I'm soon to enter my 70th year of life, and I've been around the block a few times, and I've yet to hear anything as sick as this rant affirming the virulent homophobia in Uganda.
Seeking to rationally sit down and reason with people who express demented reasoning like we see in this video is not only futile, but elevates their hatred to the same moral level as those who seek to live out the Gospel of grace (God's unmerited favor), faith, love, peace, reconciliation, and inclusiveness.
For years I've advocated that there be coordinated grassroots activism in each and every city or jurisdiction where one homophobic church is chosen to be peacefully and continually picketed during each of its services, where the picketers tell all who pass by, and the media, how the homophobia preached by that church and/or its denomination is antithetical to the Gospel of Christ.
To advocate the exclusion and even the hatred of others in the name of the Prince of Peace is bizarre, to say the least, and shows the bankrupt "reasoning" and vile nature of the oppressor who would advocate discrimination, and punishment of Gay people.
And to allow virulent, or any, homophobia to determine the deprivation of LGBT civil rights is just as bizarre as the message this video conveys:
Friday, February 19, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
AN INTERVIEW WITH BISHOP HARRY JACKSON; THE IRONY AND IRRATIONALITY OF MINORITY GROUP HOMOPHOBIA
This is a very telling interview with Bishop Harry Jackson. His not seeing Gay rights as a civil rights issue every bit as valid as was the African American civil rights struggle not all that long ago, and his desire for same-sex marriage to be put up to a vote of the electorate when, had any or all of the civil rights of African Americans been put up for such a vote, there is a very good chance that we'd still have Segregation and Jim Crow laws, is very disquieting.
His inability or unwillingness to see Gay rights as a civil rights issue; his opposition to same-sex marriage and the "reasons" he uses to justify his position, show that not only is homophobia irrational, but is not amenable to "sweet reason" or to the appeal to "the milk of human kindness" by LGBT rights activists or by anyone who seeks equal rights for Gay people.
Here is an interview with Bishop Jackson. (Thanks to the Washington Post.):
Now, check this out:
Jackson was an active supporter of anti-gay ballot initiatives in 2008. He took part in conference calls designed to rally conservative pastors to support Proposition 8 in California. And he spent time on the ground in Florida, mobilizing support for Amendment 2. “There is a national agenda by the homosexual lobby to break down and redefine the family,” he said in an Amendment 2 press release. “If we do not protect marriage now, then their agenda will advance and we will face a threat to our religious freedom to preach the full truth of God’s word on issues like this.” On a Larry King Live discussion after the passage of Proposition 8, he said that “There’s been a hijacking of the civil rights movement by the radical gay movement,” and said to a gay activist on the show, “you can’t equate your sin with my skin.”
According to journalist Sarah Posner, Jackson was ordained not by one of the nation’s traditional African American denominations, but by Wellington Boone’s Fellowship of International Churches. Boone is among the most extreme of the anti-gay African Americans that Religious Right groups have embraced for their anti-gay positions. During the Family Research Council’s “Liberty Sunday” event in Massachusetts in 2006, Boone charged gay rights activists with the “rape” of the civil rights movement and spoke approvingly of colonial era laws making homosexual behavior a crime punishable by death.
Jackson insists that he’s not anti-gay, and often works hard to sound reasonable. He repeatedly told reporters last year that his effort to pass anti-marriage initiatives last year was not an attack on gays but based on his concern that “redefining” marriage could make it extinct in the African American community. But it’s awfully hard to square Jackson’s assertions that he’s not anti-gay with his repeated accusations that gays are Satan-inspired enemies of religious freedom who have “hijacked” the civil rights movement and are out to shut down the church in America.
Gays as satanic: Shortly before the 2004 election, Jackson outlined a strategy for defeating the “gay agenda,” writing, “Gays have been at the helm of a fourfold strategy for years, but the wisdom behind their spiritual, cultural, political, and generational tactics is clearly satanic.” In 2007, he blamed the advance of hate crimes legislation on the fact that “the authority of the evil one in the nation has continued to ascend and get stronger and bolder.” And at the Jamestown celebration that year, he said, “And so what we are dealing with is an insidious intrusion of the Devil to try to cut off the voice of the church, and I for one am not going to let that happen.”
[For the full article, please see here.]
It is a profound tragedy when many members of a minority group that was victimized by unspeakable oppression for hundreds of years in the U.S. now become the oppressor of another minority group!
In this connection, the following is a post I wrote a few months ago entitled, "The Irony and Irrationality of Minority Group Homophobia."
This is how Bishop Harry Jackson [Pictured] spent his summer vacation: He hustled back and forth across the District rallying his faithful flock who oppose gay marriage. He leaned into microphones over at the Board of Elections and Ethics, quoting biblical verse, decrying those who would trumpet marriage between man and man, woman and woman.
He continued his protests when the leaves began to fall and the early darkness crawled across the sky. He heard amen this and amen that from the pulpit of his Beltsville church. They sent him out to spread their version of the Gospel, and off he went, hopscotching across the country. Sometimes crowds would gather around him like geese, in Denver, in Los Angeles, sometimes 10,000 at a time. He spoke to swelling groups of people who felt the same way he did about same-sex marriage: No, no, no.
He popped up on national talk shows. The conservative radio commentators ushered him into their studios.
[For the full article, see here.](Thanks to AmericaBlogGay.)
Bishop Harry Jackson is a man who, as an African American, has a legacy of grinding oppression and unimagined suffering relieved only by intensive civil rights agitation by those who endured what Martin Luther King called "a season of suffering." It was this "season of suffering" that enabled the Harry Jacksons of the world to have what credibility they enjoy, but by no means deserve to the degree that they seek to deny the same civil rights of which they were once deprived but that they now enjoy precisely because of that civil rights struggle.
Now, Harry Jackson, and those minority group members who agree with him regarding the minority group of LGBT people, is exhibiting what may be seen to be a version of what Vilfredo Pareto, a famous early twentieth century Sociologist called, "the circulation of elites," whereby a deprived group, once it gets some measure of power, then turns around and oppresses another minority group.
Jackson invokes the Bible and God to seek to justify his homophobia, his intense desire to prevent same-sex loving couples from benefitting from the institution of marriage, with all of the civil and sacramental rights that accrue to that institution. (In this connection, please read my October 21, 2009 post, The Danger of the Religious Right.)
The irony of a member of one minority group seeking to prevent full equality of another minority group, beyond invoking the Bible and God to justify that oppression, is seen when we read of many of the "justifications" used by professing "Christian" White Supremacists to maintain the institutions of Slavery, Segregation and Jim Crow laws that once were institutionalized in the U.S. Indeed, "...religious endorsement of Jim Crow went a long way to sanctifying segregation as a widespread social reality." (See here.)
It would be instructive for the Harry Jacksons of the religious world to learn from the following:
For centuries, Christian artwork had depicted Satan and his demons as black. In Christian literature, Satan was described as black, even specifically as an African, such as in Athanasius' Life of Saint Anthony and the medieval best-seller Voyage of Brendan. Not surprisingly, Christians decided that Africans and Indians were a lot closer to Satan than white-skinned Europeans and acted accordingly to protect themselves from the "pollution" of contact with dark-skinned peoples. Read historian Forrest G. Wood's The Arrogance of Faith for an in-depth exploration of the Christian origin of racism, slavery and segregation.
That's why defenders of slavery in the antebellum South repeatedly use the Bible and refer to Christian concepts in their arguments. Read The Ideology of Slavery, which reprints slavery defenses, edited by Drew Gilpin Faust, to see how devoutly Christian the defenders were. Defenders correctly note that the Bible repeatedly condones slavery, even commands it at times, and never condemns it. Even the Tenth Commandment condones slavery; so much for the Commandments as a source of moral virtue. Also read Proslavery, by Larry E. Tise, pages 116-120, for surveys showing the overwhelmingly Christian character of slavery defenses. In one survey of pro-slavery tracts, clergymen wrote more than half.
In the aftermath of the Civil War, it's no surprise that Sunday morning became the most segregated time of the week. Nor is it surprising that it was agnostics and atheists in various liberal movements who spoke out first against segregation and racism. That's one reason that white segregationists--clergy included--labeled the civil-rights workers "communists," a word they considered synonymous with atheism.
[For the full article, see here.]
Part of an Abstract of an article entitled, God, Preachers, And Segregation, reads as follows:
In 1965, transcripts were collected of 72 sermons on the issue of racial integration preached between 1955 and 1965. The sermons, all given by Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, or Episcopal ministers in the southern United States, were examined to determine the position advocated by the minister. The sermons deemed segregationist were then analyzed for recurring strategies used to defend the segregation viewpoint. The major arguments of the segregationists may be summarized as follows: (1) segregation is the divine will of God as expressed in the Bible; (2) desegregation leads to mixed marriages, which are undesirable; (3) segregation is a universal law of nature...(5) the motives of those who support integration are improper; (6) segregation does not necessarily entail discrimination....
So, the irony of the homophobic pronouncements of the religious Harry Jacksons of the world is that those pronouncements virtually mimic much of the rhetoric of the White Supremacist clergy that was used against their ancestors, and that helped to provide "justification" for the institutions of slavery and segregation in society.
As I wrote in an article, It's Not About Issues:
...we have the irrational and surreal phenomenon where we have people aligning themselves with the Power Elite by directly working against their own interests, so that we see the spectacle of some African American clergy willing to align themselves with the KKK to oppose same-sex marriage, as seen by Rev. Gregory Daniels who is quoted as having said, "If the KKK opposes gay marriage, I would ride with them."
The reactionary mind-set of the Power Elite has even infiltrated many other African American clergy and their gullible followers who should certainly know better, so that they perversely use the very same rhetoric, justifications for, and advocacy of, discrimination against LGBT people and their acquisition of full and equal civil rights that were once used against African Americans by the allies and members of the Power Elite, and they are now willfully blind to the fact that it was those "activist judges," "liberals," and courageous people, Black and White, which and whom they now roundly condemn, that made possible the end of slavery and segregation.
Unfortunately, appeals to rationality and to the essence of the Gospel message seems to have little, if any, influence on deeply prejudiced people, particularly if those people can get their fifteen minutes of fame, and acquire a great deal of power, prestige, and wealth by bearing false witness against Gay people, and preaching exclusionary rhetoric that appeals to people's prejudices and xenophobic feelings and unfounded fears.
It comes down to the fact that the rhetoric of the Harry Jacksons of the religious world are not merely bankrupt, but that there are all too many gullible people who take their rhetoric seriously, and thereby suppress and subvert the "season of suffering" that their ancestors endured; they also renounce the entire Gospel that they falsely say they preach, as well as they renounce the Prince of Peace, the very God, Whom they say they represent!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unless and until all people realize that we are all brothers and sisters who are equal in the sight of God; God creates both Gay and Straight people; bearing false witness against Gay people (and others) and defaming and stigmatizing them will only lead to increased acts of incivility and even depravity by the oppressors against Gay people and any group that they perceive to be vulnerable and "safe" targets to persecute; as long as those who claim to represent the Prince of Peace contravene the teachings of Jesus and seek to deprive others of dignity and civil rights, we will degenerate from one madness to another until such time that there will be a war of all against all, to the detriment of the oppressors' souls!
His inability or unwillingness to see Gay rights as a civil rights issue; his opposition to same-sex marriage and the "reasons" he uses to justify his position, show that not only is homophobia irrational, but is not amenable to "sweet reason" or to the appeal to "the milk of human kindness" by LGBT rights activists or by anyone who seeks equal rights for Gay people.
Here is an interview with Bishop Jackson. (Thanks to the Washington Post.):
Now, check this out:
Jackson was an active supporter of anti-gay ballot initiatives in 2008. He took part in conference calls designed to rally conservative pastors to support Proposition 8 in California. And he spent time on the ground in Florida, mobilizing support for Amendment 2. “There is a national agenda by the homosexual lobby to break down and redefine the family,” he said in an Amendment 2 press release. “If we do not protect marriage now, then their agenda will advance and we will face a threat to our religious freedom to preach the full truth of God’s word on issues like this.” On a Larry King Live discussion after the passage of Proposition 8, he said that “There’s been a hijacking of the civil rights movement by the radical gay movement,” and said to a gay activist on the show, “you can’t equate your sin with my skin.”
According to journalist Sarah Posner, Jackson was ordained not by one of the nation’s traditional African American denominations, but by Wellington Boone’s Fellowship of International Churches. Boone is among the most extreme of the anti-gay African Americans that Religious Right groups have embraced for their anti-gay positions. During the Family Research Council’s “Liberty Sunday” event in Massachusetts in 2006, Boone charged gay rights activists with the “rape” of the civil rights movement and spoke approvingly of colonial era laws making homosexual behavior a crime punishable by death.
Jackson insists that he’s not anti-gay, and often works hard to sound reasonable. He repeatedly told reporters last year that his effort to pass anti-marriage initiatives last year was not an attack on gays but based on his concern that “redefining” marriage could make it extinct in the African American community. But it’s awfully hard to square Jackson’s assertions that he’s not anti-gay with his repeated accusations that gays are Satan-inspired enemies of religious freedom who have “hijacked” the civil rights movement and are out to shut down the church in America.
Gays as satanic: Shortly before the 2004 election, Jackson outlined a strategy for defeating the “gay agenda,” writing, “Gays have been at the helm of a fourfold strategy for years, but the wisdom behind their spiritual, cultural, political, and generational tactics is clearly satanic.” In 2007, he blamed the advance of hate crimes legislation on the fact that “the authority of the evil one in the nation has continued to ascend and get stronger and bolder.” And at the Jamestown celebration that year, he said, “And so what we are dealing with is an insidious intrusion of the Devil to try to cut off the voice of the church, and I for one am not going to let that happen.”
[For the full article, please see here.]
It is a profound tragedy when many members of a minority group that was victimized by unspeakable oppression for hundreds of years in the U.S. now become the oppressor of another minority group!
In this connection, the following is a post I wrote a few months ago entitled, "The Irony and Irrationality of Minority Group Homophobia."
This is how Bishop Harry Jackson [Pictured] spent his summer vacation: He hustled back and forth across the District rallying his faithful flock who oppose gay marriage. He leaned into microphones over at the Board of Elections and Ethics, quoting biblical verse, decrying those who would trumpet marriage between man and man, woman and woman.
He continued his protests when the leaves began to fall and the early darkness crawled across the sky. He heard amen this and amen that from the pulpit of his Beltsville church. They sent him out to spread their version of the Gospel, and off he went, hopscotching across the country. Sometimes crowds would gather around him like geese, in Denver, in Los Angeles, sometimes 10,000 at a time. He spoke to swelling groups of people who felt the same way he did about same-sex marriage: No, no, no.
He popped up on national talk shows. The conservative radio commentators ushered him into their studios.
[For the full article, see here.](Thanks to AmericaBlogGay.)
Bishop Harry Jackson is a man who, as an African American, has a legacy of grinding oppression and unimagined suffering relieved only by intensive civil rights agitation by those who endured what Martin Luther King called "a season of suffering." It was this "season of suffering" that enabled the Harry Jacksons of the world to have what credibility they enjoy, but by no means deserve to the degree that they seek to deny the same civil rights of which they were once deprived but that they now enjoy precisely because of that civil rights struggle.
Now, Harry Jackson, and those minority group members who agree with him regarding the minority group of LGBT people, is exhibiting what may be seen to be a version of what Vilfredo Pareto, a famous early twentieth century Sociologist called, "the circulation of elites," whereby a deprived group, once it gets some measure of power, then turns around and oppresses another minority group.
