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crossposted on Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters
Now that President Obama has signed lgbt-inclusive hate crimes legislation, every wannabe religious right activist with access to a computer and someone dumb enough to fund them is coming out of the woodwork looking to profit on the supposed coming persecution of Christians by the lgbt community.
Last night, Pam Spaulding clued me in on the following from Gary Cass and the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission:
“In other nations, like Canada, where hate crime laws have been enacted, it is Christians, specifically conservative Christians who hold to the historic Christian faith and it's values, that become the object of institutionalized, governmental hate.”
“Christians who dare to tell the truth about the social, moral, spiritual and health consequences of illicit homosexual acts are accused of hate speech and intimidated into silence with threats of fines or jail.”
“The fact the hate bill had to be passed in such an unscrupulous and cynical manner (attaching it to the Defense Authorization Act) reveals the depth of President Obama's commitment to a radical, anti-Christian agenda. He will stop at nothing to undermine the will of the majority of Americans to pay back militant homosexual activists who raised millions of dollars for his campaign and worked to get him elected.”
So the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission is claiming that Christians will be under siege thanks to President Obama signing hate crimes legislation.
Now this factoid has been refuted continuously, so there is no need to go over it again.
I would prefer to show you just exactly who does the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission feels would need defending from so-called persecution.
Remember the recent controversy about the church in Connecticut, Manifested Glory Ministries, which attempted to exorcise a young teen from the “spirit of homosexuality?”
Guess who went on record defending this vile act?
The Christian Anti-Defamation Commission:
CADC wants to know where is the tolerance for a church who tried to help a young man who freely asked for help to overcome homosexual temptations? No church deserves to be maligned for trying to help a troubled teen who asked for prayer.
Why are homosexuals so outraged?
And then there the group's statement defending those 11 groups who have been referred to as official anti-gay hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center:
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a liberal pro-homosexual legal group, has compiled a list of “hate groups” throughout America. According to their latest list of 926 hate groups, if you advocate for biblical righteousness you are lumped together with violent neo-Nazis and skinheads. This is slanderous on its face.
Fine Christian groups that work hard to protect biblical marriage have been demonized on the SPLC list. The only reason Christian organizations are labeled hate groups is because of their stance on traditional marriage, as defined in the Bible. There is absolutely nothing hateful about this. In fact, the opposite is true. If you will not speak the truth to those lost in homosexuality, or in any other sin, you are unloving.
Here are just two of those “loving” groups:
The Family Research Institute – that is the organization run by discredited researcher Paul Cameron.
We all know Paul Cameron. He is the guy who has been censured by individuals and groups from diverse backgrounds including the American Psychological Association, The American Sociological Association, conservative leader Williams Bennett, and anti-gay group Exodus International.
He is the guy who makes up stories about gay men castrating children in bathrooms.
He is the guy who publishes phony studies claiming, amongst other things, that gay men eat feces.
He is the guy who said the following:
“If you isolate sexuality as something solely for one’s own personal amusement, and all you want is the most satisfying orgasm you can get—and that is what homosexuality seems to be—then homosexuality seems too powerful to resist. The evidence is that men do a better job on men, and women on women if all you are looking for is an orgasm.” – Rolling Stones magazine, March 18, 1999
Then there is Abiding Truth Ministries – that is the group founded by Scott Lively. He is the guy who wrote that fradulent book The Pink Swastika which connects the gay community to the Nazi party; the book that has been repeatedly discredited.
If these three groups (Manifested Glory Church, The Family Research Institute, and Abiding Truth Ministries) are the examples of Christians needing protection from the lgbt community by the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, then I have one question.
Who is going to protect the lgbt community from the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission?
Related posts and articles:
'Christian' organization doesn't know the difference between a pro-family group and a hate group
Who's crazier? The church that tries to 'exorcise' homosexuality or those who would defend it?
16 Comments
I’m not a christianbut I’ve always wondered why Jesus never said anything about lying. Certainly if he had, so many of his followers would be a little more concerned with truth, yes?
The picture of Hartline on the left side of the blog always cracks me up. His head is stuck up a like a chicken squawking after laying an egg.
“Christians who dare to tell the truth”This is the nub of the problem. Christians have been getting away with peddling their obscene superstitions (ritual cannibalism, for instance) and making fantastic livings at it in the process, they’ve come to believe it is all truth. Obviously there is no “purge” or “persecution” of Christians in the offing. But with every pro-LGBT law that passes, the more apparent it becomes that their ridiculous Sodom-and-Gomorrah predictions are so much twaddle. Their belief system is a house of cards and was bound to fall sooner or later. (That it’s managed to last 2000 years makes a sad commentary on the human race.) The fact that LGBT equality is nudging the cards in that direction is enormously satisfying.
“Anti-Defamation”, my foot.1. This “christian anti-defamation” group defames the LGBT community.
2. I wonder when Morris Dees is going to put these bozos on the list. The fundies whine about being on the same list as Nazis and Muslim terrorists, but don’t mind when they compare the LGBT community to pedophiles, necrophiles, alcoholics, junkies, etc.
3. Speaking of the SPLC list, I wonder if the “christian anti-defamation” group also defend the Westboro Fascist Church.
These people have turned Christianity into a death cult…I knew that when I was 14, and being “educated” by them. The Jonestown incident happened right in the middle of my last year in Christian schools, and my eighth-grade “teacher” said they were allegedly convinced to off themselves by “satan” since they were from San Francisco (no, I’m not kidding) and listened to Rock/Soul music and danced the night before they died. I actually HEARD this in class, and it bothered me that this a**hole could stand there and pass judgement on those people that died. I now think it also had something to do with the fact that many of those people were black-my eighth grade “teacher” was an unrepentant racist who bragged about going to Bob Jones ‘University’.
