If you haven’t read about Michigan’s brand-new law rescinding the health benefits of state employees’ domestic partners, signed last Thursday the 22nd by Governor Rick Snyder, this article by Box Turtle Bulletin’s Timothy Kincaid is a good place to start. Kincaid points out that contrary to what the Michigan Republican Party would like to believe about itself, it is behaving in a “talibanish” way that empowers big government to force its values–in this case, religious dogma–on individuals and smaller government entities. Not to mention discouraging new businesses from relocating to the state, an ill-advised move given Michigan’s economic troubles.
The Washington Blade reports that lawsuits are on the way.
It’s weird when the War on Christmas starts hitting itself. Join me in asking these Michigan wingnuts, “Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself?”
A Michigan music teacher’s decision to censor the word “gay” from a traditional Christmas carol is being met with a frosty response.
The teacher, who has not yet been named in any of the published reports, allegedly removed “gay” from “Deck The Halls” after 1st and 2nd grade students kept giggling during preparations for a Christmas concert at Cherry Knoll Elementary School in Traverse City. Instead of the traditional lyric, the students were taught to sing “don we now our bright apparel,” according to UpNorthLive.com.
So the kids giggled, and instead of taking a moment to have an educational conversation with the children about words having multiple meanings, this alleged “educator” freaked out and removed the word, replacing it with “bright.”
Confusing still, because the sun is “bright,” but “bright” can also refer to the intelligence of a 1st grader, or the sound of certain Japanese grand pianos. Words is hard!
Anyway, people’s reactions on the school’s Facebook page are hilarious:
And again, I repeat, words is hard! And also, people is dumb. Luckily, happy ending:
As UpNorthLive.com notes, however, Principal Chris Parker has said he is disappointed in the music teacher’s decision to change the lyrics to the song, and the students are, in fact, now back to singing the original version.
“Please, come join us,” insisted an attractive college student flashing her bright Aquafresh smile.
Before I was able to decline her friendly invitation I was gently pulled into a large prayer circle of thirty or so Charismatic Christians. “I’m sorry my hand is sweaty,” the girl said with a sheepish grin.
Those were the last words she spoke that I understood. We quickly surrounded a handful of young preachers who whooped and hollered before surrendering English for the unintelligible language of tongues. The manic participants sounded like a cross between a prayer service and a Native American tribe preparing for battle.
Eventually, they raised their hands toward the sky pointing to God, which allowed me to escape and enter the seating area at Ford Field, where Lou Engle, founder of The Call, had gathered 27,000 fundamentalist Christians from across the nation on 11.11.11, a date that came to him in what he believes to be a divinely inspired vision. The majority of the crowd was Caucasian, however a significant number were African American. There was a large youth component, but the age of participants reached across the spectrum.
While I can’t speak for the entire conference, which was a 24-hour call to fast and prayer, I did spend 14 hours at Ford Field watching sermons, surveying sideshows, videotaping the gathering, and interacting with the hyped-up crowd. So, my observations, while not complete, do offer a significant snapshot of the 11.11.11 Detroit rally.
In a press release prior to the event I wrote that I expected 11.11.11 Detroit to be a “gay bashing” and “Muslim trashing” extravaganza.After all, The Call had chosen Detroit as its rally site in an effort to convert the region’s estimated 150,000 to 200,000 Muslims.
The Associated Press reported that Apostle Ellis Smith, Engle’s local “point person” for The Call, referred to Islam in a sermon leading up to the revival as a “false,” “lame” and “perverse” religion.
Engle had previously held an infamous event in Uganda that whipped up anti-gay hysteria. In 2008, the electrifying preacher organized a rally at San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium in support of Proposition 8, a successful measure to prohibit marriage equality in California.
To my surprise, the festivities, which were aired on God TV, were appreciably toned down. Sure, there was red meat on the menu, but it was not the all-you-can-eat buffet that I had come to expect from Engle and other leaders of the 7 Mountains Movement (aka The New Apostolic Reformation) that he is a key part of.
Indeed, most of the aspersions on Friday evening and Saturday were deliberately cast though euphemism. Homosexuality was never explicitly mentioned, but was instead lumped together with other “sins” under the umbrella of “sexual immorality.” Other times, speakers camouflaged their anti-gay agenda by simply saying they supported “traditional marriage.” During the entire time I observed the event there was not one reference to healing homosexuality and no “ex-gays” were trotted up on the stage to tell tales of how they “prayed away the gay.”
However, the Detroit Free Press reported that Apostle Smith claimed that at the event, “a lesbian came from the homosexual community and said she has never experienced such love. And she is now working to change her lifestyle.”
(I’m sure this alleged lesbian was very stable and well adjusted because it is common for healthy and secure LGBT people to spend weekends attending revivals that consider them demonic.)
