First Presentation to a Religious Group – Seminar or Sermon?

The only way to get me to go to church is for a protest like last Sunday's Freedom To Marry Protest 2011 at Holy Name Cathedral as a member of Chicago’s Gay Liberation Network.  And now for the first time, just this past Friday, I addressed a religious group: the Changing Conversations program of the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. The presentation (Myth and Science of Sexuality – Disordered or Just Different) was the same talk that I gave to the Ethical Humanists on October 10th 2011 except for one new PowerPoint slide shown below.

The slide is entitled: Protest at “Holy Shame” Cathedral by the “Intrinsically Disordered.” Photos I took during the Freedom To Marry Protest 2011 were used to prepare the collage in the new slide. The slide shows Gay Liberation Network members and supporters, the new blue-shirted “reparative therapy” Catholic bigots who want to give “love” rather than civil rights (GoFirst Ministries), and an out and proud young gay man who spoke to these bigots about the horrors he suffered during four years of “reparative therapy” (lower right photo). Read the story here.

Catholic teaching insists gay and lesbian people are “intrinsically disordered.” The science in my presentation shows that LGBTI people are natural variants and that the cause of our distress is not intrinsic, but extrinsic – due to the cultural prejudice and discrimination stemming primarily from religious ideology.

I added this sarcastically-titled slide to emphasize the damage that organized religion with its implicit Adam and Eve binary-gendered restrictions has done to LGBTI people. I can only wonder if medicine would have ever pathologized LGBTI people if not for the religiously-inspired prejudice that the medical doctors unconsciously entrenched in their respective specialties.

So I wasn’t preaching to the choir this time. As I reminded these churchgoers during the talk, Presbyterians are still among the religious groups that discriminate against LGBTI people. The nonreligious humanists I’ve spoken to in the past do not discriminate against LGBTI people and many actively support LGBTI rights. The science I presented makes it clear that religious anti-LGBTI discrimination is not justified by the facts. The best I can say about these religious “good guys” is:
• They are followers, not leaders, doing “too little, too late” in the LGBTI human rights struggle
• They have been too reluctant to confront the anti-LGBTI bigots in their own and other religious groups
• They share guilt for LGBTI suffering as they continue to enjoy the perks of their religious affiliation, and
• They have a moral imperative to repent and make reparations for their sins against LGBTI people.

Now, if all religious people made such reparations, that would be true "reparative therapy" for LGBTI people that is long overdue.

LGBT Informational Picket at Holy Name Cathedral on Valentine's Day

Members of Chicago's Gay Liberation Network were joined by PFlag members from the northern Illinois region and other LGBT folk and allies at Holy Name Cathedral on the cold Sunday/Valentine's Day morning to picket Cardinal George's hateful anti-gay activities.  Cardinal George is the most powerful enemy of LGBT people in the Chicago area.
Here's a video snippet featuring Brent Holman-Gomez and Andy Thayer of GLN as the first and third speakers respectively.



While juggling a huge gay flag with a sign I made nailed to the pole that read "BORN GAY I'm supposed to be this way," I managed to take some photos of the picketing with my Treo.  Still more here.

Some of our chants were:

Homophobia is a sin
Homophobes go to hell
Stop funding the bigots
Stop the harm, stop the hate, separate church and state
Love your gay children

I noticed that young mothers with small children were the most agitated by our demonstration.  When we shouted:  "What if your child is gay?," they got visibly upset.  Here's what I think.  For the first time, these women were confronted in their minds with a divide between their religion's edict and their mothering instinct.  The thought that bringing their kids to church could turn out to be a bad thing for the kids (if in fact the kids are gay), startled them.  Well, as someone who was a gay Catholic girl, I know the damage that the Church did to me - and that is why I was there picketing at Holy Name Cathedral.  That's the only way to get me to go to church!

Anti-Gay Catholic Hierarchy To Be Confronted by LGBT Activists on Both Sides of the Ocean

The global enemy of LGBT people is being confronted by LGBT activists on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.  Peter Tatchell and other British LGBT activists will protest against Pope Benedict during his state visit to the United Kingdom. This will occur on the same day (February 14th), as I posted earlier, that Andy Thayer and other members of Chicago’s Gay Liberation Network will picket Cardinal George who has been a major accomplice to the evil doings of the Pope.

Here is what Peter Tatchell has to say about the Vatican:

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE VATICAN

This tiny State inhabited mainly by priests is extremely powerful and its "moral" crusades adversely affect the lives of millions of people in Europe and in the world.

