The Anti-Gay Screed Of An Idiot

The blood is boiling. Angry.

Sometimes I hate opening my inbox and finding the new batch of solitary hells that are contained within like some sort of festering cancer. Today was no exception.

The “editor-in-chief” of LifeSiteNews.com, John-Henry Westen, spoke to a hoard of anti-choice, anti-gay monsters this week in Italy at what can only be described as a convention of hate. I don’t like bringing any attention to these douche-bags unless it is absolutely necessary, which it seems to be. Here are some choice excerpts from the article.

It is an act of love, he said, for parents to correct and discipline their children. “It is not love,” he said, “to allow your children to rampantly misbehave without correcting them.”

“So too the Church, especially Her shepherds – the fathers of souls - must feed the flock, must teach the truths however difficult and politically incorrect. That is true love.”

So gay people are children who need to be corrected and disciplined. I think the church has had a pretty good display of its discipline for the “wrongdoings” of society, from the Inquisition to the “Kill The Gays” bill in Uganda. Perhaps John-Henry should be addressing the lot of priest who were less interested in correcting their flock than they were “feeding the flock” of children as much of their penises as they could.

Christians, he said, have balked at defending their beliefs in all the areas of concern in the Culture Wars, from abortion, adultery, homosexuality and divorce to human embryonic stem cell research.

Does anyone truly think that the church is quiet on any of these subjects? There is proof about 30 miles from my home that the church is quite vocal on the areas of abortion, homosexuality, and stem cell research. Who is blowing up abortion clinics? Who is attacking gay people? Who couldn’t keep their damned noses out of stem cell research? The church, that’s who.

Take Prop 8 in California, for example. The Mormon Church bankrolled the entire fight against allowing two people who love each other to get married. Before you ask, I do lump all churches in together. Mormons are the same as Muslims are the same as Hindus are the same as Satanists. It all the same bullshit lies and myths with a different Brand Name.

The Catholic Church is the worst offender when it comes to human rights. A group that has a history of fostering hatred for Jews, assisting the Nazis, and raping children should have a better mind to keep their opinions about society to themselves.

Westen posed the question of how Christians can now begin to present their beliefs forthrightly in a culture that is so firmly rejecting them. The answer, he said, is to be found in the Christian principle of love of neighbour. Specifically, the love of those suffering from homosexual temptations and those men and women in the grip of a destructive lifestyle.

I don’t think this guy gets it. Society rejects his beliefs because they are fucking stupid! This isn’t 1500, as much as the church would like it to be, and no one gives a shit about what the church has to say about subjects that they obviously have no idea about. Their version of Christian Love ™ consists of smiling to your face and telling you that you are scum and are going to burn in hell for eternity if you don’t denounce who you are. The only reason that homosexuals are suffering is because of fucking bigots like this guy.

I can’t bring myself to quote any more of this tripe. This is the face of the church. This is what they all think of those who don’t buy in to their bullshit. The problem lies in the fact that people like John-Henry have the ear of many politicians and world leaders. The tragedy is that anyone listens to what he has to say.

What should we do about people like this, if anything?

American Gay

In case you haven't seen it, Dan Savage's It Gets Better project is just awesome. In light of the recent, tragic suicides by gay teens who obviously had no support in the various shitty places they lived, Dan set up a YouTube channel for people to send in their own videos telling how things got much better once they became adults and moved on with their own lives.

It really is an awful situation: you're gay, lesbian, bi, or hell anything other than straight, skinny, and white, and you live in Bumfuck, Tennessee, and if you so much as part your hair the wrong way someone will call you a fag and kick your teeth in. A lot of people understand being bullied; it happens to many kids, true. However most people who are bullied go home to a supportive family that will pat them on the back and tell them they love them.

It's different to be bullied for the very essence of who you are, and then have that bullying come from the adults around you too. As Sarah Silverman succinctly puts it:

"...don't be fucking shocked and wonder where all these bullies are coming from that are torturing kids and driving them to kill themselves because they're different---they learned it from watching you."

