Their new sign says that individuals and churches that support “homos” will be cursed with cancer, HIV (the virus that causes AIDS), syphilis, stroke, madness, and itch, then references I Corinthians 6:9: “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind…” Interestingly they don’t reference the next verse, which is a continuation of the sentence, “nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.”
That’s important because Pastor Manning spent time in prison in both New York and Florida for burglary, robbery, larceny, criminal possession of a weapon, and other things. So verse 10 would seem to say that Pastor Manning may not be so welcome in the kingdom of God.
But less snarkily, look at another word there: “revilers.” A reviler is someone who insults or verbally abuses someone else, someone who criticizes abusively. Such as someone who calls people devils, or calls for whole classes of people to be stoned to death. That sort of thing.
I know that Pastor Manning is using one of the more hateful translations of the Bible. Since 1946 certain people have decided that the scriptures weren’t anti-gay enough, and they went through changing verses where it isn’t entirely clear what they are referring to to explicitly says “homosexual.” But the two words that used to be translated into english as “effeminate” and “abuses of themselves with mankind” are not so clearcut.
Scholars argue a lot about what the Apostle Paul meant there. Paul wrote in greek, which had a word for men who have sex with other men already, but Paul didn’t use that word. Greek also had a word for male temple prostitutes, and Paul didn’t use that word. Instead, he made up a word, arsenokoitai. That words has never appeared in any other Greek text at all. It appears to be a compound of the words “man” and “beds.” If Paul was condemning homosexual behavior, why would he make up a new word when words already existed for it? And also, it is important to note that he uses specifically male-gendered nouns, so if Paul was condemning homosexual behavior, it was only gay male homosexual behavior: so apparently lesbians are fine, as far as Paul is concerned.
My own guess, based on how much of a misogynist Paul appeared to be, and how much he despised sex of all kinds (the fundamentalists all ignore Paul’s other admonishments where he condemns marriage and having children as an anti-Christian waste of time that would better be spent preparing for Jesus’ return; yes, Paul was against people marrying and raising families), is that Paul was making a general condemnation of all kinds of sexual and romantic behavior, here. And he aimed it at men because Paul didn’t really believe that women mattered, or at the very least he didn’t believe that women made choices of their own, but rather simply did what men told them to do.
And there is nothing in 1 Corinthians at all about cancer, or the virus that causes AIDS, or itching.
But Manning sees lots of things that aren’t actually in the text. It’s very convenient for a man with as big an ego as his, and as long a history of abusing and using others as him.
So Time allowed a college student to write an op-ed piece they published this week called, “Dear White Gays: Stop Stealing Black Female Culture.” A lot of other people have written some great responses to it (I most particularly recommend Vice Magazine columnist Dave Schilling’s answer in his This Week in Racism column), but I want to focus on something that most of them have overlooked. Among the offences Ms. Mannie lays at the feet of white gay men as proof that we are stealing the culture of black women: having sex with black men.
I’m sorry that I’m not going to be as funny as the Saturday Night Live crew, but I had to share a few updates on some of the things I linked to just yesterday:
The Washington Times (not to be confused with the award-winning, serious newspaper, the Post) is a regular donor to the anti-gay National Organization of Marriage, was the primary sponsor of yesterday’s anti-gay marriage march, and usually finds a way to spin every story about a step forward for gay rights as a victory for their side, concedes:
After rallying the troops for years, and even with one New York politician recruiting people for what he told them was “a free trip to Washington, D.C. to see the monuments” (that’s right, some bus loads of people didn’t even know what they were going to), they were only able to get “hundreds.” So my caption yesterday saying it was “tens” was slightly off.
But wait, there’s more!
The official hierarchy of the Morman Church is also a regular donor to any anti-gay political action committee or group you can name (even if they did try to tone it down and hide their involvement a bit in 2012; something several of us predicted would end once Mitt Romney’s run for the White House ended, and we were right), owns it’s own newspaper, the Deseret News, and it tried to put a slightly less defeatist spin in its headline:
Funny, neither site mentions the leader of a French neo-Nazi (remember, it isn’t hyperbole when they are literally members of a Nazi Party) organization wasn’t just at the event, she was one of the people leading the march!
The Wonkette’s piece shows some pictures of some hateful signs. It’s worth noting that the people who organize this thing, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), keeps claiming that they are not anti-gay. They say we’re distorting their message when we call them anti-gay. They insist that they are simply defending traditional marriage, and not attacking anyone. But a quick perusal of the pictures at this article shows they are lying: Photos: Animus at #March4Marriage. You can see some more of the clearly anti-gay signs, read quotes from some of the speeches, and watch video interviews of some of the attendees to demonstrate the hate further: Inside NOM’s Second Failed “March For Marriage”. If you can stomach any more, the Daily Beast talked to a lot more of the attendees: Crucifixes, Gorillas, and Adult Diapers: My March Against Gay Marriage.
