The way he tells the story, the first and only time Archbishop Peter J. Akinola knowingly shook a gay person’s hand, he sprang backward the moment he realized what he had done.
Archbishop Peter J. Akinola, right, internationally known for his harsh stance against homosexuality, with bishops in Abuja, Nigeria, in 2005.
Archbishop Akinola, the conservative leader of Nigeria’s Anglican Church who has emerged at the center of a schism over homosexuality in the global Anglican Communion, re-enacted the scene from behind his desk Tuesday, shaking his head
in wonder and horror.
“This man came up to me after a service, in New York I think, and said, ‘Oh, good to see you bishop, this is my partner of many years,’ ” he recalled. “I said, ‘Oh!’ I jumped back.”
Archbishop Akinola, a man whose international reputation has largely been built on his tough stance against homosexuality, has become the spiritual head of 21 conservative churches in the United States. They opted to leave the Episcopal
Church over its decision to consecrate an openly gay bishop and allow churches to bless same-sex unions. Among the eight Virginia churches to announce they had joined the archbishop’s fold last week are The Falls Church and Truro Church,
two large, historic and wealthy parishes.
In a move attacked by some church leaders as a violation of geographical boundaries, Archbishop Akinola has created an offshoot of his Nigerian church in North America for the discontented Americans…
And they’re contented with him? Well…yes. Yes they are…
He supports a bill in Nigeria’s legislature that would make homosexual sex and any public expression of homosexual identity a crime punishable by five years in prison.
The bill ostensibly aims to ban gay marriage, but it includes measures so extreme that the State Department warned that they would violate basic human rights. Strictly interpreted, the bill would ban two gay people from going out
to dinner or seeing a movie together.
It could also lead to the arrest and imprisonment of members of organizations providing all manner of services, particularly those helping people with AIDS.
It’s worth remembering that this was once the situation for gay people here in America. Never mind the sodomy laws and sex…you could literally be rounded up and herded into paddy wagons and then to jail simply for being in a bar or club that the police thought to be a homosexual gathering place. Many states, including Virginia, had or still have laws on the books forbidding bars and restaurants from serving known homosexuals. And despite the supreme court decision in Lawrence verses v. Texas, Virginia is Still trying to enforce in some measure, its sodomy laws. Without a doubt, the priests and common folk of those Virginia churches that voted to schism, did so with a longing for the good old days when a good homosexual was either a dead one, or one that was in jail.
But it gets even better. Look at this:
One of Archbishop Akinola’s principal arguments, often heard from other conservatives as well, is that Christianity in Nigeria, a country where religious violence has killed tens of thousands in the past decade, must guard its flank lest Islam overtake it. “The church is in the midst of Islam,” he said. “Should the church in this country begin to teach that it is appropriate, that it is right to have same sex unions and all that, the church will simply die.”
Wonderful. The reason we have to persecute homosexuals isn’t so much a biblical necessity, as a political one. Hatred of homosexuals is popular, and if we teach peace and goodwill and not casting the first stone and loving your neighbor and all the rest of that politically incorrect crap some radical named Jesus once taught, we’ll loose ground to the Islamicists who will gladly keep on playing on the hatreds of the masses. Someone should ask the Archbishop…no, wait, someone should ask the Virginia Episcopalians if this means they have to hate Jews as much as the Islamicists do too.
This is the man they’ve thrown themselves at, because their church started treating the gay people among them as something other then human garbage. This is their new Moses, delivering them to their promise land where homosexuals cannot so much as sit down together in public to eat without being arrested. But where persecution toward one group is made righteous, none are safe. The heathens are the people in the church across the street. The witch is your neighbor, who also sees a witch when they look back at you. When Jesus said we have to love our neighbor, I don’t think he was suggesting it as a feel-good exercise. Africa has suffered one horrific wave of genocide after another in recent decades, and it wasn’t because there was too much love to go around. It isn’t your flank you have to guard, it’s your soul. Evil rests within us all. The good person is the one who will not unleash it within themselves, or in others. When they speak in Virginia of their devotion to the faith, and to Christ, laugh in their faces.
The Westboro Baptist Church is coming to Baltimore. On Dec. 8 and 9 a handful of protesters from the Topeka, Kan., church will be outside the Baltimore School for the Arts on Cathedral Street in Mount Vernon to picket the school’s production of the play The Laramie Project.
The church is infamous for its anti-gay rhetoric (it operates a web site called www.godhatesfags.com) and it protests at the funerals of military personnel killed in Iraq. According to the church’s attorney, Shirley Phelps-Roper, Westboro Baptist protests the funerals because they want people to make the connection that the war "is where God is dealing with this nation for their rebellion against him." Such rebellion, she says, includes putting on productions of The Laramie Project, which is based on the murder of Matthew Shepard, a Wyoming man who was killed in 1998 for being gay. Phelps-Roper says of the play: "It’s got only one goal, and that’s to promote a perverse manner of life."
One of the most poignant moments in the play is the scene where the Phelps clan is busy waving their obscenity laced signs at the townspeople in front of the courthouse where Matthew Shepard’s murderers were being tried, and Romaine Patterson and about a dozen of her friends, dressed as angels with huge wings, step between Phelps and the townspeople, and turn their backs on the Phelps’, their wings blocking Phelps signs from view. So I’m sure The Laramie Project holds a special place on Fred’s little shit list.
Galileo was persecuted for revealing what we now know to be the truth regarding Earth’s place in our solar system. Today, the issue is homosexuality, and the persecution is not of one man but of millions. Will Christian leaders once again be on the wrong side of history?
Not all of them. The author Mary Renault once said that politics, like sex, is an expression of the person within. If you are mean and selfish and cruel she said, then that will show up in politics and it will show up in your sex life when what really matters is that you aren’t the sort of person who will behave like that. To that I would only add religion. If you are mean and selfish and cruel it will show up in your religious life, when what really matters is that you aren’t the sort of person who will behave like that. I realize this point of view rubs people who believe in the transforming power of faith the wrong way but it’s been my experience. When contemplating the Eternal, it’s pretty damn hard to separate what’s you, from what is trancendant, and that’s if you’re really trying. For most people, religion is a mirror, and you never know that better then when the discussion turns to homosexuality, and all of a sudden God just seems to agree with every cheapshit prejudice of the believer you’re talking to…
In the USA Today Opinion pages last week, Oliver "Buzz" Thomas, a Baptist minister and author of 10 Things Your Minister Wants to Tell You (But Can’t Because He Needs the Job), tried to reason with his fellow Christians. He might as well have been talking to the wind.
Christianity is not the problem. Christianity has nothing to do with the problem. Christians, just like any other group of random people anywhere, both do and do not accept the homosexual as their neighbor. For the ones that do their faith clarifies and illuminates and sustains that deeply felt need to love their neighbor, and stand with them when they are persecuted. For the ones that do not, Christianity provides an excuse, a cloth they can wrap the rotting core of their hatreds in, so they won’t have to look at it, won’t have to look at what they are becoming because of it. You try to take that cloth away from them and they’ll grip it with a ferociousness the likes of which you’ll never witness anywhere else. Because once that cloth is gone, they have to take responsibility for what they are, for they’ve done.
Last week, U.S. Roman Catholic bishops took the position that homosexual attractions are "disordered" and that gays should live closeted lives of chastity. At the same time, North Carolina’s Baptist State Convention was preparing to investigate churches that are too gay-friendly. Even the more liberal Presbyterian Church (USA) had been planning to put a minister on trial for conducting a marriage ceremony for two women before the charges were dismissed on a technicality. All this brings me back to the question: What if we’re wrong?
Religion’s only real commodity, after all, is its moral authority. Lose that, and we lose our credibility. Lose credibility, and we might as well close up shop.
It’s happened to Christianity before, most famously when we dug in our heels over Galileo’s challenge to the biblical view that the Earth, rather than the sun, was at the center of our solar system. You know the story. Galileo was persecuted for what turned out to be incontrovertibly true. For many, especially in the scientific community, Christianity never recovered.
This time, Christianity is in danger of squandering its moral authority by continuing its pattern of discrimination against gays and lesbians in the face of mounting scientific evidence that sexual orientation has little or nothing to do with choice. To the contrary, whether sexual orientation arises as a result of the mother’s hormones or the child’s brain structure or DNA, it is almost certainly an accident of birth. The point is this: Without choice, there can be no moral culpability.
This is reason’s case. It’s a good case. But it’s the wrong case to make to about half his audience. For the Christians who don’t hate, the evidence of science, and for that matter the lives of their homosexual neighbors, provides further cause to stand with the gay community, and speak out against persecution. But when you try to reason with the ones who just can’t see the people for the homosexuals, you’re talking right past them. Appeals to reason, appeals to the Christian faith, do not reach down to where the hate is. Mr. Thomas is not even talking to half of his audience. He’s talking past them.
For those who have lingering doubts, dust off your Bibles and take a few hours to reacquaint yourself with the teachings of Jesus. You won’t find a single reference to homosexuality. There are teachings on money, lust, revenge, divorce, fasting and a thousand other subjects, but there is nothing on homosexuality. Strange, don’t you think, if being gay were such a moral threat?
On the other hand, Jesus spent a lot of time talking about how we should treat others. First, he made clear it is not our role to judge. It is God’s. ("Judge not lest you be judged." Matthew 7:1) And, second, he commanded us to love other people as we love ourselves.
This is also reason’s case. The rules of evidence have merely changed from the scientific, to the theological. But it is still an appeal to reason.
Scroll down to the comments below his opinion article, and you can see what reasoning with bigots gets you…
Sodom and Gomorrah??? And you are a Baptist Preacher?? Shame on You. What would Jesus do? He’s already done it (Death, burial and resurrection) "Grace"! God’s Word is the same yesterday, today and forever. Choice is everyone’s decision: Heaven or Hell. This is the reason no one fear’s God, is pastors like you that is suppose to be preaching the Truth, are tickling the ears with what the people want to hear. All of us will stand before the Lord’s judgement; you and me included…….Now do your JOB! Their house is on fire….Tell them to come to the Lord for salvation. Talk about discrimination are you discriminating against GOD??? God won’t let you starve, if He Called you to the ministry? Have a good day.
In spite of what you try to "prove" and your smear tactics against good Christian people, Bible-believing Christians will NEVER accept your lies and propaganda for a sinful lifstyle which God Himself in the Bible condemns. Homosexulality is sin and no one is born with it. Your hatred of the church only reflects your own bias. I you want to promote this perversion you have a right to do so, but don’t condemn others who choose to believe the Bible instead of your lies and distortion!
Oliver Thomas seems to believe that disagreement with gays on matters of sexual beahvior is equivalent to persecution and bigotry. Since when is it a crime or a sin to hold certain standards of behavior, or to disagree with liberalized views of sexual conduct? When did Christianity require indulgence of urges strengthened by genetics? Why must Jesus expressly condemn an activity for churches to be justified in opposing it? (If that were the case, Christians would be compelled to accept substance abuse, pedophelia, pornography, and a whole host of other inborn attractions Jesus didn’t mention by name.)
Yes I am disappointed and I’ll get to that in a moment. What Oliver "Buzz" Thomas has forgotten are scriptures such as; [Romans 1:26-27]…
Ah yes…the Some Of My Best Friends Are defense…
I’m no homophobe or gay basher, I have had good friends that are gay, but I never compromised my standing on the word of God to accommodate their feelings. Believe it or not they actually over time appreciated the fact that I stuck firmly with my convictions and didn’t conform to what society sees as tolerance. I accepted them for who they were as people but not their sexual sin and they knew that from the beginning and know it still to this day. If I were to run into them again at the market we’d joyfully catch up on lost time and laugh at college memories.
