Reading this article from Gay.Com, about a raid on a New Mexican gay gym, was like reading a history book about gay life before Stonewall…except that only one person was arrested…

New Mexico state police and the Albuquerque fire marshal’s office entered and secured the men-only gym about 10 p.m. Saturday and arrested club manager Ron Cordova on suspicion of selling and dispensing alcohol without a liquor license, said New Mexico Department of Public Safety spokesman Peter Olson.

But gym patrons — who were forced to lie on the floor, handcuffed, with semi-automatic rifles pointed at them — say that if the raid was about an alcohol infraction, it was, at least, overkill.

Ronald, a 57-year-old gay man from Miami Beach who requested that his last name not be used, said he was visiting New Mexico looking for real estate opportunities when he heard about a "social event" at Pride Gym on Saturday evening.

"There were about 35 of us there, and most were older men, some in their 70s, eating tacos and chatting," Ronald said. "Most of us were fully dressed, because it’s a legitimate gym with a sauna, but not a bathhouse."

"Suddenly, a SWAT team carrying semi-automatic weapons, plastic shields and late gloves burst through the door and told us to get on the ground. They kept saying, ‘We’re not here for you,’ but still they handcuffed us and kept us on the ground until they could run background checks on all of us. This took about an hour."

At least one elderly man suffered a panic attack and was taken away by paramedics, Ronald said. A few of the patrons were in the sauna when the raid occurred, and, when their towels fell, they were forced to lie on the floor naked, he said.

Ronald claimed that police officers led one man into a separate room and took pictures of him.

"The guy was wearing a leather harness and a jockstrap. A female officer with a digital camera took him into a room; we saw about 15 or 20 flashes coming from there and heard lots of laughter. They (the officers) were having a good old time. It was like the gay Abu Ghraib."

The ACLU is looking into it, but this is George Bush’s America, and I honestly can’t see any court case against police treatment of citizens like this, let alone homosexuals, going anywhere.  The Bush supreme court gives the police pretty much carte blanche these days, and it seems sometimes reading the news accounts of police behavior that made it past the courts, that they can cuff you and strip search you and do a cavity search of you during a routine traffic stop, so long as in their "judgment" they needed to do that.

"The officers were serving a search warrant and the fire marshal was there to inspect the building," Olson said. "Any time there is a situation with a large number of people, officers will employ whatever tactics they need to maintain control of the situation."

The warrant, he said, arose from tips from locals that alcohol was being served at Pride Gym. "Any time agents find someone serving alcohol without a license, it causes concern because those proprietors are operating outside of the law." He said it’s inaccurate to characterize Saturday night’s event as a ‘raid,’ and maintained that officers were not out of bounds.

…

"We were committing no crimes, and not one of us treated the police with any disrespect," Ronald said. "If they (the police) were trying to prevent drunk driving, why didn’t they target the art gallery where I went earlier that night? They were serving wine."

Olson said art galleries serving alcohol had been the focus of similar enforcement in the past, and now employ professional bartenders to serve wine.

However, he said he was not aware of incidents where gallery patrons were forced to lie on the ground at gunpoint.

Does anyone really need to explain why art gallery patrons are treated more like human beings by the police then the patrons of a gym that caters to the gay community?  The only difference here from the way cops treated gay people pre Stonewall is that everyone inside wasn’t led in handcuffs to police vans stationed outside, but that’s only because sodomy isn’t a crime anymore.  One more Bush appointee to the supreme court, and that will change, and the vans will be back.

The usual suspects have filed suit in Michigan , to stop Michigan State University from offering health insurance to the partners of gay people.

LANSING — A conservative group sued Wednesday to stop Michigan State University from offering health insurance to the partners of gay workers and said the school is violating a 2004 amendment to the state constitution.

The American Family Association of Michigan filed the lawsuit in Ingham County Circuit Court and hopes to get a ruling setting a precedent that would block domestic-partner benefits at other state universities.

The purpose of the suit is to ensure that courts rule on the constitutionality of domestic-partner benefits at public universities, said Patrick Gillen, an attorney for the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, which is representing the association.

By providing same-sex benefits, MSU is "recognizing same-sex marriage in substance, if not by label," Gillen said.

Not to mention providing access to health care for a class of people the American Family Association would just as soon see dead.  The bible says their blood will be upon them after all…

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.

Via Ex-Gay Watch…  Steven Fales was excommunicated from the Mormon church when reparative therapy failed (surprise, surprise) to make him heterosexual.  He divorced, was separated from his children, and then his church…

“When I was getting excommunicated, I found it so bizarre and fantastical, I could not believe what was happening,” Fales says after a recent rehearsal of "Mormon Boy" alongside his Tony-winning director Jack Hofsiss.

“Part of me as a man of the theater was like, ‘This is a good story,’“ he says. “And the budding activist in me, who was starting to get it, was like, ‘You know what? This is happening to all kinds of people—someone needs to write about this.’“

The theater also proved to be therapeutic, offering him a “soft place to land” after being excommunicated, which he calls “a medieval, barbaric practice.”

“What do you replace the church of your birth with? That’s how fragmenting it is to be no longer Mormon,” Fales says. “It’s a cult tactic used to control and suppress, and if you buy into that mind-fuck, then it can really do a number on you.”

Thankfully, theater offered Fales a new sense of communion.

No offence to my readers of different faiths, but this is why I am eternally thankful I was born into a Baptist household, and one that believed, as Baptists always used to believe, in soul competency, and the primacy of the relationship between the individual believer and God.  It’s not that you cannot be excommunicated from the Baptist faith, it’s that the concept itself is utterly meaningless.  At worst you can be tossed out of your local church, which can be traumatic enough; but you are always free to find another, more welcoming congregation.  A Baptist does not regard the church as an instrumentality of God.  It is a community of believers, important in it’s own right, but not an instrumentality.  There are no instrumentalities.  There is only the personal relationship you have with God which is always direct and intimate.  No one can take that from you.  No one.  No one can stand between you and God.  No cleric, no church, no authority of state or church, no one, nothing.  That is bedrock.  Or used to be anyway.  It’s what I was taught all through childhood, and though I no longer regard myself as a Christian (I have a hard time with forgiveness, otherwise today I might be a Unitarian…), I still believe it.

