206. caveat

Yesterday I received an email inviting me to sign a petition. I get these fairly often, usually from Change.org or the Democrats, alerting me to some grave issue that requires my clicktivist engagement right away. Sometimes I join if it seems a worthwhile cause, but usually it gets deleted.

The petition I received yesterday was from All Out, an organization whose mission is to build “a global movement for love and equality.” A worthy goal, if a tad… shall we say… lofty.

All Out is mobilizing millions of people to build a world where no person will have to sacrifice their family or freedom, safety or dignity, because of who they are or who they love.

If anything, they’re doing a fairly good job of alerting people to issues around the world, such as human rights abuses and instances of LGBT discrimination and persecution. And they are bringing together LGBT advocacy organizations to combat institutionalized prejudice and hate.

The petition yesterday was intended to put pressure on Orange, “one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators, present in 32 countries,” to remove its advertisements from a Ugandan tabloid that recently published the names of “Uganda’s Top 200 Homos.” This just a day after its president, Yoweri Museveni, signed the “Kill The Gays” bill into law.

Getting Orange to pull the adverts wouldn’t just send a message to the editor of the Ugandan tabloid — it would show the Ugandan government that a major investor doesn’t approve of the anti-gay law. If more companies join in, the Ugandan government won’t be able to ignore the potential damage to their economy of their attacks on human rights.

While this is a good sentiment and a good start, having grown up in Evangelical culture I know that this approach won’t ultimately do much good. The authors of this petition are assuming that Ugandans (and Evangelicals) care what the international community thinks. They think that sanctions and cuts to aid from other nations will convince Uganda’s leaders that the bill was a bad idea, and that human rights is the best way to go.

In short, they’re assuming that they’re reasonable people.

What they don’t understand is that Evangelicals believe that our world is a spiritual battle ground, divided between God and Satan.

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12)

Furthermore…

“Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you… If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.” (1 Peter 4:12-14)

They’re not being criticized and their aid is not being cut because they’re bigots. They are experiencing backlash because they believe they’re doing “God’s work.”

I grew up being told that if we lived true to the Bible and God’s commandments, non-Christians (i.e., “the world”) would turn on us. When someone made fun of us for not using profanity or “saving ourselves for marriage,” we weren’t the real target — Jesus was the target.

If you listen to any ultra conservative bent on outlawing marriage equality or screaming about “religious liberty,” these are the Bible verses you’ll hear. They believe that a time is coming when Christians will be thrown in jail and possibly even executed for their beliefs.

No, really. Seriously.

I’m currently watching the fourth season of the Star Trek series Deep Space 9. The other night I saw the episode “Accession,” in which a Bajoran poet who disappeared two hundred years earlier mysteriously reappears through the wormhole. He claim to be the Emissary and to speak for the “prophets,” demanding that Bajorans return to “d’jarra,” an ancient caste system. This doesn’t go over well with everyone. The decree also puts Bajor’s application to Federation in jeopardy. But the religious leaders in favor of the “d’jarra” believe that following the “prophets” is worth any consequence that may result.

In the same way, the Ugandan government doesn’t care if it loses standing in the international community, if Western nations cut off funding and aid, if advertisers pull spots from newspapers, or international businesses pull out of the country.

I’m not sure how many Evangelicals really believe they’re following the commandments of their “God” by attempting to deny LGBT people equal human rights. Frankly, I think it’s part of the song and dance they perform to help themselves sleep at night.

I believe it is the responsibility of the ninety-four nations that signed the UN Declaration on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity to offer asylum to LGBT Africans affected by these bills. Yesterday, I sent a letter to the director of U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Services, asking him to do that. I’m also writing to activists to ask if there are any organizations working to help relocate LGBT Africans to safer areas.

What we need is for Western nations that claim to welcome LGBT people to offer asylum to displaced Ugandans and Nigerians (and Russians). Like the Underground Railroad of the 19th Century, we could build a “Rainbow Road” for people currently living without hope. Many of these people are living in poverty, with little to no means of immigrating, now in fear of being exposed, punished, and even killed.

Secretary of State John Kerry recently said: “People everywhere deserve to live in freedom and equality. No one should face violence or discrimination for who they are or who they love.”

I believe we’ve a responsibility to try to and make that a reality.

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UPDATE: This site was recommended as a potential resource for helping LGBT Ugandans: ugandans4rights.org.

183. bilge

Another Exodus International alum is on the mea culpa circuit: Randy Thomas, former Executive Vice President of Exodus, who issued a public apology today.

Why does anyone think this matters? Do they think this will lead to some sort of hippy-dippy Kumbaya moment where bygones are bygones, and we hold hands and sing around a campfire? Lest we forget that this is an organization that emotionally manipulated thousands of gay people into betraying themselves in the name of religious bigotry and homophobia…

The fact is, this apology doesn’t matter. Like his former boss, Alan Chambers, at no point in this “apology” does Thomas ever outright apologize for his actions. Instead, he blames others for his part the psychological terrorism of LGBT persons:

• “My understanding of public policy at that time was limited to the talking points I was given to tailor my testimony around.”
• “I participated in the hurtful echo chamber of condemnation.”
• “I was, in a sense, attracted to this kind of power and allowed my conscience to be numbed so I could have a seat at their table. In the name of trying to positively affect Christian leaders, I willingly became one of their pawns. Again, I was selfish and prideful. Please forgive me.”

According to his biography on the Exodus website (now taken down), Randy Thomas grew up in an abusive home, which he attributes to having caused his feelings of same-sex attraction:

“Growing up I internalized the abuse and the pain grew. My need for love was desperate. I knew at a very young age that I preferred the company of males even though I wasn’t like them. When a male would smile my heart would leap. This became erotic at the age of ten.”

After being thrown out of his home by his religiously radicalized mother, he basically went on a sex, alcohol and drugs bender that eventually led to a “come to Jesus” moment and internalizing the lie that homosexuality is both a disorder and a sin. He “left his homosexual identity at the cross,” “learned to relate to men and women the way Father intended,” and “received love from men and women in the body of Christ that displaces homosexuality.”