The, Shoot Your Bible Verses Back At Them Like A Machine Gun approach…
Sexual immorality is explicitly discouraged in the Bible passages below. The full texts of a few representative verses from Paul’s genuine writings are included…
Old Testament
Exo 22:16,17
Deu 22:13-29
New Testament
1Co 6:15-20; 7:1,2
You know that your bodies are parts of the body of Christ. Shall I take a part of Christ’s body and make it part of the body of a prostitute? Impossible! Or perhaps you don’t know that the man who joins his body to a prostitute becomes physically one with her? The scripture says quite plainly, “The two will become one body.” But he who joins himself to the Lord becomes spiritually one with him. Avoid immorality. Any other sin a man commits does not affect his body; but the man who is guilty of sexual immorality sins against his own body. Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and who was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourselves but to God; he bought you for a price. So use your bodies for God’s glory. A man does well not to marry. But because there is so much immorality [from the Greek word porneia, Strongs #4202], every man should have his own wife, and every woman should have her own husband. (TEV)
In the last passage listed above, Paul commends marriage as a means to avoid "fornication" (KJV), "immorality" (NAB, NIV, REB, TEV), "sexual immorality" (NRSV), which is a translation of the Greek word porneia (Strong’s # 4202). That Greek word and its related Greek words porneuo (Strong’s # 4203), pornos (Strong’s # 4205), and ekporneuo (Strong’s #1608) are discouraged throughout the New Testament, as in the following verses:
New Testament
Mat 5:32
Mat 15:19
Mat 19:9
Mar 7:21
Joh 8:41
Act 15:20,29
Act 21:25
Rom 1:29
1Co 5:1,9,10,11
1Co 6:9,13,18
1Co 7:2
1Co 10:8
2Co 12:21
Gal 5:19
Eph 5:3
Col 3:5
1Th 4:3
Heb 12:16
Jude 1:7
Rev 2:14,20,21
Rev 9:21
Rev 14:8
Rev 17:2,4
Rev 18:3,9
Rev 19:2
Homosexual acts are explicitly discouraged in the Bible passages below. The full texts of a few representative verses from Paul’s genuine writings are included.
Old Testament
Lev 18:22-30
Lev 20:13
New Testament
Rom 1:24-27
24 God has given those people over to do the filthy things their hearts desire, and they do shameful things with each other. 25 They exchange the truth about God for a lie; they worship and serve what God has created instead of the Creator himself… 26 Because they do this, God has given them over to shameful passions. Even the women pervert the natural use of their sex by unnatural acts. 27 In the same way the men give up natural sexual relations with women and burn with passion for each other. Men do shameful things with each other, and as a result they bring upon themselves the punishment they deserve for their wrongdoing.
1Co 6:9,10
9 Surely you know that the wicked will not possess God’s Kingdom. Do not fool yourselves; people who are immoral or who worship idols or are adulterers or homosexual perverts [from the Greek word apsenokoites, Strong’s #733] 10 or who steal or are greedy or are drunkards or who slander others or are thieves—none of these will possess God’s Kingdom.
If you bother to look in the bible you will find problems for these kind of people. In God’s world they were not born this way. If I was a gay male I would start looking at women closer and become a member of God’s Church, and If I was a gay female I would look closer at men and become a member of God’s church.
First, Poppycock! Second, I am sick of the Matthew 7:1 argument…
Third, yes Jesus never mentions homosexuality per se. He does, however, discuss adultery several times.
Just another liberal screed trying to downplay religion and lift up their homosexual agenda. There is a reason that homosexuality has been looked down upon by almost every civilization and religion. It’s is against god’s will and nature. Homosexuals can’t reproduce so they have to coopt your children to advance their agenda and the bible is a major stumbling block in their way, so that is why the attacks on religion and the bible.
There’s this old joke about how protestantism represents the ascendancy of Paul over Peter, and protestant fundamentalism represents the ascendancy of Paul over Christ…
Mr. Thomas you do yourself quite a disservice by showing your complete ignorance of scriptures. First of all, the Old Testament law was given to the Jewish nation and it was never expected that non-Jewish individuals would follow these laws. So for you to say that if I apply the verse in Leviticus 18 and therefore I must therefore keep the whole law shows you incompetence in interpreting and applying scripture. Paul explicitly tells the Gentile converts in New Testament that they were under no obligation to keep the law (see Galatians 2 and 3)of the Old Testament.
Sir, I will never make any apologies for my beliefs because there is no need for me to do so since my beliefs can be backed up by the word of God.
Gay, Homosexuals whatever, you trust in the lord, your way is wrong, but he still loves you, while I find you kind of sickening. Ya see, I am not performing according to God’s plan by my feeling as I do.
And for anyone who thinks religion is a cause of prejudice, and not just another one of its excuses…
What I don’t understand is how homosexuality differs from any other congenital birth defect or condition (ie downs syndrome, spina bifida, or any of the myriad of other birth defects). Something goes wrong in the development of the fetus and alters the funtioning of the brain. So while it’s debatable whether or not their behavior is moral or immoral I don’t think there’s any reason why there shouldn’t be research into preventing whatever changes the brain chemistry in the first place. Homosexuality is a disease… we shouldn’t be embracing it… we should be looking to cure/prevent it.
hate the sin, not the sinner.
to know the LORD is to fear…to fear the LORD is to love…to love the LORD is to obey his comandments.
You may believe there is a God and in Jesus, but this is not enough, you must make a formal commitment to them. Remember Jesus says there is no way to the Father except thru me. There must be a vocal (or prayer) some action by you to make a commitment. Your belief only may leave you in a place you do not want to be. You may say I believed, why am I being denied eternal life. For some belief may be enough, but for others there is eternal death. Some of us who claim to be Christians may not receive eternal life (I may be one I do not know). My wife tells me I am to judgemental. Maybe I should listen closer. Anyway go to a bible study and find out why you should be a Christian.
Take the following steps!
In my belief there are two steps to becoming a member of God’s family. Formally accepting Jesus as savior, (I believe Jesus is the Christ the son of the liveing God, I believe in my heart he is Lord and God raised him from the dead).
Be, Baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
You have been forgiven at this point and the Holy Spirit now lives within you, to give you strength and help you in your sinful ways which will require much prayer.
As a straight woman, I don’t understand what it’s like to be attracted to the same sex, but I have had conversations with those who have never felt any other way. However, as a Christian, I do believe in the Bible’s condemnation of homosexuality, and fornication, adultery, etc.
Even if I followed your line of logic that some people can’t help it, how far should we extend these "rights"? What’s never addressed is the "gay today, gone tomorrow" crowd, who argue for gay "rights" while only temporarily in gay relationships.
Ann Heche (straight, gay, straight again…Julie Cyphers, married to Lou Diamond Phillips, "married" to Melissa Etheridge, now married to a man again…) the list goes on. If we’re supposed to believe that gay people can’t love anyone of the opposite sex, these actors aren’t very good ambassadors for the cause.
I’m apt to believe that hormones gone awry explain at least some cases of homosexuality. The stereotypically effeminate man or masculine woman, (no bra, short hair, no makeup, etc.) would fall into that category. I have even seen people whose sex is hard to determine at first glance. This of course does not excuse any form of sexual immorality, adultery or fornication, gay or straight.
What those who believe in gay marriage are really asking for is nothing less than acceptance of their behavior. Tolerance already exists. (And please dont bring up Matthew Sheppard – his murderer admitted that he only killed him for money; didn’t even know he was gay!)
If gay "marriages" were allowed, children could be taught in schools that these are perfectly acceptable lifestyles. I don’t claim to know what it’s like to feel "gay", but I also don’t want 6 year olds recruited into the lifestyle.
Mr. Thomas there is NO conclusive scientific evidence that homosexuals are born that way. 60 Minutes did a piece on this very subject a few months ago and these scientific theories were all over the place. (1) Its the mother’s fault — hormonal imbalance or triggers during pregnancy. However, on this program they showed faternal twins (same mother, same hormones) who had different sexual orientations. (2) Its in the DNA: again identical twins who share the same DNA — one is gay the other is heterosexual. (3) And there was the big brother theory which supposedly says the more big brothers a man has the more likely he is to be gay. Again, how do you explain the eldest brother being gay or no brothers being gay?
It was also interesting that NOT ONE of these theories explain lesbianism. According, to the scientist spouting this nonesense, when they viewed the dna of lesbians, looked at the hormonal balance/triggers/whatever of their birth mothers, or the status of their sisters — they could find no genetic reason to explain lesbianism. So where does that leave these scientific theories?
Mr. Thomas you have the absolute right to defend the practices of homosexuality. However, please do not mislead individuals reading your op-ed or other works that this practice can be backed up by science because that IS A LIE.
Finally, if you and others want to embrace homosexuality as a right, privilege, or whatever you see it as — fine, great, bravo, and more power to you. However, please do not lecture to me or tell me that I need to or will need to apologize to anyone because of my belief in God’s word.
The Scripture also says, "Fornicators and adulterers God will judge." Jesus doesn’t address homosexuality, because in the world of the Hebrew, that’s a "no brainer." If God condemned it as an abomination, and if He is not the author of sin or evil, it follows that He stands against it now.
With the author’s convoluted logic, God will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.
We, like the apostle Paul, should determine in our minds to know nothing save Jesus Christ and him crucified [1]; but what does this mean? For Paul, and every preacher, preaching Christ crucified is condemning, among many things, homosexuality. How do I know that?
In 1 Corinthians 6:9, Paul did not only condemn homosexuality in general, but got REALLY SPECIFIC by naming the “effeminate” or catamite (PASSIVE homosexual partner) and “abusers of themselves with mankind” or sodomite (ACTIVE homosexual partner). Who can misunderstand and misapply Paul’s word under inspiration?
Obviously, Mr. Thomas is tickling many ears having turned aside unto fables [2], which is great for crowd seekers because the world hears them [3]. Mr. Thomas, you need to remember, “Let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we shall receive a stricter judgment” [4]. Do your homework. Preach the word. Have backbone. Quit tickling ears.
I could easily address your abuse of other points e.g. Leviticus, Jesus & love, Mt. 7:1; but I want to keep this response short to be read by all.
It’s the truth, not fables, that makes men free [5].
[1] 1 Corinthians 2:2
[2] 2 Timothy 4:3-4
[3] 1 John 4:5
[4] James 3:1 NKJV
[5] John 8:32
We find ourselves living in a society, where the moral climate is at it’s lowest point (2 timothy 3:1-5). There are several million people on this plantet, Earth, who still have a love for God and His Word. True lovers of God’s Word are now in the minority but they will be vindicate and so will Almighty God and His Son Jesus Christ. The family arrangement will perish if They do not bring an end to the selfish greed and depraved sexual appetite of those, who "claim" that God made them that way!!
How sad that a so called "minister of God" feels justified to support this "lifestyle" that the Word of God clearly condemns. If a heterosexual couple who are not married is condemned, how much more so a homosexual one!! God is not one to be mock, whatever a man sows, he will reap-Galatians 6:7.
Any religion claiming to be christain should have the courage to stand up for Almighty God and His Son Jesus Christ and not allow the moral climate to shape their views!!
The following individuals did not allow the world to shape their moral stand or views.
Foremost Jesus Christ, Moses, Abraham, Apostle Paul just to name a few.
