Know your wingnuts.

February 13, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

from  http://www.streetprophets.com/tag/LGBT :

 Criminalizing GLBTs: the “Christian” thing to do?

Fri Feb 12, 2010 at 12:35:59 PM PST

Recently there has been a spate of commentary from the loony wing of the Christian right, calling for the criminalization of homosexuality in this country.

Item: Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council said that gays should be imprisoned.

“I think that the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas which overturned the sodomy laws in this country was wrongly decided,” said Sprigg. “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior.”

“So we should outlaw gay behavior?” asked [MSNBC’s Chris] Matthews again.

Yes,” said Sprigg.

For a second bit of coverage on this, see FRC’s Sprigg Wants To See Homosexuality Criminalized on the Right Wing Watch.

Lately I’ve been digging up a lot on other wingnuts, such as David Blankenhorn, Arthur Abba Goldberg, Rick Santorum, Hak-Shing William (”Bill”) Tam—and the usual suspects (Dobson, Robertson, Phelps, etc.). Sprigg is new to me—I don’t actually enjoy reading every word that issues from the Family Research Council mouth. FRC is an instrument of James Dobson and his religio-political apocalyptarians, after all.

But research is indispensable if you’re going to blog, and the more thorough I try to be in online research, the more amazed and dismayed I feel. We think we had a movement going (the so-called Homosexual Agenda), but there is an equal and opposite (hopefully no more than equal) movement of hate-filled, power-lusting, fear-mongering, pseudo-Christian money magnets out there who have more interlocking corporate directorates than a Lego kit and an Agenda which would take us back to burning faggots at the stake if they got their way.

Bottom line is we absolutely have to pay attention because these wing nuts, at every level of our society, are trying to twist public policy in their direction. If they have their way, the future will not include us, nor would it be safe for young LGBTQ kids who are just discerning their orientation, gender and self-esteem in the world.

Be afraid. And then be motivated. Be the change you want to see in the world, not the change that Sprigg, Dobson, Phelps and their more extremist friends are trying to put into place.

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in wingnuts, Violence, Sex, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

For the love of God, no violence!

February 12, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Today is the second anniversary of the death of 15-year old Lawrence King, in Ventura, California, at the hand of a 14-year old classmate (see: “Who should be on trial? and Another senseless murder of a child.).

Thanks to GLAAD for urging everyone to remember his death and highlighting this sad fact of American life — gun violence is OK when used against sexual minorities, abortion doctors, or total strangers who crowd your lane on an L.A. freeway, etc.

I don’t know what saddens me more: the news stories of people who wrap themselves in the Christian Bible toting guns, or the news stories of gay or lesbian people committing acts of violence against their lovers, etc. All of us—gay or straight, this or that or any category you can mention—all of us have got to stop the cycle of violence that is in America. And the place to begin is to cry out loud when anyone tries to equate any act of violence with faith in God. 

If you think I exaggerate, just click around you.

—Pastor Dan

Posted in Violence, Homophobia, History, Public Affairs, Coming Out | Print | No Comments »

Lack of credentials, lack of accountability.

February 2, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Dan Neil’s column in the Los Angeles Times this morning, “No Coming Out Party for Super Bowl” was amusing, about the application of a new gay dating service (”Man Crunch” dot com) to get their video aired during the Super Bowl, which was rejected by CBS even while Tim Tebow’s Focus on the Family anti-abortion ad will apparently get the green light to run. Neil rightly cries about this being a double standard in the part of CBS.

That’s not surprising. Double standards are just one weapon in the culture wars we are living through.

But what caught my eye was Neil’s perhaps-innocent error in referring to “The Rev. James Dobson” as “well-known as an All-Pro gay hater.”

Can it be that any journalist worth his keyboard doesn’t know that Dobson is not and never has been an ordained minister of any church? Check his biography here.

I sent Mr. Neil the following e-mail:

As amusing as your column was in this morning’s Times, it contained a serious error. Dr. James Dobson is not and never has been an ordained minister. Please see, for example, this article: “Attention journalists everywhere: James Dobson is not a minister” on the www.regrettheerror.com web site. And for future reference, Pat Robertson is no longer a minister either.

The article at Regret the Error is thorough and cites erroneous articles going back several years with 22 retractions that had to be printed in respectable newspapers and news magazines about Dobson. This is my opinion, unsubstantiated, but I can’t help wondering if Dr. Dobson enjoys the free credibility he gets by being mistakenly respected as an ordained minister.

This little cyclone-in-a-coffee-cup (okay, “tempest in a tea pot”, but who remembers that cliché?) illustrates a major problem in both reporting and blogging: we all tend to write about people we’ve not actually interviewed and probably haven’t even met. That is probably unavoidable, but it simply increases the pressure on us to check our facts, not overstretch our points or be too quick to rush to publish.

It illustrates a deeper and more disturbing issue, of course. What are the credentials of the Religious Reich figures who have plagued America’s otherwise open-hearted compassion and generosity of spirit? Pat Robertson is not an ordained anything, either, having resigned from the ranks of the Southern Baptist clergy when he decided to run for the Republican nomination for President of the United States in 1988. (You may roll your eyes now. What, after all, were his credentials to be a candidate for the nation’s top office?)

But what are the credentials of Christian ministers, period? Many well-known preachers have run through Bible colleges while others have advanced degrees. The procedure by which any particular local church, or national denomination, certifies one to be competent to lead Christian churches and to speak for God, are vastly different form place to place, denomination to denomination. The lack of a uniform high standard doesn’t merely allow the wing nuts to use the title “Reverend” with their name. It has also allowed unqualified people who are also sexual predators to gain access to the vulnerabilities of innocent people, and who are manipulators and thieves to help themselves to huge sums of money.

Wikipedia conveniently lists the dirt on 27 public evangelists involved in scandals of one sort or another, including Aimee Semple McPherson, Jim Bakker, Paul Crouch, Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard and Tony Alamo.

The Southern Baptist Convention’s official website has this on its Frequently Asked Questions page:

2. “What is the procedure for ordination in the SBC?

“Actually, there is no standard process or policy concerning ordination in the SBC. In fact, the SBC cannot ordain anyone. The matter of ordination is addressed strictly on a local church level. Every Southern Baptist church is autonomous and decides individually whether or not to ordain, or whether to require ordination of its pastor. When a church senses that God has led a person into pastoral ministry, it is a common practice to have a council (usually of pastors) review his testimony of salvation, his pastoral calling from the Lord, and his qualifications (including theological preparation and scriptural qualifications according to 1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:7-9) for pastoral ministry. Based upon that interview the church typically decides whether or not ordination would be appropriate.

