Box Turtle Bulletin

NC Politico’s Wife: Marriage Ban Needed “To Protect the Caucasian Race”

The hits just keep coming, don’t they? Chad Nance, a Winston-Salem freelance journalist who is currently active in electoral politics, spoke with poll workers about a conversation they had with Jodie Brunstetter, wife of state Sen. Peter Brunstetter, who is described as the architect of Amendment 1:

Nance paraphrased the remarks, as told to him by those who were present: “During the conversation, Ms. Brunstetter said her husband was the architect of Amendment 1, and one of the reasons he wrote it was to protect the Caucasian race. She said Caucasians or whites created this country. We wrote the Constitution. This is about protecting the Constitution. There already is a law on the books against same-sex marriage, but this protects the Constitution from activist judges.”

Nance said he recruited a friend, who works for the Coalition to Protect All North Carolina Families, to witness his interview with Jodie Brunstetter. He said Brunstetter reluctantly acknowledged that she had used the term “Caucasian” and then repeated the statement previously attributed to her, but substituted the pronoun “we” for “Caucasian.” Nance said Brunstetter insisted there was nothing racial about her remarks, but could not explain why she used the term “Caucasian.”

An edited transcript from the video Nance took of his conversation with Ms. Brunstetter is here. The video itself has not been posted.

NC Pastor: Gay Kids Just Need A Good Punch

Jeremy Hooper at Good As You yesterday posted audio of Pastor Sean Harris, who spoke at a North Carolina event supporting that state’s proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage (and all other relationships, gay or straight, outside of marriage). Harris told the “Marriage Sunday” rally that if parents suspect their kids might be gay, they should “give him a good punch”:

So your little son starts to act a little girlish when he is four years old and instead of squashing that like a cockroach and saying, “Man up, son, get that dress off you and get outside and dig a ditch, because that is what boys do,” you get out the camera and you start taking pictures of Johnny acting like a female and then you upload it to YouTube and everybody laughs about it and the next thing you know, this dude, this kid is acting out childhood fantasies that should have been squashed.

Can I make it any clearer? Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok? You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male. And when your daughter starts acting to Butch you reign her in. And you say, “Oh, no, sweetheart. You can play sports. Play them to the glory of God. But sometimes you are going to act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl and that means you are going to be beautiful. You are going to be attractive. You are going to dress yourself up.”

You can hear the audio at Good As You. Today, the Fayetteville Observer reports that the Berean Baptist Church pastor was “joking” when he made those remarks. However…

But he defended his belief in the need to reinforce traditional gender roles in children.

“If I had to say it again, I would say it differently, no doubt,” Harris said Tuesday. “Those weren’t planned words, but what I do stand by is that the word of God makes it clear that effeminate behavior is ungodly. I’m not going to compromise on that.”

Harris claims that he “would never ever advocate” hitting a child, except for when he would. He had also said in the same sermon that same-sex couples who live together do so “in the most sick and ungodly way.” But Harris told The Observer that there was “not an ounce of hate being communicated in that.”

Whatsamatter? Can’t you feel the love?

Dan Savage Was (Mostly) Right

Let’s skip the preliminaries and jump straight to the heart of the controversy, shall we? Dr. John Corvino, author and philosophy professor at Wayne State University, made a similar argument five years ago — no, strike that — ten years ago, about Leviticus 25:44-46:

Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.

and Ephesians 6:5-9:

Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free. And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him.

Ten years ago, Corvino addressed those passages:

Faced with such morally troubling passages, the reader has one of three options:

(A) Deny that the passages really endorse slavery. But this seems rather difficult to do, especially given the references to “property” in the first quotation, which was allegedly spoken by God himself.

(B) Maintain that the Bible contains no error and concede that slavery may be morally acceptable. Not surprisingly, few believers take this approach (though the case was quite different 150 years ago, when slave-owning Christians often cited these passages). This option ought forcefully to be rejected. Surely one should have more confidence in the wrongness of slavery than in the inerrancy of the quoted text. Which leaves us with

(C) Acknowledge that the Bible contains some error. To admit this is not to claim that God makes mistakes. Perhaps humans have erred in interpreting God’s will: after all, one should not confuse complete faith in God with complete faith in human ability to discern God’s voice.

