Catholic Church moves to ban gay priests
The Pope is considering banning gay men from becoming priests and removing priests who are gay from service. Interesting on so many levels, really. My thoughts:
- I wonder when they’re going to remove all the lesbian nuns.
- The pedophile scandals will continue, because the priests molesting kids aren’t gay, and the gay priests aren’t molesting kids.
- With the gay priests gone, they may as well fold up the church and go home, because no one else is joining the priesthood except the pedophiles.
- I feel terrible for the retired priest from my mom’s parish, Father James Bates, who is gay, openly celibate, and an active part of the gay community. He is a great guy who served devotedly his whole life, kept his vows, but still acknowledged who he is. I sat and talked to him one night at a gay bar downtown about the church and its treatment of gay people. What the church is doing is both shortsighted and disrespectful of wonderful people like Father Jim.
Sounds like the church has it all worked out. Good luck with that one, guys. I’m so glad I left.
Juliet and Juliet
Apparently, Boston’s famous swan couple are a same-sex couple. Testing recently revealed that the swans who have been promoted by the city as a Shakespearean romantic dream are actually both female. How very appropriate. This, however, is not:
”Each year when the swans go in, the kids immediately come to us and say, ‘Which one’s Romeo, and which one’s Juliet?’ ” parks spokeswoman Mary Hines said yesterday in response to a Globe inquiry. ”It’s just like one of those fairy tales; why spoil it?”
How offensive that the idea that a romantic pair of female swans would be considered “spoiled.” Nice.
Gender Roles
There are lots of things that I like that are traditionally considered feminine. For example: big poofy white wedding dresses. There are lots of things of things that I like that are traditionally considered masculine. Like pipe tobacco smoke (which is because I have memories of my dad smoking a pipe when I was a really little kid and he played with us a lot).
I don’t reject wearing things, or decorating my house with them, because they fit one gender role or another. I simply don’t care about gender roles; if I like something, I wear it, regardless of whether it fits with society’s conventions or not. I intend to get married in a big poofy wedding dress, and if that doesn’t fit with your image of me, then you don’t know me very well.
So when it comes to the subject of purses: I just don’t like the way they look. I don’t carry one because it’s a visual that I don’t like, regardless of what the gender role of it is. If I carry a purse, I look like an old lady, or a soccer mom, which has a lot to do with the purse in conjunction with the size of my butt. It just doesn’t look right on me.
“Outing” Revisited
Way back in March of 1998, I wrote a long article/essay/diatribe on the subject of “outing” people. Reading it today, I realize it wasn’t as much about “outing” people as it was about complaining about prevalence of opportunistic gay people who stay in the closet to prey on people who are out while avoiding the stigma of being gay, rather than about the action of “outing” itself.
The subject of “outing” has come up recently in the local gay community, surrounding the issue of Prop 68, the city’s human rights ordinance. It seems that there is some evidence that one of the city-county councilors who voted against the measure is gay or has a history of gay behavior, and none-other than State Rep. Julia Carson herself threatened publicly to “out” him as a hypocrite because he didn’t support it.
The suggestion has caused huge debate within the gay community; see bilerico.com for some of the discussion on the issue. It even has the religious right’s panties in a bunch; Micah Clark from the AFA sent out an email to his kool-aid drinkers where he was all in a tizzy about it.
Here’s my take: If you truly believe there’s nothing wrong with being gay, then revealing someone as gay shouldn’t be wrong, should it? If there’s nothing wrong with me having blue eyes, then why would you be hesitant/bothered/ashamed to talk about my blue eyes with other people? You don’t see black people running around worried about whether to reveal other black people as black, do you?
I thought not.
Homophobia in the News
Gay teenager forced by parents to go into a “sexual re-orientation” camp to “cure” him of his homosexuality. Nevermind that all licensed, legitimate psychological and psychiatric professionals say it isn’t possible to change sexual orientation because it isn’t a disease.
Read Salon’s four part expose on these “ex-gay” camps.
The New York Pizza Depot in Ann Arbor, Michigan is undergoing a boycott by a catholic group for displaying an rainbow flag sticker — a symbol of tolerance of diversity — in the window of their store. “I find the rainbow flag offensive because it is a symbol of the homosexual movement that, in my opinion, indicates a validation of the homosexual lifestyle, as opposed to a sign that indicates ‘openness’ to customers who are of the homosexual orientation” — said one of the boycotters.
In Washington, D.C., Rev. Willie Wilson, pastor of Union Temple Baptist Church, has been demonizing gay and lesbian people in his church sermons. “Sisters making more money than brothers and it’s creating problems in families… that’s one of the reasons many of our women are becoming lesbians” Wilson said.
Father kills 3-year old son because he thinks child is gay
In Tampa, Florida, the 21-year old father of a small boy went on trial this week for killing his son, whom he was boxing with because he thought the boy was gay.
Even though the boy would shake and wet himself, his father, Ronnie Paris Jr., would box with the 3-year-old, slapping him in the head until he cried because he didn’t want his son to grow up to be “a sissy,” the boy’s mother testified Monday.
“He was trying to teach him how to fight,” said Shanita Powell, Nysheerah Paris’ sister. “He was concerned that the child might be gay.”
Even Sheldon Bostic, who was Ronnie Paris Jr.’s Bible-study friend, said he warned the father several times not to play so rough with his son.
“He really did what other fathers do – slap box,” Bostic said. “He always said he didn’t want his son growing up to be pushed around.”
“Did Ronnie use a term for that?” asked Jalal Harb, an assistant state attorney.
“He didn’t want him to be a sissy,” Bostic said.
