The Gaytheist Agenda

There are openly gay and lesbian politicians in America, currently there are no transgender candidates. Last year, Largo FL officials voted to dismiss City Manager Steve Stanton following his disclosure that he would be having sex-change surger and becoming a woman named Susan. A transgender woman served a term on the City Council in GA, but was defeated upon bid for re-election last year.

Chrissy Nakonsky, who until five years ago was Jeff Nakonsky, hopes to change that. She is running for the Minnesota Legislature. What is surprising is that she’s running as a Republican.

Nakonsky said the 2006 reelection of the state’s only openly gay Republican legislator, Sen. Paul Koering of nearby Fort Ripley, gives her hope that Brainerd-area voters won’t deny her a legislative seat because of her gender change.

“If people vote for or against me, it should be because of my values,” Nakonsky said.

Good luck with that. Sadly to many Republicans being LGB or T is in and of itself a “value”, and a bad one at that. They won’t look past it to see what your other qualities are, nor do they care to.

“I’ve voted Republican all my life,” Nakonsky said. “Republicans swear by not raising taxes, and raising taxes would hurt families in poverty, like mine.”

…..

Nakonsky, who grew up in Washington state and moved to Brainerd 10 years ago because her brother lived there, said she knew from the time she was young that she was female at heart. She and her wife, Jennifer, were married seven years ago, when Nakonsky still was “pretending,” she said, to be a man.

Jennifer Nakonsky said, “It’s been a learning experience, but I knew she was the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, either as a man or a woman. Our marriage is strong.”

Together they’ve had four children, all girls, now ages 6, 5, 3 and 10 months. While the oldest has had some trouble accepting her dad’s gender change, the rest see it as normal, the couple said.

Today, she identifies and dresses as a woman and gets female hormone therapy, but said she has yet to undergo a sex-change operation because it’s expensive.

The family lives on government public assistance in a cramped mobile home. Jennifer Nakonsky is a stay-at-home mom, and Chrissy Nakonsky hasn’t worked, she said, since quitting as a store cashier and stocker because managers required her to observe the dress code for men. She said she’s filed a complaint with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights.

While she may be at odds with many in the party on issues such as gay marriage, she said she would focus mainly on issues of education and poverty.

I honestly don’t see how Nakonsky thinks she’s going to accomplish anything with the Republican party–assuming she gets elected in the first place. Education, poverty, LGBT rights. None of those issues are strong suits for the Republicans. They cater to the rich and deplore “entitlements”. They favor private education and homeschooling over public education which leaves public schools the short end of the stick when it comes to legislation (and dare I mention NCLB?). And LGBT rights? It’s going to be a long, uphill battle to get those even from Democrats. Republicans certainly aren’t ready to fork them over.

But she’s willing to try, so more power to her. I wish her well in her endeavor, misguided as I think it is.

At least according to this LTTE in the Salt Lake (UT) Tribune.

President-wise, I would vote today for an intelligent, compassionate, articulate, well-read, honest and brave atheist or agnostic over any one of the more-Christian-than-thou bunch pandering shamelessly in the ring right now.
Professions, assertions and declarations of “faith” belong at home and in the church/synagogue/mosque/temple/treehouse/cave of one’s choice. In government, I want common sense and practicality, neither of which is the exclusive preserve of any religion.
However, I have “faith” that no such individual will emerge to save us from our own self-righteousness.

Jackie McCowen-Rose
Roy

I don’t care about a politician’s religion or lack thereof. I just want them to keep it out of politics, political decisions and my life. Sadly too few of them seem to be able to do that so maybe it’s time for an atheist president.

What Religion’s Blind Stranglehold on America Is Doing to Our Democracy

It’s a presidential campaign like no other. The candidates have been falling all over each other in their rush to declare the depth and sincerity of their religious faith. The pundits have been just as eager to raise questions that seem obvious and important: Should we let religious beliefs influence the making of law and public policy? If so, in what way and to what extent? Those questions, however, assume that candidates bring the subject of faith into the political arena largely to justify — or turn up the heat under — their policy positions. In fact, faith talk often has little to do with candidates’ stands on the issues. There’s something else going on here.