“Some SBC churches require seminary training from an SBC seminary, while others may not, such a requirement is entirely up to the church.

“Of course, every SBC church is free to approach ordination in the manner it deems best.”

This underlines an issue for evangelical churches across the land, with their emphasis on feel-good enthusiasm and direct inspiration form God: lack of accountability. It is in the accountability area where a thread of relationship is woven into recent Roman Catholic sex scandals as well. Predatory priests have evaded accountability and so have the bishops who have place and replaced them time after time to protect both the priest and the privilege of holy orders.

But Jesus set the standard for those who would be ministers by washing his disciples’ feet. To minister means to serve, not to be served. The scramble for larger-than-life credibility and power in our society has led too many so-called Christians to ditch all standards in the effort to have public authority.  Academic credentials are harder to fake (although not impossible; I get spam e-mails all the time advertising the degrees for sale that I never tried to earn in school). Being elected to office requires cesspools of money if not mountains of integrity. But to become a “reverend” seems to be easy enough to attract wing nuts of all kinds.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Violence, Go figure!, Sex, Ecumenical Issues, Public Affairs, Fundamentalism, Ministry | Print | No Comments »

The devil you say.

January 20, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

I guess I am not through lambasting Robertsonian Christianity (fundagelical-blame-the-victim-praise-Jesus-cash-the-check theology). When I wrote recently, “Is he still totally nuts?” I hadn’t yet absorbed the fullness of the history lesson that wasn’t even in my college history textbooks.

Pat Robertson insinuated a “what do you expect?” view of the disastrous earthquake which has collapsed most of the infrastructure of Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. The ex/wannabe reverend Robertson, who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars annual and has a personal fortune estimated to be near one billion dollars, is said to be quite compassionate for the people of Haiti: he called for prayer for them. Not he sent funds to help emergency life-saving efforts. He called for prayer.

Robertson gives a bad name to prayer and an evil name to what it means to be Christian. Why is he being singled out for criticism? For his remark that Haiti’s slaves in 1791 “made a pact with the devil” to obtain their freedom from the French. Mind you—this was a man who launched a campaign to run for President of the United States. Imagine how his foreign policy views would have shaped up.

Thank God for Elizabeth Palmberg’s blog entry on the Sojourners blog last week (and in posting it here I reproduce her important hyperlinks):

“So Pat Robertson, to whom the media are still inexplicably willing to pay attention, is saying that Haiti is being punished for an alleged pact with the devil?

“This might be a reasonable time to point out that, when Haiti threw out the French, it was the latter who were on the side of evil — first, as slave-owners (Haiti was the only modern nation created by a slave revolt). And then, when Haitians had finally attained freedom from plantation chattel slavery, France forced Haiti to pay reparations to the former slave-owners, to compensate them for their loss of ‘property.’

“You read that sentence right — the ex-slaves were forced to pay their former masters, the equivalent of $21 billion (billion-with-a-b) in today’s dollars. It took the tiny nation from 1825 to 1947 — that’s right, over a century — to finish paying off this “debt,” a crushing burden which bled away resources for education and economic development.

“I’ll leave it up to you to decide where the devil is in that history. But if you want to be on the side of the angels — and God’s Jubilee economics, as laid out in the Old Testament — then surf over to Jubilee USA and see their advocacy points for Haiti today.”

Now, what has this to do with an LGBT/Christian blog? It is not Pat Robertson’s inanities which need to be shamed somehow. But it is important that we who are open-hearted, “progressive” and compassionate Christians—whether sexual minorities or not—absolutely divorce ourselves from the evil theology that uses Jesus as a commodity to make money for the preacher not for ministry. Robertson is only an emblem of this kind of profitable evangelism. He is not the only one. But his misuse of Scripture and of God Above to blame the victim, shame gay/lesbian people, and now malign an entire nation, is irredeemably shameful.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Fundamentalism, Violence, Go figure!, LGBT Christian, History, PRAYERS, Public Affairs, Ministry | Print | No Comments »

Letters from prison.

December 21, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

This week I am trying to send out a few Christmas cards — I have essentially given up on that gracious communication with the bulk of our friends, because I get weighed down with everything else, more and more, as Christmas approaches. But I am writing now to several inmates in California prisons, to men who have written to our church from time to time. These men (all men, so far) have written because of one of our own community who is doing time now for a parole violation, and he has told other inmates that, yes, there is a church in Los Angeles which welcomes gay people. So, although the communication is a bit “stiff” in prison letters because every word going out and coming in is pre-read by prison staff, I can only assume that the guys writing to us are probably gay.

A couple of weeks ago, one of them wrote from Kern County. He isn’t ready to tell me what he did that got him convicted, or even how long he is in prison for. But he says this is his first time in prison, and it’s December and I realize he will spend Christmas in a cell.

“Since my imprisonment I have become ever stronger in Jesus Christ and God and church and hold my Christian beliefs even more dear to my heart than ever before.

“What I need: is someone — some church– and some church members to help me and take me under their wings and into their church and allow me to prove myself as a person, as a fellow church member and child of God.”

This young man’s plea is as clear as any I have ever heard. It seems risky for upstanding church-goers to be concerned about convicts who will have to prove themselves in order to be accepted again in society. But as to being a child of God, he has no need of proof. The church is the community of those who put their faith in Christ. Regardless of the division of people into categories—Jew or Greek, male and female, young or old, imprisoned or free, LGBT or straight, there are no subcategories for the children of God.

How can I be so sure of that? Because each of us is made a child not by something we do or accomplish, or avoid doing, or even repent, but by the gracious act of God alone. We are God’s children just because God says so. It’s about love, not “Brownie points,” sexual conformity, or the lack of a criminal record. It’s about a love so strong that nothing can tear us away from it.

In his Letter to the Romans, St. Paul agonizes about all of the things in life (he mentions “hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword” as examples) that may conspire to cause pain, failure, regret or worry, but then he says, “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

I am open-hearted enough to read his phrases very broadly, where he says “in all these things” and especially “things present nor things to come (like our modern world). Can we not see that, if Paul were writing today, he might have mentioned other examples: “poverty, racism, gangs, homophobia or sexual orientation, divorce, unemployment, drugs or alcohol, obesity, health problems or gun violence,” and still come to the same conclusion: “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

To my friends in prison: may God keep watch with you at Christmas, knowing that not even bars and walls can separate us from the love which is given to us freely. Keep the faith you have in God’s gracious acceptance. And may the people of God keep faith with you!

