NOM's Brian Brown Applauds Russia's Persecution of Gays

I am of an age that I remember when applauding Russia and its dictatorial government caused one to viewed as a possible traitor.  Indeed, during the reign of terror pushed by Joe McCarthy, even rumors that one supported Russia and/or communism ended careers and ruined lives.  Now, Russia is ruled by a former communist KGB officer and the country has moved from a flirtation with democracy to a  dictatorship headed by the aforesaid former communist KBG officer, Vladimir Putin.  So who has been to Russia cheer leading for Putin's vile and corrupt government and policies?  Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage.  Right Wing Watch has details on Brown's disgusting support for Putin's efforts to make Russian gays the modern day equivalents of Jews in early 1930's Germany.  Here are highlights:

[W]e recently discovered that the website for the international conference of social conservatives hosted at the Kremlin in September has posted a number of English transcripts of speeches given at the event, including those of a handful of American activists.

One of those activists was Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, who had previously testified before a Russian parliamentary committee in favor of tightening the country's laws  preventing the adoption of Russian orphans by same-sex couples.

Brown warned the audience in Moscow that “[i]n the West especially there is an attempt to silence those of us who stand for the truth of marriage” but claimed that Americans in general oppose LGBT rights. Lamenting that “there’s a picture that is sometimes painted of the United States as if all of us in the U.S. are somehow embracing this new and false vision of the family,” Brown said that it is “unelected judges” who are “coming and simply throwing away the votes” of Americans who oppose LGBT equality, violating “our civil right to have our vote counted.”

Brown told the conference attendees that he was hopeful for the future of the “international pro-family movement” that would “stand in a united manner against the attempt to redefine the very nature of what it means to be a human being:

It is a great blessing to be with all of you here, in Moscow. . . .  There are three things I want to discuss today. I want to focus primarily on what the future of the international pro-family movement is. Because what is occurring here, and what is occurring around the world, with leaders coming together, and meeting, and thinking, and discussing, and planning, and organizing, is a historic moment. We have an opportunity, we have been placed here to make a change.

It is a testament to how far the Republican Party has fallen that someone like Brown would not only be welcomed but with allies like Tony Perkins aids in setting the GOP's virulently anti-gay agenda.   The irony of it all is that I suspect Vladimir Putin doesn't give a damn one way or another about gays.  But in order to rally support from the heinous Russian Orthodox Church, he is willing to persecute and ruin the lives of Russian gays solely for the purpose of maintaining his own power.  That said, it speaks volumes about what a vile low life Brian Brown is - as are his "godly Christian" allies.

Homophobia is Still with Us 60 Years After the Death of Alan Turing

British gay rights advocate has a moving piece in The Telegraph that looks at the sad reality that homophobia is alive and well even 60 years after perhaps one of the greatest minds of the 20th century was driven to suicide (some question whether it was really a suicide) under the UK's heinous anti-gay laws of the time.  What keeps such hate and bigotry.  One word sums up the cause: religion.  Religion, one of the most evil influences in the world today as demonstrated by ISIS' claimed beheading of another American.  Of course, the poison of religion is amplified by politicians like Nikki Haley (see the previous post) and other political prostitutes only too happy to pander to those who embrace hate and ignorance.  Here are some column highlights that focus on the ongoing harm:

Movies rarely make me cry, but I cried when I watched The Imitation Game. Released today, it stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightly, telling the heroic and tragic story of the British wartime code breaker, mathematical genius and computer pioneer, Alan Turing.

As well as decrypting Nazi military codes, shortening the war by two years and saving millions of lives, the entire modern digital age of computers, mobile phones, email, internet and space exploration is based on the principles he elaborated. Although Turing arguably possessed one of the greatest minds in history – on a par with Newton and Einstein – he was nevertheless prosecuted and hounded to his death in 1954 for being gay. 

Upon conviction, Turing was given a stark choice: two years' jail, or chemical castration via a hormone therapy that was uncannily similar to the Nazi "cures" for homosexuality that were used on gay men in Buchenwald concentration camp. 

Unable to cope with the ghastly side effects of castration treatment, he committed suicide at the age of 41 – depriving humanity of future knowledge and inventions he might have pioneered had he lived.

I wept not only for Turing’s terrible personal suffering, but also for the estimated 50,000-100,000 other gay and bisexual men who were convicted in Britain under the same or similar anti-gay laws. Unlike Turing, most of them were given no choice. They were jailed and often brutally abused on the inside. 

Turing received a posthumous royal pardon in 2013. Unfairly, no such pardon has been extended to the tens of thousands of other gay victims – not even to other high-profile ones such as Lord Montague and Sir John Gielgud.  Shockingly, the persecution of men for same-sex love continued for nearly half a century after Turing’s suicide.

