The Dooryard

Palin's church does NOT 'pray away the gay'

Supporters of Barack Obama have been spreading more nasty lies about the church that Sarah Palin attends. Among many other lies, they have said that her church sponsors anti-gay prayer events. Greta Van Susteren this week spent some time talking to Pastor Larry Kroon (left), the pastor of the church Palin attends. He set the record straight about these nasty rumors that his church hosts “Pray away the gay” events.

He said they do not have anti-gay or “pray away the gay” prayers of any kind; it is Focus on the Family that is hosting an event like that in Alaska. He said Focus on the Family is completely separate from them and they don’t have a part of it. He said they mentioned the event in their newsletter, but they are not sponsoring it or part of it.

Focus on the Family IS a nasty anti-gay group, but their name, and the name of the conference, "Love Won Out," are terribly misleading, and my guess is Kroon had no idea he was posting something that was so anti-gay when he probably thought it was loving and pro-family. The newsletter said, "You'll be encouraged by the power of God's love and His desire to transform the lives of those impacted by homosexuality." That sounds affirming, not damning; it sounds like they are reaching out to families to help them deal with gay family members (which many people need help with), not "cure" gay people. Unfortunately, those are the misleading tactics of Focus on the Family; but they're not the tactics of Palin's church!

He also has some caring, open-minded thoughts about gay people . . .

Kroon: When the subject of homosexuality comes up, people that matter to me come to mind. And over the past year, I’ve had different people in our congregation speak of homosexuals in ways that I did not want to hear people speak.

Greta: Unkind?

Kroon: I would say not with understanding, and without any sense of the dynamics of same-sex attraction and all those types of things, and I felt like there was not a good understanding, and I don’t think there was an appropriate use of terminology. This was not in the church setting, this was outside the church. … Two individuals who are within the Christian faith, they wrestle with same-sex attraction and their Christian commitment. These people were real, they were not a dog-and-pony show or something like that, like they’ve been called. These people were real, and I wanted my people if at all possible to hear somebody in their tone and their manor, because I don’t think the church has done a very good job of speaking to this issue in a gracious tone and manor.

Obama: "I will expand the powers of religion"

When Bill Clinton was in office, I remember there being a select few things that I could have agreed with him on, namely gay rights and the environment. Unfortunately, Clinton threw both under the bus to get elected and get other things he wanted.

Now I'm left thinking the same thing about Obama: That I should agree with him about some things, but he keeps giving the middle finger to some of his key liberal beliefs so he can get elected. The latest is this nonsense he is espousing about increasing Bush's funding for religious organizations; and now, Obama supports letting religious institutions hire and fire people based on religious beliefs. Yep, he wants religious leaders to be able to fire people because they disagree with them on issues like gay rights.

Of course, gay-rights groups like HRC will completely ignore this. In fact, they now have t-shirts that say "Vote Obama" with the HRC logo on them. The media, which attacked Bush when he created these programs, will also ignore it; the AP article linked above provided nothing but positive spin on it.

So here we go again. Another hardcore liberal running for President who will kick minority-rights to the curb for his own personal gain. And the minorities will kiss his ass as he's doing it.

Marines say no to Jesus

This is too good to be true. The Marines' Toys For Tots drive rejected an attempted donation of 4,000 talking Jesus dolls. The dolls are manufactured by a company called one2believe, whose stated objective is to "teach 10 million children 50 Bible stories by 2007."

The doll says varies verses from the Bible, including many of the old stand-bys like "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son."

Then there's one I don't even remember: "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit." Ahem.

See . . . Jesus made me gay!

Evangelical caught with his pants down?

An explosive story out of Colorado pits gay former prostitute Mike Jones against evangelical pastor Ted Haggard. Jones has come forward accusing Haggard of hiring him for sex over the course of a couple years and attempting to buy drugs from Jones. Jones said he has come forward because of Haggard's support for a Colorado consitutional ban of same-sex marriage.

Haggard has resigned his post as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and he has temporarily stepped down as the head of his own church. His temporary replacement at the church claims that Haggard has admitted to some of what Jones says.

But in a strange twist, Jones has actually failed a lie-detector test regarding his allegations about Haggard. It's a pretty wild story (and I bet you don't here much about the lie-detector test from the Big Three). And if it's true, I'm glad it's coming out.

