Religious Left

By GLBTQ PublicTheologian I am a strong believer in the separation of church and state. Living in the US, I find too often many pastors and religious leaders over step this established boundary. Theofascism is a religious ideology that requires absolute allegiance to a particular brand of theology or religion interpreted by either one individual or small group of individuals. Theofascism is the child of fascism. The same people who say “hate the sin, love the sinner,” “you can change, many have,” “you are an abomination,” and the like comments are all informed by either an overt or subtle adherence to theofascism. The heart of the civil rights, including religious freedom, for GLBT is the counterattack against theofascism. Theofascism starts with general oppression. For example, in Christianity, the bible and how it has been translated, interpreted and reinterpreted over the years have had an agenda or another of oppression. Anti-abolitionists used verses in the bible to justify slav...

Jamaican church leaders stand resolute that despite strong lobbying by international gay rights activists, homo-sexuality will not be accepted as normal. The Church's rebuke comes in the wake of a recent scathing report from the New York-based Human Rights Watch and protests last week by a Florida church sympathetic to gays. The Rev Dr Merrick 'Al' Miller, pastor of the Fellowship Taber-nacle in St Andrew, said that Jamaicans generally deem homo-sexuality wrong. "Homosexuality is wrong from every possible angle," said Miller. "It's immoral from a physical, social and spiritual standpoint." He said that despite this, the Church was willing to help and support those homosexuals who are in need of counselling or assistance to change their lifestyle. Last week that on Valentine's Day, the Metropolitan Community Church in Florida staged a demonstration outside the Jamaican consulate in Miami over what they said was a series of anti-gay murders and gay...

The New York State Supreme Court recently ruled that same-sex marriages performed legally in other jurisdictions are now legal in New York. Two women from Chili, Pat Martinez and Lisa Golden, were legally wed in Canada. When one tried to add the other to her insurance plan and was told “No,” they sued. Martinez knows change comes slowly at times. "We're going to advance towards the road of full equality,” she said. Advancing down that road is something the co-ministers of the First Unitarian Church of Rochester started doing when they stopped signing marriage licenses. Co-Minister Kaaren Anderson said, "In this state, I can only sign a license saying this is true and authentic for a heterosexual couple and I can't do that for a same-sex couple, which makes you feel really sick to your stomach." full story

by Tony Campolo By calling ourselves Red-Letter Christians, we are alluding to the fact that in several versions of the New Testament, the words of Jesus are printed in red. In adopting this name, we are saying that we are committed to living out the things that He said. Of course, the message in those red-lettered verses is radical, to say the least. If you don’t believe me, read Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). In those red letters, He calls us away from the consumerist values that dominate contemporary American consciousness. He calls us to be merciful, which has strong implications for how we think about capital punishment. When Jesus tells us to love our enemies, he probably means we shouldn’t kill them. Most important, if we take Jesus seriously, we will realize that meeting the needs of the poor is a primary responsibility for His followers. Figuring out just how to relate those radical red letters in the Bible to the complex issues in the modern world will be difficult...

by Rev. David North I was the pastor of a large Baptist church in Northeast, D.C., being a big hypocrite, and living on the down low. My biggest sin was living a lie so long, and denying who and what I was at the expense of the love of my family and church. As horrible as the experience was, being outed gave me a chance to make a clean, fresh start on life and ministry. IT IS FRUSTRATING that there are many churches with clergy who do not choose to be informed about modern biblical scholarship. Their clergy training, if any, is from fundamentalist institutions that perpetuate archaic and inaccurate biblical interpretations. I am appalled that there are many clergy persons who have received credentialed seminary post-graduate educations who choose to ignore the modern biblical scholarship they were taught. And so too many of our pulpits have clergy who either don’t know better, or even worse, clergy who know better but don’t and won’t preach and teach what they know to be the facts, the...

KnowThyNeighbor has published the names of thousands of Florida residents who signed the state's petition to place a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage on the november ballot. 611,000 signatures are required to get a measure on to the state's ballot. Foes of same-sex marriage found themselves more than 20,000 signatures short of the goal in January, but a last minute push collected more than 92,000, more than enough to get the measure to the ballot. KnowThyNeighbor publishes the easily searchable list of names, which are a matter of public record, so people can see for themselves who among their neighbors is intolerant.