Just in case anyone ever tries to tell you that the people who oppose marriage equality aren’t anti-gay (and very ill-informed, too).
Marcus Bachmann is married to a vehemently anti-gay congresswoman, runs a cure-the-gays clinic, and calls himself “doctor” based on a degree from a diploma mill that didn’t even offer psychology degrees at the time he took classes.When I first came out to my family, nothing went smoothly. Mom went into full denial mode, even insisting she had never suspected I was gay (despite having regular prayer sessions with other family members and church friends begging god to turn me straight for at least a decade). One aunt sent me a 28-page handwritten letter outlining the words I wasn’t allowed to use in her presence, the topics that could not be mentioned in her house, and so forth. I lost track of the number of relatives who assured me I was still welcome to visit, but only if I promised not to act gay and certainly never accompanied with a boyfriend. One cousin-in-law—who happened to also be my best friend from college—got angry that some family members knew before he did, causing lots of drama. It has also been his excuse for 20-some years for ending our friendship (it’s not because I’m gay, see, it’s because I didn’t tell him first). Some relatives on Dad’s side blamed Mom. Some relatives on Mom’s side blamed Dad.
I could go on and on.
I think it was the first time in my life that I was unhappy that my parents and grandparents had so many siblings, and that many branches of our huge extended family had always been in regular communication with each other.
During one of the many melodramatic phone conversations I had during that first year after coming out, my Grandma was going on about why she didn’t understand how I could choose this. So I asked her to stop for a moment and think about that. Could she honestly say, I asked her, that she could choose to be gay? I had to rephrase it a few times before she understood what I was asking. Then she declared, very firmly, that of course there was absolutely no possibility that she could ever even imagine deciding to be gay herself. It was ridiculous to suggest it.
“In that case, Grandma, how can you keep accusing me of choosing this?”
She got flustered and started quoting the Bible at me. I quoted some verses back and pressed her again. If it’s a sin, then everyone is equally capable of being tempted by it. If she felt so strongly down to her bones that she couldn’t choose to do this, how could she believe that I could? She eventually admitted that maybe I was right about it not being a choice.
We were hardly the first people to have that conversation. For those of us queer people who were raised in exceptionally homophobic churches and families—who spent decades crying ourselves to sleep over feelings that would not go away; who begged god again and again in epic prayer sessions to make us “normal;” and who lived in constant fear of the being rejected by those we loved if they found out—the notion that this is all a matter of choice is so patently ridiculous that it defies reason.
Not to mention having watched people we know go through programs intended to “cure” homosexuality and seeing most of them come out not changed at all. Or seeing the ones who claimed to be changed so obviously projecting a facade that did nothing to hide how profoundly unhappy and unchanged they were. Or reading the statistics which show that literally 99.9% of them aren’t even able to resist their feelings for any length of time.
It’s deeply frustrating knowing that it was never a matter of choice for ourselves or anyone we’ve known, that the myth is still bandied about and still used to justify laws, policies, and practices that discriminate against us.
Then one day I read an op-ed piece by advice columnist and gay rights activist Dan Savage, in which he described the same frustration, but then explained an epiphany he had had. He had been reading yet another news story of a vehemently anti-gay minister or politician having been caught having had a number of same-sex affairs, and remembering all the times said anti-gay person had publicly insisted that being gay was a choice, when it hit him. The reason they believed it was a choice because in a twisted way it was true for them. Every single day they looked themselves in the mirror and convinced themselves one more time that they weren’t going to be gay that day.
We know from both the medical research and the statistics that some so-called ex-gay therapists were forced to admit in court, that no one who feels same-sex attraction ever stops feeling it. No one. When the advocates of such quackery have been pinned down in court under threat of perjury and faced with actual evidence, they even admit that by “cure” all they’ve ever meant was that a person could learn to resist the urge to act on their feelings. Which is a very twisted definition of cure.
Congressman Shock was raised Southern Baptist in a rural community, has a consistent anti-gay voting record, but posts pictures of himself to Instagram like these, has never married, and has lived with a string of young athletic male “roommates” for over a decade.Before I came out, back when I was still fighting the feelings and still trying desperately to convince myself that maybe I was bi, it always struck me as weird that the preachers I met who preached most virulently and obsessively against homosexuality were always the most effeminate men I had ever met. When a group of ex-gay activists came to the methodist university I was attending, I was again struck by how stereotypically sissified the ex-gay men were, and how unladylike the ex-lesbian women were. Back at the dorm, one of the other guys on my floor went on and on about it, getting big laughs when he asked why they couldn’t find at least one non-faggy person to represent the program.
