By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Picture this.

A small town café. An eclectic group of folks commune at the breakfast counter, shooting the bucolic shit.

“How’s school?” the older, white man asks.

“It sucks,” says the young woman. “I don’t like the students.”

“Why? Are they Hispanic students?”

“No, actually, mostly white and privileged.”

He doesn’t notice her cringe. He doesn’t notice that she is Hispanic.

And picture this.

A flight home after a hectic trip. A lovely young disciple distracts the businesswoman from her work, hoping to save her soul.

“You have quite a faith there, and you’re bright,” the businesswoman says, deflecting the proselytizing. “You might enjoy the ministry. Have you thought about going to divinity school?”

“Oh, we’re taught that women aren’t suited to being spiritual leaders,” the young disciple says. “Women are driven by too much emotion; men are driven by reason. That’s why god tells them to lead us.”

“It takes some powerful emotions to start and fight a war,” the businesswoman suggests. “You might find men are no more rational than women. And you might find a church that doesn’t limit your freedom of choice.”

“Oh, no, knowing Jesus has set me free! God gives me the freedom to choose to submit to his will.”

She doesn’t notice the dogma that binds her. She doesn’t notice the profanity of her words.

Then picture this.

A dispersing student government meeting about an anti-hate proclamation. A male administrator and a female student cross paths, to his apparent dismay.

“There seems to be a message from the administration that we shouldn’t name the cause of the proclamation. Why is that?” the student asks.

“Oh, that’s the students’ initiative,” he says, sidling away.

“I’m not talking about the students,” she persists, “I’m talking about the administration’s avoidance of naming the problem.”

“Oh, no, no, that’s the students,” he says through his back, scurrying for cover as though the student is the beast.

He doesn’t notice he’s left her to fend for herself. He doesn’t notice the beast is stalking him as well.

And finally, picture this.

A gathering of wingtipped white men at the Value Voters Summit. A Southern Baptist pastor, waxing didactic, introduces presidential hopeful Gov. Rick Perry.

“Rick Perry is a proven leader,” Pastor Jeffress intones, doing the devil’s work. “He is a true conservative, and he is a genuine follower of Jesus Christ. … He is willing to stand up and defund that slaughterhouse for the unborn known as Planned Parenthood!”

“Are you talking about Mitt Romney?” the media pounce in a proper flurry. “Are you saying Mormonism isn’t genuine Christianity?”

“It is not Christianity,” the pastor reassures them. “It’s a cult.”

“And he knocks it out of the park!” Perry roars, disregarding the nation’s 14 million Mormons.

He doesn’t notice the slaughterhouse comment. He doesn’t notice the 156.5 million women in the United States he would represent.

What is wrong with these pictures?

Love,
K-B

Crossposted at San Diego Gay & Lesbian News.

Image of Woolworth’s counter by *Kid*Doc*One*

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

I vaguely recall the first time someone asked me what it means to be a feminist. I was still a kid, freshly baptized in the blaze of radical feminism. Or so it seemed, as our consciousness-raising group met in Anita’s living room. She was into her middle years, a professional woman returned to college, and the group was a school project. Its existence in our small town was a damn miracle for us and a disturbing mystery for the men, who didn’t understand why a gaggle of gals would get together for no better purpose than to talk — just talk — to each other! — what the hell? — and we weren’t too sure ourselves, at first, although their reactions were reason enough, and enlightenment shortly followed.

Ensconced in pastoral adornment — brocade throw pillows, hand-tatted antimacassars, ceramic tchotchkes — we spoke of goddesses and orgasms, of Shulamith Firestone and her Dialectic of Sex. We gasped and caressed the images of female genitalia in Our Bodies, Ourselves. We dreamt of Feminist Revolution amid fiery Redstockings. And we strode boldly forth to spread the good word of equality of the sexes.

That’s when one of the boys on the farm asked me about feminism (yes, there literally was a dairy farm, with a lot of eager boys on it). But the acrid sarcasm in his inflection neutralized the need for a serious response, along with his chances. Were it not for my oh-so proper upbringing — the gendered training that turns Southern females into well-coiffed boot scrapers and males, into manure-crusted boots — I’d have asked him what it means to be a teeny sexist turd.