The "gross indecency" law of 1885 – prohibiting any sexual contact between men – was used against Turing and before him against Oscar Wilde in 1895. It was repealed only in 2003. . . . . Since the Sexual Offences Act 2003, for the first time in over 500 years we have a criminal code that does not discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation.

Progress at last! But homophobia isn’t over yet. Only last year to create a data base of "serious sex offenders", the police turned up unannounced on people’s doorsteps to demand DNA samples from men who, like Turing, were convicted of consenting adult same-sex relationships decades ago. They were lumped together with rapists and paedophiles. 

Some parents still kick their children out of home and onto the streets after discovering that they are gay or lesbian. It is one of the biggest causes of youth homelessness. 

All Britain’s equality laws have exemptions for religious organisations, which permits faith-run service providers, such schools and hospitals, to discriminate in certain circumstances on the grounds of sexual orientation.

To combat anti-gay bullying and hate crimes, education against all prejudice – including racism and sexism, as well as homophobia and transphobia – should be a mandatory subject in every school. It ought to start from primary level onwards and continue throughout a pupil’s secondary years. The aim should be to encourage the understanding and acceptance of difference, which is vital for a happy, harmonious society. Is the Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, listening? 

The Catholic Church’s Gay Obsession

Having been raised Roman Catholic and indoctrinated with the Church's obsession that sex is dirty and that gay sex is particularly evil - it took several years of therapy to get over the psychological damage or dare I say abuse - I also learned that few institutions are more filled with hypocrisy.  Prissy old men in dresses, most of whom have no clue about living in the real world, purse their lips and feign piety even as they ruin the lives of countless individuals.  In reality, they are petty, power mad and seek to control the sex lives of others even as they are miserable in a supposed life of celibacy.  Divorce, contraception and homosexuality are constantly on their minds and in their pronouncements, but it is the gays that get particularly horrible treatment even when a blind eye is turned towards other sexual transgressors since the financial cost of driving those people away might jeopardize their far to pleasant lifestyle.  A column in the New York Times looks at the Church's hypocrisy and anti-gay obsession.  Here are excerpts:

REPEATEDLY over the last year and a half, I’ve written about teachers in Catholic schools and leaders in Catholic parishes who were dismissed from their posts because they were in same-sex relationships and — in many cases — had decided to marry.

Every time, more than a few readers weighed in to tell me that these people had it coming. If you join a club, they argued, you play by its rules or you suffer the consequences.  Oh really?

The rules of this particular club prohibit divorce, yet the pews of many of the Catholic churches I’ve visited are populous with worshipers on their second and even third marriages. They walk merrily to the altar to receive communion, not a peep of protest from a soul around them. They participate fully in the rituals of the church, their membership in the club uncontested.

The rules prohibit artificial birth control, and yet most of the Catholic families I know have no more than three children, which is either a miracle of naturally capped fecundity or a sign that someone’s been at the pharmacy. I’m not aware of any church office that monitors such matters, poring over drugstore receipts. And I haven’t heard of any teachers fired or parishioners denied communion on the grounds of insufficiently brimming broods.

About teachers: When gay or lesbian ones are let go, the explanation typically cites their contractual obligations, as employees of Catholic schools, not to defy the church’s strictures, which forbid sexual activity between two men or two women.

But there are many employees of Catholic schools nationwide who aren’t even Catholic, who defy the church by never having subscribed to it in the first place. There are Protestant teachers. Jewish ones. Teachers who are agnostic and, quite likely, teachers who are atheists and simply don’t advertise it. There are parish employees in these same categories, and some remain snug in their jobs.

The blunt truth of the matter is that during a period when the legalization of gay marriage has spread rapidly in this country, from just six states in 2011 to more than three times that number today, Catholic officials here have elected to focus on this one issue and on a given group of people: gays and lesbians.

Their moralizing is selective, bigoted and very sad. It’s also self-defeating, because it’s souring many American Catholics, a majority of whom approve of same-sex marriage, and because the workers who’ve been exiled were often exemplars of charity, mercy and other virtues as central to Catholicism as any guidelines for sex. But their hearts didn’t matter. It was all about their loins. Will the church ever get away from that?  Pope Francis seems inclined to do so . . .

The pope’s actions don’t jibe with the way many Catholic leaders in the United States are treating gays and lesbians. The National Catholic Reporter said recently that it could find, since 2008, about 40 public cases of employees’ losing jobs at Catholic institutions in this country because of issues connected with homosexuality or same-sex marriage. Seventeen of these occurred just this year.