Look at the TV ad that brought Mike Huckabee out of obscurity in Iowa, the one that identified him as a “Christian Leader” who proclaims: “Faith doesn’t just influence me. It really defines me.” That ad did indeed mention a couple of actual political issues — the usual suspects, abortion and gay marriage — but only in passing. Then Huckabee followed up with a red sweater-themed Christmas ad that actively encouraged voters to ignore the issues. We’re all tired of politics, the kindly pastor indicated. Let’s just drop all the policy stuff and talk about Christmas — and Christ.

Ads like his aren’t meant to argue policy. They aim to create an image — in this case, of a good Christian with a steady moral compass who sticks to his principles. At a deeper level, faith-talk ads work hard to turn the candidate — whatever candidate — into a bulwark of solidity, a symbol of certainty; their goal is to offer assurance that the basic rules for living remain fixed, objective truths, as true as religion.

…..

Mitt Romney was courting the evangelical-swinging-toward-Huckabee vote when he, too, went out of his way to link religion with moral absolutes in his big Iowa speech on faith. Our “common creed of moral convictions? the firm ground on which Americans of different faiths meet” turned out, utterly unsurprisingly, to be none other than religious soil: “We believe that every single human being is a child of God? liberty is a gift of God.” No doubts allowed here.

…..

When religious language enters the political arena in this way, as an end in itself, it always sends the same symbolic message: Yes, Virginia (or Iowa or New Hampshire or South Carolina) there are absolute values, universal truths that can never change. You are not adrift in a sea of moral chaos. Elect me and you’re sure to have a fixed mooring to hold you and your community fast forever.

…..

So, when it comes to religion and politics, here’s the most critical question: Should we turn the political arena into a stage to dramatize our quest for moral certainty? The simple answer is no — for lots of reasons.

For starters, it’s a direct threat to democracy. The essence of our system is that we, the people, get to choose our values. We don’t discover them inscribed in the cosmos. So everything must be open to question, to debate, and therefore to change. In a democracy, there should be no fixed truth except that everyone has the right to offer a new view — and to change his or her mind. It’s a process whose outcome should never be predictable, a process without end. A claim to absolute truth — any absolute truth — stops that process.

Read the rest at the link. You won’t be sorry.

I’m no sports fan, and I don’t agree that steroid use in sports is completely irrelevant. However athletes juicing up on steroids bothers me far less than politicians (who decide the fate of our nation and make laws that restrict my freedoms) being junked out on religion.

Most Americans have noticed that a presidential campaign is underway. All but one candidate is Christian, with the remaining candidate being a devout Mormon. We have been inundated with speeches and, dare I say, sermons from the candidates professing how deep and abiding their faith is. Particularly from the GOP side the candidates sound more like they’re running for preacher than president. Candidates visit churches frequently while on the campaign trail to stroke the egos of congregations and stump for votes.

Barack Obama, for example, has bent over backwards to woo Christian evangelicals to vote for him. Particularly in light of accusations that he is a Muslim owing to his middle name (Hussein) and Muslim lineage he has been hawking the fact that he is very much a Christian. The latest in his “Vote for me because I’m a really, really, really good Christian just like you are” campaign is this:

The brochure being handed out in South Carolina shows a picture of the candidate with his hands together and eyes closed. In large letters, it reads “ANSWERING THE CALL.”

Inside, voters learn of a candidate who was “CALLED TO CHRIST” and even larger letters is a “COMMITTED CHRISTIAN” and is quoted saying, “I believe in the power of prayer.”

Barack Obama’s campaign in South Carolina is targeting black voters, and one of the ways he’s doing it is appealing to a connection based on shared religious faith. Obama, a Christian who attends a United Church of Christ congregation in Chicago, has talked about his faith in Iowa and other states, as well, but his campaign literature is particularly focused on his religion here, where he depicts himself, in one picture, before a pulpit, and, in another, praying with an African American man.

