Well, we praise individual Mormons, like the ones in the following story from the Contra Costa Times. The Mormon church, on the hand, is a whole ‘nother ball of beeswax.
Some Mormons are rejecting their prophet’s call to campaign for a ban on same-sex marriage in California, suggesting the church leadership’s sway over the issue of homosexuality may be weakening.
In a letter circulated to all the state’s congregations June 29, President and Prophet Thomas Monson called on Mormons to “do all you can” to support the November ballot measure “by donating of your means and time.”
The church strongly supported a successful 2000 California proposition that prohibited same-sex unions. The state Supreme Court struck down the measure May 15, opening the door for same-sex marriages.
The intervening years have brought a more widespread acceptance of homosexuality.
“In the eight years since the state proposition we have all become more educated,” said Walnut Creek Mormon author and playwright Carol Lynn Pearson. “Most people have realized they have a gay family member or a gay friend or people they work with who are gay. Most people are less quick to judge,” she said.
“The LDS church — any church — has the right to do whatever it wishes, but I applaud the California Supreme Court’s decision,” said Martinez resident Susan Randall, an active Mormon.
Church officials declined to comment, referring calls to the Sacramento coalition behind the ballot measure. …
A former Brigham Young University professor — Mormon, married and heterosexual — is circulating a letter of his own. In it, he says he does not believe people choose their sexual orientation and that denying them equal opportunities “is grossly unfair.”
“You should also know, not all faithful Mormons agree with our religious leaders’ encroachment into political matters,” Jeffrey Nielsen wrote.
Nielsen, who lost his job at the university two years ago after speaking out about gay rights, said he has received numerous positive e-mails from other Mormons — a sign of times, he said. …
Even in Utah, some question the mandate. An article on the church’s position in The Salt Lake Tribune drew several indignant responses. Some online posters said they resented being asked to contribute money for a political proposition on top of their required tithe.
“If the LDS church could give me one valid reason of how gay marriage is going to damage my marriage, I would probably jump on the bandwagon and start handing out pamphlets, but they simply cannot,” wrote one. …
Editor - I see once again the Church of Latter-Day Saints is involving itself in California politics (”Mormons urged to back ban,” June 25). They just don’t get it that it’s God who creates some people gay. It’s too bad they don’t believe in the Bible. If they did, they would have to follow the admonishment, “Judge not that ye be not judged.”
DAVE WILCOX Walnut Creek
Editor - In your article about the Mormon Church openly backing the initiative to ban gays from marriage, both from the pulpit and by raising funds to make anti-gay ads etc., it mentioned that such activities by the church do not run afoul of the “church in politics” rules of the IRS.
So this means that those who are for the initiative can organize and fund their position with pre-tax dollars while those of us who are against the initiative must spend after-tax dollars to defend ourselves? Wow! This sounds like something Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe would think up! Well, but then they both claim God’s blessings.
TED HAX Woodside
Editor - I really do not understand why some people, and now the Mormon Church officially, want to impose their perception of civil marriage onto all of society. I understood the history of this country was based on escaping dictatorial state-run churches and governments.
It is un-American to impose by law the beliefs of a church upon everyone in the state. Civil marriage is a civil issue, a civil right. As I understand our recent state Supreme Court ruling, religious practice is not affected. The court is not directing any faith to change or amend its practice or belief in marriage.
Our world needs more loving marriages and fewer broken homes and much less promiscuity. These seem like worthy social goals to me. Churches should stay out of civil matters which do not affect them or their members.
Why is a church involved in politics? Their tax exempt status should be revoked.
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Bigots.
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Institutionalized racism until 1978. Institutionalized bigotry, still.
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Their position is wrong in so many ways, but it’s really kind of sad to see people living in such irrational, unsubstantiated fear. You’d think these people lived in T. H. White’s ant colony in The Once And Future King, where “everything not forbidden is compulsory”, and therefore the ability to marry either a man or a woman will put their coreligionists in an intractable pickle. I have yet to hear anybody offer a scintilla of evidence that allowing gays to marry will have even the slightest effect on the rate or success of straight marriages.
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Have you noticed that opposition to same-sex marriage is EXCLUSIVELY grounded in religion? Think about it … there is NO secular opposition to same-sex marriage.
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Some things are too important to be left up to majority rule, namely the protection of minority rights. A christian church should realize this.
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Whatever you folks want to do in Zion (Utah) is your business. California is off limits.