The conversion of Muslims was also downplayed and “Dearborn,” referring to the Detroit suburb with perhaps the nation’s largest Muslim population, euphemistically replaced the word “Islam.”
It took several hours to figure out what was really going on – but I gasped when the disturbing pattern finally revealed itself. This elaborate show had all the trappings of a modern religious revival – from the thumping music to the two gargantuan video screens suspended above the enraptured audience. But this ostensibly religious event was little more than a political front.
Its real aim was to peel African American support away from the Democratic Party in a swing state during a critical election year. Not only is President Barack Obama’s reelection at stake, Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow is locked in a tight race that includes social conservative and former GOP Rep. Peter Hoekstra. This cynical revival was not about “values” — it was about votes. It was not about worship, but winning office for Republicans by promoting what writer Ed Kilgore called in The New Republic, a “big-God, small-government creed.”
The amazing part was that the audience seemed totally unaware of the underlying motives and machinations. After all, the words “Democrat” and “Republican” were never spoken and there was only one local politician identified on-stage. It seemed that even some of the minor speakers might not have been privy to the overarching strategy. Nonetheless, a brilliant display of political subterfuge was unfolding as the oblivious crowd bopped to Christian rock with their hands swaying above their heads.
This is not the first attempt of white fundamentalists to lure black voters away from the Democratic Party. Immediately following the 2004 presidential election, social conservatives made a strong push to lure African-Americans. Rev. Lou Sheldon, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center hate group, The Traditional Values Coalition, hosted a right wing meeting of 70 black religious leaders in Los Angeles.
“In 2004, the religious right was concerned about re-electing George W. Bush,” said Al Sharpton at First Iconium Baptist Church. “They couldn’t come to black churches to talk about the war, about health care, about poverty. So they did what they always do and reached for the bigotry against gay and lesbian people.”
Unbelievably, at the Los Angeles meeting Sheldon played an anti-gay video featuring disgraced Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss. Remember, Lott had to step down as Senate Majority Leader after he publicly pined over Strom Thurmond not winning the presidency as a Dixiecrat. African-American columnist Leonard Pitts put Sheldon’s power grab in perspective:
“Whether the issue was slavery, segregation, lynching, voting rights or housing discrimination, social conservatives have always taken a position that history later judged to be ignorant and flat-out wrong….which leaves me at a loss to understand why any African American possessed of a functioning brain would give this atavistic bunch the time of day.”
Still, the attempt was gaining some momentum until Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, which badly frayed the burgeoning unholy alliance. The effort was further hampered by the emergence of Barack Obama as the Democratic standard bearer.
In this renewed effort in Detroit, Lou Engle and his minions were smart. They wisely figured out that direct attacks on the Democratic Party would not fly, nor would all-out verbal barrages against President Barack Obama, who still has strong African American support. They also understood that the baggage surrounding white Evangelical racism would have to be addressed and surmounted before real progress was made.
To overcome these obstacles and recruit African Americans to vote for the GOP they devised what seems like a five-part strategy.
1) Pick a key swing state with a beleaguered city that had an economically disadvantaged African American population
2) Create an emotional spectacle where tearful white people pleaded for forgiveness and repented onstage for past racism
3) Sharply define new wedge issue(s) and create a racially-based conspiracy theory that could ultimately be used against the Democratic Party
4) Exploit these emerging wedge issue(s) to the point they become more important than fixing the economy
5) Redefine voting criteria so candidates are primarily judged by where they stand on these wedge issue(s) – with the ultimate goal of leading many African Americans to conclude that they are best represented by the conservative GOP.
Lou Engle understands that much of Michigan is conservative. If he were able to peel off fifteen or twenty percent of Detroit’s black Democratic vote, he might be able to turn the state solidly red. The main wedge issue he selected to accomplish his plan is abortion. For good measure, he helped weave a conspiracy theory: Sinister white bigots who run programs like Planned Parenthood were using abortion to reduce African American birthrates.
“What Birmingham is to the civil rights movement, Detroit is to abortion,” bellowed Engle at the event. “Detroit has a calling…blacks and Latinos could lead the parade of history.”
Engle’s message was aided by a parade of socially conservative African American ministers. One preached that black people must choose “BC (Biblical Correctness) over PC (Political Correctness).” The subtext was that the pro-life GOP is on the side of the Bible and thus should be the party of African Americans. Another pastor was even more explicit when he declared that African Americans had a choice: “God’s way or a political party’s way.” (Read More)
Holland, Michigan, a conservative tourist town best known for its popular May tulip festival*, is now gaining a different kind of fame. NPR reports that local pastor Bill Freeman is pushing the city to change its anti-discrimination laws to include protections for LGBT people.
