Legalizing gay marriage would "only strengthen New York’s families," according to Governor Spitzer, who laid forth his most detailed argument in favor of recognizing same-sex relationships in a legislative memo.
Mr. Spitzer, who late last month became the nation’s first governor to propose legislation legalizing gay marriage, articulated a legal and moral argument in defense of the bill in a two-page "statement in support" that is being distributed to lawmakers.
The governor’s forceful language adds even more contrast between his position and that of the major Democratic candidates for president, including Senator Clinton, all of whom oppose gay marriage but favor civil unions.
Supporters of the bill said they were heartened and surprised by the governor’s appeal and said they viewed it as another sign that gay marriage could become a more mainstream Democratic position. While Mr. Spitzer’s stance is not shared by his party’s top-tier White House hopefuls, it could become a more widely accepted position within the party by 2012, when Mr. Spitzer, a nationally known political figure, may be a candidate for president.
The memo, which was prepared by the governor’s counsel, directly confronts one of the main arguments made by opponents of gay marriage, who have warned that allowing same-sex couples to marry would erode the institution of marriage.
"Same-sex couples who wish to marry are not simply looking to obtain additional rights, they are seeking out substantial responsibilities as well: to undertake significant and binding obligations to one another, and to lives of ‘shared intimacy and mutual financial and emotional support,’" the memo states.
"Granting legal recognition to these relationships can only strengthen New York’s families, by extending the ability to participate in this crucial social institution to all New Yorkers."
Opponents of gay marriage said the governor was trying to co-opt their argument.
"He’s couching it in this family values language, which is insulting. He’s trying to turn our argument on its head," a spokesman for the New York State Catholic Conference, Dennis Poust, said. The conference is the public policy arm of the bishops of New York.
Actually Dennis, the insult was you and all your pals in the American political gutter turning the words "Family" and "Values" into code for prejudice and hate. On its head, did you say? I’m laughing in your face bigot. Your kind has turned two precious human institutions, Family and Marriage on Their heads; from things that nurture and sustain us, into instruments of your cheapshit culture war. May. You. Be. Damned.
The bill memo also suggests that civil unions, adopted by a number of states to confer many of the legal rights enjoyed by married couples, offer insufficient protection.
"Civil marriage is the means by which the state defines a couple’s place in society. Those who are excluded from its rubric are told by the institutions of the State, in essence, that their solemn commitment to one another has no legal weight," the memo says.
Mr. Spitzer also tries to place the legislation in a historical context by arguing that the "history of this country" has been a story of excluded groups achieving access to equal rights. New York has long been a main character in that story, the memo says.
I’m From The Government And I’m Here To Give You The Finger…
President Junior. Loyalty for him runs only one way…
The White House fought back Tuesday against criticism from Kansas’ governor that National Guard deployments to Iraq are slowing the response to last week’s devastating tornado.
White House press secretary Tony Snow said the fault was Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’.
In a spat reminiscent of White House finger-pointing at Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco after the federal government’s botched response to Hurricane Katrina, Snow rapped Sebelius for not following procedure to find gaps and then asking the federal government to fill them.
The difference here of course is that the governor of Lousiana is a Democrat, and the city of New Orleans was mostly black, and it’s pretty damn obvious that Bush and Rove didn’t give a rat’s ass about New Orleans for those very reasons. But…Kansas? Okay, now we really get to see the squalid, petty core of the man who the republican powers that be practically hand picked to be president of the United States. But millions of True Red White and Blue American red staters saw the perfect reflection of their own inner values and moral character, and voted for him estatically…
What you get in exchange for being a loyal republican one-hundred percent American supporter of George Bush, is the benefit of not being put on his petty shit list. That’s it. That’s the only thing you get for kissing his ass year after year. A hearty handshake and a smile that couldn’t be less genuine if it was painted on a brick and the benefit of not being on his shit list. This spoiled, cheapshit good-for-nothing is the bastard he is, probably because he never had to learn how to make friends with anyone. Bullying everyone into cooperating with him is the only way he knows how to deal with people.
And much of red state America saw in him the same cheap resentments they hold within themselves and they voted for him in droves, not because they thought he was the better man but precisely because they knew he wasn’t, and putting him in the White House was as close as they could come to putting their thumbs in the eyes of the rest of America. How pleasurable it must have been, to hear all those blue state voices howling in pain after he was elected. Twice. Oh yes…they were all predicting that nothing good would come of it, that President Codpiece would be a disaster. But so what? It won’t be a disaster for the republican heartland. Just those damn liberals, those damn elitists, those damn dirty hippies, all those pregnant welfare moms, all those uppity coloreds, and those god damn faggots. Their cities can go to hell as far as we’re concerned…
…what is that to us? But when you give power to a man who thinks he’s entitled, he’s going to act like he thinks he’s entitled to use it as he damn well pleases. And now you’re on his shit list too, because you dared to complain.
It’s said that propaganda doesn’t fool anyone, so much as allow people to fool themselves. Ronald Reagan got himself elected saying "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, `I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’" For years now the talk radio babblers have been telling the Constituency Of Resentment that "Government Isn’t The Solution, It’s The Problem". And of course it was…it had to be…once Uncle Sam Uncle Sam started telling them that they had to start treating the coloreds, and their women, with respect and even a little basic human decency. Next thing you know it’ll be the faggots too. Fuck that shit. So they put a cheap bar stool loudmouth asshole in the Whitehouse with the same contempt for government they had. Which was great…just great…as long as it was only cities full of darkies in states with democratic governors that had to suffer for it.
Except now it isn’t.
"I don’t think there is any question if you are missing trucks, Humvees and helicopters that the response is going to be slower," she said Monday. "The real victims here will be the residents of Greensburg, because the recovery will be at a slower pace."
Sebelius said about half the state’s National Guard trucks are in Iraq, equipment that would be helpful in removing debris, and that the state is also missing a number of well-trained personnel.
"The issue for the National Guard is the same wherever you go in the country. Stuff that we would have borrowed is gone," she said
Maj. Gen. Tod Bunting, the state’s adjutant general, said the Kansas National Guard was equipped at only about 40 percent of its required levels, down from the 60 percent that it had at the start of the war.
Well you got what you voted for: a government that doesn’t work…a government that Can’t Help when you need it to, because Junior needs his toys over in Iraq, because it was either put the likes of him in power, or let the darkies, the heathens, the women, and the faggots have a share in the American Dream too.
…we move on to the condescending protection of "minorities" in the form of superfluous hate crimes legislation. The latest attempt has been named the Matthew Shepard Act, in honor of a Wyoming meth addict killed in a drug deal gone bad. The fact that he happened to be gay apparently entitled him to more protection than your average straight meth addict.
Thank you, ABC News, and especially you Elizabeth Vargas, for giving gay haters everywhere a way to pistol whip that poor kid’s memory forever, if not his actual body like they’d like to.
Almost immediately after the bill passed the House, president Nice Job Brownie threatened to veto it, saying that the laws "already on the books" were sufficient. One of the most pernicious memes the religious right is putting out there regarding hate crime laws is that they’re unnecessary, because the violent crimes committed against gay people are already illegal.
