Carrie's porn loses her a gig with NJ "family defenders"
Wal-Mart bans gay couple for NOT shoplifting
California Poll: I support marriage but I don't want to vote again
Because She Needed It
The "Biblical" Worldwide Anglican Communion
Namibia Political Parties Hesitantly Supportive
Purdue Professor Spews "An Economic Case Against Homosexuality"
Australian Senate Refuses to Oppose Uganda's "Kill Gays" Bill
Featured Reports
David Benkof: Behind the Mask
At first glance, David Benkof appears to be a young gay man who believes that same-sex marriage will damage the institution of marriage, that there are better options for gay couples than marriage, that the community should join him in prioritizing other more pressing issues, and that the marriage discussion is harming the efforts of gay couples in red states to get recognition for their unions. He also claims that he’s a gay columnist, that he speaks for an influential collection of gay thinkers, and that he is part of the gay and lesbian community and that he shares our goals and dreams. But none of that is true.
“Repeat After Me”: The Reparative Therapy Echo Chamber
The April 2008 edition of the pay-to-publish vanity journal Psychological Reports featured a new report from NARTH. Written by NARTH president A. Dean Byrd, past president Joseph Nicolosi, and Richard W. Potts, the report carries the unwieldy but self-descriptive title, “Clients perceptions of how reorientation therapy and self-help can promote changes in sexual orientation.” While the title describes what the authors meant to show — how clients describe the benefits of reparative therapy — the report itself actually illustrates something very different: the ex-gay movement’s remarkable ability to instill an almost robot-like parroting of ex-gay rhetoric among their clients.
Testing the Premise: Is MRSA The New Gay Plague?
The Toronto Star said that a new study “discover[ed] a new strain” of a super-bug “hitting gay men.” Headlines in Britain screamed, “Flesh-eating bug strikes San Francisco’s gay community,” and anti-gay extremists across America spread the alarm that gays were introducing another plague into “the general population.” But there was a small problem with all of this: None of it is true!
Paul Cameron’s World
In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.
From the Inside: Focus on the Family’s “Love Won Out”
On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.
Prologue: Why I Went To “Love Won Out”
Part 1: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Part 2: Parents Struggle With “No Exceptions”
Part 3: A Whole New Dialect
Part 4: It Depends On How The Meaning of the Word "Change" Changes
Part 5: A Candid Explanation For "Change"
The Heterosexual Agenda: Exposing The Myths
At last, the truth can now be told.
Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!
And don't miss our companion report, How To Write An Anti-Gay Tract In Fifteen Easy Steps.
Testing The Premise: Are Gays A Threat To Our Children?
Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.
Straight From The Source: What the “Dutch Study” Really Says About Gay Couples
Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.
The FRC’s Briefs Are Showing
Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.
Review: The Gay Report
When Karla Jay and Allan Young published The Gay Report in 1979, it quickly a favorite source of statistics for many anti-gay extremists. But before you accepts these statistic at face value, you should examine the inner workings of this survey very carefully. What you learn might surprise you.
Daniel Fetty Doesn’t Count
The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.
L. Junius Brutus
November 18th, 2008 | LINK
All nonsense! This is the wrath of Zeus against the modern world for no longer holding sacrifices for him. Why can’t people see something that is so obvious?
elaygee
November 18th, 2008 | LINK
No it’s the anger of Ganesh the elephant headed god who carries the earthon his back. he is much angered by this false worship of Xtians.
David C.
November 18th, 2008 | LINK
Quick, sacrifice a virgin! Or switch to virgin olive oil.
Jaft
November 18th, 2008 | LINK
LOVE that last line, Tim. Totally made my day.
kevin
November 18th, 2008 | LINK
You know, as someone who has read the Gospels, I just don’t see how you can profess to be a Christian and ignore a very profound passage that appears at least 3 times in the New Testament…
“But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” Matthew 5:44-45
That’s not just one phrase out of many, it’s one of the major THEMES in the Gospels and is an ACTUAL, authentic saying of Jesus.
Do these people even care about what Jesus had to say or do just make things up as they go along?
Kristi
November 18th, 2008 | LINK
Since God’s preferred method of expressing his wrath when people go against his will is by raining down judgement by fire or some other natural disaster, why hasn’t he expressed himself similarly in Connecticut? or Massachussetts? Or Canada, Belgium, Spain, Netherlands, South Africa and Norway? Hmmm…
TJ McFisty
November 18th, 2008 | LINK
Kevin, didn’t Jesus say something about following his word being the hardest thing or, at least, something difficult to do? Memory’s foggy on that.