Corvino warned that if historical context isn’t used to aid in terpreting the Bible, using “Biblical passages to condemn contemporary homosexuality looks much like using them to support nineteenth-century American slavery.” Five years ago, he returned to context again, but said:

I’m not convinced that any amount of context is going to help the slavery passages. I think when we look to those passages, we have to admit that the prejudices and limitations of the Biblical authors crept into the text. And if they did that with respect to slavery, it could happen with respect with homosexuality.

Which brings us to the latest outrage over columnist Dan Savage, who said this at convention of high school journalists two weeks ago:

The Bible. We’ll just talk about the Bible for a second. People often point out that they can’t help it, they can’t help with the anti-gay bullying because it says right there in Leviticus, it says right there in Timothy, it says right there in Romans that being gay is wrong.

We can learn to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about gay people, the same way (applause and cheers)… the same way we have learned to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about shellfish, about slavery, about dinner, about farming, about menstruation, about virginity, about masturbation (applause). We ignore bullshit in the Bible about all sorts of things. The Bible is a radically pro-slavery document. Slave owners waved the Bible over their heads during the Civil War and justified it. The shortest book in the New Testament is a letter from Paul to a Christian slave-owner about owning his Christian slaves. And Paul doesn’t say Christians don’t own people. Paul talks about how Christians own people.

We ignore what the Bible says about slavery because the Bible got slavery wrong. Sam Harris in Letter to a Christian Nation points out that if the Bible got the easiest moral question that humanity has ever faced wrong — slavery — what are the odds that the Bible has gotten something as complicated as human sexuality wrong? One hundred percent.

The Bible says that if your daughter is not a virgin on her wedding night, or if a woman is not a virgin on her wedding night, she shall be dragged to her father’s doorstep and stoned to death. Calista Gingrich lives. And there is no effort to amend state constitutions to make it legal to stone women to death on their wedding night if they are not virgins. At least not yet. We don’t know where the GOP is going these days.

People are dying because people can’t clear this one last hurdle. They can’t get past this one last thing in the Bible about homosexuality.

One other thing I want to talk about is…. So you can tell the Bible guys in the hall they can come back now because I’m done beating up the Bible (Cheers and applause). It’s funny, as someone who’s on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the Bible, how pansy-assed some people react to that (Cheers). I apologize if I hurt anyone’s feelings, but I have a right to defend myself and to point out the hypocrisy of people who justify anti-gay bigotry by pointing to the Bible and insisting we must live by the code of Leviticus on this one issue and no other.

Aside from the last paragraph (which I’ll get to in a minute), there is very little different from what Savage said and what Corvino has said through the past decade. The only substantial difference was not a substantive one, that difference being one of tone. Savage used the word “bullshit” — twice! — which is a well-used exclamation that the kids (and more than a few adults) use these days when confronted with utter nonsense, that nonsense, in this particular case, being the Bible’s instructions on purchasing, owning and being slaves, instructions which, if a teacher or leader were to try to impart today, the audience would scream, “bullshit!” At least, so I would imagine.

Where Savage truly did err, of course, was in calling those students who walked out on him “pansy-assed.” And for that, Savage was wrong, and for that he apologized. “My use of ‘pansy-assed’ was insulting, it was name-calling, and it was wrong,” he wrote. “And I apologize for saying it.” As well he should. As the face of the most widely-recognized anti-bullying campaign, Savage’s turning to name-calling was incredibly inappropriate. And to use a name — pansy-assed — with all of the undertones of disgust for effeminacy, well the irony, if you can call it that, is striking.

(Savage also erred factually: the shortest book of the New Testament is the Third Letter of John, which doesn’t have anything to do with slavery. He may have been thinking of Paul’s letter to Ephesians 6:5-9) or his letter to Colossians 3:22-4:1, or, perhaps, of Paul’s shortest book in the New Testament, his letter to Philemon, a slave-owning bishop of Colossae, to whose congregation Paul’s letter to Colossians is addressed. But anyway.)

Savage’s apology was very specific for calling the walkouts “pansy-assed.” But he didn’t apologize for using the word “bullshit” to describe those ideas written in the Bible which, if they would have come from anywhere else, would have elicited cries of “bullshit!” should anyone ever attempt to seriously propose them today in 2012. He only described his choice of that word “regrettable.”

It is regrettable, but only because it gives anti-gay Christians an opening (as if they really needed one) to cry foul over the larger point that Savage was making. And let’s not fall into the error of ignoring that it really is that larger point that they’re upset about, and not the dingle-dropping. He’s used worse words than “bullshit” in other contexts and Brietbart.com didn’t lead with an entire page devoted to it. And that wasn’t the issue for the minority of students at the conference either: if you look at that video above, you’ll see that the walkout started before Savage dropped his first poo.