If we are ashamed of God, he will be ashamed of us and not acknowledge us. That is a dangerous position to be in. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God-Hebrews 10:31
Another Some Of My Best Friends Are…
A few thoughts for you and others to consider. 1)Your intentional selective Scipture usage is interesting in that this is exactly what you usually accuse the "bible beleivers" of doing. There are much more difficult passages in the Bible for you and others who agree with you to consider. I know you are aware of them, but instead of intelligent, informed dialogue, you chose selective banter that only seduces the uninformed. Jesus certainly didn’t speak on homosexuality, but that is only an argument from silence, which isn’t very convincing. If your reliance on science is so strong, maybe you ought to investigate the false claims of scientist throughout history and the damage they have caused as well. Investigate the claim that five years from now nearly half of what is claimed to be scientific fact will be disproved.
In Romans, Paul writes of the corrupted nature of man from birth. The idea that every one of us is predisposed to sin. The mere discovery of something that the Bible has claimed for centuries doesn’t change what sin is nor does it change our response to it. I do believe that homosexuality is outside of God’s desire for His creation. I also believe that Christ calls us to compassion for those that disagree with me. I am a local pastor with homosexual friends and a fellow staff member who struggles with homosexuality. He is one of my best friends. Can anyone speak the truth on the matter and have compassion without trying to make a political point? You are intentional in what you write and don’t write. To me your silence speaks so loud it is hard to read your words.
I give an "amen" to the person who reminded everyone that just because Christians view homosexuality as a sin, they are not "persecuters." Be reasonable! I am a Christian and do not for a minute think I will be able to understand the difficult trial of same-sex attraction. However, we are all sinners, we all have our individual hardships, temptations, lusts etc. For homosexuals, if they feel this is not a choice, then maybe they should focus not on the cause, but how to live in accordance with God’s law. I am not Catholic, and they certainly are not the moutpiece for all Christian religions, however I applaud them for standing firm with Biblical doctrine and not be swept up in what pop culture wants to feel is ok. The bottom line is if we want to be happy, we must obey God’s commandments. We cannot treat the commandments like a buffet, picking and choosing what is easiest for us to obey, and expect to feel satisfied. Wickedness never was happiness.
Here we go again. Pick out the parts you don’t like, inflate the ones you do and call it scholastic whatever. Agchhh. That’s an expression of disgust combined with frustration. It is because these so called "Men of God" lack the courage to apply the important spirit of the scripture, while amplifying the value of the "spices and mints", so to speak. It is in-obvious to these particular brand of "Pharise opaques", the ones who justify homosexual lust-gratification, that is, that the overall meaning and lesson in the Bible is the negation of the animal, or in more modern terms, carnal, in human nature. While they trumpet restraint in wrath, so long as it is not against their particular "natural-ness". While they limit lust, so long as it is not against children, yet. While they desparge greed, against the lastest poster children for oppression. And while they consult the latest trend, without thinking, of course, as to who or what they should be "against" in any particular month, week, day or hour, they do seem to forget that Christ told them that there is a Ghenna for those who do not seek him. If they believe they can do so while making "love" to the same sex, or children or animals or themselves or money or whatever, what person can argue to change them? If they believe that there is no righteous wrath, no one, not even Christ himself as to His correction of the Pharises, can turn them from their self directedness. They are what they are. Rationalized animals, the carnal self-purified and the makers of their own god and religion. It is the same as it has always been, with the only change being the technical mass media distribution of so polarized a view by so many that have been inculcated into the "sacredness" of our carnal roots. These are the same that would have pronounce "sin" upon Christ for whipping the money changers from the Temple. They never would have guessed they were defining "sin" upon the ultimate definer, of them, and, lest we forget, us.
I hear it all the time: "Wishful thinking" presented as fact – that homosexuals cannot help themselves; that they are born that way and that their is "scientific" evidence indicating a genetic basis. On the contrary, there is NO solid scientific evidence and what little there is has been effectively refuted. Why also doesn’t the liberal community want us to know what EX-GAYs have to say and how they fell into the lifestyle? Most will tell you that they were subjected to some form of dramatic emotional trauma (ie., parental or peer rejection and sometimes molestation) that caused them to go into a kind of self-defense withdrawal. One man said his dad always put incredible pressure on him as a youth to excel in sports…but he had no interest. Eventually his dad (and other boys) essentially rejected him, calling him a wimp. He withdrew and found relative safety in the company of his mother, sister and other girls that seemed to understand his emotions. He longed for the love and acceptance of his father and eventually tried to substitute other men for it. He also stated that the gay lifestyle means hundreds of gay partners but ultimately the lifestyle is empty, lonely and unfullfilling. His journey out was not easy because its emotional and mental…but there is a way out. He and many others are living proof.
The idea that got Galileo in trouble with the Roman church, that the earth is the center of the Universe, was from Aristotle and not the Bible. Such human philosophy invaded the church and was partly responsible for the Reformation. This makes the author’s main premise that science is superior to the Bible in this case null and void. After this absurdity he then tries replace biblical teachings again with human philosophy. This would recreate the same error he was trying to condemn. Anyone who thinks this article has any merit needs to take a logic course.
Now the bottom line is this? Should we change every law that exists to accomodate a group of people who are living outside what is considered the legal bonds of marriage. NO. We wouldn’t do if for other special interest groups. If they want to live together as companions and partners, then finding a way to make it work for them is part of the burden of choosing that lifestyle. Because whether they like it or not, homosexuality may not be a choice; maybe it is something that happens at birth, but deciding to live a gay lifestyle is a choice. If being gay wasn’t a bad thing, then why do so many homosexuals say that they tried to live a heterosexual lifestyle; made every attempt to live straight? Why did they not tell anyone when they were very young and first had those strange attractions to the wrong sex? Because something within their own PERSONAL moral structure let them know it was wrong. The apostle Paul said in Romans that "nature itself lets us know there is a God." Nature also lets us know the lifestyle that God ordained for man to live. You rarely see two male dogs trying to mate…they would kill each other.
Anyway. I love you. Whether you are gay, lesbian, straight, Pentecostal, Church of Christ, Church of God, Mormon, Seventh Day Adventist, Catholic: I love you because I love HIM, and he has allowed me the capacity to love you all.
Now one last word for "Buzz." SHUT UP!
If I am travelling South on I-75 and I approach an exit from the flowing highway I must choose to leave it. But my journey has begun with me travelling south on I-75.
If I am alive I am on a heterosexual journey. I do not need to choose to be heterosexual, I am. I must however choose to exit that journey.
Homosexuality is a choice, and a sin. And the fact that I don’t choose to be hetrosxual does not disprove homosexuality’s status as a choice.
I believe in compassion and acceptance, but not absolution. Those who are debating the scripture are demonstrating their lack of understanding of a very complex issue regarding God’s law as reveled across time. The Bible does teach against homosexuality from a variety of perspectives, and does not contradict itself in doing so.
The scientific community says that alcoholism is in the genes and murderers have a gene that makes them predisposed to kill. Let’s just say that everything is OK. It sure makes it hard to figure out what a morally pure life is. I guess you have all the answers and we have had it wrong for years.
When it comes to tolerance, where is yours?
The problem with this very old tactic is that Mr. Thomas discredits the Bible in order to discredit Leviticus, then appeals to that very same Bible (presumably Matthew, Mark etc.) in order to support his position on homosexuality. This "Cafeteria" approach to Scripture supposes that some Scripture is wrong while other scripture is right. Thus Scripture is only inspired in spots, a so-called "Dalmatian theology". The problem with this faulty approach is the question of who decides what parts of scripture are inspired or right and what parts are wrong. In his article, Mr. Thomas has appointed himself the supreme determiner of Biblical rightness. Thank you, but I will let Scripture determine that for itself.
Mr. Thomas if you want to condone homosexuality that is your God given right but don‘t “try“ to change “The Word of God“ to fit your beliefs? The Bible says we were all born sinners.
It is irrelevant that a person is born gay. Your sin may have included homosexuality etc.., mine included lying, fornication etc… Thank God I had parents and “The Word of God” to give me standards to live by or I would still be a liar today. The problem is, who is teaching someone who is born gay, that it is wrong. Someone needs to teach a pedophile, yes, you may be attracted to little children, but it is wrong. I don’t believe that a person wakes up one morning and yawns and says “I think I will be attracted to little children today”. No, they were born that way. Does that make it alright? Are there any studies being conducted on that subject?
There is good news for the homosexual, the pedophile, and the liar you don’t have to be.
To every person who has made up their minds to live life their own way and not according to “Godly Principles”. There is no need to argue. It is your God given choice.
Ironically, homosexuality is one area where religion and science agree. Contrary to what the author states, a close reading of scientific literature shows there is NO scientific PROOF that homosexuality is innate, genetic, inborn or biologically pre-determined (scientists are backing off from the gay gene theory). There is ample "common sense" evidence that homosexuality is, however, very harmful to people involved, witness the AIDS crisis and numerous diseases such as anal cancer for which homosexual men are at greater risk.
No one is born homosexual. With that being said, no one chooses to be homosexual either. It is like other psychologcial issues, a matter of development, beginning with childhood. But no one has to be homosexual. I know this because I am a man who left homosexuality. I am not just talking about behavior here, but patterns of sexual response and fantasy. I can’t say it was easy but it can be done. A truly liberal and tolerant approach would make people aware of this alternative. This is the message that needs to get out to people yet is rarely, if ever, heard.
With all due respect, I believe you’ve been "bonging the yahe"( When religion loses its crdibility 11/20/06). Comparing Galileo with gay rights is an absurd straw man argument. You want to talk persecution?… try being a devoted follower of Jesus in secularized American society today. As for Christianity’s moral authority, try admonishing anyone by quoting from the Bible…you might get a blank stare and a laugh. I don’t know where you are getting your "fact" and "truth", but I am not aware of a "gay gene" being discovered…scientists who have spent years studying this issue, simply do not know. Sure there may be a predetermination at an early age, but an argument from nature is flawed, because as everyone (not just Christians, Jews and Muslims) knows, nature is flawed. As for your quoting from Scripture, the Law ( for followers of the Christ) is fulfilled in Jesus…so we are not under the law, but not free of moral living (Acts 15), including sexual morals in the context of Hebrew Biblical morality. Of course,if you are not a follower of Christ, this doesn’t apply to you and you can ignore it like you ignore the letters of St. Paul, etc. Unfortunately your article, to me, supports what the " Religious Right" has been saying about a " Homosexual Agenda"…biased judgemental statements without hard scientific proof used to attack the demonized " narrow-minded, Bible thumping Christians", etc. I don’t think this email has much of a chance of being published in USA Today, but I thought I would try and check your open mind.
If Mr. Thomas has proved anything from his essay, it is his complete ignorance of the Bible. There is no text in scripture stating that the Earth is the center of the solar system; the Bible makes no mention of a solar system, and never states that planets go around anything. Venus, Mars, and Jupiter are never discussed. Galileo was persecuted by the mediaeval Roman Catholic Church, an organization dominated by tradition, not scripture; an organization that burned many people alive for reading the Bible or translating it into the language of the common people. Going on, eating catfish might have been forbidden by Leviticus, but there was no death penalty stated for this offence, or for many others. Premarital sex might have been forbidden, but if the two were single, the penalty was not death, but rather marriage forthwith to the partner in question. Mr Thomas totally fails to catch the basic distinction made by the New Testament regarding ceremonial laws specially applicable to the Jewish nation at that time (cf Acts 15), and moral laws which applied to all humans for all time (see Jesus’ statements, Matthew 5, the Sermon on the Mount). Jumping with Mr Thomas to Genesis, it is stated that everything that God made was good. This statement was made at Creation, and not after the Fall or the entrance of sin into the world. Mr Thomas and his logic would imply that rapists and child molesters are good, since God made them. Traveling to Romans 1 or any other references by Paul to homosexuality, there is absolutely no hint that minors are being discussed by Paul; it is another wishful dream by the august reverend to try to prove his desired conclusion. Homosexuality, with no special qualifications, bells, or whistles, is held forth as a prime example of the moral depravity of the Gentile world, and all who engaged in that sin or many other sins listed there, at the conclusion of the chapter are declared to be worthy of death. Mr Thomas begs to argue that Jesus never mentions homosexuality. Nor does he mention rape. Guess Jesus thought that rape was a very trivial thing. Get a brain. Garbage in, garbage out.
