Anti-gay activist group, Repent America, has claimed that God destroyed New Orleans because it welcomes gay visitors. A few choice selections from its press release include:
“Southern Decadence” has a history of filling the French Quarters section of the city with drunken homosexuals engaging in sex acts in the public streets and bars. Last year, a local pastor sent video footage of sex acts being performed in front of police to the mayor, city council, and the media. City officials simply ignored the footage and continued to welcome and praise the weeklong celebration as being an “exciting event”. However, Hurricane Katrina has put an end to the annual celebration of sin.
And
“Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city,” stated Repent America director Michael Marcavage.
If this group sounds familiar, they are the same group who held up banner declaring homosexuality to be sin at a day designated by the Philadelphia Phillies for gay fans to come to the park. They also attend gay events with bullhorns to drown out the entertainment with anti-gay slogans.
Ironically, they may have misheard what God was saying with this storm. Had they listened closer they might have realized that the part of the city with the least damage was the French Quarter and that so far most of the deaths have been in Mississippi (not a state famous for it gay excesses).
Had God been truly trying to make a point about The Gays, he could have just skipped the South altogether and send a tornado after wedding chapels in Massachusetts. But, then again, maybe God finds gay people much more to his liking than bigots.
I don’t like to be glib about a natural disaster that has shattered thousands of lives and killed hundreds. But it seems important to point out that there is a growing trend — from Fred Phelps to Pat Robertson and all the anti-gays in between — to blame every disaster on The Homosexual Agenda. And the irony is that God seems determined to prove them wrong.
With that kind of absurdity, one could also argue that the hurricane was sent by God to punish Mississipians for abstaining on the Senate vote condemning past lynchings or anti-gay fundamentalists.
Who listens to this nut anyway?
Anti-gay activist group, Repent America, has claimed that God destroyed New Orleans because it welcomes gay visitors.
Another lie from the anti-gay types. New Orleans has been flooded because the Bush malAdministration refused to fund the levee construction that had been promised in 1995. Because they wanted to divert funding to tax cuts for the “have and have mores” and, more recently, for the war on Iraq.
One might seriously ask the Repent America nuts: did the hurricane a couple of years ago, that was barreling down on Orlando, take a sudden swerve and hit Diamond Pat Robertson’s Virgina Beach because of the presence of Southern Baptists there?
These people are really stupid.
If you believe that I am joking, I am most definitely not.
For those about which these things matter:Macarvage doesn’t even care about verse he quotes
This follows the “turn the other cheek” and “love your enemies” verses of Matt 5 — examples of which, both rain and sunshine is given to all without qualm.It’s not about a threat to either get rid of the ungodly or equally face punishment.
I can’t believe that I’ve just read such foolishness! If God destroyed New Orleand because of its gay people, then I assume that my home country, Brazil and, moreover, my city, Rio de Janeiro, the city where people are free to to whatever they want to, would already been wiped out of the Earth. Don’t you give a damn when those religion freaks claim that everything they do and say is in the name of God. I don’t think God is that bad. How would He kill people when, according to Him, everyone is free to live their lives the way they want to. I think all this scorn for gay people means, in fact, an inner desire for what they are against. It makes me wonder why a welthy and developed country like USA is so outdated when it comes to sexuality. Sometimes, I’m glad for being here where I am.
For those who go along with me, my e-mail address is lnetzwerk@hotmail.com.
What about the gay parades all over the world? If New Orleans welcomes gay visitors, Rio de Janeiro not only welcomes gay visitors, but also promotes gay parades every year to open the minds of those conservative nuts and to show that the number of gay people is bigger than you would thought possible. And never, I said, never has a hurricane hit the city. I think those bigots will never get anywhere.
On the topic of the post, I will merely cite “Do “Unnatural” Acts Cause Natural Disasters?”
https://www.sodomylaws.org/usa/wackos/wacko003.htm
(It is a humor piece, by the way)
As we all probably realize by now, this guy is nothing more than an opportunist, and it is saddening that he would take advantage of such a terrible situation to advertise himself.
