Oh Joy! A Realistic Ally of the LGBT Community

One thing I love about Joy Behar, she puts it OUT there.  If she feels it, she’s gonna say it.  Unlike other “strong” women who say what’s on their mind (like Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin) the big difference is here, Joy Behar makes sense.  She’s not basing her thoughts and words on trying to appease a certain voting population nor is she trying to make anyone agree with her.  She simply states how she sees it, without trying to shove a Bible up anyone’s @ss while she does it.  Joy Behar is a down to earth, tell it like it is, not hiding behind the apron of religious bigotry, no nonsense voice…a voice of reason.

There’s a great post on The Advocate where Joy speaks out about her support for the LGBT community, where again, she takes a very common-sense approach to the issue.

According to the post:

Joy Behar is taping an interview with financial expert Suze Orman. “It’s a disgrace,” Behar says of the fact that Orman and longtime partner Kathy Travis can’t legally marry. “I mean, what kind of bullshit is that?”

And continues with -

“I see myself as an ally of the gay community for sure, but not an extraordinary ally,” says the outspoken 67-year-old host and New York TimesJoy Shtick: Or What Is the Existential Vacuum and Does It Come With Attachments?) from behind her desk in a windowless office at Time Warner Center that’s as modest as she is. “It’s not like I’m on some kind of a mission; it’s just the way my brain works.” For example, it was the former full-time comic’s idea to assemble a panel of gay comedians to discuss the perks of coming out to family over the holidays. “I’m always interested in what people haven’t thought about before, and the average straight person hasn’t thought about the pain involved in coming out to your parents and the difficulties of being a gay kid in a straight world. My philosophy is that parents should be asking their kids, ‘Are you gay?’ When the boy’s playing with dolls and the girl’s playing with trucks, a light should go off in your head and you should ask the question when it’s the appropriate time.”

Read more of this great post here!

GA’s 2009 Out Artist: A Year In Review

2009 brought the LGBT community some great work by some great artist…Many of which are either part of, or an ally to the LGBT community. One commonality they all share is they are working diligently, not only to provide the LGBT community with great books, music and movies, but to promote equality for all members of the human race.

This is a tribute to those artist who so graciously gave their time to speak with gayagenda.com in 2009!

Click on the name below to find out more about the artist and how they are contributing and making a difference to the LGBT community!

• Derrick L. Briggs – Actor (Best known for “Finding Me”)

• Smiletone – Actor (Best know for his YouTube Advice)

• Carl Capotorto – Actor/Author (Best known for the HBO Series,”The Sopranos”)

• Stanley Bennett-Clay – Author/Playwright (Best known for “Looker”)

• E. Patrick Johnson – Author (Best known for “Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South)

• Alex Oryan – Author/Photographer (Best known for “The Nude Book”)

• Ryan Field – Author (Best known for “An Officer and His Gentleman”)

• TimPermanent – Recording Artist/Musician

• TJ Cass – Recording Artist/Muscian

• Gaye Adegbalola – Recording Artist/Musician

• Scottie Gage – Recording Artist/Musician

• QB of da’ Midwest – Recording Artist/Musician

• Bry’Nt – Recording Artist/Musician

• JayBezz – Recording Artist/Musician

• Jana Mashonee – Recording Artist/Musician – an ally to the LGBT community!

*Artist are not listed in any particular order.

‘Real’ Christians Taking Back America and YouTube!

This guy has some really great points about Christianity and how those who fear the reemergence of the ‘fairness doctrine’ are the ones who really are trying to sensor other and how the extreme religious righters have ruined it for all other “Christians”.

According to his site:

I am a Christian but maybe unlike many most have encountered. I don’t go around “Preaching” the word at people nor will I ever have the arrogance to tell someone they are hell bound, that is Gods decision not mine or anyone eles’s. I believe in evolution not creationism and over all just try to live my life in a positive way encouraging people.

Check out more at: youtube.com/shirotora1979 and watch the video below!

Encouraging Words – Preaching Inclusion

We believe that all people are included in the Gospel invitation, and we affirm that there is a place within the full life and ministry of the Christian Church for faithful believers regardless of race, ethnicity, sex, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation, both those who are called to lifelong celibacy and those who are partnered.

Jesus’ ministry was radically inclusive, challenging social, cultural, and religious traditions and beliefs which devalued any human being. In a culture where tax collectors were corrupt and despised, he broke bread with them and shared a meal (Matthew 9:9-13). The Pharisee’s were confused by this and exclaimed, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

In a world of innumerable purity laws and cultural norms which governed interactions between Jews and Gentiles, as well as between men and women, Jesus, when sitting at a well, asked a Samaritan woman for a drink of water. She exclaimed, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (John 4:1-42).