Jackson invokes the Bible and God to seek to justify his homophobia, his intense desire to prevent same-sex loving couples from benefitting from the institution of marriage, with all of the civil and sacramental rights that accrue to that institution. (In this connection, please read my October 21, 2009 post, The Danger of the Religious Right.)
The irony of a member of one minority group seeking to prevent full equality of another minority group, beyond invoking the Bible and God to justify that oppression, is seen when we read of many of the "justifications" used by professing "Christian" White Supremacists to maintain the institutions of Slavery, Segregation and Jim Crow laws that once were institutionalized in the U.S. Indeed, "...religious endorsement of Jim Crow went a long way to sanctifying segregation as a widespread social reality." (See here.)
It would be instructive for the Harry Jacksons of the religious world to learn from the following:
For centuries, Christian artwork had depicted Satan and his demons as black. In Christian literature, Satan was described as black, even specifically as an African, such as in Athanasius' Life of Saint Anthony and the medieval best-seller Voyage of Brendan. Not surprisingly, Christians decided that Africans and Indians were a lot closer to Satan than white-skinned Europeans and acted accordingly to protect themselves from the "pollution" of contact with dark-skinned peoples. Read historian Forrest G. Wood's The Arrogance of Faith for an in-depth exploration of the Christian origin of racism, slavery and segregation.
That's why defenders of slavery in the antebellum South repeatedly use the Bible and refer to Christian concepts in their arguments. Read The Ideology of Slavery, which reprints slavery defenses, edited by Drew Gilpin Faust, to see how devoutly Christian the defenders were. Defenders correctly note that the Bible repeatedly condones slavery, even commands it at times, and never condemns it. Even the Tenth Commandment condones slavery; so much for the Commandments as a source of moral virtue. Also read Proslavery, by Larry E. Tise, pages 116-120, for surveys showing the overwhelmingly Christian character of slavery defenses. In one survey of pro-slavery tracts, clergymen wrote more than half.
In the aftermath of the Civil War, it's no surprise that Sunday morning became the most segregated time of the week. Nor is it surprising that it was agnostics and atheists in various liberal movements who spoke out first against segregation and racism. That's one reason that white segregationists--clergy included--labeled the civil-rights workers "communists," a word they considered synonymous with atheism.
[For the full article, see here.]
Part of an Abstract of an article entitled, God, Preachers, And Segregation, reads as follows:
In 1965, transcripts were collected of 72 sermons on the issue of racial integration preached between 1955 and 1965. The sermons, all given by Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, or Episcopal ministers in the southern United States, were examined to determine the position advocated by the minister. The sermons deemed segregationist were then analyzed for recurring strategies used to defend the segregation viewpoint. The major arguments of the segregationists may be summarized as follows: (1) segregation is the divine will of God as expressed in the Bible; (2) desegregation leads to mixed marriages, which are undesirable; (3) segregation is a universal law of nature...(5) the motives of those who support integration are improper; (6) segregation does not necessarily entail discrimination....
So, the irony of the homophobic pronouncements of the religious Harry Jacksons of the world is that those pronouncements virtually mimic much of the rhetoric of the White Supremacist clergy that was used against their ancestors, and that helped to provide "justification" for the institutions of slavery and segregation in society.
As I wrote in an article, It's Not About Issues:
...we have the irrational and surreal phenomenon where we have people aligning themselves with the Power Elite by directly working against their own interests, so that we see the spectacle of some African American clergy willing to align themselves with the KKK to oppose same-sex marriage, as seen by Rev. Gregory Daniels who is quoted as having said, "If the KKK opposes gay marriage, I would ride with them."
The reactionary mind-set of the Power Elite has even infiltrated many other African American clergy and their gullible followers who should certainly know better, so that they perversely use the very same rhetoric, justifications for, and advocacy of, discrimination against LGBT people and their acquisition of full and equal civil rights that were once used against African Americans by the allies and members of the Power Elite, and they are now willfully blind to the fact that it was those "activist judges," "liberals," and courageous people, Black and White, which and whom they now roundly condemn, that made possible the end of slavery and segregation.
Unfortunately, appeals to rationality and to the essence of the Gospel message seems to have little, if any, influence on deeply prejudiced people, particularly if those people can get their fifteen minutes of fame, and acquire a great deal of power, prestige, and wealth by bearing false witness against Gay people, and preaching exclusionary rhetoric that appeals to people's prejudices and xenophobic feelings and unfounded fears.
It comes down to the fact that the rhetoric of the Harry Jacksons of the religious world are not merely bankrupt, but that there are all too many gullible people who take their rhetoric seriously, and thereby suppress and subvert the "season of suffering" that their ancestors endured; they also renounce the entire Gospel that they falsely say they preach, as well as they renounce the Prince of Peace, the very God, Whom they say they represent!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unless and until all people realize that we are all brothers and sisters who are equal in the sight of God; God creates both Gay and Straight people; bearing false witness against Gay people (and others) and defaming and stigmatizing them will only lead to increased acts of incivility and even depravity by the oppressors against Gay people and any group that they perceive to be vulnerable and "safe" targets to persecute; as long as those who claim to represent the Prince of Peace contravene the teachings of Jesus and seek to deprive others of dignity and civil rights, we will degenerate from one madness to another until such time that there will be a war of all against all, to the detriment of the oppressors' souls!
Monday, February 15, 2010
STEPHEN FRY AND THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH
This is a superb talk by Stephen Fry regarding the Roman Catholic Church. If you do nothing else today, please watch this superb video of a talk by the erudite Stephen Fry regarding the Roman Catholic Church and its assorted abuses, including that of its rabid homophobia.
Friday, February 12, 2010
HOMOPHOBIA IS THE RESULT OF EMOTIONAL DEFICIENCIES
The following is a post I wrote close to a year ago that I think is worth repeating, particularly given the fact that we must take the offensive and bring this fight for equal rights to the homophobe, rather than being defensive and merely seek to show people why Gay people deserve the same civil rights that heterosexuals enjoy:
In his book, “In Our Time,” Eric Hoffer who was an excellent philosopher, was self-educated, blind for the first fifteen years of his life, and became a migrant worker and then a longshoreman, wrote the following:
“In the alchemy of man’s soul almost all noble attributes—courage, honor, love, hope, faith, duty, loyalty—can be transmuted into ruthlessness. Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil within us. Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: Where there is com-passion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless. Thus the survival of the species may well depend on the ability to foster a boundless capacity for compassion.”
So many in the United States (and elsewhere) lack that essential emotion, “compassion,” that will help ensure the survival of the species! Indeed, the hostility visited upon LGBT people is a very strong indicator in our time of that deficiency!
All sorts of rationalizations have been trotted out by the ignorant and/or hatefully homophobic to try and justify discrimination against LGBT people, ranging from “maintaining traditional family values” to linking Gay people with pedophiles to causing all sorts of societal calamities. The very irrationality of their arguments in favor of deprivation of civil rights to LGBT people both bespeaks lack of compassion as it bespeaks gullibility and/or lack of compassion of those who take their rhetoric seriously.
In his book, “The Passionate State of Mind And Other Aphorisms,” Hoffer states:
“Passions usually have their roots in that which is blemished, crippled, incomplete and insecure within us. The passionate attitude is less a response to stimuli from without than an emanation of an inner dissatisfaction.
“A poignant dissatisfaction, whatever be its cause, is at bottom a dissatisfaction with ourselves. It is surprising how much hardship and humiliation a man will endure without bitterness when he has not the least doubt about his worth or when he is so integrated with others that he is not aware of a separate self.”
And it is to this phenomenon every person who possesses both a critical intellect and the necessary emotion of “compassion” must turn to help understand why there are some homophobes who make their homophobia something like a career. So many spend an inordinate amount of time condemning God’s LGBT children, and one must understand that their animus ultimately resides, not in the object of their hatred, but in their own psyches that betrays their blemishes, crippled natures, incompleteness, and insecurities.
After all, if someone is emotionally and sexually intact, why would there be a need for their obsessive condemnation of other consenting adults’ emotional/sexual orientations?
How is same-sex marriage, for example, going to adversely affect anyone’s heterosexual marriage? Is there anyone who can give a reasonable answer to that question?
Clearly, there can be no rational answer to that rhetorical question! If anything, same-sex marriage will enhance the institution of marriage!
Indeed, increasing legitimacy will accrue to the institution of marriage the more people partake of its rights, privileges, and responsibilities. So, people who are genuinely concerned with the future of the institution of marriage should be working to minimize divorce and encourage same-sex couples who wish to make a lifetime commitment to each other to marry!
Yet, we have many religious (and secular) people who try and prevent same-sex couples from partaking of the very institution from which they benefit, thereby encouraging fornication as one of their prejudices’ byproducts, and they even have the temerity to claim the right to discriminate in the name of God. So, would they have us believe that God would prefer fornication over marriage among Gay people?
Can they be that clueless that they could reasonably expect that Gay people can, should, and must lead celibate lives while only heterosexuals can and should fulfill one of human beings’ most primal urges?
The irrationality of homophobic rhetoric shows a clear deficiency on the part of homophobes regarding their level of “compassion,” as it does their clear dissatisfaction with their own lot in life! Why else spend such an inordinate amount of time thinking about and condemning the emotional/sexual lives of others?
Emotionally and sexually intact people aren’t particularly concerned with the emotional and sexual lives of other adults! They are likely to have a “live and let live” approach to such matters!
However, when someone has an inordinate fascination with condemning others, that condemnation betrays an emotional deficiency that makes compassion very difficult, if not impossible, to have or sustain.
And if a Christian (or any other decent person) can be characterized by any one characteristic, that characteristic is “compassion!”
Christians are to be agents of God’s grace in this world; we are to preach and live out the Gospel of grace, faith, love, peace, reconciliation, and inclusiveness! And those who condemn others, those who seek to deprive others of civil rights, those who help create a climate of fear and hatred of others, have shown by their words and/or deeds that they are neither Christians nor even decent people!
We are to make no mistake: homophobes are absolutely no different in their mind-set and in their emotional deficiencies than were and are White Supremacists! Both groups partake of the need to discriminate and hate in order for the awareness of their own emotional deficiencies to be overridden by their condemnation of others!
“Condemnation” acts as an imperfect and temporary band-aid to help heal the haters’ own emotional woundedness, a woundedness that they don’t have the courage to bring themselves to face, confront, and overcome! So, they take the coward’s way out and, rather than deal with “the beam in their own eye,” they feel the need to manufacture a beam in a minority group whom they perceive it is safe to persecute.
And when that particular minority group is no longer considered safe to persecute, they will search for another minority group upon which to vent their anger, an anger borne of their own emotional deficiencies that they cloak in religious trappings, so that they can try and stake a claim on “godliness,” “virtue” and “morality” when, in fact, their own rhetoric and actions show them to manifest the greatest form of ungodliness, lack of virtue, and immorality: the sin of pride in their oppression of others!
Jesus never condemned Gay people, but He sure spent quite a bit of time condemning the proud, the haughty, the legalists who condemned and discriminated against others and put yokes of bondage onto others, all the while claiming to impose those yokes in the name of God.
If haters didn’t have an object to hate, they would be forced to confront their own emotional blemishes, crippled natures, incompleteness, insecurities, deficiencies and frailties. And that is the last thing a moral coward feels he/she can afford to do!
In his book, “In Our Time,” Eric Hoffer who was an excellent philosopher, was self-educated, blind for the first fifteen years of his life, and became a migrant worker and then a longshoreman, wrote the following:
“In the alchemy of man’s soul almost all noble attributes—courage, honor, love, hope, faith, duty, loyalty—can be transmuted into ruthlessness. Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil within us. Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: Where there is com-passion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless. Thus the survival of the species may well depend on the ability to foster a boundless capacity for compassion.”
So many in the United States (and elsewhere) lack that essential emotion, “compassion,” that will help ensure the survival of the species! Indeed, the hostility visited upon LGBT people is a very strong indicator in our time of that deficiency!
All sorts of rationalizations have been trotted out by the ignorant and/or hatefully homophobic to try and justify discrimination against LGBT people, ranging from “maintaining traditional family values” to linking Gay people with pedophiles to causing all sorts of societal calamities. The very irrationality of their arguments in favor of deprivation of civil rights to LGBT people both bespeaks lack of compassion as it bespeaks gullibility and/or lack of compassion of those who take their rhetoric seriously.
In his book, “The Passionate State of Mind And Other Aphorisms,” Hoffer states:
“Passions usually have their roots in that which is blemished, crippled, incomplete and insecure within us. The passionate attitude is less a response to stimuli from without than an emanation of an inner dissatisfaction.
“A poignant dissatisfaction, whatever be its cause, is at bottom a dissatisfaction with ourselves. It is surprising how much hardship and humiliation a man will endure without bitterness when he has not the least doubt about his worth or when he is so integrated with others that he is not aware of a separate self.”
And it is to this phenomenon every person who possesses both a critical intellect and the necessary emotion of “compassion” must turn to help understand why there are some homophobes who make their homophobia something like a career. So many spend an inordinate amount of time condemning God’s LGBT children, and one must understand that their animus ultimately resides, not in the object of their hatred, but in their own psyches that betrays their blemishes, crippled natures, incompleteness, and insecurities.
After all, if someone is emotionally and sexually intact, why would there be a need for their obsessive condemnation of other consenting adults’ emotional/sexual orientations?
How is same-sex marriage, for example, going to adversely affect anyone’s heterosexual marriage? Is there anyone who can give a reasonable answer to that question?
Clearly, there can be no rational answer to that rhetorical question! If anything, same-sex marriage will enhance the institution of marriage!
Indeed, increasing legitimacy will accrue to the institution of marriage the more people partake of its rights, privileges, and responsibilities. So, people who are genuinely concerned with the future of the institution of marriage should be working to minimize divorce and encourage same-sex couples who wish to make a lifetime commitment to each other to marry!
Yet, we have many religious (and secular) people who try and prevent same-sex couples from partaking of the very institution from which they benefit, thereby encouraging fornication as one of their prejudices’ byproducts, and they even have the temerity to claim the right to discriminate in the name of God. So, would they have us believe that God would prefer fornication over marriage among Gay people?
Can they be that clueless that they could reasonably expect that Gay people can, should, and must lead celibate lives while only heterosexuals can and should fulfill one of human beings’ most primal urges?
The irrationality of homophobic rhetoric shows a clear deficiency on the part of homophobes regarding their level of “compassion,” as it does their clear dissatisfaction with their own lot in life! Why else spend such an inordinate amount of time thinking about and condemning the emotional/sexual lives of others?
Emotionally and sexually intact people aren’t particularly concerned with the emotional and sexual lives of other adults! They are likely to have a “live and let live” approach to such matters!
However, when someone has an inordinate fascination with condemning others, that condemnation betrays an emotional deficiency that makes compassion very difficult, if not impossible, to have or sustain.
And if a Christian (or any other decent person) can be characterized by any one characteristic, that characteristic is “compassion!”
Christians are to be agents of God’s grace in this world; we are to preach and live out the Gospel of grace, faith, love, peace, reconciliation, and inclusiveness! And those who condemn others, those who seek to deprive others of civil rights, those who help create a climate of fear and hatred of others, have shown by their words and/or deeds that they are neither Christians nor even decent people!
We are to make no mistake: homophobes are absolutely no different in their mind-set and in their emotional deficiencies than were and are White Supremacists! Both groups partake of the need to discriminate and hate in order for the awareness of their own emotional deficiencies to be overridden by their condemnation of others!
