Gay Men Will Marry Your Girl Friends!

Religious Right Endorses Barebacking For Gay Male Teens

by Wayne Besen

I never thought the Religious Right would endorse barebacking, but it turns out I was wrong. No, it’s not what you think, but the notion is equally bizarre.

Gay Star News reported today on research from Ned Flaherty that The Cowboy Church of Virginia, led by chief pastor Raymond Bell, believes homosexuality and other ‘addictions’ can be cured by Equine Assisted Psychotherapy. The church urged gay men to stroke horses to help them go from gay-to-straight.

We’ve have all heard of “pray away the gay” but how about the new technique of “neigh away the gay”?

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Pope’s Attack on Marriage Equality Will Backfire

by Wayne Besen

Instead of using his annual Christmas address to call for unity and peace on Earth, Pope Benedict XVI squandered his big moment to declare war on the gay community. In a mean-spirited and hyperbolic speech, the pontiff tried to whip up fear about the unfounded threat caused by marriage equality. He demanded that the world’s major religions join forces — like a twisted version of the old Super Friends cartoon — to defeat gay marriage initiatives worldwide.

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Benedict Defends Traditional Family in Christmas Address—a Quick-and-Dirty Paraphrase

Benedict XVI

by Doughlas Remy

[Read Benedict XVI’s full address to the Roman Curia here.]

How difficult it sometimes is to be St. Peter’s successor and the current incarnation of the Petrine ministry! So many difficult situations, so many important questions and challenges, so many cheering crowds, so many young people respectfully kneeling at one’s feet.

Among the three broad themes of this moment in history, none deserves so much attention as that of the traditional family. Not poverty, nor overpopulation, nor disease, nor environmental devastation, nor gun violence or war or genocide, nor economic inequality. No, the family is in imperiled from lack of commitment and from abandonment of the mother-father-child configuration. But why linger on the commitment issue. Let’s get straight to the heart of the problem. It’s the gays.

Now that we’ve narrowed down all the world’s major pressing issues to the threat of same-sex marriage, we at least know whom to blame.

Okay, now on to the second theme, which is about dialogue. That one, too, is actually about gay marriage, which signals a breakdown of dialogue between the Church and the state on this important issue. The failure of dialogue has led to a condition of forgetfulness about what it means to be human as understood by the Church. (Gays are not really, you know, human. No.)

Finally, there’s the theme of proclamation, or evangelization, which is to say that the Church is correct about the first two themes and, if you are a Catholic, your solemn duty is to tell everybody how evil gay marriage is. Let no one doubt the Church’s moral authority to judge gays and lesbians. She is on the side of God. Pax vobiscum.

Dean Hansen’s Annual Photoshop Retrospective

For Bishop Robert Vasa, Catholic Faith Trumps Medical Norms, Reason, and Science.

Bishop Robert Vasa

In February of last year, Bishop Robert Vasa, Coadjutor of the Diocese of Santa Rose in California, addressed faithful Catholics at a White Mass sponsored by the Kansas City chapter of the Catholic Medical Association. His message was about medical ethics. Catholic Internet media approved and channeled it uncritically to their readers, most of whom—judging from the comments—found it edifying.

Here is some of what Bishop Vasa said:

In those instances where faith and reason seem to be in conflict then, provided you truly know your faith, you will become convinced that it is reason and not faith which is involved in error.

In our subjectivist, relativistic age which often masquerades as an age of pure reason it is tempting to put a lot more faith in science and reason than it is to put faith in God. Yet, both are acts of faith and both are directed toward a perceived god. For much of our society that god is science or government or technology. For us there is a greater God and a greater good.

We are repeatedly challenged to decide if we are people of science or people of faith.  In truth, we must always be both. In those instances where faith and science agree there is no moral or ethical conflict. In those instances where science or the usual practice of medicine conflicts with faith, or conflicts with the moral code of our Church, we must be men and women of faith.

The Catholic Medical Association, which sponsored the mass, is very clear about its priorities. Its mission statement says, “The Catholic Medical Association [CMA] is dedicated to upholding the principles of the Catholic Faith as related to the practice of medicine…” One might have expected something more like, “The CMA is dedicated to providing superior medical care and advancing the scientific understanding of disease.”

Here is the CMA’s statement about homosexuality:

CMA supports the teachings of the Catholic Church as laid out in the revised version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, in particular the teachings on sexuality: “… tradition has always declared that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered… Under no circumstance can they be approved.” (CCC, n.2333)”

The CMA’s position on homosexuality and its support of the so-called “reparative therapies” is diametrically at variance with that of the World Health Organization, which has stated the following:

1. “Conversion” or “reparative” therapies and the clinics offering them should be denounced and subject to adequate sanctions.
2. Public institutions responsible for training health professionals should include courses on human sexuality and sexual health in their curricula, with a focus on respect for diversity and the elimination of attitudes of pathologization, rejection, and hate toward non-heterosexual persons.
3. Professional associations should disseminate documents and resolutions by national and international institutions and agencies that call for the de-psychopathologization of sexual diversity and the prevention of interventions aimed at changing sexual orientation.

