(PDF version available here)
EC’s 2019 Columbus Day Weekend at Ocean Grove will honor the Bicen-tennials of Philip Schaff, Julia Ward Howe, and Susan Bogert Warner. Each was born in 1819.
EC’s theme for the weekend is: “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah, His Truth Is March-ing On” – through biblical history, church history, and all time and eterni-ty. The event runs from Friday supper through Sunday lunch, October 4 – 6, 2019. Register at ECinc.org.
“The priesthood is being crucified on the cross of celibacy”, according to Fr. Peter Daly, a retired Roman Catholic priest and a lawyer, in The National Catholic Reporter. He states: “The fact that celibacy is not normal is self-evident.” He argues that it is “not healthy for many people.” There is plenty of evidence that, as he notes, “Celibacy fosters a culture of mendaci-ty and secrecy, which contributes to sexual cover-ups. Celibacy is not es-sential to holiness or to priesthood. It is not mandated by the Gospels. Celi-bacy contributes to a culture of clerical-ism.” He sees that required celibacy in the priesthood explains the fact that, “Worldwide, the number of Catholic priests has ‘flat-lined’ at about 400,000 for the last 50 years. Numbers are way down in Europe and in the Americas, where priests are headed for extinc-tion.”
“We are sorry.” This recent apology is from the American Psychoanalytic Association at its 109th annual meeting. It concerns the old psychoanalytic view of homosexuality as a disorder to rem-edy through lengthy psychoanalysis. Though the various mental health pro-fessions have revised or declassified homosexuality from lists of mental disorders, including the APsaA’s revi-sion, it is believed that this is the first time that such a group actually has so formally apologized for its past.
Joseph Nicolosi, Jr. is a psychologist, as was his father, the late Joseph Nicolosi, Sr., who in 1991, wrote Re-parative Therapy for Male Homosex-uality. After his father’s death in 2017, he took over the practice. The younger Nicolosi practices what he calls “Rein-tegrative Therapy®”. He claims: “A byproduct that clients often report of Reintegrative Therapy® is often is [sic] a decrease in same-sex attractions and an increase in heterosexual attractions.” Yet, a chart on his “Reintegrative Ther-apy®” website states that “conversion therapy” – what his father called, “re-parative therapy” – is contrasted with “Reintegrative therapy”. In the prior approach, “Sexual orientation change is the goal”. In his revision, “Clients are not encouraged to try to change their sexual orientation.”
Rachel Alexander, senior editor of The Stream and a contributor to Town-hall and The Christian Post, recently asked him about his father’s patients who say that their homosexual orienta-tion never changed. He replies: “My father always agreed that some clients didn’t change. In fact, he readily admit-ted that about one-third of his clients did not see significant changes. How-ever, they did almost always report success in achieving other, related goals. Notably, improving family and peer relationships.”
Reparative Therapy for Male Homo-sexuality was reviewed in EC’s Review, Fall 1991, Vol. 16, No. 4. Cf. also EC’s Record, Summer 2017.
Yet another “ex-gay” leader, McKrae Game, has come out as gay. A former board member of an “ex-gay” organization, “Hope for Wholeness”, in South Carolina, he now apologizes: “I was wrong! Please forgive me!” He admits that the “ex-gay” propaganda was “a lie”, it was “false advertising” and it was “absolutely harmful to gen-erations of people”.
A New Jersey judge orders a second group to end its gay “reparative” practice. The group had simply re-placed a previous “reparative” practice that was ordered closed down in 2015. The Jewish Institute for Global Aware-ness (JIFGA) took the place of the Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homo-sexuality (JONAH). Both groups were charged with the same consumer fraud for promising discredited “ex-gay” outcomes. In concluding that the sec-ond group was just the “alter ego” of the original organization, Judge Peter F. Bariso, Jr., of the Hudson County Superior Court, wrote, “JONAH and JIFGA have the same co-founders and co-directors (Arthur Goldberg and Elaine Berk), occupy the same office, and are reachable at the same phone number and email addresses.”
A New Jersey judge orders a second group to end its gay “reparative” practice. The group had simply replaced a previous “reparative” practice that was ordered closed down in 2015. The Jewish Institute for Global Awareness (JIFGA) took the place of the Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH). Both groups were charged with the same consumer fraud for promising discredited “ex-gay” outcomes. In concluding that the second group was just the “alter ego” of the original organization, Judge Peter F. Bariso, Jr., of the Hudson County Superior Court, wrote, “JONAH and JIFGA have the same co-founders and co-directors (Arthur Goldberg and Elaine Berk), occupy the same office, and are reachable at the same phone number and email addresses.”
