Pope Francis Warns of ‘Culture of Hate’ Targeting LGBT People

Pope Francis remains utterly inconsistent on the treatment of LGBT individuals.  He recently hatred directed at LGBT individuals and stated that that government leaders targeting LGBT people remind him of the Nazis.  Yet at the same time, the Roman Catholic Church's dogma that demonizes gays and refers to us as "intrinsically disordered."  I'm sorry, but Francis doesn't get to have it both ways especially when he, as Pope has the power to change the Church's position by pronouncing "ex cathedra" a new position on homosexuality by relying on Roman Catholic doctrine that a Pope speaking ex cathedra on issues of faith or morals is infallible.  The reality is that Christian missionaries (and Islamic fundamentalist) exported anti-gay hatred across the globe and until all religious leaders reject this agenda of hate, LGBT people will continue to suffer, sometimes losing their lives. A piece in The Advocate looks at Francis' welcomed statements and his failure to change the Church's condemnation of gays:

Pope Francis said on Friday that government leaders targeting LGBTQ people remind him of the Nazis.

In Rome, the pope warned members of the International Association of Penal Law, "I confess that when I hear some speeches by someone responsible for public order or a government, I am reminded of Hitler's speeches in 1934 and 1936,” according to CNN.

"They are typical actions of Nazism which with its persecutions of Jews, gypsies, people of homosexual orientation, represent a negative model 'par excellence' of a throwaway culture and a culture of hate,” he continued.

Francis did not refer to any specific governments, but LGBTQ people are subject to persecution all over the world. This month alone, five men in Malaysia were sentenced to caning and jail time for attempting gay sex. Ugandan police rounded up more than 100 people at an LGBTQ-friendly bar in Kampala. Activists went on trial after being arrested at a Pride march in Ankara. Marriage equality was overturned in the Cayman Islands. And trans women of color continue to face an epidemic of violence in the United States.

DignityUSA Executive Director Marianne Duddy-Burke . . . . said she hopes Francis’ remarks “are also understood to be applicable within the Church, and that Catholic leaders who say hateful, disparaging and dehumanizing things or act to limit the human rights of LGBTQ people and others immediately change their ways.” [M]any point out that the Catholic church’s teachings on LGBTQ issues have not changed. As The Advocate reported in April, Francis “has also said gay priests are not welcome in the church. He has met with gay and transgender people who described his manner as loving and supportive, yet he has said same-sex couples don’t meet the church’s definition of family and denounced gender-affirmation procedures. The church remains intractably opposed to same-sex relationships; Catholics with same-sex attractions should never act on them, according to church doctrine.”

Is Francis a hypocrite?  You decide, but I am inclined to say "yes."

Christian Activist Group Demands Criminal Probe of Jerry Falwell Jr.

This blog has previously noted stories concerning Jerry Falwell, Jr.'s possible use of Liberty University's assets to enrich himself, his family and friends - especially two young and very attractive young men - who have received sweetheart deals worth millions of dollars. Now, Falwell finds himself with a liberal Christian activist organization calling on the IRS - which polices non-profits spinning off wealth to corporate board members and officers - and Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring to investigate Falwell and the potential misuse and misappropriation of Liberty University assets. In the process, the organization also accuses Falwell of un-Christian conduct and perverting the Christian message.  Frankly, Falwell business transactions involving Liberty assets would seem to deserve a thorough investigation. NBC News looks at the continuing scandal following Falwell.  Here are story excerpts:

An activist Christian group has launched a petition drive to get the Virginia Attorney General’s office and the IRS to open criminal investigations into Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr.

So far Faithful America has collected 10,875 signatures and hopes to reach their goal of 15,000 by this weekend.

“The response has been great so far, more than we expected,” said Rev. Nathan Empsall, the organization’s Campaigns Director. “But that shouldn't come as a surprise given how fed up so many Christians are with the way Falwell and others have hijacked the Gospel to represent their hypocritical own self-interests rather than Christ's teachings of love and justice.”

The drive comes in the wake of exposés by Politico, The Miami Herald and other news outlets which have accused Falwell of, among other things, using the influential and ultra-conservative Christian college to enrich himself and his cronies.

Falwell is also alleged to have engaged in activities that run counter to the Christian college’s ethos like sharing photos of his wife, Becki, in French maid costume with employees, graphically describing their sex life, and drinking and dancing in Miami Beach nightspots.

Empsall, who is also a priest associate at the Episcopal Church of St. Paul & St. James in New Haven, Connecticut, said Faithful America has been critical of Falwell before “when he’s made, for example, anti-Islamic statements.”

“The difference is now we are calling for a criminal investigation because there has been this snowball of stories that point out that there is a potential pattern of criminal self-dealing at Liberty University,” he said. “We’ve always known this guy is an extremist and a hypocrite and he should face social consequences for that. This is the first time we’re calling for legal consequences.”

NBC News has reached out to Liberty University spokesman Scott Lamb and Liberty University Board of Trustees chairman Dr. Jerry Prevo for a response.

Faithful America is a left-of-center group that was founded in 2004 and affiliated with the National Council of Churches of Christ.

Previously, it launched a petition drive demanding the resignation of Franklin Graham from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association for “preaching hatred and Trumpism” and another urging publisher HarperCollins to drop Focus on the Family founder James Dobson “for his discrimination against women, immigrants, and the LGBT community.”

