Southern Baptist Convention Doubles Down on Anti-Gay Venom

Like the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention ("SBC") is hemorrhaging members and as  youth go off to college like so many Millennials they leave their Baptist parishes never to return.  Despite the numerous surveys that show that anti-gay bigotry is a huge factor in the exodus of Millennials from organized religion, Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,thinks it is time for the SBC to double down on it anti-gay animus.  Mohler even goes so far as to state "even if scientists prove people are born gay, the “sinfulness of homosexuality” would not be eliminated."  Of course, Mohler still clings to the myth of the existence of Adam and Eve despite the fact that the human genome project has proven that they never existed as historical persons because without them the entire Christian story line of "The Fall" and the need for a savior crumbles.  If you want an example of the Christofascist embrace of ignorance, look no farther than Mohler.   Huffington Post looks at Mohler's latest batshitery.  Here are highlights:

Christians should not attend a same-sex wedding — even of their own child — because it signals “moral approval” of the union, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary said in a new book. . . .  “At some point, attendance will involve congratulating the couple for their union,” he wrote. “If you can’t congratulate the couple, how can you attend?”

Even if scientists prove people are born gay, the “sinfulness of homosexuality” would not be eliminated because human sin taints the world, Mohler said in addressing other topics of sexual identity. He contended that transgender people who are “saved” should consult with their pastors about whether to have surgery to return to their original gender.

In the past he has said that delaying marriage and limiting family size are both sins, that the Roman Catholic Church teaches a “false gospel,” that the pope holds an “unbiblical office,” and that Christians who practice yoga “either deny the reality of what yoga represents or fail to see the contradictions between their Christian commitments and their embrace” of it.

He wrote his 213-page book, subtitled “Speaking truth to a culture redefining sex, marriage & the very meaning of right and wrong,” for what he called “intelligent evangelical readers,” pastors, other church leaders and the public, he said.

“Dr. Mohler’s self-righteous intractability on this issue — even banning followers from simply attending the weddings of their LGBT loved ones — can cause nothing but strife, heartache and hardship,” said director Chris Hartman of the Fairness Campaign, a Louisville-based non-profit advocacy organization that works to prevent discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Southern Baptists are the largest Protestant denomination in the USA, numbering a little less than 15.5 million members, down from a peak of 16.3 million in 2003.

While Jesus regularly ate with sinners, Mohler said that “his constant call was to repentance” and in no case did he endorse sin.

Mohler said he never has attended a same-sex wedding and wouldn’t even if one of his children or grandchildren were marrying. In an interview, he said he addressed the question in the book because students and grandparents had asked about it even before the June 26 Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage.

“I don’t want to underestimate the difficulty of these questions, but I don’t think a faithful Christian can recognize or celebrate … what we don’t think is a marriage,” he said.

I have to laugh at Mohler's comment about "intelligent evangelical readers."  Intelligent and evangelical are oxymoron.  Moreover, studies have shown that the more evangelical and fundamentalist ones denomination is directly correlates to a lower level of education and intelligence.  It's not an accident that Episcopalians and Lutherans are better educated and intelligent than sat Jehovah's Witness members.  Sadly, individuals like Mohler celebrate the embrace of ignorance and the bigotry that often goes with it.

Going to a Historic Wedding Today

Our friends Tim Bostic and Tony London - the lead plaintiffs in the Virginia marriage case - are getting married today at beautiful Christ and St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Norfolk today (the church is like a small cathedral as the images below shows).  The wedding ceremony is open to the community and the husband and I will be in attendance and are among those lucky enough to be included in the guest list for the elegant reception to follow.  Above is a photo from the rehearsal last night.  It should be an amazing wedding and we are so happy for these wonderful guys who had the courage to take a huge risk and put themselves out the to create change.Local media coverage is here.

I am hard on religion, but there are some good and decent denominations that put love and the Gospel message over hate and bigotry, and the Episcopal Church is one of them as is the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to which I still formally belong.  Would that all Christian denominations would follow their lead.

Wedding Clebration - Phase I

The husband and I got married back in April in Washington, DC, but put off having a wedding celebration/reception until later.  Yesterday was the first celebration focused on family and a few closest friends who include us as members of their extended family.  The weather was absolutely perfect - much of the party was in the back yard - and all seem to have had a good time, especially the little grandchildren and nieces and nephews.  Lest other friends feel slighted, we will be having two more "celebrations" where we will include friends and neighbors.  Our goal was to keep the size of the gatherings smaller and more intimate, although with 60 some guests it still was a whirlwind. The first part of the morning today was packing away all the chairs and tables in the shed until the next event.  I've posted a few photos.