Yeah, I read that RepentAmerica piece and could just throw up…all over disgusting guy.
New Orleans and all it’s history and mystique and everything…
I’m not ready to mourn that amazing place.
I will mourn all those poor pilgrims in Iraq, who were panicked into a stampede that crushed or drowned so many on that bridge over the Tigris River.
I’ve been to New Orleans (several times) and Biloxi and Gulfport the family that hosted me in NO most likely have lost their home and neighbors of over 50 years.
I don’t care why this terrible thing happened in the whole Gulf area…
I just opened my heart and checkbook and got on my knees in prayer for all the people who are in pain.
Some things are beyond argument…
Some things just require kindness and rolling up the sleeves.
That’s what MY Chicasaw religion taught me.
I am a native and lifelong resident of Los Angeles.
Believe me, the Angels have opened their hearts to the Saints…
Well, Randy Thomas and Alan Chambers both went to bat for Repent America when they were arrested for their protests.
They’re both strangely silent now on MacArvage’s latest anti-gay rant. I guess they’re still batting for him.
Side note, DL Foster is blaming the hurricane on the US allowing Isreal to evacuate settlers out of the Gaza Strip.
Let me get this straight….
Global Warming is a lie (even though scientists can prove it).
HOWEVER, God is sending these hurricanes for a biblical reason with no proof at all.
Is that what we’re up against?
Here, sub in this link, it makes it a bit more clear the epicenter is in Mississippi.
https://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/09/01/obliterated.town.ap/index.html
Luciano at August 31, 2005 11:40 PM
So does Sydney Australia. They have had huge gay pride festivals in recent years.
So, actually, does Tel Aviv (Israel).
They’re big parties. All to the good.
The real challenge is to find the dealer who is selling crack cocaine to Repent America’s board of directors. Apparently they use it to excess and are delusional.
I can’t believe all this gas being spouted by the usual anti gay suspects and their religious bile being aimed at the Crescent City.
NO wasn’t the only place hit.
The Gulf area is FREQUENTED by hurricanes. The only difference is the size. And in the case of NO, the levees broke. The levee situation was known to be a disaster waiting to happen for decades and the federal government didn’t provide the funding needed to shore them up.
This is an example of a woeful lack of priorities, the oversight of political bloat and preparedness for disaster, whether man made or natural.
Bush is running this country like a BUSINESS, instead of a COUNTRY.
Global marketing has trumped national security and identity.
And look at what corporate corruption has done to consumer AND stockholder confidence.
Bush is being rewarded, rather than criticized, for his lack of understanding the enormity of his job and responsibilities to the ENTIRE country, not just his haves and have mores.
He’s been a failed administrator in other business interests, it’s no wonder he’s a failure at the running of this country too.
Leading us as a united country, united in material and financial sacrifice to keep us strong is his responsibility as well.
His smirking and glad handing and using his hayseed appearance and speech making as a prop to ‘connect’ to us regular working folks is as phony as phony as it gets.
The rest of this country can best look at this situation and realize we’ll get no timely and meaningful help from our government.
Not from invading, marauding illegal immigrants.
We’ll be gouged for vital energy needs and we’ll have no basics like food and water and criminals and gangs will use a disaster as an opportunity to break down civil order.
We’re importing desperate and needy people as much as unable to manage the American born ones in a disaster.
If I were one of these refugees (whether from South of the border or the Gulf area), I’d head to Crawford and I wonder how soon it would be before I was forced from camping right at Bush’s opulent doorstep.
I live in Los Angeles, where a major earthquake isn’t a matter of if, but when.
How many damn times will be be caught with our pants down, and malevolent foreign governments see our vulnerability as an opportunity to do more damage?
The preachers out there pointing fingers at this dark and jeweled black magic lady can just shut the hell up.
Just shut up.
I love New Orleans. My maternal great grandfather immigrated there from Ireland as a teenager.