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Homophobia, Gay Catechism, Violence, Doctrine, LGBT Christian, Public Affairs, Living by Grace, Faith, Recovery | Print | No Comments »

Politics and policy are driven by a culture of hatred.

September 26, 2009 by Dan Hooper.

I have decided to post this 9-15-2009 essay from Wayne Dynes, forwarded to me by Billy Glover, because it is compelling and thought-provoking about our relationship to international events and national policy.  There is much here to think deeply about, rather than to become partisan about. - DH

Homophobic killings

Thirteen years ago I joined a gay-conservative listserv on the Internet, consisting of about 60 members. I had never regarded myself as a conservative and found to my pleasant surprise that there were several other centrist (and liberal) members of the group. We were united by our common exasperation with the insufferable smugness and intolerance of the gay left, which had for so long dominated the Movement. Alongside this trend stood the “official” gay groups. These had no viable ideology at all, except for raising money and cosying up to the Democratic Party. No matter how much that Party ignored us, the official gays were determined to hang on. We see this sycophancy even today, when those folks urge “patience,” even though Obama has failed to deliver on any of his campaign promises to us.

For their part, the gaycons were uniformly in favor of the Iraq War. I tried ceaselessly to warn them against this stance, but my erstwhile friends were plugged into the DC establishment, and freely parroted the groupthink prevalent there.

The breaking point came when the double standard of the group became glaringly obvious.

In several newspapers and on his site direland.typepad.com, the independent journalist Doug Ireland had meticulously documented the state-sponsored executions of gays in Iran. For the gaycons, of course, Iran was a rogue state, so one could expect nothing good there.

When I reminded my little group of the death squads that were killing gays next door in Iraq, the gaycons wanted none of it. They would have had to admit that the US invasion and occupation of that country had been a disaster for women, Christians, and especially for gays.

As the US presence diminishes in Iraq, the peril that gay men face there has only worsened. An article in the British newspaper, The Guardian, provides some gruesome details (www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/13/iraq-gays-murdered-militias.)

The Muslim extremist groups use young militants with computer training to hunt down gays on chat rooms on the Internet. “It is the easiest way to find those people who are destroying Islam and who want to dirty the reputation we took centuries to build up,” one said. Once the targets are found, arrangements are made to attack and sometimes kill them. The groups now active are believed to be responsible for the deaths of more than 130 gay Iraqi men since the beginning of the year alone. With a stream of homophobic epithets, the deputy leader of one Baghdad group explained its campaign. “Animals deserve more pity than the dirty people who practice such sexual depraved acts,” he told a reporter. “We make sure they know why they are being held and give them the chance to ask God’s forgiveness before they are killed.”

It has been suggested that the violence may be a consequence of the success of the government of Nuri al-Maliki. As militia groups see that their earlier function of providing local security is no longer needed they “shift their focus to the moral and cultural sphere, reverting to classic Islamist tactics of policing moral boundaries,” one observer remarked.

Under Saddam Hussein same-sex behavior was not criminalized, though there was repression, as occurs throughout the Arab world. Violence against gays started in the aftermath of the invasion in 2003. Since 2004, according to Ali Hali, chairman of the Iraqi LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) group, a human-rights group based in London, no fewer than 680 gay men are known to have died in Iraq, at least 70 of those in the past five months. Actually, the figures may be higher, as most cases involving married men are not reported. Seven victims were women.

Rumor has it that the police are involved, but these reports have been denied. In recent days I received an email from a leftist gay group, noting only the killings in Iraq. This is the mirror image of the blindness of my gaycon friends. The lefties only want to hear about homophobic atrocities in Iraq, which are indeed terrible. They take this selective approach because their template is that all the troubles in the world are due to US “imperialism.” If only we would refrain, all would be well.. (As in Darfur, the Congo, Burma, North Korea, and other such stunning examples of Third World virtue.)

Since gays are being killed in Iran and Palestine, where there is no US presence, this cannot be the key variable. The essential factor is of course the fanaticism of Islamist extremists. Yet the left—and multiculturalists in general—are reluctant to criticize any aspect of Islam.

And of course they cling to their “blame America first” demonology. I would be glad if the US were less active in intervening throughout the world, but this would not mean that conditions would improve in most places. Kleptocracy and repression are rampant in much of the Third World.

Moreover, from Karl Marx to Hugo Chavez, the hard left has a long history of homophobia. That record is nothing to be proud of.

So why not just stop looking at these comments from both the right and the left? The reason I pay attention to them is that I have become disillusioned with the mainstream media. As a resident of New York City, I find that I am obliged to read the New York Times. But after that newspaper allowed the appalling Judith Miller free reign with her incendiary stories about Saddam’s Iraq, I no longer trust that newspaper—or indeed any establishment source.

The only remedy is to get your information from as many sources as you can.

Billy Glover’s forwarding comments (September 17):

I think I agree with your thinking. The problem is that I’m not sure that homosexuals were not as bad off before we invaded Iraq as before, because I agree that it is Islamic nonsense that is the factor. And that is why I supported the war and still do. There is no doubt in my mind that eventually we will have to confront all religious nonsense that is anti-homosexual.I saw a TV documentary, I think on National Geographic channel, on “Inside Islam.” It may be my lack of hearing it before, but I had never heard that there has been a study of the Koran like the Bible, and it came to the same conclusion: parts of the Koran have not only been mistranslated, but things have been added. Specifically, in a modern language translation words like tanks, etc were added, which obviously could not have been in the time it was “written.” (This in a text that supports war on non-Muslims.)

Another aspect is that, like the original Baptist belief, early Islam had no professional leaders, but each person was his own interpreter of the book. And it was pointed out that “Islam’ in non arabic nations is different from the Arabic ones and that, as we already knew, the worst elements are paid for by Saudi-Arabia, the Wahabis-the Islamic element like the right-wing “Christian” extremists in this country.

Need I remind anyone that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons are still being attacked and killed in the United States of America, and that it doesn’t make any difference which party is in power in Washington? We Americans also tolerate a culture of hatred. It isn’t only extremists who are guilty of hatred. We all need to re-examine our mean-spirited and violence-driven rejection of those who differ from us, whether that is in gender or sexual orientation, race or ethnicity, nationality, political persuasions or just every day opinions. People differ from one another. God does not smile on our mean spirits or our culture of violence, hatred and rejection of anyone. Period.

