Ex-Gay Watch

Maybe I should set up an autoforward of it for you.

These guys are just like the people who said that integration of blacks and whites in schools and public accomodations would mean the end of civilization.

These guys are just like the people who said that marriage between people of different races would mean the end of civilization.

What will bring an end to Western Civilization is not the gay and lesbian movement – it is the theocratic movement led by the very same people screeching that the sky is falling because Adam and Steve might have a legally-recognized marriage.

Theocracy is the danger. Theocracy is the goal of every last one of the right wing social/religious conservative groups. They all want to impose their interpretation of Mosaic law on the rest of us. Read Margaret Atwood’s “Handmaid’s Tale” to get a glimpse of the horrors that await all of us should the right wing gain the total power that they seek.

Another book that I highly recommend to combat the moonbats is Sam Harris’ “The End of Faith”. A voice of reason crying in the wilderness, Harris exposes the problems with “faith” and why our freedoms are threatened by people who believe that their religion is “the only way” and that they are justified in killing or oppressing anyone who doesn’t convert to their way of thinking.

A little OT, but I really wish that XGW would make it an editorial policy not to use the word “hysterical.” It is a sexist term.

Correction: the word Dan used was “hysteria.” But same thing. Here’s is the etymology of “hysteria” from miriamwebster.com:

“New Latin, from English hysteric, adjective, from Latin hystericus, from Greek hysterikos, from hystera womb; from the Greek notion that hysteria was peculiar to women and caused by disturbances of the uterus”

Would that mean sinister is a slur against left-handed persons?

And to be somewhat on topic, how many people desire to join the institution that they are attacking? The behavior would be counter-productive.

kurt,

I can sympathize with being sensitive to the women and not deliberately offending folks, but I think you’re being a little too PC here. The current usage of the word has no gender connotations associated with it that I know of.

Just as “incredible” no longer means that you think the other person is lying, and “fantastic” no longer suggest that something is based in fantasy, words often change meaning. For example, “liberal” and “conservative” have very little in common with what they meant 100 years ago. Even “discrimination” has changed from something that implied that you were good in making judgements to meaning the opposite: biased and irrational.

So unless hysterical is currently offensive to the women that write here (is it women?) then let’s not ban a word because it once upon a time was based on a sexist premise.

On a tangent, it is this changing of meanings of words that causes me to question much of the literalist approach to scripture. Without an understanding of the culture in which something what written, you can lose meaning and end up with an interpretation that is the opposite of what was intended.

If I said something about using strategery, you would know that I was mocking the President’s misuse of words and meant a bumbling poorly thought-out approach masquerading as strategy. However 2000 years from now scholars may think I’m talking about being very wise.

When Paul selected the word arsenokoitai in 1 Corinthians, he selected a word for which there is no other concurrent reference. Perhaps it was slang, perhaps he made it up. But without any other useage at that time and with no cultural signposts to compare we frankly just have no idea whatsoever what Paul meant.

The word appears to be some combination of “man” and “couch”. Perhaps it was a condemnation of sex between men, but it could also have referred to prostitution or half a dozen other things. For all we know, this could be slang term for women who went from one man’s couch to another. Because we don’t know what this word means, it’s a pretty weak defense for the establishment of dogma and the passing of legislation.

While it is an interesting intellectual persuit to try and deduce meanings, to claim, as the anti-gay religious activist do, that they know what this word means and that it justifies mistreatment of gay people is both vain and cruel.

(sorry for the sideways rant)

Jon, I definately recommend the book End of Faith too.

Pushpak sho nuff had a point.

They aren’t ‘just like’. They ARE…dyed in the wool, let’s save the world from gay heathen…segregationists.
Anyone that wants a contributing, non criminal citizen to be separated not only from the protections and access to the Consitution, but from the pursuit of happiness too, IS a segregationist.

James Dobson is horrible! Don’t the people who listen to him have a clue about how self-righteous, pharasaical and self-serving he is? I wish that people would just wake up. What a creep that man has become as he has gotten richer and more powerful off of the unsuspecting sheep who are Dobson disciples.