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Forget Al Qaeda, we’ve got terrorists in our own backyard that want to take away our freedoms - they’re called the Catholic and Mormon churches. Please don’t let these zealots attack America’s freedoms - do not give money to Mormon or Catholic organizations!!
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Organizations the size of the LDS (Mormons) and the Catholic Church are NOT non-profit, along with a whole host of others. You should see some of the places of worship built in California within the past 20 years. These organizations know how to make money. They are either entitled to their political agendas or non-profit status, but not both.
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If you’re Mormon, it wasn’t that long ago in human history that God Himself redefined marriage to be between only two people (and of course it was only 30 years ago that God decided it would be okay for black men to be elders in the church, just like every white man is by default). So my thinking is, the Mormon God is on a dialup connection and he’s just got a big backlog of emails to send down to the latest Prophet. Were I the Prophet or one of his followers, I wouldn’t be quite so hasty to lock down a concrete definition of marriage again.
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This is about what I would expect from the Church of Later Day Saints. They are always alarmed when it comes to being criticized about their “cult like ways”, their legacy of polygamy, or their past of institutionalized racism. But the truth is, despite their missionary work abroad - their mindset is very provincial at best, and quite frankly - vert out of step with modern western culture. This is why Mitt Romney lost his bid for the presidency, And why he will never get there. Most people do not trust the Mormons
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ahh yes, the Mormon church.. that bastion of morality and believers in the sanctity of plural marriage. one man, several women.
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And this from a cult that not too long ago allowed multiple wives. But if it comes to money, they look the other way - they’ll gladly take 10% of each cult members salary but the greatest hipocrisy is thier interests in Las Vegas.
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Mormons see gay marriage as morally wrong . The Mormon religion was founded by practicing Poligimy. But to them marrying their 13 year girls to a 50 year old man is ok even without her consent in certain sects.. And with a history of poligimy this cult religion has no room to tell anyone how to live.
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Oh great. The descendants of Brigham Young’s 55 wives will now lecture on the subject of marriage morality. Lovely.
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Lol! The Mormon church has “progressed” from polygamy, to racial bigotry, and now to “defenders of marriage. Defending it from WHAT I have yet to hear one person explain to me. Perfect example of the carpet-bagging Christian Taliban trying to force others to their own dubious moral code. Religious organizations have no right to foist their dogma onto to others or into law. Period. This is not a theocracy.
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What the church is advocating is a violation of the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution. They are perfectly within their rights to define what a religious marriage is in their church, and they can restrict it to skew-eyed people born on the ides of March for all of me; I am not a Mormon and care not a whit for their rules so long as they do not demand that I live by them. When they demand that their followers establish their religious definition of marriage in our secular republic, though, they cross the line. Jefferson had things right centuries ago when he penned a religious freedom statute that kept church and state separate. The churches that are trampling on that line now need to be vigorously prosecuted until they start living up to that expectation once again.
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I remember the strong and organized opposition the Mormon church had in the ’70s to the equal rights amendment to the US Constitution. Their arguments against it were reactionary and unfounded, e.g., “if it passes, people will be forced to use unisex public restrooms.” (The horror!) That amendment did not pass, and historians usually site the Mormon church’s highly organized efforts as a large factor in its defeat. However, while the church’s Utah leadership is staunchly conservative and unyielding in its sweeping condemnation of homosexuality, the California members, especially in the Bay Area, are a little more willing to take a hands off approach when it comes to personal matters, even if they are reluctant to admit that publically. I am hopeful that in the privacy of the voting booth many California Mormons will vote their conscience instead of blindly following this Utah mandate.
I still haven’t told you all about our (very positive) marriage license adventure, or the most productive marriage equality meeting we attended Monday night. I’m bad. Well, maybe not so bad as just pushed. I’m still digging out from under a million years’ worth of family belongings so we can move households, and trying to fix wedding plans (July 26th is the tentative date), and it was Mom’s birthday yesterday, and there’s a family friend impatient for me to pick out a new computer for her (lifelong tech support comes with the territory of being/having been an I.T. professional), and… just and, and, and.
But I will get around to both. Fingers crossed.
Hateful Sow, Hateful Sow, Hateful Sow!
