Someone forgot to inform National Geographic that sexual orientation is a lifestyle choice

Hat tip: BTB

Tell me again why the Catholic Church thinks it has the moral high ground to condemn anybody much less my gay son

So once again we get smacked in the face with the reality of the "intrinsic moral evil" (Benedict's description of my gay son) of the Catholic Church's actions:

[A] report in May sought to document the scale of abuse as well as the reasons why church and state authorities didn't stop it, whereas Thursday's 720-page report focused on why church leaders in the Dublin Archdiocese – home to a quarter of Ireland's 4 million Catholics – did not tell police about a single abuse complaint against a priest until 1995. By then, the investigators found, successive archbishops and their senior deputies – among them qualified lawyers – already had compiled confidential files on more than 100 parish priests who had sexually abused children since 1940. Those files had remained locked in the Dublin archbishop's private vault.

This Church needs to step aside from judging anyone else until it get its own damn house in order. And while they are at it, they need to stop using the Sacrament of Communion as a weapon to get our country's lawmakers to vote a certain way.

Andrew is spot on about this:

If the Catholic church were a secular institution in Ireland and had been found guilty of child abuse to the massive extent the Church has, it would be forced to close. Its top officials would not be issuing statements of apology and regret, but serving sentences in jail. The name of John Paul II would not be a revered mantra; it would be synonymous with the head of an international organization that had to be dragged kicking and screaming to acknowledge its own long-running, institutional brutalization of generations of defenseless children.

In the name of Jesus.

The cold hard truth about the Catholic Church

For those who did not already catch this over at Pam's -I present to you a speech that outlines the ugly and destructive side of the Catholic Church so brutally and honestly that it made me squirm with both discomfort and relief. Stephen Fry nails it in a way that only someone who has felt the full force of this institution's hate and backward policies could. And I must confess that I may have enjoyed this clip a bit too much.

Watch it. (the good part starts at about a minute and 25 seconds).

What I had hoped to see when Obama became President

A girl can dream, can't she?



Sadly, I now realize that my dreams are the only place I am going to see this. Ahhhh the power of the "ignorant tight-ass club"...

10 year old boy from Arkansas stands up for his many gay friends

What a Kid!! Watch it. And I'll wager a bet you can't keep a big ole grin from spreading across your face before the video clip is done.

Nice interview with John Cole (of Balloon Juice fame) over at League of Ordinary Gentlemen

As many of you know, finding out we had a gay son back in 2003 was a profound and life-changing experience for both my husband and me. And it was the catalist we needed to open our eyes to what was really going on all around us. And once we actually started paying attention, we realized how lazy we'd been about letting others form our
personally held beliefs, both in religious and political terms.

In the beginning, the process of paying attention was difficult and painful because it forced us to realize how much of an echo chamber we'd put ourselves in and how little we did to challenge our beliefs. It also made us feel ungrounded and alone. The Republican Party, our party!, was campaigning for votes on a constitutional amendment that would forever enshrine our gay son's second-class citizenship into the Constitution. The Catholic Church, our church!, was loudly proclaiming that our son was "intrinsically evil" and "objectively disordered". And we'd been blindly pledging allegiance and support to both institutions!

We felt abandoned, betrayed, and duped. So it was a tremendous relief to find out we were not alone. There were many people who were feeling disillusioned and angry, people like Andrew Sullivan and John Cole, both of whom were also experiencing major cracks in their own most basic and life-long political (and in Andrew's case) religious beliefs.

Neither one of them will know how much of a saving grace they were to me, but I am
profoundly grateful to both of them. By allowing me to ride along with them (via their blogs) while they grappled with their own transitions, I was able to slowly regain my own footing while learning to think critically for myself. And having their digital company made it a much less lonely journey.

So it was really fun to learn this morning of this interview with John Cole. It is worth clicking over to read the whole interview, but one passage in particular resonated with me, the question about John's tipping point when it came to how he felt about the Republican Party and the Conservatives after being one of their biggest and loudest supporters:

For me, the final straw was the Schiavo affair, on top of Abu Gharib, torture, the Presciption Drug plan, the bankruptcy bill, the treatment of homosexuals and calling anyone who disagreed a traitor, etc. In 2005, I started to look around at the GOP and the conservatives and all I saw was a freak show that has just gotten worse the last few years. But Schiavo was really the final straw. I couldn’t believe they inserted themselves into that marriage that way. I couldn’t believe they passed legislation. I couldn’t believe Congress locked arms with Randall Terry and the rest of that insane crew, hounding a man who had been going through hell for two decades. They trashed that Judge Greer in Florida, a man who had been a Republican his entire life, calling him an activist judge because he had the nerve to actually follow the law and piss off the godbotherers. He even had to leave his church. It was just sheer insanity.

