Kidnapped for Christ follows the stories of several American teenagers who were sent to Escuela Caribe, an American-run Evangelical Christian reform school in The Dominican Republic.
The worst part of my experience in reparative therapy came at the end. In a locked office, alone with my unlicensed ‘life coach’, who said he was an ‘ex-gay man’ I was told to undress, stand in front of the counsellor and do things too graphic to describe in this article. I was extremely uncomfortable, but he said that I must do this for the sake of changing and that if I didn’t remove my clothing I wouldn’t be doing the work it takes to achieve change. I would do anything to change, and so I did what he asked me to do. It was probably the most traumatising experience of my life.
Sadly gay men are particulary susceptible to this type of sexual predator. The consequences of having your sexual orientation revealed could be exile from your family or religious community. And religious figures are in a particularly advantageous position to expoit the vulnerable. They know which childlren are from alcoholic or abusive homes and need special attention. They know who is in financial need or susceptible to flattery. They know which children are considered liars and troublemakers by their families and can groom their prey over months or years. And wrapped in a cloak of righteousness they can deny everything. All of these factors make gay teens and young adults particularly vulnerable to abusers. Churches have for years fought tooth and nail against gay rights but are slowly losing ground.
Over in the other Washington, anti-gay pastor Ken Hutcherson rants rather incoherently against marriage equality. Basically, he expects the civil government to act as an extension of his church. Other than introducing him to the First Amendment, I want to tell him: Dear Ken, please get over it. There's a spot waiting for you over at Silver Daddies.
My column this week addresses anti-gay minister Rev. Anthony Evans, one of the people we defeated in enacting marriage equality in D.C. two years ago. He claims to head a vast network of black churches, and frequently emails me about his plans. I wrote him on January 15. Here's a portion:
You and your cohorts tried to provoke an African American backlash by sowing discord in the name of religion. You sought to render black gay couples and their families and affirming clergy invisible. You failed at every turn, including at the voting booth. The new generation is leaving you far behind.
I have recently been advising several students at a public charter high school, all of them African American, who chose marriage equality as their thesis topic. All took the pro-gay side before I arrived; not all are gay. Most of their peers agree with them. Your name hasn't come up, but your arguments have. Their teacher insists, quite properly, that they examine both sides. They have studied the federal court case Perry v. Brown (formerly Perry v. Schwarzenegger), and have looked at its parallels to Loving v. Virginia, in which the U.S. Supreme Court overturned state laws against interracial marriage in 1967.
These students' views contrast with your image of a monolithic Black Church. They see no difference between Loving and Perry. They can quote your favorite biblical passages, but they can also quote the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment and the Due Process Clause and Equal Protection Clause of the 14th. I lent them my expertise, but they brought their own gifts of intellectual curiosity and comfort with a diverse society.
I am perplexed by your plan to excommunicate black church members who disagree with you. It reminds me of the parody website LandoverBaptist.org. People don't require permission to pray. Your stunts have no more chance of turning back the tide of history than speaking in tongues has of being mistaken for anything but gibberish. Kindly spare gay people your professions of love for our souls and try to raise your understanding at least to the level of those 17-year-olds.
Read the whole thing here. The title, incidentally, alludes to a quote from Dr. King that I use near the end of the piece.
Right Wing Watch reports: "Bryan Fischer says God will heal AIDS patients if they just stop having sex with men." This reminds me of the story of the man with a well who refused a drink to a man dying of thirst, admonishing him with the observation that water was dangerous and the man could drown.
Here's another photo shared by our friend Alan Sharpe, showing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at his desk. My first thought upon looking at it was how beautiful he was. The second was how young he was. His public ministry — from the moment he stepped into the pulpit at Holt Street Baptist Church on Dec. 5, 1955 to launch the Montgomery Bus Boycott (four days after the arrest of Rosa Parks), to his death in Memphis on April 4, 1968 — lasted just over twelve years. A marvelous shooting star that made a lasting impact.
Right Wing Watch shares the latest from Bishop Harry Jackson, whom we defeated in the fight for D.C. marriage equality. When I watch this video, I can't help thinking: didn't I see this guy at Bear Central?