Whoa. He sounds really super Christiany. I guess I’ll just have to vote for him.

Hillary Clinton does her share as well. In November she proudly announced that she had the backing of 60 pastors. Apparently the endorsements of clergy are better than laypersons because clergy would never do or say anything unethical, you know. Clinton also felt it necessary to advertise her church attendance. See, going to church is important, but other people knowing you go is critical. How else will they know you’re a Good Christian?

John Edwards, too, wants you to know how central his faith is to his life, and therefore how it will guide his presidency. He went on CBN in November to attest to his faithiness:

Edwards: Well, my faith is hugely important to every aspect of my life and it has been for a long time. I’m not going to lie to people. I was born and raised in the Southern Baptist church, baptized when I was young. I went to church on Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. It was the center of our lives. My father was the deacon in the Baptist church.

…..

I lost my son 1996 — and then of course more recently Elizabeth’s development of cancer and recurrence of her cancer. The truth is I don’t know how I could have ever gotten through these struggles plus the day-to-day stresses of being a candidate for president without my relationship with the Lord. It’s hugely important in every part of my life

The GOP candidates are not only trying to out-Christian one another (even Romney), they’re making infinite promises as to how they’ll impose RRRW Christian morality on all of Amurka–whether the rest of us like it or not. Says Mittens:

I support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that defines marriage as between a man and a woman. Marriage is fundamentally an institution about the development and nurturing of children. Every child deserves a mom and a dad. We must recognize the traditional union of a man and a woman as the bedrock of the family in our society. If our courts are determined to undermine this principle, then we have no choice but to defend it through a constitutional amendment.I support an amendment to prevent activist judges from misreading the Constitution to force same-sex marriage on any state.

I oppose civil unions between same sex partners. Government should encourage the formation of families and the nurturing of children, and I believe that this is best accomplished with a mom and a dad. Every child deserves a mother and a father.

Then there’s John McCain, who hits several of the right buttons–if you’re a RRRWer, that is.

Watching Beliefnet’s exclusive John McCain video, God-o-Meter finds it perplexing that the Arizona senator has long been a scourge of the Religious Right. After all, McCain told Beliefnet that the “Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation,” that he’s in talks with his pastor about undergoing a full-immersion baptism to become a full-blown evangelical, and that the prospect a Muslim presidential candidate makes him queasy because he wants someone who shares a “solid grounding in my faith.” That certainly checks some big boxes on the Christian Right’s presidential prerequisite list. (Not to mention that it offers a stark contrast to some of former Christian Right golden boy Fred Thompson’s recent stumbles on matters religious.)

Of course he’s small potatoes compared to Mike Huckabee, the Baptist Preacher turned Arkansas Governor turned presidential candidate.

“[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it’s a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that’s what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards,” Huckabee said, referring to the need for a constitutional human life amendment and an amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

Can you say Dominionist ? I knew you could!

So we have the candidates jumping through hoops, speechifying, sermonizing, wearing their belief on their sleeves and doing everything in their power to prove to the faithful that they’re the right believer for the job. But the job is the presidency of the United States, not pastor, reverend, priest or pope. So why is there so much emphasis on religion? What ever happened to “There shall be no religious test for public office”? And why do candidates not only spend so much time visiting churches, but feel compelled to, lest they “lose” the religious vote? Are religious people that needy and fragile. Do they really need that much pandering and ego-stroking? What is this insane need they have for people to tell them their beliefs are right, true and good? And why do politicians–particularly the GOPers–always have to promise the nation will be run according to the RRRW Christians rules to make them happy? Never mind; I already know the answer to those questions.

I’ll make it easy for you, candidates. You don’t need to give me flowery speeches or monologues about your faith. I don’t want to hear about your fabulous gay friend or the one who is the most ethical person you know–and she’s even an atheist. I don’t need to be validated by you nor do you need to be validated by me . I don’t want any form of song and dance. Save the pandering for the believers.