Gene Stone at the Huffington Post has some very eloquent thoughts on the subject:
The right wing’s relentless propaganda machine has a pernicious effect throughout society. Not only does it remind gays how much they’re hated by a segment of the population, it helps convince parents who don’t know much about homosexuality that it’s evil, a perversion, something that no family could possible want in its midst. When people are exposed only to the hateful bigotry of the right, what’s the result? When taken to the extreme, infanticide — as the Tampa case reveals.
Is this really what the right wing wants? A war against homosexuality in which innocent children are slaughtered in the name of righteousness?
Sometimes, it seems that, yes indeed, this is exactly what the right wing hopes for. Because where else can such anger, hatred, and intolerance lead?
Ken Mehlman needs to resign, too
Republican Party Chairman Ken Mehlman (and closeted homo), speaking in Puerto Rico, said there was no need to apologize because “what Karl Rove said is true.”
White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, asked about the Rove dispute on CNN, noted, “We have seen pretty hot rhetoric from both sides of the aisle lately.”
Again, what Card said is BULLSHIT. Regardless of what Dean or Durbin said, Rove’s remarks were beyond anything that should have been said by a public official about HALF THE AMERICAN POPULATION. You couldn’t say anything more offensive or vile about me than to suggest that I’m a coward or that I wouldn’t defend America with my life. I haven’t been this furious about a political issue since 2001, and that’s saying something.
And all of this is happening because they have to deflect attention from the fact that the war in Iraq has taken a horrible turn for the worse and people are more and more dissatisfied with the job the White House is doing. When all else fails, start calling people names.
City-County council member Virginia Cain
Advance Indiana has a very interesting in-depth article on homophobe and city-county council member Virginia Cain. Among her choice quotes:
Homosexuals have a shorter life span, are more likely to contract HIV/AIDS, experience serious bouts of depression and even suicide….
Thus, we need to help those who are entrapped in any kind of unhealthy lifestyle. I will never support something that is meant for destruction of human beings and our civilization.
I know that you probably know better than all this, but in case you don’t, let’s talk about the lifespan and AIDS issue. Half of the homosexuals in this world are lesbians, who have longer expected lifespans than heterosexual men and women, and who have the lowest instances of contracting HIV/AIDS of any group. That alone makes her statement false.
And when it comes to gay men, her statement makes it sound like AIDS is the fault of gay men, rather than something that has unfortunately happened to them. We don’t blame kids for contracting rheumatic fever, so why is she blaming gay men for the disease attacking them? Oh yeah, because she’s a bigot, that’s why.
Now lets talk about depression. We aren’t depressed because we’re gay. We’re depressed because people are filled with hatred and bigotry towards gay people, and they take it out on us by firing us from jobs, kicking us out of housing, throwing gay kids out into the streets, not letting us see our loved ones, stealing our children away from us, threatening us, beating us, raping us, and killing us.
In short, we’re depressed because of evil people like Virginia Cain. If she’d stop being a bigot, we’d be happy.
Rep. Espich on supporting bigotry: “I sure do!”
Representative Jeff Espich (R 82) was asked, “You don’t support bigotry do you, Sir?” His reply? “I sure do!”
There were around 150 people protesting against House Speaker Brian Bosma’s Beer Bash for Cash last night at the Rathskeller in the Antheaneum, and my partner Stephanie and I were two of them. The problem with Bosma’s fundraiser is, of course, that Massachusetts Avenue was revitalized primarily by gay and lesbian business owners who moved into the area and restored buildings and built prosperous businesses when most of the real estate there was boarded up and the Republican mayor at the time, Stephen Goldsmith, was ignoring the area.
Now Massachusetts Avenue is a flourishing cultural district, and Bosma was attempting to cash in on the success of GLBT people’s hard work by holding a fundraiser designed to raise money to crush the very people who made the area a success. Fortunately, he failed, because our protest was a smashing success.
Bosma’s party expected 500 supporters, but they had no more than 50 people in attendance, and apparently at one point Bosma was pounding the table in frustration over the noise and commotion we created.
We held up signs outside the event; we took photos of people entering and leaving the fundraiser, chanted and talked to people on their way in, gave them leaflets and information on why we were there, and when their fundraiser moved outside to the beer garden, we walked around to the side of the building with a bullhorn and chanted and talked to drown out their speeches. We also aired some of the dirty laundry some attendees brought with them; several politicians who claim to support “the sanctity of marriage” have some less than stellar records when it comes to marital fidelity, and a list of those incidents read into the bull horn stopped some Bosma supporters in shock.
The protest was organized by the Indiana Action Network (a direct action group) and attended by people from StopTheAmendment.org, Greater Indianapolis Fairness Alliance, Indiana Equality, Jesus Metropolitan Community Church, and Rock Indiana as well as many individuals.
The event was not without incident; one male Bosma supporter viciously attacked Outword Bound Bookstore owner Tamara Tracy, attempting to steal and break the camera she was holding after she took his picture. He was stopped and quickly hustled inside where he couldn’t harm anyone else.
“Bosma Faces Protesters over Gay Marriage Ban” — That’s the headline on the Star article about the event. In the Star, Bosma has a very strange quote:
“I’m not overly concerned about any protest,” Bosma said. “We will just have to agree to disagree on this issue.”
I’m not sure what he thinks that means, really. We’re not going to “agree to disagree” when heterosexual people enjoy special rights that are denied to others. We’re not going to “agree to disagree” on the issue of being denied health care benefits and the ability to see our family members in the hospital. We’re not going to “agree to disagree” on being fired from our jobs because some people are bigots. We’re not going to “agree to disagree” when gay and lesbian youth are harrassed in school. We’re not going to “agree to disagree” when we’re told we can’t worship as we please.
There’s no agreement with any of those injustices here.
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