Iceland Melts My Heart with First Open Lesbian Prime Minister

As we in the U.S. herald the election of our first African-American president as a civil rights victory, we remain in the relative Ice Age compared to countries like Iceland on open LGBT leadership and the affirmation of LGBT rights. Just yesterday, the world's first first openly-lesbian leader was appointed Prime Minister in Iceland.

As with Obama, the country is pinning its hopes on the popular 30-year political veteran Johanna Sigurdardottir to restore the troubled economy. However, unlike with Obama's historic election, Iceland is not making any big deal out of Sigurdardottir's identity. For more, including other countries' gay leaders, see this by the Huffington Post.

The U.S. also lags in human rights. Back in December of last year, albeit under the Bush administration, the U.S. could not even muster the moral courage that 66 other countries found to support a basic U.N. statement that

affirms the principle of universality: that all human beings, irrespective of their sexual orientation or gender identity, are entitled to equal dignity and respect.

To read the Bush administration's lame excuse under the guise of "state rights," read this NY Times article:

For a list of the 66 countries, go to Pink News.

Let's hope under Obama, and with Hillary managing our international affairs, that we catch up with at least some of the more progressive countries of the world.

Hypocrite Haggard Still Wants to Pray Away the Gay!

Despite Oprah pressing Haggard with delightfully real and challenging questions on 1/28/09 (video clip below), Haggard remains perplexing and inconsistent. He seems relieved and grateful that Mike Jones outed him in 2006 to "be free and tell the truth," but he still won't get out of the closet. He wants to keep the light on inside the closet (and admit these "feelings"), but no one is hom(o)! He said he "tried to deal with it in spiritual circles, but it didn't work out." Now he admits to attractions to males since childhood that continue today, but still holds onto the futile wish that if he seeks God, God will heal him and improve his life... allowing him to live up to his "heterosexual monogomous ideal." He says he's "heterosexual with issues." He got the issues part right. Unfortunately, his public actions only serve to reinforce religious-based misunderstandings about homosexuality and imply that it's unnatural or bad. Watch this:



More questions remain:
1) What role did his wife Gayle plan in denying who Haggard is, and encouraging him to suppress this part of himself? Is she his hero or his foe?
2) Are the Haggards just suppressing the truth further to uphold the Bible?
3) Why did the New Life church he founded lift all their restrictions on him? Was there a condition that he spin his homosexuality as a dark, sinful thing that he will still try to battle, but this time openly?
4) Is he using the sexual abuse he got as a child as an excuse for "compulsive" indulgences in sexual immorality?
5) Can someone please educate this man? Oprah tried, saying "Denying part of your self is wrong."

It seems this story will go on for years until Haggard can come to peace with who he is and reconcile this with his faith.

More On Haggard's Latest Sex Scandal

See the exclusive interview with the latest "victim" of Haggard's advances:

Wow, the complex, ironic and hypocritical saga of Haggard is even deeper than I thought. A young man, Grant, struggles to accept his homosexuality and seeks out a church where he can heal and be himself -- even nurture a dream of becoming a pastor himself. He finds a closeted gay pastor who is just about the worst gay role model he can meet. Not only is Haggard trying to hide his homosexuality from his family and the huge church that he leads, but he speaks out publicly against gay marriage. And Haggard abuses his authority and gets involved with this young man.

Now I'm sure there is a lot more than this clip suggests, but this is shaping up to be one big tragedy. I wish both Haggard and Grant can find peace in accepting who they are without the spider web of unnecessary religious guilt that unfortunately catches so many LGBT people. Only the Truth can set them free.

Hypocritical Haggard: Still Haunted by the Truth?

Now that the dust has settled on a surpringly conciliatory and inclusive invocation last Tuesday by evangelical preacher Rick Warren, more dust is being stirred up by a fallen evangelical preacher. Remember Ted Haggard? He was the the former President of the National Association of Evangelicals (an umbrella group representing more than 45,000 churches with 30 million members) who also backed Amendment 43 to ban gay marriage in Colorado and was so sweetly exposed by his gay male prostitute in 2006 ? What I remember about that story is that the male prostitute, Michael Jones, thought it was so hypocritical for Haggard to speak out against gay rights while engaging in repeated acts of sex with him. Hypocritical indeed.

