Camels With Hammers

Archive for the ‘Homosexuality’ Category

The Overdue End of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVAgz6iyK6A&feature=player_embedded Commenting on this enormously popular, moving video of an Alabama soldier coming out to his father on the day that the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” finally went into effect, Andrew Sullivan analyzed, reminisced, and celebrated: This is gay America, ladies and gentlemen: the ordinariness, the humanity, the pain, the promise. And the [...]

Clerk In New York Refuses To Sign Marriage Licences For Gay Married Couples

Ledyard town clerk Rose Marie Belforti tacitly admits to imposing theocratic law on her constituents in blatant disregard for the actual laws she is tasked with enforcing: That all changed in August when Belforti sent a letter to the Ledyard town board two weeks after the Marriage Equality Act became law in New York, allowing [...]

The Evils of the Sermon on the Mount (Part 1)

Progressives, regardless of whether they are liberal Christians or non-believers, like to accuse fundamentalist Christians of ignoring Jesus’s supposed message of love and tolerance which is supposedly epitomized by his remarks in the Sermon on the Mount. Actually reading the Bible, Jesus does not actually always live up to the billing progressives give him as [...]

Did Theocrats Swing Weiner’s District Republican?

Robbie George, the conservative Princeton Professor who opposes same-sex marriage, writes of an under-reported influence in Weiner’s Queens district (NY-9): In the run up to the election, a group of Orthodox rabbis, most from Brooklyn, but including others, notably Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky and Rabbi Simcha Bunim Cohen, two nationally prominent Orthodox Jewish authorities, published a [...]

A Living Illustration of the Problem With Trying To Love The Gay Person But Hate Her Gayness

The AP reports: Barbara Von Aspern loves her daughter, “thinks the world” of the person her daughter intends to marry and believes the pair should have the same legal rights as anyone else. It pains her, but Von Aspern is going to skip their wedding. Her daughter, Von Aspern explains, is marrying another woman. “We [...]

Scapegoating Through Song, Swedish Style

If you know how to sing in Swedish, sing along, otherwise be sure the subtitles are on (the cc button on the YouTube player): Via Friendly Atheist Your Thoughts?

Santorum’s Hypocrisy and Backwardness on Questions of Epistemic Authority

My thoughts:

Gays, Jesus, and Judging

In response to my earlier post praising a young Christian man who reached out with love to what he thought was a lesbian couple being berated by a cruel and judgmental waitress, Justin writes: Not to point out the obvious, but homosexuality is a sin, You have indeed not pointed out anything obvious.  Homosexuality is [...]

Meet Jesy Littlejohn, Founder of "Rainbow Bridge", Grove City College’s Unrecognized LGBTQ Awareness Group

Grove City College, my alma mater from which I graduated with a BA in Philosophy and a minor in Religion in 2000, is an Evangelical Christian college which ranks among America’s most religiously and politically conservative colleges.  Princeton Review ranks Grove City among the “Best Northeastern Colleges” and among the 373 best colleges in the [...]

The Problem of Muslim Homophobia In Britain

Johann Hari goes into detail about how bad it is: Here’s a few portents from the East End that we have chosen to ignore. In May 2008, a 15 year old Muslim girl tells her teacher she thinks she might be gay, and the Muslim teacher in a state-funded comprehensive tells her “there are no [...]

Daily Hilarity: Immersion Therapy For Homosexuals

Rather than subjecting our gay friends to the cruelties of “aversion therapy” for the sake of appeasing homophobes, perhaps instead we should just cure the homophobes of their irrational fear of gays using “immersion therapy”. Your Thoughts?

TOP Q: "How Is It Fair To Question Other People’s Identity-Forming Beliefs While Demanding Respect For One’s Own Belief-Formed Identities?"

I always tell my students as they start studying philosophy that it is crucial that they not associate their ideas too closely with themselves.  They need to get used to not taking criticism of their ideas personally. I warn them that if they cannot disassociate from their ideas when they fail, they will never be [...]

Sam Brinton On Coming Out At 10 And Going Into Aversion Therapy

Can you say “religiously motivated child abuse”? via Feminist Philosophers. Your Thoughts?

Can You Really Love Religious People If You Hate Their Religion?

Atheists do not exactly claim to “love sinners but hate sins” (if for no other reason than that most, if not all, of us reject the category of “sin” as a meaningful or valuable way to talk about ethical failure). Also, atheists may be more realistic than to think that we really do, or feasibly [...]

Why "Loving The Sinner But Hating The Sin" Is Not An Option When Dealing With Gay People

Many a homophobic religious person has infamously claimed that when it comes to gays he “loves the sinner but hates the sin” and many a defender of the full dignity and ethical lives of gay people has judged such a compromised offer of love inadequate (if not insincere). This cannot be because it is impossible [...]

Zach Wahls, Son Of Lesbians, Testifies To Iowa Legislature

Your Thoughts?

TOP Q: Where Are The Lines Between Peaceable Death Penalty Advocacy And Criminal Incitement?

Last week a heinous, conscience-shocking injustice occurred when the brave, openly gay, Ugandan gay rights campaigner David Kato (pictured above) was murdered shortly after a Ugandan newspaper featured him on the cover with the headline: “100 PIctures of Uganda’s Top Homos Leak” and the words “Hang Them” next to it.  The AP photo of the newspaper [...]

Techniques Meant To “Cure” Homosexuality

James Voss describes the attempt to “cure” him of his homosexuality he experienced at Teen Challenge, “an Assemblies of God USA evangelical Christian recovery program and a network of Christian social and evangelizing work centers”: People that entered the center with psychological problems were often not allowed to take medications prescribed by doctors since there [...]

How DADT Made Things Worse For Gays In The Military Than They Were

A Daily Dish reader’s first hand experience: before DADT the policy was more about conduct at least in the minds of the commanding officers, not the mere mention of the fact that one was gay or had those inclinations. I joined the Army National Guard in 1988 and was called up for a time in [...]

Daily Hilarity: The Bizarre World Of The Bisexual

Your Thoughts?

Barney Frank Owns Up To The “Radical Homosexual Agenda”

Congratulations to all the brave young men and women who will now be treated as honorably as they deserve by their country with the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Hopefully soon the day will come when all our gay fellow citizens will be treated with equal rights under the law and with the equal [...]

Anderson Cooper Gets Resignation From Anti-Gay Ranter

The Christian writer of truly disgusting attacks on bullied gays, AIDS-afflicted gays, and pretty much all gays was powerfully confronted by Anderson Cooper last night: Your Thoughts?

David Hyde Pierce On His Marriage And Prop 8

This is a little old and comes from before the landmark Prop 8 ruling of this summer, but it is still poignant: Your Thoughts?

Dan Savage On Gay Adoption

A great case is made in less than 5 minutes: Your Thoughts?

Louis C.K. Shreds Homophobia

Completely NSFW and completely brilliant. Your Thoughts?