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Loading ...Protestors counter anti-gay conference promoted by Palin church
09.15.2008 8:27am EDT
(Anchorage, Alaska) A small group of demonstrators protested outside the controversial “Love Won Out” conference in Anchorage on the weekend.
The conference, which claims homosexuality can be “cured” through prayer, was promoted by Gov. Sarah Palin’s church, along with other conservative churches in Alaska.“Love Won Out” is part of Focus on the Family, the national Christian fundamentalist organization. About 300 people attended the conference.
Demonstrators were made up of members of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays and Truth Wins Out, an organization fighting the ex-gay movement.
“People should accept people for who they are, and they shouldn’t use bigotry concealed in the name of God’s love to pass hatred on to others, and to create a culture where discrimination against someone is ok, because it’s not,” said protestor Mike Mason.
Critics of the so-called “ex-gay” movement say groups like “Love Won Out” use outmoded medical theories and radical religious beliefs.
Mainstream psychiatrists and psychologists have discredited the group’s assertion that homosexuality is learned and can be reversed. In 1990, the American Psychological Association (APA) stated that scientific evidence does not show that conversion therapy works and that it can do more harm than good.
This topic is quite hot in the net right now. What do you pay attention to while choosing what to write ?
I was glad to see that PFLAG and other activists were there so early, when I showed up with some of my friends they were just winding down. We kept representation until the conference ended, about 50 people came, some from as far as the valley over the course of that grueling day.
I still stand by my statement, and am glad to see someone put in real reporting on this issue.
“People should accept people for who they are, and they shouldn’t use bigotry concealed in the name of God’s love to pass hatred on to others, and to create a culture where discrimination against someone is ok, because it’s not!”
-Michael Mason
Quasi,
I rejected my mother’s church-going for quite some time. I had to learn for myself about God’s place in my own life.
My mother’s faith and meeting with others of her faith helped her endure an otherwise hard life of illnesses with grace and humor. That was an inspiration to me, but I needed to learn for myself about what God meant in my life.
I am not convinced of the moral superiority or superior intelligence of either choice of God or atheism. One arrives at these things through reflection, experience and self examination. I made the determination that after years of trying to do without God that atheism left a void in my life and that giving praise, glory and thanks to God in the form of our church services and away from my church praise, thanks and glory to God quietly in the form of public service was what I needed to do with my life.
Any set of humans can do good works and God is not needed to cause good works to be done, but for me and others who believe in God the good works are done for the higher purpose of giving glory to God as well as for the practical purpose of meeting needs.
I’m thinking they should spend their time and money on finding a cure for stupidity… [annoying] breeders.
I think performing all those humanitarian deeds is good and nice, and is certainly the way humans should act. But nothing you mention in any of the posts requires a god or a higher power. They all are simply services and actions performed by humans. And I applaud your generosity and kind efforts, both individually and collectively.
And if you want to believe in something, you certainly have the freedom to do so, even if this government and people were ruling against religious activities. What is in one’s mind is one’s own personal business. The government should stay out of that place, and also churches unless one chooses for it to be there, of course. I do not so choose.
But as you mentioned, Morgan, (”My mother went to church as did my ancestors for generations past …”) you are a victim of ancestral brainwashing. If you had been from a Muslim family, or a Buddhist family, I am sure you would probably just follow their teachings. I think in general, people are a victim of their own evil ancestry, and a product of the religious gene-pool cleansing, resulting in the evolution of many humans that are hard-wired to believe in a deity of some sort.
I just do not feel a need for religion in my life, and I do not think any person, government agency, or religious organization (of any kind) should be dictating what another person should or should not do. While there are some religious people who are good, most seem to want to seize the power to tell others how to live and what to do, and usually (but not 100%, and I know that) they do not follow their own teachings.
One can lead a decent, normal, moral and ethical life without the need for a deity or a religious life. It is this fact that most religious people forget. And many, many crimes throughout history have been done in the name of religion, or in rebellion to religion and government oppression.
Why is it that religious people cannot leave well enough alone and feel that they must change everyone? I cannot fathom it. I never will become a sheepish religious automaton. If God exists, then it should show itself and prove it without a shadow of a doubt. Otherwise, it is simply a fairy tale.
As a God believing gay I also agree if the church is getting political they should loose their tax exempt status. The church has it so it can give back to the community. It equally makes me sick when I drive through a very low income area where the houses are falling apart, and right across the street there is a multi million dollar structure they call a church…. I doubt that’s what God had in mind…
While lots of churches give LGBT a hard time, there are many churches, in every denomination, that stand up for us, but they are still outnumbered.
Peter-Nicholas,
I have believed in a long time in removing non-tax status for churches involved in partisan politics of any kind. Church is about human spirit and human needs and that is all it needs to be concerned with. Politics and candidate endorsing and trying to change a political outcome has nothing to do with a human need or being a place of renewal of human spirit.
As one minister said on TV, separation of church and state is absolutely correct. You can not be both a preacher and a politician. You have to choose to be one or the other he said, You can not be both.
I wholeheartedly support the lifting of the tax-exempt status of any church that voids its spiritual mission by drifting off on blatantly political tangents of any persuasion and thus places itself at blatant cross-purposes as to what its correct and only mission is to be, a place of worship and spiritual renewal and refreshment and nothing more.
