A child left out in the cold, no older than twelve years, shivering, crying and lonely; no love to fill the hole that permeates their shattered heart. Why is this poor child left out in the cold? Why won’t a shelter take him in and care for him? Where are his parents? Who is at fault?
This child was abandoned to the frigid wasteland simply for admitting that they can only love a member of the same sex. Simply for being honest to those they thought they could trust… their parents. Parents, who have discarded their children simply because of the ideals that society has placed upon LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) persons, ideals such as hatred, bigotry, and dissent towards them. These are ideals that do not hold true with the facts, but simply are nothing more than misconceptions and misunderstandings of these innocent and loving individuals.
The tragic scenario above is a gruesome reality that plagues our country. These innocent children are homeless for no other reason except for the fact that they were born different. A difference so undeniably hated, so venomously despised that a further analysis seems only to provoke conviction and dispute amongst individuals, when, in actuality, it is merely addressing the simple facts. This epidemic not only curtails homeless LGBT youth who make up nearly 40 percent of all homeless youth (PDF document), but also exemplifies how LGBT people are discarded and hated by society. By just addressing the situation we can witness not only the depravity that haunts LGBT people, but also see their humanity through the hardships and despotism they face from a country and its people that refuse to allow them to live as who they are born as; free, equal, and accepted. (Read More)
What happened when the New Jersey Senate vote on marriage equality went down? If you skip to around 1:12 in this video, you’ll see a woman named Aughtney Khan, whose religion apparently trumps her humanity, and whose expression of joy at the prospect of hurting gay people can be described as nothing less than unmitigated, sadistic glee. She appears to be a normal human being, but then the religious programming* kicks in:
And oh lookie, she’s a minister. Isn’t that the kind of mentally stable person you want leading you spiritually?
*And look, I’m not knocking all religious faith. I’m knocking the kind that causes people to lose their moral compasses and their humanity, in the service of meaningless, unfalsifiable dogma. The kind that causes people to rejoice in the suffering of their neighbors. In short, I’m knocking religious sadism.
The second step is more complicated, and more graphic. George argues that only vaginal intercourse — “procreative-type” sex acts, as George puts it — can consummate this “multilevel” mind-body union. Only in reproduction, unlike digestion, circulation, respiration or any other bodily function, do two individuals perform a single function and thus become, in effect, “one organism.” Each opposite-sex partner is incomplete for the task; yet together they create a “one-flesh union,” in the language of Scripture. “Their bodies become one (they are biologically united, and do not merely rub together) in coitus (and only in coitus), similarly to the way in which one’s heart, lungs and other organs form a unity by coordinating for the biological good of the whole,” George writes in a draft of his latest essay on the subject. Unloving sex between married partners does not perform the same multilevel function, he argues, nor does oral or anal sex — even between loving spouses.
Oh, hi. I’m just sitting here reading this long profile from the New York Times Magazine of Robert George, author of the now-infamous bigot manifesto known as the “Manhattan Declaration,” and the largely behind-the-scenes brain* of the right-wing religious industrial complex. You might read the above quote and ask yourself, “What kind of pseudo-intellectual self-congratulatory wankfest is this? And shouldn’t a tenured professor at Princeton (how embarrassing for them) be able to see that he’s arguing that only couples with biological children are actually mar…”
Infertile couples, too, are performing this uniquely shared reproductive function, George says, even if they know their sperm and ovum cannot complete it. Marriage is designed in part for procreation in the way a baseball team is designed for winning games, he says, but “people who can practice baseball can be teammates without victories on the field.”
Oh, you have to be kidding me. Okay, so, infertile couples/olds who still do the dirty-dirty are still technically playing the World Series even if they know their balls, er, baseballs, don’t work? All you need is a team that’s willing to practice?
Well by that logic, even though my (nonexistent — taking applications) husband and I know that our parts aren’t extremely likely to create a baby, it’s the thought that counts, and as long as we practice a whole bunch, and we both love being on the team, then it’s just as valid as any other loving, committed marriage.**
Q.E.D., loser.
Read the whole thing if you have nothing better to do with your life than read the convoluted musings of a quasi-philosopher with far too much education for his intellect and a Mommy complex.