I watched the “gay parenting” episode of “30 Days” last night with my mom (on her 87th birthday), and all I can say is that I’m not sure which of us was more disgusted — only that she gasped a lot more, and I exhausted my lexicon of Profane Words I Can Use In Front of Mom. Since Buffy had to go to bed before the show, I taped it for her, and all three of us re-screened it this evening, with me exhorting Buffy throughout to blog the thing, and Buffy telling me I’m better at long, analytical take-downs than she is (which is totally wrong; she’s way smarter and more analytical than I am, which is one of the things I adore about her). I argued that if I blogged the show, I’d end up with thirty paragraphs consisting of nothing but what I snarled at the screen, over and over: “Hateful sow! Hateful sow!” — directed, of course, at the anti-gay, terminally cognitive-dissonant B-word, “Kati,” from Fullerton, California (Heart o’ the Hateland), who can’t break through her bubble of utter wrongness and dimwitted bigotry disguised as What God Says to admit that her stubborn, numbskulled, Dark-Ages christendom is absolute bullshit when confronted by two fantastic men raising four good boys who would otherwise be languishing in some crap-hole of a foster home.
Hear that, Kati Whateveryourlastnameis? You are a hateful sow, and you make me thank the god I don’t believe in that I spent mere months living in Orange County, California’s magnet for sickening bigots like you. (You also make me thankful I was raised Catholic — Catholics look positively bohemian next to Mormons. Of which Kati is one. Of the most hopelessly brainwashed variety.)
As I commented on the excerpt Joe.My.God put up on YouTube:
I can’t decide who the more hateful sow is — “Kati” or that pr*ck Sprigg. Or maybe it’s the screwed-up daughter compelled to wreak vengeance of on her father (for… whatever) by airing her own neuroses over her father’s gayness, and slamming all gay people in the process. Hateful, hateful, hateful, stupid, and mean-spirited.
Now, Kati, you hateful sow, go pull a Sally Kern or an Ann Barnett and tell us all how hurt and surprised and shocked you are when people call you on your most un-Jesus-like dogmatism. May your fragile bubble of cognitive dissonance blow up in your proud, ugly face. And let me know when you want me to call the waaahmbulance.
(See, Buffy? I told you I couldn’t blog that show without dissolving into “Hateful sow! Hateful sow!”)
And those lies presented by the Farcical Research Council that GLAAD is (and I am) pissed about? That was nothin’ compared to the screwed-up daughter of a gay man, who was given the stage to wreak vengeance on her old man by slamming the gay community at large. Another hateful sow. And FX didn’t have the decency to counter her obvious exercise in airing dirty laundry, ’cause, like, maybe, she’s just an astoundingly annoying attention-seeker no shrink in the world would put up with for five minutes, so she has to bash Daddy Dearest on national TV and make the whole gay world look like a bunch of freaks. (That’s what I think.)
Speaking of Mormons, a straight, married Mormon ally has this to say to the LDS church. If we believed in his god, we’d thank Him for him.
We Love Antonio Villaraigosa (and not just because he took his ex-wife’s name)
L.A. mayor solid on gay marriage: With the clink of champagne glasses, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Monday became the latest politician to preside over the marriage of a same-sex couple, uniting a Hollywood producer and his five-year companion in a short ceremony at City Hall. …
Click the link and read how some religious wingnut called the “Angel of the Trinity” disrupted the ceremony.
Today in Anti-Gay Violence
Four Arrested After Anti-Gay Assault at Flagstaff, Arizona Pride: Two men, one of whom was a worker for Equality Arizona, were assaulted outside a Pita Pit restaurant in downtown Flagstaff, Arizona following the city’s “Pride in the Pines” festival. The attackers preceded their attack with anti-gay slurs…
Second Man Guilty In Murder Of Gay Author: (West Palm Beach, Florida) The second of two men charged in the 2006 murder of Alan Shalleck, the collaborator of the “Curious George” books and TV series, has been found guilty by a West Palm Beach jury. …
Today’s Anti-Gay Creep Forced to Be Nice Story
SC School Begrudgingly Allows Gay Club: (Irmo, South Carolina) A high school whose principal announced he would resign rather than allow a gay student club to meet on campus will gets its club after all. …
LOL-A-Palooza of the Day
Limbaugh: ‘Democrats will bend over’ for blacks and gays: On Monday, radio talk host Rush Limbaugh opined that, while Republicans will abandon their conservative voter base, Democrats are willing to “bend over, grab their ankles, and say ‘Have your way with me’” for the “kook-fringe base” backed by billionaire George Soros. …
Wishful projection, Rush?
