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Another June “First.”

Monday, June 20th, 2011

http://www.hrcbackstory.org/2011/06/un-adopts-groundbreaking-resolution-affirming-that-lgbt-rights-are-human-rights/

UN Adopts Groundbreaking Resolution Affirming that LGBT Rights are Human Rights

By Paul Guequierre • June 17th, 2011 at 10:34 am

The following post comes from Mark Bromley Chair of the Council for Global Equality:

For the First time, the UN’s Human Rights Council in Geneva has adopted a resolution expressing concern at acts of violence and discrimination committed against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. The text calls on the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights to prepare a global study outlining discriminatory laws, practices and acts of violence directed at LGBT individuals, with recommendations on how to put an end to such fundamental human rights abuses. The study will be reviewed by the UN Human Rights Council next year. The resolution was tabled by South Africa and it enjoyed strong support from the United States and a broad coalition of voting states from all regions of the world. It was adopted in Geneva today by a vote of 23 countries in support, 19 against and 3 abstentions.

The United States was represented at the adoption by U.S. Ambassador Eileen Donahoe and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Baer. Baer noted the importance the United States placed on this vote, emphasizing that “this resolution confirms to millions of people around the world that every person – every human being on this planet – matters. As Secretary Clinton said, ‘Gay rights are human rights.’ So are the rights of religious minorities, the disabled and so many others who have been historically ignored or persecuted, not for what they do but for what they are. This is an important step in the quest for dignity for all. And I am proud that the U.S. is a part of it.”

This is the first official UN resolution to focus exclusively on human rights, sexual orientation and gender identity, and it is the first time that gender identity has ever been included in such a formal UN text. A vocal coalition of civil society advocates, coordinated by ARC International, also gathered in Geneva to push the UN to adopt the text. Those advocates, together with non-governmental leaders in South Africa, worked with the South African government to refine the text and then lobbied hard for its adoption. See the full text of the statement from the NGO coalition that supported the resolution here.

The United States was an official co-sponsor of the resolution and worked with South Africa and other co-sponsors from Europe, Latin America and Asia to secure its passage. Under President Obama and with the leadership of Secretary of State Clinton, the United States has become a strong voice for LGBT rights at the United Nations. The Human Rights Campaign is a founding member of the Council for Global Equality whose mission is to bring together international human rights activists, foreign policy experts, LGBT leaders, philanthropists and corporate officials to encourage a clearer and stronger American voice on human rights concerns impacting LGBT communities around the world. You can find more information on the Council for Global Equality and their work on this action here.

— Dan Hooper

Posted in International, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs, Violence | No Comments »

We are a Sanctuary.

Thursday, June 2nd, 2011

As our church polishes us and celebrates the recent completion of new things in our sanctuary (such as flooring and pipe organ), my mind turns to the significance of the sacred space, what it has meant historically as a place of prayer and sacrament for nearly 90 years, and what it should mean in the lives of Christians—not just here but everywhere.

The idea of Sanctuary is an ancient one. A sanctuary is not merely a sacred space where we can pray to God, but a safe space from the anxieties, terrors and violence of the world around us.

From time to time, churches also serve as a refuge or sanctuary for illegal immigrants, for runaways and for the hungry and homeless. Battered wives have fled to the church as a place of safety, hiding and understanding. After natural disasters, many people who have been displaced by fire or flood have come to churches seeking help and temporary shelter.

Hollywood Lutheran Church is a sanctuary for sexual minorities (LGBTQ etc.), people in recovery from alcohol, drugs and other addictions, people living with HIV/AIDS, people of color and everybody else who suffers discrimination, and even inmates and parolees who are shunned even after they have “paid their debt to society.”

We don’t just sit in a Sanctuary to pray! The purpose of the Christian Church everywhere should be to enlarge the Sanctuary of God’s love and compassion, and to become a living sanctuary of people committed to mercy, safety, healing and wholeness.

There is no place in our church for judgmentalism, rejection, hatred, prejudice or fear. The Christ we know in faith—who on the Cross gave up his life for our sake and took away the sins of the world—is a Lord who seeks the lost, upholds the weak, feeds those who hunger and thirst, and reveals the light of God to anyone who struggles against the darkness.

If that sounds over-dramatic, it shouldn’t. Christians are in a life-and-death struggle with evil in the world. Every day I see the ruins and results of evil—broken lives, fearful people, indifference or hatred. In the midst of this world, there is no reason to be “religious” if not to follow in the steps of Jesus Christ. And if we follow Christ, we must be the change we want to see in the world. We must be the sanctuary to which others may come and rest and pray and feel safe. This is true religion . This is the life of faith.

—Pastor Dan

P.S. If you’re curious, here are some key Bible passages about sanctuary: Psalm 20:1–5, Psalm 28:1–3; Isaiah 8:13–14; Ezekiel 37:26–27; Hebrews 10:19–24.

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, Doctrine, Faith, History, HIV and AIDS, Homophobia, LGBT Christian, Living by Grace, Ministry, PRAYERS, Recovery, Spirituality, Uncategorized, Violence | No Comments »

Perspective is everything.

Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

I am always browsing the internet for graphics and photos to use in illustrating articles, web sites and this blog. But this one I took myself last week. I haven’t seen this particular vehicle before or since, but its owner certainly has a different perspective on things than I.