“Condemnation” acts as an imperfect and temporary band-aid to help heal the haters’ own emotional woundedness, a woundedness that they don’t have the courage to bring themselves to face, confront, and overcome! So, they take the coward’s way out and, rather than deal with “the beam in their own eye,” they feel the need to manufacture a beam in a minority group whom they perceive it is safe to persecute.
And when that particular minority group is no longer considered safe to persecute, they will search for another minority group upon which to vent their anger, an anger borne of their own emotional deficiencies that they cloak in religious trappings, so that they can try and stake a claim on “godliness,” “virtue” and “morality” when, in fact, their own rhetoric and actions show them to manifest the greatest form of ungodliness, lack of virtue, and immorality: the sin of pride in their oppression of others!
Jesus never condemned Gay people, but He sure spent quite a bit of time condemning the proud, the haughty, the legalists who condemned and discriminated against others and put yokes of bondage onto others, all the while claiming to impose those yokes in the name of God.
If haters didn’t have an object to hate, they would be forced to confront their own emotional blemishes, crippled natures, incompleteness, insecurities, deficiencies and frailties. And that is the last thing a moral coward feels he/she can afford to do!
Thursday, February 11, 2010
ROWAN'S BACKHANDED 'APOLOGY' TO GAYS
This article entitled, Rowan's Backhanded 'Apology' to Gays, is one that deserves to be read.
Part of it reads as follows:
So, while Williams is so, so sorry for how he has undervalued the lives of gays and lesbians, he continues to oppose a new law that would recognize the value of that same slighted group - and dare to cloak his objection in religious doubletalk.
It's high time that we recognized that most of the institutional Church, including many professed "liberal" denominations, churches, and clergy, are homophobic and can't be counted upon to set the moral tone in society to affirm Gay people and LGBT civil and sacramental rights. This was true in regard to the African American civil rights struggle, and it's no less true in the LGBT civil rights struggle!
It also must be recognized that much of this homophobia stems the financial gains that are accrued by "playing to the audience" of those who have been erroneously taught that homosexuality is a sin and contravenes "biblical principles." To maintain and increase church membership, and keep money coming into the collection plates, people like Williams don't want to rock the boat and risk losing even more members than they already have.
Moreover, as long as churches are tax-exempt, taxpayers (you and I) are subsidizing their homophobic rhetoric and actions that have caused untold suffering, suicides, assaults, and murders of LGBT people. If they want to be a private club and discriminate, I suppose that's their business. But they must not be allowed to do it with our money, as we thereby become culpable in the spreading of their homophobia!
If they want to retain their tax-exempt status, it's not unreasonable that we require professing Christians to live up to Jesus' teachings of loving and not judging people. If they refuse to do that, they are presumably contravening the very reason for their tax-exempt status in society, and should have that exemption removed, so that they are free to preach and act in ways that are really diametrically opposed to Jesus' teachings.
Part of it reads as follows:
So, while Williams is so, so sorry for how he has undervalued the lives of gays and lesbians, he continues to oppose a new law that would recognize the value of that same slighted group - and dare to cloak his objection in religious doubletalk.
It's high time that we recognized that most of the institutional Church, including many professed "liberal" denominations, churches, and clergy, are homophobic and can't be counted upon to set the moral tone in society to affirm Gay people and LGBT civil and sacramental rights. This was true in regard to the African American civil rights struggle, and it's no less true in the LGBT civil rights struggle!
It also must be recognized that much of this homophobia stems the financial gains that are accrued by "playing to the audience" of those who have been erroneously taught that homosexuality is a sin and contravenes "biblical principles." To maintain and increase church membership, and keep money coming into the collection plates, people like Williams don't want to rock the boat and risk losing even more members than they already have.
Moreover, as long as churches are tax-exempt, taxpayers (you and I) are subsidizing their homophobic rhetoric and actions that have caused untold suffering, suicides, assaults, and murders of LGBT people. If they want to be a private club and discriminate, I suppose that's their business. But they must not be allowed to do it with our money, as we thereby become culpable in the spreading of their homophobia!
If they want to retain their tax-exempt status, it's not unreasonable that we require professing Christians to live up to Jesus' teachings of loving and not judging people. If they refuse to do that, they are presumably contravening the very reason for their tax-exempt status in society, and should have that exemption removed, so that they are free to preach and act in ways that are really diametrically opposed to Jesus' teachings.
A WONDERFUL ARTICLE ON THE FOOLISHNESS OF DADT
This is a terrific article entitled, Asking and Telling In Israel, that puts the lie to any stated fears and/or problems that the U.S. military would have if DADT were repealed. All the fears and lies about "unit cohesion" and "national security" are debunked in this one article.
Part of the article reads as follows:
As Israelis, we are taught from a young age to admire the United States. The American dream offers an alternative to the somewhat harsh reality of life in the Middle East. But that dream has been betrayed by the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that governs gay and lesbian service in the U.S. military. Repealing it will help America fall in line with what many other countries have already accepted—that, in the 21st century, sexual preferences should not be a matter of shame or secrecy, not even in the military. The thought of living a lie while serving—of not being able to share one's personal life with fellow fighters and commanders—is hard to bear. (And it's ridiculous: if Israel, a nation that is forever on high alert, can defend itself just fine with open homosexuals in its defense forces, then any other nation's army should also be able to integrate.)
Part of the article reads as follows:
As Israelis, we are taught from a young age to admire the United States. The American dream offers an alternative to the somewhat harsh reality of life in the Middle East. But that dream has been betrayed by the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that governs gay and lesbian service in the U.S. military. Repealing it will help America fall in line with what many other countries have already accepted—that, in the 21st century, sexual preferences should not be a matter of shame or secrecy, not even in the military. The thought of living a lie while serving—of not being able to share one's personal life with fellow fighters and commanders—is hard to bear. (And it's ridiculous: if Israel, a nation that is forever on high alert, can defend itself just fine with open homosexuals in its defense forces, then any other nation's army should also be able to integrate.)
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
HOMOPHOBIA CAUSING THE DIVORCE BETWEEN SEXUAL ATTRACTION AND BEHAVIOR WITH ONE'S SEXUAL IDENTITY
This is a fascinating article entitled, Gay, lesbian, bisexual higher suicide risk discussing a study that shows that sexual "identity" is the major factor leading to suicide risk, rather than sexual behavior or sexual attraction.
This study deserves repeating among different teen population groups, because if this finding is borne out, the hateful and discriminatory rhetoric leveled against Gay people will be seen to be far more dangerous regarding risk of suicide than is anything that has to do with same-sex attraction and/or sexual behavior. Indeed, the devastation visited upon Gay youth by religious and other homophobes may inculcate such shame and self-loathing that the very term "Gay" is renounced in favor of "heterosexual," despite same-sex attraction and same-sex sexual activity.
So, suicides among Gay youth, or attempted suicides among Gay youth, may well be seen to be due to self-identification with a concept that has been defamed (often by homophobic clergy and their gullible followers), rather than same-sex attraction and/or same-sex activity that objectively would consign a person to the status of "Gay."
Indeed, self-loathing and other factors borne of homophobia that lead to suicide risk among teens may be seen to come from one's very self-identification with the term "Gay," rather than being Gay, in and of itself. Regardless of sexual attraction and sexual behavior, if a teen self-identifies as "heterosexual," suicide risk is no different than is the risk for the general population of teens.
As the article states: "The majority of teens with same-sex sexual attraction or experience considered themselves to be heterosexual, the researchers said." And why not? Given the taunting, the defamation, the bearing of false witness, the lies and distortions made by homophobic clergy, all too many professing "Christians," and assorted politicians, appropriation of a term viewed as credible ("heterosexual") is an unfortunately understandable defense and coping mechanism that trumps one's actual status as being "Gay" when sexual attraction and sexual behavior are used as indicators of one's true sexual orientation.
This phenomenon further highlights the great need for LGBT rights activists to take the position that rather than be on the defensive, and merely try to show homophobic people why LGBT people deserve equal rights, it's high time that LGBT people and allies take the offensive and expose and confront the many psychological, social, political, and financial factors that create the ignorant and/or hateful rhetoric and actions of those, many of whom profess to be "Christians," who would demean, defame, and seek to prevent and/or rescind the civil and sacramental rights of their fellow Gay citizens, often ironically doing so in the name of God; use patently irrational arguments as justifications for their homophobia.
Should this exposure and confrontation be undertaken and be successful, there will no longer be a felt need for many young people to divorce their sexual orientation from their self-identification as the Gay people God created them to be.
This study deserves repeating among different teen population groups, because if this finding is borne out, the hateful and discriminatory rhetoric leveled against Gay people will be seen to be far more dangerous regarding risk of suicide than is anything that has to do with same-sex attraction and/or sexual behavior. Indeed, the devastation visited upon Gay youth by religious and other homophobes may inculcate such shame and self-loathing that the very term "Gay" is renounced in favor of "heterosexual," despite same-sex attraction and same-sex sexual activity.
So, suicides among Gay youth, or attempted suicides among Gay youth, may well be seen to be due to self-identification with a concept that has been defamed (often by homophobic clergy and their gullible followers), rather than same-sex attraction and/or same-sex activity that objectively would consign a person to the status of "Gay."
Indeed, self-loathing and other factors borne of homophobia that lead to suicide risk among teens may be seen to come from one's very self-identification with the term "Gay," rather than being Gay, in and of itself. Regardless of sexual attraction and sexual behavior, if a teen self-identifies as "heterosexual," suicide risk is no different than is the risk for the general population of teens.
As the article states: "The majority of teens with same-sex sexual attraction or experience considered themselves to be heterosexual, the researchers said." And why not? Given the taunting, the defamation, the bearing of false witness, the lies and distortions made by homophobic clergy, all too many professing "Christians," and assorted politicians, appropriation of a term viewed as credible ("heterosexual") is an unfortunately understandable defense and coping mechanism that trumps one's actual status as being "Gay" when sexual attraction and sexual behavior are used as indicators of one's true sexual orientation.
This phenomenon further highlights the great need for LGBT rights activists to take the position that rather than be on the defensive, and merely try to show homophobic people why LGBT people deserve equal rights, it's high time that LGBT people and allies take the offensive and expose and confront the many psychological, social, political, and financial factors that create the ignorant and/or hateful rhetoric and actions of those, many of whom profess to be "Christians," who would demean, defame, and seek to prevent and/or rescind the civil and sacramental rights of their fellow Gay citizens, often ironically doing so in the name of God; use patently irrational arguments as justifications for their homophobia.
Should this exposure and confrontation be undertaken and be successful, there will no longer be a felt need for many young people to divorce their sexual orientation from their self-identification as the Gay people God created them to be.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
BURIED TRUTHS ABOUT GAYS IN THE MILITARY
Notice how North uses such buzz words as "NAMBLA," "youngsters," and "national security" in his brief argument as to why DADT should not be repealed:
Now, please read the following article entitled, Buried Truths About Gays in the Military its entirety.
Part of the article reads as follows:
A couple of dozen countries already allow gays in uniform -- including allies that have fought alongside our troops, such as Britain, Canada and Australia. Just as there is plenty of opposition in the U.S. ranks, there was plenty of opposition when they changed their policies.
In Canada, 45 percent of service members said they would not work with gay colleagues, and a majority of British soldiers and sailors rejected the idea. There were warnings that hordes of military personnel would quit and promising youngsters would refuse to enlist.
But when the new day arrived, it turned out to be a big, fat non-event. The Canadian government reported "no effect." The British government observed "a marked lack of reaction." An Australian veterans group that opposed admitting gays later admitted that the services "have not had a lot of difficulty in this area."
Israel, being small, surrounded by hostile powers and obsessed with security, can't afford to jeopardize its military strength for the sake of prissy ventures in political correctness. But its military not only accepts gays, it provides benefits to their same-sex partners, as it does with spouses. Has that policy sapped Israel's military might? Its enemies don't seem eager to test the proposition.
I'm sorry to say that I'm not optimistic about DADT being rescinded any time soon; we don't even hear much about rescinding DOMA.
There are, unfortunately, far too many gullible people who are willing to believe assorted lies and distortions concerning Gay people.
Many people are all too willing to foolishly and falsely believe that Gay people are some sort of menacing threat when, in fact, it is strident homophobes who are the real menacing threat to our children, to our national security, to most of the institutional Church, and to the very fabric of our society!
Now, please read the following article entitled, Buried Truths About Gays in the Military its entirety.
Part of the article reads as follows:
A couple of dozen countries already allow gays in uniform -- including allies that have fought alongside our troops, such as Britain, Canada and Australia. Just as there is plenty of opposition in the U.S. ranks, there was plenty of opposition when they changed their policies.
In Canada, 45 percent of service members said they would not work with gay colleagues, and a majority of British soldiers and sailors rejected the idea. There were warnings that hordes of military personnel would quit and promising youngsters would refuse to enlist.
But when the new day arrived, it turned out to be a big, fat non-event. The Canadian government reported "no effect." The British government observed "a marked lack of reaction." An Australian veterans group that opposed admitting gays later admitted that the services "have not had a lot of difficulty in this area."
Israel, being small, surrounded by hostile powers and obsessed with security, can't afford to jeopardize its military strength for the sake of prissy ventures in political correctness. But its military not only accepts gays, it provides benefits to their same-sex partners, as it does with spouses. Has that policy sapped Israel's military might? Its enemies don't seem eager to test the proposition.
I'm sorry to say that I'm not optimistic about DADT being rescinded any time soon; we don't even hear much about rescinding DOMA.
There are, unfortunately, far too many gullible people who are willing to believe assorted lies and distortions concerning Gay people.
Many people are all too willing to foolishly and falsely believe that Gay people are some sort of menacing threat when, in fact, it is strident homophobes who are the real menacing threat to our children, to our national security, to most of the institutional Church, and to the very fabric of our society!
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
MANY GAY PEOPLE PLAY INTO THE HANDS OF HOMOPHOBES AND HELP DENY OR RETARD EQUAL RIGHTS
My pal, Don Charles [Pictured], who blogs at "Christ The Gay Martyr," posted this superb essay to the comments section of GayAmericablog.com, and he kindly gave me permission to reprint it here.
His comment is essential reading for all people who are truly desirous of obtaining full and equal civil rights for LGBT people:
It's February 2010, and we're upset that the Obama administration has once again kicked us to the curb. The President is still renegeing on his promise to repeal the US military's Don't Ask/Don't Tell policy (DADT). The anger is justified, but there's an elephant in the room that needs to be acknowledged. It's a question: Why isn't the LGBT rights movement taken seriously by mainstream society? Why do Democrats and Republicans find it so easy to play us? What can we do to lessen the stigma that's attached like a barnacle to LGBT status?
Late last year, the Nation's Laura Flanders hosted a roundtable discussion on this very topic on her show "Grit Radio". One of her guests posed the question this way:
"Why aren't queers taken seriously?"
One answer could be found in the very phrasing of the question. Typically, nobody on the panel picked up on it. Can you?
I think it's time for the Gay "community" to decide what it really wants: To be seen as a radical counterculture that defines itself primarily by sexual behavior, or to be seen as fully entitled American citizens who, like the heterosexual population, are not defined primarily by sexual behavior. That decision has not been taken.
When gayAmericablog staff cite people like Dan Savage as leaders, who cheerfully refers to himself as a "faggot" when he appears on TV, I know that decision has not been taken. When San Francisco assemblyman Tom Ammiano publicly refers to himself as a "queen" and the Gay media adores it, I know that decision has not been taken. When activists cheer after a Lesbian biker club wins a copyright for the name "Dykes on Bikes", I know that decision has not been taken. When Pride parades thrive on frivolty, intoxication, exhibitionism and shock value, and fail to communicate the gravity of living as a Gay person in this world, I know that decision has not been taken.
