Pastor Manning is once again misquoting the Bible to bash gay people.Let’s all heave a big sigh, because Pastor Manning and his church sign are at it again.
This week the sign says, “When the homos bullied the poor and needy in Sodom like they do in Harlem, Jesus fire and brim-stoned them,” and then cites three Biblical passages: Ezekial 16:48-50, Leviticus 20:13, and Genesis 19:24-? – the last one is cut off, as it doesn’t quite fit into the lit up part of the sign.
The first thing to note about these Bible verses is that all of them are in the Old Testament, where Jesus does not appear, as he hadn’t been born yet, and is not the person speaking. One could argue that it might not have been the intent of the Pastor to imply that Jesus is being quoted in those verses, but given the context of why this sign is saying this particular message now (which I will get to), that argument is wrong. So, the first lie in the sign is the notion that Jesus said anything about homosexuals at all. Jesus did not at any point at all in the Bible.
A pair of bigots.In case you didn’t already know that neither Pastor Manning nor Pastor Driscoll are even slightly acquainted with logic, the last couple week’s revelations will make it crystal clear.
I’m not even sure where to begin. Pastor Manning’s most recently posted youtube video explains how NASA’s Voyager spacecraft proves that homos are perverts, with a long digressive rant about rectums. Pastor Driscoll’s supporters have been trying to distance themselves from recently unearthed postings on the church’s forums in which Driscoll explained that god created each woman as a special home for a particular penis.
(Source: musingsfromunderthebus.wordpress.com)Mars Hill Church, a cult-like evangelical megachurch/ denomination headquartered right here in the Emerald City has had a really, really bad summer. Scandals about lead Pastor Mark Driscoll plagiarising most of the content of several of his books, the church spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy one of Driscoll’s books onto the New York Times best seller list, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for specific disasters overseas, then sending only a few hundred, raising millions of dollars for a Jesus Festival that was supposed to happen last weekend, but was simply never scheduled or organized, ordered members to shun other members who raised questions and taking further action to defame said former members, threatening legal action against former members based on spiritual covenants signed by the former members, suing former associate pastors who try to find work in other churches under non-compete clauses in employment agreements, and so on, and so on.
As I said before, all of these transgressions are serious problems. But all of these these things are merely symptoms of a deeper issue. Mars Hill claims to follow the teachings of Jesus, and Jesus had something to say on this issue: “Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.” (Matt 7:16-17)
When an organization is producing this much unethical and immoral behavior, it isn’t a matter of just one bad person. Even though I firmly believe that Driscoll is a narcissitic bigot and con man, he isn’t the only problem. He’s the leader of this church, but that doesn’t explain the financial shenanigans, lies, and violations of law at the National Organization for Marriage. Or the lies told by Save America. Nor the crimes against humanity and related actions by evangelical leaders such as Scott Lively. Or scamming tax-payers for millions in tax breaks for a creationist museum.
The evangelical fundamentalist theology is inherently hateful, fearful, and toxic. One of the evangelical movement’s central tenets is that in god’s eyes everyone isn’t merely imperfect, but infinitely wicked. And rather than seeing god’s love as infinitely merciful and compassionate, they see god as being so consumed by wrath at sin that only by killing his own son could he even consider being merciful.
They have scripture they quote to rationalize this belief, but other Christians read those same scriptures and come to a different conclusion. Evangelicals hold their fellow humans (and often themselves) in utter contempt, ignoring Jesus’ teachings about compassion. When you combine that with the anti-intellectual, anti-modernist mindset of most fundamentalists, it is no surprise that so many of their leaders and institutions are corrupt, because the followers are infinitely susceptible to being hoodwinked.
Do I have your attention now? You think your so safe to hide behind a fake name to spread lies about God and attacking Christians? You aren’t.