I have no doubt homosexual desire is genetic. I also have no doubt that if medical science bothered to look, it would find genetic links to all of mankind’s evil desires. God created a perfect man and woman, but their own choice to sin condemned their offspring to be imperfect. The obvious way that this imperfection is passed down is through the now-imperfect genetic code.
A complete reading of the Bible leaves no doubt that God is Love, but He is also Perfectly Just. Jesus was compasionate to sinners, but He left no doubt that sin keeps man separated from God, and that only by believing in His Perfect Sacrifice could man be saved from God’s Judgement. To quote (completely) from the Gospel when the adulerous woman was accused: "…neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more."
There is much more…Thomas’ opinion piece really opened up the sewers…but in a way it was all worth it, for this one response, from a reader named David. Here’s the bedrock of pain, right here. Here’s what this piss ignorant worthless useless sickening prejudice does to people, to families, to the bond between parent and child. Here is why I am not a Christian. I simply cannot follow Jesus where I’m pretty sure he would want me to go. He would say I need to forgive, and I cannot. This is why:
I thought some might be interested in what happened when I sent this article to my Christian family. First, the response from my older sister. Second, the response from my dad.
David,
Do you not realize how painful it is to receive something like this from you? Your lifestyle choice is your choice; I don’t agree with it, but it is your choice. In fact, I am very sad for you. You will never experience the joy of marriage, or the joy of becoming a father. The family name, Peery, has ended with our generation. You have lost your excitement for living the Christian life. Need I remind you that you were the head of the Christian club in high school; started the Christian group, the Core, at Santa Clara; worked at Hume Lake Christian Camp; and worked at a Baptist Church. Were all these Christian activities a cover-up for your true soul?! I’m not sure what turned you away from living the Christian lifestyle. If I recall correctly, you even were considering becoming a youth pastor. When I listen to my Christian music on my way to work many days I nearly come to tears when I think about you when listening to many of the words in the songs. I wonder how the evil one took hold of you, but I will never lose the faith that you will return and come to your senses. I only hope it is not too late. I think of our very own Uncle Jim and how he lost his life over making the decisions he did. I don’t know how, knowing that, you could repeat the cycle of this.
It’s not me who has to live your life; it is you and you alone. I don’t send you articles on how morally correct it is to be heterosexual; therefore, I don’t appreicate you sending me articles on how morally correct it is to be homosexual.
I will continue to pray for you in hopes that you might change. Until then, I am very sad for you.
Sarah
Hi David,
For yourself, don’t you think that homosexuality was a choice you made?
I’ve read up on a lot of scientific claims about homosexuality. The arguments I’ve read are weak at best. This article doesn’t cite specific scientific claims. If you want to, we can discuss the various studies.
Environment and family life are big factors too. Relationships with fathers are a huge factor. Were there people who influenced you?
Sodomy is discouraged all over the Bible; but the Corinthian church had some who came out of that lifestyle:
"Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God." I Cor 6:9-11
Homosexual sin is like heterosexual sin is just like a lot of other sins. Jesus can forgive it all if you ask for forgiveness. Let Jesus do the changing.
You are my son. I am proud of many things you do. I love you. God has used you in the past and wants to do great things through you in the future. The homosexual thing is not the real you. The scars will be there for a long time but it doesn’t have to define you. I hope we can talk more about it in the future.
Jesus said, "Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne." Rev. 3:19-21. Jesus won’t barge in; he waits outside until the guy inside opens the door.
I won’t put you on the spot this Thanksgiving. You’re welcome here anytime. If you want to discuss more then or at another time, let me know.
Love,
Dad
Love. There is no knife that cuts like the one families wield upon each other. Strangers can beat the living crap out of you, can take your life away from you. But only family can chew your heart up, and spit it back out again in shreds. Love. Look at it. And if you are brave, consider that this is Exactly what the gutter means by it. If you’re not bleeding, then we’re not loving you enough…
Picture Minister Thomas trying to patiently reason with David’s father…a man who is slowly twisting the knife in his son’s gut out of…oh not hate surely, but Love. The problem is that you even think you can reason with a man who would do that to his own son, after having absolutely convinced himself of his own compassion in doing it. The more the kid hurts, the more Dad is loving him. And it is especially useless to reason with such as him from religious faith. All this man’s religion ever did for him, was take away his brakes. That was probably all he needed it for. Otherwise, how else could he put the knife in his son’s heart and still look at himself in the bathroom mirror every morning? In the end, Blaise Pascal said it best when he remarked that "men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." But the religious conviction did not put the evil there. It was merely waiting for something to come along, and give it purpose.
To appeal to someone’s better nature, they first have to have one. And now you know why you can’t bring reason to a knife fight.
…and why I’m so thrilled that our gutter crawling bigot of a Governor John Ehrlich got the boot last Tuesday. In May of 2005, Ehrlich vetoed a domestic partnership bill, saying it would "…open the door to undermine the sanctity of traditional marriage." This was, some of us noted, at a time when he was conducting a whisper smear campaign against the family of Baltimore Mayor O’Malley, who everyone figured would be his democratic challenger in the upcoming election. Ehrlich and his henchmen spread lies that O’Mally was having secret extramarital affairs utterly without concern for the effect on O’Malley’s wife and children. So much for the sanctity of marriage.
Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. vetoed a bill yesterday that would have granted rights to gay partners who register with the state, concluding after weeks of intense deliberations that the legislation threatened "the sanctity of traditional marriage."
The emotionally charged bill was among 24 that Ehrlich (R) rejected yesterday afternoon, including legislation to raise the state’s minimum wage by $1, allow early voting in elections and heighten oversight of the state’s troubled juvenile justice system. Another measure sought by gay rights activists that would have extended a property transfer tax exemption to domestic partners was also scuttled.
(Emphasis mine) His staff made a big noise to the news media afterward that he would "probably" sign the bill adding gay people to Maryland’s anti-discrimination laws. But that was another of his little moves to the middle made only when he knew he had no choice. The statehouse would have overridden a veto of that particular bill and he knew it. But it was useful to put the word out there that he’d sign it, because he’d just made a move which shocked, shocked, the chattering class…
Ehrlich’s decision to side, almost without exception, with business interests and social conservatives surprised some analysts, who thought he might try to burnish his credentials as a moderate by allowing some of the session’s more controversial bills to become law.
Most of the legislation vetoed yesterday had been strongly opposed by Republican lawmakers. But Ehrlich’s appeal to swing voters was key to his 2002 election in a state where registered Democrats still hold a nearly 2-to-1 advantage.
"I think it’s just breathtaking that he’s casting his lot with the right wing of his party," said Tom Hucker, executive director of Progressive Maryland…"He ran for governor as the moderate, affable son of an automobile dealer who would stick up for working-class families."
No it wasn’t breathtaking. It was eminently predictable. Ehrlich ran as a moderate. But he wasn’t. A simple glance at his political career would have made it obvious to anyone. He’s pure Ellen Sauerbrey Republican, and there are no moderates in the Maryland republican party since the Sauerbrey wing took it over.
A leading Republican lawmaker praised him for making "a principled decision."
"I know the governor wrestled with this decision because he may be sympathetic to some of the intentions," said House Minority Whip Anthony J. O’Donnell (R-Calvert). "But sometimes bad laws are the result of good intentions."
Modeled after laws in California, Hawaii and other states, the legislation would have granted nearly a dozen rights to unmarried partners who register with the state. Among those: the right to be treated as an immediate family member during hospital visits, to make health care decisions for incapacitated partners and to have private visits in nursing homes.
A principled decision. Anyone who knows a same sex couple, knows exactly the threat that constantly hangs over them from their lack of legal recognition…
A woman who could have benefited from the bill, Stacey Kargman-Kaye of Baltimore, said yesterday that she was heartbroken. "I don’t understand how a human being who has a significant other and children could not see the need for this," she said.
Kargman-Kaye, 37, said that after she emerged from heart surgery five years ago, a nurse literally pushed away her longtime partner, who was there to support her, "because we’re not considered a family in the eyes of Maryland."
But republicans just can’t seem to twist the knife in us enough…
A group of conservative activists had launched a petition drive in recent weeks that sought to repeal the bill if it became law. They argued that it was part of a "homosexual agenda" advancing in Annapolis. Maryland allows residents to put legislation passed by the General Assembly to a public vote if enough signatures are gathered.
Del. Donald H. Dwyer Jr. (R-Anne Arundel), a leader of the petition drive, said organizers would soon decide whether to continue, in case lawmakers override Ehrlich’s veto in January. Dwyer said he was "very pleased that the governor has sent a strong message about the morality of the state."
Dwyer had been puking anti-gay venom into the Maryland statehouse for years now, and I am delighted to say he lost in his bid for re-election this year. Good riddence. Perhaps the voters in Anne Arundel Country had just about enough of his brand of morality…
A gay Baltimore man has won a courtroom battle to keep his late partner buried in the Tennessee grave the two men chose.
But the victory is not absolute. Kevin-Douglas Olive said the parents of Russell Groff have indicated they plan to appeal the Nov. 2 ruling that Olive received Thursday.
“This is awesome,” Olive said. “It may not be over if they appeal, but I feel so good.”
Baltimore City Orphans’ Court Judge Karen Friedman ruled against Lowell and Carolyn Groff, who sought to overturn their son’s will and move his body to a family cemetery.
Groff’s parents argued in court Sept. 25 and 26 that their 26-year-old son didn’t know what he was doing when he completed his will and burial instructions shortly before his death on Nov. 23, 2004.
Groff, who was HIV-positive, died from a staph infection that spread throughout his body.
Olive said Groff was estranged from his parents at the time of his death, and completed a will and burial instructions in anticipation of the legal battle.
So he knew what he was doing all right. He knew his own parents would try to take him from the man he loved after death. And they tried. And they might Still succeed. Morality.
Olive, who married Groff according to local Quaker tradition in 2003, said his battle illuminates the need for equal marriage rights for gay couples.
“I won, but I wouldn’t have had to go through this at all if the state had some sort of provision that allowed my partner and I to have legalized our relationship in some sense,” he said. “This is kind of bittersweet because I had to go through a lot of shit to get this.”
A principled decision… That simple Quaker marriage of two young men in love in 2003 did nothing, Nothing to harm the marriage of any heterosexual couple in this state, or anywhere else. It takes nothing away from anyone save for this one thing: the ability to twist the knife in the broken heart of a gay person who has just lost the love of their lives. There is no pain like the loss of a loved one. What kind of person wants to make that bottomless loss even harder for someone to bear? What kind of person sees righteousness in it?
