The Christian Post listed homosexuality as the #4 story in its Top 10 Christian News of ’07 review, ahead of the passing of Jerry Falwell and D. James Kennedy (#6), the joint calls for peace and “common ground” by Muslim and Christian leaders (#7), the negative image that most young Americans now have of the evangelical church (#8) and the chronic problems of poverty and disease around the world (not on the list). Only the rise of “militant atheism,” Mike Huckabee’s presidential bid and Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith ranked higher.
Among the news items mentioned were the APA’s decision to review its stance on reparative therapy, ex-gay converts Charlene Cothran and Michael Glatze, and the Jones and Yarhouse study. No mention was made of Ted Haggard’s alleged three-week transformation from gay to straight, the Ex-Gay Survivors’ Conference or the outing of multiple anti-gay Republican politicians.
In short, there appears to be little reason to hope that 2008 will be any different than previous years where the right wing of the evangelical church is concerned. Odds are that their rhetoric (“homosexuality is no worse than any other sin”) will continue to be belied by the time, energy and money that they pour into anti-gay political crusades.
What has become of Michael Glatze? Has there been any recent word on what he’s doing?
A source we did not verify but who I feel was probably legit told us that Glatze had pulled back from any public interviews or contact so he could “rethink what he has said”, though not necessarily retract any of it. The last thing we know of that came from him was an interview NARTH posted on 9/27/2007 but which this same source told us was actually given in July.
I suspect we will hear more from Glatze, but I sincerely hope he is getting some qualified help for whatever was actually at the core of all this.
Jews For Jesus advertises on their website. Fitting. I too hope Glatze gets help for whatever ails him, because I’m sure once he finds a happy middle path in his life, he can have some peace. Then nobody will be able to use him as a pawn in their agenda.
I’ve been cruising around conservative blogs to get a read on what people are thinking. A pattern certainly emerges and the discussions regarding anything about gay people are definitively reductive. I don’t have to tell you.
Try and discuss all the other things of merit a gay person does or has the potential to do, the conversation almost ALWAYS devolves into crude remarks on gay sex and genitals. No intelligent discourse on the path of civil rights issues or the impact of societal hate and discrimination on minorities and the similarities in that impact.
It’s as if their minds can’t grasp the sum of all parts of a human being.
Even when talking about marriage. Just as inevitable, the discussion is posited on fertility and fecundity and the USE of genitals. It’s impossible to talk about the role of gender in marriage and whether or not such roles are artificially constructed.
It’s terrible to see the deconstruction right before your eyes. And the refusal to refer to gay people AS people, but rather some amorphous, tyrannical and conspiratorial entity. Who is miniscule and minor when it comes to positive influence, but who is enormous and out of control and fearsome when it comes to negative influence.
Very often, I will bring up my law enforcement experience and access to criminal statistics and comprehensive data on what are the most negative aspects on society.
Such as recruitment by drug dealers and gang members and how each of these feeds the other.
I try to interject that sex trade and it’s industry exploits females of all ages, and it’s straight men who have the biggest influence on the violence and other matters within the home.
All that falls on deaf ears. They pat themselves on the back and can’t help but mention NAMBLA on ANY discussion regarding homosexuals, but they can’t name a single website maintained by HETEROSEXUAL males for the exploitation of children.
Try and talk about the victimhood of boys by WOMEN, no sale. Boys aren’t victims unless a man is responsible.
In explaining that gay men and women are more invested in keeping children safe for obvious reasons and that gay parents have the same concerns for their children, you’d think common ground had been found.
No hope there.
To assure these people that gay folks aren’t the reprobates they are made to believe is good news and that powerful allies are being ignored to deal with greater evils, carries no weight either.
Or that the inevitability of contact would be better served with clearer and more honest interaction is a better course….doesn’t seem to sink in.
So, yes…it’s true about the fixation on homosexuals and homosexuality as worse than all else humankind has confronted.
I’ve never been asked questions on what I think, or feel regarding the things in the street or in our data. Nor has anyone inquired about where they can access the same information and if my information is accurate, what do law enforcement people know about gay men and women.
It’s very telling that no one was the least bit curious about what I’ve known in the field or what my collleagues are most concerned with.
Even in an agency as big as Los Angeles Police Dept in the second biggest city in the entire nation.
I get lectured a lot. I witnessed the few gay people who care to comment get treated like children.
And I’ve been vilified for supporting gay men and women as if I haven’t a clue what evil there is in the world.
As if a person in law enforcement who supports gay people, isn’t also privy to the most depraved of human behavior and knows MUCH better than they do what evil really is and what really happens.
In other words, I have seen what people who don’t REALLY want to know, think they know.
It’s easier to believe myth and abstraction, than reality and facts.
