Many times on this site, I have offered to anti-gay Christians the idea that they could still oppose homosexuality without spewing hate or contributing to the culture of violence that exists for gay people. I still truly believe that can be done. I would like to start offering some concrete suggestions that anti-gay, Christian organizations could use to oppose homosexuality but without the hate speech.
But then he goes a little further…
I would appreciate pro-gay folks taking a moment to empathize with those who are oppose gay rights and give them some concrete requests to how they can voice religious opposition to homosexuality and gay marriage without promoting violence or hate toward gays. Understanding that some people believe homosexuality is against their religion, not everyone who voices opposition to us is a religious extremist. Some people just hold different beliefs. Perhaps we can talk about better ways to voice those beliefs and even run organizations that lobby for anti-gay rights groups without hate.
I have several problems with this Joe. Thirdly, you shouldn’t assume that us "pro-gay" folks haven’t tried…hard…to understand what is motivating the opposition. Do not assume that its easier to write off the opposition as malicious and hateful unless you’ve looked, really looked, into that Pit called Hate. There is nothing easy about walking up to that terrible edge, and looking in. There is nothing easy about having to go on living with what you saw. Nietzsche was right about the danger of gazing into an abyss.
Secondly, opposition to some things, like same sex marriage, is predicated upon the very dehumanization of gay people you’re asking them to refrain from. There is just no way to oppose same sex marriage while upholding opposite sex marriage without dehumanizing gay people first. It’s one thing to assert that marriage is essentially a religious rite and another to oppose even civil unions, let alone civil marriage. A lot of deeply religious people see the difference there perfectly well. The problem is that haters tend give their principle objection to same sex marriage a religious gloss to prevent people from actually looking right at it and seeing it for what it is.
If atheists can marry in ceremonies utterly bereft of any acknowledgment of God, then what, really, is the objection? It isn’t religious. It’s constitutional in the sense that they regard same sex relationships as a perversion of normal love. That’s what is being said in the opposition to same sex marriage. They’re not objecting to sinners marrying in sin. Someone else’s sin does not defile their own marriages or every 24 hour church in Las Vegas would have been closed down decades ago. Sinners are free to marry every day of the year as long as it’s to a person of the opposite sex. What the haters have been saying, unambiguously for decades now, is that letting gay couples marry defiles their own marriages. By making a mockery of their feelings for one another. Because homosexuals are incapable of those same feelings. Because all we can do, as Orson Scott Card once put it, is play at house.
Witness their insistence lately on that so-called complementary essence of heterosexual unions. Really look at it. What they’re saying is we don’t even have genuine sex, let alone authentically love the person in our arms. What they’re saying is that by calling our damaged, degenerate, empty assignations marriages we are mocking, deliberately mocking, their authentic humanity. That is not about sin, it’s about how they regard gay people as subhuman deviants. Perverts. Degenerates. That is what we are to them, and that is the basis for their opposition to same sex marriage, or they wouldn’t be using the language of defilement to describe their opposition. Two heterosexual drunks getting married after having sex in a Las Vegas hotel doesn’t devalue marriage. Two sober homosexuals claiming to love and cherish one another just like heterosexuals do does. You are asking them to stop dehumanizing gay people in their opposition to same sex marriage when the bedrock of that opposition is how thoroughly they’ve dehumanized us.
But my first and biggest problem with your suggestion is that the folks who aren’t extremists have never acted toward us in hateful ways. There are many devout people out there who aren’t waging kulturkampf against us but are simply and sincerely, if misguidedly, trying to steer us away from what they regard as sin. They aren’t lobbying against us in the statehouses and in Washington. They aren’t flinging mud at us, at our relationships, at our homes, at our hearts. They are instead, offering us a kind of hospitality. The "Good News" as they say. But that hospitality is hard to see beneath all the static the religious right is throwing out into the public discourse.
We don’t need to give those folks any of this advice because they know it all instinctively. And…this is important…they know it instinctively because They Can See The People For The Homosexuals. We are not some faceless other to them. We are not monsters. We are their neighbors. We are human beings to them, as real and as human as they. They have always known this, and they have always treated us as they would treat any neighbor in this life.