I am having a serious crisis of faith over this issue. My crisis of faith is not about Jesus Christ but about many of those who profess to be Christians.

Dobson, Fallwell, Robertson and others remind me of a song I was listening to not long ago. That ingenius song by Joni Mitchell called “TAX FREE”.

TAX FREE by Joni Mitchell

Front rooms
Back rooms
Slide into tables
Crowd into bathrooms
Joke around
Cheap talk
Deep talk
Talk talk talk around the clock
Crawl home
Lie down
Teeth chatter
Heart pounds
I don’t feel so good
I don’t feel so good
Push a button to escape
Preacher on the tube crying “Lord!”
There’s evil in this land

(Evangelist:)
“Rock and roll music!”
“Cast down these dope fiends
and there noisy bands!”
“Damn their souls!”

Preacher preaching love like vengeance
Preaching love like hate
Calling for large donations
Promising estates
Rolling lawns and angel bands
Behind the pearly gates
You know he will have his in this life
But yours will have to wait
He’s immaculately tax free

“Multiple hundreds of thousands of…”
Tax free
“Hundreds and millions of dollars”
Tax free
“A hundred billion dollars!
And who is paying the price?
Who who
“Your children are”

Pissed off
Jacked up
Scream into the mike
Spit into the loving cup
Strut like a rooster
March like a man
God’s hired hands and the devil bands
Packing the same grandstands
Different clothes
“Pot in their pockets!”
Different hair
“Sexually active”
Raise a screaming guitar
or a bible in the air
Theatre of anguish
Theatre of glory
God’s hired hands and the devil bands
Oh come let us adore – ME!
Lord, there’s danger in this land
You get witch-hunts and wars
When church and state hold hands

[F%@k] it!
Tonight I’m going dancing
With the drag queens and the punks
Big beat deliver me
From this sanctimonious skunk
We’re no flaming angels
And he’s not heaven sent
How can he speak for the Prince of Peace
When he’s hawk right militant
And he’s immaculately tax free

“Our nation has lost its guts!”
Save me
“Our nation has lost its strength”
Tax free
“Our nation has whimpered and cried”
Save me
“And petted the Castros”
Tax free
“The Khomeinis’ and the Kaddafis’”
Save me
“For so long”
Tax free
“That we don’t know how to act like a man”
Save me
“I think that we should turn the United States Marines
loose on that little island south of Florida and
stop that problem!”
“I am preachin’ love, I am!”

SharonB at May 31, 2006 04:34 PM

Mark 10:10-12 – “When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.”"

Isn’t Dobson a scriptural literalist? Or is that only when it is convenient such as when condemning gays?

It never ceases to amaze me how Mr.Dobson and others like him fail to either understand or omit Matt.Ch.7 “Judge not least ye be judged” or understand the actual teaching of Jesus Christ.
Jesus never excluded anyone from coming unto him or worship him plus Jesus’s teaching is about Love,Compassion and Tolerance for all human being regardless of their journey in life.
Jesus isn’t about hate or exculsion and as Mr.Dobson will have to admit we are all sinners so why would he judge in Jesus’s place.As Jesus said Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone.
Mr.Dobson and others like him help prove the point Jesus made when he said many will come in my name only to deceive,Wolves in Sheep Clothing.
Jesus was and isn’t about perpetuating hate,fear and ignorance which Mr.Dobson and others seem content in doing rather then accepting diversity and gaining true knowledge and understanding of things they don’t understand.
People need to stop useing Jesus’s name in order to perpetuate their hate,fear and ignorance of things they don’t want to find understanding in.
Regardless of whats been said or what will be said Jesus is not about hate or exclusion.He’s about Love,Compassion and Tolerance.Anyone who preaches otherwise is merely a wolf in sheeps clothing.Lets hope christians who don’t understand this will.If not their hate will consume them which is contrary to the teachings of Jesus.
Sincerely,
Dee

Anybody seen that new game by Left Behind creators: http://www.leftbehindgames.com/. Non-Christians (Jews, Catholics, gays, etc.–their beliefs, not mine) are forced to convert or be killed: http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/5/29/195855/959.

I thought it was satire, but watching the trailer was very scary.