The Republican speaker of the Kansas statehouse issued an apology this week after sending emails from his personal account referring to First Lady Michelle Obama as “Mrs. YoMama” and quoting a Bible verse cited by some as a reference to presidential assassination.
Kansas House Speaker Mike O’Neal, from the city of Hutchison, sent an email before Christmas that compared the president’s wife to the Dr. Seuss character The Grinch, with a tagline asking: “Twins separated at birth?” ...
In a statement to The Lawrence Journal-World, a newspaper in Kansas that was first to obtain the emails, O’Neal apologized for “missing” the offending text. “To those I have offended, I am sorry,” he said. “That was not my intent.”
The Journal-World also revealed that O’Neal had forward another email which referenced the Bible verse Psalm 109:8, which reads: “Let his days be few; and let another take his office.”
The very next verse adds: “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.”
The verse became a conservative meme in 2009 after it began appearing on bumper stickers, t-shirts and even toys. The most common slogan was, “Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8.”
Notice how much more eager God's bullies are to quote the Old Testament than the new?
It's amazing what the Republican Party has allowed itself to become. Which brings to mind another Biblical passage, Hosea 8:7. "For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind."
At a fundraiser to fight marriage equality Bishop Harry Jackson entertained the crowd by praying in tongues, according to Right Wing Watch. I admit that not being up on religious fanaticism I was confused by all of the talk about the 'Queen of Heaven'.
Jackson said that Washington D.C. and Maryland are facing problems because of the Queen of Heaven, which NAR founder C. Peter Wagner and Jacobs believe to be the demonic force with power over Roman Catholicism, Islam and other faiths. Wagner even wrote a whole book on the subject, Confronting the Queen of Heaven, and along with Jacobs was involved with a spiritual warfare expedition called Operation Ice Castle on Mount Everest, where the Queen of Heaven allegedly resides. They gloated that the expedition led to the deaths of Mother Theresa and Princess Diana, in addition to the “earthquake [that] destroyed the Basilica of Assisi.”
You have to wonder how well Catholics will want to work with him.
Last year, Robertson claimed God told him that America’s future will be bleak because of debt and divisions, and today on The 700 Club said that God again communicated to him that financial problems and partisan politics are going to bring America into decline. Unsurprisingly, Robertson said God is no fan of President Obama: “Your president holds a radical view of the direction of your country which is at odds with the majority, expect chaos and paralysis.” Robertson claimed that the country would be devastated by an “economic collapse” and “the country will begin disintegrating.” He also claimed that God revealed to him who the next president will be, but that he is “not supposed to talk about that.”
Because this is a respectable blog, I will not say that any people stupid enough to believe this vulgar, deluded huckster should consider sticking their heads in an oven. Instead I will pray that Rev. Robertson is raptured soon.
My column this week concerns a controversy that erupted over a New Year's Eve performance in Times Square:
Not since Sinéad O’Connor ripped up a photo of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live in 1992 have so many believers been so outraged by such a simple act.
I refer to the furor that erupted in the early hours of Jan. 1 over Cee Lo Green’s performance of John Lennon’s utopian anthem "Imagine" before the ball dropped at Times Square. The three-time Grammy winner had replaced the line "And no religion too" with "And all religion’s true." As they say in the ’hood, oh no he didn’t.
Green tried to fend off Lennon fans’ anger by tweeting, "Yo I meant no disrespect by changing the lyric guys! I was trying to say a world were u could believe what u wanted that’s all." Green may have been wishing away religious-based conflict the same as Lennon, though in a different way. Unfortunately for him, and ironically to say the least, he was messing with a sacred text....
Green’s lyric change on New Year’s Eve offended both religionists (who tend to consider only their own faith true) and non-religionists, and inadvertently provoked the quasi-religious fervor of fans for whom the late former Beatle is a martyr. It may offend pilgrims to the Strawberry Fields memorial in Central Park, but Lennon’s wealth and privilege were just as dissonant with the line "Imagine no possessions" as Green’s fur coat.
