It’s an amazing country: how a fundamentalist Christian explored the world of homosexuality and found Jesus

Paul Harris, The Guardian:

Timothy Kurek grew up hating homosexuality. As a conservative Christian deep in America’s Bible belt, he had been taught that being gay was an abomination before God. He went to his right-wing church, saw himself as a soldier for Christ and attended Liberty University, the “evangelical West Point”.

But when a Christian friend in a karaoke bar told him how her family had kicked her out when she revealed she was a lesbian, Kurek began to question profoundly his beliefs and religious teaching. Amazingly, the 26-year-old decided to “walk in the shoes” of a gay man in America by pretending to be homosexual.

For an entire year Kurek lived “under cover” as a homosexual in his home town of Nashville. He told his family he was gay, as well as his friends and his church. Only two pals and an aunt – used to keep an eye on how his mother coped with the news – knew his secret.

This is truly an inspirational story. One only wishes that more fundamentalists would try to see things through the eyes of their opponents. What Kurek did in trying to understand those he despised is the real meaning of “love your neighbor as yourself”.

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Via Avedon, a good theological argument on why everything that conservative Christians think they know about what the Bible says on homosexuality is wrong.

Now, if only it were this clear-cut. The Bible is simply not very clear on many issues and this is one of them. But Matthew Vines makes an excellent, erudite case for his viewpoint, and even (especially) people who think that the Bible condemns homosexuality should hear him out. Including those gays/lesbians/TG who have left the church believing they have no place in it.

Maybe if she’d had a gun: Minneapolis denies the right of self-defense against hate crimes/corrected

DemocracyNow:

A transgendered African-American woman is set to go on trial next week on charges of second-degree murder for an altercation after she was reportedly physically attacked and called racist and homophobic slurs outside a Minneapolis bar last year. Chrishaun “CeCe” McDonald received 11 stitches to her cheek, and was reportedly interrogated without counsel and placed in solitary confinement following her arrest. There were reports that the dead victim, Dean Schmitz, had a swastika tattooed on his chest.

So McDonald’s face was slashed open and then she killed the person who did that.

These are facts similar to those asserted in the Trayvon Martin case, but with some important differences. Compare McDonald to Zimmerman and the deceased Dean Schmitz with the deceased Trayvon Martin:

1) Schmitz did have a deadly weapon, while Trayvon did not have a deadly weapon, while McDonald had been assaulted and seriously wounded.
2) Schmitz pursued her, while Zimmerman alleges that he was assaulted by Trayvon, who Zimmerman was following.
3) Schmitz was allegedly tattoed with a hate symbol, while Trayvon had none.
4) Schmitz allegedly had a history of harassing McDonald, while Trayvon was unknown to Zimmerman.

Now, there’s one more similarity and one more difference. McDonald used a knife, scissors while Zimmerman used a gun. And both of the dead people, one an assailant, one allegedly a victim, were black.

One is reminded of an ancient (50 years ago) Dick Gregory joke: “You complain about us cutting people. Well, hell, you won’t sell us any guns!”

This appears to be a stark illustration of why we need to confront hate crimes and demand an end to the stirring of racial hatred by TV news. Every person, black or white, gay or straight, has an absolute right to mind his or her own business in safety. For Minneapolis to charge someone in fear of her life with second degree murder, while it took a national campaign and intervention by the Governor to get Zimmerman charged with the same crime is clear evidence that the scales of justice are not balanced in this oh-so-free-and-fair country.
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Note on the corrections: apparently one of Schmitz’s female companions opened up the wound on McDonald by throwing a glass at her. So Schmitz was not carrying a deadly weapon. Also, Schmitz was apparently stabbed with fabric scissors. Sorry about the mistakes. Like Stormcrow (see comments) I was completely disgusted by this. I got careless in writing it up.

Christians Being Christian

Here in southeastern Michigan, an Evangelical church is producing a play with a message of compassion for gays.

The play will be a fundraiser for The Trevor Project, which provides a 24-hour suicide prevention hotline for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth.