Of course, I didn’t. As one of the elite white males who has claimed the exclusive U.S. leadership mantle said years later, “Wouldn’t be prudent”[1] — no matter that belittling my passions annoyed me. But, alas, back then I still clasped the remnants of ladylikeness as a virgin bride clutches the coverlet to her chin on her wedding night.

Hmmm, that image might be a tad sexist. Blame it on the South, the South and the more generic sublimation of female anger. We were not allowed to be angry; it would interfere with our being gracious, accommodating, acquiescent — boot scrapers.

But I changed — with the seasons, with the years, with the geography — and by the 1990s I took to slinging the Oxford English Dictionary definition of feminism at California’s political candidates, who proudly proclaimed their befuddled disaffection for the moniker by answering “No” to the question “Are you a feminist?” and “Yes” to the question “Do you support granting women the same rights as men?”

“Ahem, sir,” I’d say, “that is feminism.” And the hapless hucksters would stumble over their reassurances that they both advocated for women’s equality and abjured feminism.

Go figure.

Now, thirty-five years removed from my feminist birthing, I am asked yet again what it means to be a feminist, a feminist in an anti-feminist culture, a culture as far removed from the feminism of the 1960s and 70s as we were then from the suffragists of the previous century’s turning. But there is a difference. This time, the query is posed without sarcasm. It comes from a women’s studies professor, a smart woman with wild hair and more books than her institution deems seemly. She’s been plunked into a new office with shelves enough for half her books. When I saw this, I couldn’t help but imagine the architect wondering how many words women really need to pack into their pretty little heads. Idiot.

Do I seem angry? I’m not supposed to be. But after thirty-five years of surveilling our patriarchal system, I am.

Or no, I’m not angry. I’m thinking, thinking of that classic Southern aphorism — that horses sweat, gentlemen perspire and ladies glow. I recall telling Mother, once, that I was sweating like a stuck pig. I don’t recall that she laughed, but I hope she would laugh at my suggestion now — that ladies clench their sphincters and remain silent, women become understandably yet politely angry, and feminists get mad. Because I am mad. I am a mad feminist. And I get mad better than most. Because mad is a tool for change. Silent acquiescence and clenched sphincters, polite anger, they are not tools for change — not at the turn of the century, not in the 60s and 70s, and not today.

What does it mean to be a feminist today, a mad feminist? I think it means a lot of things, some I’m still learning.

But I do know it means seeing people roll their eyes at the mention of consciousness-raising groups, those silly little things that turned on our voices, that aroused our sexuality, that confirmed our personhood.

It means a persistent gendered wage gap that in 2009 paid women a median wage equating to about 80¢ to each $1.00 men earned.[2]

It means fuming as women’s bodies serve as capitalism’s primary tools, our breasts selling beer, our genitalia pitching the latest fashions, our undeveloped hands assembling the endless stream of consumer goods from Third World countries that keep the elite in power around the globe.

It means mourning the loss of Congresswoman Bella Abzug’s trailblazing path to the United State’s lackluster ranking of 70^th of 186 nations in the percentage of females in national legislatures[3] — behind such countries as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.

It means gasping as young women succumb to the fallacy that fellatio is not sex and their bodies, themselves are not worthy of respect — their own or their partner’s.

It means flinching as nearly one in every four women in the United States reports experiencing violence at the hands of a current or former intimate partner.[4]

It means wailing as each of more than 500 women per day reports being raped or sexually assaulted.[5]

And still — still! — we blame them for their abuse. Perhaps this is why experts suggest the actual numbers for domestic violence, rape and sexual assault are double or triple what is reported — or more.

It means that the U.S. government has barely begun to collect comparable data for lesbians and bisexual and transgender women.

It means — all of this means — that we need to do something about it, something to declare that this is how it is and that how it is, is not right, is not sane, cannot continue.

And that means we need to be activists for equality all the time, everywhere we go, always insisting on having difficult conversations we might rather avoid, the kind we would have shied from before our do-it-yourself-home-inspection-speculum days, when it was easier to fake an orgasm than to talk about it, to explore what it would take to achieve it, to tell a partner to try this instead of that. It’s not that different from equality. Seriously. Female orgasms and equality require the recognition that they are absent when they shouldn’t be, the desire for them, and the commitment to talk about them for the purpose of obtaining them. Orgasms are just a lot easier.