Any Catholic doctor or medical institution that is guided by the values and ethics of the Catholic Medical Association should take heed. Any person who subjects him- or herself to treatment by such a doctor or institution should be wary.

World Health Organization Denounces Conversion Therapies

In May 2012, the World Health Organization (WHO) strongly denounced conversion therapies. Here is part of a statement from one of its regional offices, the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO):

PAHO makes a series of recommendations for governments, academic institutions, professional associations, the media, and civil society, including:

• “Conversion” or “reparative” therapies and the clinics offering them should be denounced and subject to adequate sanctions.
• Public institutions responsible for training health professionals should include courses on human sexuality and sexual health in their curricula, with a focus on respect for diversity and the elimination of attitudes of pathologization, rejection, and hate toward non-heterosexual persons.
• Professional associations should disseminate documents and resolutions by national and international institutions and agencies that call for the de-psychopathologization of sexual diversity and the prevention of interventions aimed at changing sexual orientation.
• In the media, homophobia in any of its manifestations and expressed by any person should be exposed as a public health problem and a threat to human dignity and human rights.
• Civil society organizations can develop mechanisms of civil vigilance to detect violations of the human rights of non-heterosexual persons and report them to the relevant authorities. They can also help to identify and report people and institutions involved in the administration of “reparative” or “conversion therapies.”

The PAHO’s full statement is available here.

Response to Dale O’Leary, author of “The Defense of Marriage Requires Honesty About Homosexuality,” Crisis Magazine, 12/20/12

[Read Ms. O’Leary’s article here.]

Ms. O’Leary, how ironic that your article calls for “honesty” about homosexuality but is so starkly and fundamentally dishonest in its claims. You would have us believe you are speaking as a professional, an expert, and perhaps even as a scientist: “It is long past time to educate the public and particularly the younger generation as to what we know about SSA,” you write. Who is “we?” Surely not the medical community, which has time and again denounced the reparative therapies that you advocate.

Maybe by “we,” you means the Catholic Church? But the Church doesn’t “know” anything about homosexuality. It is not in the business of research or the accumulation of scientific knowledge; it is in the business of propagating certain views of society that are often at odds with scientific knowledge.

So let’s be honest about where we’re coming from, Ms. O’Leary. This is a propaganda piece masquerading as health science, and one sure sign of this is the conspicuous absence of journal citations or even names of researchers. You refer to “numerous well-designed studies” without a hint as to their origin. You make easily disprovable claims from beginning to end, in the apparent conviction that none but the “faithful Catholic laity” for whom Crisis articles are intended will read your piece.

Identical twins don’t share the same sexual attractions? Check again. More than half of them do. There is “no evidence” of a genetic or hormonal cause? Time to read up on the literature. By “the literature,” I mean the scientific literature, not junk-science articles in Catholic magazines. You want evidence? Just ask me. I’ve got it waiting in the wings. Homosexuality is caused by “masturbation with fantasy?” I suppose masturbation also causes pimples? … and hair to grow in the palms of your hand? All this is early 20th-century Catholicism redux.

If you are interested in disease control and prevention, follow commenter “Tim’s” advice. Go to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website and read what they have to say about HIV.  Here’s what I found:

“The effects of homophobia, stigma and discrimination can be especially hard on adolescents and young adults. Young MSM and other sexual minorities are at increased risk of being bullied in school. They are also at risk of being rejected by their families and, as a result, are at increased risk of homelessness. A study published in 2009 compared gay, lesbian, and bisexual young adults who experienced strong rejection from their families with their peers who had more supportive families. The researchers found that those who experienced stronger rejection were:

• 8.4 times more likely to have tried to commit suicide
• 5.9 times more likely to report high levels of depression
• 3.4 times more likely to use illegal drugs
• 3.4 times more likely to have risky sex”

I hope that before you write another article about HIV, you will do some serious soul-searching about  the issue of responsibility for the HIV scourge. Blaming HIV on “troubled childhoods,” “narcissistic attitudes,” “[early] wounding,” “rebellion against the moral law,” and “[psychological] disorders” all adds up to homophobia, which is one of the three causes of HIV as identified by the CDC. If anyone needs conversion, it is you.

Doughlas Remy (The Bent Angle)

Maybe God is Mad at You, James Dobson!

by Domenick Scudera

Enough already. I am gay, and I had nothing to do with those innocent children getting killed in Connecticut. I am gay, and I have gay sex, and I have a gay partner, and I support gay marriage, but none of those facts has contributed one iota to the fact that 20 blameless children were slaughtered last week. So, James Dobson, stop implying that God “has allowed judgment to fall upon us” in the form of a mass killing of innocents because “the institution of marriage is right on the verge of a complete redefinition,” and because homosexuality is more accepted in the United States. When others of your ilk blame gays for extreme weather like Hurricane Sandy, I laugh it off, because it is preposterous. But building a link between the Connecticut killings and homosexuality is malicious. I have had my fill of it.

Continue reading…

New Bent-Angle Satellite Site, “The Cornerstone Forum Samizdat” Now Up and Running

Because The Bent Angle was becoming a little top-heavy with responses to Gil Bailie’s postings on The Cornerstone Forum, I decided to start a dedicated site for these responses. You will find it here.