Israel’s new Education Minister supports “conversion therapy” for homosexuality. Rafi Peretz, who was Israel’s Chief Military Rabbi, claims he’s performed such therapy. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded that Peretz’ claims “do not represent my government’s position.” Justice Minister Amir Ohana, who is openly gay, objects to Peretz’ advocacy of such “therapy”, saying that it’s been discredited as ineffective and harmful.
Science reports that genetic research on nearly a half million participants found that five genetic variants are associated with having a same-sex sexual partner. However, this is not predictive of sexual behavior. Sexual behavior is something one chooses to do and this research was done on participants who so chose.
Since this research could not conclude that any one so-called “gay gene” was found, antigay forces were delighted but unenlightened. For example, American Conservative’s Rod Dreherjumped to the erroneous conclusion that, “If homosexuality is primarily a matter of nurture, not nature, why is it wrong to let gay people who want to seek therapy in hope of reducing or eliminating same-sex desire undergo that treatment?” Failing to comprehend the study and the woeful history of the “ex-gay” hoax, Dreher asserted: “This study undercuts the case against this kind of therapy, right?” Wrong. He forged ahead, nonetheless, with that always very big little word “if”: “If same-sex desire is not genetically hard-wired, what’s wrong with the principle behind this therapy from a scientific point of view (as distinct from a moral or political one)?” From a scientific point of view, decades of scientific research into the misleading “ex-gay” claims and decades of “ex-gay” leaders’ confessions of their double-talk and failures, followed by their closing down their national “ex-gay” network with deep apologies for their misleading promises, should be enough to counter Dreher’s wishful thinking.
Joshua Harris says: “I am not a Christian”, and regrets, “standing against marriage equality.” Author of the 1997 bestseller, I Kissed Dating Goodbye and the pastor of the large Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Maryland from 2004 until he resigned in 2015 to study at Vancouver’s evangelical Regent College. Harris is now divorced and runs his own marketing and brand strategy company. He says he’s “fallen away” from his faith and “by all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian.” Addressing the LGBT community, he apologizes for “not affirming you and your place in the church, and for any ways that my writing and speaking contributed to a culture of exclusion and bigotry. I hope you can forgive me.”
The Equality Act “is not a good-faith attempt to reconcile competing interests. It is, says University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock, a long-standing supporter of same-sex marriage and other federal gay-rights legislation, “an attempt by one side to grab all the disputed territory and to crush the other side.”
“I’m not against equality. I’m against the Equality Act”, says Gregory Angelo, who served for many years as the president of the Log Cabin Republicans. He objects to the Equality Act because it forces folks to violate their consciences – something that Angelo says, “betrays the promises we had made on past campaigns and could destroy all the goodwill we built up with everyday Americans, especially people of faith.” He warns: “Passage of the ‘Equality Act’ would make liars out of the lot of us. It would put the nonprofit status of religious charities at risk; it would force mom-and-pop businesses to participate in same-sex marriage ceremonies; and it would flout bedrock principles that have served as the foundation of the American experience for centuries.” Another critic says, “The Equality Act pretends to promote equality and fairness, but it’s a cynical power grab to crush religious freedom and parental rights in the name of political correctness.” After expressing their objections, Angelo and others have gotten hate-filled messages on Facebook.
The Log Cabin Republicans endorse President Trump’s 2020 reelection bid after consultation with their chapters across America. This conservative/libertarian LGBT organization declined an endorsement in 2016. The group recognizes the support that the President has been giving to its cause, including appointments he’s made such that of the openly gay Richard Grenell as U.S. Ambassador to Germany, perhaps the most important of US ambassadorships and the President’s commitment to individual responsibility, freedom and a strong national defense.
Andy Ngo, a gay, peaceful, center-right journalist, was viciously attacked in riots staged by the masked anarchists, the so-called, “Antifa”, in Portland, OR. LGBTQ advocacy groups, once again, looked the other way. Some who made excuses for the thugs including Human Rights Campaign’s Charlotte Clymer, even blaming Ngo for the injuries the masked rioters inflicted, included Ngo’s cerebral hemorrhage. Ngo, reared in a Buddhist family in Portland, has written for The Wall Street Journal, National Review, The New York Post and Spectator USA.
Muslim parents and their children chanted antigay harassment at a gay assistant head teacher in Birmingham, UK. He’d set up a gay supportive program at school called, “No Outsiders”, an effort started by a man who won an Order of the British Empire award for improving public awareness of same-sex issues.
More Arabs approve of honor killing than approve of homosexuality. This finding is from a survey of the Arab world, conducted for BBC News Arabic by the research network, Arab Barometer, across 10 Arab countries and the Palestinian territories in 2018 and 2019. 25,000 Arabs were interviewed.
Another finding was that the number of Arabs who say they are “not religious” rose from 8 percent to 13 percent from 2018 to 2019. Some Arab countries censored some of the questions.