And I can’t help wondering what level of frustration, anger or rage against the cosmos would drive a person to further deface his/her/probably his own vehicle as an editorial on one’s own life. Everything is a pretty inclusive word, after all, and no one person’s perspective is quite so vast. Okay, I know, it’s rhetorical. But we’re looking at a mental case, folks, and this driver needs help.

A second equally plausible explanation: the painter of the message is not the owner of the car. That opens up another entire set of assumptions and conclusions.

How are things for you? Is this your car? Is this your life? Feel free to comment.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Bullying, Doctrine, Go figure!, Public Affairs, Violence, wingnuts | No Comments »

The devil doesn’t frighten me.

Wednesday, May 4th, 2011

Be careful what you pray for. We have an interesting legacy of hands-on Bible Study in our parish, complete with all the urgent shouts of differences of opinion. It took us 9 months, for example, to slog through the Gospel of John verse by verse.

And when it ended we took a survey of what people wanted to study next. Guess. People want to study Satan, and tonight was the opening volley of our local war of good against evil.

Of course, we pray constantly for all people, dozens of them by name on Sundays, Wednesday and Thursdays, including those who are suffering from addictions, mental health problems, unemployment, homelessness, you name it.

And tonight three guys walked in who are not part of our “usual crowd,” two of whom I knew from prior episodes and one I’d never seen before. One is a known drug addict who thinks he is serving Jesus by preaching to the wackos on Skid Row but has himself never mastered his addiction to crystal meth. Another is certifiably mentally ill who cannot stop talking and making grimacing faces as if he is digging deep into intellectual turf. And the third turned out to be a raving fundamentalist who wanted to make sure we are a Christian Church before he would sit down, and later admitted he is homeless. This on top of several other “regulars” who tend to dominate, act out or digress into tabloid news, pop psychology or Dan Brown-esque conspiracy theories.

All true Christians, of course, show up for things late, and that meant that our special friends tonight were the first ones there. I was praying next not for the homeless, the addicted or the mentally ill, but for a very fast-acting dose of patience. Jesus, you promise you will never test us with more than we can handle (that is the Bible, isn’t it, however obliquely?), and I don’t think I can handle three at once with special needs.

But we launched the study of Satan with some general observations that people tend to believe stuff about Satan, the devil, evil and human nature that are not grounded in the Bible but mostly shaped by pop culture. In truth, pop culture has always yanked the chains of Christian theology and has been doing it for thousands of years.

We started with a verse-by-verse reading of Genesis 3. As improbable as it is, I had to argue for a mythic reading of this story–a story of talking snakes and the low-hanging fruit of good and evil. People want to believe the story is literally true—fact—because they think that somehow they are honoring the Bible and showing their loyalty as believers. Then the grimacing man asked in all seriousness if scholars have ever researched what kind of tree it was and what kind of fruit Adam and Eve were eating.

Hello? Lord, please show me some mercy. Help me show them that a parable is a story with Truth of far greater significance than the kind of fruit or the talking snake. A parable is not untrue just because it has no historic facts in it. If we obsess about the facts we will likely not be paying attention to the Truth even if it bit us in the heel!

What we will agonize about in coming weeks of course, is whether there is such a creature as Satan, the Devil, as an individual being who is God’s nemesis and truth’s antithesis, who is able to take over the brains and fates of all human beings at will. The idea that the Devil is God’s evil counterpart, with nearly all the same omniscience and omnipotence to inflict suffering, is largely non-scriptural. Such an idea entered into the western pop psychology thousands of years ago as their contemporary answer to the problem of evil in the world and the human aversion to responsibility for ourselves, our lives and relationships, and our world.

It may be a tough sell that Satan is the personification of evil run amok in the world–the aggregate of thousands of frailties, selfish choices, avoidance of spiritual struggle, and indifference to the suffering of others. Evil takes on a life of its own, I keep saying. If, as the homeless man said tonight, we leave an open door, evil will enter. That is not paranoia, but an understanding that evil seeks opportunity like seeds seek a crevice in the earth and water seeks its own level. Think Osama bin Laden, who is his madness and contempt opened every door he could and squandered much of his own $300 million fortune causing untold human suffering.

Where do the mythic and screwball images of the devil in our culture come from?— think of the evil child horror movie genre. Think “The Exorcist” (which grossed over $400 million, the most “successful” horror film ever), or “Rosemary’s Baby” or “The Omen.”

The screwball stuff does not come from the Bible. In my opinion, the Bible does not have an elaborate “doctrine” of Satan, assigning him great supernatural power over humanity for two reasons: (1) it believes that Almighty God is the source of all created things, all good, all power, all blessing, all purpose and all destiny; and (2) it believes that humanity is responsible for our own errors, failures and rebellion against God.

Two quotes to end this reflection, the first from Leo Tolstoy: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

And this from the late M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled, People of the Lie): “The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in one solitary and even humble individual–for it is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost.”

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, Doctrine, Fundamentalism, Go figure!, History, Ministry, Recovery, Violence | No Comments »

Privilege behind the curtain.

Saturday, February 26th, 2011

We’ve long known about those folks who think they are spiritual but don’t like “organized religion.” Now add the group of political conservatives who say they want what is best for the people but don’t want organized labor. In fact, many of the same conservatives have relentlessly ridiculed the sitting President for, among other things, having been a community organizer.

