PERMISSIBLE PREJUDICES: Responding to Religion-Based Bigotry Our Biggest Obstacle, Part V

Op-ed excerpt from Faith In America’s Founder Mitchell Gold in the Washington Blade

“As thousands converge on the nation’s capital this weekend for the National Equality March, our demand is simple: We want full equality.

Now. Although there has been great progress in the last 50 years, the equality movement for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans has not moved forward as quickly as we should and could have. In the final analysis, it is because we have not effectively addressed the biggest barrier between us and our equality: religion-based bigotry and prejudice.

For those who do not realize the significance of religion and the impact religion-based bigotry has on our struggle for equality, they will continue to wander about aimlessly, dragging the pink elephant in the room behind them, holding them back.”

¨RELIGION-BASED BIGOTRY CAUSES UNTOLD HARM TO MILLIONS, ESPECIALLY YOUTH¨

RELIGION-BASED BIGOTRY is a giant pink elephant in the room. It is the cause of incredible harm to millions of people and especially vulnerable adolescents and teens
To be clear, I am not anti-religion. I am anti-religion based bigotry. I feel truly blessed to have former Rev. Jimmy Creech, Bishop Gene Robinson, Revs. Welton Gaddy, Reggie Longcrier, Benny Colclough, and Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum in my life.¨

····Bishop V.Gene Robinson of the The Episcopal Church diocese of New Hampshire. Consecrated in 2003, Bishop Robinson is the first openly Gay/Partnered Bishop in The Episcopal Church and The Anglican Communion (of course there have been, and currently are, many other Gay Bishops, of many denominations, who were or remain ¨closeted¨).

····Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum is since 1992 of New York City’s Congregation Beth Simchat Torah (CBST), Sharon Kleinbaum is as immersed in politics as one can get. She is the openly lesbian leader of the world’s largest gay religious congregation, and is at the forefront of the movement to secure basic civil rights for lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.

····The Reverend Dr. Bennie Colclough named as winner of the 2008 Trailblazer Award, which recognizes an individual who has a record of consistent and significant contributions to the LGBT community and is seen as a role model to others, will be presented to the pastor of the Providence Christian Church, Manning, South Carolina.

····The Reverend Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Interfaith Alliance, Washington D.C. While ministering to churches with a message of inclusion, Welton emerged as a leader among progressive and moderate Baptists. Among his many leadership roles, he is the immediate past President of the Alliance of Baptists and is a twenty-year member of the Commission of Christian Ethics of the Baptist World Alliance. His past leadership roles include serving as a member of the General Council of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, President of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and Chair of the Pastoral Leadership Commission of the Baptist World Alliance.

¨But moving from New York to North Carolina in the 1980s, I discovered just how pervasive and deep anti-gay sentiment is beyond our urban centers. As I traveled to many areas across our country, it became apparent that the condemning and hateful attitudes and actions could be traced to one source: church teachings.

I spoke to many people who have been victimized by rejection and condemnation. I was burdened most by the young people I had met who had been discarded by their families, churches, communities and lost their own self worth from the onslaught of anti-gay religious language and actions they experienced. I met mothers and fathers who had lost a son or daughter to suicide — young people who believed they'd be better off dead than growing up gay in America...¨

· read it all, from The Washingtonblade, click HERE

·The Reverend Dr. Welton Gaddy/Day1 is the voice of the mainline Protestant churches on the radio and online, offering life-enriching sermons, community, and other resources to help you grow in faith.¨ click HERE

·The Rt. Reverend Robinson is widely known for being the first openly gay, non-celibate priest to be ordained a bishop in a major Christian denomination believing in the historic episcopate. His sexual orientation was privately acknowledged in the 1970s, when he studied in seminary, was ordained, married, and started a family.¨ click HERE

· Going Head to Head with the Religious Right, An Interview with Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum.¨ read it all click HERE

· The Reverend Dr. Colclough has given much time and effort working as an advocate and straight ally for the South Carolina Equality Coalition (SCEC), the South Carolina Gay and Lesbian Pride Movement (SCGLPM), Faith In America and HRC. A native of Sumter, S.C., Colclough served in the United States Marine Corps for six years with a tour of duty in Vietnam, and is a graduate of Yale University Divinity School. click HERE

·Thanks to The Washingtonblade
·Thanks to Jewish Currents
·Thanks to Wikipedia
·Thanks to Day1 (voice of mainline Protestant churches)
·Thanks to Truth Wins Out
·Thanks to Faith in America
·Thanks to Mitchell Gold
·Thanks to The Human Rights Campaign Carolina´s
·Thanks to Wayne Besen
·Thanks to Matt Comer

PERMISSIBLE PREJUDICES: Responding to bigotry based on religion, morality, ethics, psychological rationale, IV

Homosexual Servicemembers have had to compromise their personal integrity by keeping their sexuality secret.

