Good Republican Sheep

My parents are your typical good Republican sheep. My mother has said she votes by looking for the "R" next to someone's name. My father still maintains he voted for Prop 8 because he didn't want them teaching about Gays in schools. My mother has previously stated the same reason for her vote for Prop 8. (Remember that Prop 8 had nothing in it pertaining to education, and that the FAIR Education Act was signed into law in July of this year.) They supported the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the richest people, not realizing that these tax cuts gave them no benefit at all. My parents have always supported whatever measure or ideas brought up by mainstream Republicans.

When I mentioned the recent news about the Republicans not supporting the extension of the payroll tax cuts that would benefit the working people, I shouldn't have been surprised by their blind support of that position. My father spouted off that while the effect was the raising of taxes, it was really just letting something expire and that everything needs to be paid for. (Never mind the fact that tax cuts for the wealthiest never have to be paid for...) And then it occurred to me: these payroll tax cuts don't matter to them! My father makes around $120k a year. But this is a Social Security tax break, and as Think Progress points out, "the [Social Security] tax only applies to the first $106,800 of a worker’s wages." So my parents will receive the maximum amount of benefits, but it won't be the full 2% of their income that it could be.

Though now that I'm writing about it and seeing the numbers, I don't see why $2,136 wouldn't be important to them. My parents are drowning in credit card debt, and that money could go to paying that off. Once again, maybe they're just being good Republican sheep.

On the other side of things, my fiancee makes less than the $106,800 that the Social Security maxes out at, so we'd get the full 2% benefit, though not a full $2,136. We have no credit card debt. We have been trying to buy a house, so all the money we can save will go towards our new home.

I often wonder where I came from. With a family so blindly conservative, how did they raise such a critical thinker? Even my sister is intelligent, driving towards more free thinking. (We will see how far she drifts from them as she leaves home. Leaving their house really helped me grow.) Somehow I've changed them in a few ways, educating my mother every so often about the crazy things Republicans have done, showing them that even us gays deserve our rights. My father now supports marriage equality. I'll keep hoping for them to make educated votes. It bothers me so much when they vote against their own interests. I think it bothers them that I didn't grow up to be another good Republican sheep.

Good Morning. This is God.

I saw a "Good Morning, this is God" poster on Etsy a while back and felt that it needed altering. Here's my version.

Good Morning. This is God. There are some things that need to be made clear.
I have 7 billion children. I cannot give my devoted attention to each and every one of you each and every day.
Please do your part to make our world a better place.
Instead of asking me to provide shelter for the homeless, please volunteer at a homeless shelter.
Instead of asking me to provide food for the hungry, please donate to a food bank.
Instead of asking me to heal the sick, please donate to medical centers.
Instead of asking me to spread love throughout the world, please perform random acts of kindness.
Instead of asking me to heal the environment, please reduce your own waste and plant a tree.
Instead of asking me to help those who are hurting, please volunteer at a call center.
Instead of asking me to have that cute crush call you, please call them yourself.
While I am flattered by your opinion of me, I wish you would do many of these things yourself.
I have made you with the power to change this world, and I would appreciate it if you use more of that power for good.
It is easier for me to focus on the larger problems if you do your part to assist with the smaller problems that you can solve or prevent. Then, hopefully, we can all work together to make the world a better place for all of my children.

Where is my America?

Via HuffPostHill Yfrog

When I was in school my teachers told me that America was a great Democracy. That we had personal freedoms other countries dreamed of. This was a country to be proud of simply because we had free speech, free assembly, and free press. We could speak out if we saw wrongs and injustices in our government. The press could write about these injustices. We could picket, protest, speak out. We, as citizens, were part of the whole process.

Reporters in other countries would fear for their lives if they got caught up in a situation of dissent from the government. They would fear for their livelihoods. The media was often controlled by the government in order to control everything that was said. People would be jailed or run over by tanks if they expressed frustration with the government. The police would beat them mercilessly. But America, this was a country to be proud of. This was a country where the people could speak and be heard.

And yet, there have been thousands of protestors with the Occupy Wall Street movement jailed, all across the country. Many charged with "being on the scene of a riot." Police have been throwing tear gas and flash grenades at large groups of peaceful protestors. Some have brutally beaten college students and other peaceful protestors. Dozens of reporters have been jailed, regardless of their press badges. The governments in many cities have told news organizations not to film during raids. They have forced news trucks and helicopters out of the areas during raids. Many reporters were fired just for standing with the protestors.