Joe…I think you should look…really look…at the advice you are giving the ones you think should hear it, and ask yourself in all seriousness, what sort of person needs to be told any of this…
…start talking about anti-gay violence and condemning it very vocally…
…be sure your information is balanced and based on PEER REVIEWED research…
…If your message is truly about “reaching out” to gays and lesbians than stay away from calling us insulting and dehumanizing names like sodomite and militant…
…Promote youth safety. If you are opposed to teaching about homosexuality in schools or anti-bullying campaigns that include homosexuality as a subject, then you damn well better have a solution to offer that stops the violence and shame that makes life miserable for these kids…
…Gays and lesbians want the same things out of life that you do. I cannot and will not believe that you unable to come up with ways to present your message without the barrage of negative pictures of gays and lesbians…
…Gays and lesbians really are reasonable human beings. Have you ever thought of setting up some meetings with your organization and pro-gay organizations to see what you can work on together and what you can agree on…
…The only reason this is a “war” is because you continue to promote it as one. If you promoted it as a collaboration or a disagreement, then it would be that instead of a war…
…Admit it when someone on your side just goes too far. Comparing us to terrorist went too far…
…We would appreciate it if you could acknowledge that our requests are valid requests even if you disagree with what we want. There is no secret agenda. We want equality and safety…
…Lastly, vow yourself and your organization to abandon myths about homosexuality, especially the one about us choosing to be gay. No one chooses to be gay. Each time you say that you minimize the whole issue to a simple choice and if it were so simple, I wouldn’t be writing this list of requests right now…
Exodus has been saying out of both sides of its mouth for years how "thousands have made the choice to leave homosexuality" and at the same time when asked to back that up with some cold hard facts admits that it is not, as you say, so simple after all. Do you think they cannot hear themselves talking out of both sides of their mouths?
Who needs this advice Joe? No one who would actually take it is who. You are looking for good faith where there is none. What does opposition to homosexuality minus the hate look like? Well I’ve seen it…rarely…but I’ve seen it, and it looks like hospitality. Nothing more. Nothing less.
I would also ask pro-gay folks to try their best to frame their request in Positive Actions Language. In other words, ask people what you DO want them to do, not what you DON’T want them to do.
I want them to get off my back. I want them to get the hell out of my garden. I want them to finally one day look at themselves in a mirror and die of that shame they’ve been running away from ever since they sold their soul to hate because it was easier then living in a world where other people are happy and content. That positive enough?
So I’m reading this story about some Italian jackass former football general manager bloviating about gays in football…
Moggi: Gays Should Be Banned From Football
The 70-year-old was widely regarded as the best transfer guru in Serie A before he received a five-year ban from football in the summer of 2006 for his alleged role in the Calciopoli scandal.
Despite being out of the game Moggi still regularly has his say on current affairs, and he has had some controversial things to say about homosexuals.
“I don’t know if footballers are against gays in the team, I certainly am,” he stated.
“I can quietly confirm that, in the clubs where I have been, I have never had them, never.
“I would never have wanted a homosexual player. Even today I wouldn’t buy one. Supposing I were to make a mistake and I found one of them, he would be the first to go.
“I am a little old-fashioned. But I know the football world and its insides. You cannot live within it as a gay. A homosexual cannot be a footballer.
“In calcio there are no homosexuals, neither between players nor among directors. It’s not racism, its fact. Football has a particular environment; you get naked in the dressing room.
“I have no gay friends. I go out with other people. But I have to say that homosexuals are very intelligent people, they have the capacity to see things differently.”
Former Juventus general manager Luciano Moggi has again stated that he was the only person to defend the club before, during and after the Calciopoli crisis.
Moggi was one of Calcio’s shrewdest transfer gurus up until the Calciopoli crisis in the summer of 2006.
The 70-year-old received a five-year ban from football for his alleged role in the scandal, meaning that he cannot return until 2011, by which time he will be 74.
Moggi has always maintained that Calciopoli was a conspiracy, involving Inter Milan, as well as other important figures.
“I looked to defend a business that, in practice, had no parents. Gianni and Umberto Agnelli died and Juventus were left without a father or a mother,” he explained.
“We didn’t have the funds because shareholders weren’t putting money into the club and we didn’t have the television on our side. We were a step behind the others.
“RAI was of Roma and we won’t speak of who Sky and Mediaset belong to. We had to make do with what we had and look strong even if we weren’t.”
Moggi has always been painted as something of a shady and mysterious figure, but he says this is an unfair assessment. “I was arrogant, but it is not a crime,” he said.
No…but fixing football games is, isn’t it? Here’s the Wiki entry on what they’re referring to in that article as the "Calciopoli crisis"…
The 2006 Italian football scandal (Italian more common names: Calciopoli or Moggiopoli, sometimes referred to as Calciocaos) involved alleged match fixing in Italy’s top professional football leagues, Serie A and Serie B. The scandal was uncovered in May 2006 by Italian police, implicating league champions Juventus, and other major teams including A.C. Milan, Fiorentina, Lazio, and Reggina when a number of telephone interceptions showed a thick network of relations between team managers and referee organisations. Juventus were the champions of Serie A at the time. The teams have been accused of rigging games by selecting favourable referees.
…
The scandal first came to light as a consequence of investigations of Naples prosecutors on the Italian football agency GEA world. Transcripts of recorded telephone conversations published in Italian newspapers suggested that during the 2004-05 season, Juventus general manager Luciano Moggi had conversations with several officials of Italian football to influence referee appointment. The name Calciopoli is a pun on Tangentopoli, [rough English translation:Bribesville], a corruption-based attitude starting in the early 80s and ending with the Mani Pulite investigation in the early 90s, led by, among others, Antonio di Pietro. Another very common name for Calciopoli is Moggiopoli after the name of Luciano Moggi. Also Calciogate, a pun on Watergate, is used. Calcio means football in Italian.