**And don’t give me that arbitrary B.S. from the first quote about how it has to be a vagina. If you know it’s a reproductive dead-end, then it really doesn’t matter. That’s merely Church Lady Robert failing to grasp the epic fail of his 13th century thinking.
Pope’s Effort To Unite Conservatives By Promoting Discrimination Is Divisive, Says TWO
Truth Wins Out today condemned the Vatican’s effort to steal conservative members of the Anglican Church by promising that Rome will remain hostile against women and gay people. In his naked appeal to prejudice, the Pope solidified his reputation as a divisive figure that is out of touch with modern society, said TWO.
“The Vatican’s efforts to unite conservatives through ‘The Dogma of Discrimination’ is disgraceful,” “said Wayne Besen, Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director. “Bonding through bigotry against women and gay people seems to be the Vatican’s strategy to lure disaffected Anglicans. The Catholic Church is defining itself by who it stands against, rather than the principles it stands for.”
In a divisive move that will likely set back relations between Anglicans and Roman Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI ordered the Vatican to create a new plan to incorporate Anglicans and enable the faith’s married priests to transition into Catholic clerics.
Rome’s opportunistic recruitment plan is in response to fissures in the Anglican Church over allowing gay bishops and ordaining women. In the 1990’s social conservatives were angered when the Anglican Church allowed women to become clergy. They went ballistic in 2003 when openly gay V. Gene Robinson was selected as Bishop of New Hampshire. Since then, conservative Episcopal factions in America – egged on by anti-gay peers in developing countries – have threatened to bolt and take every bit of property that isn’t bolted down to the church floor. During this crucial time period, Rowan Williams, (Pictured Right) Archbishop of Canterbury, refused to take a firm stand against discrimination, while also failing to placate conservatives.
“The feckless and ineffectual leadership of Rowan Williams opened to door for the Vatican’s unseemly power grab,” said TWO’s Besen. “When one stands for nothing, the void is always filled by those with a more lucid vision. At an historic time when the Anglican Church needed a leader, it got a lemming, and so it is not surprising that the Pope moved to fill the leadership vacuum.”
The American Psychological Association has clearly articulated that ‘reparative therapies’ don’t work, in fact they can be very harmful. This resolution is welcomed news for all who support the full humanity, morality and worth of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, especially those of us who do so because of our religious understandings.
At the Task Force, we have worked with more than 3,400 congregations to create environments that are supportive and affirming of LGBT people. In addition to these, there are many, many supporters of LGBT people within many religious traditions, even those whose official policy is anti-LGBT. This is important because, while it may be the most psychologically healthy move for some to leave their religious denomination of birth, for others, faith, family, ethnicity, race and culture are inextricably linked and leaving is not an option. For these folks, finding those allies and supporters within their tradition is critical to spiritual and mental health.
Additionally, the report makes some important statements about the relationship between science and religion. Being deeply religious does not necessarily mean being anti-LGBT. In fact, this report shows that religious practice and belief can and does translate into support for LGBT people. The truth is that religion and science do not have to be opposed to one another. In fact, science can be an enormously important tool for understanding the grandeur and wonder of God’s creation. In this case, science helps us understand more fully the gift of sexuality — one of God’s greatest gifts.
Be warned: Those new National Organization for Marriage anti-GLBT actor auditions videos Wayne reported about this week are gone. NOM noticed that its evil ruse had been exposed and demanded that YouTube take them down. Even a clip of a recent MSNBC Rachel Maddow clip that included the audition tapes is gone. NOM’s reason: copyright infringement.
YouTube has to develop a bigger pair. The fact that a national organization is working to deny equality under law to millions of certain citizens makes the story newsworthy. Showing at least excerpts is fair use — under law.
Why are people so afraid of the anti-equality crowd? It’s so obvious that the organized fundies are the ones to fear. NOM was willing to lie, manipulate, and terrify the ignorant segment of the public, low-info types who can be compelled en masse to do what is right for their brand of Christianity, but wrong for anyone who really believes in basic American ideals. The tactic is cynical, selfish, immoral, and destructive. And it works: Remember Proposition 8?
