Tag: anti-gay

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President of Uganda asks legislators to not rush in reintroducing anti-gay bill

President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda is asking lawmakers to slow down as they work to re-legislate a controversial anti-gay law that was invalidated earlier this month.

From the Washington Post:

Museveni, who held a meeting Monday with lawmakers from his party, urged parliamentarians “not to cause chaos” by quickly reintroducing the bill, according to Medard Bitekyerezo, a lawmaker who strongly supports the anti-gay measure.

He said Museveni formed a committee, to be chaired by Vice President Edward Kiwanuka Ssekandi, to look into the concerns of rights activists who challenged the constitutionality of the law.

The government-controlled New Vision newspaper reported Tuesday that Museveni warned lawmakers that the bill could hurt the country’s economic development. Museveni asked the parliamentarians to debate the law “without any emotional feelings,” the paper reported.

More than 200 members of the Ugandan Parliament have lined up to reinstate the bill.

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Florida pastor stands firm on denying gay man’s funeral

Florida pastor T.W. Jenkins feels “fine” about his decision to cancel gay man’s funeral

Reverend T.W. Jenkins, pastor of New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Tampa, is standing firm on his decision to cancel the funeral services of Julion Evans once he found out the man was gay.

Rev. Jenkins, in the midst of the media firestorm, wanted to let his congregation know “My family is doing fine,” he said to claps from the audience. “Church family please remain focused and prayerful … and we will continue to stand on the word of God.”

Good to know the Rev. Jenkins is “doing fine.”

The family of Julion Evans eventually used the funeral home that handled Evans’ wake for the funeral.

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Tampa church that cancelled gay man’s funeral sees online backlash

New Hope Baptist Church near Tampa, Florida

Yesterday I reported on a small Tampa-area church that cancelled funeral services for 42 year old Julion Evans after learning he was gay and married to another man.

Evans’ mother received the call canceling the service standing by her son’s casket at the wake a day before the funeral. The pastor said it would have been “blasphemous” for the church to host the funeral service.

Now, New Hope Missionary Baptist has been forced to take town their website and contact information after the internet rose up to condemn the clearly “un-Christ-like” behavior of the church and pastor.

Just a sample of the 300+ one-star reviews on the Church’s Facebook:

• Discriminatory practices that Jesus would never approve. Complete lack of Christian behavior. Shame on then.

• Using your misunderstanding of faith in a Divine and Loving God as a reason for turning away the funeral for one of God’s beloved children is a perversion of the Gospel. God calls us to love and reach out to all persons. You have once again made Christianity look badly. Shame on you.

• Disgraceful. Utterly disgraceful and unforgivable. There are no “Christians” attending or acting as Pastor at this church. To cancel a man’s funeral, simply because you and your “flock” do not agree with or like Homosexuals is beyond evil. A persons life before they have died has no baring on their right to a funeral. Do you refuse to hold funeral services for murderers? Adultors? Unwed mothers? People who have pre-maritial sex? All of these are also “sins” in the Bible but you don’t refuse to grant these people a funeral at your church. You are all hypocrites and you disgust me.

• Christian = Christ like; There is nothing Christ like about what this Church just did. I am appalled that this should occur in a place were the compassion of Christ should be seen most. Shame on this place!

• True evil. So glad that I don’t call myself a christian anymore, because churches like yours that are so exclusive and show none of God’s love.

[via The New Civil Rights Movement]

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Benham Brothers: The homosexual agenda “is evil and wrong and needs to be dealt with”

The Benham Brothers, David and Jason, are again preaching against the LGBT community, as they prepare to headline an anti-gay, conservative Family Leadership Summit  this weekend.  The brothers are being billed on the same level as US Senators, Governors and other elected officials.

You may remember that the Brothers Benham saw their nascent HGTV show cancelled when their virulently anti-gay rhetoric came to light.

Now, they are back and still campaigning against the LGBT community. This week it was on the Tamara Scott Live radio show:

“It’s very important that we speak to the fact that homosexuality is a sin that can only be redeemed by God when we repent.

“But the idea of a homosexual agenda that seeks to capture the nation and capture children’s curriculum, capture television and entertainment, I mean you name it, and laws — that is an idea that is evil and wrong and needs to be dealt with.”