Iran and Libya don’t want organized opposition. Scott Walker has now coerced the Wisconsin legislature to deny the right of state workers to collective bargaining. (If unions are outlawed, only outlaws will have unions?) It has become clear that the effort to break the back of organized labor is itself highly organized and well-funded.

What these things have in common is fear and loathing for anything organized. Better, they think, if everything which threatens their status quo remains disorganized.

But curiously, one organization that doesn’t seem to suffer the same criticism, at least from the people on the proverbial right, are corporations. Highly organized, armed with extraordinary international clout, fluid money and shadowy subsidiaries, a very controlled hierarchy and playing for high stakes, corporations are running my life from behind the velvet drapes of the Wizard of Oz. “Pay no attention to the corporation behind the curtain,” says the corporation behind the curtain.

Is there any doubt that Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker intended to keep a curtain drawn over his own prejudices until he was exposed by a prank caller? Is there any doubt that Hosni Mubarek or Moammar Gadhafi want to keep control shielded by a curtain of absolute authority from all public accountability. Is it any wonder that British Petroleum corporately winced at the exposure of its avarice and manipulation that contributed to that catastrophic Gulf oil spill?

It amazes me that the mental coprolites who think there is a conspiracy behind everything don’t want to look behind the curtain of their own privilege, made possible by the simple act of hurting and destroying other people.

This is not naivete here. I am well aware, for example, that the California Prison Guards Union is screwing both the inmates in California prisons and the people of California. In little more than a decade, the cost of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations, which runs 33 state prisons, has jumped from $3.5 billion to $11 billion.

But by and large it is not the union lobbyists who are bankrupting state governments. It is not the corporate lobbyists either—at least on the surface. It is greed which is behind the curtain. Lobbyists make their living on funding politicians behind the curtain. Where is the public accountability if the public thinks it is really more comfortable and privileged as a result of corporations?

On my recent “vacation” to Florida, where the land is flat enough to be completely erased from the map by a high tide, people are in complete denial about global warming, for example. The ground of their denial is not that the science of permanent climate change is still hugely theoretical, but linked to the denial that anything could possible wash out their entitlement to a life of privilege, ease, comfort and high standard of living.

Probably more than anything, it is privilege which is behind the curtain: masculine privilege, white privilege, American (native-born not immigrant legal or otherwise) privilege. For all the conservative ranting about entitlements, our nation, our culture, our wonderful America is turned our national entitlement into a god at whose altar anyone, any minority, any cause, any just thing, many be slaughtered and sacrificed. We have met the enemy, says Pogo, and it is us.

—Dan Hooper

Posted in Bullying, Environment, Go figure!, Public Affairs, Uncategorized, Violence, wingnuts | No Comments »

Religious Terror: What can I do?

Friday, February 25th, 2011

This last link (“not in Iran“) from the previous blog, February 24, 2011, is a very thoughtful piece from 2007 that analyzes the complex forces with Iranian and other Islamic societies. I had not read all of it when I posted the link, but now I have. Its author, Martin Beck Matustik, who came of age intellectually in then-Czechoslovakia, compares contemporary Islamist Iran to the sheer force of Soviet power in the 1980s, which also tried to hold back every change with all force.

It should be no secret that I stand against violence in all forms, and cannot support the death penalty. More basic, I oppose all forms of religious terror, whether sanctioned by civil law, fundamentalist law, schoolyard bullying, or the pathetic but relentless terror inflicted by Fred Phelps and his mentally deranged ilk.

A friend of mine in the LGBTQ movement here in Los Angeles (with whom I am long overdue to “do lunch”) raised the issue with me that: our society, which talks the talk of protecting its children from violence and abuse, is doing nothing to free any children from religiously-grounded domestic terrorism and abuse in homophobic families. Truthfully, it is equally as chilling as a hanging in Iran to realize that America tolerates another “deathstyle” for homosexual teenagers: suicide.

What are we doing to stop this wave of death (which fundamentalism seems to find more acceptable than abortion)? What am I doing? What are you doing? How can we do more than weep for those who are dying, and reach out to our own neighbors’ kids to turn them from all self-destructive behaviors, show them the way of life, and the joy of being the persons that God has created us?

Certainly, the volunteers of the Trevor Project, the It Gets Better Project, and other anti-suicide efforts are huge in trying to intercept a life spiraling down to death. But it should be Job One for Christians intercept all messages of hate (including self-hate), rejection, and violence wherever they are coming from — and especially when they are being spewed out by homophobes claiming to love Jesus. Christians are not following Jesus when we simply say, “tsk, tsk, how sad” where spiritual/emotional or physical violence is inflicted on others in the name of God. It is the ultimate misuse of religious faith to resign ourselves to the evils around us which harms countless people, especially the young.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Bullying, Family, Fundamentalism, Homophobia, International, LGBT Christian, Violence, wingnuts | No Comments »

In memory of M.A. and A.M.

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

We easily forget what a terrible cost is paid by individuals who do not hide in fear. Thanks, Michael, for sending me the link on Facebook to this tragic news story. Two Iranian teen boys were hanged for the crime of homosexuality—identified only as M.A. and A.M. but photographed just before their deaths.

This brutal act of course is also meant to shame and intimidate not only all gay people in Iran but also the families of these young guys.

While we are reveling in the news of emerging freedom in Egypt, and the promise of the fall of other despotic regimes, blood is being shed. Lives are being lost in the struggle in Libya. Iraqis are still killing Iraqis because of a millennium-old rivalry. the rest of the Mideast will not see another Velvet Revolution. Definitely not in Iran. And Iran is worse than Libya because it has great strength and more power to hurt greater numbers of people.

