality as a choice rather than something that is uncontrollable.

He also spoke out against abortion even when pregnancy is caused by rape, saying “everything happens for a reason.”

When asked what his views on homosexuality are, Bieber responded: “It’s everyone’s own decision to do that. It doesn’t affect me and shouldn’t affect anyone else.”

It is not clear whether he intended to label homosexuality as a lifestyle choice.

[...]

“I really don’t believe in abortion,” he told the magazine “I think [an embryo] is a human. It’s like killing a baby.”

He added that while it is “really sad” for a woman to become pregnant after being raped, he claimed that “everything happens for a reason.”

“I don’t know how that would be a reason,” he added. “I guess I haven’t been in that position, so I wouldn’t be able to judge that.”

He “hasn’t been in that position.” He hasn’t been in any of these positions, yet. The child is sixteen, and while I cannot believe that it has become necessary for me to say “Leave the Biebs alone!”, mostly because I could not identify one of his songs if there was a gun to my head, people need to cool it.  You know who else was a moron about abortion and homosexuality when he was sixteen?  I WAS.

Hopefully this can be used as a teachable moment and a grown-up close to him can teach him why his stated positions on these issues are puerile, especially when held by adults, but Justin Bieber is puerile.  Because he’s sixteen.

Jeez.

This post from John Shore is a few weeks old, but I hadn’t seen it, so I figured y’all might not have either.  In it, he goes directly to the heart of why so many fundamentalists are so virulently anti-gay.  It, of course, has nothing to do with the Bible, no matter how much they protest that it does — that’s all a smokescreen that they use to convince themselves and others that something much deeper isn’t going on.  This is also why the word “homophobia” is so excessively appropriate to describe the condition exhibited by anti-gay activists:

The reason is power. It’s all about power. The problem Christians and others have with homosexuality isn’t about sex. Nobody cares that much about what consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedrooms. Sure, it says in the Bible that homosexuality is bad. And of course that matters. As a Christian, what the Bible says certainly matters to me. But the Bible also says that slavery is good, and that women shouldn’t speak in church, and that Christians should never eat shellfish, and on and on an on. We’ve long ago made our peace with the idea that sometimes we have to modify our understanding of Biblical texts—especially when (as is true with the Pauline proscriptions of homosexuality), there are sound reasons to question the way the text has been translated.

You see, fundamentalist Christians have no trouble finding easy rationalizations for the Bible verses they don’t personally like or that don’t fit in with their own worldview.  Indeed, if you browse John’s comments section, you can easily find ten examples of fundamentalists doing just that.  John goes on to explain what he means by “power”:

And the answer to that question is simple: they threaten the traditional power base of men.

Here’s the basic run of it inside a man’s brain/heart/subconscious:

I may not be much. But I’m a man. And that entitles me to a lot.

Two women together? That’s kind of cute—sexy, even. But it doesn’t scare me. Because neither of those women can threaten my power. They can’t undermine the truth that, as a man, I’m still (figuratively and literally) on top. Two women together doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a man’s world.

But two men together? Yikes. That’s a problem for me. That’s when all the walls in my world begin to crumble.

Each of those men is my equal, my peer; they’re my kind. If it’s okay for them to be romantic with each other, then, for me, everything gets upended. [Oh, will you just stopalready?!] Because where the heck does that leave me?

I’m a man. I get to be a man. That means I’m … the man! I’m in charge. I’m at the head of the table. I make the money. I have the muscles. I build the castles. I’m number one! But I can’t be number one without people below me to be number one over. You’re not a boss unless you have subordinates. My whole organization—my entire power structure, everything that keeps me being The Man—absolutely, 100% depends upon me—and, by extension, upon my kind—being in charge.

And what we’re in charge of is women.

Hello? Muscles. Castles. Food on the table. Conquering hero.

Swinger of clubs. Thruster of weapons.

Head of household.

That’s how it’s been. That’s how it’s supposed to be. That’s my goddamn right as a man. And if you try to take that from me, I will do everything in my power to make sure that you fail.

And we’re not joking now. I’ll beat you. I’ll make sure my kids learn to hate you.

I’ll have no pity for you when you commit suicide. I’ll happily supply the gun for that. Or the pick-up truck and the rope, if you’re having a problem with gettin’ her done.

You’re screwing with my life now, you see? And I will see you in hell before I’ll sit back and let that happen.

And that’s how that goes. That’s how that’s always gone.

This is a point that feminists have been making for decades, and it’s refreshing to see it stated so bluntly by a straight, Christian man.  [It also suggests that John Shore is more secure in his manhood than many of his co-religionists.]