I was troubled by that incident for quite awhile-however, I kind of knew, even as a kid, that there wasn’t a lot of difference between the People’s Temple and the conservative branch of Christianity-I just couldn’t figure out what it was. I saw the truth of it after I got sober and was introduced to REAL spirituality through the 12 Steps.
Anyway, it’s my opinion that the Conservative branch of Christianity has turned it into a death cult. I knew people who really seemed envious of the ancient martyrs during the Roman persecutions-like they got to ‘die for Jesus’ and those people didn’t. It’s sick.
These people are batshit crazy. That’s the real reason nobody listens to them-sane people can smell the crazy coming off these “christians” and stay far, far away from them. What’s really sad is that they still have SOME influence with kids growing up in that insanity. For all the bitching they do about how they’re supposedly “persecuted”, you think they would try to find out WHY most of their kids leave the death cult.
But-oh, no..it’s not CHRISTIANITY, is it?
Too many Xstians, Not Enough Lions
Here We Go–AGAIN!Predictably enough, Obama signs a hate crime law and the fundies start screeching “Persecution!” No one is persecuting you–this law merely makes public acts of hatred punishable by law. You can still hate all you want in your heart, but if I were you I would want to read your bible on that–isn’t there something about if you hate your brother in your heart, it is the same as murder?
Yeah, those would bethe parts of the Bible that supposedly have the actual words of Jesus Christ.
The Gospels are the parts that these people seem to have comprehension issues with. Won’t find anything about the gays there, either.
These are the same kind of people who put Jesus on that cross to begin with…They aren’t going to listen to a word he had to say. Basically, the Pharisees took over the “church” and they still run it. I figured that out a long time ago.
“Christian,” my footFrom where I sit, which is in the United Church of Christ, a church in which I was married, this bozo and his ilk seem like they hardly read anything Jesus said or did. Preaching hate (or cheerleading a war, or preaching prosperity in Jesus’ name) is, if anything, heresy, and it would be well for progressive Christians to start using that word in this context.
Christianity has ALWAYS been a death cult.There were scads of them in the ancient world–cults devoted to the worship of this dead hero or that one. Except for their voracious lust for power, which ultimately placed the entire Roman empire in their hands, they were not especially different–in kind, I mean–from any of the others. But this Galilean death cult has had the western world in its grasp for two thousand years.
Cass’ heroes are the authors of the Salem Witch Trial horrorsHis heroes are the Puritans, who banned Catholics, hanged Jesuits, beat dissenters, and were the accusers, prosecutors and judges of the Salem Witch Trials, as well as the executioners.
He describes them as “uncompromising, ” history describes them as murderous and tyrranical
While we nearly always agree, coram,I have to call you out on this one. You’re doing what Christians always do–selecting a few passages and ignoring others. For example, the Gospel of Matthew (10:34) clearly records Christ saying,
I’d say the fundamentalists and the Catholics are fairly well in harmony with that. Selecting only the feel-good parts of the Bible, claiming they and they alone are the essence of Christianity, and pretending the rest aren’t there is just plain dishonest–and it’s a large part of the reason so many intelligent people can’t take Christianity seriously.
“the actual words of Jesus Christ”As noted above: Matthew 10:34
How’s that for “the actual words” of “the Prince of Peace”? Not to mention violently driving “money changers” out of the temple, blasting a tree, etc., etc.
The game Christians always play with their Bible isn’t especially hard to play. By quoting selectively, you could also make the case that Moby Dick was a tame, gentle whale, that Dr. Jekyll was nothing more than a dedicated scientist, and that Fagin was devoted to the welfare of minors. If the Bible isn’t worth examining in its entirety, then it’s just another old book and there’s no reason why anyone should base his or her life on it.
Actually……there’s indications of our existence even then and there, in the Bible.
A story (in Matthew, iirc) tells of a Roman officer of some wealth and influence who comes in person to beg Jesus to heal his servant. Except that in the Greek, the word used is most definitely not an exact equivalent to servant. The closest literal translation for how this word “pais” was used commonly in Jesus’ time is younger male lover of a (often rich/influential) man.
There are a few other hints of individuals who did not conform to the hetero-normative roles of the day in the Bible, both in the Old Testament and the New.
Regardless, plenty of contemporary (extra-Biblical) accounts mention the existence of same-sex couples, relationships, and even wedding ceremonies. Jesus surely would have been aware of the existence of gay people, especially given the Hellenization/Romanization of Levantine cultures in the previous three centuries.
That we are not mentioned more often, and that Jesus issues no condemnations of the Greek/Roman practices of having same-sex partners/lovers/spouses is odd, but one thing is sure. Given the later shift of the Romans and the early Christian church towards homophobia, it is nearly certain that had Jesus roundly condemned homosexuality, we would know about it.
Poor Gary CassIt must be so hard for him, knowing it is no longer socially acceptable in polite society to torture and murder gay people with impunity. Whatever will he do for fun now?
My heart bleeds for him. Really. No, really, it does.
on balance, thoughFrankly, I didn’t want to pick a particular verse; I did believe that on balance, Jesus’ comments were not of the “I want to smite them dead” variety. Also, progressive religious scholars have some doubts as to the full accuracy of what was written about him in the Gospels. What does seem to come out is that whoever he was, he probably wasn’t going to be fond of this yo-yo or his kind.