Rid Me of God and Toxic Religion

From the blog of Michael in Norfolk

It often seems that religion - or at least fundamentalist religion in which I also categorize far right Catholics - is the number one enemy of LGBT individuals. A few minor Bible passages set the stage for a relentless war against us. And a mean and horribly vindictive God, at least according to fundamentalists and conservative Catholic dogma, often makes a flight from religion seem the best course. The problem is that often LGBT youth are not yet old enough and mature enough to make the break from toxic religion and when bullying is thrown into the mix, suicide all too often seems the best option. I know that growing up I though of suicide often since it seemed that death was the only solution to "my secret." I know I am not alone in this and it drives me to distraction that too many youths are still being literally killed by religion and the falsely pious and self-satisfied "godly Christian" set, most of whom I personally view as probably psychologically disturbed and motivated by hate and transferred self-loathing. Maggie Gallagher, Tony Perkins, Timothy Dolan and Benedict XVI are but a few examples of these horrid people. A column in Religion Dispatches looks at the toxicity of religion. Here are some highlights:

I tried to kill myself when I was a teenager. It seemed like a natural progression for a young lesbian, growing up in the South. I kept my sexual orientation hidden until college, but that didn’t stop the taunting and the bullying I encountered in high school. I was teased relentlessly for my manner of dress—I wore boys’ shirts, jeans, jean jackets and boots or tennis shoes. I was teased for my short hair, my boyish mannerisms and, oh, yeah, my funny name.

It was torture—but school wasn’t the only place. There was also church; that good old Southern Baptist house of worship where I learned that my secret yearnings made me a sworn enemy of the God I had loved (and who I thought loved me) since childhood.

All that condemnation, from my peers, from my church, from my God, came to a head one night and I decided to put an end to it all by putting an end to me. Thankfully, my plan failed — and as the videos being produced by LGBT people who, like me, survived their childhood say, it does, indeed, get better.

I blame the religious right and their insistence on their “religious freedom” to condemn and bully LGBT people for this continuing trend of spiritual violence . . . . One young man who took his life recently was 19-year-old EricJames Borges whose “extremist Christian” parents tried to exorcise his gay demon and called him “disgusting and perverted” before kicking him out of the house. Borges had the best support around as a volunteer for The Trevor Project (the org that works to prevent LGBT suicide). He even did his own It Gets Better video.

But I fear it was finally the religious condemnation that led this beautiful young man to take his own life. Everyone under the sun can tell you it gets better, but the bottom line is this: If you believe God will send you to hell for who you love, there will be nothing anyone can say to convince you that it gets better—since God never changes, right?

I have seen too many in my community struggle with God—and the image of the bullying God they have been given by their churches and their families. This image of God as a loving destroyer, whose acceptance is conditioned on your strict adherence to “His” rules, has ruined too many lives. What needs to change is not the LGBT child, but this horrible and terribly wrong image of God as a holy bully that is being purveyed by religious institutions and believers.

The trouble is, though, this image of God has worked very well for those in power.

It is exactly this vision of God as “backyard bully” that puts LGBT youth on the path to suicide, and it must stop. But, it won’t as long as the GOP and anti-gay religious right groups can raise cash using this image of God as divine bully. This is why the “religious freedom” debate is so important; and why it highlights the hypocrisy of the religious right. They can certainly crow all they want about how they condemn LGBT people out of “love” for them, but one surefire test of true love is that it leads to life—not death.

It is these religious undertones—and outright blatant anti-LGBT preaching—that makes children choose to end their own lives no matter how many role models and videos they have telling them it gets better. It’s hell for them right now, and that’s all that matters to them.

The problem lies not with the child, but with the messages they are receiving from authorities like parents, preachers, and politicians. When money and power become more important than the lives of children, then God is truly and finally dead. It was the 15th-century mystic Meister Eckhart who prayed: “God, rid me of God.” If we are to have true religious freedom for everyone in this country, that must be our prayer as well.


The column's author is 100% on point. Religion has truly become one of the great evils of this world.

