What happens in Arkansas may happen elsewhere
Something is presently happening in Arkansas that could negatively affect lgbts in the future:
The Little Rock, AR based organization largely responsible for placing a constitutional ban against gay marriage in Arkansas in 2004, is back in 2008 with an anti-gay adoption ban.
On Monday, the Family Council Action Committee (FCAC) met a deadline to submit 61,974 signatures to the Secretary of State to place a proposed law banning unmarried couples from adopting children on the November ballot. While the initiative bans both same-sex and opposite-sex couples, the organization's website lists banning gay and lesbian couples from adoption as a goal of the law.
The Arkansas Adoption Act makes it illegal for adoptive and foster care children to be placed in homes with individuals who cohabit with a sexual partner. Single people, living alone, would be free from the restrictions.
Arkansas did initially bar gays from adopting or becoming foster parents before the state court struck down the law. Then the legislature wouldn't pass a law prohibiting lgbts from adopting or becoming foster parents.
So now some folks are taking the "let the people decide through a vote" route. And while they have tried to word the law to make it seem that its not an attack on lgbts, they freely admit that it is:
“[The Arkansas Adoption Act] is about two things. It's about child welfare, first of all. Secondly, it is to blunt a homosexual agenda that's at work in other states and that will be at work in Arkansas unless we are proactive about doing something about it,” FCAC Executive Director Jerry Cox told Fox16 News.
This attempt is nothing new. After their success in banning gay marriage, the anti-gay industry have long had their sights on making it more difficult for lgbts to be foster or adoptive parents. It is obvious that Arkansas is a testing ground. If they are successful there, then they are going to try the same thing in other states.
What gets me is this part:
The FCAC lists three primary reasons for the law: For the safety of children, to increase the number of prospective homes, and to “blunt a homosexual agenda.”
Increase the number of homes? How can you increase the number of homes that will take in children by prohibiting potential foster and adoptive parents?
Sadly, that question is not answered by the FCAC in the article.
And that is the crux of the fallacy involving denying lgbts the right to be foster and adoptive parents.
According to the National Resource Center for Family Centered Practice and Permanency Planning:
510,000 = Number of children in foster care on September 30, 2006
129,000 = Number of children waiting to be adopted on September 30, 2006
51,000 = Number of children adopted from the public foster care system in FY 2006
And according to the Department of Health and Human Services' s Administration for Children & Families, 984 Arkansas children were waiting to be adopted in 2005.
But I bet the FCAC law doesn't address that point.
What we get from them is the same talking point the anti-gay industry shovels about children in foster care:
Children have a right to a mother and father.
But (and here is the rub) the FCAC potential law does not guarantee that children in foster care will be placed in this type of home. In fact, it does not guarantee that children in foster care will be placed into a home at all.
You see, this talking point is not designed to do anything but create the premise that somehow two-parent heterosexual households are being discriminated against for the sake of same-sex households.
And according to national figures, this notion just isn't true.
Children don't necessarily need a home that appeals to someone's limited view of "family.
Children need homes where they can receive love and support.
And there are no studies that say they cannot receive love and support from a same-sex home.
But thanks to FCAC, Arkansas children in foster care may not get any home at all.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
It's Tuesday - oh boy
Well it's Tuesday and I'm all alone.
My mother has gone to Pennsylvania to participate in my uncle's wedding. That leaves me home alone until Monday. This means that I can indulge in two of my favorite guilty pleasures - butter almond ice cream and porn.
Just kidding. Butter almond ice cream is so fattening.
Seriously though, last week I alluded to the fact that I can no longer link from One News Now. Is it just me or does the site see me as a hinderance to their message?
My linkage now takes one to a Rick Astley video on Youtube. But the joke is on One News Now. I happen to like Rick Astley.
Redhaired men are my weakness.
Who am I kidding? Men with a pulse are my weakness.