I have thought for a long time that many of these closet-cases who oppose same-sex marriage do so because they don't want gay relationships codified because then it will put them in a strange predicament. Gay marriage will somehow turn the gay sex they like to engage in from something people do "on the side" to something that is right and just and acknowledged by the government and society. I imagine some of these guys don't consider gay sex as cheating on their wives, because it's not really sex - it's just some strange act.

I don't buy that line of thinking, but I have thought for a while that might be where some of it comes from. Hopefully, more on this will come out.

No-bullshit yoga

I went to my second yoga class yesterday. Dan has been going for the last couple months at Chelsea Piers, and he really enjoys it. So, I figured I'd take the plunge again; I took a yoga class about four years ago in Los Angeles.

It was more of what I remembered from that first class. The exercises are pretty good. I feel like they challenge my body physically both in flexibility and strength. It's the bullshit, though, that sticks in my mind.

I'd guess about 30% of the class was a bunch of hocus pocus nonsense about opening up my heart and freeing my voice. Blah. I don't need Gandalf at the front of the room telling me to release my inner chi; I just want to get stretched and get stronger.

Of course, when I said this to a couple people who are big yoga-heads, they said I just didn't understand it. Bull-freakin-shit. Near the end of the class, the instructor told us to bring our hands together in front of our heart, and rub them together quickly. Then he told us to pull them apart slightly.

"Feel the energy between your hands, emanating from your heart."

Uh, that's called friction. It's the energy that's generated when you rub your hands together. It's heat. That's what I'm feeling, not my heart opening up or any other spiritual nonsense that he wanted to try to connect us with.

I see the positives of the exercises. And I know some people get something out of all the nonsense surrounding the exercises; but it's all that other stuff I want to do without. I'll be looking for a 45-minute no-bullshit yoga class in the city; here's hoping.

Perpetuating the terrorist monicker

If ever there was an example of 1) why all religions should be disbanded and 2) why so many people view Muslims and terrorists as the same thing, it's this latest controversy surrounding a dozen cartoons that has sent so many in the Muslim world to commit violent terrorist acts. The skinny: A Danish paper published some cartoons of the prophet Muhammad; Muslims protested, papers in 20 countries reprinted the cartoons because the protestors made them a news item; now Muslims have resorted to rioting and murder to protest the printing of the cartoons.

Here's the sick thing. I was going to put one of the cartoons here, to show my readers what the cartoons looked like. But, for fear that some crazy person would see it, find my address and kill me, I have opted to just link to them. And that's why I call these protestors terrorists: they try to terrorize people into conforming with their sick views of freedom. Now, Iran says it's going to hold a competition for people to create cartoons of the Holocaust - to see how the Israelis like it (they blame the Israelis for this whole thing).

I can't help but hear these terrible stories of murder in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and others and think that maybe we should just nuke the whole Middle East and start over there. Calm down, I'm not remotely serious. But, that does reflect my own personal level of frustration with the Muslim world. All of this violence over the printing of a cartoon. I'm glad our military is there in Iraq. I'm glad we did what we did there. The regimes that support this nonsense cannot stand.

Religious groups support gay marriage

It's nice to see some in the churches and synagogues actively supporting my right to marry the man I love. A number of them have filed an amicus brief in the California legal battle intent on opening marriage to same-sex couples. A press release can be found after the jump.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are coming to the U.S. I couldn't care less about all that hocus pocus stuff about raising people from the dead and God destroying cities; but, I do find ancient religious artifacts fascinating. Especially these scrolls, because some of them are supposedly written in code. Maybe I am into hocus pocus.

Straight, Not Narrow

There's a new gay blog in town - but this one is a little different. It's written by a straight guy, Jim Johnson, of Rockville, Md. It's obviously just great to see a straight guy taking such an interest in standing up for the equality of gay people. But, for him to be a strongly religious man and to do it - that's unique.

Check out Straight, Not Narrow and drop Jim a line to say hi.

News Flash: Pope slams gay marriage

The old single man in a dress has a new book coming out (I can't imagine he actually wrote it, since he has trouble even speaking) lambasting gay marriage as part of "a new ideology of evil." I wonder if his minions are still raping little boys. I bet he doesn't address that too much in the book. I wonder if they're considering officially renaming the Catholic Church "NAMBLA."