Here in Oregon my husband and I (56 yrs. together!) are familiar with the deceitful activities of Scott Lively from the days when he and his buddy Lon Mabon were crusading against gay rights.

Yesterday at the gym where we work out, in conversation with a reliable and honest “gym friend,” the name Scott Lively was mentioned.

Our friend commented that he remembered Lively as one of his colleagues teaching in the same school years ago. The school had many street kids in it and many of the males were young gay men prostituting themselves on the streets. Scott Lively was well known to them as someone finding his Rough Trade among them. My retired teacher friend remarked that his teacher colleagues were also aware of Lively’s activities and often expressed the wish they had some way to document it.

I went over this story several times with my friend, anxious to be accurate in my recollection of what he had just said so that my sharing this hearsay with you would not be distorted by me as I gladly share it with you.

I hope this is of use to you. I feel certain it could be the seed for a legitimate, professional journalistic investigation.

What horrors the closet can breed.

Best wishes to you and your readers whose names are now familiar to me.

Eric Marcoux &
Eugene Woodworth

You will no doubt be pleased to learn that this is my last post on this now off-topic thread.

I appreciate that you have been speaking to me in “religious language”. My previous posts were a challenge for you to frame your ideas in a language that was not obscure, but grounded in reality. I will let other readers decide for themselves why you steadfastly refused the challenge.

I find your non-answer condescending because it assumes that I have never been engaged in a quest for religious meaning and truth.

Contrary to your “Road to Damascus” example, all doubters and skeptics are not merely people who have not tried to become steeped in ‘His Word’.

It may surprise you to know that many people labeled as: agnostic; atheist; humanist or skeptic indeed have a religious background. Many were once believers, the elect, the saved, and born again. They have sought religious truth, struggled with reconciling it with the real world, and ultimately found it sorely lacking on so many levels.

I will leave you with a quote from Bertrand Russell (it’s only fair after all – as you have given me many warmed over bon mots from your favourite authors):

“…it is the business of the church to discriminate, just as it is the business of the art connoisseur to know a genuine Leonardo from a forgery. In this way revelation becomes institutionalized at the same time. Righteousness is what the church approves, and unrighteousness is what it disapproves. Thus the effective part of the conception of righteousness is a justification of herd antipathy.”

This pretty much sums up my feelings towards ex-gay apologists, and people who proclaim that we are duty bound to follow the instructions of their ‘inerrant authentic inner voices’.

God is alive and He still speaks to us through His Holy Spirit. Go alone away from the world and your computer maybe to the beach or mountains and listen for His voice. If you really are a seeker. He will reveal Himself to you…”if you seek Him with all your soul, body, mind and strength. He will answer your questions if you’re willing to hear some hard answers and truths about yourself. The apostle Paul wasn’t looking for Jesus. If you read the Holy Scriptures it will tell you that He was even killing the early Christians. He was a good Jew who thought he was defending the faith by kiliing thoses “phony Christians”. and then what did Jesus do on the road to Emmaus, he said, “Paul, Paul why are you persecuting me? I implore you to start answering questions…If your serious, He will answer you…In His Love, Anthony Falzarano

So if I understand your answer correctly, you know the mind of god(s) because you hear inner voices.

For the record, I hear no inner voices. A great many well adjusted people (you know – people with sound mental health) also do not hear inner voices.

If you determine the authentiicty of your inner voice(s) because they are consistent with the bible, then why does anyone need the inner voice(s) at all? What happens when the inner voice speaks about something not in the bible?

Seriously Anthony, if you are really hearing voices that no one else can hear, then I would direct you to the following website:

http://www.cmha.ca/bins/content_page.asp?cid=3-100

There is help Anthony. There is hope. Don’t wait.

Let me share something with you. I have met God. Been in his presence even before I became a Christian. He even spoke to me. What my life was like before I even knew God was totally different than it is now. Yes, I sin just as you and everyone that has walked this earth. Except Jesus of course. Yet I am still gay. While everything else changed I am still gay. If God chose me before I was even born he will NOT lead me astray. He has a plan for me.

Let me ask you this. Why is your brand of Christianity so obsessed with gay people above all else? Is it because it makes them money by scaring people that the gay boogeyman is out to get their kids? And why are your allies so embracing of divorce and remarriage (except in cases of adultry which is permissible) all the while claiming to defend traditional marriage? Why is wealth no longer a sin and practiced heavily in evangelical/fundamentalist megachurches when Jesus clearly said that it was easier for a camel to pass through an eye of a needle than it was for a rich man to get into heaven? Why have many of these megachurches embraced an eye for an eye mentality while Jesus himself said to forgive one another and turn the other cheek? Why is the Iraq War embraced by many conservative Christians as just and blessed by God? To me, this does not sound anything like the Christianity Jesus started.

So yes, I agree with you Anthony. Many of these megachurch evangelical and television ministers are leading people astray. I wouldn’t listen to them. They lie in order to squash the real truth and claim that by sending them money they can be healed or be given a blessing for that new mansion or $50,000 car. They embrace some truths while hiding behind other false beliefs that wealth and divorce and remarriage are no longer sins.