I have no idea what I would have done, what I would have become, if I had to face excommunication, and actually believed I was being separated from God.  I think it might have killed me. Fales is right.  It is medieval and barbaric.  I’d call it grotesquely arrogant as well.  He is one strong hearted soul.  I so much admire all the excommunicated ones who made it to the other side of the pit of heartbreak, still holding on to their humanity, and their spirituality.  It speaks so much to the strength of the human spirit.

Fales’ blog is here. 

Via my friend Bob Cutler, who lives far too close to the Rotting Crypt Keeper…

I’m going to get smacked for not posting this sooner…but if you’re in the mood to give Fred a piece of your mind, it’s happening tomorrow, right at his doorstep:

This is about the protest against Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church.

So, Gay, Straight, Soldier, Soldier supporter, and those concerned about the Tide of Hatred Are welcomed and encouraged to show up.
 

I went to the protests yesterday, in front of Focus On My The Family’s so-called Love Won Out conference at Immanuel’s Church in Silver Spring Maryland, missing the D.C. Pride parade and block party, and what was even worse, Baltimore’s "Hon" Fest in Hampden.  But I had to go, and it was the more rewarding experience.  I met so many kind and decent people on the picket line, all ages, gay and straight, all deeply troubled by the lies being told about homosexuals and homosexuality inside the sanctuary of a church.

The first thing I noticed when I got there was how remote Immanuel’s Church actually is from the city.  If Focus is bringing its circus to Washington D.C., why put it inside a church, and not all that big of one, all the way out here in the outer suburbs?  I discussed it with some of the other protesters and came to think that they did it so that they wouldn’t be mobbed by an angry gay community.  The thought also struck me that it was why they held the event right on D.C. Pride day…to have it happening while the city’s gay community would be busy with something else.  It wasn’t until I got home that another reason occurred to me: a number of Focus supporters might not have wanted to go into the city for such an event.  For all its appeals to black ministers lately, the anti-gay religious right is largely a phenomena of the well to do suburbs…the vanguards of the white flight of the 60s and 70s.  They may draw support from the rural voters, they are perfectly willing to appeal to the prejudices of some in the African American community, but the anti-gay agenda is being driven largely by the rich white burbs.  Dobson had to know his base probably wouldn’t want to drive into a largely black, never mind largely democratic city for his conference.

Our picket line was not huge, but according to Steve Boese of A Tenable Belief, neither was the crowd inside the conference.  Steve actually went into the conference (a thing Wayne Besen is apparently no longer allowed to do) and sat through most of the presentations and his estimate of the crowd size was about 300 or so people, in a church that could hold about four-hundred or so.  Lance Carroll, who protested Love Won Out when it was in St. Louis, said they’d gotten over a thousand people at their conference in that city.  But the people who stood in front of Immanuel’s Church yesterday, and held their signs for the attendees to see, had strength in more then simple numbers: the strength that comes from truely loving your neighbor, and caring about what happens to them.

Lance Carroll, the 18 year old who was taken to Love In Action against his will when he was 17, was there, as was Wayne Besen.  During the afternoon picket Lance spied what he thought were a group of LIA staff members and walked across the street to talk to them.  Having been forced to walk the walk of shame last year on the LIA campus in Memphis, it had to have been an exhilarating feeling for him to be able to freely choose whether or not to talk to LIA staff.  As it turned out only one of them was from LIA, the others were Exodus.  The LIA guy was new, and hadn’t been at LIA when Lance was in the program.  He told Lance that he and John Smid were the only two people from LIA there at the conference.  They all chatted with Lance for a bit, and Lance asked the LIA guy to tell John he said ‘hi’.  Of course Smid never had spine enough to come out and talk to him.  But later the other guy from LIA come back out, by himself, and walked over to the picket line.  He told Lance he wanted to hear from him directly why he was so upset over how he was treated at LIA.  Lance gave him an earful.  It had to have felt good to be able to get that off of his chest to someone on LIA staff.

I met many good and decent people…did a little chauffeur work for Lance and Wayne and Steve, back and forth to the Metro station, and watched so many interesting moments as the people inside the Love Won Out conference encountered people outside their doors, who were bearing witness to actual human love and compassion.  I’ll be chewing on what I saw for weeks I’m sure.  In the meantime, here are a few photos…

God Loves You

I just have to mention this about the image above…these folks there at the head of the picket line had just broken into a chorus of Amazing Grace when I walked over and snapped this one.  Listening to their quiet, insistent voices singing that song just there, just then, nearly brought me to tears. 

Shame On You

Homosexuality Is Not

Jesus Loves

Lance Carroll being interviewed

Love Won Out

No Fixing Needed

Choose Acceptance

Wayne Besen and Lance Carroll

 More photos later…bandwidth permitted…

I should have posted this earlier in the week after I got back from Memphis…but anyway…

Montgomery County Maryland is my growing up place.  I’ve been waiting for these rats to stick there noses there.  I’ll be at the vigil in the morning, or if not the morning one, the afternoon one.  If you expect to be there please email me.

This has been one ex-gay protesting week for me…

Join Us at a "Love Won Out" Vigil
June 10, 2006

Focus on the Family is coming to Montgomery County Saturday June 10. They are presenting their "Love WonOut" conference at Immanuel’s Church in Silver Spring. We know from other similar events around the country that these conferences propagate the view that LGBT people must choose between their Christian faith and their own God given sexuality; that homosexuality is a mental disorder and that this"disorder" can and must be cured.

In other communities, citizens of all walks of life have joined together to bear witness that these statements are not true. We hope to do the same. A vigil is being held in front of Immanuel’s Church the day ofthe conference. We desire to let people know that being faithful to God and being a healthy, LGBT person are not inconsistent; and to counter the conversion therapy notions set forth by Focus on the Family, which are dangerous to the well being of those to whom it is directed. We further want to provide a friendly face of support for any individuals attending the conference due to coercion.

The morning vigil is between 7:30 – 9:30 AM in a lot across from the church. The press conference will take place at 9:00 AM. The afternoon vigil is 4:00 – 6:00 PM. Our vigil will be silent and peaceful. Respectful placards are welcome.

Immanuel’s Church is located at 16819 New Hampshire Ave. Silver Spring, MD. It is just north of Spencerville Road, 6.8 miles north of Colesville Road.

