Feb

27

Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence

Filed Under Audio Update, Lesbian Podcast, Religion | Leave a Comment

Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence is a collection of stories told by ex nuns. Readers hear stories from ex nuns who discuss their short stay in convents all across the United States. Each woman left the convent for various reasons and each of them is living a full life as an out lesbian.

Co-author Nancy Manahan joined us on SistersTalk Radio to discuss the book. We also discussed the challenges spiritual people often feel as they attempt to reconcile their religious beliefs with their sexual orientation.

Listen to the interview here.

Subscribe to SistersTalk Radio on iTunes here.

Jan

4

Do Anti-Gay Conservatives Support Affirmative Action Based on Race?

Filed Under Bitch Slap, Gender, Religion | Leave a Comment

While scrolling through a digest of news items related to the LGBT community today, this article jumped out at me: President Appoints ‘Transgendered’ Individual to Federal Post.

Whenever members of the conservative christian reich want to claim a certain group of people don’t really exist, they place that group’s identifier in quotation marks. You’ll often see “gay” instead of gay and “transgendered” instead of transgender (the correct way to format the word).

It was no surprise to see this kind of ridiculous disrespect on a conservative christian web site, but this is what I did find extremely interesting (bold emphasis is mine):

“This isn’t like appointing an African-American in order to try to provide diversity and right some kind of discriminatory wrong,” he said. “This is about political correctness.

Stop.the.press.

Did one of the nation’s largest conservative web sites just suggest the following:

1. Hiring a Black person is a good thing
2. Hiring a Black person is a sign of true diversity
3. Hiring a Black person has nothing to do with political correctness

Has this group of hateful christians replaced their hatred for Blacks and Affirmative Action with their hatred for homosexuals and transgender people?

Nope.

Those people haven’t swapped one hatred for another; they’re simply pretending they give a shit about Blacks because they’ve used Black christians to fuck over homosexuals and transgender people for awhile now.

Nov

12

Catholic Archdiocese of DC Says: We’ll Stop Feeding the Hungry if DC Recognizes Gay Marriage

Filed Under Bitch Slap, Religion, WTF? | 4 Comments

If I were Jesus, I would be really pissed off right about now.

Members of the Catholic Church hierarchy in DC announced they will prohibit Catholic Charities from providing services to DC residents if DC’s City Council decides to recognize all married couples – even same-sex couples – as equal under law.

That’s some seriously fucked up divide and conquer goin’ on right there. What kind of church withholds charity from a group of people in order to convince them to fuck over another group of people? I’m sure there are some really decent Catholics out there who are extremely embarrassed by all this.

Nov

10

Mormons Back Gay Rights in Salt Lake City . . . Sorta

Filed Under Employment, LGBT, Religion | Leave a Comment

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints supported two proposed Salt Lake City ordinances protecting gay and lesbian residents from housing and employment discrimination, but only because the law does not “do violence to the institution of marriage.”

Umm, what?

It seems this particular group of Mormons are willing to protect the rights of LGBT people – as long as they don’t plan on asking for gay marriage rights. What happens if Utah residents pass pro gay marriage laws? Will these Mormons no longer protect the LGBT community from housing and employment discrimination?

Nov

8

Ben Patrick Johnson Discusses New Book, Religion and the Gay Community

Filed Under Lesbian Podcast, Race, Religion | Leave a Comment

Tonight on SistersTalk Radio, we interviewed Ben Patrick Johnson.  Ben is a gay rights activist, model, author and journalist.

He appears on CBS (promoting Survivor, CSI: NY and other shows), Fox (advertising House, Bones, NASCAR and Major League Baseball), the cable channels Starz!, NFL Network, Big Ten Network and others. His voice is used to promote movies and in commercials for Burger King and Kellogg’s.

Hear Ben discuss:

*His career as a voice-over artist

*What happened when Extra found out he was gay

*Why the LGBT community should care about developing a relationship with communities of Christian faith

*His organization the Ben Patrick Johnson Foundation

*His latest novel ‘If the Rains Don’t Cleanse’

*How he’s dealing with some of the negative reviews that claim his book glorifies cultural imperialism

Listen to the podcast now.

