The Continued Fraud of "Ex-Gay Conversion Therapy"

UPDATED:  As LGBTQ Nation reports, the  Christofascist backed "Freedom March" in Washington, DC, for those who "escaped the gay lifestyle" by praying away the gay, drew a whopping total of 36 participants.   To say that the turn out has humiliating is far too kind for these frauds.

In my view, "conservative" religious traditions cause the world at large great harm, especially in light of the divisiveness of their message that relies on fear of a horrible, vengeful god, and hatred towards those who are different or who reject their toxic dogma.   Few groups have borne the hate and wrath "conservative Christians" and patriarchal religious institutions over the last thousand years more than LGBT individuals.  Why such hatred?  In my view, it boils down to the fact that we challenge their Bronze Age beliefs on sexuality.  Sadly, the Roman Catholic Church remains stuck in a 12th century understanding of sex and sexuality (37 years of my life were damaged by this institutional ignorance).  Other traditions cling to a few cherry picked passages in the Bible that are taken out of historical context and weaponized against those deemed others.  While these "conservatives" can no longer burn gays at the stake - the origin of the derogatory term "faggot"  - they nonetheless continue to do their utmost to make lives of LGBT individuals a living hell.  In this quest, they use the myth that gays can "change" as part of their propaganda campaign against recognition of LGBT civil rights, and marriage in particular.  So-called "conversion therapy" is nothing short of child abuse when inflicted on minors.  No legitimate medical or mental health association supports its use.  Fortunately, eleven states now ban licensed professionals from subjecting minors to the fraudulent practice.  39 states, however, allow it and worse yet, no state bans religious "ministries from inflicting incalculable harm on minors and adults.  A column in the New York Times looks at the myth still being peddled and the damage that it does.  The practice needs to be banned everywhere and there should be no religious exemption from the ban.  Here are column highlights: 

On Saturday, a group of Christians will gather in Washington for the Freedom March, an event that organizers describe as “a celebration of freedom from homosexuality and transgenderism.” . . . . In the national conversation about conversion therapy, people often focus attention on the 10 states (plus Washington) that have banned the practice for minors. But these laws, and this conversation, address conversion therapy only as it’s practiced by mental health professionals with minors. That’s not where most conversion therapy is happening, though. I know, because I spent the better part of my 20s involved in it.

Most conversion therapy occurs not with mental health professionals but in conservative Christian communities. Numbers are hard to come by, because the communities usually don’t come out and say they’re doing conversion therapy; in fact, they’re often skeptical of therapy in general. Groups that help people “leave homosexuality” are usually nonprofit ministries, and the counseling is facilitated by pastors and lay leaders who are not trained professionals. These groups are protected by religious freedom laws, so laws banning conversion therapy for minors do not apply to them.

The numbers of minors exposed to some form of conversion therapy is already staggering: In January, the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law released a report that estimates that 57,000 youths between 13 and 17 will receive conversion therapy from religious advisers before the age of 18 and 20,000 will receive conversion therapy from a licensed mental health professional before the age of 18 in the 40 states that still allow it.

These communities will urge countless more adults to take a similar path. And while adults have the power to leave or remain in those communities, my heart still goes out to them. They face intense pressure to rid themselves of desires that research has shown will never go away.

I was taken to an “ex-gay” organization when I came out at the age of 17, and I spent almost 10 years involved in a member ministry of Exodus International, an umbrella organization that promoted conversion therapy and that shut down in 2013. From that experience, here are a few things to consider as we think about the future of conversion therapy in Christian communities.

First, it’s important to know that the people in conversion therapy don’t actually become straight. If you listen to their testimonies, they say they decided to “find their identity in Christ” rather than in their sexuality. . . . . They try not to engage in sex with people of the same gender, and some even date and marry people of the opposite sex. But very few in the videos say their attractions changed.

I attended several of my gay friends’ weddings to people of the opposite sex, and I sat across from them years later when they grieved over the end of their marriage. They might have changed the way they identified, but they felt a longing for intimacy with someone of the same sex that simply could not be met by their spouses. Some white-knuckled their way through the rest of their lives in these marriages, often with secret hookups that left them deeply ashamed, sometimes suicidal. Others eventually ended their marriages, and they despaired over the pain they caused their spouses and children.

