Marriage: An $80,000,000 word

The proposition 8 campaign in California costed more than $80,000,000.00. The goal, limiting the use of the word marriage in legal context in the state of California. It wasn't about rights, because in California, the supreme court has ruled that gays should have exactly the same rights. Something they reiterated after Prop 8 passed and it was challenged in court. It is also not limiting the use of the word in religious context. Everybody can get married at a LGBT-friendly church. Just let it sink in. Just let it sink in that this campaign was about whether same-sex couples may use the word marriage in a legal context. Nothing else.

Just think about what could have been done with $80,000,000.00? I know what I would do. What would you do?

Ex-gay panel discussion in Tallahassee

This evening, I attended a panel discussion titled:

All God's Children: LGBTQ Members of Faith & the Ex-Gay Movement

jointly organized by the Pride (the on campus student version) and Seminole Christian Life, a very conservative christian student body. I have taped the whole conversation, and I am currently making a backup to my webserver so that the file cannot get lost. I will upload the video in sections to YouTube in the coming days. Uploaded to YouTube here Before the panel started, two of the ex-gay members asked me to refrain from making the video, because they were afraid that the message would be distorted by selectively cherry picking pieces of the video. So, I told them that if I would upload the video to YouTube, I would upload it integrally. I personally think the complete video is much more powerful, so that is not an issue. Internally, I was actually quite appalled by it, knowing that the ex-gay movement has a reputation of distorting the information of others.

What follows is my personal impression.

First of all, I think it was incredibly stupid of Pride to provide a platform to these people in the first place. As expected, they deliberately distorted what we know about homosexuality based on scientific research. Two of them claimed that there is no genetic component to homosexuality, which is bullshit. I know exactly what gene (frutty oops, the political correct version is fruitless) needs to be manipulated to make a male fly court other male flies, or a female fly to court other females. But heck, what can you do once they have made the blunder? Well, document. So, I went to the meeting, with my laptop and web-cam, and recorded the whole discussion.

Ok, the panel consisted of five members. Three representatives were representing the ex-gay movement, Frank Carrasco & Christine Sneeringer, from Exodus and ex-felon and con-artist Arthur Goldberg, from JONAH. The other side was represented by two local clergy, Rev. Mark Byrd of the Gentle Shepherd MCC and Cantor Tanya Greenblatt of Temple Israel.

The evening started with personal introductions by the panel members, and I will provide a short impression of those introductions:

Frank Carrasco
Frank appeared to me as genuine about himself, realizing that he still has feelings for men, but he has chosen Jesus over his own feelings. I think that he in due time will find peace with Jesus and being gay, and that he will follow the many former ex-gay's that have left the ex-gay movement before him.

Christine Sneeringer
Christine is a different story. Based on her story, I am sure that a major reason she found love in the arms of a woman was her abuse past. That happens, and it sucks. I am glad that she has found herself and has realized that she has attractions to men. However, she didn't say whether she still has or not has feelings for woman, but I would not be surprised if she did. She at least still makes blips on the gaydar of at least some of the females in the audience.

Arthur Abba Goldberg
Arthur is an Orthodox Jew, convicted fellon, dis-barred attorney with a criminal record for financial crimes. Spend 18 months in jail. He is still a con-artist based on what I saw of him this evening. Glib and skilled, lies between his teeth. He gave me the creeps, similar to psychopaths I have met.

Rev. Mark Byrd
Mark told us about his journey from being raised in a church that considers the Southern Baptists as too liberal (sic) to finding peace in being gay and Christian. ADDED in response to the first comment: Tried basically the ex-gay path (he was married, has a daughter), was miserable, to the point of being suicidal, till his wife finally told him to be true to his feelings and amicably divorced so he could find peace. You could see his eyes shout fire when the ex-gay people claimed to do no harm.

Cantor Tanya Greenblatt
Tanya is a member of the Reform Judaism branch, heterosexual, married and very open towards gay people. She explained a lot about the context in which the Torah was written, and tackled head on the cherry picking of Bible/Torah verses to proof ones point.

And now about the content of the discussion. I think there were a few good things and the expected and obvious bad things.

A major discussion point was about respect. Especially the ex-gay members stressed this point, and within qualified limits, I agree. I think that if someone chooses Jesus over his or her sexual orientation, that is that persons personal choice, and whether or not we believe it is healthy or not, something we should respect. But as I say, this is within qualified limits. The limit is honesty. Telling your personal story is one thing, distorting the facts is another. For example, Christine claimed that there is no genetic component to homosexuality. Really? No, wilfully distorting important facts results in less respect. If you want respect, you better become honest and stop distorting the facts. And no Christine, NARTH is not a reliable source for that kind of information.

But there is another point that I would like to bring up. And that is the question of change? Basically, can people change their sexual orientation? My answer is neither yes or no, because I think that in rare cases, some people can change their sexual orientation. And those numbers are far less than what the ex-gay movement want you to believe. Also, I suspect that most of those cases are either bisexuals who have a somewhat stronger attraction to individuals of the same sex, or people who have for example experienced trauma or something related. However, most of the people that claim to have been heterosexualized are pretending.