The walkout started when he said he wanted to talk about the Bible.

And that’s what anti-gay Christians are really upset about. They are happy to talk about the Bible until they’re blue in the face. But when someone like Savage reads the Bible — something that I thought countless self-described Christians were all praying he would do — and describes some of the passages he found in it, then all aitch-ee-double-toothpicks breaks loose.

Which is very surprising. Is pointing out that the Bible got it wrong on slavery really that controversial? It certainly isn’t controversial among the growing numbers of Christians who also believe that the Bible got it wrong on homosexuality. Nor is it controversial among the very many more Christians who are still trying to sort out what they think about the Bible’s take on homosexuality. Nor is it controversial, when it gets right down to it, among those Christians who condemn gay people with the vigor of Paul. Their denominations all denounce slavery as an unmitigated evil and in other strong terms that the Bible’s authors didn’t have the moral foresight to mention. Even the Southern Baptist Convention — whose sole reason for existence is that they broke away from their northern abolitionist counterparts over the validity of these very passages — formally apologized in 1995 for getting it wrong by using the Bible’s defense of slavery as a defense of slavery.

So now we’ve learned some valuable, if conflicting, lessons. It turns out that Savage isn’t allowed to read the Bible after all. Or, if he is, he isn’t allowed describe what the Bible says. Or if he is allowed to do that but only in a way that affirms its complete inerrancy, then that would mean that if he runs across someone describing the proper and righteous way to own slaves, his only logical response would be to call it the Inspired Word of the Unchanging Almighty.

You know what I call that?

Bullshit. And regrettable.

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, May 2

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Wall St. Executives Discuss LGBT Equality: New York, NY. Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan will host the second annual Out on the Street Leadership Summit at the Bank of American Merrill Lynch headquarters in New York. According to a press release, this “represents the first time that so many senior executives will meet to discuss LGBT equality.” The press release continues:

Building on the success of the inaugural summit in 2011, the 2012 summit will focus on the role that support for LGBT equality can play in the retention of talent and the conduct of business. In addition to Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, featured speakers include, Lloyd C. Blankfein, chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs; Paul Singer, CEO of Elliott Capital Management; Ken Mehlman, head of global public affairs, KKR; Lynn Utter, president & COO, Knoll Furniture; John Veihmeyer, Chairman, CEO KPMG LLC; and special guest moderator George Stephanopoulos from ABC.

The senior-level representation at the full-day summit reflects the groundbreaking role financial services, in particular Wall Street banks, have taken in advancing LGBT rights. Whether reimbursing LGBT employees’ pay to address the tax inequalities of domestic partner benefits or taking highly visible stances on marriage equality, these leaders exemplify the willingness of financial services companies to go beyond the relative safety of employee engagement issues, such as support for LGBT employee groups, into larger issues affecting their LGBT employees.

The all day summit begins at 8:30 a.m. Information on the 2012 summit can be found here.

“Call Me Kuchu” Screening: Toronto, ON. The Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival in Toronto will set the stage for the North American premiere of Call Me Kuchu, which follows the story of Ugandan LGBT advocate David Kato’s struggle for LGBT equality in the face of the proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which proposes the death penalty for gay people. The film includes the infamous tabloid campaign which outed “Kuchus” — the Ugandan word for gay people — along with the headline “Hang Them!” The unthinkable happened when Kato was brutally murdered in his home. All of this was captured in Call Me Kuchu, which screens tonight at the Isabel Bader Theater at 9:45. Additional showings are scheduled for tomorrow and Saturday. Additional information can be found here.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Brussels, Belgium, Houston, TX (Black Pride); Norrköping, Sweden and Raleigh, NC.