Officially part of the UN, its "observer-state" status means it engages in UN debates on a variety of issues ranging from favourites, such as birth control, abortion and homosexuality, to the environment, war and global trade.

The Vatican has diplomatic relationships with almost all the Countries in the world (174 when John Paul II died) and in many EU countries they benefit from the support of Catholic politicians or in many cases of Christian political parties. Of the 27 countries of the European Union, 14 are bound to the Vatican by at least one treaty. No other religion has such a power in Europe and in the World, thus prompting the Economist to publish an investigation about the diplomatic service of the Vatican, questioning whether it deserves its special status in the UN (21/07/2007)

The Catholic Church is an extremely profitable business. They own businesses such as hotels, restaurants, shops and private schools and they DON’T pay any tax! On top of this, the Vatican receives public money in many countries: in Italy about 1000 million Euros from taxes is destined to the Vatican every year (930 millions € in 2006 ).

The Vatican wields considerable political and economic power. It uses its influence and privilege to impose an agenda on a variety of issues that affect our lives as European citizens, and limit our civil rights and our civil liberties.

THE POPE'S VIEWS ON WOMEN AND LGBT PEOPLE
The issue of women's rights and the Catholic Church goes way beyond the hierarchy of the church, where women are unable to ascend to priesthood as a result of their gender. Women who have had a divorce, women who want to have an abortion and women who are living as single parents in catholic countries are often victims of intimidation and discrimination. The Pope encourages us to view women as unequal to men, by consistently and publicly stating that the two genders are naturally different and that women are naturally inclined for domestic living. In some catholic countries, like Ireland and Poland, abortion is illegal. In others, like Italy, the right to an abortion is constantly under threat from the Vatican's pressure on the Government.

The Pope thinks being gay is an "objective disorder" and a "moral evil". In many countries in the world you can still get the death penalty for being gay. A proposal to de-criminalise homosexuality was opposed by the Vatican in the UN because it would mean that States where same-sex unions are not recognized would be discriminated against and unfairly subjected to international pressure.

WHY SHOULD IT MATTER TO PEOPLE IN THE UK
This is certainly a global issue, but it also directly affects people living in the UK. This country is regarded by many as fairly "secular" but in reality, Christianity remains strongly embedded in many British Institutions and continues to enjoy unfair religious privilege.
Although a limited right to abortion has been granted to women living in England, Scotland and Wales since 1967, in Northern Ireland it remains illegal. This anomaly is significantly due to religious influence. Christian lobbies are engaged in continual efforts to restrict a woman's right to abortion and have succeeded in reducing the time limit for an abortion in Great Britain from 28 to 24 weeks.

Religion retains undue influence and power in various ways. With increasing numbers of state funded faith schools (1 in 3 of all schools in the UK is either Catholic or Church of England), they continue to exercise a strong influence on young people.

With public opinion distracted over the proposal to refer to the Christian roots of Europe they made sure that the proposed EU Constitution – and now the approved Lisbon Treaty (article 16C) - dangerously commits the European Union to "an open, transparent and regular dialogue with Churches and religious organisations".

PROTESTING AGAINST THE STATE VISIT OF THE POPE IN THE UK

The reactionary head of the Catholic Church is to be accorded a state visit to Britain next September: Joseph Ratzinger will meet the Queen and speak in both Houses of Parliament. The whole visit will have the full panoply of a visiting head of state.

We should not forget that his 'teachings' have resulted in the banning of condoms in developing countries where HIV is decimating the populations. He encourages population growth in places where starvation is common. He persecutes homosexuals, treats women as second class citizens, has colluded in the large-scale cover up of child abuse. His Church interferes illegitimately in politics and undermines democracy. It siphons huge amounts of money out of poverty-stricken economies.

We should firmly reject honouring the head of a Church with a lavish state reception in the UK.

WE DEMAND A SECULAR EUROPE

The state should be neutral in matter of religion or belief.

The beliefs of any group may not be used to limit the rights of others.

We affirm the common values of the people of Europe as expressed in the Brussels Declaration.

We need to protect democracy and to champion human rights against those who wish to retain undemocratic influence and privilege.

This event is organized by the Central London Humanist Group in partnership with the British Humanist Association, the National Secular Society, One Law for All, the Gay And Lesbian Humanist Association, the Rationalist Association and Peter Tatchell's OutRage!

Go to http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=415005340443 to RSVP and join in the “welcoming committee” for the Pope!

Here is what Andy Thayer has to say about Cardinal George:

“In contrast to the church laity, who holds a variety of views on gays – pro-equality and anti-equality – the leadership of the Catholic Church has been unified in its opposition to equal rights.