Why We Need Full, Federal Marriage Equality, Part 849,284,223,197
Czech Government Bans Anti-Gay Protests: (Prague) Authorities have banned two anti-gay rallies that were to have taken place Saturday to coincide with an LGBT pride march in Brno, South Moravia. The parade is billed as the first gay pride march in Czech history. …
Oh, this is rich: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (a.k.a. the Mormons) is throwing its weight behind the November ballot initiative to strip gay and lesbian Californians of marriage equality.
How about taking the big, fat log out of thine own eye first, LDS? I’m not even talking about the way the church, with all its power and superiority, can’t even manage to rein in its own modern-day rogue polygamists — the FLDS sickos (can you say “Warren Jeffs“?) who keep “marrying” their 12-year-old girl-cousins and throwing their own teenage boys out on the street before they can become a threat to the Elder Daddies (who want to keep “marrying” their 12-year-old girl-cousins without any virile young bucks getting in the way).
No, I’m talking about the way the LDS church redefined marriage when “prophet” Wilford Woodruff (”the only man on the earth at the present time who holds the keys of the sealing ordinances”) had a “divine revelation” and declared that plural marriage was no longer a “divine principle,” and was now prohibited.
Funny how Woodruff’s “divine revelation” coincided with the campaign for Utah’s statehood (1896), eh? Ya think Utah would have attained statehood at all if its men remained free to marry little girls (and lots of little girls) under the gossamer-thin pretense of “religious freedom”?
The Mormons, as the PBS documentary of the same name noted, paid “a high price politically for their embrace of polygamy. For 47 years, Utah was denied admission as a state. The United States government insisted that the Mormon church must completely renounce polygamy.”
It finally took an act of Congress — literally — to force the Mormons to obey the law, via the Edmonds-Tucker Act: “Now we will target the church itself. We will seek to prohibit immigration of people to the United States who are Mormon. We will disfranchise members of the Mormon Church. They will not be allowed to sit on juries. They will not have the right to hold office, they will not have the right to vote. And we will seize the property of the Mormon church.”
“In 1890, under enormous pressure, the new leader, Prophet Wilford Woodruff, issued a manifesto that he would only years later describe as a revelation. In it, he announced that from this time forward, the LDS church renounced polygamy. … The church’s official renunciation of polygamy and other political concessions finally led to statehood for Utah in 1896.”
In other words, the redefinition of marriage by the LDS church was about nothing but politics and money. And you can better your buttons that polygamy would still be condoned by the Mormon church today if it could get away with it.
And these holier-than-thou hypocrites — whose forebears settled in Utah to escape interference by the government in their religious activity — have the audacity to insinuate their ever-changing belief system into the public square to influence what they perceive as a redefinition of marriage? And in another state?
Polygamy, of course, is hardly the first or the last seemingly iron-clad law the LDS church has switched gears on by way of these so-called “divine revelations” — which usually, ever-so-conveniently come along just as the church is undergoing intense pressure from the reality-based world to jerk itself out of the Dark Ages on a given issue. Ever hear how God “placed the Negroes originally in darkest Africa” to keep them from intermarrying with whites? How God “placed a dark skin upon them as a curse — as a punishment and as a sign to all others,” forbidding “intermarriage with them under threat of extension of the curse”? And then how, ever so suddenly, “God changed His/Her/Its mind in 1978 about how cursed and lowly the black race was“?
Don’t believe me? Go study up on the “Curse of Ham” yourself. (But don’t blame me if you end up punching out the next Mormon missionary who shows up on your doorstep.)
That, folks, that is the Mormon church for you.
(Don’t even get me started on the Mormons’ shocking — I mean literally shocking, as in penile electrodes — history of torture to “cure” homosexuality.)
Of course, the Mormons’ oh-so-proud history of white supremacism all but disappeared in 1978, when LDS Grand Poobah Spencer Kimball had a “divine revelation” that God suddenly changed his mind and decided that black people weren’t — literally — the scum of the earth after all.
Do you think the LDS’s backpedal on the status of African-Americans was really the result of some “divine revelation”? We don’t — any more than we believe Uri Geller’s spoon-bending is the result of “divine” telekinesis.