Read the whole thing here. (To see Green's blasphemous performance, go to 3:53 in this video clip.)
The Advocate reports that Amazon has stopped selling the calendar "I'm Not Gay, I'm Just a Sissy: 12 Months of Sexual Confusion" by 'Christian' cartoonist Joe King. This follows an earlier decison by Barnes and Noble to pull the item. The fight started when popular blogger Andy Towle publicized the item on his blog following which over 800 people condemned the item in reviews with many threatening a boycott until Amazon removed it. The reviews are no longer available on-line. Joe King taunted his critics on Facebook, in a posting which is also no longer available.
The LGBT community is certainly not unified in this regard. Many comments on Towleroad said that threatening boycotts on publishers is censorship. Others point out that he has constitutional right to publish this type of material and that people who object have a constitutional right to make their objections known. No one is obligated to buy from Amazon if they choose not to do so. And Amazon has the right to make business decisions it finds in its best interest. Having only seen the front and back cover of the calendar it is difficult to make out what they say. Never-the-less, it seems likely that the illustrations are tasteless, unfunny, offensive and have a meanness of spirit.
In his Facebook comment Joe King wrote "Ironic who the real bullies are isn’t it? Let’s see if I get a call from Oprah’s people or even Anderson Cooper." He would like to equate being called a bigot with being bullied. To not be called abigot he only needs to stop saying that gay people deserve fewer rights and protections that enable them to live their lives without discriminationi. The fact that he cannot see this is the log in his eye. No doubt if he beseeched God this could be removed. This is called "Pray the bigot away".
Summit Ministries founder David Noebel is out with yet another screed against LGBT rights, this time attacking the Obama administration for pushing back against attempts to criminalize and persecute gays and lesbians abroad. “Obama and his radical homosexual mafia plan to sodomize the world and make such perversion seem as wholesome as apple pie and vanilla ice cream,” Noebel writes, “In reality, such perversion cannot be printed in a family publication or broadcast on any FCC regulated TV or radio stations.”
Imagine how the Jesus of the Gospels would react to what is being said and done in his name.
Notorious radical-right Rabbi Yehuda Levin has this to say about Mitt Romney:
At a special Chanukah conclave, The Rabbinical Alliance of America, a 70 year old organization of over 850 Orthodox Jewish Rabbis in the United States and Canada, serving approximately one half-million religious Jews, has condemned the decades long pro-homosexual record of former Governor Mitt Romney.
Spokesman Rabbi Yehuda Levin declared that "Chanukah commemorates the defeat of the Syrian Greek efforts to impose their pagan culture on the Jewish people. The Jews rejected the intergenerational homosexual activity which was a prominent aspect of the Syrian Greek culture. While our organization does not make any endorsements of political candidates, in view of the disastrous national decline in morality, we are compelled to condemn Mitt Romney's support and promotion of the immoral homosexual lifestyle and agenda.... Governor Romney over a long political career has earned the title: 'Dangerous Homosexualist'-one who constantly advances the militant anti-religious, anti-society, immoral homosexual agenda to the detriment of family people....
Furthermore, religious people should realize that the increasing homosexualization of society increases the likelihood of Sanduski-like child abuse. Craven politicians like Mitt Romney should not be empowered to destroy the moral fiber of our country. They must be held accountable, RIGHT NOW!"
This should help Romney in the general election if he makes it past the wingnuts voting in the Republican primaries.
New Birth Christian Academy, a school affiliated with Bishop Eddie Long’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, sent a letter to parents saying that the school would not continue with classes after the Christmas break.
With the 18-year-old academy closing, over 200 students will find themselves without a school....
Although the school denies any connection between the decision to close and the many recent scandals connected to Eddie Long, some parents are skeptical.
“I don’t believe that. I believe that this last straw with the divorce, the sealed settlement, it just does not look good,” said one parent to WSB TV Channel 2.
All those people who were enablers for so long finally realized they'd been had. I am reminded of a scene at the end of the great 1955 film Night of the Hunter, concerning another predator who thrives for a time on the gullibility of others. There's nothing like the fury of a person who's been played the fool. Call it rough justice.