“The bishops have picked up gay marriage ever since the 2004 presidential election as a special cause that they are against,” Cahill [Lisa Sowle Cahill, a professor of theology at Boston College] noted. She said that they were “staking out a countercultural Catholic identity” that doesn’t focus on “social justice and economic issues.”

“It’s about sex and gender issues,” she said, adding that it might be connected to the disgrace that church leaders brought upon themselves with their disastrous handling of child sexual abuse by priests. Perhaps, she said, they’re determined to find some sexual terrain on which they can strike a position of stern rectitude.

“They’re trying to regain the moral high ground, no matter how sure it is to backfire,” she said. Having turned a blind eye to nonconsensual sex that ravaged young lives, they’re holding the line against consensual sex that wounds no one.

What’s happening amounts to persecution. And it’s occurring not because the workers in these situations called any special attention to themselves or made any political fuss. No, they just loved in a fashion displeasing to many church officials, whose concerns with purity are spasmodic and capricious.

My advice to gays raised as Catholics is to walk away from the Church, shaking the dust from your shoes as you do so.  There are plenty of gay accepting churches out there and, if you long for the rites of the mass, the ELCA and Episcopal churches provide a near identical service but with out the hypocrisy and outright evil that pervades the Catholic Church hierarchy.  I have never regretted leaving the Catholic Church for even a single day.

Russian Gold Medalists Kiss On Podium In Defiance Of Anti-Gay Law

Not everyone in Russia supports Vladimir Putin's and the Russian Orthodox Church's as evidenced by a same sex kiss on the awards podium by two Russian Gold Medalists at the World Track & Field Championships in Moscow.  Will they be arrested?  And will others competing in athletic events in Russia?  Or will international bodies like the IOC and those like Swedish officials who told Swedish high jumper Emma Green Tregaro that she had to paint over her rainbow flag colored fingernails act as anti-gay enforcers for Russia?  ALL international events - especially the 2014 Winter Olympic Games - need to be moved out of Russia until the anti-gay laws are repealed.  First details on the same sex kiss via Joe My God:

Kseniya Ryzhova and Tatyana Firova, two members of Russia's women's 4x400 relay team, defied their nation's ban on "homosexual propaganda" when they kissed on the podium during the presentation ceremony for their gold medals at the World Track & Field Championships in Moscow.  Just fantastic! Thank you, ladies, thank you!

As for the enablers in Sweden,  there's this from News.Com.Au:

Emma Green Tregaro modelled bright red nails yesterday as she took the field at the world championships.

Swedish officials told the 28-year-old her rainbow gesture, which brought international attention as a protest against Russia's new law against gay "propaganda," could be a violation of the competition's code of conduct.

She said the Swedish track and field federation asked her to "please respect the rules" and change the colour of her nails.  "So I decided to paint them red instead, for love," she said.

The general secretary of the Swedish federation said the IAAF, the sport's governing body, had warned them that Green Tregaro may have violated the code of conduct.

"They were saying that this was by definition a breach of the regulations, not saying anything else, really," Anders Albertsson said. "We have informed our athletes about this."

Apparently, Swedish officials leaned nothing from the 1936 Berlin games and what happens when one offers appeasement to brutal tyrants.  Shame on Sweden.

Court Rejects Scott Lively's Dismisssal Motion in Crimes Against Humanity Lawsuit

Good news out of Massachusetts: in the lawsuit against anti-gay extremist Scott Lively (who has exported anti-gay hatred to Uganda and Russia), a federal judge has refused to dismiss the case and ruled that a federal judge ruled that persecution on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is a crime against humanity and that the fundamental human rights of LGBT individuals are protected under international law.  Expect the Christofascists to shriek and whine that their "religious freedom" is under attack.  Their agenda is all about inflicting their poisonous beliefs on all and punishing those who do not conform to their ugly, bigoted beliefs.  Here are details from the Center For Constitutional Rights which has joined in to bring the lawsuit (a copy of the Court's ruing is here):

Today, in a first-of-its kind case brought by a Ugandan LGBTI advocacy organization against a prominent U.S. anti-gay extremist, a federal judge ruled that persecution on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is a crime against humanity and that the fundamental human rights of LGBTI people are protected under international law. The ruling means that the case brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of Sexual Minorities of Uganda (SMUG), a Uganda-based coalition of LGBTI rights and advocacy groups, can move forward over defendant Scott Lively’s request to dismiss the lawsuit.

“Widespread, systematic persecution of LGBTI people constitutes a crime against humanity that unquestionably violates international norms,” said Judge Michael Ponsor. “The history and current existence of discrimination against LGBTI people is precisely what qualifies them as a distinct targeted group eligible for protection under international law. The fact that a group continues to be vulnerable to widespread, systematic persecution in some parts of the world simply cannot shield one who commits a crime against humanity from liability.”