These stories never show up in the short videos on ex-gay ministries’ websites.  Ex-gay organizations create emotional short films with earnest young people who talk about hope and redemption, and then they quietly remove the videos when these very same people come out years later with the truth about themselves that they tried to suppress. In fact, that’s what happened to me.

While many conservative Christians actively work against the flourishing of L.G.B.T.Q. people, they don’t represent all Christians.

I feel compassion for the people who will attend the Freedom March on Saturday. The videos on their Facebook page feature young people who say they left a lifestyle of anonymous sex, drug addiction and despair. But I have a lot of L.G.B.T.Q. friends, and I don’t know any who would describe their lives in that way.

I can’t help wondering whether the young people in the videos found themselves in destructive cycles because of the shame they carried from the teaching they heard growing up. It’s hard for me to believe they would seek to rid themselves of their God-given desire to love someone of the same sex if it weren’t for the leaders in their communities who fail to consider the possibility that they’re wrong about the value and dignity of L.G.B.T.Q. people made in the image of God.

As several Christian leaders have already said: If the gospel someone preaches is not good news for the marginalized — for people of color, those with disabilities, immigrants and L.G.B.T.Q. people — then it’s not good news for anyone. The message the organizers of the Freedom March preach is certainly not good news for people like me.

The author "hit the nail on the head" when she notes that so many featured in the ex-gay programs cite destructive behavior that I believe comes from the poisonous religious dogma that they try to escape through drugs and alcohol.  It has nothing to do with their sexual orientation in and of itself.  Remove the toxic religious dogma and I believe most would have had no reason to try to escape from themselves. It took several years of legitimate therapy by licensed professionals to undo the damage done to me by my Catholic upbringing.  If any type of therapy should be promoted, it is they type that aided me, not a fraudulent practice largely practiced by quacks and charlatans.

Trump, White Male Fragility, and Unfiltered Hate

The New York Times has put together of video clips from Donald Trump rallies over the last few months The video can be found here).  The picture it paints of the supporters of Trump is nothing less than ugly.  Hatred of others and misogyny in general is a constant underlying theme.  And who is embracing this message the most? White males without degrees, white evangelical Christians for whom racism goes hand in hand with their toxic religious beliefs, and white supremacists.  Even among friends who much to my dismay are supporting Trump, latent racism seems to be a driving forces despite the fact that a majority of these individuals would deny it.  I suspect anti-gay animus also motivates many of the "godly folk" who are rallying to Trump's world view which is the antithesis of the true Gospel message.  The New Civil Rights Movement looks at the Times compilation.  Here are highlights:

"Sieg heil!"
"Fuck you, Hillary!"
"Hang the bitch!"
"Kill her!"
"Trump the bitch!"
"Get out of here, you fag!"
"Fuck that nigger!"
"Hillary Clinton needs to get her ass spanked!"
"Ignorance and immigrants. They mix together!"
"Fuck those dirty beaners!"
"Hillary is a whore!"

Those are some of the comments made by Trump supporters at rallies the Republican nominee for president has made over the past few months, as the New York Times shows in a compilation of various clips they've put together and published today.

The video, clearly, is disturbing, but what's more disturbing is the culture Trump has created, fostered, nurtured, and allowed at his rallies. 

Perhaps even more revealing are the comments of one Trump supporter included in the video, an older man who says he feels Trump is his last chance to "preserve the culture I grew up in."

Its ugly to say the least.  But sadly, what the video clips disclose are the true face of today's Republican Party regardless of whatever smoke screen the party elite may try to utilize.  A column in the New York Times makes the case that the time has come to cease giving Trump and his most foul supporters a pass.  Their racism and wide ranging hatred must be confronted and called out.  Here are column excerpts:

Donald Trump . . . . appeals to something deeper, something baser: Fear. His whole campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” is in fact an inverted admission of loss — lost primacy, lost privilege, lost prestige.

And who feels that they have lost the most? White men.

As the New York Times’ Upshot pointed out in July, “According to our estimates, Mrs. Clinton is doing better among basically every group of voters except for white men without a degree.” Put another way: “Hillary Clinton is largely performing as well or better than Barack Obama did in 2012, except among white men without a degree.”