The Link Between Bullying, Social Rejection and LGBT Suicide

The sad reality is that suicides among the LGBT community are higher than in the general population.  This is not due to anything inherently wrong with being LGBT or a higher level of mental illness among those who are LGBT.  Instead, the problem stems from how society treats people in sexual minority groups.  Bullying, of course springs to mind, but also involved is family and societal rejection, all typically fanned by the constant anti-LGBT drumbeat of right wing Christian denominations and, now, a White House regime that is arguing that mistreatment of LGBT individuals in the workplace is perfectly legal. Anyone who thinks that LGBT youth aren't watching and listening to this potentially deadly message is deluding them-self. That supposed "Christians" are in the lead in projecting this message of hatred also directly ties to the growing exodus of the younger generations from religion, a trend that I for one view as positive. A recent piece reviews the linkage between unnecessary suicide deaths and bullying and societal abuse.  Here are highlights: 

Chloe was 12 or 13 years old when she began to question her sexual identity. She felt attracted to girls. She knew she was different from most of her classmates. So she didn’t talk about her feelings at school in the United Kingdom. She didn’t share them with her family, either. She knew they would not approve. “It wasn’t something that would be okay,” she said. A feeling of isolation built up inside her, and Chloe felt more and more like she didn’t fit in. Eventually, she tried to kill herself. Data for 2017 show that 17 percent of all high school students — about one in six — seriously considered killing themselves. That figure was nearly one in every two teens (almost 48 percent) for those who are lesbian, gay or bisexual. And 23 percent of these teens made attempts. Nearly one in three teens (32 percent) who were unsure about their sexuality also thought about ending their lives; 14 percent tried.

Scientists have begun to dig into why suicide risks are higher for LGBTQ+ people, especially teens. . . . The problem, researchers say, seems to stem from how society treats members of these minorities. Changing attitudes toward these teens can help more of them live and thrive. There’s no reason why being a sexual minority means a person must face a higher risk for suicide or other mental-health problems, Mueller says. “What does put kids at risk of suicide is when they feel rejected by families or friends or communities and when they feel ashamed of themselves.” Dealing with all of those stresses, she says, “can be really hard.” Those feelings often emerge when society views those who are different through a lens of stigma. “Stigma is about not valuing people who are different,” explains Ian Rivers. It is about “viewing them as less worthy or less important.” Rivers is a psychologist at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. When society treats people who are in a minority group as if they have less value, those individuals can feel serious stress. In some cases, stigma leads to bullying. “I was isolated from the boys and they started calling me sissy and things like that,” said Sirus, a study participant. The teasing turned into violence. And, he added, “the teachers did not pick it up.” So they did nothing about it.

In 2015, Mueller and her colleagues found a link between bullying and suicides of lesbian, gay and bisexual youths. As bullying increased, so did the rates for young people’s thoughts of ending their lives, the researchers reported in the American Journal of Public Health. But bullying didn’t fully explain why the rates for LGB youth were so much higher than for other young people. . . . “It’s about a lot of other factors — like rejection from peers or families or shame.”

Young people also can internalize other people’s bad attitudes. In other words, they come to believe what others say. So even though it’s not true, they might come to believe that they’re “not good” simply because they are experiencing a same-sex attraction, Mueller says. To make things harder, society typically assumes “that everyone is heterosexual.” That, she says, “automatically puts everyone who isn’t at a disadvantage.” Burdens created by a hostile social environment “fall hardest on the youngest people” in LGBTQ+ groups, says Geoffrey Ream. He’s a professor of social work at Adelphi University in Garden City, N.Y. Ream recently dug into data from the U.S. National Violent Death Reporting System. . . . LGBT youth were 24 percent of the 49 victims ages 12 to 14. LGBT teens also made up 16 percent of the 15- to 17-year olds. Younger people “don’t have the same level of psychological resources” to cope with challenges that older people do, Ream explains. So children and teens are less ready to deal with the abuse that society may heap on them if they are part of a sexual minority. Youths also have fewer options to get out of the house and find resources to help. Family rejection is a big concern, agrees David Huebner. He’s a psychologist at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He and others have found that parents’ rejection ups the risk of health problems, including suicide, among young adult LGB people. Name calling, physical violence and being kicked out of home are obvious examples of rejection. But rejection can also be more subtle. For example, parents might criticize a young person’s dress or behavior for not conforming to gender stereotypes.

Some Republicans Urge SCOTUS To Protect LGBT Employees

LGBT friendly Republicans are about as plentiful as unicorns (especially in the Virginia GOP), but believe it or not a group of Republicans - most former office holders since being gay friendly would guarantee a primary challenge for an incumbent - have filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court of the United States ("SCOTUS") arguing for the Court to rule that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bans employment discrimination against LGBT employees. Their argument is that the plain language of the statute encompasses sexual orientation not just biological sex.  Two the United States Courts of Appeal have agreed with them while the 11th Circuit based in Atlanta unsurprisingly did not, reflecting the overall social and educational backwardness of the states within the 11th Circuit. A piece in The Advocate looks at this unlikely brief.  Here are article excerpts:

Donald Trump and his Justice Department may argue that current federal law doesn’t ban anti-LGBTQ discrimination, but many members of Trump’s party disagree.

More than 30 well-known current and former Republicans have filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the employment discrimination cases the U.S. Supreme Court will hear October 8, The New York Times reports. The court will consider the cases of two men who say they were fired for being gay and a woman who was fired for being transgender, and the signatories to the brief contend that those actions are illegal.

Lower courts have found that such discrimination violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964, holding that the act’s Title VII, banning sex discrimination, applies to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The lawyers representing the employers have contested that interpretation and appealed the rulings to the Supreme Court.

The Republicans signing on to the brief, to be filed with the court this week, are led by Ken Mehlman, former chairman of the Republican National Committee and George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign manager. Mehlman came out as gay in 2010 and became an activist for marriage equality.

Other signatories include several former members of the U.S. House of Representatives, such as Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Tom Campbell, Ryan Costello, and Christopher Shays; former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson; Meg Whitman, the president and CEO of eBay and 2010 California gubernatorial nominee; 2012 presidential candidate Fred Karger; and staffers from the George W. Bush administration.

Numerous other friend-of-the-court briefs regarding these cases are expected to be filed this week; the deadline is Wednesday. More than 150 Democrats in Congress, led by Rep. David Cicilline and Sen. Jeff Merkley, are also filing a brief supporting this interpretation of Title VII. But the Republican brief, which is not endorsed by any current members of Congress, is more surprising.

The Republicans’ document calls for for an expansive reading of the civil rights law but does so using a conservative legal argument — one derived in part from the writings of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, certainly no supporter of LGBTQ equality. It quotes from a book by Scalia and Bryan Garner, saying, “The text [of a law] plainly applies or does not apply by its very words,” even if the legislators who crafted the law did not foresee a “particular circumstance” in which it would apply.

