Speak Compassion

Press Conference: Former Ex-Gay Leaders Apologize

June 27, 2007

Leaders from Soulforce and BeyondExGay.com just completed a press conference at the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center.

Three former ex-gay leaders issued public apologies for the roles they played in ex-gay ministries affiliated with Exodus International. They also shared portions of their personal stories.

 Statement of Apology From Former Exodus Leaders

As former leaders of ex-gay ministries, we apologize to those individuals and families who believed our message that there is something inherently wrong with being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.  Some who heard our message were compelled to try to change an integral part of themselves, bringing harm to themselves and their families. Although we acted in good faith, we have since witnessed the isolation, shame, fear, and loss of faith that this message creates. We apologize for our part in the message of broken truth we spoke on behalf of Exodus and other organizations.

We call on other former ex-gay leaders to join the healing and reconciliation process by adding their names to this apology.

We encourage current leaders of ex-gay programs to have the courage to evaluate the fruit of their programs. We ask them to consider the long-term effects of their ministry.

Full Statements from former Exodus Leaders

Darlene Bogle

Michael Bussee

Jeremy Marks

Americans for Truth is reporting on 2 Christian men who went to Chicago’s gay pride to hand out bible messages condemning homosexuality.   Then men portray the “torture” they got for doing this and make the claim that the police refused to defend their right to free speech. (The same tactic used by the philly 11).

The one Christian reports:

While talking to her, several things began to occur. First, I remember the most sinister laughter, mocking and jeering I have ever heard. The crowd despised Joe’s preaching. People from the crowd were yelling out at us and moving closer to us. Someone from a balcony up above us threw some kind of bottle — I think it was plastic - and hit Joe on his left shoulder. Another man came up and tried to light the banner with his cigarette lighter. While trying to do this someone sprayed beer on both of us and another man poured beer on Joe. At about this point it crossed my mind that we might just be casting our pearls before swine.

Lets start with me saying that the gays and lesbians at the parade should have channelled their anger into love using creative nonviolence.   I will continue to spread the word about this and hope and dream it happens.  If Gandhi could do it, If King could do it, then I should damn well try my best to get the word out.  Any bloggers that want to help spread the message of new and more peaceful ways to respond to hate, please send them to SoulForce or here to me, but we will never get the rights we seek when we are pouring beer on the heads of our adversary or lighting them on fire.  Rather than making new allies in the fight for rights, we only make enemies.

Now, back to this create the victim status:

These guys went to a gay event to condemn gay people.   Should anyone be surprised that they were not welcomed with open arms? The showed up with a banner that read:

Lied, Stolen, Lusted? Homosexual, Fornicator, Drunkard? Repent and call on the Lord Jesus to Escape Hell and at the bottom burningheartsoutreach.com

I am sure if a  KKK neo-nazi showed up at the pride parade of any non-white minority saying they would go to hell oe some other statement that said group would find offensive or inflammatory, that would get ugly too! What made these guys think this was going to “bring people to Christ”.   From the sounds of this, their actions were not only poorly thought out, but more about them then any real care for GLBT folk’s salvation.  If they really cared about our “salvation” they would have used a tactic that speaks to us, not offends us.

More from the man’s account:

We got our banner back. I asked the police to defend our free speech rights. He said, “Let’s be practical. There are 400,000 of them and only a handful of us.” He said the banner was inflammatory and that the police could not control the crowd if Joe continued preaching. If he continued preaching he would have to arrest us. I think he was thinking of his duty to protect us.

The police told these men to stop preaching or they would arrest them.   As far as I am concerned the police had every right to do so in light of public safety.  Free speech does not provide a platform for speech.   Protesters are regularly sectioned off for public safety.   They too would be arrested if they ventured outside of the area given to them to exercise their free speech rights.  These men were inciting what could have become a riot.   The police have every obligation to respond to that for the sake of public safety. 