Equality, equality is a toughy. Which brings me back to the question of what it means to be a feminist today. Although I’m still working on the answer, I’m certain it means I have to be mad. I’ll let you know what else I figure out. And then I’ll call Anita, to thank her.

Love,
K-B

Crossposted at the Ocean Beach Rag, The Progressive Post and San Diego Gay and Lesbian News.

By Kristin Laurel

Who shall set a law to lovers? Love is a greater law into itself.

– Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, A.D. 524

Like October poplars that are first
to drop their leaves, I often find myself unprotected, exposed.
The one I love is more reserved,
like the Bur Oak that clings
to its leaves, perhaps there is a gentle sacredness
in not giving everything away.

We hold hands on the narrow path
while squirrels scuttle to bury
their hoarded treasure.
I read once, that they find only ten percent of the nuts
they hide; the rest go to seed and give rise
to trees. I stop to pick up
an acorn, press it between my thumb and forefinger.
It smells of musky earth, a trace of permanence.

Two joggers approach—
we quickly drop hands.
A few red maples glare, against a pale-blue sky.
And I am ashamed.
It’s the same when I cut a hug—
short, hide my tears
when I greet her at the airport,
or cover up our held hands with the bucket
of popcorn at the theatre.
We look around again.
No people. It’s safe.

My God, it is strange
how perfectly our clasped hands fit,
how this is the closest thing to God’s love I’ve known,
how other’s see this as wrong.

Sometimes, it feels like I was abducted
from the nice white straight world
and came back queer-colored and green.
She says, “In public turn up the friendship and turn down the love,”
but I say, “Why should we contain love?”

She treads lightly, doesn’t disrupt the forest floor.
I drag my feet and kick up leaves,
tearing them like tissue paper.
I let my shoes sling mud—

This morning, on Good Morning America,
they showed members of Westboro Baptist Church,
picketing at a dead vet’s funeral, holding their signs:
Thank God For Dead Soldiers
God Hates Fags
Jews Killed Jesus

Listen. I’m not here to preach.
I’ve been no saint.
I remember how, in college, I shared an apartment with Tammy
whose father was a pastor; how distraught, she confided in me:
“I want to get married, go to church and have kids,” she said,
“But I’m attracted to women.”
I moved out as fast as I could.

And I remember how once, in 5^th grade,
at Hesperia Christian, I called a kid a faggot.
Even though I didn’t know what the word meant,
Mrs. Thompson made me put my hands
on the wall and spanked my ass

with a holy paddle.

I have a few friends still “praying for my soul.”
And let them pray; I need all the help I can get.
My godmother is coming around
but I haven’t spoken to my father since I fell in love;
he drinks too much, and calls me a dyke.
Yet, I’ve had it easy.
I wasn’t court-martialed by the US military.
I wasn’t put on the stand to defend
my career and myself as a human being
for associating with gays like my friend Maria was, a decade ago.
I wasn’t disowned by my Christian family, like Donnie,
my mom’s cousin, who died alone of AIDS, back in the 80s.

Yes, I have a lot to be thankful for.
The people I now call family
support me and the one I love.
And yes, I’ve been in love with a man, and a woman,
so in case you are curious, let me tell you, love is love.
Sex is sex.
“But,” people ask, “what about the kids?”
Children have a way of seeing things
for what they are. I hold my daughter’s hand
sometimes when we’re watching TV. I hold my youngest
son’s hand, my mother’s, my sister’s, my grandpa’s—
my oldest son won’t let me hold his, but he’s nearly sixteen.
My kids love me, and they love my partner.
And yet I know what my mother fears. It has nothing
to do with what goes on

in my home. Maybe we all need to shut off the news,
and get close to a person with a label
we have nothing in common with.
Are we really a nation divided?
Don’t most of us all care about the same things at the core,
our kids, our spouses, our aging parents?
Maybe we all need to just take a walk in the woods.