However I won't be using this time alone to catch up on my quota. And when I say quota, I mean the following - according to the anti-gay industry, gay men have over 500 partners a year . . . or is it 1,000 partners in a lifetime . . . or is it 1,500 partners on Judy Garland's birthday.
Really though, just who is so damned egotistical to count sexual partners? And just what is the criteria for an official sex act. Does heavy petting count?
More importantly, why can't I find any of those slutty gay guys?
Whatever the case may be, I am waaaay behind on the quota. If I don't get some soon, then national headquarters is going to come and get me for re-education.
From what I understand, it involves being locked in a small room somewhere in the Castro and being forced to watch Barbara Streisand movies for 48 hours.
And not the good ones but the ones she made when she was blatant about wanting the Oscar for Best Director.
Something that I haven't talked about is the American Family Association's boycott of McDonalds.
Apparently because McDonalds donated $20,000 to the Gay and Lesbian National Chamber of Commerce and because the company has the audacity to protect its employees against discrimination, Donald Wildmon and that bunch has branded it public enemy number one.
You know the vernacular - "McDonalds has signed on to the radical homosexual agenda." "McDonalds is no longer for families." "Ronald McDonald and Grimace are secret lovers."
Well McDonalds has gained a loyal customer because of the boycott - yours truly.
Lastly, if you all are still here and not thinking that I am insane, I want to let you in on something that I realized last week.
Some members of U.S. Senate are pushing for that dreary marriage amendment. Not only that, but two of the sponsors are Larry "wide stance in the toilet" Craig and David "hey, prostitutes need to pay the bills too" Vitter.
Craig is a hot mess himself but doesn't the fact that Vitter is sponsoring this bill goes to prove that a lot of the things the anti-gay industry says about gay men aren't true?
They like to claim that we have so much anal sex that we end up wearing diapers.
If this was the case, then wouldn't Vitter be our ally, with his love of diapers and all?
Think about it.
And hopefully by tomorrow, I will be in a normal frame of mind.
Well it's Tuesday and I'm all alone.
My mother has gone to Pennsylvania to participate in my uncle's wedding. That leaves me home alone until Monday. This means that I can indulge in two of my favorite guilty pleasures - butter almond ice cream and porn.
Just kidding. Butter almond ice cream is so fattening.
Seriously though, last week I alluded to the fact that I can no longer link from One News Now. Is it just me or does the site see me as a hinderance to their message?
My linkage now takes one to a Rick Astley video on Youtube. But the joke is on One News Now. I happen to like Rick Astley.
Redhaired men are my weakness.
Who am I kidding? Men with a pulse are my weakness.
However I won't be using this time alone to catch up on my quota. And when I say quota, I mean the following - according to the anti-gay industry, gay men have over 500 partners a year . . . or is it 1,000 partners in a lifetime . . . or is it 1,500 partners on Judy Garland's birthday.
Really though, just who is so damned egotistical to count sexual partners? And just what is the criteria for an official sex act. Does heavy petting count?
More importantly, why can't I find any of those slutty gay guys?
Whatever the case may be, I am waaaay behind on the quota. If I don't get some soon, then national headquarters is going to come and get me for re-education.
From what I understand, it involves being locked in a small room somewhere in the Castro and being forced to watch Barbara Streisand movies for 48 hours.
And not the good ones but the ones she made when she was blatant about wanting the Oscar for Best Director.
Something that I haven't talked about is the American Family Association's boycott of McDonalds.
Apparently because McDonalds donated $20,000 to the Gay and Lesbian National Chamber of Commerce and because the company has the audacity to protect its employees against discrimination, Donald Wildmon and that bunch has branded it public enemy number one.
You know the vernacular - "McDonalds has signed on to the radical homosexual agenda." "McDonalds is no longer for families." "Ronald McDonald and Grimace are secret lovers."
Well McDonalds has gained a loyal customer because of the boycott - yours truly.