Do we really think that kind of retrograde language and display works to the benefit of a Victor Fehrenbach or a Dan Choi? There has long been a profound lack of dignity and seriousness in our public presentation. And we wonder why it's so easy for our enemies to get anti-Gay amendments passed. I'll tell you one big reason why: We make it easy for them!
Now, I'm not saying this to excuse the behavior of the Obama administration, the HRC or any agency that isn't living up to its promises or stated mission. I'm just saying that when I compare the desegregation movement of the 1950s and '60s with today's equality struggle for LGBT Americans, one of them I can clearly identify as a Civil Rights crusade undertaken by a dignified and noble people, and one of them I can't identify as such. Guess which is which?
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his marchers would not have earned the international respect they had if they'd come across in the media like Butterfly McQueen and Stepin Fetchit. With all due respect to Marc Shaiman and his Prop 8 musical on YouTube, a Civil Rights movement is not a comedy skit. If we want respect, our presentation has got to indicate as much. Even more to the point: if we want respect, it's got to start with our own self-perception.
Too many of us truly believe we are "queers", "faggots", "queens", "dykes", etc. The oppressor tells us who we are, and we fail to challenge his definition. We don't even have the ambition to challenge his terminology. We've got some work to do, and it begins by taking a hard look in the mirror.
In this connection, a couple of years ago, I wrote an article entitled, On The Need To Grow Up, that generated a lot of revulsion by ostensibly Gay people; part of that article reads as follows:
...I say to those who revel in using pejorative and hateful self-identifiers [like Queer, Dyke, Fag, etc.], who are content with being treated as second-class citizens, who are delighted with crumbs of incrementalism, who are self-satisfied as long as their immediate perceived self-interests are being met, who tolerate the indignities attendant upon being treated as "the other," and "the deviant," who allow homophobic clergy and others to demean them with impunity: Grow Up!
When we were children we usually, and for some of us all too frequently, allowed adults to define our realities for us. Now that we're grown, we have an obligation to act our ages and demand to be treated with the same dignity and have the same civil and sacramental rights as anyone else! And not settle for anything less!
Listen to the Apostle Paul: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." (1Corinthians 13:11)
To the degree we act like children, either by centering our lives on frivolous and self-destructive activities, or by allowing others to define our realities for us, or by not demanding full and equal civil and sacramental rights, or by using negative and hostile self-identifiers that serve to perpetuate "outsider," "deviant," "abnormal," and "inferior" status, it is to that degree that homophobes are further emboldened; what rights that are currently enjoyed are threatened or may even be rescinded; increasing numbers of decent people will find "justification" for considering LGBT people as "not one of us," and the fight for full and equal civil and sacramental rights will be greatly harmed.
Moreover, such harmful behaviors and self-concepts are inimical to the fire in the belly that is needed to acquire the dignity and civil and sacramental rights that are enjoyed by all other citizens in the U.S.
It's time that many LGBT people, including professional "activists," fish or cut bait: either embrace the role of "sexual outlaws" that pride themselves as being countercultural, OR see being Gay as being just as normal as is being heterosexual, present a dignified self-image that demands that one be treated with dignity and respect; demand full equality in every single aspect of life.
The publicly expressed persona of the former virtually guarantees the retardation or denial of the latter!
And we are to make no mistake: those who insist on using pejorative and hateful epithets as self-identifiers, have wittingly or unwittingly internalized the hateful messages of the homophobic oppressor; ironically often do so in the name of "liberation" or "empowerment."
To put it in context, it is inconceivable that any university would have a course or program entitled, "Kike Studies," yet "Queer Studies" courses and programs abound in many of our universities. I have yet to hear any Jewish person refer to him/herself or other Jewish people as "kikes." It's a matter of honor, dignity, and the refusal to appropriate and articulate such a hateful word used by many anti-Semites.
Why should Gay people view themselves any differently? It should be a matter of honor and dignity to never use such hateful words when referring to oneself and/or other Gay people!
As I've written in an article entitled, Confronting Internalized Homophobia, that I hope you will read in its entirety:
I know right out of the starting blocks that this article is going to offend a great many people, but I feel very strongly that many LGBT people are seriously sabotaging the cause for full and equal civil rights by referring to themselves by the use of historically and current hateful epithets, using such terms as "Queer," "Dyke," "Fag," and other such demeaning and hateful words that have been historically used by their oppressors, and are still being used by their oppressors. Also, the many behaviors and images that are viewed by most potential allies as offensive, and that become public presentations of self, help reinforce the fallacious stereotype that Gay people are sex-obsessed deviant and abnormal hedonists, and these public images are doing tremendous harm to the struggle for, and the cause of acquiring, full and equal civil rights....
Jews usually don't have self-loathing; LGBT people all too often do have witting or unwitting self-loathing, and use those historically punishing words on themselves in the name of "liberation," ignorantly (or stupidly) thinking that they are appropriating and neutralizing those words, even when gay bashers use those very words when bashing their victims and, furthermore, they even perpetuate and encourage further use of those words among university students when titling those courses, programs, minors, or majors, and freely use those words within the curricula as they do in other public venues.
Please take Don Charles' insights and all of these words to heart, and understand that as long as hateful words are used as self-identifiers, as long as being Gay is projected and seen to be solely sexual and devoid of the same romantic emotions held by heterosexuals, that presentation of self bespeaks self-loathing (recognized or not) and bespeaks lack of the dignity necessary to fully feel worthy to fight for the same rights and privileges that heterosexuals enjoy; be taken seriously by potential Straight allies, as well as by politicians and jurists when they deal with the unconstitutionality of denying LGBT people the same rights and privileges held by every other citizen in society.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
BARRIERS TO AUTHENTIC SEXUALITY, THE EX-GAY MYTH, AND STRIDENT HOMOPHOBIA
Sexually intact and emotionally healthy people really don't care what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes! And sexually intact and emotionally healthy people don't in any way demean Gay people or seek to deprive Gay people of civil rights that accrue to heterosexuals in society!
Save for crass material and political gains yielded by homophobia within "religious" and other contexts, much strident homophobia may be attributed to the interplay between heteronormativity and homophobia within society and the psychological dynamics residing in certain people who are intrigued, and who are even unconsciously and/or consciously envious, of out and proud Gay people who express an authenticity that the strident homophobe may lack.
Heterosexism and homophobia, unfortunately, often make sexuality to be falsely perceived as fluid. However, that perception of its seeming fluidity has to do with that heterosexism and homophobia, and does not imply either "fluidity" or "choice" in one's sexuality! It seems that most frequently people realize that they are attracted to members of the same or opposite sex at a relatively early age. (One woman told me that she realized she was attracted to girls when she was about six years old.)
However, we can't ignore the cultural stigma still visited upon Gay people, and that stigma may well condition a person to think he/she has emotional/sexual feelings toward the opposite sex until either his/her true nature can no longer suffer the inconsistency between that nature and his/her perceived need to conform to heterosexist cultural expectations of sexuality, and he/she comes out either to him/herself and/or to others, or one unconsciously and/or consciously chooses to live a life of quiet (and sometimes not so quiet) desperation by conforming to the dominant cultural heterosexist norms of society and labels him/herself "heterosexual" when, in fact, his/her homosexuality is repressed and/or suppressed, thus causing him/her tremendous anxiety.
It is this latter group from which we can expect much of the strident homophobia that we encounter in society! Psychoanalysts refer to this defense mechanism of vociferously condemning in the other what one possesses in him/herself as Reaction Formation.
Moreover, one can have fulfilling same-sex relationships and then abstain from those relationships, or even marry a person of the opposite sex, and falsely think of him/herself as no longer Gay (hence, the "ex-gay" myth) when, in fact, he/she is Gay when same-sex emotional and sexual desire and also homosexual masturbatory fantasies are used as indicators (as they must be) of one's true sexuality.
It is entirely possible, regarding feelings, perceptions, and behavior, that a person can act and even consider him/herself to be Straight for a part of his/her life and subsequently act and consider him/herself to be Gay for another part of his/her life. Or, one can act and even feel Gay for a part of his/her life and subsequently act and consider him/herself Straight for another part of his/her life! For Gay people, homophobic society can account for the former; bankrupt and dangerous "ex-gay therapy" can often account for the latter!
In this context, we can see that much misogyny, like homophobia itself, borne of barriers to the expression of authentic sexuality to be discussed below, underlies strident homophobia as well as all anti-Gay sentiment. For example, the revulsion that some people feel at the very idea of two men making love, at least one of whom is viewed as taking on "the female role," highlights the profound discomfort and anxieties that result in those whose misogyny shows their lack sexual intactness and confidence in their own sexuality, their own perceived "manhood." Indeed, the aggression visited upon Gay people by homophobes may also be mirrored in the unhealthy power dynamic that is likely to occur in many homophobes' own heterosexual relationships.
In addition, this is also why transgender people are an enigma to many, even many in the Gay communities, and are so stigmatized! It is alleged that one is either a man or a woman and must act in a way that is in accord with the cultural expectations of our society. The fact is that blended gender is quite normal, and misogyny, as well as the felt need by many to place people into neat dichotomous boxes (that don't fit the facts of many people's experiences or the diversity of God's creation), is the result of many people's blind adherence to cultural norms of what is considered to be "male expression" and "female expression" that unjustly visits tremendous suffering upon transgender people.
Regarding strident homophobes who are unwittingly (or even wittingly) Gay by nature, their sexual expression is often conditioned by unconscious and/or conscious forces by which they often react to the heterosexism and homophobia that exist in society that creates their internalized homophobia. And that internalized homophobia can be manifested in all sorts of destructive behaviors against Gay people ranging from free-floating anxiety to suicide to hateful rhetoric to free-floating aggression to acts of discrimination to assaults and murder!
I truly believe that this repression, suppression, and the frustration and anxiety that ensue from unconsciously and/or consciously living an emotional/sexual lie, is one of the major causes of strident homophobia!
It is quite likely that those who repress and/or suppress their own homosexuality are among the most strident homophobes, as the very existence and freedom exhibited by out Gay people are a terrible threat and source of great anxiety to those who are unconsciously and/or consciously closeted.
Lilian Faderman wrote, "Observation tells us that the neat categories of sexual identity are often an illusion. People in real life can move in and out of those categories, spending one portion of their lives as straight and another as gay and then perhaps straight again, or vice versa, or all of it at once, or none of it at all.... [Faderman, Lillian. 1997. "Why Is It Shocking When A Lesbian Leader Falls In Love With A Man?" The Advocate, April 29, 1997:80.] Faderman buys into the notion of "sexual fluidity," and refuses to see that our emotional/sexual nature is fixed, despite many behavioral manifestations that may not be consistent with that nature due to societal, cultural, and even "therapeutic" pressures to conform to heterosexist norms, as well as the existence of homophobia, all of which often provide barriers to the expression of one's authentic sexuality!
Hence, the existence of strident homophobia as well as the myth of being "ex-gay!" One can act against his/her true nature as he/she was created and honestly contend he/she is Straight when, in fact, he/she was created to be Gay and will always be Gay.
As mentioned above, our sexuality is comprised of both emotion and behavior, and that emotion and behavior are often influenced, either temporarily or even permanently, by homophobia and heterosexist cultural norms and expectations that can cause repression and/or suppression of one's true sexuality; such repression and/or suppression creates tremendous anxiety and frustration in the person that often results in his/her aggression that is either internalized and/or often displaced (externalized) onto those who exacerbate that anxiety and frustration. And those who exacerbate that aggression are out and proud Gay people who exhibit their sexual authenticity!
Given societal constraints and expectations, sexual behavior can very well be falsely manifested, as that expression can very well be inconsistent with one's very sexual nature that has been fixed as created by God. I think that it's that false sexual expression, largely caused by societal constraints, expectations, and unconscious and/or conscious internalized homophobia, that has a great deal to do with the phenomenon of people who make a habit of condemning Gay people. It is those who are afraid of their own sexuality because of societal constraints who are very likely to verbally and/or physically attack the person whose sexual orientation the attacker has likely repressed and/or suppressed within him/herself.
The excellent author James Baldwin made a telling remark in a 1965 interview when he said, "[T]hose terms, homosexual, bisexual, heterosexual, are 20th century terms which, for me, really have very little meaning. I've never, myself, in watching other people, watching life, been able to discern exactly where the barriers were." [Mossman, James. 1989. "Race, Hate, Sex, and Color: A Conversation with James Baldwin.] It may well be that in 1965 even James Baldwin, certainly not homophobic, was unable to understand his true nature as a gay man.
Much strident homophobia and transphobia may very well be attributed to societal and cultural barriers to the expression of sexual authenticity that reside within those who make a veritable career out of bearing false witness, demeaning, and discriminating against LGBT people.
There may very well be the fear of their own sexuality as a result of those barriers that may be seen to reside in the strident homophobe and that causes him/her to fight against his/her own true sexual desires by displacing his/her aggression, borne of his/her own sexual frustrations and anxieties, onto others who hold up a mirror to his/her face by their being out and proud as fully authentic people who fully accept and embrace themselves as the LGBT people whom God made; who demand full equality in a society that prides itself on having equality under the law for all of its citizens.
It is crucial to be on the offensive when contending with "religious" and secular expressions of homophobia!
And understanding sexual inauthenticity due to heterosexism and homophobia, and the repressions, suppressions, frustrations, anxieties, and aggressions they can cause, can go a long way toward shining a light on the dynamics that likely motivate many strident homophobes and transphobes and their hateful rhetoric and actions that they unjustly and irrationally visit upon LGBT people.
And it must also be understood that these psychological and social barriers, social phenomena and constraints, and prejudices borne of the interplay between cultural norms and psychological dynamics, make any rational discussions with strident homophobes futile and fruitless! Tragically, many of them manifest their hatred based on largely unconscious repressions, drives, and tempestuous psychological forces of which they are unaware.
As I recently wrote in an article entitled, Homophobia Stems From The Unconscious:
When confronting another's prejudices, that person may, when asked, seem to come to a rational explanation for those prejudices, with appeal to assorted "scientific" and "biblical" claims yet, when push comes to shove, those reasons are mere rationalizations used by the person in order to justify in his/her mind and in the minds of the questioner(s) why those prejudices are "rational" when, in fact, they are anything but rational but emanate from the unconscious longings and repressions, the resistances and the untamed and untamable forces that reside within the unconscious of the person with whose prejudices we are dealing.
In the case of homophobia, it is eminently clear that ignorance and/or hate are the root causes of those prejudices, and that hateful animus that propels and compels one to consistently seek to demean the other, and deny equal rights to Gay people, is coming from the unconscious of that person, those tempestuous forces of which he/she is largely, if not solely, unaware.
However, the homophobe's conscious mind must make him/her and his/her homophobia seem "reasonable" to those who ask the question as to why that person is homophobic, so there is an attempt by the homophobe to invoke "credible evidence" in his/her conscious mind, particularly the homophobe's interpretation of certain selected biblical verses, so that credibility can be sought and often, unfortunately, irrationally obtained by gullible people to the hateful utterances made by clergy and by other professing Christians in the name of God and the Prince of Peace.
Therefore, "sitting down and reasoning together" with strident homophobes, particularly religious homophobes, is a waste of time and energy, and is bound to degenerate into profound resistance and hostility on the part of the homophobe because his/her unconscious structure and drives make it virtually impossible for rational discourse to penetrate that structure and change those drives.