This is not just about the equal right to marry. In Illinois, Cardinal George and his predecessors over the years have worked behind the scenes to vehemently oppose EVERY piece of equal rights legislation for Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgender (LGBT) people that has ever been proposed, including opposing:
-- equal employment rights
-- equal access to housing
-- equal access to public accommodations
-- equal access to adoption.

And they haven’t been above playing hardball to get their way:

* The church leadership recently threatened to torpedo support for Congressman Luis Guiterrez’s immigration law bill if it included any consideration for LGBT people

* In Washington, DC, the church leadership threatened remove support for the homeless there if the District upheld its equal marriage rights bill.

On Freedom-to-Marry Day 2010 – aka, Valentine’s Day – we will drag the Church leadership’s bigotry out into the open for all the see with a picket of Cardinal George at Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral, 735 N State Street at 10:30 AM. For more information go to www.GayLiberation.net or email LGBTliberation@aol.com. Please join the Facebook Event for the action, http://www.facebook.com/event.php?invites&eid=281885059470, and invite others!”

I will be at Holy Name Cathedral with my fellow members of Gay Liberation Network picketing the evil Cardinal George on February 14th. Where will you be?

Picket Anti-Gay Cardinal George on Freedom-to-Marry-Day!

Because bigots need to be called out, whether they wear clerical robes or not!

I cannot think of a greater enemy in the Chicago area to LGBT people than Cardinal George. While this blog has a scientific focus and never mentions the vast majority of my political activism, sometimes I regard a political happening as so important to LGBT people that it becomes a post here. Below is a statement from Chicago’s Gay Liberation Network explaining why Cardinal George needs to be confronted by LGBT people.

In opposition to the desires of millions of lay Catholics for simple justice for all, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church has long alligned itself with, and often led, the forces of hate and bigotry opposing equal rights for gays and women.

At 10:30 AM on Freedom-To-Marry-Day – Sunday, February 14, Valentine’s Day – the Gay Liberation Network will host an informational picket of Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral, 735 N. State Street, to highlight the role the Church’s leadership has played in promoting inequality.

For many years the Catholic leadership has attempted to fly under the radar screen with its opposition to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality. A key secret to their success has been their stealthiness, ironically often assisted by gay rights “leaders.” These leaders, not trusting rank-and-file Catholics to be fair and too worried about hurting their fundraising base with well-connected and wealthy Catholics, are too cowardly to call out Catholic leaders for promoting hate and discrimination.

As a local example, Chicago's Catholic leader Cardinal Francis George has worked tirelessly -- albeit from behind the scenes -- to block our path to full legal equality. George attempted to kill LGBT inclusion as a protected class in the Illinois Human Rights Act, which now protects us from housing and employment discrimination. He and other Catholic bishops circulated petitions in a failed effort to force an advisory referendum on "gay marriage," and George is the head of the national Conference of Catholic Bishops which spent big bucks backing Prop 8 hate in California. Back in Illinois, George is working hard today to block same sex-marriage and/or civil unions.


On Sunday, February 14th, with our picket of Holy Name Cathedral, we will make a start in dragging Francis George's bigotry out of the closet.

But Cardinal George is no lone voice in the wilderness. He is joined by almost the entire hierarchy of the Catholic Church whose record of activism against gay equality is long and sordid:

• Speaking of the current pope, the Associated Press reported that “Benedict, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, spearheaded a Vatican campaign against same-sex unions in 2003, issuing guidelines for Catholic politicians to oppose laws granting legal rights to gay couples when he was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.” Associated Press, 6/6/05
• The Portland, Maine Archdiocese gathered more than a quarter of the funds recently used to defeat marriage equality in Maine. In addition, Marc Mutty, the chair of the principal statewide organization in Maine that fueled anti-gay discrimination there, was the Portland Archdiocese’s head spokesperson until taking a leave of absence from his job to spearhead the successful effort to rob gays and lesbians of their equal marriage rights.
• The Catholic fraternal organization Knights of Columbus bankrolled California’s anti-gay Proposition 8 to the tune of over $1 million.
• As California’s East Bay Express noted about newly-minted Oakland Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, “What almost no one knows is that without Bishop Sal, gay men and lesbians would almost surely still be able to get married today. As an auxiliary bishop in San Diego, Cordileone played an indispensable role in conceiving, funding, organizing, and ultimately winning the campaign to pass Proposition 8. It was Bishop Sal and a small group of Catholic leaders who decided that they had to amend the state constitution. It was Bishop Sal who found the first major donor and flushed the fledgling campaign with cash. It was Bishop Sal who personally brought in the organization that took the lead on the petition drive. And it was Bishop Sal who coordinated the Catholic effort with evangelical churches around the state. Bishop Sal even helped craft the campaign's rhetorical strategy, sitting in on focus groups to hone the message of Proposition 8."