You have to utterly dehumanize the person who suffers. (Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex…) But before you can do that, you have to take your conscience around behind the barn and kill it. And you do that, so you can make other people scapegoats for everything fine and noble and honorable that a human being could be, that you could never live up to. All your cheap failures of character, all your pathetic evasions of reality, all those need a scapegoat. Otherwise, you’ve only yourself to blame. And the best scapegoat of all, the one you can hate the most without reservation, is the one who faced their life squarely, honestly, and honorably, and became everything a human being can, that you could never be. It isn’t the sanctity of marriage but the sanctity of gay bashing that they’re afraid of loosing. Because if we don’t bleed, if we can’t be made to bleed, then they’re not righteous.
There are attributes of marriage that same-sex couples will never achieve. But in the minds of radical activists, getting the label and a piece of paper saying so will be close enough.
For instance, a woman who engages in lesbianism will never know the joy of lovemaking that creates within her the product of that union — an actual human life. She will never know the security of a true man protecting her from the dragons of the world and providing for her an environment where she can nurture and give love to that little life once it arrives, or the stamp of approval that God puts on such an experience. And because she and her partner know this, they must defy reason, biology and sexual function to create children and experiences that serve as faulty substitutes for that God-ordained picture.
You have to figure a true man is someone who prefers his women helpless, which somehow doesn’t make any sense but then expecting sense from a brick brained idiot like Kevin McCullough (the author) is a bit like expecting a pig to shit pearls. McCallough isn’t just pissing on the happy couplehood of lesbians there, but also every heterosexual couple that cannot have children of their own too. So any children they manage to have must also serve only as faulty substitutes for the God-ordained picture thing.
You need to notice this: What McCullough is saying there, is that Any Child not naturally brought into a family can only be a faulty substitute for the Real Thing. Adopted children cannot be loved and cherished like Real Children can. Children conceived by various medical means likewise cannot be loved and cherished like Real Children. Their families can never be as loving, as caring, as nurturing as Real Families can…they can only be faulty substitutes for the God Ordained picture thing. You have to love how, in attacking the households of gay couples, these gutter crawling maggots show just how much they regard themselves as holier then…well…just about everyone else, not just gays. And if you think they don’t mean their rhetoric to apply equally to childless heterosexual couples too, think again.
But even when it comes to reason, biology, and sexual function, McCullough doesn’t get it right.
Likewise, a man who seeks his perverse kicks by depositing the seed of life in, shall we say, non-life-giving cavities, may know orgasm, but never complete union, as he uses anatomy in ways for which the Creator did not create it.
It’s called the prostate gland Kevin. Massaging the prostate gland, which is what happens during a certain kind of male to male sex, can bring a human male to a right dandy orgasm. Now…I am unaware of any other gland in the human body that will produce such a result when it’s rubbed. In fact, most of them will probably produce a sharp stab of pain when you do that to them. But not that particular gland, in that particular location in the male anatomy. The conclusion is obvious. God did, in fact, intend for males to be fucked. It probably helps if they’re gay though.
I keep bringing up the prostate because it’s something worth paying attention to. It wasn’t lax moral standards that did that. It wasn’t hedonism. It wasn’t Godlessness. It was millions of years of adaptive evolution that gave that to human males, even the ones with absolutely no use for it at all. Or, if you don’t believe in evolution, fine. Then God did it. But there it is. If you’re going to go on a pulpit thumping rant about God’s design, the fucking take some notice of God’s design willya? Open your goddamn eyes every now and then and fucking take a look at what God hath wrought…okay? Just a suggestion.
By coincidence I came across this article in the Economist just prior to reading that Pam’s House Blend post, which seems to do nothing more then idly wonder why homosexuality exists in nature. It starts off with a pretty good observation though…
WHAT is taught in a country’s schools reveals much about the national psyche. The Norwegian curriculum requires that all 14-year-olds learn about homosexuality. Assisting with this education, the National History Museum at the University of Oslo has just opened an exhibition of gay animals.
“Against Nature?” does not tell zoologists anything new. Homosexuality has been recorded in some 1,500 species so far, and been well documented in about a third of these cases; it has been known since the time of Aristotle, who thought he witnessed two male hyenas having sex with one another. But the exhibition’s purpose is not to educate zoologists. It is to persuade the public that, as there are gay whales and worms, gay humans do not disturb the natural order.
And ends with another…
Taking lessons on sexuality from the birds and the bees itself requires first accepting something not taught ubiquitously outside Norway—that evolution occurs by natural selection.
Ya think? Well that leaves a large swath of the United States out. We have crackpots here who can’t even divine God’s will from the evidence of our own bodies, let alone the workings of nature.
Via Steve Gilliard… If the Russian mob joined in the fight against gay rights, Randy Thomasson would applaud them as "shining models for the rest of us in terms of faith, family, work ethic, patriotism and community" too…
Sacramento’s large enclave of immigrant Slavic evangelicals is becoming a force on social issues. Their actions shock many.
SACRAMENTO — Organizers of the annual Rainbow Festival were prepared for trouble.
The Q Crew, a local "queer/straight alliance," distributed cards telling people what to do if approached by hostile demonstrators. Sympathetic local church groups formed a protective buffer along the festival ground’s cyclone fence. Mounted police were on patrol.
Jerry Sloan manned a table for Stand Up for Sacramento, a recently formed gay self-defense organization.
"So far, so good," he said. "No Russians."
The festival, held last month amid the gay bars, restaurants and shops of midtown’s "Lavender Heights" neighborhood, went off without conflict. But the elaborate security preparations reflected growing tensions between Sacramento gays and the city’s large and vociferous community of fundamentalist Christians from the former Soviet Union.
Over the last 18 months, Sacramento Russian-language church members have picketed gay pride events, jammed into legislative committee meetings when gay issues were on the agenda and demonstrated at school board meetings.
Incited by firebrand Russian Pentacostal pastors and polemical Russian-language newspapers, the fundamentalists turn out en masse for state Capitol protest rallies.
Last June, urging readers to attend a massive rally, the Russian newspaper the Speaker told them:
"Make a choice. It’s your decision. Homosexuality is knocking on your doors and asking: ‘Can I make your son gay and your daughter lesbian?’ "
In most instances, the Russian-speaking demonstrators far outnumber representatives from all other anti-gay groups combined. Anti-homosexual rallies that a few years ago attracted a few dozen participants now regularly draw hundreds and sometimes thousands, many with a heavy Russian accent.
It’s worth noting, and the L.A. Times article does note, that not all Russian communities in this country are as crazy bigoted as the one in Sacramento. But this one community is different. How?
The Sacramento community, on the other hand, is overwhelmingly evangelical — Baptist and Pentecostalist. The charismatic Pentacostal church, introduced in the Ukraine in the 1920s by missionary and martyr Ivan Efimovich Vornaev, includes speaking in tongues and washing of feet. The churches’ social views are based on a literal interpretation of the Bible.
And I’ll just bet, relentlessly antisemite too. Russia has had a problem with that for untold generations…the Protocols of the Elders of Zion originated in Russia…and my understanding is that it is among precicely these fervent religious types in Russia, the kind that like their Christianity loud and gilded and glittering and all controlling, that the hatred of jews is the most vehement.
Well…hating jews doesn’t gain you a lot of traction here in the United States, no matter how proudly you wear Christ around your neck…just ask Mel Gibson. But you can still hate homosexuals and demand respect for your sincere religiosity…
Many credit the Slavic Christian immigrant community with filling a void left by the traditional American church and providing reinforcements in the ongoing culture wars over what should define family, acceptable sexual relationships and marriage.
"Russian Christians bring a fresh faith and uncorrupted family values to this country. They are a shining model for the rest of us in terms of faith, family, work ethic, patriotism and community," said Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and Families.
Behold a shining model…
Gay civil rights activists, meanwhile, accuse the demonstrators of hateful and aggressive tactics that they say sometimes lean dangerously toward violence.
Signs displayed by the demonstrators often equate homosexuality with pedophilia and describe the AIDS epidemic as a message from God. One of the common tactics of the demonstrators is to tap gays forcefully on the head and announce that they have been "saved."
"They’ve declared war on us for some reason," said Stand Up for Sacramento founder Nathan Feldman, a jewelry store clerk. "They got it into their heads that California is the land of sin and that it is their duty to cleanse the state, starting with homosexuals."
What Thomasson means is that they are more aggressive and willing to physically attack gay people then even Fred Phelps’ group. Thomasson is a well known opponent of gay rights in California. What he sees and values in the ethnic Russian community around Sacramento isn’t faith, it’s their willingness to bring fear into the lives of gay people. Because of his new allies in the war on homosexuals, Sacramento Pride Days now require heightened security. This is what brings Randy hope. Or at least, satisfaction.
The usual retort by gay bashers is that the victim made a pass at them, or something akin to a pass. This is the essence of the "gay panic" defense, that the victim provoked them by in some way attacking their masculinity or their heterosexuality. What heterosexuals don’t realize, is that they get to play too, by merely being thought to be gay by their assailants, or by having gay friends, and now, apparently, just going to a concert given by a gay performer …
(London) Two men who beat a man and his young nephew as they left an Elton John concert were convicted Wednesday of assault causing bodily harm.
Graham Brydon had taken his nephew John to the concert at Watford football stadium in June last year. Walking home Brydon put an official T-shirt he bought at the concert over his shirt.
Henry Peters, 31, and Neil Wattley, 30, spotted the T-shirt and began harassing Brydon and his nephew, yelling "Elton John is fucking gay."
Then without provocation the assailants began beating them.
Brydon, in his 50s, required hospitalization for a suspected broken cheekbone.
Peters and Wattley pleaded not guilty, and claimed that Brydon and his nephew had provoked the attack.
But at trial police showed tape from a CCTV camera which had recorded the entire encounter.
The tape showed Wattley yelling the homophobic slur and then punching Brydon in the face. Peters then joined in the attack.
Notice the reflex. They provoked us! Yes. Because "Elton John is fucking gay." It was provocation enough. Were it not for the video tape, they might just have gotten away with it. People would think to themselves, there must have been Some kind of provocation after all…nobody just walks up to complete strangers and starts beating them up without Some kind of provocation… And so there was. "Elton John is fucking gay." That was the provocation. Luckily for the victims in this case, there was a video tape to prove that was all there was to it.
Without a doubt this is the way it goes in nearly all gay bashings. If you could watch a tape of the entire time Matthew Shepard was in the company of his killers the night he was tortured and murdered, you would, never doubt it, see something very similar to this. Two adult thugs suddenly turning on a young five foot two 112 pound gay college student who had done absolutely nothing to them, beating him bloody, tying him to a fence, putting cigarettes put out on his skin, and then bashing his skull with a handgun, and then later telling the police, and then the world, that Shepard had provoked them.
COUSHATTA — Nine black children attending Red River Elementary School were directed last week to the back of the school bus by a white driver who designated the front seats for white children.
The situation has outraged relatives of the black children who have filed a complaint with school officials.
Superintendent Kay Easley will meet with the family members in her office this morning.
…
Easley would not comment much on the allegations Wednesday, saying it is a personnel issue. She acknowledged that she has investigated the claim. And she confirmed that the bus driver did not run her route Wednesday, nor would she today.
Asked if the driver would work for the rest of the year, Easley said, "I’m not going to answer the questions. "You’re getting all that you’re going to get from me. I’m sorry."
…
After Richmond and Williams [the parents of the children] filed complaints with the School Board, Transportation Supervisor Jerry Carlisle asked Davis to make seat assignments for her passengers, Sessoms [a relative] said.
"But she still assigned the black children to the back of the bus," she added.