Meanwhile, in Canada, a Muslim neurosurgeon, Mohammed Shamji, killed his wife, who was also a physician. He did it for “his honor” as a Muslim man because she’d filed for divorce. He broke her ribs and her neck before choking her to death while their three children slept. He then put her body into a suitcase and drove some 20 miles to throw it into the Humber River. He returned home, cleaned up the mess, went to work, did some surgeries, and later he reported that his wife was missing. He pleaded guilty to 2nd-degree murder and is eligible for parole in 14 years.
The Palestinian Authority banned an LGBTQ community group from holding events in the West Bank city of Nablus in August. The group was threatened with arrest for promoting what was labeled “harmful” to the ideals of Palestinian society.
Washington, DC’s organizers of the Dyke March banned all Israeli and Jewish symbols, e.g., the Star of David. Though LGBTQ+ politics otherwise propagates the notion of “intersectionality”, total censorship of all things Israeli is demanded in order to share “solidarity with our queer Palestinian friends”. Yet, it’s not Israel, but Palestinian leadership that oppresses “queer Palestinians”. Homosexuality is illegal in the Gaza Strip and, both there and in the West Bank all LGBTQ+ people face discrimination, violence and even death. Not surprisingly, the DC Dyke March banned all American flags, too.
Richard Grenell, U.S. Ambassador to Germany and an openly gay evangelical, pushed back at these virtue-signaling, anti-Semitic progressives: “Show me the Gaza City or Damascus Pride Parades … Tel Aviv’s celebration of equal rights for gays is massive.”
A reanalysis of a 2014 Pew Research survey of some 35,000 adult Americans finds lesbian, gay and bisexual adults are more skeptical of churches and other religious groups than are heterosexual adults. About seven-in-ten lesbian, gay and bisexual adults said churches and other religious organizations focus too much on rules, compared with half of heterosexual adults. Given many churches’ opposition to homosexuality, LGBT adults were much more likely than heterosexual adults to say churches are too involved in politics (66% vs. 47%) and too concerned with power (64% vs. 51).
40% of members of the Presbyterian Church in America, the major denomination of evangelical Presbyterians, said they favored marriage for same-sex couples, while 49% of members opposed it. These findings are from a Pew survey in 2014.
That polling also found that, among Independent Baptists, 32 percent favored marriage for same-sex couples, among non-denominational Charismatics, 30% favored it, among non-denominational Fundamentalists, 29% favored it, among Church of the Nazarene members, 24% favored it, among Southern Baptists, 22% favored it, and among Assemblies of God members, 19% favored it.
The PCA’s 47th General Assembly in June 2019 approved Overture 42, to establish an ad interim study committee on the topic of “human sexuality with particular attention to the issues of homosexuality, same-sex attraction, and transgenderism.” Three other overtures were answered by reference to this overture.
The Lutheran Church / Missouri Synod has overwhelmingly passed a resolution reaffirming its negative position over homosexuality. It passed with a nearly 97 percent majority. It added that LC/MS churches should “minister compassionately” to LGBT people.
40 LGBTQ Mormons met together for a “tweet-up” at a Denny’s in Provo this summer. Kerry Spencer, a former Brigham Young University professor and lesbian Mormon, who now teaches in Maryland and lives there with her partner, Heather, was in Provo to speak at the Affirmation International Convention for support of LGBT folks among the LDS. She says she was really nervous to be back in Provo for the first time since she was on the BYU faculty. She says she was overwhelmed by the numbers of old BYU friends who’d come to support her.
“The Struggle for Gay Rights is over.” This is the title of James Kirchick’s essay in The Atlantic on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. But, as the piece is subtitled, “For those born into a form of adversity, sometimes the hardest thing to do is admitting that they’ve won.” Admitting the win, he said, could throw cold water on “the flames of hysteria to scare donors into opening their wallets”, and for those accustomed to pushing against “discrimination … victimhood is too essential an identity to be so easily discarded.” As Kirchick reviews the history, “Since gays began organizing politically in the 1950s – meeting in secret, using pseudonyms, and under constant surveillance by the FBI – their movement for legal equality and societal acceptance has arguably advanced faster than any other in American history.”
Botswana’s High Court rules that the nation’s same-sex ban is unconstitutional. The Court unanimously agreed that, “Any criminalization of love or finding fulfillment in love dilutes compassion and tolerance.”
Ecuador’s Constitutional Court approves same-sex marriage in a 5-4 decision. The Court directed Ecuador’s legislators to pass a law assuring full marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples.
China has its first “gay couple”, but it’s a secret. Publicly, they’re only each other’s guardians. Chinese law does not recognize same-sex couples. This couple, together for 10 years, was married outside China. Their legal guardianship allows them to look after each other as the grow older together.