I can’t help thinking, of course, that in brutally killing boys, Iran’s obsession with maintaining the purity of Islam as they see it is their way of saying, “WE WILL NOT let anything Western influence our view of reality.”

Ultimately it will not work. Over time, medieval Islam will change or crumble, just like the medieval West has changed—some crumbling, some destroyed through revolution, some adapting and reinterpreting its traditions.

But in the meantime, countless thousands of people will bleed and die. No matter how reasoned my own mental analysis of these moral, cultural and historic issues might be, I cannot wrap my mind around the idea that Allah is pleased with the torture, blood, pain and death of people. Capital punishment is barbaric, no matter where instituted and for what “crime.”

From the Beirut.Indymedia.org article: “According to the website Age of Consent, which monitors such laws around the world, in Iran “Homosexuality is illegal, those charged with love-making are given a choice of four deathstyles: being hanged, stoned, halved by a sword, or dropped from the highest perch.”

Pray for God’s eternal compassion for these young men and countless others.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Fundamentalism, International, Public Affairs, Violence | No Comments »

Stop excusing cruelty.

Sunday, December 26th, 2010

Sometimes things just come to me – thoughts that won’t let me go until I have thought them through. This hit me hard on Christmas night.

Like a cup or bucket that cannot hold another drop with overflowing, or (more pertinent in Southern California) like a rain-saturated hillside that cannot take one more tenth of an inch of rainfall before it gives way to a mudslide, I have reached my lifetime saturation point on some things.

One of them is cruelty. Whether it be cruelty to animals or children, or women—or cruelty to POWs, children and animals in Iraq (it just goes on and on), or the atrocities of Darfur, or bullying of gay-appearing teenagers, or all the genocides of the 20^th century, some of which I have lived contemporaneously with and others were only lessons I learned as a student (the Jewish Holocaust had ended before I was born)— I am beyond wearying of cruelty.

These days I find myself not wanting to read a news headline if my cruelty meter begins to beep. Individual acts of psychopathic behavior or cruelty, or the utter madness of foreclosures upon the elderly and a marshal escorting someone from their own home because of missed payments, the bottom line is that our society still tolerates, if not legalizes, many forms of cruelty.

Like many other things, cruelty is concealed under different terms. Society accepts the unacceptable because it re-labels things to appear less odious, less inhuman, less cruel. When it comes to the tragic gay bullying of recent months that led to a wave of teen suicides, for example, how many of us heard “boys will be boys” as the standard excuse, a deflection of the evil. Braced as I was for the tragedy of it, I still got weepy watching a live production of The Laramie Project earlier this year in Pasadena, telling the chilling story of mixed reactions to the torture and murder of Matthew Shepard in1998. Cruelty is perpetrated by overpowering the weaker party. Masculinity is constantly measured and defined by the ancient contest to prove who has weakness, as if weakness then is justification for contest, for warfare, for cruelty.

When I was in college, our Drama Department produced “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller, a defining work that views the 17^th century Salem witch trials through a moral lense. Although there was no visible violence, what took place in those trials was also cruelty, disguised and re-packed as religious righteousness, and the slowly-grinding wheels of justice to conceal fear and superstition. But like masculinity in another context, justice and righteousness cloak the redefinition of cruelty so that it seems somehow necessary in the service of a higher good.

Nonsense!

One can always explain evil things that happen, but explanations cannot excuse them. For one human being to condemn another to death, or to torture another to death, is cruelty. Cruel is defined as willfully or knowingly causing pain or distress to another. Wikipedia’s article on psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder is long and complex, but disturbing. For example, “Psychopaths lack a sense of guilt or remorse for any harm they may have caused others, instead rationalizing the behavior, blaming someone else, or denying it outright.”

I would love to talk this over with a mental health professional in terms of religious convictions. Is there a corporate psychopathology that is easily cloaked with religious rectitude?

Today is St. Stephen’s Day on the Christian calendar. St. Stephen of the Acts of the Apostles (6:8–7:60), the first martyr in fact for the name of Jesus. Stephen was cruelly stoned to death by an angry mob that took offense at his religious views.

It is probably not wise to make any comparisons of that act with the actions of Muslims who defend their faith by taking umbrage whenever the Prophet is demeaned in a cartoon, etc. Christians have perpetrated perhaps as much or more cruelty than others to defend what they suppose is “the Christian faith.” Think the Crusades, the Inquisition. Think of burning gay people alive at the stake. Think of a flawed moral theology, pushed onto the faithful, which expects them to tolerate and accept unbearable burdens.

For example, “God never expects us to bear burdens which we cannot bear,” according to an old saying. You can find various wordings of this cliche on Answer Bag. Such a cliche is just as much heresy as anything else ever said. It is not God who lays unbearable burdens on us, but other Christians who load those burdens, completely lacking a “sense of guilt or remorse for any harm they may have caused others, instead rationalizing the behavior, blaming someone else, or denying it outright.” There you have theological psychopathology.

One thinks of that outrageous preacher from Topeka who preaches hatred at the front door of funerals. He thinks he is morally and theologically “right” as if that justifies cruelty and the complete absence of compassion. No wonder that “followers” of Jesus give him a bad name!

