Box Turtle Bulletin

MA State Sen. Candaras On Why She Changed Her Vote On Marriage Equality

State Senator Gale D. Candaras was among the sixty-two Massachusetts legislators who voted for the proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage last January. She was also among eleven lawmakers who switched their vote this time to defeat the measure on its second reading. Her poignant statement explaining her change of heart is worth reading. I’ve reprinted it in full after the jump. The most compelling reasons she gave all centered around “family”:

Same gender couples have been adopting children and building families here in the Commonwealth for about twenty years. In many instances, same gendered couples have adopted children with severe challenges, children no one else wanted, and they have worked miracles with them. These children would have lived lives of despair without these families. This underscores how we cannot afford to marginalize any of our people; make anyone second-class citizens.

…One grandmother told me she had changed her mind and wanted me to change my vote in case one of her grandchildren grew up to be gay or lesbian. She did not want any of her grandchildren to be denied the right to marry the person they love. This is exactly the legacy we will leave to generations beyond us, and the example we can set for the nation and, I daresay the world, which is certainly paying attention to what we do and say here today.

Click here to read Sen. Candaras’s full statement

Another Senseless Hate-Crime Murder

On May 12th, 20-year old Roberto “Poncho” Duncanson was walking down the street in Brooklyn when he passed 17-year old Omar Willick.  Perhaps Roberto smiled… we don’t know.

What we do know is that Willick began a stream of slurs against Poncho and that Poncho walked away.  Willick followed Duncanson, waited outside while Duncanson visited his cousin, followed him some more, confronted him, and ultimately stabbed him four times.  Yesterday the authorities added hate crimes to the murder charges against Willick.

For some truly heart-wrenching comments by people who knew and loved Pancho Duncanson, check out this site.

Colombia Recognizes Same-Sex Couples

The Congress of Colombia has passed a bill to provide same-sex couples with many of the rights of married opposite-sex couples.  The Latin American country joined with Tazmania, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, and nearly all of Europe as well as parts of Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico in providing protections that are denied by most of the United States.

Southern Baptists Push Ex-Gay Ministries

The Southern Baptist Convention has adopted a kinder gentler face to its efforts to deny gay men and women marriage, adoption rights, protection from employment and housing discrimination, and tracking of hate crimes. They now seek to provide a “loving response and ministry to those who face this kind of temptation.”

The Southern Baptist Convention has commissioned a Texas pastor to become its “national strategist for gender issues” — a position designed to promote “ex-gay” ministries to SBC congregations. […]

Stith’s primary emphasis will be to model a ministry to gays that goes beyond condemnation. “When pastors and churches aren’t sure how to deal with it, they usually deal with it wrongly,” Stith said. “I understand because I was there; I did those things.”

I welcome the church’s efforts to tone down their demonizing and recrimination efforts.  However, I think that replacing them with wildly unsuccessful ex-gay ministries is not a solution that will in the long run prove effective.

Interview on “Democracy Now!”

As I write this, I’m waiting to go on the air for an interview on Democracy Now! They’ve asked to have me on to talk about Dr. James Holsinger’s report. The show is live, but it’s often carried on radio stations throughout the country on tape delay. Check your local listings for more details.

Update: It’s done. My part was very brief. Never having done this sort of thing before, I learned a valuable lesson. Once you’ve been given a chance to speak, don’t stop.

Update: Democracy Now! has posted a rush transcript along with a link to the audio and video.

“Pathophysiology”

That was Stephen Colbert’s Word for yesterday’s Colbert Report, in which he asks, “Why go to a doctor when you could go to a plumber.” You can see the video online at Comedy Central.

Marriage Upheld in Massachusetts

A proposed amendment to the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to ban same-sex marriage has failed.  The requirements for a citizen generated amendment are that such amendment receive 25% favorable vote from the joint legislature in two consecutive sessions along with a favorable vote from the populace.

To get the proposed ban on the 2008 statewide ballot would have required 50 votes. It got 45, with 151 lawmakers opposed. There was no debate.

The soonest anti-gay activists could get such an amendment on the ballot would now be 2012 and though they vow to press on, time is not on their side.  Barring some unexpected event, marriage is here to stay in Massachusetts for the foreseeable future.