It’s one of those pat little bits of dishonest rhetoric by which they poison the national discourse. Yes, killing someone is already illegal. But motive has always been a part of how killings are prosecuted. It is more then simply determining the kind of punishment that fits the crime. You have to know what crime was actually committed, before you can know the punishment that fits it. Was the killing accidental? Was it accidental but reckless? Was it reckless in a depraved and indifferent way? Was it intentional? Was it committed in a heat of passion, or in a cold, calculating and deliberate way? This process of evaluating a criminal’s motive, and differentiating between them as to the charges and punishments applied works the same for just about every serious crime that comes before a court of law. When the religious right argues that hate crime laws are thought crime laws, they are in effect arguing that four-fifths of the laws on the books today are also thought crime laws.
That’s not what they mean of course. What they mean is that crimes committed against gay people should not be treated as what they are, but as something they are not. Murder is murder is murder, they say. But it isn’t. Otherwise, why have so many different laws for it? And where you really see the effects of hate crimes on the gay community, isn’t in the murders, but in the far more common, and often devastating to the survivors, assaults, beatings, gay bashings.
Gabi Clayton called me on Wednesday to tell me that she had some very good news. She sent me the link to lennonpiano.com and said that they had contacted her to participate in an even to happen this next Tuesday at her house May 8, the anniversary of the death of her son, Bill.
Longtime readers of my diary know that I met Gabi at least 10 years ago over the net after having seen a picture of Bill. I also wrote and recorded a song — "Will It Always Be Like This" — about her and the whole incident.
The story of Bill Clayton is just heartbreaking…
Bill came out to us as bisexual when he was 14. He was afraid to tell us, because he knew that other kids had told their parents and that their parents had disowned them or reacted in other ways that were frightening. He had read the book I had loaned him "Changing Bodies, Changing Lives," and there were coming out stories in the book. Finally he worked up the courage to tell us and we assured him that we loved him and accepted him. He was so happy that he wanted to tell the whole world. We recommended a support group out at the college which I had just graduated from. Bill went to that group three times and stopped – he said he really liked it but that he was fine and didn’t need to go any more.
An older man had sexually assaulted him after one of the support group meetings. Bill struggled afterwards with the trauma, and with suicidal throughts…
Bill finally told Sam, his best friend. He told Sam that the memories of that sexual assault were overwhelming him and that he was suicidal. He asked Sam not to tell anyone, but Sam put the friendship on the line and told me, because he didn’t want to lose his friend. Bill was relieved once we knew, and we reported it to the police and got Bill started with a therapist.
It took the police a long time to find the man. When they finally questioned him he confessed to exactly what Bill had said. Then he got a lawyer, plead not guilty at his arraignment, and managed to avoid jail and court until a month after Bill died. (He finally went to prison for 13 months.) So, Bill would see him around town — which aggravated the post-traumatic stress he was in counseling for. There were times when Bill would suddenly take a nose dive into severe depression for no apparent reason. Later we would find out that it was because he had seen this man on the bus or at the movies. Bill was so depressed and suicidal at one point that he spent some time in the hospital.
He stayed in counseling, and finally was getting back to being his old, impish self again. His mental health improved tremendously. He had a summer job doing computer and office stuff, and he loved it. He started looking forward to school again (after two rough years), and he felt like he had a future. Yes, he was back! He and his counselor agreed that he was done with therapy, and she closed his case with Crime Victims Compensation — on April 5th, 1995.
And then it all came apart…
On April 6, 1995, Sam and his girlfriend, Jenny, were walking with Bill near their high school to Jenny’s house to watch a video they had rented. Four guys — one of whom knew Bill and Sam because he was in the same high school (and had gone to their middle school before that) — followed them in a car and yelled things I will not repeat related to sexual orientation. Bill and his friends ignored them and decided to walk through the high school campus, thinking it would be safer because the gate was closed. The four guys drove off, but they parked the car nearby, because the next thing Bill and his friends knew, they came up on foot and surrounded them. They said "You wanna fight?" Bill, Sam and Jenny tried to walk away — they didn’t want to fight at all.
The four then brutally assaulted Bill and Sam, kicking and beating them both into unconsciousness while Jenny screamed at them to stop. It was broad daylight during Spring break.
When they regained consciousness a minute after the attackers left; Bill, Sam and Jenny ran to the school custodian’s office and called the police and then their families. They were taken to the emergency room where we met them. Bill had abrasions and bruises. They thought he might have kidney damage, but he didn’t. Sam was a mess too, with a broken nose and many bruises.
While we were in the emergency room, one of the guys who did the assault came casually walking through with two other friends, to visit a friend who had just had a baby. Sam saw him and Sam’s parents called the police. When they found him he confessed and told the police who the other guys were – they were all under 18 years old. The police treated it as a hate crime from the very beginning.
It did its work…
We thought he was going to make it – he seemed to handle things really well until after the rally, and then he crashed back into depression. He was suicidal again – it was too much. The assault sent him right back into the place he had fought so hard to get out of. He suddenly became depressed and suicidal, and we had to put him in the hospital again. While he was in the hospital he heard that a friend of his was gay-bashed at school in a nearby town.
After about 10 days he came home. We and his doctors in the hospital thought he had gotten past being suicidal. But Bill took a massive overdose on May 8th. Alec found him unconscious on the kitchen floor and had him rushed to the hospital, but they couldn’t save him.
And the attackers? Well the police may have treated it as a hate crime from the beginning, but the courts sure didn’t…
The boys who assaulted Bill and Sam were finally sentenced to 20-30 days in juvenile detention followed by probation and community service and 4 hours of diversity training focusing on sexual orientation.
Hate crimes really are different in kind, from other crimes, just as manslaughter is different from murder one is different from terrorism. That much is obvious from the overkill police often see in them. But the religious right doesn’t want people to see it that way. Partly, it’s because they don’t see it that way themselves. Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex… In their eyes, gay people aren’t even human. We don’t feel pain like real humans do. We are sick, depraved, lower then animals. Attacks on us simply do not do the kind of profound damage they otherwise do to real humans. If anything, the gay haters think that crimes against us should be treated Less seriously then crimes committed against real people…as something tacky and graceless, that polite upright god fearing men don’t do, at least not in public anyway, but not rising to the level of an actual crime against a Person. More like kicking a dog. These are homosexuals after all.
But gay bashings are more like rape then like common assaults. For the victim, a gay bashing strikes a knife into the heart of their most intimate sense of sexuality and self. And that is the intent. And they are a kind of domestic terrorism. It is that last quality that makes them particularly useful to the religious right, and why they emphatically don’t want the nation to become serious about combating anti-gay hate. A fearful homosexual, is a good homosexual. Fearful homosexuals stay in the closet. They don’t agitate for equal rights. They don’t live openly. They don’t hold their lover’s hand in public. They are not proud.