In the safety of the car we head home, holding hands.
Tomorrow, she will leave, and we will be separated by
Minnesota prairie and North Carolina mountaintops.
I still have my little acorn. I twirl it around in my other hand.
It is face-less, and race-less; an oval shaped head, wearing a hat,
enclosing a single seed.
As a child, I wanted to plant an acorn,
but I was told, “You’ll be dead before it ever grows up to be anything.”

I’m going to give it to her before she goes,
have her plant it in some fresh, red clayed, Appalachian soil.

Editor’s note: Kristin Laurel is a divorced mother of three teenagers, employed as a nurse, who unexpectedly fell in love with a woman three years ago. She graduated this January from a poetry apprenticeship at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, and has recently been published in Calyx, Main Street Rag, Hospital drive, Talking Stick, Prose Poem Project, Grey Sparrow Review and other journals. “God Hates Fags” is from her first collection of poetry, Giving Them all Away.

At the Naval Weapons Station Gate

Sentry: My brother was dating a girl, got her pregnant, and she dumped him. That’s when he went gay.
Commuter: You think she flipped him, huh?

At First Christian Church
— the reaction, perhaps, of those who learn God loves homosexuals

Read more Fallbrookisms…

On writing endings: Sometimes life is like the movies. The End!               – Elise

Daughter: I found Jesus, Mom. I found him. He was lost, or perhaps misplaced, but I found him!
Mother: Where?
Daughter: I found him underneath the passenger seat of my car. Can you believe he was there this whole time!!!
Mother: Heaven’s under the seat of your car?! Who knew?
Daughter: Right!?
Mother: I need a pic of Jesus under your car seat asap for a blog announcement

–  Many thanks to Kate Gressitt-Diaz for this bit of flash fiction

Daughter: It’s not fiction! He’s really there — under the passenger seat!

Read more Fallbrookisms…

On Tuesday’s election

We got so many calls from Steve Poizner [Republican gubernatorial candidate], I figured he was having an affair with someone in the house. But my husband said it wasn’t him.

The four San Diego County candidates who ran for judge because God told them to must have misinterpreted him — they all lost. It’s one of those Fundamentalists are from Mars, God is from Venus sort of things.

Over martinis: Don’t you know any single Marines? I need to be ravaged.

Mother: Last night, after eating pig snouts and sauerkraut, I watched a dwarf in a medieval costume hawk ale to the college students outside my hotel. Oddly cynical.
Daughter: That might be the creepiest thing I’ve ever heard.

Read more Fallbrookisms…

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

The volume of campaign collateral littering my mailbox confirms that Tuesday 08 June is indeed California’s primary election: I’m buried in the noxious stuff. So far, our mixed-party household has received fifty-eight pieces of propaganda from candidates, special-interest ballot measure sponsors and for-profit slate-mailing scoundrels who promote whichever campaigns are willing to pay (one of the truly heinous banes of democracy … as are many candidates). And every piece of the dogmatic toilet paper is urging us to vote as its propagators see fit.

For your disgus— ah, entertainment, I’ve selected a few choice examples.

Let’s start with Joel Anderson. A seated assemblyman, Joel wants to fill Fallbrook’s termed-out State Senator Dennis Hollingsworth’s homophobic shoes. The candidate sent us nine pieces of propaganda explaining why “Liberals Hate Joel Anderson.” He apparently considers this a stellar endorsement.

Yet, I’m a liberal and I don’t know enough about him to hate him. Yet.

I reviewed his pieces for some redeeming virtue and read that he “took the fight to terrorists.”

“Cool,” I thought, “he’s a vet, just like my dear husband!” But I searched and searched, and Joel reports neither military service nor battlefield contractor status, which means he in fact did not see the armed conflict most reasonable people would have interpreted his message as suggesting.

I feel jilted, Joel. You try to woo me to your camp and then you spurn me with deception. I hope no one who really did take the fight to the terrorists gets her or his battle-hardened hands within reach of your wannabe-warrior neck. But, because I’m not such a bad person for a liberal, I’ll help you out a little by hiding your misleading brochures from my infantryman husband. After that, you’re on your own, buster. Time to atone.

Oh — there is a clincher: Joel quotes Glen Beck, whom he mistakenly identifies as a talk show host, but who is actually an alien televangelist fleeing scandal in a galaxy far, far away. Glen says of Joel, “I wish there were more people like you. Thank you, sir, for getting it.” I wonder who got what from whom. …

As for us, we got plenty of propaganda from Proposition 16 sponsors — enough to paper the powder room. At first glance it seems an easy “Yes.” Who wouldn’t want to “Protect Our Right to Vote” — the propaganda’s claim?

