The Gathering Storm in America's South

Thankfully, over the last decade and especially since 2017 Virginia has effectively ceased to be a southern state and has embraced modernity and Democrat political control.  Thus, Virginia was the first state in the South to see a gubernatorial "stay home" order - Kentucky, North Carolina and Louisiana, also with Democrat governors followed suit.  Only much later did a few other states - e.g., Georgia and Florida - issue such orders although Florida's order exempts church gatherings from the restrictions.  Why the difference?  Simple: all the other states are "red states" with Republican governors eager to kiss Donald Trump's ass and beholden to Fox News and fearful of their knuckle dragging base.  We have yet to see the consequences of these failures to act as urged by medical experts.  A piece New York Times looks at Tennessee as a case study of the Republican failure to heed medical experts.  Note the governor's idiotic call for mayors and other local leaders to pray even as he ignored medical experts. Here are article excerpts:

NASHVILLE — On March 22, when Nashville’s mayor John Cooper closed nonessential businesses here, it was a terrible blow to companies and shops still reeling from the tornado that tore through Middle Tennessee on Super Tuesday. Small businesses struggle in the best of times, and a one-two punch like that — a natural disaster followed by a lethal pandemic — will almost certainly force some of them to close for good.

But it had to be done. Nashville’s courts and schools were already closed, but the crowds on Lower Broadway, the heart of Nashville’s tourist district, showed no sign of dissipating . . . Even after the Nashville Board of Health voted unanimously to shut the honky-tonks down, several bar owners said they would not comply unless ordered to do so by the governor of Tennessee.

Such orders have been slow in coming here, and in nearly every other state in the American South. Tennessee governor Bill Lee was slow to end the legislative session and send members of the Tennessee General Assembly home to their districts, slow to close public schools, slow to suspend church services, slow to shutter restaurants and gyms.

Many city charters in Tennessee prevent local leaders from issuing their own orders, and mayors begging for a statewide directive got none. . . . . On March 16Mr. Lee told local leaders around the state that mandates weren’t necessary to enforce social-distancing guidelines: “We’re not issuing orders, we’re issuing guidance and strong suggestions,” Mr. Lee said. “We don’t have to mandate people not do certain behavior because Tennesseans follow suggestions.”

As it turns out, they don’t. . . . where I expected to find a deserted parking lot, it was business as usual on a sunny spring Saturday. Nashville has received hundreds of reports of similar violations.

On March 30, when Mr. Lee issued an executive order shutting down nonessential businesses, he stopped short of requiring Tennesseans to stay home. “It is deeply important that we protect personal liberties,” he said, ignoring tens of thousands of health professionals who argued that nothing less than a stay-at-home order would save this state from disaster. And not just this state.

Fort Campbell, a U.S. Army base that straddles the Tennessee-Kentucky border, restricted travel to Nashville. And Andy Beshear, the Democratic governor of Kentucky, urged his citizens not to enter Tennessee . . . . If you ultimately go down over that border and go to a restaurant or something that’s not open in Kentucky, what you do is you bring the coronavirus back here.”

Kentucky, which not only elected a Democratic governor but also expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, is an outlier in the South.

What does it mean to live though a pandemic in a place with a high number of uninsured citizens, where many counties don’t have a single hospital, and where the governor delayed requiring folks to stay home? Across the South, we are about to find out.

Viruses are not partisan. Science itself is not partisan. Nevertheless, Covid-19 has become a partisan issue here in the South because our governors have followed the lead of both [Trump] the president, who spent crucial early weeks denying the severity of the crisis, and Fox News, which downplayed concerns about the pandemic as Democratic hysteria. That’s why every governor who has issued a deeply belated shelter-in-place order is a Republican.

In that March 16 conference call with mayors and county leaders around Tennessee, Mr. Lee offered some advice: “I want to encourage you to pray. . . . . I want you to know that you’re being prayed for as leaders in your community that you will have wisdom and discernment.”

I, too, pray for my fellow Tennesseans. I pray for the success of researchers racing for a vaccine. I pray for the safety of every medical team working to save lives. But I also pray for our leaders to lead, to put the safety of their citizens far, far above partisan pandering. And when the entire medical community — people who are putting their very lives on the line for us — are begging for help, the answer isn’t prayer alone. It’s also action.

 One can only hope Republican idiocy doesn't lead to tragedy, but if it does, I hope citizens will hold their foolish, partisan governors accountable. 