So here’s a guy babbling about how gays should be banned from football, who has himself been banned from the game for fixing games. How…unsurprising. I doubt he was cheating for money so much as to stand in the winner’s circle as though he’d actually earned his place there and not cheated his way to it. That’s exactly how bigots go through life. A genuine crook will, when caught, take some smirking pride in putting one over on you. A bigot will deny how they tilted the scales and fixed the game to the very end, insisting that they’re perfectly honorable and respectable people and endlessly pass the blame for the damage they do onto someone else. It’s not about having the trophy, it’s about knowing deep down inside what a runt you are and bitterly resenting anyone and everyone who can achieve that which you cannot, and fixing the game as a way of revenge.
The US army doubled its use of "moral waivers" for enlisted soldiers last year to cope with the demands of the Iraq war, allowing sex offenders, people convicted of making terrorist threats, and child abusers into the military, new records released yesterday showed.
The army gave out 511 moral waivers to soldiers with felony convictions last year. Criminals got 249 army waivers in 2006, a sign that the demand for US forces in Iraq has forced a sharp increase in the number of criminals allowed on the battlefield.
The felons accepted into the army and marines included 87 soldiers convicted of assault or maiming, 130 convicted of non-cannabis-related drug offences, seven convicted of making terrorist threats, and two convicted of indecent behaviour with a child. Waivers were also granted to 500 burglars and thieves, 19 arsonists and nine sex offenders.
SANTA BARBARA, Calif., April 21 (AScribe Newswire) — New information released today by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee shows that in 2006 and 2007 Americans who were convicted of serious crimes including sexual offences, manslaughter, "terrorist threats including bomb threats", burglary, kidnapping or abduction, aggravated assault and sexual assault were allowed into the military under moral waivers granted by the services.
According to the data given to the committee by the Department of Defense, the Army allowed the most waivers in 2006 and 2007. During this period, moral or felony waivers were given to 3 soldiers who had been convicted of manslaughter. One soldier was allowed in following a kidnapping or abduction conviction, 11 were convicted of arson, 142 convicted of burglary, 3 who were convicted of indecent acts or liberties with a child, 7 who were convicted of rape, sexual assault, criminal sexual assault, incest or other sex crimes and 3 who were convicted of terrorist threats including bomb threats.
So…let me get this straight. Letting gay people serve will harm the moral and readiness of our armed forces…but allowing child molesters and rapists to wear the uniform won’t. Look at this. No…really look at it. The leaders of the armed forces of the United States of America would really rather be saluted by rapists and child molesters then by a homosexual.
Well…this explains why Iraq is pretty much FUBAR doesn’t it? It wasn’t just Rumsfeld and Bush. They had help running our military into the ground from all the country club thugs in the pentagon executive suites. And it explains all this too…
All the culture warriors, all the fine culture warriors who fought to keep gay people out of the armed forces… All the righteous men and women of high moral standards and values… And in the end they turned out to be nothing more then a pack of street thugs, dragging America into their gutter…into that open sewer they call virtue…
A man has posted videos on YouTube in which he claims to have deliberately infected thousands of women with AIDS.
The masked man – who calls himself “Trashman” and speaks with an American accent in a series of clips posted on the video-sharing website – claims to have infected between 1200 and 1500 women with the disease.
In the videos, Trashman reads the names and ages of some of the women he claims to have had unprotected sex with.
President of People Living with HIV/AIDS Victoria, Brett Hayhoe, said the man seemed genuine.
AIDS is contracted only once a person has been infected with HIV but Mr Hayhoe said the man may have lumped the two together.
“It’s extremely disturbing (and) the guy needs psychiatric help,” Mr Heyhoe said.
The videos – one of which has been viewed 195,000 times – also feature a web address to a “gangsta” portal filled with pornography and where Trashman has a profile.
In the first video, Trashman reads from a list of women he claims to have infected.
“Today I’m doing a show about something that’s more important than killing rappers,” he says.
“This here (piece of paper) that I hold in my hand is a list of women who I actually infected with AIDS on purpose.
“So if I call your name and if you just happen to be on my ‘I got the AIDS from that nigger’ list’, then God bless you.”
He then goes on to name several women and how old they are.
Mr Hayhoe said if Trashman was telling the truth, it would be “absolutely devastating” for anyone who has had sex with him.
“For someone to hear that on a YouTube video is just disgusting,” Mr Hayhoe said.
“To have your name yelled out would be shattering.”
Google, the owner of YouTube, has been contacted for comment.
Indifference is a cancer on society Sally. Greed is a cancer on society. Not ambition, which is self actualizing, but greed which only wants to take what others have. When your neighbors in this life have become nothing more to you then a means to an end, nothing more then stepping stones to your idea of paradise, then you have become the cancer. Trashman is your face in the mirror Sally.