Arkansas Family Council to Propose Adoption Ban

The Arkansas Family Council, the group responsible for Arkansas’ constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, has announced that they will push for a ballot measure to ban adoption and foster parenting by gay people or unmarried couples. If the measure’s name and ballot title are approved by the state Attorney General, the Family Council would then have until July 7th to collect the required signatures to get the proposal on the November 2008 general election ballot.

The group hasn’t decided yet whether to make the proposal an initiative, which could be overturned by a three-fourth’s vote of the state legislature, or a constitutional amendment, which can only be overturned by another ballot proposal.

The Arkansas Family Council is an official state policy council for Focus on the Family.

DADT’s Death Rattle Just Got Louder

Sunday, it was Colin Powell calling for an end to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Today, the Wall Street Journal features an op-ed by rabidly anti-gay former Georgia congressman Bob Barr, the author of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), saying “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” should go: (Sorry, no link; it’s not online):

Attitudes both within and outside the military have shifted greatly since 1993 when the current policy was formulated. Three-quarters of returning Iraq and Afghanistan vets said in a December 2006 Zogby poll that they are “personally comfortable” interacting with gay people. A majority of those who knew someone gay in their unit said the person’s presence had no negative impact on unit morale. Among the public at large, polls show consistently that roughly two- thirds of Americans favor letting gays serve, including majorities of Republicans, regular churchgoers and even people with negative attitudes toward gays.

These reasons, and the credibility of many experts making the arguments, have convinced me that there is little reason left to believe gays openly serving would break the armed forces. Americans want strong, moral leadership, and they are quick to sniff out pandering and expediency. It sure would be nice if the presidential wannabes were as quick to realize this.

The Death Rattle of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

This past Sunday, Colin Powell, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had some comments about the military’s anti-gay “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy put in place during his term of service.

MR. RUSSERT: The only two countries from the original NATO group that do not allow openly gay people to serve in the military are the U.S. and Portugal. Is it a time to do away with “don’t ask, don’t tell” and allow openly gay people to serve in the military?

GEN. POWELL: I think the, the country has changed in its attitudes quite a bit. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” was an appropriate response to the situation back in 1993. And the country certainly has changed. I don’t know that it has changed so much that this would be the right thing to do now. My, my, my successor, General Shalikashvili has written a letter about this.

MR. RUSSERT: Yes.

GEN. POWELL: He thinks it has changed sufficiently. But he ends his letter by saying, “We’re in a war right now, and let’s not do this right now.” My own judgment is that gays and lesbians should be allowed to have maximum access to all aspects of society. In the State Department, we had a very open policy, we had gay ambassadors. I swore in gay ambassadors with their partners present. But the military is different. It is unique. It exists for one purpose and that’s to apply state violence. And in the intimate confines of military life, in barracks life, where we tell you who you’re going to live with, where we tell you who you’re going to sleep with, we have to have a different set of rules. I will not second-guess the commanders who are serving now, just as I didn’t want to be second-guessed 12 or 13 years ago. But I think the country is changing. We may eventually reach that point. I’m not sure.

MR. RUSSERT: Is it inevitable?

GEN. POWELL: I don’t know if it’s inevitable, but I think it’s certainly moving in that direction. I just don’t—I’m not convinced we have reached that point yet, and I will let the military commanders and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Congress make the judgment. Remember, it is the Congress who put this into law. It was a policy. And that’s all I wanted it to be was a policy change, but it was Congress in 1993 that made it a matter of law. And so there are some proposed pieces of legislation up there. I don’t know if all of the candidates the other night who were saying it ought to be overturned have co-signed that or introduced law. But it’s a matter of law now, not a matter of military policy.

It is comforting to hear that General Powell is not a defender of anti-gay bigotry. And it is encouraging to hear him question whether the ban should stay in place. But perhaps the most valuable result of this interview is that Powell has removed himself as a tool for others to avoid an honest discussion of the merits of the policy.

And an excuse he was. In the June 5 Republican primary debates, Rudy Guiliani shifted discussion of the policy to Powell saying:

This is not the time to deal with disruptive issues like this.