BTW, check out this thoughtful article by Anthea Butler in September 2010 on why the "Eddie Long Case Should Mark the End of Black Church Homophobia."
John Aravosis shares a set of three videos of David Sedaris getting a great deal of comic mileage by simply describing the Dutch version of St. Nick. What he fails to mention is that, judging by the photos used in the video, the "six to eight black men" who traditionally accompany the Dutch version of St. Nick on his illicit house visits appear to be white guys in blackface. Okayyyyyy, so that takes us to America circa 1927. (Or Whoopie Goldberg and Ted Danson in 1993, but let's be charitable and try to forget that one.)
According to the Dutch, St. Nick is also the former bishop of Turkey, is much thinner than America's fat and jolly version, and might beat and kidnap a child rather than stuff its shoes with gifts. (Wouldn't you prefer a lump of coal?) Sedaris points out that, lest you find this version of Christmas distasteful, the Dutch sweeten the deal with legalized drugs and prostitution, so what's not to love about the Dutch? Actually, I'm not so sure about the answer to that breezy question. I just found out from my enterprising niece Missy that she and I are descended from someone named Nieuwenhuize from the southern Dutch town of Roosendaal. A Miss Nieuwenhuize sometime in the latter part of the 19th century married a guy named Janse. I've lost track of whether it was they or their progeny who emigrated to America, but I don't think it reasonable to flatter myself by assuming that the journey was motivated purely by adventurous spirits.
What I want to know is, were my Dutch ancestors fleeing something? Was it, for example, an arrest warrant, or (I speculate with Ron Paul's rants ringing in my ears) stifling government regulation? Clearly, I'll have to get Missy to continue her investigations. After all, the Dutch may seem peaceful and tolerant enough today, but let's remember that those bloody Boers in South Africa are descended from the Dutch; and Holland's colonial past (along with that of the Americans, British, Russians, and French) is enshrined by Stephen Sondheim in Pacific Overtures in his historically accurate "Please Hello." In short, if the Dutch Christmas tradition bears whiffs of racism, trust your nose.
We need more ministers like this one. Our friend Alan Sharpe (a GLAA Distinguished Service Award recipient) shares this clip from Oprah. It makes a fine year-end message.
Newt Gingrich, that fearless defender of the nation and little babies, announces that if elected President he will issue an executive order establishing a commission on religious freedom. Which is to say that he will launch the final battle to end the war on religion by the liberal secularists who are ruining America. Of course everything he says is a lie, but set that aside, Why would liberals need to destroy religion when the fundamentalists are doing such a good job of it themselves?
As Newt sees it, any respectful mention of the existence of gay people constitutes forcibly imposing a pro-gay religion on God-fearing, homo-hating Christians. In other words, ending anti-gay discrimination is itself a form of religious tyranny. The radical religious right feels trampled if it is not allowed to trample everyone else. This is the rabbit hole Newt would drag the country down.
My question is this: if rescuing that Old-Time Religion requires the White House to be occupied by a man with a First, Second, and Third Lady, isn't it already too late to rescue? I mean, Newt Gingrich as Defender of the Faith? Really?
That is the one-word response I think the Democrats should use to answer Republican candidates, attacks, and proposals in 2012: "Really?" Just recite the catalog of outrageous lies, loony candidates and reckless proposals, and end with President Obama calmly looking into the camera and saying, "Really?"
Newt trotted out his religious-freedom rhetoric at a presidential debate in November; see the clip above. Newt decries what he calls "the use of government to repress the American people," which overlooks the fact that most Americans do not share his views (or at least the views he is expressing, since it's hard to know what this unscrupulous man actually believes, if anything). Of course, if you disagree with Newt you're not American. The "wall of separation between Church & State," a phrase coined by Thomas Jefferson 210 years ago this Sunday in his letter to the Danbury Baptists to describe the protections of the First Amendment, is what Gingrich actually is calling "a mortal threat to our civilization." Newt's proposed fix is like "Team America" destroying Paris to save it from the terrorists. But it appears the republic is strong enough to withstand the threat posed by the former Speaker. At the moment he has been reduced to attacking Virginia for its primary rules that prohibit write-ins — which is to say that the rules should be changed for his benefit after his failure to do the basics of campaign organizing.