David Roberts, over at Ex-Gay Watch, observes the kook pews falling over each other to excuse Sally Kern’s calling gay people a greater threat to the nation then terrorists, and writes…
I’m beginning to realize that, in at least some cases, what I thought was a more civil, sincere change in the hearts and minds of those who have opposed gay rights and equality in this society, perhaps was only a thin veneer which they feel has been imposed upon them.
Welcome to bigotville David. Yes…now they hate our guts even more for making them pretend to love us.
Economists say home prices are no where near hitting bottom. But even in regions that have taken a beating, some neighborhoods remain practically unscathed. And there’s a pattern emerging as to which neighborhoods those are.
The ones with short commutes are fairing better than places with long drives into the city. Some analysts see a pause in what’s long been inexorable—urban sprawl.
…
Realtor Danilo Bogdanovic surveyed two rows of neat new brick town homes on Falkner’s Lane. "These were selling for about $550,000 at the peak, which was about August 05, and they’re selling right now for about $350,000," Bogdanovic said."So $200,000 in a year and a half and fifty 50 of this community has been ether foreclosed on or is facing foreclosure.
For residents who work in the city, their commute is around an hour on trouble-free days. But that could extend upward toward two hours very quickly.
…
But construction in town has held steady. Goldberg sees other cities rebounding too, including Baltimore and Philadelphia."Philadelphia was loosing downtown housing and in town housing until very recently," Goldberg said. "And now that’s the hottest part of their market."
That’s my experience so far here in Baltimore. In the neighborhood I live in, the houses going up for sale still don’t stay on the market for more then a few weeks. Prices aren’t soaring like they once were…if anything they’ve gone down a tad. But just a tad. Prices are still more then double what they were seven years ago.
I can walk to work from where I live. For most folks here in my neighborhood who work in the city, the commute can’t be too bad because we’re close to I-83 which goes right into the heart of downtown Baltimore. The Light rail is nearby too.
Traffic congestion plus the rising cost of gas is already having an effect. The housing market collapse isn’t happening where people can live close to where they work, or close to rail transport. One of the biggest booming housing markets in Baltimore, still is around Penn Station. Which just also happens to be close to our gay neighborhood too.
I had to take a closer look. The column from Craig Smith begins promisingly…
Before you know it November will be upon us, and we will be required to choose a new president. But as in all elections, we will also vote on certain proposals and ballot initiatives. So I suspect it is only a matter of time before we hear the voices of the gay and lesbian community demanding the right to government-sanctioned "marriage," and this year I am all for it!
Homosexuals should enjoy the same rights and privileges married couples have experienced since the beginning of time: To be able to love and cherish, to have and to hold, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, ’till death do they part.
But this is a Wing Nut Daily column of course, so actually Smith is being sarcastic here. His real point is…
Thus I suspect if married gay couples honored their vows, within two to three generations we would not have any more gay babies being born. Given most gay people say they didn’t choose to be gay but were born gay, it would eliminate innocent people being born into a world that homosexuals deem so hostile toward them. It would settle once and for all the argument that homosexuality is genetic and not a choice. Nature, not nurture. If there is no procreation, there is no passing of genes and, thus, the species does not survive.
Darwin would have been right!
…
Let’s get serious. Homosexuality is a choice. And the choices people make are their business. What goes on in your bedroom is your choice. But when a group or person attempts to force society into condoning their choice or demands that their choice be taught to future generations as a "normal" lifestyle, I have a problem.
If you want to take the position that homosexuality is not a choice, then let’s experiment with my idea. We will know rather quickly who is right and who is wrong for nature itself proves the whole genetic argument invalid.
We’re having a Darwin moment here I see…
From: Bruce Garrett
To: Craig Smith
Subject: Darwin and Homosexuality
You write, "If you want to take the position that homosexuality is not a choice, then let’s experiment with my idea. We will know rather quickly who is right and who is wrong for nature itself proves the whole genetic argument invalid".
You need to take a little better interest then this in how the natural world really works. Perhaps this AP article from 1999 will help you out a tad…
Why Do Peacocks Stick Together in Avian `Singles Bar’?
Groups of peacocks strut their stuff in hopes of attracting the finest peahens, but only a few lucky guys will find a willing mate in the wild kingdom’s equivalent of a singles bar.
Scientists have long wondered why the unsuccessful peacocks stick around the same group year after year when the hens tend to select the same few males each breeding season.
Research published Thursday in the journal Nature suggests a sound evolutionary reason: Many of the bird buddies within individual groups are brothers. By working together, the brothers are increasing the odds that their genes will be passed to another generation.
"By helping your relatives to attract mates, your genes are spread," said Marion Petrie, a researcher at Britain’s University of Newcastle, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
The research sheds light on why some peacocks seem unconcerned with sex and are content to be hangers-on in the animal singles scene: Larger groups of peacocks attract more females, so some of the peacocks are there just to make the group bigger.
"The benefits of helping closely related dominants to attract more females may outweigh the subordinate males’ own meager mating opportunities," said Cornell University researcher Paul Sherman in an accompanying Nature commentary.