Nov

5

ENDA Supporters Address Religious Exemption in Senate Hearing

Filed Under ENDA, LGBT, Politics, Religion | Leave a Comment

I just finished liveblogging today’s Senate hearing on ENDA. Here’s a brief summary:

The panel included Tom Perez, Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division, United States Department of Justice, Washington, DC; Helen Norton, Associate Professor of Law, University of Colorado School of Law, Boulder, CO; The Honorable Lisa Madigan, Attorney General, State of Illinois, Chicago, IL; Virginia Nguyen, Diversity & Inclusion Team Member, Nike, Inc., Beaverton, OR; Mike Carney, Police officer, City of Springfield Police Department, Springfield, MA; Craig Parshall, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, National Religious Broadcasters Association, Manassas, VA; Camille Olson, Partner, Seyfarth Shaw, LLP, Chicago, IL

There was lots of focus on the religious exemption, mostly because Parshall spent most of his time explaining why ENDA would hurt the religious community. The pro-ENDA panel partricipants (especially Norton) did a great job of countering Parshall’s claims.

The one complaint we heard the most from our liveblog participants was there was a lack of trans-identified representation, even though much of the discussion addressed the needs of trans-identified people.

To read the transcript of the liveblog, head on over to iQreport.

Oct

30

Bernice King Named President of SCLC

Filed Under LGBT, Religion, Syndicated News | 2 Comments

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) announced the election of The Reverend Bernice King, the daughter of The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. (the organization’s founder), as its eighth president this morning. The Reverend Eric P. Lee, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the SCLC and an outspoken advocate of social justice, was targeted last year by the organization for his advocacy in favor of LGBT marriage equality during California’s Proposition 8 controversy.

With next week’s anniversary of Proposition 8, and the upcoming marriage equality votes in Maine and Washington, Reverend Lee says, “my hope is that Reverend King will follow in the spirit of her father and her mother. We know that her mother, Coretta Scott King, was supportive of LGBT equality, and we believe that Dr. King would have been as well.” Reverend Lee adds, “it’s going to be a tough role for her because, of course, sexism still plagues our society. My hope is that her election is a sign that the SCLC is returning to its sprit of equality for all people. The need for the SCLC is more critical than ever at this time. Our society is facing the challenges of healthcare reform, immigration reform and education reform. Reverend King and the SCLC have the opportunity, and the obligation, to once again ensure justice is provided to all people.”

Reverend Lee is the author of the book, “Marriage Equality: Proposition 8, The California Divide”, and the co-producer of a 90 minute documentary film on the failure of public education for African American and Latino children entitled, “Who Is Accountable?” For additional information about the Reverend Eric P. Lee, please visit: http://cause-pr.com/2009/10/the-reverend-eric-p-lee/

Oct

27

Hey Gay Guys: The Golden Girls Made You a Homo

Filed Under Religion, WTF? | 2 Comments

The writers over at Christwire finally have the answer. We finally know the origins of male homosexuality – at least for a certain time period:

Many studies have been done on why the gays love The Golden Girls, but science can’t fathom the moral challenges and social upheaval of those historic times. The 1980s was an epoch of President Reagan’s manly wisdom and the terrifying threat of Cold War annihilation. America had sobered up from the flashy lights of 1970s disco. We were skipping all night cocaine and sex parties to focus on our careers. Spiritual leaders like Jerry Falwell were telling us that Christianity was in the majority again. On the other side, there was a subculture of homosexuality creeping up on our youths. It gave them an excuse to wear tight jeans and to sneak off to public parks for quick releases with hairy men of different ethnicities.

There ya have it. The Golden Girls made you a homo who likes cock from all ethnicities. You’re a big ol’ tight jean wearin’ queer because you watched Blanche, Sophia, Rose and Dorothy one too many times on television.

Apparently, the Golden Girls has been a part of the gay agenda for a long time. That show was created to ruin the very threads keeping our wholesome, apple-pie, white American society together:

It was only to be expected that our lonely boys exposed to these conflicted times would succumb to the nagging Golden Girls agenda. These were slender, unathletic children who were left out of the fun militarism of the Reagan years. Skyrocketing divorce rates ruined their faith in traditional relationships. Rock groups like Duran Duran and Styx encouraged big hair and overactive libidos. The show lit a match which enflamed their intense physical urges. With the utmost cruelty and immorality, The Golden Girls seized upon this opportunity to cross the hormonal wires of America’s lost generation.

