Just when I think things cannot get worse…the 2 stories come across my desk.
Now mind you over the last couple of months there have been more then our fair share of really bad things happening to our community, but these two set up tonight’s soapbox.
“Gay teen couple made to sit apart on bus
Posted by: “Thomas Jackson” tcjackson2005@sbcglobal.net tomjackson2008
Mon Nov 5, 2007 9:58 am (PST)Two gay teenagers from Scotland are considering legal action after being
humiliated on a late-night bus journey.Steven Black, 16, and Mark Craig, 19, were told to get off the bus by the
driver and then forced to sit in separate seats, according to the Sunday
Mail.“If we had been all over each other, I could understand – because that
behavior in public is not appropriate whatever your sexuality. But Mark
just had his arm around my shoulder,” Steven told the paper.“I have never been so humiliated in my life. I just can’t believe we are
still made to feel like second-class citizens.”In 2000 Mr. Souter, an evangelical Christian, donated half a million pounds to a campaign in Scotland to uphold Section 28, which banned the “promotion of homosexuality” in schools.
He cited his religious beliefs as justification for his actions, insisting he is not homophobic.
Mr. Souter is a member of the Church of the Nazarene, a Methodist denomination.
The couple chose to sit separately because they had no other way to get
home.
Indicted in beating of gay couple
Saturday, November 03, 2007
By MICHAELANGELO CONTE
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER
UNION CITY – Two former employees of a Burger King on Bergenline Avenue have
been indicted on hate crime charges in connection with the vicious beating of a
same-sex couple outside the restaurant earlier this year, officials said yesterday.Angel Caraballo, 28, of Duncan Avenue, and Christopher Soto of Prospect
Street, both of Jersey City, were charged with aggravated assault and a first-degree hate
crime in connection with the July 22 beating, officials said. The hate crime offense
carries a possible sentence of 10 to 20 years in prison.The two victims, Union City men in their early 40s, were in the Burger King,
on the 3500 block of Bergenline, when they asked someone behind the counter for a refund for an item that was not available, officials said.One employee allegedly asked the other who was asking for the refund and he
replied with a derogatory term for a homosexual, according to a news release issued by
the gay rights advocacy group Garden State Equality.The couple left the restaurant, but a group of Burger King employees followed them outside, where “they beat them mercilessly,” while repeating anti-gay slurs,
the news release, says.
There is the 21 year old who was executed in Iran (we don’t have any homosexuals as stated by Iran’s Dictator) for being gay.
There was the drive by shooting in front of a gay club in Atlanta.
There was the transgender person who was murdered down in Savannah Georgia.
There was this headline: “Gay-bashings up in 2006”
The African Episcopal Bishop continues to say all kinds of nasty things about us as if we are not in the room.
This is followed by an entire section of the Episcopal Church leaving the denomination because a man who is tremendously gifted but gay and in a long-term relationship is made a Bishop.
“The Diocese of San Joaquin, a conservative fold that serves California’s Central Valley and has long chafed under what it considers the increasing liberalism of its fellow Episcopal, on Saturday became the first in the nation to separate from the U.S. Episcopal Church, voting overwhelmingly to take a strong and definitive stance against how the church deals with homosexuality and other controversial issues.
The vote capped a dispute that had been sweeping through the Episcopal Church in the United States for decades, one that was highlighted in 2003, when the Right Rev. V. Gene Robinson, who is openly gay, was ordained as bishop in New Hampshire.
“We were interested in seeking leadership that held to a traditional interpretation of Christianity,” said the Rev. Van McCalister, a spokesman for the Diocese of San Joaquin.”
We have a democrat who wants to be President of the US and thinks it is perfectly OK to have a lying, self-absorbed internalized homophobe sing for his campaign. I wonder if a former grand wizard of the KKK who suddenly got religion would be ok to sing for the campaign too?
Of course there is the radio talk show host by the name of Michael Savage who gets in his dig:
“CNN is a bear trap. CNN is a bear trap for anybody conservative. Look what they did the other night, last week rather, with the YouTube/CNN debate, when they put a planted, gay, phony general in the audience to throw out a question, and then Anderson Cooper followed up with intelligible, ‘Did you get the question answered adequately?’ That’s your idea of a fair debate? It’s like a Stalinist show trial.” “I don’t care about this old queen, frankly. He disgusts me to make — my flesh crawls from the old queen. That was a general? Now you wonder why we’re still in Iraq five years later. General — with General Keith Kerr, you know why we’re still in Iraq five years later.”
Think the craziness is over? Hell no…we get a National League football coach with this gem:
“During an interview with Bob Costas on HBO’s Costas Now, Colts coach Tony Dungy seemed taken aback when asked what he would do if he had an openly gay player on his team.
After a pause in which Dungy smiled and looked as though he wanted to choose his words carefully, Dungy said, “I’m sure I would talk to him about my views on it, what the Bible says about it.”
So why is the afore mentioned stuff so bad? Why do I want to just sit in a room and beat my head against a wall?
Because it shows just how fundamentally flawed the whole damn issue around LGBT folks really is.
People in the LGBT community have to fight for full and legal recognition of their relationships, job protection, protection from being hunted down like animals and killed. We have to fight for the ability to be contributing members of the church, to be a pastor, a bishop, to get communion.
We have to fight to visit our partner in the hospital, get health insurance for our partner, or just live in peace where we want too.
To make matters worse we are told that because of whom we love, we don’t meet biblical standards for being included equally in God’s creation. Yet when these same biblical standards are applied to these zealots the hypocrisy could not be more obvious.
Anybody with more then a 6th grade education knows to claim the Bible, as the inerrant word of God is as ridicules as it is foolhardy. I am sorry if I offend people’s faith here, but God and the Holy Spirit did not go out of business 2,000 years ago.
Hey wait a second…let’s take the Bible at its word…let’s suppose for a moment we have exact quotes from Jesus. Let us suppose there is a heaven or a burning hell for which people are heading. Let us suppose God is going to sit in judgment and one by one will decide who is in and who is out.
How will God make the determination? By what standard will we be held accountable? In the very words of Jesus I found an answer.
31″When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 32All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
34″Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
37″Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40″The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’
41″Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44″They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45″He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
46″Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” Matthew 25 (New International Version)
Damn, apparently those whom think the battle to stop homosexuality is the end of the world have missed God’s agenda all together.
Tell you what, I will make a deal with all the traditionalists, fundamentalists, conservative family value folks. When y’all begin spending your time, energy and resources living up to God’s agenda for who is in and who is out as stated by Jesus, then and only then can we talk about homosexuals and how we are supposedly destroying the world. It seems to me we are the least of the problems with the coming judgement.