Petrie and her colleagues studied about 200 free-ranging peafowl in Whipsnade Park north of London. Using DNA fingerprinting, the researchers found birds inside the strutting groups are more likely to be related to each other than those outside the group.
But how do the related birds find each other? That’s unclear, but it is not because the peacock brothers grew up together.
In fact, the researchers found that when peacock brothers were separated before hatching, and then were released into Whipsnade Park when they were yearlings, the brothers still tended to group together.
The mechanism by which the birds found their relatives is unclear. It could be by odor, feather patterns or the sounds the birds make.
"There is some way in which kin can be associated, which doesn’t require learning or environmental clues," Petrie said. "They didn’t know their fathers or mothers. They could not possibly learn who their brothers were. They had no reference points to where they were born, but they still found each other."
If you don’t pass on your genes, but you help your siblings pass on theirs, your family genes get passed on, and that’s good enough as far as natural selection is concerned. If you help make your family, or your tribe look desirable, then the genes in that pool, which likely include a good many of yours too, get to go a few more rounds. If a trait is recessive, not everyone in the group needs to express it, for it to get passed along too, with all the others. If this is not true, then the mating rituals of Peacocks would not look the way they do.
Here’s a little something else to ponder when considering Darwin and homosexuality: the humble prostate gland. When you massage it, which is what happens during a certain kind of male to male sex, you can bring a human male to a right dandy orgasm. I doubt that massaging any other gland in the human body will produce anything other then pain, let alone sexual pleasure, but that one particular gland, in that one particular part of the male anatomy is different that way. You need to pay attention to that, because militant homosexuality didn’t do that, godless secularism didn’t do that, the Warren court didn’t do that, millions of years of adaptive evolution gave that to every human male who ever walked this earth, whether they had any use for it or not. And let’s be honest here, most don’t. The vast majority of human males have utterly no use for that.
Yet there it is.
So…actually, you’re probably sitting on all the proof you need for the genetic argument at this very moment.
—
Bruce Garrett
Baltimore, Maryland.
I was too polite to tell him that as long as he’s got his head up his ass he should look around.
The tire pressure warning hasn’t come back, so I’m writing that one off to something they did during service ‘A’. I’ve got almost fourteen grand on the car now and it still drives like a dream come true…so solid and sure. Problem is gas is now at about $3.60 a gallon for premium at the cheap station near me (which is part of a convenience store chain, so they may be writing gas off as a loss leader…something the regular gas stations cannot do. I’m tempted to go to Costco to fill up but the numbers just don’t justify it. I’m using more gas to make the trip then I save in cost. So I might as well fill up locally. But I just can’t pop into it and take a drive just anywhere for the shear pleasure of driving it like I did in the weeks just after I bought it. I have to plan my pleasure drives out now. Oh well…it’s getting to be springtime here in Baltimore now, and there is a lot of yard work to do around the house anyway. But the annual road trip to California is going to be a tad costly this year. I’m really starting to be afraid now, that I’m going to live to see the end of the open road.
DMG now had a successful brand name, but still lacked a characteristic trademark. Then Paul and Adolf Daimler – the company founder’s two sons, and now senior executives at DMG – remembered that their father, who had died in March 1900 shortly before his 66th birthday, had once used a star as a symbol.
Gottlieb Daimler had been technical director of the Deutz gas engine factory from 1872 until 1881. At the beginning of his employment there, he had marked a star above his own house on a picture postcard of Cologne and Deutz, and had written to his wife that this star would one day shine over his own factory to symbolize prosperity.
The DMG board immediately accepted the proposal and in June 1909, both a three-pointed and a four-pointed star were registered as trademarks. Although both designs were legally protected, only the three-pointed star was used. From 1910 onward, a three-dimensional star adorned the radiator at the front of the car.
The three-pointed star was supposed to symbolize Daimler’s ambition of universal motorization – “on land, on water and in the air”…
So now you know where the star came from. And on that note, here’s a little something I found on YouTube for any other Mercedes fanboys out there reading this.
Mercedes Jellinek Whose father named his very famous Daimler made racing car after her, and whose name has been on every car Daimler has made ever since…
Hell is other people, said Sartre. I am not nearly enough misanthrope to agree. I can amuse myself for days at a time working on this and that solitary pastime at home, in my art room, in my office, reading a good book, listening to a favorite piece of music. But not for long. Without companionship I am miserable. Hell is having no one to talk to, no one to walk through life with. But I’ll concede that there are people in this world who embody hell pretty nearly. My maternal grandmother for one.
I’ve always found the concept of Hell…capital ‘H’…disturbing. Not to contemplate the reality of it, because I simply don’t believe in it. It’s disturbing in what it reveals about the human psyche. God didn’t invent Hell. Humans beings did. To put other human beings into. Nothing says more how bottomless the human capacity for evil is, then the idea of Hell.