— Dan Hooper

Posted in Violence, Homophobia, Fundamentalism, History, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

Do we take the Bible literally?

July 31, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

I got to thinking about Biblical literalism again, and the pain, fear, suffering and bull___ it leaves in its wake. No, I didn’t grow up with that monkey on my back (although I am sure the pastor of the church where I went to Sunday school and catechism probably had it on his back). But literalism is such a crazy issue, since many true-blue Christians think they want to buy into it, even while they ignore it, or manipulate it to hurt others.

Biblical literalists want to stick gay people with the sinfulness of homosexuality, for example, even though no one, literally, knows what arsenokoites and malakos mean in the original Greek. Whatever they mean, it is not “homosexuals” as we understand that idea now. We could argue for days I think.

So, take long hair, then. According to the New Testament, men aren’t suppose to wear long hair, but women are, because of the angels. I am not making this up. It’s literally true, if the Bible is literally true. In 1 Corinthians 11:14, Paul says, unconditionally, “Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is degrading to him . . .?” Never mind that Christians ever since have assumed that Jesus himself wore long hair. Michelangelo put long hair on God the Father in the Sistine Chapel. Old Testament heroes such as Sampson wore long hair. And even St. Paul, a few verses before that passage, urges the Corinthians, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” Christ, the guy with the long hair. Yeah, right.

Warner Sallmen’s portrait of Christ was all the rage in the 1930s. Richard Hook’s surfer-dude portrait of Christ was all the rage in the 1970s, especially among evangelicals.

So literalism (Paul’s advice) can be ignored when they want to ignore it, and especially if you’re a born again surfer dude.

After I wrote the blog about the Brandon McInerney murder trial, I realized how futile it is to quote Matthew 26:52 when it comes to Christians toting guns. Jesus, after all, said “all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” Jesus, literally, never mentions guns, so they must be okay for Christians to wield. They weren’t invented until the Middle Ages, after all, so violence-loving “Christians” can dodge the bullet—they can safely claim that there’s nothing in the Bible against Christians owning and using guns.

(At least McInerney didn’t have long hair. That would be degrading, according to St. Paul, who never condemned guns but did condemn arsenokoitai and malakoi and long hair.)

This is a clear case of using Biblical literalism narrowly in order to hide behind it. If something isn’t expressly forbidden in the Bible, then it is permissible.

The great gun control debate isn’t the first time, of course, that Christians have gotten into bed with evil and violence, weapons, or earthly power. The Christian church has a shameful history of using earthly cruelty to enforce the boundaries of the kingdom of heaven. Biblical literalism is only one weapon in its arsenal.

But people who were raised on the comfort food of biblical literalism have a hard time changing their diet, even if it isn’t good for them. When Christian gay apologists first started trying to create “wiggle room” in the 1970s, they tried to argue their way with literalism. In Genesis 19 (the Sodom and Gomorrah story), for example, there were tortured arguments about the meaning of the Hebrew word in 19:5: “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them.” Lot, the host, urges the evil townsmen “do not act so wickedly.”

In other places, “to know” meant in the Biblical sense, to have sexual relations with, as in Genesis 4:1, “Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain.” But fundamentalists refused to see the truth behind the euphemism because they hid behind literalism. The truth, of course, is that in this place “know” really means “gang rape.” “… so that we may gang rape them,” an understanding which makes much more sense when read in light of the amazing parallel story in Judges 19, where the wicked townsmen are also told not to behave so wickedly, but then offered the hosts two daughters to ravish (19:24) and even the guest’s female concubine, who was raped all night long (19:25).

Betty Bowers, by the way, has a wonderful take on Biblical marriage from a literal interpretation’s point of view. Especially see the section on marriage between a woman and her rapist. Literalism has an answer for everything, after all. But when are we going to step away from it once and for all?

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Violence, Bible & Interpretation, Fundamentalism, History, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

Who should be on trial?

July 23, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

I am really angry all over again as Brandon McInerney is on trial for the murder of Lawrence King. Brandon is charged with shooting King at point blank range twice in the back of his head in their eighth grade English class on February 12, 2008.

McInerney’s defense is sexual harassment, because King apparently had a crush on the younger McInerney.

What has made the headlines recently is that McInerney, who was 14 at the time he allegedly shot the 15 year-old King, is that the accused killer is being tried as an adult. To me, trying him under the rules of adult courts is irrelevant and of course will only elicit a spectrum of views about the juvenile justice system. What angers me is that when a juvenile is accused of such a gross capital offense, it is really his parents who should be on trial. And our so-called justice system makes no provision for literally holding the parents of a minor responsible for the criminal behavior of their child.

In the Los Angeles Times article in Tuesday’s paper, it is revealed that the 14 year-old was handling a .22 caliber revolver. Where did he get it?

“Another witness testified that the detectives found a cache of weapons in an unlocked closet at McInerney’s home.

“The weapons reportedly belonged to his grandfather, William McInerney Sr.

“Ammunition, an instructional DVD called ‘Shooting in Realistic Environments’ [available used from Amazon for as little as $6.25!] and drawings of swastikas were found in a bedroom that the defendant shared with an older brother stationed in Iraq, investigators said.”

If this evidence is true, the family and the household environment are the true “smoking gun” in the murder of a gay teenager. It is not the simple question, “Where were his parents?” but “What kind of values were being taught and what kind of parental control was being practiced in this Oxnard, California household? The internet could be named as an accomplice here, since any kid could put together the six dollars and a quarter to buy the training DVD.  Life is cheap.  So, apparently, is death.

In an undated Queerty story, “we learn this disturbing fact about the killer of eighth grader Lawrence King: He boasted proudly of having guns at his house, just in case, on the off chance he wanted to kill someone, he could.”  (See: “Boy accused of killing gay classmate bragged he had guns at home, police say,” July 20, 2009.)

When I Google the phrase “teaching kids to shoot guns” I get “about 1, 490,000″ hits. Some of them are on the negative side of the issue. Many, probably most, of them are on the side of literally teaching kids to shoot guns. The NRA has a page on “Safety Information for Parents”.  Gee, great!  The parents of Brandon McInerney hardly need to worry now about teaching their son safety information. If convicted of first degree murder, he will be behind bars for a long time. Apparently the crime was pre-meditated, by the way, because he had bragged to other school chums that he was going to kill King.  No one at the school took him seriously. But why didn’t his family take it seriously, since they had to know about the instructional DVD and the swastikas?