We predict that something, someday, will come along to convince some future head of the LDS church to suddenly have a “divine revelation” about gay people (and women, too, who in the church still “enjoy” a status barely half a notch above where African-Americans were 30 years ago). We can’t imagine what will inspire that “divine revelation,” but we expect that it will be something along the lines of the LDS President being caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.
No issue is too big or too small for the LDS to reverse its set-in-stone position after its Big Kahuna experiences a “divine revelation” — even magic underwear. (Why did the church really decide to alter its “sacred” undie design? We’re guessing ’cause the old design created unsightly lumps under the costumes Bob Mackie was designing for Donny and Marie.)
Now, with all that hypocrisy in mind, let’s get back to the issue at hand. From today’s Salt Lake Tribune:
On the 39th anniversary of New York City’s Stonewall Riots, which arguably launched the gay rights movement…
Oh, yeah, if I forget (the anniversary is actually the 27th): Happy Stonewall Day, everyone!
…the LDS Church is asking California Mormons to support a proposed constitutional amendment that would recognize only marriages between a man and a woman.
In a statement to be read in California churches Sunday, LDS President Thomas S. Monson, with his counselors in the governing First Presidency, Henry B. Eyring and Dieter F. Uchtdorf, say Mormon teachings on the issue “are unequivocal.”
“Unequivocal”? “Unequivocal”?! Just like Mormon teachings on the “Curse of Ham” were “unequivocal”?
“Marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God, and the formation of families is central to the Creator’s plan for his children,” the statement says.
What about marriage between a man and a whole bunch of women (or young girls)? That was “unequivocal” at one time, too.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will participate with a “broad-based coalition of churches and other organizations” to promote the amendment, which will be on the Nov. 8 ballot.
“Do all you can to support the proposed constitutional amendment by donating of your means and time,” the statement says.
Church spokesman Scott Trotter confirmed the authenticity of the statement published Saturday on the Internet, but declined to comment further.
“We are disappointed,” said Dave Melson, assistant executive director of Affirmation, a support and advocacy group for Mormon gays, lesbians and their families that has about 2,000 members.
“We had hoped the church would back off and stay on the sidelines of this one.”
I feel ya, Dave — when I was still a Catholic, I used to hope the Vatican would stay out of the business of making everybody else’s life miserable, too. But, come on, Dave, don’t tell me you’re actually surprised by this… are you?
Current California law deals only with civil marriage. It does not affect religious rites or institutions.
Ohhhh noes!!!11!1 You can’t tell people that, Tribune, or they’ll understand that in no way will any church be forced to marry anybody it doesn’t want to! You’ll have eliminated one of the biggest lies the anti-gay crusaders use to scare the schnitzel out of the general public!
(Never mind, of course, that while the anti-gay crusaders outright lie about the state interfering with their freedom of religion, they sidestep the fact that they’re trying to impose their religious beliefs on the state.)
The LDS Church has been involved in the California effort to promote traditional marriage since 1998, when it spent $1.1 million to defeat proposals in Hawaii and Alaska. At the same time, LDS leaders in California urged members to support Proposition 22, a law that defined marriage as between a man and a woman.
“We were asked to canvass neighbors, go door to door with the petition and ask for support,” Russell Frandsen, a Latter-day Saint in southern California, told The Salt Lake Tribune in March. “A large number of us volunteered to do that. I suppose most of us did it out of a sense of responsibility.”
So the Mormon church is telling its members what to do in order to promote a specific state ballot initiative. I so wish the IRS would strip the LDS (and every other church) of its tax-exempt status for politicking from the pulpit, but, sadly: “Clergy can and do address public policy concerns, ranging from abortion, gay rights and gun control to poverty, civil rights and the death penalty. They may support legislation pending in Congress or the state legislatures, or call for its defeat. They may endorse or oppose ballot referenda. Indeed, discussion of public issues is a common practice in religious institutions all over America. The only thing houses of worship may not do is endorse or oppose candidates for public office or use their resources in partisan campaigns.” [”Religion, Partisan Politics And Tax Exemption: What Federal Law Requires And Why,” Americans United for Separation of Church and State]
Earlier this year, the LDS Church joined with several California religious groups, including the California Catholic Conference, National Association of Evangelicals, and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, to file a friend-of-the-court brief in defense of Proposition 22…
Politics… strange bedfellows… “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”… What a pack of shameless hypocrites, the lot of them. (Hey, Mormons, Catholics, evangelicals, Orthodix Jews: When this is all over — and you’ve lost — you’ll still wake up the next morning, each of you thinking the other is condemned to hell for beliefs that don’t coincide with yours. I guarantee it.)
