Comments on: Religious Business, Public Access, and Discrimination

By: Catholic Church Threatens to Leave Homeless Out in the Cold | Asterisk

Catholic Church Threatens to Leave Homeless Out in the Cold | Asterisk — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:50:58 +0000

[...] law, by the way. This is the way it’s been for ages. It’s why a Methodist organization in Ocean Grove, New Jersey wasn’t allowed to refuse to allow a lesbian couple to use its pavilion in 2007. The boardwalk [...]

By: Leo

Leo — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 19:21:09 +0000

Even here in NJ there’s a lot of confusion around this case. Likely because of the unusual nature of the Camp Meeting Association and it’s relationship to the larger community.

This the best summation I’ve seen –good job of bringing all the salient points together.

By: The Story So Far… » Blog Archive » There Can Be No Morality Without Religion

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 03:35:50 +0000

[...] to donate sixty copies of Of Pandas and People to his school’s library. See it in the Proposition 8 advertisements that claimed same sex marriage would result in the forcing of churches to marry homosexuals. [...]

By: Boo

Boo — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 22:28:27 +0000

If you glance around Charlene’s blog, she also thinks she sees ghosts and that Santa is the devil.

By: Ephilei

Ephilei — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:55:02 +0000

Tim

Thanks for the good article. That story always sounded fishy but I’ve been too lazy to investigate.

By: Lying About Church and State | Popehat

Lying About Church and State | Popehat — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:15:34 +0000

[...] gay couple wanted to use it. In other words, OGCMA offered the pavilion as a public accommodation. Box Turtle Bulletin illustrates in minute detail how opponents of Proposition 8 flat-out lied about this case and its [...]

By: a. mcewen

a. mcewen — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:26:45 +0000

I think this is the role that lgbt blogs should play.

When situations like this come out, the religious right are quick to spin them inaccurately. We should quick to get the entire story out there before this happens.

By: Matt Algren

Matt Algren — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 16:48:53 +0000

Interesting. I found Charlene’s blog in late October and offered to disprove the claims, even linking (three times) to the Box Turtle Bulletin to give her an idea of how wrong and intellectually dishonest the statistics were.

Sadly (but not surprisingly), she decided to delete my reply and the facts contained therein rather than face the possibility that she was lied to. It’s all too common when talking with people of a certain religious strain. They’ve been taught to trust their leaders for everything, and the thought of having been lied to is out of the question.

Lucky for me, I screencap everything! Link to my blog post about Charlene’s blog below.

http://blog.mattalgren.com/2008/10/when-facts-get-in-the-way/

By: cowboy

cowboy — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:37:34 +0000

Gay-supportive organizations need to be constantly on the lookout for this behavior and counteract the lies by publishing the truth, which in my view, should be a major component of their activism.

— David C.

I think BTB is part of this process. I brought up the facts illuminated by Timothy Kincaid’s posting with some very close/trusted Mormon friends. They acknowledge the deception by the folk at Pro-Proposition 8 on this point. However, I think they want to insulate themselves (or their Mormon religious leaders) from being directly responsible for this deception. They lay the blame for the deceptive lying with the “political” actions of someone and not the Mormon leadership.

Before my discussion with my friends, I wish I had read David C. comment:

Most of these individuals are not inherently bad people, but they are not diligent when that diligence may cause them to question belief in their leaders or cherished ideas.

Truth is a marvelous thing. It eventually clears the clouds surrounding a debate. I am just glad I got a sympathetic acknowledgment of this fact about the “public pavilion” with my friends and they now are somewhat questioning the rationale for supporting Proposition 8.

Thanks Mr. Kincaid.

By: Pat

Pat — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:15:38 +0000

Lurker, Charlene’s “statistics” were rather interesting. I’m glad to know that I passed the average life expetancy for gay men. Also, it doesn’t help her case to say that homosexuals make up 1% of the population in one stat, then they make up 2% in another stat.

The other problem with statistics is that even when they are correct, they can be misleading. For example, the stat that 73% of all homosexuals have had sex with boys under 19, which seems reasonable when looking at it another way. I would gather that since most people, gay or straight, had sex before they were 19, most of their partners at the time were under 19. In fact, if I understood Charlene’s story (under the link “My Story” on her website) correctly, it appears that she herself had sex with a boy under the age of 19 as well. Or at the very least, her ex-husband had sex with a girl under 19.

By the way, if you read her story, she unknowingly, gives a good argument to strip marriage rights for heterosexuals as well.