I guess it's something that I'm destined never to understand---why it is that people go apeshit when someone is different. And when people start matter-of-factly explaining to me that the bible (or what about the Koran?) clearly lays out what is expected from the sexes---besides the obvious ridiculousness of people holding up a haphazard collection of thousand-year-old letters as instructions for life---my brain can't figure out whether to kill that person or die laughing.

Here's how I feel about it: men and women come in various, ever changing forms that run a broad spectrum and often bleed into each other. Not only does society constantly re-evaluate what it means to be a "man" and a "woman", but the very traits we deem masculine or feminine shift camps constantly. Androgyny is more common than people realize. Hermaphrodites and even newer combinations of sex do occur. Whatever a person's physical sex is, they can be attracted to any or all or combinations of any sex; their preferences may be fixed, or may change over time. I think all of this is a good thing, and just makes for more interestingness. If someone wears something that's odd, it makes my day interesting----what it doesn't do is invoke fear or rage, which seems to be exactly how people who oppose gay rights feel after seeing a gay person.

If a guy wants to wear women's clothes and fuck dudes, that's cool. If a guy wants to wear women's clothes and fuck women, that's cool too. If a girl is a totally girly-girl to the point that she just loves eating pussy, that is awesome. If a man feels he was born into the wrong body, and pursues treatment to alter his physical sex, I wish him the best in finding his true self. And if regular old straight people want to fuck each other however they want to, that's cool too. Because I don't believe in interfering in the sex lives of consenting adults. How is this hard to understand? Why do people get fixated on the "grossness" of what other people who are enjoying what they are doing are doing?

But mostly, it's very irritating that gay people don't have full rights, when the only opposition comes from religion, and our government is supposed to be secular---not imposing one group's religious beliefs on the rest of the nation. So someone doesn't like the clothes that someone wears and who they're in love with, so they get to deprive them of basic civil rights? What century is this? As it's been said, it's no wonder that gay teens with no support system feel lost to the point of no return.

Discriminate If You Like, It Let's Me Know Who The Bigots Are

The Supreme Court is going to be hearing a case this week, Christian Legal Society Chapter v. Martinez, that has some pretty hefty implications for college groups across the nation. The Christian Legal Society is arguing that the policy of non-discrimination when it comes to admitting groups on the University of California, Hastings College Of The Law campus is unconstitutional because it doesn't allow the groups to bar people from joining them based on religious or sexual orientation reasons.

Who would have thought that it would have been a Christian group that wanted to discriminate against gays and atheists? I mean, it isn't like religion has a long history of openness and acceptance. But I digress.

In this particular case, as much as it pains me to say, I have to agree with the Christian group. The implications of this case reach a little further, a lot further, than just not discriminating against someone who wants to join your club. For example, if there was an atheist group that was not allowed to discriminate against religious people, a christian group could effectively pile the group with Christians, take all of the officer positions, and shut the group down. Easy peasy.

The sticking point is going to be that a group that operates on the campus actually receives funding from the state university system.

Official recognition brings the right to use the Hastings name and logo, access to an e-mail address with a link to the law school's network, office space and meeting rooms, and small grants from student-activity fees and university funds.

That is where you have to draw the line, for religious, atheist, gay, or white-supremacists groups. You shouldn't stop anyone from forming a group. Ever. But, if the group is based on something that does not correlate to education at the school, then there should be no help at all from the university system. This is not to say that you couldn't have a "LGBT Rights" group on the campus of Hastings that received funding from the state. That is an issue that attracts straight people and the LGBT community alike. There could also be a "Religious Freedom" group that received benefits. However, when you have a specifically Christian or Muslim or Jewish or, yes, Atheist group, then there should be no funding from the state system.

Besides, having the Christian group take a stand like this is fantastic. I love it when I can easily pick out a group of bigoted idiots.