For further information about the Love Won Out conference: www.lovewonout.com

For further information about the vigil, email Rev. Sandy Dodson, Christ Congregational Church, UCC: sandy@christ-ucc.org
 

The Sunday before the protests, the protesters organized a wee poster making party at Peabody Park in the Forbidden Zone (the forbidden Zone being being those regions of Memphis that Love In Action inmates are not allowed to enter while in the program).  It was an affair that might have stuck you as a tad carefree, given the brutal nature of Love In Action’s Refuge program.  But these folks, nearly all of them teens themselves (Morgan told me to go to Peabody Park and look for a bunch of crazy teens), had a message of genuine love and courage to be oneself, to speak to the people trapped inside LIA, and there were times when the atmosphere got a little giddy with it.  But I could not emphasize this enough: the message they were determined to bring to the doorstep of LIA was not one of anger and fear and hurt, but of courage and love. 

I can think of no quicker, surer solvent of the hatred and fear inside of John Smid’s hollow church, then the spirit these determined teens brought to the protests. They are an amazing group.

Poster Making – Peabody Park

!!

Love in Action

Stop It

Don’t Be Mean

WTF?

Why John Smid

Poster Making – Peabody Park

More photos to come…

See it here…

Morgan and Lance

Love Is…

God Loves…

Be As You Are…

Lance Carroll made a statement to the press.   QAC has it on their site, including some more info about the protests that you should read.  Here’s what Lance said:

In January of 2005, I came out to my parents as being gay. After an initial positive and supporting reaction they began to change their minds…I was sent to several different counselors, the last of which worked for a fundamentalist Christian church. This “counselor” informed me that I was not Gay, in fact, he said no one was really Gay…and anyone who claimed to be gay was living a lie. This pastor recommended to my parents that I be sent to Love In Action’s REFUGE program for teens.

On June 6, 2005 I left Jackson, Missouri at five o’clock in the morning to make the long trip to Memphis, Tennessee. The first things I saw at the Love in Action campus were the protesters. I spent the entire summer between my junior and senior year of highschool in Memphis, against my will, at Refuge, where I underwent many forms of “therapy” that were supposed to turn me away from being gay. These so-called “therapies” included group activities where one person was singled out and made to be ashamed of very personal occurrences in their lives. I had to participate in this activity many times. Other “therapies” included isolation, where you wouldn’t be allowed to communicate—we were not even allowed to make eye contact, with any of the other participants; making the women wear skirts and makeup to help them become more feminine; and making the men play sports in an attempt to help them become more masculine.

These are just a couple of examples of the type of “program” they use to turn people straight. Though while I was there, it just seemed to make people more depressed and self-loathing than they already were. I, myself, went through several of these depressive periods. After enduring this time in Memphis I returned home, unchanged.

My parents were very disappointed and didn’t know what to do next, feeling that they had tried everything. My mom took it upon herself to somehow change me. This began with daily bouts of verbal abuse, her telling me how ashamed she was of me. After a few months of this, the verbal abuse escalated into small episodes of physical abuse, with her cornering me and slapping me, while telling me what an abomination I was.This type of behavior continued until I could no longer stand to live at home. One day I packed up all of my belongings into my car, and told my parents that I was moving out right that minute. My mother got so angry when I told her this that she exploded and beat me into a corner, ripping my shirt and giving me scratches and bruises in the process. My dad had to pull her off of me so that I could get to my car to leave.

Fortunately I am now living with a wonderful, and supportive family who are very empathetic toward my situation. They have taken me in, and made me their son-in-spirit. Now that I am in a much-improved situation, I feel that I need to speak-out against the things that I went through. Parents should not be able to force their children to attend any type of program like the one I went to. When a child comes out to their parents as gay, lesbian, or bisexual they need the love and support of their parents. They don’t need to be made to feel that there is something wrong with them, something that needs to be fixed.

That’s the gist of it, but Lance gave Morgan a more detailed account later, and as they allowed me to photograph the interview process, I was able to hear it and it just breaks your heart.  Keep this kid’s experience in mind as you read this statement on LIA’s newly updated Refuge website:

God has admonished us to respect our parents. God has given them to us as vessels of His choosing to bring us into His world. Whether or not our parents are worthy of respect.

In other words, if your parents are beating the living crap out of you, then God must want them to do that.  That is the kind of thing John Smid is pounding into the heads and hearts of gay teenagers at Love In Action, and time and again I have heard from survivors that the emotional effect of it is devistating.  I was able to talk with Lance for a while after the interview and he’s a decent and thoughtful guy and there are parents all over this country who would gladly have given him all the love he’d ever want.  But instead of healing the wounds in the families of gay teens, Smid is taking his several thousand dollar fee and making a toxic ruin of their emotional lives, and cutting scars in the hearts of teens they’ll be dealing with for years, if not for their entire lives.

I’m on the road back home today.  I’ll post more photos from the protests when I get back, and settled in.

I never thought I’d find myself applauding an essay on abstinence.  Most essays you read on the subject start from a strongly negative view of sex itself.  But then that’s because most essays you read on the subject come from religious right sources, and the religious right considers joy anathema.  You should be ashamed, ashamed of your body, of your feelings, of your deepest inner self.  Otherwise, why would you want to let them take control of your body, your feelings, your deepest inner self?  Most essays on abstinence start from the premise that there is something evil about sex, and especially if you’re gay, something evil about you.  When people speak of abstinence and gay people, what they’re really talking about is lifetime celibacy, lifetime shame.

Peterson Toscano posted recently about an evangelical teen website, Battle Cry, which advertises itself as righteous teens fighting a war against…well…against sex.

TELEVISION

This generation views 16 to 17 hours of television each week and sees on average 14,000 sexual scenes and references each year. That’s more than 38 references every day.

INTERNET

This generation spends three hours a day online and is the first to grow up with point-and-click pornography. Almost 90 percent of teens have viewed pornography online at one of the 300,000 adult websites, most while doing homework.

MUSIC

More than 25 percent of teen-targeted radio segments contain sexual content; 42 percent of the top selling CDs contain sexual content.