It all goes back to the simple question of “Who am I better than?  What do I control?”  Deeply ingrained in our society is the notion that Christian men are The Deciders, and many of these men, having embraced this status through no merit of their own, are deeply fearful that one day the emperor will be shown to be quite naked, indeed, and that their fragile pedestal will crumble to the ground, forcing them to exist on the same level as everyone else.  So they are indeed threatened by the idea of men who disrupt their patriarchal power structure, on whatever side of the spectrum it’s happening; they might be deeply threatened by a man, straight or gay, who is deeply in touch with his feelings/his “feminine” side [see:  sneering about "metrosexuals"], and they might be even more threatened by a gay man who is very obviously stronger and more masculine than they are.

But it’s not just gay people that set them off in this way.  When Republican politicians scream out “baby killer!”, most rational people can tell that they’re not really talking about babies.  The entire idea of reproductive rights for women essentially says to these men, “You no longer have the final say over what does and does not happen to women’s bodies.”

Another piece chips away from the pedestal.

When teabaggers wail about “wanting their country back,” as they make up truly bizarre fantasies about who the president really is, where he really came from, what he really is, what he really wants to do — it’s disrupting their white, male patriarchal power structure.

And so on.  It’s no coincidence that the virulently anti-gay are also virulently anti-choice, and often “want their country back,” etc.  On a deeper level, they’re yearning for a time when women, gays, minorities, etc., knew their place.  On an even deeper level, these straight men [and the women who, as John Shore points out, are often just as tied up in that structure as their men are] are yearning for a time when they knew their own place, and were secure in it.

Those days are gone.  We’re a better society for it, but that’s, at heart, what scares the everloving shit out of the Bryan Fischers and Tony Perkinses of the world.  There was a time in Bryan’s life, and probably in Tony’s father’s life [and certainly within his worldview], when men like they had the last word and it was unquestioned, no matter how stupid or ignorant it was.  These days a smart, overqualified, more outspoken woman, gay person or minority can look guys like that in the face and tell them to go to hell, and then carry out the ultimate revenge by having a happy, fulfilled life that, by its very existence, negates the worldview they use as a blanket for their deep insecurities.  I imagine it’s hell, because such people have been raised with a privilege they did not earn, and that they do not deserve.  But to have privilege ripped away like that, to have society roll its eyes a little more each and every day at such provincial thinking?  Damn.

I’m glad there are straight Christian men like John Shore who are willing to step up and state the frightening truth to their own compatriots.

Remember that, though, when you’re dealing with people who have nothing of any substance to say to you beyond “It sez in the Holy Bubble!”  or some derivation of that.  It has nothing to do with the Bible, and everything to do with deep insecurities and fear.

His entire piece is worth reading.  Throckmorton has been evolving in the past couple of years as he has done honest research and come face to face with the fact that his erstwhile ideological allies are craven liars.  This section is particularly interesting:

The more I have researched these claims [from the SPLC's list of myths perpetuated about homosexuality by hate groups], the more disillusioned I have become with the credibility of the groups recently placed on the list. Even though I agree with some positions held by some of the groups on some issues (e.g., pro-life), I now investigate any factual claims for myself and accept nothing at face value.

Ultimately, this is a real problem for American Christianity. One should be able to trust Christian groups to provide accurate information and nuanced analysis. However, on issues relating to sexual orientation, I cannot trust them. For me, this lack of trust spills over to other domains as well, creating a significant problem with credibility. I hope my fellow believers will not defend these claims simply because those making them are Christians.

This is a truth I’ve noted for some time. It only takes a minute of research to realize that most everything said by Family Research Council, American Family Association, National Organization for Marriage, Focus on the Family, and all the others, are flat out lies. Meanwhile, the majority of the people who support those organizations are, I believe, essentially well-meaning people, but because they have been trained to believe that their fellow Christians are more credible than the rest of the population, they NEVER QUESTION what those groups say, and indeed have been convinced to write off anything said by scientists, researchers, grown-ups, etc. But yet if they just Googled for sixty seconds, they’d get a taste of what Throckmorton has been realizing for some time: Fundamentalist leaders lie about gay people without remorse. It is that simple.

I don’t agree with Warren Throckmorton on many things, but he’s on the right track here.

Yesterday, over at the American Family Association’s hilarious “news” website, OneNewsNow, Peter LaBarbera said the following regarding openly gay megachurch pastor Jim Swilley:

“There’s no doubt in the Bible about whether homosexual practice is a sin,” the conservative advocate points out. “He says he knew he was — quote — ‘gay’ since he was a boy. Most boys don’t think about sex, much less homosexuality, so we’re wondering what happened in his early life. Obviously, he’s a confused man.”

Commenters here and elsewhere made fun of that statement, and quite rightly, because it’s self-evident to most of us what Swilley was talking about there. But when Peter reposted his comments at his own site, he expounded further:

In the One News Now article below, when I made the comment, “Most boys don’t think about sex,” I was referring to very young boys. I am always perplexed to hear adult homosexual men talk about how they “knew they were gay” from a very young age, say, five years old. Normally, boys don’t even know what sex is, much less homosexuality, in their early years, so such comments in an of themselves seem to indicate dysfunction, at best, or victimhood at the hands of a predator, at worst, in the young lives of these homosexually identified men.

