What It's Like for a Gay Youth to Live in an Antigay Household.

I will let Joshua Scarpuzzi tell the story. It's here, beginning at Comment No. 38. He was commenting on the fifth installment of the Courage campaign's liveblog the second day of the Proposition 8 Federal trial in Federal Court in San Francisco, California.

I currently live at home with my family…and the closest description of my mother is Anita. I feel like I'm living in “prayers for Bobby” everyday. It hurts to hear these things, these statements that live off of the fear and ignorance of religious people all over our country. I am good with God, I made my peace years ago and I know where I'm going after this life, and being only 19 and out and in the spotlight of the gay community here in San Diego is rough at times but it makes my stomach churn when I see the young gays who take their rights and freedoms for granted, who haven't been through the hate and shame and isolation many of the older, wiser gays have. And I'm not saying they should go through it. No one should, but I honestly feel that losing Prop 8, and now having this battle in the public eye and discussing all of the shit we've gone through will open the eyes of other kids, families, and the public to see the truth. We have a long way to go and I wish the best for everyone in that court room. Thank you so much for blogging this to us on the outside, it is truly a blessing.

Actualy Joshua experienced a year-long concentrated dose of the hate and shame and isolation many of the older, wiser gays have gone through when his biological family sent him away and had him committed to an abusive, homophobic ex-gay cult.

In October of 2007 I was transported against my will to a behavioral modification camp in western Montana. My parents had me locked in this facility for exactly 365 days of which I spent doing labor, line drills, shock therapy, isolation therapy, among other things. I was starved at times, spit on, molested, called a faggot, and beat up by staff and other kids. These religious hypocritical leaders, and I hate to compare the two (because I would never want to minimize what the Jews went through), are the modern day Nazis of America. They want to govern everyone with their narrow minded bigotry and we have to fight! We have to come out of the closet and say enough is enough!!!!! I survived 365 days of abuse and humiliation because I knew one day I could share my story with the world. I've still not told anyone on this big of a scale but I hope that one person may read this and that one person more will take a stand. I've been out in the real world for a year and 3 months and I still, day to day, get the abuse from my family. We have to keep fighting! For my friends who are still in these camps, for our own future, and for the future of our children. :(

If only Joshua were in the Courtroom telling his story!

There are so many of these “camps”, and so many these that goes on behind the closed doors of Prop 8 supporters, churches, and religious organizations that we never hear about. I've tried a few times to contact gay newspapers, news stations, and magazines as well as police officials to try and bring light to these “camps” but no one has wanted to publish my story. People need to know about the cruelty and hypocrisy that goes on behind the God-following mask they wear!

Yes, the news must be promulgated far and wide that these ex-gay cults are a menace! They've even brought the bogus idea of "reparative therapy" to the shores of the United Kingdom (Great Britain) and much to the UK mainstream media's credit, these dangerous cults are being denounced and discredited over there!

Is This Good For The Gays? NO!!!!! And This Is Why We Have To SPEAK THE TRUTH TO RIGHT-WINGED LIES!!!!!

http://www.edgeboston.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=&sc2=news&sc3=&id=93114

There is this shocking case of a gay adoptive father who allegedly offered his five-year-old son as a sex object online.

The case, which culminated in a June 26 arrest in which Duke University Center for Health Policy Associate Director Frank Lombard allegedly offered an undercover officer the sexual services of his young adopted son. Eeeewwwww. And, it's appalling! This is the sort of thing that ought not be done by ANYBODY within the LGBT community! One case of pedophilia or child prostitution by an LGBT person is one too many!

Yet this is just one of how many hundreds or thousands of gay fathers who are the best parents the kids have ever ever had? And how many heterosexual parents have done the same thing this gay adoptive father did? To their own biological kids??? Yet seldom do people intervene on behalf of the kids of heterosexual parents until the parents’ conduct is simply outrageous.

Of course, pundits on the right lost no time in seizing on this shocking case. They pointing to the case as evidence why LGBT people especially gay men ought not to be allowed to adopt.

Of course, nothing coule be further from the truth. In reality, gay men are found by peer-reviewed studies to be LESS likely to be involved in pedophilia than the population at large. One such study was done by Dr. Carole Jenny of Denver Children's Hospital. She found that from a sample of fifty boys, there was one boy who was molested by a man who *could* have been gay and forty-nine boys who were molested by either straight men, straight women, or both. Usually close relatives or family friends.

Now why would heterosexual men molest boys??? Watch the embedded video and find out! What you will find will shock and disgust and appal you.

Ugandan Kill The gays Bills is Worse Than You Could Possibly Imagine.