Just to be clear: not all gay men are sissies. Sexual orientation is a complicated thing, obviously the result of a whole lot of different things going on in our brains and hormones. Some gay men are great at football and have no interest in musical theatre, while some straight men have no interest in sports and like to cook. Believe me, I know.
But there are actual studies which show that almost all sissies are gay.
And my own epiphany about these anti-gay or ex-gay guys that I can’t believe are fooling anyone is this: they are so desperate to believe there is a cure precisely because they have never been able to hide.
As bad as childhood may have been for me, being called sissy and pussy and far worse by classmates, coaches, some teachers, other kids at church, or my own father, I bet Aaron Shock had it worse. I’m absolutely certain that Marcus Bachmann had it far, far, far worse. Convincing themselves that they aren’t gay, or convincing themselves that they could hide it, was a matter of survival for them.
So, yeah, they deserve at least some pity.
But not so much that we don’t hold them responsible for the tens of thousands of queer and questioning kids thrown out on the street by homophobic parents and driven into high risk of drug abuse and prostitution. Neither should our pity stop us for placing some of the blame for the thousands and thousands of kids who commit suicide for fear their parents will find out they’re gay, and/or because the incessant bullying and rejection at school, church, and in their homes.
Because people like Bachmann and Shock and all the other ex-gay and anti-gay folks are perpetuating and enabling that cycle of hate. They need to stop faking it, and start making amends.
expreacherman.comTwo leaders of Southern Baptist Churches have recently justified their opposition to gay rights with misleading allusions to the struggle for racial equality. In April, Pastor J.D. Grear, speaking at the Southern Baptist Convention Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission’s Leadership Summit, said, “Preaching against homosexuality in our day is about as popular as preaching against slavery and racism in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1861.” A month later, Pastor David Price posted a commentary on the Southern Bapatist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission website which explained that anyone comparing the first openly gay NFL draftee, Michael Sam, to the first black major league baseball player, Jackie Robinson, has been deceived by Satan. Prince’s commentary goes on at length to describe how much hatred and opposition Robinson faced from the public at large.
Why these statements are so weird is because both preachers are clearly implying that Baptists are and always have been in favor of racial equality. Grear’s comments are the most explicit in that regard, but Price’s aren’t far behind. The problem is that those implications are absolute, unequivocal lies…
Pastor Manning’s infamous sign now warns about sell-out negroes and demonic homosPastor Manning is at it again. And I understand why no one should be surprised, except this sign means more than it appears to. The sign went up a day author, civil rights activist (not to mention former actress, singer, and many other things) Maya Angelou, died. Angelou was an African American who fought for the civil rights of many minorities, not just other African Americans, and was notably an early supporter of including gay and lesbian civil rights in the fight. And she owned a home not far from Manning’s church. And Manning’s sign is visible from front door of the Apollo Theatre, which had just changed the message on its famous marquee to honor Dr. Angelou. It doesn’t seem too much of a stretch, then, to conclude that the sign’s reference to “pinch nosed sell-out negroes” is meant to be a slam on the Maya Angelou.
The other interesting thing to note on the sign is the date of the “next meeting” given on the sign. June 2nd is not a Sunday, it’s Monday night. The same night that another nearby institution, the Ali Forney Center (“Housing for Homeless LGBT Youth”) which opened a new shelter near the church the same night Manning’s sign went up. And the Ali Forney Center is having a rally to raise money for more shelters for queer homeless teens on the evening of June 2.
Manning and his church sign have featured in several of my previous posts, where he warned about white homo devils steal black men from good black women, where he proclaimed that Jesus would be stoning homos to death if he were here now, and so on. And people have argued that we should just ignore him, because he’s just crazy and the only people listening to him are crazy, et cetera.
Here’s why I especially can’t do that in this instance: Manning and scores of other ministers like him (and the “crazy” people who listen to him) are the reason that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans children are thrown out of their homes by their own parents. Manning tells these parents that their gay kids are sinners. He tells them that their gay children are demonic. He tells them that their gay children will molest their own brothers and sisters unless they are driven from their homes.
He is one of the reasons that the majority of homeless teens are non-heterosexual. He’s one of the reasons that so many of those homeless teens are murdered on the streets every year. He’s on of the reasons that so many queer teens commit suicide rather than risk telling their parents that they think they might be gay.
And he’s planning a special service to pray for the failure of a charity event intended to raise money to help a fraction of those teens beat the odds and survive.
He is an evil, evil man. And it is immoral for us to stand silently by while such evil men perpetuate their evil.
I’m just a fat, old white homo living on the other side of the continent from this particular evil man. And this is just one very small blog. But I’ll use what voice I have. And I’ll make a donation to the Ali Forney Center as well as one to the local YouthCare.