I feel bad these guys were treated so badly.  I would hope GLBT folks would learn to just ignore them or respond to their hate with love, but that doesn’t overshadow the fact these men created the events that happen.  They should not have gone to a pride event, where people were not in a position to listen to them.  If you want to reach gay people, start by not offending them from the start.   Going into the crowd of drunk homo’s and proclaiming they are going to hell isn’t going to bring anyone to god, it turns them away from god, pisses people off, and brings people to a bad place.   These two men knew that.   They have seen the news of the Philly 11, and other events and knew exactly what they were doing and here are my thoughts:

• These two men jeopardized public safety,
• they basically did the equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded theater,
• and they are lucky no one got hurt, they didn’t get arrested and that a riot didn’t follow this crazy practice.
• These men should take responsibility for their actions rather than blaming GLBT folks and the police. 
• Peter LaBarbera should stop his hateful tactics of painting GLBT person in bad light every chance he gets.   His need to express such hatred is only topped by Fred Phelps and Company. 

More and more I see the need for GLBT folks to follow in the true spirit of the Civil Rights Movement of King.  Their successes came from the use of nonviolence in response to hate.  We as a whole community need to work on this response.

There is an interesting article, followed by a program tonight on CNN’s Paula Zahn, that examines the science of sexual orientation.  I don’t have cable, so I won’t be watching the show, but the article implies it will be looking at the similarities that gays and lesbians all seem to share in regard to walking, talking, hearing and other traits.  I feel rather uncomfortable with some it, because of the stereotypes of people “walking gay” or “talking gay” but it would seem to explain how people were calling me a fag before I even knew what it meant.  I know many other gays and lesbians who share that same experience.   People seem to know we are gay before we even know.  My own mother tells me that she always knew.  She can’t say how, but she knew when I was small.

Do gay people all walk the same?

Do gay people talk the same or share the same hair “whorl”?

Let the science decide.

I have my own reservations as to what science will do to end the violence against gays, but maybe if we can show scientifically that few people really do change their sexual orientation, then people will stop saying this is a choice.   According to my mother, if this was a choice, then I made the choice at about 3 years old.  Don’t know what I was thinking, and it seems not to be an informed choice I made at such a young age, but according to my mom, that would be around the time she seems to think she knew I was gay.   So if this is a choice, I made the choice to be gay at 3.  (yes, I am laughing as I write this)

I usually never do these things, but Kevin Tagged me (damn bastard) and I really like Kevin (Damn Bastard who tagged me), so I will do it.

I am suppose to list 8 things people might not know about me. Considering this website is pretty much about me and my thoughts, my music, photography and other stuff, this should be hard for me.

1. I played little league baseball, street hockey, swimming, diving and ran track when I was a kid.
2. I refuse, even at the threat of death, to eat peas.
3. I was raised a Catholic, and went to both Catholic Grammar and High school.
4. At an early age I wanted to be a priest even pretending to hold a mass in my basement with my friends.
5. I have a majestic sun tattooed on the base of my neck. This way, even on a rainy day I have the sun smiling at my back, warming me.
6. I have really small duck feet. I only where a size 5 and 1/2 shoe, but really, really wide. “They call him flipper….”
7. I took my first piano lesson at age 5.
8. I use to own a small 14 foot sailboat called a “Phantom” and race it. I never won with it, but I loved to sail.

Wow, that was hard. I got to 4 and had to think what I was willing to share on the Internet and what was fun to write. It is all Kevin’s fault!

But now I get to tag eight (8) others…..yeah!!!!!!!! So I tag:

Mark at Chester Street

Jody Wheeler at Naked Writing

Alvin at Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters

Stacy Harp at Active Christian Media

Alan Chambers at Exodus

okay that is all I could think of on a Friday night. Too tired to try for more…..

The web is buzzing over recent comments by Exodus International leader Alan Chambers.  Apparently Chambers has implied in his comments that no one really completely changes from gay to heterosexual.  Chamber’s first quote was on CNN:

“For one for someone to simply think that going from straight to gay is like flipping a light switch, that’s something that we want to correct at every turn.” as reported by Box Turtle Bulletin

He followed that the next day with a report in the Los Angeles Times, the article states:(bold print mine)

With years of therapy, Chambers says, he has mostly conquered his own attraction to men; he’s a husband and a father, and he identifies as straight. But lately, he’s come to resent the term “ex-gay”: It’s too neat, implying a clean break with the past, when he still struggles at times with homosexual temptation. “By no means would we ever say change can be sudden or complete,” Chambers said.