Lastly, if you all are still here and not thinking that I am insane, I want to let you in on something that I realized last week.
Some members of U.S. Senate are pushing for that dreary marriage amendment. Not only that, but two of the sponsors are Larry "wide stance in the toilet" Craig and David "hey, prostitutes need to pay the bills too" Vitter.
Craig is a hot mess himself but doesn't the fact that Vitter is sponsoring this bill goes to prove that a lot of the things the anti-gay industry says about gay men aren't true?
They like to claim that we have so much anal sex that we end up wearing diapers.
If this was the case, then wouldn't Vitter be our ally, with his love of diapers and all?
Think about it.
And hopefully by tomorrow, I will be in a normal frame of mind.
Monday, July 07, 2008
Jesse Helms - Life, Death, and the Inability to Stop Evolution
One of the most anti-gay individuals in the United States, former North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, passed away during the Fourth of July holiday.
Some of us are probably dancing in joy over his passage. The mainstream media is slowly tiptoeing over his controversial history as an anti-gay Senator.
The anti-gay industry is treating his death like the passage of George Washington.
But I want to take another tack.
In the past year and a half, the lgbt community has seen the passing away of three of our most persistent opponents.
There was Jerry Falwell, who will always be defined not by his influence on politics but the bad choices he made.
During the beginning of the AIDS crisis, he could have ministered to the sick. However, he took advantage of the calamity to enhance his own reputation. Through rhetoric and brochures designed to scare and inflame ignorance, he exploited and grew fat off of the suffering of those who stricken with the disease.
Worse than that, his actions served as a blueprint. Like some female monster out of mythology, his efforts sired offspring either equally or more determined to demonize the lgbt community; i.e. Paul Cameron, Peter LaBarbera, the LaHayes, James Dobson, Janet Folger, etc.
Then there was James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries, who wrapped himself up in Biblical doctrine and demanded that others repented while he spun untrue stories of ACLU and homosexual boogeyman and secretly worked to convert America into a theocracy.
Then comes the third party in the triumvirate: Jesse Helms.
Helms was a man who claimed that this country needed a "spiritual revival," while freely and openly feeding on fear.
He was a shining example of not only the underside of this country, but of human nature in general. Hateful, homophobic, and racist, Helms was so stewed in the self-righteous juices of his own rhetoric that he was immune to its bad smell.
He was like that dog in the Aesop fable; the one who was so unruly that he was given a bell as a badge of shame. In his ignorance, the dog mistook the bell as a symbol of pride.
Such was Helms when he heard himself being described as a bigot.
I group those men together to emphasize a point. No matter how many lies they spun, how offensive their words were, or how many people they swayed, in the great scheme of things, Falwell, Kennedy, and Helms are pretty much irrelevant.
Why? Because while they hindered lgbts, they did not stop us. We are still here and we are strong. In fact, we continue to get stronger every day.
Lgbt children are coming out at earlier ages, same-sex families are beginning to be acknowledged as they should be, and slowly but surely, the entire community is evolving past being punchlines, past secret encounters in public places, and into the mainstream.
We are rejecting the lies spun by folks like Falwell, Kennedy, and Helms that our sexual orientation somehow disqualifies us from having substantial lives.
And most of all, we are rejecting the lie that God did not create us to be the proud lgbt people that a vast majority of us are.
In the long run, Falwell, Kennedy, and Helms served their purpose. Every successful hero needs a villain to triumph over. Falwell, Kennedy, and Helms were our villains.
And we defeated them.
Not by voting them out of office or exposing them as liars (although those things would have been nice.) We defeated them by simply enduring.
So while some may think what I am saying is in bad taste, just think of Helms (not to mention Falwell and Kennedy for that matter) as footnotes in our struggle for equality.
Let our successes be their epitaphs.
One of the most anti-gay individuals in the United States, former North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, passed away during the Fourth of July holiday.