This is what the fight against hate crime law is about. This is why the gay haters are taking such a scorched earth attitude toward the Matthew Shepard Act. When a gay person is murdered, the religious right can point to the seriousness of the crime and argue that a hate crime enhancement is meaningless. When the killer is brought to justice they can say that the law already prosecutes murder, what is the point of adding a hate crime charge too? But most gay bashings do not result in death, most are random and sudden attacks such as the one that left a same sex couple beaten and bloody on the streets of Scottsdale Arizona last year, when they’d dared to hold hands in public …
Scottsdale police are investigating an alleged hate crime reported by a gay couple who said they were jumped by as many as seven men outside a Scottsdale restaurant near McDowell and Scottsdale roads.
As they held hands and began to leave Frasher’s Steakhouse late Sunday, Jean Rolland and Andrew Frost said they were humiliated and beaten in the restaurant’s entryway.
Frost, 19, was taken to Scottsdale Healthcare Osborn, where he was treated and released. Frost received several staples to treat a wound on his scalp, and several stitches to seal other wounds to his face.
Rolland, 28, suffered minor injuries.
The men, who had been dating for a couple of weeks, are seeking to press charges against their attackers – none of whom have been arrested as of Monday afternoon, according to Scottsdale police.
"My only hope is that they’re going to brag about it and tell their friends how tough they were," said Rolland, a native of France who lives part-time in Scottsdale.
"How tough is it to use seven guys to take on two guys, including one 19-year-old who weighs 120 pounds?" he asked.
Frost, a Scottsdale resident who graduated from Mesa Westwood High, said the attack was the second he endured in the past three years. When he was 16, he said, he was attacked by two teens and an adult in Mesa. One used an aluminum baseball bat.
The Sunday night incident was upsetting, he said, because no one from the restaurant said they saw anything, though the attack happened only a few feet from the front door.
Of course no one saw anything. And George Bush and James Dobson would like it very much if this nation keeps right on not seeing anything. Except this:
Imagine. Imagine a world, where there was no hate…
OLBERMANN: Let’s just sit here a moment more as we watch this. And this touches on the idea of regal qualities that were not seen in South Carolina. This is the prosession, this is the parade, these are tonight’s debaters. The ten candidates, filing out, just in fact to our right. We can see them from where we are seated. There is a coronation quality that just was not present in South Carolina.
FINEMAN: Keith, if you look at that picture and took away all of the writing and all of the words, and just had the image, could the American people tell that those were Republicans? I think the answer is yes. There is a hierarchical, there is, dare I say it, male, there is an old-line quality to them that some voters, indeed a lot of voters, find reassuring. And this is something that the Democrats need to understand. The Democrats are the “we are family” party, which is great, but this is the other side of the conversation and this is their home here. We really are in Reagan country.
Anyone remember how Ronald Reagan opened his 1980 presidential campaign on a theme of State’s Rights…in Philadelphia, Mississippi…the town where civil rights workers Cheney, Goodman and Schwerner were murdered? Yes, it’s about old male superiority…but not just any old males…
But the "old guard" that so many people find reassuring isn’t just male, is it? The Democrats had a couple of other inappropriate people on that stage last week — a brown one and a black one. (Yet another example of that ridiculous "we are family" stuff.)
I think the Democrats know very well what "the other half of the conversation" is, don’t you?
I, for one, found it extremely "reassuring" that only three out of ten of the Republican candidates for president don’t believe in evolution. And only nine out of ten said it would be a good day if Roe v Wade were repealed. Hey, it could have been worse.
Only nine out of ten? Gosh. They’re really getting liberal over there, aren’t they.
OK… Thanks to a blog reader and supporter over in Tennessee, I’ve gotten copies of the articles (which were never online) concerning David Crockett High School senior Curtis Walsh, who was dismissed from school for a day after organizing the Day of Silence at his school.
The Day of Silence is a national event in which middle, high school and college-aged students take a vow to silence, symbolically representing the silence that is forced upon LGBT people every day by our society.
The articles (which can be viewed as photos: Page 1 and Page 2) state, in part:
Senior Curtis Walsh said he was dismissed for the day early Wednesday morning by David Crockett High School principal Henry Marable for his own safety.
…
“I showed up at school and within two minutes (Marable) called me and three others into his office. After first period I was dismissed for the day.”
…
Marable as well as Director of Schools Grant Rowland said they had no comment on anything pertaining to the student of the “Day of Silence,” in which several students reportedly left school early.
However, Rowland was quoted by a local television station later in the day:
“One student and one reporter caused one heck of a mess to be stirred up for no reason,” said Rowland in regard to the article on the “Day of Silence” that appeared in Wednesday’s edition of the Johnson City Press.
This principal has apparently kept Curtis out of his school ever since the Day of Silence…
As it seems, Curtis was kept out of school not only on the Day of Silence (Wednesday, April 18th) but also on Thursday, April 19th and Friday, April 20th.
Just wanted to give you an update on Curtis Walsh, the Tennessee senior who was dismissed for supporting the day of silence. I am Curtis’ mother. On Wednesday, he was sent home as the newspaper article said, but we were given NO REASON (the paper said for his own safety). On Wednesday afternoon about 4:00, I received a phone call from Marable, the principal, and he said that Curtis did not need to come to school on Thursday. I asked if he had been threatened (Curtis) or if it was a punishment. He replied, “It don’t matter, He just don’t need to be here.” On Thursday afternoon my husband, Curtis’ STEP-FATHER, NOT HIS MOTHER, received a call from Marable saying that Curtis did not need to be in school on Friday. As you may guess, this fight is NOT over.
This story hasn’t really gotten all that much attention yet… but I hope it will. What is happening to Curtis is beyond unacceptable.
Gotta love it… “It don’t matter, He just don’t need to be here.” Right. Anyone who agitates on behalf of the dignity of gay kids let alone their safety, doesn’t need to be in Henry Marable‘s school. Sorta gives you a flavor for what life is like for gay kids that have to walk those halls doesn’t it? Meanwhile Pat Robertson’s legal sharks are threatening any school that refuses to support their "Day Of Truth" with litigation.
Contact info for David Crocket High School in Jonesborough, Tennessee can be found, Here. More info on another kid who was punished for organizing a Day Of Silence, and a school in Indiana that was put into a lockdown over threats of violence during the Day Of Silence, Here. You can suppose that Jay Sekulow won’t be stepping up to defend the rights of those students…
…or This Teacher who allowed this student editoral calling for tolerance toward gay students to be published. She stands to loose her job now , for allowing these highly controversial words to be published in the student newspaper, and read by impressionable young minds…
Would it be so hard to just accept them as human beings who have feelings just like everyone else? Being homosexual doesn’t make a person inhuman, it makes them just a little bit different than the rest of the world. And for living in a society that tells you to always be yourself, it’s a hard price to pay.
Well we wouldn’t want our kids taking any of that shit seriously now would we?
You’ve got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught
From year to year,
It’s got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
Those Little Twists Of The Knife That Are Meant To Remind You That You’re Human Garbage
Via Pam’s House Blend… All those happy little amusements that heterosexuals take for granted…because the No Homos sign doesn’t apply to them of course…
I had a hard time getting started on this post. My mind couldn’t wrap itself around how the TN anti-gay marriage amendment weaseled itself into the most mundane aspects of our life.