The power industry, that’s who. The very manipulators who brought us the California energy crisis of 2000-2001, the perpetrators of ever-increasing utility rates exceeded only by their profits, want voters to believe that they are trying to help us.

But, if you read the teensy print — that plain-black stuff they bury at the bottom of their star-spangled propaganda so folks won’t notice it — you’ll see that Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) is financing Prop 16. This is because PG&E wants to prevent public utility providers (as in “nonprofits”) from competing with them (as in “profit pigs”).

What is most gross about Prop 16 is that PG&E is usurping our citizen ballot initiative process to protect their monopoly from public utilities. That is, this huge honking corporation is using the very tool the voters adopted in 1911 to stop big business from controlling our state, and PG&E’s Prop 16 would amend our California Constitution to require a two-thirds vote for public entities, such as municipalities, to become energy providers.

And there’s one more dirty trick PG&E pulled: They slapped a bunch of Democratic candidates’ mugs on a slate-mailer endorsing Prop 16, which the Democrats oppose. Although it happens every election cycle, this is really bad form, buckos. PG&E, you are dirty rotten mendacious bastards! And even I am surprised by who agrees with me — check out this list!

Next to PG&E’s cynicism, the slate of four Christian attorneys who want to be judges seems almost mainstream: Craig Candelore, Harold Coleman Jr., Larry “Jake” Kincaid and Bill Trask are on a mission from God to run for San Diego County Superior Court judgeships.

Under the red-white-and-blue banner of BetterCourtsNow.com, the four candidates seem, well, red-white-and-blue. What they fail to reveal to site visitors is that God told them to run. You’d think with an endorsement like that, they’d be blasting it to the heavens.

Could it be they are suffering a crisis of faith? But sins of omission are still sins, so we can only hope they let God out of the closet before Tuesday. Or maybe they’ll call on their backer, El Cajon Gun Exchange, to nudge voters out to the polls.

There are a couple other little agenda items they also fail to share on the website, including their ultimate goal of a Christian takeover of government at every level and their opposition to abortion rights and same-sex marriage.

That’s a hell of an agenda, boys, but I have to warn you: My invisible friend told me not to vote for you all.

We’ll have to wait until Tuesday night to see whose deity wins. In the meantime, I can at least be thankful for the free TP.

Love,
K-B

The League of Women Voters operates a great searchable source of nonpartisan candidate and ballot measure information: SmartVoter.org.

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Outside your local grocery store, a fellow wearing a bedraggled Santa Claus hat stands by a folding table festooned with political slogans. As he fumbles five or six clipboards, you’re thinking you wouldn’t want him dating your daughter, and then he thrusts a clipboard into your path.

“Wanna sign this initiative petition to protect local voter control?” he asks. “Or how about stopping sexual predators? Or religious freedom — do you support religious freedom? Just sign here.”

Religious freedom is a little iffy these days, with all the folks who demand it for themselves while they condemn the rest of us to sizzle in hell in perpetuity. So you look a little closer and read that what the initiative would actually do is exempt Bible-based speech from California’s current hate speech restrictions. This means all those charmers from Kansas’ Westboro Baptist Church, who haunt military funerals and communities across the country with signs that read “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” “God Hates Jews” and “God Hates Fags,” could incite violence in California with their epithets — sans repercussions.

“Well, now, that’s misleading,” you say, “and gross.” But the petitioner is busy pushing a clipboard at someone else.

So you take a look at the petition for stopping sexual predators. Those bastards sure need to be stopped — with extreme prejudice. Problem is, you start reading it and discover the sexual predator language is a front for the next in a long line of failed biennial attempts to force parental notification of abortion on pregnant teens and their healthcare providers.

“You know, you should be calling this what it is, a parental notification proposal.”

“Huh?” he replies dully.

You decide you wouldn’t even want him dating your worst enemy’s daughter. Nonetheless, you check out the local voter control initiative, because you suspect you and your fellow bucolic burg dwellers couldn’t do any worse than the state legislature. You ask the dullard how local control will be accomplished.