Anti-gay hatemongers talk of religious "freedom" is a lie

The so called "defenders of marriage" and religious hatemongers talk of their religious freedom whining that such freedom is treathened by gay marriage, anti-discriminaton laws, anti bullying programs. Pure bloody lies!They brazenly want everyone to conform to their archaic prejudices and their bibliolatry (the bible says so! SO WHAT?). They have no right to that, and "religious freedom" means you're free to practise your religion RESPECTING OTHER PEOPLE'S FREEDOM! when will they realize that?

Crisis in Cameroon: Stand with Alice

http://www.allout.org/en/actions/cameroon?akid=231.611349.oTF5_U&rd=1&t=3&utm_campaign=cameroon&utm_content


"I've heard countless recent stories of homophobic violence throughout the country. I'm 66, and in ten years of defending LGBT people in Cameroon, it has never been this bad." - Alice N'Kom
15,032
GOAL: 25,000
15,032 people support this campaign. Help us get to 25,000.
Posted: 15 September 2011

Alice N'Kom is one of the only attorneys in Cameroon who defends people who've been jailed for the "crime" of being gay.

In the last 2 weeks, gay men have been snatched from their homes and public places and thrown in jail just for being gay. The situation is approaching a crisis and Alice told us she and her colleagues are ready to confront the President to demand the release of those arrested and an end to laws that make being gay a crime. But she needs the support of people around the world:

"I need to show the president of Cameroon that the world is behind me".

Please sign the urgent letter, then ask your friends and family to do the same. Alice and her colleagues are brave enough speak out, and it only takes a minute to add your voice and to make theirs even stronger.


Dear friends,

My name is Alice N'Kom, and here in Cameroon I am one of the only attorneys who defends people who've been jailed because they are gay.

In the last two weeks violence against gay people in Cameroon has skyrocketed to unprecedented levels: the situation is quickly becoming a crisis. The president of Cameroon can put a stop to this, and if he feels enough pressure he will do so.

I'm watching police in Cameroon conduct an anti-gay crackdown - over 10 people have been arrested on charges of "homosexuality" in the last months. One of them, Jean-Claude, has been sentenced to 3 years in prison merely for sending a text message to another man. I've heard countless recent stories of homophobic violence throughout the country. I'm 66, and in ten years of defending lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT) people in Cameroon, it has never been this bad.

Only one person can put an end to this gay bashing - President Paul Biya. He can stop the escalating crisis of homophobic roundups and attacks, and he can immediately release those arrested and call for the end of Cameroon's laws against homosexuality.

Time is running out. I'm headed to Cameroon's capital, Yaoundé, to confront the President with these demands. He will not be able to ignore a powerful outcry from every corner of the globe. I am counting on your help.

Alice N'Kom, Cameroonian attorney 

Founder of the Association for the Defense of LGBT Rights in Cameroon (ADEFHO)
in partnership with Alternatives-Cameroun

The Catholic Hierarchy’s Pointless Campaign Against LGBT Rights

From the blog of michael in norfolk

The hypocrisy of the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy knows few limits when it comes to denigrating LGBT individuals. Out of one side of its mouth the hierarchy disingenuously states that it is Church policy that gay individuals be treated with dignity. Out of the other side of its mouth and through its checkbook, the hierarchy does everything possible to help fan the flames of anti-gay hatred and to inflict emotional harm on LGBT individuals and to keep them third or fourth class citizens. Indeed, the members of the Church hierarchy - not to mention their Protestant Christianist allies - make the Pharisees of the Gospels look like kind, upstanding folks. Especially given their foul hands in the context of the Church's virtually worldwide sex abuse scandal. A piece at Religion Dispatches looks at the pointless anti-gay jihad of the nasty old men in dresses among the hierarchy. Here are some highlights:

In early July, Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles opposed a modest piece of legislation that requires schools in that state to include lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender people, and other previously excluded groups, in their social studies curricula.

The archbishop argued that he was merely supporting parents’ rights to make decisions regarding their children’s education. But Catholics who pay attention to our bishops’ energetic campaign to thwart any legislation that legitimizes (or in this instance, even recognizes) same-gender attraction are familiar with this ruse.