Well no duh.  Human beings are sexual creatures (its how we reproduce), and at a certain time in our lives (scientists call it ‘puberty’), sex starts becoming a pressing interest for us.  So much, so goddamned obvious.  Ask me if I’m happy about the commercialization of sex.  Ask me if I think sex is being treated in this culture with the respect it deserves.  But it’s not like any of the above are things you wouldn’t expect from human beings.  The presence of sex in popular culture is as unsurprising a thing as the presence of weapons and violence.  Note however, that you don’t hear a peep from Battle Cry about how frequently teens encounter violent images in popular culture.  That’s probably because Battle Cry is itself dealing in violent imagery.  It’s okay to imagine yourself as a warrior slaying thousands of your neighbors in blood strewn battle for all that is righteous and holy, but imagining yourself as a lover, laying down with someone and taking them into your arms and driving each other into fits of joyful sexual ecstasy is evil, and you need to have your mind washed out with soap.  Jesus didn’t say love thy neighbor, he said to make war on them.

But if Battle Cry is a teen website, the teens writing for it are doing so with adults looking over their shoulders, and feeding them the words.  Contrast it with a recent essay I found on Mogenic, a site for gay teens, about abstinence.  It’s by a gay teen, and it’s titled, A Virgin, and Proud of it…

…gays have traditionally felt the need to identify themselves as separate from the mainstream. We have created our own subculture, and every subculture needs its own doctrines to follow. We tend to throw out religious teachings—especially Christian teachings—without fully considering their worth. We create our own beliefs, and often we choose beliefs that directly oppose those espoused who have adopted a dislike for homosexuality—like Christians, say. In doing so, we drop many things that perhaps Christianity got right. An example of this is abstinence.

The other problem in gay society is that we don’t have a point to define as the moment when abstinence should end. Abstinence traditionally means waiting until marriage to have sex. As long as gay marriage remains illegal, we don’t have that magical marker in the sky that shows us when, if we decide to abstain from sex, we can stop abstaining. Those of us who choose to remain abstinent, therefore, must forge our own definitions, such as “Once I’m in a meaningful, loving relationship, then I’ll have sex.” But there’s no sure indicator as to when that occurs, and it is easy for us to begin to have sex without infringing upon our morals.

I, personally, am a proud virgin. And by virgin, I mean Virgin, with a capital “V”. Unless you consider masturbation a means to end virginity, I am about as close to 100% virgin as they come. I intend to remain this way until I find myself in the aforementioned “meaningful, loving relationship.” It’s not that I do not find myself attracted to the idea of no-strings-attached sex. In fact, I fairly often fantasize about it. But I cannot imagine myself actually going through with such an act. There are several reasons why I believe abstinence to be the best way to go…

Okay, he gets many things completely wrong in this essay, like when he says "the sexual abandon of gays is legendary".  Yeah it’s legendary…as in urban myth legendary.  There’s a lot of claptrap talked about gay men and sex, most of it pushed by religious right propaganda machines using studies they’ve either distorted or produced themselves to arrive at the conclusions they were after, namely that gay people are dirty twisted sexual perverts who have sex compulsively and never experience anything like love.  This kid buys into a lot of that myth, but so so a lot of us, even many of those of us who should be old enough to know better.  Never mind.

And…personally…I strongly doubt that abstinence before marriage is a good idea.  I think after you’ve made a vow is the wrong time to find out you’re not sexually compatible.  Again…never mind.

What was so heartwarming, so thrilling, about reading that gay teen’s essay, was the self confidant conviction running throughout, that he was entitled as a human being to experience sex in a context of pride, dignity, and self worth.

That’s it.  That’s the golden heart of it.  Right there.  You give that to kids, and it won’t matter what the popular culture says at them.  They’ll take from it what they need, what validates their lives, and ignore what does not.  Look at the example of the Netherlands, where sex education is frank and comprehensive, and prostitution is legal, and yet they have among the lowest of teen STD and pregnancy rates.  Pride matters.  And for so many years, my own teen years included, pride was such a scarce commodity for gay teens.  I have seen the cost firsthand, of the absence of pride.  I have experienced it.  And that is why, to this day, I still fight for it.

I never thought I’d find myself applauding an essay on abstinence.  And there I was, seeing to my delight, the difference, the profound life affirming difference, between an abstinence discussion based on shame, and one based on self worth.  So many kids, so many gay kids especially, never get to have that discussion, because the adults talking to them aren’t really concerned about whether or not they have sex.  They’re concerned that they might wake up one day, and realize that to be a human being, is not a dirty thing.

Kids start believing that, and it won’t matter what the religious right says to them, never mind pop culture.  And that is exactly why the religious right does not want them to have pride, dignity, and a sense of self worth.  They must be ashamed of themselves.  Ashamed of what they are: sexual beings.  Ashamed, ultimately, to be human.

I’ll be protesting in front of Love In Action here in Memphis tomorrow.  Already I’ve heard from some of its supporters, posting on the QAC comment boards, how homosexuals have given themselves up to their base sexual urges, over a holy god.  No.  We have embraced life.  And we are angry at those who would take away from teens, their pride, their dignity, and their self worth, in the name of the creator that gave them life.

[Updated – Fixed the link to the Mogenic essay] 

Those of us who were following the events in Memphis last year closely knew there were other teens imprisoned in Love In Action besides Zach…

"When we drove around to the front…we saw these men and trailing behind them–four young guys, all with their heads hung, staring at the ground as they walked. They are not allowed to make eyecontact with ANYONE for the first few days.so they are forced to fucking…i’m crying now…but…they have to look at the ground as they walk, for three days it’s a walk of shame, their heads hanging for being themselves, for having the courage to stand up and say "this is who i am"…and now all these people are saying ‘no you aren’t and we will change it. and you will be punished for thinking such things.’ I will NEVER get that picture out of my head. those four guys…"

Thus began the summer of shame for at least four gay youths.  One of them will be back in Memphis a year later, 18 now and free to speak for himself, to bear witness to what John Smid is doing to innocent children, in the name of love.  His name is Lance Carroll…

…and this is what happened to him last year: 

In January of 2005, I came out to my parents as being gay. After an initial positive and supporting reaction they began to change their minds. They had me see three separate counselors, the last of which was a Christian counselor in St. Louis who worked for a fundamentalist, evangelical church. He told me that I wasn’t really gay, in fact no one was “really” gay. He tried to convince me that the whole idea of homosexual orientation is a lie, and that I felt the way I did because of some sort of early emotional/psychological deficiency. This counselor recommended Love in Action to my parents.