All I want for myself is equal human and civil rights. ENDA, Marriage Equality, the Hate Crimes Act. Enforce Separation of Church and State, “no religious test for public office” and equal-access laws. I don’t think that’s too much to ask. You’ll also save a lot of time, effort and money on the campaign trail.

Now what I want for everyone else–that’s going to take a bit more time, effort and money.

This was posted by Sapphocrat on Lavender Newswire

An Obama Supporter Illustrates Why Obama Supporters Scare Us. A Lot. Really.

A post on a mydd.com blog was re-posted on another message board (which, because I genuinely like the board admin and don’t want to embarrass him any more than he’s already been by the mere presence of said post, shall remain nameless), under the subject line:

“This is what the Obama ‘movement’ is all about…”

Here’s the original post:

THE BAM”… PASS IT ON AT THE NEXT OBAMA RALLY!

Having caught “Obama fever” like so many others rallying in support of Barack, I experienced something at a Barack Obama Rally on Thursday, January 10 at the College of Charleston here in Charleston, South Carolina, which I felt was both inspirational and spontaneous!

As Barack worked the line following the close of his speech, there was a surge of people moving forward hoping to get close enough to shake Barack’s hand. Since I was standing about 20 feet back from center stage in the crowd, I felt the crowd down front tighten as many of us stood on our toes, stretched our bodies forward while reaching out to Barack. I noticed that a six foot tall guy who was standing in front of me had stretched far enough above the crowd and shook hands with Barack. As the guy drew back his hand I asked him, “You shook his hand didn’t you?” Happily the guy said “Yes.” I then said, “give me some of that” and the guy shook my hand with the same hand he had just clasped with Barack’s. A woman friend of mine who was standing next to me saw me shake hands with the guy. I turned to her and said “He [the guy] just shook hands with Barack,” to which she responded…”Hey, give it up.” We then shook hands. She then turned to the person next to her and shook hands. This chain of hand shakes went on for about five or six more persons.

I did not know the tall guy in front of me; he is white, I am black. But at the moment we shook hands, I felt some solidarity with this stranger, consummated by a handshake and signifying some unspoken agreement presumably about Barack Obama and his core message of UNITY!

I call this hand-shake scenario the “BAM” because, descriptively, it takes a bit of Obama’s name and it’s the sound of a collision, of People Coming Together!

My reaction:

If that’s “what the Obama ‘movement’ is all about” — the blind frenzy of a mob clamoring to touch the hem of his garment — then the Obama camp is scaring the absolute crap out of me.

What next? Obama raises the dead? Where does the line start to worship a fragment of The One’s sandal?

“Give me some of that”? Jesus Christ, people, GET A GRIP! Obama is NOT GOD!

“You don’t get it! Why do you hate hope? Why do you hate change? Let Obama change your life…!

Holy crap. Ho. Lee. Crap.

Oh, yes, I “get it” — which is precisely why it scares me. The writer sounds like every “est” convert I ever knew in the 1970s. And I remember People’s Temple, and Heaven’s Gate, and Waco, much too well not to be shaken to the bone by this blind madness over Obama.

This is beyond 1960s-era teenyboppers spending a precious five dollars on a one-inch square of bedsheet that one of the Beatles supposedly slept on. This is the guy in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert wearing a vial containing the holy relic of an ABBA turd. Neither Anni-Frid nor Agnetha — nor Obama — is the Second Coming of Christ!

To the writer, and especially to the rest of the adoring throngs blinded into a froth:

How do you expect the rest of us “non-believers” to take you — or your candidate — even half-seriously when all you can offer is this kind of cult worship I thought died out with the 1970s?

And people think Kucinich is nuts for admitting to seeing a UFO? This craziness dwarfs any UFO talk — by light years.

And: Do you have any clue whatsoever as to the fodder you’re providing far-right sites that exist solely for the opportunity to point out how wacko Democrats are? Do you even care how embarrassing posts like that are? I don’t know if such lunacy makes me more ashamed to be associated with the message board to which the message was cross-posted, or with the entire party.

Thank God I’m as dissociated from Obama and his apostles as I ever can be!

