Gay Marriage Splitting the Lutheran Church?

Well, I suppose if you’re bound and determined that you have no way of overcoming your bias, hate, intolerance and bigotry against the LGBT community it is.

In a post on the notoriously anti-gay CBN.com website:

The liberal Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is heading for a split over gay marriage.

The denomination voted in August to allow sexually active gay and lesbian pastors. Opponents say that’s in direct contradiction to scripture.

“We don’t feel we have a choice,” Paull Spring, a retired Pennsylvania bishop now chairman of Minnesota-based Lutheran CORE told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “The vote on sexuality opened the eyes of many to how far the ELCA has moved from biblical teaching.”

Conservative Lutherans say they will soon start drafting a constitution to form a new denomination. They hope to have it off the ground by next August.

So now there will be more us’s and them’s. But unlike our anti-gay friends over at CBN, I tend to view this as a positive instead of a negative. If you’re hell bent on hating the gays, then by all means, form your own “we hate the gays” religion. File your tax-exempt forms and use your tax exempt money in an attempt to uphold discrimination.

But for those who were strong enough (and obviously a majority in the Lutheran church) to stand up and say it’s not OK to discriminate. Thank you! As an American citizen, I applaud your strength, courage and wisdom.

Maggie Moo ‘Optimistic’ About Maine

NOM’s leader, Maggie “Moo” Gallagher was recently seen on the anti-gay CBN spouting off about how a majority of Americans oppose equality, gay marriage is being “forced” upon U.S. citizens, and the usual b.s. rhetoric spewed by the haters and bigots of the world.

You can see her in the video below…she’s so witty!  According to Moo:

“The American people are not on board with this gay marriage thing”, and marriage equality is “not a civil right, it’s a civil wrong.”

OK, since when is marriage of any type “forced” upon anyone…in this country at least, unless it’s a good old fashioned shot-gun wedding?

And I know, I’m not perfect, nor do I claim to be, but I also know I’m not fighting to keep a group of tax paying Americans categorized as second-class citizens.

This Maggie is NOT a representation of America.

The Right’s Diggin’ Deep, But Who’s Getting Burried?

It was no surprise to me when the members of the Right, especially the extreme “Christian Right”, started foaming at the mouth over President Obama’s nomination of Sotomayor. It really doesn’t matter what President Obama does, those silly Right Wing Nuts will try their best to find a way to spin it into something bad. They are so bitter over the past election they’ll lie about anything, and dig down deep to find any little bit of “dirt” they can to discredit the President and anything he does…so very “Christian” like don’t you think?

One of CBN’s lead haters, David Brody is no exception to the above rule. He’s obviously not too happy with Sotomayor’s nomination either, and has managed to dig down deep, all the way down to 1976 to find something “wrong” with the nominee.

Brody was able to dig up a a letter co-signed by Sotomayor in 1976 while she was at Princeton. In the letter she speaks out against violence towards LGBT people, and he was kind enough to post a copy of that letter as he thought his bigoted following of readers “might want to read it.”

Below is that letter:

The link is here. Full text below.

This letter to the editor, published in the Feb. 27, 1976, edition of The Daily Princetonian, was written in response to an incident six days before, when eight students ransacked the dorm room of two gay students who were members of the Gay Alliance of Princeton. The letter was signed by 39 individuals, including Sonia Sotomayor ’76, history professor Nancy Weiss (now Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel) and politics professor Walter Murphy.

Rights of all

To the Chairman:

A university is an institution dedicated to the pursuit of truth, to open inquiry, to exchange of ideas through discourse. Here freedom of communication, enshrined in the First Amendment as a predominant value of all American society, must not only exist, but all members of the university community must cherish that freedom. For private citizens to try to intimidate the Gay Alliance into silence is a denial of the foundations on which a university is built.

No matter how much one may disagree with the Gay Alliance or the policies they are advocating, no matter how repugnant one may find homosexuality, the manner of expressing this opposition should be intellectual. At this university we are dedicated to persuasion by reason, not by brute force.

Intimidation of those courageous enough to express their views, violence directed against unpopular associations, midnight criminal assaults on private residences — these speak for themselves. The entire university community should be angry, and disgusted, that this kind of action has occurred at Princeton.

But a negative response to the violence is not enough. A positive response — a university-wide support for the right to dissent on any issue — is necessary. It is precisely such extreme situations which measure the willingness of this community to encourage bold new ideas by tolerating dissent.

We hope that freedom of expression on this campus is still intact. We must keep it that way by supporting all forms of expression, not just those with which we are comfortable. If you disagree with someone’s views, attack his views, not him, not the fact that he expressed them.

Nothing too, if at all controversial about the above.  Basically, it points out that violence is NOT acceptable.  But, because she thinks, or at least thought in 1976, that violence against LGBT people was not acceptable, those Right Wing conservatives are shocked and awed.

What I would like to know, if it’s a bad thing (according to Brody and his following) to object to violence against LGBT people, does that mean he promotes or advocates for violence towards LGBT people?  I mean serious, how can you condemn someone for speaking out against violence, especially if you’re “Christian”?

So, when those on the right get upset and start waving their arms because some of us “Liberals” accuse them of hate, intolerance and bigotry, perhaps they need spend a little more time examining their own actions, and a little less time degrading someone for speaking out against violence.  No wonder the Republican party is in disarray.  Brody should be careful how deep he digs, he just might not be able to climb back out!

Hey Brody, since you’re a “Christian”, tell me, what would Jesus do?