Indeed, a Monday report in The Times put it this way: “A New York Times/CBS News poll two weeks ago found that white men preferred her Republican opponent, Donald J. Trump, to Mrs. Clinton almost two to one, 55 percent to 29 percent.”

He appeals to a regressive, patriarchal American whiteness in which white men prospered, in part because racial and ethnic minorities, to say nothing of women as a whole, were undervalued and underpaid, if not excluded altogether.

White men reigned supreme in the idealized history, and all was good with the world. (It is curious that Trump never specifies a period when America was great in his view. Did it overlap with the women’s rights, civil rights or gay rights movements? For whom was it great?)

Trump’s wall is not practical, but it is metaphor. Trump’s Muslim ban is not feasible, but it is metaphor. Trump’s huge deportation plan isn’t workable, but it is metaphor.

There is a portion of the population that feels threatened by unrelenting change — immigration, globalization, terrorism, multiculturalism — and those people want someone to, metaphorically at least, build a wall around their cultural heritage, which they conflate in equal measure with American heritage.

In their minds, whether explicitly or implicitly, America is white, Christian, straight and male-dominated. If you support Trump, you are on some level supporting his bigotry and racism. You don’t get to have a puppy and not pick up the poop.

And acceptance of racism is an act of racism. You are convicted by your complicity. . . . Supporting Trump is indefensible and it makes you as much of a pariah as he is.

For as long as racism and tribalism and xenophobia exist in this country, Trump’s foibles will not signal his ultimate failure. But let’s not let off the people who prop him up, claiming that they’re simply being party loyalists, or Hillary haters or having Supreme Court concerns.

Trump is a mirror. He is a reflection of — indeed a revealing of — the ugliness that you harbor, only it is possible that you may have gone your life expressing it in ways that were more coded and politic. Trump is an unfiltered primal scream of the fragility and fear consuming white male America.

Like I have long argued about with conservative Christians, it is time that the larger public recognizes that these people are not nice, decent or deserving of deference.  They need to be exiled to the cultural and political wilderness and shunned by truly decent people. 

RNC Issues Resolution In Support Of Anti-LGBT Laws

While we have been seeing a new round of anti-LGBT viciousness on the part of Republicans at the state level, the demonization of LGBT citizens within the Republican Party does not stop at the state level.  Now, the RNC has adopted a resolution that supports the wave anti-LGBT laws being pressed at the state level.  The development is evidence of the reality that even as the business community becomes more supportive of LGBT equality, the Republican Party has sold its soul to the ugliest of the Christofascists.   Hatred of others is now a defining element of the Republican Party.  Here are highlights from The New Civil Rights Movement: 

While the Republican presidential candidates are trying to outdo one another with their proud displays of Islamophobia, the Republican National Committee under chairman Reince Priebus, (photo above) is reminding voters there is more than one kind of scary "other" Republicans are unreasonable afraid of.  

The Republican National Committee has issued a resolution encouraging state legislatures to enact anti-trans bathroom legislation which The Washington Blade has dubbed "papers to pee" laws. They want states to require people to use the bathroom corresponding to their gender at birth.

Republicans also want to the U.S. Department of Education to change its interpretation of Title IX - the law known for bringing us equal funding for women's sports - to exclude the use of bathroom and locker rooms by transgender students. They want the Department of Education to institute a policy in which a student must use the bathroom associated with his/her anatomy that can be confirmed by DNA. 

It is election season, so unsurprisingly, the resolution takes the opportunity to attack Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton for her support of transgender rights. 