He says, “Uh, it’s complicated. Er, I don’t know, and I have to keep moving — I get paid by the signature.”

“If it’s such a good idea, can’t we get volunteers to collect signatures — Fallbrook volunteers from among Fallbrook voters?” you ask. “And how can you represent something you don’t understand?”

Now you’re a little suspicious, so you ask who’s paying him to gather signatures, who’s funding the campaigns, and he says, “They don’t tell us that stuff.”

“Well, I have a right to know, don’t I?” you mutter as he ignores you to body block the next shopper before he makes it to the grocery store door.

And this is much of what’s wrong with California’s initiative process.

The grassroots citizen initiative was adopted in 1911 in response to the common perception that rail and land barons controlled the state legislature, neglecting the needs and will of the citizenry. The California Constitution defines the electors’ right to propose and vote on constitutional amendments or statutes, bypassing the state legislature and going directly to a vote of the people. “Direct democracy” it’s called, and though it’s a highly valued concept, it has degenerated to a big business that caters to moneyed special- and single-interest groups (often from outside of California), whose proposals range from the cynically ridiculous to the ridiculously complex. In a recent interview, former State Senator Lucy Killea, who worked on an unsuccessful initiative reform effort while in office in the 1990s, explained why reform is so important.

“It’s become commercialized. You’re not getting people voting for an initiative because they want it or because they’re informed on the issue, but because there’s a young man at the grocery store with a whole list of things. Some of these people will have eight or nine different measures — some of them even opposing each other. It’s really too bad. It’s become a business for people; they treat it as a business. It’s the buying of votes.”

To Killea’s point, the examples reflected above are actual initiatives: the Local Voter Control and Government Accountability Act — enjoy reading its 10 pages of statutese; the Parental Notification, Child and Teen Safety, and Stop Predators Act, the introductory letter for which is signed by a John Smith without an address, a probable cover for Jim Holman, publisher of the San Diego Reader, who just can’t leave it alone; and the Religious Freedom Act, intended to “secure and perpetuate the blessings of Almighty God for the people of California.” You can read more about this initiative’s sponsors at YesJesusIsLord.org.

These initiatives are only three of a whopping 91 submitted to date to the California Attorney General’s Office for 2010 elections. Of the 91, four have qualified for the June or November 2010 ballots by acquiring the necessary number of valid signatures, four failed to qualify, three were withdrawn, 37 are in circulation, and the rest are pending.

In the meantime, those initiatives primarily funded by something other than grassroots supporters have incurred costs that are making money for members of the initiative campaign elite, commonly known as the “Initiative Industrial Complex” — political and campaign consultants, attorneys, list brokers, and firms that specialize in petition signature gathering, media, polling, public relations and direct mail. Most often, only those initiatives wrung through the complex actually make it to the ballot — the others don’t have the money to pay for such success.

But wouldn’t it be nice if success actually looked like volunteers — from California — who believe in the issues they’re promoting; independent judicial review of proposed initiatives — to weed out the idiotic, hateful and deceitful initiatives; online petition signing — to cut out at least some of the Initiative Industrial Complex money grubbers; and full disclosure of initiatives’ sponsors and contributors.

Until that vision is achieved, beware what you sign.

Although, as luck would have it, there is an initiative-reform initiative coming to your grocery store soon, the “Grass Roots Initiative Reform Act.” But if that one’s too esoteric for you, you could always consider the 2010 California Marriage Protection Act. It’s not another Prop. 8 diatribe against gay marriage; it is writer John Marcotte’s satirical response to the proposition. He has jumped into the “protect marriage” revival tent by proposing to “safeguard marriage from the evils of divorce.”

Marcotte’s campaign website is laugh-out-loud funny — but yet another scream for initiative reform.

Love,
K-B

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

(Westboro Baptist Church image via a Creative Commons license. Marriage graphic courtesy of RescueMarriage.org.)

On November 20, a group of self-described “prominent Christian clergy, ministry leaders and scholars” held a press conference to announce their new manifesto, the “Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience.”

The manifesto was written by Chuck Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries and one of the folks convicted of misbehavior related to the Watergate caper; Dr. Robert George, on leave from Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and National Organization for Marriage board chairman, and Dr. Timothy George, dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University.