Back when I first posted on the effects of an amendment within the state, I focused on the obvious problems such as being denied access to or the right to make medical decisions for a partner. Little did I consider at the time, that we wouldn’t even be able to participate in a "vow renewal ceremony" at the Tennessee Renaissance Festival.
The vow renewal ceremony has no legal standing, even for heterosexual couples. It’s purely a declaration of love and devotion. There is no earthly reason to limit it to legally married couples, other then the casual matter-of-fact bigotry that motivated the Tennessee anti-same sex marriage amendment, which the operators of the Tennessee Renaissance Festival apparently share. You just don’t treat devoted dedicated couples like dirt otherwise.
So now we see that all the anti-same sex marriage amendments are meant to act in the way the old sodomy laws used to, before the Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional: by defining gay people as innately depraved and legally unequal. It’s about more then marriage. Even the smallest things in our lives, must constantly remind us that we are different, that we are unequal, that we are hated.
May 12 – 13: Romance Weekend
In the spirit of Romeo & Juliet, love is in the air, along with many a love ballad…
Our vow renewal ceremony is a group ceremony performed by one of our vendors,
who is an ordained minister. Participants in the ceremony must be legally
married under the state laws of Tennessee. We encourage participants to come in costume.
For our homosexual attendees, we suggest something sodomites might have worn back in the middle ages, when they were being burned at the stake…
The spiritual leader of the world’s Anglicans said Monday he has agreed to an urgent request for a meeting with U.S. church leaders as the Anglican fellowship nears a split over the Bible and sexuality.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, visiting Canada for a spiritual retreat with the country’s Anglican bishops, said he would meet with U.S. Episcopal leaders in the fall.
"My aim is to try and keep people around the table for as long as possible on this, to understand one another," Williams said at a news conference at the Anglican Church of Canada headquarters.
Some stuff I was meaning to post about this weekend but didn’t have the time…
Wanna See Something Really Scary…?
Jesus Plus Nothing: The Political Right at Bible Study, is an article that was originally published in Harper’s Magazine in 2003. But it’s still worth a read, if you don’t mind getting a peek into the hidden world and machinations of the secretive group of believers who refer to themselves as "the Family"…the folks who have been running the "National Prayer Breakfast" since 1953.
Ivanwald, which sits at the end of Twenty-fourth Street North in Arlington, Virginia, is known only to its residents and to the members and friends of the organization that sponsors it, a group of believers who refer to themselves as “the Family.” The Family is, in its own words, an “invisible” association, though its membership has always consisted mostly of public men. Senators Don Nickles (R., Okla.), Charles Grassley (R., Iowa), Pete Domenici (R., N.Mex.), John Ensign (R., Nev.), James Inhofe (R., Okla.), Bill Nelson (D., Fla.), and Conrad Burns (R., Mont.) are referred to as “members,” as are Representatives Jim DeMint (R., S.C.), Frank Wolf (R., Va.), Joseph Pitts (R., Pa.), Zach Wamp (R., Tenn.), and Bart Stupak (D., Mich.). Regular prayer groups have met in the Pentagon and at the Department of Defense, and the Family has traditionally fostered strong ties with businessmen in the oil and aerospace industries. The Family maintains a closely guarded database of its associates, but it issues no cards, collects no official dues. Members are asked not to speak about the group or its activities.
The organization has operated under many guises, some active, some defunct: National Committee for Christian Leadership, International Christian Leadership, the National Leadership Council, Fellowship House, the Fellowship Foundation, the National Fellowship Council, the International Foundation. These groups are intended to draw attention away from the Family, and to prevent it from becoming, in the words of one of the Family’s leaders, “a target for misunderstanding.” [1] The Family’s only publicized gathering is the National Prayer Breakfast, which it established in 1953 and which, with congressional sponsorship, it continues to organize every February in Washington, D.C. Each year 3,000 dignitaries, representing scores of nations, pay $425 each to attend. Steadfastly ecumenical, too bland most years to merit much press, the breakfast is regarded by the Family as merely a tool in a larger purpose: to recruit the powerful attendees into smaller, more frequent prayer meetings, where they can “meet Jesus man to man.”
In the process of introducing powerful men to Jesus, the Family has managed to effect a number of behind-the-scenes acts of diplomacy. In 1978 it secretly helped the Carter Administration organize a worldwide call to prayer with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, and more recently, in 2001, it brought together the warring leaders of Congo and Rwanda for a clandestine meeting, leading to the two sides’ eventual peace accord last July. Such benign acts appear to be the exception to the rule. During the 1960s the Family forged relationships between the U.S. government and some of the most anti-Communist (and dictatorial) elements within Africa’s postcolonial leadership. The Brazilian dictator General Costa e Silva, with Family support, was overseeing regular fellowship groups for Latin American leaders, while, in Indonesia, General Suharto (whose tally of several hundred thousand “Communists” killed marks him as one of the century’s most murderous dictators) was presiding over a group of fifty Indonesian legislators. During the Reagan Administration the Family helped build friendships between the U.S. government and men such as Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova, convicted by a Florida jury of the torture of thousands, and Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, himself an evangelical minister, who was linked to both the CIA and death squads before his own demise. “We work with power where we can,” the Family’s leader, Doug Coe, says, “build new power where we can’t.”
At the 1990 National Prayer Breakfast, George H.W. Bush praised Doug Coe for what he described as “quiet diplomacy, I wouldn’t say secret diplomacy,” as an “ambassador of faith.” Coe has visited nearly every world capital, often with congressmen at his side, “making friends” and inviting them back to the Family’s unofficial headquarters, a mansion (just down the road from Ivanwald) that the Family bought in 1978 with $1.5 million donated by, among others, Tom Phillips, then the C.E.O. of arms manufacturer Raytheon, and Ken Olsen, the founder and president of Digital Equipment Corporation. A waterfall has been carved into the mansion’s broad lawn, from which a bronze bald eagle watches over the Potomac River. The mansion is white and pillared and surrounded by magnolias, and by red trees that do not so much tower above it as whisper. The mansion is named for these trees; it is called The Cedars, and Family members speak of it as a person. “The Cedars has a heart for the poor,” they like to say. By “poor” they mean not the thousands of literal poor living barely a mile away but rather the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom: the senators, generals, and prime ministers who coast to the end of Twenty-fourth Street in Arlington in black limousines and town cars and hulking S.U.V.’s to meet one another, to meet Jesus, to pay homage to the god of The Cedars.
There they forge “relationships” beyond the din of vox populi (the Family’s leaders consider democracy a manifestation of ungodly pride) and “throw away religion” in favor of the truths of the Family. Declaring God’s covenant with the Jews broken, the group’s core members call themselves “the new chosen.”
The Family’s leaders consider democracy a manifestation of ungodly pride… Somebody might want to start asking all the politicians that hang around them and big business leaders who give them money why they’re supporting an anti-democratic cult.
Mr. Sheldon, your nose is growing… Good As You catches Mr. Family Values, Louis Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition, in a great big fib. Once again we see a righteous man of God counting on the fact that the pews are unlikely to fact check him.