Another cool site is at www.christiangunowner.com (screen capture above) where a true oxymoron is this guy’s motto: “Christian first American second gun owner third.” In the first place, Jesus tells us to put down our weapons. “All who take the sword will die by the sword,” Matthew 26:52. I don’t think there’s any wiggle room for this. The sword is the ancient equivalent of today’s handgun. How any Christian can rationalize keeping, using and teaching their kids to shoot guns in realistic environments (not on a firing range) is an unconscionable abuse of Christian ethics. No, the news accounts don’t reveal whether or not the McInerney family was a Christian church-going family—I am not holding my breath to find out. But if Christian people and Christian churches refuse to teach rightly and control the extremist behavior of their members, then I say leave it to the government to hold the adults responsible for the criminal behavior of their children.

This is way bigger than a gay/straight thing, although it is an especially deep sadness that juvenile murders involve a teenage gay kid who barely had begun to understand himself as gay or learn how to behave appropriately as an “out” teenager.

And the fuzzy line in ethics and law over trying a juvenile as an adult only illustrates the fuzziness of our culture that cannot decide whether to be ethical, to have concerns, to have limits, or to say “whatever…” to virtually every moral question. On the Amazon page selling the DVD on how to shoot “in realistic environments,” for example, is another add for Kinder Care Learning Centers. Do child care centers now offer to teach kids to shoot guns? Is this okay in our society, that to express affection for someone of the same sex is still not okay (apparently labeled as sexual harassment by McInerney’s defense attorney, because he was “humiliated” by King’s affection), but it is okay to train children to kill one another.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Violence, Public Affairs, Coming Out | Print | No Comments »

Undisguised indifference to bigotry and suffering.

May 1, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

I followed his story closely. I became emotional when he died. I made memorial gifts in his name.  I have written about him. But I never met Matthew Shepard. There was something so tender, so shy in the few photos of him that have been published. Maybe the heart-strings that his murder tugged upon was that I could have been just as easily victimized at that age.  Skinny, shy, not very masculine, uncertain of my gay self in a hostile world.  The only thing different was I don’t have blond hair.  But that innocent 21 year-old could have been me.  Since I was that young, and even since his senseless death, I have met countless gay kids.  And too many of them have sad stories, if not horror stories, to tell about parental rejection, being bullied, feeling too hungry for a little sympathetic company while sitting all alone on a bar stool. Too many of us still experience real queer bashing.  In my own neighborhood (liberal Silverlake in Los Angeles) there are still fearful, frightening episodes of queer bashing and mugging.Of course I am gratified that the House of Representatives has now passed the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes bill (and who knows, will there be an uphill battle in the Senate?). Yet since Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) called this hate crime a “hoax”, I am outraged all over again. (Huffington Post’s headline, “Virginia Foxx: Story of Matthew Shepard’s Murder A ‘Hoax.’“)

For one thing, I must surmise that she didn’t follow his story, when Matthew was discovered tied to a Wyoming fence in the freezing cold, his skull already crushed. Everyone (except people like Foxx) was horrified. And within hours he was dead. Rep. Foxx has simply “bought into” the flimsy defense argument that those scumbags who murdered him had only robbery on their minds; and therefore she could argue that to classify his murder, and to name this bill after him, is a hoax. 

That is almost like suggesting that Hitler only incidentally murdered six million Jews, and all he meant to do was to rob their bank accounts, seize their art collections and remove their gold dental fillings!

I certainly agree with Keith Olberman (MSNBC Countdown) that if Foxx cannot fully and appropriately apologize for her calloused remarks (now indelibly written into the Congressional Record to document her indifference to bigotry, homophobia and suffering in 21^st Century America), she ought to resign.

Of course, Rep. Foxx sort of apologized soon after for her poor choice of words, as if it were only a matter of language. Language is the servant of thought, Rep. Foxx. The language you chose reflects your thought, and it made clear that you really trivialize Matthew Shepard’s brutal torture and murder as a mere robbery, and so you trivialize the reality of brutal, relentless hate crimes in America.

Gay and lesbian people aren’t the only ones who suffer hatred. But like African Americans, Muslims and those who resemble one, Jews, transgender persons, physically-challenged individuals, and women of all states and conditions, violent hate crimes against such people are violent hate crimes. Robbery is a convenient sequel to the evil within the heart of those whose real intent is to hate, to reject, and to destroy people. If Ms. Foxx had followed the trial, read the transcript, or even watched the news, it might have tested her to see if she has any genuine human emotions. I am completely disgusted by her comments because I can tell how she measures the whole matter in her “heart.”

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Violence, Homophobia, LGBT Rights, History, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

Torture is evil, regardless of when and where.

April 18, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

It has been awhile since we gave thought to the torture issue—beyond my pay grade, to quote President Obama.

Yet the thought of torture is never far from my mind. Eleven and a half years ago, a slight, innocent gay college kid named Matthew Shepard died after being tortured and left, tied to a fence in Wyoming, to bleed or freeze to death. His brutal torture and murder is different than the waterboarding and other brutalities of the late Bush administration, of course. Shepard’s torturers did it for the sport of it, many people might think, even if they believed that he represented some kind of a threat to them.

(The “homosexual panic” defense of course did not originate with the trial of his murderers Russell Arthur Henderson and Aaron James McKinney, who are serving life sentences. But Wikipedia has an article which discusses this at length and explains the attempted use of this defense at their trial. Later Henderson and McKinney tried to recant this defense by saying it was a robbery gone awry.)

I think there is an evil parallel with what American troops, under color of authority, have done to prisoners from the Iraq/Afghanistan wars. In reverse order, we are told that these prisoners represent some kind of threat to American security which, presumably, justifies torture. And secondly, many people may privately believe, the soldiers did it for the sport of it. Stripping a man naked and turning dogs loose on his genitals, clearly seen in Abu Ghraib photos originally published by the Washington Post in May 2006, would seem to be the kind of thing you have to have the sick mind, not just a sick legal brief, to think up.

“And the LORD said, ‘What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!’”— Genesis 4:10

I applaud President Obama’s decision to release the Justice Department memos which now appear to have been written as (ludicrous and erroneous) legal rationalization for torture for the late Bush administration. Whether high officials —who justified the torture or who gave the orders or consent to carry it out— are ever investigated or charged with criminal behavior is anybody’s guess.