Our hierarchy has a habit of invoking noble sounding principles but applying them only when they can be used against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington did something similar last year when he announced that the legalization of same-sex marriage in the District of Columbia had forced him to stop offering health insurance to the spouses of new employees of Catholic Charities.

To take this argument seriously, one has to overlook the fact that Catholic Charities already offered benefits to the spouses of employees who had not been married in the Catholic Church, or who had been remarried without benefit of an annulment. These are also clear violations of the Church’s teaching on marriage. But Wuerl’s harsh and unloving stance is typical of a hierarchy that behaves as though there is sin, and then there is gay sin—and gay sin is much worse.

Catholics faithful to the scriptural admonition to love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly with their God, have become increasingly alienated by bishops who seem obsessed with pushing a narrow anti-gay agenda to the exclusion even of simple charity. Our bishops were in the small minority of religious leaders who failed to speak out when a wave of anti-gay bullying, some of which led to suicides, swept the country last year.

In their zeal to deny any form of legitimacy to same-sex relationships, the bishops have neglected more urgent pastoral duties. Catholic schools and parishes are closing by the dozen in dioceses across the country, yet somehow the hierarchy and its allies in the Knights of Columbus have found millions of dollars to spend in one state after another opposing marriage equality, or its weaker cousin, the civil union.

If you are the Catholic parent of LGBT daughter or son, you know firsthand that it is your child’s sexual identity, and not a belief in the Immaculate Conception, that puts them at risk for beatings and taunting. Archbishop Dolan and his colleagues should stop pretending that they face anything like the intolerance that our children do.

The one fortunate aspect of the bishop’s campaign against LGBT people is that it has been singularly ineffective. Polling by the Public Religion Research Institute makes clear that almost three-quarters of Catholics support either marriage equality or civil unions, and that we back legal protections for LGBT people in the workplace (73 percent), in the military (63 percent), and in adoptions (60 percent) by significant margins.

Last week, the Vatican announced that it had appointed Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver as the new archbishop of Philadelphia. . . . We would only note that in his previous post, he supported a parish priest who expelled a girl from a Catholic school because her parents were lesbians. The archbishop argued that parents must be able to cooperate with Catholic schools in the education of their children, and that those who do not embrace Church doctrine cannot do so.

This was not an argument he employed against Protestants, or non-Christians, or children whose parents had remarried after a divorce. It was employed exclusively against lesbian parents. Because in the theological universe that our bishops are constructing to support their personal biases, there is sin, and then there is gay sin, and gay sin is so much worse.


Meanwhile, here are highlights from a story in the Malta Independent that tell the true story of the bishops' utter moral bankruptcy:

Basing himself exclusively on publicly available sources – newspaper and magazine articles, court documents, books – Mr Podles documents only a fraction of what really went on. He concludes: “The bishops made excuses, but the excuses did not excuse. Bishops claimed they were only following the advice of psychologists, but they put abusive priests in parishes even when the psychologists warned against it. Why hadn’t bishops ever gotten angry at abusers? Why were abusers treated so gently, when men who left the priesthood to marry were treated so harshly? Why had the bishops lied to parents? Why hadn’t they disciplined their clergy, when they seemed so eager to micromanage everything else in America, from what married couples did in bed to what the government did about immigration?”

Then he analyses the findings. Since 1950, tens of thousands of boys and girls have been molested by priests in the United States. The victims were chosen because they were vulnerable and the vulnerability was often the misplaced faith they or their parents had in the trustworthiness of the Catholic Church. The victims suffered the immediate horror and degradation of sexual abuse; they and their families endured decades of pain, which sometimes ended only in death by suicide for the victims and unending grief for the families.

Podles discusses the possible number of victims and abusers and comes to the ‘conservative’ estimate of up to 200,000 victims in the United States alone, and a rough estimate of up to 100,000 abusive priests worldwide since 1950 and anywhere up to two million victims.