I loved those old buildings and the recipe I have for the creamiest, dreamiest pralines you ever tasted.
I am grieving for that amazing place and the sin is in who will pass judgement, rather than pass the hat.
Let’s not turn this into a bash-Bush site. It distracts from our primary purpose and alienates some of those who would otherwise participate.
Bush isn’t our enemy. Neither is Alan Chambers, James Dobson, or even Fred Phelps. Our enemies are lies, bigotry, ignorance, selective scriptural adherence, and humanity’s willingness to believe bad things about people we don’t know or understand.
Timothy said, “Bush isn’t our enemy. Neither is Alan Chambers, James Dobson, or even Fred Phelps. Our enemies are lies, bigotry, ignorance, selective scriptural adherence, and humanity’s willingness to believe bad things about people we don’t know or understand.”
I have to respectfully disagree, Timothy. The folks who promote the lies, bigotry, ignorance, etc. are just as much our enemies–even more so, because they have the choice to be neutral on the subject and aren’t.
Or, as someone stated recently, “If you fly the flag, you get the bullets.”
Robis,
I understand your position. And I do recognize that some people who oppose our equality deliberately lie and actively seek to do us harm. Others, out of arrogance, seek to establish a legal hierarchy in which they receive preferential treatment over us.
These people are not our friends and the certainly are deserving of having their cruelty and lies exposed. And, I suppose, in a sense they have made themselves to be our enemies.
However, I believe that if we allow the fight for equality to be defined as a fight between individuals, we will lose. Were Dobson and Chambers to be caught tomorrow in a three-way with Bush, leaving them all discredited, though it would make us laugh, it would not advance our cause. Someone else would step in to perpetuate the myths.
Our fight is not about the liars but about the lies.
One of the biggest problems our community faces from the right has been the successful campaign on their part to portray the debate over gay equality as a battle of sinners vs. saints. Their arguments are never about what rights citizens should have in a pluralistic society, but rather are always portrayed as a battle against “liberal homosexual activists”.
The radical right cannot win this fight as a battle of ideas. Their positions are not palatable. Their platform, when broken into its simplest parts is noting more than:
1. My religious views are right. Yours are wrong.
2. Some citizens (me) deserve better treatment than others (you)
3. I should be entitled to determine what other citizens should be allowed to do – even those things which have no direct impact on me
4. Only my views should be allowed in the marketplace of ideas, particularly in schools and libraries
5. Secular government should reward or punish based on religious positions
Since those concepts don’t sell well, they are substituted with “I’m protecting the innocents from the sinners”. Of course it isn’t that coarse. Usually it’s more like:
1. I’m protecting the innocence of children from sexuality
2. I’m upholding community standards
3. I’m protecting the institution of marriage
You’ll notice that in each instance in which our rights are attacked (such as the three listed above) there’s an implied threat. Something always needs protection. It is never defined from what, but it’s clear that it’s the activists, the liberals, the militant homosexuals, the bad bad bad people.
As long as we allow those who wish to deny us equality to define the combatants, we’ve lost. After all, it becomes a battle of drag queens against godly ministers, leather daddy’s with their butts hanging out against beloved politicians, drug-crazed sex addicts against pillars of society. There’s no chance.
Joe and Janet Sixpack aren’t going to be impressed by some faggot screaming “Bush kills.” Their first reaction is to support their icon and never hear anything else you have to say.
However, they might be convinced by “Bush (Dobson, Whoever) may mean well, but he is misinformed. Now here are the facts”. And if they hear the truth enough, they may be willing to stop seeing us as Those Militant Homosexual Activists and start hearing what we are saying.
Timothy, I think your above post should be saved as some part of a FAQ for XGW. Wise and true words, imo.
Thank you.