Other Celebrations This Weekend: Hot Rodeo, Banning, CA; Boston LGBT Film Festival, Boston, MA; Purple Party, Dallas, TX; Frieberg International Gay Film Festival, Frieberg, Germany; and Miami Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, Miami, FL.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: Atlantic City/Asbury Park/Morristown/Newark/New Brunswick/Pennsauken/Ridgewood, NJ; Charlotte, NC; Ft. Wayne, IN; Orange County, CA; Poughkeepsie, NY; Portsmouth, NH and Raleigh, NC.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Disloyalty vs. Security Risk: 1950. So if you’ve been following along on the Daily Agendas (for example, Feb 28, Mar 14, Mar 23, Apr 18, Apr 26) you would have a pretty good feel for the incredible anti-gay hysteria that was sweeping the country in 1950. The twin scares — the Lavendar Scare and the Red Scare — cemented in everyone’s mind the argument that gay people in federal employment, particularly in the State Department and in the armed forces, represented a security risk which, in the words of the GOP chairman, were “as dangerous as the actual Communists” (see Apr 18). On May 2, columnist James Marlow took the opportunity to provide a couple of hypothetical situations to explain to readers the difference between being disloyal and being a security risk:

1. Jones, completely loyal, is a good worker, sober on the job. But at night, sometimes or often, he gets drunk and talks too much. In the non-sensitive agriculture department that might not make much difference, as long as Jones did his work and kept out of trouble when drunk. In the commerce department, if Jones held a sensitive job, he might be considered a security risk: he might blab secrets when drunk.

The commerce department could do one of two things: fire Jones on the ground that he was “unsuitable” for government work; or transfer him to a non-sensitive job. But state department officials say that if Jones worked there and was considered a security risk, he’d be fired. (The say emphatically they keep no known security risks or disloyal persons on the payroll, although Senator McCarthy, Republican of Wisconsin, says the place is full of them.)

2. Smith is found to be a homosexual. He’s completely loyal but because of his secret sex habits may some day run into an individual or group which would blackmail him. In the state department, he’d be considered a security risk and out, officials there say.

Officials of other government agencies, sensitive and non-sensitive, told this writer they would get rid of a homosexual on the grounds that he was “unsuitable” for government employment, not because he was a security risk.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

I’m taking a break

I know that my opinions are not popular in the gay blog-reading community and that my views are not shared by more than a quarter to a third of those who identify as Gay or Lesbian. But lately the criticism has become very personal in nature and very hurtful.

I really need to have a brief period where I don’t log on every day to be subjected to personal abuse. Frankly, it’s getting to me. So I’m taking some time off.

CO civil union bill going to committee Thursday, here are the Reps that need to hear from you

SB-2 the civil union bill here in Colorado has been scheduled for a hearing by the House Judiciary Committee this Thursday (May 3).  This committee is generally regarded as the most important hurdle in the process because if the bill makes it to a floor vote in the House it will likely pass.

So Thursday’s Judiciary Committee hearing is a bit of a showdown.  It’s where the bill died last year after hours of passionate testimony failed to overcome a one vote Republican majority on the committee.

Here’s a list of the Republicans who sit on Thursday’s committee.  I would encourage you to contact them and speak compassionately, persuasively, and respectfully about the need to protect committed gay and lesbian families here in Colorado.

Rep. Brian Delgrosso, HD-51 Loveland
brian@briandelgrosso.com
303-866-2947
Facebook profile

Rep. BJ Nikkel, HD-49 Loveland
rep.nikkel@gmail.com
303-866-2907

Rep. Mark Waller, HD-15 Colorado Springs
mark.waller.house@state.co.us
303-866-5525
Facebook profile

Rep. Jerry Sonnenberg, HD-65 Sterling
jerry.sonnenberg.house@state.co.us and Jerry@RepSonnenberg.com
303-866-3706
Facebook profile

Rep. Mark Barker, HD-17 Colorado Springs
mark.barker.house@state.co.us and mark@markbarker.org
719-339-8265 and 303-866-3069
Facebook profile

Rep. Bob Gardner, HD-21 Colorado Springs
bob.gardner.house@state.co.us
303-866-2191

Grenell quits

Richard Grenell has resigned from the Romney team, reportedly despite the campaign’s efforts to talk him into staying. This undoubtedly pleases those who very much prefer that there be no gay voices in Republican politics.

Bono Mack on Chaz

The big news from the GLAAD Awards a week ago was the surprise appearance of Cher to congratulate her son Chaz on his recognition by the group. But for me the more interesting story was that Chaz step-mother was the one scheduled to present the award.

Mary Bono Mack is a congresswoman from the Palm Springs area. A moderate Republican, her record on gay issues is mixed. She has voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment and for the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, but she also taken positions that were not in the interest of equality. Oddly enough, while she may not exactly represent my views, I’ve spoken to enough of the ‘Oh, Honey’ generation of gay men to know that her views are probably not too far from where they are (Palm Springs is, after all, where old gay Republicans go to die retire).