Essentially, he became frightened of the abusive way he was treating his body, and was seduced by the alluring message of (conditional) love and acceptance of God and the Church. Not only that, but he joined an organization devoted to seducing others into exactly the same lifestyle (irony strongly intended).

Rather than see that he needed psychological help and counseling after an abusive childhood and then rejection and abandonment by his own mother, like so many of these ex-gay faggots (as Dan Savage likes to call them, because not a single one of those pathetic individuals are heterosexual), Randy Thomas made the fatal leap of seeing correlation where there was no causation. He associated the emptiness that he felt with homosexuality, not the emotionally empty sexual encounters he was having with other men.

I’ve felt that same emptiness too after a hookup that comes from the deep longing I have within me for a partner and kindred spirit, and not finding it in those encounters. We’re complex social primates, and that’s how millions of years of natural selection have groomed us for survival. For most of us, the desire for emotional companionship is embedded in our genes.

Instead of seeking real help, Randy cut himself off from his friends and support network, and joined up with bigots of the ex-gay movement who told him what he wanted to hear.

Nowhere in his public apology does Thomas take full responsibility for his part in the abuse of LGBT people, or that these beliefs were wrong and scientifically ungrounded to begin with. He apologizes for the hurt he caused, but he doesn’t actually say that the actions that caused that hurt were actually wrong. This is one of the first lessons I learned about making apologies: if you were in the wrong, you admit it. Instead we have this masquerading as an apology:

“I apologize to the gay community for idealizing and reinforcing the institutional groupthink of Exodus. I apologize for remaining publicly silent about the hurt caused by some of Exodus’ leaders and actions. I also apologize for my inexperienced participation in public policy, placing my personal ambition over truly serving the gay community as a Christian friend.”

This is virtually no different from saying: “I apologize for shooting you. But it was for your own good, and to keep you from going down an even worse path. I regret hurting you though! Friends?” That’s not an apology. That’s excuse making, designed to let the offender off the hook from feeling guilty about his/her past actions.

The fact is that Randy Thomas and everyone in the ex-gay movement knows that their ship is sinking, and fast. Their claim of evidence of change in sexual orientation evaporated into thin air, because it was never there to begin with. Every mainstream medical body in the world has affirmed that there is nothing aberrant or pathological about homosexuality. The much touted Mark Regnerus study that was supposed to prove that same-sex parents ultimately harm their children turned out to be fraudulent.

And they’re likely trying to make friends amongst enemies before the anti-ex-gay animus really heats up.

If Randy Thomas wants to “make amends,” he could start by inventing a time machine, going back and smacking some sense into his young adult self. Or spending his time volunteering in shelters for gay teens who have been disowned by their bigoted Christian parents, and helping them reject the lies that he helped perpetrate, come to accept themselves as the beautiful human beings they are, and find healthy and emotionally mature ways of expressing their sexuality.

Hell, just a decent sex ed course would be a start.

But this so-called apology is a joke. It’s self-pitying, self-congratulatory, and blame-shifting. Whatever his motivations here, an apology without action is worthless.

179. balk

“Please know that I am deeply sorry. I am sorry for the pain and hurt many of you have experienced. I am sorry that some of you spent years working through the shame and guilt you felt when your attractions didn’t change… You have never been my enemy. I am very sorry that I have been yours.”

Dear Alan Chambers,

I read your funny little note today. Or it would be funny if it weren’t so deeply offensive to me and to every gay person you’ve helped murder, maim, mangle, dehumanize and abuse over the many years of your “ministry” as president of Exodus International.

Fortunately, I am not one of those “ex-gay” survivors (i.e., victims). I was never desperate enough to fully buy into the lie that there was something fundamentally wrong with me, or that my sexual orientation needed “curing.” Frankly, I’m not sure why this is when so many of my friends willingly subjected themselves to the brand of psychological terrorism your organization helped promote. They did this out of a desperate, last-ditch hope that it would make them acceptable enough for your so-called God, and for their families who ultimately failed in the duty to show them unconditional love.

Perhaps it was my parents’ instilling of critical thinking skills in me at an early age that never allowed me to fully accept their and my church’s teaching about homosexuality. There was a small but present voice in my mind (that, thanks to teachings about demons and “spiritual warfare,” I attributed to the Devil tempting me) that said, “This doesn’t make sense.”

And why should it? Why would we willingly choose a “lifestyle” that for too many of us results in the hostile rejection of our friends and family, being taunted, called names, beaten up (and too often brutally murdered), demonized and hated — all for simply loving a person of the same sex?

That’s right — straight people have relationships; faggots just want sex.

“… If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

I was never desperate or foolish enough to pursue so-called “reparative” therapy. But that doesn’t mean that I didn’t spend the majority of my teen years in pained anguish over what I believed were filthy and repulsive sexual feelings, pleading with God almost every single night growing up to take those feelings away.

It doesn’t mean that there aren’t 25 years of my life that I’ll never get back because I believed the bullshit that God’s “design” for human beings was heterosexuality.

It doesn’t mean that my young adult life were desperately lonely and miserable as I watched my straight friends date, fall in love, and get married, something I thought wasn’t an option for me because our holy book said that marriage was between a man and a woman.

So forgive me if I find it infuriatingly laughable when you say that you’re not my enemy. You’re worse than my enemy. You’re a disgusting quisling, a self-loathing, self-hating collaborator against your own kind. You’ve ruined lives with your teachings. You’ve all but put the gun in the hand or kicked the chair out from under who knows how many innocent LGBT people who couldn’t live with the life you and others told them they had to live in order to get to Heaven — all because they were unfortunate enough to have been born different than 95% of the human population.

And for that you’re sorry? Like Steve Urkel lamenting, “Did I do that?”