And a good deal of the hateful animus that emanates from the unconscious repressions, suppressions, frustrations, displaced aggressions, and societal barriers to sexual authenticity (e.g. misogyny, heteronormativity, societal homophobia) that likely reside within many strident homophobes may be seen to have their origins in unconscious and/or conscious envy of out Gay people who present a mirror of the very relationships and drives that comprise much of the unconscious and/or conscious desires of those who seek to impose their own warped psyches onto both Gay people as well as onto society as a whole.
Save for crass material and political gains yielded by homophobia within "religious" and other contexts, much strident homophobia may be attributed to the interplay between heteronormativity and homophobia within society and the psychological dynamics residing in certain people who are intrigued, and who are even unconsciously and/or consciously envious, of out and proud Gay people who express an authenticity that the strident homophobe may lack.
Heterosexism and homophobia, unfortunately, often make sexuality to be falsely perceived as fluid. However, that perception of its seeming fluidity has to do with that heterosexism and homophobia, and does not imply either "fluidity" or "choice" in one's sexuality! It seems that most frequently people realize that they are attracted to members of the same or opposite sex at a relatively early age. (One woman told me that she realized she was attracted to girls when she was about six years old.)
However, we can't ignore the cultural stigma still visited upon Gay people, and that stigma may well condition a person to think he/she has emotional/sexual feelings toward the opposite sex until either his/her true nature can no longer suffer the inconsistency between that nature and his/her perceived need to conform to heterosexist cultural expectations of sexuality, and he/she comes out either to him/herself and/or to others, or one unconsciously and/or consciously chooses to live a life of quiet (and sometimes not so quiet) desperation by conforming to the dominant cultural heterosexist norms of society and labels him/herself "heterosexual" when, in fact, his/her homosexuality is repressed and/or suppressed, thus causing him/her tremendous anxiety.
It is this latter group from which we can expect much of the strident homophobia that we encounter in society! Psychoanalysts refer to this defense mechanism of vociferously condemning in the other what one possesses in him/herself as Reaction Formation.
Moreover, one can have fulfilling same-sex relationships and then abstain from those relationships, or even marry a person of the opposite sex, and falsely think of him/herself as no longer Gay (hence, the "ex-gay" myth) when, in fact, he/she is Gay when same-sex emotional and sexual desire and also homosexual masturbatory fantasies are used as indicators (as they must be) of one's true sexuality.
It is entirely possible, regarding feelings, perceptions, and behavior, that a person can act and even consider him/herself to be Straight for a part of his/her life and subsequently act and consider him/herself to be Gay for another part of his/her life. Or, one can act and even feel Gay for a part of his/her life and subsequently act and consider him/herself Straight for another part of his/her life! For Gay people, homophobic society can account for the former; bankrupt and dangerous "ex-gay therapy" can often account for the latter!
In this context, we can see that much misogyny, like homophobia itself, borne of barriers to the expression of authentic sexuality to be discussed below, underlies strident homophobia as well as all anti-Gay sentiment. For example, the revulsion that some people feel at the very idea of two men making love, at least one of whom is viewed as taking on "the female role," highlights the profound discomfort and anxieties that result in those whose misogyny shows their lack sexual intactness and confidence in their own sexuality, their own perceived "manhood." Indeed, the aggression visited upon Gay people by homophobes may also be mirrored in the unhealthy power dynamic that is likely to occur in many homophobes' own heterosexual relationships.
In addition, this is also why transgender people are an enigma to many, even many in the Gay communities, and are so stigmatized! It is alleged that one is either a man or a woman and must act in a way that is in accord with the cultural expectations of our society. The fact is that blended gender is quite normal, and misogyny, as well as the felt need by many to place people into neat dichotomous boxes (that don't fit the facts of many people's experiences or the diversity of God's creation), is the result of many people's blind adherence to cultural norms of what is considered to be "male expression" and "female expression" that unjustly visits tremendous suffering upon transgender people.
Regarding strident homophobes who are unwittingly (or even wittingly) Gay by nature, their sexual expression is often conditioned by unconscious and/or conscious forces by which they often react to the heterosexism and homophobia that exist in society that creates their internalized homophobia. And that internalized homophobia can be manifested in all sorts of destructive behaviors against Gay people ranging from free-floating anxiety to suicide to hateful rhetoric to free-floating aggression to acts of discrimination to assaults and murder!
I truly believe that this repression, suppression, and the frustration and anxiety that ensue from unconsciously and/or consciously living an emotional/sexual lie, is one of the major causes of strident homophobia!
It is quite likely that those who repress and/or suppress their own homosexuality are among the most strident homophobes, as the very existence and freedom exhibited by out Gay people are a terrible threat and source of great anxiety to those who are unconsciously and/or consciously closeted.
Lilian Faderman wrote, "Observation tells us that the neat categories of sexual identity are often an illusion. People in real life can move in and out of those categories, spending one portion of their lives as straight and another as gay and then perhaps straight again, or vice versa, or all of it at once, or none of it at all.... [Faderman, Lillian. 1997. "Why Is It Shocking When A Lesbian Leader Falls In Love With A Man?" The Advocate, April 29, 1997:80.] Faderman buys into the notion of "sexual fluidity," and refuses to see that our emotional/sexual nature is fixed, despite many behavioral manifestations that may not be consistent with that nature due to societal, cultural, and even "therapeutic" pressures to conform to heterosexist norms, as well as the existence of homophobia, all of which often provide barriers to the expression of one's authentic sexuality!
Hence, the existence of strident homophobia as well as the myth of being "ex-gay!" One can act against his/her true nature as he/she was created and honestly contend he/she is Straight when, in fact, he/she was created to be Gay and will always be Gay.
As mentioned above, our sexuality is comprised of both emotion and behavior, and that emotion and behavior are often influenced, either temporarily or even permanently, by homophobia and heterosexist cultural norms and expectations that can cause repression and/or suppression of one's true sexuality; such repression and/or suppression creates tremendous anxiety and frustration in the person that often results in his/her aggression that is either internalized and/or often displaced (externalized) onto those who exacerbate that anxiety and frustration. And those who exacerbate that aggression are out and proud Gay people who exhibit their sexual authenticity!
Given societal constraints and expectations, sexual behavior can very well be falsely manifested, as that expression can very well be inconsistent with one's very sexual nature that has been fixed as created by God. I think that it's that false sexual expression, largely caused by societal constraints, expectations, and unconscious and/or conscious internalized homophobia, that has a great deal to do with the phenomenon of people who make a habit of condemning Gay people. It is those who are afraid of their own sexuality because of societal constraints who are very likely to verbally and/or physically attack the person whose sexual orientation the attacker has likely repressed and/or suppressed within him/herself.
The excellent author James Baldwin made a telling remark in a 1965 interview when he said, "[T]hose terms, homosexual, bisexual, heterosexual, are 20th century terms which, for me, really have very little meaning. I've never, myself, in watching other people, watching life, been able to discern exactly where the barriers were." [Mossman, James. 1989. "Race, Hate, Sex, and Color: A Conversation with James Baldwin.] It may well be that in 1965 even James Baldwin, certainly not homophobic, was unable to understand his true nature as a gay man.
Much strident homophobia and transphobia may very well be attributed to societal and cultural barriers to the expression of sexual authenticity that reside within those who make a veritable career out of bearing false witness, demeaning, and discriminating against LGBT people.
There may very well be the fear of their own sexuality as a result of those barriers that may be seen to reside in the strident homophobe and that causes him/her to fight against his/her own true sexual desires by displacing his/her aggression, borne of his/her own sexual frustrations and anxieties, onto others who hold up a mirror to his/her face by their being out and proud as fully authentic people who fully accept and embrace themselves as the LGBT people whom God made; who demand full equality in a society that prides itself on having equality under the law for all of its citizens.
It is crucial to be on the offensive when contending with "religious" and secular expressions of homophobia!
And understanding sexual inauthenticity due to heterosexism and homophobia, and the repressions, suppressions, frustrations, anxieties, and aggressions they can cause, can go a long way toward shining a light on the dynamics that likely motivate many strident homophobes and transphobes and their hateful rhetoric and actions that they unjustly and irrationally visit upon LGBT people.
And it must also be understood that these psychological and social barriers, social phenomena and constraints, and prejudices borne of the interplay between cultural norms and psychological dynamics, make any rational discussions with strident homophobes futile and fruitless! Tragically, many of them manifest their hatred based on largely unconscious repressions, drives, and tempestuous psychological forces of which they are unaware.
As I recently wrote in an article entitled, Homophobia Stems From The Unconscious:
When confronting another's prejudices, that person may, when asked, seem to come to a rational explanation for those prejudices, with appeal to assorted "scientific" and "biblical" claims yet, when push comes to shove, those reasons are mere rationalizations used by the person in order to justify in his/her mind and in the minds of the questioner(s) why those prejudices are "rational" when, in fact, they are anything but rational but emanate from the unconscious longings and repressions, the resistances and the untamed and untamable forces that reside within the unconscious of the person with whose prejudices we are dealing.
In the case of homophobia, it is eminently clear that ignorance and/or hate are the root causes of those prejudices, and that hateful animus that propels and compels one to consistently seek to demean the other, and deny equal rights to Gay people, is coming from the unconscious of that person, those tempestuous forces of which he/she is largely, if not solely, unaware.
However, the homophobe's conscious mind must make him/her and his/her homophobia seem "reasonable" to those who ask the question as to why that person is homophobic, so there is an attempt by the homophobe to invoke "credible evidence" in his/her conscious mind, particularly the homophobe's interpretation of certain selected biblical verses, so that credibility can be sought and often, unfortunately, irrationally obtained by gullible people to the hateful utterances made by clergy and by other professing Christians in the name of God and the Prince of Peace.
Therefore, "sitting down and reasoning together" with strident homophobes, particularly religious homophobes, is a waste of time and energy, and is bound to degenerate into profound resistance and hostility on the part of the homophobe because his/her unconscious structure and drives make it virtually impossible for rational discourse to penetrate that structure and change those drives.
And a good deal of the hateful animus that emanates from the unconscious repressions, suppressions, frustrations, displaced aggressions, and societal barriers to sexual authenticity (e.g. misogyny, heteronormativity, societal homophobia) that likely reside within many strident homophobes may be seen to have their origins in unconscious and/or conscious envy of out Gay people who present a mirror of the very relationships and drives that comprise much of the unconscious and/or conscious desires of those who seek to impose their own warped psyches onto both Gay people as well as onto society as a whole.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
THE AMERICAN PRAYER HOUR
The American Prayer Hour
We are about to embark on a historic mission to stop persecution of LGBT people in Uganda and we want you to be a key part of our vision.
On February 4th, we are launching The American Prayer Hour. It is a multi-city affirmation of inclusive values and a celebration of diversity. It is also an action to protest the sponsors of The National Prayer Breakfast, which will take place on February 4 in Washington, DC.
While The National Prayer Breakfast is ostensibly a benign event, it is hosted by a secretive fundamentalist organization, The Family, which is directly tied to the draconian “Kill the Gays” bill in Uganda. We strongly urge those invited to the National Prayer Breakfast to reconsider attending the event. Instead, they can join us at our American Prayer Hour.
The American Prayer Hour will be anchored by events in the following cities:
Dallas—Creating Change (Sheraton Dallas – Dallas Ballroom A)
Chicago Theological Seminary (The Chapel)
Berkeley–Pacific School of Religion (The Chapel)
Washington, DC (Calvary Baptist Church, Chapel)
Anchorage, AK (Church Life Alaska)
Boynton Beach, FL (Church of Our Savior, MCC)
Get Involved
There are four ways to get involved:
If you live in a city where an American Prayer Hour event is already occurring, please consider attending.
If you are interested in creating an American Prayer Hour event in your hometown, please contact Wayne Besen, wbesen@truthwinsout.org.
Spread the word about the American Prayer Hour and the truth behind the National Prayer Breakfast
Pray where you are—wherever you are—for a world safe for all families regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.
We are about to embark on a historic mission to stop persecution of LGBT people in Uganda and we want you to be a key part of our vision.
On February 4th, we are launching The American Prayer Hour. It is a multi-city affirmation of inclusive values and a celebration of diversity. It is also an action to protest the sponsors of The National Prayer Breakfast, which will take place on February 4 in Washington, DC.
While The National Prayer Breakfast is ostensibly a benign event, it is hosted by a secretive fundamentalist organization, The Family, which is directly tied to the draconian “Kill the Gays” bill in Uganda. We strongly urge those invited to the National Prayer Breakfast to reconsider attending the event. Instead, they can join us at our American Prayer Hour.
The American Prayer Hour will be anchored by events in the following cities:
Dallas—Creating Change (Sheraton Dallas – Dallas Ballroom A)
Chicago Theological Seminary (The Chapel)
Berkeley–Pacific School of Religion (The Chapel)
Washington, DC (Calvary Baptist Church, Chapel)
Anchorage, AK (Church Life Alaska)
Boynton Beach, FL (Church of Our Savior, MCC)
Get Involved
There are four ways to get involved:
If you live in a city where an American Prayer Hour event is already occurring, please consider attending.
If you are interested in creating an American Prayer Hour event in your hometown, please contact Wayne Besen, wbesen@truthwinsout.org.
Spread the word about the American Prayer Hour and the truth behind the National Prayer Breakfast
Pray where you are—wherever you are—for a world safe for all families regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Monday, January 25, 2010
MORE EVIDENCE OF OBAMA'S BETRAYAL OF GAY PEOPLE
A Democratic lawmaker has postponed a Senate hearing on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” until February after the State of the Union address at the request of administration officials who said President Obama may address the issue during his speech.....
Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen had been set to testify at the hearing originally set for January, but Levin said he wants to hear from junior officers and enlisted personnel and not just top military leaders.
[For the full article, see here.]
If this isn't despicable, I don't know what is! Obama has betrayed Gay people and obviously has no intention of initiating Gay people's civil rights.
For example, he could easily issue an Executive Order rescinding DADT; he could have refused to have his Justice Dept. pursue and seek to justify DOMA; even raising the specter of incest and pedophilia in that pursuit in federal court.
It's high time LGBT people, allies, and all progressives realize that he is no friend, and his only interest in us is to seek our votes by throwing us crumbs of meaningless rhetoric.
A clear and comprehensive road map for repealing DADT and implementing an alterna- tive, non-discriminatory policy already exists. This report provides a realistic outline for repealing DADT and opening our armed forces to the many qualified men and women who have been excluded under that law. These steps include:
1. Signing an Executive Order banning further military separations based on DADT and sending a legislative proposal on DADT repeal to Congress
2. Forming a presidential panel on how to implement the repeal
3. Repealing DADT in Congress and changing the Uniform Code of Military Justice, or UCMS
4. Changing other necessary military guidelines to conform to the new policy
5. Following-up to ensure that the armed forces implement the policy changes
This report draws upon lessons from previous attempts at ending discrimination and effecting change within the military in order to place these steps into proper context.
[For the full article, see here.]
Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen had been set to testify at the hearing originally set for January, but Levin said he wants to hear from junior officers and enlisted personnel and not just top military leaders.
[For the full article, see here.]
If this isn't despicable, I don't know what is! Obama has betrayed Gay people and obviously has no intention of initiating Gay people's civil rights.
For example, he could easily issue an Executive Order rescinding DADT; he could have refused to have his Justice Dept. pursue and seek to justify DOMA; even raising the specter of incest and pedophilia in that pursuit in federal court.
It's high time LGBT people, allies, and all progressives realize that he is no friend, and his only interest in us is to seek our votes by throwing us crumbs of meaningless rhetoric.