Maybe it's not the government who's pulling the strings. Maybe it's the banks and the corporations. Either way, this is not the nation I learned about in school. This is not the proud nation of personal freedoms my teachers boasted about. I don't know where that nation has gone to, but I do hope we can find it again. Because if this is what America is, I don't want to live here anymore.

Pro-Life? More like poor taste.

This video, a documentary called "180," made it to my Facebook feed a couple nights ago. It's over 30 minutes, and its content makes a drastic shift after the first 12 minutes.



The first thing I'd like to say is that I believe it is not a good tactic to equate the Holocaust with legalized abortion. Those two issues have great differences, and it's a disservice to each cause to compare them. You can't just say that since Hitler justified his crimes by calling the Jews "inhuman" it's the same as legalized abortion. There are many abortions that occur to save the mother! And there have been dramatically fewer deaths of women seeking abortion since it was legalized. Remember: abortions do not occur just because a woman hates children. Abortions happen because a woman is in an abusive relationship and doesn't want to bring a child into it. Abortions happen because a family can't afford a child. Abortions happen for a variety of very valid reasons. The Holocaust was a great tragedy, and legalized abortion should never be equated with it.

Let's imagine that abortion had never been legalized. They say 50 million abortions have occurred. Are all 50 million of those children born if abortion is illegal? The simple answer is no. Some of those women are going to get illegal abortions or induce miscarriage, as was happening prior to its legalization. Some of those will die, as also happened with illegal abortions. Some of the other women will unsuccessfully attempt to induce miscarriage, and instead have underweight, unhealthy children set up for a life of increased health risks. Many of the children born will come into homes where they are not wanted, and will not be properly cared for. Let's just assume that of those 50 million abortions, 40 million (80%) of them would have resulted in a live birth.

Today, over 16 million children live in homes where there is not always enough food.¹ According to surveys, about 21% of abortions occur because the mother knows she cannot afford the baby.² So let's figure that 21% of those 40 million children go into similar households. That's an additional 8.4 million children in homes without enough food. Some of those homes may have been financially okay without the addition of the child. So now we're up to over 24.4 million children living in homes without enough food. An additional 10% of abortions occur because having a child would disrupt education or career. We can figure that if those births occurred, some of these 4 million children would also be added to these financially and food insecure homes.

Let's look at some of the other reasons for abortion. The survey says that 14% of abortions occur because the mother is going through relationship issues, including a partner who may not want the baby, 12% are too young to be socially supported in having a baby, and nearly 8% do not want the child at all. These are high risk for abuse. Unwanted children are going to be abused from conception in many cases. You've just introduced 13.6 million children into homes where they are unwanted. These are children at high risk for abuse, at high risk for ending up in the foster care system, and at high risk for later criminal activity.

The answer these pro-lifers always give is adoption. If you can't afford to keep the baby, why don't you give them up for adoption? There is a problem with this. As science and medicine has advanced, more and more couples are having children through fertility medicine instead of adopting. There are still lots of children in the foster care system hanging in a sort of limbo waiting to find out if they even can be adopted, let alone whether they will be. Some of the parents of these unwanted children may try to tough it out, waiting until the child gets taken from their home by Child Protective Services, at which point older children are less likely to be adopted.

And even if all of these children who would have been born could be adopted, who do you think would be adopting them? It's not all the millionaires and billionaires who could afford to support these millions of children. They are not often the ones who have the heart to care for these unwanted children. Just consider how much economic issues we're having. Our cities are overcrowded. The national unemployment rate is nearly 10%. Do you think that flooding the country with over 40 million more children is going to improve our economic situation? I highly doubt it.

The last part of the video involves the interviewer asking the subjects about their various "sins," calling them liars and thieves and idolators, and asking them whether they thought they would go to Heaven or Hell. Even when I was part of the mainstream Protestant Christian church, I often did not like this tactic. This tactic of scaring people to Christ is not any more honest than requiring them to join the church by law. As a Unitarian Universalist, I find the practice even more abhorrent because I don't believe any of these people will be going to Hell, since I don't even believe there is a Hell. (This belief would take way too long to explain, so feel free to ask me about it if you can't find an explanation on the internet.) My outrage to this common Evangelical tactic is a whole post in itself, but I felt it was worth mentioning. Especially since the set the people up the way they did, starting with the holocaust and moving into abortion and finally their souls.