In case anyone’s interested, the impetus behind my writing my last post, ”Homosexuality Isn’t Stealing or Lying …”‘ is this simple truth: If my gay friends, whom my life experience tells me can no sooner stop being gay than I can stop being straight, have to go to hell after they die, then I’m going with them. Too many gays and lesbians have been too good to me in this life for me to leave them behind in the next. I won’t do it. That’s really all I was saying.
What I am not saying (and certainly haven’t said) is that the Bible is wrong, or should be changed, or that fundamentalist or “conservative” Christians are wrong or should change. I’m not even saying that it’s true that gays and lesbians are born homosexual in the same way I was born straight. Maybe I’m wrong about that. I don’t care. I leave those kinds of questions to the future and those in the present who, unlike me, like to debate. (And you better believe I have no interest in alienating my fundamentalist and “conservative” Christian friends, for whom I have nothing but love and respect. I wish I had blood relatives who’d ever been as good to me as some of my conservative brothers and sisters in Christ have been.)
Again: I’m saying nothing more than this: If any of my dear gay friends get condemned to hell for no other reason than that they’re gay, then I will choose to go to hell with them. I am sure Christ will let me make that choice. I’m not sure of a lot of things, but I’m positive Christ understands sacrificing oneself for the love of others.
This isn’t just posturing, this man really believes in Hell, Capital ‘H’. Tavdy pointed me to this follow-up post over at John Shore’s blog in the comments to This Post. This man is really struggling between his love for his gay friends and what he honestly believes about God and for once I can look at this and believe it’s real and not some sort of empty posturing and that’s entirely because you can see he really does view gay people as human beings and not a bunch of faceless scarecrows with the word SODOMITE pinned on them. I really feel for him.
What decent person could accept entry into paradise, knowing that so many other good-hearted, decent, loving people are going to burn for eternity simply for loving someone of their own sex, and being loved by them? I think part of my own journey away from the faith, never mind what it had to say about my sexual orientation, was realizing that paradise itself would be a kind of Hell so long as I knew there were people burning alive in Hell for all eternity. What kind of person would feel comfortable in paradise knowing that? And for what? For being a Mormon instead of a Presbyterian? For being a Muslim or a Jew? For being an Atheist? For dismissing the story of Noah? For not praying to the Saints? For not going to church every Sunday? For that you burn for all eternity? What kind of person even conceives of such a thing to begin with? God didn’t invent Hell. Human beings did.
As I wrote back to Tavdy, I count my blessings. I could have easily grown up to be a biblical literalist. Considering the household I grew up in I’m still a bit surprised to this day that I didn’t. I could have ended up loathing myself as a gay teenager, drifting in and out of Ex-Gay programs, and generally hating myself and who knows what else. Destroying my mind with drugs and booze. Trying to kill my heart with brief barren assignations in the toilets because that’s where my twisted up conscience kept insisted my sexual desires belonged. Somehow I didn’t. I think I know why. Partly. I fell in love with the stars at an early age and began devouring books on astronomy and from there to nature and science. Ever since my thinking about God and my relationship to my creator has always been grounded in what I saw in nature and my theology such as it is, goes along the lines of "When the bird and the bird book disagree, believe the bird." I never took the bible literally and have always felt free in conscience and spirit to embrace the wisdom I see in it and discard what makes no sense. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live… Right…whatever…
But I can’t point to any moment in my life where I made a conscious decision to reject the idea that the bible is the Literal word of God. That never happened. All that happened was I had this gut level understanding ever since I can remember walking outside at night and looking up at the stars, that the literal word is up there in the dazzling night sky and there on the ground under my feet and the birds in the trees and the scent of the blossoms and there in the light of the rising sun. So whenever I read the bible I always had this sense that I was reading how people understood God to be, but not necessarily how God was, and whenever I read anything that was ugly or stupid or mean I just reckoned that had nothing do to with God and just glossed over it. God made the bird. Humans write the bird books and humans are not infallible.
Maybe there is a life after death…I have no idea. But the idea of Hell, like the idea of original sin, is cheap and petty and ugly and completely unworthy of that which could create space and time, let alone the birds and the bees out of nothing. Humans have an almost bottomless capacity to hate. If Hell is anything, it is proof of that. But I simply cannot believe that of anything capable of creating a soul. So I don’t believe in hell. I have seen a small portion of the hell humans can make for each other on this good earth however, and that has convinced me that Jesus was absolutely right about this: We have to love one another.
Sometimes a news article just jumps off the screen and laughs in your face. Via Box Turtle Bulletin… If you have any doubts about the depth anti-gay hate in this country, read this:
The General Assembly yesterday approved a resolution calling for expanded opportunities for Kentucky public schoolchildren to learn about the Holocaust and other acts of genocide.
House Joint Resolution 6 is named after the late Ernie Marx of Louisville, a Holocaust survivor who made a life’s mission to spread education about the horrors he witnessed.
It passed the Senate on a voice vote and the House by a vote of 83-12. It now goes to Gov. Steve Beshear.
The resolution would direct the Department of Education to make curriculum materials available for optional use in public schools by March 2009.
