The Gaytheist Agenda

Sam Harris is preparing to run another fMRI study of belief and disbelief and he is asking for volunteers to complete surveys to help refine experimental stimuli. There are four different surveys and it’s best if you can take them all. If you can’t please choose a random survey so there isn’t a dearth of responses to the first and too few to the last. Please note that each survey begins with the same first page of questions. Thank you for your help!

 
Belief Survey A

Belief Survey B

Belief Survey C

Belief Survey D

 

Imagine if this became a nationwide trend. Something so simple, yet it can do so much.

Seitan has gone through the mail bag again. As always he enjoys reading everybody’s comments and has asked for readers to keep sending them in. The first message is from Ezekiel regarding Holocaust Remembrance Day:

I was shocked to learn recently from the play: “The Re-Education of George W. Bush” (by Peterson Toscano) that when U.S. troops liberated many of the camps, when they found out what the pink triangles (and presumably black patches, though I don’t know on that count) meant, they actually put many of the gay survivors back into prison, believing this to be an instance where the Nazis seemed to be on the right track.
Chilling, from a country that seems to have an obsession with having been “the good guys” in this and every other war.

I’d like to say that surprises me but it doesn’t. There are people who would do that even today if they could get away with it. Where they get the idea that imprisoning, threatening, or torturing LGBT people is going to change anything I don’t know. It hasn’t changed anything since the beginning of time so why would it work now? Gay people exist, and all of the efforts to repress us simply hasn’t changed anything. Sadly some notions refuse to die and I can’t help but wonder if people centuries from now will be having the same arguments as we are now thanks to personal bigotries and an ancient book known as The Bible.

Next up is this from VickiLynne who commented about Specialist Jeremy Hall:

What ashame a soldier goes to fight for freedom which includes religious freedom for others but doesn’t have any of their own.

It is indeed sad. Unfortunately the breed of people who believe religious freedom extends only to their religion have taken over the military as well as much of the government and it’s going to take some real effort to set things right. Fortunately the tide seems to be turning and the RRRW appears to be losing ground, though I’m not yet ready to throw my victory party.

Also regarding Spc. Hall, this comes from Ebon:

I’ve been hearing about Spc. Hall and similar situations for some time now, including at least one body devoted to converting the military.

For anyone who has some knowledge of history, the idea of the USA’s collosal military might presided over by religious fanatics (of any religion) is, frankly, positively terrifying.

Agreed. Anybody who believes that they must impose their way on everyone else–one way or another–very much disturbs me.

This last piece comes from Joe G. regarding Gay Panic Defense for Lawrence King’s Killer.

You’re right! The killer was unable to see any other way? What, he didn’t know about counselors or administrators or social workers at 14 years of age? Give me a break. I know kids half his age that could have made a better choice than this 14 year old did. The lawyer needs to work on getting this kid help (at the very least) and not getting him free of any responsibility for purposely killing another human being.

Any rational person knows that, as you and I do. But the assumption behind the “gay panic defense” is that it is normal for a person to flip out when a person of the same gender shows an interest in them, thus perpetuating the notion that gay people are dangerous predators. What ever happened to simply saying “I’m not interested” or “No thank you”?

Quest maintains that “this was a confluence of tragic events that could have been stopped”. I agree with that, though not with his assessment of how. Homophobia is the problem, and the cures are education and tolerance.

The mailbag is empty again and Seitan has gone off for a nap. Until later, dear readers!

The detainee abuse at Guantánamo has been in the news for years. Amnesty International will be bringing it to Americans in a way that makes it more real than any photos or video ever could.

Amnesty International is bringing a life-size model of a maximum security cell at Guantánamo to cities across the USA. The tour is a way to enable people in the United States to get a glimpse of the harsh realities of illegal detention and prolonged isolation.

Most of the detainees at Guantánamo are held in isolation, many of them with virtually no access to natural light or contact with other human beings, for up to 24 hours a day. Compounding their suffering is the fact that they have no indication of when or if they will be freed from Guantánamo.
…..
Starting in Miami on 8 May, the tour will make a stop in Washington D.C. on 26 June, to mark International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.

Visitors to the cell are encouraged to enter and to experience the conditions of isolation and then share their experience in a video message. Watch a panoramic photo from inside the model cell to get an idea. And before leaving, they can also take action to end illegal US detentions at Guantánamo and elsewhere.

 


 
The tour has gone to Miami, and plans to visit Philadelphia, Portland (ME), New York, Washington DC and Los Angeles. For more information see the Amnesty International site.

 

This is just one of those days where the only way to sum things up is by saying Life is Beautiful. I’m sitting at the table in the back yard under one of the trees, the sun is shining in a cloudless sky, a gentle breeze is blowing and the birds are singing.

People who believe atheists don’t have hope, or cannot appreciate beauty of nature amaze me. Just because we don’t attribute things to a deity doesn’t mean we don’t feel awe when experiencing them, nor is belief a prerequisite for hope. Sadly old misconceptions die hard.

I know there is a great deal of tragedy going on in the world, the devastation in Myanmar for example. There are also certain pressing realities in my own life that make it less than perfect. But for this day, and perhaps tomorrow, I will revel in the fact that life is beautiful.

