Should we tolerate GAYS? No (audio)

Wisdom Quarterly; Sonali Kohlhatkar (uprisingradio.org), S.N. Walters, Tolerance Trap 1

The Tolerance Trap

Texas Governor Rick Perry, speaking in San Francisco last week, likened being gay to being an alcoholic. “Whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle...” he said, “you have the ability to decide not to do that.”

“I may have the genetic coding that I’m inclined to be an alcoholic,” he added, “but I have the desire not to do that. And I look at the homosexual issue the same way.” 

 

His controversial remarks come on the heels of the Texas Republican Party expressing its support for so-called “reparative therapy” for homosexuality -- a discredited counseling treatment to “cure” people of homosexuality.

• AUDIO: Segment with Suzanna Walters (entire show)
• David Feldman asks, "Is Rick Perry gay?" answers, yes
• VIDEO: There IS a cure for homosexuality! (Rated R)

What's Republican Perry doing with that pig in his mouth, cannibalism, swallowing? (DFS)

 

We're here, please tolerate us

The progressive response to the idea that homosexuality is a choice is the assertion that people who are gay are born that way, perhaps with a gene that makes them prefer people of their own sex, or in Judeo-Christian terms, “God made them that way.”

Westboro Baptist vs. US Army

Northeastern University Sociology Professor Suzanna Walters has a problem with this approach. She maintains that using the “born this way” approach to gay liberation reduces the LGBT movement to one that will be happy with “tolerance” or “acceptance” by mainstream American society.

 

Gays are evil! God hates them! (Westboro)

But is tolerance something worth fighting for? In asking to be tolerated, aren’t gay rights advocates simply asking society to tolerate the LGBT community like one tolerates anything that is uncomfortable or undesirable?

What does Buddhism say?

In her ground breaking book The Tolerance Trap: How God, Genes, and Good Intentions Are Sabotaging Gay Equality, Walters demands liberation over acceptance and warns against declaring victory for gay rights too soon.

Analyzing pop culture’s depictions of gay characters, the marriage equality movement, scientific research into homosexuality, and religious approaches, she makes the case that nothing less than full equality and a societal transformation is worth fighting for. More

GUEST: Prof. Walters is Director of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, author of All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America.

Bob/David explain Overcome, a Christian Center for Reparative Therapy

It's not okay to be gay (video)

Dev, Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; ViceMag.tumblr.com (facebook)

Even after it's leader died recently, the family-run Westboro Baptist Church is still causing trouble. This past weekend a group from the church, protected by L.A. County Sheriff's deputies, was out at the West Hollywood Gay Pride Parade Fest with harsh and offensive signs. Who are these Christian crusaders?

But I'm a Yankee doodle "dandy"!

VICE follows the story of the Westboro Baptist Church as families split and children are "brainwashed" into picketing the funerals of dead American soldiers fighting for a doomed gay nation and bashing homosexuals at every turn.

During that time, VICE interviewed more than a dozen members of the reviled group, including some of the only members not related by blood, the Drains. They welcomed VICE into their homes and gave them access to 17 years of home video footage. In return, VICE produced an unbiased look into the lives of one of America's most despised Christian fundamentalist organizations.

• Watch PART 2
• VICE.com  (full video catalog)
• VIDEO: How to Sell Drugs (Fringes)
• Los Angeles loves festivals
• Gay marriage, pandakas, and kinnars
• There are no gays in China 

Grad Night and Intolerance (video)

Pat Macpherson, Crystal Quintero, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly; Matt Bai (news.yahoo)

"Die-in" San Francisco protest (IM)

America's college students are back and resting at home this week, which is a good thing, because during the long months away they seem to have gone completely out of their minds.

 

Last weekend, The New York Times' Jennifer Medina reported on the latest bizarre demand on campus: "trigger warnings" to let students know if the text [book] they're about to study will expose them to some version of misogyny or homophobia, so they aren't unexpectedly [re-]traumatized by visions of things that can never be unseen -- like, say, every novel written by a white man before 1960 [Hey, by the way, I'm a privileged white male, but never mind that].

The Harvard Commencement Speech

PC on overdrive: Ali G. (Sacha Baron Cohen aka Borat) gives commencement speech at America's most prestigious university in 2004.

That followed the public [sham]ings of several commencement speakers whose invitations had to be rescinded, including such evildoers as [Bush Era war criminal] former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the International Monetary Fund's [bankster] Christine Lagarde, and [insider] Robert Birgeneau, the former chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley.

