Category: Gay / Straight

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Gay People Are Not…

…Looking to convert anybody

Why on earth would you seek to convert someone’s sexuality? Especially if you knew that you were condemning the person or persons successfully converted to a life where hatred, ridicule, violence (in word and deed), and where federally mandated loss of constitutional rights was all they had to look forward to. No one is that cruel. Especially not Gay people.

…Child Molesters

In the main, gay people do not molest children. Straight People do!! After all Jerry Sandusky isn’t gay is he? Nor is Bernie Fine. In fact, I defy you to find a significant number of gay people within the larger group of identified child molesters. Contrary to what the Christian Right would have you believe, once someone comes to grips with their gayness they tend to get over the guilt and put together a life that is positive instead of one where they simmer in self loathing. Fundamentalist Christianity has done more to harm in this area than help. Shame and Guilt are not useful controls of human behavior they only serve to create a dark shadow world fueled by self hatred.

…Always Effeminate, Hairdressers, Interior Designers, or Fashionistas.

Gay people are in every walk of life. They are scientists, doctors, lawyers, house painters, machinists, magicians, singers, dancers, truckers, pilots, steel workers, boat captains, and auto mechanics. Pick ANY profession and you’ll find a gay person there. What the media often portrays as representative GAY people is the equivalent of the wonderful “Crazy Eyes” photos of Michelle Bachmann. (except SHE IS Crazy)

…Weak

Perhaps the most important thing to understand is that Gay people are not weak.

Many Gay people are, or were soldiers. Just because the Government and Christian Fundamentalists like Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Mit Romney, Michelle Bachmann, Tony Perkins, and Fred Phelps convinced themselves that dishonorable discharges were the only fit punishment for Gay soldiers…
It in no way means that the training those soldiers received was erased when their military careers were.

Those men and women are a resource and they’ll train the rest of the gay community if necessary to defend themselves.

In the main, gay people are pretty peaceful and liberal. A segment of the gay population is downright anti-gun, anti-war, & anti-volience, at any price. BUT… and this is important… Gay people come from all walks of life, and every single state and community within this country.

So all you Christian Fundamentalists out there, Picture your redneck cousins from Arkansas in your uncles truck with rifles. Toss in a couple of Desert Storm, Desert Shield, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans. Sounds like a great time hunting Elk doesn’t it?

Now imagine them as ALL GAY. Scary?

If the fundamentalist, bible thumping, child molesting, sons of bitches, ever try to take basic rights away from Gay people or try something even more stupid like imprisoning people because they’re Gay…

Be assured that scary image is what they’ll be looking at. Think long and hard about it.

Oh, the Gays will be stylish, and will do you the courtesy of shooting your bigoted asses with the finest ammo money can buy.

But the bottom line is….

BRING IT BITCHES!


I can assure you that this is not 1939 Germany.

Demonizing a segment of the population for political gain won’t work with our political system.

We are not a theocracy. We separate church and state precisely to prevent the kind of religious purges we SAY we’re trying to prevent in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world.

So Please! Will all the presidential candidates stop pandering to the Fundamentalist Christian Fringe and start addressing the real problems of the Country?

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The FRC Has got to be kidding!

When I started writing this, I was annoyed, and very sarcastic. As I wrote I calmed down and the sarcasm level dropped. I went back and removed or re-worded the venom because I’d like this not to be a rant as much as I’d like it to be something that people read and say humm, I hadn’t thought about it that way.

The FRC (Family Research Council) published an article on their web site expressing their concern about modifications to the UCMJ (Universal Code of Military Justice).

They used a headline that reads “BESTIALITY SHOULD GIVE LEADERS PAWS IN TROOP BILL” saying they’re concerned about congress changing the UCMJ so that it wouldn’t include bestiality as an offense. 

The idea that our congresspeople wouldn’t understand how to edit a line like this is preposterous, but it gave FRC something to rattle cages with.

Specifically they’re concerned about the line that reads;

“Any person subject to this chapter who engages in unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal is guilty of sodomy.”

I pray to God these folks review their Christian beliefs and consider the following; 

Not all troops are gay. Those that are gay, really worked hard and sacrificed a lot for the privilege of serving their country.

Yeah, most Gay Soldiers I’ve talked to think of it as a privilege.

Sadly, gay troops sometimes face open hostility from other gay people because they’re soldiers.

So much of the gay community is so far to the left that sometimes gay soldiers are treated like traitors or criminals. (You should see how the gay community reacts if you’re a Republican! You’re not even dateable.) This from the very community that is supposed to be inclusive and proud of them…

Yet they serve, without complaint, without drama, they just do their jobs.