Anybody who knows of a sexually active OR romantically involved GLBT Ugandan would get caught up in this bill if it becomes law and if they commit more than one offense related to homosexuality, then they meet the Death Penalty once convicted! This means that for Ugandan gays, lying and hiding in the closet is no option. Their friends, relatives, employers, coworkers and ministers would have to give them up to the state. And the bill if enacted would have extraterritorial reach.

Link here: http://wakingupnow.com/blog/uganda-kill-everyone-video/comment-page-1#comment-1890

And even the antigay pastor Martin Ssemba could get caught up in this and get killed by the State if this bill were eneacted and he continues to show extreme gay porn in Ugandan churches. He's had two such presentations already and I doubt he'll stop! He appears to be a closet case to me. Still, we cannot allow this bill to become law! Kill the bill!

Prop 8 Trial Re-Enactment, Day 1 Chapter 1

This is a landmark case in which a mountain range of evidence has been built which shows that prejudice against us LGBTIQ people is irrational and based on religion, lies, mid/disinformation, myth and false assumption.

So Now Gavin Newsom is a Homosexual by Association! LOL

From today's session, early afternoon, of the California Proposition 8 Trial in Federal Court, S.F., CA.

David Boies: (pauses to collect himself) Turn to PX513. This is something you wrote for the campaign for Proposition 8, correect?
Dr. William Tam: Yes.
B: The heading is WHAT IF WE LOSE, correct?
T: Yes.
B: Meaning what if Proposition 8 doesn't pass?
T: Yes.
B: You write, "They will lose no time pushing The Gay Agenda."
T: Yes.
B: You wrote, "The San Francisco government under rule of homosexuals."
T: Yes.
B: Who were these homosexuals?
T: Tom Ammiano was a supervisor.
B: Was the mayor a homosexual?
T: I don't believe so?
B: So why did you say that?
T: Well Gavin Newsom married them so he must be their friend.
B: So you mean that San Francisco was under the rule of heterosexuals who were friends with homosexuals?
T: You were using your legal words to change my original intent.

So here we have Dr. Tam basically saying in his campaign email that gavin Newsom is a homosexual by association. Or at least that's how it comes off to me.

Caokley Won Hand-Count Precincts.

According to Black Box Voting, Martha Coakley won the precincts that hand-counted its ballots. The precincts that had electronic machine counts? Scott Brown.

Link

We need hand-counting of all ballots, now. Otherwise, why vote? The machines will do the voting for us and will always tilt further to the right until we become a totally antigay professing-Christian right-wing totalitarian state.

An Ex-Gay Survivor Speaks.

Today in San Francisco at the Proposition 8 Trial, Ryan Kendall testified to his own personal experience in an ex-gay cult called NARTH at their facility in Encino, CA, which is just north of San Diego. Despite our stories for over 40 years, gay kids are still joining these cults, whether by their own free will, manipulation, blackmail, or even force.

Plaintiffs' counsel Flynn led the direct investigation.

[Note: K = Kendall, F = Flynn]

K: I am an NCIC agent, it is a database maintained by the FBI. I have a secure clearance for this work.