But I have wondered just how Mary has responded to Chastity/Chaz. Mary became Chaz’ step-mother when he (then Chastity) was 17; Mary was only about eight years older. And while there has been no public bickering, one never knows whether there was resentment or hostility between the two and my brief interactions with Chastity suggested that a relationship of any sort would require the patience of a saint.

I suspected that Mary would be classy in her demeanor. Her request that Cher deliver a eulogy for Sonny after his death seemed like a class act. But support for transgender issues is not exactly the hallmark of Republican congress members.

So I was pleased to see Mack there to support Chaz.

“I’m so honored that GLAAD asked me to present the award,” Mack told The Hollywood Reporter. “I think if anyone exemplifies courage and bravery right now, it’s Chaz. He’s had an extraordinary year — two years, actually — put himself out there for the public to see and I think America has fallen in love with him.”

Mack faces a redrawn district that is increasingly trending Democratic and her percentage of the vote has fallen in recent elections. But she is a sitting congresswoman and a Republican. And I find it encouraging that our nation’s social attitude has changed to the point where Mary Bono Mack can show up at the GLAAD Awards and tell the Hollywood Reporter how proud she is of her transgender stepson and no one, not even the professional anti-gays, has apoplexy.

We have won. Now it’s just a waiting game.

17 Arrested Under St. Petersburg “Don’t Say Gay” Law

According to the St. Petersburg, Russia web site Coming Out, seventeen LGBT advocates were arrested for carrying rainbow flags as part of the May 1st civil rights and freedom march on Nevsky Prospect, the city’s main boulevard. The LGBT advocates were participating in the city-sanctioned march as part of a larger group of democratic and civil society gropus. According to Coming Out:

5 minutes into the march, police requested removal of rainbow flags. When activists refused, they were forcefully detained and are now facing charges of “propaganda of homosexuality” and non-compliance with the police. One activist was detained for holding a sign “homophobia is illegal.”

17 activists are still being held by the police. Among those detained are Igor Kochetkov, chairman of the Russian LGBT Network, Mikhail Belodedov of Coming Out, Sergey Kondrashov, lawyer and straight ally, and Elena Popova, director of St. Petersburg organization “Soldier’s mothers”, defending rights of draftees.

The so-called “gay propaganda law” bars groups, publications, events and other so-called “promotion” of LGBT rights, was passed in St. Petersburg in February. The Russian Parliament and Moscow City Council may take up similar proposals.

Tennessee’s “Don’t Say Gay” Bill Dies

Rep. Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald) has pulled the proposed “Don’t Say Gay” education bill from consideration before the Tennessee General Assembly. But while the bill dies with the end of the legislative session, it’s effects will continue on. Hensley has told reporters that he received assurances that the Department of Education and the State Board of Education will send a letter to all Tennessee school districts “telling them they cannot teach this subject in grades kindergarten through eight.”

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, May 1

Today is May Day, otherwise known as the International Workers Day. But that’s the dull version. Long before it was a national labor holiday in more than 80 countries around the world, it was among the most popular spring festivals throughout Europe. It’s still celebrated in Scandinavia and pockets of Germany and the UK with maypoles, ribbons, May Queen crowning, all-night revelry — so explain to me: how is it that none of this is gay? In Edinburgh, Scotland, May Day is celebrated with the Beltane Fire Festival on the city’s Calton Hill. Maypoles and bonfires are also a feature of rural German celebrations on May Day eve. May Day is reputed to be the only carnival-style festival in all of Finland. And if it can make the Finns smile, it’s probably not a bad holiday to keep around.

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Premiere of “American Transgender”: Nat Geo TV. The National Geographic’s cable channel tonight will premiere the hour-long documentary “American Transgender,” which examines the lives of three transgender people and their families. According to NGTV:

American Transgender takes us firsthand into the daily lives of three individuals—Clair, Jim, and Eli—who each identify with a different gender from the one in which they were born and raised. We witness their struggles and triumphs, and experience their hopes and fears. How do they manage at work, build careers, maintain friendships, and nurture lasting, intimate partnerships? Each of the characters in the film tells their story in their own words as we follow them through life’s daily battles and victories, both large and small.

You can read a brief Q&A with Clair, Jim and Eli here. The documentary airs tonight at 8:00 PM EST/PST.