Back in 1994 we went through this. And it created a tremendous amount ofdisruption. Colin Powell, I think, was still the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff before he left at the beginning of the Clinton administration

He came to the view that this was a good policy.

But Guiliani was not alone in trying to shift the conversation off of his own beliefs. In fact, none of the Republican candidates were willing to discuss the merits of the policy or what they personally felt about it.

Ron Paul talked about “disruptive behavior” whether heterosexual or homosexual, McCain said the policy “is working, my friends”, Romney punted the conversation to some future point in which we weren’t in war, and Huckabee decided this was a good time to talk about immigration. The other also-rans rest kept their heads down and hoped they didn’t get called on.

In short, there are very few voices willing to call for continued discrimination. Very few anxious to rant about sin and immorality in the troops. And the last one to do so, no longer has his job.

This battle is over on this. The policy is dead. Congress just hasn’t voted to tell it so yet.

The Reorientation Bomb

Some things are funny even the second time around.  Although it broke three years ago, this story about a secret military project didn’t get legs until now. 

The proposal came from the Air Force’s Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, which requested $7.5 million to develop a so-called “gay-bomb.” Using the Freedom of Information Act, Edward Hammond, director of the U.S. office of the Sunshine Project, obtained a copy which was “part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons.” If completed, the bomb would release a chemical aphrodisiac “and by virtue of either breathing or having their skin exposed to this chemical… soldiers would become gay.” This would cause their units to break down as the troops “became irresistibly attractive to one another.”

Let’s hope the anti-gays don’t get any ideas about reorientation through chemicals.  If anyone sees Alan Chambers flying over West Hollywood in a cropduster, run for cover.

A Closer Look at Dr. James Holsinger’s “Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality”

President Bush’s nomination of Dr. James Holsinger to be the next Surgeon General continues to raise concerns among several leading gay rights advocates. Alarms first went up when we learned that Holsinger co-founded a church which sponsors an ex-gay ministry. That discovery reinforced other well-known facts about his tenure on the United Methodist Judicial Council, where he opposed the 2004 decision to allow Rev. Karen Dammann, a lesbian, to continue serving as a minister. He also backed the defrocking of Rev. Beth Stroud, another lesbian minister, and he supported a Virginia pastor who barred an openly gay man from church membership.

Most of those concerns, by themselves, have little direct bearing on his future role as Surgeon General. We should remember that Dr. C. Everett Koop was also an evangelical Christian, and he was able to aside whatever qualms he may have had to become a outspoken advocate for sanity during the AIDS crisis. Not only that, but Dr. Koop battled powerful forces within the Reagan administration to do this, and he created many enemies among his fellow social conservatives. Dr. Koop showed considerable medical integrity and moral bravery in standing firm against the pervasive stigma which gay men were experiencing at the time.

But there is troubling evidence which suggests that Dr. Holsinger is no C. Everett Koop. Holsinger wrote a 1991 white paper for the United Methodist Church’s Committee to Study Homosexuality titled, “Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality,” (PDF: 752 KB/8 pages) where he tries to give a scientific opinion that gay male relationships are inherently inferior because “when the complementarity of the sexes is breached, injuries and diseases may occur.”

That paper, dressed up as a considered medical opinion backed by a bibliography drawn from professional sources, would likely appear to be rather impressive to the lay reader (as most members of the committee were). But a closer examination of that paper reveals very little of scientific value. Worse, it shows a startling eagerness to pull evidence out of context to provide damning evidence against gay men, while willfully ignoring counter evidence in the same literature which essentially destroys the core of his arguments.

Holsinger’s Scientific Evidence

Holsinger began his “scientific” examination by recounting the reproductive role of male and female genitalia. He then went on to observe that the rectum doesn’t perform such a role, and is, in his estimation, unsuitable for intercourse. He cited Agnew (1986)¹ to say:

The rectum is incapable of mechanical protection against abrasion and severe damage to the colonic mucosa can result if objects that are large, sharp or pointed are inserted into the rectum (Agnew 1986.)