For the past two decades political correctness has been derided as a surrender to thin-skinned, humorless, uptight oversensitive sissies. Well, you anti-politically correct people have won the battle, and we’re all now feasting on the spoils of your victory. During the last few months alone we’ve had a few comedians spout racism, a basketball coach put forth anti-Semitism and several high-profile spoutings of anti-gay epithets.
And you thought e pluribus unum was this country’s motto…
Finally…a little comic relief from, where else, The Daily Show. You have to figure it can’t be easy for Nancy Grace these days, seeing a fellow out of control prosecutor going down hard like that…
Some mornings, by the time I’ve finished breakfast and read the first news reports of the day, I feel exhaustion for no other reason than the fact that I’m a gay American. I wonder if my fellow citizens who spend their days campaigning and crusading to limit my civil rights – the civil rights that they themselves take for granted – ever consider the inhumanity and irrationality of what they do? And I wonder if the millions of Americans who stand by apathetically and allow this travesty to play out with each passing day ever consider the emotional anguish they are deliberately or carelessly causing to millions of children, teenagers and adults?
This weekend KETV Omaha has provided live coverage of the "Love Won Out," Focus on the Family conference intended to "curb homosexuality" and promote "the truth that change is possible for those who experience same-sex attractions," At the same time, Don Imus is fired for making a horribly tasteless and grossly inappropriate joke about a group of black women. Oh well, who cares about a bunch of fags? Obviously not any of our prominent civil rights crusaders.
No kidding. Or about the welfare and safety of gay kids either…
In what is clearly an orchestrated strategy, students and parents across the nation are suing public school systems to force them to allow professional bigots to advocate gay bashing and self-loathing on school premises.
Yup…
I wonder how many straight Americans wonder what it’s like to live with the fear and reality that in most parts of this nation you can be legally fired from your job, denied housing, refused a room in a hotel or barred from public facilities simply because of your sexual orientation. I wonder if they wonder how a gay child feels when he or she is called an abomination, prevented from attending a prom with his or her high school sweetheart, or beaten up in the schoolyard while homophobic teachers look on with contempt.
If one assumes – and I do – that given the right information most people will do the right thing, it is very difficult to understand the degree of homophobia and outright hatred that manifests itself in this great nation. Why are we, as Americans, so out of synch with other Western democracies? Why are civil rights more widely protected and honored in the EU, in South African and in Canada then in the land of Jefferson, Madison and Lincoln?
I think it has something to do with that old joke about how Australia got all of England’s criminals and America got all of England’s religious fanatics and between the two countries America got the worst of the bargain. Seriously…I don’t think the rest of the civilized world really appreciates how dangerously nuts religion here in America has become. And in these times, gay people have become to the religious right, as the Jews once were to the Nazis. If you think that is hyperbole, you are not paying attention.
Time was they could demonize Jews as Christ killers. But after the Holocaust, antisemitism stopped being a winning proposition. Just ask Mel Gibson. Then Antia Bryant showed them what playing the gay card can do for the bottom line and suddenly they had a scapegoat they could demonize all they wanted and and they didn’t even have to call us Christ killers to do it. But, per the androgynous and almost certainly gay Satan in Passion Of The Christ, which almost nobody outside the gay community remarked on during the din of offense over Gibson’s waving around the blood liable, you can see the day coming when the passion plays will have replaced The Eternal Jew with The Eternal Faggot as the villain responsible for nailing Our Savior to the cross. Maybe they’ll start playing Judas as a homosexual too. Then every Christmas break can be followed by a rash of January school yard gay bashings, followed by James Dobson’s annual washing of his hands before the advocates for abused children, at Focus On The Family HQ…
I caught a reference to a 2005 article in the Boston Globe about the propaganda machines of the religious right. It was one I’d read before, but I don’t think I’d managed to blog about it then. It’s a good one…well worth reading still. These are religious right front organizations that take on the trappings of legitimate science and then inject themselves into the news stream as opposing viewpoints to well established institutions. They’re completely fake, but the mainstream news media, and in particular the TV networks, all give them a platform to spread their lies under a bogus effort at "balance", and because it suits the money at the top of the media corporations to keep republicans in power…
President Bush had a ready answer when asked in January for his view of adoption by same-sex couples: ”Studies have shown that the ideal is where a child is raised in a married family with a man and a woman," the president said.
Bush’s assertion raised eyebrows among specialists. The American Academy of Pediatrics, composed of leaders in the field, had found no meaningful difference between children raised by same-sex and heterosexual couples, based on a 2002 report written largely by a Boston pediatrician, Dr. Ellen C. Perrin.
But Bush’s statement was celebrated at a tiny think tank called the Family Research Institute, where the founder, Dr. Paul Cameron, believes Bush was referring to studies he has published in academic journals that are critical of gays and lesbians as parents. Cameron has published numerous studies with titles such as ”Gay Foster Parents More Apt to Molest" — a conclusion disputed by many other researchers.
The president’s statement was also welcomed at a small organization with an august-sounding name, the American College of Pediatricians. The college, which has a small membership, says on its website that it would be ”dangerously irresponsible" to allow same-sex couples to adopt children. The college was formed just three years ago, after the 75-year-old American Academy of Pediatrics issued its paper.
That pediatric study asserted a ”considerable body of professional evidence" that there is no difference between children of same-sex and heterosexual parents.
The Family Research Institute and the American College of Pediatrics are part of a rapidly growing trend in which small think tanks, researchers, and publicists who are open about their personal beliefs are providing what they portray as medical information on some of the most controversial issues of the day.
Created as counterpoints to large, well-established medical organizations whose work is subject to rigorous review and who assert no political agenda, the tiny think tanks with names often mimicking those of established medical authorities have sought to dispute the notion of a medical consensus on social issues such as gay rights, the right to die, abortion, and birth control.
For example, Cameron’s Family Research Institute, with an annual budget of less than $200,000, tries to counter the views of the 150,000-member American Psychological Association, which has an annual budget of $98 million. The tiny American College of Pediatricians has a single employee, yet it has been quoted as a counterpoint to the 60,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics.
(emphasis mine) The quickest way to deflate the propaganda of these religious right front groups is to shine a light on them. More often then not you find their bogus studies and stats getting injected into the political conversation without acknowledgment of where it came from. That’s because these outfits are well understood to be propaganda mills and not real scientific institutions, whatever their names make them sound like. So whenever politicians like president Nice Job Brownie start quoting their numbers, reporters need to ask where those numbers came from.
Senior Bush aides, asked for the basis of the comment about adoption, now say they are unaware of any studies comparing heterosexual and same-sex adoptions — by Cameron or by any pediatric association. The president, they say, was probably referring to studies that show children are better off living with both biological parents — though those studies have nothing to do with adoption by same-sex couples.
Duck and weave, duck and weave. You may remember the time Mr. Book Of Virtue Bill Bennett got caught on ABC’s This Weekquoting Paul Cameron’s bogus figure for the average lifespan of homosexuals. He first denied he got it from Cameron, then he said there were other researchers who got the same figures. And so there were. The other researcher Bennett pointed to, Jeffrey Satinover, had in fact, gotten his figures from Cameron too. When that was pointed out to him, Bennett retracted the claim, only to make it again some years later.