A clear and comprehensive road map for repealing DADT and implementing an alterna- tive, non-discriminatory policy already exists. This report provides a realistic outline for repealing DADT and opening our armed forces to the many qualified men and women who have been excluded under that law. These steps include:
1. Signing an Executive Order banning further military separations based on DADT and sending a legislative proposal on DADT repeal to Congress
2. Forming a presidential panel on how to implement the repeal
3. Repealing DADT in Congress and changing the Uniform Code of Military Justice, or UCMS
4. Changing other necessary military guidelines to conform to the new policy
5. Following-up to ensure that the armed forces implement the policy changes
This report draws upon lessons from previous attempts at ending discrimination and effecting change within the military in order to place these steps into proper context.
[For the full article, see here.]
FILM: 8: THE MORMON PROPOSITION
The role of the Mormon Church in affirming Prop. 8 by the electorate in California cannot go unchallenged, and this film, written and directed by Reed Cowan, presents one of those needed challenges. No decent person can remain silent when any minority group is denied the same rights and privileges that accrue to every other citizen in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Interview with the writer and director, Reed Cowan:
Interview with the writer and director, Reed Cowan:
Saturday, January 23, 2010
CIVIL UNIONS IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR THE INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE
The Hawaii Senate approved same-sex civil unions Friday, potentially setting up the measure for final passage as soon as next week.
The Senate passed the bill on an 18-7 vote, moving it to the House and signaling that the Senate's Democratic majority has enough votes to override a possible veto from Republican Gov. Linda Lingle.
The House has yet to decide if it will vote on the bill. House leaders say they will take up the bill if they have a veto-proof two-thirds majority but may let it die if they have only a small majority.
"It's very close," said Democratic Speaker of the House Calvin Say. "During an election year, this issue is so divisive that it may hurt many of our members."
The bill would grant gay and straight couples the same rights and benefits the state provides to married couples.
[For the full article, see here.]
Civil Unions are no substitute for Marriage! As long as same-sex couples are denied the label of "marriage," their love is considered to be different and even inferior to the love of heterosexual couples, and that state of affairs must be unacceptable to all those who seek equality for same-sex couples and for all LGBT people.
It is a great mistake to settle for second best, and for crumbs of incrementalism, hoping against hope that civil unions will eventually lead the way toward marriage. The fact is that to the degree that same-sex couples settle for civil unions, it's to that degree that marriage rights will be retarded.
Unless the designation of "marriage" is removed from all hitherto heterosexually married couples, and their relationship status substituted with the designation of "civil unions," same-sex couples should settle for nothing less than the dignity that heterosexually married couples currently enjoy by being recognized as "married," both civilly and sacramentally.
There is absolutely no reason why same-sex couples should be treated any differently than heterosexual couples, and to allow such a difference, to settle for such a difference, is to acknowledge that same-sex love is different from, and even inferior to, heterosexual love, and same-sex love doesn't deserve the dignity that heterosexually married couples enjoy.
And that state of affairs must never be allowed to exist if we are truly intent on equality for same-sex couples and LGBT people!
The Senate passed the bill on an 18-7 vote, moving it to the House and signaling that the Senate's Democratic majority has enough votes to override a possible veto from Republican Gov. Linda Lingle.
The House has yet to decide if it will vote on the bill. House leaders say they will take up the bill if they have a veto-proof two-thirds majority but may let it die if they have only a small majority.
"It's very close," said Democratic Speaker of the House Calvin Say. "During an election year, this issue is so divisive that it may hurt many of our members."
The bill would grant gay and straight couples the same rights and benefits the state provides to married couples.
[For the full article, see here.]
Civil Unions are no substitute for Marriage! As long as same-sex couples are denied the label of "marriage," their love is considered to be different and even inferior to the love of heterosexual couples, and that state of affairs must be unacceptable to all those who seek equality for same-sex couples and for all LGBT people.
It is a great mistake to settle for second best, and for crumbs of incrementalism, hoping against hope that civil unions will eventually lead the way toward marriage. The fact is that to the degree that same-sex couples settle for civil unions, it's to that degree that marriage rights will be retarded.
Unless the designation of "marriage" is removed from all hitherto heterosexually married couples, and their relationship status substituted with the designation of "civil unions," same-sex couples should settle for nothing less than the dignity that heterosexually married couples currently enjoy by being recognized as "married," both civilly and sacramentally.
There is absolutely no reason why same-sex couples should be treated any differently than heterosexual couples, and to allow such a difference, to settle for such a difference, is to acknowledge that same-sex love is different from, and even inferior to, heterosexual love, and same-sex love doesn't deserve the dignity that heterosexually married couples enjoy.
And that state of affairs must never be allowed to exist if we are truly intent on equality for same-sex couples and LGBT people!
Friday, January 22, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
NEW HAMPSHIRE MAY ONLY BE THE BEGINNING OF THE ATTEMPT TO RESCIND GAY RIGHTS
I think the Republican win in Massachusetts has emboldened the homophobes, not only in New Hampshire, but elsewhere as well; we can foresee a Republican win in 2010 and 2012 that could well rescind many of the rights Gay people now have. Reactionaries are countng on the current composition of SCOTUS to affirm their discriminatory votes and actions. Clearly, I'm not optimistic about the fate of Prop. 8 once it goes before the U.S Supreme Court, given its current composition.
Three weeks after the state legalized gay marriage, opponents on Wednesday asked a House committee to repeal the law.
"I'm here today about Adam and Eve," state Rep. Alfred Baldasaro testified at a House Judiciary Committee hearing.
Baldasaro, a Londonderry Republican and prime sponsor of legislation to repeal the law, and other gay marriage opponents argued the unions defy nature.
"A man and a woman together create a family where individuals of the same gender cannot create a family," said state Rep. Jordan Ulery, a Republican from Hudson.
[For the full article, see here.]
Three weeks after the state legalized gay marriage, opponents on Wednesday asked a House committee to repeal the law.
"I'm here today about Adam and Eve," state Rep. Alfred Baldasaro testified at a House Judiciary Committee hearing.
Baldasaro, a Londonderry Republican and prime sponsor of legislation to repeal the law, and other gay marriage opponents argued the unions defy nature.
"A man and a woman together create a family where individuals of the same gender cannot create a family," said state Rep. Jordan Ulery, a Republican from Hudson.
[For the full article, see here.]
Monday, January 18, 2010
PROP. 8: LIVE COVERAGE FROM THE COURTROOM
PLEASE CLICK ON THIS LINK TO READ LIVE COVERAGE FROM THE COURTROOM REGARDING PROP. 8.
NOTE: I just came upon this article:: Gay Marriage Trial Back Up On YouTube Tuesday
After the Supreme Court blocked video broadcast of the federal trial to decide the constitutionality of a gay marriage ban last Wednesday, freelance journalist and filmmaker John Ireland decided he'd produce his own version and post it on YouTube.
“People want to see this drama unfold and there is a tremendous narrative that was propelled by that first day of testimony,” Ireland told On Top Magazine on Sunday. “This is the first time that gay and lesbian people have talked about their lives in federal court. It's historic from that point of view.”
[For the full article, see here]
NOTE: I just came upon this article:: Gay Marriage Trial Back Up On YouTube Tuesday
After the Supreme Court blocked video broadcast of the federal trial to decide the constitutionality of a gay marriage ban last Wednesday, freelance journalist and filmmaker John Ireland decided he'd produce his own version and post it on YouTube.
“People want to see this drama unfold and there is a tremendous narrative that was propelled by that first day of testimony,” Ireland told On Top Magazine on Sunday. “This is the first time that gay and lesbian people have talked about their lives in federal court. It's historic from that point of view.”
[For the full article, see here]
Monday, January 11, 2010
ONE WONDERS WHY THOSE WHO ARE IN FAVOR OF PROP. 8 DON'T WANT THE COURT PROCEEDINGS BROADCASTED
Televising the Prop. 8 case on Youtube held in abeyance until Wednesday:
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday temporarily blocked a federal judge's plan to broadcast the trial over California's ban on gay marriage by posting video on YouTube.
Lawyers defending the ban filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court arguing that broadcasting the trial would turn the case into a "media circus" and that witnesses would be intimidated.
If the truth were known, the irrational and hateful justifications presented by those who seek to deny same-sex marriage rights to Gay people would show the public the bankruptcy of their arguments, and win over a lot of potential Straight allies, if the court proceedings were broadcast and presented on YouTube.
The homophobes undoubtedly know and are afraid of this fact, and are therefore loathe to have the spotlight shine on their irrational rhetoric and on their discriminatory animus directed at our fellow Gay citizens who deserve all of the Constitutional rights that heterosexuals enjoy.
By seeking to prevent the broadcast of this trial, they are showing that they are afraid of having their bankrupt arguments come to light; by those who seek to overturn Prop. 8 desiring that the proceedings be broadcast show that rationality and constitutional mandates for equality are on their side and that they have nothing to fear.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday temporarily blocked a federal judge's plan to broadcast the trial over California's ban on gay marriage by posting video on YouTube.
Lawyers defending the ban filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court arguing that broadcasting the trial would turn the case into a "media circus" and that witnesses would be intimidated.
If the truth were known, the irrational and hateful justifications presented by those who seek to deny same-sex marriage rights to Gay people would show the public the bankruptcy of their arguments, and win over a lot of potential Straight allies, if the court proceedings were broadcast and presented on YouTube.
The homophobes undoubtedly know and are afraid of this fact, and are therefore loathe to have the spotlight shine on their irrational rhetoric and on their discriminatory animus directed at our fellow Gay citizens who deserve all of the Constitutional rights that heterosexuals enjoy.
By seeking to prevent the broadcast of this trial, they are showing that they are afraid of having their bankrupt arguments come to light; by those who seek to overturn Prop. 8 desiring that the proceedings be broadcast show that rationality and constitutional mandates for equality are on their side and that they have nothing to fear.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
SELF LOATHING, BEING DUPED, AND BELIEVING A LIE
I wrote the following article a couple of years ago and I feel it especially appropriate to post it here at this time when it is hoped that Prop. 8 will be viewed as unconstitutional when it goes before federal court this coming week. (By the way, Youtube will contain the court proceedings.)
So much antipathy toward same-sex marriage, and Gay people in general, seems to me to stem from the fact that in many people's minds Gay=Sex, and that the emotional component akin to that held by heterosexuals is lacking. That is, many people and religious institutions falsely see Gay people as disordered heterosexuals and, hence, much of the discriminatory rhetoric and actions taken against Gay people, as well as the assertions of so-called "ex-gay" people and "ministries!"
The following is a very slightly edited version of the article I wrote in November 2007:
My friend, Don Charles sent me an article entitled, "EXCLUSIVE: An Interview with Donnie McClurkin's Ex-Lover."
This is a revealing interview, not merely because of the obvious, but because I truly believe that McClurkin, on the basis of this interview, thinks that being Gay by "his definition" is a choice. He seems to solely identify one's choosing to be Gay as one's choosing to have sex!
According to this article, McClurkin said, as reported in "...The New York Times in 2002: 'Love is pulling you one way and lust is pulling you another and your relationship with Jesus is tearing you, tearing you,' said Mr. McClurkin, who now counsels adolescent boys that homosexuality is a choice they can overcome."
To him, and to so many other homophobic people, both Straight and Gay, whether or not to have sex is a choice, and so, since they seem to equate being Gay solely with having sex, McClurkin and those who think like him can with a straight (pardon the pun) face say that being Gay is a choice.
So many are unable to see that having sex is usually a manifestation, or a culmination, of a more or less loving relationship, and emotional sensibility, or affectional desire, and McClurkin seems convinced that same-sex loving relationships (the idea of which may well scare the hell out of him, and of which he might very well be incapable at this point in his life) is also antithetical to being a Christian, so his "relationship with Jesus is tearing you, tearing you."
He sees the choice to be not only between being Gay (as he seems to define the term) and being a Christian, but sees, in his case, that "love is pulling you one way and lust is pulling you another."
He has, according to his reported statement, divested "sex" from "love," and so, since he equates being Gay with sex, and he sees "sex" as distinct from "love," he can believe that being Gay (which he equates with lust and sex) is a choice by his definition of what "Gay" means. And if he's incapable and/or fearful of same-sex "love," which I believe may very well be the case, he doesn't see, and certainly doesn't want to see, being Gay as embracing one's whole being, including feelings as well as actions.
It is not only many, if not most, Straight people who can only see one's being Gay in terms of one's sexual activities; many Gay people themselves define the term "Gay" in this way, so that rather than one's seeing their being Gay as encompassing the whole person, body, mind, and soul, they see the term "Gay" the way that they have been taught in or by churches, and other instutions, largely, if not solely, run by homophobes.
Hence, many Gay people themselves don't realize that they are Gay until they have had one or more satisfying same-sex sexual encounters and retrospectively understand that they were Gay long before they engaged in sexual activity. It's only when a Gay (or Straight) person is able to integrate love and affection with those encounters, that they then are better able to become emotionally and spiritually intact as human beings. But to be given institutional, interpersonal, and psychological permission to integrate the emotional and sexual parts of one's nature is made very difficult in a rabidly homophobic society, largely aided and abeted by those who have yet to healthfully integrate these two facets of their humanity.
So, in this context, a Donny McClurkin and other "ex-gay" spokespeople can actually believe that he/she is not, or is no longer, Gay because he/she no longer has sex (at least on a regular basis) with another person of the same sex or is celibate, despite his/her emotional and affectional desires for intimacy with a member of the same sex.
And when that desire for such intimacy, although frequently consciously suppressed by the homophobic Gay person, builds to such a crecendo that it can no longer be suppressed, and then that person is likely to act out that desire in surreptitious, sometimes illegal, ways that can lead to profound embarrassment and the risk of losing one's very family, reputation, and career.
The tension brought by that crescendo brings a demanding, overwhelming, need for release and that will bring a brief respite from their conflict, their inner turmoil, between "who they really are" and "what they desperately desire to do," yet usually bring a profound guilt upon them that frequently impels them to condemn "homosexuality" both as a denial to themselves and/or to others like whom they really are, and as a way of expiating their guilt and trying to believe that they are no longer or really not like "those people."
So, according to the person interviewed in this article, McClurkin sees conflict between love and lust, and between same-sex love and being a Christian, and between sex and being a Christian. So, he seems to have at least three manifestations of inner turmoil. And people are seeking out his advice?
Being Gay is as much about solely being about "sex" as is being Straight solely about sex! Sexual activity represents relatively few hours a week or month of our lives, be we Gay or Straight! Moreover, even if one never engages in sexual activity, he/she is still Gay or Straight!
The status of being Gay, just as the status of being Straight, has mainly to do with one's affectional and emotional sensibilities and feelings, encompassing the whole human being in all of his/her complexity and humanity. Indeed, these sensibilities and feelings and their romantic/sexual manifestations are largely representative of our very souls!
There is no "on" and "off" switch on our souls! When one seeks to deny a good portion of one's very soul, under any conditions, let alone by the condition of misinformation so as to be duped into believing a lie, he/she is not only committing a grievous offense against him/herself, but is committing a grievous offense against God!
God made our souls and how dare anyone throw that wonderful gift, or any part of that gift, back in God's face! And to do so because he/she chooses to believe the lie that being Gay is solely about sex, that same-sex sexual expression is unGodly, and that homosexuality is anything lesser in value to oneself, another human being, and to God than is heterosexuality, places the judgments of frequently ignorant and tortured human beings over the will of God!