Limbaugh Demonstrates the Continued Evil of Homophobia

Rush Limbaugh - a thrice divorced study in misogyny - who is a sycophant and cheerleader of Donald Trump (another man who cares little about the sanctity of marriage) recently attacked Pete Buttigieg and maligned his marriage to his husband. This after Trump awarded Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom, thereby severely denigrating the value of the award.  In doing so, Limbaugh - and by extension Trump - clearly was pandering to the anti-gay Christofascists who, along with white supremacists make up the core of Trump's base.  The entire episode underscores the continuing evil of homophobia and hate based religion belief that continues to foster it.  A piece at CNN reminds us of the work that needs to be done to rid the world of the evil of homophobia and those who continue to fan the flames of hate and bigotry.  Here are highlights: 

This week lawmakers in Iowa are debating whether a teacher can say "Pete Buttigieg is gay" in the classroom without first notifying parents.   I wish I were kidding but I am not.

The bill, which was introduced by 13 Republicans and advanced to the full House Education Committee on Monday, would require that lessons touching on the topic of sexual orientation or gender identity first be approved by parents, who would then have the option of sending a note to the principal excusing their children from class. It's the kind of story that supports the uncomfortable truth Rush Limbaugh spoke of during a homophobic rant he delivered on his radio show Wednesday, a week after Melania Trump hung a Presidential Medal of Freedom around his neck. Limbaugh mused about the discomfort some voters would experience watching Buttigieg kiss his husband on the debate stage, especially if he's standing next to, as he put it, "Mr. Man, Donald Trump."

As offensive as Limbaugh's remarks about Buttigieg were (and as ironic as his holding up Trump as the epitome of manliness were, considering it was the gay dude who volunteered to fight for this country and the straight one who pleaded "bone spurs"), the reality is homophobia is not theoretical. As the lawmakers in Iowa are showing, it is actively practiced. There will be people who will see Trump's many alleged infidelities (which he denies) as well as his well-documented bullying as quintessential masculine behavior and will dismiss Buttigieg's levelheadedness and affection toward his husband as effeminate. And because homophobia is ultimately an extension of misogyny — that is, to be female is to be less than a man — some of the same prejudices that women seeking the highest office face also plague Buttigieg. That doesn't mean fair-minded people should placate homophobes, misogynists and or racists to win an election — although that does happen. It only means that when a loudmouth like Limbaugh spews his vitriol, people should not be surprised. Remember, he would not be a millionaire if a significant number of people didn't agree with him. So, the question isn't whether or not we should chastise the blowhard messenger, it's what are we doing to challenge the hateful message? Prejudice did not go away.  The people who listen to Limbaugh did not and will not go away. This is not meant to conflate supporting Buttigieg with fair mindedness. Only to remove who he loves off the list of reasons to not vote for him. Limbaugh recently revealed he was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. He may survive it. He may not. But one thing for sure is the attitudes of those who delight in his hateful speech will remain.

So be mad at Limbaugh all you want. Just know there is a difference between how things are and how things should be. The bridge between the two is not constructed from denial and despair but rather acknowledgement of the enemy — in this case, it's prejudice — and a determination not to allow it to prevail.

"Conservative" Religion Is Fueling Hate and the Partisan Divide

As regular readers know, I view religion as one of the most poisonous forces throughout human history that has fueled hatred, violence, and mass murder over and over again over the centuries with any beneficial side effects some argue religion provides being far out weighed by the negatives. Religion has time and time again been used to label others as "other" and/or worthy of death, be it in India and Pakistan, the Middle East, 17th century France, or Northern Ireland.  In the age of Trump, religion - in this case "conservative" Christianity is repeating religion's toxic impact on society and fueling political partisanship and a willingness on the part of Republicans to destroy America's democracy in order to cling to power. In my view, no true follower of Christ can be a Trump supporter or Republican nowadays and those who do so put their hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy on open display as they support the caging of children, white supremacy and a man who is the personification of the seven deadly sins.  A lengthy piece at CNN looks at religion's toxic role in dividing American society.  The good news is that over the long term, conservative Christianity is dying in America.  It's death cannot come soon enough in my opinion.  Here are article excerpts:

The religious and cultural divide between Democratic and Republican voters is widening, pointing toward even greater partisan polarization and social tension as the nation careens into a possible impeachment vote against President Donald Trump and potential record turnout in the 2020 presidential election.

An extensive national study released Monday by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute showed that voters in each party now hold antithetical views not only on issues that dominate the immediate political debate -- such as health care and impeachment -- but also on deeper changes in the nation's demography, culture, race relations and gender roles, according to detailed results the institute provided to CNN. While whites who identify as Christians still represent about two-thirds of all Republicans, they now compose only one-fourth of Democrats, according to results provided by the Pew Research Center from a new study it released last week. Americans unaffiliated with any religion, and racial minorities who identify as Christians, now each make up a bigger share of the Democratic coalition than white Christians do, Pew found. Both groups remain only relatively minor components of the GOP coalition.