The text of Title VII, the brief says, makes clear that “it is unlawful for an employee’s sex to contribute to an employer’s decision to discharge or otherwise discriminate against the employee. Yet that is exactly what happened in all three cases on review. Two men were discharged because they were gay, which necessarily means that they lost their jobs because they were men who were attracted to men. Had they been similarly situated women — that is, women who were attracted to men — their employers would not have discharged them for such attraction.

“The other plaintiff is a transgender woman whose employer discharged her for representing herself as the woman she understood herself to be. The employer so acted because the employee declined to accede to the demand that employees who had been assigned ‘male’ at birth (or whom the employer otherwise believed to be male in essence) refrain from representing themselves as women. Had the plaintiff been assigned female at birth (or had the employer otherwise believed her to be female in essence), she would not have been discharged for representing herself as a woman. Thus, in all three cases, an employee was fired for attractions or actions that his or her employer would have tolerated for members of another sex.

The brief acknowledges that in 1964, Congress and the American public may not have envisioned the term “sex” applying to sexual orientation or gender identity, but argues that this is not relevant. “As this Court has repeatedly recognized, in Title VII cases as well as cases in other areas of the law, statutes often apply more broadly than their drafters anticipated, and extrinsic evidence of statutory ‘intent’ is irrelevant when the statute’s words are clear,” it states.

The Trump administration, through the Department of Justice, has argued that Title VII does not apply to sexual orientation or gender identity.  . . . .The Equality Act, pending in Congress, would amend the Civil Rights Act and several other federal laws to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, so the matter would no longer depend on courts’ interpretation. The House approved the Equality Act in May, with support mostly from Democrats. Whether it will even come to a vote in the Republican-controlled Senate is doubtful. Trump is on record as opposing the bill.

Mehlman also had an op-ed published in today’s Times arguing that these people suffered unlawful discrimination. “Such treatment is unethical and un-American, and the Supreme Court has the opportunity to read the clear language of Title VII and affirm that it is illegal,” he wrote. “No matter whether the justices take a textualist or practical interpretation, the answer is the same. …

Mehlman obviously doesn't speak for the Christofascists and professional Christians Trump panders to for whom mistreating others is a hallmark and raison d'etre.  For these self-centered hypocrites, it is ALWAYS about discriminating against and harming others.

Pete Buttigieg Continues to Prompt Evangelicals to Show Their True Hate-Filled Nature

The presidential candidacy of Pete Buttigieg - and the fact that he is running in third place currently - has evangelical Christians, or at least the "professional Christians" who make a living disseminating hatred and falsehoods under the guise of religious belief, to go into absolute apoplexy.  Constant shrieks and flying spittle are the norm, especially for a group that has labeled itself as the Gone2Far Movement which has a piece in Christian News Wire - a typically far right Christian "news" outlet.  

As blogger friend Joe Jervis noted - Joe and I have been tracking far right anti-gay "Christian" extremists for over two decades - Gone2Far is a relatively new coalition of long time anti-LGBT extremists Scott Lively, Peter LaBarbera, Brian Camenker, and alleged ex-gay Stephen Black, who Joe, I, and other LGBT activists have tracked for many years as they have peddled anti-gay lies and bogus science.  New to the group is what Jie describes as "a gaggle of hater nobodies you’ve never heard of"  who I suspect are motivated by a desire to get onboard the anti-gay financial gravy train among evangelical circles.   With luck, these hate merchants will finally be seen by the larger public for what they are - extremists who are leeches who prey on the ignorant and gullible while they line their pockets with money made from speaking circuits and books peddled to the sheeple.

On a related note, some say that I am far too hard on evangelicals and that some are decent people.  My problem with such people is that they are cut out of the same cloth as the "good Germans" who did nothing to stop the rise of Hitler or the Holocaust. Good, decent people cannot remain silent in the face of hate, deliberate lies and evil.  Yet the silence of the majority of evangelicals in confronting groups like Gone2Far is deafening.  By their silence, rightly or wrongly, they have tacitly allowed such hate merchants to define them.  If they have a problem with how I describe them, all they need do is speak up and condemn folks like those involved in Gone2Far.  

Meanwhile, here's a sampling of the lunacy and animus being spouted by Gone2Far as set forth in the Christian News Wire piece (note that per these lunatics Buttigieg's candidacy is part of a larger gay conspiracy):  

Mayor Pete Buttigieg is publicly challenging the definition of what a Christian is in the public square.

The culmination of the culture wars has now turned to redefining Christianity. The LGBTQ community has used media, entertainment, and the law to codify their view of sexuality. They have convinced Americans that the homosexual lifestyle is normal and an acceptable practice in the public square. They have, in effect, successfully introduced a neo-morality into the culture. In fact, the LGBTQ community is claiming victory over the traditional values of evangelicals.

Mayor Pete represents the "kill shot" launch by the gay community to now re-define Christianity. This neo-Christianity is made out of their feelings into their image. Pete Buttigieg is the face of their new theology. Buttigieg claims that "God made me this way." An incredible claim in light of the fact the Bible teaches homosexuality is a sin. However, this claim is far more dangerous and sinister than it appears. This claim creates a contradiction and brings into question the coherency of truth claims in the Holy Word of God.

Also, the claim makes the God of scripture a hypocrite. Why would He make people homosexuals and then condemn them as sinners? Buttigieg is challenging underlying assumptions in the infallible word of God. I submit he is redefining Christianity. This attack has been brewing for a long time. The LGBTQ has been seeking ways to diminish the influence of the Bible's unswerving teaching against the gay lifestyle. 

Note the use of the term "gay lifestyle" is derogatory in itself and pushes the lie that sexual orientation is a choice and can be changed.  Never mind what medical and mental health experts say and never mind that the Old Testament to which these folks point to for their authority - the New Testament is silent on homosexuality - was authored by ignorant Bronze Age herders.  The real problem Buttigieg poses for these extremists is two-fold: (i) he shows that gays are normal, responsible people like so many others in society and not the drug addicts and alcoholics the Christofascists have depicted us as for decades, and (ii) he is putting a spotlight on the archaic and untrue myths the Christofascists have based their lives and exclusionary and divisive dogma on. They simply cannot tolerate anything or anyone that makes it clear to others that they have lived their lives based on lies.  They will lash out and try to destroy anyone who exposes their false beliefs.  Mayor Pete had best fasten his seat belt. Their hysteria and hate-filled attacks will likely only increase.

