Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyFebruary 8th, 2009
There’s some disappointment that President Obama chose to remake President Bush’s Office of Faith-Based Initiatives into the Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, instead of dismantling it completely. But Jennifer Vanasco reminds us that faith-based means us, too:
Gays and lesbians have given religion over to the right. This is not good. There are many religions that have denied us our personhood; there are many of us who have been hurt by the religious traditions we grew up in. But gays are a diverse people, and there are many of us who are religious or spiritual — and we should not be ignored by a national program that should serve the whole country.
My hope is that gay religious organizations will approach DuBois’s office about funding their valuable social service programs that assist homeless queer youth, people with AIDS, and other disenfranchised LGBT communities. And that we will all make noise about it until we know that our programs are being treated equally.
There are plenty of gays and lesbians who will disagree with me here. They think that religion is poison, and we are fools to drink it. We shouldn’t want to be part of a club that doesn’t want to grant us membership. They think we should fight the existence of a faith-based anything in the West Wing.
That is a battle we won’t win, not this time around, not with a president who was partly elected through the voter turnout strength of the black church.
But in any case, seeking equity when it comes to this new President’s Council isn’t a referendum on religion. It’s about fairness… If there is a federal conduit for getting funds to religious organizations, then gay religious organizations should be getting equal access to those funds. Any President’s Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships should not only be reaching out to Evangelicals — it should also be reaching out to us.
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libhomo
February 8th, 2009
Queers should be fighting these things in court, not trying to feed at this unconstitutional trough. The intermingling of church and state is something that endangers us and should be resisted in every instance as if our lives depend on it. They do.
Josh
February 8th, 2009
Fred Davie, an African American openly gay man, is a part of the Faith Based Council…
http://www.gaypolitics.com/2009/02/06/obama-names-fred-davie-to-council-on-faith-based-and-neighborhood-partnerships/
I’m not sure that he belongs to a gay affirming religious group though.
I agree with Jennifer that gay affirming religious groups should be a part of the Faith Based Initiatives.
Tailypoe
February 8th, 2009
Obama’s policies are ….
just Look up Infowars.com and do your own research.
He’s a banker front.
What I tell people in general about The US and Gay Rights:
http://wigu.livejournal.com/167938.html?page=2#comments
comments at the Bottom.
what I tell christians who hate on gay rights :
A homosexual does not care what you think of his lifestyle. Nor does he want you to restrict his rights to that lifestyle because of what you think that he does not care about. Maybe, if someone was to engage in sincere, open debate with this homosexual, he would consider your viewpoint on why to change his lifestyle further. But currently, he’s too busy trying to fathom how making his lifestyle illegal is going to change his views of it. But for now, he’s just very, very angry and feels like doing everything he can to spite you.
” You are ignorant and evil and you eat cigarette butts from the gutter and you’re ungodly because you’re gay, No marriage for you because that’s going to make the world less evil, and don’t ask questions, that’s just what I believe, ”
to ————>
Now that I’ve convinced you to share these beliefs, you should know that they involve living like you hold them dear to you, as a testament to your firm belief in them, and not engaging in ” worldly ” activities such as lusting after people, especially people of your gender.
So I expect you to not to engage in this type of relationships, and if you’re going to marry, marry a woman and only have sex to reproduce, keep it low key and don’t think about it too much.
It’d probably be better for you just to be a monk and live in a monastery or something, y’know, not get married at all, maybe mastrubate every now and then or not for prostate health.
But seriously, if you’re going to be a man of god, you gotta live like it. So don’t go chasing after guys, okay ? I’m glad we had this little talk.
Now, on to MORE IMPORTANT THINGS IN LIFE.
Let’s stop, focus, Read slowly, and consider.
consider That this type of Garbage is exactly what gives christians a Bad image with today’s youth and makes the rest of everything you do hopeless.
We need to have peace with abortion, not war. It’s not easy to change, but christianity’s gonna keep turning into more and more f a joke if we don’t.
Issues like this and Homosexuality :
Are just 100 % mass ignorance and hysteria.
You can’t tell someone who doesn’t care that they’re evil and that by taking away their legal unions they’re going to become less evil, even though they don’t care, and that it’s wrong to “murder children”, yet we do nothing to stop it. Pro-life is Ridiculous. Where does it stop ? Are we to procreate every second of our lives for fear of losing a potential Life ?
We have to look at reason here and see that it takes a certain amount of disregard for these babies to live a functional life.
If it’s just plain old murder, why don’t we stop it ?
The only thing more ridiculous than pro-life is shooting an Abortion clinic doctor/ worker.
Christians, you have been warned. Stop turning your messiah into an unwanted loudmouth who drives people to ignorance, hypocrisy and stupidity.
Every five seconds a child dies from Hunger. Adress that.
The corporations controlling our government kill people every year with things that really shouldn’t be in food and water. We’re all getting cancer and dieing of Alzheimer’s in our 30’s. We can’t keep supporting ” The sanctity of life ” , ” Traditional marriage ” and ” cancer ” Like this. we need to move out of ignorance and into actually trying to deal with people who’s opinions are different.
If abortion is murder as bad as any other murder, millions of people in the U.S. are openly, directly murderous and they’re indistinguishable from you. If it’s really that heinous, then why don’t we stop it like we would with any other human murder ? Because Government and societal pressures prevent us, just like they prevent us from standing up to the actual murders committed overseas to advance their evil agendas and the murders that are coming to our streets if we let them undermine our civil rights further. While you’re yelling at gay people who hate you that taking away their rights is going to have a positive impact on their world, Government is pulling a lot of shady stuff on us without our noticing.