On the religious front, just as in those other arenas, the groups that favor Democrats are clearly growing. Not only have the religiously unaffiliated expanded since 2009 from about 1 in 6 to 1 in 4 adults, but the share of Americans who ascribe to non-Christian faiths, a group that also leans strongly Democratic, has edged up from 5% to 7% of the population over that time, Pew found. Simultaneously, white Christians have fallen as a share of all American adults -- from just over half in 2009, according to Pew and other data, to around two-fifths today.

The challenge for Democrats is that their potential gains from the growing groups are being muted by an increasing tilt toward the GOP among the groups that are shrinking, in this case whites who identify as Christian. (The same dynamic is evident among other contracting groups such as whites without college degrees.)

Trump has accelerated the trends on both sides of that equation, consolidating the GOP's position among blue-collar, older, non-urban and evangelical whites at the price of sparking intense resistance among younger, white-collar, nonwhite and metropolitan voters.

[E]ven as white Christians have declined as a share of the population, more of that shrinking group is aligning with Republicans. In 2009, Pew found 51% of white Christians identified as Republicans, while 37% considered themselves Democrats (the rest were independents). Today that 14-point partisan gap has more than doubled: In the latest Pew results, 63% of white Christians identify as Republicans, compared with 30% who identify as Democrats. The movement has been even sharper among white evangelical Protestants. Their share of the overall population is also shrinking: It fell to 16% in the latest Pew results, down from 19% in 2009. In 2009, they were about twice as likely to identify as Republicans (61%) as Democrats (30%), according to figures provided by Gregory Smith, Pew's associate director of research. Today 75% of white evangelicals call themselves Republicans, while just 19% identify as Democrats, a ratio of nearly 4 to 1.

Democrats rely on voters who reflect the nation's growing racial and religious diversity, while the contracting population of white Christians -- especially white evangelical Protestants -- tilt more toward the GOP as a vehicle to protect values and a vision of America that they believe is under siege from the forces of change. Across the key changes reshaping American culture, the two groups rendered almost inverse verdicts. On gender, roughly three-fifths of adults who approve of Trump agreed that "these days society seems to punish men just for acting like men." Three-fourths of adults who disapprove of Trump disagreed. The divide between the two sides was even more pronounced on issues relating to race. Fully 68% of those who approve of Trump agreed that "Today, discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities." Three-fourths of those who disapprove of Trump disagreed with that sentiment. At the heart of these contrasts are the inimical views of white evangelical Protestants and religiously unaffiliated Americans (of all races), which now arguably represent the core of each party's coalition. While two-thirds of white evangelicals, for instance, say discrimination against whites is as big a problem as discrimination against minorities, more than 7 in 10 among the religiously unaffiliated disagree. Two-thirds of white evangelicals say immigrants are "invading" America; three-fourths of the religiously unaffiliated disagree. Three-fourths of white evangelicals say socialists have taken over the Democratic Party; two-thirds of the unaffiliated say racists now control the Republican Party. [T]he long-run threat to Republicans clearly emerges from these new studies: The party, especially as defined by Trump, faces huge resistance among the groups that are growing in society, while the groups most drawn to his racial nationalism -- such as white evangelicals -- are shrinking. Given that pace of change, it's an open question how long Republicans can rely on the Trump strategy of squeezing bigger margins from shrinking groups. On most key measures, from racial diversity to the shift away from Christian faiths, the changes reshaping America are more pronounced among the youngest generations. Among adults younger than 30, only 1 in 4 are white Christians, the Public Religion Research Institute found, with the religiously unaffiliated and those who practice non-Christian faiths accounting for nearly half and non-white Christians making up the remaining fourth.

This wave of new data on religion and partisan allegiance underscores the broader conclusion that American politics in 2020, and likely for years beyond, promises an epic collision between what America has been and what it is becoming.

Brazil's Supreme Court Rules Homophobia Is a Crime

Brazil Supreme Court.

As Brazil's horrid right wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, takes steps to wage war on LGBT Brazilians much as Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, has waged war on LGBT Americans, the Brazil's Supreme Court has voted that homophbia and anti-LGBT discrimination is a crime.  Both Trump and Bolsonaro are motivated against LGBT citizens for the same reason: they depended on the support of far right Christians for their election to office and they need the same ignorance and hate embracing "Christians" to maintain whatever popular support they continue to enjoy. That said, Bolsonaro is much more cut out of the same cloth as Mike Pence - a man some think is a deeply closeted and self-loathing gay. How the Court's ruling will impact Bolsonaro's wave of attacks at LGBT rights remains to be seen, but hopefully LGBT rights will prevail over Bolsonaro's campaign of anti-LGBT hatred.  Aljazeera looks at the Court's ruling.  Here are excerpts:

A majority in Brazil's Supreme Court has voted to make homophobia and transphobia a crime, like racism, a decision coming amid fears the country's far-right president will roll back LGBT social gains.