On June 6, 2005 I left Jackson, Missouri at five o’clock in the morning to make the long trip to Memphis, Tennessee. The first things I saw at the Love in Action campus were the protesters. That morning began my summer as a participant in the Love in Action Refuge program.

…

I am attending the protest in reaction to my own horrendous experience last summer, and as an opportunity to voice my personal opinions concerning the Love in Action Refuge program…while I was there, it just seemed to make people more depressed and self-loathing than they already were. I, myself, went through several of these depressive periods.

And in case you’re wondering how John Smid handles these sorts of depressive periods in his clients, here’s what he told Tom Ottosen, when he was on the verge of suicide:

"I would rather you commit suicide than have you leave Love In Action wanting to return to the gay lifestyle. In a physical death you could still have a spiritual resurrection; whereas, returning to homosexuality you are yielding yourself to a spiritual death from which there is no recovery."

"That’s exactly how he put it," states Tom Ottosen, 24, an expressive, articulate two year ex-LIA group member.

Ottosen says he clearly recalls that experience. He says it occurred in October of last year during his last one-on-one conference with John Smid, LIA’s Executive Director, who claims to be able to change gay men into straight men through a live-in rigidly controlled indoctrination program Smid calls "reparative therapy."

Ottosen says Smid clearly and emphatically warned him, "It would be better if I were to commit suicide than go back into the world and become a homosexual again. He felt that a physical death–with my soul intact–was much preferable to a spiritual death, which would happen if I were to leave the group and go back to being gay." claims Ottosen.

Ottosen further states that Smid said this at a time when Smid clearly was aware he had strong suicidal feelings and was going through periods of extreme depression, guilt and loneliness.

Ottosen recalls his depression had been building for several months during his second year at LIA, primarily because of a warm and emotional relationship he was experiencing with another group member. "It wasn’t sexual at all, but it was strictly forbidden and I was kept from even talking to him for several months."

Also, earlier in July, "Another house member, who was in his fourth year with the group and in a position of authority, became depressed and attempted suicide" and was sent away for observation. "He was taken from his position of leadership and then he just kind of disappeared." Ottosen admits that he too, within a few months was at point where he had never been before. "I couldn’t work. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t do anything."

Whosoever – The Final Indoctrination

It is bad enough that this man is counseling gay adults who go to him of their own free will.  But John Smid is determined to expand his program for gay youth, dragging in more and more of them against their will, to be taught to hate themselves for what they are. 

They will be kids who have already gone through one of life’s most traumatic moments – coming out to parents who have reacted in shame and anger.  Smid will take these already wounded and bleeding kids, and in essence try his almighty best to rip their hearts out of them, tell them that its all their fault, make them believe that they are broken, make them ashamed and deeply afraid of their inner selves, in the hope, the earnest hope, that they will never know what it is to love another person whole heartedly.  And I don’t think even the suicide of one of his teenaged clients will be enough to make him stop.  Shame is for his clients.  Smid is on a mission from god, and gods don’t feel shame.

We will be gathering Monday, June 5th at the Love In Action HQ on at 4780 Yale Road in Memphis, Tennessee.  There will be two protests: one from 8:30am until 10:00am, and another from 4:00pm until 5:30pm.  If you can be peaceful and respectful, please come.  Come to support the young ones silently walking the walk of shame.  Come to support the survivors bearing witness.  Come in the name of love.  Show the world what love in action looks like.

Imagine you’re a gay teenager, and you’ve either just come out to your parents, or been outed to them.  Imagine they react with anger and shame and contempt.  You’re a kid, going through adolescence, struggling with your emerging sexuality.   It’s a  confusing, embarrassing time when you begin to feel things, things about the attractive sex, that you’d never felt before.  Thrilling, confusing, embarrassing things.  You are a pervert, your parents tell you.  You’re going to catch AIDS and die before you’re 40 they tell you.  You’re a shame on your family name, and on them.  You’re going to hell.   

Imagine your parents force you into Love In Action to be cured.  Imagine you find yourself one day, inside the Love In Action program.  You are a young teenager, and you are in one of the group sessions, surrounded by older adults who have in their past engaged in sexual perversions and addictions the likes of which your teenage mind could never have conceived.  Imagine being force into exposing yourself, your deepest sexual thoughts and feelings, to these men, and being forced to listen as they expose themselves to you.  They are sexually broken, say the staff at Love In Action.  You are sexually broken, they tell you.  You, and the man next to you telling you how it is to fuck animals, are both sexually broken.  You are the same as they.  The sessions last for weeks.  There is no place inside of yourself that is safe from the staff at Love In Action, and you must expose it all to the men who fuck animals, rape children, and have never known what it is to have a healthy adult sex life.  You’re a young teenager.  Throughout it all you are told in word and in deed that you are no different from them.

Eventually, you begin to believe it.  You are finally dismissed from the Program, and perhaps you decide you are still gay and there is nothing wrong with that.  Or perhaps you try, as so many do, to stop being gay, only to discover you can no more choose your sexual orientation then you can choose whether to be right or left handed.  Perhaps some logical, rational part of your mind rejects what you were told about your sexuality at Love In Action.  But deep down inside, the seed is planted.  I’m a freak…There’s something wrong with me…with my sex…I’m a freak…I’m a freak…  You try to go on with your life, find yourself failing utterly to find love, emotional intimacy, peace…

Surely, nobody would do this to a child, even if they think that homosexuality is sinful and wrong.  Right?  You don’t understand.  Faith excuses everything.  Faith, and hate.  Peterson Toscano has an expanded post up now that you should read.

Back in January 2005, I met with the BBC crew that had just finished filming LIA/R. The presenter and the crew expressed shock at the treatment of the youth in the facility. They told me that adults and minors gathered together and talked about serious issues including prostitution, sexual abuse, and beastiality. They told me of a 16 year old lesbian placed in the program against her will. And the message that she received by being there is that her same-sex attractions are on the same level as a man having sex with animals.

I couldn’t believe it, so on June 1, 2005, when I bumped into John Smid at the Atlantia airport, I questioned him about this. (I had not yet heard of Zach’s story as it was just unfolding). He assured me that although the youth and the adults attended the some of the same sessions, they did not talk about their particular "issues", just their feelings.

