The Gayly News

(Hat tip to Hot Air)

So an athiest group (athiests are organized?) in England is doing something I hate, which is pushing their beliefs on others. Even if I agree with them, I think they should keep their religion, or lack thereof, to themselves. After all, that seems to be the point of the ads they’re running on busses:

The adverts contain the slogan: ‘There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life,’

Some people do enjoy their lives through religion. I’m not religious and I enjoy Episcopal church. It has a calming, soothing effect on me. I’ve written poetry about how the repitition of well-memorized statements in unison with others is somewhat calming to me, even if/when I don’t believe. The ritual itself is soothing. And then there’s that 10-minute sermon which –  if you’re in a church with biblical and historical scholars for preachers –  is like a historical lecture. So it’s easily possible to enjoy life within the confines of religion. Not to mention the feeling of community and the actual community a church creates.

I take issue when folks, outside of an academic-ish debate, try to invalidate the beliefs or lives of others. And use religion to do it. It’s hard to reason with “Well God says being gay is wrong,” or “Well, God said the world was created in 7 days.” How do you reply? “Scientific evidence says otherwise.” “Yeh, but God said this.” That’s a debate killer.

That’s what I feel like this athiest group is doing. “There is no God, you’re wrong, get over it.” Debate over.

I feel more for ardent Christians who take a similar tactic, because if they’re not motivated  by the desire to piss people off by telling them they’re wrong, then, at the very least, they actually are trying to get people into heaven. They are literally trying to save (post-mortem) lives. I feel like this atheist group is just being confrontational for the sake of confrontation.

Well, a Christian group got pissed off and has reported the ads to the bus service regulator because they are allowing advertising that can’t be backed up with evidence, or so the Christians say. That’s true, I have no more evidence that there is no God than I have that there is a god. As it is, God doesn’t make sense to me, and the idea that I’m supposed to give up this gift of reason God supposedly gave me and just believe in and worship him makes me think that God is a terribly conflicted egomaniac. But I’m always open to the possibility of God.

Anyway, got off on a tangent there. Sorry.

They might lose that “no evidence God doesn’t exist” debate in court, if it comes to that. But if you’re not talking about, say, evolution or something else scientific, the athiests might have some problems. It’s difficult to invalidate people’s perceived perceptions of God in court. You can’t prove that those people aren’t sure God didn’t talk to them, after all. In some cases, you might be able to prove that they’re crazy, but hell, Tucker Carlson became a Christian the other day because he said God talked to him (“I exist,” God said to Carlson). He sucks, he really, really sucks and is a miserable cesspool of humanity’s potential, but I don’t think he’s a diagnosable schitzophrenic.

But it sounds like an interesting case, and I look forward to following it.

Legal Schnauzer follows up on a recent story about a UAB employee who is being investigated for sending an e-mail regarding Day Without a Gay that contained this:

“You freaks make me sick,” the e-mail read. “You are the scourge of the earth and are responsible for everything that’s wrong in this sorry world because of the immorality you have brought on this world as a whole.”

That’s sweet. Gays are responsible for *everything* that’s wrong? Man, that’s impressive. I’d think Tamburlaine, Christopher Marlowe’s “scourge of God,” might also be pissed that homosexuals who don’t even conquer or whip anyone (well, not unless you’re into that kind of thing) or do any other such badass shit get to be named the “scourge of the earth” by this UAB employee. Who is this UAB employee, you ask? The Schnauzer’s got the link to the folks who think they’ve figured it out. FOX40 News in Sacremento believes that Pamela Gibson, an office associate in the Physiology Department, is the culprit who allegedly sent this e-mail from her work e-mail address, which is probably a violation of policy.

What’s even more amazing is that a UAB employee is being investigated about hate speech by a news outlet in Sacremento, California. Makes Alabama look good, doesn’t it?

Man, I’d like to know the thought process that goes into declaring that someone is “responsible for everything that’s wrong in this sorry world because of the immorality you have brought on this world as a whole” for being gay. I, personally, have a hard time figuring out how what I do in the privacy of my own home with a consenting adult is immoral, or in fact affects anyone else at all. Is it like bad karma or bad energy? Does it radiate from my house and infect the world with immorality? I don’t get it. When two straight people fuck, does it restore the balance? Is it like the Force? If I start fucking women can I trick people into thinking that these are not the droids you’re looking for?

Because, if so, I could probably pretend to think women are attractive … if I got superpowers. How many times do I have to do it until I can lift an X-Wing with my eyes closed? I could do it like, maybe 5 times. I wouldn’t want to make a habit out of it. But if I get superpowers from just one fuck or something, I could probably swallow it. Or not swallow it, as it were.

Lady, if you were the one who wrote that and you did it on company time, you might have a lot more to do with what’s wrong with the world than queers do.

I have not read all of this back-and-forth e-mail discussion of gays and the Bible that Newsweek posted online after Lisa Miller’s cover story on the same thing. That’s because I have a job and things to do and it’s long. But the first few paragraphs I’ve read and the others I’ve skimmed over suggest to me that I should read it, as the people in the discussion…

On the pro-gay marriage side: Bill Wylie-Kellerman, a United Methodist serving as pastor at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Detroit. His sparring partner: Dr. Barrett Duke, vice president for public policy and research at the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, an agency of the Southern Baptist Convention…

…seem intelligent even though I don’t particularly care what the Bible says about gays.

Anyway, after the jump there’s a sample to get you interested…

Read the rest of this entry »

Over at The Daily Dish a reader has written in to expound on Sullivan’s comments regarding marriage as a civil right and a religious rite.

Of Christian fundamentalists, the reader writes…

their faiths themselves are defined by the people they exclude: the unbelievers, the unsaved (or let’s be blunt: the “damned”), the always-demonized Other: without that division, that exclusion, their entire theology, indeed their entire worldview, collapses: a theology of inclusion is anathema to them, just as a politics, a sociology or even a science of inclusion (evolution) is anathema.

…

And irony of ironies, it is precisely the opposite of the message the Christian Savior tried to bring: that salvation is found only through love, through inclusion, through openness of mind and heart and spirit, through, ultimately, trust — that this world, with all its difficulties and pain and imperfections, built through evolution, and including endless Others, is as it should be, as it was intended to be.

The whole post is worth reading (in the end he mentions a curious case of a preacher shunned by the evangelical community for preaching that no one goes to hell…interesting theology). In a pure sense, I don’t care what the churches think about gay marriage. I think marriage should be a purely civil rite, and if you want to have a preacher marry you as well, then that’s fine. But obviously (as we see from Mormon involvement in Prop 8’s success) they have an effect on what America thinks about gay marriage.

I’ve never really understood the arguments against gay marriage. Read the rest of this entry »

A new Gay News Blog launches today calling itself “The Gayly News”. After hearing the announcement, Rev. Lou Sheldon of “TVC” ,which may or may not stand for “Transvestities are Very Cool”, was heard to gasp loudly in a really girly kind of way. “Ex-gay” men all across the country got boners and “Ex-Lesbians” fought off a strong urge to build something. More on this story as it develops.

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