methinks thou dost protest too much*

ladies, keep this in mind the next time your guy makes some crass, homophobic crack. or the next time your elected representative votes against lgbt legislation. or the next time your church official...well. you get the idea:

In 1996, three researchers from the University of Georgia published a study in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology about the links between homophobia and homosexual arousal.

The authors, Henry E. Adams, Lester W. Wright, Jr., and Bethany A. Lohr, started with 35 straight men identified as homophobic and 29 straight men that were not. Both groups were shown heterosexual, lesbian and gay male porn while their erectile responses were measured.

“Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli,” reported the researchers.

*this is a common "misquote." certainly tuesdaysblog readers know the correct version, and where it comes from. right?

wow.

who said priests don't have balls.

ROME — A senior Vatican priest speaking at a Good Friday service compared the uproar over sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church — which have included reports about Pope Benedict XVI’s oversight role in two cases — to the persecution of the Jews.

right. when exactly do we send the child molesters to the concentration camps? oh, that's right. we don't. we send them to northern wisconsin.

200 deaf children in wisconsin

the pope's response: "From God comes the courage not to be intimidated by petty gossip."

bill booked his athiest buddy

bill maher and christopher hitchens on the catholic church.

the pope's final act?

could wisconsin's rev. lawrence murphy case be what brings down this pope?

Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.

The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.

don't scan me, bro

am i nuts, or have we now gone way overboard?

Saying that body scanners violate Islamic law, Muslim-American groups are supporting a “fatwa” – a religious ruling – that forbids Muslims from going through the scanners at airports.

The Fiqh Council of North America – a body of Islamic scholars that includes some from Michigan – issued a fatwa this week that says going through the airport scanners would violate Islamic rules on modesty.

keep in mind, a fatwa doesn't mean what you probably think it does. and passengers who don’t want to use the scanners are being offered the option of a pat down by a security guard – which muslim groups are urging members to opt for.

still, is it crazy to think this just goes too far?

tweet of the day

never gonna give god up

rickrolling the lord.


(hat tip joe.my.god)

pathetic excuse #2

giving limbaugh a run for his money.

UPDATE 1/13/10, 1:29 pm – ta-nehisicoates lets "professional bigot" robertson, and his nodding co-host, have it.

at the corner of 8th and sonia

how do the two major news stories of the day (sonia sotomayor's nomination to the supreme court and the california ruling on proposition 8) intersect? the family research council's tony perkins lets it slip:

"The [California Supreme] Court [ignored] the meaning of the law it upheld [Proposition 8] by recognizing the 18,000 same-sex ‘marriages’ performed last year. By grandfathering in these ‘marriages,’ the justices are seeding the ground for a possible legal battle in the U.S. Supreme Court."

how 'bout that.

spreading the good news

"of course you will deny it."

words spoken by an apostolic nuncio – a representative of the pope – to former catholic archbishop rembert weakland of milwaukee when weakland confessed to a homosexual relationship he'd had some 20 years earlier. details of the affair (and the hefty sum paid to keep it quiet) were being revealed by the other man in an interview on good morning america.

weakland told the nuncio he could not deny the relationship and resigned from his post the following day.

weakland served as milwaukee's archbishop from 1977 until that abrupt resignation in 2002. in a new book he'd originally planned to have published only after his death, weakland talks about that affair, his homosexual feelings as a teenager, and a "loneliness that became very strong."

he also discusses his view of the church's teaching on homosexuality:

“If we say our God is an all-loving god, how do you explain that at any given time probably 400 million living on the planet at one time would be gay? Are the religions of the world, as does Catholicism, saying to those hundreds of millions of people, you have to pass your whole life without any physical, genital expression of that love?”

weakland and the milwaukee archdiocese are targeted by several lawsuits regarding priests involved in child abuse and the church's failure to remove those priests before more minors were abused. "the concern," weakland says, "was more about the priests than about the victims.”

dear mormon friends: keep your grubby mitts off my soul

the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints confirmed tuesday that barack obama's late mother was posthumously baptized (yes...posthumously) into the mormon faith. the woman died in 1995. they baptized her last year. seriously. someone not related to her, someone with no family connection.

i'm sorry, but this is the stuff of witchcraft and voodoo and fiction. not just posthumous baptism, but that someone can do this after you die? without your involvement or consent?

seriously. oogs me out.

the tassel's worth the hassle

should a public school hold its graduation ceremony in a church?

paid for by god and doctors

and i thought the parodies couldn't get any better:


(hat tip b.runbeck)

edging closer to a conversation

jonathan merrit suggests that christians need to love their gay neighbors as jesus loved the tax collectors. first, the love – the tough love, for fellow christians:

"Many Christians today live in opposition to the teachings of our Lord. They use harsh language when speaking to, or more commonly, about their gay neighbors.

Sadly, this doesn't just emanate from the "God Hates Fags" crazies, but from everyday Christians in everyday churches. Evangelicals often speak of lesbians and gay men as if they have some sort of medical disease that we experts have diagnosed and can easily cure with a simple, biblical prescription.

Our job is to mirror Christ by loving people in spite of our differences and advocating for our culture's disenfranchised groups. Only then can we effectively share with them the reasons that we believe our beliefs are most compelling."

merrit's suggestion would be a good first step. but the problem with any christian v. anything argument is the assumption that "christian" defines an entire group of people. using christian as a broad, generic label is unfair when there are, quite obviously, many different types of christians. there are even christians who don't believe other christians are actually christian. (on the other hand, there are not gays who think other gays are not gay. there are gays who think some non-gays are gay, but that's another story. and more than likely it's about your husband.)

merrit does suggest, as i have, that conversation is most important. we must talk to our parents, our friends, our co-workers. our pastors, our priests, our rabbis. what is unfortunately inherent in his side of the conversation, though, is his interest in convincing me that his way is the right way. i have no desire to convince him to be a homosexual, or to not be a christian.

ultimately, he would like me to not be gay.

bible bait and switch

a pasadena christ-centered ministry – disguised as a pregnancy clinic – lures young women in with the promise of a free pregnancy test only to corner them in order to preach abstinence and the word of christ. or as pasadena weekly's tina dupuy puts it, "go in for a root canal and come out with fire insurance."

if your really spreading "biblical truth," why would you have to be deceitful and manipulative to do it?

UPDATE 4/19 – from the comments, aaronorear adds:

"We do something similar at St. Jude's...we advertise Sunday Eucharist, but once people are here we try and talk them into taking a pregnancy test."

"it does me no injury...

...for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god." so said thomas jefferson in his "notes on the state of virginia." the united states will never be a post-christian nation because it was never a christian nation to begin with.

rick in a pickle

imagine my surprise to find this tuesdays post (on pastor rick warren's decision to lie about his support of proposition 8) virtually duplicated on onenewsnow, the online conservative christian "news" site run by the american family association. they're not so happy to see the good pastor snuggle up to his homo friends.

thou shalt not bear false witness

i'm not sure what else you could make of rick warren's attempts to talk out of both sides of his mouth. here's a quote from warren monday night, on larry king live:

"I am not an anti-gay or anti-gay marriage activist. Never have been, never will be. During the whole proposition 8 thing I never once went to a meeting, never once issued a statement, never once even gave an endorsement in the two years prop 8 was going."

clear enough? "i never once even gave an endorsement in the two years prop 8 was going." nothing wishy-washy about that, right? now, watch:



more of rick warren's lies here.