And I’ll urge (and plead) that anyone who reads this does the same.
And it happens again.In a short segment on her MSNBC show last night, Rachel Maddow commented that this is the 13th state in a row to have a judge rule this way, and it’s almost reached the point where no one thinks it’s news anymore. She talked a little bit about how, for many years, almost every time the question came up, the forces of equality lost, and how now things seemed to have turned the other way.
But there is a difference with Oregon. There is a reason that none of the previous federal rulings have caused places such as Wikipedia or GLAAD or any other place that is covering his phenomenon to count those states as one that now allows marriage equality.
Oregon is the first state with one of these cases where not a single state or county official argued in favor of keeping the ban.
Cover of this week’s Arkansas Times.If I thought the weekend’s events was enough to make the bigots’ heads explode, I can’t think how they’re surviving this week!
A judge in Idaho declared that state’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, and refused to issue a stay, so marriages could begin Friday (depending on how the Governor’s appeal to the Circuit Court goes).
The Arkansas Supreme Court declined to issue a stay, but also pointed out that the judge’s preliminary ruling forgot to mention a third statute that prohibits clerks from issuing licenses. More on that in a minute.
The federal judge in Oregon who heard arguments about the ban last month (if you can call it arguments when the state Attorney General and every other group filing a brief agreed with the gay couples that the ban is unconstitutional) ruled that the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) could not intervene on behalf of anonymous citizens who allegedly fear reprisal, so they couldn’t be named.
Seriously, NOM’s behavior on this has been really pathetic. They issued a lengthy angry press release two months before the deadline to file a brief about the case, then they missed the deadline to file. Then the night before the scheduled hearing, they file an emergency request to be allowed to file a brief and come into the court to argue on behalf of the ban, claiming that they were caught off-guard by the hearing? The judge refused to halt the scheduled hearing, but promised he wouldn’t release a ruling until he’d had another hearing on their intervention petition.
Rumor had it that NOM had missed the deadline because they were looking for a county clerk who would agree to be their co-filer. Since marriage equality came to California because the Supreme Court rejected the case on the grounds that NOM and other groups had no standing to step in if the state declined to appeal the lower court ruling, NOM has switched to trying to recruit lower-level state officials to be their puppet petitioner. Rumors were that, with polls shows 58% of Oregon voters already wanting to repeal the state constitution’s ban, no state or county official who might arguably have standing was willing to come forward. That’s why NOM filed late.
They confirmed this in their arguments about why they should be allowed to intervene. They allegedly had several people who wanted to argue for the ban, but only if they could remain anonymous. It should have been no surprise to them that the judge denied the request. Come on! The Supreme Court had already ruled NOM didn’t have standing. Claiming you have anonymous co-petitioners who are afraid even to meet with the judge? That’s just crazy.
And then there’s Kentucky, whose ban was ruled unconstitutional a while ago, but the ruling has been stayed while awaiting the outcome of an appeal. But that doesn’t mean nothing’s happening. No, the original court has now ordered the state to pay the attorneys fees of the gay and lesbian couples who originally filed the case.
But it’s the Arkansas case that’s crazy. When the news first broke last week, I was kind of surprised to read that the Judge had to find both a state constitutional ban and a separate statute banning same-sex marriage violated the federal constitution. Arkansas had both a law and a constitutional ban? Talk about wearing both a belt and suspenders at the same time! But it’s worse than that, there’s another statute that separately prohibits clerks from issuing the licenses. Really? How paranoid can you be?
But apparently, since the state Supreme Court mentioned that third law, everyone, including the counties that had been issuing licenses since Saturday, has stopped following the first judge’s order allowing marriage equality. As more than one observer has pointed out, it seems absurd that once the ban is declared unconstitutional, that anyone could argue that an extra law whose only effect is to enforce this thing that has already been declared unconstitutional can itself remain constitutional.
The original judge had only issued preliminary ruling, not his final orders, so he could mention the third law in those final orders. No one knows if the justices on the state’s highest court did this to make certain everything is covered, or it it’s a delaying tactic to avoid having to decide whether to issue a stay. I’m not sure what the delay would accomplish. Do a couple of them hope that if they wait a few weeks this will all blow over?
Between thr time I started writing this and now, the judge has issued a revised order, and specifically ordered clerks to issue marriqge licenses. So it’s back in the state Supreme Court’s lap. There comes a point where you wonder when the bigots will admit the fight on this is over…
There were a lot of heads exploding this weekend…Marriage licenses issued to same sex couples in Arkansas. A drag queen/genderqueer performer won Eurovision despite angry protests from Russia and a few other places. And Michael Sam, an openly gay NCAA football player, was drafted into the NFL…Continue reading It bothers some people that we exist→
Font Folly 