Federal and Michigan laws protect residents from discrimination in housing and employment, but not based on a person’s sexuality or gender identity, and Holland’s city council rejected modifying the local anti-discrimination law with those specifications. Freeman, married and a father of two, has appeared before the council several times since, urging the council to revisit that decision.
“I think the only thing that might get [the council members] to change their mind is national attention. Not the kind of attention that the City of Holland would like to have when holidays come up and Tulip Time comes up,” Freeman says, referring to the city’s annual tulip festival.
I love it: a media-savvy pastor in reddest Michigan who’s on our side. God bless you, Pastor Bill. NPR’s headline calls Freeman and his coalition “Unlikely Advocates,” a sad comment on how no one expects Christians to defend LGBT people (see also our Kristin Chenoweth blog entry). To learn more about actions in Holland, visit Until Love is Equal, a grassroots organization in Western Michigan dedicated to overturning the Holland law.
Let’s give Holland our attention by respectfully e-mailing members of the Holland City Council, encouraging them to reconsider their position on this ordinance. (See the end of this entry** for a list of members’ addresses.) Gently encourage Holland’s city council members to meet and mingle with LGBT people, and remind them that the nation and its many tourists are taking a keen interest in the decisions Holland is making about its citizens.
If that doesn’t work, of course, there’s always the possibility of a boycott. The gay mecca of Saugatuck, Michigan is just down the coast from Holland, and no doubt many people visit both towns, but why should LGBT people and their allies patronize a town that currently treats them as second-class citizens?
* Half a million attendees each year, according to Tulip Time’s offices.
Do you all remember the bizarre campaign of stalking undertaken by former Michigan Assistant Attorney General Andrew Shirvell, against the gay student body president at the University of Michigan? For his obsessive ways and generally unhinged way of handling himself in public, Andrew Shirvell was removed from his job as a public official. The student in question, Chris Armstrong, is suing Shirvell, so of course Andrew Shirvell has decided to embarrass himself some more:
Andrew Shirvell, the former Michigan Assistant Attorney General who was booted for harassing the student body president of the University of Michigan, Chris Armstrong, for being gay, is arguing that Armstrong’s “course of conduct” and lawsuit against him are “politically motivated and intended to make an example out of [Shirvell] in order to deter others from criticizing [Armstrong]‘s homosexual activist agenda.”
Armstrong filed a lawsuit in April asking for more than $25,000 in damages for “defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, abuse of process, invasion of privacy, and stalking,” after Shirvell wrote a series of blog posts that attacked Armstrong for being gay. Among other things, Shirvell repeatedly described him as “a radical homosexual activist,” and photoshopped a picture of Armstrong next to a rainbow flag with a swastika in the middle. Shirvell would also show up at school events and parties to picket, based on information gleaned from Armstrong’s Facebook activities.
On Friday, Shirvell, who is representing himself…
Haha, we’ll just stop right there, because that’s a funny line to stop on. Anyway, Shirvell has filed a bunch of frivolous counter claims, and we’re sure that will go quite well for him.
If you’ll remember, the thing the Michigan Attorney General’s office is best known for is Andrew Shirvell, the assistant AG who embarked on a completely creepy stalking campaign against a gay student at the University of Michigan, claiming that the student’s involvement in campus government was somehow a “family values” issue. Shirvell, as so many gay-obsessed Religious Right figures so often do, came off as a stalker with a prurient interest in this young gay man.
Now the Michigan Attorney General’s office is failing again, in deciding to back Julea Ward, the former counseling student from Eastern Michigan University who wanted an exception to be made in counseling standards, just for her, so that she could give poor, second-rate, bigoted care to gay patients:
Attorney General Bill Schuette filed a brief Friday on behalf of Julea Ward, who is appealing a federal district court’s ruling on behalf of the university. Ward was dismissed from a graduate counseling program after she refused to provide counseling to a homosexual who wanted help with relationship issues, the Detroit Free Press reported.
The university says Ward failed to abide by the guidelines and ethical rules of the American Counseling Association. In legal papers, it suggests Ward, who wanted to be a school counselor, would have to set aside her own belief that homosexuality is morally wrong.
[...]
Schuette, in his brief, said EMU did not follow its own written standards in Ward’s case. A spokesman, John Sellek, said the attorney general also believes the university violated her constitutional right to religious freedom.
Note that they’re not saying that she has to “change” her beliefs. She merely has to learn to be a professional if she wants to be considered qualified in that field. If an oncologist personally believes that prayer has healing powers, but is nonetheless willing to provide exemplary medical care to cancer patients, then no one will care about the physician’s belief in prayer. If instead the physician advocates a course of prayer over a regimen of chemotherapy, then there will be a problem!
Likewise, if Julea Ward is willing to treat all her patients as human, and is able to refrain from sharing her (personal, unprovable) belief that homosexuality is immoral, she could make a fine counselor. But if she and other fundamentalists like her are not willing to live up to the standards and practices of their chosen fields because of their religious beliefs, they should perhaps choose other fields where reality won’t get in the way of their religious faith.