The only good thing to came out of this nightmare for me is that I was well prepared for the realizations that (1) religion is nonsense, and (2) there is no God. For me, these conclusions were inevitable. I was never the kind of person who can blindly accept given propositions as fact. It would’ve been nice if these realizations could’ve come earlier, and with less grief and pain, but they are hard-won, and they are mine. And I’m building a new, happier, freer life for myself, without the lies and self-hatred that I was fed growing up.

It would’ve also been nice if I could have accepted my sexuality earlier, and in a family where I could’ve been accepted for who I am rather than who they believe I should be. But then, I wouldn’t be the unique, strong, dynamic and caring individual that I am today. It has been a long, difficult road to accepting myself, but I doubt that I’d appreciate the joy of love and relationships in the same way had I not known the despair and broken loneliness first.

However, I hold you personally responsible for the grief, loss and pain I suffered, in the full knowledge that you’re merely a part of the system that oppressed and subjugated you too. Yet you willingly participated in that oppression and subjugation by becoming an oppressor yourself. You taught millions of gay men and women to hate and loathe themselves, and to bury themselves alive in unfulfilling relationships with members of the opposite sex because the leaders of your church taught that this is “God’s will.”

So until you figure out a way to go back in time and prevent every person from going through the life of pain and misery you inflicted on them, there is no forgiveness for you, or your kind. All I hope is that you devote the rest of your sad life to dismantling the lies about LGBT people that you’ve promoted and fostered over the years.

But there is no forgiveness for you. There may be others who can find it in their hearts to do so, and good for them. But you will be my enemy until the day you die and leave this planet to those of us who want to build a more kind, peaceful and tolerant world.

 

170. atavistic

So apparently two of the Phelps granddaughters, Megan and Grace, have left the Westboro clan. They even issued a public statement expressing regret for their actions as members of the family and the church. And everyone seems to be really excited and happy about that, ready to welcome these women with open arms into polite society.

And while I’m certainly glad that they’re out of that awful place and that there are two less Phelps in that clan to cause harm, I’m not entirely pleased with the reactions to this story.

Before I delve into my own feelings on this, here’s the statement they released:

We know that we’ve done and said things that hurt people. Inflicting pain on others wasn’t the goal, but it was one of the outcomes. We wish it weren’t so, and regret that hurt.

We know that we dearly love our family. They now consider us betrayers, and we are cut off from their lives, but we know they are well-intentioned. We will never not love them.

We know that we can’t undo our whole lives. We can’t even say we’d want to if we could; we are who we are because of all the experiences that brought us to this point. What we can do is try to find a better way to live from here on. That’s our focus.

Up until now, our names have been synonymous with “God Hates Fags.” Any twelve-year-old with a cell phone could find out what we did. We hope Ms. Kyle was right about the other part, too, though – that everything sticks – and that the changes we make in our lives will speak for themselves.

Okay, basic rules of public apology-making, as summarized on Billosophy:

1. Ask For Forgiveness
2. Admit What You Did
3. Do Not Excuse
4. Do Not Place Blame
5. Do Not Justify Why
6. Acknowledge The Consequences

I know as well as anyone who grew up in a fundamentalist home the regret that comes with wishing you had come to your senses earlier. The way things are is normal. You don’t know that you have a choice not to participate. But we’re not talking about just any family. This is the “God Hates Fags” family, just a step below the Manson clan in terms of notoriety. So it bothers me that not once in this statement did either Megan or Grace say, “I’m sorry.” The whole thing is essentially a non-apology.

We know that we’ve done and said things that hurt people. Inflicting pain on others wasn’t the goal, but it was one of the outcomes. We wish it weren’t so, and regret that hurt.

“Regret” is a word you use when saying that you wish things had turned out differently: that the other car hadn’t run the stop sign; that you hadn’t sunk all your money into the Ponzi scheme; that you hadn’t wasted a year of your life pining after a guy who would never return your love. However, it’s not a word you use when talking about having intentionally caused pain and misery for so many people. Because if inflicting pain on others wasn’t the goal, I’d sure as hell like to know what was.

It’s as if a rapist-murderer said at the trial: “I know that I’ve done things that hurt people. Inflicting pain on others wasn’t the goal, but it was one of the outcomes. I wish it wasn’t so, and regret that hurt.” We shouldn’t be surprised when the jury comes back with a guilty-on-all-counts verdict.

When it comes down to it, Megan broke pretty much every rule of apology making that psychology has identified as being integral to the healing process. She justifies her actions by laying the blame on her family, and on us by saying they were somehow misunderstood. She glosses over the painful consequences of those actions, and dances around the specifics of what she actually did (e.g., picketing military funerals, thanking God for AIDS, telling everyone God hates them). Then she justifies her actions by having the unbelievable gall to say that she didn’t mean to hurt anyone.

Personally, I’d have been satisfied with something like this:

I’m sincerely sorry for all of the pain and suffering I inflicted on innocent people as a leader of the Westboro Baptist Church. There’s no way that I can ever fully undo the damage I caused or unsay the things that I said, but I promise to spend the rest of my life working to heal the hurt I imposed on gay and lesbian people, on the families of the brave soldiers who gave their lives defending this great country, and on anyone else my family has directed their hatred toward.

That might have convinced some of us of her sincerity—not that we doubt that she’s not a member of the Westboro cult anymore. Rather, that she grasps the gravity of who she was and what she did. At the bare minimum, I expect some real tears here.

Some of the anger I’m feeling comes from the fact that I’ve never been offered an apology by my family, or any of the people who unwittingly taught me how to hate and view myself as a disgusting, perverted, broken faggot. And probably never will. Even after I shared those feelings, no one apologized for the pain I suffocated under all those years, terrified and unable both to articulate that pain or to share its cause. So I’m left to heal all by myself, like the victim of a psychopath with a scalpel, who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I’m angry (particularly with the atheist and LGBT communities) with those who seem quick to welcome these women into the fold without so much as an apology that comes close to being adequate or forthright. I don’t expect anyone to crawl over broken glass, but I do expect them to own up to who they were and what they did. They owe us that much.

