The following is a 12-minute excerpt of one of many WEEKLY videos produced by executive officer Owen Honors on government video-production equipment, on government time, and shown to a largely captive audience of 6,000 sailors and Marines on the U.S.S. Enterprise during 2006-2007 deployment for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Female and gay servicemembers are required to live, work, share quarters, and take orders from the creator of this video and those who aided in its production and broadcast.
To what extent does this video facilitate respect, discipline, and unit cohesion in the ranks?
To what extent does this video, produced via the ship’s public-affairs office, foster respect for human dignity?
Does the video serve to degrade or defame some servicemembers?
Does this officially produced and funded video uphold the honor and professionalism of the armed services?
As lawyer David Boies points out to CBS News, Perry vs. Schwarzenegger dealt a serious blow to the junk science of the ex-gay movement.
Challenged to produce empirical evidence of the inferiority and changeability of homosexual orientation, the Christian Right defenders of Proposition 8 failed — because their “science” doesn’t exist.
We mourn the loss of Tom Murray, whose death today from a heart attack was announced by partner Vince on Tom’s Facebook page.
Murray was an award-winning documentary filmmaker who focused on stories exploring the LGBT experience. His recent projects examined “the variety of ways people find spirituality in our community.” His films included “Farm Family: Rural Life in Gay America,” “Fish Can’t Fly,” “Almost Myself,” “Tell,” “A Portable Tribe,” and “Amancio: Two Faces on a Tombstone.”
His 2005 documentary Fish Can’t Fly was a full-length exploration of the lives of people of faith who have endured and survived the spiritual and emotional traumas that are inflicted upon gay and lesbian people and their families by the “ex-gay” movement.
The film was instrumental in making religious audiences aware of the spiritual lives of LGBT people — and in alerting these same audiences to the religious and mental-health fraud that is Exodus International.
According to Murray’s website:
Tom Murray openly admits to getting a late start in life with filmmaking. Having studied filmmaking in his college years, and long term fan of documentary films, it was only in his “50+” years that he tackled his first feature length work. Inspired by his upbringing on a dairy farm in northern Illinois, “FARM FAMILY…in search of Gay life in rural America” was voted Best Feature Length Documentary at the Philadelphia Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in 2004 and has been acquired by Viacom as part of the initial acquisitions for LOGO TV, the new Gay and Lesbian cable channel. Now a resident of the Gulf coast of Florida, in 2005 Tom completed his second feature, “FISH CAN‘T FLY” which takes a look at the way in which Gay people of faith go about putting their spirituality and sexuality in harmony.
Murray continued to refine his filmmaking skills with subsequent efforts, and this year he was planning to complete work on a film exploring spirituality in the LGBT community.
In 1995, Sophie B. Hawkins sang a wistful ballad in memory of her father. “As I Lay Me Down” went on to top the Adult Contemporary charts for six weeks. Hawkins was subsequently honored by GLAAD in 2000.
In a shameless attempt to fill space on a holiday weekend :-) we are posting this music video in memory of loved ones.
Feel free to discuss anything in the comment section below.
Thanks to Shazam for helping me recognize and identify the song.
Current TV’s Vanguard program aired a documentary last week about the U.S. evangelical and ex-gay role in fomenting antigay hate and violence in Africa.
If you live outside the United States, or who wish to have a permanent digital copy of the documentary, you’re in luck: The program is now available as an mp4 file download.
You may also be able to watch the documentary in short clips online. International viewers: Please let us know whether either method works for you.
Here are the first 10 minutes of “Missionaries of Hate”; parts 2 through 4 are not yet available online:
Here’s an extended interview with David Bahati, the mastermind of the Uganda antigay genocide campaign: (Read More)
When Michael Bussee and other Exodus International co-founders and early members admitted that Exodus’ reorientation counselors had failed to change their sexual orientation, one might expect Exodus to have compassionately asked what it had done wrong, help counselees find competent therapists, and take responsible action to ensure that any future counseling actually worked.
And considering that Exodus boasts that it supports families and friends, one might expect that Exodus helped Bussee’s parents, siblings, and wife adapt.
That’s not what happened.
Bussee’s siblings kept their kids away from him and deprived his mother of a family Thanksgiving dinner. His mother felt worse than when his father died, and said she wanted to drive her car off a cliff. Bussee’s sister said she would pray that God makes him miserable for the rest of his life — just as Exodus president Alan Chambers and Focus on the Family activist Mike Haley do today. Bussee’s wife and her church sought to prevent him from having any custody.
Exodus exiled Bussee, and continues to exile whistleblowers and to threaten counselees with ostracism and prayers for damnation.
How Exodus treated Bussee then, it continues to treat people today:
In terms of Exodus’ response, I got this very loving letter from Frank Worthen of Love In Action telling me that I was cursed, I was an anathema, that I had forfeited my salvation and he ended the letter with very graphic descriptions of the flames of hell that awaited me and he said that his heart was going to be grieved to see me pushed into the fiery pit by the angels on the final day. He’ never apologized for that.
A small group of fellow Exodus ministry leaders came to my house and sort of begged me to turn back. And I told them that there was no turning back, that I had never changed, that I was never really ex-gay and I was just accepting the truth about myself. But they made that one attempt, I think they felt biblically obligated to plead with me one last time but then after that nothing.
So when [my partner] Gary and I left we were pretty much abandoned.
Support is slowly building from LGBT groups and affirming therapists for people who are abandoned by Exodus — but no one tells them that.
I didn’t get a warm welcome from the gay community because I didn’t know there was a gay community to become a part of so it was a very isolating kind of experience. I’ve talked to people who are considering, even now after 30 years of marriage, after presenting themselves as ex-gay that are considering coming out and leaving Exodus, but they’re terrified of that abandonment they know they’re going to experience. And they’re terrified of the rejection by family and friends and it’ a real fear.
U.S. cable network Current TV is premiering a can’t-miss documentary this week:
The network’s Vanguard program traveled to Uganda to “trace the influence of American evangelical leaders on a proposed law that could make being gay punishable by death.”
The episode premieres on Wednesday, May 26 at 10/9c. Current TV is available on DIRECTV channel 358, DISH Network channel 196, Comcast channel 107 (most cities) or 125 (Dallas and Seattle), AT&T U-verse channel 189, and various Time Warner Digital channels. Portions of its broadcasts are also available at Current.com/video.
Update: The documentary is now viewable via Hulu. (Hat tip: Ex-Gay Watch)
Murray was an award-winning documentary filmmaker who focused on stories exploring the LGBT experience. His recent projects examined “the variety of ways people find spirituality in our community.” His films included “Farm Family: Rural Life in Gay America,” “Fish Can’t Fly,” “Almost Myself,” “Tell,” “A Portable Tribe,” and “Amancio: Two Faces on a Tombstone.”