Flynn: When were you born?
K: 1983.
F: 26 years old?
K: Yes.
F: School?
K: Evangelical Christian University.
F: How did you hear about homosexuality?
K: Proposition 2 in Colorado where I was raised.
F: Did your family talk about it?
K: Yes, it was very scare, homosexuality was wrong and evil and threatened our family, my parents said.
F: What is your sexual orientation?
K: I am a gay man.
F: How long have you known that?
K: Since I was 12 years old.
F: How did you feel when you realised you were gay?
K: ...and what your family and community did NOT like this concept, so I kept it a secret, hidden away from everyone.
F: What names were you called?
K: Homo, faggot, queer
[This shows that our natural comportment gives us away even if we don't tell a soul about our natural sexuality]
F: What else happened?
K: Played keep-away with my glasses and broke them.
F: What was it like being in that Christian School?
K: They were taunting me with a word that was so close to the truth. My parents changed schools.
F: When did your parents find out you were gay?
K: My parents discovered my journal when I was 13.
[His parents did not respect his privacy, nor his boundaries -- for they obviously read the journal.]
F: What happened?
K: My parents flipped out, they yelled, it was pretty scary the way they reacted.
F: Do you remember anything they said?
K: My mom said I was going to burn in Hell.
F: Was your family religious?
K: Yes, Church was a big part of our lives.
F: How did you feel when your mom said that?
K: I was totally stunned. I could not believe I was eternally damned.
F: What therapy did your parents send you to?
K: I was sent to a "Christian therapist" who would make me a heterosexual.
F: How many times did you go?
K: I went two or three times.
F: Did you recall much?
K: Inconsistent with Christian teachings, disapproved my parents, and that I was a bad person and evil.
F: How bad did you feel?
K: I always wanted to please my parents, now I was a bad and evil kid.
F: Was therapy successful? Did it make you heterosexual?
K: No, I was still gay.
F: Did you try to be straight?
K: No I knew I was gay the way I know I am short and half-Hispanic.
F: Next, where did you go?
K: NARTH: National Association of Reparative Therapy for Homosexuality, Encino, CA...
F: For how long?
K: Two, three years, 14 to 16.
F: How was your home life?
K: It was like night and day. My parents used to take me to school, make notes and put them in lunch, pick me up. Afterwards they called me names and that they hated me and that I was disgusting. My mom told me she wishes she'd had an abortion instead of a gay son, or Down's Syndrome or a retarded kid... instead of a gay son, me.
[Interesting, how the parents' unconditional love turned to unadulterated hate. They should be ashamed of themselves.]
F: Who at NARTH?
K: Joseph Nicolosi, Executive Director of NARTH.
F: Where did you meet with him?
K: Over the phone, an hour, 90 minutes. Then travelled to California.
F: What did you talk about?
K: Homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teachings, and not what your parents want for you.
F: Advice how to repress homosexuality?
K: No specific advice, just general admonishments.
[Just like my experience in the Boston Church of Christ! "Homosexuality will lead you to a bad lifestyle, you'll catch diseases and AIDS, you'll meet an early demise blah blah blah and then you're going to hell!" The only so-called "advice" they gave me was to pray, "Lord deliver me from these lusts!," and the like. Fat lot of good that did. I almost became an Atheist because of them.]
F: How did your NARTH experience help you reconcile your gayness and your faith?
K: At NARTH I was told I was dirty and bad, the therapy played no role in making me better or healthier.
F: Were you straight when you were done?
K: Just as gay as when I started.
F: Why did you stop going?
K: My life had fallen apart: my faith, my family, everything. If I did not stop going to NARTH, I wouldn't survive. I would kill myself.
[And by suiciding, he could have exiled himself into the Outer Darkness!]
F: How were you able to stop?
K: At 16 I surrendered myself to the Colorado Department of Children.
F: How does that work?
K: I told a social worker I was going to kill myself if I didn't leave my parents. They strated an abuse and neglect proceeding against my parents.
F: How was that?
K: I was incredibly suicidal, I turned to drugs to escape reality, things did not get better, I had lost everything.
F: How long did this period last?
K: Four to five years.
F: How did you support yourself?
K: It was a struggle.
F: On Public benefits?
K: I had to go to the emergency room for health care.
[This is why we need a National Health Service with a network of clinics for the uninsured. Instead we get Obama-Romneycare! But that's a different subject.]
F: How long have you worked for the Denver Police Department?
K: two to three years now.
F: Are you stable and can you support yourself?
K: Yes, it has been really hard, but I have been able to do that.
F: Just a couple more questions. Are you aware of organisations that are supportive of gay rights?
K: Yes. I am a member of Log Cabin Republicans, and a member of Denver Commission on LGBT Rights.
F: Are you testifying for them or you?
K: For myself, Ryan Kendall.
F: Have these organisations shaped your testimony?
K: No.
F: No more questions.

[Cross examination]
Campbell for the Defendant-Intervenor
C: Do you live in California?
K: No.
[But he went to the NARTH cult facility in Encino and even if he didn't, this is relevant.]
C: Did you participate in No on Proposition 8?
K: No.
C: Were you contacted by the San Francisco City Attorney's Office, yes?
[So Ryan Kendall knows someone in San Fran! (-: ]
K: Yes, in October.
C: Have you studied human sexuality?
K: No.
C: Have you known people who profess to have changed their sexual orientation?
K: In public, yes.
C: Were you compelled by your parents to go to conversion therapy?
K: Yes.
C: It was all your parents, without your consent?
K: Yes.
C: You told your parents your objections.
K: I told my parents and my therapist.
C: But that did not matter?
K: Yes, it did not.
C: Did you have the goal of changing your sexual attraction?
K: Yes, I just wanted to survive it.
C: But your goal was not to change.
K: No.
C: You talked about things your parents said to you?
K: Yes.
C: But your family experience was just as damaging as the therapy itself?
K: Yes, I said that.
[Of course it would be! What do people expect, when unconditional love turns to unadulterated hate?]
C: At some point your parents lost custody with you?
K: Yes.
C: After that, did you go back to live with your parents when you were 18?
K: Yes, briefly.
C: Some people volunteer and choose to go into conversion therapy?
K: That's not my experience.
C: So no one has ever gone to conversion therapy voluntarily?
K: I don't know EVERYONE; but in my experience, no.
C: But you have acknowledged that some people have success with conversion therapy?
K: I don't know that.