I have far more respect for those in the ex-gay movement who actually honestly say they still have feelings for the members of the same sex, but make an active choice between God and their sexual orientation. There is nothing wrong with it, as long as it is their own choice.

And that brings me to the next item that I want to address here tonight. Recruiting. This was brought up, and all ex-gay members said they did not recruit. However, nothing was said about youngsters that are singed up for their programs by their parents. O wait, the parents sign the release, so they are not recruited.

And that brings me to the last item to be discussed. Harm. They claimed they did no harm. Whow. The APA disagrees. The survivors disagree.

UPDATE in the morning
Ok, I am going to bed. Tomorrow more.

And let me finish my last thoughts. If you are really interested to do no harm, you only can achieve that when you are honest, and means that you represent the research accurately. When you claim that you can change, but that the research indicates that it is a very rare thing, you give people false hope of a solution that is not there. If you REALLY want to help people without harming them, you say that. You say, we can help you, not with changing your sexual orientation, but with finding a way to deal with your generally unchangeable sexual orientation that is compatible with your believe. For more information about professional standards of helping people, see here.

He heterosexuals, we feel you pain.

Yesterday, the Catholic Charities in Washington DC removed the health benefits for new employees in order to be able to deny same-sex couples from having the same. Basically, they extended the anti-gay bigotry to their heterosexual employees just so they could stay within their religious doctrine. That is their good right, but it tells me one thing. Those heterosexuals now feel what we are feeling all along, religion LIMITS your rights. I want to say to them, welcome to the club of lesser than people.

Jonathan Wells shows his ignorance. Man bites dog at page 75645

Jonathan Wells, a fellow of the Dishonesty Institute posted on the "Evolution News and Views" website the following in a post attacking Donald Prothero, someone who actually does know his shit:

Some Darwinists have suggested that ancestral four-winged fruit flies could have evolved by mutation into modern two-winged fruit flies. But this explanation doesn’t work, because a two-winged fly hasn’t simply lost a pair of wings; it has acquired a large and complex gene (ultrabithorax) that enables it to develop “halteres,” or balancers. The halteres are located behind the fly’s normal pair of wings and vibrate rapidly to stabilize the insect in flight. So the two-winged fly represents the gain—not loss—of an important structure. (See Chapter 9 of my book "Icons of Evolution"). (Emphasis mine)

Really?

Well, Jonathan Wells, tell me, why is this large and complex gene found in other insects than Diptera?

Does Biology rules out Gay Marriage?

Gay marriage is a hot button in the US. Where I come from, the Netherlands, it is not any more and even the CDA now considers is something not to be fought any more. Anyway, the US is making head ways, now that a third state (Connecticut, after Massachusetts and California) legalized gay marriages.

Some people opposing gay marriage use biology to argue that the traditional marriage should be limited to one man and one woman. They argue that “It takes a man and a woman to create children and thus create a family”. And that therefore, marriage should be limited to one man and one woman. Unfortunately for them, they only would be right if, and only if, marriage was a biological phenomenon, which of course, it is not. Marriage is just a social construct, nothing more.

But besides that marriage is a social construct, using biology in this way is oversimplifying what biology actually tells us. Using biology in the way it is used against gay marriage ignores the large variation that biology shows. It for example assumes that you only have man and woman, ignoring that there are a substantial number of intersex people. During development of the foetus, many biological processes have to line up perfectly to get the proper sex-determination. if anything goes wrong, because of genetics or environment, some of the characteristics typical for a man or a woman will be skewered and defining whether the person is a man or a woman becomes a legal nightmare.

For example, in Texas, the state's 4th Court of Appeals in San Antonio, ruled that a man is defined by his chromosomes. This results in that same-sex couples, of which one is transsexual, can legally marry (with the cravat that it is considered illegal in the rest of Texas). Thus just illustrates that using biology to define a social construct as marriage is anything but build on the most shaky grounds.

But I think the argument is made this way because it avoids the insertion of overt religious arguments into something that should be free of religion. We have to expose the argument for what it is, a thinly veiled argument to insert religion into the legal system.

God Bless! Hail Odin!

I am an Heathen. And that means that I have a whole pantheon full of Gods and Goddesses. I will write more about that at a later stage.

One of my pet peeves is the repeated blessings that I receive from good meaning people in the form of "God Bless". I know they mean well, but sometimes, it irritates the hel(l) out of me. And it irritates me so much not for the fact that they bless me, what bad can that do, but for the fact that they would be hell bend if I would reply back with: "Hail Odin", which would be the appropriate response for me. And believe me, I have done this in discussions with an Evangelical Christians, and they were often very offended.

For me, this has everything to do with tolerance, or intolerance to be more precise. Why is it okay to say "God Bless" to someone and be offended if they reply in kind with their own deity of choice? To me, this is a situation of different standards. One for Christians and one for everybody else. It has to change.