Here it is in all its paranoid glory: 

Republican National Committee Counsel’s Office 

RESOLUTION CONDEMNING GOVERNMENTAL OVERREACH REGARDING TITLE IX POLICIES IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

WHEREAS, A person’s sex is defined as the physical condition of being male or female, which is determined at conception, identified at birth by a person’s anatomy, recorded on their official birth certificate, and can be confirmed by DNA testing;

WHEREAS, Transgender policies deal with students who choose to be designated by their desired gender identity; an identity that conflicts with their anatomical sex;

WHEREAS, The U.S. Congress has never included gender identity within the Title IX Federal Law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity and that mandates allowing students of one biological sex to play sports designated for the opposite biological sex;

WHEREAS, Federal courts have ruled that Title IX does not extend to claims of discrimination based on gender identity and that schools can maintain separate restrooms, locker rooms and other facilities on the basis of sex where privacy is a concern;

WHEREAS, The Obama Administration’s Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights released an updated policy letter stating that Title IX’s sex discrimination prohibition extends to an individual’s chosen gender identity of male or female;

WHEREAS, Federal courts have ruled that the U.S. Department of Education’s interpretation of Title IX is not legally binding because the Department lacks authority to promulgate such an interpretation; and

WHEREAS, Policies of the Obama Administration, presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and public schools that allow any students to use the restrooms, locker rooms, or other facilities designated for the exclusive use of the other sex infringes on the rights of privacy and conscience of other students; and therefore be it

RESOLVED, The Republican National Committee calls on the Department of Education to rescind its interpretation of Title IX that wrongly includes facility use issues by transgender students.

RESOLVED, The Republican National Committee encourages State Legislatures to recognize that these Obama gender identity policies are a federal governmental overreach, a misinterpretation of Title IX policies, and an infringement upon the majority of students’ Constitutional rights; and

RESOLVED, The Republican National Committee encourages state legislatures to enact laws that protect student privacy and limit the use of restrooms, locker rooms and similar facilities to members of the sex to whom the facility is designated.

Note the repeated effort to link scary acceptance - at least for bigots - of transgender individuals to the nations black president.  If anyone poses a threat to the nation, it is the Christofascists and their political whores in the GOP.

Authoritarianism - The Leading Trait of Trump Supporters

Some have wonder how the thrice married Donald Trump has manage to attract a significant percentage of the Christofascists in the Republican Party base.  A piece in Politico seems to have found the explanation.  Trump is peddling an authoritarian message akin to what Hitler and the Nazi party pushed in Germany in the late 1920's and early 1930's to a Germany reeling from defeat in World War I and the economic whirlwind that hit Germany.   Meanwhile, no one love authority more than Christofascists provided its harshness is aimed at those they don't like: non-whites, immigrants, and non-Christians.  Here are some article highlights:

I’ve found a single statistically significant variable predicts whether a voter supports Trump—and it’s not race, income or education levels: It’s authoritarianism. 

That’s right, Trump’s electoral strength—and his staying power—have been buoyed, above all, by Americans with authoritarian inclinations.

My finding is the result of a national poll I conducted in the last five days of December under the auspices of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, sampling 1,800 registered voters across the country and the political spectrum. Running a standard statistical analysis, I found that education, income, gender, age, ideology and religiosity had no significant bearing on a Republican voter’s preferred candidate. Only two of the variables I looked at were statistically significant: authoritarianism, followed by fear of terrorism, though the former was far more significant than the latter.

Authoritarianism is not a new, untested concept in the American electorate. Since the rise of Nazi Germany, it has been one of the most widely studied ideas in social science. While its causes are still debated, the political behavior of authoritarians is not. Authoritarians obey. They rally to and follow strong leaders. And they respond aggressively to outsiders, especially when they feel threatened. 

 

From pledging to “make America great again” by building a wall on the border to promising to close mosques and ban Muslims from visiting the United States, Trump is playing directly to authoritarian inclinations.

 

[A]uthoritarians have steadily moved from the Democratic to the Republican Party over time. He hypothesizes that the trend began decades ago, as Democrats embraced civil rights, gay rights, employment protections and other political positions valuing freedom and equality. In my poll results, authoritarianism was not a statistically significant factor in the Democratic primary race, at least not so far, but it does appear to be playing an important role on the Republican side. Indeed, 49 percent of likely Republican primary voters I surveyed score in the top quarter of the authoritarian scale—more than twice as many as Democratic voters.

Trump was the only candidate—Republican or Democrat—whose support among authoritarians was statistically significant.

 So what does this mean for the election? It doesn’t just help us understand what motivates Trump’s backers—it suggests that his support isn’t capped. In a statistical analysis of the polling results, I found that Trump has already captured 43 percent of Republican primary voters who are strong authoritarians, and 37 percent of Republican authoritarians overall.