As a survivor of “ex-gay” therapy, I was mortified to learn that Exodus International is shifting its focus in 2011 to children and teens. These are the people most vulnerable and defenseless to Exodus’ attacks on healthy development and psychological well-being.
As I first became aware of my sexual orientation at the age of 12, I was drawn into the web of Mike Jones, one of Exodus International’s unlicensed, unqualified, untrained, unregulated, and unsupervised counselors. For the next 10 years, a man who had no business counseling anyone, and who certainly should not have had access to children, set the tone for how I viewed my orientation and myself as a person.
Jones passed on to me the “facts” that my attractions were sinful, that no gay person was happy, and that every gay person was addicted to drugs, alcohol and random sexual encounters. I lived in a homogeneous religious world, didn’t know any LGBT people and had no reason to believe otherwise. I fully believed Mike Jones for years. He assured me that my sexual orientation could and should change, leading me to suffer through years of shame and self-hatred when no such change occurred.
Later, when I was 19, he subjected me to prolonged hugs and even “holding therapy”, where I was instructed to lay in his arms for a solid hour to “feel the strength of another man”. He asked me inappropriate questions about my genitals and suggested I use handyman tools to become more masculine.
Last year, Jones was largely discredited – his board of directors dissolved, many local churches ceased supporting his work, and he was removed as an “approved outreach group” with the Michigan Department of Corrections. But the entire time he was victimizing me, Exodus International supported Jones’ work and continued to refer people to his “ex-gay” operation.
This week, Exodus International unveiled its plan to put targets on the backs of thousands of innocent children around the country, many who already sit in pews each Sunday feeling scared and alone. The “ex-gay” group plans to utilize social media, YouTube videos, booklets, an IPhone App, and a re-branding to make sure every one of these kids hates a part of themselves and believes their orientation is perverse and an abomination.
The reality is their orientation is a natural and beautiful part of who they are. Exodus International has proven they are content to sacrifice children’s identities, happiness, self-confidence and mental health, to further their lies and messages of intolerance.
What is particularly insidious about Exodus’ ministry is that it hides behind the fallacy that it desires helping only those who face what they cynically call “unwanted same-sex attraction”.
The reality is the “ex-gay” industry works day and night to create cultures in families, churches, communities and governments when possible, where folks who are not heterosexual are left ostracized, alone, judged and condemned. When the lies spread by Exodus International and the “ex-gay” industry lead people to believe change is possible and necessary for God, their church or their family to love them, naturally their attractions become “unwanted”.
Thankfully, there is a happy ending to my story. I escaped the destructive lies of the “ex-gay” industry and with time, good friends, and therapy, came to love and accept myself the way I am. I have been an out and proud gay man for almost 5 years and have found healing through sharing my story and connecting with other survivors of the “ex-gay” industry.
But my heart breaks imagining other children naively falling for the same lies that ruled my life all those years. Children deserve to be loved and supported for who they are. Their young, fragile self-esteems deserve to be protected and their identities nurtured.
It is my sincere hope that more and more families and churches will see the real danger Exodus International represents and choose to distance themselves and their children from Exodus’ materials, counselors and programs.
Before the organization does enormous harm, it should abandon its disturbing plan to target children and teenagers in 2011.
This video has gone sort of viral over the weekend, but if you haven’t seen it, it’s worth watching. This is Graeme Taylor, and he’s only fourteen, but he seems to have quite a head on his shoulders as he speaks to his school board in Michigan in support of his teacher, Jay McDowell, who came under fire after he asked two students to leave his classroom — one was wearing a Confederate flag on his belt buckle and the other was making anti-gay remarks — for being disruptive.
A Michigan assistant attorney general who started a blog against the University of Michigan’s openly gay student body president has been fired, the state attorney general’s office said Monday.
Michigan Assistant Attorney General Andrew Shirvell had taken a voluntary leave of absence earlier this fall after his blog garnered national media attention. Shirvell, a graduate of the university, took issue with what he called the student body president’s “radical homosexual agenda.”
Single tear. If you’ve somehow missed the story of Andrew Shirvell, click here.
To my surprise, the festivities, which were aired on God TV, were appreciably toned down. Sure, there was red meat on the menu, but it was not the all-you-can-eat buffet that I had come to expect from Engle and other leaders of the 7 Mountains Movement (aka The New Apostolic Reformation) that he is a key part of.
It took several hours to figure out what was really going on – but I gasped when the disturbing pattern finally revealed itself. This elaborate show had all the trappings of a modern religious revival – from the thumping music to the two gargantuan video screens suspended above the enraptured audience. But this ostensibly religious event was little more than a political front.