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
By Om Prakash*

¨The 1993 “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” law was a political compromise reached after much emotional debate based on religion, morality, ethics, psychological rationale, and military necessity. What resulted was a law that has been costly both in personnel and treasure. In an attempt to allow homosexual Servicemembers to serve quietly, a law was created that forces a compromise in integrity, conflicts with the American creed of “equality for all,” places commanders in difficult moral dilemmas, and is ultimately more damaging to the unit cohesion its stated purpose is to preserve. Furthermore, after a careful examination, there is no scientific evidence to support the claim that unit cohesion will be negatively affected if homosexuals serve openly. In fact, the necessarily speculative psychological predictions are that it will not impact combat effectiveness. Additionally, there is sufficient empirical evidence from foreign militaries to anticipate that incorporating homosexuals will introduce leadership challenges, but the challenges will not be insurmountable or affect unit cohesion and combat effectiveness. Though, as Congress clearly stated in 1993, serving in the military is not a constitutional right, lifting the ban on open service by homosexuals would more clearly represent the social mores of America in 2009 and more clearly represent the free and open society that serves as a model for the world. Ultimately, Servicemembers serving under values they believe in are the most effective force multipliers.¨

The Efficacy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” By Om Prakash, read it all, click HERE

*Colonel Om Prakash, USAF, wrote this essay while a student at the National War College. It won the 2009 Secretary of Defense National Security Essay Competition.

UPDATE: Pentagon Can't Explain Why DADT Kicks Out So Many Women. Because That'd Be Discriminatory, read it all, click HERE

¨Continuing a lovely trend, the United States military removed a disproportionate number of women under Don't Ask Don't Tell than men. If you'd like the Pentagon to explain to you why this might be, they can't: even "inquiring" about the statistics could violate DADT. Huh?

Though only 15 percent of all active duty and reserve military personnel are women, some one-third of all 619 DADT dismissals last year were women. Maybe that's better than 2007, when 46 percent of Army discharges were women (though they accounted for only 14 percent of the total), or the Air Force's 49 percent discharge rate (with women making up only 20 percent of personnel). In 2006, "about 35 percent of the Army’s discharges and 36 percent of the Air Force’s were women."

·Thanks to Colonel Om Prakash, USAF
·Thanks to The National War College
·Thanks to The 2009 U.S. Secretary of Defense Essay Competition
·Thanks to The Episcopal Cafe
·Thanks to Queerty, at the right side bar
·Thanks to Flickr Photosharing

PERMISSIBLE PREJUDICES: Responding to bigotry by well meaning religious people/society, Part III

Mr. Alan Hevesi
Comptroller of the City of New York
Public Forum on Homophobia
The American Psychoanalytic Foundation

¨...It is important that we are all here to address, in all of its components, a terrible blight on our society which is the bigotry that is focused against gay men and lesbians.

I assume that a substantial proportion of you are trained academicians and/or clinicians, health professionals, experts in psychoanalytic and other psychological treatments. I have a little bit of an academic background, completely and totally unrelated to your experience. I have no expertise in the science of treating people or in the science of generalizing about populations of people and what motivates them. I come at this issue from the point of view of public policy, but I do not believe my total lack of expertise is terribly relevant in terms of how society should be responding to issues of bigotry.

So let me tell you where I am coming from on these issues. One: bigots are stupid people, ignorant people, sometimes led by people who are neither stupid nor ignorant, but are exploiting the underlying feelings of hatred and anger that bigots express. This is sort of a grand oversimplification and yet in the public policy debate, such broad oversimplifications have great power.¨

·¨America has been more successful than most societies in labeling bigotry for what it is, the evil that it is, the stupidity, the ignorance, the anger, the hatred, and ultimately the violence that flows from it. In institutional American life, it is no longer acceptable for the most part for people to be overtly anti-Semitic or overtly racist or overtly sexist or to express, in a generalized way, negative feelings about the disabled. The one bigotry that remains acceptable in large portions of American society is the bigotry against gay men and lesbians.

·More than fifty percent of gay men and lesbians experience some kind of incident, verbal or physical or otherwise, because of the perception of their sexual orientation. Nine percent of gay men and lesbians have been assaulted with a weapon and the rates are going up, not down. Every other category is down, but crimes against gays and lesbians are going up and that means people are being killed. Matthew Shepard was not an isolated case. People being killed because of the perception of who they are. Bigotry towards gay men and lesbians has been reinforced in institutional America with a variety of rationales. Some are based in theology, which for me has as much legitimacy as for example the justification of apartheid by the theology of the Dutch Reformed Church which rationalized racial bigotry.

·It is not acceptable to talk about civil rights on the basis of race, creed, color, gender, disability and accept bigotry against other people because of their sexual orientation. That is just wrong and there is no way to overcomplicate it, it is wrong in principle.¨

¨Crimes against gays and lesbians are going up and that means people are being killed. Matthew Shepard was not an isolated case. People being killed because of the perception of who they are.