In 2006, the LDS Church joined a national religious coalition to push an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would define marriage as between a man and a woman. LDS Apostle Russell M. Nelson was among 50 prominent Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox and Jewish leaders who signed a petition explaining why they see a need for such a constitutional amendment.
“We are convinced that this is the only measure that will adequately protect marriage from those who would circumvent the legislative process and force a redefinition of it on the whole of our society,” reads the petition. …
Oh, go redefine your own marriages, you sad old busybodies — or, better yet, go invent some magical panties of your own. I hear they keep evil spirits away.
Here’s the thing, folks: I don’t give a rat’s patoot what anybody practices, religion-wise, as long as nobody else (like children, animals, or people who don’t follow that religion) gets hurt.
I don’t care if you want to believe (as Mormons do) that God lives somewhere in outer space near a star nobody’s ever heard of called Kolob, and that Mormons who do everything right will “literally become gods, get to have their own spirit children, and create their own planets to populate them with.”
I don’t care if you want to believe (as Scientologists do) that you’re full of body thetans as the result of 178 billion people being blown up by a 75-million-year-old volcano.
I don’t care if you want to believe that God is going to appear on cable TV and then rescue his people from the Tribulation by swooping down in a flying saucer (Chen Tao).
Gordon B. Hinckley, the president and prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who led Mormonism through a period of global expansion, died Sunday at his apartment in Salt Lake City. He was 97.
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Mr. Hinckley spent 46 years in the church’s top leadership ranks, nearly 13 of those as its 15th president, and became the its oldest president.
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To Latter-day Saints, the church president is not merely a temporal figure but also an inspired prophet who interprets church teachings for the present day. In his first year in office, Mr. Hinckley issued a proclamation on the family. Besides reaffirming Mormon belief that families live on together after death, it condemned domestic abuse. It also said that gender was a characteristic determined even before birth, and that procreation was reserved only for a man and a woman as husband and wife.
Under Mr. Hinckley, the church endorsed a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman and financed political campaigns to support legislation that would ban same-sex marriage in California and Hawaii. …
In what will likely be remembered as one of the most offensive Christmas devotionals ever, LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley used part of his 2003 Christmas address to condemn homosexuals and to remind his audience that “the traditional family is under attack.”
“Sodom and Gomorrah, and the sinful practices observed therein, became examples of that which was evil and abominable in the sight of God,” said the nonagenarian leader. “It was Jehovah, speaking through his prophets, who decried evil and pleaded for righteousness. When there was no repentance, it was his withering hand that destroyed them.”
Rather than speak ill of the dead, we’ll just let the dead speak for himself:
158 Years of Racism in the Mormon Church = Merely “Little Flicks of History”
Mike Wallace: From 1830 to 1978, blacks could not become priests in the Mormon Church. Right?
Gordon B. Hinckley: That’s correct.
Wallace: Why?
Hinckley: Because the leaders of the church at that time interpreted that doctrine that way.
Wallace: Church policy had it that blacks… uh… had the mark of Cain. Brigham Young said, “Cain slew his brother, and the Lord put a mark upon him, which is the flat nose and black skin.”
Hinckley: It’s behind us. Look, that’s behind us. Don’t worry about those little flicks of history.
Why Did It Take So Long to Overcome Racism in the Mormon Church?
I like that. “I don’t know.” That’s nice. “Mr. Hand, will I pass this class?” “Gee, Mr. Spicoli, I don’t know.” You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to leave your words right up here for all my classes to enjoy, giving you full credit of course, Mr. Spicoli.
Steve, a devout Mormon, feared God would not accept him if he were gay. The couple met with their bishop who urged Steve to rid himself of his homosexuality by going through conversion therapy, a controversial program intended to eliminate homosexual feelings. Steve felt he had no choice.
“I wanted to be accepted by God,” he said. “I wanted to be loved. That was everything to me. And so I saw no other route.”
So every week Steve joined other Mormon men for group therapy. Most conversion therapy involves different forms of behavior modification, attempting to make people straight by having them act straight. Some programs even teach men about stereotypically “male” activities, such as talking about football and changing motor oil. Steve did not find that his experience with conversion therapy was at all therapeutic.