In June, the Rev. Bill Banuchi, executive director of the New York chapter of the Christian Coalition, said in a speech protesting Gay Pride Day that gays should be legally required to wear warning labels, not unlike Jewish stars under the Nazis.
"We put warning labels on cigarette packs because we know that smoking takes one or two years off the average life span, yet we celebrate a lifestyle that we know spreads every kind of sexually transmitted disease and takes at least 20 years off the average life span, according to the 2005 issue of the revered [sic] scientific journal Psychological Reports."
One month later, Dr. John Whiffen, chairman of the board of the National Physicians Center for Family Resources, a faith-basped advocacy group that was contracted by Bush Administration federal health officials to develop an abstinence education curriculum, said that, "There are obvious effects for male homosexuals from a health standpoint. Parents should discuss those with their child." Then he added: "It’s fairly well-accepted that smoking is not a good idea. It takes seven years off your life. It appears that male homosexuality takes more than that off your life. Naturally you should warn them about that."
You notice that none of these people said anything about where they got their information about homosexuality. That’s because they know full well that it comes from a completely untrustworthy source. And yet even knowing that, they continue to cite it, and all those other bogus groups with names that mimick actual institutions of science. All the while posturing as defenders of virtue and morality and godliness…that pesky ninth commandment exempted.
A 15-year-old gay Centennial High School student was taunted and attacked by six classmates last week because of his sexual orientation.
The victim was undergoing surgery for a broken nose and facial injuries today, according to the Gay, Lesbian and Gay Alliance.
The incident happened last Thursday afternoon, when Anthony Hergesheimer was walking home from Centennial High School along Denver Boulevard, the organization said. Six male students, ages 15 and 16, in a vehicle apparently passed by Hergesheimer several times before they stopped and hurled anti-gay insults at him.
One of the students also got out of the vehicle and threw a can of Lysol at Hergesheimer, who suffered a broken nose and severe facial injuries.
Lysol. Like they were cleansing the street of some kind of human garbage…
The six male Centennial students, who were not identified, were suspended Monday until a decision is made about possible expulsion. The district usually has 25 days to make a recommendation on whether to expel a student.
Pueblo police is also investigating the attack and possible criminal charges may be filed against the youths.
But it’s not the teenagers who attacked the gay kid who need to be ashamed of themselves, according to The Alliance Defense Fund…
God has condemned them. They should live in shame. What was I saying the other day? You can’t paint a bulls-eye on a group of kids, tell their peers that those kids are condemned by god, and not expect that every now and then one of them will get the shit beaten out of them. But…that’s the intent isn’t it? A fearful homosexual is a good homosexual. You have to beat the pride out of them young. Christianity has come to this in the Land Of The Free And The Home Of The Brave: Accepting Jesus Christ as your lord and savior means you can set kids loose on other kids, and still look at yourself in a mirror. Who would Jesus throw the first can of Lysol at?
Daniel Gonzales, formerly of ExGay Watch has created a little video about the anti-gay counter attack on the Day of Silence. Cynically named “Day Of Truth”, it seeks to legitimize harassment of GLBT kids in school by their classmates, in the name of freedom of religion. The problem is, as always, that the religious right isn’t on speaking terms with Truth, or anything even remotely resembling it. Their website, as the video shows, helpfully provides kids with cards printed up with informational resources on homosexuality that all link back to Ex Gay ministries and their usual myths, lies and superstitions. The party line is that this is all supposed to give gay kids “the other side” of the story. But as always this “other side” is actually a message directed not at gay youth, but to their heterosexual peers. The resources handed out to school kids are nothing less then a collection of handy excuses for them to treat their GLBT peers with disrespect, if not outright contempt.
We see in the video the t-shirt their poster child got tossed out of class for wearing on a previous Day of Silence, which tells gay kids to “Be Ashamed” and that God condemns them. On its face then, this is not a message of love directed toward gay youth, but an exhortation to their peers to treat them like human garbage. It is incitement that at some point is certain to result in outright physical assaults. And when that happens you can bet that like Pilot the grown adults who are instigating this will wash, wash their hands of the consequences. But you don’t paint a bulls-eye on children, tell everyone that those children are condemned by God, and not expect violence to result.
I’m splitting this into two parts because it’s becoming a tad longish and I’m sorry. Also, you may have to endure some of my efforts at writing fiction, which I don’t normally shove out onto my blog because I know my tastes in fiction aren’t everyone’s. But something struck me as I read this story this morning, from Pam’s House Blend …
I have the names of the four women, and while some of them held some sort of Wisconsin Department of Administration position while Thompson was governor, they tend not to be public figures today; one was a Milwaukee-area state representative, one a county campaign manager, one a member of the gaming commission, one a staffer at the state Division of Health, one a Portage resident. While Thompson was governor, many of the liaisons allegedly occurred at Madison’s Concourse Hotel. One of my correspondents wrote, "After he moved into the [Governor’s] Mansion, Tommy quit the practice of logging in the names of guests and visitors. Can be verified by Mansion officers." — reporter Jay Rath, about 2008 GOP prez candidate (and married man) Tommy Thompson’s colorful love life while Governor of Wisconsin. Apparently a lot of other reporters weren’t asking or telling about it back in the day.
It apparently gets better…
"Tommy had an apartment in Madison before he was elected governor," read the June 22, 1994, letter. "He kept the apartment after he was elected [to the state legislature]. Supposedly there were several women who joined him there."
In fact, there allegedly were as many as four long-term affairs before Tommy Thompson finally left for Washington, D.C., to become secretary of Health and Human Services.
These are old notes in my files that suddenly are current again. Now that his hat is in the presidential ring, it’s time for journalists to finally look at the alleged extramarital affairs of the latest presidential candidate of the family-values party.
Reporters are a clubby bunch, and the problem in getting the story while Tommy was governor was that statehouse journalists — the ones who could most easily have reported on the allegations — historically tended to be part of an old boys network; everyone was pals, and so everyone looked the other way. The rumors were a "secret" that many working reporters knew about.
So…lessee… To quote Pam, We have "Sen. John McCain (affair, divorce), former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (affair, divorce, affair, divorce), and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (divorce, affair, nasty divorce)…" And then there’s Rush Limbaugh, who was caught not that long ago taking a trip to the Dominican Republic, an island that I’m told had an active sex tourist trade going, with Viagra he hadn’t been legally prescribed. Swell. Okay…now I know why my sex life is so tame. I’m not a right wing Family Values republican…
Anyway… I want to begin making my point, with a passage I wrote some years ago for my Skywatcher’s Of Aden fantasy series. (I’ve had it offline for some time now for major re-writes.) This particular passage is part of a still evolving backstory for one of my main characters, Daniel Tanner. The scene is the room of Joshua Putnum, a student of theology at the Wallensden Seminary. Daniel was sent there as a young boy by his father to insure he would never follow in his mother’s wickedness. Daniel is being groomed to become a minister of his faith. He is not a reluctant student. His religiosity is real, deeply felt and part of his bedrock. But at this point in the story, at 16, he is having a crisis of faith over his sexual orientation. To further complicate matters, the older boy, Joshua, has been trying to take him as a lover, though he too is having his own crisis of faith and sexuality.
