Monday, August 1, 2011

Via JMG: NAACP Stages First-Ever Panel Discussion On Black LGBT Rights

Clip via No More Down Low TV. A partial clip description:
The debate gets heated when the current NAACP president is asked how can the LGBT community take the NAACP seriously when its current board members are out saying that gay rights are not civil rights, referring to current NAACP board member Rev. Keith Ratliff recent statement: "Gay community, stop hijacking the civil rights movement."



reposted from Joe

Via NPR: Shots - Health Blog: Can Therapy Help Change Sexual Orientation?

Can Therapy Help Change Sexual Orientation?

A debate over the value of conversion therapy has been raging in psychological circles for more than a decade. Two men who underwent the therapy, with vastly different results, share their story.

Via JMG: SOUTH CAROLINA: Paper Prints Wedding Notice For Interracial Gay Couple


Andrew Sullivan points us to the above wedding announcement published by South Carolina's largest daily newspaper. Rather than smile at the image of all those good ole boys freaking out over today's paper, let's wish the happy couple our best. (Whoops, smiling anyway.)


reposted from Joe

Today's "say wah?" is via JMG: Anti-Gay Group Vows: We'll Overturn California's "Nazi" LGBT History Bill


More anti-gay hate groups are piling on the petition drive to place a repeal of California's LGBT history bill on the June 2012 ballot. Today, it's the World Congress of Families.
"When people have [voted], and Governor Brown knows that he has an issue that would fail when put to a popular vote, of course, they just go around the people," Jacobs explains. "They essentially implement their will. And, of course, in a democracy, that's not the way things are supposed to work. It's certainly something that forces our children to be indoctrinated in a certain way. It's like a Nazi state or a communist type of way of dealing with an issue." And he contends the bill has enforced the homosexual agenda on children in the state. "What the homosexual movement has done with ... SB 48 [and] in general, in calling for equality, what they're calling for is special rights," the pro-family group spokesman notes. "We don't have special things in education to teach people to change history based on a particular Christian worldview or Muslim worldview, but they go beyond that."

reposted from Joe

My  addition:  That's because we all know that the Nazis "loved" those gays as much as they "loved" those Jews....  hey zoose! Have these guys ever heard or seen a pink triangle?
 

Via JMG: A Letter To TIME



reposted from Joe

Via JMG: Porno Pete - No Longer Tax Exempt


Ex-Gay Watch reports today that Peter LaBarbera's SPLC-certified hate group, Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH), lost its tax-exempt status in 2010. Yanked by the IRS!
According to the IRS, the tax-exempt status of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH) was revoked on 5/10/2010 (PDF). The reason for this action is listed by the reporting organization Guidestar as a “failure to file a Form 990, 990-EZ, 990-N, or 990-PF for 3 consecutive years.” These forms are required of legitimate non-profit organizations for review by the IRS and the public. While the current incarnation of AFTAH appears to have been active since 2006, we found only one form 990-EZ on file — for the year 2009 (PDF). In this, total receipts are listed as $110.000, out of which Peter LaBarbera received a salary of $75,000. For perspective, this is approximately the same salary plus benefits claimed by Exodus president Alan Chambers. Exodus lists eleven employees and a million dollar budget.
Ex-Gay Watch notes that AFTAH's "about" page STILL CLAIMS that donations are tax-exempt. (See the screenshot below.) They add: "Thousands of organizations exist which claim that homosexuality is a sin or otherwise immoral, only eighteen are listed as true hate groups by the SPLC. AFTAH is one of them."

Via JMG: Cher Tweets About Crazy Eyes


"Just got spam letter from M. Bachman! My reply: Woman go back to school take history! If I was on my deathbed & your best friend was JESUS, I wouldn't vote for your gay-hating, bully-loving, poser Christian ass!'" - Cher, tweeting about Michele Bachmann.

NOTE: I corrected a bit of Cher's notoriously poor typing to make this more legible. The second sentence above was sent in all caps.


reposted from Joe

Via AmericablogGay: WWJD regarding same-sex weddings?


If you are a gay progressive Christian like me, you've probably already contemplated this question. Thought it might be good discussion for a Sunday morning. 