I have to agree. I don’t get the whole Obama phenomenon. But then being an atheist perhaps I have a special immunity to whatever it is people are falling prey to. And for that I am thankful.

Considering most of us have presidential primaries coming up:

Courtesy of First Freedom 1st

Stephen Baldwin, the far-less talented brother of Alec Baldwin , is memorable for movies like Bio-Dome and Threesome. Or maybe not.

In recent years Baldwin became a Born-Again-Christian. He apparently was inspired to do so following the conversion of his wife, Kennya.
 

After Baldwin and his wife moved back to New York, Kennya started attending a charismatic church, praying and reading the Bible twice a day. He noticed a change in her that he found inspiring.

“She became more gentle, she became less judgmental, she just changed,” he said.

Now I’ve read about this before. People say they decide to follow in the path of others who have become Christians because they see how becoming Christian “changed” the other person by makng them calmer, happier, nicer, etc. So why is it that after they convert they are something akin to Jake Busey in Contact?

Needless to say, Stephen has become quite a different person. Where he once acted in movies that contained nudity and sex scenes, he has reportedly begun crusading against them. Most recently he announced his endorsement of Mike Huckabee for president and disapproval of same-sex marriage.

I don’t believe that gay marriage is in line with God’s Word, which is found in the Bible. So, what I think doesn’t matter; what I believe is what’s in the Bible and the Bible says that gay marriage is not acceptable.

Says Bill Browning of The Bilerico Project:

So again, it’s okay to show nudity in his own movies, but he has to protest movies with nudity that have more of a plot than “Bio-Dome”. (Remember that one? With Pauly Shore? You know it’s good if Pauly Shore is your co-star!) It’s okay to rub another man’s hand all over your naked ass as long as you don’t, you know, want to marry him.

Then again, he converted after 9/11. Seriously. I’m surprised he’s not backing Guilliani since that candidate’s stump speech consists of a noun, a verb, and “9/11.” So maybe it used to be okay to mess with guys and girls and let your ass hang out for all to see, but if you do it now, the terrorists win.

I’ve had it with these nitwits who sow their wild oats, find Jebus, then become the Morality Police for the rest of America (“Dr. Laura” Schlessinger, anybody?). Religion should be a guide for one’s personal path, not a weapon to wield over others. But the “Christian Nation” types can’t seem to distinguish the difference.

The results are official.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton powered to victory in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary Tuesday night in a startling upset, defeating Sen. Barack Obama and resurrecting her bid for the White House. Sen. John McCain defeated his Republican rivals to move back into contention for the GOP nomination.

…..

Her victory, after Obama won last week’s Iowa caucuses, raised the possibility of a prolonged battle for the party nomination between the most viable black candidate in history and the former first lady, seeking to become the first woman to occupy the Oval Office.

Exit polls results help explain some of the differences between the two states, and some speculation is offered:

Against predictions of a second straight defeat to Obama, Clinton won because:

• Women rallied to her side. She won the female vote by more than 10 percentage points, according to exit polls, after losing among women in Iowa.

• The youth vote did not lift Obama as it did in Iowa. He won 51 percent of votes cast by people under 30, compared with 57 percent in Iowa.

…..

First, New Hampshire has a history of putting the brakes on surging candidacies, and the Clintons spoke to that sense of prudence by suggesting that Obama was not ready for the White House.

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Second, the Clintons went negative on Obama’s record to say he has not been consistent on a host of issues, including the Iraq war. Obama constantly trumpets his early opposition to the war without informing voters that, like Clinton, he later voted to pay for it.

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Third, aides had urged her to show more passion and emotion, and, coincidentally or not, she did so by nearly breaking down during a restaurant appearance. Eyes welling up and voice quavering, she declared the campaign “is very personal for me. It’s not just political.”

There’s another potential factor that hasn’t been mentioned thus far. New Hampshire (and New England in general) simply doesn’t go for the Bible Banging in the same way that Iowa does. Hence the way Huckabee went down in flames, having won Iowa with 34.3% but receiving only 11% of the vote in NH.

Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister, rates a ten (out of a possible ten) on BeliefNet’s God-o-meter. Their observations:

When God-o-Meter went to the Parker’s Maple Barn in Mason, New Hampshire yesterday, it observed that everyone present was an evangelical or a frequent churchgoer, raising doubts that Huckabee is breaking out of his Christian Right base after winning Iowa last week almost solely on the backs of evangelicals. And tonight’s results and exit polls out of New Hampshire confirm those doubts. Even among those who attend church multiple times each week, Huckabee took just third of the vote, with Mitt Romney and John McCain doing almost as well. And among the much bigger chunk of weekly churchgoers–nearly a quarter of the vote in New Hampshire– Huckabee came in third, bested by McCain and Romney. …..

Granted, John McCain scores just one point below Huckabee on the God-o-Meter at eight. However evidence suggests his God-talk is more a facade than genuine. He was, remember, the person who denounced the Religious Right as agents of intolerance some seven years ago.

As to Barack Obama, who once promised his supporters a Kingdom right here on Earth, he rates a nine on the God-o-Meter.Obama has certainly done enough pandering to evangelicals and infused his campaign speeches with plenty of religious rhetoric. Then of course there’s the Embrace the Homophobia Change gospel concert tour. That was the grand finale to his 40-Days-of-Faith-and-Family , a massive effort to woo religious voters in SC away from Hillary Clinton . But when Obama lost to Huckabee in Iowa he decided to go for broke preaching–for Hope and Change.

…..

Stopping by a packed Barack Obama rally last night in Rochester, New Hampshire, God-o-Meter noticed that fans standing behind the candidate on stage waved homemade poster board signs proclaiming “In Obama We Trust” and “Believe.” The local activist who introduced Obama said, “What I really like is his ability to uplift people.” And Obama opened his stump speech this way: “Over the next 20 minutes or so, you’re going to see a light shine down the from the ceiling… you’re going to have an epiphany.”

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Indeed, God-o-Meter would go so far to say that Obama, peddling his message that hope matters more than experience, has become the Democrats’ secular preacher, his party’s rough equivalent to Huckabee, who’s been criticized for campaigning to be “pastor-in-chief.”

There are blatant religious overtones to Obama’s campaign. Jim Wallis calls him “virtually a public theologian… articulating the relationship between faith and politics.” During last night’s rally in Rochester, Obama opened his speech with an anecdote about his stint organizing churches in Chicago to respond to the closing of steel mills there.

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The Obama faithful don’t seem to mind. When God-o-Meter asked a dozen attendees at last night’s rally why they supported Obama, none mentioned a specific issue—or even a general one. At a Huckabee event earlier that morning, by contrast, supporters mentioned the former Arkansas governor’s pro-life views or his promise to help the middle class as secondary reasons for supporting him, even while acknowledging Huckabee’s “Christian values” as the prime reason.

On her way out of last night’s event, 41-year-old Sandy Becker said she backs Obama because “he gives us something to hope for.” Asked if there were any specific issues undergirding her support, the Montessori school owner said that “Obama can cut across all issues.”

Obama himself wouldn’t disagree. “Let me talk about hope,” he said near the end of last night’s speech. “I’ve been talking about hope so much I’ve been derided for it. Lately some folks have said Obama is so idealist, so naïve—he’s a hopemonger.”

Hopemonger. Isn’t that just another name for minister?

…..

Ironically that’s the same problem I’ve had when confronting Obama supporters elsewhere. Hope for what? What sort of change? Nobody has the answers. Essentially Obama is an empty suit hidden behind fluffy feel-good slogans–similar to many religions.

Hillary Clinton, by stark contrast, rates a six on the God-o-Meter (though she previously stood at seven). A recent campaign insisting that she is more Pro-choice than Obama is apparently the reason for the drop in score. She had scored six previously when she joined the War on Christmas by saying “Happy Holidays” in her holiday campaign advertisement.

It will be most interesting to see how the upcoming primaries in NV, MI, SC and FL shape the face of the election.