As you can surmise from the quoted text, Agnew’s paper deals largely with foreign objects, not intercourse. But before the reader can notice this discrepancy, Holsinger quickly dropped the subject of foreign objects (he will return to it later) to begin a broader outline of conditions “found in homosexually active men.” Holsinger quoted Owen (1985, although the paper is missing from Holsinger’s bibliography):²

Four general groups of conditions may be found in homosexually active men: classical sexually transmitted diseases… enteric diseases… trauma… and the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).

This much is true. These conditions may be found among some homosexually active men. They may also be found in heterosexually active men and women. But to justify his singling out of gay men, Holsinger cited another study to say that STD’s are “strongly correlated to sexual lifestyle,” and presents a large number of statistics for an impressive list of diseases. Unfortunately, the statistics were given without context, leaving the impression that they are representative of all gay men.

But what is that context? It turns out that these statistics came from one lone study consisting of a convenience sample of 365 male patients, all of whom attended a single urban STD clinic in Copenhagen over a seven month period in 1983.³

This is not a representative study at all. It’s not even a representative study of gay men in downtown Copenhagen. It tells us nothing about rural or suburban Danish men. More importantly, it doesn’t tell us anything about gay men who don’t need the services of an STD clinic. It doesn’t even tell us anything about gay or straight men who attend other STD clinics besides the single clinic that performed this study. It is, at best, a snapshot of a small population from one urban center over a short period of time, taken eight years before Holsinger’s paper was written.

This of course means that if you study people with STDs, whether they are gay or straight, you will find people with STDs. Holsinger uses the behavior of one particular sample of men who expose themselves to the risk of STDs to denigrate all gay men (and lesbians!). This study says nothing of those whose “lifestyle” choices do not lead to contracting STDs. And of course, Holsinger’s arguments don’t address whatever responsibility heterosexuals overall have for the 64% of this particular Copenhagen sample who were exclusively straight and were treated for STDs.

After dealing briefly with sexually transmitted diseases, Holsinger introduced the squeamish subject of anorectal trauma, again implying that it is a common condition among gay men. He opened this line of argument by repeating this statement from Bush (1986):⁴

Consensual penile-anal intercourse can be performed safely. Few anorectal problems and no evidence of anal-sphincter dysfunction are found in heterosexual women who have anal-receptive intercourse. However, forceful anal penetration without lubrication against a resistant sphincter will result in abrasive trauma, causing fissures, contusions, thrombosed hemorrhoids, lacerations with bleeding, pain, and psychic trauma.

Notice what’s going on here. If intercourse is consensual, then everything’s okay. After all, they see few problems among straight women. But if it’s not consensual then damage can occur. This statement seems to preclude the possibility that gay men can have consensual sex, doesn’t it?

Holsinger seems to agree. The entire premise of his “scientific” evidence is not based on the ordinary bonds of affection that arise between committed gay and lesbian couples. Nor is it even based on the ordinary physical expressions of that love that occur in a mutually supportive and consensual basis. Instead, all three sources that Holsinger quoted from in this section (Bush, 1986; Geist, 1988; and Agnew, 1986)⁵ describe conditions that were found among men and women treated in emergency room settings. And much of the evidence provided in the Bush and Geist papers were the result of sexual assault, not consensual sex. It’s no wonder Holsinger is able to find so many alarming medical problems. But what does his evidence have to do with gay and lesbian couples in love? Well, the answer is simple. It’s no more relevant than the serial rapist is to the average loving heterosexual couple.

Holsinger then returned to the topic of foreign objects which were removed in emergency room settings. But he utterly failed to recognize, as Geist did, that many of these patients were heterosexual men and women. From Geist, Holsinger undoubtedly read that:

Anal erotic practices are incorrectly presumed by many to be limited to male homosexuals. A significant number of heterosexual men, heterosexual women and lesbian women also enjoy and practice anal sexual stimulation. Bolling’s mid-1970s study, which included a wide cross-section of gynecology clinic patients, revealed that 25 per cent practiced analingus. Eight percent of the women included anal intercourse as a regular part of their sexual repertoire.