[T]hose who say a Trump presidency “can’t happen here” should check their conventional wisdom at the door. The candidate has confounded conventional expectations this primary season because those expectations are based on an oversimplified caricature of the electorate in general and his supporters in particular. Conditions are ripe for an authoritarian leader to emerge. Trump is seizing the opportunity. And the institutions—from the Republican Party to the press—that are supposed to guard against what James Madison called “the infection of violent passions” among the people have either been cowed by Trump’s bluster or are asleep on the job. 

 

It is time for those who would appeal to our better angels to take his insurgency seriously and stop dismissing his supporters as a small band of the dispossessed. Trump support is firmly rooted in American authoritarianism and, once awakened, it is a force to be reckoned with.

How Trump Has Tapped into GOP Pyschosis

If one looks at many of Donald trump's avid supporters, they exhibit many frightening psychological traits that some might describe as a form of psychosis. They seem motivated most by fear and hatred of others - a common trait of the Christofascists - and border on obsession when confronted with demographic changes that in their minds threaten their perceived much deserved white privilege.   In some ways, the GOP base is reminiscent of the segments of Germany's population in the late 1920's and early 1930's that were reeling from Germany's loss in World War I and the social and economic disorder that followed. Hitler recognized that this fear and loathing could be tapped into and used to fuel his rise to power.  Donald Trump is now doing the same thing here in America.  A piece in the New York Times looks at those who are flocking to Trump and the psychological issues that motivate them to embrace what is in many ways a form of fascism.  Here are excerpts:

Jesse Graham, a professor of psychology at the University of Southern California, elaborated on the purity-disgust dimension of this year’s political campaign:

More than any other Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump has been appealing to a particular combination of in-group loyalty and moral purity concerns. On the purity side, he often expresses disgust, often toward women and women’s bodies (e.g., Clinton’s bathroom break during a Democratic debate). But his purity appeals are most commonly in the context of group boundaries, like building walls on our national borders to prevent contamination by outsiders, who are cast as murderers and rapists, both morally and physically dirty.

These themes, in Graham’s view, have laid the groundwork for Trump’s popularity with explicitly racist and fascist groups:

The National Alliance and National Vanguard spawned The Turner Diaries, which imagined a dystopian future where America is ruled by lazy and corrupt Jews and Blacks, until a morally pure white resistance group nukes the Pentagon. Trump of course is not advocating anything like these horrors, but the moral intuitions he’s playing on can lead in this direction if unrestrained by other moral concerns, such as injustice and the suffering of out-group members.

According to Graham, Trump’s personal style attracts voters, including current and former Democrats, who are drawn to authoritarian leaders:

Trump is more domineering than the other candidates, bullying opponents and reporters alike, calling them losers, refusing to ever apologize for anything. This could indeed appeal to those high in social-dominance orientation and authoritarianism, particularly those who mistake such domineering for actual authority.

John Jost, a professor of psychology at N.Y.U., picks up some of the same themes as Haidt and Graham. In an email he writes that Trump

is tapping into and indeed amplifying anger and fear, primarily among white citizens who are older and less educated than the average Republican voter. He is answering that anger and fear with tremendous self-confidence and 100 percent certainty, which some people find impressive and reassuring.

Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory, was emphatic in placing authoritarianism first in describing Trump’s current success.  Abramowitz is one of a number of scholars who see Trump as posing a significant danger to American democracy. He wrote in an email that Trump

is very clearly, in my view, advancing a modern American version of fascism. A lot of the coarse language, harsh personal attacks and misogyny play into the theme of “strong leadership” and willingness to say things that are “politically incorrect” no matter who doesn’t like it.

Trump’s campaign style, his bullying and his pointed insults of competitors, fit into the psychological research concept of “social dominance orientation.” . . . . Those with a social dominance orientation agree strongly with such statements as:

“Some groups of people are simply inferior to other groups;” “it’s O.K. if some groups have more of a chance in life than others;” and “to get ahead in life, it is sometimes necessary to step on other groups.”  And they disagree with such statements as: “It would be good if groups could be equal;” “we should do what we can to equalize conditions for different groups;” and “no group should dominate in society.”