And the nine children had to share only two seats, meaning the older children had to hold the younger ones in their laps.
A new solution reached Monday by School Board officials has a black bus driver driving across town to pick up the nine black children.
Dig it. The new solution was to kick the black kids off the white lady’s bus altogether.
It’s Louisiana and I’m not surprised. I’ve driven from one end of this country to the other and Louisiana has always stood out in my remembrance for the level of openly in-your-face white racism I saw while I was there. It’s a problem everywhere, but in Louisiana it was like stepping into a time warp, not just in terms of how often you saw it, but how they all seemed to accept it as a fact of life. New Orleans was the exception to that. Drive across the causeway into Covington and north and there might as well have never been a civil rights movement. But in New Orleans itself, at least the parts I explored, you didn’t see that. And that’s almost certainly why New Orleans is still a devastated ruin. I’m convinced the rest of Louisiana was glad to see it go.
A ceremony to honor the achievements of six high profile gay Californians erupted into a political fight at the State Capitol Monday with some Republicans storming off the Assembly Floor.
The Legislature’s Lesbian, Gay Bisexual and Transgender Caucus (LGBT) sponsored the first Pride Recognition Awards, a program they say is designed to recognize the accomplishments of people who happen to be gay in their respective fields.
Conservative Assemblymembers boycotted the program.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, I rise to point out the ridiculousness of the exercise," said Assembly Republican Leader George Plescia, R-San Diego. "We’re wasting a lot of time we have a lot of bills on the floor."
The honorees included several celebrities, including former NFL tackle Esera Tuaolo and Reichen Lehmkuhl, the million dollar prize winner of the "The Amazing Race 4" reality television show. Watching quietly from the back of the room was Lehmkuhl’s partner, Lance Bass, a singer with the former boy band ‘N Sync. Bass recently went public with the fact he is gay.
Assemblymember Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, said he hoped the event would benefit Republicans by showing them the "strength of our diversity and the many accomplishments in a variety of disciplines." But about 10 Republicans either walked out or boycotted the event altogether.
"So it’s a great disappointment that they’re acting like such children," Leno said.
MEADE – Two Meade boys have confessed to cutting down a rainbow flag outside a hotel here, the proprietors said Monday.
The Lakeway Hotel became a focus of controversy last month after owners J.R. and Robin Knight hung the colorful banner, a gift from their 12-year-old son, in front of the place. Locals uncomfortable with such a symbol – it also stands for gay pride – decried the flag’s presence and then, in the early-morning hours of July 31, someone cut it down.
The disappearance had remained a mystery, but the father of two local boys brought them to the Lakeway on Friday and they owned up to their involvement.
"They apologized and said they’d replace it," J.R. Knight said. He didn’t name the boys, and Meade County Sheriff Michael Cox said only that officials are investigating.
Meanwhile, Knight said replacing a 5-foot-by-5-foot plate glass window smashed in at the hotel’s restaurant – also apparently due to the flag flap – probably would cost about $500. Two neon beer signs destroyed in the same incident probably will cost another $1,000.
Someone tossed a brick through the window early Friday morning, according to the Knights and local authorities, who are investigating. Scrawled on the brick was the word "fag."
An 18-year-old gay man who was badly beaten in Edgewood on July 30 might have been assaulted because a man at the party believed the gay man had touched his butt, a statement of probable cause filed in state District Court says.
William York, 21, of Edgewood, and Leroy Segura, 19, of Moriarty have been charged with aggravated battery, kidnapping, false imprisonment and conspiracy to commit kidnapping. Bond for each man was set at $100,000 cash only by District Judge Michael Vigil on Monday. Two juveniles, a boy and girl, are also being held in connection to the case.
York believed the victim tried to grab his butt while they were at a party in Edgewood on July 30, the statement says. He said Segura, who is known by the nickname “Half Pint,” told him the victim tried to grab York’s butt, the statement says.
In an interview, York told state police the comment upset him and made him want to fight the 18-year-old man, the statement says. York said everyone at the party made fun of the 18-year-old man because he was gay, the statement says. York said he wanted to “scare” the victim to “make him straight and to get him to stop acting the way he was,” the statement says.
The juvenile male arrested in the case said he, York and Segura tied the gay man’s hands, placed a torn black T-shirt over his head, walked him into a deserted field, pushed him onto a downed fence and beat him, the statement says. The juvenile, the statement says, said he egged on York by calling the gay man joto, a derogatory Spanish word meaning gay.
The documents did not contain statements from Segura, who wore a rosary around his neck in court Monday.
The gay man suffered bleeding on the brain, a concussion, facial lacerations and bruising from the beating, which lasted for hours, state police have said. York, Segura and the juvenile male have been charged under New Mexico’s hate-crimes law.
The 18-year-old victim went to the party with a girl, who was also beaten and held inside the trailer house where the party took place, the statement says. She told police “the male subjects would knock (the gay man) down and if he did not get up off the ground within a certain count or if he did not make any noise, they would jump on him, hitting and kicking him,” the statement says.
The female victim said the beating stopped as “the sun was coming up,” the statement says.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, I rise to point out the ridiculousness of the exercise…"
We saw small town gay bar, a documentary by Malcolm Ingram (it was exec produced by Kevin Smith, yes, the director of Clerks). It was a wonderful look at what social life is like for gays in the rural South. I mean really rural — the two Mississippi bars profiled were in Shannon (pop. 1,657) and Meridian (39,968). Durham, for comparison’s sake has an estimated pop. of 204,845.
Watching this film is like going back in time if you live in a progressive area or large city; the closet is a necessity here, as you might imagine. Being out can be a death sentence for these people. The bar is their only refuge, their only time to let their hair down, be themselves and feel safe to be who they are, as gays, lesbians, trans, black, white — all that matters is that you know you aren’t alone. Drag queens had a home to perform out and proud at Rumors and Crossroads (now called Different Seasons).
The audience howled as Ingram interviewed the unhinged Rotting CryptkeeperTMFred Phelps. Fred was his animated self, talking about "fanning the flames of fag lust" and it was clear he’s energized and surprised by "all the fags that come out to protest him."
The Phelps Klan picketed the funeral of Scotty Joe Weaver, who was killed right next door in Alabama. The 18-year-old out gay teen, known to many at the Mississippi bars, was murdered by a trio of backwoods homobigots; he was tied to a chair in his trailer, beaten, stabbed, and partially decapitated. His body was dumped in the woods and then set on fire. No wonder these people remain closeted.
And since this is Mississippi, Ingram had to stop by the HQ and nexus of homohate, Don and Tim Wildmon’s American Family Association, which is in Tupelo. Tim sat on camera and dutifully told the story about how it was a good thing for the community to have his local minions stand on a nearby bridge and take down the tag numbers of people who were going over the bridge to go to the gay bar.
The next day on his radio show, Don would read the tag numbers on the air. This, he said, "would keep people accountable."…
Right. Like Christopher Gaines, Nichole Kelsay and Robert Porter held Scotty Joe Weaver accountable. Love the sinner, hate the sin, tie the sinner to a chair, torture them to death and then burn their body.
The antigay junk science of the religious right often strikes me like a bunch of drunks in a bar trying to see who can out bullshit everyone. I’m telling you guys, homos are all pedophiles. The average homo has sex with a thousand underage kids in his lifetime…did I say a thousand? I meant ten thousand. In a day. During their lunch break. That’s why they’re all school teachers. I’m telling you. Where’s my drink? The whole entire fucking NEA is a bunch of liberal homos. And they’re communists too. Communist Islamic terrorists. They want to teach six year olds how to use dildos. No shit…I did a study that proves it. They should pass an amendment closing all the public schools and making home schooling mandatory for everyone. Last year the NEA passed out a million dildos to elementary school kids. It’s true. And they panted them to look like candy canes. FOX news did a story on it…
One of these days, I figured, they’d start yapping that we’re having sex with infants too. Well…guess what…
An organizer for the conservative Renew America is under fire for linking homosexuality with infant pedophilia.
"The newest thing in Chicago, it’s becoming a trend, and you’re gonna find this hard to believe…sex with infants," Guy Adams told an Internet radio show hosted by fellow conservative Stacy L. Harp.
Adams (pictured) offered no evidence to back up his claims of infant pedophilia.
He appeared on Harp’s program on Wednesday to discuss the recent Gay Games in Chicago and embarked on a nearly 30 minute conversation with Harp to attack gays.
"It’s not enough that they have…you know when you engage in perversion, and homosexuality is perversion, we don’t hate the gays mind you, we don’t hate them, we hate what they’re doing…pretty soon that perversion is like addiction, it’s not enough, so you need to graduate to something else. You need to move on. So now they’re having sex with animals, a small group that’s getting bigger, sex with infants, sex in the street in Chicago out in the open, it’s just getting more and more perverted."
Adams dismissed the contributions of GLBT people to society by saying, "what contributions, AIDS, pornography?"
He also referred to gay people as "a very angry and violent group when confronted with the truth."
From "Guy Adams" <GuyAdams@RenewAmerica.us>
To "Joe Brummer" <joebrummer@joebrummer.com>
Cc <stacyharp@gmail.com>
Sent Friday, August 04, 2006 216 AM
Subject Reply From Joe
What’s your point Joe? It sex with babies the truth; it IS happening, so what’s your point?
Let’s just assume that gays are not screwing babies. Okay then, what ARE gays doing? Can you describe it for me and the public???
If you won’t describe it, then I will. Openly and in a national forum.
One thing you will quickly discover about me — I CANNOT be intimidated nor will I retreat. I will stand my ground no matter what.
YOU brought this war to me and I will finish it. And there are many, many more like me too.
We simply don’t care about you petty proclamations, not does Alan.
You woke up the wrong guy.
~Guy
—– Original Message —–
From "Guy Adams" <GuyAdams@RenewAmerica.us>
To <joebrummer@joebrummer.com>
Cc <stacyharp@gmail.com>
Sent Friday, August 04, 2006 329 AM
Subject Re From Joe
Dear Joe,
You are intentionally deceived.
Whether I reach gays or not is not that important to me. Yes, I hope that God is able to reach them, but at the end of the day, I have been placed at war with your likes, and that was YOUR choice.
In other words, I declare war against you and your kind.
I did not desire this war, but you thrust it upon us. It was your call.
Having said that, I say to you (now more than ever) that I am singularly determined to see your agenda defeated, and it will be.
Not that I am perfect — far from it, but your behavior is explicitly labeled by God as an "abomination". T\here’s no getting around that judgment.
Say what you will and argue as you must, but at the end of the day, God declares your behavior as totally unacceptable to Him.
God will not change His position on that, as He has clearly stated, Jesus is the same today, yesterday and tomorrow.
He will never affirm homosexuality.
Nor will I.
~Guy
On Thu, August 3, 2006 856, joebrummer@joebrummer.com said
> Dear Guy,
> Sorry you feel that way. While your busy trying to get God to call me,
> you are also out in the public eye making outlandish and false claims
> about gays and lesbians. Injustice like that needs to be brought to the
> light of the public eye, or as I commonly say, the sunlight of justice.
> I cannot change your mind about gays and lesbians, although I can
> certainly say I have never had sex with animals or infants. Your claims
> are disgusting and your message is evil. Talk about bearing false
> witness.
> You will never reach gays and lesbians with these immoral acts. Your
> approach is awful. Sadly you discredit anything truthful you could say
> with the utterly outrageous claims like this. Stacy informs me that
> part 2 of the show is worse and that your claims there are eve more
> outrageous.