“I would definitely call it brainwashing,” he said. “It was an exercise in humiliation.”
Channeling Groucho: Whatever It Is, If It’s Gay, I’m Against It.
Larry King: …As the mores have changed— for example, I know the church is opposed to gay marriage. Do you have an alternative — do you like the idea of civil unions?
Gordon B. Hinckley: Well… We are not anti-gay. We are pro-family, let me put it that way. And we… love these people and try to work with them and help them. We know they have a problem. We want to help them solve that problem.
King: The problem they caused or they were born with?
Hinckley: I don’t know. I’m not an expert on these things. I don’t preted to be an expert on these things. The fact is, they have a problem.
King: Do you favor some sort of state union?
Hinckley: Well, we want to be very careful about that… because that— whatever may lead to gay marriage, we’re not in favor of. We…Many people don’t get married. Goodness sakes alive, you know that. We have many people who have to discipline themselves. If they transgress, they become subject to the discipline of the church. But we try in every way that we know how to help them, to assist them, to bless their lives.
And How, Exactly, Does the Mormon Church “Help” Gay People Get Over Their “Problem”?
This is how:
And then there’s Stuart Matis. And countless other Stuarts.
That’s enough, we think, to give the heretofore-uninformed an introduction to Gordon B. Hinckley.
Having already run over Mary once, Liz prepares to back up and do it again.
Well, we assume Liz Cheney, the not-lesbian daughter of The Big Dick and his wife who’s not a lesbian but appears obsessed with lesbian sex, hates the guts (or at least the oh so sinful lifestyle) of Mother Mary— er, her sister, Mary Cheney, the boyish, brainless lesbian turncoat we love to hate (because she got hers, so to hell with everybody else).
It’s bad enough that Neocon Liz was working for the presidential campaign of Fred Thompson, until the ugly, mediocre actor with the hearing problem (or maybe just the stupid problem) dropped out of the race, but now Liz is working for Mitt Romney as senior foreign policy adviser (so Mitt’ll have some good-sounding made-up reasons to bomb Syria and Iraq and anybody else he damn well pleases back to the Stone Age the very second he receives divine inspiration to visit blood atonement upon them non-believin’ heathens).
I tell you, if my sister decided to work on getting Rabidly Anti-Gay Magic Underwear Man — who believes that a dead parent is better than a gay parent (helllllo, Mary!) — into the White House, I’d disown her (after I tried to have her involuntarily committed).
[T]he endorsement is likely to be well received among conservatives who comprise a critical primary voting bloc in both Florida, which votes Tuesday, and the 22 states voting Feb. 5.
Romney has also enjoyed the support of aides with ties to the Bush family, including top assistants to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former President George H.W. Bush.
Liz Cheney, 41, is the elder of Dick and Lynne Cheney’s two daughters. Her younger sister, Mary, has been more prominently in the public eye after revealing she is a lesbian and having a son last year with her partner, Heather Poe, despite the administration’s opposition to gay marriage.
Liz Cheney, the mother of five children, said in a statement: “Throughout his campaign, (Romney) has distinguished himself as a leader who can guide our country with a clear vision for overcoming the threats we face today. … I look forward to working with Governor Romney because he is the leader our country needs.”
Now, we don’t really give a hoot what idiotic pursuits Liz Cheney chases, and quite frankly, we don’t have a whit of sympathy for that elitist little traitor Mary Cheney either.
We’re just struck by how not surprised we are that one Cheney would throw another Cheney even further under the bus. (And we will be even less surprised if Mary Cheney comes out to support her sister’s decision.)
As Republican family dynamics go, politics (which, for those people, translates directly into money and power) is always thicker than blood.
Nevertheless, we think Liz Cheney sucks. And not in a good way.
Salt Lake City, UT (AHN) - After two days of deliberations, jurors in the trial of polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs have found him guilty on all counts, and now faces a possible life sentence in Utah.
Jeffs, 51, faced two counts as an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old girl by coercing her into a marriage to his 19-year old cousin. Jeffs allegedly used his religious authority as leader of the 10,000-member Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), which openly practices polygamy, to force the girl into marriage.
The sect leader, the girl testified, told her her salvation would be endangered should she not agree to marry his cousin in a religious rite in 2001. “Warren Jeffs told them to go forward and multiply and replenish the Earth, and that is why that man is an accomplice to rape,” prosecutor Brock Belnap said. …
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