 

The lawsuit alleges that Lively’s actions over the past decade, in collaboration with key Ugandan government officials and religious leaders, are responsible for depriving LGBTI Ugandans of their fundamental human rights based solely on their identity, which is the definition of persecution under international law and is deemed a crime against humanity. This effort bore fruit most notably in the introduction of the notorious Anti-Homosexuality Bill (aka the Kill the Gays bill), which Lively helped engineer.

 

Lively has also been active in countries like Russia where a new law criminalizing gay rights advocacy was recently passed. In 2007, Lively toured 50 cities in Russia recommending some of the measures that are now law.

 

Said CCR Attorney Pam Spees, “We are gratified that the court recognized the persecution and the gravity of the danger faced by our clients as a result of Scott Lively’s actions. Lively’s single-minded campaign has worked to criminalize their very existence, strip away their fundamental rights and threaten their physical safety.”

I hope Lively is ultimately found guilty and that at a minimum, Lively deserves a lengthy prison sentence.  Personally, an even harsher sentence would be most welcome. 

Falsely Aggrieved Christian Soldiers

Burning of two sodomites at the stake outside Zürich, 1482, by Spiezer Schilling

In addition to attacking gays and gay supportive Republicans as noted in a prior post, the Christianists have shifted into hysterical high gear shrieking and lamenting that it is they who are now being persecuted.  The phenomenon would be laughable but for the fact that far too many sheeple will stupidly - there really is no other word applicable - believe the rants and lies of the professional Christian crowd and hate groups like Family Research Council, the National Organization for Marriage and a host of other similarly foul and dishonest groups.   A piece at Shakesville looks at the ridiculousness of the Christianist whining and false claims of persecution.  Here are highlights:

Over at The American Prospect, Paul Waldman documents the outpouring of self-pitying aggrievement from a number of conservative Christian commentators who are lamenting their "second-class citizenship" because they support the "traditional definition of marriage."

Here's CBN's David Brody lamenting the sorrows of Kirk Cameron and Tim Tebow. Here's Red State's Erik Erikson predicting the coming pogrom ("Within a year or two we will see Christian schools attacked for refusing to admit students whose parents are gay. We will see churches suffer the loss of their tax exempt status for refusing to hold gay weddings. We will see private businesses shut down because they refuse to treat as legitimate that which perverts God's own established plan."). Here's Fox News commentator Todd Starnes on the oppression that has already begun ("it's as if we're second-class citizens now because we support the traditional, Biblical definition of marriage").

And here's Pat Robertson (of course) warning that "the foundation of our society since the founding of our great Republic is under attack" by "a few people [who] want to have their way doing of sex affirmed by everyone else." Solid commentary as always from the biggest bozo in the hate biz.

It is execrable that there are conservative Christians—whose paternalistic, retrofuck, unscientific, indefensible views on reproductive rights and women's agency are currently being legislated all over the nation with nary a peep from the office-holding pro-choice president—who have the temerity to whine about how oppressed they are simply for having their undiluted right to legislate how every other person should be allowed to use their bodies and live their lives minimally eroded via marriage equality.

Losing the capacity to oppress is not oppression.  And there's no equivalence, none, between a position that wants to reserve marriage for some and deny it to others, and a position that wants to extend marriage to all, for anyone who wants to take part in whatever way they wish, with no one compelled to participate.

It's a theme I have touched on before although I may noy have enunciated it so well.  The real grievance of the Christofascist is that they are losing their ability to  persecute others at will and without restriction.  If you want to see what true persecution looks like, Andrew Sullivan has a post that looks at what the "godly Christian" folk have done to gays over the centuries.   Here are highlights:

There’s a dangerous tendency to believe that somehow, this was the first time in human history that gay people had sought marriage, or deemed themselves worthy of it. That’s not true – and my anthology finds examples from 14th century China to Native American culture to African matriarchies. Here is Montaigne, writing in the late 16th Century, of an incident he had heard of:

On my return from Saint Peter’s I met a man who informed me humorously of two things: that the Portuguese made their obeisance in Passion week; and then, that on this same day the station was at San Giovanna Porta Latina, in which church a few years before certain Portuguese had entered into a strange brotherhood.

They married one another, male to male, at Mass, with the same ceremonies with which we perform our marriages, read the same marriage Gospel service, and then went to bed and lived together. The Roman wits said that because in the other conjunction, of male and female, this circumstance of marriage alone makes it legitimate, it had seemed to these sharp folk that this other action would become equally legitimate if they authorized it with ceremonies and mysteries of the Church.