> Your mentality is nothing more than a call to arms that some sick minds
> will be happy to take. Over the past six weeks there have been some
> violent attacks on gays and lesbians espcially in San Diego. Where do
> you think people get this notion tht they need to "get the homos"? Is it
> perhaps your false messages about gays being after children? Is it your
> false notion we are the biggest danger since the civil war?
> Your message is wrong and it will be paid for in the blood of GLBT people.
> Perhaps you should think before you speak. If you think you are doing
> god’s works, you are sadly mistaken. God would have no part in putting
> his children in danger they way you have done.
> Joe
On Thu Aug 3 1:19 , ‘Guy Adams’ sent
Joe,
Initially, I had a great sense of compassion for you and I hoped that God would be able to reach you.
But after your actions in shutting me down on your blog, and esp after reading your recent pleas to Stacy, I am of the persuasion that you are what God calls a "reprobate", beyond His willingness to save.
Over and out,
~Guy
~Guy Adams
Deputy National Grassroots Director
(Alan Keyes’ RenewAmerica)
Email GuyAdams@RenewAmerica.us
—– Original Message —–
From "Guy Adams" <GuyAdams@RenewAmerica.us>
To "Joe Brummer" <joebrummer@joebrummer.com>
Sent Friday, August 04, 2006 257 AM
Subject Re From Joe / you lose.
You and your remarks are inconsequential.
At the end of the day, you lose.
~TGuy
—– Original Message —–
From "Guy Adams" <GuyAdams@RenewAmerica.us>
To "Joe Brummer" <joebrummer@joebrummer.com>
Cc <stacyharp@gmail.com>
Sent Friday, August 04, 2006 222 AM
Subject Re From Joe
Your comments are not even worth me read. I’ll bypass. WHO ARE YOU? WHAT’S YOUR NAME?
In the course of a few short months, no one will want to mention your name out of sheer fear.
You CANNOT tear my words apart because you are speaking from the moral low ground and because my words spoke the truth.
In other words, you have no firm ground on which to stand. You are a coward. I initially had a heart for you but you have proven yourself to be a reprobate.
The war is on. As Reagan said: We win, you lose.
Understand that quite well, because in a true war (unlike Iraq), all means available to me will be used.
You targeted the wrong guy, but I thank God that you did.
There it is. There is the hot burning core of hate not far beneath all that pious rhetoric about loving the sinner, and hating the sin. And that kind of thing, I want to emphasize, is nothing new. Over and over I saw words just like those on Usenet, back as far as 1993. Paranoid…threatening…hysterical…and not just from the usual gutter trash, but from…well…otherwise fine and upstanding pillars of the community. People just like Mr. Guy Adams, who, as it turns out, not only works for Renew America, but also is, or was as of January 2005, a Deputy Sheriff in Cook County Illinois.
(Thanks to Pam’s House Blend for the catch) I’m sure he treats the gay and lesbian citizens of Cook County he encounters during the course of his work with dignity and respect. Well…actually I’m not.
Please Know From My Heart That I Am Not An Anti-Semite. I Am Not A Bigot.
Sure thing Mel…
"For 1,950 years [the church] does one thing and then in the ’60s, all of a sudden they turn everything inside out and begin to do strange things that go against the rules. Everything that had been heresy is no longer heresy, according to the [new] rules. We [Catholics] are being cheated… The church has stopped being critical. It has relaxed. I don’t believe them, and I have no intention of following their trends.It’s the church that has abandoned me, not me who has abandoned it."
Mel Gibson, in an interview with El Pais in January 1992, discussing why his brand of Traditionalist Catholicism does not subscribe to the Second Vatican Council’s 1965 rulings on various subjects including who was responsible for the death of Jesus Christ.
"Why are they calling her a Nazi? …Because modern secular Judaism wants to blame the Holocaust on the Catholic Church. And it’s a lie. And it’s revisionism. And they’ve been working on that one for a while."
On criticism of Anne Catherine Emmerich, a nineteenth-century nun whose writings influenced his portrayal of Jesus’ death. The New Yorker, September 15, 2003
"That’s bullshit…I don’t want to be dissing my father. He never denied the Holocaust; he just said there were fewer than six million. I don’t want them having me dissing my father. I mean, he’s my father."
On allegations that his father is a Holocaust denier. The New Yorker, September 15, 2003
"I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. He worked in a concentration camp in France. Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine, several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century, 20 million people died in the Soviet Union."
In The New York Post, January 30, 2004
"They take it up the ass. This [pointing to his butt] is only for taking a shit."
When asked what he thinks of homosexuals in an interview with El Pais in January 1992
"With this look, who’s going to think I’m gay. I don’t lend myself to that type of confusion. Do I sound like a homosexual? Do I talk like them? Do I move like them?"
When asked during the El Pais interview if he is afraid of being mistaken for a homosexual, because he is an actor.
"I have no idea how anti-Semitism entered into it. But I do feel that gay people will burn in hell. Their way of life goes completely against God’s plan for procreation."
"Fucking Jews… The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world."
During his arrest for driving under the influence, July 2006
"What do you think you’re looking at, sugar tits?"
To a female sergeant during his arrest for DUI
"In its representation of its Jewish characters, The Passion of the Christ is without any doubt an anti-Semitic movie, and anybody who says otherwise knows nothing, or chooses to know nothing, about the visual history of anti-Semitism, in art and in film. What is so shocking about Gibson’s Jews is how unreconstructed they are in their stereotypical appearances and actions. These are not merely anti-Semitic images; these are classically anti-Semitic images."
It’s worth noting that The Man Without A Face, was produced after Gibson’s homophobic outburst in El Pais, and was widely taken at the time (mostly by heterosexuals sympathetic to Gibson) as a kind of apology to the gay community. I’ve read the book the film was based on, I still have it on my shelves. The story is about a young boy growing up in an emotionally abusive family, who turns to an older neighbor for support and guidance. As their relationship develops, the boy finds himself experiencing a nascent sexual awakening and desire for the older man, which the older man gently but firmly turns aside. He is not interested in having a sexual relationship with the boy, he just wants to help him through a difficult time in his life, despite the suspicions of the local townsfolk. The final confrontation in the book comes when the boy discovers that the man really was a homosexual, and he lashes out at him in fear and confusion over his own sexual orientation.
The story is about growing up, trust, and what it is to genuniely love someone. It’s about accepting differences in others, accepting yourself and not running away from your life. The punchline is that the man was gay, and so was the boy, yet the man did not take advantage of him. There was real love and friendship there between them, that was taken away and destroyed by fear and prejudice. The prejudice of the townspeople, and the boy’s own fears and doubts about himself. Gibson, in making the film, turned the man into a heterosexual who had only been mistaken for a homosexual once in his life, when he was falsely accused of having an affair with a former student, effectively nullifying the book’s point that to be homosexual isn’t necessarily to be a child molester, and thereby weakening the impact of its message about love. The townsfolk were right about the man…and yet they were wrong. The boy lashed out at the man from fear of something within himself. This is what prejudice does to us…it tears us apart from within, tears neighbor from neighbor, friend from friend. But Gibson could not bring himself to make that film. So he turned the story into a tale about the unjust persecution of a heterosexual. Yet to this day people point to this film, Gibson’s directorial debut, as some kind of proof that Gibson really isn’t a homophobic bigot after all.
So when Gibson offered to make a film about the Holocaust after the outrage over Passion of the Christ…I laughed. Some blogger wag whose name I cannot recall just now, joked that in his script for his Holocaust film, Gibson changes the story to make it a bunch of Jews who kill six million Nazis. But no…he would have made a very nice film about the crimes against the Jews by the Third Reich, and few would have noticed that the film’s basic premise was, as Gibson’s father insists, that the killing of Jews by the Nazis wasn’t anything special or systematic, because a lot of people died during world war II.
At the root of prejudice is a terrible blindness to the humanity of the hated other. The hated other is not really human, so the things that happen to them are not remarkable. It is only injustice when bad things happen to real people. Not when it happens to Jews. Not when it happens to women who challenge the authority of men. Not when it happens to homosexuals. That is the message of every film Mel Gibson has ever made. It is what he believes. It is his bedrock. You saw it again last week in Malibu, without the silver screen makeup.
This is the kind of thing I was taught about homosexuals nearly all through grade school. They taught me that homosexuals usually kill the people they have sex with. They taught me that homosexuals prey on young boys, but will sometimes lure an unsuspecting heterosexual man into the woods too. They told me that homosexuals almost never have sex with another homosexual because they know how dangerous it is. This was in the 1960s, in the school system of a well do do suburb of Washington D.C.
That film brings back memories all right. That is what I grew up knowing about homosexuals. I suppose a lot of people from my generation were taught those things. I suppose a lot of people from my generation still believe them. The only thing that saved me from a lifetime of fear of my sexual nature and self loathing was that it was so extreme I just knew it was not me, and the conclusion I drew throughout most of my school years, even while I was severely stressing out over a certain male classmate, was that I was not a homosexual. I just couldn’t be. I wasn’t anything like what they were telling me homosexuals were. Therefore I was not a homosexual.
They’re not teaching boys to be careful around strangers in that film. They’re teaching them to fear and loath homosexuals. They’re teaching the gay boys to fear and loath themselves. And they are taking from the gay boys, all the awe and wonder and joy of that first high school romance, and for many of us of my generation, the possibility of love altogether. What they took from us is incalculable, and unforgivable.
I’m going on another of my cross-country road trips this weekend, and the news today gives me reason to reflect once more on a simple, devastating fact: I can freely travel all over America, only because I am single.
Had I a spouse, a same-sex spouse because I am a gay man, we would have to take care not to set so much as a toe in states like Virginia, and Nebraska, and any of the other states in the Union (maybe we should start referring to it as a Dis-union now…), that have not only passed constitutional amendments banning same sex marriage, but also any legal recognition whatsoever of any possible legal right a same sex couple may need to have, in order to defend their union. Because if anything should happen to either one of us, it would be a nightmare for the other. A nightmare like this…
When Sharon Kowalski was injured in an automobile accident in November 1983, her partner, Karen Thompson had to fight a nightmarish legal battle with Kowalski’s parents lasting ten years. During that time, Kowalski’s parents placed her in a nursing home where they could insure that Thompson would be kept away. The nursing home was unequipped to give Kowalski the physical therapy she needed, and which might have made a difference in the extent of her recovery had it been given to her early on. When Kowalski was given a typewriter to communicate, she instantly began typing out calls for Karen. The typewriter was taken from her.
…or this…
When Juan Navarrete came home in 1989 and found his partner LeRoy Tranton lying bloody on the concrete driveway to their house, it marked the beginning of a bitter fight with Tranton’s brother who prevented Navarrete from seeing his beloved in the hospital. Despite Tranton’s persistent calling for his lover Juan, he was kept away. When Tranton later died, Navarrete was unable even to visit the grave.
…or this…
In 1993, a Virginia judge ruled that Sharon Bottoms was an unfit mother because she was a lesbian, and awarded custody of her 20-month-old son, to her mother, who had sought custody of the boy when she learned her daughter was a lesbian, and in love with another woman.
…or this…
In 2000, a court in Tacoma Washington ruled that Frank Vasques could be denied his lover of 28 years’ estate because the two where in a homosexual relationship. They had shared a house, business and financial assets for 28 years.
…or this…
After NBC news cameraman Rob Pierce died in a helicopter crash, his family visited his partner Frank Gagliano, in the Miami condominium the two had shared. After mourning together, they told Gagliano he should take a walk on the beach. Then Pierce’s family changed the locks on the condo, and when Gagliano returned, told him he was no longer welcome there. Gagliano had to go to court just to get his belongings.