164. pontificate

Just so everyone knows, I haven’t forgotten about the shootings in Newtown, CT. My thoughts are definitely with the families and friends of the victims. However, I wanted to share a somewhat related email I sent this morning to Sue Seul, assistant to the superintendent of the Anoka-Hennepin school district.

There’s been a petition going around on Change.org to Tom Heidemann and the Anoka County School Board to have Bryan Lindquist of the Parents Action League removed from his appointment to the district’s anti-bullying task force.

In March of 2012, the Southern Poverty Law Center put the Parents Action League on their list of active anti-gay hate groups in the United States for promoting “damaging propaganda about the gay community” (see below). Incidentally, the PAL is affiliated with the Minnesota Family Council, the group that formed Minnesota for Marriage to campaign for the failed 2012 Minnesota Marriage Amendment.

ABC Newspapers, the local paper for that area, reported that Lindquist “has come under fire due to statements he’s made that indicate a belief that homosexuals can change their sexual orientation and that the district should distribute information about gay conversion or “reparative” therapy.”

On December 10, the nearly 2,500-signature petition was delivered to the District 11 school board. As recounted in an email sent last night by the petition organizer, Melissa Thompson, the board’s response was not only to reject the petition but also to “[remove] the public comment portion of the video and recorded agenda.” She also urged signers to write to Ms. Seul, which I did:

To: Sue Seul <sue.seul@anoka.k12.mn.us>
From: David Philip Norris

Ms. Suel,

I am writing to express my extreme displeasure at the decision of the Anoka-Hennepin school board to not remove Mr. Lindquist from the anti-bullying task force, and to censor the public comment portion of the meeting where supporters of his removal voiced their concerns and opinions.

As a member of the Parents Action League, a group classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as one of 27 active anti-gay hate groups in the United States, Bryan Lindquist is no ally to LGBT students in the Anoka-Hennepin district. This is a man who has been quoted calling homosexuality a “lifestyle choice” and a “sexual disorder” — a man tasked with protecting students (particularly lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students) from bullying. This is also a school district with an unusually high number of suicides and suicide attempts, the majority of which are committed by LGBT students and students merely perceived as being gay or lesbian.

Mr. Lindquist was recently quoted as saying that “discussion of sexual orientation [should] take place in the homes with parents and not with a teacher in a classroom full of impressionable kids.” There is a difference between avoiding discussion of sexual orientation in the classroom and pretending like LGBT students don’t exist and therefore aren’t being bullied for being gay or lesbian. The school board should be enacting policies to protect ALL students, not just students Mr. Lindquist believes deserve not to be bullied.

Yours,
David Philip Norris

School Boardmember Mike Sullivan stated that “it’s critical to have opposing points of view.” Yet as Thompson was quoted in a KSTP News story, appointing Lindquist to this task force “would be like asking somebody from the [Klu Klux Klan] to sit on the committee that plans black history month.”

She has a good point. While it’s not right to exclude someone because of their religious beliefs, neither does it make sense to put a man who belongs to a group that actively promotes the idea that homosexuality results from “dysfunctional family relationships, experimentation with men or boys, incest, negative body image, peer labeling and harassment, temperament, exposure to pornography, not bonding correctly with your own gender parental figure, abandonment, early trauma such as sexual victimization, and media influences” in a position to protect those very students.

The implication here is the same made by opponents of same-sex marriage and LGBT rights: Why should we give them special rights when they choose to live a perverted lifestyle? The FAQ on PAL’s website states that “to date there is no genetic link to prove they are born that way.” Ironically, on the day that the Anoka school board rejected the petition to have Lindquist removed, results of a study by international researchers were published, who found that homosexuality seems to have epigenetic (rather than genetic) causes, suggesting that we really were born this way.

The only special rights here are the ones being demanded by bigots like Lindquist, the PAL, the Minnesota Family Council and its national affiliate Focus on the Family: to abuse LGBT people under the auspices of “freedom of religion.” These groups all have close ties with the Family Research Council, which has promoted and supported the passage of Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” bill, further reinforcing the notion that groups like PAL and people like Lindquist are in fundamental opposition to the human rights of LGBT people.

As we put the events in Newtown in perspective and try to learn from it, we must remember that making schools safer doesn’t just mean protecting students from outside threats. It means taking a look at internal threats as well.

162. amygdaliform

This post is a mirror of one I just published over at www.GayWithoutGod.com. I’m publishing it here too because it’s worth reading, and so that I can get back to my new Jon Meacham biography of Thomas Jefferson!

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A recent article in the LA Times reports that the Associated Press is distancing itself from use of the term “homophobia” in its hallowed Style Book. (For those outside of journalism, this is the Bible for press editors and writers.)

The wire service’s online style book recently recommended against the use of “phobia” in “political and social contexts.” That means terms like “homophobia” and “Islamophobia” will become rarer in the many publications that operate under AP style.

Watch Your Language…

To be fair, there are potentially valid reasons driving this move. Over the past year and a half it seems usage of “homophobia” has increased dramatically. It’s become the new “racism” – the proverbial gauntlet to the face, with anything perceived as anti-gay quickly labeled “homophobic.” Chick-fil-A. Tracy Morgan. Fox News anchor Tricia Macke. Even socialite Paris Hilton was recently accused of hatin’ on the gays.

As AP Deputy Standards Editor Dave Minthorn told Politico:

. . . “homophobia” is often “off the mark” as a descriptor. . . . “It seems inaccurate. Instead, we would use something more neutral: anti-gay, or some such, if we had reason to believe that was the case.”

Crying Wolf?

The website nohomophobes.com tracks usage of anti-gay language on Twitter: words like “faggot,” “dyke,” “no homo” and “so gay.” (Apparently no homo is “a term used by straight guys who are insecure with their masculinity” to clear up confusion over something a guy says or does that may be perceived by others as gay, according to tagdef.com. You learn something new every day.)

