Friday, December 30, 2016

'13 wonderful LGBT moments' & other Fri. midday news briefs

 
Editor's note - This will most likely be the last post of 2016 on this blog. It wasn't exactly a fun year and I won't talk about the BIG UGLINESS who was elected in November. I will just say that 2017 brings challenges but with challenges come the promises of victory. Let's not dwell on things which will divide our communities. Let's unite and go full speed ahead in mutual trust, love, and understanding. And especially with the knowledge that we will take no slack or  any disrespect. 2017 is all about us up in here!  And we intend to get everything which belongs to us.

Catholic groups are suing the Obama administration over trans protection laws - Just as they did with marriage equality, Catholic religious groups are exploiting their religion to push anti-lgbt laws. The last time, they wasted lots of money in the loss. This time, they may lose something a bit closer to home - their so-called religious integrity. 

13 Moments That Made Us Proud To Be Queer In 2016 - Just 13?

 'I feel alive': Transgender Iowans on medical care, surgeries - When the religious right demonizes the transgender community, it prevents critical stories like this one from being read or heard. 

The top 10 transgender stories of 2016 - And stories like these also. 


LAST BUT CERTAINLY NOT LEAST:  

This Gay Man Is Fighting For LGBT Rights In The South And Beyond - This is from September and I neglected to even write a post on it. The Huffington Post featured ME and this blog in an interview. I talk about being an "activist" and facing homophobia, racism, and regional prejudice. Plus, the picture of me is wonderful. Unashamedly black. It reminds me so much of Nina Simone.

Preachers on Trump's inaugural podium a collection of hot messes

Franklin Graham
Trump will have several ministers on his podium during his inauguration and wouldn't you know it? They all seem to be "hot messes." Particularly when it comes to the lgbt community.

From Right Wing Watch, this is just two of them:

Franklin Graham

Franklin Graham, son of the iconic evangelist Billy Graham, is a more intensely anti-gay right-wing version of his father, and reflects the continuing spiral of America’s right wing into anti-Muslim conspiracy-theory paranoia.

Like Trump, Graham is a fan of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, praising Putin’s anti-gay policies and defending his support for the Assad regime in Syria. Graham went to Russia in 2015, where he praised Putin while criticizing secularism in America. While in Russia, Graham told a reporter that President Obama was “leading America down the wrong road” and “taking a stand against God.” Graham also planned to host a conference in Moscow with the Russian Orthodox Church to address anti-Christian persecution, but had to cancel after Putin outlawed evangelism from Christians who aren’t members of the Orthodox church. Although Graham maintained that he was not formally endorsing a presidential candidate in 2016, he held rallies around the country during which he made it clear what he thought Christians’ duty was at the ballot box. Graham, who has said the advance of legal equality for LGBT people is a sign of the coming End Times and invites the judgment of God, repeatedly said that 2016 was the last chance for Christians to save America from godless secularists and the “very wicked” LGBT agenda being promoted by the Obama administration.

Graham was among the Religious Right leaders who spoke up for Trump when the tape of him bragging about sexually assaulting women was released, decrying “the godless progressive agenda of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton” and saying the Supreme Court was the most important issue for Christians when voting. When Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on,” Graham defended him and said he’d been making the same argument “for some time.”

And of course Timothy Dolan:

New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan criticized Trump’s nativist rhetoric in 2015, but more recently has praised Trump’s positions on abortion and “religious liberty” and has said since the election he looks forward to the appointment of Supreme Court justices “who will reform the injustice and travesty of Roe v. Wade.”
Dolan hosted the meetings at which the 2009 Manhattan Declaration was created, and he was among its original signers. The declaration is a manifesto for Christian conservatives who declare that when it comes to opposition to abortion and marriage equality, “no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence.” Regarding marriage specifically it says, “No one has a civil right to have a non-marital relationship treated as a marriage.” And it vows civil disobedience, saying:

Because we honor justice and the common good, 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 marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.

Someone probably needs to anoint that podium with holy water before AND after the inaugural ceremony.