I find the whole video disturbing and inappropriate. What do you think?

[NOTE: This video even got mentioned at The Huffington Post for its crimes against sanity.]

NOTES & SOURCES:
¹ USDA Food Security Study: http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB56/EIB56_ReportSummary.html
² Wikipedia, Reasons for Abortions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_the_United_States#Reasons_for_abortions

Our America: Pray the Gay Away?

I get most of my news from LGBTQ Nation and Change. Well one day I saw a guest piece on LGBTQ Nation about the new episode of Lisa Ling's Our America. Our America has so far been a pretty noncontroversial show. It's about showing the parts/sides of America that most people may not see. She takes a neutral third-party stance in every episode, letting the people she interviews tell their story. So what could be so controversial about the latest episode?

This article appeared first at Truth Wins Out before it spread to an article on LGBTQ Nation and a Change petition. The outcry was from a single writer angry about an episode titled "Pray the Gay Away?". That's right, there is a question mark in that. Lisa Ling sought an answer to the question about the clash of Christianity and homosexuality.

The writer at TWO was upset because that meant a lot of air time to Exodus International and similar minds. They were upset because she didn't ask the hard questions and do good investigative journalism.

Ling was completely uninterested in Exodus’ nefarious lobbying efforts, including the group’s work to pass Proposition 8 in California and enthusiastic support of the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would ban marriage equality in the United States constitution. Could Ling not have taken a moment to explain how Exodus vigorously opposed federal hate crime legislation, was in favor of sodomy laws, and is still fighting against all efforts to protect students from bullying in schools?

No, it was more important for Ling to humanize a group of activists dedicated to dehumanizing LGBT people than to state the plain facts. Better to produce a tearjerker for Oprah than shine a spotlight on the anti-gay jerks causing tears for their victims.

I'd like to point out a problem with this article. Namely the fact that they accuse Ling of not doing good investigative journalism while not doing any themselves. I didn't see any kind of freak out when they aired the episode she made about sex offenders. There was no outcry about her humanizing a group of rapists and child molesters.

So, out of curiosity, I watched the episode in question. Yes, probably more than half the time was given to Exodus International and one other similar program. However, she also featured The Naming Project, a youth summer camp based on keeping the Christian faith and accepting your LGBTQ identity. There were also interviews with Michael Bussee, a co-founder of Exodus International who left after (1) seeing the harm the program was doing and (2) falling in love with another member. He spoke on the harmfulness of the program, and what he found in accepting himself as a Gay Christian.

Unlike all the insanity that was written about the episode, I found it to be pretty balanced. Not once did Ling affirm that you could change your sexual orientation. A few people in the ex-gay programs did say that they didn't feel it really did. She even pointed out that one of the members seemed very gay and she couldn't imagine him ever marrying a woman.

There is one thing that the writer at TWO was absolutely correct about, which is that Alan Chambers, the current EI president, lied during the episode to make himself look better to outsiders. After telling Ling that he believed those gays who really love Christ would also be in Heaven, he issued a statement clarifying his belief that gays are still not allowed in Heaven. He was a deceptive jerk on the show, but did you expect him to be honest? He wanted to make his program look more alluring in this tense climate.

However, my biggest problem with the whole TWO attack is that the writer seemed to make up his mind before the episode even aired. They wrote an article hours before the show aired, asking for some intense investigative journalism. That decision set them up for disappointment because it was beyond the scope of the show. Don't get me wrong. I'd love a good main-stream investigative look at Exodus and their associates, but it's not going to happen on the Oprah Winfrey Network (eerily abbreviated to OWN).

My opinion in short: (1) journalists should do their homework before accusing someone of not doing their job, (2) Lisa Ling did the job she claims to do and stayed mostly neutral, and (3) it was a pretty good (and quite moving) show.

If you'd like to see the full episode, try here, though it seems to be a bit buggy today. It is episode 4 of Our America, and it aired on March 8.

Progress In the Church

Right off the bat, Murray Richmond catches your attention with the title "I preached against homosexuality, but I was wrong."