Why did the fellows write the thing? Well, this is interesting. When Colson appeared on former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee’s Fox News show to promote the declaration, Huckabee asked a similar question: “Why do we need something that sort of defines the line in the sand for people of Christendom?”

Colson replied, “Everybody blames the Christians for starting the culture wars. That’s not true, Governor. What really happened is the liberals started to say we are going to take away rights which we’ve had since the founding of this nation, rights which are intrinsic to what makes a good society and a just society, rights which are vital to our Christian faith.”

Yikes. This is also interesting because I’m a liberal, but if I were trying to take away Christians’ rights, none of my siblings would speak to me. Hmmm.

Colson went on to say: “We released a document which is remarkable because it is signed by 150 leaders from the Orthodox church, the Roman Catholic Church and from leaders of the evangelical world, all of us saying three things: We want to affirm the sanctity of human life. … The second thing is the sanctity of the family because the family is the basic building block of any good society historically, and the third thing is, if you continue to assault the family, continue to assault life, continue to assault our liberties, we will ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but under no circumstances render to Caesar what is God’s.”

At first I wasn’t sure what Colson was talking about, and it occurred to me that garnering the support of only 150 of the thousands of Christian leaders in the country really isn’t worth a press conference.

But then Huckabee, who was practically squirming out of his seat (was it excitement or an enlarged prostate?), compared the document to one of Christianity’s more momentous — and divisive — occasions: “I can’t remember of anything this significant happening in my lifetime! In fact I’m thinking the posting of the 95 theses on the door at Wittenberg by Martin Luther may be the equivalent, where the community of faith says, ‘This is it. We make a stand.’ This is a bold stand, but what’s unique about this [is] Catholics, Evangelicals, Orthodox coming together. They normally can’t get together for a cup of coffee!”

It’s nice to know Huckabee has a sense of humor, but if you actually read the document, you realize that Colson’s language in the interview is code. What the declaration actually says is that his group is anti-abortion and anti-same-sex marriage (Colson refers to homosexuals as “people with that disorder”), and they want to be able to say and do whatever they believe is in keeping with their faith, regardless of the law and the consequences — although they indicate they are willing to suffer the consequences of their actions if there are any. This is old news, but they are darn adamant: “We will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriage or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family.”

Yep, old news — and my understanding of the U.S. Constitution is that these folks already have the rights they are demanding and no one’s trying to take them away. Of course, if you don’t want to perform an abortion or dispense birth control, it would be wise not to accept a job with those responsibilities. And if you own commercial property that is rented to the public for special events such as weddings, expect to be held to the same standards as any other commercial property owner — even if you are a church. But other than that, you can practice your faith as you see fit and you can certainly declare most anything you want.

So, why the 4,700-word prayer for deliverance from evil’s with which they are not afflicted — a preemptive attack, paranoia, everyone else is holding press conferences for non-news idiocy, so why not?

I dunno, but it is kind of interesting, although I would never have heard of the manifesto had I not been on the email lists of several extremist groups that keep me much better informed than is comfortable. As of one week post-press conference, a Google News search of the declaration produced less than 200 hits, but a Web search produced 697,000. And the declaration’s promoters, who are asking “believers and non-believers” to lend their names to the electronic document, have managed to reel in 180,000 signatures — not stupendous, but not bad. However, I am embarrassed to admit that one of the signatures is mine — using the pseudonym “Ido Notagree.” I wonder if they’ll condemn me to hell for this? Or maybe they’ll take a kinder approach and just pray for my wanton soul, which would be okay, as I figure I can use all the prayers I can get. I don’t care whose invisible friend hears them.

Love,
K-B

The Preamble and the Declaration are below, but beware the Preamble: The fellows’ take on Christianity’s history is an adept whitewashing of the church and its faithfuls’ atrocities, tyrannies, denials of religious liberty to non-Christians and the wrong kind of Christians, and rejections of the sanctity of life — with a single-phrase nod: “While fully acknowledging the imperfections and shortcomings of Christian institutions and communities in all ages…” Regardless, you might consider checking out the whole enchilada.

Preamble

Christians are heirs of a 2,000-year tradition of proclaiming God’s word, seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering.