Read more at: Straight, Not Narrow

Open Letter to Potential LGBT Allies

The following was contributed by the Rev. Dr. Jerry Maneker:

There are to be no second-class citizens in the United States! We established a long time ago that “separate is not equal,” and all American citizens are entitled to enjoy equality under the law. Any society that presumes to refer to itself as “decent” and “civilized” must not in any way discriminate against any group of people through its laws or their enforcement.

We should have learned this painful lesson during the struggle for African American civil rights, and we must now apply that lesson in this struggle for full and equal civil rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (hitherto referred to as LGBT) people. LGBT people are entitled to the same rights and privileges that accrue to all other citizens of the United States

Gay people are certainly entitled to full and equal civil rights, including the right to marry! The lies and other nonsense purveyed by many self-proclaimed arbiters of “morality,” often cloaked in the guise of religion, that same-sex marriage destroys “the sanctity of marriage” is ludicrous on its face!

I have been married to my wife for forty-seven years, and I can’t see how same-sex marriage will in any way negatively impact my marriage or in any way destroy the sanctity of my marriage! No rational person can believe that same-sex marriage in any way compromises the institution of marriage, an institution that has taken many forms in our history.

As a Christian, I am profoundly embarrassed and outraged by those professing Christians who are in the vanguard of discrimination against LGBT people; who spew hateful rhetoric, borne out of their ignorance and/or their hatred and/or their avariciousness, that is diametrically opposed to anything Jesus said, lived, or taught to all who would claim to be His disciples! Indeed, Jesus saved His harshest words for those who claimed to be “godly” and yet sought to put yokes of bondage onto others!

Christians love other people, and the only Gospel to be found in Christianity is comprised of: grace (God’s unmerited favor to us), faith (trusting God over and above seen circumstances), love, peace, reconciliation, and inclusiveness. There is no other Gospel!

Jesus makes it abundantly clear that we are to love and not judge or condemn others! Any professing Christian who thinks that he/she is representing Jesus by doing the very opposite of what Jesus told us to do is not only seriously misled, but is woefully misleading the public, many of whom are gullible enough to take the purveyors of the false gospel of legalism and perfectionism seriously.

Moreover, we are under the Constitution of the United States and we are not a Theocracy! Since when are we to take a group of people’s understanding of the Bible, an “understanding” far more informed by their preconceived prejudices than it is by anything else, and enshrine those prejudices into our laws of the land; impose those prejudices onto a minority group that all too many professing Christians and others view as being relatively “safe” to persecute?

The discrimination against LGBT people in the names of “Christianity,” “morality,” “tradition,” “the well being of our children,” and any other specious reasons given for this oppression has many of us saying: “Enough is enough!” We’re not going to take it anymore!

For those of us who are Christians, we are sick and tired of having those who would hate and/or discriminate against others presume to speak for us! For those of us who are heterosexual, we are sick and tired of watching our LGBT sisters and brothers be oppressed! For those of us who are LGBT, we are sick and tired of being viewed and treated as second-class citizens, denied marital and other rights and benefits that heterosexual tax paying citizens are given and take for granted.

In sum, LGBT rights activists demand full and equal civil rights that every other citizen of the United States possesses, and we won’t rest or stop until that goal is achieved!

Rev Dr Jerry Maneker

Rev. Dr. Jerry S. Maneker  is a Professor Emeritus of Sociology at California State University, Chico. He has been married since 1962, has two grown daughters. He’s an ordained priest in the Congregational Catholic Church, a division of the Independent Catholic Churches International (ICCI). For many years, he had a weekly column in the Sacramento Valley Mirror entitled, “Christianity and Society,” where he dealt with a variety of social issues from a biblical and sociological perspective. He is also a regular contributor to the Online magazine, “Whosoever,” that deals with topics of relevance to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Christians and their allies; His web site entitled, “Radical Christianity,” located at www.radicalchristianity.net, contains some of his articles concerning “progressive Christianity,” and the need for Christians worthy of the name to confront the perversions of the Gospel of grace that have gained ascendancy so as to change the face of much of the institutional “Church” in America, and threaten the very foundations of liberty and democracy in America itself.  You can also read more from Rev Dr Jerry Maneker at ChristianLGBTRights.org!

Next Page »