Sensible words indeed Timothy — this is exgaywatch not exgaySwatch.But, the but… we must not lose sight that this is personal. This is not merely a college debate about an idea but a struggle for some to live their own lives without prejudice, and for others to control the lives of others on the basis of their prejudices. James Dobson isn’t just floating a concept, but is but one of many religious people seeking the political control of others and — to quote a libertarian expression now decades old — “The personal is political”This thread began on the toxic ideas expressed by one plainly deranged individual. But he’s not alone, and it’s not the first time.How far apart — really — is the idea that a God will punish an entire city for the behaviours of “the sinners” to the equally religion-inspired and fear-based ideas that seem, often, to overwhelm American religious and political life?Falwell and Robertson blaming “the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America” for September 11?Robertson declaring in 1998 that homosexuality “will bring about terrorist bombs, it’ll bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor” or that because some street flags were flown “I would warn Orlando that you’re right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don’t think I’d be waving those flags in God’s face if I were you”?Katrina is “clear evidence that civilization is now in the End Times described in the Bible.”https://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46090the Indian Ocean tsunami to be “punishment from Allah for homosexuality and fornication”https://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42242Someone who thinks that we living our lives openly is a tsunamihttps://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=33068Peter Sprigg “What harm could same-sex civil marriage possibly do to anyone else’s heterosexual marriage? One answer is, it could destroy it.”https://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=PD04F01Tony Perkins “You know, there has already been so much damage done. The Supreme Court somehow found this right to privacy…”https://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=CM05H23&f=CM05E02″This is the climactic moment in the battle to preserve the family, and future generations hang in the balance. This apocalyptic and pessimistic view of the institution of the family and its future will sound alarmist to many, but I think it will prove accurate unless – unless – God’s people awaken … we are urgently seeking the Lord’s favor … Tampering with His plan for the family is immoral and wrong. To violate the Lord’s expressed will for humankind, especially in regard to behavior that He has prohibited, is to court disaster.”Marriage Under Fire – Why We Must Win This Battle by Dr. James C. Dobson A”>https://www.marriageunderfire.com/arguments.aspxA range of people, issues and even a non-Christian (if I’d wanted to spend several minues more I could have found similar declarations from Greenpeace or PETA or whoever). Should I have been writing an essay, I’d have sourced comments about abstinence education, or abortion, or evolution or any of the other issues that inflame these people. These aren’t just a buch of lunatics, but lunatics that have access to and a respectful audience in the highest levels of government.What is the common thread? For me, it’s an underlying belief that a failure to compel others to live according to their “religious beliefs” will end with devastation for all. It’s Doomsday thinking. It’s aggressive, bullying language designed to frighten. And it’s pervasive among a large slab of people.More the point, those views are being increasingly pandered to by each succeeding administration. The foothold under Reagan. The open declaration of war by Dobson under Bush Snr. The Gingrich et al takeover under Clinton, who folded with both Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and DOMA. The current administration that is now actively diverting billions of dollars to “holding companies” such as Focus on the Family under “Faith Based Funding” and Abstinence-Only regimes.(And let me leave you without doubts — much of the World looks at the patronage-based politics of the United States and the influence peddling and sees a corrupted system; even at the same time when there is so much to inspire and admire about the nation and it’s people. We can distinguish between these three.)And all the while a city waits decades for several more feet of concrete wall. Pumps that aren’t sited under the flood level. A Governor who would have followed a mandatory evacuation with the prior placement of National Guards to protect the empty city. An immediate declaration that all the State’s schools were closed and all their buses commandeered in readiness.Frankly, we remain flabbergasted; as I think this post now well and truly shows. This chaos one would expect in dirt-poor Bangladesh. The entire Dutch goverment would have already resigned in disgrace should such lack of anticipation and response occured in the Netherlands (something which is not even conceivable).If this appalling natural disaster and the shameful human response should bring about genuine soul-searching across American politics — instead of spending their time soul-saving — at least something good will have been retrieved from the weckage.Our thoughts are with each of you that have family and friends in the Gulf area.
Oh, now He is not happy with the response either.