…or this…
In Massachusetts, after Ken Kirkey’s partner Mark died of cancer, Mark’s family removed his ashes from the home the two shared. Kirkey discovered he had no legal right to Mark’s ashes, though they were among the first to take advantage of Vermont’s new Civil Unions law.
…or this…I
n 2001 Sharon Smith was told she had no legal standing to file a wrongful death suit against Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller, after two of their dogs mauled her partner Diane Whipple to death in the hallway of her apartment.
…or this…
In 2002 Officials at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center barred William Robert Flanigan Jr. from his dying partner’s bedside, saying he was not "family", and that ‘partners’ did not qualify. Though Flanigan had legal power of attorney for his partner, Robert Lee Daniel, officials at the Shock Trauma Center insisted he would not be allowed his partner’s bedside. Only when Daniel’s mother arrived from New Mexico, was Flanigan allowed into Daniel’s room. By that time, Daniel had lost consciousness. He would die two days later. Because Flanigan was not present during Daniel’s final four hours of consciousness, Flanigan was unable to tell Shock Trauma that Daniel did not want breathing tubes or a respirator. When Daniel tried to rip the tubes out of his throat, staff members put his arms in restraints
…or this…
In 1999 Earl Meadows 56, passed away a year after suffering a stroke which left him unable to take care of himself. He was cared for by his lover and partner, Sam Beaumont, 61, on the Oklahoma ranch they had both worked together for a quarter century. Meadows cousins, filed suit and Beaumont lost everything he and Meadows had worked together for, the ranch, the cattle, everything, because even though he had a will, it lacked a second witness signature, and a judge ruled it was invalid, and in a state that has a constitutional amendment banning not only same sex marriage but any legal recognition of same sex couples, as far as the law was concerned, Beaumont and Meadows were legally strangers.
After Meadows’ cousins won his worldly goods in court, they went back to court and sued Beaumont for back rent for every year he lived on the ranch.
This is the future that jackasses like Andrew Sullivan, and the Deep Thinkers at the Independent (sic) Gay Forum, who preach the virtues of "federalism"and letting each state go their own way on same sex marriage, are condemning gay couples to: a patchwork of states they can safely travel in, embedded in a dangerous no-homo-land where the law doesn’t merely fail to acknowledge your rights as a couple, but actively seeks to destroy your union, and throw the two of you into a living nightmare, when given any opportunity whatever to do so. For all the same reasons that a nation half free and half slave would not work, for all the same reasons that a nation where rights are allocated on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion different in every state would not work, a nation where some couples are allowed to live in peace in some states and in a state of fear in others will not work. You cannot build a democracy out of "some animals are more equal then others, depending on their sexual orientation and their physical location at any given moment".
In Georgia, where the question was about how many different subjects a constitutional amendment ballot could embrace, the court unanimously decided that the subject in question was not, after all, a combination of same sex marriage plus civil unions, but one simple all embracing expression of animus by the heterosexual majority of Georgia toward same sex couples as a class. On that basis, the heterosexual majority of Georgia could have thrown every knife at gay people they could have gotten their hands on in that ballot question, the right to hold property, the right to vote, the right to walk down any street in Georgia without getting your head bashed in, and the subject of the ballot question would still have been only the hate, not the particulars of how that hate is expressed. On the other hand, let’s face it, that is pretty much a correct view of what the subject of the ballot question was: Resolved – same sex couples have no rights the heterosexual majority is bound to respect…
But for this week’s laughing mockery of justice, the court in New York has to take top honors. This is their rational, I am not kidding, for keeping marriage in New York a heterosexual prerogative:
First, the Legislature could rationally decide that, for the welfare of children, it is more important to promote stability, and to avoid instability, in opposite-sex than in same-sex relationships. Heterosexual intercourse has a natural tendency to lead to the birth of children; homosexual intercourse does not. Despite the advances of science, it remains true that the vast majority of children are born as a result of a sexual relationship between a man and a woman, and the Legislature could find that this will continue to be true. The Legislature could also find that such relationships are all too often casual or – temporary. It could find that an important function of marriage is to create more stability and permanence in the relationships that cause children to be born. It thus could choose to offer an inducement — in the form of marriage and its attendant benefits — to opposite-sex couples who make a solemn, long-term commitment to each other.
The Legislature could find that this rationale for marriage does not apply with comparable force to same-sex couples. These couples can become parents by adoption, or by artificial insemination or other technological marvels, but they do not become parents as a result of accident or impulse. The Legislature could find that unstable relationships between people of the opposite sex present a greater danger that children will be born into or grow up in unstable homes than is the case with same-sex couples, and thus that promoting stability in opposite sex relationships will help children more. This is one reason why the Legislature could rationally offer the benefits of marriage to opposite-sex couples only.
What they’re saying there, is that a "rational" reason for limiting marriage to heterosexuals only, "could be" because heterosexual couples are less likely to provide stable homes for children, because heterosexuals can have children just by randomly fucking around, and probably will, whilst homosexual couples are more likely to provide stable homes for children because they have to work harder to bring children into their homes.
Never mind that this is, once again, arguing that the purpose of marriage is to provide an environment for the raising of children, which is patently is not since having children, or even being physically able to have children, is not a requirement for marriage. Never mind that. This argument is pathetic on its face. I guess you have to have grown up during the Stonewall years to appreciate the irony of it all. Once upon a time it was your gay and lesbian neighbors who were begging for some meager measure of rights, or at least a shred or two of human dignity, on the grounds that it wasn’t our fault that we were mentally unstable, and it would be cruel to punish us for something we cannot help. Today, at least in New York, it is heterosexuals who are saying they need rights because they cannot help being unstable. But if heterosexuals relationships are too unstable to exist without marriage, then heterosexuals are in no position to pass judgment on the fitness of their gay and lesbian neighbors for marriage either.
Except that they are the majority, so they can anyway. That is the rational here, nothing else. We outnumber you, so we can. The rights of heterosexual couples are enshrined in the fabric of our democracy, our constitution. The rights of gay couples exist, or not, a the discretion of heterosexuals. We can beg for rights, but we cannot assert a right of equality because we are manifestly unequal to heterosexuals in the only way that matters in George Bush’s America: we are fewer. What two state supreme courts have said today, is that this means the majority can do whatever it damn well pleases with our households, and any hopes and dreams we might have ever had or ever dared to want for happiness and peace and a life together with the ones we love, simply because they outnumber us. My Country ‘Tis Of Thee…
And here I am, slowly packing my things for another cross country trip, looking at my path through Virginia, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, and so on…and wondering how the hell I could possibly make such a trip if I had a spouse. I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t. It would be too dangerous for both of us. The minute either of us became sick or ill or incapacitated in some way, everything we made of our lives together, and every hope and dream we ever had for the future, could be annihilated by laws designed specifically to be relentlessly hostile toward same sex couples.
And never mind vacations. My employer is sending me to the OSCON Open Source conference in Portland Oregon at the end of the month. Do I tell them I can’t go because Oregon passed a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage and if I get sick or injured out there my spouse could be legally barred from taking any sort of care of me, let alone visiting me in the hospital, or seeing to it that my medical wishes are respected. Robert Flanigan Jr. Karen Thompson. Juan Navarrete.
And then there is the matter of families being torn apart. I have family in Virginia, and my mother’s grave, that I could never see again, if I had a spouse. They say Virginia’s anti same sex laws are so draconian, they may even disallow joint checking accounts between same sex couples. How the hell do I even go lay flowers on my mother’s grave, when every moment I am in Virginia, I am putting my spouse at risk for a legal nightmare? It is impossible. No family of mine has the right to demand I risk flushing our marriage down the toilet, simply to come down for a visit. If the people busy passing these laws really believe that homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex, then there are a lot of families in those states, in for some bitter awakenings in the years to come. Of course a lot of these people just discard their gay and lesbian children anyway, like so much human garbage. But not all of them do. I guess the message to those families is, if you love your gay children, there’s probably something wrong with you people anyway.
Anyone who thinks this state’s rights approach is fine for solving the issue of same sex marriage in America is smoking crack. It is a recipe for tearing this nation apart, one family at a time. And friends from friends. I used to have straight friends who would have told me today, to count my blessings, and be glad that I am still single. That is why they are now ex-friends.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has outlined proposals that are expected to lead to the exclusion of The Episcopal Church of the United States from the Anglican Church as a consequence of consecrating a gay bishop.
The US branch of Anglicanism faces losing its status of full membership of the Anglican Church in the wake of its consecration of the openly gay Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire, an act which has propelled the worldwide church to the brink of schism.
The final straw came when The Episcopal Church failed to "repent" of its action at its General Convention in Columbus, Ohio earlier this month, and failed to vote through a moratorium on any more gay consecrations.
Dr Williams is proposing a two-track Anglican Communion, with orthodox churches being accorded full, "constituent" membership and the rebel, pro-gay liberals being consigned to "associate" membership.
All provinces will be offered the chance to sign up to a "covenant" which will set out the traditional, biblical standards on which all full members of the Anglican church can agree.
But it is highly unlikely that churches such as The Episcopal Church in the US, the Anglican churches in Canada and New Zealand and even the Scottish Episcopal Church would be able to commit themselves fully to such a document.
These churches and any others that refused to sign up could opt to cut ties to Canterbury altogether, or could choose to remain in associate status.
This is not simply a victory for bigotry…it’s a milepost along a highway of blood. Homosexuals will die, never doubt this, as a result of the religious passions Williams is now pouring gasoline on. After the holocaust you’d think they’d know better, but it seems that lesson was only Lets lay off the Jews for a while and bash the homosexuals instead. Once upon a time the Catholic church, and then the Protestants, insisted that Jews were Christ killers who deserved what they got. You can argue that lead directly to the Ovens, but in fact the killing had been going on for centuries. By the reckoning of normal population growth statistics, and starting from the count of the number of Jews in the holy lands at the time of Jesus (the Roman occupiers kept meticulous records in the manner of all totalitarian states…), I’m told there should be about 240 million Jews walking this earth, right now, right this moment. In fact there are about 18 million. Hitler didn’t do all that…
We shall see how defenders of the Church take pains to distinguish between "anti-Judaism" and "antisemitism"; between Christian Jew-hatred as a "necessary but insufficient" cause of the Holocaust; between the "sins of the children" and the sinlessness of the Church as such. These distinctions become meaningless before the core truth of this history: Because the hatred of Jews had been made holy, it became lethal. -James Carroll, "Constantine’s Sword"
The holocaust made antisemitism something you’re not supposed to preach from the pulpit…at least not while outsiders are looking. But on the other hand Leviticus gives a free pass to people who kill homosexuals in the name of God, and judging from the reaction in some quarters already to Williams’ decision to expel everyone who doesn’t think homosexuals are unclean, the mob is ready for a little Leviticus action…
And get it they will. I strongly doubt it is any coincidence, that the rise in gay bashings and killings worldwide has come at a time when Catholic and Protestant church leaders, in America and in the third world, are busy calling homosexuals a threat to everything from children and marriage and family to the existence of civilization itself. Rowan Williams has not only signed onto this pogrom, whatever his future protestations that he means gay people no harm, by throwing his church into schism because some churches weren’t treating gays as the unclean god condemned sinners they are, he’s now poured gasoline onto it. The Gays Split The Church, isn’t quite as good as The Jews Killed Christ, but it will do nicely.
No Dr. Williams…our blood is not upon us. It is upon you.
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