Six of the Supreme Federal Tribunal's 11 judges have voted in favour of the measure. The five other judges will vote in a court session on June 5, but the result will not be modified. The measure will take effect after all the justices have voted.

Racism was declared a crime in Brazil in 1989 with prison sentences of up to five years. The court's judges ruled that homophobia should be framed within the racism law until the country's Congress approves legislation specifically dealing with LGBT discrimination.

Brazil's Senate is dealing with a bill to criminalise discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender with sentences of up to five years.

"Racism is a crime against flesh and blood, whether it is a member of the LGBT community, a Jew or an Afro-descendant," justice Luiz Fux said Thursday. The court's judges said the ruling was to address an omission that had left the LGBT community legally unprotected.

While same-sex marriage is legal in Brazil, it is still a dangerous country for members of the LGBT community and has a large evangelical movement often critical of gay rights. According to the rights group the Grupo Gay da Bahia, 420 LGBT people were killed across Brazil in 2018, while at least 141 have been killed so far this year.
 President Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain who assumed office on January 1, has a history of offensive comments about gay people, black individuals, women and other minorities, openly acknowledging he is a homophobe. He has said he would rather have a dead son than a gay son.

The ruling "comes at a very good moment, when we have a head of state who is LGBT-phobic," said Bruna Benevides, president of the Niteroi Diversity group. "The Supreme Court assumed the responsibility to protect us."

Would that the U.S. Supreme Court would hand down such a ruling.  The situation in Brazil is a reminder that regardless of the country, right wing Christians are an evil and a threat to the rights of both minorities and the secular majority.

The Far Right's Effort to Eliminate the Establishment Clause

In addition to guaranteeing freedom of religion, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states: says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”  It's a provision increasingly ignored by the far right and the political whores in the Republican Party who seemingly have no limits on how far they will go in seeking to force far right Christian dogma on the entire nation and all of its citizens.  Between red state anti-abortion laws and the Trump/Pence regime's new "conscience rule" that exempts right wing Christians from the state and federal non-discrimination laws, America has a de facto established religion.  Worse yet, due to the tax-exempt status granted to churches and the plethora of  "ministries" so loved by Christofascists, all of us are underwriting this de facto established religion.  All of this would shock the Founding Fathers who knew well the evil of an established church.  A column in the New York Times looks at the phenomenon which violates the U.S. Constitution and puts the religious freedom of everyone else at risk.  Here are highlights:

It’s almost exactly a year since Irish voters, by an overwhelming two-thirds majority, threw off the shackles of the Roman Catholic Church and repealed the country’s constitutional provision banning abortion. On Friday, voters are expected to defy the bishops again and repeal the provision that requires at least four years of living apart before a couple can apply for a divorce. (Ireland legalized same-sex marriage by popular vote back in 2015.)

Back in Alabama, the state’s governor, Kay Ivey, issued this official statement when she signed the abortion ban into law: “To the bill’s many supporters, this legislation stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians’ deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God.”

I lack the social science expertise to explain the opposite trajectories of our two countries: Ireland marching proudly into the future, while the United States is reconfiguring itself into a theocracy that would have appalled our Founding Fathers. (Abortion, by the way, was legal at the nation’s founding, and for much of a century afterward.)

But I do know something about the United States Constitution. If the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause means anything, it has to mean that God’s will cannot be a constitutional justification for a law that erases an individual right.

[I]t’s past time for the rest of us to step back and consider the impact of religion’s current grip on public policy — not only on the right to abortion, but on the availability of insurance coverage for contraception in employer-sponsored health plans and on the right of gay and transgender individuals to obtain medical services without encountering discrimination.

The Establishment Clause says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” But we don’t hear much about it these days. It has shrunk noticeably at the hands of the current Supreme Court, in contrast to the First Amendment’s other religion clause, the Free Exercise clause, much in favor with today’s majority.

The only Supreme Court justice who ever linked abortion and the Establishment Clause was John Paul Stevens, now nine years into retirement and, at age 99, author of a new memoir.

Thirty years ago, in a case called Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, the court considered a Missouri law that placed several restrictions on access to abortion. The law contained a preamble declaring it to be a “finding” of the state legislature that “the life of each human being begins at conception.”