Eight or nine Portuguese of this fine sect were burned.

“This fine sect”… “these sharp folk”. Montaigne was one of the first supporters of marriage equality. But he had to tell us in code. As we congratulate ourselves, let us recall the profound pain this stigmatization caused for so many throughout history, and the brutal repression they had to endure – even being burned alive for seizing their own destiny and declaring the church their own.

I continue to believe that if one added up all the good Christianity has done(mainly through relief services for the poor and medical assistance) and weighed it against all the evils that have been done and all the lives lost as a result of wars of religion and the persecution of non-believers, the net result would be that the world would have been a better place had Christianity never existed.  Yes, this assessment is harsh and unfair to those who actually practice the Gospel message.  Unfortunately, their good deeds are far outweighed by the evil done under the Christian banner.   Sadly, today's Christianists continue the tradition of hatred, persecution of others and evil deeds.

Stomping on Jesus and the Myth of Christian Persecution

A post yesterday looked at the legislative effort in Kentucky that would have allowed far right Christians - the real folks behind the bill's introduction - to ignore any law or regulation that conflicted with their allegedly deeply held religious beliefs.  Thankfully, Governor Beshear vetoed the batshitery, but do not expect these types of efforts to cease.  More and more we hear professional Christians and hate group leaders like Tony Perkins, Brian Brown and many others claim that Christians are being persecuted in America.  In reality, they have it all backwards.  It is the Christians who continue to be the persecutors and the Bible has been used to justify countless horrors both in America and elsewhere (the images above from Civil Commotion recall the Bible's uses as a justification for segregation).  What's happening is that finally the victims of their bigotry and hate are simply say that they are not going to stand for it any more and are successfully convincing legislators, courts and the general public that the days of allowing the Christofascists to ride rough shod over everyone else need to end now.  It's this ending of their right to bully and persecute and inflict their toxic religious beliefs on everyone else that has the Christofascists in such an uproar.  Their self-centered nature and utter contempt for the rights of others is increasingly be exposed and they are livid about it.  An example of the Christofascist desire to trample on the rights and beliefs of others while demanding subservience to their beliefs cropped up in a story out of Florida where a self-centered right wing Mormon was suspended from his Intercultural Communications class.  The Miami Herald has these highlights:

A junior at the university’s Davie campus says his professor threw him out of a course for refusing to “stomp on Jesus.”  Ryan Rotela, of Coral Springs, told CBS12 in West Palm Beach that three weeks ago, the instructor in his Intercultural Communications class asked everyone in the class to take out a sheet of paper, write “Jesus” in bold letters and put the piece of paper on the floor.

The instructor, Deandre Poole, then told the class to stomp on the papers.  Rotela refused, and told Poole he was offended by the instruction. 

"Anytime you stomp on something it shows that you believe that something has no value. So if you were to stomp on the word Jesus, it says that the word has no value," Rotela told CBS12. Rotela, who describes himself as a devout Mormon, went to Poole’s supervisor two days later to discuss the incident. He was suspended from the class since the incident. 

It goes without saying, these folks have no problem burning Korans, depriving gays equal civil rights, and seeking to control the ability of women  to make health care decisions affecting their own bodies.  Rotela and those like him won't "stomp on Jesus" but they will happily treat others as disposable trash and/or less than human.    Again, these folks are not the victims of persecution.  They are the ones that seek to persecute others and trample on the rights of anyone and everyone who does not subscribe to their hate and fear based religious beliefs.

Civil Commotion also looks at a book that debunks much of the Christian persecution myth all the way back to the early days of Christianity:

Which brings us to the smartest book I’ve read in a good long while, Candida Moss’ The Myth of Persecution.

Moss demonstrates convincingly that much of what tradition says was Roman persecution of Christians was in fact prosecution for refusing to obey the law. Except for a very brief period of about 2-years, that is, Christians were very rarely singled-out as Christians per se. Rather, they flipped-off the civil authorities and declared that they were beholden to only some other law. 

The early Christian movement was no different than any other; it needed a devil in order to cultivate a shared sense of urgency, and so it invented devils when it was useful — as it does today. The overwrought Pious folk are being played, just as dishonest imams provoked ignorant mobs to outrage and murder over the forbidden Muhammed cartoons a few years ago.

This is an important history, and immensely timely. When we hear moderns complain of religious persecution before ‘ObamaCare,’ and racial integration, and psychiatric care of homosexuals, and the expectation that they learn something of the world outside Podunk, we are reprising a very old dispute driven chiefly by the same careless thinking and intransigent movement-behavior that made the first few centuries such a tumultuous time.