The above image is just a snapshot of the home page. By the time I’d finished editing the picture (which took about a minute), mentions of “faggot” had risen to 22,935. The reality of chronic homophobia in American culture is still very real, and not something to ignore.

However, is everything labeled “homophobic” actually homophobic? Are all of the above tweets indicative of gay bashing just waiting to explode? Is Dave Minthorn correct that it’s inaccurate? Or is the meaning of the term cheapened by its quick-trigger usage?

Name Calling v. Calling a Spade

The definition of homophobia is “irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals” (Merriam-Webster).

During this past election season here in Minnesota, I had to limit myself from using “homophobia” or “bigot” too often. Even when it was really tempting, and even when the shoe clearly fit, as it did on many occasions. It was almost too easy to resort to it, like a fallback. And it does tend to shut down conversations and put everyone on the defense.

At the same time, I worried about caving to pressure to be conciliatory, to be too courteous to those who were trying to take away my rights. The LA Times article later quoted John McIntyre of the Baltimore Sun: “Homophobia gets used because it is useful in describing an identifiable phenomenon.” There’s a difference between name calling and calling out people for hurtful behavior.

There’s a big difference between “You’re a homophobe” and “That’s homophobic.” Nouns name. Adjectives describe. My conservative Christian parents may not necessarily hate gays or be disgusted by us, but their behavior certainly doesn’t indicate that they love us. They may not tell me outright that they believe I’m going to hell, or that I’m an abomination and a pervert. But they have told me I need therapy, that I don’t deserve to be legally married just as my younger sister was four years ago, and that they won’t acknowledge any relationship I’m ever in, no matter how committed.

Whether or not their behavior is fueled by fear or disgust is another matter. But their behavior is clearly homophobic. Does that make them homophobes? Possibly, but the issue is more nuanced than that. And that may be what the AP is trying to get at.

It’s Not Time to Back Down

Whether or not the decision is a right one is a topic for for discussion. And there will be. This may be an olive branch to Evangelicals and conservatives after the recent marriage equality victories in the U.S. and across the world. If so, it’s a potentially wrong-headed approach. They may have been defeated, but they’re just regrouping, so now is not the time to back down when we can actually make progress towards equality.

Of course, if this is a call to be more responsible and purposeful about language and how we conduct conversations, it could be quite useful. We shouldn’t be stooping to label our opponents into boxes for the purpose of dismissing them. As Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, “never underestimate your opponent.”

But one thing we can’t do is stop talking about homophobia and its effect on adults and children alike. We need to stop being polite when politicians say hateful things about the LGBT community. What we can do is adapt our methods and change how we talk about these issues. Instead of letting them control the conversation, we can be getting to know friends and neighbors and dissolving the lies and slander by simply being decent human beings.

Our opponents know they’re fighting a losing war, and that it’s only a matter of time before people stop listening to them. After all, if evolution teaches us anything it’s that those who fail to adapt ultimately fail to survive.

151. vicinage

To—Mark S. Rubin, St. Louis County Attorney:

When I heard about the story of Max Pelofske being charged with fifth degree assault and disorderly conduct for defending himself in the midst of a hate crime, my jaw almost hit the floor. Even more astounding was that a friend coming to his aid was also charged with a crime. What does this say about our legal system in Minnesota—that the victim of a crime motivated by bigotry and prejudice would be punished for merely standing up for his rights? This is not consistent with the values I have observed and come to associate with this state—fairness, decency and respect for the dignity of human life being just a few.

The law is supposed to protect citizens and punish those who step outside those boundaries. The only wrongdoers in this case are the young men who decided to let their hatred for Mr. Pelofske based solely on his sexual orientation drive them to attack him.

In the Book of Esther in the Jewish Tanakh, King Ahasuerus’ prime minister Haman is driven by his hatred of Mordechai, a Jew and cousin of Queen Esther, to kill not just him but all of the Jews in Persia. Haman convinces Ahasuerus to allow him to carry out this plot without either of them knowing that Esther is herself Jewish and therefore under the death sentence. Upon learning the truth about the plot, Ahasuerus has Haman hanged but cannot revoke his own decree. He does, however, allow the Jews to defend themselves against the decreed attacks, which they do, and the Jewish people are saved from being unjustly annihilated.

There are many in Minnesota—some in our legislature—who wish to do away with GLBT citizens in this state. They may not want to kill us, but they do want to take away our right to defend ourselves and to be protected against attacks on us based on our sexual orientation. They want to hand bullies of all ages the unassailable right to abuse and mistreat us with impunity. That is categorically wrong.

If the incredulous charges against Max Pelofske and Kelly Johnson are allowed to stand, the bullies and the terrorists (for they are indeed terrorists) in this state have won, and the eyes of the nation are watching, looking to see how we handle civil rights in this state. GLBT teenagers are watching to see if their state is going to side with them or with their attackers.  If the law won’t stand up for the rights of minorities and even goes so far as to take away the right to self-defense for (and the right of others to come  to the defense of) GLBT individuals, then who will?

Thank you for listening, as I hope you’ll listen to everyone who has responded asking the St. Louis County Attorney’s Office to drop the charges, to side with human rights, and not apply the law unfairly and unjustly.

Sincerely,

David Philip Norris

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If you’d like to write your own letter to the St. Louis County Attorney’s Office to voice your support for equal treatment and protection of GLBT individuals under the law and ask for the county to drop the charges against these two people, you can do so at countyattorney@stlouiscountymn.gov. They are scheduled to appear in court August 23 and 30. (Please be respectful, to help ensure that the County Attorney takes this issue seriously.)

142. varlet

I forget sometimes what an absolute bastard John Calvin was. For how much Protestants laud him and his theological contributions, his reign of holy terror in Geneva during the sixteenth century was comparable to any of the Catholic inquisitions or the holocausts of fascist regimes. In 1531 he had thousands of religious nonconformists burned at the stake (that is, for believing differently from what he was teaching). In 1547, he had an atheist named Jacques Gruet tortured for a month and then beheaded for alleged atheism.