Francis Cardinal George clarified remarks he made equating gay activists with the Ku Klux Klan during a few pastoral visits on Christmas Day. According to ABC News Chicago he said:
"Obviously, it's absurd to say the gay and lesbian community are the Ku Klux Klan, but if you organize a parade that looks like parades that we've had in our past because it stops us from worshipping God, well then that's the comparison, but it's not with people and people - it's parade-parade," said George.
Watch his remarks on the second page.
What the Cardinal is trying to do is evoke images of a rather famous march by the KKK in Skokie Illinois and by associatiion tie gay activists to it. This a reather common practice on both the left and the right. [Hated Group] = [Hated Group] Beside being compared to the KKK, gay activists are frequently called Nazis and pedophiles. The only thing that is surprising here is the uproar over his statement. The Cardinal surely did not expect it. Considering the opposition of the Catholic church to ALL gay rights measures it is hard to understand why the Cardinal doesn't grasp that it might be thought of as ane enemy.
The ABC article mentions that next month Cardinal George will have his 70th birthday and will submit a resignation to the Vatican. It will be interesting to see if it is accepted. Making anti-gay statements seems to be a way to endear oneself to this pope.
As I said to fellow GLAA veteran Craig Howell over a pleasant Christmas lunch, I admire the late Christopher Hitchens and have cheered the many well-deserved "Hitchslaps" he administered against religious authoritarians and assorted other rogues; but I do not in the least share his dislike for Christmas festivities. Why wear oneself out or make oneself miserable growling and sneering at all the Christmas goings-on that begin before Halloween? Better to spend your energy on something else. Of course, Charles Dickens ensured that the story of Christmas includes a role for a curmudgeon, so the "Bah, Humbug" chorus has long since been annexed no matter how much they squawk.
I have always sympathized with Ebenezer Scrooge's incorrigibly cheerful nephew; also with his long-suffering clerk Bob Cratchit, except that I could never endure so much abuse without saying, "Screw you, you miserable old bastard." Indeed, without the job protections built into the federal civil service, I am sure I would have been fired long before I qualified for an annuity. My competence and reliability helped, but that can only carry an outspoken person so far. But for all my resistance to dogma and authority of various kinds, I don't think Christmas in a cultural sense is mainly about that. It is inextricably interwoven with ancient winter solstice festivals, and I share the common impulse to light candles and share good food and drink with friends and family on the longest nights of the year.
The last two weeks of the year are also among the quietest here in the nation's capital — partly because so many leave town to be with loved ones elsewhere, and partly because those who remain are largely inclined to relax a bit. The First Family is generally away at Camp David or some other retreat (in the present case, the President's original home state of Hawaii), the Capitol empties out, civil servants take their use-or-lose annual leave, and the streets are quieter. A few minutes ago, one of the destitute 17th Street regulars came by to ask for some food, and I shared some of the goodies I'd received.
Craig went off after lunch to the E Street Cinema, and I am relaxing at home. Turner Classic movies just started showing the 1961 film King of Kings, starring Jeffrey Hunter as Jesus Christ. Ben Mankiewicz, who introduced the movie, mentioned the fact that Hunter played Captain Christopher Pike in the original Star Trek television pilot. Besides Hunter, the film includes Hurd Hatfield (star of the 1945 film The Picture of Dorian Gray) as Pontius Pilate; gay Australian actor Frank Thring (who played Pontius Pilate in the 1959 Ben Hur) as Herod Antipas, and narration by Orson Welles. But I've seen the film before, so I think I'll catch up on some reading. For one thing, the second volume of Sondheim's collected lyrics beckons me.
