My name is Nicole and I’m a proud lesbian. I have an important question. My girlfriend recently broke up with me because she thinks that gay people are going to hell. I’ve never believed that but I would like your opinion on it.

Thanks so much,
Nicole

I don’t believe in Hell, but for those of you who do, here’s a list of SistersTalk Radio podcasts that address the issue of homosexuality and salvation.

Can you pray away the gay?

Reverend Candace Chellew-Hodge discusses reconciling your faith with your sexual orientation

GayByGod.net creator discusses the Black church and its opinion of homosexuality

Catholic theologian James Alison discusses Catholics and their view of homosexuality

Reverend Rizi Timane discusses what the Bible really says about homosexuality

Lesbian nuns break the silence

Gay Christian musician Tom Goss discusses spirituality

Share this.

Hide Sites

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.

Share this.

Hide Sites

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.

Share this.

Hide Sites

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.

Share this.

Hide Sites

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?

Share this.

Hide Sites

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.

Share this.

Hide Sites

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.

Share this.

Hide Sites

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/

Share this.

Hide Sites

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.

Share this.

Hide Sites

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.

Share this.

Hide Sites