Trump had captured “the resentment and sense of loss” in a large segment of the white electorate:

These folks have lost a lot with the hollowing out the middle and working class; if you combine that with floating xenophobia, you get this kind of reaction.

Sidanius argues that Trump’s supporters have been receptive to this kind of appeal since Obama’s victory in 2008 and his re-election in 2012, but until now, “nobody was there to exploit it, to pick out the marketing opportunity. This is Trump’s genius.”

Graham and Haidt have found in their research that for the most conservative voters, the two “values” with the strongest appeal are authority and purity.

The strong appeal of purity to committed conservatives helps explain why Trump’s supporters are not put off by his compulsive focus on disgust.

The accompanying chart, adapted from their 2009 paper “Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations,” shows how this works: for the most conservative voters, the emphasis on the importance of the values of authority and purity increases while the stress placed on fairness and the avoidance of harm declines.

Trump has already left an indelible imprint on the political system. He has inflicted tremendous damage on the Republican establishment, as he hoped he would, but he has done much more. By setting a populist agenda that appeals to millions of Republicans and to substantial numbers of Democrats and independents as well, Trump has opened the door to a reshaping of the traditional two-party coalitions.

As everything shifts and we question previously sacrosanct boundaries, Trump and his supporters embody conflicts that the American political system will be hard pressed to resolve. Whatever happens next, he has remade the landscape on which these conflicts will be fought — for better, or, more likely, for worse.

Trump has played to the ugliest elements in the GOP and has tapped their emotional and psychological fears much as Hitler did in Germany.  It is a very scary thing to watch. 

Poll: Americans More Comfortable with Gay Presidential Candidate than Evangelical Candidate

I noted the other day that a new WSJ/NBC poll found that 58% of Americans hoped that the U.S. Supreme Court would strike down state same sex marriage bans nationwide.  Hidden within the poll results was something even more fun: More Americans are more comfortable with a gay presidential candidate than they are with an evangelical Christian candidate.  Talk about an indictment of what the Christofascists have done to destroy the Christian brand!  Personally, I hope the trend continues and even accelerates with evangelical Christians becoming pariahs on every social and political front.  Here are highlights from Gay Star News:

Americans would feel more comfortable with an LGBTI presidential candidate than an evangelical Christian one, according to a new poll. 

Some 61% said they would be either enthusiastic about or comfortable with an LGBTI candidate, while only 37% said they would have reservations or be uncomfortable and 2% were not sure.

By comparison, 52% said they'd be enthusiastic about or comfortable with an evangelical Christian running for president, while 44% expressed some degree of hesitancy about the idea and 4% were not sure.

 

Obviously, Mike Huckabee needs to read the poll results.  Meanwhile, lets hope that the "godly folks" continue to demonstrate that their religious beliefs reduce down to fear and hatred and others so that the rejection of evangelical Christians intensifies.  Perhaps, if this happens, the GOP will finally realize that the Christofascists are radioactive politically.

How My Conservative Religion Almost Killed Me

I have stated before that, in my view, raising a gay child in a conservative Christian (or Muslim) home is tantamount to felony child abuse.  The lessons that the child/youth learns are those of self-hate and self-loathing not to mention a yearning of how to make the gay go away.  These homes represent the antithesis of modern medical and mental health knowledge about sexuality yet parents - whether well intentioned or not - are allowed to subject their children to a world of psychological torture as they treat their children as a form of chattel property.  All too often such children and youth see suicide as the solution rather than walking away for the religious based ignorance in which they have been submersed.  An op-ed in The Advocate tells the nearly tragic story of one gay youth.  Here are excerpts:

It was Saturday night, October 13, 2012, and I was determined to end my miserable existence.

I wrestled with depression since the eighth grade, when I made the connection between the attractions I was having and the words that society — specifically the church — used to label people like me. I was a faggot, a homo, a freak, and an abomination in the eyes of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The only options I was offered were celibacy, a life of lies, or sin. I wasn’t OK with any of those choices.

I spent years trying to "pray away" my attractions, often crying myself to sleep at night, my head whirling with hopelessness and self-loathing.