It is far past time that the public learn the truth about the myths and lies disseminated daily by the Christian Right and that the rest of us rise up and say "No" to continued special rights and privileges for those who wrap themselves in religiosity while persecuting and bullying others.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/22/3301023/student-fau-professor-suspended.html#storylink=cpy

Far Right Christians Play the Victim While Persecuting Others

Over the close to 20 years that I have been closely following Christian Right and "family values" years, beginning in my days in the Republican Party when the Christofascists began to take over the Republican Party of Virginia, my contempt for many of these people has grown geometrically.  Simply put, many are not nice people and if one isn't a white evangelical/fundamentalist Christian their attitude towards these "others" is one of hate and bigotry.  Worse yet, while they whine about freedom of religion and liberty under the U.S. Constitution, they see those rights as belonging only to themselves.  No one else has any rights and when you stand up to them and demand  your own equal rights the Christofascist claim that you are persecuting them.  Bottom line, they are some of the most dishonest, selfish and hypocrisy filled individuals one is likely to ever encounter.  Here in Virginia the situation is particularly egregious with The Family Foundation, a hate group in all but formal designation, playing puppet master to the Republican Party of Virginia.  The Family Foundation constantly claims that "Christians" are being persecuted:

The right of conscience and the right to practice faith according to personal beliefs are sacred and should not be infringed or denied. In the birthplace of religious freedom, state police chaplains should not be censored; students should be allowed to share their faith at graduations; Christian run businesses should not be forced to hire people whose lifestyle is contradictory to their faith; pastors should not fear reprisal for speaking against lifestyles contrary to their beliefs. Yet in Virginia today, all those scenarios have either happened or could happen in the very near future if we don’t reestablish our First Freedom.

Yet in reality, they are the ones actively persecuting others, particularly LGBT individuals who they view with a hatred not too far removed from that of the Nazis towards the Jews in the 1930's.  A piece in Metro Weekly looks at this sickening state of affairs.  Here are highlights:

One thing about living in Virginia is that it makes you sensitive to small victories. While my friends in D.C. and Maryland enjoy the local legal benefits of getting gay married, my husband and I are simply happy that we can be on the same health insurance policy. While much remains to be done in D.C. for transgender Washingtonians, the city is bounds ahead of most of the country and Maryland is on a path to catch up. Transgender Virginians may enjoy some minor local protections and accommodations, as long the state government doesn't decide to step in and put a stop to it.  So the bar for success is set low on this side of the Potomac.

The latest example is Virginia's upcoming anti-bullying law that could in theory provide protections for LGBT students who are victims of sustained harassment. I say ''in theory'' because the whole reason that the bill is poised to pass with strong support is that it was neutered to avoid directly addressing LGBT youth and to provide more protections for the ''real'' victims of bullying: Christians.

We've gotten used to anti-gay churches playing victim over the past few years as they've come to realize they're on the losing side of their culture war. That's why we keep seeing flare-ups of idiocy, like the group of concerned Christian parents in Indiana who decided they wanted a fag-free prom — that's what ''traditional prom'' means in their context — because the simple act of seeing the existence of gay people is bullying to them.

Things like the Virginia anti-bullying legislation aren't as flamboyant as small-town fights over proms, but they capitulate to the exact same fantasy that somehow Christians are losing their rights when we gain ours. Their relentless focus on being able to clothe their children in anti-gay slogans and spout Bible verses at any moment of their choosing continues to show their inability to understand that a right to free speech doesn't come with a right to force others to listen to it. Telling high-school hallway proselytizers to leave LGBT kids alone isn't bullying, it's the commonsense way to make sure all of them, Christians too, enjoy their right not to listen.

The only thing that matters to these self-appointed moral guardians is maintaining special status for their own children, no matter the damage their hate causes LGBT youth or that their indifference causes youth who are the wrong kind of Christian. I may be distant from my own church upbringing at this point in life, but I did pick up a lesson from Sunday school that should be universal:  Selfishness in the face of suffering and injustice is an affront to God or the universe, whichever you happen to prioritize. It's as un-Christian an act as they come.

In truth, these foul people are not followers of Christ despite their application of the Christian label to themselves.  They utterly ignore the Gospel message and selectively focus on Old Testament passages that they use to condemn others while making the Pharisees of the New Testament look like paragons of Christian virtue. We must do all we can to cause the larger public to see them for the horrible liars and hypocrites that they are in fact.  Am I being too harsh?  I think not.  Here's what Matthew 23:13-15, 23-28 has to say about these types of people:

13 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye shut the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye enter not in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering in to enter.  14 (Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, even while for a pretence ye make long prayers: therefore ye shall receive greater condemnation.) 15 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he is become so, ye make him twofold more a son of hell than yourselves.  23 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye tithe mint and anise and cummin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and faith: but these ye ought to have done, and not to have left the other undone.