While Catholic leaders decry any attempts to label them as haters and bigots, their own scapegoating statements tell a very different story about their true feelings:

• Former pope Karol Wotija, aka John Paul II, condemned gay foster parents for doing "violence" to children. He called us "disordered," and "against the natural law." He railed against civil marriage equality for all same-sex couples whether Catholic or not, condemning our civil marriage contract as an act "against God," and proclaimed defeating marriage equality his "primary task" for 2005.
• In a 2005 pastoral letter read in every church in the diocese of Calgary, Alberta, Bishop Frederick Henry called on his flock to stamp out same-sex marriage. “Since homosexuality, adultery, prostitution and pornography undermine the foundations of the family, the basis of society, then the State must use its coercive power to proscribe or curtail them in the interests of the common good." (365Gay.com)
• In an end-of year address in 2008, the current pope, George Ratzinger (aka Benedict XVI), said that the existence of gay people threatens humanity as much as the destruction of rainforests and that "blurring" genders through acceptance of transgender people would kill off the human race.
• Beginning in 1986, Ratzinger wrote a series of church documents that branded sexually active gays as "evil," told church officials to kick Dignity chapters off church property and even warned Catholic lawmakers that voting in favor of gay-rights legislation is "gravely immoral" because "the approval or legalization of evil is something far different from the toleration of evil." (Deb Price, Detroit News)
• Ratzinger has disparaged lesbian and gay couples as engaging in “pseudo-matrimonies by people of the same sex.”
• Bishop Cordileone has called same-sex marriage a Satanic plot: "The ultimate attack of the Evil One is the attack on marriage.”
• In 2007 Chicago’s Cardinal George wrote that same-sex behavior "brings people's salvation into jeopardy" in a column for the Archdiocese of Chicago newspaper.

When haters garb themselves in clerical robes, their statements and activities must be exposed.


The Gay Liberation Network encourages all people of good will, regardless of faith background, to join us at 10:30 AM, Sunday, February 14 for an informational picket of Holy Name Cathedral, 735 N. State Street, Chicago.

As a member of Chicago’s Gay Liberation Network, I will be in this important picketing event. If you live in the Chicago area, please RSVP and join this protest.

Picketing Obama & National Equality March for GLBT Civil Rights in All Fifty States - My Photos

Gay Liberation Network's message to Democrats: Don't count on GLBT support anymore!

This video shows members of Chicago's Gay Liberation Network and Dallas's Queer LiberAction who traveled to Washington DC and joined forces to picket President Obama at the Human Rights Campaign fundraiser on the eve of the GLBT National Equality March.  We picketed because President Obama needs to start delivering on his promises to us.  Democrats and Obama should not smugly assume that they will get the ongoing support of GLBT people.  And we will not stop our activism until GLBT people have equal civil rights in all fifty states!

Chicago’s Gay Liberation Network will picket Obama at Human Rights Campaign Fundraiser

The location of this Saturday night’s picketing of President Obama has changed. On September 18th, I posted the reasons why GLN planned to picket Obama at the White House.

But this morning, as a member of GLN, I received the following message from Andy Thayer, GLN's co-founder.

Subject: CHANGE OF LOCATION for Sat. Night Picket of Pres Obama

In reaction to the announcement yesterday that President Obama will address a black tie fundraising gala of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) on Saturday, October 10th, organizers of a pro-LGBT picket originally scheduled for that night at the White House have instead moved the picket to the site of the HRC gala. The picket will begin at 6 PM in of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, on the northeast corner of Mt Vernon Place NW and 9th Street NW, Washington, DC.  Please spread the word widely.

And later today, another email from Andy:

Hi folks,

I thought people would like to know that we will be joined on our picket line at the HRC fundraiser by the people who organized the picket of the DNC fundraiser (and VP Biden) a few months back. They are working hard to russle up more support locally. Since we moved the location of our picket last night, I've gotten inundated with email and Facebook messages from people saying that they'll be there. I think we've really struck a chord. Lots of people and websites are reposting our message.

So this Saturday night I'll be joining other GLN members and a lot of other LGBT activists who will be picketing President Obama at the Human Rights Campaign dinner.  GLBT Americans demand equal rights across the United States!