The material would be part of the Kentucky Program of Studies, which has state approval but is not required.
The resolution reflects four years of efforts by middle-school students at St. Francis of Assisi School in Louisville, where Fred Whitaker offers instruction on the Holocaust and takes students to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
He said the pupils began lobbying for legislation that would give students in public schools access to opportunities to study the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators.
"These middle school students really knew something we should all know," Whitaker said. "They really knew there was something powerful that (happens) to anyone when they study the Holocaust and genocide."
Not powerful enough for some, apparently…
The Senate deleted a clause in the House version that cited other people the Nazis deemed "undesirable" because of their "race, nationality, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, religion, and political ideology."
Whitaker said he received indications earlier in the session that the reference to sexual orientation was a "red flag" that could have endangered the bill.
Dig it. It took them Four Years, just to get the Kentucky statehouse to agree that school kids should probably learn something about one of the greatest human catastrophes of the twentieth century…Maybe. We’ll suggest they learn about it, but not require it. And then someone spies a clause in the bill suggesting that school kids learn that there were other victims besides Jewish folk, and that would have been fine too except for the homosexuals. You know…these guys…
But the republican majority leader tut, tuts, any suggestion that they wouldn’t have been fine…really…with including the gay victims of the holocaust in their Completely Optional Curriculum…
But Senate Majority Leader Dan Kelly, R-Springfield, said in an interview that was never an issue for Senate leadership.
He said he had no problem with curricula discussing homosexual victims of the Holocaust as long as it’s "age-appropriate."
Whitaker said that, even without the language on other victims of the Nazis, "you can’t study the Holocaust and not also come across pink triangles," the insignia that homosexual prisoners were forced to wear.
You know goddamned well you can. For decades after World War Two nothing, Nothing was ever said about the pink triangles, until gay scholars started digging into it based on rumors and stories they’d heard from survivors. I started learning about the Holocaust in Junior High schools (middle school these days) and it figured in every lesson on that period of time for the rest of my grade school years and Not Once did I ever hear mention of the pink triangles, or how the Nazis had toughened Germany’s seldom enforced anti-gay laws, even before they enacted the brutally antisemitic Nuremberg laws, or how when the death camps were finally liberated, the surviving Jewish prisoners were released, as well as the gypsies, the Slavs, the intellectuals, the opposition party members…hell, even the communist prisoners were let go…but not the pink triangles. They were considered vermin by both the Nazis, and the American liberators.
Yes Mr. Republican Majority Leader Sir, you can goddamned well teach about the holocaust and not once mention the fact that gay men were rounded up by the Nazis too and shoveled into the death camps. That was the status-quo all during both our school years wasn’t it? And you’d like very much to go back to that status quo wouldn’t you? Because you know most of your voter base doesn’t think the Nazis did anything wrong when it came to exterminating homosexuals don’t you? And you know goddamned well you’ll loose votes if you do anything to suggest otherwise don’t you? If you have no problem with curricula discussing homosexual victims of the Holocaust, then why didn’t you have that line put back into the bill?
The Holocaust museum says the Nazis arrested about 100,000 men as homosexuals and that an unknown number died amid brutal conditions.
Marzian said she could accept the Senate changes.
"You have to compromise in legislation," she said.
You did a great job of putting the knife into it Kelly. You had your boys whisper that the bill Whitaker and Marzian worked on four four years was dead unless they deleted the line about gay victims of the Holocaust and they did it and now you can look at the cameras and claim you’re shocked, shocked, that anyone would bother caring about all that. This is why you’re majority leader isn’t it. You could have had it fucking put back in and insisted to your caucus that it stay there and you didn’t, and make no mistake, everybody knows who ripped that little page out of the history books and why.
And one other thing they’ll always know… In 2008, over sixty years after World War Two, Kentucky school children still aren’t routinely taught about the Holocaust, and won’t be because after four years of trying all the Kentucky state house could do was pass a bill that suggests they learn about it. That was about as far as you could go without loosing the bigot vote, wasn’t it Kelly? And now you get to play civilized man for the cameras.
Whitaker said he regretted that Marx, who died last year at age 81, didn’t live to see passage of the bill.
If it’s too much to ask that your schools teach about what happened to six million Jews I suppose it’s way too much to ask that it also mention the unknown thousands of gay victims too. Especially when you and your fellow republicans need to be able to gay bash for votes every few years.
Another thing about the homosexual/Christian “issue” is that it seems to me that we Christians should be clear on the fact that asserting homosexuals should stop acting homosexual necessarily means asserting that they should spend their lives never knowing the loving intimacy with another that straight people enjoy and know to be the best and richest experience in life.
If I were gay, and I lived and behaved in the way most Christians (understandably!) defend as biblical, I would live alone. I wouldn’t wake up every morning next to my wife. I’d never hold hands with my wife. I’d never kiss my wife. I’d never cuddle with my wife. I’d not know the profound pleasure of every day growing older with my wife. Remaining as sinless as possible would, for me, mean never knowing love of the sort that all straight people, Christian or not, understand as pretty much the best thing life has to offer.