At HuffPo, Lambda Legal’s Evan Wolfson provides a description opf the ads and refutes their vicious claims, so that at least some of those unable to view the outrage can see clearly the threat with which we are dealing. It’s a long excerpt, but it is an important one:
Consider what the actors in the NOM ad pretend to be:
A doctor who wants to discriminate against her patients, despite civil rights laws and medical ethics that the California Supreme Court upheld – in a case having nothing to do with marriage.
An officer of a New Jersey group that for years voluntarily operated a beachside pavilion with special tax-breaks that required it be open to the public – but then tried to turn down a lesbian couple. The case did not turn on marriage, since New Jersey doesn’t yet allow gay couples to marry, but, rather, basic civil rights laws about open access to public accommodations.
A Massachusetts parent who sought to dictate public school curriculum about the diverse families children will need to be aware of to thrive in a diverse world, and then wanted to remove her child from classes in a way that would have disrupted class and imposed unreasonable burdens on the school and other kids.
The law in California, as elsewhere, is that doctors can’t discriminatorily refuse to treat patients — Christian, Muslim, or Jewish, gay or non-gay; that has nothing to do with marriage, and yet NOM incites fear. The law in New Jersey, as elsewhere, says that organizations running public accommodations such as restaurants or rental halls cannot discriminatorily exclude people — African American, Latino, or Asian, gay or non-gay; that has nothing to do with marriage, and yet NOM says that the discriminators are somehow the victims. The law in Massachusetts, as elsewhere, of course allows parents to teach their kids whatever they want, and even to send them to private schools or do home-schooling. The law also rightly sets rules for determining public school curriculum without having every parent, or special interest with an agenda, coming in and imposing their views on everyone else’s kids — yours or mine, gay or non-gay.
I encourage you to read Wolfson’s entire piece — he has worked on the front lines of this fight and knows the terrain. And he’s a lawyer.
National Organization for Marriage may believe that its copyright trumps our right to know the truth, but the group is wrong. Here is an opportunity to dtake action and do some good: Anyone with a thirst for a truly equal US will share descriptions of the ad — along with the truth about marriage equality and the fact that is is no threat to anyone, save those who need legal supremacy — with everyone they know. It is particularly urgent that we talk with those who question the need for civil-marriage equality. If we can’t trust YouTube to stand up to transmit the truth, we must do it.
Here is a debate between NOM’s Maggie Gallagher and Human Rights Campaign Joe Solmonese on CNN’s “Hardball,” where the HRC chief handily obliterates his opponent’s position using truth and fact.
Another religious-right figure is on the hot seat for inappropriate behavior and hypcrisy: The Colorado Independent reports that Focus on the Family Spanish-language broadcasterJuan Alberto Ovalle, 42, faces felony charges after being caught using the Internet to try and lure a 15-year-old girl for sex. If you don’t know Ovalle, he’s the voice on FOTF’s Spanish-language Bible CDs and markets Christian-themed tapes. Here, he shares admonitions against unlawful fornication from 1 Corinthians.
Ovalle “came to know the Lord at the age of 14,” according to a Web site offering his Spanish Bible narration for sale, and founded Spanish Christian Audio in 2001 to “help Christian organizations with their audio needs.”
After first encountering the officer who was posing as a 15-year-old girl in a chat room last week, Orvalle made “sexually graphic statements in a chat room to a person he believed to be an underage teen,” the district attorney’s office said. When the undercover officer said her mom wouldn’t be home the next day, Orvalle said he was “horny” and made arrangements to come to her house, according to an arrest affidavit cited by The Post.
Officials expect Ovalle to be charged formally Thursday with two felonies — criminal attempted sexual assault on a child and Internet luring of a child. The Independent reports that his bail was set at $25,000; at the time of this writing, he was still behind bars.
For 30 years, Focus on the Family and its offshoot, the Family Research Council, have acted to erode public approval and participation in Christian churches through cultural and religious warfare against Americans — including warfare against members of their own conservative churches.
Focus on the Family and FRC on Monday accused their former church members of “an absence of morality and religion.”
Focus and FRC were responding to the release of the American Religious Identification Survey by Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. The survey found that the percentage of Americans claiming no religion has nearly doubled to 15 percent since 1990.