The conservative religious people are effectively asking that America reward that kind of dedication and love of country with what?

Lies? Fear? Never being able to dance in public with their loved one? Revulsion? Being treated as something “Less” but good enough to die? It doesn’t seem very Christian to me, and it’s sure as hell not American.

The bottom line for all of our service members regardless of sexuality is this;

They shouldn’t have to lie, to serve.
They shouldn’t have to live in fear, to serve.
They shouldn’t have to live a half life, to serve
They protect our way of life and should be respected and treated fairly and equally due to their service.

The FRC will wrap itself in the flag, talk about equality and fairness and vehemently defend its rights while at the same time hypocritically denying others their rights.

But they’ll never answer the simple questions “Why are you afraid, and of what?”

Is it any wonder that so many people look at religion and religious institutions with suspicion?

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Is Social Media Bad?

Several weeks ago, After reading of  another suicide by an all too young man who had been bullied incessantly I found myself thinking about Social Media.

Social Media inherently is neither good or bad on it’s own.

It’s the WAY that people use it for that cause the problems.

The young man who recently killed himself over being bullied brought home to me a major difference between when I was in school and now.

While I was bullied a bit when I was AT school, When I got home I didn’t have to think about being bullied at all. I was on my own turf. I had a break, and the bullies were far too lazy to walk the three blocks over to my house to bully me in person.

There was a built-in system of checks & balances. I only had to put up with those assholes while I was at school and I could use the afternoon and evening while I was pretending to do my homework to figure out the best way to avoid the bullies for a couple of days.

Bullies being what they are, if you’re out of their sight for a day or so you’re typically forgotten for several weeks. Oh don’t worry, the bullies would always come back around to you again.

I was a redhead when I was younger, I got to deal with taunts about my hair color, “I’d rather be dead than red”, taunts about my sports inability, “You (run, throw, catch) like a girl”, and later “the ever present “Faggot!”.

In my defense, once my legs and arms slowed down in their growth I suddenly became a lot more co-ordinated, and no longer ran, threw, or caught like a girl.

With Social media and the 24 /7 connectedness each of us deals with, we find it harder to retreat.

As an Adult I know I can turn off my cell phone, and I don’t feel compelled to be on Facebook, or Twitter, Tumblr, or any other system that invades my privacy except on my terms.

Our children don’t seem to understand that connectedness is something that they control.

It may be more proper to say our children, being social animals and craving approval simply don’t have the maturity to exercise their right to to retreat by turning off the electronics.

Maybe that’s the real lesson.

We know that parental controls probably won’t work, and we really shouldn’t expect the schools to stop all bullying. I’m firmly against so called “Zero Tolerance” policies.

These policies are unenforceable and in fact often punish the wrong persons. Saying Zero Tolerance to most teenagers is like waving a red flag in front of a bull.

Perhaps we should instead teach that technology, while essentially a good thing does have a down side and that each of us needs to remember ultimately we have control over what we see, hear, and participate in.

Social media isn’t bad, but it is certainly prone to abuse. Dealing with that abuse is as simple as blocking people that are abusive and forbidding anonymous posts.

This isn’t a bad thing. It’s simply exercising your right to limit what you have to put up with.

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Notably absent from the media…

I have noted that the gay men and women that lost their lives, or were first responders on 9/11 have been glaringly under-represented in the national media. In many cases their names haven’t even been mentioned.

This article is a good reminder that Gay folks are / have / will be at every event in human history. Regardless of what the religious zealots would have you believe.

Here is a page that lists those men & women. Some were heros, some were victims, ALL were loved.

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NOM as the Victim?

Say WHAT????

Brian Brown of NOM is playing the victim card. You can read the Advocate article here. It would be funny… if he wasn’t serious.

One paragraph really caught my attention.

He’s referring to Marriage Equality advocates. But this paragraph itself is amazing.

“can only win if they can get us to accept and internalize the second-class status they propose for us. To accept our own marginalization, to be quiet, to stand down and keep our heads down. To live in fear, instead of acting, with courage, out of hope.”

I read this twice before my brain melted down.

NOM is in fact DEMANDING that gay people accept just what NOM says it’s members cannot.

NOM pulled this paragraph straight from The Fear Mongers, Despots, & Dictators Speech & Operations Manual. This is from the chapter titled “How to win and keep popular support for immoral ideas“. The next chapter in the book is “Political Prisoners and how to disappear them“

This paragraph is all about demonizing your enemy by capitalizing on the fears of the people you’re trying to win over. In the case of NOM, they’re talking about marriage, but this could as easily be plugged into any context.

Here are some other examples of the way in which this paragraph can be used.