Most of Geist’s paper describes injuries resulting from heterosexual activities, including vaginal and anorectal injuries to women during consensual activity. The paper also includes a large section describing injuries sustained during adult heterosexual rape and child sexual abuse. None of that was even hinted at in Holsinger’s paper. Instead, Holsinger cherry-picked from all of this evidence a few short passages to lambaste consensual relationships among gay men.

An Oddly Padded Bibliography

It’s at this point in the paper where Holsinger brought up the practice of “fisting”:

The most severe type of anorectal trauma follows fist fornication which during the 1970s was practiced by approximately 5% of the male homosexual population.

Five percent of a small minority seems hardly worth mentioning, but Holsinger went ahead and talked about it anyway. And this is where his bibliography gets interesting. His bibliography includes a letter to the editor by Carlo Torro with the eye-catching title, “Delayed death from ‘fisting’,” a letter that Hollinger didn’t refer to in the text of paper.⁶

And why didn’t Holsinger describe the contents of the letter? The reason is obvious. The letter describes a woman who had died of sepsis as a result of engaging in this practice with her husband! Of course, there’s no hint of this in the letter’s title. The only possible reason for Holsinger to include the letter in the bibliography is to gain whatever advantage he can from the letter’s title.

This is probably among Holsinger’s most egregious abuses of the medical literature. He has already denigrated consensual relationships of gay men by using examples drawn from emergency room traumas that include heterosexual couples. As if that weren’t enough, Holsinger padded his bibliography with an entry that has nothing to do with gay men whatsoever.

And that’s not just a one-time “mistake” either. He padded his bibliography again with another paper that he didn’t reference in his article, one by David B. Busch and James R. Starling, titled, “Rectal foreign bodies: Case reports and a comprehensive review of the world’s literature.”⁷ Given the title of the paper and the context in which it appears in Holsinger’s bibliography, one might assume that the paper presents case reports from all over the world of gay men sticking things inside themselves.

Well, they’d be wrong. The authors introduce their report with two case cases, both of whom were straight. One was a 39-year-old married man with a perfume bottle inserted in his rectum. Busch and Starling used these two examples to illustrate an important point:

As in the great majority of published cases, both patients reported no history of a gay life-style. It does not seem possible to generalize about the sexual preferences of male patients (ratio of heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual patients) presenting with rectal foreign bodies, since very few of the reports provide such information. … Obviously both anal intercourse and foreign body insertion involve stimulation of the same area of the body, but the literature fails to provide sufficient information from which to draw any conclusions about whether foreign body self-insertion is in fact predominantly performed by men practicing anal intercourse.

It’s not unusual for bibliographies to include sources which aren’t referenced in the body of a paper. Bibliographies often provide additional reference material should someone want to investigate further. But one would expect the bibliographic entries to be relevant, and these two entries clearly are not.

So why did he include these two papers in his bibliography? Did he suppose the other members of the UMC committee would look up these bibliographical references for further study? The answer is more likely that he assumed that they wouldn’t. After all, very few people do. And so adding these two provocatively-titled entries to his bibliography is all the more suspicious, especially now that we’ve seen how selectively he quoted from the studies that he did mention in his text.

Holsinger closed his “scientific” portion of his paper with a discussion of anal cancer, which is more common among gay men than straight men. At that time, it was strongly suspected that the human papillomavirus (HPV) was the culprit. What we now know is that those same HPV strains are also responsible for causing cervical cancer. In fact, for gays and straights alike, the single greatest risk factor for contracting HPV is sex with men, who are the primary carriers of HPV. While we know this to be true today, it may not have been so clear in 1991. So I’m willing to give Holsinger something of a pass on this one.

Conclusion

The whole point of Holsinger’s paper is to draw a sharp contrast between gay relationships and heterosexual relationships. But to do so, he culls his evidence largely from papers which describe injuries from nonconsensual intercourse to denigrate consensual relationships, he describes odd sexual practices that are enjoyed by heterosexual couples to denigrate the minority of gay couples who indulge in those same practices, and he misleads his readers by padding his bibliography with more references to papers explicitly describing injuries experienced by heterosexual men and women to imply that they describe gay men instead.