While Focus looked for bogeymen to blame, a more objective and reputable news source, Beliefnet, offers the following insights into the nature of America’s changing attitudes toward religion:
Evangelicals for years could mock mainliners for their lethargic growth numbers. It’s more complicated than that. Baptists, the largest evangelical denomination, dropped from 19.3% in 1990 to 15.8%. What has grown is the group called “non-denominational Christian,” often associated with megachurches which grew from 200,000 people in 1990 to 8 million today — from 5% of the population in 1990 to 11.8% in 2008.
The Muslim slice of the population has grown from 0.3% in 1990 to 0.6% now.
Only 1.6% call themselves atheist or agnostic, though ARIS concludes that based on their beliefs 12% are either atheist or agnostic. 27% expect that when they die, they won’t have a religious service.
12% of the population believe in a higher power but not a personal God.
Still, from 2001 to 2008, the percentage of the population that’s Christian remained stable at 76%. 34% now call thesmelves “Born Again or Evangelical Christians.”
82% say they believe in God.
Best educated faiths (% of college graduates): Muslim, Other Religins, Eastern Religions, Jews, Mormons and Mainline Christian.
Least educated: Pentecostal, Baptist, “Protestant Denominations”
In a new documentary set to air on HBO next month, a disgraced evangelical pastor comes clean. “The Trials of Ted Haggard,” directed by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s daughter Alexandra, was filmed with Haggard’s cooperation — and how.
You may recall that two years ago, Haggard stepped down from his post as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and was sacked as senior pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs after a former male prostitute alleged that the cleric paid him for sex and used illicit substances.
I have yet to see the documentary, but published reports say that Haggard speaks onscreen, speaks about his new life. The father of five remains in his marriage for the same of his children and apparently has been living with shame. While he doesn’t speak of his sexual improprieties in detail, he does admit to “sexual immorality” and says, “I really did sin.” Haggard tells of his longtime struggle with his same-sex desires, insisting that he never claimed to be heterosexual.
“The reason I kept my personal struggle a secret is because I feared that my friends would reject me, abandon me and kick me out, and the church would exile and excommunicate me. And that happened and more,” he says in the film.
He also reveals that while he purchased methamphetamine, he never used it.
Haggard’s wife Gayle speaks in the documentary as well, and offers what perhaps is the reason behind the couple’s participation in the production: “I know to restore the honor to our children is to help restore honor to their father.”
That may be a long, hard road. Right-wing Christian leadership isn’t treating Haggard with honor, and most GLBT people probably will say that a man who worked so hard against honorable treatment for us is not worthy of anything resembling honor. Many believe he’s getting his just deserts.
After the scandal broke, the Haggard family fled Colorado for Arizona, where the former preacher confesses thta he is having a tough time making ends meet as an insurance salesperson. ”At this stage in my life, I am a loser,” Haggard says.
I suspect Haggard is a loser only if he does not come to grips with his reality and learn to embrace it. If he can emerge from this crisis a better human being, then he will deserve to be honored. He doesn’t have to abandon his family to do it: Many gay and bisexual people end up in marriages with heterosexual partners. (Exhibit A: Me.) Sometimes those marriages work; often they do not. But the real losers are the misguided ones who work to diminish others. The Religious Wrong is filled hypocrites who divide people and spead a message that does not include anything Jesus would champion — things like forgiveness, compassion, and acceptance without judgment.
Haggard could choose to re-up as a fundamentalist Christian soldier — or he could take another road, one that leads to justice for all of God’s children and could help him right the wrongs he committed. That second path leads to honor. At this point in his now-difficult life, the choice is his.
You know what? I hope he makes the honorable choice — and I wish him and his family well.
“The Trials of Ted Haggard” is scheduled to run Jan. 29 on HBO.
Another religious-right figure is on the hot seat for inappropriate behavior and hypcrisy: The Colorado Independent reports that Focus on the Family Spanish-language broadcasterJuan Alberto Ovalle, 42, faces felony charges after being caught using the Internet to try and lure a 15-year-old girl for sex. If you don’t know Ovalle, he’s the voice on FOTF’s Spanish-language Bible CDs and markets Christian-themed tapes. Here, he shares 
In a new documentary set to air on HBO next month, a disgraced evangelical pastor comes clean. “