And putting aside personal political beliefs, I simply don’t understand how anyone can look back at the two Bush administrations and say, with a straight face, that Gore or Kerry would have been worse. I just don’t. Every single aspect of the last eight years was a complete and total disaster. How could Gore possibly have been worse? Anyone who is still a Republican after eight years of Bush and Cheney is simply a Republican for the rest of their life. Nothing is going to change them.

Go read the rest, it is a nice read.

So the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix had a spare $50,000 to put towards stripping rights from gays in Maine

Wow, just wow. I simply can't help but wonder if spending $50,000 in another state's political battle to strip gays and lesbians of rights that everyone else enjoys was the best way to spend such a large sum of money in these desperate economic times. I guess if you are the very homophobic bishop of the Phoenix Diocese it is definitely money well spent.

At the very least, the Most Reverend Thomas J. Olmsted, bishop of the Phoenix diocese, should have considered giving some of that money to the many victims of Pedophile Priests that preyed on Phoenix families for decades.

Dan Savage pokes big holes in the Religious Rights' "Re-defining marriage" argument

Hat tip: BTB

100's of thousands of dollars later(the poor be damned), the Catholic Church claims huge victory-no equality for Maine gays and lesbians

I stayed up to the wee hours of the night last night watching the voting tallies come in from Maine and Washington state. And when the trend in Maine started going the wrong way for marriage equality, I couldn't help but feel a complete sense of devastation and loss (and I can only imagine how those whose dignity and rights were stripped from them felt).

But today? Different story. I am enraged. I am horrified. And I am filled with an intense revulsion for what the Catholic Church did when it declared an all-out war on an already demonized and oppressed minority. And every ounce of my rage is pointed at the Catholic Church even though there were others involved in this campaign of hate as well. For me, the "others" in this war were acting true to form, but watching the Catholic Church's involvement was the final realization that it is every bit as cruel and homophobic as the other religious frauds preaching hatred and bigotry in the name of God.

I wish I could say that I will get over it, but I will not. This wound is deep and unhealable. This is the only church I have ever known and the betrayal is just too enormous. There is absolutely no forgiveness in my heart, there is only an intense feeling of revulsion for what this Church has done. The fact that they could use their pulpit, their collection baskets, and t.v. ads to declare my son a threat to other people's children while conveniently forgetting the decades they spent hiding and protecting those within their ranks who truly did destroy so many children's lives is simply pure evil.

My heart is too broken for any more words. But here are some other reactions. From Andrew:

After Maine, where the Catholic church actually organized a second collection to raise money to prevent gay people from having civil rights, the situation shifts again. Using a tax-exempt church to raise money to defeat the civil rights of fellow citizens is not too shocking in the age of Benedict. It is shocking if one believes in a separation of politics and religion, and if one believes that the church of Jesus should stand in solidarity with the marginalized, rather than seeking to marginalize and demonize them still further.

It is time to acknowledge that the Catholic church hierarchy can no longer pretend that it isn't the active enemy of gay people and our families. That this church hierarchy - especially in its more conservative wing - is disproportionately gay itself and waging war against their fellow gays through the cowardly veil of the closet, is not new. But it is, as we flinch with the sting of defeat, harder to take than ever.

It is time to demand that gay priests who are actively fighting against the dignity of gay people own their enmeshment in injustice, stigmatization and cruelty. It is time to reveal them in this respect as the enemies of the Gospels, not the champions.

And a letter sent by a Gay Catholic to his Parish Priest (via Andrew):

Dear Father Andrew:

We have shared the celebration of Mass of universal inclusion for 18 years. Homeless, doctors, addicts, plumbers, prostitutes, trash collectors, gang members, elderly, boomers, young adults, teens, babies of all colors, races, genders gathered in common purpose -- to give thanks for blessings and rejoice in the goodness that can come from humanity. You provided a unique sanctuary for us all -- rich or poor, educated or not, gay or straight. No one had any fear; none were rejected.

It is with the deepest sorrow that I must write you that I no longer can join you at Mass. After 59 years, I am no longer a Catholic.

You will be distressed at my decision, but not surprised. We have spoken about this possibility for some time now. In fact, I suspect you would join me if you did not have such a valuable mission in this vibrant community. I will still volunteer for the children's programs, and remain involved in activism, but I can no longer participate in the one rite that binds me to the Catholic Church. I cannot swallow the bile another day. I cannot look up at the altar when you read the gospel, give a homily that is so beautiful, it makes me weep, raise the chalice we believe is to be shared by everyone. I cannot bear the thought of you being driven from your ministry when the bishop discovers you are gay.

Hatred fueled by the resources of hundreds of thousands of parishes will be the central reason why the Church will eventually wither and die. I can no longer bear the stench of the rotting body and hierarchical ignorance. I can no longer embrace what has become a menace and money machine to support evil. We are all tainted by what happened in Maine. We are all lesser citizens because our brothers and sisters are lesser citizens.

We remain joined in friendship and common cause, my dear friend. I will need your counsel in this dark time because I feel hatred bubbling in my thoughts. I do not want to be them. Bless you, dear Andrew.

With great affection,

M.