And the victims had a variety of innocent weaknesses which the abusers exploited: the sexual ignorance of the very young, the emotional turbulence of adolescence; sickness or injury, family problems such as divorce or death or poverty; the absence of a father, or, most dangerous of all, piety.

Many times, the abuse suffered was horrendous. Abusive priests often added the pleasures of sacrilege to the pleasures of abuse. Being, as they invariably put it, ‘close to God’, enabled them to ensure the victims’ silence. Predators seek out vulnerable children and prey on them.

Fundamentally, bishops and priests tolerated abuse and bear the greatest responsibility after the abusers themselves. Bishops were weak in dealing with abuse, a weakness that had its source in their non-confrontational personalities, personalities which made them attractive to the Vatican as candidates for bishop. Abusers exploited bishops’ desires to avoid confrontation and bad publicity. Priests almost always turned a blind eye to abuse going on in their parishes, because they knew the bishops did not want to know about it and they would be marked as troublemakers for reporting it.


All of the above underscores why I left Catholicism. Had I remained in the Church, I would have felt dirty and tainted as an accessory to crimes against children and youths. How others can shut their eyes and deny their own complicity by remaining in the Church still baffles me.
Posted by Michael-in-Norfolk at Sunday, August 07, 2011

Hate Merchants At Mission America Attack Scholarships for LGBT Students

From the blog of Michael in Norfolk


http://michael-in-norfolk.blogspot.com/2011/07/hate-merchants-at-mission-america.html

Linda Harvey (pictured at left) at Mission American once again proves that she's about as unloving and nasty piece of work as one can be when it comes to denigrating not only LGBT Americans but in addition anyone or any organization which endeavors to make life less of a Hell for those who suffer as victims of anti-gay bigotry. As Right Wing Watch is reporting, Ms. Harvey has gone on a spittle spraying rant against scholarships for LGBT high schools students and the National Education Association in particular. Harvey alleges that such scholarships offer a "financial incentive" and help "persuade youths to be in a deviant lifestyle" and engage in "risky behavior" Having endowed a scholarship for LGBT students myself in honor of my late parents, in my view Ms. Harvey is an utter douche bag and from a moral perspective is no different that the Islamic haters that the Christian Taliban in this country love to malign. Here's a portion of Harvey's screed:
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Harvey: The group’s website says they raise money for teen scholarships given to those kids who consider themselves homosexual. The past few years the scholarship winners have not simply been young people persuaded to be in this deviant lifestyle, but are students who have unfortunately bought the party line and become involved in activism projects like homosexual clubs and the pro-homosexual Day of Silence in their schools. And so now kids are given financial incentives to be actively engaged in both the political goals of homosexuals as well as the risky behavior. This is appalling. In these tough economic times many kids will be struggling to get money together for college and here we have a really sleazy connection for them to make. It’s just one more outrageous thing going on with our teachers’ unions.
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What's appalling and sleazy are Harvey and those like her. It's precisely because of people like Harvey and those who embrace her hate-filled form of Christianity that many LGBT students find themselves in need of scholarships in the first place having been disowned and/or cut off financially by their Kool-Aid drinking parents and families. In describing my motivation for establishing a scholarship for LGBT high school students I said in part the following:
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I provided the initial funding to establish the scholarship for a number of reasons, not the least of which was to honor my parents who always valued education and who were unwavering in their support of me when I came out. In fact, when I was telling them that I was gay and made a remark that I hoped that they would not disown me, my father - not always the easiest of individuals to get along with - was indignant that I'd even think such a thing about them. He honestly could not conceive of any decent parent who would disown their own child merely because they were gay. Unfortunately, many parents do not follow my late parents' example. And as a result, LGBT youth make up a disproportionate percentage of homeless youths because too many parents prefer to cling to religious based bigotry or worry about what others will think rather than stand by their children.
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Other LGBT youths, if not disowned and homeless, nonetheless can find themselves cut off from family resources and may never have an opportunity to got to college. Sadly, I know a significant number of individuals who suffered this disheartening experience. It's a tragedy. I sincerely hope that this scholarship will help offset such bigotry in small part and over time will grow and provide benefit for more aspiring LGBT youth each year.