Even if that were true, any 16 year old I know is smart enough to figure out within a half a day why everyone is in the program.

This fall, I spoke at length with a young man who was in the adult program this summer when Zach was also in attendance in Refuge, the youth program. I asked him to describe the sessions and he confirmed that adults and youth met together. When I asked, "But of course they don’t talk about issues, just emotions, right?" He replied that they talked about the issues often, in fact, each participant had to give an introduction which outlined the exact nature of their issues.

[Emphasis mine] Notice how John Smid was able to look Peterson right in the eye and tell him it wasn’t happening.  And it was.

Today, pumped up on the war rhetoric of saving youth from a culture set out to destroy them, potentially thoughtful and kind human beings who run LIA/R end up employing harmful strategies designed to scare these kids straight by any means necessary. Even if it means exposing them to pedophiles and people with extreme sexual fetishes. (The language reminds me of the fear-fueled war talk of the US Christian fascist group BattleCry)

I know folks from my time at LIA who before they entered the program never had sex with another person and were quite naive sexually. By the time they left, often with the shame of failure, armed with loads of details about what we thought of as "the gay lifestyle", they ended up living self-destructive lives filled with anonymous sexual encounters and worse addictions than they ever experienced before.

Go read the whole thing.   This is why I’m going to be in Memphis on June 5th.  If doing this to kids in the name of love appalls you, and you can make it to Memphis, then be there too.

It was about a year ago that I first read these words…

I pray this blows over. I can’t take this… noone can… not really, this kind of thing tears you apart emotionally…It’s so horrible. This is what it’s doing to me… I have this horrible feeling all of the time… I wish this on no person…

A 16 year old gay teenager had been outed to his parents.  It happens probably every day in this country, and all too often with brutal results for the kid.  Parents, who should love their children unconditionally, are taught by this nation’s men of god to hate them instead if they are homosexual, the better to make gay teens hate themselves, and thereby produce self destructive, self hating adults: convenient scapegoats for all the problems heterosexuals would rather not deal with in themselves.

Zach’s misfortune was not only to have parents who could not see the child for the homosexual, but also to be living just a few miles from the first ever ex-gay program, Love In Action, which had relocated from its San Fransisco birthplace to the friendlier climes of the bible belt, and its current leader John Smid had only recently decided to create a program, ostensibly for teens, but actually for frantic fundamentalist parents who were easy pickings for his ex-gay snake oil.  Smid was able to talk Zach’s parents into his little two-week teaser program, which of course led to the full eight week course. 

It’s a brutal, sexually abusive program where a teen’s deepest feelings about themselves, their bodies, their sexuality, their relationships to their parents, peers and god are systematically ripped out of them using the same mind control techniques that cults throughout the world use to alienate people from the world, the better to imprison them within themselves.  And make no mistake, Love In Action is a cult.  You want proof, read the rule book that Zach found on his parent’s computer, and posted on his blog for the world to see.  A teen who is forced into the "program" finds their life utterly controlled,  who they can talk to, what they can read, what they can wear, even down to the kind of underwear they’re allowed to put on, when they can eat, and even – I am not kidding – how many minutes a day total they can spend in the bathroom.  There are actually timers placed in or near the bathrooms to insure compliance.

It has one purpose and one purpose only: to break a kid’s spirit.  Not to make them a better person.  Not even, really, to make them heterosexual.  As with any cult, the purpose is to erase the soul within, so the cult leaders can put their will in its place.  And in June of 2005, a 16 year old gay teen was thrown into that cult, that ex-gay soul grinder so laughingly misnamed Love In Action.  But before he vanished into it completely, he was able to get a cry for help out to the world.  You can pretty much bet that John’s advice to parents nowadays is Take The Fucking Computer Away Before You Tell The Kid Where They’re Going!!!

When I read Zach’s words, and the LIA rule book, I literally could not sleep for about a week after, so sick with worry was I for him, and for other gay teens who I believed were almost certainly being forced into that "program" too.  I was later to learn that it was not an uncommon reaction.  People from all over the world have since told me the same thing: I couldn’t sleep for days after reading that…  But for Zach’s amazing, loving, devoted friends, worry and stress turned into activism.  They could not stand silently by, they did not stand silently by, while their friend was being abused behind closed doors.  They took to the street, and stood side by side in front of the door to a gay teen’s nightmare, and with their simple presence sent a message of support of their friend, and all the other teens inside, and they took to the Internet, to shout out to the world what was being done to helpless kids in Memphis, and to spread the word about LIA and programs like it, so other teens wouldn’t have to suffer the same silent abuse.

Now, on the one year anniversary of that moment, the Queer Action Coalition is calling for a protest at LIA’s hollow church in Memphis.  And the need is as urgent as ever, because even having suffered setbacks and losses, John Smid is as determined as ever to expand his "program" directed at gay teens.  Child abusers are like that…they never stop with just one:

As the one year anniversary of last summer’s protests nears, an un-publicized/somewhat hidden document on Love In Action’s REFUGE website outlines a new plan to expand their targetting of youth.

From LIA’s document: REFUGE International BOOK/Summer 2006:

Although we have seen success in our ministry, we see the culture relentlessly fighting back. So, we are expanding our ammunition to battle for young people and their families. Our experienced counselors and staff will offer a whole new array of options starting during the summer of 2006:

• Residential recovery for young adults (ages 18-25)
• College campus outreach
• Revamped summer program for youth (ages 13-17)
• Seminars to equip church and community youth leaders
• Conferences to heal wounds within families
• Creative support for parents and families

It appears, in this 8 page document, that LIA will launch a 3-month pilot program this summer for youth ages 13-17, and have begun to request funds for its operation. They have also launched a MYSPACE.COM blog in an attempt to further target youth by adopting main-stream/pop-cultural avenues of communication/outreach….these tactics seem to be the stepping stones towards a much larger front in an attack on youth, and their vunerable parents…

The Queer Action Coalition is rather concerned about these actions on LIA’s behalf, simply because WE ARE CONCERNED ABOUT THE WELL BEING OF OUR FELLOW CITIZENS.

