[blindlgbtpride] 62 foot statue of Jesus - not Gays - struck by lightening

Wed Jun 30 19:12:57 GMT 2010

Hi All,
Thought you'd like this below.

Lyn

62-Foot Jesus - Not Gays - Struck by Lightning 
by Tommi Avicolli-Mecca, Jun. 24, 2010 
0diggsdigg  

It's interesting that fundamentalists, who usually blame hurricanes and other natural disasters on God's displeasure with our country's so-called sinful ways, are being pretty silent on why their deity would send a lightning bolt to destroy a 62-foot-tall styrofoam and plastic statue of Jesus Christ along Interstate 75 in Monroe, Ohio.

Asked by the Washington Post to comment on the incident, Pat Robertson, host of the 700 Club, a fundamentalist TV program, had absolutely nothing to say. In the past, Robertson was quick to blame queers for hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes and even meteors. The giant Jesus was incinerated during Pride Month. Surely, that's not a coincidence, right Pat?

Lots of other disasters turn out to be the fault of the LGBT community and its desire to marry, join the military, and be just like everyone else. 

Fred Phelps, who heads up the hateful Westboro Baptist Church whose members have picketed the funerals of people with AIDS to say that they're going to hell, blamed hurricane Katrina on queers. "New Orleans, symbol of America," Phelps said, "seen for what it is: a putrid, toxic, stinking cesspool of fag fecal matter. ... Pray for more dead bodies floating on the fag-semen-rancid waters of New Orleans."

In probably one of the most absurd comments after a disaster, fundamentalist preacher Jerry Falwell, who isn't around anymore to accuse anyone of anything, blamed gays and others for 9/11: "I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say you helped this happen."

Michael Heath, head of the Christian Civil League of Maine, wrote recently in a blog that there's no direct cause and effect relationship between acceptance of gays and the financial crisis, but God would "crack a smile" on our nation if abortion rights and gay marriage were eliminated.

And before you think that only right-wingers in America play the blame game, the Association of Russian Orthodox Experts two months ago proposed that the eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano was caused by the country's tolerance of gays and "neo-paganism." 

Then how do these fundamentalists explain the fact that lightning has been striking religious icons for a long time, probably since humans first started erecting them. In 2008, the 130-foot Jesus statue in Rio de Janeiro had its eyebrows and fingers burned. In 2007, one of Jesus' arms was severed by lightning in Golden, Colorado where a 33-foot likeness of the "son of God" stands at a shrine.

Maybe God can't aim straight?

Tommi Avicolli Mecca is co-editor of Avanti Popolo: Italians Sailing Beyond Columbus, and editor of Smash the Church, Smash the State: The Early Years of Gay Liberation, which has been nominated for both an American Library Association and a Lambda Literary award. His website is www.avicollimecca.com. 
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Don Brown 
  To: Blind LGBT Pride discussion list 
  Sent: Friday, June 18, 2010 12:26 PM
  Subject: [blindlgbtpride] Prop. 8 trial: Closing arguments end as judgepresses both sides

  Hello:

  This is in response to those of you who've asked about the status of the Prop 8  Challenge.

  I've pasted below a recent article from the L.A. Times  which briefly summarizes closing arguments and brings us up to date with the court proceedings.

  The wheels of justice turn slowly.

  Don 

  Prop. 8 trial: Closing arguments end as judge presses both sides

  June 16, 2010|By Maria L. La Ganga, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

  Closing arguments concluded Wednesday afternoon in the Proposition 8 trial with more pointed questions from U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker, who is

  presiding over the landmark proceedings to determine the constitutionality of California's ban on gay marriage.

  When court resumed after the lunch break, Charles Cooper, attorney for proponents of the measure, told Walker that the "marital relationship is fundamental

  to the existence and survival of the race. Without the marital relationship, society would come to an end." That relationship, he said, is between a man

  and a woman and its main focus is procreation and "channeling" the sexual behavior of heterosexuals into "stable, marital unions."

  Walker continually pressed the sometimes flustered Cooper on just what marriage means and why the state should care about it. Why does the state regulate

  marriage, he asked. Do people get married to benefit the community? Why doesn't the state just consider it a private contract?

  Walker: "Why is it that marriage has such a large public role? What is the purpose?"

  Cooper: "This relationship is crucial to the public interest.ÃfÂ, Procreative sexual relations both are an enormous benefit to society and represent a very

  real threat to society's interest."

  Walker: "Threat?"

  Cooper: "If children are born into the world without this stable, marital union ÃfÂ, both of the parents that brought them into the world, then a host of

  very important, very negative social implications arise.... The purpose of marriage is to provide society's approval to that sexual relationship and to

  the actual production of children."

  Walker: "But the state doesn't withhold marriage from people who cannot have children."

  Cooper: "It does not." Walker: "Are you saying the state should?"

  Cooper took Theodore Olson, attorney for the gay and lesbian couples who filed suit against Proposition 8, to task for claiming that Californians could

  support the ban on same-sex marriage only "through irrational or dark motive, some animus, some kind of bigotry." He called Olson's characterization a

  "slur" on the millions of Americans who voted for the ballot measure in 2008 and "a slur on 70 of 108 judges who have upheld as rational the decisions

  by voters and legislators to preserve the traditional definition of marriage."

  Olson's viewpoint, Cooper said, "denies the good faith of Congress, of state legislature after state legislature and electorate after electorate." To which

  Walker responded: "If you have 7 million Californians, 70 judges and this long history, why in this case did you present but one witness? ... You had a

  lot to choose from. One witness, and it was fair to say his testimony was equivocal."

  A ruling in the case is expected sometime this summer

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