Well, as the pro-gay world is buzzing about what Chambers meant or didn’t mean as he pretty much states that no one has a “complete” change from being gay and that ex-gays will still face “temptation”, ex-gay Stephen Bennett is calling “misquote.”

Stephen has written on his new igroop daily commentary:

“I have to say with every breath of my being, I believe Alan COULDN’T have said the things the LA Times claimed he did.”

Sadly for Stephen this is not the first time Alan Chambers has made such comments, but it also appears he was not misquoted either.  Jim Burroway reports that Alan made similar. types of comments at the Love Won Out Conference last year. Jim writes on his blog about the “times” interview (bold mine):

This is very much in line with what he told an audience at Love Won Out in Phoenix last February. Alan Chambers gave a workshop, attended by about seventy-five people out of the 700 total attendance, in which he cautioned about setting realistic expectations for change. He also talked about his own struggles, and he candidly discussed the fact that even though he is happily married, his struggles continue.

Stephen doesn’t want to believe that Alan still has same sex attractions.  For whatever reason he has, Stephen feels that Alan has been misquoted.   Bennett states further:

“Our prayers are with Alan and Exodus during this time, and I hope someone will publicly respond to these ludicrous so-called “quotes” the LA Times is claiming.”

I sometimes, actually most of the time, feel bad for Bennett.  I feel Stephen needs to believe, as well as many other ex-gays, the things he does.  He needs to believe that gays and lesbians can just change and that all they need to do is find god.   The fact remains that dozens of men and women, including Alan Chambers, are still homosexual regardless what they call themselves.   The dictionary and science define homosexual as someone attracted to the same sex and Alan has stated more than once that even though he calls himself a heterosexual, he is still “tempted” by his same sex attractions.   In other words, he is still a homosexual.

I too, hope that Alan will clarify his statements as I see this as a very important step towards finding the truth.  I offered Alan Chambers an interview in this site.  I sent him the questions and he replied he would work on them and send the answers back.  I agreed I would post his responses unchanged, unedited and only print a final interview we both agreed on.  He just kept sending me emails with excuses as to why he never filled it out.  Either way, he never filled out the answers and sent them back to me.  I will post the questions sent to Alan at a latter date (there are on my other computer), but knowing how direct my questions were, and knowing I crafted those questions so that it would be hard to avoid answering them directly, I suspect Alan is in the same boat as Stephen Bennett.   Afraid to say the things that really need to be said.

I will add for the record I sent the same invitation to be interviewed by me for a gay audience to read, to Stephen Bennett, Peter LaBarbera, Stacy Harp and others.  Those offers still stand.   It was a chance to increase understanding and try to do away with the “Us vs. Them” mentality that plagues this conflict.  Gandhi believed, and so do I, that we all hold a piece of the truth and a piece of the untruth.   Gandhi believed that if we stripped away the “untruth” which is our greed, fear, power hunger, our desire to control, and mostly our ego, we are only left with that which is truth.   Somehow, we have got to find a way to strip away the untruths.   It takes strength and courage to take such a bold move in such a heated debate, but so many lives are at stake.   So many people are getting hurt, killed, abused, and beaten over this debate.   Finding the truth could change the world for the better.  Alan Chambers appears to be making a courageous move, but the question remains, will Stephen?   Will DL Foster?   Will anyone follow the example?

Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin offers a challenge:

Focus on the Family, Exodus, Family Research Council, Traditional Values Coalition, Mission America — all of them have repeated some serious outright lies about what the proposed legislation would do. And several individuals associated with these organizations have done the same.And so here’s a challenge. I have posted the actual proposed legislation in full on my web site. You will find the text after the jump below. I dare them to do the same. And I challenge them to point to any part of the bill which would usurp the First Amendment.

I watch, read, and follow lots of gay rights stuff each day. I read blogs, watch the HRC, read 365.gay, and gay press and the movement as it turns. I google the words “hate crime” each day to try and find the latest attacks to write about that have changed the landscape of our fight. I have seen the religious right go off the deep end with us entail, going off the deep end right back at ‘em. I have seen pro-gay advocates attack those on the right. I realize their are lots of gays and lesbians who feel this tactic is necessary. I have read comments that were need both approaches, both agreesive and mean, as well as the nonviolence approach. I respectfully, disagree 100% percent.