By my sophomore year of college at Andrews University, I quit going to church altogether. I felt no need to expose myself to the superficial hellos, smiles, and handshakes every Saturday morning. I spent a lot of time in bed on the weekends, brooding on my self-hatred, convinced that the deepest relationships I would ever experience were those of casual jokes and hasty conversations. I was positive that my life was going to become an endless circle of lonely days, self-contempt, and tear-stained pillows. I would rather die than live such a life.

Back to October 13, 2012. Rather than throwing myself from the bridge, I resorted to overdosing, placing myself on the road to heart and liver failure, rather than the asphalt of U.S. 31. I was admitted to Lakeland Healthcare, where I lay in bed after chugging a mix of charcoal and cherry flavoring.
My homosexuality became a matter of life or death, rather than heaven or hell.

Having dodged the bullet I had shot at myself, I needed to understand my sexuality from a different perspective.

I could no longer ask, “What do I need to do to make the people in the church happy?”
It became imperative that I ask, “What do I need to do to become happy and ultimately stay alive?”

Since I joined the unofficial Gay-Straight Alliance at Andrews University, my life has made a 180-degree turn for the better. I have made friends whom I will have for life. I joined a family of love, acceptance, and understanding.

I pray that my friends, family, and fellow members of the church will come to see me through God’s eyes of love and acceptance, instead of through eyes of judgment, apathy, and bigotry. 

So much pain and suffering - all based on a few lines written by unknown herders who, under any other circumstance, would be viewed as ignoramuses.  We would never think to go to medical providers utilizing 2500+ year old myths for cures, yet many do it daily in how they live their lives.  It's frightening and disturbing.  Oh, and I do know about the charcoal mix the author references - I too one had to be treated for an overdose after I sought to simple end the pain.

The Tea Party's Ideal Nation Rejects Basic American Beliefs

Like the Christofascists who increasingly live in a fantasy world detached from objective reality and in open opposition to modernity and knowledge, the Tea Party's adherents cling to image of America that (i) never existed and (ii) in reality runs afoul of many basic American beliefs -  I attribute the phenomenon to the fact that the Tea Party has an 85% or more overlap with the Christofascists.  Among the thing one hears constantly is the Tea Party meme of returning to the rule of the U.S. Constitution and democracy, yet what they really want is akin to a fascist state where they inflict their beliefs on the majority of Americans. Sadly, too many in today's GOP are only too ready to jump on board the anti-democracy train.  Here are excerpts from a piece in Salon that looks at the hypocrisy of the Tea Party loons:

[I]f a recent Slate analysis of the Tea Party worldview from conservative pundit Reihan Salam is correct, it’s the Tea Party — more than what remains of Occupy Wall Street, or the Davos crowd  — that most stridently represents those citizens who reject actual, real-world American democracy. Salam jokingly refers to the U.S. of the Tea Party’s dreams as “Teatopia,” . . .

What I’d argue, rather, is that the Tea Party’s philosophy of government (again, as understood by Salam) has embedded within it an aversion to basic democratic principles that goes far beyond a typical contempt for Washington, politicians and pundits. When Salam writes that Teatopia is founded on a commitment to a “robust federalism” intended to let “different states … offer different visions of the good life” and allow citizens to “vote with their feet” by moving to whichever state best reflects their values, he’s not describing a common aversion to corruption or a distaste for political theater. He’s describing a childish and essentially anti-political belief that a return to an Articles of Confederation-style U.S. order — in which each state is more of a sovereign unto itself than a member of a larger American whole — will produce 50 mini-nations where everyone basically agrees.

If we take into account the recent Pew report on polarization, which found a full 50 percent of “consistently conservative” respondents saying it was important to them to live in “a place where most people share my political views” vs. only 35 percent of “consistently liberal” and 22 percent of “mixed” respondents saying the same, Salam’s “Teatopia” makes perfect sense. If you’re made uncomfortable by the very idea of sharing sidewalk with someone on the other side, why wouldn’t you pine for a future in which you’re so tucked away among your kind that you come to forget people who think differently even exist?  