But it's getting better now... Yet another young man is coming forward to speak out against Haggard to expose him for being involved sexually with him. The Denver Post reported January 25th that this man, a former church volunteer, had what their church called "inappropriate, consensual sexual relationship"with Haggard for a long time. This man is now taking this news outside the 10,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs to a Colorado Springs TV station. He originally came forward in 2006 after the Jones expose', but he and the church reached a quiet settlement in 2007.

Now he's "going public" with it, according to Brady Boyd, Haggard's successor, because Haggard is now peddling his "story" in a new documentary by HBO about his "time in exile." "The Trials of Ted Haggard" airs this Thursday, January 29th as the a documentary by Alexandra Pelosi (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's daughter). Ted was also in Pelosi's earlier documentary, "Friends of God..." For this documentary, Ted's story is on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" Wednesday and on Thursday on Larry King Live.

"I think what caused this young man to be a bit aggravated was Ted being seen as a victim, when he himself had experienced a great deal of hurt," Boyd said. It seems Ted just keeps getting chased by the Truth... that pesky, inconvenient Truth... Or, is Ted behind this, to stir up a new controversy from 2006 before his "therapy sessions" to get straight, to help promote the documentary? How does this former lover even know about the nature of how Ted portrays events in this documentary?

I've seen the video on the the HBO site and it seems part of the documentary is a "poor me" story, showing Ted and his family moving from hotel to hotel as he tries to make a living in sales.
Has Ted really been "de-gayed" during his "time in exile," or he still really gay and perpetuating his lies to himself, his family and the country in this documentary? And does he profit from the film?

I will leave you with this quote from the Denver Post to ponder: "In an AP interview...Haggard described his sexuality as complex and something that can't be put into stereotypical boxes." Complex indeed. Sounds like an out of control spiral of lies to me...

"Blessed with Anger"

In Robinson's invocation yesterday, which I only read on blogs since it was not carried by the HBO broadcast, he said:

Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against
refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian,bisexual and
transgender people.

Boy, am I ever blessed. I just heard Robinson interviewed on NPR's Talk of the Nation, where Robinson reported that he only learned yesterday morning that his invocation was scheduled for 2:25pm and not the 2:30pm time when it would be televised on HBO.

Robinson guessed that HBO felt that its audience would not be as interested in a prayer as all the entertainers, but the Huffington Post has reported that

"a spokesperson for HBO stated that decisions regarding the timing and presentation of Robinson's remarks were made by the Presidential Inaugural Committee, and that Robinson was "not a part of our show from the start."

and

"A spokeperson offered AfterElton.com much the same response: "The producer of the concert has said that the Presidential Inaugural Committee made the decision to keep the invocation as part of the pre-show."

So ultimately, the responsibility for this "surprise" when America expected Robinson to open this concert is at the feet of the Obama inauguration team. When Robinson's selection was apparently to counter-balance the Warren mistake, this is yet another slap in the face. How easy does Obama think we are to placate?

I call on LGBT and allied leaders to be as blessed with anger as I am. I call on Obama to make up for this mistake by giving Robinson a real microphone during a real TV program during the inauguration ceremonies. Ironically, Robinson was shut out of the program "We are One."

How will Obama explain this one?

Was Gene Robinson's Prayer Really Censored by HBO?

I was ready to hear Bishop Gene Robinson's prayer today (transcript below), but now I am praying that HBO really did not truly censor Gene out because he's gay and his selection was controversial. I thought I had missed it between switching channels but now I've learned that HBO simply did not include it. No one saw it on HBO.

Some bloggers are calling it censoring, but I'm reserving judgment until we hear HBO's response. Now I understand there was a 10 minute break between Robinson and when HBO started their programming, so maybe it was logistical and not intentional. But it seems suspicious.