We do not need, nor do we benefit from any negative advocacy tactics against our adversaries. It serves no one and nothing to go that route. Yet we still have these advocates taking the “low” road to justice.

Nonviolence is proven to work. Gandhi used it to free 300,000 Indians from British rule. King used it to end segregation in the South. Chavez used it to help migrant workers in California. We know this works. It is proven beyond the shadow of a doubt.

With that said, I offer the words of Gandhi:

The object of nonviolence is not to bring them to their knees, but to bring them to their senses

So why then are we still using violence to win gay rights? Why are we still using language that is hateful towards those who oppose us? What ever happen to “keep your friends close and your enemies closer? What happen to the words of Christ in the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew for those who are Christian? If they hit you on the right cheek, smile and offer the left for them to hit. Let them be the one who takes the low road, not us. What about those who are wiccans and the energy of negative action? Why are we going there? What about secular gays who are taking the road against logic? Is it not logic that tells us every negative reaction leads to another negative reaction?

So here are my suggestions, if we really want to win the fight for gay rights and end the violence against us, here is what we MUST do:

1. Stop calling them names!

Please delete from your vocab words like “religious nuts” or “Fundies”. Especially lose the words that are just name calling like “bigot” or “homophobe.” They get us nowhere. They only take people who dislike us and make them dislike us even more. They already see us as the enemy of marriage and freedom. We must use words of love, no matter what they say about us. Rise above and be better than they are being. They call you a faggot, smile! it is only a word with no power until you give it power. They call you perverse, a sodomite, smile and know that those words only have the power you give them. If you do not react to those attacks, they have no power.

When Mathew Shepard was killed and Fred Phelps came to protest. A group of “angels” came in costumes to block the hate from the view of Mathew’s family and friends. They were the subjects of abuse from anti-gay christian protesters (Phelps’s gang). They stood firm and smiled. We all can do this. It can be done.

2. Stop the attacks on them personally!

It also only makes them hate us more. Attack what they do. Attack the bad science, but do not be dragged so low as to make you hate them. Do not sink to this level. I have seen pro-gay advocates sink to levels of hate that are just as hateful as the hate the other side spews. Where does this get us? It only gives them firepower to call us intolerant of tolerance. A vicious cycle of hate. Someplace along the line someone has to rise about it, and that should be us.

3. Stop with the death threats against them!

I can’t believe all the death threat stuff I read about from gay folks to anti-gay folks. Not that I am blind to the death threats against us, but we must not retaliate with the same stuff. We must rise above. If black kids could dance in the water sprayed against them with smiles in Birmingham, we can certainly find better ways to address those who oppose us.

4. Let then have their religious beliefs!

Soulforce claims they work on the basis of nonviolence but they fail at letting others have their own beliefs. They try hard to change people’s views of their religious beliefs rather than saying, hey, you have your beliefs and I have mine and under our constitution we both have the right to have them. If you want others to respect for your beliefs, then you must start earning it, by respecting, that others will always believe homosexuality is a sin. Get over it! It is their belief and they are entitled to it, no matter how much you disagree. Giving them room to believe what they want, while asking for respect for your belief homosexuality is not a sin is the way to go….you get respect by giving it.

I realize and know my beliefs about gay rights and nonviolence are not popular. I refuse to give up. If I manage to influence just a few then, great. If I manage more, even better. I hope to send a message to those who are using tactics they think will help. I hope I send a message that what they are doing may have brief moments of benefit, in the long term, they do more damage then they do good.

As we site with smiles on our faces about the defeat of the anti-gay amendment in Mass.  Let us not lose site that this has been a vicious month of violence and hate speech against gays and lesbians across America and abroad.   Just today, anti-gay preacher, Rev. Harry Jackson has made the claim in his fight against the Mathew Shepard Act:

 ”[hate crimes against gays] don’t rise to the level of murder and lynchings that happened to black people.”