[T]he animating spirit of Teatopia is also, at its core, childish. It reflects a psychological makeup that privileges certainty, loathes ambiguity, celebrates purity and is awash with a mild but persistent sense of vulnerability and fear. Teatopia is a place where one never has to wonder about the veracity of her basic assumptions about what Salam calls “the good life.” It’s a place where no one ever has to grapple with the uncomfortable reality of other human beings living full, rewarding lives while concurrently making major decisions one thinks are self-evidently incorrect. It’s a place where one need never acknowledge that there are people who dream vastly different dreams and, what’s more, believe they have just as much right as anyone to make those dreams come true. 

Like the author, I believe that their is a psychological defect - a sickness, if you will - that causes both the Christofascists and their Tea Party first cousins to desperately fear those deemed "other" and anything that differs from their fantasy world beliefs.

Hate Group Leader: Christians Need To Be Meaner About Gays

Linda Harvey - a mean and bitter woman

A number of years ago I had an e-mail duel with hate group leader Linda Harvey in which she basically admitted that her education credentials contained nothing that qualified her as an expert on psychology, mental health or sexual orientation. However, like most of the faux experts of the far right, Harvey has never let a lack of any legitimate credentials get in her way of pretending to be an expert and making a buck on the anti-gay speaking circuit.  In those circles, extreme religious belief is all one needs and often the more extreme one is the more the adulation from the ignorance embracing masses of the "godly folk."  With gays making significant gains in social acceptance and legal rights, Harvey is literally boiling over with anti-gay animus.  Now she is arguing in a piece at World Net Daily, a/k/a Wing Nut Daily, that the Christofascists haven't been mean enough in the jihad against gays.  Here are highlights from her batshitery:

Why are conservatives back-peddling on slam-dunk issues like freedom of religion? Because we are being challenged on a core question we refuse to directly address.  And here it is: What about homosexual behavior? Good, evil, or neutral?

The answer is that homosexuality is always wrong. Objective reasoning shows us that skin color is unchangeable and that racial discrimination is unjust. We can in the same way objectively reason that same-sex “marriage” is indefensible because homosexual conduct itself is disordered for human beings. 

We aren’t fighting to protect marriage because the term and tradition are important. Let’s be honest that the only reason for this dispute is because people want to engage in anatomically challenged behavior that is observably unnatural, medically risky, improper as an example for children, and changeable.

And it’s a behavior God calls sin. There is no other biblical description of homosexuality except always and only a big taboo.

So in view of marriage law or public accommodations, could the immorality of homosexuality be a rationale for refusing to honor same-sex nuptials? Absolutely, it should be. It’s time to pull the curtain on this wizard, folks. Homosexuality itself is wrong. 

The constructed identity of being “gay” is harmful and should not be considered a worthy defense in light of reality. The evidence clearly points to the truth that everyone is intrinsically a heterosexual.

We need to have the guts to stand up and say so. Our defense should not be because we Christians just hope to somehow preserve narrow rights over here in our holy huddle. 

It’s because homosexuality is unnatural and unnecessary, and the harm its advocacy is doing to our culture is apparent to anyone with half a brain, even atheists. Confusion abounds only because we won’t state the obvious.  And this doesn’t even begin to cover the lunacy of “transgendered” behavior.

Just as we understand race to be a neutral, unchanging characteristic, rational thought arrives at the conclusion that homosexuality is neither. This recognition just confirms facts and is not hateful but helpful to others.  Pull back this curtain. Expose the truth, because it’s a positive one.

What's obvious in my view is that if there's any lunacy going on, it is in Harvey's mind.  It is also to be noted that the U. S. Supreme Court has said in Lawrence v. Texas and Windsor that religious based disapproval of gays is not sufficient to make unconstitutional laws somehow magically become constitutional.  Harvey has done a great job underscoring that anti-gay animus is at the core of the Christofascists' anti-gay agenda.  The woman is, in my view and idiot and mentally ill.Why are conservatives back-peddling on slam-dunk issues like freedom of religion? Because we are being challenged on a core question we refuse to directly address.

And here it is: What about homosexual behavior? Good, evil, or neutral?

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/03/sin-vs-service-the-issue-is-virtue/#yWeSrKhq5wvTFtI3.99