Even if you aren't and have been victimized by those who claim to speak for Jesus and wanted ammunition then this post should help. "What would Jesus do (WWJD)" regarding the question of gay marriages or if he was invited to attend one? A straight Christian attempts to answer this question, some consider thorny, and comes to the very same conclusion I already have, but he does an even better job of his justification than I could:
Wondering what Jesus would do if he were invited to a gay wedding naturally enough led me to the New Testament. And therein I found these quotes:
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices — mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law — justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” (Matthew 23:23-24); and 

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.” (Matthew 23:13); and,

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.” (Matthew 23:15). And last but hardly least:

“Love your neighbor as yourself,” [said Jesus]. “There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:31)

When I next went looking for anywhere in the Bible where Jesus says anything at all about homosexuality, I learned that Jesus spent about as much time talking about gays and/or lesbians as I do talking about button collecting and/or sea horses: none. Of course, it’s entirely possible that Jesus did say many crucially informative things about homosexuality, but that when he did no one around him happened to have handy an ostrich feather, sappy stick, or whatever it was they used for pens back then. Which would make sense, actually. If you’ve spent any time at all reading the New Testament, you know that Jesus’ disciples weren’t exactly Johnnies-on-the-spot. They were just normal, everyday guys.

Go there and read the rest of it. It is really good, and this straight but not narrow guy most definitely has the heart of Jesus Christ.

Via HimalayaCrafts


The world, indeed, is like a dream and the treasures of the world are an alluring mirage! Like the apparent distances in a picture, things have no reality in themselves, but they are like heat haze. Buddha

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Via NPR: For Gay Christian Musicians, Work Balances Faith, Art, Love

For Jennifer Knapp, coming out as gay meant abandoning a promising career as a Christian singer-songwriter.

Wanda Sykes on Ellen (full interview)

Julian Bond speaks at NAACP on Homophobia

Wanda Sykes Speaks OUT at NAACP 102nd Annual Convention

Via JMG: Rick Santorum on Tim Gill, gay marriage, incest, etc.

Via JMG: Brown: SPLC Is The Real Hate Group


"Is the SPLC, by its own criteria, the real hate group? It still carries weight in plenty of circles here in America, and so when it categorizes an organization as a hate group, many people of good conscience are influenced by that designation, one which is quite stigmatizing and destructive, as evidenced by the recent events involving FOTF and AFA mentioned above. Yet it is the leaders of the SPLC who are either irresponsibly attacking other fine organizations, or worse still, knowingly defaming them. Who then deserves the title of 'hate group,' Focus on the Family or the Southern Poverty Law Center? Who has been guilty of demonizing others and spreading hurtful, inaccurate information? Whose actions and words have been hateful? The record speaks for itself." - Anti-gay Christianist author Michael Brown, writing for Human Events.


reposted from Joe

Via AmericablogGay: Did Obama just come out for same-sex marriage on Facebook?

Check out the ad the Obama campaign is running on Facebook. If you didn't know any better, you might think the President is for marriage equality (he's not).


What's actually going on is that the Obama campaign, and White House, have been trying to pull the wool over the community's eyes with a little bit of rhetorical trickery. The president is for equal rights for all couples, gay and straight, they keep telling us. And the proof they use is that he's for repealing DOMA (and that Facebook ad lands on a page about DOMA). What they don't say is that the only way to get those equal rights is for us to get married, and the President isn't for that (he was for it, then decided to run for federal office and suddenly his position changed).

So the President says he supports equal rights for all married couples, and refers to gay couples as married in the ad, even though he opposes our marriages, which will stop us from getting the very equal rights he claims to support.

Someone in the White House and the Obama campaign thought they were mighty smart using this "I'm for equal rights" language in order to trick you into thinking he is.  He's not.

Though this ad does beg one further question: Does President Obama consider gay couples married in Massachusetts or Iowa or Washington, DC "married"?  Are they "married," Mr. President? 

make the jump here to read the full article

Quote of the day: Discussion > Is my friend untrustworthy?

"Thank you for posting this, Peyam ! Fundamentalist Christians can prove any point of view they want to, no matter how glaringly at variance with spiritual principles, through their narrow (literal) reading of the Bible. The same is being done by the majority of Baha'is, who condemn as "spiritually sick" and "immoral" a significant portion of the diverse human family based on guidance given in a time and social condition where for the Guardian or his secretaries to have said otherwise would have been unacceptably inflammatory and well outside mainstream thought in psychological and even scientific circles. My work is in the gay community, and I am a proud member of that community. I know in my heart that as long as the Baha'i community continues to exclude, marginalize and actively discriminate against ("oppress" might be a better word) the vibrant and spiritually alive gay community, they are dashing into a thousand pieces the spiritual principles which are the pillars of the Kingdom of God. By their own hands, they rip apart the fabric of World Order."

DW on GayBahai.net  

Ralph Goneau, 79, & Richard Wilhelm, 87, Waited 41 Years To Say "I Do"

Via JMG: On The 4 Year Old Killed For "Acting Gay"

Joe says, "More details have emerged about the horrific killings that I reported on several weeks ago."




reposted from Joe