NOM's Latest Lie: Homosexuals Have Never Faced Persecution

I often cynically joke and say that while the Christianists claim to revere the Ten Commandments, at most they only follow nine since of them since they act as if the Commandment against lying and bearing false witness doesn't exist. Likewise, given the fact that evangelical Christians have the highest divorce and remarriage rate, the Commandment against adultery and Christ's supposed Gospel directives against divorce seem to disappear from acknowledgement by these folks as well. Only tHe gAys get strict application of the language of the Bible and are condemned accordingly. Now the National Association for Marriage ("NOM") seems determined to make Family Research Council and Focus on the Family look down right truthful in comparison. On the organization's Facebook page the following statement was made:
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Through out history homosexuals have never faced persecution at the level Jews, Christians, and Blacks have. For the homosexual population, their only focus is WWII.

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Somehow I think the gay teens in the photo above would disagree - that is if they had not been murdered for being gay. And at the root of their murder - just like most other violence against gays - one finds intolerance fueled by religion. Yep, just like the religion that NOM likes to wrap itself in. Of course, the hypocrisy gets even better. What about the witch hunts for gays in Uganda? That's not persecution? In fact, what about this photo:

Click to enlarge image.

Looks like persecution to me. What makes the hypocrisy and disingenuousness of these self-congratulatory "Christians" is that now funding of the anti-gay witch hunts has been traced to some of the "Godly Christians" in the USA who, I suspect, are allies to NOM. NPR has a story that looks at the complicity of Canyon Ridge Christian Church in Las Vegas which has been financially supporting the anti-gay jihad in Uganda. Here are some highlights:
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"Martin Ssempa makes no bones about going around to churches, to community centers, to different neighborhoods and saying things like gays and lesbians should be put in prison, they should be killed," says Michael Jones, a gay-rights activist in the U.S. who has been following Ssempa's activities.
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So why does Canyon Ridge Christian Church in Las Vegas — a megachurch with some 6,000congregants each week — financially support Ssempa? Kevin Odor, the senior pastor there, says Ssempa has been "misrepresented."
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"They're engaging in Ugandan politics whether they like it or not," says Jones, the gay-rights activist. "Calling Martin Ssempa, who is one of the foremost religious and political figures in Uganda, a strategic partner is automatically engaging in Ugandan politics. There's just no way around that."
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Warren Throckmorton, a professor at the evangelical Grove City College in Grove City, Pa., says Odor is trying to have it both ways. "What we have here is a church that wants to be viewed as moderate and outreach-minded and compassionate, and yet they're supporting a set of values and principles elsewhere that are very harsh and deadly, frankly, to the very community you say you want to reach," he says. "If you preach compassion here, you have to support compassion elsewhere."
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[T]he Southern Nevada Health District severed its ties with the church, saying it was "profoundly concerned" about the relationship with Ssempa.
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Christianists are found to be directly tied financially to persecuting gays, yet NOM lies and says that gays have never been persecuted. As I have stated before, if there is a Hell, Maggie Gallagher and many other professional Christians must have special spots already reserved for them..

The Sinister Side of the Bible

The other day I again did a post about the ridiculous resolution being co sponsored by local Chesapeake Congressman Randy Forbes which seeks to declare 2010 as "the National Year of the Bible." Putting aside the fact that Congress ought to be focusing on the pressing issues facing the country rather than supporting grand standing by those who shameless pander to the wingnut base of the Republican Part, the text of the resolution which is quoted in my prior post utterly ignores the dark and evil influence the Bible has been through much of history rather than a force of good. What's disturbing about the resolution is that it is those who would seek its passage who have the same mind set of those who have used the Bible for evil in the past as they denigrate others and in some cases slaughter those who do not share their fanatical views. Via Civil Commotion, I found a great post of a portion of a lecture by Robert Ingersoll on the blog of by the now atheist son of Fred Phelps - who has seen the evil of extreme Christianism first hand. This lecture looks at the historical truths ignored by Mr. Forbes and his fellow Christianists in Congress. I am NOT against the Bible - just those who use it to persecute others like Daddy Dobson's minions at The Family Foundation who will be gathering here in Norfolk in a few weeks to peddle intolerance. Here are some highlights:

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Ministers wonder how I can be wicked enough to attack the Bible.