The Coming Demise of Evangelicals as a Political Force

One of the continuing toxic poisons in American politics is, in my view, white evangelicals who seek to impose their reactionary and exclusionary views on all citizens.  Over the last decades, this toxic mindset has taken over the Republican Party and, when looks at the history of the evangelical movement, has made white supremacy a pillar of today's GOP.  The good news is that the political power of the white evangelicals may be about to plummet as younger evangelicals are walking away from what has become a partisan religious movement defined by hatred of others.  A piece in Newsweek looks at what is hopefully the beginning of the end of white evangelical political power, an end hastened in part by evangelicals' embrace of Donald Trump, a man who is the embodiment of everything a true Christian should oppose and find abhorrent. Here are article highlights:

Alex Camire left the church a few months before his pastor announced from the pulpit that the election of Donald Trump was “a miracle of the Lord.”

The 29-year-old Connecticut social worker had been raised in the evangelical tradition; his parents were married in it. But Camire’s faith had started to fail a decade earlier when his church deemed his mother’s alcoholism—and his parents’ subsequent divorce—a sin. Later, a secular college education taught him that “the world”—the community outside the church—wasn’t going to drag him into a cesspool of sex and drugs, as he’d been taught from childhood. His pastor’s outspoken support of Trump convinced him he’d made the right decision.

Californian Jason Desautels similarly began to doubt his faith as a teen. In the week after the Oklahoma City bombing, his church’s minister railed against “sand people” and Muslims. “When it came out that the bomber was a white nationalist, he didn’t apologize or even say anything,” Desautels recalls. “And the adults seemed to be all fine with it. That planted the seed.”

Later, as an Army infantryman in Iraq, Desautels, now 39, moved further from the church. “I was in the land of Father Abraham,” he says. “I had this weird spiritual moment when I realized that these families had lived in this neighborhood for longer than America had been a nation, and here we were telling them what to do.” He cut ties completely with his church after his sister came out as gay and felt she had to apologize to their parents.

Blake Chastain, 35, entered Indiana Wesleyan University the week of 9/11, with hopes of graduating from the seminary. Instead, he began to fall away from the church when he couldn’t reconcile what he was learning in Bible study with his professor’s support for the Iraq War. “Conservative Christianity,” he says, “was at odds with the teachings in the Bible.”

All three men are on the front lines of a growing movement among millennials that is reshaping the evangelical church and the nation’s political landscape. Since the 1970s, white evangelicals have formed the backbone of the Republican base. But as younger members reject the vitriolic partisanship of the Trump era and leave the church, that base is getting smaller and older. The numbers are stark: Twenty years ago, just 46 percent of white evangelical Protestants were older than 50; now, 62 percent are above 50. The median age of white evangelicals is 55. Only 10 percent of Americans under 30 identify as white evangelicals. The exodus of youth is so swift that demographers now predict that evangelicals will likely cease being a major political force in presidential elections by 2024.

To be sure, evangelical Christians have been rewarded for their support of Trump after enduring eight years wandering in Barack Obama’s political desert. They have two new conservative Supreme Court justices, and there have been nine self-professed evangelical Cabinet members, plus a flurry of laws and executive orders clamping down on gender roles, abortion and LGBTQ rights. But experts say this may represent the last bounty for a waning political power. Unlike their parents, the younger generation is not animated by the culture wars; many are pushing for social justice for migrants and LGBTQ people and campaigning against mass incarceration—positions more in line with the Democratic Party. 

The result is a shrinking conservative bloc, something that could weaken white Christian political power—and, consequently, a Republican Party that has staked its future on its alliance with the religious right. It’s a conundrum that the father of modern GOP conservatism, Barry Goldwater, predicted in 1994: “Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem.”

The association of the religious right and the Republican Party has its roots in the 1954 Supreme Court ruling Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, after which white Southerners began to flee public schools following forced desegregation. They opened so-called segregation academies: religious schools that were tax-exempt. When the IRS came after evangelical colleges like Bob Jones University, which officially prohibited interracial dating, the schools were faced with losing their tax-exempt status.

That would have meant financial doom. But a Republican activist named Paul Weyrich—with patronage from Western segregationist beer billionaire Joseph Coors—forged alliances with Southern religious leaders like Jerry Falwell and successfully lobbied to soften IRS enforcement. . . . Republican strategists used the issues of abortion and gay marriage to cement the union and drive right-leaning Christians into the voting booth.

But demographic trends are steadily diluting their outsize clout. Researcher Robert Jones, author of The End of White Christian America, has tracked what he calls a “stair-steps downward trajectory of white Christian presence in the electorate.” In 1992, when Bill Clinton was elected, 73 percent of the electorate was white and Christian. By 2012, that number was 53 percent. “If current trends hold steady, 2024 will be a watershed year—the first American election in which white Christian voters do not constitute a majority of voters,” Jones, who heads the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), tells Newsweek.

[T]heir ranks are now dwindling, driven largely by the youth exodus. According to Jones, white evangelicals constituted 21 percent of the U.S. population when Obama was elected in 2008. Eight years later, in 2016, that number dropped to 17 percent. Today, they make up 15 percent of Americans.

For an analogy, he uses Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s landmark “stages of grief” experienced by the dying and their loved ones to describe what’s happening to evangelicals and American politics. First comes denial, then anger, followed by bargaining, depression and acceptance.

“We are past denial. People see the writing on the wall in terms of demographic change. And that is also why we see immigration taking over and becoming the flagship issue. That and a wall symbolize the resistance to this demographic change,” Jones says. “I think we are somewhere between anger and bargaining. And in many ways, this shotgun marriage between Trump and white evangelicals happened under some duress and is a desperate bargain that you make at the end of life. That is what we’re really seeing here.”