If so, then he was right on that, also.
I do recall him also saying he came to destroy the family and had a bad relationship with his parents, but well, that’s just as overlooked. Stuff for Jesus scholars only, I guess.
kevin
November 18th, 2008 | LINK
TJ: I think what you’re thinking of is this…
“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” Matthew 7:13-14
Or perhaps this?
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ “And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’ Matthew 7:21-23
Richard Rush
November 18th, 2008 | LINK
Either way (pro-gay or anti-gay), if a god had a hand in causing the fires, he’s a psychopathic wackjob that millions of people choose to worship.
I have some familiarity with these nuts. My own mother thought Hurricane Katrina was a god’s punishment. I love her, but she’s a religious nut.
Timothy Kincaid
November 18th, 2008 | LINK
kevin
I can’t help but think that for many conservative Christians Jesus is a collossal pain in the ass.
Yeah, they’re glad he died, but couldn’t he have kept his mouth shut? I mean all that stuff about loving your neighbor and doing good and caring for the less fortunate, sheesh. And the 25th Chapter of Matthew.. ugh, get rid of it; in it Jesus says that being decent to others is more important than being all religious.
Now Paul, on the other hand. He’d make a perfectly good savior. He said all sorts of things that could interpreted as keeping women subjugated and slavery in place and maybe (if you squint) even telling gays to go straight.
You know what kind of Christian you’re dealing with when the only use they can find in Jesus is Christmas and Easter.
Scott
November 18th, 2008 | LINK
Once James is finally on his deathbed, it won’t surprise me if his current supporters (Chastity Pariah, etc.) surround him and tell him that what’s happening is God’s judgement “for all those years of sinful homosexual behavior”.
He forgets the pack he runs with lives to act “holier than thou” – even towards their own. And they could care less about puppets like James.
kevin
November 18th, 2008 | LINK
Yeah, I know what you’re saying Tim.
I think most self-proclaimed Christians, even liberal Christians, get Jesus wrong (down to what his name actually is – Yeshua the Messiah) and almost everyone who uses the bible to argue a point has an agenda, myself included.
Christianity in America is a competing marketplace of ideas full of entrepreneuers, kinda like a big giant God Supermarket. People like myself steer clear of the middle aisles that contain all of the shelf-stable, high in sugar, nutrionally suspect products and try to stick to the margins, where the whole foods are.
If we were to find James Hartline on one of the shelves, I think he’d be a sugar-frosted, Pop Tart (that’s gone rancid).
On Paul, I think scholarship is changing the perspective we’ve had about Paul for many centuries. Garry Wills has a book called “What Paul Meant” that attempts to salvage Paul’s reputation for liberal Christians, such as Paul not being mysogynistic whatsoever or totally hung up on sex.
We’ll never know what the early Church left out of the canon, what they changed, or what was written by Paul and what was attributed to Paul. But even if you consider Paul to have hijacked the Religion Of Jesus and perverted it into the Religion About Jesus as How Paul Interprets It, Paul’s observations about faith and community still contain valuable lessons.
Timothy Kincaid
November 18th, 2008 | LINK
Paul was a pramatist trying to herd cats. Sadly, the modern church has turned all of his remonstrations of the faithful into denunciation of everyone else.
Buffy
November 18th, 2008 | LINK
I feel myself quoting Susan B. Anthony more frequently these days:
“I distrust those people who
know so well what God wants
because I notice it always coincides
with their own desires.”
BTW, do you ever wonder why people never blame the routine flooding of the Mississippi River on “God’s Wrath” against people in the region?
Ephilei
November 19th, 2008 | LINK
So Prop 8 passes and God regins down fire? Clearly God must be against prop 8!
Since joining the Eastern Orthodox Church, I’ve found it interesting realizing that the Wrath of God concept wasn’t articulated until Martin Luther and has no place in Orthodox theology. Christian theology would be much better without theologians.
Jennifer
November 21st, 2008 | LINK
Doesn’t he know we don’t use fire?
We make the hurricanes.
Timothy Kincaid
November 21st, 2008 | LINK
My favorite comment of the day
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