His first sentence states the "huge shift in American attitudes toward gay marriage," which recent polls from many groups put around 53 percent approval (up from 32 percent in 2004). The second sentence gets the ball rolling on the rest of his column. "I am one of those people who changed their minds."

There are some wonderful quotes as he goes through his story. He says that after 5 years of being a minister in the Presbyterian Church, homosexuality became the big issue. His response was this:

The truth is, I was put out that this was an issue. Feeding the hungry, preaching the gospel, comforting the afflicted, standing up to racial intolerance -- these were the struggles I signed up for, not determining the morality of what adults did in their bedrooms.

But the debate would not go away. It came up, again and again, year after year, pushed by activists on either end. Each time, I grudgingly voted to hold the traditional line and limit the role of gays in the church. But I felt increasingly uncomfortable. What I believed was biblically correct began to feel less and less right in my heart.

Later, Richmond says that he talked to a man who "finally decided ... that God was more concerned with his pride than his sexuality."

Another epic quote is this:

Toward the end of my parish ministry, I was approached by five individuals who demanded that I do a sermon to come out strong against any acceptance of gays and lesbians in the church. They wanted to hear what the Bible said on the issue. The funny thing was, all five of them were divorced and remarried. Had I done a sermon on what the Bible said about divorce, every one of them would have left the church in a huff.

He then said that he did that sermon, but did not feel so great about it. He says he took a "back-door approach to the subject." Also saying, "[I]f we were going to start throwing out sinners from our church, I wanted to start with the gossips."

By far the best part comes at the end of his story:

With distance, I could see the mean-spirited nature of the anti-gay movement, and the naked way large Christian organizations used the "gay threat" to raise money. Free from the constraints of a congregation, I could spend more time actually looking at the biblical texts that deal with homosexuality, and I was surprised to find they were not as clear as I had supposed they were. At this point, I have done a 180 on the topic. And I believe it's a change for the good.

So why had we singled out homosexuality as a litmus test for True Christianity in the first place? Why had it become such a lightning rod for self-righteousness?

One reason, I think, is that it's easy to condemn homosexuality if you are not gay. It is much harder than condemning pride, or lust or greed, things that most practicing Christians have struggled with. It is all too easy to make homosexuality about "those people," and not me. If I were to judge someone for their inflated sense of pride, or their tendency to worship various cultural idols, I would feel some personal stake, some cringe of self-judgment. Not so with homosexuality. 



Now I am wondering why, if two gay people want to commit their lives to one another, they should ever be denied that chance. No church or pastor should be forced to perform those ceremonies, and they can choose not to recognize gay marriage for their adherents. But the constitution of the Presbyterian Church does not explicitly forbid a pastor from being a thief, a murderer, or an egotistical jerk. It is not designed to do these things. It does prohibit a gay person from becoming a pastor. All I can ask is: Why?

I think he definitely found a good reason as to why it's so easy for conservatives to attack gays. I have found it often is an "us vs. them" sort of issue. It's like how it can be so easy for people to be racist or classist because the people you're against are people you can't relate to. If you were condemning someone for doing something you struggled with, you'd have to confront the issue of your own struggle, or take a seat on the ego throne and say you're still better than them.

Probably the saddest part of this whole issue is what he says about his congregation: "And while the people who believed it should be accepted were not going to leave if we maintained a position of non-acceptance, those who felt it was a sin would bolt in a heartbeat if we ever allowed gay clergy or gay marriage. If they bolted, half our budget would go out the door." I'd like to challenge anyone in a church that preaches non-acceptance to go against this. Talk to the clergy, stand up to the position, and don't ever be afraid to go looking for a more accepting church.

I'm hoping that his change in attitude will spread. I know there's not a whole lot I can do, as I'm not active in the Christian church. However, I hope that there are people out there who will take his ideas to heart. I hope there are pastors and ministers and priests who have family or friends or parishioners who are gay, people who will show them that we're not evil or possessed or some group of "them" that will never affect them. Send Richmond's story to your clergy, your family, your friends. Tell them to keep an open mind. Maybe, just maybe, we will make more progress in changing people's views and gaining true equality in this nation and in the world.

If you missed the first link, you can find Murray Richmond's story of transformation here.

Thanks to LGBTQ Nation for tweeting about this special transformation.