In other words, to describe gay sexual acts, more often than not he turned to papers which describe injuries sustained through heterosexual activity. And then he used this evidence from heterosexual activity to say that “when the complementarity of the sexes is breached, injuries and diseases may occur as noted above.” But what does this evidence suggest about “complementarity” in heterosexual relationships? Holsinger doesn’t answer.

But worse, Holsinger made the fatal error of ignoring the bonds of affection and devotion that arise in gay and lesbian couples. He reduced the rich complexity of their relationships to pipe fittings and how they interlock with each other. But the interlocking parts that fit together in relationships are those parts that fit sublimely. They have absolutely nothing to do with pipes or connectors or any other analogies drawn from the local Ace Hardware store.

Whatever pretensions Holsinger may have had to presenting a scientific argument, this paper does not rise to that level. In fact, Holsinger deployed many of the same tactics other anti-gay extremists use in writing common anti-gay tracts. The result is not science, but propaganda.

The Human Rights Campaign’s Joe Solmonese, in opposing Holsinger’s nomination, points out that, “it is essential that America’s top doctor value sound science over anti-gay ideology.” This paper shows no evidence that Holsinger holds to such values. What he wrote was no error, nor is it a simple misreading of the medical literature. In fact, it is simply impossible to write what he wrote by accident or in error.

Holsinger wrote this paper as part of a church inquiry where the greater considerations for Truth ought to hold sway. This makes Holsinger’s actions all the more disquieting. If he’s willing to commit an act of false witness on behalf of the church — in the service of his God — what assurances can we have that he will act differently on behalf of the nation?

References

1. Agnew, Jeremy. “Hazards associated with anal erotic activity.” Archives of Sexual Behavior, 15, no. 4 (1986): 307-314. [BACK]

2. Owen, William F., Jr. “Medical problems of the homosexual adolescent.” Journal of Adolescent Health Care. 6, no. 4 (July 1985): 278-285. [BACK]

3. Christophersen, Jette; Menné, Torkil; Friis-Møller, Alice; Nielsen, Jens O.; Hansted, Birgitte; Øhlenschlæger. “Sexually transmitted diseases in hetero-, homo- and bisexual males in Copenhagen.” Danish Medical Bulletin 35, no. 3 (June 1988): 285-288. [BACK]

4. Bush, Robert A., Hr.; Owen, William F., Jr. “Trauma and other noninfectious problems in homosexual men.” Medical Clinics of North America 70, no. 3 (May 1986): 549-566. [BACK]

5. Agnew, Jeremy. “Hazards associated with anal erotic activity.” Archives of Sexual Behavior, 15, no. 4 (1986): 307-314.

Bush, Robert A., Hr.; Owen, William F., Jr. “Trauma and other noninfectious problems in homosexual men.” Medical Clinics of North America 70, no. 3 (May 1986): 549-566.

Geist, Richard F. “Sexually related trauma.” Emergency Medicine Clinics of North America 6, no. 3 (August 1988): 439-466. [BACK]

6. Torre, Carlo. Letter to the editor: “Delayed death from ‘fisting’.” American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology 8, no. 1 (March 1987): 91. [BACK]

7. Busch, David B.; Starling, James R. “Rectal foreign bodies: Case reports and a comprehensive review of the world’s literature.” Surgery 100, no. 3 (September 1987): 512-519. [BACK]

James Dobson and John MacArthur Have Tested Stigma-Positive

We all remember back to just a few days after 9/11 when Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson blamed the terrorists’ actions on homosexuals, among others. According to Falwell, God lifted his veil of protection of America because we embraced all sorts of moral evil. Falwell stood by those remarks just a week before he died.

Now comes word that something terrible is going to happen, and this time it’ll be the lesbians’ fault. Not only that, but the old 1980’s canard of AIDS being the wrath of God is back in all its glory. And all of this comes with James Dobson’s imprimatur.

On the June 4 broadcast of James Dobson’s radio program, he played a recorded sermon by John MacArthur, pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, titled “A Nation Abandoned by God.” Dobson preceded that broadcast with this endorsement:

Some of our listeners are not going to agree with what he [Rev. McArthur] has to say, but it’s going to make you think, and it’s also going to be somewhat disturbing. And I happen to agree with what John MacArthur was saying on this day, and I want to thank him and his team and Woodman Valley Chapel for allowing us to share this message. It needs to be heard, especially at this time in our nation.