Timothy at September 2, 2005 02:12 PM
Bush isn’t our enemy. Neither is Alan Chambers, James Dobson, or even Fred Phelps. Our enemies are lies, bigotry, ignorance, selective scriptural adherence, and humanity’s willingness to believe bad things about people we don’t know or understand.
I respectfully disagree. Lies, etc., aren’t enemies, people are. People who believe the lies, etc. and who act upon those beliefs are. As well as people who may not believe the lies, but who use the lies to seduce others into supporting them I would put Bush, Chambers, Thomas, Dobson and Phelps into at least the latter category, even if they are not in the former category. By suggesting that merely lies, etc., are the enemies essentially suggests that the persons who promulgate them are not responsible for their actions: they are. They are enemies, too.
Regarding Bush-bashing, as far as I’m concerned Bush is nothing more than a Cheerleader-In-Chief, rah-rahing for interests whose identities and extent are not exactly clear. I’ve bashed Bush elsewhere for his incompetence, but I haven’t done it here because the relevant issues haven’t come up.
Repent America isn’t the only group that sees the hurricane as a benefit.
The Rev. Bill Shanks is quoted as saying:
“New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion — it’s free of all of those things now…”
https://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/9/22005b.asp
If mentioning the facts about how this country is administrated is Bush bashing, I don’t see who else deserves to take the hit.
He’s in charge, he wanted to be in charge and he’s delegated other duties, so he’s responsible.
He’s a liar, a bigot, a coward and a poor leader and he’s demonstrated that he likes others who think as he does.
And it’s done SERIOUS damage to the safety and morale of my fellow citizens.
I care more than Bush does, and I don’t get to have the power to do as much as he could.
I won’t apologize for this making me very, very angry and willing to bash a deserving target.
What a rotten human being this Shanks is!
DL Foster has taken to criticizing Kanye West for West’s criticisms of the response of government.
What two faces Foster has.
Easy for him, I’d say.
When the Northridge earthquake hit in 1994, me, my sister and husband hid under a table as our apartment shook like a runaway train.
The noise was horrible and transformers were exploding close by.
Above the din of that near minute situation, I could hear the screams of my neighbors.
Many of whom I loved.
There is NOTHING like it, hearing your neighbors screaming and the feeling it gives you.
We lived in a big one hundred unit building, so there were hundreds of people living there.
It took weeks before my heart came from out of my mouth and back into my chest where it belonged.
At least I know I have a heart.
But…
Something in me wants to take Shanks and all the others who have bad mouthed the city and people of New Orleans… and kick their teeth in.
Timothy says: ‘Bush isn’t our enemy. Neither is Alan Chambers, James Dobson, or even Fred Phelps. Our enemies are lies, bigotry, ignorance, selective scriptural adherence, and humanity’s willingness to believe bad things about people we don’t know or understand.’
Actually the list of villains shown here is a good stand in for the problem. If these were people who were not connected to the second list by concrete statements and actions, then maybe your statement would have some meaning. As it is, Chambers Dobson etc and the whole of the evangelical church can stand in for the problems until something better come along. They may not be the best example, but they will do for now.
Also, this ‘selective’ thing only works with people who are Christians. You might try reaching out to a wider audience with some other phrase. The idea that there are Christians who are not ‘selective’ strikes me as absurd. I have never heard of let alone met a Christian who did not have a highly selective view of ‘scripture’.
Apparently Shanks is also unaware of the fact that New Orleans is also largely people-free–most people apparently have left the city.
Of course, his comment was quite stupid, but what would someone expect from agape press?
I think that everyone has a right to believe what they want he obviouly believes that what he wrote is right and that all agy people are wrong but if u critize him wouldn’t you be doing the same. Everyone should be able to express what they feel whether they are right or wrong and no one is anyones enemy because we are all here for the same purpose in life.
Jojo- no, criticizing someone for saying mean and bigoted things does not put you on the same level of the person saying mean or bigoted things. No one is denying that jackasses have the “right” to speak and write their jackassery. However, everyone else also has the right to point out the nature of their jackassitude.