If HBO really did censor Robinson, then we are clearly NOT the America that was represented on screen for the rest of the concert celebration. The program theme was "We are One" and Obama's overall theme for inauguration events is "Renewing America's Promise." What we saw on stage was a lot of diverity of many kinds -- racial, musical, gender, age, even multinational (e.g., Bono from Ireland, Shakira from Columbia), and we also saw the Washington DC Gay Men's Chorus. If I had to capture the music and short speeches in words, I'd say it was all about the strength of our diversity and our ideals of equality -- that anyone can be what they want to be in this great nation. How fitting that this celebration will affirm and recognize another man, like Obama, who broke another power barrier by become the first openly gay Bishop. Robinson's own beautiful references to the virtues of anger against discrimination and related injustices, freedom from mere tolerance, and realizing Martin Luther King's dream for ALL people completely fit into the entire spirit of the event. And I'm glad he asked Obama to "remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims." These were words of moral courage, calling us all to a higher purpose.

If HBO censored this, then we need to question if they stand for the American ideals of diversity and equality that was paraded on the stage today. Did the overall theme of the event escape the executives at HBO? I look forward to hearing their justification. If their censorship is confirmed, we will be justified in our outrage in this decidedly un-American act of censorship. I can only pray that the American people will denounce any censorship if it occured and see the irony of censoring a person who is so emblematic of real change and progress in America --another truly courageous, admirable American. And I pray that the ensuing outrage will allow TV stations everywhere to broadcast the entire prayer for even more Americans to hear, again and again, in not only their living rooms, but in their hearts. And now... for Gene...

Gene Robinson's Invocation at "We are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial"
January 18, 2009

"Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in
pausing for a moment, to ask God’s blessing upon our nation and our next
president.

O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…

Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist
on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and
raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition,
malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and
abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian,
bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort – at the easy,
simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of
the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going
to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience – and
the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the
understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must
always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from
mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our
differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every
religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human
community, whether across town or across the world.

And God, we give you
thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the
United States.

Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with
Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist
our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm
captain in these times.

Give him stirring words, for we will need to be
inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to
facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his
own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states,
but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a
minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to
change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him the
strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though
he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our
presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and
his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to
keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we
have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and
that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity,
prosperity and peace.

AMEN."

Introduction Followed by Open Letter to Rev. Rick Warren

As a gay rights advocate, I was as disheartened as many gay leaders such as those in HRC were upon hearing the news that Obama was giving Rick Warren, one of our nation's religious leaders who was a supporter of Prop 8 in California, the limelight at his inauguration on Tuesday, January 20th. Read HRC's open letter to Obama. To be fair to Obama, I was also pleased to hear about how only gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson is now being given a similar role at a pre-inauguration concert on Sunday, January 18th - two days before.

In short, I believe that Obama's selection of Warren lacked moral leadership -- the kind of leadership that speaks truth to power and does not cave in to the political popularity of discriminating against a poorly-understood minority group. He partly redeemed himself by choosing Robinson as a counter-balance and hopefully in response to the understandable sense of betrayal that many in the LGBT community felt when Obama picked Warren.

However, Warren himself has not been redeemed for his part in contributing to a Biblically-based misunderstanding of who we gay people are and whether our homosexual behavior is moral/immoral or simply a natural variation found consistently across countries among less than 10% of the world's populations of homo sapiens.

Here is my own Open Letter to Rick Warren, my inaugural blog entry:

Who Is the Fool?

Rev. Warren:

I appreciate the work you do for the poor and sick around the world, including those with AIDS. I also appreciate your enthusiasm for civil discourse, in which people can "disagree without being disagreeable" as both you and Obama have said. It is with this civil spirit that I want to let you know that I do not appreciate your contribution to what is a massive and Biblically-based societal misunderstanding of gay people.

In your belief.net interview, you made your most controversial statement, which was caught on video:

The issue to me, I’m not opposed to that as much as I’m opposed to redefinition of a 5,000 year definition of marriage. I’m opposed to having a brother and sister being together and calling that marriage. I’m opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that marriage. I’m opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.

Do you think those are equivalent to gays getting married?

Oh , I do. For 5,000 years, marriage has been defined by every single culture and every single religion – this is not a Christian issue. Buddhist, Muslims, Jews – historically, marriage is a man and a woman."