Again: I’m not saying that it’s manifestly absurd and even cruel to suggest that everyone within a broad swath of our population spend their lives in emotional and physical isolation. I believe in the tenets of Christianity as ferociously as any Christian in the world. All I’m saying is that, as far as I can tell, we Christians (insofar as we ever speak with one voice) are saying that it is morally incumbent upon homosexuals to spend their lives in emotional and physical isolation. I hear a lot of Christians asserting that gays and lesbians should stop acting like gays and lesbians. But I never hear anyone saying the unavoidable follow-up to that — saying what that really means — which is that gay and lesbian men and women should spend their lives never experiencing what people most commonly mean when they use the word “love.”
This is what I’ve been waiting to see…someone who believes the bible categorically forbids same sex relationships admit what that really means to gay people. Not babble that homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. Not witlessly deny that there is ever any fulfilling, romantic, body and soul and spirit component to same sex relationships. But honestly and seriously look at what denying intimate romantic love to gay people does to their lives, to their inner lives, to their heart and soul. To our spirit.
Someone who is at least willing to both see human beings when they look at us, and honestly acknowledge the hell we are being put through for the sake of these biblical passages, can be talked with.
Thank you Mr. Shore. I’ve been waiting for literally decades to see a Christian writer make this connection. Usually it’s just quickly glossed over. I think the reason why is pretty obvious.
When my mom passed away a few years ago, I inherited her diaries. We never discussed my sexual orientation…it was a Don’t Ask Don’t Tell household. I was, like her, raised a Baptist, and the time of my coming of age coincided, not coincidentally, with the period of my leaving the faith. What I expected to read in her diaries from that time was grief over my slow but steady walk away from our church. But no. Grief there was, but it was almost exclusively over how the bright and cheerful son she once had turned into a moody, sullen, angry young man. It makes me cry to read those entries.
When you take the possibility of love away from someone…what do they have left? Think about that, the next time you see an angry homosexual.
Bruce: Perfectly said. Just … perfect. And what a touching, heart-wrenching story.
Liberal Christians like Fred Clark have never had any trouble acknowledging the spiritual potential of same sex love. But they’re not generally biblical literalists. Hopefully I’ll see more of this from those in the coming years. The people who don’t care and just don’t want to know have had the stage for far too long.
Despite the fact that I still don’t have my college degree and that I struggled to make ends meet for most of my life working various low paying blue collar jobs, I suspect I could never pass myself off as "a man of the people", were it not for the shot of "Bartender’s Special" a very foxy bartender gave me once at Larry’s Lounge in D.C..
To run for president, you need to drink a lot…
I think it had Southern Comfort in it, which automatically gives me extra bonus populist points. Which is good, because I wouldn’t have touched that glass with a ten foot pool if I hadn’t been completely twitterpated by the guy who handed it to me, and having a drink with a cute guy in a gay bar penalizes me severely on populist points.
I spoke in an undergraduate class today. As a friend of mine has said a few times about her students, pretty soon you’re going to have to explain to them what the Lewinsky scandal was. This isn’t a comment on the quality of the students, just that the degree to which 19 year olds have shared cultural and historic experience with me is shrinking fast. Bush v. Gore happened when they were 11. What’s recent history to me is a vague recollection for them.
I suppose I need to stop comparing Bush and Reagan, let alone Nixon…
Three Cheers For Heterosexuality. Oh Come On Now…Cheer!
Via Pam’s House Blend… Brian Blair is the opponent of Kevin Beckner, the openly gay man running for the Hillsborough County Commission in Florida. The county is holding its Day of Silence in honor of 15-year-old hate crime victim Lawrence King this year, and naturally, as Pam puts it, "…the idea of kids engaging in a silent, passive act against violence, harassment and prejudice during the school day is just too much to bear for these people of apparently weak faith." Here’s what Blair has to say about it:
"I have always believed that all citizens are equal and should be treated accordingly. On the other hand, no group of citizens should be given government sanction and support to promote their social and sexual agenda upon the rest of us and especially, on our children."
"Considering the fact that the same school system does not want to allow just one Minute of Silence in the classroom for God, this is preposterous."
"Can you imagine asking for a ‘Day of Cheer for Heterosexuality?’ If no action is taken to change this policy, then perhaps it is time for another surgical strike from the majority; ‘A Day of Abstention’ from school participation might be considered."
Brian Blair brings a high degree of seriousness to American politics, and Florida politics especially, not simply because he is a defender of heterosexuality against the militant gay agenda, but also because he was once a WWE professional wrestler. Here’s a photo of Mr. Blair (on the left) in his role as part of the WWE "Killer Bees" team…
Can you imagine asking for a ‘Day of Cheer for Heterosexuality?
When you want it the most there’s no easy way out
When you’re ready to go and your heart’s left in doubt
Don’t give up on your faith
Love comes to those who believe it
And that’s the way it is
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