To sell one's soul, or any part of one's soul, on the word of ignorant and tortured people, or on the word of anyone else for that matter, is a grievous sin!
One can only imagine the turmoil infusing the lives of virtually all "ex-gay" gurus and spokespeople, and those whom they have duped into believing that God condemns same-sex love and its expression; that being Gay is a "choice." If they weren't so destructive of others' lives by their often using the defense mechanism of Reaction Formation, and venting their inner turmoil and conflicts through their strident homophobia, I'd have even more pity for them than I, in fact, do.
But, most of all, I have pity for those who are gullible and/or desperate enough, having been duped into believing the lie that being Gay is not moral and Godly, to trust these "counselors" and "therapists" and "spokespeople" who seek to re-define their reality and the very nature of their lives and loves, having the result of further consigning those who take them seriously to the outer darkness of believing and living a lie and, thereby, renouncing a good deal of their souls!
And to give ignorant, confused, and twisted people, be they clergy, entertainers, counselors, therapists, or politicians, a platform and a credibility they do not deserve, through and by which they can spew their frequently ignorant and hateful rhetoric that has the effect of "recruiting" others into their warped views of love and sex, of righteousness and morality, of Christianity, and of God, further aids and abets the self-loathing and the hatred that so many Gay people suffer and confront every day of their lives.
And in the twisted mind set that reflects the "ex-gay" industry and its spokespeople, their advocacy of the suppression of one's God-given affectional/sexual orientation, much of the essence of one's very soul, is equated with "morality," with "Godliness," and with mental health!
Lewis Carol's "Alice in Wonderland" has nothing on this surreal farce, save that this surreal farce is tremendously destructive to Gay people, their psyches, their mental health, their families, and to Straight people who, along with many Gay people, have all too often come to believe the lies that one can be best intact by throwing God's gift of one's affectional/sexual orientation, part of the very essence of his/her soul, back in God's face and call that "morality," "mental health," and "Christianity."
And that's just a damn lie!
So much antipathy toward same-sex marriage, and Gay people in general, seems to me to stem from the fact that in many people's minds Gay=Sex, and that the emotional component akin to that held by heterosexuals is lacking. That is, many people and religious institutions falsely see Gay people as disordered heterosexuals and, hence, much of the discriminatory rhetoric and actions taken against Gay people, as well as the assertions of so-called "ex-gay" people and "ministries!"
The following is a very slightly edited version of the article I wrote in November 2007:
My friend, Don Charles sent me an article entitled, "EXCLUSIVE: An Interview with Donnie McClurkin's Ex-Lover."
This is a revealing interview, not merely because of the obvious, but because I truly believe that McClurkin, on the basis of this interview, thinks that being Gay by "his definition" is a choice. He seems to solely identify one's choosing to be Gay as one's choosing to have sex!
According to this article, McClurkin said, as reported in "...The New York Times in 2002: 'Love is pulling you one way and lust is pulling you another and your relationship with Jesus is tearing you, tearing you,' said Mr. McClurkin, who now counsels adolescent boys that homosexuality is a choice they can overcome."
To him, and to so many other homophobic people, both Straight and Gay, whether or not to have sex is a choice, and so, since they seem to equate being Gay solely with having sex, McClurkin and those who think like him can with a straight (pardon the pun) face say that being Gay is a choice.
So many are unable to see that having sex is usually a manifestation, or a culmination, of a more or less loving relationship, and emotional sensibility, or affectional desire, and McClurkin seems convinced that same-sex loving relationships (the idea of which may well scare the hell out of him, and of which he might very well be incapable at this point in his life) is also antithetical to being a Christian, so his "relationship with Jesus is tearing you, tearing you."
He sees the choice to be not only between being Gay (as he seems to define the term) and being a Christian, but sees, in his case, that "love is pulling you one way and lust is pulling you another."
He has, according to his reported statement, divested "sex" from "love," and so, since he equates being Gay with sex, and he sees "sex" as distinct from "love," he can believe that being Gay (which he equates with lust and sex) is a choice by his definition of what "Gay" means. And if he's incapable and/or fearful of same-sex "love," which I believe may very well be the case, he doesn't see, and certainly doesn't want to see, being Gay as embracing one's whole being, including feelings as well as actions.
It is not only many, if not most, Straight people who can only see one's being Gay in terms of one's sexual activities; many Gay people themselves define the term "Gay" in this way, so that rather than one's seeing their being Gay as encompassing the whole person, body, mind, and soul, they see the term "Gay" the way that they have been taught in or by churches, and other instutions, largely, if not solely, run by homophobes.
Hence, many Gay people themselves don't realize that they are Gay until they have had one or more satisfying same-sex sexual encounters and retrospectively understand that they were Gay long before they engaged in sexual activity. It's only when a Gay (or Straight) person is able to integrate love and affection with those encounters, that they then are better able to become emotionally and spiritually intact as human beings. But to be given institutional, interpersonal, and psychological permission to integrate the emotional and sexual parts of one's nature is made very difficult in a rabidly homophobic society, largely aided and abeted by those who have yet to healthfully integrate these two facets of their humanity.
So, in this context, a Donny McClurkin and other "ex-gay" spokespeople can actually believe that he/she is not, or is no longer, Gay because he/she no longer has sex (at least on a regular basis) with another person of the same sex or is celibate, despite his/her emotional and affectional desires for intimacy with a member of the same sex.
And when that desire for such intimacy, although frequently consciously suppressed by the homophobic Gay person, builds to such a crecendo that it can no longer be suppressed, and then that person is likely to act out that desire in surreptitious, sometimes illegal, ways that can lead to profound embarrassment and the risk of losing one's very family, reputation, and career.
The tension brought by that crescendo brings a demanding, overwhelming, need for release and that will bring a brief respite from their conflict, their inner turmoil, between "who they really are" and "what they desperately desire to do," yet usually bring a profound guilt upon them that frequently impels them to condemn "homosexuality" both as a denial to themselves and/or to others like whom they really are, and as a way of expiating their guilt and trying to believe that they are no longer or really not like "those people."
So, according to the person interviewed in this article, McClurkin sees conflict between love and lust, and between same-sex love and being a Christian, and between sex and being a Christian. So, he seems to have at least three manifestations of inner turmoil. And people are seeking out his advice?
Being Gay is as much about solely being about "sex" as is being Straight solely about sex! Sexual activity represents relatively few hours a week or month of our lives, be we Gay or Straight! Moreover, even if one never engages in sexual activity, he/she is still Gay or Straight!
The status of being Gay, just as the status of being Straight, has mainly to do with one's affectional and emotional sensibilities and feelings, encompassing the whole human being in all of his/her complexity and humanity. Indeed, these sensibilities and feelings and their romantic/sexual manifestations are largely representative of our very souls!
There is no "on" and "off" switch on our souls! When one seeks to deny a good portion of one's very soul, under any conditions, let alone by the condition of misinformation so as to be duped into believing a lie, he/she is not only committing a grievous offense against him/herself, but is committing a grievous offense against God!
God made our souls and how dare anyone throw that wonderful gift, or any part of that gift, back in God's face! And to do so because he/she chooses to believe the lie that being Gay is solely about sex, that same-sex sexual expression is unGodly, and that homosexuality is anything lesser in value to oneself, another human being, and to God than is heterosexuality, places the judgments of frequently ignorant and tortured human beings over the will of God!
To sell one's soul, or any part of one's soul, on the word of ignorant and tortured people, or on the word of anyone else for that matter, is a grievous sin!
One can only imagine the turmoil infusing the lives of virtually all "ex-gay" gurus and spokespeople, and those whom they have duped into believing that God condemns same-sex love and its expression; that being Gay is a "choice." If they weren't so destructive of others' lives by their often using the defense mechanism of Reaction Formation, and venting their inner turmoil and conflicts through their strident homophobia, I'd have even more pity for them than I, in fact, do.
But, most of all, I have pity for those who are gullible and/or desperate enough, having been duped into believing the lie that being Gay is not moral and Godly, to trust these "counselors" and "therapists" and "spokespeople" who seek to re-define their reality and the very nature of their lives and loves, having the result of further consigning those who take them seriously to the outer darkness of believing and living a lie and, thereby, renouncing a good deal of their souls!
And to give ignorant, confused, and twisted people, be they clergy, entertainers, counselors, therapists, or politicians, a platform and a credibility they do not deserve, through and by which they can spew their frequently ignorant and hateful rhetoric that has the effect of "recruiting" others into their warped views of love and sex, of righteousness and morality, of Christianity, and of God, further aids and abets the self-loathing and the hatred that so many Gay people suffer and confront every day of their lives.
And in the twisted mind set that reflects the "ex-gay" industry and its spokespeople, their advocacy of the suppression of one's God-given affectional/sexual orientation, much of the essence of one's very soul, is equated with "morality," with "Godliness," and with mental health!
Lewis Carol's "Alice in Wonderland" has nothing on this surreal farce, save that this surreal farce is tremendously destructive to Gay people, their psyches, their mental health, their families, and to Straight people who, along with many Gay people, have all too often come to believe the lies that one can be best intact by throwing God's gift of one's affectional/sexual orientation, part of the very essence of his/her soul, back in God's face and call that "morality," "mental health," and "Christianity."
And that's just a damn lie!
Saturday, January 9, 2010
THE CONSERVATIVE CASE FOR GAY MARRIAGE
This is an excellent article by Ted Olson who, along with David Boies, is seeking to overturn Prop. 8 in federal court this coming week. The following is an excerpt from this article that I urge you to read in its entirety:
Many of my fellow conservatives have an almost knee-jerk hostility toward gay marriage. This does not make sense, because same-sex unions promote the values conservatives prize. Marriage is one of the basic building blocks of our neighborhoods and our nation. At its best, it is a stable bond between two individuals who work to create a loving household and a social and economic partnership. We encourage couples to marry because the commitments they make to one another provide benefits not only to themselves but also to their families and communities. Marriage requires thinking beyond one's own needs. It transforms two individuals into a union based on shared aspirations, and in doing so establishes a formal investment in the well-being of society. The fact that individuals who happen to be gay want to share in this vital social institution is evidence that conservative ideals enjoy widespread acceptance. Conservatives should celebrate this, rather than lament it.
[For the full article, see here.]
Many of my fellow conservatives have an almost knee-jerk hostility toward gay marriage. This does not make sense, because same-sex unions promote the values conservatives prize. Marriage is one of the basic building blocks of our neighborhoods and our nation. At its best, it is a stable bond between two individuals who work to create a loving household and a social and economic partnership. We encourage couples to marry because the commitments they make to one another provide benefits not only to themselves but also to their families and communities. Marriage requires thinking beyond one's own needs. It transforms two individuals into a union based on shared aspirations, and in doing so establishes a formal investment in the well-being of society. The fact that individuals who happen to be gay want to share in this vital social institution is evidence that conservative ideals enjoy widespread acceptance. Conservatives should celebrate this, rather than lament it.
[For the full article, see here.]
Friday, January 8, 2010
STEPHEN FRY SPEAKS OUT AGAINST THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH
The Roman Catholic Church has no monopoly on religiously based homophobia, but it's one of the major players in this disgrace, and out gay man, Stephen Fry, skewers that Church for its many horrors visited upon others in its name and, ironically, in the name of God.
It is essential to view this two-part video that lays bare for all to see the ideologically and physically damaging corruption and imperialism visited upon vulnerable people, not the least of which are LGBT people.
Stephen Fry on the Roman Catholic Church:
Part 1:
Part 2:
It is essential to view this two-part video that lays bare for all to see the ideologically and physically damaging corruption and imperialism visited upon vulnerable people, not the least of which are LGBT people.
Stephen Fry on the Roman Catholic Church:
Part 1:
Part 2:
Thursday, January 7, 2010
SAME-SEX MARRIAGE DEFEATED IN NEW JERSEY LEGISLATURE
I just received this email from Andy Humm of Gay USA:
BULLETIN: NJ Senate defeats marriage equality 14-20; LGBT groups going to court
Brothers and Sisters:
The New Jersey State Senate just voted a marriage equality bill down 14-20. It needed 21 affirmative votes to pass.
Now the NJ LGBT lobby group, Garden State Equality, and Lambda Legal are going back to the NJ Supreme Court to argue that civil unions did not provide equal rights for gay couples the court ordered and that the court must open up marriage to same-sex couples to provide those rights.
Below is the release from Garden State Equality.
Andy
Gay USA
GARDEN STATE EQUALITY AND LAMBDA LEGAL ANNOUNCE: BACK TO COURT TO WIN MARRIAGE EQUALITY IN NEW JERSEY
The New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously ruled in 2006, in a case brought by Lambda Legal, that same-sex couples must be treated equally under the state Constitution.
The courts now have monumental proof that the civil union law has failed to provide equal protection.
Garden State Equality: “We are not waiting out the term of any new Administration to bring equality to same-sex couples in our state.”
Below are the remarks of Garden State Equality Chair Steven Goldstein, cell (917) 449-8918, at today's post-Senate vote news conference:
With today’s vote in the state Senate, the New Jersey legislature defaulted on its constitutional obligation to provide same-sex couples in New Jersey equal protection, as unanimously mandated by the New Jersey Supreme Court in 2006. That’s why we at Garden State Equality are here with our partner Lambda Legal, which has an extraordinary track record of advancing LGBT civil rights in the courts.
Now our organizations will announce major news. Our side is going back to court to win marriage equality.
We’ll hear from Lambda Legal in a moment. Let’s be clear about what this news means. We are not waiting out the term of any new Administration to bring equality to same-sex couples in our state.
In 2006, the New Jersey Supreme Court told the legislature it could enact marriage or another structure that provides the equal protection of marriage. But the civil union law failed to do that. Too often, civil union couples too often cannot visit loved ones in hospitals, make medical decisions for their partners or receive equal health benefits from employers. Hospitals and employers have treated civil union couples differently because they’ve been labeled differently. Children have been treated differently at school because their families are labeled differently.
In recent months, including today and at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in December, New Jersey legislators publicly recognized these failures. They publicly acknowledged that the civil union law has not provided equal protection. That’s important. New Jersey legislators themselves said it. Our opponents in the legislature said it.
In other words, though we didn’t achieve our final victory today, we’re better positioned than we were a few months ago to win marriage equality. So if you’re wondering how we feel, it’s complicated. On the one hand, we resent, more than you can imagine, remaining second-class citizens a bit longer. On the other hand, the ball has moved forward. The public record for the courts is mighty, and we’re closer than ever to winning.
In 2006, New Jersey enacted an experiment called civil union. In 2010, New Jersey has a mountain of proof that the experiment has failed.
Now let’s talk about what happened politically.
Things didn’t go our way in the legislature because of one factor: Governor Corzine lost reelection.
After his win in November, Governor-elect Christie persuaded a number of legislators to reverse their support of the bill. Before the election, nearly every neutral observer in New Jersey thought marriage equality was certain to become law in lame duck. It became the zeitgeist in Trenton, with good reason. In contrast to today’s outcome, before the election we had votes to spare in the Senate, including from a number of Republicans.
But the election changed everything and our national opponents changed nothing. They didn’t do much or spend much in New Jersey. As you saw from our thousands of members at the State House these past few weeks who symbolized the massiveness of our campaign, we overwhelmed our opponents on every front – but one. Our opponents had the Governor-elect on their side, and that’s all they needed to have. It’s ironic given that marriage equality wasn’t even an issue in the election, and that the candidates who favored marriage equality together won a majority.