This leads me to believe that what is self-evident to us actually needs to be explained, so I will do so. Because the Religious Right has lied so long about the nature of homosexuality, and indeed, sexuality itself, that they actually believe their own lies, they have reduced homosexuality to a “temptation” or an “affliction,” and moreover, they have convinced themselves that being gay is All About Sex. It’s an asinine belief, but it is what they believe.

Peter: Sexuality is not all about sex, thoughts of sex, or having sex. Sexuality, whether hetero, homo, or somewhere in between, is about which gender/s a person is geared to connect with on ALL levels. This starts to manifest in childhood. Think about kids on the playground. Little boys pushing girls down in the sandbox. Little girls harassing the crap out of the boys around them. A friend of mine was telling me the other day about how his four year old son is COMPLETELY the Don Juan of his preschool daycare. When he gets there, four or five girls glomp all over him, and he stands there with his arms around them like “Lookuh me. These my girls!” Are ANY of these kids thinking about sex?  No.  But I’ll bet money that most of the kids I just described will end up being heterosexual as adults.

LIKEWISE, kids who grow up to be gay have those same feelings about kids of the same gender.  Again, they are not sexual feelings, by any stretch, but they’re just the completely normal first pangs of what will, one day, be their full adult sexuality.  And yes, many gay men can look way back, in hindsight, and say “Yeah, I knew I was drawn to the boys.”  Likewise for lesbians.  Even at age five.

Personally, I can’t look that far back, but I can go back to age eleven, a good two years before I hit puberty and started thinking about sex.  That was the first time I had a crush on a boy.  So, at the time, I didn’t have any concept of “gay” or sexual desires of any sort, but when I look back now, I realize that that was the first indication that I would several years later realize that I was gay.  And I can’t emphasize enough that there was no “turning point” or anything where my thoughts went from girls to boys or anything.  From the start, if I was going to have a crush, or think somebody was cute, regardless of how deep my thoughts about it were, if it was genuine, it was about a boy.  I point that out because I went through times when I dated girls, had crushes on girls, etc., but that was mostly a manifestation of Trying To Fit In.

So that is what it’s about, Peter.  You can continue oversexualizing it, painting gay people as predators and victims, as if it hasn’t been explained to you, but that would be just another permutation of your pathological, loathsome dishonesty, because it has now been explained to you.

Instead of working within the realm of reality and getting behind efforts to get every person who engages in sex to take the proper precautions to protect against STD’s like AIDS, syphilis, Matt Barber instead chooses to remain within his little bigoted bubble and condemn all gay people instead.  This is nothing new.  I’m not quoting the meat of his piece, because everything he writes is stupid.  By his “logic,” the Christian Right ought to start an “ex-African” ministry, since their STD rates are through the roof.  But at the end, he puts on the veneer of fake Christian compassion and says this:

Do you consider yourself “gay” or lesbian? As untold thousands of ex-gays will tell you, you don’t have to be. It’s my most sincere prayer that going forward you’ll choose Christ over sin: Life over death.

You think sexual “freedom” makes you happy? You should experience the true freedom that comes through abiding in He who is “the way, the truth and the life.”

That’s liberation.

There’s that “untold thousands” line again. It’s “untold,” because it doesn’t exist.

But I guess any who see through Matt’s lies and choose to embrace themselves rather than Christian Right propaganda are free to kill themselves, aren’t they, Matt?

People like Matt Barber want nothing more than to see the eradication of homosexuality, and by their words on some subjects and their silence on others, we can see that they’re not too concerned by which particular means are employed to get rid of us.

Ugandan First Lady Janet Museveni — longtime ally of The Family and genocidal pastor Martin Ssempa — cautioned 8,000 youths at a convention last week against promoting tolerance of homosexuality.

From AllAfrica.com:

“In God’s word, homosexuality attracts a curse, but now people are engaging in it and saying they are created that way. It is for money The devil is stoking fires to destroy our nation and those taking advantage are doing so because our people are poor,” she said. Mrs. Museveni advised the youth not only to listen to messages on how they can make money but also focus on spiritual growth. “You know that you will lose everything else when you lose your soul.”

Uganda’s tribal and sexual hatreds, the corruption of its despotic leadership, and its suppression of creativity and individuality lead many graduates to flee the country at the earliest opportunity.

Instead of correcting these social ills for which she and her husband are responsible, the First Lady accused expatriates of selfishness.

[Museveni] also decried what she called selfishness of especially the educated who leave the country as soon as they are educated by the same nation. “They bite the hand that fed them and they appease their consciences by blaming whichever government is there. These are a few of the ills that have beset our nation. We need to consciously make our minds to succeed,” she said.