Justice Stevens, alone, disagreed. The preamble was “an unequivocal endorsement of a religious tenet of some but by no means all Christian faiths,” he wrote in his separate opinion. It “serves no identifiable secular purpose,” he continued, adding, “That fact alone compels a conclusion that the statute violates the Establishment Clause.”

Stevens explained: “Bolstering my conclusion that the preamble violates the First Amendment is the fact that the intensely divisive character of much of the national debate over the abortion issue reflects the deeply held religious convictions of many participants in the debate.” He concluded, “the Missouri legislature may not inject its endorsement of a particular religious tradition into this debate.”

The court will face another Establishment Clause test, which it will predictably fail, in a year or so when it confronts the Trump administration’s Religious Exemption Rule. This rule grants employers who have religious objections to birth control an opt-out from the Affordable Care Act’s mandate to cover contraception in the employee health plan. The rule represents a metastasis from the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision in 2014, . . . the Trump rule offers no such workaround. Women with the misfortune to work for anti-contraception employers will become second-class citizens, their statutory right to full health care benefits sacrificed to protect the boss from complicity in the sin of birth control.

In the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, 14 leading scholars of the Constitution’s religion clauses have filed a brief arguing that the rule manifests unconstitutional “religious favoritism,” an “unyielding preference for religious interests over any conceivable secular interest,” while shifting “serious burdens to third parties.”

This month, the administration issued an expanded “conscience rule” to permit health care workers, down to the level of receptionist, to opt out of involvement with procedures to which they have moral or religious objections. Another new rule to be issued shortly would limit protections for transgender patients seeking even ordinary health care by expanding opt-outs for providers who have religious objections to treating them. These new measures, carrying out [Trump's] the president’s pledge to serve the interests of his allies on the religious right, will undoubtedly be the subject of lawsuits.

[B]efore the end of the current term, we will have a better idea of whether there’s anything left of the Establishment Clause when the court decides the pending case on the constitutionality of a 40-foot cross on public land in Maryland. Lurking in the background of this case is the argument that the Establishment Clause permits any religious favoritism short of actual coercion of non-adherents. You don’t like the public display of sectarian symbols? No problem — no one’s making you look at them.

It took Ireland many years and much pain to claim the secular freedom its people now enjoy. It’s taking us just a few years of disingenuous politics to hurl us backward to a place many of us never imagined.

Be very afraid.  The far right, especially the Christofascists represent a clear and present danger to constitutional government.

Facing Backlash Brunei Says It Will Not Enforce Gay Sex Death Penalty

Protesters outside the Dorchester hotel in London, owned by Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah.

I continue to see fundamentalist religions of all stripes as a bane on human existence and responsible for far more misery and death than their often pathetic charitable endeavors can ever outweigh. Fundamentalism, be it Christian or Islamic, puts literal interpretations of selective passages from supposed scripture to target those who do not conform or who hold differing faiths,  By both design and default, hatred of others and a division of society are the primary fruits of fundamentalism.  Fortunately, both in the USA and around the world - at least outside of Muslim countries - more and more people are recognizing fundamentalist religion and its message of hate and inhumanity towards others as reprehensible and unacceptable.  This is the lesson the Sultan of Brunei has learned the hard way after implementing "Sharia law" that would subject gays to death by stoning. The backlash to this medieval law has been wide and intense, ranging from boycotts of the top tier hotels owned by the Sultan to nations refusing to have their personnel in Brunei.   A piece in The Guardian looks at the Sultan's announcement that the barbaric law will not be enforced (while an improvement, it needs to be repealed).  Here are article highlights:

Brunei’s Sultan, Hassanal Bolkiah, has extended a moratorium on the death penalty to incoming legislation on punishments for gay sex, after a global backlash led by celebrities such as George Clooney and Elton John.

The country provoked an outcry when it rolled out its interpretation of Islamic laws, or sharia, on 3 April, punishing sodomy, adultery and rape with death, including by stoning.
Brunei has consistently defended its right to implement the laws, . . . . However, in a rare response to criticism aimed at the oil-rich state, the sultan said on Sunday that the death penalty would not be enforced in the implementation of the sharia penal code order (SPCO).

The vastly wealthy sultan, who once piloted his own 747 airliner to meet the former US president Barack Obama, often faces criticism from activists who view his absolute monarchy as despotic, but it is unusual for him to respond.

The sultan’s office released an official English translation of his speech, which is not common practice.

“Both the common law and the sharia law aim to ensure peace and harmony of the country,” he said. “They are also crucial in protecting the morality and decency of the country as well as the privacy of individuals.”

The law’s implementation, which the UN condemned, prompted celebrities and rights groups to seek a boycott on hotels owned by the sultan, including the Dorchester in London and the Beverley Hills hotel in Los Angeles.