While fully acknowledging the imperfections and shortcomings of Christian institutions and communities in all ages, we claim the heritage of those Christians who defended innocent life by rescuing discarded babies from trash heaps in Roman cities and publicly denouncing the Empire’s sanctioning of infanticide. We remember with reverence those believers who sacrificed their lives by remaining in Roman cities to tend the sick and dying during the plagues, and who died bravely in the coliseums rather than deny their Lord.

After the barbarian tribes overran Europe, Christian monasteries preserved not only the Bible but also the literature and art of Western culture. It was Christians who combated the evil of slavery: Papal edicts in the 16^th and 17^th centuries decried the practice of slavery and first excommunicated anyone involved in the slave trade; evangelical Christians in England, led by John Wesley and William Wilberforce, put an end to the slave trade in that country. Christians under Wilberforce’s leadership also formed hundreds of societies for helping the poor, the imprisoned, and child laborers chained to machines.

In Europe, Christians challenged the divine claims of kings and successfully fought to establish the rule of law and balance of governmental powers, which made modern democracy possible. And in America, Christian women stood at the vanguard of the suffrage movement. The great civil rights crusades of the 1950s and 60s were led by Christians claiming the Scriptures and asserting the glory of the image of God in every human being regardless of race, religion, age or class.

This same devotion to human dignity has led Christians in the last decade to work to end the dehumanizing scourge of human trafficking and sexual slavery, bring compassionate care to AIDS sufferers in Africa, and assist in a myriad of other human rights causes – from providing clean water in developing nations to providing homes for tens of thousands of children orphaned by war, disease and gender discrimination.

Like those who have gone before us in the faith, Christians today are called to proclaim the Gospel of costly grace, to protect the intrinsic dignity of the human person and to stand for the common good. In being true to its own calling, the call to discipleship, the church through service to others can make a profound contribution to the public good.

Declaration

We, as Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical Christians, have gathered, beginning in New York on September 28, 2009, to make the following declaration, which we sign as individuals, not on behalf of our organizations, but speaking to and from our communities. We act together in obedience to the one true God, the triune God of holiness and love, who has laid total claim on our lives and by that claim calls us with believers in all ages and all nations to seek and defend the good of all who bear his image. We set forth this declaration in light of the truth that is grounded in Holy Scripture, in natural human reason (which is itself, in our view, the gift of a beneficent God), and in the very nature of the human person. We call upon all people of goodwill, believers and non-believers alike, to consider carefully and reflect critically on the issues we here address as we, with St. Paul, commend this appeal to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.

While the whole scope of Christian moral concern, including a special concern for the poor and vulnerable, claims our attention, we are especially troubled that in our nation today the lives of the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly are severely threatened; that the institution of marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies; that freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest convictions.

Because the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as a union of husband and wife, and the freedom of conscience and religion are foundational principles of justice and the common good, we are compelled by our Christian faith to speak and act in their defense. In this declaration we affirm: 1) the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every human being as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, possessing inherent rights of equal dignity and life; 2) marriage as a conjugal union of man and woman, ordained by God from the creation, and historically understood by believers and non-believers alike, to be the most basic institution in society and; 3) religious liberty, which is grounded in the character of God, the example of Christ, and the inherent freedom and dignity of human beings created in the divine image.

We are Christians who have joined together across historic lines of ecclesial differences to affirm our right — and, more importantly, to embrace our obligation — to speak and act in defense of these truths. We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence. It is our duty to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in its fullness, both in season and out of season. May God help us not to fail in that duty.

Read more here.

Prayers for Bobby

Based on a true story, Prayers for Bobby portrays the Griffith family’s struggle to adjust to a gay teen son, Bobby, amid his mother’s belief that God will “cure” him. For Bobby, suicide is the resolution; for his mother, finding faith in unconditional love is the cure.

Prayers for Bobby might enlighten parents who believe God condemns their homosexual children — and it could save a child’s life. MAMMA says give unconditional love a chance.

The book is available in paperback and the movie, currently unavailable for purchase, can be seen on youtube.com, in nine segments.

Learn more about the story at Lifetime.com.

And, thanks to MAMMA Kim for the heads up.