To understand what’s happening among evangelicals, researchers study the results of PRRI’s annual, wide-ranging, 80,000-interview American Values Atlas poll. In the most recent survey, from 2017, 40 percent of individuals under 30 claim “no religious affiliation” (sometimes called “the nones”). “White evangelicals are a big part of that decline,” Jones says. . . . “They cite partisanship,” Jones says. “That’s a big turnoff for young Americans. And so is negative treatment of gay and lesbian people.”

Polls find that upward of 80 percent of young people now support same-sex marriage. That number includes young Republicans and evangelicals under 30. . . . Some major evangelical leaders and thinkers, not surprisingly, reject this assessment.

Christopher Maloney, 32, was raised evangelical, stepped away from his faith and has released a documentary film on the exvangelical movement called In God We Trump. He disagrees with Moore that young evangelicals like him will come back to the fold.

“People around my age and younger were already deconstructing their evangelical faith in large numbers before Trump came along,” he says. “What the 2016 election did was accelerate what was already happening. We had begun edging toward the doors, and when evangelicals embraced Trump we bolted outside. To be honest, I don’t see a return of younger generations to the church as we know it.”

They aren’t interested, he says, in going to a central place to worship anymore, particularly when those fellow churchgoers are Trump supporters. “Millennials largely live by Christian ethics without any formal doctrine or dogma,” he says. “We just don’t need a religious structure to tell us how to be kind to one another.”

The disaffected ranks include women like Dawne Marx, a 53-year-old Texas mother of five, who walked away from her church community in 2016 after decades of voting with the evangelical fold. “I was a single-issue voter, a pro-life voter,” she tells Newsweek. “It was so nice and tidy. I didn’t have to think about anything else.”

Then she saw the images of family separations at the Mexican border and listened as the president casually dismissed the Saudi killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi:

“All of a sudden there is Trump. And children wrapped up in aluminum blankets in cages and this crass, crude man, on a daily basis, saying things like, ‘OK, so a journalist got chopped up.’ And he’s saying, ‘We have a $100 billion contract, and there are a lot of jobs on the line.’ It’s like: They chopped somebody up!”

As one of the individuals in the article correctly noted, conservative Christianity is at odds with the teachings in the Bible.  It has become the home of modern day Pharisees who are the antithesis of what Christians should be. It deserves to die. 

Organized Religion: The Worse Bully of LGBT People

Now, in the midst of the Christmas holiday season, many LGBT individuals across America and so-called Christian areas of the world find themselves disconnected from any religious aspect of the season.  Why?  Very simple: through out much of its history - at least since the 1100's - Christianity has been one of the worse tormentors and enemies of LGBT people. Much of this mistreatment of LGBT individuals traces back to the ignorant writings of the Hebrew Old Testament - ignorance which was sadly also picked up by Islam.  Add to the poison of a few passages in Leviticus the sick need of many to fell superior to others and to have some target for abuse as "other", and organized religion has been a toxic evil to so many LGBT people throughout history since the rise of Christianity and the dissemination of the message of hate by Christian missionaries.  A piece in The Advocate looks at this sad truth.  Here are excerpts:

As a gay youth, I attended church like I attempted suicide: half-heartedly, with a lack of conviction, and pretty sure it wasn’t for me. That makes me one of the lucky ones.

Growing up in Wilmington, Del., in the 1970s and 1980s, I had no idea how lucky I was to be brought up in a hodge-podge of faith traditions. My parents were raised in different Protestant traditions, but my mother had converted to Catholicism to marry (and shortly divorce) her first husband. They had an ethical and moral basis in the teachings of Christianity, but neither was particularly connected to the trappings of any specific tradition.  They were married in the Episcopal Church, the best option for a divorced woman in 1971. Early on, and because of that choice, they were part of a congregation that was less judgmental of difference. 

Additionally, since my parents had met onstage in community theatre, they had many friends who were gay and this was the world into which I was born. I went to Sunday school for a few years and went to services on Christmas Eve and on Easter Sunday.

It wasn’t until I came out to them in the late '80s that the subtle insidiousness of church teachings reared its head. Despite having gay friends in the theatre, in their social groups and even in our living room on a regular basis, having a gay son was not an option my mother wanted to consider. I was told I could never bring a boyfriend home, and she openly confessed to worrying what people would think of her. She worried that people would think she was a bad mother and that she’d done something wrong when they found out she had a gay son.

This was not the reaction I expected. Nowhere in her secular life was I given any clue that she would feel any differently about a gay son. Years later, as I reflected on this painful (and thankfully, brief) period, I came to understand that it must have been feelings ingrained by her own religious upbringing.

Like most LGBTQ+ youth, when I started feeling different and out of place (Steven Carrington on Dynasty was the only significant LGBTQ+ character on TV in those days), I was confused. I was depressed. I was anxious. I’d been the subject of bullying for most of my life,  . . . . In the absence of other factors and in the presence of other LGBTQ+ people in her social circles leads me to believe that the religion of her upbringing had coded these feelings deep into her subconscious, and that is where religion became an issue for me.

For too many LGBTQ+ teens, though, religion IS the issue. According to data from a 2011 study from the University of Texas at Austin’s Research Consortium , gay and lesbian youth who reported that religion was important to them were 38 percent more likely to have had recent suicidal thoughts.  . . . Only 5 percent of the heterosexual youth surveyed had considered suicide.

No person, no matter their sexual or affectional orientation, their gender, their class, their beliefs or their interests should be made to feel inferior, particularly in a community that is meant to provide support and love. Religious bullying, whether direct, or in my mother’s case, subconscious, can serve as one of the most destructive forms of bullying and more has to be done to prevent it.

Religious-based bullying of  LGBTQ+ people is insidious. It can lead to isolation, disrespect, and exclusion. According to the National LGBTQ Task Force, nearly 40 percent of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ+, and many of them are likely homeless because their families’ faith could not accept them for who they are. Worse, it is killing LGBTQ+ young people.

[W]e have a moral obligation to embrace each other’s differences: true faith doesn’t bully. It is about love and support. I’m proud to have recently joined the team at the Tyler Clementi Foundation, where our “True Faith Doesn’t Bully” campaign is working to provide tailored resources to help faith communities affirm the value of the lives of every single individual, no matter their identity. . . . We all deserve that.