I truly think the kids had the best time of anyone.  It was the first time that my family members other than my youngest daughter met most of the husband's family.  It was a good time. :)  To the gay haters, my message is that we gays do have families and thankfully the younger generations are not accepting your hate and misogamy.

Same Sex Marriage - 10 Years Later

Remember the shrieks and flying spittle from the Christofascists when Massachusetts became the first state to allow same sex marriage?  These foul, hate and animus motivated people predicted that the sky would fall and that western civilization would end as a result.  A decade later, none of the predictions have come true and Massachusetts continues to have the lowest divorce rate in the nation while serial marriage remains the most prevalent in the hypocrisy filled Bible Belt.  Meanwhile, same sex marriage is legal in 19 states and gays even in gay-hating states like Virginia are marrying in high numbers in states where such marriages are legal.  The husband and I went to a wonderful wedding celebration of friends last night in Norfolk.  One of the things that was noteworthy was the mix of people in attendance - young, older, black, white, gay and straight.   It was a glimpse of what all of Virginia could be like but for the political whores in the GOP who continue to prostitute themselves to the Christofascists at The Family Foundation and other "family values" hate groups.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the transformation over the last 10 years.  Here are excerpts:

So, what happens to a marriage over the course of 10 years? Make that a gay marriage.

On May 23, 2004, The New York Times printed 41 wedding announcements that included 5 same-sex couples, the first legal gay marriages to appear in these pages. (It began publishing same-sex “celebrations” two years earlier.)

Earlier that week, Massachusetts had become the first state to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia do so now and on Wednesday, a federal appeals court struck down Utah’s same-sex marriage ban.

So, where are those first five couples now? Three live in Massachusetts, one moved from Boston to Washington, D.C., and one is in Brooklyn. They have a total of five children, with three born in wedlock. The men and women involved are now 41 to 58 years old. Four couples are still together, one isn’t.

And how did a marriage license change their lives? Some couples talked about how it made everyday headaches like tax and insurance forms go away. One said their lives didn’t change at all. And two couples said they ended up being transformed in ways they had not expected.

“I wasn’t necessarily, like, the bride type of lesbian,” said Mary Beth Caschetta, 47, who married Meryl Cohn, 52, at their home in Provincetown, Mass. “But our marriage has been such a stabilizing force in my life — in both of our lives, really — in a way I could never have imagined.”

“I don’t have some overly romantic notion of it,” Ms. Cohn said. “We were already committed to each other, so I was surprised marriage felt so meaningful in some serious way that feels anchoring. Maybe those feelings would have happened over time anyway, but it does feel like a deeper commitment to say: ‘You. You’re the one I married.’ ”

They were married at their Cape Cod home and had legal benefits until they moved to Washington in 2006, when Mr. Shannon took a new job.

“All of a sudden, poof, the marriage doesn’t exist,” Mr. Shannon said. “We were just two people again.”

With that came complications involving insurance forms and filling out apartment applications. (Washington did not allow gay marriage until 2010.)

Thanks to the Supreme Court ruling a year ago that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, this was the first year they did not have to file separate tax returns. “The accountants are a lot less happy now,” Ms. Leuchs said.

Conservatives claim to want societal stability and the Christofascists always depict gays as promiscuous sluts, yet the oppose same sex marriage that not only encourages stability but also monogamy.  If they truly cared about what they claim to support, they would support same sex marriage.  The fact that they don't underscores their hypocrisy.  Thankfully, the world and the courts and most of society are moving on and leaving these hypocrites as increasingly irrelevant.  They are indeed the modern day equivalents to the segregationists of the 1950's and 1960's.

Same Sex Weddings: Spend Less and More Innovative

As same sex couples marry in growing numbers - our friends are getting married in droves it seems and we attended a wedding last weekend and have another one this weekend - one phenomenon that is appearing is that we gays spend less but have more innovative weddings. I like to think a case in point is the husband and my own wedding in Washington, DC, which used the Kennedy Center roof terrace for the site of the actual ceremony.  In a few weeks we will be having a family reception and then likely two more receptions for  differing groups of friends rather than one massive event.  Like many same sex couples, we wrote our own vows.   The Advocate looks at the findings of a survey on innovative aspects of same sex weddings.  Here are highlights:

A new survey conducted by The Knot in partnership with The Advocate finds that one year after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling and marriage equality's spread across the country, same-sex couples are starting new traditions.

With a wave of new U.S. states with marriage equality in the past year, most same-sex couples (82 percent, up from 70 percent in 2013) are making it very clear to attendees that their ceremony is a wedding, by calling it this term in invitations. A minority of same-sex couples label their event a celebration (7 percent), a commitment ceremony (4 percent), or a civil union (2 percent).