While I agree the numbers of blacks murdered in hate crimes over the last 100 years is higher, this statement begs the question, how many gay and lesbian deaths and beatings does it take to warrant hate crime protections?  Is it 10, 20 50, 1000, a million?   How many is enough before we start protections?  When is enough going to be enough to satisfy the good Rev.   I feel his pain and sympathize that he feels we are riding his coattails but we are not.   I believe if he learned the facts about anti-gay hate crimes, he would change his song and dance to a much more supportive number.

In the last month, we have seen either more coverage of violence against gays or in fact, more violence against gays.  I have read some horrid tales of murder, hate speech, discrimination and violence against gays and lesbians over the last few months of news and I wonder if those numbers are enough for the good rev. to start getting behind protection of GLBT folks?

In the last few months we have seen a string violence, discrimination and hate speech:

• Sean Kennedy of South Carolina murdered in a hate crime attack, May 16, 2007.
• Roberto Duncanson was stabbed to death in New York on May 12.
• Alexander Ruppert of Chicago was allegedly beaten by police, and held without food or water forced to drink from a toilet for being gay on March 5, 2007
• An unidentified man walking with his boyfriend in Seattle on June 10th beaten by 6 men after they saw him holding hands with is boyfriend.  The man was beaten while they uttered anti-gay slurs.
• Two teenagers, both lesbians, were kicked off a transit bus in Oregon for kissing.
• Neal Anthony and his partner in Texas have spent the past few months washing spray painted slurs off their house.  Now the slurs have become death threats.  The vandals wrote “Die Neal” on the house.
• On May 27th, a man in Boston was assaulted after being asked if he was gay by a group of teens.
• In Rochester, NY police are asking for help finding a group of people who bashed a group of friends walking together.   In the beginning the police were not so helpful, using anti-gay slurs at the group.  The police refused to arrest the attackers when they had the chance and are now on a manhunt to find them.
• Recent reports show that anti-gay hate crimes are up in Los Angeles and Tennessee.
• Three 19-year-old men assaulted Jenine “James” Nickola in Lowell, Massachusetts on Saturday, June 3 at 3 a.m. while shouting anti-gay slurs including the word “faggot”. They also said, “We don’t want you in our neighborhood”. Nickola’s lower lip was severely torn in the incident.
• Several teenagers assaulted a lesbian couple on May 20th in Brooklyn in the Jay Street subway station. Jennifer Berry punched one of the women in the face and then stole her jacket and wallet. She was arrested on Thursday on charges of assault and robbery but was not charged with a hate crime. The other suspects have not been caught.

I sadly report that this is just a sample of the hate that GLBT folks have faced in the past few months.   I do ask the question again to the good pastor, how many?  Tell me how many?

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, ‘n’ how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, ‘n’ how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind. (B. Dylan)

 

 

Nonviolence is no new idea.  In 1849, Henry David Thoreau wrote on civil disobedience.   It was his idea of noncooperation with evil that influenced both Martin Luther King and Gandhi.  Even today, many of the nonviolence movements that have gained amazing success in bringing down hateful injustice have been framed around the idea, that if we refuse to cooperate with evil things, those things lose their power over us.  I fully agree with this notion.

On smaller levels, noncooperation really means, as my old roommate, Thaddeus would say, not co-signing other people’s bullshit.  It means not playing other people’s games when it is seen that the end result is unjust, immoral or wrong.   It is a polite way of saying that I will not play along with your activities to demean, dehumanize or insult me.   It can be as simple as just saying “no” to the bully who wants to call you names.  It is as simple as not letting the names people call you effect you.   As soon as you play along with the name calling you give it power.   If you don’t react or cooperate with the name calling, it loses it power.  You can call me perverse but it means nothing until I give it meaning.   Gandhi’s famous words: No one can hurt you without your permission.

The same goes for these silly debates and challenges from people like DL Foster, who has challenged gay Christians to prove the “validity” of their relationships to Rev. Foster.  As if we should justify our lives, our loves or our beliefs in god to him.   I say, don’t play along with his game.  Don’t co-sign his bullshit.  Don’t empower him by playing along with him.  