There’s the tragic case of Michael Servetus, a physician Calvin had burned at the stake for heresy—namely, denying Trinitarianism and infant baptism. Servetus could have been spared his fate, except that Calvin took a personal dislike to him. According to descriptions, it took half an hour for Servetus to die, and it was an excruciating death. The Calvinists built his pyre of half-green wood that took a long time to burn. They also placed a wreath of sulfur on his head. Yet even as he was burning slowly to death, he still cried out to God for deliverance.

Compare that to the remarks made this past week by our friend Pastor Charles Worley, who thinks that gay people are so revolting that they should all be locked up in a concentration camp until they all “die out.”

We’re presuming he believes that homosexuals somehow breed more homosexuals, which anyone who took biology in middle school knows is absurd. However, given his folksy grammar and inability to pronounce words properly (or formulate logic), I rather doubt that Pastor Worley made it past the third grade.

In a way, the GLBT community should be thankful for someone as patently mean-spirited, ignorant and offensive as this man because he’s the poster child of the anti-gay movement. While others like Tony Perkins, Michele Bachmann and James Dobson manage to craft their homophobic rhetoric with the silver tongued glibness of a smarmy politician, Worley wears his bigotry on his sleeve for all the world. “The Bible’s again’ [sic] it [homosexuality], God’s again’ it, I’m again’ it, and if you got any sense, you’re again’ it!” he said in his sermon. He’s proud of being a bigot, and he wants everyone to know it.

And—here’s the important part—he thinks God is pleased with his bigotry. His is the God of the Old Testament who decreed death for such crimes as murder, rape, kidnapping, cursing a parent, blasphemy, idolatry and witchcraft, but also adultery, bestiality and sodomy. A woman could be put to death for not “crying out while being raped,” but also for being found to not be a virgin on the night of her wedding. This is Worley’s God—a pagan god of wrath and judgment.

This is what Worley and the rest of the anti-gay crowd have in common with John Calvin and his merry band of inquisitors: hatred of anyone different from themselves. They have made God in their own xenophobic, ignorant, intolerant and bigoted image, quick to label sins and mete out the severest of punishments. They desire to enforce their Talmudic and draconian views on the entire world, bringing believer and non-believer alike under the iron fist and rule of almighty Jehovah. Of course, in this theocracy they would be the ones ruling in God’s stead, making a heaven on earth for themselves—or, in our case, a hell.

This is what enables parents like mine to reject their gay sons and daughters. In the case of my parents, they refuse to accept me as I am, which is just as much a rejection, choosing instead the version of the son they want to have or believe that God gave them. As much as they claim to love me, this is the same spirit that leads parents in countries where extremist religion is dominant to kill their own children rather than let them live in opposition to the religion they were born into.

And the ironic thing is that in doing so, they violate the very commands God gives them in the Bible:

• Judge not, that you be not judged. (Matthew 7:1)
• Never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” (Romans 12:19)
• Do not resist the one who is evil. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. (Matthew 5:39)
• To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? (1 Corinthians 6:7)

If they truly believed what’s in their holy book they’d expend that energy they’re currently wasting in spreading anti-gay propaganda and legislation on saving us wretched sinners, not condemning us to hell every other minute. Instead of sentencing us to death, they’d let us live our lives in the knowledge that someday we’ll stand before God and give an account for our sordid time on earth, and that they led quiet, humble lives of devotion to God. But with every sermon like this, with every heretic burned at the stake, they testify to the fact that they truly believe that the only judgment we face is here on earth, in this life and not the next. In trying to make this world into a theocracy, they prove that they’re storing up plenty of treasure here instead of the next.

There may well be a God after all. I don’t know. Lack of evidence does not necessarily equate to non-existence. However, if there is indeed a Sky Father, it is a negligent and uncaring deity who allows its followers to run rampant as they do. Frankly, it’s people like them that facilitated my rejection of God and religion. If it weren’t for their hypocrisy and uncharitable behavior I might still be a Christian today as I’d have no reason to question what I believed.

So Pastor Worley, Michele, James, and this charming little southern belle… thank you for saving me from Christianity.

115. doyenne

My plan for February is to write a post each day, the topic taken from/inspired by Dictionary.com’s Word of the Day. I’m trying to venture outside of the usual subjects I write about (i.e., religion), and this seems like a good exercise to get new ideas going.

Doyenne. noun, a woman who is the senior member, as in age or rank, of a group, class, profession, etc.

It’s always interesting to see which Facebook posts of mine go relatively unnoticed, and which ones cause an uproar. The other day I posted this YouTube video from Second City:

In case you hadn’t heard, last month Rick Santorum gave an interview with Piers Morgan where he attempted to “clarify” his position on abortion (especially in the case of rape and incest) in which he said the following:

As horrible as the way that that son or daughter was created, it still is her child. And whether she has that child or doesn’t, it will always be her child. . . And so to embrace her and to love her and to support her and get her through this very difficult time I think [is] the right approach [;] to accept this horribly created — in the sense of rape — but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you. . . I can’t think of anything more horrible. But, nevertheless, we have to make the best out of a bad situation.

In short: Rape sucks. Give her a hug and tell her to buck up and push. Then ask what she’s planning to name the baby. Does it have its father’s eyes/nose/chin?

The gist of the flurry of comments that followed was that while the sentiment may sound harsh, it’s a complex issue, but abortion is never right, and children are a gift from god. If there’s one topic Evangelicals will never fail to speak up about, it’s abortion.

Even a year ago my own position on this was evolving. Up until last year, or maybe a bit before, I’ve always been solidly pro-life. Life was a gift from god and humans have no right to make those kinds of decisions concerning it. This is ironic, considering how many Christians are pro-death penalty and how many people their god has commanded other people to kill in horrific ways over the centuries.