Let’s go to the audio tape:

(via Jeremy Hooper)

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As he turns 18, an Eagle Scout asks Robert Gates to allow gay adult Scouts

Pascal Tessier is the first known openly gay Eagle Scout.

Yesterday, Pascal turned 18. This meant that he was now considered an adult by the Boy Scouts of America, and under the current rules adopted by the BSA, Pascal now cannot be a part of the organization that has meant so much to him.

On his 18th birthday, he shared this open letter to former U.S Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who now serves as President of the Boy Scouts of America, wherein he urges Gates to end the ban on gay adult Boy Scouts.  The full essay appeared on Time.com.

Just part of Pascal’s letter reads:

I was just 4 years old when I went on my first camping trip with my older brother and his Cub Scouts pack. After that, I was hooked.

Scouting has been a constant part of my life… The Boy Scouts taught me everything from how to survive in the woods to the morals and values that shaped the person I am today. For that, and for the good times and friends I made through Scouting, I will always be grateful.

Today is my 18th birthday, a milestone on my path to becoming an adult and the day I am no longer eligible to be a Boy Scout because I am gay. Despite the Boy Scouts’ historic decision last year to open its ranks to gay youth, the Scouts still ban gay adults. And as of today, that means me.

Mr. Gates, only you have the power and experience to bring an end to the unwarranted, unjust and un-Scout like ban on gay adults. Every day that you do nothing, more boys and parents struggle with their place in Scouting, in their communities and in their families.

Not long ago, Mr. Gates, you were instrumental in the repeal of the military’s ban on gay service members, telling the U.S. Senate in February 2010 that, “The question before us is not whether the military prepares to make this change [to allow gay service members], but how we best prepare for it.”

Openly gay adults will eventually be allowed in Scouting, Mr. Gates. As support for equality continues to grow, Americans will soon demand it. The question before you, then, is not whether the ban should end, but how many more young people like me will be a victim of your failed leadership if you do nothing.

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Uganda’s Constitutional Court annuls anti-homosexuality law

Uganda’s Constitutional Court has annulled the recent anti-gay legislation signed into law in February over what amounts to a technicality:

It (the Constitutional Court) ruled that the bill was passed by MPs in December without the requisite quorum and was therefore illegal.

Homosexual acts were already illegal, but the new law allowed for life imprisonment for “aggravated homosexuality” and banned the “promotion of homosexuality”.

Earlier drafts of the anti-homosexuality act made it a crime not to report gay people – which would have made it impossible to live as openly gay – but this clause was removed.

The law, which was signed by President Yoweri Museveni in February, toughened up existing laws.

Lesbians were covered for the first time and those found living in a same-sex marriage could have been sentenced to life imprisonment.

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Anti-gay Rick Santorum says marriage equality “devalues” marriage

Former US Senator Rick Santorum

Right Wing Watch is reporting on a recent interview on the Eagle Forum Live radio show wherein former US senator and forever anti-gay Rick Santorum said that marriage equality “devalues” marriage:

The former senator and presidential candidate told host Anne Cori, Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly’s daughter, that supporters of marriage equality have “devalued marriage” and “divorced marriage from any meaning beyond a romantic relationship,” while Cori lamented the “celebration of single mothers.”

He also warned of polygamy: “If marriage is simply a romantic relationship between two people, and by the way, that’s what it’s devolved to the minds of a lot of Americans, if that’s all that marriage is well then it’s hard to make the argument that any two people or any three or four people shouldn’t be able to get married.”

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Michele Bachmann: Gays plan to get rid of age of consent laws & prey upon children

On a recent appearance on the “Faith & Liberty” radio show, wingnut Michele Bachmann says the gay community wants to “abolish age of consent laws, which means we will do away with statutory rape laws so that adults will be able to freely prey on little children sexually. That’s the deviance that we’re seeing embraced in our culture today.”

She also says that the gays are out to “punish” those who don’t agree with our viewpoint, thus bringing about a “rise of tyranny.”

What a victim! Oh, the indignity of it all!

Sadly, there is an all too hungry audience out there for this kind of idiocy. You can hear the misguided diatribe below.

You know, I only post these things to remind us all that this happens every day in the

(via Right Wing Watch)