[The church’s pastor, the Rev. Bill] Barnwell said the church is conservative by most standards, but is taking a stand against the harsh mistreatment of the gay community.

…

Barnwell said if a church proclaims to be pro-life, then its leaders and members should care about the lives of gay teenagers.

Whatsoever you do for the least of these…

More Like This, Please

The quote of the day is from New York state senator Mark Grisanti, who is a Republican and a Roman Catholic, which gives him a double dose of institutional opposition to equal rights for homosexuals. Senator Grisanti explained his vote to legalize same sex marriage in New York:

I cannot legally come up with an argument against same-sex marriage… I cannot deny anyone in my district and across New York the same rights I have with my wife.

New York, New York!

New York legislature passes marriage equality bill

The GOP gets bragging rights! First gay presidential candidate!

I sorta wonder whether they’re going to be touting this anywhere except at Log Cabin meetings, but hey–they didn’t get the first African American presidential candidate (Frederick Douglass), they didn’t get the first woman presidential candidate (Victoria Woodhull), they certainly didn’t get the first African American or woman nominee of a major party for either president or vice president. But they do have the first openly gay presidential candidate: Fred Karger.

I really, really don’t think they want this honor.

Montana Tea Party Leader Jokes About Murdering Gay People

Hat tip to PZ Myers to alerting us all to this story on how the president of the Montana Big Sky Tea Party, Tim Ravndall, thinks jokes about murdering gay people are lovely.

From a Facebook exchange of his:

Dennis Scranton: “I think fruits are decorative. Hang up where they can be seen and appreciated. Call Wyoming for display instructions.”

Tim Ravndal: “@Kieth, OOPS I forgot this aint(sic) America no more! @ Dennis, Where can I get that Wyoming printed instruction manual?”

The surprise isn’t that he expressed these views, but that the Tea Party — or its funders the Koch brothers — realized that this was Not A Good Thing to be known for saying, and punished the man soon afterwards.

Sounds like it’s the season for right-wing bullies to get in trouble for things they put on Facebook.

Freepers Bringing The Stupid WRT Prop 8 Ruling

Salon‘s Alex Pareene points out how the right wingers are losing their collective shit over Judge Vaughn Walker’s overturning of Prop 8:

After a dry Corner post from Daniel Foster excerpting the decision, Kathryn Jean Lopez popped in to be sad, and compare Judge Walker’s ruling to “an academic seminar at Berkeley.” (Oh, Berkeley! They simply do not understand America and their crazy ideas have no place in court rulings.)

One Freeper’s “solution”: pictures of guns, apparently.

What’s really funny is that the gun — an FN P90 — is a piece of junk — and a Belgian piece of junk at that. Per a Belgian commentator at Joe My God:

As a European I am so glad to see the freepers are buying our products. And from the French speaking corner of Belgium no less!

A famously inaccurate Frenchie gun known for it pathetically short barrel, getting overheated quickly and blowing all its load(ed ammo) really fast… a perfect match for a freeper hothead.

In fact, cant we get these guys buy ALL our guns? I certainly would feel a lot safer, and lets be honest, aren’t we all a little disappointed when right wing nuts like say the huttary don’t try an get in a shootout with the FBI but surrender peacefully?

MoveOn Goes Up Against Target

This may be what saves us all:

Target, the Minnesota-based company whose brand has become treasured by young urbanites across the country, provided $150,000 in seed money to a group called Minnesota Forward, a political group running ads supporting Republican Tom Emmer in the state’s gubernatorial race. At first, the LGBT community began to oppose Target for its support of Emmer, who opposes gay marriage. Target’s CEO did some damage control on that, claiming to support LGBT rights. However, the progressive group MoveOn.org took this to another level, threatening a nationwide boycott against Target for their use of corporate money in campaign activities.

[…]

This is a very important effort. As MoveOn says in their petition, the Target funding is really “the tip of the iceberg” for corporate campaign spending in a post-Citizens United world. By letting Target know that they will face financial repercussions for influencing elections, MoveOn can send a powerful message to other retailers to stay out of the controversy. And they’re practically the only group with enough members – over 5 million – to make that threat tangible.

I wish them well.