Alleging that a meeting organized by a group led by a gay white man, a gay black man, a gay Jew and a white transgender woman would make many in “the community feel unsafe”,New York’s LGBT Community Center abruptly canceled a scheduled “town hall”. Brandon Straka, Rob Smith, Mike Harlow and Blaire White are leaders of #WalkAway. This movement is pushing back against “the oppression of intellectual diversity”. Straka, a cosmetologist and former Democrat, says: “I am taking a stand on behalf of every person who has become liberal mob road-kill – having our lives, reputations, livelihoods, families, & legacies dragged through the mud for defending a position not aligned w/ liberal brainwashing.” And Smith, an Iraq War vet, says he’s tired of being told that he must identify as a “victim” just because he’s black.
Says Straka: “Every day in this country, good people who are not racists, who are not bigots, who are not homophobic, who are not bad people — people who support our president or the conservative movement — are verbally and physically attacked, are intimidated into silence, and have their jobs and relationships and livelihoods put in danger. Why? Because they have a political position that is not accepted by the controlled media norm or the narrative that societal bullies deem approved. I grew up enduring homophobia, violence, and bullying — and now, I see the LGBT community misusing newly acquired power and position to engage in these very same behaviors to silence people.”
Straka’s discernment is confirmed, though unintentionally, by the mainstream media’s negative coverage of the #WalkAway movement.
Taylor Swift disregards her own good advice. Her pro-LGBTQ+ video for Pride 2019 debuted her song, “You Need to Calm Down”, a disparaging caricature of “white trash” “redneck” “Christians” and a supposedly “celebratory” caricature of the protestors’ KGBTQ+ targets that are mere stereotypes. There’s been backlash from Left and Right.
Emily Jashinsky, The Federalist culture editor assesses: “With a dash of self-awareness, ‘You Need To Calm Down’ could have been the giant exhalation we need right now, collective catharsis as the grip of social media platforms designed to keep us in conflict tightens, an easy antidote to the stresses of virtual battle. We do need to calm down. All of us! But this won’t help.” Indeed, she observes: “Swift’s lazy caricatures and pedestrian insults belong very firmly to the moment at hand. So, too, does the video’s deafening elitism, rubbing celebrities in the faces of rubes as if their glamour was an argument in and of itself. It’s not.” Jashinsky notes, it’s “aggressively tone-deaf for a song that styles itself as a defusion effort.”
Tiffany Cabán, who identifies as a “queer Latina” is a 31-year-old public defender who claimed victory in the Democratic primary for Queens district attorney before a recount showed that the other candidate won. Among Cabán’s stances were: Don’t prosecute prostitutes and johns, do prosecute ICE agents, end cash bail, and shorten sentences for felonies.
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Paul, Minnesota, says a Christian couple can try to show that a law violates their First Amendment rights to free speech and free exercise of religion. Judge David Stras called videos by Angel and Carl Larsen, “a medium for the communication of ideas about marriage,” and said the state’s law “is targeting speech itself.”
The court ordered U.S. District Judge John Tunheim in Minneapolis to decide whether the Larsens and their Telescope Media Group deserve a preliminary injunction against the law, which subjects violators to fines and possible jail time. Tunheim had dismissed the lawsuit in September 2017. “With this perversion of the First Amendment, the majority sanctions a policy of ‘No gays allowed,’” said Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat who defended the law. He pledged to respond in the “strongest and most strategic way possible” to the decision. In a statement provided by his lawyers at Alliance Defending Freedom, Carl Larsen said: “Angel and I serve everyone. We just can’t produce films promoting every message.”
For declining to wax the male genitals of a man who identifies as a lesbian, immigrants in Canada, struggling to earn a living in waxing, were forced out of work. The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, supported the transwoman activist, Jessica Yaniv, formerly known as Jonathan Yaniv. Yaniv has also filed complaints against 15 other British Columbian estheticians for refusing to wax her male genitals. Canada’s National Post reports that Yaniv’s human rights complaints “brought her prominence; now she’s accused of harassment and predatory behaviour” aimed at young girls.
Yet another transwoman wins top medals in women’s sports competition. Laurel Hubbard, formerly Gavin Hubbard, who now identifies as a woman, won two gold medals in women’s weightlifting at the 2019 Pacific Games in Samoa.
AND FINALLY Interviews with 15 “gay cisgender men” in San Francisco, conducted by a University of Texas student for his Master’s thesis in sociology “focusing on masculinities theory”, uncovered barriers to their integrating with transgender men. They “grappled with defining manhood, maleness, and gayness between biological or constructivist discourse which created tensions”. And, the “requirements of doing gender facilitate the invisibility of transgender men in social spaces”, so, “cisgender gay men, especially when faced with sexual desire for transgender men experienced a vagina panic.”