I have more or less walked away from Christianity in any organized form.  Like many of their generation, my children are now "Nones" despite having been raised Catholic, and my grandchildren, thankfully, are being spared from Christian indoctrination and all of the self-hate and judgment of others that it sadly embodies.

Indian Supreme Court Strikes Down "Indefensible" Gay Sex Ban

Like so many places that the British colonized and where Christian missionaries took their anti-gay animus, India was subjected to the imposition of criminal penalties for same sex relations.  Also, like many other former colonies, India clung to anti-gay laws - many African countries are still doing so - bizarrely claiming that homosexuality was imported from the west when in fact it was anti-gay hate and religious bigotry that was imported.  Sadly, legislators in many such countries lacked the courage to challenge such idiocy and it has been left to the courts to end the anti-gay legacy of colonial rule.  Now, the Supreme Court of India has struck down that country's ban on homosexuality that dates back 150 years.  In a unanimous ruling, the Court deemed that archaic law irrational and indefensible.  Here are highlights from the New York Times on this most welcomed development:

India’s Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously struck down one of the world’s oldest bans on consensual gay sex, a groundbreaking victory for gay rights that buried one of the most glaring vestiges of India’s colonial past.

After weeks of deliberation by the court and decades of struggle by gay Indians, Chief Justice Dipak Misra said the law was “irrational, indefensible and manifestly arbitrary.”

News of the decision instantly shot around India. On the steps of an iconic courthouse in Bangalore, people danced, kissed and hugged tightly, eyes closed. In Mumbai, India’s pulsating commercial capital, human rights activists showered themselves in a blizzard of confetti.

The justices eagerly went further than simply decriminalizing gay sex. From now on, they ruled, gay Indians are to be accorded all the protections of the Constitution.

“This ruling is hugely significant,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, the South Asia director for Human Rights Watch. With restrictions on gay rights toppling in country after country, the ruling in India, the world’s second-most-populous nation, may encourage still more nations to act, she said.

Still, however historic the ruling of the court, considered a liberal counterweight to the conservative politics sweeping India, gay people here know that their landscape remains treacherous. Changing a law is one thing — changing deeply held mind-sets another.

Much of this may also be true in other parts of the world. But what made India stand out from most — at least until Thursday — was its application of an anachronistic law drawn up by British colonizers during the Victorian era and kept on the books for 150 years.

The law banned sex considered “against the order of nature,” and thousands of people were prosecuted under it. But for gays in India, prison was only one of the risks. The law was often used as a cudgel to intimidate, blackmail and abuse.

In their ruling, the justices said homosexuality was “natural.” They also said that the Indian Constitution was not a “collection of mere dead letters,” and that it should evolve with time.

The court did not rule that the law being challenged, known as Section 377, should be excised altogether. It can still be used, it said, in cases of bestiality, for instance. But it can no longer be applied to consensual gay sex.

The justices seemed moved by the stories they heard from the petitioners about harassment, blackmail, abuse and persecution.  “History owes an apology to members of the community for the delay in ensuring their rights,” Justice Indu Malhotra said.

India has a complicated record on gay issues. Its dominant religion, Hinduism, is actually quite permissive of same-sex love. Centuries-old Hindu temples depict erotic encounters between members of the same sex, and in some Hindu myths, men become pregnant. In others, transgender people are given special status and praised for being loyal.

But that culture of tolerance changed drastically under British rule. India was intensely colonized during the height of the Victorian era, when the British Empire was at its peak and the social mores in England were austere.

In the 1860s, the British introduced Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, imposing up to a life sentence on “whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature.” The law was usually enforced in cases of sex between men, but it officially extended to anybody caught having anal or oral sex.

Not surprisingly, those most be moaning and opposing the ruling were "Christian" groups, some likely bankrolled by American Christofascists who continue to export anti-gay hatred around the world. 

Faux Christian Jack Phillips Again Proves He's A Bigot

Likely emboldened by the Supreme Court's refusal to squarely address the issue of whether claimed or feigned religious belief allows ones to be exempt from non-discrimination laws and public accommodation laws - and encouraged by the hate group, Alliance Defending Freedom ("ADF") - Jack Phillips, the owner of the infamous Masterpiece Cakeshop is back in federal court.  This time he is suing the State of Colorado and defending his refusal to create a cake to celebrate a milestone in the life of a sexual minority.   Let's be blunt.  Phillips is a self-centered bigot who sadly now feels he has a platform from which to encourage similar modern day Pharisees to insult and reject those they don't like. Meanwhile, his legal counsel at ADF won't be happy until homosexuality is re-criminalized.  Anything and anyone who challenges the Christofascists' Bronze Age myth based beliefs must be attacked and crushed. A piece in Politico looks at the new round of bigotry and pretense of martyrdom on display from Phillips.   Here are highlights:

Difficult decisions can be deferred, but not ultimately avoided. So it is that Jack Phillips, the owner of the famous Masterpiece Cakeshop is back in federal court, again defending his refusal to create a cake to celebrate a milestone in the life of a sexual minority.

This time, it’s a birthday cake celebrating a gender transition he’s declining to bake, and it’s not clear how the courts will balance the parties’ competing interests. That’s because of the Supreme Court’s dithering on the issue earlier this summer.

Just two months ago, the Supreme Court confounded expectations on all sides with its side-stepping decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. It looked like the case had nicely teed up the question of how to accommodate two competing interests. On the one side stood a gay couple that wanted to buy a wedding cake from a business that had an obligation under Colorado state law not to discriminate against them on the basis of sexual orientation. On the other stood the owner of the cake shop, Jack Phillips, who claimed that requiring him to create a cake in celebration of a same-sex wedding would violate his constitutionally protected rights of religion and free expression. How would the court resolve these competing claims?

