Instructor Accused of Anti-Gay Bias

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a complaint with Fresno City College, charging that a health instructor is giving religious instruction with an anti-gay bias, in violation of the separation of church and state. The instructor could not be reached for comment and the college says only that it is investigating. The ACLU’s letter says that the instructor, Bradley Lopez, regularly uses the Bible as a text on health issues, called homosexuality an illness for which recommended treatments include counseling and hormones, cited the Bible to explain why abortion should be viewed as murder, and told students that abortion is the leading cause of death in the United States.

More at: Inside Higher Ed!

Why Gay Marriage is Not Like Abortion

People lump gay marriage in the same polarizing issue category as abortion and gun control all the time. It’s one of the issues, it seems, that defines someone as a liberal or conservative, from a Red state or a Blue one.

For example, the Washington Post said in a headline in 2004 that gay marriage is “the new abortion.”

And often, legal experts or other talking heads will predict the outcome of a Supreme Court gay marriage battle by looking at Roe v. Wade. That decision was a disaster, they say, because the Court’s opinion protecting the right to an abortion was far ahead of public opinion. The country was heading toward making abortion legal anyway, the theory goes, until the Court made a big deal about it and caused a backlash that we’re still suffering from.

That’s what a lot of people worry will happen as the Prop 8 advances – lower courts will overturn Prop 8, but the court that matters – the Supreme Court – will think about Roe v. Wade and uphold it.

But gay marriage is not abortion.

More at: Huff Po!

Spanish Catholics: Just Blame the Gays!

According to a post on Telegraph UK:

“A survey on religion in Spain, published just before Christmas by the newspaper Público, showed there has been a steady decline in those who describe themselves as Catholics in Spain – down almost four per cent to 26.2 per cent – and an increase in atheism.”

Why? Well the gays of course!

Over the weekend, there was a huge rally, attended by thousands of protesters in Madrid, Spain’s capital, that was lead by Cardinal Antonio Rouco, who also leads Spain’s Roman Catholic church. Rouco told protesters the no more children will be born in Europe if “Christian values” were not kept in place. Of course he’s talking about abortion and gay marriage. And as we all know, without “Christianity”, there will be no more straight people who procreate and even the ones who do, will only end their pregnancies in abortion. Don’t believe Rouco? Just look at other non-Christian nations like China…oh, well maybe China’s not such a good example of what happens to a population when “Christian” values aren’t upheld. So look at what’s happen in Spain since they legalized marriage equality, straight people stopped having babies…oh, that’s right, the birth rate in Spain hasn’t dropped either…but you get their point…right?

The mass, which was attended by thousands on onlookers was actually set to mark the Feast of the Holy Family, but Catholic leaders from various European countries seized the opportunity to show their hate and intolerance for the Spanish government who has given rights out like they are pennies. Yes, Spain has legalized same-sex marriage and is getting ready to legalize a woman’s choice.

Rouco, who is 73, stated:

“Europe will be practically without children. Who denies to defend a human being so innocent and weak, already conceived but not born, commits a grave violation of moral order.”

And the Pope himself sent a message of intolerance to the rally reinforcing his belief that family is:

“Founded on the marriage between a man and a woman … because it is of paramount importance for the present and the future of humanity”.

So there you have it, the official “Catholic” point of view. Even though great numbers of people are dumping the religion like the rotten tomato it is, (after all, it is the most corrupt institution in all written history), they still hold steadfast that if you give women and the gays rights, the human race will simply cease to exist!

Dark Ages Now: Robert George’s Plan for America

There’s an excellent post by Kathleen Reeves at RH Reality Check which does a great job of pointing out the absurdity of the “religious culture wars” which concentrate more on taking away rights from people then it does of actually doing the “Christian” thing of helping those in need. Below is an excerpt.

A story by David Kirkpatrick in the New York Times Magazine profiles Robert P. George, the purported “intellectual architect” of the rise of conservative Catholic bishops in American politics. George is the chairman of the National Organization for Marriage and a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton—a man admired by conservative legal scholars and political henchmen alike. Like other members of the religious right, George focuses on “culture war” issues like abortion and gay rights, while ignoring poverty, war, and health care (in other words, the issues involving people’s lives). What’s interesting about George is his way of accounting for this inconsistency—he embraces it, while other Christian conservatives shy away from the issue. George claims that the Gospel is clear on abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, and same-sex marriage, but inconclusive on the liberal stuff:

To be sure, he said, he had no objection to bishops’ “making utter nuisances of themselves” about poverty and injustice, like the Old Testament prophets, as long as they did not advocate specific remedies. They should stop lobbying for detailed economic policies like progressive tax rates, higher minimum wage and, presumably, the expansion of health care—“matters of public policy upon which Gospel principles by themselves do not resolve differences of opinion among reasonable and well-informed people of good will,” as George put it.

Perhaps because George has a PhD, he thinks he can pull this off. Embryo- and sex-related issues are “moral social” issues, but poverty and health care are somehow neither moral nor social.

Read the entire post here!

I couldn’t agree more. The religious right constantly attempts to turn the “intolerance and bigotry” of social issues around to reflect poorly on members of the LGBT community, but it’s only to distract from their own misdeeds. The only thing I’m really intolerant of when it comes to “religious” institutions is the fact they are allowed to use tax-exempt dollars to lobby against equal rights for a tax-paying minority. This is a point that must be pointed out over and over again until people start to hear what’s really going on.

The Manhattan Declaration: Will Young Evangelicals Be Swayed?

From Politics Daily:

As for sexuality, younger evangelicals also tend to think less abstractly, if no less Biblically, chiefly because they have grown up around out-of-the-closet gay friends or relatives. “The younger generation is not liberal,” say Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., “but they are into relationships and personal stories.”

Critics of the declaration may be right, then, that a finger jab from the older generation won’t lure these younger evangelicals back to fold, but the compassion mixed into the declaration’s combativeness shows they are willing to groom their rhetoric to fit a new sensibility. This inside baseball, however, doesn’t explain the broad appeal the document had among religious leaders. The intense language of the statement, others say, reflects just how dire Christian leaders believe their situation has become. “This has more of a confrontational tone than I would used myself,” Mouw told me. “But it’s a cry of the heart.”

Other signers call it a plea to take conservative Christian concerns seriously. Reverend Jim Pocock, pastor at the Trinity Congregational Church in the Boston suburb of Wayland, Mass., told me that even other clergy in town dismiss his objection to same-sex marriage as a simple animus toward homosexuals. “I’m not anti-gay,” says Pocock, who signed the declaration after hearing of it from a member of his congregation who knows Colson. “I’m not a hate monger, though I’ve been called those things. What I favor is not changing the definition of marriage, but in a sense we can’t even have a dialogue.”

Entire post here!

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