Perception is skewed and distorted in a very convoluted.
Are people really THAT stupid? How can people be so afraid of ordinary folks who bear no ill will and have shown considerable patience for this denial and obstruction?
I know it’s exhausting. And I’ve only known a bit of that exasperation that comes with justifying yourself to people in no place to judge, but who do it anyway.
More patience and persistence is needed, if not deserved for those more invested in fantasy and a superiority complex.
My brain bleeds just thinking about it. Which is why, brothers and sisters…if you can hang in there, I certainly can and will.
If we’re NOT ourselves, no one will know who we really are, or want or need.
I’m so over hostile straight folks speaking for you as if oh so expert. And why other straight people listen ONLY to them, I don’t know.
It’s about the inevitability of contact, and the status quo was NEVER good or healthy and the results show it. So why continue the status quo?
Of closets, ignorance, denial and brutal Catch 22 laws?
I’m SO glad I’m not like that. I thank the Creator everyday for giving me a curious and analytical mind. I would have missed a lot.
I see how ugly being in denial of another’s humanity is. It’s no way to get at any truth. Evangelicals are hard pressed to understand or apply that inconvenient fundamental directive of treating another as they’d want to be treated.
Not only that, but what THEIR treatment has actually wrought.
That is to say, if they’ve placed a stumbling stone on the path, then vilifying a person who stumbles doesn’t make sense.
It makes even LESS sense, if that person avoids stumbling, to mark it as a sign of something evil, rather than a sign of intelligence.
Or worse still, not even acknowlege placing the stumbling stone in the first place.
That is to say, society at large isn’t even recognizing when they are being cooperated with and not treated violently or with brutal imposition.
I know this comment is long. But I’m analyzing those patterns and the way people communicate and think as you all do too.
But still and all, you know straight folks better than they know you.
And knowlege IS power.
“It’s as if their minds can’t grasp the sum of all parts of a human being.”
Bingo, Regan, sadly, Bingo.
What conservative blogs do you frequent?
I have been reading this site for some time and have enjoyed it very much. I must say, that Regan’s above post was incredibly well written and thought out.
I live in Oregon and my partner and I literally had to cancel last minute plans for a family gathering celebrating our new “domestic partnership” because the Alliance Defense Fund sued the State of Oregon and was granted a temporary restraining order to stop the law from going into effect on January 2nd.
Regan, your above post would make a PERFECT well written OpEd piece for The Oregonian.
Just food for thought. Thank you for writing such a wonderful comment.
It seems for a great many, understanding gays as regular people requires abandoning a view of the world which is far too comfortable. A world full of certainty in the order of things is less difficult I suppose.
Change is afoot. Tonight we see a change happening. This Obama win made my heart race. Huckabee represents the evangelical hold on the country, but he also seems like someone who is resistant to change. He seems concerned about the triggers that will win votes. Obama is a great win, because I think Obama is the future–Huckabee is the past. This next year is going to be exciting and show what America we want. Who knows? Maybe homosexuality will become a footnote as people realize we can all have a place in society.
Regan Ducasse, thanks, that was excellent. To me, the degree to which the “religious” right are frothing at the mouth is quite comical, but, in some ways, an oddly positive sign. They know that anti-gay bias is one of the last “safe” areas of demagoguery. And I am ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED some of them somehow know, deep down in their troubled little psyches, what a powerful recruiting mechanism internalized homophobia is. I’ve met SO many evangelicals who seem like closet cases. If society stopped condemning them for who they really are, the fundie leadership knows that these people would stop looking for an authority structure to tell them they can “change”. (which, you know, means marrying a poor woman and hooking up at the local interstate rest stop once a month) Their foot soldiers are obviously desperate to keep up this charade – look at how right-winters troll on Wayne’s site for example. Absolutely pathetic. But surveys have shown that younger people of all backgrounds increasingly just don’t care about someone’s sexuality. Even in the military, 3/4 of soldiers would not care if gays served! These nutjobs are fighting a losing battle and they know it! I was so amused to read that, in New Hampshire, the only protester to the civil unions was some loser who drove from Maine to protest.
And how do you feed the demagoguery? This is where your post comes in…of course…they have to continually dredge up every stereotype they think will make middle america squeamish. I do sometimes wish the so-called “gay community” – my point being that it is, of course, is far too diffuse a thing to have any central organization, which we would if we really were a “tyrannical and conspiratorial entity” – could avoid certain missteps that can be so easily used as fuel…like the stupid last supper folsom street festival poster (which I know is not exclusively gay). It just wasn’t aesthetically interesting or particularly witty. An S&M take on Project Runway, for example, would have been clever and timely. The only people it incensed were far from the target audience intended to be informed of the event. Frankly I doubt 1/2 the people at the event would have even known what it was parodying. So it was, in it’s own way, a stupid piece of demagoguery, too. And gave FAUX NEWS hours of babbling so they could avoid reporting real news. Far less vile that claiming all gays are pedophiles, of course, but pointlessly disruptive nonetheless. I think that’s a sort of realpolitik in these kind of cultural “wars” – you do have to try to play better than the other side. MLK knew that.
