The once every four years assembly of the United Methodist Church’s legislative body, General Conference, is not scheduled to meet again until 2012. For four more years anyway, those of us who are United Methodists will have to continue living in a house divided, a house where the majority — made up of equal numbers of lay and clergy delegates—upheld church policy by a vote of 504 to 417 declaring the practice of homosexuality "incompatible with Christian teaching."  

The matter was first addressed at the General Conference in 1972. The position taken was this: "Although we do not condone the practice of homosexuality and consider this practice incompatible with Christian teaching, we affirm that God's grace is available to all." At each General Conference since that time, the position has been unsuccessfully challenged. In fact, it has been extended to prohibit the ordination of homosexuals into the ministry of the church, as well as prohibiting ministers from performing ceremonies blessing same sex unions.

With all of this coverage of Rev. Wright, why is it we never hear about John McCain’s fraternization with the radical preachers John Hagee and Rod Parsley? Hagee made headlines in 2005 for saying that Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for hosting a gay pride parade. And now Mother Jones has published footage from one of Parsley’s sermons where he claims that "America was founded in part with the intention of seeing this false religion [Islam] destroyed."

You can watch the whole clip here.

Here's some mind-numbing irony from the far right.

I had intended to write my third and final diary about an alleged hate crime that took place recently in Champaign, Illinois, after the case had been adjudicated.  The defendant, Brett Vanasdlen, 18, of Minooka, Illinois, goes to Court on May 6th.  However, since last night when I posted part two of my series of diaries on the April 12, 2008 incident, the Brett Vanasdlen case has spread further around the blogosphere with increasing vitriol directed at the victim, Steven Velasquez, a gay man who suffered some head trauma in the alleged hate crime that took place near his school, the University of Illinois. (And if you don't want to read my diary, but I hope you take a short break from all the election-focused diaries and check it out, then please take the poll).

We know from examining the FBI's hate crime statistics from 2006 that hate crimes based on hatred toward non-heterosexuals accounted for 1,387 of all 9,080 hate crimes reported to the FBI in 2006.  Over nine hundred gay men were the victims of reported hate crimes that year; they constituted 9.46% of all reported hate crime victims.  That percentage is totally out of proportion to the estimated percent of gay men that make up the population of the United States which is about 2.8%, according to a reputable study from the National Health and Social Life Survey by Edward O. Laumann, John H. Gagnon, Robert T. Michael, and Stuart Michaels titled "The Social organization of sexuality in the United States".  In other words in 2006 gay men were 3.38 times more likely to be the victim of a reported hate crime (often genteelly called a bias-motivated crime) than would be expected.  

Following up on FishOutOfWater's excellent diary today, I want to add another group to the list that will abandon her in droves in November, should she win the nomination via superdelegate coup:

Teh Gays.

Yup.

We won't.

With all the antigay, anti-Dem dogwhistles, innuendoes, omissions, commissions, insults:  Shame on you, Hillary Clinton.  You know better.

More on the flippity...

"The Bible I read declares both adultery and homosexuality as sins. But now, since some preachers are saying homosexuality is not a sin some parishioners are concluding that neither are adultery and "shacking," and are using this re-writing of Scripture as the basis for returning to their old sinful lifestyles."

So says Hillary supporter Dr. Barbara Reynolds, the woman who sponsored Rev. Wright's recent speech before the National Press Club. These are direct words of hers, from her blog.

Update: It appears the comments disagree that pansy is a slur against gays, but only applies to "effeminate men."  Seems to me, however, that the portrayal of men as effeminate is an effort to question their "manhood" and that each is pretty much the same thing.

This is pretty amazing.  Back in October I was pretty tough on Barack Obama for the whole Donnie McClurkin situation, and suggested that Obama had lost my support for much of anything beyond a vote in the general.  

But now we get the Governor of North Carolina, Mike Easley, endorsing Hillary Clinton with a gay slur:

Gov. Mike Easley made his endorsement official this morning, saying that Hillary Clinton is a fighter who "makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy."

So the Easley endorsement is finally out.

Blogged by CNN.

Call me crazy, but "pansy" seems a bit confrontational.  Maybe he should have chosen his words more carefully?

Today, April 25, students at schools around the country are observing the Day of Silence

The Day of Silence, a project of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), is a student-led day of action when concerned students, from middle school to college, take some form of a vow of silence to bring attention to the name-calling, bullying and harassment -- in effect, the silencing -- experienced by LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) students and their allies.

for more info see http://www.dayofsilence.org/

April 25 is an important day for me for another reason as well. On April 25, 2002, I attempted suicide.

Understandably, there was national outrage and sadness about last year's very probable hate crime murder of a young gay man from South Carolina, Sean William Kennedy, 20, of Greenville.   A stranger with hatred in his heart and homophobia swirling in his mind is said to have thrown a single, fatal punch at Kennedy--a college student with a life's worth of promise--on a sidewalk in downtown Greenville in May, 2007.  Less than two months later in early July, a west coast picnic outing with friends similarly ended in a violent, homophobia-fueled death.  The single-punch hate crime murder of 26 year old Satendar Singh outside Sacramento, California, will be another tic-mark in the "Murder and non-negligent manslaughter" column of the FBI's annual report of hate crime statistics for 2007 to be released later this year. Whether or not the FBI chooses to bring Mr. Singh's alleged killer to justice is another story; Andrey Vusik, 29, fled to his native Russia and there seems to be no political will to have him returned to the United States to face a murder charge, although he has been charged with manslaughter.  

OK, my first diary.  

But did I expect during KO to see ATT air an 'ad' showing fat, ie, normal, straight 'men' singing
Show Tunes as humor?  

I called ATT, and asked, would you air Aunt Jemima or nappy headed salt and peppers,

or jews in a bank handing out $$  with a scorning eye????

In "A More Perfect Union," Barack said that he could no more disown his pastor than he could disown his white (and admittedly racist) grandmother.

I have the same problem, sort of. But for me, one of the reasons I can't disown my grandmother is that her attitudes are what made me think about racism and bigotry, even when I didn't yet know what those words meant. One of the main reasons I am the man I am today is that her bigotry gave me lessons to learn about how NOT to behave, and how NOT to think.

Come with me after the jump for a trip down memory lane.

While taxes are never a particular joy, some people have injustice inherent in their taxes.  We all know how this country is hurting the poor with regressive taxes, but I think the homophobia in our tax structure is largely unknown.

Conservatives gripe about the 'marriage penalty,’ which affects a very small number of people who could find ways to work around it.  However, there are massive major benefits as well.  This year, I have to pay taxes on $6,899.48 of "income" for the market value of the health insurance my domestic partner and his kids received last year.

I shudder to confess this to such an august body of bloggers, but I do occasionally find myself one of the 7 million daily visitors to Perez Hilton's celebrity gossip site.

I’m a student at North Dakota State University, and am absolutely appalled at the events detailed below. This has been commented on previously by the diaries below:

Cross-posted from Ocelopotamus.com.

From Friday's AP story on Lawrence King:

OXNARD, Calif. (AP) — Larry King was a gay eighth-grader who used to come to school in makeup, high heels and earrings. And when the other boys made fun of him, he would boldly tease them right back by flirting with them.

That may have been what got him killed.

No, that is not what got him killed. What got him killed was not his flirting, but the homophobic response of his classmates to that flirting.

I am an alumnus of North Dakota State University living in the Twin Cities.  Today is not a proud day for me.

Do you have trouble telling this

from this?

Was that so hard?

Apparently, it is for the two major newspapers in Oklahoma, the Daily Oklahoman and the Tulsa World.