DL Writes on his new blog:

GCM Watch would like to issue a 7 day challenge any member of the gay christian movement to please submit a list of criteria whereby we may adequately judge the validity of homosexual relationships. 

My first thought when I read this was, “Who died and left this man in a position to judge the validity of others?”  The arrogance in this statement is just breath stopping, but it is our response to this should be based in the philosophy of Thoreau, Gandhi, and King.   Just say “NO!”

Mel White, founder of the group Soulforce, said it best when he discussed ending the debate of the “validity” of our lives.   He laid out 10 reasons why we should engage in noncooperation with this evil tactic of debating our lives, loves and beliefs.  I am only selecting a few of them since some are more christian in nature and I have no desire to exclude those GLBT folks who have non-christian beliefs.

• By participating in these endless studies and debates, we support our own oppression.
• By participating we demean ourselves.
• By participating we assume that the decision can be based on scientific or biblical facts.
• By participating we give credibility to the notion that the debate is about homosexuality.
• By participating we only confuse further those who haven’t made up their minds.
• By participating we help drive a wedge between us and our gay sisters and brothers.

Rev. White follows this statements with a very important notion, it is time to end the debate over the validity, morality or humanity of our lives.  DL Foster is not the judge of us.  He only has the power to judge the validity of us, if we give him that power.  By not cooperating with his challenge or anyone else’s, we take away the power to judge us or the validity of our relationships.

Let DL Foster make his challenges, but they only have the power we give him.   I would hope by not sending him a list of criteria it sends the message to him that we will not be cooperating with this evil.

In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.

“I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.”

The Massachuttes General Assembly voted not to place the amendment banning gay marriage on the ballot in 2008.   This just shows that again, the universe leans to the side of justice.

The Assembly couldn’t get the 25% or 50 votes they needed to make this happen!   Yeah US!

Years ago, I was part of a small movement called, “Voices Against Hate” to stop Buju Banton and Beannie Man from playing in Providence, RI.   We were not successful at stopping the concerts but we were at calling awareness to the death calls these singers were promoting.

Now I see today that these same singers have signed on to an agreement to stop murder music or, in other words, music that promotes violence against gays and lesbians.

365Gay.com reports:

A three year battle to get some of the world’s top reggae artists to renounce homophobic lyrics in their music has been met with success the group that began the campaign said on Wednesday.

Beenie Man, Sizzla and Capleton have signed an agreement renouncing homophobia and condemning violence against gays and lesbians the group  Stop Murder Music said.

The London-based organization and LGBT rights groups in the US have been successful in getting concerts by reggae artists whose lyrics promote violence against gays cancelled.

This is good news and we should celebrate that change happens!  People can go from supporting the violence to ending the violence.   I believe the Universe leans to the side of Justice!

Some background on this change is from the same article:

Beenie Man’s his hit tune, Bad Man Chi Chi Man (Bad Man, Queer Man) contains lyrics LGBT rights groups say instructs listeners to kill gays.

“If yuh nuh chi chi (queer) man wave yuh right hand and (NO!!!)/If yuh nuh lesbian wave yuh right hand and (NO!!!)Some bwoy will go a jail fi kill man tun bad man chi chi man!!!.” the lyrics say in Jamaican dialect.

Lyrics from Sizzla’s songs include: “Shot batty bwoy, my big gun boom” (Shoot queers, my big gun goes boom); “Boom boom! Batty boy them fi dead” (Boom boom, queers must be killed); and “Mi a go shot batty bwai dem widdie weapon ya” (I go and shoot queers with a weapon).

Now, these performers are turning around, proving that “change is possible”.   You can go from being anti-gay to at best less anti-gay!

The three performers this week signed what Stop Murder Music calls the Reggae Compassionate Act.

In the Act, the artists agree to  “respect and uphold the rights of all individuals to live without violence due to their religion, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity or gender.”

It goes on to affirm that “There’s no space in the music community for hatred and prejudice, including no place for racism, violence, sexism or homophobia. We agree not to make statements of perform songs that incite hatred or violence against anyone from any community”.

“The singers’ rejection of homophobia and sexism is an important milestone,” said Stop Murder Music founder Peter Tatchell. “We rejoice at their new commitment to music without prejudice.” 