Several multinational companies have since banned staff from using the sultan’s hotels, while some travel companies have stopped promoting Brunei as a tourist destination.

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.

The Continued Fraud of "Ex-Gay Conversion Therapy"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church Turn HIV Into Heterosexual Epidemic

Throughout Russia's history the Russian Orthodox Church has typically been on the side of autocracy, has fought any and every progressive idea, and worried more than anything else about its own wealth and power.  Indeed, the Church opposed even small moderate changes that might have helped Russia avoid the horrific 1917 revolutions.  Now, Putin, like some of the most insidious tsars from Russia's past has allied himself with the Russian Orthodox Church to bolster his base of power .  In exchange for such support, Putin has given the Church free reign to push its archaic, anti-modernity, anti-knowledge based agendas.  Adding to the toxic mix has been the efforts of American Christofascists to export their anti-gay animus and contempt for modern democratic norms.  In Russia, this embrace of ignorance is fueling a HIV epidemic that is rapidly ravaging the heterosexual population.  Unlike other modern nations that are seeing their rate of increase of HIV cases drop, Russia is seeing explosive increases that rival those of sub-Saharan Africa, an area known for its lack of education and susceptibility to Christofascist propaganda.  A piece in Politico looks at the disaster taking place in Russia.  Here are excerpts:   

The Kremlin and its allies are pushing a socially conservative, hands-off, and often church-influenced approach to sexual and reproductive health, as well as drug policy. Fueling an epidemic, state policies and inaction have led to more cases than ever of Russians contracting or dying from HIV/AIDS.

At least 14,631 Russians died from AIDS-related symptoms in the first half of 2017—an increase of more than 13 percent from the year earlier. Russia now hosts the largest HIV epidemic in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, which, along with the Middle East and North Africa, make up the world’s only two regions where the rate of HIV cases is rising. “It’s explosive,” says Christopher Beyrer, an epidemiologist and professor at Johns Hopkins University who previously served as president of the International AIDS Society and helped run an anonymous HIV testing facility here in Moscow before pulling out due to Russian policy hostile to U.S. funding. “The policies that they have been sticking to in the Russian Federation and attempting to impose in countries they seek to control are clearly not evidence-based,” he adds, calling the shocking rise in HIV rates a clear “failure of policy and practice.” In January 2016, Russia registered its millionth HIV-positive person, a 26-year-old woman. Actual numbers are likely much higher, according to health experts. Across much of the world, including the United States, the rate of HIV is declining, thanks to strategic programs like clean needle exchanges, increased awareness and better access to antiretroviral therapy. In the U.S., for example, the annual number of overall HIV diagnoses decreased by 5 percent between 2011 and 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But that’s not the case in Russia: Here, the rate of HIV infections is rising faster than in sub-Saharan Africa, host to the world’s largest HIV epidemic, where an international effort has slashed the rate of new HIV infections. Russia’s growing HIV crisis is seemingly no match for the Orthodox Church, which preaches faith and family values as the cure-all for the virus. A burgeoning alliance between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the church in recent years has fueled an environment where sexual education in schools is forbidden, clean needle programs are shunned as sinful and attacks on women’s and gay rights are state-sanctioned. Further blocking access to health care and resources, Putin signed a controversial church-backed bill into law in 2013 that criminalized the dissemination of information about homosexuality to minors—or, in government terms, “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations.” But it wasn’t just the Russian Orthodox Church: U.S. evangelical funding and influence have also fueled the conservative tide in Russia, says Dr. Breyer. “The [anti-gay law] language was in some cases lifted whole from legislation passed in Nigeria and Uganda,” he says, referring to the U.S. Christian right’s influence on anti-gay legislation in parts of Africa. Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, who has deemed Putin’s presidency a “miracle from God,” has called for the “establishment of family values, ideals of chastity and marital fidelity” and a focus on “moral education”—not sexual education. The church’s presence on social issues is so suffocating that one researcher working on issues of HIV in Russia quipped that he saw “more Orthodox priests than condoms” at a recent HIV conference in Moscow. Despite the rising number of new HIV infections, Russia is not increasing the amount of HIV medication accessible to the public or ramping up health education efforts. Instead, parents are expected to educate their children at home on the risks of unsafe sex and drug use. HIV experts say that’s largely still not happening, and a generation of children are growing up without life-saving knowledge of HIV and its risks.

Meanwhile, top Russian officials cast doubt on the need to combat the disease. Deputy Director Tatyana Guzenkova of RISS, for example, has said that the HIV epidemic is merely an “information war” waged by the West on Russia.