It’s one of the many areas of ethics that has undergone significant revision since my coming out as an atheist. And right now, it’s this: while life is a rare thing in the universe, we seem to be the only species on earth that is able to manage its own sexual reproduction. Unlike animals, we can choose how, when and if to reproduce. We are under no divine mandate to bring each and every fertilized ovum to full-term.

Now let me stop a moment and point out that I currently have a four-year old roommate (the son of my two married, adult roommates). My younger sister has a one-and-a-half year-old son. Most of my friends have multiple kids. Hell, I have friends who have kids going into kindergarten and first grade. This isn’t a neutral, academic issue for me. My views have palpable, real-life ramifications.

Basically, I don’t believe human life has any purpose other than that which we as humans define it with. A shorthand way of saying this might be: Humans are made, not born.

What I think is happening here is that we’ve confused ‘potential’ for life with the ‘right’ to life. By the Christian definition, every miscarriage should be prosecuted as manslaughter, but functionally, a fetus is neither innocent or guilty. At the moment of conception it’s a conglomeration of mutating cells, and by the time that a pregnancy is detectable, it’s still largely animal—pre-human, void of consciousness. We anthropomorphise that grouping of cells and project intentions and feelings on to it that likely aren’t there. It’s all Instinct.

This may sound like rationalization for abortion, and perhaps it is. But from a logical standpoint, the simplest solution is to terminate a “rape/incest pregnancy” before the situation becomes more complicated than it already is. By any definition, the fetus is not yet “human.” There is no god to bestow automatic personhood, and no one’s rights are being violated. The zygote does not have opinions, and the fact is that we can’t ask it if it would like to live or not. We are under no divine obligation to protect it, especially in cases where the pregnancy was induced by force rather than by the woman’s choice.

The only person whose rights are being violated is the woman who is being forced to carry the fetus (a parasite by any definition)  that she never asked for to full term. And, to be sure, this is a huge decision for the woman. Santorum claims that a rape victim just needs the support and care of her community. But no one can take on the radical physiological changes that take place during pregnancy—not to speak of the wild hormonal changes—or the agonies of labor and childbirth for her. She must face these alone. To be realistic, women have faced this reality since the beginning of time, when there was no rape. Males “took” women without impunity, and getting pregnant was just a hazard of being female.

And we know better now.

However sympathetically they couch it, Santorum and those who share his views on this issue fundamentally view women in this barbaric way. Ironically, it’s godless atheists and humanists who have women’s best interests in mind—not theists. The only person who should have a say over what happens to a woman’s body is the woman herself.

It’s funny how different this issue looks outside of the Christian bubble. It’s much more nuanced and shaded out here.

And that’s the point. We can’t just decide these issues for each other. Each case is unequivocally unique. We have to decide together.

75. votive

On the way home this afternoon, I was listening to this passage from The Selfish Gene:

“Consider the idea of God. We do not know how it arose in the meme pool. Probably it originated many times by independent ‘mutation’. In any case, it is very old indeed. How does it replicate itself? By the spoken and written word, aided by great music and great art. Why does it have such a high survival value? Remember that ‘survival value’ here does not mean value for a gene in a gene pool, but value for a meme in a meme pool. The question really means: What is it about the idea of a god that gives it its stability and penetrance in the cultural environment? The survival value of the god meme in the meme pool results from its great psychological appeal. It provides a superficially plausible answer to deep and troubling questions about existence. It suggests that injustices in this world may be rectified in the next. The ‘everlasting arms’ hold out a cushion against our own inadequacies which, like a doctor’s placebo, is none the less effective for being imaginary. These are some of the reasons why the idea of God is copied so readily by successive generations of individual brains. God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture.”

—Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, p.192-193

In my last post and in posts previous (in particular, one from a few weeks ago), I’ve been discussing and considering the idea of the existence of, and belief or non-belief in, God. I’ve pondered various theories, from theism being an evolutionary advantage for our early ancestors that we just never got rid of, to it being a “mind virus” that infects a person until a good dose of rational thinking cures him or her of it. But this idea of God being a meme (that is, “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture” (source: Merriam-Webster)) finally put into words what I’d been trying to articulate. Considering how fast Internet videos and catch phrases spread now, and that some are more or less enduring than others, puts the whole thing in better perspective. God is an idea—and ideas, as Alan Moore once wrote, are bulletproof.

Or is God an idea?

Along with this I’ve considered the possibility that I’ve made God what I want God to be—or not to be—to suit my notions of the world and how I think it works. It certainly is more convenient for there to be no God, since it eliminates the “problem of pain.” This world is all there is, and there is no benevolent God in the afterlife waiting to wipe away all our tears and put all things to right. We don’t have to work out how or why God might allow terrible things to happen because there is no God to allow it. Things just happen. Children die. Planes fly into buildings. We’re just another animal on the Serengeti plains, eating or trying to avoid being eaten.

But I keep wondering if we’re simply asking the wrong questions. Supposing that there is a God (and my sense is that there is). Why would such an all-powerful being expect us to erect this monolithic ideology around the idea that people are intrinsically evil (tainted through no fault of their own, simply by virtue of the fact that they’re born and without any choice given to them, by this supposed Sin Nature that was imputed to them when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden however long ago it was) and that Jesus had to be born as a human in order to be tortured to death for our sins (which we seemingly have no choice about committing since it’s inevitable that we’re going to do something “sinful”)?

If we look not to the Bible but to the world around us, we see a common theme: it’s broken and a mess, but we do the best we can and life goes on. Why instead do we spend all this time flagellating ourselves (literally or metaphorically) about what awful sinners we are in God’s eyes? What a colossal waste of time and energy considering how brief and wonderful life is! It would be like going to the Louvre and instead of marveling at the incredible works of art, we’re outraged about how other people aren’t appropriately appreciating the artwork, or aren’t looking at it in the right way, or littering, or talking too loudly—and completely missing the point.

This afternoon one of my good friends at work and I were discussing her son and his three neighborhood friends, and how she wonders which one of them might turn out to be gay. She and her husband are trying to raise him in as affirmative a way as possible so that he feels free to be who and whatever he is. Her neighbors are of the same mind.