But Mr. Phelps is only the most publicly odious of the under-scum of our society which tolerates and excuses cruelty. It is time that decent people stop condoning hatred and cruelty no matter how it is labeled.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, Bullying, History, Public Affairs, Violence, wingnuts | No Comments »

Lutheran bishop speaks out prayerfully, because “our silence causes you pain.”

Friday, October 29th, 2010

I am glad to receive word that even our national Lutheran bishop has joined the “It Gets Better” project. This just came in from Lutherans Concerned/North America:

Dear Members and Friends of Lutherans Concerned/North America:

The recent wave of media reports of teen suicides as an apparent result of anti-gay bullying has brought national attention to a matter which has affected LGBT people for generations. Video messages from cultural celebrities such as Lady Gaga, from governmental leaders such as President Obama and Secretary Clinton, and from the Presiding Bishop of the ELCA have provided crucial words of support and hope for millions of vulnerable youth. While anti-LGBT bullying has taken center stage of late, anyone who is perceived as “not like us” can and do become targets of both physical and verbal bullying. It’s vitally important that parents, teachers, elected leaders, and clergy reassure all young people that they are loved and cared for just as they are.

In his video message, Bishop Hanson, Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, speaks of the “pain and shock” of hearing of young people bullied “for being the people God created them to be.” He says that he knows of the hurt that had been inflicted by the words of some Christian brothers and sisters and also that “our silence” had the power to hurt as well. He reminds lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people that they are “beloved children of God,” for whom there is a place in this world and in this church.

To see the video, go to: http://lutheransconcerned.blogspot.com/2010/10/rev-mark-hanson-and-it-gets-better.html

or http://tinyurl.com/BpHanson-on-bullying

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, Bullying, Doctrine, Homophobia, LGBT Christian, PRAYERS, Violence | No Comments »

This bullying thing, writ large.

Thursday, October 28th, 2010

Once our society becomes more aware of the extend of personal bullying and its role in violence and criminal behavior, things would have to get better in this country, right?

I wish that were true. Many naysayers are found of using the term “slippery slope” to describe moral points of no return. We are afraid of legalizing marijuana, for example, because it may/will lead to harder drugs, etc. Chief William Bratton, when serving the New York Police Department, subscribed to the “broken windows theory” that ignoring trivial things like broken windows in the city leads to the deterioration of entire neighborhoods: vandalism first, then, bigger crimes against property and against people. In other words, “it gets worse.”

Why, then, do we allow child and adolescent bullying to go unchecked? Is it not a slippery slope for adult aggression, violence and crime?

There is a lot of conversation now about the bullying which has led to the self-hatred on the part of lesbian or gay teenagers which led to them taking their own lives. Another slippery slope that should be corrected, right?

As President Obama says in his It Gets Better Project video: “It breaks my heart. It’s something that just shouldn’t happen in this country. And we’ve got to dispel this myth that bullying is just a normal right of passage.”

Bullying is a sign of a deeply-rooted psychology of violence. School bullies often go on to become violent criminals as adults. If they are sufficiently motivated not deflect their own rage, it can often come out in resentment, hatred, racism, and those odd and dangerous political views that hold other people in suspicion and try to deprive them of equal rights and equal opportunity in our society.

If bullying were a “right of passage”—or something Jamie Nabozny was told by his high school principal, “boys will be boys”—then theoretically bullies would “grow out if it.” Instead, many “grow into it” and become more violent in their lives.

The story of Jamie Nabozny has just been released: “Bullied” premiered in Washington three weeks ago. Nabozny was a gay teen in small-town Wisconsin who was harassed relentlessly, attacked and even urinated on in the school bathroom. He tried running away from home, attempted suicide, and finally sued his school district and won a $900,000 settlement.

Ironically there is an anti-bullying law in California which has been on the books for seven years, but it has no teeth: no definitions of either bullying or of protected classes of people, and no penalties against schools or educational executives who decline to stop the harassment and violence in their schools. Nabozny’s successful lawsuit should have made a forceful point to all of America’s educational system that one school bully is like a “broken window” in a community, and it will almost always lead to a meaner, less civil, more violent society.

It is interesting to see the letter published in the Ashland, Wisconsin paper this week that shows some progress in local thinking there. Kaylie McCarthy, a 10-th grader there wrote, “Now, I ask the Ashland School Board this: do you choose to accept the mistakes made in the past, to help move on for the future and prove not only to us students, but the entire community, that leadership comes from acceptance? Or do we cover up the mistakes, and halt the progressions that’s been made thus far? As a proud Ashland High School student, all I know is that I look forward to seeing the documentary for myself.”

Looking at the larger society, In my view, the present political climate in America is a form of bullying on steroids—when inexperienced political wannabees think they can buy an election through forceful negative advertising and saturation of our TV channels; when a minority caucus or segment of elected officials think they can demand to have their way or shut the government down in retaliation. And is not war itself the ultimate form of bullying? —when one nation thinks that by intimidation, sheer force and aggression, violence and bloodshed, it can have its way in the world.

We live in a big city, and the bullying that takes place on our streets and highways has also reached a serious, fevered level. I have personally followed drivers in traffic, for example, who barely slowed down in slipping through stop sign after stop sign on the same route. Twice I have had a driver of a truck stop and get out of his vehicle and threaten me verbally for something he didn’t like. (One of those times I was a pedestrian who had yelled out “slow down!”) The slippery slope created by the dangerous, aggressive driver is convincing others to say “everybody does it.”