The Lords Of The Ex-Gay Cults claim they act in love.  During the first week of protests in Memphis last year, witnesses saw for themselves what had been largely hidden from the world up until that moment: their love, in action:

Whilst in this centre he [Zach] had to spend the first three days in total silence unable to talk while he was talked to by their counsellors. An eye witness has reported "When we drove around to the front…we saw these men and trailing behind them–four young guys, all with their heads hung, staring at the ground as they walked. They are not allowed to make eyecontact with ANYONE for the first few days.so they are forced to fucking…i’m crying now…but…they have to look at the ground as they walk, for three days it’s a walk of shame, their heads hanging for being themselves, for having the courage to stand up and say "this is who i am"…and now all these people are saying ‘no you aren’t and we will change it. and you will be punished for thinking such things.’ I will NEVER get that picture out of my head. those four guys…" 

You may have a different definition of love then beating shame into an innocent kid because you hate what they are.  If so, then come to Memphis on June 5, and show your love in action.

Some moments in your life, you just don’t know whether to put your face in your hands and cry, or put your fist through a wall. 

So I’m following the links Mike Airhart  put up on Ex-Gay Watch to a discussion about whether or not the term "ex-gay" is offensive (to other ex-gays apparently…) and I find myself scanning the posts on various blogs of gay people who just want to not be homosexual anymore if they only could, and it’s making me sad and then it starts making me angry, nail spitting angry once again, at the Dobsons, the Falwells, the Bauers, the Wildmons, all the pusillanimous bigots of this world who just can’t feel fulfilled in their own lives unless they’re sticking a knife in some homosexual’s heart and twisting it once in the name of Jesus Christ and once more in the name of love…  And I’m following the discussions and the links on their blogs to various other blogs, those of other ex-gays and also those of out and proud ex-ex-gays, and I run across this post at Disputed Mutability:

In my last post I shared how I recently learned that several years ago my mother prayed for God to "take me" (i.e., kill me) if being gay was a sin. Many parents ask for similar or less drastic ills to befall their gay children. Sometimes they actively pray for misery that will drive the child in question back to the Lord and the straight and narrow.

HuH?  So I follow the link…

Christine over at Rising Up Whole recently wrote about parents who hope or pray that their gay children’s lives are made difficult or cut short. The opening paragraph:

I just had a conversation with a friend who found out her mother had prayed that if being gay was a sin, that the Lord would take this daughter before she had drifted too far from God (yes, as in "take this daughter" out).

Yeah, so that’s yours truly. My mom dropped that bomb on me Saturday, telling me she prayed that prayer about nine years ago. I guess she thought it would be okay for me to hear about it now, because I’m evangelical and exgay and happily married and all that. Apparently she thought I would approve. But I must admit I still find it very, very disturbing.

I can’t imagine why.  Just one of those little rites of growing up I reckon.  You know…the day your parents tell you that they’ve been praying all along that God would kill you…

So I follow the link to Rising Up Whole… 

GCB at This Gay Christian’s Blog writes about his Beau and the phone call he recently received from his parents:

And among it all comes the proclamation that, among the church gossip and woe-is-me’s about their so-called wayward son, his mother is praying that the Beau and I would have unsettled lives.

This is in line, though more blunt, with my own mother’s proclamation that “God will never bless me.”

A commenter on the above entry related the following:

I know the feeling. My mother sent me a letter saying that she used to (before I came out) pray that I’d find the right woman to marry, but after I came out, she prayed that I would never fall in love (with another man)…So, I remember well the ‘punched in the guts’ feeling of knowing your mother is/was praying against you.

Well I’m sure as shit glad I don’t know that feeling.  I had it rough in some sense growing up in the biological middle of two families who didn’t much like each other, and in particular the constant crap I got from people on my mother’s side for just being my father’s son.  But I never doubted that my parents, both of them, loved me, and especially mom, the most gentle kind-hearted sunshine and light kinda person you ever met, until one of her relatives started bad mouthing me when they thought they were doing it behind her back and then you never saw her get so angry.  Had she ever told me that she was praying for my life to be miserable I think that would have been the thing to make me just go stand in front of a train.

So I follow the link to This Gay Christian’s Blog… 

Unconditionally

Good Friday. Work let out early, I got to get out of Dodge and come home while it was still light outside. Wonderful! So as I recline on the couch, soaking in some old Will and Grace episodes on DVD – a birthday present from The Beau – he goes off to answer a phone call from his mom. Usually innocuous except for the occasional sigh and hell-bound innuendo, we figured it would just be another dull parental chat.

Until about a half hour later I start to hear the just-this-side of yelling voice coming from the bedroom. Alarmed, I rush in to lend my boyfriend moral support for the rest of the fundamentalist bashing he was going through. And as I stood there, arms around him listening in, I hear the weepy voice of his mother claiming how much Beau hates them (he doesn’t), has said they abused him (he never said that), and refuses to call (who needs to when they call every third day?). And among it all comes the proclomation that, among the church gossip and woe-is-me’s about their so-called wayward son, his mother is praying that the Beau and I would have unsettled lives.

Wait – replay that back a bit – you read it right. Beau’s mother, is praying, against her own son.

This is in line, though more blunt, with my own mother’s proclomation that “God will never bless me.”

And it’s this sort of thing that makes me appreciate the mission of Soulforce all that much more. You can argue for or against the gay Christian activist group, but the fact is they are fighting against spiritual abuse that is laid on our people by our own mothers.

Interestingly, what hurts Beau the most is not the words themselves. Remarkably, he ignores the words themselves and can absorb the sting of their cruelty. None of the surface level attacks stuck to my beloved. No, what set him to tears in my arms that day was the fear his parents would never understand what it means to love unconditionally.

…and I’m reading this and for a second I think I’m going to start crying, and then I think I just want to get up and put my fist through a wall.  Well…I didn’t take it out on my poor walls. 

What the Fuck are these people doing to their children!?  There are adults out there would would gladly raise those kids with all the love they’d ever want in their lives.  My own mother had tons of love to spare for every other kid she ever met and every single one of my friends felt it and told me so.  Children are precious.  If you don’t feel that, even if like me you don’t have kids of your own, there’s something wrong with you.  To wound one like that is a crime against all humanity.  You’ve not only taken wholehearted love away from the kid, you’ve taken it away from everyone in their lives that they could have loved wholeheartedly.  What the Fuck is wrong with some people.