Some of us are probably dancing in joy over his passage. The mainstream media is slowly tiptoeing over his controversial history as an anti-gay Senator.
The anti-gay industry is treating his death like the passage of George Washington.
But I want to take another tack.
In the past year and a half, the lgbt community has seen the passing away of three of our most persistent opponents.
There was Jerry Falwell, who will always be defined not by his influence on politics but the bad choices he made.
During the beginning of the AIDS crisis, he could have ministered to the sick. However, he took advantage of the calamity to enhance his own reputation. Through rhetoric and brochures designed to scare and inflame ignorance, he exploited and grew fat off of the suffering of those who stricken with the disease.
Worse than that, his actions served as a blueprint. Like some female monster out of mythology, his efforts sired offspring either equally or more determined to demonize the lgbt community; i.e. Paul Cameron, Peter LaBarbera, the LaHayes, James Dobson, Janet Folger, etc.
Then there was James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries, who wrapped himself up in Biblical doctrine and demanded that others repented while he spun untrue stories of ACLU and homosexual boogeyman and secretly worked to convert America into a theocracy.
Then comes the third party in the triumvirate: Jesse Helms.
Helms was a man who claimed that this country needed a "spiritual revival," while freely and openly feeding on fear.
He was a shining example of not only the underside of this country, but of human nature in general. Hateful, homophobic, and racist, Helms was so stewed in the self-righteous juices of his own rhetoric that he was immune to its bad smell.
He was like that dog in the Aesop fable; the one who was so unruly that he was given a bell as a badge of shame. In his ignorance, the dog mistook the bell as a symbol of pride.
Such was Helms when he heard himself being described as a bigot.
I group those men together to emphasize a point. No matter how many lies they spun, how offensive their words were, or how many people they swayed, in the great scheme of things, Falwell, Kennedy, and Helms are pretty much irrelevant.
Why? Because while they hindered lgbts, they did not stop us. We are still here and we are strong. In fact, we continue to get stronger every day.
Lgbt children are coming out at earlier ages, same-sex families are beginning to be acknowledged as they should be, and slowly but surely, the entire community is evolving past being punchlines, past secret encounters in public places, and into the mainstream.
We are rejecting the lies spun by folks like Falwell, Kennedy, and Helms that our sexual orientation somehow disqualifies us from having substantial lives.
And most of all, we are rejecting the lie that God did not create us to be the proud lgbt people that a vast majority of us are.
In the long run, Falwell, Kennedy, and Helms served their purpose. Every successful hero needs a villain to triumph over. Falwell, Kennedy, and Helms were our villains.
And we defeated them.
Not by voting them out of office or exposing them as liars (although those things would have been nice.) We defeated them by simply enduring.
So while some may think what I am saying is in bad taste, just think of Helms (not to mention Falwell and Kennedy for that matter) as footnotes in our struggle for equality.
Let our successes be their epitaphs.
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Matt Barber returns to spin another distortion
Matt Barber may have left Concerned Women for America, but he still continues to distort research.
One News Now (your favorite phony news source and mine) published a piece by him entitled: Children in the 'gay marriage' crosshairs .
This piece follows standard anti-gay industry talking points that include: "marriage presents the best way to raise children" and "children deserve a mother and a father."
For the record, children deserve a good home where they have love and support. This doesn't necessarily only come from a home that features a mother and father. It can come from a home that features only a mother or only a father. Or two mothers or two fathers for that matter.
In fact in this country, families that don't fit the "traditional definition" are raising children and are doing it quite well.
They just don't matter to the anti-gay industry.
But I deviate from my point. Barber's column features the following:
While standing before the Courts of Justice Committee of the Virginia Senate in 2005, Robert Knight, former director of the Culture and Family Institute, testified to the following:
"In 2001, a team of pro-homosexual researchers from the University of Southern California did a meta-analysis of 'gay parenting' studies and published a refreshingly honest article in American Sociological Review, '(How) Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?'