“I do sometimes wish the so-called “gay community” – my point being that it is, of course, is far too diffuse a thing to have any central organization, which we would if we really were a “tyrannical and conspiratorial entity” – could avoid certain missteps that can be so easily used as fuel…like the stupid last supper folsom street festival poster (which I know is not exclusively gay). It just wasn’t aesthetically interesting or particularly witty.”
I have to take issue with you on this on two points:
1) Gays are not responsible for homophobia. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth. We cannot, and SHOULD NOT self-edit in order to appear less “threatening” to other people. Quite frankly, the hubub over the last supper S&M poster was a real stretch. It’s not a religious artifact, and in it’s time was considered quite blasphemous itself. It’s also been parodied to death, so it was obviously a slow news day when Fox decided to go nuts over it.
People like to romanticize the notion that if we’d all just “behave” that the straights would all rally to our side. It’s a fairy tale the straight-acting and closet types use to lull themselves to sleep at night. And like all fairy tales, it’s not true. No amount of positive PR is going to overcome the “ick” factor and the prejudice at center of homophobia. No amount of “yes suh!” is going to make it all okay. It’s a waste of time, and leads to infighting, when we have bigger fish to fry and need to focus our efforts on our goals, not on tearing each other down for not “behaving” so the straights will like us.
2) The poster itself. The S&M community does tie into a certain amount of religious immagery, as part of the “domination” part of the role play (I mean, really, this is just Dungeons & Dragons Nerds with riding crops). There was nothing particularily vulgar or disgusting about the poster, in fact, there was nothing particularily provocative. Yes, there were sex toys…or something on the table, I really couldn’t tell you what any of that does, and I’ve been around a few sex shops.
3) The poster was not intended for a wide audience. Those who got offended were obviously looking for something to be offended over. I have no sympathy for people who go looking for trouble, find it, and then have the gall to be offended about it. It’s just like the Puritans, looking into their neighbors yard to find something to gossip about, rather than focusing on their own lives.
4) The presumption that nobody in the S&M community is religious. Are we not allowed to indulge in a little self-parody? This site, as well as others, prove that gay is not the polar opposite to religious belief. So are we not allowed to do the things we want to do, to express ourselves, simply because somebody else from our faith group might be offended?
There are a total of 6 verses in the Bible that may or may not pertain to homosexual activity. Yet, the fundies can only comment on those six verses. I just don’t get it. With all the horrible things happening to people in this world, why is my sex life the first thing on their list?
Darren said:
But they do not rely on those six versus in the Sacred Scriptures, they rely on the translators who translated the Sacred Scriptures into English. (And, most Protestant-oriented Bibles are translations from the English versions NOT from Greek, Hebrew, or Latin manuscripts. At least I can vouch for the Spanish translations.) The main translation used now is the NIV, New International Version. Before it was the King James Bible (the Authorized Bible).
a sample of what I mean…I got this off my blog …
St. Paul’s writings deal with pagan worship, sexual lust, and sexual abuse in the form of prostitution and sexual slavery. His writings cannot be interpreted to mean sexual acts between two persons of the same sex who are in a committed relationship.
Epistle to the Corinthians (St. Paul) I;6:9,10 (50-60 AD) – MORALLY SOFT AND MALE CONCUBINES NOT HOMOSEXUALITY
Know you not that the unjust shall not possess the kingdom of God? Do not err: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the morally soft (molles), nor male concubines (masculorum concubitores), nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners, shall possess the kingdom of God.
Epistle to Timothy (St. Paul) I;1:9-11 (66?-100? AD) – MALE CONCUBINES NOT HOMOSEXUALITY
Knowing this, that the law is not made for the just man but for the unjust and disobedient, for the ungodly, and for sinners, for the wicked and defiled, for murderers of fathers, and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for fornicators, for male concubines (masculorum concubitoribus), for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and whatever other thing is contrary to sound doctrine which is according to the Gospel of the glory of the blessed Gods which has been committed to my trust.
MALE CONCUBINES were slaves who were, (most of the time) against their will, required to be a sexual slave for either their male or femaie owner (or both).