And what did Rev. MacArthur preach? Well, first of all, he says we’re lucky we haven’t been smited already:

I don’t believe we’re waiting for God’s wrath in this society. We haven’t had a massive calamity such as the destruction of an entire city. We certainly don’t want that to happen — pray that does not happen — but it could happen. And God would be just in any calamity that he brought upon us. … But this massive concept of the wrath of abandonment, I’m convinced, is now at work in our society.

…The first thing that you look for in a society if you’re trying to discern whether God has abandoned that society is whether or not that society has gone through a sexual revolution so that illicit sex, adultery, every form of immorality is accepted as normal in that society. And we’re there. The second step in the progression, [Romans, chapter 1] verse 26: “God gave them over not just to passions that are explicable,” because they’re men and women, “but to inexplicable, degrading passions. For their women exchange the natural function for that which is unnatural.” You know a society has been abandoned by God when it celebrates lesbian sex.

So there it is. Whenever something goes wrong, we’ll know who to blame. It’s them lesbians.

But MacArthur doesn’t let the guys off the hook either:

The amazing thing of it is this, verse 27: “The men abandoning the natural function of the women, burning in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts, and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.” Right into this wrath of abandonment comes the wrath — the consequential wrath. And even though it generates venereal disease and AIDS, they keep doing it.

AIDS as the consequential wrath of God. It’s as if we all stepped back in time to the mid-1980’s. And remember, this has Dobson’s imprimatur all over it.

These comments arise from a most incredible willful ignorance. If AIDS were God’s judgment on the gay community, why did he have the AIDS virus enter the human chain clear back in the 1930’s in the Congo River basin? In fact, there is a pile of documentation showing that AIDS began ravaging parts of Central Africa since the early 1970’s. But in a land of inadequate fresh water, mysterious tropical diseases, war, povery, and poor hygiene and nutrition, this went unnoticed by the outside world until the CDC reported the deaths of five young gay men in 1981.

Gay men have been the scapegoats ever since. For twenty-five years now, people like Falwell, MacArthur, and Dobson have been compounding the suffering of those with the opportunistic infections that accompany AIDS and the struggles of those who continue to live with the disease. Medical science has progressed significantly in the past decade and those opportunistic infections are no longer the threat they once were. But no pill can vanquish the one opportunistic infection that continues to plague society. Stigma is alive and well, and James Dobson and John MacArthur are among the carriers.

I guess you could say they are Stigma-positive.

Why Does Stacy Harp Hate Our Founding Fathers?

Anti-gay extremist Stacy Harp approves of the Israeli parliament’s recent vote, passing a first reading of measures prohibiting gay pride parades in Jesrusalem and “banning mass homosexual public events anywhere in Israel.” Harp adds, “May the USA follow in Israel’s footsteps.” Unfortunately for her, that would violate the very first provision of America’s Bill of Rights — something every schoolchild should know:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

It looks like Stacy Harp is once again on the wrong side of history — this time more than two hundred years after the fact.

It’s Hard To Kick a Good Man Out

Remember Petty Officer 2nd Class Jason Knight, the openly gay sailor who thought he had been kicked out under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” only to be reactivated for an Individual Ready Reserve tour in Kuwait? When the Navy found out about the mixup, they kicked him out again. You’d think that would be the end of the story, wouldn’t you?

Well, this morning’s Stars and Stripes is reporting that once again, Knight wasn’t kicked all the way out again:

However, in the latest twist, Knight’s new discharge papers — like his previous discharge papers — do not mention homosexual conduct as the reason for his dismissal. Instead, they cite “completion of required active service.” And they list his recall code as RE-1, with a reserve obligation ending in April 2009.

The Navy says they are looking into the matter. When asked if he would go back to active duty if he were somehow called, Knight simply replied, “Of course I would.”

Since leaving the Navy last May, Knight became a spokesperson for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which is actively working for the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

It seems that with our armed services being stretched thin on all fronts in an increasingly unpopular war, denying Knight’s eagerness to serve is a terrible waste to all those who voluntarily put their lives in danger.