"The authors concluded that, yes, studies show that girls are more likely to 'be sexually adventurous and less chaste,' including being more likely to try lesbianism, and that boys are more likely to have 'fluid' conceptions of gender roles, and that researchers should stop trying to cover this up in the hopes of pursuing a pro-homosexual agenda. The researchers said, in effect: Some of the kids are more likely to turn out gay or bisexual, but so what?"
Of course this is a blatant lie, but typical of Robert Knight. Before Knight joined another group, the Media Resource Center, he was involved with Concerned Women for America and the Family Research Council.
While with these groups, Knight freely cited discredited researcher Paul Cameron, as well as distorted credible research in order to paint a negative picture of the lgbt community.
The example Barber used is just par for the course.
The study cited, (How) Does Sexual Orientation of the Parent Matter, was written by Timothy Biblarz and Judith Stacey.
My guess is that Barber intentionally omitted the authors of the study because, you see, Stacey has gone on record complaining as to how her work has been distorted.
But let's look at the "horse's mouth," so to speak.
A look at the Stacey/Biblarz study shows that what was said is more complex than what Barber and Knight claim.
Here is what the passage (page 171) actually said:
Tasker and Golombok (1997) also report some fascinating findings on the number of sexual partners children report having had between puberty and young adulthood. Relative to their counterparts with heterosexual parents, the adolescent and young adult girls raised by lesbian mothers appear to have been more sexually adventurous and less chaste, whereas the sons of lesbians evince the opposite pattern—somewhat less sexually adventurous and more chaste (the finding was statistically significant for the 25- girl sample but not for the 18-boy sample).
In other words, once again, children (especially girls) raised by lesbians appear to depart from traditional gender-based norms while children raised by heterosexual mothers appear to conform to them. Yet this provocative finding of differences in sexual behavior and agency has not been analyzed or investigated further.
The gender-based roles that Stacey and Biblarz alluded to is in this passage on page 168:
For example, lesbian mothers in R. Green et al. (1986) reported that their children, especially daughters, more frequently dress, play, and behave in ways that do not conform to sex-typed cultural norms. Likewise, daughters of lesbian mothers reported greater interest in activities associated with both “masculine” and “feminine” qualities and that involve the participation of both sexes, whereas daughters of heterosexual mothers report significantly greater interest in traditionally feminine, same-sex activities (also see Hotvedt and Mandel 1982).
Similarly, daughters with lesbian mothers reported higher aspirations to nontraditional gender occupations (Steckel 1987). For example, in R. Green et al. (1986), 53 percent (16 out of 30) of the daughters of lesbians aspired to careers such as doctor, lawyer, engineer, and astronaut, compared with only 21 percent (6 of 28) of the daughters of heterosexual mothers.
So it sounds like that Stacey and Biblarz were actually saying that children raised by lgbts don't necessarily conform to the "traditional" gender roles. This point is alluded to throughout the entire study.
But Knight and Barber took passages out of the study to extrapolate the following incorrect stereotype: gays and lesbians raising children will lead to girls being lesbians and sluts and boys putting on dresses.
It's sad how these supposed Christians will lie. I think that the following point Soulforce Executive Director Jeff Lutes made at a teleconference call says it all:
Those who oppose civil equality for gays and lesbians are actively distorting, cherry-picking, and misrepresenting the social science research in their attempts to justify discrimination . . . and unfortunately, the media often reports these distortions without investigating and fact checking them. Politicians and legislators then use that misinformation to pass bans on marriage equality, as well as foster parenting and adoption by same gender parents.
So my question to you all is: how do we stop it?
Matt Barber may have left Concerned Women for America, but he still continues to distort research.
One News Now (your favorite phony news source and mine) published a piece by him entitled: Children in the 'gay marriage' crosshairs .
This piece follows standard anti-gay industry talking points that include: "marriage presents the best way to raise children" and "children deserve a mother and a father."