We know the new President wants to put the excesses and evils of BushCo. behind America. But when something is so heinous and disgusting as torture, murder, holocaust, etc., it cannot simply be removed with a wave of the political wrist. We will never forget My Lai in Vietnam, for example, or the heinous murder of James Byrd Jr.

To its credit, the American Civil Liberties Union is calling for that same Justice Department to appoint an independent prosecutor with the authority to investigate the Bush Torture matter. And the Obama administration needs to halt any torture methodology, regardless of when and where conducted.

Many have tried to excuse or forget the behavior of the Church’s atrocities committed against “faggots,” or dispense with it as irrelevant to contemporary issues about sexuality and homosexuality. But what was the capital punishment of suspected homosexuals in the Dark Ages but torture?—burning someone alive for a sin against religious doctrine?

If you have the stomach for it, a thorough description and brief history of such burnings from 1222 to the late 18^th century can be found at capitalpunishmentuk.org. And Colbert Nation has an instructive little article as well (which relies on this Wikipedia article)! Rictor Norton has an article I assume is fairly accurate tracing this atrocity as far back as a.d. 390. Apparently some in the Church favored capital punishment by burning because it did not involved shedding blood, (see Genesis 4:10!!). I wonder who penned that legal brief!

I rely on the work of Dr. John Boswell (Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality), who carefully explained that gay people were not burned for homosexual conduct per se but for heresy when they refused to repent. In other words, this method of torture and murder was used to exterminate those who held different views of religious doctrine. Boswell once commented, in a lecture here in west Hollywood, about the enormous doctrinal squabbles of the ancient church, such as the fight against Arianism which was finally settled by an ecumenical council, that “before the vote is taken, there is a majority and a minority.  After the vote, the minority is dead wrong.”

It is so emblematic of American cultural arrogance that the word “fag” or “faggot” has become universal as a pejorative slang word used against homosexuals, males in particular. Maybe the ACLU should call for the appointment of an independent prosecutor to investigate the Phelps machine for advocating torture and violence against homosexuals, because that is what the word “faggot” has come to represent.

Third generation hate monger Benjamin Phelps.  But what is this Romans 9:13 citation?  Do they even read the Bible, or just make this stuff up?

But why would I spend time reading and writing about such stuff, let alone exhibiting graphic photos? Do LGBT people today take the threat of violence against us seriously? Do we report hate crimes and attempted hate crimes to the police? Do we think that a few civil rights victories will somehow erase torture, violence, atrocity and homophobia from the American lexicon of behavior? It is always time to wake up and be prepared to defend not only our alienable rights but our very humanity against anyone who dehumanizes us or anyone else.

— Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Violence, Homophobia, Doctrine, History, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

Jesus is not the only one despised and rejected.

April 10, 2009 by Dan Hooper.

About a year ago a young Muslim man came to my office to learn more about the Christian faith. (I blogged about this once before~ June 3, 2008) I was taken by surprise, and thought to myself, “Oh God, where to begin?” But we have several deep conversations. He helped me begin by asking me, “How did Jesus die?”—something which many Muslims have never been told about.

Today is Maundy Thursday. In this Holy Week, Christians recall the events of the final days of Jesus’ life, and especially his betrayal, arrest, mock trial and condemnation to death. Those events are fully told in the Gospels. But in the ancient prophesies, there are a series of “Servant Songs” in the book of Isaiah which Christians have recognized since the earliest times as prophetic of the suffering and death of Jesus.

In reading this passage from Isaiah 53:1–9, I began to imagine some parallels between the rejection and hatred of Jesus and the rejection (and secret suffering) of lesbian, gay or transgender people who also feel despised and hurt —especially young people who don’t have enough perspective on life yet to be able to stand up to homophobia and hatred:

1 Who has believed what we have heard? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?I am going nuts, Lord. How do I know if you are with me or not, because my friends and my family think I am evil and sick, and people say I will go to hell for being gay.

2 For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

I can feel the hatred in their eyes, because they look at my like I’m some kind of freak. I’m only a teenager, and already my life is a mess!

3 He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account.

This torture inside of me has been going on for a long time. I just knew I was different since I was a little kid. And no matter how I have tried to be good or to conform or “fit in,” people either disliked me or completely ignored me, like I’m not even a human being.

4 Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.

When they find out you’re queer, the first thing they think is like, “He’s got AIDS! Get away from me you fag!” And, “God is punishing you for being so gay!” Sometimes I have been hit or shoved into the wall. Once they kicked me.

5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.

They think that by treating me with hate they are somehow better, like “holier-than-thou.” They think that by beating up on me or shouting obscenities, somehow they are more human that I am. Like, the guys are insecure about their masculinity, so they want to hurt me to prove they are “real” men.

6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

I can’t help it, Lord, but I feel like you have let all this hatred come down on me. I cannot carry this load, Lord. People say you never give us a load we cannot carry, but I can’t carry the load of hatred that has been put on my back.

7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.

So how am I supposed to remain quiet, and be nice to people who talk about me behind my back? Am I supposed to just let them hate me, be cruel, abuse me and kill me like they did to Matthew Shepard and Lawrence King and Gwen Araujo?

8 By a perversion of justice he was taken away.  Who could have imagined his future? For he was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people.

I’ve heard about guys who went to jail “on a morals charge” just because they were gay! And anti-gay violence is getting worse. We are being killed just for being who we are!

9 They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.

O God, I feel like I could die. I mean, I feel dead, because people wish I was dead!! Protect me, and help me to not to go crazy. I want to live. you gave me life. Help me to go one living until there is better day, and not to hate those people back because they hate me.  Help me to survive!!

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Homophobia, Gay Catechism, Violence, HIV and AIDS, Bible & Interpretation, PRAYERS, Faith, LGBT Christian, Coming Out | Print | No Comments »

Another senseless murder of a child.

February 17, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

I am distraught with this past week’s news of the killing of a 15 year-old, in school, by a 14 year-old—the end of a rash of school shootings that is absolutely numbing to think about. Thousand of people are grieving for a child we never met. But what caught me in the throat was that this was an effeminate boy who only recently began to admit to himself and classmates that he was or might be gay.

It is hard to imagine being 15 again. I do remember that I was scared to be myself and that I hid my feelings and my questions. What puts young gay boys or lesbian girls at such risk nowadays is that they are more self-aware, at earlier ages, and are growing more confident because of the relative acceptance in society. In the 1960s there was NO acceptance, period, as well as no information. So when I was 15 I didn’t even have a name for who I was and was bright enough not to ask questions out loud.