(Spelling errors from the original letter, signed “God’s Little Helper”)
While there is a photo of the first letter at the linked site, the second letter is in police custody. According to the author, while the police agreed the first letter was creepy and they strongly advised that he take precautions to protect himself and his family (including suggesting he hire a bodyguard), the first letter didn’t rise to the level of an actionable threat. Even though it quoted a section of Deuteronomy that included the phrase, “Have no pity, and do not spare or protect them. You must put them to death! Strike the first blow yourself.” The threatening letter also said, “I’ll see you up in Seattle next week. You wont see me.” But apparently that doesn’t constitute, under state law, a threat.
Apparently, however, the second letter did.
I want to point out that his book does not, in fact, contain any lies. The book’s text is lifted straight from the Bible (or in some sections, from the writings of such Christian luminaries as Pat Robertson and Ken Ham) and the children’s book-style illustrations adhere faithfully to that text. The whole point of the book is that these are passages from the Bible that are almost never taught in any Christian school or church. They are very disturbing, or at least uncomfortable, passages.
According to one of the other articles I read on this, a substantial number of the book sales have been to Christian teachers and pastors who use the books to get their congregations to read these more challenging passages of the Bible, and more importantly, discuss them.
Folks like “God’s Little Helper” either are so unfamiliar with their own holy book that they aren’t aware that the text is literally coming out of the Bible, or they’re angry because they think the passages are being distorted somehow.
In any case, even though the conference offered to hire some off-duty police and military personnel to serve as body guards and security, the author decided to cancel his appearance. As he said, he can’t ask other people to put themselves at risk to defend his own lack of belief. On the other hand, a lot of attendees at the convention decided to wear badges that bore the name of the author, as a sign of solidarity.
Proving they’re braver than the person sending anonymous death threats through the mail.
The argument they are pushing is: “allowing same sex couples to marry is exactly the same as prohibiting interracial couples to marry.” If you don’t read that closely, it sounds like they’re finally agreeing with one of our arguments, but look again (and go look at the confusing graphic that accompanies the meme they’re trying to get their people to post everywhere).
Because interracial marriage bans prevented people from marrying who they wanted to merely because the color of one half of the couple’s skin didn’t match the other was bad. Most everyone agrees the interracial marriage ban was bad. And the Ruth Institute agrees. But, they say, allowing same-sex couples to marry is just as bad because it prevents straight women from marrying gay men if they want to. And so forth.
That’s literally their argument.
Which is wrong on so, so many levels. Allowing my husband and I to legally marry does not prevent any gay person (closeted or not) from entering into a marriage with a straight person if they want. It doesn’t. If they want to do that, they can. I don’t know why they would want to, but they can.
Allowing someone to do something doesn’t prevent other people for doing it.
The closest you can get to any “logic” in this argument is that if marriage equality is not available anywhere, it increases the odds that people will be closeted, and it makes it slightly more likely that unsuspecting straight people will get married to closeted gay people, and probably suffer a lot of heartache later on.
I think Jeremy is right: desperation is making them lose their minds.
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).
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.
Maggie Gallagher appearing on one of the news showsLots of places have been running similar headlines this week, about how Maggie Gallagher, who for many years was the president of the anti-gay National Organization of Marriage, has announced their surrender.
Except that isn’t what she had done, at all.
For a little background, for many years she pulled in a six-figure salary from this group while she went around the country, explaining how letting gay people have either civil unions or get married would destroy families, would harm children, would cause irrepairable harm to non-gay people’s marriages, and so forth. She raised and spent (every year) tens of millions of dollars putting advertisements onto local radio and television filled with lies and distortions about how immoral, unhealthy, et cetera, et cetera gay people were. She sent people into churches to rally the faithful. She repeated the lies on local and national “news” shows, and so forth.
Then, when it became clear that the battle had been lost on civil unions, she and her organization started insisting that they only meant to protect traditional marriage, and they claimed to stop opposing civil unions (though they did keep more quietly funneling money into campaigns opposing those), and asserted they were only against marriage.
She kept repeating the same lies, demonizing gay and lesbian people, quoting all those debunked studies and so forth. They fought tooth an nail, mounting speaking tours, spending large amounts of money on ads to defeat judges and legislators who helped civil unions and marriage equality move forward.