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I will tell them: This book, the Bible, has persecuted, even unto death, the wisest and the best. This book stayed and stopped the onward movement of the human race. This book poisoned the fountains of learning and misdirected the energies of man.

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This book is the enemy of freedom, the support of slavery. This book sowed the seeds of hatred in families and nations, fed the flames of war, and impoverished the world. This book is the breastwork of kings and tyrants — the enslaver of women and children. This book has corrupted parliaments and courts. This book has made colleges and universities the teachers of error and the haters of science. This book has filled Christendom with hateful, cruel, ignorant and warring sects. This book taught men to kill their fellows for religion’s sake. This book funded the Inquisition, invented the instruments of torture, built the dungeons in which the good and loving languished, forged the chains that rusted in their flesh, erected the scaffolds whereon they died. This book piled fagots about the feet of the just. This book drove reason from the minds of millions and filled the asylums with the insane.

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This book has caused fathers and mothers to shed the blood of their babes. This book was the auction block on which the slave- mother stood when she was sold from her child. This book filled the sails of the slave-trader and made merchandise of human flesh. This book lighted the fires that burned “witches” and “wizards.” This book filled the darkness with ghouls and ghosts, and the bodies of men and women with devils. This book polluted the souls of men with the infamous dogma of eternal pain. This book made credulity the greatest of virtues, and investigation the greatest of crimes. This book filled nations with hermits, monks and nuns — with the pious and the useless. This book placed the ignorant and unclean saint above the philosopher and philanthropist. This book taught man to despise the joys of this life, that he might be happy in another — to waste this world for the sake of the next.

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I attack this book because it is the enemy of human liberty — the greatest obstruction across the highway of human progress. Let me ask the ministers one question: How can you be wicked enough to defend this book?

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Randy, if you are going to talk about the Bible's role in history in your resolution, lets tell the whole story which is very, very ugly because of people like your Christianist political base that use the Bible as an instrument of hate and utterly ignore the Gospel message of Christ.

Nazi Persecution of Gays Is Explored In Exhibit

Many of the Christianists like to allege that the Nazi persecution of gays is without a basis and some of the more lunatic elements even try to blame the Holocaust on gays. But then, accurate honest, accounts of history are NOT a Christianist strong suit. They rewrite history at will to further their theocratic/fascist agenda. Individuals like Oklahoma Rep. Sall Kern, James Dobsons and others who preach an anti-gay message are currently speaking about gays in dehumanizing terms just as their fascist predecessors did about Jews in the lead up to the Holocaust. Christians they are not. Thus, I found this story from the Boston Globe (http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/03/16/nazi_persecution_of_gays_is_explored_in_exhibit_at_uri/) interesting because it looks at a museum exhibit that documents the actual, real truth. Here are some highlights:

In Nazi Germany, some gay men were castrated and prosecuted by the Gestapo under Draconian laws prohibiting homosexuality. Others were subjected to crude medical experiments purported to correct their sexual orientation. Gay men in concentration camps were singled out with distinctive pink triangle badges and assigned backbreaking labor that often killed them. A traveling exhibit from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum uses photographs, documents, and artwork to chronicle the Nazis' arrests and persecution of tens of thousands of gay men from 1933 to 1945.

The exhibit, on display through the end of the month at the University of Rhode Island, gives voice to what its curator describes as "one of the lesser-known stories of the Nazi era." "You could substitute the word homosexual and put in any minority group and see a story of how easy it is to persecute somebody who is outside of the norms of the society," said curator Edward J. Phillips, also acting director of the museum's division of exhibitions.

The Nazis regarded gay men as a socially deviant subclass whose sexual preference threatened the elite and masculine Aryan race they sought to establish. A diagram included in the exhibit likens homosexuality to a contagious infection that could be spread among men by seduction. Sexual relationships between women, already regarded as second-class citizens, were not criminalized, and lesbians were generally seen as less of a cultural threat, Phillips said.

The exhibit begins just before the Nazis rose to power, when an estimated 1.2 million gay men lived in Germany and a gay culture flourished in nightclubs and cafes. But after Adolf Hitler took power, the Nazis began closing gay clubs, and in 1934 the Gestapo asked local police departments to compile lists of men believed to be gay.

In 1943, SS chief Heinrich Himmler approved a medical experiment designed to "correct" gay men of their sexual preferences. Two men died from complications of the surgery, the exhibit says. A highlight of the exhibit is a series of published lithographs by Richard Grune, a gay artist who was arrested and sent to a concentration camp. His works, with titles like "Death Slide to the Crematorium in Concentration Camp Flossenburg" and "Undernourished Prisoners in the Bath," offer unflinching depictions of prisoners as exhausted, skeletal, and tortured.