No one is changing their lives to be more christian as a result of this.
It’s spawning a generation of young people who mostly, openly hate everything you stand for. They’re sick of the hypocrisy.
No one is going to admire your steadfastness in your ignorant ranting or your inability to take Left-Right politics and conservative values out of religion, they’ll just get really mad, go on the internet, and start poking holes in your existance. If we care so much about all the human being being murdered, why do we get indignant, project our “beliefs” onto everyone, piss people off, and then go home to watch tv and hypocrisise the internet. No one has thought that maybe this is all based on societal stigmas, the society that watches an average of …. http://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html Hours of tv a day, ……. Dear ****, people, what are we up to ? and that ignorance was never in The Bible. The gloves are off, now, it’s all going down soon. Do you want to cling to your ignorance and start shouting about the horrors of abortion and legalized suicide and then just sit back and be cool while other christians are okay with it and other people just allow it to happen ?
Or do you want to DO something about it like I am, biking around the world to get people to stop killing themselves, and publicly, calmly, intelligently debating why we should not consider agreeing on murdering old people to be as legal as murdering yourself in secret ?
Let’s go out there and represent jesus in these increasingly turbulent times, not represent a bunch of old people yelling about how everyone else is the devil from their mediocre, uninspired materialistic lives and then going online sometimes to say things that just make the kind of people they’re supposed to rebuke very angry.
In the space of our finite lives, what do we want to accomplish ? Something wonderful ? something spirited ? something different from the pack ? something out of this world ? or do we just want to fit into the commonly accepted vision of an old, decrepit
, cantankerous herd of people who go along with what they collectively say and never reform their ways of dealing with an increasingly intolerant public ? There’s a lot more to christianity once you get past the hypocrisy and political issues, but it’s as of yet inaccessible.
It doesn’t mean you have to be black sheep, or goats, you’ve probably just been spending more time alone, and more time with the sheperd.
We need to take a look at where our collective energy is going and weather it’s taking us anywhere in a world that would rather see us just retire into relative obscurity. Or radical hatred of everything we want to hold dear to ourselves.
GaySolomon
February 9th, 2009
The wall of separation that should exist between church and state will only be weakened further if the LGBT community follows Ms. Vanasco’s advice.
Mark F.
February 9th, 2009
I think that religious organizations should not be sucking at the Federal teat.
CLS
February 9th, 2009
There are two questions here neither of which Vanasco asks.
The first is not whether the Right “has” religion and we don’t. It is whether the religion is true or not. I would assert that it is not and to hold a position for political reasons alone, not out of conviction, is dishonest.
The second question is whether any church, sect or cult should be bleeding the taxpayers in order to exist. The answer is no. No tax funds to religion no matter how that religion is packaged. It is dangerous to the charities that accept the money and dangerous to keeping religion out of government. It turns charities into just another special interest group pandering to second rate politicians (which is about as good as they get). It politicizes charity which is a bad thing. So not only do I support separation of church and state but separation of charity and state.
Jim Burroway
February 9th, 2009
My preference would be for the whole faith-based funding initiative to be eliminated completely, for may of the reasons Timothy gives here.
I do have one observation though. The office is now called the Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, which, if I read it correctly, now includes non faith-based groups. Obama has been carefull to include people of “no faith” in a lot of his faith messages lately, and I think this rechristening is a reflection of that.
Now if Obama can change the nature of this initiative, a future president could always change it back — which is just one more good reason for abandoning the concept altogether.
However, since we do have it, I believe that it’s counterproductive for us to stand on principle and not go after the money for some of our own community needs. As it is, we’re essentially letting the anti-gay establishment have a monopoly on these dollars.
As I said, I think the office should be abolished altogether. But it looks like it’s not going away.
We have too many battles we’re fighting with one hand tied behind our backs because of noble principles, while our opponents are running circles around us with far greater resources. I think it’s time to think more strategically than that.
Timothy Kincaid
February 9th, 2009
And I, on the other hand, think it is a very costly mistake for any body of faith to become beholding to politicians or government.
Some of the reasons why I think pro-gay religious bodies (as well as anti-gay ones) should run from such entanglements are discussed here. That others – including some of our opponents – fall into this trap is certainly not reason for us to follow.
Jim Burroway
February 9th, 2009
Timothy,
I think every body of faith should way carefully the concerns you bring up. I’ll let the MCC, Episcopal, UCC, and other affirming churches decide whether they can live with the risks or not.
But to expand further on what I was suggesting, since it is now the Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, it looks to me that the initiative is no longer exclusively faith-based, but will work with other community programs.
I was actually thinking that this is a good opportunity for some of our LGBT community centers and service organizations who have been working hard on anti-violence projects, HIV/AIDS services, LGBT homeless youth outreach and services, etc. They now have a good reason to think about applying.
Timothy Kincaid
February 9th, 2009
Jim,
I do agree that neighborhood programs have less to lose than do religious bodies. But I think that the best way to bring about specific benefit in the lives of individuals is at the most local level and many of my concerns do still apply to neighborhood groups.
I would be hesitant to tie any local gay programs too heavily to Washington. Another administration with abstinance only and anti-sexworker policies could totally undo the good work that many HIV/AIDS and LGBT homeless youth outreach programs have been able to accomplish.
I do see a federal role for specific large scale projects such as the global AIDS efforts or a Manhattan Project-like approach to HIV research. But nationalizing the neighborhood is probably a very bad idea.
I think we’ll have to disagree on this one.
Nevada Blue
February 9th, 2009
Faith based funding is a terrible idea and violates the separation of church and state.
Will funding an LGBT church organization get Alicia Pedreira her job back? No.
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