For the record, children deserve a good home where they have love and support. This doesn't necessarily only come from a home that features a mother and father. It can come from a home that features only a mother or only a father. Or two mothers or two fathers for that matter.
In fact in this country, families that don't fit the "traditional definition" are raising children and are doing it quite well.
They just don't matter to the anti-gay industry.
But I deviate from my point. Barber's column features the following:
While standing before the Courts of Justice Committee of the Virginia Senate in 2005, Robert Knight, former director of the Culture and Family Institute, testified to the following:
"In 2001, a team of pro-homosexual researchers from the University of Southern California did a meta-analysis of 'gay parenting' studies and published a refreshingly honest article in American Sociological Review, '(How) Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?'
"The authors concluded that, yes, studies show that girls are more likely to 'be sexually adventurous and less chaste,' including being more likely to try lesbianism, and that boys are more likely to have 'fluid' conceptions of gender roles, and that researchers should stop trying to cover this up in the hopes of pursuing a pro-homosexual agenda. The researchers said, in effect: Some of the kids are more likely to turn out gay or bisexual, but so what?"
Of course this is a blatant lie, but typical of Robert Knight. Before Knight joined another group, the Media Resource Center, he was involved with Concerned Women for America and the Family Research Council.
While with these groups, Knight freely cited discredited researcher Paul Cameron, as well as distorted credible research in order to paint a negative picture of the lgbt community.
The example Barber used is just par for the course.
The study cited, (How) Does Sexual Orientation of the Parent Matter, was written by Timothy Biblarz and Judith Stacey.
My guess is that Barber intentionally omitted the authors of the study because, you see, Stacey has gone on record complaining as to how her work has been distorted.
But let's look at the "horse's mouth," so to speak.
A look at the Stacey/Biblarz study shows that what was said is more complex than what Barber and Knight claim.
Here is what the passage (page 171) actually said:
Tasker and Golombok (1997) also report some fascinating findings on the number of sexual partners children report having had between puberty and young adulthood. Relative to their counterparts with heterosexual parents, the adolescent and young adult girls raised by lesbian mothers appear to have been more sexually adventurous and less chaste, whereas the sons of lesbians evince the opposite pattern—somewhat less sexually adventurous and more chaste (the finding was statistically significant for the 25- girl sample but not for the 18-boy sample).
In other words, once again, children (especially girls) raised by lesbians appear to depart from traditional gender-based norms while children raised by heterosexual mothers appear to conform to them. Yet this provocative finding of differences in sexual behavior and agency has not been analyzed or investigated further.
The gender-based roles that Stacey and Biblarz alluded to is in this passage on page 168:
For example, lesbian mothers in R. Green et al. (1986) reported that their children, especially daughters, more frequently dress, play, and behave in ways that do not conform to sex-typed cultural norms. Likewise, daughters of lesbian mothers reported greater interest in activities associated with both “masculine” and “feminine” qualities and that involve the participation of both sexes, whereas daughters of heterosexual mothers report significantly greater interest in traditionally feminine, same-sex activities (also see Hotvedt and Mandel 1982).
Similarly, daughters with lesbian mothers reported higher aspirations to nontraditional gender occupations (Steckel 1987). For example, in R. Green et al. (1986), 53 percent (16 out of 30) of the daughters of lesbians aspired to careers such as doctor, lawyer, engineer, and astronaut, compared with only 21 percent (6 of 28) of the daughters of heterosexual mothers.
So it sounds like that Stacey and Biblarz were actually saying that children raised by lgbts don't necessarily conform to the "traditional" gender roles. This point is alluded to throughout the entire study.
But Knight and Barber took passages out of the study to extrapolate the following incorrect stereotype: gays and lesbians raising children will lead to girls being lesbians and sluts and boys putting on dresses.