Daniel has thoughts of suicide when his sexual orientation becomes apparent to him. But instead of going through with it, he becomes determined to understand why this curse had happened to him. He begins devouring material in the seminary and town library…anything he thinks can help him understand why this is happening to him. In the course of this research he meets Joshua, and falls in love with the bookish older student.
The critical inner difference I am trying to illustrate between the two in this passage of Daniel’s story, is that at this point, when he actually falls in love, Daniel begins to realize that his sexuality isn’t a curse at all, but a blessing. But Joshua, having rigorously conditioned himself to think of sex only in terms of lust, is still full of shame, even as he coaxes Daniel into bed with him. I was thinking as I wrote this, of the difference between someone whose spirituality is, as I like to think of it, "faith with eyes wide open" and that fundamentalism that constantly flinches away from the world like a frightened animal, and into the safety of ritual and dogma.
Understand that this all takes place in a fantasy world that’s vaguely similar to New England colonial America, but not as technologically advanced. The various religious sects in this world, including Daniel’s and Joshua’s, are not ours, but merely akin to ours in certain aspects.
In the morning of his third year at Wallensden Seminary, in the sixteenth year of his life, Daniel Tanner awakened, and saw the earth anew, as though for the first time.
He lay on his side looking across Joshua’s room. Sunlight streamed though the room’s only window, bathing room in a vibrant morning glow. Beside him, Joshua breathed steadily, still asleep, one arm flung possessively around Daniel. Daniel sighed, luxuriating in Joshua’s embrace, while his eyes took in every detail of Joshua’s room.
His eyes strayed over to the open window. A restless desire to see the world outside also awakening stirred in him. Gently, Daniel rolled out from under Joshua’s arm. He rose from the bed, and wrapped one of the light cotton sheets around him, not to hide his nakedness, but to feel himself still embraced by something from Joshua’s bed. He stepped barefoot over the room’s only rug, felt the nap of it between his toes, and stopped to look down at it.
It was a common household rug. The trader’s son in him identified it at once as a local product, made not far from where it rested now. Leeward Hills, second grade wool and remnant blend, northern single cross weave. It’s market value fixed to the penny, he knelt down and ran a hand lightly over its surface, allowing his fingers to make their own assay. First with, then against the weave, his fingertips delivered to him their own understanding of the rug, while he marveled at how carelessly he had dismissed so much of the richness of the world around him.
He rose and walked to the window. The morning sun embraced him with golden light and warmth. Outside, the main road leading into Wallensden was already busy with traffic. The sounds and smells of the street below, annoying distractions to him before, arrived at his ears like a new music, and danced with his other senses like playful children. There was a knife grinder rolling his stone up the street, gesturing to the butcher across the way with a simple, timeless hand sign that asked if there were any knifes to grind that day. A local farmer carried a stick of tobacco hands from his wagon into a tobacco shop. A man gave a penny to the paperboy on the corner, for one of his single-sheet newspapers. Like a chorus to the scene he now beheld, came the smells from the baker’s shop across the street. He breathed them in deeply, felt his body respond almost at once to their promise of nourishment.
Lord…my life is full beyond measure… For an instant, he found himself trembling again, as at his lover’s first touch. So this is what it’s all about…
There existed no word in his language for ‘homosexual’. Not until the far distant future, when clinical terms would be invented, would the idea of it as a state of being, and not a perverse habit, enter into his culture’s consciousness. For generations to come, his kind would invent and borrow words from other languages and cultures to identify themselves. Many in his and later ages, who shared his deep religious faith, would endure years of self hatred and torment, before finally achieving a small measure of self acceptance, if any. But he had already grown up with the knowledge that he would never be good enough, because he was his mother’s son.
Only hours before, his steadfast faith told him that to love another male in this way was wrong, dissolute, a grievous offense to the eyes of God. Now that same unwavering faith lifted him to heights of spirit he had never known before. So different from the warm and wonderful childhood feeling he’d had during prayer, when he felt that God was near. So breathtaking, like the electric pleasure that ran through him when he saw Joshua smile.
It was beyond questioning in him that the pleasures brought to humanity by the Jackal, the Despiser, the father of lies, to tempt humankind, were both transient and tawdry. The drunkard’s bliss. The gambler’s spoils. The lecher’s thrill. Deep in the bedrock of his nature was the certainty that only God could create a thing of beauty. He thought of Joshua’s body, of the sensation of Joshua’s hands on him, and his own body shivered in remembrance, and in that moment he knew that no amount of thanks or praise to his creator could ever be enough.
He heard a rustling in the bed behind him, and knew that Joshua was awake.
Daniel is in love. But Joshua is merely in lust, and now he’s made a night of it with another boy and like clockwork his crisis of faith starts tapping him on the shoulder.
[Joshua] saw the boy standing there wrapped in the blanket, looking like an apparition from Pagan times, the sunlight shimmering over his pale blond hair like a halo. His eyes darted away from the sight. As a young humanities student, he once beheld a nude statue of Aster, the lost son of the Prophet Thomas, created by the legendary Mary Stephan. It was Aster at the moment he realizes his father has abandoned him in the wilderness. In the figure’s quiet courage in the face of sorrow, and its sensual beauty, Joshua saw everything within himself that he was struggling desperately to renounce. He vowed never again to lay eyes on the work of Mary Stephan. Now its living embodiment was in his bedroom, looking at him.
He took a breath, fixed a smile on his face, and blandly said, "Good morning sleepyhead."
They are both deeply religious, both passionately devoted to their God. Their feelings about what happened the night before are inextricably wound up in that faith. And yet their reactions to it could not be more different…
The theologian distrusted reason. Daniel distrusted his emotions. Reason offered Joshua no sanctuary from the fact of his sexual orientation, and so it was to his religion he turned, time and again, for solace, for forgiveness, for absolution. He had become so successful at keeping his intellect away from his emotions, that now even the mildest of passions would always threaten to overwhelm him. Guilt regarding his sexual nature, had long since become a secret humiliation that he could not control himself. Daniel, when his emotions threatened his balance and self control, would flee them time and again, into a dispassionate monastery of reason and logic. Emotions were, irrational, specious, misleading. Reason was truth and light. Daniel could endure anything but doubt. Joshua, anything but certainty.
In the fire the metals behaved differently. The theologian, confronted by love, shrank away, utterly unable to distinguish it from debauchery. Daniel, pulled by an ancient tide so certain and sure he could not rationally deny it, walked finally, with eyes wide open, into its embrace. All the rest of it would have to be reasoned out later; it’s ethics and morality, what it meant to his faith, to his future, to the kind of life he would have to live. That he would only know this depth of feeling for another male was a thing he had already acknowledged. What changed matters irrevocably now, was that he knew it was good. To act as if he believed otherwise would be self deceit, a thing his intellect would not permit and his conscience could not endure.