REDIRECT:
F: Have you met anyone who succeeded in conversion therapy?
K: Yes, Nicolosi trotted out his perfect patient, named Kelly, who (when the doctor left the room) told me he was going to a gay bar that night and was pretending success in conversion for his family.
[HA! So not only are these ex-gay ministries cults, they are scams.]
F: You said you went back to our parents when you were 18?
K: Briefly.
F: And do you talk to your parents now?
K: No.
[Why should he? They proved to him that they were horrible parents after discovering his sexuality.]
No more questions.

"This is un-American. My state is supposed to protect me, not discriminate against me."

So said Paul Katami yesterday in the historic legal challenge to California's Proposition 8.

That ballot question, place on the ballot by initiative petition, was motivated solely by religious fundamentalism and was approved by voters based on appeals to their fears and their blind prejudices.

And it's nothing but bloody discrimination in favor of heterosexuals, even the worst kinds thereof.

As Ted Olson has said,

At the end of the day, whatever the motives of its Proponents, Proposition
8 enacted an utterly irrational regime to govern entitlement to the fundamental
right to marry, consisting now of at least four separate and distinct classes of
citizens: (1) heterosexuals, including convicted criminals, substance abusers
and sex offenders, who are permitted to marry; (2) 18,000 same-sex couples
married between June and November of 2008, who are allowed to remain married but
may not remarry if they divorce or are widowed; (3) thousands of same-sex
couples who were married in certain other states prior to November of 2008,
whose marriages are now valid and recognised in California; and, finally (4) all
other same-sex couples in California who, like the plaintiffs, are prohibited
from marrying by Proposition 8.

There is no rational justification for this unique pattern of
discrimination. Proposition 8, and the irrational pattern of California's
regulation of marriage which it promulgates, advances no legitimate state
interest. All it does is label gay and lesbian persons as inferior,
unequal, and disfavored. And it brands their relationships as not the
same, and less-approved than those enjoyed by opposite-sex couples. It
stigmatizes gays and lesbians, classifies them as outcasts,and causes needless
pain, isolation and humiliation.

In a nutshell, the proposition humiliated and shamed us in order to advance a blind prejudice that I call heterosexual supremacy. And goes against the state's interest in encouraging people, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, intersex and straight alike, to commit to stable, lifelong, monogamous civil and sacred unions based on love. And inadvertently reduces the importance heterosexuals' relationships to simply breeding children.

It is a crime against humanity that must be ruled Unconstitutional.

Bryce's Story.

To view the bulk of his story, click here.

A few more details: at about 4:30 the afternoon of June 15th 2009, Bryce Faulkner called his long-distance lover Travis Swanson via cel phone. Bryce was in tears. He reported to Travis that his parents had found out about ALL his communications by unethically obtaining passwords behind his back and rummaging through his email, cel phone and Skype communications. He said further that they called him and Travis hateful, hurtful names and made him read out loud all the "clobber" passages from the Christian Bible beginning with Leviticus (aka 3rd Moses) 18:22. They took away all that he had and gave him an ultimatum: homelessness, or join a live-in Ex-Gay cult for 14 months. Well in his homophobic ultra-conservative town of El Dorado, Arkansas, being homeless could have been for him a sentence of death by queer-bashing before he was even one day's journey outside of that town (it is literally in the middle of nowhere -- at least two hours' drive or four summer's days' walk from Little Rock) given that his parents had proven themselves to be untrustworthy and would IMO blab his "sexual sin" all over town. So IMO he picked the option least likely to prevent him from ever seeing Travis again... joining the cult. And the cult teaches that for the homosexual, salvation is by works until he becomes heterosexual. Or at least that is how the message preached comes off to the homosexual.

So now he waits trapped, six months into his 14-months' sentence, waiting for the day he will be released, in some Ex-Gay cult facility surrounded by humiliating negativity and impacted by extremely dangerous mind-control tactics. He is rumoured to be in a facility in Memphis or in Pensacola. I am four hours away from Pens., in New Orleans. Good people in either city, if you see Bryce and recognise him, tell him God loves him just the way he is and that God does not make mistakes! And if he wants to get away from that cult (I'm certain he will) please rescue him!

Everybody, pray for Bryce and send him spiritual support, good vibes and life-sustaining energy any way you can.

Thank you!

Bush and the Rapture.

I found an illustration of the last seconds on Earth prior to the Rapture, at the site Democratic Underground. It depicts Bush with a whole bunch o' Christians on a hillside awaiting the rapture that is just about to happen. Below, World War III rages. Of course, it's just LIKE Bush to disappear whenever disasters and catastrophes happen. Remamber 9/11? Remember Katrina? Remember when the economic meltdown first reached critical mass last September and Paulson -- not Bush -- sent a page-and-a-half piece of proposed legislation to Congress?


Well, here is the Rapture!