In the past, most HIV positive Russians contracted the virus through intravenous drug use. That’s changing: The number of people contracting HIV from heterosexual sex will soon overtake new HIV infections from drug use, according to experts. And an increasing number of newly infected Russians—some 38 percent in 2015—are women. As Russia’s decades-long HIV crisis takes on a different shape, experts say more and more Russians like Ivanova—non drug-using Russians who are part of mainstream society—are becoming infected, although drug-use is still a leading factor fueling the country’s HIV epidemic.

Gay Olympic Athletes Provide Role Models

Growing up gay can be soul killing, not because there is anything inherently wrong with being gay, but rather because of the hate, maligning and denigration one must suffer from portions of society, especially the modern day Pharisees among the "godly folks" - think Mike Pence.  As I have noted before, it took a couple of years of therapy to undo the damage my Catholic upbringing had done to me.  I can only believe that growing up Southern Baptist or evangelical Christian would do even more damage to one's psyche. No child or youth deserves such indoctrination that leads to self-hatred and, in still far too many cases, suicide.  Compounding the problem, especially for LGBT individuals of older generations was the lack of role models to demonstrate that one could succeed and live a happy life.  Nowhere was the case more than in sports.  For so, so long, there were no role models.  Now, Olympians Gus Kenworthy and Adam Rippon (who helped the U.S. figure skating team to win a bronze medal yesterday) are proving to young gays that things do not have to be as some charlatan behind a pulpit tells them it must be.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at this welcomed development.  Here are excerpts:

Gus Kenworthy is free. Eat your heart out, Mike Pence, and anyone else predisposed to sneering at his good, gay life.

It took the freestyle skier 24 years to get to this place — to stop hiding, to love himself unabashedly — and that is more valuable to him than his slopestyle silver medal from the Sochi Olympics. Since Kenworthy came out of the closet in 2015, he hasn’t flaunted his sexuality as much as he has owned it, with an intent to inspire others to shun the shame. He and figure skater Adam Rippon are Team USA’s first openly gay male Winter Olympians. The fact is wonderful, not controversial. If you disagree, that is now your problem, not theirs.

 

“I’m here at the Olympics,” said Kenworthy, 26. “Not many people get to say that. And doing so as a gay man makes me feel amazing.”

The U.S. Olympic Committee hails its 243-athlete squad as both the largest group any nation has sent to a Winter Olympics and the country’s most diverse contingent. Some wonder why the latter deserves such recognition. They must not understand the harsh effects of social exclusion. It’s too easy to marginalize, to judge and to hinder people considered different. So Kenworthy’s pride matters. He’s one of the best in the world at what he does. And he’s gay. Don’t merely tolerate it. Celebrate it.

“It’s 2018, and you see how open-minded many parts of the world are,” Kenworthy said. “But there are also many parts of the world where being gay is punishable by death, punishable by jail time. It’s a new world, and it’s also not, and I think that the only way to change perception is through visibility, through representation, and the more that we have that, the more normalized queer becomes, the easier it is for people to wrap their heads around it, and I think that the more we’ll see positive change.”

At the Opening Ceremonies, Kenworthy posted an Instagram photo with Rippon. They embraced in the image. As part of the caption, Kenworthy wrote: “I feel incredibly honored to be here in Korea competing for the US and I’m so proud to be representing the LGBTQ community alongside this amazing guy! Eat your heart out, Pence. #TeamUSA #TeamUSGay”

Rippon has been outspoken in his criticism of Vice President Pence, who led the official U.S. delegation to the Winter Olympics. His strong and passionate words against Pence’s questionable record on LGBTQ rights became a major story this week when he blasted Pence once again to USA Today. 

It’s more beneficial to consider, with compassion, how liberated Kenworthy feels now. He looks back at his first 24 years and sees fear. He was an Olympic silver medalist and he was ashamed of himself. Once he stopped treating his sexual orientation like a dirty secret, he found peace and a higher level of performance.

His superpower — he can ski really fast with exquisite body control, wondrous grace and stunning athleticism — used to be a crutch. He used to use the spectacular within him just to feel normal. Now he’s free to be extraordinary in every way. . . . . "I think that being in the closet is really hard. It takes a toll on your mind. It takes a toll on you. I think it just makes every aspect of your life more difficult.”

The hardest part? He didn’t know who to aspire to be. He thought there was no prototype. That’s why he’s so open now. He wants to provide vision for other gay athletes or anyone foraging life to find a comfortable place.

“As a kid, I just felt like I didn’t really have anyone to look up to that I felt like I could really relate to, someone that was out and gay and also competing in sports and finding success,” Kenworthy said. “And someone I could kind of emulate and try to follow in their footsteps. And so I hope to just be someone that the younger generation can kind of see themselves in and just really be visible for people that haven’t really been able to be visible in the past.