Romaine Brooks, Self Portrait, 1923.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Romaine Brooks: 1874. The American painter worked mostly in France, where she was surrounded by the brilliant colors of Fauvism and the decompositional attitudes of cubism, but her work harkened back to the style of James Whistler. She was born Beatrice Romaine Goddard, and in 1903 she married John Ellingham Brooks. He was gay, but he couldn’t take her gender-bending manner of dress and hairstyle. Their marriage lasted only a year, but she wound up keeping his name. The following year, she discarded the bright colors of her works which were so fashionable and adopted the darker, more subdued colors which would become her trademark. she took a string of unconventional lovers, including the American heiress Winnaretta Singer and Lord Alfred Douglas (Oscar Wilde’s former lover), and the Russian ballerina Ida Rubinstein, who Brooks pained more than any other subject. Her paintings were almost all portraits, and very nearly all of them of women. By 1925, she had been featured in several successful solo exhibitions in Paris, London and NEw York, but after that year she produced only four more paintings. She briefly took up line drawing in 1930, but dropped that by 1935. Her longtime partner, Natalie Barney, also became her manager and continued to arrange shows for her. But after the Second World War, Brooks became increasingly reclusive and paranoid. By 1969, Brooks’s paranoia led her to stop communicating with Barney entirely. Brooks died in 1970 at the age of 96.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

Al Mohler’s truly stupid bigoted statement

Dr. Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, seldom agrees with me on matters of theology, freedom, and civil rights. But, in general, I find him to be a man searching for a way to reconcile his faith with his observations and that his positions, while based in blind tradition, tend not to be driven by animus. While his instincts are almost invariably wrong, I don’t consider Mohler to be a bigot.

However, I may be mistaken.

Mohler has come down on the side of the Boy Scouts on the issue of their refusing to allow a lesbian to serve as Den Mother for a first grade group of Tiger Scouts. That isn’t where I see bigotry. Frankly, if the Scouts want to ban left-handed Scots or Asian Episcopalians I think they should have the right to do so. It’s incredibly stupid and they’d best not be using my tax dollar, but I’m okay with people being stupid.

Mohler makes a case for his support of the scouts and, while I find it lacking, it isn’t illogical or full of knee-jerk radicalism. Other than one paragraph which floored me:

The Boy Scouts of America has the right to establish policies consistent with its convictions. Indeed, the group’s policy of excluding homosexuals from leadership would seem to be necessary and prudent. A consideration of recent national scandals should make that point sufficiently clear.

Recent national scandals? Based on homosexuals in leadership? Didn’t happen.

That statement is pure bigotry, undiluted by excuse, unfiltered through prejudice, not tempered by misunderstanding, but based in the vilest of places: the willingness to believe and repeat lies designed for no purpose but the denigration of the innocent.

Perhaps Mohler might argue that when pedophile priests molest children that this proves them homosexual. Just like if a priest has a drink he must be Irish. And if he if burns crosses on the lawn of African Americans, I suppose that proves that the Catholic priest is really a Southern Baptist.

But research conducted by the Catholic Church (which chose to ignore its own reports) found that the priests who molested children were not homosexual either in identity or in attraction. They were not attracted to adult men. They were pedophiles. And that their victims were primarily boys was due to availability.

Mohler has access to the facts. I guess he simply chooses to believe evil of the innocent. But by doing so, Mohler selects the path of bigotry. It is his own choosing.

That’s how we deal with it around here

Need I say anything?

UPDATE: The original video has been removed. The one above is a copy that was recently uploaded by someone else.

Typical Barney Frank

I don’t know why our community is so enamored of Barney Frank; he certainly doesn’t reciprocate. Frank’s two great loves are himself and the Democratic Party, and the gay community comes in a far distant third, if that.

I first became aware of Frank’s priorities in 1990 when he endorsed Democrat John Silber over Republican William Weld for governor of Massachusetts.

Silber, president of Boston University, was a vocal anti-gay activist and an enemy of equality. And the death of his eldest son from AIDS in 1994 did nothing to diminish his ire. In 2002 Silber (then Chancellor of the University) demanded that the gay-straight alliance at a high-school affiliated with BU be dissolved, accusing the group of “homosexual militancy” to promote gay sex and of, naturally, “homosexual recruitment”.

Weld, on the other hand, had an established record of being supportive on gay issues. He attributed it to being a picked-on fat kid and to having his roommate come out to him shortly out of college.

From the perspective of who would be best for the community there was no question. There was no hesitant possible maybe really they weren’t all that far apart.