Call for a Pro-LGBT Picket of the White House

I reported in my September 9th post that I will be going to Washington DC with other members of Chicago's Gay Liberation Network (GLN) to participate in the October 11th National Equality March.

But we will also picket the White House during the prior evening!

Why does GLN want to picket the White House?

Here is our statement:

6 PM, Saturday, Oct. 10th

Lafayette Square (on H Street just north of the White House)

Many of us watched in disgust this past January as the homophobic Reverend Rick Warren was given an honored place at the inaugural festivities. It was as if a leader of the White Citizens Council had been invited to the White House.

After indignant complaints to the incoming administration about this homophobic slap in the face, what was our consolation prize? Openly gay Episcopalian Bishop Gene Robinson was invited to speak at a lesser inaugural event, as if "balancing" a bigot with a non-bigot was good enough. Then, for good measure – at the behest of the White House – Robinson wasn't televised (see http://www.gayliberation.net/opinion/2009/0122chicagod.html).

 This homophobic behavior by the Obama White House has been repeated several times before and since:

 ** During the South Carolina primary, when his campaign featured rabidly anti-gay Gospel performer Donnie McClurkin at a major rally;

 ** With the quiet dropping of most pro-gay promises from the Obama website earlier this year – until a firestorm of protest forced them to return much of it;

** With the failure to rescind President Clinton's ban on HIV+ people traveling to the United States, and his ban on granting green cards and citizenship to HIV+ immigrants;

 ** With the unnecessary administration brief in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), with language worthy of the most vicious anti-gay bigot, making a mockery of his promise to repeal DOMA;

 ** With the statements by Obama that his "Christian beliefs" make him oppose equal marriage rights, as if the former Constitutional law scholar from the University of Chicago doesn't know anything about separation of church and state. Obama's homophobic statements were of course gleefully quoted to great effect by pro-Prop 8 forces in California;

 ** With the failure to blunt "Don't Ask Don't Tell" (DADT) by issuing a stop-loss order. Instead, he authorized surrogates to endlessly delay the junking of DADT, thereby breaking his promise to repeal it;

** While an inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act has been reintroduced into Congress, President Obama has expended virtually no political capital in getting it or any other pro-gay measure passed.

 The organizers of the Sunday, October 11th March on Washington have placed almost their entire focus on Congress (which will be out of town) and almost none on the President. Indeed, rather than making demands of the President, the official march website goes out of its way to praise "Obama's Mobile Messaging Team (for) Donating Services To The National Equality March"!

By targeting congressional districts and lobbying Congress in an effort to win legal equality, the organizers' strategy looks suspiciously like a drive to elect and re-elect Democrats in the 2010 bi-elections, rather than make uncompromising demands on this President and his Congress.

Their current focus on cajoling Congress and the President to do the right thing ignores a very basic fact – this approach has never won civil rights gains. While LGBT activists fawned over the last Democratic President, Bill Clinton repaid our love by giving us much of the crap bullet-pointed above. Like today, many of those anti-gay measures came while the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress plus the Presidency.

By contrast, uncompromising street protests led by ACT-UP and others gave us the Ryan White AIDS Care and the Americans With Disabilities Acts – despite a very reactionary political climate during the first Bush administration. An era of such protests – the 1960s – caused the radical change in consciousness among LGBT people which thereby gave birth to our modern LGBT movement.

The last thing we need today is to parrot "yes we can" chants, like we are cheerleading this president and his party. Instead, we must take as our maxim the quote from the great anti-slavery organizer Frederick Douglass: "Power concedes nothing without a demand. Never has, never will."

Therefore on October 10th we will be picketing the White House to demand that the most powerful politician in the world implement the many reforms that the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans community needs. Please join us.

6 PM -- Saturday, October 10th

Lafayette Square (on H Street on the north side of the White House)

We also will be marching in the Sunday, October 11th march. We invite you to join us – just look for the big yellow banner that reads "President Obama – Keep Your #$^! Promises! Repeal DOMA, DADT"

For more information or to endorse this statement, please email the Gay Liberation Network in Chicago (LGBTliberation@aol.com) or Queer Liberaction in Dallas (LGBTliberaction@gmail.com).

The GLBT March On Washington for Equality Across America

     I'm so excited because I will be taking part in the historic GLBT Equal Rights March on Washington this October.  I will be taking a van to Washington with other members of Chicago's Gay Liberation Network.  In fact, GLN will be teaming up with another group to picket the White House on the Saturday evening before the big march.  That's right!  It would be awful to be in Washington DC and not picket the White House, wouldn't it?