  Photo: Ventura County Star

Young Lawrence King became a martyr for relative acceptance. Like Gwen Araujo, a 17 year-old M2F transgender person, decent society is outraged at his senseless killing. It is small comfort that the 14 year-old killer is to be charged as an adult for a hate crime. But two lives are still destroyed: one in tragic death, the other who will almost certainly serve an appreciable number of years in detention or prison.

Clearly, “LGBT rights” haven’t gotten very far if it is still not safe to grow up gay or lesbian or transgender. The expansion of hate crimes statutes is long, long overdue.  According to a U.S. Department of Justice November 2005 report, 18% or nearly 1/5 of hate crimes were related to sexual orientation. Who is standing up, besides Barack Obama, for stronger hate crimes legislation?

Why is there so much hatred and fear of what is simply different? Why must there be martyrs to bring decent people out, and get moral people to proclaim their shock and intolerance of violence loudly enough to suppress (at least temporarily) such violence in a local community?

Wasn’t the murder of Matthew Shepard over nine years ago enough to get all of America to demand an end to such hate and such violence?

Answer to that rhetorical question: No, it wasn’t enough. America loves violence, perpetuates violence, tolerates violence, promulgates violence. Like Spaniards who still relish bullfights, Americans simply want to channel violence ever-so-slightly to protect some people.

I would personally argue for greater gun control. The equally senseless killings in Illinois by a recently-deranged bright college student illustrates this. He bought the guns legally, which means that our laws aren’t doing the job that guns rights advocates pretend they are.

Yes, I know the counter-argument: “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Blah, blah, blah.

If it were that simple then hey why can’t individuals legally purchase nuclear weapons? Nuclear bombs don’t kill people, people kill people.

The fact is that too many people, even in a free and allegedly decent society, are nut cases. They are disposed to hate, disposed to judgment of others and of anything that is foreign to their experience, and disposed to violence. Should millions of potential nut cases have access to the trigger or the button on a nuclear bomb because, it is argued, bombs don’t kill people, people kill people? Of course not.

Most violent crimes are committed by people with weapons that rightfully do not belong in the hands of individuals—from “Saturday night specials,”—cheap handguns—to assault weapons.

The surface reason we don’t have meaningful gun control in America is that politicians are pressured by gun lobbyists and nut cases disguised as conservative voters. The underlying reason is that politicians have no backbones. Remember, folks, these are the “leaders” who cannot even stand up the current administration to say that America will not torture people. If they cannot say No to George Bush on waterboarding, would they have the spine to stop the senseless killings of effeminate boys?

Obviously, we will have thousands more senseless killings of children by children before the public outcry is loud enough to stop the NRA’s death grip on America.

But my heart goes out to the family of Lawrence King, and the families of others who tried to protect their young child from the hatred of others, only to see their loved one hurt, killed, even tortured as was Matthew Shepard. My heart breaks for any children who suffer unspeakable violence. But my heart is also angered by all the complicit evil, in the name of “liberty”or “family values” or any other quackery that claims every life is sacred and then turns a blind eye to hatred, torture, violence and murder.

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Violence, LGBT Rights, Coming Out | Print | No Comments »

In bed with evil?

December 10, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

I’ve been thinking over and over about the issue of torture, for obvious reason that the approval of what amounts to torture by the White House won’t go away. A few weeks back I had reason to consult ancient history on the figure of St. Martin of Tour (for whom Martin Luther was named at his baptism). Catholic On Line: Saints and Angels has this about St. Martin and his relationship to civil power and torture:

Martin of Tour (315-402)

. . . . However it was this compassion and mercy that led to what he considered his greatest mistake. Bishops from Spain including a bishop named Ithacius had gone to the emperor soliciting his help in destroying a new heresy taught by a man named Priscillian. Martin agreed completely that Priscillian was teaching heresy (among other things he rejected marriage, and said that the world was created by the devil) and that he should be excommunicated. But he was horrified that Ithacius had appealed to a secular authority for help and even more upset that Ithacius was demanding the execution of Priscillian and his followers. Martin hurried to intervene with emperor Maximus, as did Ambrose of Milan. Martin stated his case that this was a church matter and that secular authority had no power to intervene and that excommunication of the heretics was punishment enough. He left believing he had won the argument and saved the heretics but after he left Ithacius began his manipulation again and Priscillian and the other prisoners were tortured and executed. This was the first time a death sentence had been given for heresy— a horrible precedent.

The word “torture” almost slips by, along with “death sentence.” What were they thinking in the late 4^th Century? Probably the Emperor Maximus wasn’t terribly concerned about either torture or capital punishment. If religious heresy could foment great public passion and thereby de-stabilize the society, the means would justify the ends: put down the dissenters, the rebels, the heretics, swiftly and decisively. Make an example of them. (Capital punishment as a deterrent.)

Am I safe to assume that “Who Would Jesus Torture?” was not a question the Roman Emperor pondered.

But what were they thinking—Bishop Ithacius and his ilk—who thought that going to a civil authority to trounce a religious opponent is anything close to what Jesus would approve? It may not be fair for a historian to ask a rhetorical question of a Bishop 1600 years later: “Are you nuts?” But it is fair for a blogger to ask: At what point did the growing power and influence of the Christian Church first fail to notice that it was no longer following Jesus of Nazareth and had gotten into bed with evil?

Is there a lesson in this for our own times? Well, duh!!

But it is not enough to decry the adulterous relationship of one particular political party with religious conservatives in America. The separation of church and state is a huge and important issue for our own times as much as ever. But the various parties in both religion and politics come and go with every generation. Even if unchecked fundamentalism is voted out of office in the next national election, we cannot dust off our hands and sit down in complacency. The bigger issue is always before us if we are followers of Jesus. Are we really following Jesus, or simply manipulating him to conform our cultural, political and capitalist affinities?

The film “Amazing Grace” has just recently passed like a pious wave through our cinema houses. It tells the story of 18^th Century William Wilberforce who fought hard to end the practice of slavery in the British Empire and certainly had a big hand in bringing slavery down in all of civilized society.

I am interested in the film, and the figure of Wilberforce (1759–1833)—a member of Parliament, a politician, who while in his 20s had a conversion experience and became an evangelical Christian. Was he the last politician (or the last evangelical Christian) to do something noble because it was the right thing to do rather than because it was politically expedient or advantageous?