Weld won (narrowly) thanks to Democrats who found Weld to be far more consistent with their social policies. They didn’t change their mind, and Weld won a second term in the heavily Democratic commonwealth by 71% – 28%.

Nor did Weld disappoint the gay community. He was quick to appoint gay people to positions of leadership, established the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth, and signed executive orders providing equal treatment for such things as hospital visitations and bereavement leave for gay state workers. At some point early in his administration, became convinced of the fairness of marriage equality and when the Chief Justice of the commonwealth’s supreme court (a Weld appointee) wrote the opinion legalizing same-sex marriage for the first time in our nation, Weld’s response was to announce that he’d like to officiate at the wedding of his former chief of staff. The former governor also lobbied the legislature not to seek an amendment overturning the decision or replacing it with civil unions.

In short, Weld was the advocate that the community desperately needed. But Frank endorsed the homophobe.

I say this all to note that Barney Frank is consistent. He can’t be faulted for that. He still puts party affiliation far above what is best for our community.

For example, currently Richard Tisei is running for Congress in one of Massachusett’s six districts. The openly gay Republican is not a token candidate, having served as Senate Minority Leader and as the party’s Lieutenant Governor nominee.

But regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with Tisei’s politics or thinks that he would serve the interests of the district, it goes without saying that Tisei’s presence in the Republican caucus would serve in our community’s best interest. It has long been seen that having a gay person present in any legislative body or subgroup significantly shifts opinion and votes. One can oppose Tisei as a candidate without questioning whether his inclusion in the caucus would be a positive step.

Unless you’re as partisan as Barney Frank. His response to the Daily Beast:

Tisei’s candidacy, said Frank, is “of limited relevance to the LGBT effort to win equality.” He added that were the Republican to win, “it would be a setback for LGBT issues,” since “the effect would be to help perpetuate a rigid and militant anti-LGBT majority in the House.”

What a pompous partisan petty fool. He’s fine to endorse Tierney (who is not an enemy of our community) or to explain how Tierney would better serve us as representative. But to blather as though Tisei would be bad for us illustrates the contempt that Barney Frank has for you and I and how little he thinks of our intellect.

Barney Frank is retiring. And, in fairness, I’m appreciative of the times when Frank could find no advantage to selling out our community and took whatever steps were convenient for him to take on our behalf. But I will not miss him as self-appointed spokesman for my community nor will I long for the days when he encouraged our community to vote against our best interests.

Email of the Day

The devil you know.

During my lifetime I have witnessed the descent from Playboy into the abyss of online porn. I started my ministry understanding that were Martin Luther here today he would fight the baby killers and the sodomites. He would understand the times. He would see clearly that Satan is pushing most effectively on the sexual morals of our generation. That is where the fight for righteousness is most fierce. He would not shrink from that battle, and adopt the language of the other side.

I fought to keep the (Christian Civic League of Maine) on the bleeding edge of the “gay” fight from 1994 to 2009, the year I resigned. I watched our finances remain somewhat stable year-to-year. But the leadership of the evangelical movement started to weaken, and then ultimately divide, as I continued my relentless advocacy to keep the “gay” fight as the League’s number one priority.

I felt my leadership was justified at the League until it became clear to me that the pastors had decided to follow someone else. To quote from a letter I received from a key supporter and friend just before I resigned, I “lost my momentum.”

Man didn’t put me at the League. Jesus Christ put me there. There is no doubt in my mind that he put me there to confront the sodomy movement. I am now convinced it is my fault that Maine experienced twenty years of evenly split statewide voting on sodomy.

I never should have put on the suit and blow dried my hair. I never should have tried to use my image, and the image of those around me, to win the battle. I always should have trusted God more than I did.

…The truth about the vote this November is that it isn’t a battle between nice people who happen to disagree.  It is not important that we respect the devil.  It is important that we condemn him, and those who wish to use the sexual instinct in humanity for their own ends.

Michael Heath was forced out of the Christian Civic League in 2009 because anti-gay activists thought that his extreme rhetoric would wreck their pans to ban marriage at the ballot box that year. He left, and they prevailed. Heath went on to become board chair of Peter LaBarbera’s Americans for Truth (an SPLC-certified anti-gay hate group) and a state campaign director for Ron Paul. Heath is now back in Maine, where he vows to press his crusade against “sodomy-based marriage.” If that becomes the tag line for our opponents, then the campaign to re-legalize marriage equality this November gets way, way easier.