Bible Harness

Where I've been lately...

These are a couple of articles I wrote for Ex-Gay Watch. The Michael Brown one really sapped me. I transcribed a 40 minute episode from his radio show which entailed listening to it at least 4 times. I felt so dirty...

Building ‘London Bridges’ with Dr. Michael Brown
Posted on July 1st, 2009 by Patrick Fitzgerald

"Brown’s feigned interest in “building bridges” seems like it was designed to inspire condescension-conversations that are meant to elicit an angry response. That way they can see our supposedly explosive nature in person—confirming just how undeserved of legal protections we all are, and further fueling the victim/moral superiority meme."

Book Review: Alan Chambers ‘Leaving Homosexuality’
Posted on July 17th, 2009 by Patrick Fitzgerald

"...In the first part of that paragraph, Chambers defines homosexuality as a state of being: “to be a homosexual.” Then switches gears, defines homosexuality as a behavior, and voilà, the pro-gay movement now considers sexual behavior to be as uncontrollable as an epileptic attack."

Movie: Explicit Ills

I watched this last Friday and thought it was inspiring. Not necessarily while I was watching it, but it all kind of came together at the end

It’s a movement too, called the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (linked to below). I took the liberty of typing out the "Get Involved" portion that was on the special features, and will probably be more interesting after having seen the movie (and liked it).

There’s a good synopsis of the movie here.

The special features text is rather long, so I'm including only the first paragraph after the trailer, the rest is on my other blog and linked to below.

Then comes an interesting and relevant Rachel Maddow clip and it’s corresponding transcript on the minimum wage.

I think a lot about what can be done to combat the hell on Earth that is life for much, if not most of humanity. Shortly before watching the movie I had been thinking, despondently, about what really can be done to help save the world. The segment from the special features answered it for me---end poverty. If we could end poverty, we could have the closest thing to heaven on Earth that is possible. Not that achieving that would be easy, but it’s a very simple and easy to remember solution.

Unfortunately, about 30% of the US population are united in their unreachable brainlessness, so we have our work cut out for us. I am not hopeful, but it's movies and movements like this that at least give me something to grasp onto.



EXPLICIT ILLS
1. Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign
http://old.economichumanrights.org/index.shtml

Mission Statement - The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign is committed to unite the poor across color lines as the leadership base for a broad movement to abolish poverty. We work to accomplish this through advancing economic human rights as named in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, such as the rights to food, housing, health, education, communication and a living wage job. Continue...

And here's Rachel Maddow on the minimum wage increase and the cost of health insurance @ the 2:16 mark (transcript here):

Transcript @ 2:16:

And finally, thanks to the Democrats‘ midterm election promise in 2006, the minimum wage in America went up today. If you make minimum wage, your annual salary just went from about $13,600 to just over $15,000. Of course, that‘s if you work eight full hours every single freaking week day of every single freaking week and you never get sick and never sleep in once and never leave early ever in the whole entire year. $15,000 grand for the year.

Are you, by any chance, supporting a family on that salary? And by any chance, does your minimum wage job not offer you health insurance? If so, here is the telling awful math about being poor in America today.

The minimum wage annual salary just went up to $15,080 a year, right?

The annual average cost of family health insurance this year is $13,150. Which means if you have a minimum wage job and you want to live the fantasy of buying health insurance for your family, on average, America expects you to live off a grand total of $1,930 for everything else you need for the year - food, shelter, everything. Oh, also, we‘re the richest country on earth.

And here's one to drive the point home for we masochistic blubberers...

Not Gay

$ Loving Gays $ - Exodus style

Ex-Gay Ministry Expands Reach Through Merger

During a press conference Wednesday in Wheaton, Ill., Exodus International announced a merger with Transforming Congregations, an ex-gay ministry affiliated with the United Methodist Church, and OneByOne, a similar outreach affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA).

I don't know how important this is, but I enjoyed what Randy Thomas had to say about it.

the ministry also hopes to reduce the culture-war dichotomy that casts Christians as either condemning homosexuals or uncritically embracing the gay lifestyle.

Dichotomy: contrast, opposition, irreconcilable difference, gulf, contradiction, separation, clash


It's a sad sad day when we sinners judge those Christians who make their living by conflating human sexuality with sexual perversion.
______________
BTW, "gay lifestyle" is code speak for hundreds of sexual partners.

Zygotes not worthy of life

(For the record, I'm anti-unwanted pregnancy)

Zygote: A zygote is usually produced by...an ovum from a female and a sperm cell from a male...the zygote contains DNA originating from both mother and father and this provides all the genetic information necessary to form a new individual.