If the word “homosexual” appears in your Bible in either of these passages then you’re holding a version that was written after 1946, since the word “homosexual” didn’t even reach common usage until the late 1800’s. Prior to the 1946 Edition of the Revised Standard Version, the words that “homosexual” has replaced in many modern versions have included “boy prostitutes, effeminate, those who make women of themselves, sissies, catamites, the self-indulgent, sodomites, lewd persons, male prostitutes, and the unchaste.” In What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality, Daniel Helminiak offers that “until the Reformation in the 16th Century and in Roman Catholicism until the 20th Century, the word malakoi was thought to mean “masturbators.” Among the early Greek-speaking Christian theologians who condemned homosexuality the words malakoi (Latin: molles) and arsenokoitai (Latin: masculorum concubitoribus) were never used. John Chrysostom (347-407 A.D.) preached in Greek against homosexuality and like others including Clement of Alexandra, never used these words, not even was the issue of homosexuals mentioned when he preached on these two passages. (Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, pages 335-353.)
Actually,that is the reason I state, “May or may not pertain to homosexuality.” We don’t know what was meant, but from my perspective, and my faith, I can’t see God making me as I am then condemning me for it.
My point is that regardless of what the verses mean, there are more important things that they should be focusing on if they claim to be men and women of God.
Hi Emily K!
I get TownHall in my inbox everyday, and Matt Barber of CWA and Doug Giles are the usual writers that inject a gay agenda into just about anything.
I get WorldNetDaily and Exodus International also gives me e-newsletters.
Sometimes I’m silent on AFA’s website, but check out the commentary and the answers to them. And also the FRC, I do the same thing. Those are particularly vexing websites.
I wish sometimes people would step back and observe what they are saying.
I don’t think there is anything more stupid and annoying than a straight person arguing with someone gay over who and what they are, where they came from.
I mean, that is THE definition of arrogance!
Or, at least in the Christian perspective, gay people are dead and doomed.
And actually being alive, well and happy and gay ALL at the same time, cannot convince them otherwise.
How is it that the one whose life it is, cannot speak for that life for themselves?
It’s as I’ve said before…and man convinced he knows more about child bearing than a woman who has had several children would look stupid arguing with her on that point, wouldn’t he?
And it’s saying something that men don’t do that. So why is it that straight people are convinced that they know more about being gay or homosexuality than a gay person and have no restraint in how they express that?
Oh, and btw….I thank you all for you responses to my post.
Some folks over at Townhall think I’m dumb and immoral and one guy calls me a ‘homosexualist’.
Yep. I’ve been contaminated by ‘the gays’ and since I”m not running, afraid or believe them….I must be ONE OF YOU.
Hee hee…if I’ve convinced anyone that I’m gay, even when I say I”m not…just shows you what I’m dealing with.
Which I why I respect fully and with high praise, the patience of a saint a gay person must have when dealing with such hot mess.
Darren said:
Yes, I agree. It would be nice if some Christian groups focused on Christ and his message instead of playing the “Let’s Eliminate the Gays” game. It seems strange that a religion dedicated to including all (which is, for example, how the word “Catholic” came into the picture…it means “universal, all encompassing”) would even think of excluding homosexuals from their churches.
It seems strange that a religion that starts with the belief that God loves us first and that we are called to respond to that love, not by any act on our part, except accepting his/her love, would add an exception clause for gays; that we have to change first before God can love us and/or before we can love God.
It seems strange that a religion that promises happiness and inner peace would cause misery and turmoil for gays. A religion that says we are heirs to the kingdom of Heaven would make some to be exisiting in a living hell.
But luckily there are churches who have taken the Gospel seriously and have focused on the real issues, and have taken the message of Christ seriously in allowing all to enter their church doors and be full participants in those churches.
Alan,
I just picked up Peter Gomes’ new book, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What’s So Good About the Good News?
I’m only a few pages in but he’s already talking about how churches prefer to preach the Gospels to preaching the gospel, and how it easier to preach about Jesus than it is to preach about what Jesus preached about.
I think I’m going to enjoy this book – though I’ll probably find it challenging. I certainly found his The Good Book to revolutionize how I thought about the Bible.
Timothy:
Sounds like a good book. I will look for it.
I think we of the Catholic-Orthodox tradition split in two all the time on that. On one hand we have the bishops and priests arguing without end about what we have to believe about Christ, while on the other hand we have Mother Teresa, St. Francis of Asissi and the like living the life and preaching Christ by example. The rest of us are trying to find a happy medium. But if I had a choice of the two, I’d rather follow the teachings of Christ than endlessly debating doctrine about him. That is not to say having the correct understanding of the Christian faith is necessary, but that it is more important, as Christ stated, to “hear the word and put it into practice.”
Jews believe: thoughts are just thoughts. You can think about something bad and it won’t matter because you did not act on the bad thought. Likewise, thinking about something good does not matter either. You have to ACT to make it matter.