My children had to die to be saved.  They were not righteous.
-Andria Yates.

Yates merely drowned her children.  So did Susan Smith, watching from the shore as they sank, terrified, strapped in their car seats, beneath the water.  At least their pain ended.  What do you say to someone who throws their kid into a pit of abandonment to drown in for the rest of their lives?  What words could possibly be enough?  Lady I don’t give a flying fuck what some babbling mental case with a bible told you about your kid…is there a fucking heart beating inside that miserable body of yours?  Does it work?  Did it ever?  There are no words for it. 

The real monsters here, of course, are the ones who encouraged these parents to withdraw their love from their children.  James Dobson.  Stephen Bennett.  James Hartline.  Jerry Falwell.  Donald Wildmon.  et. al.   In the name of Jesus Christ, in the name of Love, they’ve made this world a smaller, lonelier, meaner place. So many people in this world, so many gay people, walking the streets of their hometowns, coping as best they can with a part of themselves inside that should have been filled with love, empty.  Its unforgivable.  Sometimes you just want to cry.  Sometimes you just want to hit something.  Hard.

You want to know what this does to people?  Wandering around the blog links in this discussion of parents praying for their children’s misery or death, I finally found my way to the full text of Jack McIntyre’s suicide note.  McIntyre was the friend of Love In Action co-founder John Evans back in the early 1970s.  Wayne Besen documents the founding of Love In Action in his book, Anything But Straight, and writes of McIntyre:

Even’s best friend, Jack McIntyre, was also part of the ministry.  He along with the rest of the participants, struggled mightily with temptations and did everything in his power to change his sexual orientation. As with nearly everyone else in the original ex-gay cast of characters, however, he could not change and remained as gay as the day he walked through the door.  For McIntyre, the ministry led to feelings of inadiquacy and intensified his belief that he had failed God.

To save himself from his homosexuality, and keep himself from sinning in the eyes of God, McIntyre killed himself.  I’d never seen the full text of his suicide note before, and there it was, staring me in the face like a sign at the end of a dead end street.

TO: Those left with the question, why did he do it?

I loved life and all that it had to offer to me each day.

I loved my job and my clients.

I loved my friends and thank God for each one of them.

I loved my little house and would not have wanted to live anywhere else.

All this looks like the perfect life. Yet, I must not let this shadow the problem that I have in my life. At one time, not to long ago, that was all that really mattered in my life. What pleased me and how it affected me. Now that I have turned my life over to the Lord and the changes came one by one, the above statements mean much more to me. I am pleased that I can say those statements with all the truth and honesty that is within me.

However, to make this short, I must confess that there were things in my life that I could not gain control, no matter how much I prayed and tried to avoid the temptation, I continually failed.

It is this constant failure that has made me make the decision to terminate my life here on earth. I do this with the complete understanding that life is not mine to take. I know that it is against the teachings of our Creator. No man is without sin, this I realise. I will cleanse myself of all sin as taught to me by His word. Yet, I must face my Lord with the sin of murder. I believe that Jesus died and paid the price for that sin too. I know that I shall have everlasting life with Him by departing this world now, no matter how much I love it, my friends, my family. If I remain it could possibly allow the devil the opportunity to lead me away from the Lord. I love life, but my love for the Lord is so much greater, the choice is simple.

I am not asking you to sanction my actions. That is not the purpose of my writing this at all. It is for the express purpose of allowing each one who will read this to know how I weighed things in my own mind. I don’t want you to think that, ‘I alone,’ should have been the perfect person, without sin. That would be ridiculous! It is the continuing lack of strength and/or obedience and/or will power to cast aside certain sins. To continually go before God and ask forgiveness and make promises you know you can’t keep is more than I can take. I feel it is making a mockery of God and all He stands for in my life.

Please know that I am extremely happy to be going to the Lord. He knows my heart and knows how much I love life and and all that it has to offer. But, He knows that I love Him more. That is why I believe that I will be with Him in Paradise.

I regret if I bring sorrow to those that are left behind. If you get your hearts in tune with the word of God you will be as happy about my ‘transfer’ as I am. I also hope that this answers sufficiently the question, why?

May God Have Mercy On My Soul.

A Brother & A Friend.

Love your children.  Just.  Fucking.  Love your children!  If you can’t love your children, don’t ask for forgiveness.

Homosexuals Don’t Love…They Just Have Sex…

Even among those who claim to "love the sinner and hate the sin", this is bedrock.  I’ve had bigots tell me to my face that gay lovers don’t love as wholly, or as purely, as heterosexual lovers do.  When Senator Rick Santorum compared same sex marriage to a man wanting to marry his dog, he spoke for the many, who believe literally that same sex lovers exist on the same plain as fucking animals.  We don’t love, we don’t honor, we don’t care.  We don’t feel any higher human emotions, no great joy or awe in a lover’s embrace.  All we feel is mindless senseless lust for something that only happens to be another human being. This is the passion behind the fight against same sex marriage rights of Any sort, civil unions or otherwise.  To even suggest that gay couples be given any legal status other then perhaps a criminal one, is to literally place their own marriages on the same par as bestiality.  They think homosexuals are less then human, and nothing shows it better then their contempt, their utter denial, that gay lovers actually love.

The current pope (the Cardinal formally known as Ratzinger), launched another broadside against homosexual people last week, by way of attacking Italy’s new left of center government.  Calling same sex love "weak", Ratzinger warned that he would use all the power of the Vatican if Italy gave same sex couples any rights that heterosexuals are bound to respect.

It seems in the Catholic church lately, gays are the new Jews.  Or at any rate, the hate that can dare speak it’s name sixty years after the Holocaust.  And it’s having its effect.  Attacks on homosexuals, particularly in non-industrial nations with a strong Catholic presence, are becoming more common, and much more violent.  In the Caribbean, in central America, in Africa, and even in Brazil, violence against homosexuals is on the rise and it is killing people. 

And yet in the face of all the hatred and violence organized religion can incite, gay people still take their lover’s hand in theirs and say "I love you".  If they had clue one what it means to actually love someone, Ratzinger and his henchmen would get on their knees and beg God nonstop for the rest of their miserable lives to know a love that strong, even if only for a day.

(Click to see the larger version on the Cartoon Page)

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