That’s all fine, Morgan, but when
non-taxpaying churches start sticking
their damned noses into government
affairs then people must stand up
and speak up against this kind of
evil! By the way, I believe in god too!
Quasi,
Disagreement time. I am a gay church-going Christian. While I don’t care who has faith and who doesn’t, just speaking for myself, I tried atheism and found it empty and lacking.
God is in one’s heart, is in the strength and energy to get through one’s day and week and to outlast troubles and problems without being consumed by some of them. I find prayer and meditation calming and helpful. Church is a place where I can drop the ragged cares of my own world and its pile of bills, etc. for a few refreshing hours. A place where I can meet with people of all ages, both straight and gay. Our church is involved in feeding the hungry and the needy at s kitchen that feeds 100 plus people one hot meal every day of the year. Every Sunday, our parishioners bring food for a program that assembles bags of food every week for the hungry. Four times a year our church makes over a hundred sandwiches for the men at a homeless shelter. We go on a sponsored walk once a year to raise money for hunger. We give money to charities that feed the hungry and the needy.
some of our church’s knitters we have a knitting group, I am also a knitter, will be knitting scarves for the homeless starting now.
My church is a place where I can take my eyes off of myself and concentrate on being of service to others where in numbers as a group, we can pool our resources to help those less fortunate within.
Activities and ministries to get involved in.
We pitch in with a local community organization to clean the lcoal stream, fix up the local home and garden of a senior person who can’t do that anymore.
For me this is good. My belief in God has gotten me through situations, gives me a “solid rock” to stand on. gives me positive and meaningful opportunities to be of service to others. I have a ready made community of nice, pleasant people of all ages, different ethnicities and backgrounds, straight and gay, whom I can spend time with once a week.
My faith in God and my church with its beautiful music that preserves some of the great music of different cultures of different centuries is a vital part of my personal culture. My mother went to church as did my ancestors for generations past and it sustained them, gave them something to look forward where they go forth for another week, refreshed and renewed.
” .. claims homosexuality can be “cured” through prayer, was promoted by Gov. Sarah Palin’s church, …”
First, I tried that prayer stuff as a teenager. It did not work then. It will not work now. One simply cannot “pray away the gay”.
Second, numerous scientific studies conducted over the past 30 years or so show that prayer does not work at all, no matter the subject, and no matter the “god”. In many cases, if the prayer subject was human and ill, more of the people died for whom people prayed than for those to whom no prayer was given. One can easily find the evidence using a google search.
An invisible, silent and absent god does not do anything.
Wake up, Log Cabin Republicans,
these people are NOT our friends,
and never will be!
THIS IS ACTUAL BLOG REPORT…Celtic Blue went to this RALLY and then the one for ALASKAN WOMEN AGAINST PALIN..that was even bigger.READ Her reports and see pictures here.
/divasblueoasis.com
The first event on a busy day for progressives in Anchorage was to support our LGBT Community against those who claim that they should “Pray Away their Gay,” namely “Focus on the Family” who were paying us a visit from Colorado Springs. Their conference, the misnamed “Love Won Out” conference promotes “recovery” programs from “gayness” like Exodus or Pure Life Ministeries. The conference took place at Abbott Loop Community Church and was also supported by Sarah Palin’s Wasilla Bible Church.
The response didn’t quite go the way PFLAG had planned.
Their idea had been to position us all between the parking lot and the doors of the Church. This was to offer troubled families the gentle, positive message that actual “acceptance” of their LGBT loved-one(s) is REAL LOVE rather than subjecting them to torture-esque behavior modification to make them “normal.”
Unfortunately, the logistics of the church (and the threat of law-enforcement) prevented that from happening.
Even the infamous Alaska OMG-it’s-September-and-it’s-gonna-snow-soon-24-hour-7-day-a-week road construction conspired against us, forcing us across the street on the corner.
But, the point is that we had fun and felt like we were getting a positive message out through our presence!
It sure gave me interesting flashbacks to what publicly supporting gay issues in the late 80’s/early 90’s was like compared to now.
We got tons of honks…tons! There was one possible negative comment of someone driving by but we didn’t hear it–and that was in 3 hours of standing out there! It sure felt different to the abusive language, slashed tires and obscene phone calls of my past! The only anxiety I felt was the reality of where I was standing and the fact that my bro-in-law and his family would all be driving by there that morning. (I purposely didn’t look for them.) They are staunchly homophobic and Conservative Catholic.
It was also really wonderful to see the multi-generational aspect of this. When I got there about 7:30 am, the older PFLAG crowd was already there supporting the cause. As the morning wore on a bit, it was those of us middle-aged types who hung out and talked about the changes in Anchorage. Around 10:00am and when I left at 10:30, the younger folks were starting to come in…a whole new generation of social activism!
It warms the heart, I tell ya!
The coolest thing about all of this was I reconnected with some friends from the past and I met E. Ross! I also met Wayne Besen who is giving a great presentation at the Metropolitan Community Church today called “God Loves You Just as You Are” and “Truth Won Out,” exposing the Exodus “Ex-Gay” movement as the money-making business and frauds that they are.
This actually turned out to be the perfect way to start a day of progressive social consciousness.
Off to the women’s rally!