All this said, we extend to Governor-elect Christie an outstretched hand. He will be the Governor of all of us. We ask him to continue the tradition of his Republican predecessors, Christie Whitman and Tom Kean, who always kept an open door to the LGBT community. And though we differ with the Governor-elect on marriage equality, we also seek to explore with him and his Administration the issues on which we may have agreement and can work together.
No political party should write off any constituency. And no party should take any constituency for granted either. Our fundamental right to equality should never have been left to sudden death overtime by the party to which the LGBT community and our allies have been unstintingly loyal and have given so much.
To be clear, we will continue to support those who support us. Over the past five-and-a-half years, the separate Garden State Equality political committee has provided thousands of campaign volunteers and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for supportive candidates through contributions to the organization, or through contributions from individuals directly to candidates.
Of course, when we exceed politicians’ expectations in ways they like, we never hear, you’re going too far, your fervor is too much. That double standard, which other minority communities have heard in their own fights for equality, hurts deeply. And it hurts everyone who stands for equality, including supporters in the majority.
Now there will be a sustained response not only from the LGBT community, but also from straight progressive voters who have been our equal partners. Marriage equality stopped being just a gay issue long ago.
To those who let us all down, here’s our policy: Don’t ask, don’t expect. You can’t take progressives’ money and volunteers with one hand, slap us in the face with the other, and then act astonished when we declare our independence. The marketplace of democracy runs along a two-way street.
Members and friends, today was not an outcome lost, but rather a juncture in an otherwise glorious road to justice. Since Garden State Equality’s founding in 2004, New Jersey has enacted 210 LGBT civil rights laws at the state, county and local levels, a national record. We have 64,000 members – LGBT and straight alike – who have improved the lives of millions. A watchdog organization, eQualityGiving.com, just ranked New Jersey #1 in America for LGBT rights, tied with three other states, and we haven’t even won marriage equality yet.
But we will soon. Cesar Chavez said it best. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the people who feel pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. We have seen the future, and the future is ours.
Before I introduce our colleagues from Lambda Legal, some thanks are in order. Thank you to all our Senate sponsors, including prime sponsors Loretta Weinberg and Raymond Lesniak. We appreciate Loretta and Raymond beyond measure for their indefatigable leadership, and extend to them our love. We thank Senators Bill Baroni and Nia Gill – unwavering voices for justice at our committee hearing. We thank all our Assembly sponsors, including prime sponsors Reed Gusciora, Valerie Vainieri Huttle, John McKeon and Mila Jasey. We thank our Governor Corzine and Speaker Roberts for their support. And let me say this about Governor Dick Codey: He’s been an extraordinary champion of equality who kept his word about a Senate vote. Every progressive in New Jersey should view Governor Codey as a hero.
We thank the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the Human Rights Campaign, Gill Action, the Civil Marriage Collaborative, the Arcus Foundation and Freedom to Marry, which have given us resources and wisdom. We thank our partners at the state level, including the ACLU of New Jersey, BlueWave, Democracy for America, New Jersey Citizen Action, New Jersey Stonewall Democrats and the state’s progressive voice on the web, Blue Jersey, to which we owe so much.
We thank our spectacular field staff who joined us from across the country. We thank our executive committee, board, staff and donors who make Garden State Equality possible. We thank the New Jersey Lesbian and Gay Coalition for its decades of groundwork. We thank all the supportive staff in the legislature and executive branch. We especially thank our thousands of volunteers – the stars of Garden State Equality – who rallied at the State House and worked in our offices and in the field throughout the year. And if I may, I thank my partner Daniel and all the loved ones of our staff and volunteers who have supported us and sacrificed so much.
Most of all, we thank our colleagues at Lambda Legal, without whom our march toward equality would never have gotten this far. We’re thrilled to reunite with our partner Lambda Legal in the next stage of the battle. Please welcome Leslie Gabel-Brett, Lambda Legal’s director of education and public affairs.
BULLETIN: NJ Senate defeats marriage equality 14-20; LGBT groups going to court
Brothers and Sisters:
The New Jersey State Senate just voted a marriage equality bill down 14-20. It needed 21 affirmative votes to pass.
Now the NJ LGBT lobby group, Garden State Equality, and Lambda Legal are going back to the NJ Supreme Court to argue that civil unions did not provide equal rights for gay couples the court ordered and that the court must open up marriage to same-sex couples to provide those rights.
Below is the release from Garden State Equality.
Andy
Gay USA
GARDEN STATE EQUALITY AND LAMBDA LEGAL ANNOUNCE: BACK TO COURT TO WIN MARRIAGE EQUALITY IN NEW JERSEY
The New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously ruled in 2006, in a case brought by Lambda Legal, that same-sex couples must be treated equally under the state Constitution.
The courts now have monumental proof that the civil union law has failed to provide equal protection.
Garden State Equality: “We are not waiting out the term of any new Administration to bring equality to same-sex couples in our state.”
Below are the remarks of Garden State Equality Chair Steven Goldstein, cell (917) 449-8918, at today's post-Senate vote news conference:
With today’s vote in the state Senate, the New Jersey legislature defaulted on its constitutional obligation to provide same-sex couples in New Jersey equal protection, as unanimously mandated by the New Jersey Supreme Court in 2006. That’s why we at Garden State Equality are here with our partner Lambda Legal, which has an extraordinary track record of advancing LGBT civil rights in the courts.
Now our organizations will announce major news. Our side is going back to court to win marriage equality.
We’ll hear from Lambda Legal in a moment. Let’s be clear about what this news means. We are not waiting out the term of any new Administration to bring equality to same-sex couples in our state.
In 2006, the New Jersey Supreme Court told the legislature it could enact marriage or another structure that provides the equal protection of marriage. But the civil union law failed to do that. Too often, civil union couples too often cannot visit loved ones in hospitals, make medical decisions for their partners or receive equal health benefits from employers. Hospitals and employers have treated civil union couples differently because they’ve been labeled differently. Children have been treated differently at school because their families are labeled differently.
In recent months, including today and at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in December, New Jersey legislators publicly recognized these failures. They publicly acknowledged that the civil union law has not provided equal protection. That’s important. New Jersey legislators themselves said it. Our opponents in the legislature said it.
In other words, though we didn’t achieve our final victory today, we’re better positioned than we were a few months ago to win marriage equality. So if you’re wondering how we feel, it’s complicated. On the one hand, we resent, more than you can imagine, remaining second-class citizens a bit longer. On the other hand, the ball has moved forward. The public record for the courts is mighty, and we’re closer than ever to winning.
In 2006, New Jersey enacted an experiment called civil union. In 2010, New Jersey has a mountain of proof that the experiment has failed.
Now let’s talk about what happened politically.
Things didn’t go our way in the legislature because of one factor: Governor Corzine lost reelection.
After his win in November, Governor-elect Christie persuaded a number of legislators to reverse their support of the bill. Before the election, nearly every neutral observer in New Jersey thought marriage equality was certain to become law in lame duck. It became the zeitgeist in Trenton, with good reason. In contrast to today’s outcome, before the election we had votes to spare in the Senate, including from a number of Republicans.
But the election changed everything and our national opponents changed nothing. They didn’t do much or spend much in New Jersey. As you saw from our thousands of members at the State House these past few weeks who symbolized the massiveness of our campaign, we overwhelmed our opponents on every front – but one. Our opponents had the Governor-elect on their side, and that’s all they needed to have. It’s ironic given that marriage equality wasn’t even an issue in the election, and that the candidates who favored marriage equality together won a majority.
All this said, we extend to Governor-elect Christie an outstretched hand. He will be the Governor of all of us. We ask him to continue the tradition of his Republican predecessors, Christie Whitman and Tom Kean, who always kept an open door to the LGBT community. And though we differ with the Governor-elect on marriage equality, we also seek to explore with him and his Administration the issues on which we may have agreement and can work together.
No political party should write off any constituency. And no party should take any constituency for granted either. Our fundamental right to equality should never have been left to sudden death overtime by the party to which the LGBT community and our allies have been unstintingly loyal and have given so much.
To be clear, we will continue to support those who support us. Over the past five-and-a-half years, the separate Garden State Equality political committee has provided thousands of campaign volunteers and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for supportive candidates through contributions to the organization, or through contributions from individuals directly to candidates.
Of course, when we exceed politicians’ expectations in ways they like, we never hear, you’re going too far, your fervor is too much. That double standard, which other minority communities have heard in their own fights for equality, hurts deeply. And it hurts everyone who stands for equality, including supporters in the majority.
Now there will be a sustained response not only from the LGBT community, but also from straight progressive voters who have been our equal partners. Marriage equality stopped being just a gay issue long ago.
To those who let us all down, here’s our policy: Don’t ask, don’t expect. You can’t take progressives’ money and volunteers with one hand, slap us in the face with the other, and then act astonished when we declare our independence. The marketplace of democracy runs along a two-way street.
Members and friends, today was not an outcome lost, but rather a juncture in an otherwise glorious road to justice. Since Garden State Equality’s founding in 2004, New Jersey has enacted 210 LGBT civil rights laws at the state, county and local levels, a national record. We have 64,000 members – LGBT and straight alike – who have improved the lives of millions. A watchdog organization, eQualityGiving.com, just ranked New Jersey #1 in America for LGBT rights, tied with three other states, and we haven’t even won marriage equality yet.
But we will soon. Cesar Chavez said it best. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the people who feel pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. We have seen the future, and the future is ours.
Before I introduce our colleagues from Lambda Legal, some thanks are in order. Thank you to all our Senate sponsors, including prime sponsors Loretta Weinberg and Raymond Lesniak. We appreciate Loretta and Raymond beyond measure for their indefatigable leadership, and extend to them our love. We thank Senators Bill Baroni and Nia Gill – unwavering voices for justice at our committee hearing. We thank all our Assembly sponsors, including prime sponsors Reed Gusciora, Valerie Vainieri Huttle, John McKeon and Mila Jasey. We thank our Governor Corzine and Speaker Roberts for their support. And let me say this about Governor Dick Codey: He’s been an extraordinary champion of equality who kept his word about a Senate vote. Every progressive in New Jersey should view Governor Codey as a hero.
We thank the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the Human Rights Campaign, Gill Action, the Civil Marriage Collaborative, the Arcus Foundation and Freedom to Marry, which have given us resources and wisdom. We thank our partners at the state level, including the ACLU of New Jersey, BlueWave, Democracy for America, New Jersey Citizen Action, New Jersey Stonewall Democrats and the state’s progressive voice on the web, Blue Jersey, to which we owe so much.
We thank our spectacular field staff who joined us from across the country. We thank our executive committee, board, staff and donors who make Garden State Equality possible. We thank the New Jersey Lesbian and Gay Coalition for its decades of groundwork. We thank all the supportive staff in the legislature and executive branch. We especially thank our thousands of volunteers – the stars of Garden State Equality – who rallied at the State House and worked in our offices and in the field throughout the year. And if I may, I thank my partner Daniel and all the loved ones of our staff and volunteers who have supported us and sacrificed so much.
Most of all, we thank our colleagues at Lambda Legal, without whom our march toward equality would never have gotten this far. We’re thrilled to reunite with our partner Lambda Legal in the next stage of the battle. Please welcome Leslie Gabel-Brett, Lambda Legal’s director of education and public affairs.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
PLEASE SIGN THIS PETITION
PLEASE SIGN THIS PETITION TO ALLOW TV CAMERAS IN THE COURTROOM REGARDING THE CHALLENGE TO PROP. 8.
U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker -- who will be overseeing a federal court challenge to Prop 8 starting this Monday (January 11) -- is considering whether or not to open the court room to TV cameras.
The court just announced that it is seeking public comment on the proposal to televise the trial -- and that all comments must be submitted to the court by a Friday deadline.
Not surprisingly, supporters of Prop 8 -- which took away the right of same-sex couples to marry in California -- do not want the trial to be televised.
We have just this one chance to make our voices heard -- thousands of Americans calling for equality, transparency and accountability. That's why we're teaming up with the Courage Campaign to collect as many signatures as possible asking Judge Walker to televise the case. We need your signature now:
SIGNATURE DEADLINE IS FRIDAY 9 a.m. Pacific Time / Noon Eastern Time
U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker -- who will be overseeing a federal court challenge to Prop 8 starting this Monday (January 11) -- is considering whether or not to open the court room to TV cameras.
The court just announced that it is seeking public comment on the proposal to televise the trial -- and that all comments must be submitted to the court by a Friday deadline.
Not surprisingly, supporters of Prop 8 -- which took away the right of same-sex couples to marry in California -- do not want the trial to be televised.
We have just this one chance to make our voices heard -- thousands of Americans calling for equality, transparency and accountability. That's why we're teaming up with the Courage Campaign to collect as many signatures as possible asking Judge Walker to televise the case. We need your signature now:
SIGNATURE DEADLINE IS FRIDAY 9 a.m. Pacific Time / Noon Eastern Time
Monday, January 4, 2010
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN'S SEXUAL AROUSAL
This article highlights a very interesting phenomenon that deserves to be repeated in other studies to see how valid and reliable the findings of this study are. Here is an excerpt from this article:
When it comes to sexual arousal, a woman's mind and body are less in sync than a man's, a review of research finds.
Men who reported feeling turned on tended to also sport an erection, while a matchup between the mind and body wasn't so consistent for women, according to the review published online Jan. 4 in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.
If this finding holds true, it might well be that Gay sexual relationships might well be more compatible and satisfying than are many heterosexual relationships! When perception and reality are in synch, we can expect that sexual intimacy will be more satisfying and even more intense than when they are not in synch.
As would be true for Gay men, lesbians might well have more satisfying sexual relationships than do heterosexual women for the reason that lesbians are likely to be more attuned to the intricacies of female sexuality as opposed to the "on-off switch" that typifies male sexuality.
Should this be the case, we might expect happier marriages and fewer divorces among gay men and lesbians than currently exist among the heterosexually married when sexual compatibility is the issue that precipitates marital discord and divorce, and that's one reason why the above study deserves to be repeated among different samples in the population studied.
To extend this point a bit further, it might well be that some, if not much, homophobia might be due to the unconscious recognition of the truth of this finding, and that the fear that Gay sexuality might be more satisfying to those who put themselves in the socially acceptable box of "heterosexual" is one of the motivators for the prejudice and discrimination visited upon Gay people by those who are wedded to the label "heterosexual."
When it comes to sexual arousal, a woman's mind and body are less in sync than a man's, a review of research finds.
Men who reported feeling turned on tended to also sport an erection, while a matchup between the mind and body wasn't so consistent for women, according to the review published online Jan. 4 in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.
If this finding holds true, it might well be that Gay sexual relationships might well be more compatible and satisfying than are many heterosexual relationships! When perception and reality are in synch, we can expect that sexual intimacy will be more satisfying and even more intense than when they are not in synch.
As would be true for Gay men, lesbians might well have more satisfying sexual relationships than do heterosexual women for the reason that lesbians are likely to be more attuned to the intricacies of female sexuality as opposed to the "on-off switch" that typifies male sexuality.
Should this be the case, we might expect happier marriages and fewer divorces among gay men and lesbians than currently exist among the heterosexually married when sexual compatibility is the issue that precipitates marital discord and divorce, and that's one reason why the above study deserves to be repeated among different samples in the population studied.
To extend this point a bit further, it might well be that some, if not much, homophobia might be due to the unconscious recognition of the truth of this finding, and that the fear that Gay sexuality might be more satisfying to those who put themselves in the socially acceptable box of "heterosexual" is one of the motivators for the prejudice and discrimination visited upon Gay people by those who are wedded to the label "heterosexual."
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