I doubt, however, that the civic discourse in this country will take that direction in reacting to the tragic suicides of recent weeks, because to see bullying as pervasive in our society would cause a great deal of social self-examination. America is no longer very good at self-examination. Like the playground or locker-room bully, our society tends to blame everything external for our own character flaws. It is always somebody else’s fault: socialists, communists, jihadists, the poor, the wealthy, illegal immigrants, people of color, the homosexuals and their “agenda,” etc.

If any good comes out of the tragic deaths of at least six gay teens this fall, it would be to trigger a serious self-examination of the American way of aggression.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Bullying, Homophobia, LGBT Christian, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs, Uncategorized, Violence | No Comments »

Change. For the better.

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

I am hopeful that America is not going to let this fall’s tragic rush of gay teen suicides just slide into the past without a deeper understanding of the pain and anguish that LGBT teens are facing. All of us need to do something about it, whether or not we have teen children.

Now this past week, we learn of the suicide of 19-year old Corey Jackson. This is becoming a national emergency.

But I am encouraged by two resources on the web. The one is the “It Gets Better Project“ on Youtube, launched by gay columnist Dan Savage, which features the voices of literally hundreds of Americans who offer their stories and their encouragement to LGBT teens. As of this week, even President Obama has posted his offering. The Human Rights Campaign’s Religion & Faith News” contained a link for Susan Russell’s video (on her personal blog). Rev. Canon Russell is the senior associate priest on the staff of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena.

The other is the Make It Better Project, which I just learned about in an e-mail from Robin McGehee, Director of Get Equal, “President Obama, you can make it better,” which was posted yesterday. In it, McGehee shares the letter from Tammy Aaberg, whose son Justin Aaberg took his own life because of bullying. The Make It Better Project is produced by the GSA Network, where you can see young gay/lesbian people offering their experience and encouragement.

On that site, you can watch several video segments, including a 5:00 minute trailer for a new documentary “It’s Elementary” from Ground Spark there are other excellent-looking resources on their site about gender, bullying, family diversity, etc.

Personally, I was moved by the amateur videos on It Gets Better to write my own script, with a little bit of my personal story, but as yet I don’t have the camera to go visual. Work with me, people, and I may wind up on Youtube.

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Bullying, Coming Out, Family, Homophobia, LGBT Christian, LGBT Rights, Violence | No Comments »

My bombard for Thursday.

Thursday, September 9th, 2010

From 365Gay.com on Wednesday, September 8, by Ray Hunt, blogger, 365gay.com:

• Gays Worse Than Terrorists. Who remembers Oklahoma State Rep Sally Kern? Well if you need a refresher, in 2008 she was recorded (without her knowledge) giving a rabidly anti-gay speech. Among the choice quotes were: “Not everybody’s lifestyle is equal, like not all religions are equal,” and “I honestly think it’s (gays) the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam.”Them’s fightin’ words.

Well Ms. Sally wants to clear up the record: “Here in America we’ve had what, three known real big terrorist attacks on our nation. But every day our young people are in a sense bombarded with the message that homosexuality is normal and natural.” Gays = Terrorists, before. Gays = Terrorists, after.

Well I guess you cleared that up.

I had forgotten about Sally, perhaps thinking that her 15 seconds of fame were so over. I had to Google her to refresh my mind, and found this site, Party of Jesus, where Sally’s own words from February 2009 are there to haunt her forever (nothing ever goes away on the internet), if she’s intelligent enough to use Google. Ray Hunt’s blog relies on an entry at Towle Road last week. you can watch the video.

Ex-Gay Watch has more background on Kern, including the shocking revelation that “gays are infiltrating city councils.” Geez, what will they think of next? Even more entertaining is the site http://sallykern.com. She apparently wasn’t quick enough to buy her own name’s URLs to prevent this. Oh well. And over two years ago Queerty uncovered interesting stuff that alleges Kern has a (disowned) gay son named Jesse. Shades of Pete Knight all over again!

Kern appears to be a bumbling but highly religious legislator. It was her proposal last January to amend Oklahoma’s divorce laws to restrict divorce, or as Yahoo news put it, “Sally Kern divorce law forces big religion on Oklahomans.” I don’t think this ever passed , but her legislation “would make divorce illegal under these conditions:

There are living minor children of the marriage
The parties have been married 10 years or longer
Either party files a written objection to the granting of a divorce

Sally Kern has been vocal about her belief that divorce is one of the issues causing problems in America. She also blames Obama and gays.” Kern may try to outdo Palin with rhetoric intended to offend virtually every segment of society. Coming at the same time as that nut job in Gainsville, Florida who wants to burn the Koran and pick a fight which is not his to pick—all apparently just to take control of his 15 seconds of fame and probably pick up some extra cash contributions to keep his tiny church afloat— it is more obvious what kind of folks are causing problems in America.So if you are a minor and you’re reading this, I guess you have been “bombarded” again with the “gay agenda!”

– Dan Hooper

Posted in Go figure!, Public Affairs, Violence, wingnuts | No Comments »

Boycott Target and Best Buy!

Friday, July 30th, 2010

Date: Fri 7/30/2010 3:06 PMFrom: “Joe Solmonese, Human Rights Campaign” hrc@hrc.org
Subject: Target and Best Buy! Make it right!