It didn’t. . . . . The case didn’t even provide useful guidance for another case that was then before the court. A florist had refused to create an arrangement for the gay wedding of a couple she’d known for years, citing her religious belief. After sitting on the case for many months, the court finally decided not to hear it, vacated the judgment in favor of the couple, and directed the lower courts to resolve the matter in accordance with its Masterpiece Cakeshop decision. But that is no help at all, unless the case is also found to have involved anti-religious animus.

Now comes Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Elenis. Phillips, represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian [hate] group that represents clients in lawsuits that involve challenges to religious freedom, contests a finding by Aubrey Elenis, the director of the Colorado Civil Rights Division, that there is “sufficient evidence” to support a claim of discrimination in the case.

Sardina revealed that she wanted the cake to have a pink interior and a blue exterior. Then she added that the colors were to celebrate her coming out as transgender on her birthday, some years earlier. At that point, Debi Phillips (Jack’s wife, and the co-owner of the cake shop) declined to create the cake because of the Phillipses’ belief that gender was biological, and immutable.

If that’s all there is to the case, it’s not hard: Sardina should win under the Colorado anti-discrimination law, which protects customers in certain enumerated classes—including sexual orientation and transgender status—from the denial of service in places of public accommodation (like a bakery). . . . . If she had told Debi Phillips that she wanted the blue/pink cake for a gender-reveal party, as a clever way of announcing that she was going to deliver boy/girl twins, we can safely assume the request would have been honored. The complaint admits that the “problem” with the cake is its association with a message the owners don’t agree with. But a pink/blue cake, without more, doesn’t send a “message” about gender transition.

It would be a different story if Sardina had also requested that Jack Phillips write “Happy Gender Transition Day!” because the government can’t compel a business owner to engage in speech he finds objectionable. But the simple act of creating a blue-pink cake doesn’t send any message at all—unless that message is that Phillips refuses to create a given cake for one class of people (those hosting gender-reveal parties) but not for others.

In short, Phillips’ refusal here is the very essence of discrimination, and the court should have no part of endorsing it. In the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, there was a lively exchange in concurring opinions between Justices Neil Gorsuch and Elena Kagan about this very question—whether Phillips’s right to freedom of expression would allow him to refuse to create a cake he knew would be used for a gay wedding, even if that cake were identical to a cake he might make for a “traditional” wedding.

Kagan’s position is that a business owner can’t refuse to bake a cake for one customer, but not another. That doesn’t mean Phillips would have to create a cake reading “I love gay marriage!”, but, as she noted, in the case before the court the couple “requested a wedding cake that Phillips would have made for an opposite-sex couple.” She properly rejected Gorsuch’s view that the controversial confection would have been “a cake celebrating same-sex marriage” because of its significance to the couple and Phillips alike. As Kagan noted: “It was simply a wedding cake – one … suitable for use at [all] weddings.” That’s the only interpretation of the law that can keep it from collapsing into a free-for-all, in which the mere invocation of free expression is enough to defeat any claim of discrimination.

If a business owner can refuse to serve one customer the exact same product that he’d willingly sell another based on an objection to the use to which the product would be put, we might just as well admit that anti-discrimination laws are toothless.

That doesn’t mean Sardina will win the case if it does get to the Supreme Court, though. With Kennedy out of the picture—and Brett Kavanaugh his likely replacement—the conservative justices will be more apt to grant review of close cases, knowing they have the five votes they need to roll back the court’s more progressive decisions.

[I]t’s easy to forget that the discrimination laws are in place for a reason, and that the same logic that would allow religious objectors to deny service to the LGBT community would also permit turning away a couple that wanted to celebrate an interracial wedding.

Personally, I wish decent people would simple boycott Phillips' bakery and allow it to wither away or limp along with only a bigoted Christofascist client base.  I'd prefer to have no cake than have one baked by a foul, self-centered, grandstanding bigot.

Costa Rica's Supreme Court Strikes Down Same Sex Marriage Ban

While Donald Trump, his "Christian Taliban" Vice President, Mike Pence, and their Christofascists supporters are working to rescind same sex marriage equality or at a minimum turn it into a "separate but equal" status without the rights and benefits of heterosexual marriage, progress and equality are on the march  across other parts of the Western Hemisphere. Just this week the Supreme Court of Costa Rica struck down that country's ban on same sex marriage that had been orchestrated by the Catholic Church and evangelical Christian groups who believe their rights and beliefs supersede those of others and who rather than loving their neighbors per Christ's admonition, hate anyone who looks different than them or who holds different beliefs.   The Costa Rica ruling follows one earlier this year by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights which will pressure even reactionary Catholic Church bastions like Honduras to strike down religious based discriminatory laws.   Interestingly, Costa Rica's new president, Carlos Alvarado, campaigned on a pro-gay marriage platform and won.  Here are highlights via Reuters:

Costa Rica’s top court has ruled that a ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, a decision seen as a win for gay rights activists and welcomed by the country’s new president.

The Supreme Court gave lawmakers up to 18 months to legalize gay marriage, which has long been opposed by the Roman Catholic Church and evangelical groups in the Central American nation.

President Carlos Alvarado, who came to power earlier this year on a pro-gay rights platform, has publicly advocated same-sex marriage and vowed to implement the ruling.

“Our commitment to full equality remains intact,” he tweeted on Thursday. “We will continue to boost actions that guarantee no person will face discrimination for their sexual orientation or gender identity.”

The decision follows a judgment issued in January by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), the top rights body of the Americas based in Costa Rica.

It said its signatory member countries, including Costa Rica, must grant equal rights to same-sex couples, including the right to marry.

The change is likely to face stiff opposition from conservative and evangelical lawmakers in Costa Rica.

But Supreme Court judge Fernando Castillo told reporters after the ruling that the ban on gay marriage would automatically cease to exist if parliament failed to change the law by the deadline.

Many countries in mainly Catholic Latin America and the Caribbean ban same-sex marriage, but that is slowly changing.

Argentina, Colombia and Uruguay have all dropped their opposition in recent years.  “(To) those who are against this, we say live and let live,” said Castillo. “Many oppose for religious reasons, but the Bible says love your neighbor.”

As same sex marriage continues to spread across South and Central America, the America envisioned by Trump?pence and their toxic and hypocrisy-filled evangelical supporters will increasingly be on the wrong side of history.