Monday morning will be a good occasion to catch up with the denizens of my favorite coffee shop who stayed in town. In the afternoon I'll head to Maryland for the Rosendall family gathering, a pot luck affair to which my contribution is a couple of bottles of liquor. There'll be emails and phone calls to catch up with various friends. On Christmas Eve I phoned my boyfriend, who is in Thailand for a few weeks on business, and sang him "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" from the 1945 Meet Me in St. Louis (the lyric "Someday soon we all will be together" having brought it to mind). He said (as he has very sweetly said before) that I should be a professional singer, though he helpfully added that I was too old to start such a career; then I learned that he had never heard of Judy Garland. It did not come as a shock to me, after ten years, that a man who grew up in the Congo River valley did not share my cultural signposts. A little perspective and humility are useful in this season.
Last night, Pope Benedict XVI at Christmas Eve Mass gave a predictable critique of the commercialization of Christmas. (If I hear one more priest pompously telling me that I forgot the baby Jesus, I'll do something drastic; but there's Hitch's ghost again.) Dozens were killed across Nigeria by a radical Islamic sect in a series of Christmas bombings. People in Christchurch, New Zealand were recovering from an earthquake. An Afghan lawmaker and a score of others were killed in a funeral bombing in northern Afghanistan. I said something nice about Catholic Charities to a gay friend who was chagrined at a donation having been made to them in his name for Christmas (many people have done admirable work for the organization, notwithstanding the nasty boys in red hats who hold authority over them). On television, Salome has just demanded the head of John the Baptist. And so it goes. "Peace on Earth" is a valuable sentiment precisely because of the general lack of it. Here's wishing it to you and yours.
(Christmas Mass in St. Peter's Basilica. Photo by Andrew Medichini / AP)
Another moment from the October 2009 Intelligence Squared debate in London, which I quoted in my column on the late Christopher Hitchens. Sitting beside openly gay actor Stephen Fry, Hitch says this:
Amazing! No one, though they were asked repeatedly, would say whether they thought Stephen Fry, my friend, was in a state of mortal sin or not. They wouldn't tell you. Something about the question brought out their inner coward. Well, I say that homosexuality is not just a form of sex, it's a form of love, and it deserves our respect for that reason; that when my children were young, I'd have been proud to have Stephen as their babysitter, and I'd've told them they were lucky; and if anyone came to my door as a babysitter wearing holy orders, I'd call first a cab and then the police.
This week Rick Perry told a 14-year-old openly bisexual girl who questioned him after a town hall in Decorah, Iowa, that he doesn't believe gays should serve openly in the military because "homosexuality is a sin." I sure hope young Rebecca Green saw the iconic image days later of two female Navy petty officers, Marissa Gaeta and Citlalic Snell, sharing the first same-sex kiss at ship's return. Because that sweet and wonderful photo is the future. And Rick Perry is the ugly and wretched past that we can hopefully move on from after this hideous GOP primary campaign.
A presidential candidate telling a teen she is damned to hell because of her sexual orientation is heartless enough. But in an atmosphere of reports almost every week of gay teens committing suicide because of the condemnation and rejection they experience it is downright diabolical. How cold-blooded and ruthless is this guy?
A lot of people are saying Rick Perry is gay. Personally, I don't care. I look forward to his disappearance from the political stage early in 2012, after which he can go back to his ranch with the racist name.
Personally, I loved the Obama's holiday card, which arrived in the mail a few weeks ago. But the proud and unscrupulous ignoramus whom John McCain raised to undeserved prominence in 2008 as his running mate has to use it as an excuse for religious demagoguery. The L.A. Timesreports:
So much for the holiday spirit. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is once again targeting the Obama administration, leveling a critical glare at the official White House holiday greeting card for not emphasizing Christmas.
The card, seen above, was created for the Obama family by L.A. artist and designer Mark Matuszak. It features an image of Bo, the Obama family dog, in front of a fireplace in the White House library with a poinsettia and other decorations. The card, which makes no direct mention of Christmas and doesn't feature a Christmas tree, states: "From our family to yours, may your holidays shine with the light of the season."