White People “can only win if they can get us to accept and internalize the second-class status they propose for us. To accept our own marginalization, to be quiet, to stand down and keep our heads down. To live in fear, instead of acting, with courage, out of hope.” 

GAY People “can only win if they can get us to accept and internalize the second-class status they propose for us. To accept our own marginalization, to be quiet, to stand down and keep our heads down. To live in fear, instead of acting, with courage, out of hope.” 

Black people “can only win if they can get us to accept and internalize the second-class status they propose for us. To accept our own marginalization, to be quiet, to stand down and keep our heads down. To live in fear, instead of acting, with courage, out of hope.”

Christian People “can only win if they can get us to accept and internalize the second-class status they propose for us. To accept our own marginalization, to be quiet, to stand down and keep our heads down. To live in fear, instead of acting, with courage, out of hope.”

Islamic People “can only win if they can get us to accept and internalize the second-class status they propose for us. To accept our own marginalization, to be quiet, to stand down and keep our heads down. To live in fear, instead of acting, with courage, out of hope.”

Chinese People “can only win if they can get us to accept and internalize the second-class status they propose for us. To accept our own marginalization, to be quiet, to stand down and keep our heads down. To live in fear, instead of acting, with courage, out of hope.” 

Jewish People “can only win if they can get us to accept and internalize the second-class status they propose for us. To accept our own marginalization, to be quiet, to stand down and keep our heads down. To live in fear, instead of acting, with courage, out of hope.”

The list of examples goes on … apparently the readers of the The Fear Mongers, Despots, & Dictators Speech & Operations Manual need very specific instructions.

Hitler made these kinds of statements and later used similar statements to justify the murder of millions.

Have we learned nothing? Why is it that our attention spans are so short that we cannot see the hatred and bigotry that groups like NOM spout for what it is? This is not new, groups like NOM have existed for as long as mankind has. We need only look into the history of our planet and we find abundant examples.

For gods sake, right NOW we’re fighting two wars against exactly this kind of theocratic zealotry.

One thing that we should all be mindful of, is that theocracies even veiled ones like NOM would like nothing more than to remake our country in their image. Shall we consider for a moment what that might look like?

All abortions would be illegal. The rape victim would have to understand that it was Gods will that she carry and raise the baby of a psychopath. 

Gay people would be imprisoned for their own safety and subsequently executed. (So that the gene pool of God fearing Christians could be preserved.) After all a lot of gay people reproduce before they go gay. Later, the families of gay people could be sterilized to prevent further contamination. 

All genetic research would come to a halt. Who is man to tinker with Gods perfect creation? 

All Technology would eventually be banned. The bans would start in the communication sector. Too much communication and free flow of ideas is BAD. It distracts the people from their prayers. (The Fear Mongers, Despots, & Dictators Speech & Operations Manual, suggests that long distance communications be restricted immediately to government official channels. Anyone engaging in unmonitored communication of ideas must be made an example of… Public brutal executions such as stoning are recommended.)  

Dissenting ideas would be punished. God speaks only through the religious leaders

All guns would be banned. Every citizen must turn turn their guns over to the duly appointed representative of Gods army. There would be no financial compensation but the rewards in heaven will be great.

Education facilities will teach ONLY the approved curriculum. Any mention of evolution would be strictly forbidden. Abstinence is the only God approved sex education. Masturbation is a MORTAL sin. Religious studies are of the highest importance. Reading is taught only so the people can read the Bible. Math, & Science, are taught only to so that God’s army can maintain readiness for the apocalypse. 

Does ANY of this sound familiar?

NOM and other ultra conservative religious groups have far more in common with conservative Islam and the TALIBAN than they do American Democracy.

Please folks, understand that Marriage isn’t religious in nature. It is a contract that became imbued with religious significance.

Strip away the religious overtones and see it for what it is. Two people binding themselves together and by extension their families for the betterment of all parties.

Marriages brought larger grazing lands, pooled wealth & resources, and strengthened community relationships.

The gender of the participants doesn’t change that fundamental dynamic.

It’s that pooling of wealth / resources, the tax benefits, and ability to make medical decisions for their partner that same sex marriage advocates want.

Separate but equal didn’t cut it with African Americans and it sure as hell won’t cut it with Gay Americans.

Civil unions simply don’t provide or protect the rights of the parties the same way that Marriage does.

In fact apparently state sanctioned marriage doesn’t either. The case of the New York couple split up by Federal Immigration & Naturalization comes to mind.

The bottom line is that whether they admit it or not, NOM and organizations like them are advocating and supporting an unfair, biased, hateful agenda against a group of people that have done absolutely nothing wrong.

Except that is… exist then challenge the prevailing dogma.