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 lobbyJanuary 24th, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA (Ours):
Maryland Gov. Highlights Support for Marriage Equality: Annapolis, MD. Gov. Martin O’Malley is scheduled to host a breakfast this morning at Government House with same-sex couples as invited guests. That will be followed by a news conference afterward, in which he will discuss his introduction of a marriage equality bill for this year’s legislative session which begins this month. A marriage bill passed the Senate last year but failed in the House of Delegates. Aides have told reporters that this year’s bill will have more protections for religious organizations in a bid to attract more support. House Majority Leader Kumar P. Barve says that the bill is still three votes short of a majority in the House.
New Jersey Senate Holds Committee Hearing on Marriage Equality: Trenton, NJ. The New Jersey Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on S. 1, the Marriage Equality and Religious Exemption Act. The committee is expected to vote on the bill at the end of the hearing. Garden State Equality has lined up witnesses to testify for equality. Anti-marriage forces are also expected to make their presence known. The hearings begin this morning at 11:00 a.m. EST in Committee Room 4 at the State House.
TODAY’S AGENDA: (Theirs):
Exodus International Equiping Event: Atlanta, GA. Whenever Exodus puts on a Love Won Out conference, they always host what they call an “equiping event” about a month ahead of time to introduce Exodus to area pastors and to share their “35 years of experience in providing ministry support for people dealing with unwanted same sex attractions.” This morning, Exodus President Alan Chambers and team are in the Atlanta suburb of Villa Rica to provide a condensed version of Love Won Out in preparation for the real deal scheduled for February 18. Both events take place at Midway Church, an Exodus Church Association member which hosts an Exodus International Support Group (PDF) twice a month (including this evening at 7:00 p.m. after the equiping event). Midway Church is located at 3915 Carrollton-Villa Rica Hwy, about 40 miles west of downtown Atlanta.
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Jim Hlavac
January 24th, 2012
So, Exodus, which has had Zero percent success in getting anyone to go back to their “true” hetero selves (since they believe that we’re born hetero, and go gay at some later date for unknown reasons, they must, perforce, believe we are returning to our um, “true” hetero selves, no? Logically, this is so,) and 99.9% to 100% of gay folks seems to have absolutely no such thing as “unwanted same-sex attractions,” and their sole “ministry” is to simply condemn our existence, and more forcefully, condemn our liking, even luxuriating, in our existence as gay folks — I take it then that the only “equipping” that must be done is that they should get a muzzle and place it on their faces. I mean really, they are a few dozen deluded gay folks — self-admitting that their “same-sex attractions” continue unabated, or are heteros — decrying to heteros who really despise gay folks — and nary a real gay person in the mix. To what purpose? Is this anyway to make a living? Egad, go get some real jobs, Exodus, and cut the nonsense already.
EOJinDC
January 24th, 2012
Wherever Exodus goes, they announce it to distract from the other work they’re doing. For at least 20 of the 35 years they’ve been around, they have been infiltrating Black churches, sewing seeds of animosity, and stoking the fires of resentment.
There was a New York TImes article a few years ago in which a woman named Genevieve Wood, who was with the Family Research Council, reportedly told members of several Black churches that whites in the LGBT movement were trying to essentially steal the mantle of the Civil Rights Movement. She said that if she were to criticize the LGBT community, she would be attacked because she is white. She told them that they had to do it, and that the Black congregation couldn’t allow the white LGBT movement to get away with latching on to the hard fought victories of the Civil Rights Movement. I mean, forget the fact that LGBT people, black and white, were there for everyone of those victories.
And thus it began. The “rift” that exists between the Black community and the LGBT community is fictional because there are Black LGBT people. We straddle both communities and are constantly forced to defend one to the other, but, with a few exceptions, there are no conflicts between the parts of us that are black and the parts of us that fal under the LGBT spectrum.
The anti-gay movement has been able to recruit some high profile members to it’s cause. Those individuals give the impression, mainly to people who know little about the Black community, that there is an insurmountable chasm between each community’s respective goals.
It’s simply not true, and instead of the two communities working together as they have for decades, dialogue and cooperation between the two has become, for the most part, stalled.
We’ve known what Exodus is doing publicly for a very long time. It would be great to get some coverage of their destructive work in the Black community here in the US. Thanks.
Timothy Kincaid
January 25th, 2012
EOJ…
While what you say is true about anti-gay activists, it doesn’t actually seem to have anything to do with Exodus.
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