Palin told Fox News that she found it "odd" that the card emphasizes the dog instead of traditions like "family, faith and freedom." She also said that Americans are able to appreciate "American foundational values illustrated and displayed on Christmas cards and on a Christmas tree."
Dear Sarah, Merry Christmas and Happy Kwanzaa. Your fifteen minutes were over a long time ago. Please shut the fuck up. Blessings in Christ.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State celebrates:
The Religious Right’s rigid mindset dictates that its adherents can do things on their own terms no matter what the law or anyone else says. As a student at a Georgia university and the Alliance Defense Fund recently discovered, federal courts don’t support that mentality.
Jennifer Keeton was pursuing an advanced degree in counseling at Augusta State University until it became clear that she intended to impose her religious beliefs on clients in violation of the professional standards of her academic program.
Our friend (and GLAA Distinguished Service Award Honoree) David Mariner includes the following note with this slide-show retrospective on the DC Center's busy year in 2011:
Dear Friend of the DC Center,
On behalf of everyone at the DC Center I would like to wish you happy holidays. This has been an exciting year at the DC Center, and a year of many firsts:
The first year of free Second-Saturday HIV Testing for the HIV Working Group
The first year of the Friendly Visitor Program for SAGE Metro DC
The first Annual LGBT Book Festival for OutWrite
Our first Foster Parent Information night for Center Families
The first National Great American Smokeout event for the Tobacco Working Group
The establishment of our first ever arts-advisory committee for Center Arts
Programs and services like GLOV, Center Women and Center Careers continued to do great work this year, and we added new programs such as the Youth Working Group. We also established stronger online presence for the local Bisexual Community and Transgender Community.
As we look to the future, there is of course, some uncertainty. We expect that we will need to relocate to a new physical space before the end of 2012.
I can't tell you where or when we will move in 2012, but what I do know for sure is that with your continued support the DC Center will continue to grow and thrive. Your support makes this work possible.
During this holiday season, I hope you will consider financially supporting the DC Center:
My column this week is about the late, great Christopher Hitchens. Here's a portion:
Like countless others, I posted a tribute on Dec. 16 to writer Christopher Hitchens, who died the previous day at age 62. Someone on Facebook replied with a long rant alleging he was homophobic. The evidence was a quote about fellatio. Grievance collectors are free to mine Hitch’s extensive output for errors and offenses. He claimed no infallibility. Let me point, however, to a portion of his New Commandments:
"3. Despise those who use violence or the threat of it in sexual relations. 4. Hide your face and weep if you dare to harm a child. 5. Do not condemn people for their inborn nature. Why would God create so many homosexuals only in order to torture and destroy them?"
At the Intelligence Squared debate in London in October 2009, after cataloguing many crimes by the Catholic Church, including the complicity of priests and nuns in the Rwandan genocide, Hitchens denounced the Church "for condemning my friend Stephen Fry for his nature, for saying you couldn’t be a member of our church, you’re born in sin. He’s not being condemned for what he does, he’s being condemned for what he is. You’re a child made in the image of God? Oh no you’re not, you’re a faggot. And you can’t join your church and you can’t go to heaven. This is disgraceful, it’s inhuman, it’s obscene, and it comes from a clutch of hysterical, sinister virgins who’ve already betrayed their charge in the children of their own church. For shame!"
This impassioned defense of his friend (who was seated beside him) was delivered in the presence of Archbishop John Onaiyekan of Abuja, Nigeria. Hitchens was informed, confident, indignant, often inebriated, and perhaps the sharpest debater of his generation.
The video above has Hitch's defense of Stephen Fry at 3:23. The clip below has his reponse to a Christianist bully at 8:05.
Actually I don't recall that Jesus said word one about homosexuality. Much less the laying on of hands. The laying on of hands is much more of an ex-gay therapy notion.
Right Wing Watchreports on the sad spectacle of advertisers withdrawing from TLC's "All-American Muslim" because the reality-TV program fails to portray American Muslims as terrorists. Instead, it shows Muslim residents of Dearborn, Michigan as ordinary Americans going about their lives.
The right-wing Florida Family Association, which (surprise) also denounces gay people, is behind this intolerance.