But Tatchell said his organization is not disbanding yet. The group wants to ensure that the terms of the agreement are fulfilled and it wants to pressure other reggae artists to disavow homophobic music.

A new report released today shows that baised related crimes motivated by the individual’s perceieved sexual orientation are just as comparable to other groups who are already protected by Federal hate crime protections. 

The Advocate reports:

A new report released by the Williams Institute at UCLA Law School shows that crime rates against lesbians, gay men and bisexuals are comparable to other groups already covered by federal hate crime laws.  The “Comparison of Hate Crime Rates across Protected and Unprotected Groups” shows that on average, 13 in 100,000 gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals per year report being the victim of a hate crime, compared to 8 in 100,000 African Americans, 12 in 100,000 Muslim-Americans and 15 in 100,000 Jewish-Americans.

“Often, people try to pass off [the lack of legal protection for gays] as ‘Oh, it’s not as big a problem as race-based hate crimes,’” says Rebecca Stotzer, a research fellow at the Williams Institute.  “But when you actually look at the rates and you think of it as a risk per person, you can see that the numbers are actually much more even between groups that are protected versus those that are not.”

The new report was based on a 2004 study by Williams Institute Faculty Chair William Rubenstein, but current hate-crimes legislation before Congress and the availability of more data prompted an update to the report.  The U.S. Senate is presently considering the Matthew Shepard Act which would extend legal protections to the LGBT community; an identical bill passed the House of Representatives last month.  The bill proposes expanding current federal hate crime laws to include actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender, gender identity and disability.  Current law only defines race, color, religion and national origin as protected categories.

“This report’s findings provide a new perspective that should inform policymakers who are deciding whether to include hate crimes based on sexual orientation and gender identity in federal hate crime laws,” noted M. V. Lee Badgett, research director of the Williams Institute.  “The numbers show that hate crimes remain a serious problem for the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities.” (Padraic Wheeler, The Advocate)

From www.HatecrimeBill.org

Two teenage girls were kicked off a public transportation bus in Portland for kissing. That seems like hate at it’s best. I have seen heterosexual kids making out in malls, restaurants, movies, buses, even standing waiting for the bus. None of them were kick off the bus, humiliated by authorities or anything else. This was just people re-acting to their fears.

Two gay teen girls who say they were kicked off a TriMet bus for being affectionate with each other are considering lodging a complaint against the driver of the bus.Maika Rich and Jocelyn O’Neal, both 14, admit they were kissing while on the No. 12 bus traveling on Barbur Boulevard at about 5 p.m. on June 8. They were headed to the Sexual Minority Youth Recreation Center.

They say a female passenger complained to the driver about the kissing and that the driver told them to “knock it off” and also called them “sickos.”

Rich says she then gave O’Neal a hug because it appeared she was upset about the exchange. They say at that point the driver stopped the bus and ordered them off.

365gay.com coverage

It would appear DL Foster has returned to the world of blogging with a new site called, “Gay Christian Movement Watch”.   The site appears to be designed to counter those who believe that Christianity can be affirming of homosexuality.  I wondered for a moment if the name is a take off of “Ex-gay Watch”.

What I find rather interesting about this new site Foster is running is why should anyone respect his beliefs that the bible condemns same sex relationship?   He doesn’t appear to respect anyone’s beliefs, so why should we respect his?

Their are 9,000 plus denominations of Christianity listed in the World Christian Database all claiming that they have the truth.   Some of those are supportive and affirming of gays and lesbians and that is their version of the truth, others fall to Foster’s views as their version of the truth.   What I seem to find is that both sides of this debate can back up their claim that they have the truth with research, historical content, translation issues etc..but in the end they both cannot have the truth.   Rather than respecting this, Foster is picking fights with those who oppose him in belief.  He appears to be on a mission to prove them wrong.

Rather than opening a site that would create open dialogue, debate or perhaps close the gap between these two sides, DL Foster has chosen to mock gay Christians as false prophets.  Of course the other side could say the same of DL, but they most likely won’t!  Still boils down to the same ole, same ole stuff.   My Jesus is better than you Jesus arguments.