Bigotry towards gay men and lesbians has been reinforced in institutional America with a variety of rationales. Some are based in theology...¨

read it all, click HERE

·Thanks to Mr. Alan Hevesi, Comptroller of the City of New York
·Thanks to The Public Forum on Homophobia
·Thanks to The American Psychoanalytic Foundation
·Thanks to The Reverend Jerry Maneker
·Thanks to Flickr Photosharing
·Thanks to A Christian Voice For Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights, at the right side bar

PERMISSIBLE PREJUDICES: Or real abuse by well meaning religious people, Part II

The Reverend Professor Peter John Gomes
Public Forum on Homophobia
The American Psychoanalytic Foundation

Reverend Professor Peter John Gomes. Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1942, the Reverend Professor Gomes is
an American Baptist Minister ordained to the Christian Ministry by the First Baptist Church of Plymouth, Massachusetts. Since 1970, he has served in the Memorial Church, Harvard University and since 1974, as Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church. A member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Faculty of Divinity of Harvard University, Professor Gomes holds degrees from Bates College and from Harvard Divinity School and honorary degrees from nine American colleges. He is an Honorary Fellow of Emmanuel College, the University of Cambridge, England.

·¨It falls to me as a Christian minister and a practitioner of religion to indicate that in the matter of sexual prejudice, religion is fundamentally a part of the problem and one can only hope that by acknowledging that, it may well indeed become part of the solution as well. Perhaps the one thing that my profession and yours have in common is that we have a great deal to answer for in the question of this prejudice which we are confronting today.

·Scripture sanctioned racial segregation, and that the most religious, most churched, most piously populated parts of the country not coincidentally happen to be those places in which racism and slavery and segregation long have flourished. The most pious people found the Bible their easiest ally in maintaining the advantageous social status quo, and saw no conflict in their consciousness between their religious profession on one hand, and their heinous social practices on the other.

·I have come to the conclusion that, at least for people like myself who are practicing religious people, the way to function within the communities of faith is to address the contradiction, the disconnect, as we now like to say, between profession of principle on the one hand and grievous practice and violation of their principle on the other hand and to do so not simply with a wagging of the moral finger, but by pointing to the moral high ground which the Bible and all of our religious traditions affirm.¨

¨When anyone looks at the record of our religious treatment of the other in the culture, we find that the first and the last resort used to justify a prejudice is the fact that the Bible tells me so.¨ read it all, click HERE

A Kaleidoscope of Horrors
By Philip Kennedy

¨From the Christian emperor Justinian in the sixth century until the eighteenth century, Christian communities around Europe regularly put homosexuals to death by burning, beheading, flaying, drowning or hanging them. The ancient Christian thinkers Tertullian, Eusebius and John Chrysostom all argued that same sex relations deserve the penalty of death. ...In medieval Europe, secular laws often invoked the authority of the bible to execute homosexuals. Bologna adopted the death penalty for sodomy in 1259. Padua followed suit in 1329; Venice in 1342; Rome in 1363; Cremona in 1387; Milan in 1476; and Genoa in 1556. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain actively sought out sodomites to be burned. In the hundred and twenty five years after Calvin taught in Geneva, there were thirty burnings, beheadings, drownings, and hangings of homosexuals in that city. Scores of men and boys were hanged for homosexual activity in Georgian England. Before the advent of modernity, women in Europe were also vulnerable to execution if convicted of lesbianism. The history of churches' treatment of gay people has for over a thousand years been a history of hatred, persecution and death. To this day, standard Christian textbooks devoted to moral theology and commenting on homosexuality are usually trite treatises because of their complete silence on the long-standing brutality meted out to homosexuals by churches, whether Roman Catholic, Anglican or Protestant. For homosexuals, the history of the Christian church has been a kaleidoscope of harrowing horrors. Their fortunes have now changed. Physical violence has mutated into rhetorical violence, although there are still nine countries today where homosexual behavior is punishable by death.¨

A History of Horrors, read it all at Father Jake, click HERE

Attention Dr. Nazir-Ali, ¨quit talking rubbish¨ read it all, click HERE

Jamaicas only safe Church for LGBT Christians, read it all, click
HERE

ATTENTION RELIGIOUS RIGHT: Are you responsible when thugs bash our heads in? Why is it you who make America and the WORLD hate and fear us? read it all, click HERE

BURN BABY BURN: A Knight, a Squire, a Bishop, a Steward, Five RC Monks and millions of murders initiated by bigots at Church!¨ read it all, click HERE

There is no God authorized excuse for the cruelty, injustice and fear/hate-mongering at Church directed toward the demonizing and persecution of LGBT Anglicans/Christians/others.

A generous, kind and loving apology from Archbishop Tutu to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered citizens everywhere:

¨May I wholly inadequately apologize to my sisters and brothers who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered for the cruelty and injustice that you have suffered and continue to suffer at the hands of us, your fellow Anglicans; I am sorry. Forgive us for all the pain we have caused you and which we continue to inflict on you." ++Tutu



The Most Reverend Desmond Tutu, The Anglican Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace and recently awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama

·Thanks to Reverend Professor Peter John Gomes
·Thanks to The Public Forum on Homophobia
·Thanks to The American Psychoanalytic Foundation
·Thanks to The Reverend Jerry Maneker
·Thanks to Father Jake, at the right side bar
·Thanks to Phillip Kennedy
·Thanks to Archbishop Desmond Tutu
·Thanks to A Christian Voice For Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights, at the right side bar