 

I really couldn’t be more disgusted by the way the lawyer is simultaneously blaming the school, which was doing nothing more than upholding the rights of the victim, and the dead boy, for the actions of his client. But this is nothing new really, so I’m not surprised. I just can’t believe people still try to get away with this nonsense.

The lawyer of Brandon McInerney, the 14-year-old boy who killed gay teenager Lawrence King at a high school in Oxnard, CA, in February, claims school officials’ gay positive attitude is to blame for King’s murder.
…..
By allowing King to come to school wearing feminine makeup and accessories, school officials were so intent on nurturing King as he explored his sexuality that they downplayed the turmoil his behavior was causing on campus, Quest said.

Quest claimed McInerney shot King in the back of the head with a handgun as first-period classes were beginning because he was unable to see another way to solve his problem.

“Brandon is not some crazed lunatic,” Quest said. “This was a confluence of tragic events that could have been stopped. If there is partial blame in other places, let’s not throw away Brandon for the rest of his life.”
…..

School Supt. Jerry Dannenberg strongly disagreed with such allegations. “School officials definitely were aware of what was going on, and they were dealing with it appropriately,” Dannenberg said Wednesday. King was constitutionally entitled to wear makeup, earrings and high-heeled boots under long-established case law, Dannenberg said.

Shooting a person in the back of the head is a perfectly rational response to them flirting with you? What parallel universe is this lawyer from?

I hope the judge sees this outrageous defense as the garbage that it is. Quest needs to be thoroughly chastised for having the audacity to even propose it.

 

I hope you enjoy these as much as I did.

Carnival of Sex and Sexuality #1 - Silence is up at Homo Academicus. Included are great posts from The Day of Silence Blog, Greta Christina’s Blog, Brain Blogger and more. Since this is the first issue of a brand-new Blog Carnival please make a special effort to show it some love!

Those lovable RRRW purveyors of propaganda, that is. I can always count on them to react in a very specific manner to certain things, and again they’ve performed right on cue.

Yesterday there was to be a symposium at the American Psychiatric Association’s convention in Washington featuring Dr. Warren Throckmorton and Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson. The symposium was canceled when Bishop Robinson pulled out, believing that it would be used as a public relations gimmick for Focus on the Family.

Well, it certainly has turned into a public relations gimmick. WorldNutDaily plays, under a headline reading ‘Gays’ shut down discussion of faith (italics and quotes theirs), the ever predictable religious persecution card. Right, we all know how their “discussions” go. Chock full of half-truths and non-truths. Anybody who dares to question them, bring out actual facts or declare a differing opinion is impugning their “deeply held religious beliefs”.

Peter LaBarbera, of Americans for Truth, said the reaction to a plan to talk “shows the intellectual shallowness of the gay side.”

“They’re afraid of a debate,” he said, noting it wouldn’t be correct to “paint Warren Throckmorton as the religious right.”

“The gay activists don’t want to admit ex-gays exist, when they clearly do,” he said.

The attack was launched by the Gay City News publication, which on April 24 denigrated Throckmorton as “a psychologist without state board certification and an advocate for ’sexual identity therapy’,” and quoted opponents calling him a “spin doctor of the ex-gay myth.”

Throckmorton openly admitted he doesn’t have a license in PA, which is where he practices. He is an advocate for sexual identity therapy and he makes false claims about the efficacy and safety of ex-gay “therapy”. How is anything that Gay City News published an “attack”?

“Bishop Robinson provided the following explanation,” Throckmorton wrote. “‘Conservatives, particularly Focus on the Family, were going to use this event to draw credibility to the so-called reparative therapy movement,’ Robinson told the Blade. ‘It became clear to me in the last couple of weeks that just my showing up and letting this event happen … lends credibility to that so-called therapy.’”

However, Throckmorton said there were problems with that statement.

“This is quite troubling and not at all accurate. Since no one on the panel planned to speak about reparative therapy, it is clear to me that the bishop was misinformed,” Throckmorton said. “The symposium was approved by the APA in October of 2007 and nothing has changed in the descriptions, personnel or intent of the symposium since then. The meeting is not going to endorse reparative approaches, or advocate for any change in APA policy.”

That dodge might be semi-believable if not for this article on April 18th which clearly links the symposium to Focus on the Family’s Love Won Out ex-gay road show. Does Throckmorton think everybody is as gullible as his fans are?

Scasta had described the panel as a “balanced discussion about religion and how it influences therapy.” He’s a former APA president and a “gay” psychiatrist.

“We wanted to talk rationally, calmly and respectfully to each other, but the external forces made it into a divisive debate it never intended to be.”

Anybody who insists on putting gay in quotation marks every time they print it, while not doing the same for words like religious, shows they had no intention whatsoever of having a fair and balanced discussion. Once again the true nature shows through even where the intent is to deceive.

Bishop Robinson did the right thing pulling out of this symposium. There was never a chance of it being anything but a platform for the RRRW to push their ex-gay agenda, then claim persecution when it was refuted with truth.

 

I’m always looking for worthy non-religious charities to add to my list. Thanks to Mojoey I now have another one. It’s donations, gifts in kind, lap quilts or you can help in in other ways including volunteering.