The advertisers that have caved to this anti-Muslim bigotry include the Lowe's hardware chain and the Kayak travel website. Boycotts have rightfully been called against these advertisers.
Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, responds to Lowe's and the other panderers with reason.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State weighs in.
Disgraced Watergate figure Chuck Colson, who found a second career as a Christianist fanatic, dismisses 100,000 same-sex weddings as a pathetically low number while simultaneously claiming that gay people have intimidated everyone into silence. Everyone except him and his fellow religious bullies, apparently. He says of marriage equality, "The overwhelming majority of Americans do not accept this." Check the polls lately, Chuck?
Someone sent the following email message to GLAA this morning:
You stupid homosexual pervert Bastards are in league with Satan and will
have to give an account of your miserable and Satanic lives when you pass
away and stand before the Great God and Judge Jesus Christ for being
homosexual pervert Bastards. Lev 18:22-24 states that homosexuality is an
abomination before God.
This lying, openly bigoted ad by Gov. Rick Perry is another illustration of why LGBT rights advocates cannot afford to be idle or silent during the 2012 campaign.
The ad comes one day after Perry likened bold new steps by the Obama administration to tackle international human rights abuses of LGBT people to the president waging a “war with people of faith in this country.”
This is not the first time Perry has used Christianity as a means of advancing himself politically. Earlier this year, Perry held a Christian-only day of prayer in Houston. At the event, some of the nation’s most virulently anti-gay leaders and organizations addressed the crowd and even joined hands with Perry onstage. Perry worked with leading anti-gay extremist groups on the event, including the American Family Association and individuals from TheCall and the International House of Prayer.
Perry’s message is factually incorrect. Polling commissioned by HRC and conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research found that nearly 90 percent of Christians believe their faith leads them to the conclusion that the law should treat all people equally, including LGBT people. Learn more about the broad amount of Christian support for issues of LGBT equality.
Log Cabin Republicans strongly object to the advertisement put out by Governor Rick Perry’s campaign about ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and ‘traditional American values.’
“Governor Perry is running to be Commander-in-Chief, not Theocrat-in-Chief,” said R. Clarke Cooper, Log Cabin Republicans Executive Director. “Our nation was built upon individual liberty and individual responsibility, and open service by gay and lesbian servicemembers is directly in line with the vision of our Founding Fathers. It is wrong for Governor Perry to assume being a person of faith does not afford one to support equality. America is at a crossroads and our next President must be someone who is battle-focused on turning around the economy and enabling all Americans the freedom to succeed.”
Mike Rogers at Bilerico once again reveals his inner puritan by saying that "every self-respecting LGBT person should" toss out the Gideon Bible they find in their hotel room, on account of the handful of anti-gay passages it contains.
Since he was thoughtful enough to ask what others think, my opinion is that his reaction plays into our opponents' hands by (1) conceding too much importance to those few passages, and (2) behaving in a boorish manner that will be used by the radical religious right to play up what victims they are.
I much prefer the perspective of lesbian comedian Lynn Lavner, quoted yesterday by longtime GLAA stalwart Craig Howell:
The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision.
I am proud to have persuaded the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington some years ago to hire Ms. Lavner as a guest artist. As I recall, she was suggested by another GLAA stalwart, Barrett Brick, and was very funny.
Rogers' reaction to the Gideon Bible in his hotel room reminds me of a tweeted response by GetEqual to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's landmark speech yesterday in Geneva on LGBT equality:
@GetEQUAL: We question hypocrisy of Sec. Clinton spch when in the US #LGBT ppl live unequal & under gov't sanctioned Homo/Bi/Transphobia #Dignity4all
Okay, I too have a question: Are Mike Rogers and GetEqual more interested in moving us forward or in collecting grievances? As it happens, Secretary Clinton was quick to point out in her remarks yesterday that the United States has its own failings. For GetEqual to respond as it did suggests that only a saint on earth would have the standing to advocate international LGBT equality. Who might that be? This overzealousness from the gay left got tired a long time ago.
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