The results were disastrous. Our horny, lonely boys sought out intimate comforts with likeminded Golden Girls addicts who didn’t mind each other’s theatrical voices and touch-feely hand gestures. Together, these clusters of awkward teens and twentysomethings bonded over their favorite episodes and characters, mimicking the voices and gowns of their tv friends. When the rush of cheesecake and gabfests wore thin, these hairless boys needed a harder thrill. They were so desperate for the next big trend they turned to same-sex sexual experimentation. What woman would have them now, anyway? This led to the worse excesses of early homosexual visibility– the most enormous of drag queens, the dirtiest of leather daddies, the most enticing of twinkie boys, androgyny, overeating, public sex and the birth of “camp.”

That’s the most asinine shit I’ve read in ages. Is that religious wingnut smokin’ some good shit or what? I guess one too many Xena episodes turned a whole lot of girls into lesbians. Or maybe it was all those Wonder woman episodes. Hmmm. . .

The author doesn’t offer an explanation for homosexuality in countries other than the US. I’m guessing we have to wait for him to pull that one from his ass. It might take awhile.

Update: I just learned that Christwire is a satirical site. The Onion should have this guy on staff.

Aug

19

Obama’s Healthcare Interview on BlogTalkRadio

Filed Under Barack Obama, Politics, Religion | Leave a Comment

Unfortunately, I missed this show live because I couldn’t get a connection.

President Obama was a guest on 40 Minutes for Health, a faith-based initiative tackling the healthcare issue in the United States. If you can sit through all the opening prayer and religious babble, you might like what you hear (or maybe not!)

I was a bit disappointed that most of the questions I have about healthcare reform were unanswered, but I might have expected too much from this broadcast.

I know I’ll piss off a whole lot of liberals with this comment, but I’ll say it anyway: this broadcast sounded more like a public service announcement designed to support the Obama administration’s healthcare plan. I didn’t hear anything tangible that would help me decide if Obama’s healthcare plan will be the best thing for America.

Aug

18

New Anti-Gay Religious Organization Says Sexual Relationships Belong to Married Heterosexuals

Filed Under LGBT, Religion, Sex and Sexuality, WTF? | 5 Comments

On GayWallet.com this afternoon, I saw an ad for The Lighthouse Covenant, the newest anti-gay religious organization (like we needed another one, right?). I thought it was strange that the ad was running on a gay web site, so I clicked it. Here’s what I found:

If you affirm the following, you are welcome to partner with us:

We covenant to teach a high view of Scripture. We trust the Bible as the only final authority for all aspects of life.

We affirm an aggressive, positive stance on kingdom expansion and congregational growth.

We choose to advance the use of all spiritual gifts through unleashing the priesthood of all believers.

We teach and practice that a full sexual relationship belongs exclusively within the biblical boundaries of a publicly committed marriage between one man and one woman.

We believe that mission and ministry is best accomplished within the context of congregations. Facilitating that mission and ministry should be the central focus of all expressions of the church.

I was so tempted to encourage GayWallet.com members to click on that ad just to blow the organization’s daily Adwords budget, but I opted to block the site instead. After blocking the site, I went back to see if they’re much of a threat. They’re not – at least not right now. It looks like a fairly new organization designed specifically to encourage its members to stand against gay rights issues. They made a rather lame (and confusing attempt) to justify point 4 in their mission statement:

Why do you make #4 a point? The rest sounds so missional. This sounds legalistic.

Answer: Every generation has its defining issue. In 1860, you had to say were you stand on slavery. Someday the sexuality issue will go away and there will be another defining issue. Clarity on the defining issue of the day frees a group up to do other things. Un-clarity leads to yet another round of discussion and lack of focus, therefore, on mission. It is ironic but true that clarity on divisive issues leads to less focus on them.

Anybody else confused with all that babble?

Perhaps The Lighthouse Convenant wants to take over as the new, younger generation of those old folks in the anti-gay religious organization AFA.

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