$250,000 in donations to a rabidly anti-LGBT candidate?

Tell Target and Best Buy: You need to make this right.

Add your name!

Dear Daniel,

One candidate for Governor of Minnesota has promised to veto marriage equality legislation and has ties to a Christian rock band that advocates death to gays.

Target and Best Buy, both based in Minneapolis, have donated $250,000 to a political committee supporting his campaign.

But they still have a chance to make it right. We’ve drafted an open letter calling on the companies to donate an equal amount to support fair-minded candidates. We’ll publish it in a full-page ad in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Will you help us ratchet up the pressure by adding your name?

Tell Target and Best Buy to make it right. Add your name now.

By signing on, you’ll help make it clear that Target and Best Buy are risking the business of millions of pro-equality customers – and show the rest of corporate America, which is watching this situation very closely, that support for hateful and intolerant candidates won’t go unnoticed.

But don’t stop there. Print out our letter, take it to the manager of your local Target and Best Buy, and let them know how disappointed you are.

Here’s the backstory: Earlier this week, reports surfaced that Target had donated $150,000 to the political committee MN Forward. Best Buy pitched in another $100,000.

MN Forward’s mission? Elect as governor an anti-LGBT state representative with a long history of attacks on LGBT Americans. This representative’s campaign even donated to a controversial “punk-rock Christian ministry” whose leader has advocated executing gays and lesbians!

After all these two companies have done to build a fair and equitable workplace, it’s a slap in the face. In years past, Target and Best Buy consistently received 100 percent ratings on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index.

They need to make this right – by donating an equal amount to support candidates who will fight for equality. But they won’t do it just because we ask. They need to see that hundreds of thousands of customers across the country are upset and disappointed.

Add your name now.

I hope Target and Best Buy will do the right thing. But it’s up to us to show that fair-minded consumers are paying close attention to what they do next.

Let’s make this happen,

Joe Solmonese
President

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Well, I was pretty outraged by this, and I have to assume it is accurate, even if Human Rights Campaign did not entrust us with the actul facts. I frequently shop in both of these chains, especially the Target store in, of all places, West Hollywood, California.

When I reflect back just a few years ago when people were fired or had a criminal record just for associating with a known homosexual, such guilt by association was assumed to be justifiable. Politicians continue to use this practice to discredit and shame the other candidate and the other party. Why then, if the public mind accepts the reasonable conclusion that association with bad is bad, should businesses be able to duck every blemish on their carefully-groomed public relations skin?

Fox News (!) reports that Republian candidate Tom Emmer doesn’t like the flap over the campaign contributions because “I thought we were supposed to be able to exercise our rights of free speech.” Well, it is about free speech, so everybody is free, thanks to the Supreme Court decision earlier this year, to buy all the speech that their corporations want to pay for. But that’s not the issue, Tom. We are just as free to tell Target and Best Buy not that they don’t have a right to speak with their campaign dollars, but that we think what they’re saying is disgusting.

Am I being cynical about the Supreme Court? Hardly. The same Fox News story explains it in detail:

Target and other Minnesota-based companies, including electronics retailer Best Buy Co., Red Wing Shoes and snowmobile maker Polaris Industries Inc., donated to MN Forward after a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed companies to spend money on elections. The decision overturned prohibitions on corporate campaign spending in about half the states, including Minnesota.

If you can’t stand Fox News, catch the story on ABC News.

Posted in Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs, Uncategorized, Violence, wingnuts | No Comments »

Sudden acceleration.

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

I am reading and watching politics more often lately, and I am absorbed by the similarities between the Religious Reich and the political right wingnuts.

Yes, I know they are in bed together, or they are really the same people. We’ve known that since the days of the Moral Majority (Hmmm. They still have a website is up but it hasn’t been updated in 2½ years! See highlightd above.) and the politically opportune ascent of a B-rated actor named Ronald Reagan to become Governor of California as his first public elected office.

But what fascinates me is that religious, social and political conservatives use the exact same technique to promote their views, as if they are all reading the exact same playbook. Is there a modern-day Machiavellian book like The Prince that the entire right wing is circulating? (See this cynical reference; don’t bother to scroll down.)

What I refer to is this 24/7 streaming of public outrage, which seems to be rapidly accelerating in our society. We “get it” that outrage achieves results. People love to get over-excited, as if their dreary daily lives offer no rewards whatever, and it takes an interactive, 3-D action film to get them out of bed in the morning.

But the media, including blogs etc. also exaggerate the effectiveness of outrage. A few weeks ago, the election of Scott Brown as a darling conservative to replace the late Senator Ted Kennedy, the “Lion of the Senate” was supposed to prove that independent voters were outraged with the Obama administration. Now with less than three weeks in office Senator Brown has voted with the democrats on an Obama jobs bill and the right wing is outraged against their own darling.

The outrage I see is more than Rush Limbaugh’s putrid opinions calculated to “stoke indignation” as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow observed. But probably the easy access to media, the explosion of blogs and Twitter, etc., have all aided and abetted noisy anger over everything. The new American paradigm is one continuous, relentless confrontation which continues to accelerate with no responsible “recall” in sight.