Then she talked about a friend of hers from college whose friends finally made him come out for his own good, because they didn’t care if he was gay—they just wanted him to be authentically himself and to be happy with that. Hearing stories like this—about parents who love and encourage their children, and friends who do the same—both inspires and kills me. One of our art directors at the agency has a gay son who is currently studying to be a dancer at Julliard. They knew he was gay early on, and when he finally realized it they basically told him what any parent tells their straight son or daughter—we love you, and be safe. No complications. No hand wringing. No soul searching. As if it was normal.

Because (pardon my Finnish) it fucking is normal—se on vitun normaali.

What if I’d grown up in a family where my parents didn’t care whether I was gay or not? How much unnecessary mental anguish could I have escaped? And, thinking beyond just myself, I wonder what kind of a world we might have if all parents did that. If kids didn’t worry about being bullied at school because they were or are perceived to be gay.

It comes back to this cultural god meme.

I’m going to backtrack for just a bit and lay some groundwork—and I’m going to focus for now on homophobia, which happens to be on my brain and is currently (and no doubt will be) a major moral and political issue in the upcoming presidential campaign. Now it’s telling to me that the only places where homophobia still has a strong foothold is in the Americas, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Let me focus briefly on the latter two:

• Asian culture (and forgive me for generalizing here) is one steeped heavily in tradition and honor to family, though the up and coming generation is becoming increasingly Westernized and progressive, and less tradition-bound. To an outsider, it appears almost militaristic in its demand of unquestioning obedience and conformity to social mores.
• Africa—and here I’m trying hard not to be conscious of making generalizations or value judgements—is a continent that seems largely dominated by violence, ignorance, poverty and fear. That’s also true of many societies, but I look with sadness at the genocides and ethnic cleansings of even the recent past in Rwanda and the Darfur, and the apparent utter disregard for human life in the ongoing slave trade. That AIDS continues to ravage the continent because men largely refuse to practice safe sex, or believe that the rape of a virgin will cure them, is another symptom of a continent in desperate need of enlightenment.

Africa and Asia are two continents where any of the monotheistic religions haven’t had much historical presence, which is why I singled them out, and why I’m not surprised that the cultures would be strongly homophobic. For hundreds of years, the Americas have had a strong Christian dominance, and the Middle East is home to the Abrahamic religions of Judaism and Islam. Both began as largely tribal societies and religions, their religions reflecting the dominantly patriarchal hegemony of the culture.

Okay—brief excursus on sexual politics in the ancient world (which is very relevant to the discussion here) and we’ll get back on topic. Gender roles were rigidly enforced in the ancient world as social stability required that everyone know their place—and free males (those who held military or monetary power and property) were masters of that world, all others (women, children, slaves, foreigners) subservient to their wills. Consequently, because males were at the top of the social ladder, it was logical that their God was male too since he must be a bigger, stronger and invisible version of human males. And so God, like a freeman, becomes a homophobe.

Sex was often the politics of the ancient world, and a freeman’s social dominance often expressed itself through sexual dominance as well. A freeman could have sex with anyone—so long as he wasn’t violating the property of another freeman. Penetration is the key word here. A freeman could penetrate (i.e., dominate) anyone of a lower social rank—women and girls (all females were considered property of males), boys and male slaves. It was shameful for one freeman to penetrate (i.e., dominate) another since that other male was either taking on the role of a non-dominant (i.e., a woman or slave) or proving himself unworthy as a freeman by being soft or weak. Inevitably theology was woven into all of that, and it became a sin for two men to have sex since God, the überman, like any freeman, doesn’t like the idea of one man penetrating another.

Sorry, this is a huge idea to tackle in one blog post, and I must sound absolutely batshit insane and sex-obsessed, but bear with me. Fast forward a couple thousand years. At the core of every Christian pastor and politician’s polemic against gays and calling for the protection of “family values” is that same ancient meme, passed down like a collective virus that shapes and defines the culture around it.

And now I’m getting to Europe, which we purposefully haven’t talked about yet.

For over a thousand years the Roman Catholic Church was the dominant reigning power in known Western world. It dictated the thoughts and beliefs of everyone with an iron fist, from kings to serfs, holding the threat of damnation and often torture and death for heresy and unbelief—but it too was infected with that same cultural god meme that had come up through the same tribal Hebrew culture from which Christianity sprang.

Douglas Adams wrote, “There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be, but we have done various things over intellectual history to slowly correct some of our misapprehensions.”

It was around the middle of the 18th century that people started having brilliant new thoughts, and the new meme of rationality began to take hold like a anti-virus in what came to be known as the Enlightenment. Suddenly it wasn’t okay to just blindly accept whatever you’d been taught or held to be true. We could understand the world and life through logic and rational thinking. And it took several hundred years, but eventually someone questioned whether our belief that it was unnatural for “man to lie with man” or “woman with woman” was right.

And that happened in Europe—just as the Enlightenment happened in Europe.

So if you’re still tracking, I don’t think it’s by accident that Europe is less homophobic, or that it thrives in places where rationality doesn’t. It is by employing reason that we move forward (in what I believe Dawkins considers a next stage in human evolution), for it was by employing reason that we abolished slavery in the Western world, developed science and medicine, recognized basic human rights and that women were the equals of men, and first got a glimpse of our place in this vast and incredible universe.

And now back to the idea of God.

… remember God?

Supposing there is a God, but we’ve created an idea of him in our image—male to boot, in all his jealous, raging, egotistical glory (and I don’t think it’s coincidence either that most theologians were males)—and built an entire civilization around that ancient meme. What must that God think of the amazingly ape-like creatures who go around stuffing each other or themselves into artificial moralistic boxes, or even going around killing each other, based on how they think he wants them to live.

What if God is like the curator of the Louvre, seeing all the silly Puritanical visitors obsessing about how furniture is arranged instead of enjoying the artwork?