Years later, Daniel would remember it, as akin to the moment he accepted God into his heart, and its spirit flowed immediately into every corner of his being, transforming and lifting him. Joshua would remember only how completely he had misread the boy he had held in his arms. But love’s ancient and arcane logic would remain a mystery to him throughout his life.
Tentatively, Joshua placed his hands on Daniel’s shoulder’s. He half expected, half secretly hoped, that the boy would turn away with revulsion. Instead Daniel looked right into his eyes with the straight faced expression he had become known by in the seminary, save that now his lips bore a faint smile that Joshua had never seen before. For an instant he was certain no one else had ever seen it either.
"Joshua." said Daniel, as if his name were a prayer.
Joshua gently drew Daniel close and embraced him, disturbed; he did not want to be looked at that way, did not want his name to be spoken that way. He took a moment to catch his breath. "Are you all right with it, then?"
"Yes."
It was so simply stated, that for a moment Joshua doubted Daniel was being honest. But Daniel’s embrace was firm and unequivocal, and after a moment he allowed himself a sigh of relief, hearing only the boy’s acceptance of their mutual need. But Daniel was addressing another, giving it joyful thanks for the wondrous gift of his life of flesh and blood; a gift that had delivered him into an almost perfect exaltation of spirit which had brought him not to his knees, but to his feet.
The first person you come out to, is yourself…
For years I thought of this "coming out to self" process along with the institution of the closet and all its self loathing and self destructiveness, as pretty much unique to gay people. But now…in the light of all these recent right wing sex scandals I’m seeing it a little differently. What I’m starting to see is a lot of this self destructive denial of one’s sexual nature, the shame and self loathing you see in someone like Joshua in my story, in heterosexuals too. How many heterosexual men and women I wonder, comfortable with their human sexuality, have found themselves in relationships with partners who when the lights went out, treated sex like it was either a dirty joke, or a thing of shame, a sign of humanity’s brokeness and alienation from God, not a joyful, playful, delightful physical affirmation of the spiritual bond between them.
There’s a classic sort of compartmentalization that goes on in the lives and the inner world of closeted gay people, where their sex lives and their personal lives almost sometimes seem to be living on different planets. You know the story…the all-american family man/woman god fearing sexual puritan by day who becomes the slut puppy by night. Well…I think I’m seeing that now in the likes of thoroughly heterosexual people like Newt, and Rush, and Rudy and Tommy Thompson. They rail against gays and sex and pop culture sexuality, even as their own sex lives are going down the toilet. It’s the same sort of denial and compartmentalization I once saw constantly, and ruinously, in the lives of gay people, until something blows open their closet doors and there they are standing naked in the spotlight like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. Who? Me? Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain…
As H.L. Mencken once said, "The most costly of all follies is to believe what is palpably untrue". It is also pretty goddammed faithless. For untold generations gay people have been taught to believe pure unmitigated crap about themselves. But as it happens, so have heterosexuals. About sex. About human sexuality. About their own inner nature. Looks to me like there are a lot of heterosexuals in the closet too…living in a state of denial about their inner selves and their own sexuality that looks more and more like the one gay people have been struggling to come out of for generations. And it’s making them act out self destructively, and lash out at anyone comfortable with their sexuality, in a kind of transference of shame.
Anyway… Give it some thought…while I gather my mind a tad more for Part II of this…
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, has said that the churches of the Anglican Communion must be safe places for gay and lesbian people. His comments come in a welcome to an interim report on the Anglican Communion’s Listening Process, a commitment to listen to the experience of homosexual people.
Williams warns that the challenge to create the safe space for the voices of gay and lesbian people to be heard and for their dignity to be respected is based on a fundamental commitment of the Communion.
"The commitments of the Communion are not only to certain theological positions on the question of sexual ethics but also to a manifest and credible respect for the proper liberties of homosexual people, a commitment again set out in successive Lambeth Conference Resolutions over many decades," he said. "I share the concerns expressed about situations where the Church is seen to be underwriting social or legal attitudes which threaten these proper liberties.
The problem of course, is that even the local homophobes really don’t give a rat’s ass anymore what Williams thinks, never mind the ones in Africa…
Bishop blocks gay youth worker’s job
A leading bishop has fuelled the controversy over the Church of England and equality after being accused of refusing to employ a youth worker because he is gay.
The Bishop of Hereford, the Right Reverend Anthony Priddis, blocked the appointment of John Reaney, 41, Reaney’s lawyers say, despite the unanimous decision of an interview panel, including two vicars, to give him the job.
Reaney, from north Wales, claims he had been told after the interview that confirmation that he had got the job from Priddis was just a formality. Instead he was subjected to embarrassing and intimate questions about his private life before being informed by letter that he could not be offered the job because he was a practising homosexual.
On Wednesday the bishop will appear before an employment tribunal in Cardiff to defend his decision. In the first case of its kind, his lawyers are expected to argue that lay appointments by the Church of England should be exempt, as are clerical posts, from anti-discrimination laws.
Anni Holden, a spokeswoman for the Diocese of Hereford, said: ‘We expect the same sexual standards of behaviour from our support ministers or lay ministers as we do of clergy.’ The standard they expect is based on a statement from the House of Bishops in the Nineties which said it was acceptable for staff to be gay but that they must remain celibate.
Reaney’s lawyers will argue that his rejection was based purely on his sexuality, and heterosexual staff were never asked similar questions about their private lives.
The case will highlight the controversy in the Church of England facing Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, below, and could exacerbate the conflict between Christian beliefs and equality laws that are aimed at protecting the rights of gay and lesbian people.
Ironically enough, the problem facing his church, and Christianity itself these days, is pretty neatly summed up by Williams himself…
No-one reading this report can be complacent about such a situation, and the Church is challenged to show that it is truly a safe place for people to be honest and where they may be confident that they will have their human dignity respected, whatever serious disagreements about ethics may remain.
But it is precisely the human dignity of homosexuals that people in his church are having "serious disagreements" about, not ethics. How you answer the ethical questions depends on how you answer the fundamental question of the humanity and dignity of homosexual people. If you think homosexuals are some kind of human vermin, a cancer on the church, then you’re sure as hell not going to make your church a safe place for them. And you’re not going to want anyplace outside the church be a safe place for them either. Your calculation is simple: wherever homosexuals are safe, nobody else is. Therefore, homosexuals cannot be safe anywhere. You are going to do everything in your power to sweep them into the gutter where you think they belong, for the sake of your church, and your community. Well…really…for the sake of your cheapshit prejudices. But this is what Anglican archbishop Peter Akinola, is encouraging the government of his country to do. It is what the Americans who have now aligned with him would wish their government could. A safe place for homosexuals is the last thing these people want. They want a purge, and not just in the church pews either.
The really sad thing is that even in this new document, Williams cannot bear to actually take a stand For the human dignity of gay people. At a glance it seems that he is, but by glossing over the nature of the serious disagreement he’s undercutting the very stand he would like everyone to think he’s making. You can’t simultaneously insist that the human dignity of gay people must be respected, and at the same time agree that it is debatable.
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