Road rage on public streets, highways and freewaysguy slams his Toyota vehicle directly into a Toyota dealership, claiming the vehicle had an episode of sudden acceleration which Toyota should have fixed.
“Light up the Border” outrage (not outage) over illegals coming into America.
Outrage over the fact that McCain lost and Barrack Hussein Obama is president of the United States.
Fred Phelps & co.
Neighborhood gangs who take offense at the slightest slight.
Making everything into a culture war. (incidentally, www.culturewar.com is probably for sale if you want to trivialize, market, and profit from it. And www.publicoutrage.com is definitely for sale.

Making people’s private lives (right to marry, adoption of and caring for children) into a a public fury, Armageddon-moment.soggy-brained tea-party Republicanswhite supremacists, neo-Nazis, NRA, and hothead/ red-faced rednecks
The noisy derision and resistance of the 2010 Census because, after all, it is being done by The Government.

(I don’t count Dick (“heart attack”) Cheney among the professional stokers of indignation. He seems to be more proficient at sneering than stoking anything.)What I find especially ironic, of course, is that the vast majority of this outrage and indignation in American society is coming from what social and religious conservatives still insist on labeling as a “Christian nation.” Is there something about being Christian, or about Christian doctrine, which is inherently angry, indignant and outraged? Did I miss something when I got the message that God is love, and that we are to love one another as a sign of following Jesus? Help me out here, folks.

—Pastor Dan

Posted in Go figure!, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs, Uncategorized, Violence, wingnuts | No Comments »

Ignorance is death.

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

When did the gay rights movement run out of gas? Yes, it did run out of gas. I’m only asking when did it happen to us. Last week I passed my 40-year mark as a gay/Christian activist. Didn’t get a pin or a T-shirt, though.

When did the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender rights movement run out of gas? One answer is that it was when we had buried about half of our activists who died of AIDS.

Or is that we ran out of energy when we got half a loaf? When people were able to have some quality of life in some of our larger cities, and when we could use Damron’s guide to clubs worldwide or take gay or lesbian cruises and sail the seas under our own flag?

Clearly, we need a source of renewable energy to replace the gas we used to have. And that really means recruiting. Not recruiting straights to become queer. If you’ve ever tried that, with a “bi boy” or “straight-but-curious type” you probably had your heart broken within a few weeks. Recruiting no more works than praying-away-the-gay or getting reparative therapy.

No, we need to recruit the young who are already out and LGBTQ. What they need to be recruited to is to get off the couch, unplug the latest iPleasure, and zoom in from outer cyberspace. We need fresh recruits for many things, including the gathering of signatures to repeal Prop 8. But, even more basic, we need recruits to pay attention to what our right-wingnut enemies are doing out there.

American society may appear to be relatively tolerant right now (if you live in the coastal zones or in a city bigger than, say, a quarter million people). The 20-something generation, in most bigger communities, do not have homophobic issues with “the gay thing.” Everybody under 30 seems to know somebody who is gay or bi or trans or queer. It’s become a non-issue.

But at the same time, extremely backward and weird neanderthals are organizing, marching, writing, phoning, blogging and amassing money that could completely yank away the few civil rights we have patched together.

I have talked repeatedly about Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point, and the case could be made we’re at the tipping point now. LGBTQ rights could win the entire culture war, or the entire war could be lost because social attitudes, homophobia, and small-mind electoral muscle simply tip things backward again.

The late Dr. John Boswell researched and lectured persuasively that Europe was relatively tolerant up to the 11^th century or so. And then a lot of medieval factors including fear, xenophobia, war and disease began to “tip” the needle on social tolerance against homosexuals (and I think Jews and Gypsies, etc.) The visceral attitudes of an entire continent began to look for someone to blame for current social ills, a scapegoat. Gay people became the scapegoat. And within about a hundred years’ time, social tolerance for gay people not only evaporated but the death penalty for same-sex acts became the law all over Europe.

Given modern communications, what took a century 900 years ago could take only a few years in our time. Think Uganda, think Fred Phelps, think Sarah Palin and other tea party boobs.

I am not Chicken Little here, crying that “the sky is falling!” When I look up, in fact, I am hopeful. But the muck at my feet is likely to pull me under if I do nothing.

Thanks to Ali Davis on 365Gay.com for alerting me to a Washington Monthly article on how simpletons from small town Texas have hijacked the entire national system on what goes into our nation’s textbooks. The article, “How a group of Texas conservatives is rewriting your kids’ textbooks” by Mariah Blake is more horrifying than any Hollywood horror film.

People in the upcoming generations are not being dumbed–down by inattention and electronic toys alone. They are being dumbed-down by the already-stupid who have been conspiring in plain sight to make sure the young will not be able to think.

I wish I remembered who said this to me a few years back: “There are uneducated people and there are ignorant people. The problem is that the ignorant are teaching the uneducated.”

In the meantime too many of us are doing white parties, etc. If we are not vigilant, the next Burning Man event may be staged by the Hateful Right.

—Pastor Dan

Posted in Ex-Gay, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs, Violence, wingnuts | No Comments »

Indwelling Spirit ~ A Blog for LGBTQ Christians

Archive for the ‘Violence’ Category

Another June “First.”

We are a Sanctuary.

Perspective is everything.

The devil doesn’t frighten me.

Privilege behind the curtain.

Religious Terror: What can I do?

In memory of M.A. and A.M.

Stop excusing cruelty.

Lutheran bishop speaks out prayerfully, because “our silence causes you pain.”

This bullying thing, writ large.

Change. For the better.

My bombard for Thursday.

Boycott Target and Best Buy!

Sudden acceleration.

Ignorance is death.

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