Then, she resigned as president of the organization, letting her longtime friend and ally Brian Brown take over. She still pulls in a healthy, six-figure salary as chairperson of their board of directors. And they still spread the same lies. But now, they spend as much of their time and money trying to block gay adoptions, trying to block transgender rights laws, trying to repeal school policies against bullying gay and trans children, and so forth.
And recently, Maggie has started going on conservative radio shows and the like saying things that, when quoted out of context, sound like she’s surrendering. “Gay marriage is inevitable, now,” and “we’ve lost that fight.” And everyone who has been blogging about and covering the struggle for marriage equality, are repeating those quotes, slapping a “she’s surrendered!” headline on them, and sometimes wondering why she’s going around admitting that they’ve lost.
Here’s what they all misunderstand: admitting that they have lost the marriage argument is not the same thing as surrendering. And if you listen to the rest of what she says in these interviews or go read all of her blog, instead of stopping as everyone seems to assume as a consequence of the admission of loss, you find a different story:
“The rapid collapse of opposition to gay marriage we are witnessing did not just happen, and it was not inevitable. But it is.
“The question now on the table is: will orthodox Christianity (and other traditional faiths), be stigmatized and marginalized as the equivalent of racism in the American public square? Will Biblical morality be wiped out as an acceptable public position in America?
“Or will we regroup, rebuild as a subculture, and survive to become the possibility of a new foundation in the future?”
—Maggie Gallagher
She goes on to lament that “version of America we were born into is no more,” and she talks a lot about how faithful Christians and Jews and Muslims are being intimidated into silence. There are two flaws with this claim. She believes that anyone who doesn’t feel the same as she does about gay rights are not faithful or true Christians, et cetera. And she also believes that not everyone who claims to support our legal rights really do support us.
She then segues to something that may seem a little bizarre and disconnected:
“7 percent of the American people believe contraception—while legally acceptable—is not morally acceptable.”—Maggie Gallagher
This betrays another secret of the anti-gay movement that lots of people don’t understand: they aren’t just anti-gay, they think that birth control (all forms) is immoral. Rick Santorum originally got is name turned into a gross sexual slang term not because he opposed gay marriage, but because he was campaigning for re-election to the Senate on a platform of restricting access to birth control for everyone (including married people), and wanting to impose laws against kinky sex on everyone (including married people), in addition to outlawing all abortions, re-criminalizing gay sex, banning gay marriage, and repealing sex discrimination and sexual orientation discrimination laws.
Maggie quotes that 7 percent statistic for another reason, she goes on to describe how the battle for marriage equality that has been won in the hearts and minds of Americans was pushed by a mere 2 percent of the population. Because she things that only 2 percent of the population is gay and lesbian. From my study of the methodologies of all the studies that have tried to pin that number down, I think it’s closer to 6 percent. But the more important thing Maggie doesn’t understand is the studies conducted by the CDC in the 80s and 90s that concluded that merely 45% of adults have sex with some regularity with members of both genders (the other thing that study found was that Americans, at least, would rather admit to being heroin addicts than label themselves bisexual).
So, while she soothes herself thinking that only 2 percent of the population is non-heterosexual, and therefore if 2 percent of the population can bamboozle a big majority of Americans to decide that gay people are human and deserve the same rights as other humans, her 7 percent will be able to reverse all of that. She also soothes herself by believing (and until just the last week ago, continuing to insist) that the vast majority of Americans agree with her, they just aren’t speaking up.
She’s also using all these things to prepare to keep up the fight. To look for new ways to take away our rights:
the first struggle we now face is internal and spiritual: Will we accept the newly dominant culture’s view of our views—of ourselves—as hateful and bigoted and stand down?”—Maggie Gallagher
She is not surrendering, by any means. She’s saying that they have lost this battle, but the war goes on. Which is best caught by this line from the middle of her most recent blog post:
“There is no line we can draw that pushes gay people “outside” and leaves us free “inside” to be angry, foot-stomping, and morally “pure.”—Maggie Gallagher
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