Pulse Massacre Gunman’s Wife Knew of Plot

As USA Today is reporting, the tragic massacre at the Pulse night club could have been prevented had the wife of the gunman, Omar Mateen, had warned authorities of what her husband was planning to do.  Sometimes sins of omission are nearly as bad as sins of commission.  49 lives lost and dozens of other lives forever damaged all because she failed to do the right and moral thing.  Hopefully, her defense attorneys are not successful in alleging that she is innocent and she pays a severe penalty for what she knowingly allowed to happen.  Here are article highlights:

A handwritten statement given to the FBI by the wife of Pulse nightclub gunman Omar Mateen says she saw him prepare for the deadly attack for months and knew that the LGBT nightclub was his target. 

The 12-page statement, quietly released by federal authorities at the end of December in a batch of records in the case, was taken hours after the June 12, 2016 shooting. The attack left 49 dead and dozens of others injured. Noor Salman was questioned for hours, without a lawyer, after authorities learned her husband was the gunman behind the attack. 

She was arrested last year on federal charges of providing material support to a terrorist and tampering with evidence but has pleaded not guilty, claiming she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. She said Mateen abused her and claims she did not know of his plot.

But her defense conflicts with the signed statement she gave to the FBI, which details her knowledge of Mateen's planning and his path to carry out an attack on behalf of the Islamic State.

She told agents multiple times she knew his plans and that he was going to attack the Orlando club when he left their home.

She told agents she knew "my fears had come true and he did what he said he was going to do. I was in denial and I could not believe that the father of my child was going to hurt other people."

The statement includes that during a two-year span before the attack. Mateen would browse jihad websites almost everyday and frequently watch beheading videos. He was angry and frustrated about treatment of Muslims in the Middle East and talked about retaliating against Americans.

"He said if he did jihad everybody would know who he is," Salman wrote in the statement.

Salman's attorneys have been fighting against the use of the statement in court, claiming that she was in custody and had not been read her Miranda rights, according to the Orlando Sentinel. 

Prosecutors have said she was not under arrest and that all of her statements were voluntary, though she told agents several stories before writing the statement, which included an apology for lying to the FBI. 

Two days before the shooting, Salman saw Mateen looking at the website for the club. When she saw what he was doing, he said, "this is my target," the statement reads. 

Salman told FBI agents, "I knew that the time to attack the club was close."  The night before the attack, he left the house and looked "pumped up," she wrote in the statement, adding he told her, "This is the one day."

"I knew when he left the house he was going to Orlando to attack the Pulse nightclub," she wrote.

The larger issue, of course, is that pastors and mullahs are allowed to spew hatred towards others under the guise of "deeply held religious beliefs."  Worse yet, the organizations they represent typically enjoy tax exempt status, so every taxpayer is indirectly underwriting their messages of hate.   Personally, I believe that is time for churches and mosques to lose all tax exempt status. 

Fundamentalist "Christians" and Muslims: United in Anti-Gay Hatred

Pink News is reporting that the Islamic executioner responsible for having numerous men suspected of being gay thrown from rooftops of tall buildings has been captured by Iraqi security forces.  These horrific murders were motivated by ISIS' selective reading of the Koran which is not consistent with Islam during its golden age.  Back here in America, Right Wing Watch ("RWW") is reporting on the efforts of self-style fundamentalist Christian "leaders" to “re-horrify society about the sin of homosexuality."  Like their Islamic extremists counterparts, this effort is based on a selective reading of the Bible which transforms the Bible into a message of hatred.  Indeed, the only difference between the two groups is the degree of violence - at least so far - the "Christians" are willing to use against gay individuals.  As is the norm with these "Christians" mentioned by RWW, neither Linda Harvey nor Peter LaBarbera - both of who I have had email debates with in the past - have any legitimate credentials to qualify them as experts on sexuality, mental health or medical issues.  Both merely set up "ministries" that allow them to shrill for money while disseminating hatred.   Here are highlights from the Pink News piece:

Security forces in Iraq have captured a ISIS executioner who was notorious for homophobic murders.  Thousands of LGBT people have been displaced in Iraq and Syria, as the terrorist group known as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) continues to actively target and execute gay men. 

The terrorist group has taunted the West with a string of  ‘death to gays’ execution videos, showing men accused of homosexuality being thrown off buildings and pelted with stones.

One of the ISIS executioners who most aggressively targeted gay people was captured this week.  Abu Omer, a senior jihadi executioner known as ‘White Beard’, had ruled the city of Mosul with an iron fist until the city was retaken by security forces last year.  . . . . according to The Times, he was arrested on January 1 after officials were tipped off about his hiding place in the city.

Among the vicious attacks: ISIL has tied nooses around these men’s necks and dragged them behind trucks, burned them alive, thrown them off buildings and stoned them to death.

The report states: “ISIL has unleashed a reign of terror against civilians and vulnerable minorities living in areas it has seized, including barbarous violence against LGBTQ people.  “ISIL’s extreme ideology is interpreted by its followers to require the death penalty for those who engage in sexual relations outside of heterosexual marriage, including same-sex sexual relations.”

Turning to the Right Wing Watch article, note how these parasitic American Taliban members repeat the lie that gays are sexual predators (most are, in fact, heterosexual men):

On a recent episode of her “Mission America” radio show, Linda Harvey interviewed fellow anti-LGBTQ activist Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality about the importance of working to “re-horrify” society about the sin of homosexuality.

The two lamented that homosexuality is now widely accepted in America, with Harvey voicing her alarm that it is even welcomed in public schools where “predators” are allowed to use LGBTQ clubs to target children for recruitment.

“So many of these groups are predators,” she said. “I believe that the homosexual clubs in schools are just red flags for predators. I think that they exist there as an audience to continue to fast track kids into the lifestyle, network with adults—I mean, who knows what goes on there.”

“How do we re-horrify people about the sin of homosexuality?” she wondered. “People are becoming so comfortable with this, even people on our side. We need to re-horrify them.” 

From my past interactions with both Harvey and LaBarbera, in my opinion, they are mentally unbalanced and might benefit from a mental health intervention.