All of this has provoked a torrent of eloquent condemnation from pundits and academics, who worry that our elite universities, in the words of an editorial published in Monday’s Washington Post, are being "impoverished by intolerance."

One of Obama's alleged alma maters, Oxy

[This] is a reasonable concern, except that it misses the point. It's not the students' fault that they expect to laze around in a world of ideological comfort. It's totally ours.

 

There's nothing new about the basic tension between speech and sensitivity on campus. When I was at Tufts in the late '80s, at the height of what we called political correctness [PC], we argued fiercely about whether the military belonged on campus [ROTC] or whether certain faculty members were denied tenure because of their politics. But, by and large, we were primed to have the debate, not chill it. More

How we rule the world: Confessions of an Economic Hitman (John Perkins, Y Audiobooks)

God kills anti-gay Westboro Baptist preacher

I. Rony, Wisdom Quarterly (EDITORIAL); SCPR.org via the Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)

People-hating, gay-bashing, God-fearing Westboro Church members (npr.org)

 

The New Hate

It is a sad day in West Hollywood as news arrives that the tribal god of the Judeo-Christians has struck down yet another wayward minister/sinner who preached hate instead of love, prejudice instead of tolerance, bias instead of forbearance. Yea, know ye that the "wages of sin is death" (i.e., that the god will kill you if you stray). Fred Phelps, Esq. leaves us this day for a grander vision of karma (vipaka) in the hereafter than we are yet privy to see. For, lo, he preached invective and damnation on his walk with the lord from on high, frequently stating that "God Hates F*gs" and "Obey or Perish" without a trace of irony. 

Wah! I take it back! I take it back!!

Have we anything to learn from his example, or shall we too stray in the fields of the lord disregarding the good news that we are capable and responsible for the decisions that lead inevitably to our actions (karma)? May he rest in peace and find renewal of spirit, not wrestling as those he condemned in life, but in the fullness of the mercy he now seeks. Aum'n. [In all seriousness, we hope he's okay, for to hate a hater is a great mistake.] See the full story.

"As it turns out, God actually hates small-minded, bigoted, blind fanatics..."

COMEDY: Islam versus Christianity (video)

Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Steve Carrell and Stephen Colbert ("Even Stevphen," Daily Show with Jon Stewart); Wikipedia edit Allah

Arabic components for "Allah": 1. alif, 2. hamzat wasl, 3. lām, 4. lām, 5. shadda, 6. dagger alif, 7. hāʾ. According to Reza Azlan, "There is no God but God," and Mohammed is prophet.

 

Veiled in Lucknow, India (Sharko333/flickr)

Allah (Arabic, الله‎ Allāh) is the Arabic word for "the God" (as the initial "Al-" is the definite article plus ilāh, "deity," ho theos monos). The word is used mainly by Muslims to refer to God in Islam, Arab Christians, and often, but not exclusively, by Bahá'ís, Arabic-speakers, Indonesian and Maltese Christians, and Mizrahi Jews.

Femen female driver demo (cryptome.org)

Cognates of the name exist in other Semitic languages, including Hebrew and Aramaic. Biblical Hebrew mostly uses the plural form (gods) Elohim, while claiming to be monotheistic. The corresponding Aramaic form is ʼĔlāhā ܐܠܗܐ in Biblical Aramaic and ʼAlâhâ ܐܲܠܵܗܵܐ in Syriac as used by the Assyrian Church. In the Sikh scriptures Guru Granth Sahib, the term Allah is used 37 times. The name was previously used by pagan Meccans as a reference to a creator deity, possibly the supreme deity in pre-Islamic Arabia. 

Islamic women walking (ABC News/AP)

The concepts associated with the term Allah (as a deity) differ among religious traditions. In pre-Islamic Arabia amongst pagan Arabs, Allah was not considered the sole divinity. It, too, like the Elohim, had associates and companions, sons and daughters -- a concept deleted under the process of Islamization just as happend to the Jewish and Christian traditions when they became stridently monotheistic.

My bro was a Muslim. He's your prez now.

In Islam, the name Allah is the supreme and all-comprehensive divine name, and all other divine names are believed or said to refer back to Allah. Allah is now unique, the only deity, the creator of the universe and omnipotent. Arab Christians today use terms such as Allāh al-Ab (الله الأب, "God the Father") to distinguish their usage from Muslim usage. There are both similarities and differences between the concept of God as portrayed in the Koran (Muslim Bible) and the Hebrew Bible. It has also been applied to certain living human beings as personifications of the term and concept. More

• PHOTOS: Journey to Pagan, Burma city of temples