Where do we get our moral leadership? Preachers or tv/movies

One of the basic arguments we get from religious bigots is that without religion, their god and church, synagogue or mosque, there would be no basis for morals, integrity, and education of future generations on our heritage as a people.

Nonsense. The evidence I go by was reinforced this week by seeing some old movies and tv shows and what I got was better moral leadership from these sources than any preacher, rabbi or imam I have heard—in fact I have heard none of such people saying that the Islamist or Christian terrorists are evil and wrong.

I think members of our community/movement need to THINK. The fact is that much of our work was harmed in the early days by the failure of the media to hear us, thus meaning few people knew of our work and ideas, including homosexuals who were deep in their closet.

Much of the problem of homosexuals or people preferring homosexual sex comes from religion, laws based on religion and mental health people whose “thinking” also comes from religion more than they seem to understand.

So what have we heard from religion? Not much except how bad we are and a few quotes from a book that not only has been badly translated, but has hundreds of different interpretations, not only on the issue of homosexuality but even how to baptize or what day of the week we should give to our god.

But what have we been getting, for several years now, from the media, the “industry” and writers of tv shows and movies. A lot. All good. But does the average person know how much such resources affect our lives and how others view the world, including views on homosexuality? Idon’t think so.

In fact, often, when some person or show does try to cover our issue they get no congratulations and support but negative feedback if they don’t do and say the exact thing some pc person, self-appointed, thinks is “right.”

So here is a list of a few such shows that should have been on the radar of every person concerned with discrimination against homosexual Americans.

I watched two older movies, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Anyone who watches these two movies, and many others and doesn't consider gay-friendly and gay-supportive has a personal problem with themselves. These shows and the people behind them should be honored. And the probability is that millions of people who haveseen these shows are less anti-gay than they were before the movies.

By the way, local people seeing a new movie channel over the air (not on cable/satellite) from the local CBS station are seeing many promos for non-profits, and one is a series of ads against using the word gay negatively. I wonder if this “message” is heard in any local churches?

Most people have heard the humor on shows of John Stewart and Stephen Colbert, on Comedy Central, and know that they are not anti-gay and make fun of bigots of all sorts, again I know of no preachers who speakout against bigots like such tv shows. I do know, from seeing the dvd, that Hal Holbrook’s show of Mark Twain does.

And what is the average viewer seeing on tv shows? Good things in our area. I only am concerned that we do not know in advance when a good show is coming on. For instance last night the ABC tv show Cupid was about a teenage homosexual boy being bullied at school. How relevant since this week another such boy committed suicide in Massachusetts. Have many preachers spoken out against people who don't protect our children from gay-bashing? So we get better advice from movies and tv than from our so-called moral leaders.

We must do what we can to be sure that anyone needing support knows where to get it. That is why we need PFLAG, yet support for some chapters has been falling—such as the Houston chapter.

But why is it that some parents and school personnel still don't know about GLSEN, which exists soley to support children suffering for their sexuality.

And do glbt newspapers and magazines list resources for their area? Have such publications as Gayellow Pages been mentioned in our media?

And have we challenged the academic community and professions to provide information to students and people on their work? Do law schools cover the duty of school boards to provide protection for students? Do medical schools cover problems, mental and physical that homosexuals may face? Have history professors stopped trying to delete homosexual history from coverage, and literary professors stopped hiding the homosexuality of famous writers? It is the bigots who have the “agenda.” They fear that if the average person knows the facts about homosexuality it will make them gay? Or what?

Hopefully gay marriage, aka same sex marriage, will not only be everywhere soon, but that the process is going to educate us all on what life as second-class citizens means and thus why we and all Americans deserve equal/civil rights.

How sad that the push for civil rights for us, as was the real case for blacks, women, etc,not only does not come in most churches, but in fact that those churches harbor and support bigots who quote their ignorance of their guide book against us as they have aganst equality for races, sexes, etc. And it was they who supported the decimation of American Indians/Native Americans in the name of “saving” them and didn't stop if it took killing them to save their souls—which of course meant that “we” could take away their land.

At least when the movies gave us the good cowboys and bad Indians, they knew they were exploiting the subject and making up history and have now moved on in the real world of this century.

Newsweek's article on The End of Christianity/post-Christian america

My thoughts on reading your excellent article on Christianity today was, even agreeing with your thinking: Nonsense. What the skeptics are ignorant about is what has caused the “problem,” they have their complete misunderstanding of Jesus' teachings and what they see as the “wrong” direction the nation is taking, and the “failure” of the people to follow their personal ideas on morals (abortion, same sex marriage, prayer in school, etc.) is really the people and the true “remnant” of Christianity slowly going toward the ideals Jesus practiced as well as taught.

Most Americans have not rejected religion, just the stupid ideas, political and otherwise, of a few fanatic nuts who seem to get all the publicity in the lazy msm (main stream media).

As a person who has, following his religious beliefs from the late ’40s in a old Methodist Church in a then small town Southern town (Bossier City, LA). I took what my Sunday School teacher and church and local YM/YWCA taught and understood that the churches had been wrong about their use of the bible to support slavery and then racial legal racial segregation-never equal of course-as they were, no matter how “sincere” when they supported and voted for prohibition, antigambling laws, etc. And had the churches not been ignored by the government we would still have laws against inter-racial marriage, as these same ignorant un-Jesus -like churches still oppose same sex marriage.

Jesus was concerned with, as the article says, people, not nations. And as He did not worry about politics, history, despite what the media and many “gays” think today, the change in issues of homosexuality did NOT come from politicians until it had been changed in the general population, including, sadly, homosexuals themselves. An even sadder fact is that the change has still not come to Christian churches, nor Jewish nor Muslim or other religious groups. What a terrible indictment of the leadership of these religions.

I think this is what Cal Thomas is saying. And it seems that, as in those days when Jesus walked the earth, the people who “get it” and truly follow Him are not the politicians or church leaders, but the average person, and that is why our nation will not follow Europe and abandon religion, but just cast out the false prophets, as they had to do in the endless line of spendor (the title of a book on the history of Methodism in America).

Again, we need to educate the ignorant leaders of religions, which still kill homosexuals, beat and kill women victims of rape, that the reason we don't want prayer in school is because of the question of whose prayer will it be, and who will choose the prayer, and why would “conservatives” want government dictating religious events? No one seeks to promote abortions, but again, it is not the government’s business to control our personal lives, and that applies to same sex marriage as it did to laws against inter-racial marriage, etc. And the more equal/civil rights we get, the more Jesus-like we become.

One final warning. To anyone rejecting “Chrisianity”— be careful of letting radical Islamists replace it.