It's sad how these supposed Christians will lie. I think that the following point Soulforce Executive Director Jeff Lutes made at a teleconference call says it all:
Those who oppose civil equality for gays and lesbians are actively distorting, cherry-picking, and misrepresenting the social science research in their attempts to justify discrimination . . . and unfortunately, the media often reports these distortions without investigating and fact checking them. Politicians and legislators then use that misinformation to pass bans on marriage equality, as well as foster parenting and adoption by same gender parents.
So my question to you all is: how do we stop it?
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Herding the sheep through the use of Barackophobia
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama seems to be a popular subject on the phony news service One News Now.
Or maybe a better way to put it would be an "unpopular subject."
In the past weeks, columns and articles have been coming on the site at almost breakneck speed; all issuing an alarming tone that Obama is a sepia Damien Thorne whose possible ascension to the White House will bring forth the Rapture and the Second Coming of Jesus.
Which confuses me.
Of course the notion is stupid, but why are these so-called Christians fearful if such was the case.
I thought they were supposed to be swept up to Heaven when the Rapture does come, leaving the rest of us - the "unwashed sinful masses" - to our doom.
Seriously though, One News Now's tone with these articles and columns only serves to underscore just how Christianity has fallen in this country. One News Now is supposed to be a pro-family site that speaks for traditional morality. Yet, it manipulates its readers with fear:
Meetings with Obama confusing Evangelicals
Add me to the list!
Obama numbered among 'false prophets' (OneNewsNow.com)
Obama, supporters attack Dobson (OneNewsNow.com)
Evangelist questions Obama's Christianity (OneNewsNow.com)
Michelle Obama confirms husband's support for homosexual causes ...
Obama accused of 'dragging biblical understanding through gutter ...
Obama's communist ties investigated (OneNewsNow.com)
If I were to use One News Now as a news source rather than a great source for amusement, I would get the following impressions about Obama:
4. Obama is secretly a Muslim who will make Islam the official religion when elected.
3. Obama took his Senatorial oath on the Koran.
2. Obama is not the anti-Christ, but his election will invite the coming of the Anti-Christ.
1. Obama is the Anti-Christ, and therefore is also gay because the Anti-Christ is supposed to be gay.
Sometimes I get the impression that Jesus is postponing his Second Coming for fear of embarrassement over the mindsets of his "followers."
UPDATE - It seems that my One News Now links went to a Rick Astley video. It has been fixed. You can now click on links and see the One News Now articles.
God help you.
UPATE 2: Apparently it's not taken care of. Figures.
You think I'm getting to them?
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama seems to be a popular subject on the phony news service One News Now.
Or maybe a better way to put it would be an "unpopular subject."
In the past weeks, columns and articles have been coming on the site at almost breakneck speed; all issuing an alarming tone that Obama is a sepia Damien Thorne whose possible ascension to the White House will bring forth the Rapture and the Second Coming of Jesus.
Which confuses me.
Of course the notion is stupid, but why are these so-called Christians fearful if such was the case.
I thought they were supposed to be swept up to Heaven when the Rapture does come, leaving the rest of us - the "unwashed sinful masses" - to our doom.
Seriously though, One News Now's tone with these articles and columns only serves to underscore just how Christianity has fallen in this country. One News Now is supposed to be a pro-family site that speaks for traditional morality. Yet, it manipulates its readers with fear:
Meetings with Obama confusing Evangelicals
Add me to the list!
Obama numbered among 'false prophets' (OneNewsNow.com)
Obama, supporters attack Dobson (OneNewsNow.com)
Evangelist questions Obama's Christianity (OneNewsNow.com)
Michelle Obama confirms husband's support for homosexual causes ...
Obama accused of 'dragging biblical understanding through gutter ...
