The Gaytheist Agenda

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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.

 

I’ve mentioned Specialist Jeremy Hall two times previously. Well, he’s in the news again over his lawsuit against the army.

FORT RILEY, Kan. — When Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, he was excited, he said, to see an officer attending.

But minutes into the talk, the officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, began to berate Specialist Hall and another soldier about atheism, Specialist Hall wrote in a sworn statement. “People like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going against what the founding fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America!” Major Welborn said, according to the statement.

Major Welborn told the soldiers he might bar them from re-enlistment and bring charges against them, according to the statement.

Last month, Specialist Hall and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an advocacy group, filed suit in federal court in Kansas, alleging that Specialist Hall’s right to be free from state endorsement of religion under the First Amendment had been violated and that he had faced retaliation for his views. In November, he was sent home early from Iraq because of threats from fellow soldiers.
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Specialist Hall’s lawsuit is the latest incident to raise questions about the military’s religion guidelines. In 2005, the Air Force issued new regulations in response to complaints from cadets at the Air Force Academy that evangelical Christian officers used their positions to proselytize. In general, the armed forces have regulations, Ms. Lainez said, that respect “the rights of others to their own religious beliefs, including the right to hold no beliefs.”

To Specialist Hall and other critics of the military, the guidelines have done little to change a culture they say tilts heavily toward evangelical Christianity. Controversies have continued to flare, largely over tactics used by evangelicals to promote their faith. Perhaps the most high-profile incident involved seven officers, including four generals, who appeared, in uniform and in violation of military regulations, in a 2006 fund-raising video for the Christian Embassy, an evangelical Bible study group.

“They don’t trust you because they think you are unreliable and might break, since you don’t have God to rely on,” Specialist Hall said of those who proselytize in the military. “The message is, ‘It’s a Christian nation, and you need to recognize that.’ ”
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That old “Christian Nation” canard. America is not, and never has been, a Christian Nation. Sadly the revisionists will never tire of repeating that as they hope repetition will make it true.

Complaints include prayers “in Jesus’ name” at mandatory functions, which violates military regulations, and officers proselytizing subordinates to be “born again.” After getting the complainants’ unit and command information, Mr. Weinstein said, he calls his contacts in the military to try to correct the situation.

“Religion is inextricably intertwined with their jobs,” Mr. Weinstein said. “You’re promoted by who you pray with.”
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Specialist Hall said he did not advertise his atheism. But his views became apparent during his second deployment in 2006. At a Thanksgiving meal, someone at his table asked everyone to pray. Specialist Hall did not join in, explaining to a sergeant that he did not believe in God. The sergeant got angry, he said, and told him to go to another table.
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Though with a different unit now at Fort Riley, Specialist Hall said the backlash had continued. He has a no-contact order with a sergeant who, without provocation, threatened to “bust him in the mouth.” Another sergeant allegedly told Specialist Hall that as an atheist, he was not entitled to religious freedom because he had no religion.

There are definite and serious violations of Church/State Separation involved here. And the sergeant who claimed Hall had no freedom of religion because he had no religion reminds me very much of this individual who claimed the Constitution doesn’t protect atheists. How hateful some people can be.

I now move on to this letter I came across which makes a common false assertion about atheists.

I read with interest your recent story about 23-year-old U.S. Army Specialist Jeremy Hall who calls himself an atheist and feels harassed because his superiors challenged him in his ability to lead people of faith in combat conditions.
Advertisement

This young man’s convictions and character must be very weak if he had to resort to a lawsuit and a lawsuit in a time of war. Atheist means simply “no god.” If he feels this is a fact, why argue? It should be moot to him.

I suspect, however, that this young man doubts his atheism and senses that there may indeed be a God with whom he must reckon with and the fight is not with his superiors but his heart in this matter.

We need military leaders at all levels who can respect the beliefs and convictions of the ones they lead. If, in the case of this young man, they profess no faith, respect them, too. We cannot, however, suspend any discussion of faith or our chaplaincies because of a small number of insecure atheist who should really say they are agnostic.

A dishonest atheist is just as annoying as a dishonest believer.
Walter Jackson
Millbrook

Would Mr. Jackson claim a Christian who sued an employer for harassment and threats of physical violence was weak of character? Would he think for a minute the Christian was doubting his faith? I don’t imagine he would.

So why is it that atheists are held to different standards than Christians? Why should we tolerate verbal harassment and threats of violence where others would not? Why are our intentions always called into question whenever anything like this occurs?

Maybe it’s because some people can’t fathom that others are actually content not being like them, and that all the begging and even threatening in the world won’t change things. That seems to strike a deep chord in certain people, and their reactions are very unpleasant indeed.

 

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Holocaust Remembrance Day is a day that has been set aside for remembering the victims of the Holocaust and for reminding Americans of what can happen to civilized people when bigotry, hatred and indifference reign. The United States Holocaust Memorial Council, created by act of Congress in 1980, was mandated to lead the nation in civic commemorations and to encourage appropriate Remembrance observances throughout the country. Observances and Remembrance activities can occur during the week of Remembrance that runs from the Sunday before through the Sunday after the actual date.

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The Holocaust is not merely a story of destruction and loss; it is a story of an apathetic world and a few rare individuals of extraordinary courage. It is a remarkable story of the human spirit and the life that flourished before the Holocaust, struggled during its darkest hours, and ultimately prevailed as survivors rebuilt their lives.

Ultimately the death toll reached about:
Six million Jews
2-3 million Soviet POWs
1.8-2 million Poles
220,000–500,000 Roma
200,000–250,000 Disabled
80,000–200,000 Freemasons
5,000–15,000 Gay men
2,500–5,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses

A monument honoring the gay and lesbian victims of the Holocaust is to be built in Meir Garden in Tel Aviv.

A quarter of a million homosexuals were persecuted during the Holocaust, and tens of thousands were murdered because the Nazi Party believed their sexual preference to be deviant. In the concentration camps in which they were imprisoned, gay men were forced to wear a pink triangle while lesbian women wore a black patch.
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The monument is to be the first in Israel to commemorate these victims, though four of its kind exist worldwide, in Sydney, Copenhagen, Berlin, and Amsterdam. It has been designed as an iron triangle, on which the victims’ names are to be inscribed.

I am simply overwhelmed whenever I read or hear about the Holocaust. It is indeed one of the deepest, darkest stains on the history of humankind.