Among engaged same-sex couples, 58 percent indicated there was a formal proposal (and for 38 percent of this pool, it was a surprise occasion), compared to straight couples, who had a much higher proposal rate of 94 percent. A sizable portion of same-sex couples (38 percent) mutually decided to wed.
77 percent of respondents in same-sex couples did not ask the family’s permission before getting engaged. . . . . Conversely, 71 percent of straight fiancés did ask the family's permission. And 26 percent of same-sex couples said that, of all the possible surprises that were involved with wedding planning, they were most pleased to learn that their families were accepting and willing to help them throughout the process.

In planning their matrimonies, same-sex couples are spending less on average ($15,849) than straight couples ($29,858). However, same-sex couples tend to invite fewer guests, meaning the amount spent per person is only slightly less ($205) than in a straight couple’s wedding ($220).  . . . .only 13 percent of straight couples are paying for their weddings out of their own pockets, compared to 85 percent of same-sex couples.

Some 81 percent of same-sex couples indicated that they would not hire a wedding planner. So they're being very hands-on when deciding how to adopt traditions.

Same-sex couples are far less likely than straight couples to have a religious service or officiant. Only 38 percent of those who responded to the survey said they would include a religious element to their wedding, favoring either a justice of the peace (23 percent) or a family member or friend (21 percent) to conduct the proceedings. By contrast, 63 percent of straight couples favored a religious service. In this vein, more same-sex couples (49 percent) are writing their own vows, although 29 percent said they did or would incorporate a religious component to the speech.

The practice of having one partner change a last name after marriage is not being adopted by most same-sex couples. Only 23 percent of gay couples and 41 percent of lesbian couples are going with this practice, with 54 percent keeping their own names and 15 percent creating a hyphenated surname. In contrast, 79 percent of straight brides-to-be marked “I'm changing my name to his.”

Judge Rules Against Bakery That Refused Wedding Cake To Same-Sex Couple

Anti-gay bigot Jack Phillips, owner of the bakery

Brace yourself!!  The shrieks of Christian persecution (and associated flying spittle) are bound to erupt in the wake of a court ruling in Colorado that found that a bakery that refused to sell a wedding cake to a same sex couple broke unlawfully discriminated and violated Colorado's public accommodations law.   The bigoted owners of the bakery had claimed as a defense that their right to religious liberty had excused them from compliance with the law.  This bogus defense is yet another example of Christofascists believing that they deserve special rights and that they are above the laws that govern everyone else.  The ACLU has details on the ruling here.  Think Progress looks at some of the analysis behind the judge's rejection of the false defense of "religious liberty":

Here are some of the arguments from ADJ Spencer’s ruling as to why “religious freedom” did not justify Phillips’ violation of Colorado’s nondiscrimination law protecting sexual orientation:

It Doesn’t Matter If The Bakery Otherwise Serves Gay People

One of the bakery’s arguments was that it still served gay clients — the owner only objected to a wedding cake that would celebrate a same-sex marriage. Spencer argued that since only gay couples would participate in same-sex marriage, it’s a “distinction without a difference”

This Case Has Nothing To Do With Whether Same-Sex Marriage Is Legal

Conservatives often argue that cases like these that allegedly impose on “religious liberty” are the consequence of marriage equality passing, but Colorado doesn’t have marriage equality. The judge notes that this actually proves that the discrimination is based on the couple’s identity:

Nor is the ALJ persuaded by Respondents’ argument that they should be compelled to recognize same-sex marriages because Colorado does not do so. Although Respondents are correct that Colorado does not recognize same-sex marriage, that fact does not excuse discrimination based upon sexual orientation. . . . Because Respondents’ objection goes beyond just the act of “marriage,” and extends to any union of a same-sex couple, it is apparent that Respondents’ real objection is to the couple’s sexual orientation and not simply their marriage.

Cakes Do Not Constitute “Speech”

Though the judge was sympathetic that cakes require artistry, he dismissed the idea that they constituted speech. In this case, the bakery refused to provide the cake before the couple could even specify what would or would not be on the cake, thus there is not even any speech to consider.

The Act Of Selling Cakes Also Does Not Constitute “Speech”

Regardless of what the cake itself might communicate or not, the act of selling cakes is also not a form of speech; thus, forcing a bakery to sell to a same-sex couple is not compelled speech.

Baking Cakes Is Not Religious Conduct

Though Phillips objected to providing the cake on religious grounds, the ALJ pointed out that baking a cake is not actually conduct that is part of his religion. Thus, it does not qualify for exemption from regulation.

Self-centeredness, hatred of others, and bigotry.  These are the hallmarks of today's conservative "Christians."  They are not nice or decent people.