Pleasant Surprise: A Pastor Who Unloads on Hypocrisy and Tells the Truth About Leviticus

First time in a long time that I've enjoyed me some Fire and Brimstone.



Sure wish there were more pastors like this one around.

Love Won - We All Won: Beautiful, must-see video put out by Freedom to Marry

Freedom to Marry's victory celebration video takes us down memory lane. This is their going-out-of-business gift to us all. So savor the sweet, sweet victory, but let us never forget all the warriors who helped make this happen.



We are not done yet though. We must continue our fight for protections against discrimination in the workplace, housing, and public accommodations. We must limit the reach of religious-liberty claims to churches and their clergy. And finally, we must fight for full equal treatment under the law and equal access to opportunities.

There will always be culture wars, religious zealots and godbotherers who will never accept our beloved glbt loved ones. So savor this victory, but remember, resting on our laurels is NOT an option.

Speaking of religious zealots, how bout crazy Uncle Pat? He is wasting no time showing us good Christian love and acceptance of our glbt loved ones. Now he is claiming (among other things) that the gay marriage ruling legalizes love affairs between men and animals. But remember, even though this is what we have come to expect from this nutcase, we should never laugh it off, there is always a receptive audience for this kind of ugly hate.

The Golden Girls were so ahead of their time

I have a huge soft spot in my heart for this show. Back when it was in its original run, my children were 4, 6, & 7 years old. We would watch this show together. And yes, there were some scenes that may have been considered a touch racy, but that just sparked questions and discussion, which I never thought was a bad thing. I wanted my children to feel comfortable asking me anything. And I definitely did NOT want them sheltered from the realities of life. Golden Girls often provided the perfect opening for us to talk.

It was 1991 and way too early to know that one of my children would one day come out as gay, but scenes like this one below were just the kind of thing I wanted to discuss with them. I had many gay friends when I was in high school and college and I knew that there was a chance one of my children could be gay, but I also knew that it was a certainty that they would have gay children and adults in their lives as well. Either way, I did not want them starting their lives with ugly stereotypes and biases. Who better to help me with that than four lovely grandmotherly ladies like Sophia Petrillo, Rose Nylund, Dorothy Zbornak, and Blanche Devereaux?

Scott Walker is such an ignorant weasel. .

Hey Scottie, stop being such a chickensh*t and answer the damn question. Do you believe that being gay is a choice? By dodging and ducking this question, you look like big cowardly idiot. And if you finally find the testicular fortitude to answer yes to this question, I'd like to know the exact day, date, and time of your decision to be straight. A decision that momentous surely has to be seared into even your pea-sized brain.

What an A**hole!

This post is dedicated to all those "good" Christian 2016 GOP candidates

Photo via US Uncut

Scott Walker, I am looking at you in particular bud, but nothing is beneath the rest of you either. Popping my popcorn early. Getting ready for the big race to the bottom.

On behalf of every child suffering because of ignorance and intolerance - Thank you Caitlyn Jenner!

To all those people who use their bible as a weapon:

From the Christian Left

Hood County, Texas Commissioners listen to arguments on censoring LGBT books

Some very moving testimony at this hearing. Pay close attention to the Texas Mama who fiercely defends her "Princess Boy". Her love and support (and courage) are so inspiring. Every child should be so lucky.

And then there is the other side of the argument. And all I can do is sigh. I just wish people could comprehend the concept of "Separation of Church and State", but alas, there will always be some who just have to shove their religious crap into the public sphere. I suppose I just have to accept that this is the way it is always going to be, but good lord that pious godbothering sure gets old and nauseating.



Maybe someone should suggest to that one lady that she spend more time at the "libary" brushing up on the  First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Oh snap!

Way to go Conan O'Brien:

You know, one does have to wonder about some of these crazy right-wing religious homophobes who spend so much time obsessing and raging about gay sex. Pat Robertson is not the only one who sets off my gaydar warning bells, either. Are you listening James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Bryan Fischer and way too many more of you to call out by name, but you know who you are.

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates: “We must deal with the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be”

And so ends the Boy Scouts of America’s long-standing ban on gay and bisexual adults being Troop Leaders. It was a unanimous decision!

The ban on gay children participating in the Boy Scouts program ended 2 years ago, but not unanimously - in that vote 61% of approximately 1,400 voting members of the BSA National council voted to end the ban barring gay youth from participating in the BSA program.

My bet is that in a few years, people will look back on this era and shake their heads in disbelief at the cruelty directed at these young kids and adults affected by such blatant ignorant discrimination.

As I have mentioned in years past, I have 2 sons, one gay and one straight. Both were Boy Scouts from first grade on  (well Cub Scouts in their younger years, Boy Scouts in their older years). Both boys achieved their Eagle Scout, the highest rank attainable in the Boy Scouting program, an honor not many boys hang in there long enough to attain.

I am grateful to see progress happen, but sad to think that anyone could have thought a ban on children was ever something God would have sanctioned. But then again, religion has been used over the millennia to justify cruel and hurtful things done unto others, so nothing new here.