Kenworthy doesn’t want to be known merely as “the gay skier, the gay Olympian.” But for now, it’s important that he live with the label to change perceptions and counter the hatred of people such as John Moody, the executive vice president and executive editor of Fox News, who wrote an embarrassingly closed-minded piece about the Winter Games last week. It was so bad that Fox spiked it on Friday, but it was too late. We had been exposed to the poison for nearly 48 hours.

The implication is that a more diverse U.S. team is somehow worse. The implication is that Team USA didn’t hold Olympic trials and instead tried to create a rainbow. The implication ignores that Shani Davis (the first African American to win an individual gold medal at a Winter Games) has four Olympic medals, that Kenworthy can earn his second here, or that Ghana-born Maame Biney is the future of U.S. women’s short-track speedskating and Korean American snowboarder Chloe Kim might be a transcendent talent.

Why does diversity matter? Well, for one thing, it can shut up people who think like Moody.

"So I’m so proud that now you can exist as a gay man and be an Olympian, and it can be beneficial rather than negative,” Kenworthy said. “So it’s amazing. And I just think I feel so liberated now that I’ve been out of the closet for a while, and so I’m free in that I just get to be myself, speak freely, act freely, and I think that I am competing confidently.”

Eat your hearts out, bigots.

If people want to cling to the myths and legends of ignorant, uneducated Bronze Age herders, they are free to do so.  However, they have no right to seek to force such beliefs on others or to denigrate and incite hatred against those who embrace how the creator made them.  Kidos to Kenworthy and Rippon - I hope they soar and show Mike Pence to be the ignorant ass that he is in fact. 

2018: Exposing the Ignorance and Bigotry of the Trump/GOP Base

In addition to resisting the efforts of Donald Trump and a complicit Republican Party to destroy America's democratic norms and normalize the reprehensible, it is crucial that the majority of Americans expose the ugliness of the Trump/GOP base of support and truly turn these people into social outcasts.  They cannot be given a free pass and no longer out of politeness can their lies and fantasy world go unchallenged.  "Good Germans" allowed Hitler and his reign of horrors to occur just as too many "good Americans" and "good Christians" are allowing Trump and his toxic base, a majority of whom are evangelicals, to cause tremendous harm to the country and the lives of a growing number of its citizens.  The feelings of these people need to be hurt and their batshitery put on display and challenged relentlessly, both at the ballot box and in daily interactions. This should be the New Year's resolution of thinking and decent Americans.  A blogger friend looked at this urgent need as 2017 came to an end.  Here are excerpts of his review of this toxic base of Trump/GOP support:

There is something grossly out-of-kilter when a fundraising advertisement ends with the words “Thank you, President Trump, for letting us say, ‘merry Christmas’ again” and the insult passes with scarce public remark and is quickly forgotten because it’s buried beneath other lies and insults. It is time to stop indulging ignorant fantasists, to stop pretending they have something to say, and that it deserves respect. It does not.

Resolute ignorance — faith — is not a virtue, but an inexhaustible engine of harm. When a Holy Man urges you to accept implausible and downright garish claims on ‘faith,’ and in the service of faith to commit harms against others (Leviticus’ teachings about sexuality, for instance), he summons you to intellectual dishonesty and serves only some combination of his own insecurities and avarice. . . .   The final word on the subject must be given to Friedrich Nietzsche: “A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.”

Biological evolution by natural selection is real; it really happened, and it is still happening.  . . . .  Genesis is wrong, and we who have done the hard work of understanding that are tired of you who won’t — and really tired of your relentless subversion of public education. Go away.

David Barton [a favorite among Christofascists] is not a historian; he is a whore who specializes in servicing ignoramuses. America was founded by Enlightenment thinkers who meant to break the long train of bloodshed and ruin at the hands of the churches; it’s right in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, . . .

[T]he Preamble of the United States Constitution:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The Founders could not have been plainer: They intended a country of thinking men and women who decide for themselves how their affairs shall be organized. It is a national disgrace that an incandescent theocrat like Roy Moore, a plain enemy of America’s foundational ideals, nearly assumed a seat in the Senate.

All of this nonsense must be confronted where and when it is encountered, and drowned in ridicule and ignominy; after all, it is the morons who don’t know these things who have handed the country over to an authoritarian proto-fascist who thinks our Constitution is a bother. 2018 will be the decisive year; it we won’t fight for our country, we will lose it.

Let all of join in the fight to take back America from the theocrats and racist and the liars in the White House and and the ranks of congressional Republicans who are destroying the nation and trashing the founding ideals of the nation.