Obama's communist ties investigated (OneNewsNow.com)
If I were to use One News Now as a news source rather than a great source for amusement, I would get the following impressions about Obama:
4. Obama is secretly a Muslim who will make Islam the official religion when elected.
3. Obama took his Senatorial oath on the Koran.
2. Obama is not the anti-Christ, but his election will invite the coming of the Anti-Christ.
1. Obama is the Anti-Christ, and therefore is also gay because the Anti-Christ is supposed to be gay.
Sometimes I get the impression that Jesus is postponing his Second Coming for fear of embarrassement over the mindsets of his "followers."
UPDATE - It seems that my One News Now links went to a Rick Astley video. It has been fixed. You can now click on links and see the One News Now articles.
God help you.
UPATE 2: Apparently it's not taken care of. Figures.
You think I'm getting to them?
Monday, June 30, 2008
SC Black Pride 2008 - we shook up the state
Forgive me for taking an interlude from the daily grind of focusing on the anti-gay industry.
I would like to brag a little bit today.
My state celebrated our third annual Black Pride last week and it was a monster success with over 1,000 in attendance.
From our opening ceremonies (where Columbia Mayor Bob Coble presented us a proclamation) to our awards banquet, each event was heavily attended. We received a lot of attention, positive comments, and contacts.
Most of all, lgbt South Carolinians of color went away empowered.
One thing I liked about this year was the support we received from the lgbt community at large.
Our events were not only attended by African-American gays and lesbians, but folks from other ethnicities. And there was none of that nonsense about black gays "segregating" ourselves.
So many times in the past whenever I heard lgbts ask why is there a need for a Black Pride, I would have to let them know that they sound like heterosexuals asking why is there a need for a gay pride.
I think that our community is starting to realize that while we are all lgbt, our experiences and cultures when it comes to dealing with our orientations are different. And the fact of the matter is that sometimes lgbts of color have no sense of our sexual orientation because we rarely see anything that lets us know that we are a part of the community.
But not last week.
All in all, it was worth all of the work members of the SC Black Pride Committee (including my humble self) put in to make this pride a success. It was worth the long meetings, the phone conversations, the fundraisers that didn't work, the calls to vendors, the emails, and all of the seemingly miniscule but nonetheless important elements for putting together a pride.
It was worth it to see so many lgbts of color gathered together publicly and openly without fear of reprisal; no tension, no cliques, no trying to hide their affection for their prospective partners, and no pretentions about trying "not to look gay."
There was nothing but unity and love in the air.
And that's how it's supposed to be.
Forgive me for taking an interlude from the daily grind of focusing on the anti-gay industry.
I would like to brag a little bit today.
My state celebrated our third annual Black Pride last week and it was a monster success with over 1,000 in attendance.
From our opening ceremonies (where Columbia Mayor Bob Coble presented us a proclamation) to our awards banquet, each event was heavily attended. We received a lot of attention, positive comments, and contacts.
Most of all, lgbt South Carolinians of color went away empowered.
One thing I liked about this year was the support we received from the lgbt community at large.
Our events were not only attended by African-American gays and lesbians, but folks from other ethnicities. And there was none of that nonsense about black gays "segregating" ourselves.
So many times in the past whenever I heard lgbts ask why is there a need for a Black Pride, I would have to let them know that they sound like heterosexuals asking why is there a need for a gay pride.
I think that our community is starting to realize that while we are all lgbt, our experiences and cultures when it comes to dealing with our orientations are different. And the fact of the matter is that sometimes lgbts of color have no sense of our sexual orientation because we rarely see anything that lets us know that we are a part of the community.
But not last week.
All in all, it was worth all of the work members of the SC Black Pride Committee (including my humble self) put in to make this pride a success. It was worth the long meetings, the phone conversations, the fundraisers that didn't work, the calls to vendors, the emails, and all of the seemingly miniscule but nonetheless important elements for putting together a pride.
It was worth it to see so many lgbts of color gathered together publicly and openly without fear of reprisal; no tension, no cliques, no trying to hide their affection for their prospective partners, and no pretentions about trying "not to look gay."
There was nothing but unity and love in the air.
And that's how it's supposed to be.
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