Slavery is evil. Astonishingly, it still goes on in the 21^st century, mostly in the form of involuntary sexual servitude. But it is only an example, one folly among hundreds into which Christians have allowed themselves to wander from the path of Jesus.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Violence, Bible & Interpretation, Hollywood, Living by Grace, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

Prejudice and Punishment in a “Christian” Nation

December 3, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

Have you been following the headlines that the much-touted California sex offender law passed last year may never be (fully) implemented?  Apparently the will of the people can be flouted simply by the expense of it all.

“Jessica’s Law” (after a 2005 Florida law) requires convicted sex offenders to wear a device for the rest of their lives so that a Global Positioning System (GPS) would monitor their whereabouts 24 hours a day.

I did not vote for this law, so this may seem like a cheap “I told you so.” But the law is completely flawed, and even more, the angry public mind-set behind it is also flawed.  (You can still read the impartial analysis from the 2006 Voter Guide here.)

To start with, if the law is implemented I can’t think of a better example of the “cruel and unusual punishment” forbidden by the constitution other than of course torture, which is apparently OK with the White House.

 

No other citizen in any country, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union, has even tried to track the exact whereabouts of its citizenry, even a tiny percentage of them who have been convicted. The law should be challenged in court and struck down. Alas, if it isn’t implemented, it won’t be challenged, so the thing sits there on the law books, when it should be removed promptly.

At present the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation already uses GPS for a small class of convicted sex offenders who are considered at “high risk for reoffense”–they will likely do it again. But that number is about 1,000 individuals. Proposition 83 extends that to some 90,000 registered sex offenders, a number which grows at about 8,000 per year. While you’re at it, you might want to read the state’s helpful pamphlet, There’s No Such Thing as a “Typical” Sex Offender.

The “cruel and unusual” part is important as a very basic civil right of every human being in the United States. While sexual crimes may be disgusting, so is murder. Jessica Lunsford was raped and murdered in Florida. Why not require all convicted murderers to be tracked forever? Stealing the life savings of an elderly couple is also disgusting. Who then should be required to wear a tracking device? Bankers? Option-ARM loan brokers? Enron executives? Republicans? Why just sex offenders?

In the 1990s we were in Italy, and spent a couple of days in Venice. This grand queen on the Adriatic is distinguished for, among many other things, inventing the word “ghetto” and it was used for the Jews. Venice had the original Jewish ghetto, where a huge gate was rolled shut and locked every night to keep the Jews confined to their own little island, separated from the Christians by those canals. I thought it was hilarious, at the time, because if 14^th Century Christians thought that Jews were devious and crooked, why didn’t they lock them in during the day when they were about their business of writing loans, doing banking, running businesses and making profits, instead of at night?

Proposition 83 is a cynical attempt to create a “virtual ghetto” by means of technology. Another of its provisions is that a convicted sex offender cannot live near a school or park. What difference does it make where any criminal lives (sleeps at night)? What matters is where the criminal commits his crimes, and so while the GPS provision was supposed to cover that, the harassment over where one can live is unnecessary and cruelly punitive. Yet the CDCR mailed notices 90 days ago to 2,741 whom they say live too close to schools or parks and must move. These individuals had 45 days to comply. Have you ever tried to find a new place to live, and complete your move, in 45 days? That alone is reason to challenge this law in court!

But more basic is the provision–-and this is the “angry public mind-set” part— of a life-time sentence to wearing a tracking device even after the time has been served and the parole has ended and there is no further relationship with the criminal justice system. If a convicted person has served his time, paid his so-called debt to society, how can a just society tolerate a law that essentially says, “screw you; Big Brother will never forget your crime even if Blind Justice does.” In other words, there is no forgiveness, not even after remorse and repentance, not even after making satisfaction for one’s sins.

This being a Christian nation (at least in the eyes of the conservative Christians), apparently the Christians who passed this law do not believe in forgiveness and so have essentially flunked the test of Christian doctrine. “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”  “Forgive your brother seventy times seven.” “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Okay, this is not a Christian nation, at least on selected issues—issues where public prejudice easily trumps core Christian beliefs. But don’t get me started on hypocrisy!

But why is this important to a blogger who is writing from am LGBT/Christian perspective?

It has only been four years since the Supreme Court Lawrence v. Texas decriminalized consensual sex between two members of the same gender. I am still not over the high court’s earlier decision in Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) in the gathering hysteria of the AIDS epidemic, that sent Michael Hardwick to prison.  (You’re too young to remember? View the pre-Lawrence “Sodomy Map” to see what you would have faced five years ago.)

Sodomy laws have been used for at least eight centuries to criminalize, torture and put to death two people who loved each other – all done of course under the big tent of the Christian faith. One of the clear conclusions of the late John Boswell’s research in Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality was that within the course of less than 100 years in the middle of the Dark Ages, homosexual expression went from being legal to becoming a capital offense all over Europe. Unchecked fear, social prejudice and hatred whipped up a fever that has lasted from the 12^th century down to our own times.

When I first came out as a gay man—scarcely six months after the Stonewall Riots in New York City—I could have been arrested and sent to prison for expressing physical passion even with someone who was agreeable. More likely, I could have been blackmailed, shamed, and my career destroyed with just an arrest record (not even a conviction).

Okay, I didn’t have a career yet in 1970, but within a few years I did, and when my partner and I met, in Tempe, Arizona, our relationship was still criminal under the laws of Arizona.

We’ve come a long way in terms of civil rights as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons, and Lawrence v. Texas was a huge step forward for us. (You should thank the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force that you are not in prison today!) But Proposition 83 was a huge step backward promoted by mean-spirited quasi-Christians who have attempted to inflict a punishment wholly out of proportion to the crime.

Perhaps the worst part of this law pushing the envelope on sex offenders is that it makes it more likely that convicted persons will drop out and disappear, rather than register or keep the CDCR informed of their whereabouts. Would you feel safer knowing that the onerous nature of this law has actually made sex offenders go underground? From a practical point of view, Proposition 83 specified no penalty if a convicted sex offender refused to comply with wearing a monitoring device. And it did not name the agency or set aside the funds for an agency to actually administer this law. While the state government dutifully goes the steps of trying to implement it, wasting tax dollars in the process, the fact that the law was so poorly written and not funded simply reinforces my point that it was written to make a moral statement and help the angry general public feel smug and righteous, rather than actually protect children.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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