Good News: Arizona Governor Signs Pro-Life Legislation

CitizenLink: These new laws include a ban on partial-birth abortion, a ban that prevents medical professionals other than doctors from performing surgical abortions, and a bill that protects the conscience rights of healthcare workers to refuse participation in an abortion.

If life begins at conception...

Objective: To examine rates and risk factors for spontaneous abortion among pregnancies conceived using assisted reproductive technology (ART). Methods: Subjects were 62,228 clinical pregnancies resulting from ART procedures initiated in 1996-1998 in US clinics.

Spontaneous abortion was based on ART clinic report and was defined as loss of the entire pregnancy. Spontaneous abortion rates for ART pregnancies were compared with spontaneous abortion rates from the National Survey of Family Growth, a population-based survey of US women 15-44 years.

Results: The spontaneous abortion rate among ART pregnancies was 14.7%. This was similar to rates among pregnancies reported in the National Survey of Family Growth.

Among pregnancies conceived with the patient's oocytes and freshly fertilized embryos, the spontaneous abortion risk ranged from 10.1% among women 20-29 years to 39.3% among women older than 43.

Spontaneous abortion risk among pregnancies conceived with donor eggs was 13.1% with little variation by patient age.

When do you suppose they’ll concern themselves with the 14, 39, and 13% of eternal souls that just so don’t happen to make it due to “God’s divine plan”?

Where do they go?

Senate bill threatens to allow strangers to duct tape anyone they think is anti-gay

From CitizenLink 7-14-09:

Senate Close to Silencing Religious Speech:

Citizenlink: The "hate-crimes" bill, being considered… …pastors who preach against homosexuality could end up prosecuted if they are found to have "induced" a hate-crime against a self-identified homosexual by preaching from the Bible. ~~~They’ve been “inducing” people to kill gay men for years, and it’s been working for years, and it’s been Biblical for years:

Leviticus 20:13: If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman...They must be put to death

CitizenLink: “there's no dramatic increase in…sexual-orientation hate crimes”

So because the “inducement” of killing gay men, via "preaching from the Bible," hasn’t resulted in a recorded “increase” of murders, they feel that it's more important to be concerned about their freedom to further incite the murder of gay men, via "religious speech," than to be concerned about their gay brothers who are actually being murdered.

Exodus’ “differing views” on the definitions of slander, insult, condescension, defamation...

Ministry Welcomes Protesters
Encourages Church to Model Compassion
Amid Differing Views
July 8, 2009

Alan Chambers, President of Exodus International, welcomed news of the protest saying, "Ironically, there are many at this event who at one time would have been outside protesting it, but have exchanged the hurt and anger of the past for a relationship with Jesus Christ and with caring individuals in the Christian church.

"What we, as the global Christian church, must recognize is that on the other side of a picket line, are often hurting people in need of God's unconditional love," said Chambers. "While our views on these issues may differ, the bold love of Christ must prevail over opposing policies, differing views and even our own pride."

Some of those "Differing Views" may, and most likely include:

1) homosexual men who are unable to sustain healthy peer relationships might well find the potential for age-inappropriate attractions more real than they thought possible.

2) Christ can change the homosexual!

3) Homosexuality may lead to physical death, but it will surely lead to relational, emotional, and spiritual ruin.

4) Those trapped in the deception of homosexuality are people in need of healing. They are hurt and broken people who need the touch of the great physician, Jesus Christ.

5) deviation from heterosexuality to homosexuality is devastating. The devastation pervades every relationship in which the homosexual man, woman, or child engages.

6) Pray God will help them see and find biblical resolution to underlying issues that led to a homosexual orientation.

7) people [are] bound by homosexuality

8) gossipers, liars, people from non-Christian religious backgrounds, etc. Wouldn't it be better for us to view someone gay as just another sinner

9) Whatever you decide about the question of whether AIDS is God's judgment... ...show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh" (Jude 22–23).

10) if someone pursues homosexual involvement and refuses to acknowledge this as sin, it's valid to humbly question whether their commitment to Christ is genuine.

11) there is realistic hope for change for men and women who do not want their sexual orientation to be homosexual.

--Just a few snippets from their FaQ section, as linked to above.

Anti-gay ex-gay axes other anti-gay ex-gay

D.L.Foster insists that Alan Chambers Tell the whole truth about God’s love
13 July 2009

Foster quotes this portion of Chambers' quote in order to make his point:

Alan Chambers: My overwhelming message will be that God is deeply in love with the most adversarial of gay activists and that as these groups do battle over policy they must never forget that fact.

Condescending to be sure, but here's Foster's take on it:

D.L.Foster: Is God deeply in love with adversarial gay activists? Im a little wary of language that romanticizes God to sinners

Foster is worried about God's appeal to sinners.