UPDATE: There is an exemption for troops organized by religious organizations.

That sucks a bit. Damn! 

Thom Hartmann takes on the South: Time For Reconstruction in the South or Say Goodbye?

I discussed this subject a few days ago when I posted an article by Michael Lind titled How the South Skews America. And now I see that one of my favorite radio commentators, Thom Hartmann, is to my extreme delight, taking this subject on as well. I just wish he'd dump the right wingers from the panel though.



Honest to gawd, I'd love to see the Southern states secede. They've been mooching, bible thumping, parasites sucking at the teet of America for way too long. (And yes! I know my state is just as bad.)

Born-Again Baptist Jimmy Carter Believes Jesus Approves of Gay Marriage

Uh boy! Cue the crazies.



And the reactions are coming in:
(you may have to click to embiggen & read)

"We’d be less violent, more mobile and in general more normal if not for Dixie"

From the Southern Poverty Law Center

I have often wished (silently-of course) that the South had succeeded in seceding. I am not sorry to say this, even though I know there are many wonderful and decent people who live in the South, but they seem to be the silent minority, or maybe unable to out-scream the loud-mouth bigots and sanctimonious frauds that for me, define the South. And now I am thrilled to say I've found an article by Michael Lind that explains better than I can why I feel the way I do about the South. I don't feel so alone anymore. It is a great read so go read the whole thing. I cannot do it nearly the justice it deserves by excerpting (though I will, just to get you hooked):

Every year the Fourth of July is marked by ringing affirmations of American exceptionalism. We are a special nation, uniquely founded on high ideals like freedom and equality. In practice, however, much of what sets the United States apart from other countries today is actually Southern exceptionalism. The United States would be much less exceptional in general, and in particular more like other English-speaking democracies such as Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand were it not for the effects on U.S. politics and culture of the American South.

I don’t mean this in a good way. A lot of the traits that make the United States exceptional these days are undesirable, like higher violence and less social mobility. Many of these differences can be attributed largely to the South.

[...]

But even by the standards of the English-speaking world, the U.S. appears as an extreme outlier, in areas ranging from religiosity to violence to anti-government attitudes. As we learned after the slaughter last month in Charleston, S.C., some deluded Southerners still pine for secession from the Union. Yet no doubt there are also more than a few liberal Northerners who would be happy to see them go.

Minus the South, the rest of the U.S. probably would be more like Canada or Australia or Britain or New Zealand—more secular, more socially liberal, more moderate in the tone of its politics and somewhat more generous in social policy. And it would not be as centralized as France or as social democratic as Sweden.

[...] 

Religiosity is one example of American exceptionalism among English-speaking countries that is largely the result of Southern exceptionalism within the United States. “We don’t do God,” Tony Blair’s aide Alastair Campbell famously remarked, emphasizing that religion is kept out of the public sphere in modern-day Britain. In most modern English-speaking countries, voters find ostentatious piety on the part of political candidates troubling, not reassuring. But in the U.S., born-again Southern evangelical politicians like Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush who troll for votes with piety have given U.S. presidential politics a flavor more reminiscent of Tehran than of London or Ottawa or Canberra. According to Gallup, in 2014 the most religious Americans were all found in Southern states, with the exceptions of Mormon Utah and semi-Southern Oklahoma. Mississippi led the nation in zeal.

Southern violence also goes a long way toward explaining the exceptional violence of the United States in general compared to otherwise similar countries. The pre-modern “culture of honor” continues to exist to a greater degree in the South. White Southerners are more likely than white northerners to respond to insults with increased testosterone and aggression, according to social scientists. According to the FBI in 2012, the South as a region, containing only a quarter of the population, accounted for 40.9 percent of U.S. violent crime.

Compared to other Americans, Southerners disproportionately support sanctioned violence in all of its forms, from military intervention abroad to capital punishment to corporal punishment of children. According to Gallup, Southern households have a far higher rate of gun ownership (38 percent) than households in the East (21 percent), Midwest (29 percent) or West (27 percent).

I ended up snipping way more than I intended, but it is just so good it deserves to be read in full. So go do it! 

Straight talk from a straight man

146,883 views so far:

A marvelous smack down to pretend Catholic "victims"

I saw this video a few days ago and I have been stewing ever since. These so-called "Christians" turn my stomach when they present themselves as the victim when they get blow-back for being intolerant and generally hateful people. This clip, titled Not Alone, portrays a bunch of Catholic jackasses "coming out" to say that they are no longer afraid to tell people exactly how they feel about gays. It was created by a group called The Catholic Vote and has gone viral over the last few days.



Thankfully, a few days later, an alternate version of Not Alone has come out. It doesn't completely remove the stench of the original version, but it does a good job of making fun of the idiots who made the original.



Again, I will refer back to my big fat THANK YOU to the religious right for helping us make the huge strides in gay rights that we've made in the past decade. I guess hate and ignorance ain't all bad.