Just to be sure you were really saying that incest, pedophilia, and polygamy were equivalent to gay marriage, I decided to hear what you had to say about this quote on your own website at Saddleback Church, where I went directly to Pastor Rick's News and Views to your 20-minute video clarifying your position on this issue on December 22, 2008. You were visibly upset that that the media misrepresented and misunderstood you on this point, even though a video clearly shows you making the points you made above. You said, "The media never gets it 100% correct. Why? Because we are humans. If you believe everything you hear or read or see, there is a word for that. Foolish." You went on to explain that the media is motivated by conflict because it's the essence of a good story. Okay, so you misspoke. You are human. I can forgive you for that.

However, I have trouble forgiving you for blindly spreading outdated Biblical misunderstandings about same-sex relations and for not turning your powers of critical thought toward the humans who wrote the Bible. They too had their human motivations. And it was humans who decided whether or not to include the Book of Thomas in the Bible. A simple review of what happened at the first or second Council of Nicaea shows how humans make decisions about religion and what to include or exclude from the Bible, based on their human motivations for power and influence.

Since you know what it is like to be misunderstood and misinterpreted, you can now identify with what it is like to be gay in the U.S. today in a world of Biblically-misinformed people.

I choose not to play the fool to either the media or any book written by men thousands of years ago. I have the following seven critical questions for you:

1) If God is all powerful and all-knowing, why did he or she rely on fallible human beings to write his or her preferences for human behavior? And why are so many Biblical accounts of what Jesus said viewed as inconsistent by Biblical scholars? Why not provide updated versions rather than cease communications during Biblical times? Perhaps people are too cynical today, as they should be, to blindly accept claims of people speaking for God?
2) Who wrote the clauses on homosexuality and why did they write them? Were Biblical writers particularly interested in spreading the new religion through procreation? Were same-sex relationships a threat to that politico-religious interest?
3) If Leviticus is used as part of the Biblical justification, at least from the Old Testament, then why do we ignore so many other parts of it, such as about the "abomination" against eating shellfish and pork and the first seven chapters' devotion to animal sacrifice, and the death penalty for cursing your parents, have sex with a menstruating woman or violating the Sabbath?
4) Was the word "abomination" really meant to refer to a "ritual wrong" rather than a "moral wrong," as described in the excellent documentary film by former Methodist minister Jimmy Creech about the damage of religious-based bigotry, "For the Bible Tells Me So."
5) Could it be that the writers of the Bible misunderstood same-sex relations just as they misunderstood the strength of women, the role of slavery in society, and so many other social issues that have since rendered the Bible's position on them outdated and irrelevant?
6) If homosexuality were the sin that many conservative evangelical leaders would have us believe, why did it not even make the Ten Commandments or even the Seven Deadly Sins devised later and popularized by Pope Gregory in 590 AD/ACE? You say that the media's cultivation of conflict creates a more polarized nation, but what are the effects of religious leaders such as yourselves in elevating the "sin" of same-sex relations beyond other top lists? You said in your belief.net interview that we as humans "prefer to focus more on other's sins than our own." Isn't the whole religious debate about homosexuality among less than 10% of the population a big distraction from the real "sins" of the majority?
7) If the Bible defines marriage as between a man and a woman, why does it also permit polygamy? Where in the New Testament does Jesus denounce polygamy -- or is this one of the many changes and evolved understandings of Christianity designed to make us think the Bible is a greater authority on human relations than it really is? And on a personal note, why do you ignore how the Bible condones polygamy when you made the statement that that the marriage has been defined as between a man and a woman for 5,000 years? Is this yet another inconvenient Biblical "truth"?

However you choose to exercise your ministerial powers from a religious perspective and however you choose to selectively interpret the Bible to support your belief system, that is your business and the business of the church. If you don't like gay marriage, don't preside over one. However, once you step into the political sphere, giving your support for Prop 8, hosting the forum in August with Obama and McCain and now accepting the invocation role at Obama's inauguration next week, the Bible is simply not the relevant document of reference. Why even talk about the Bible in the context of people's civil rights? We should only be talking about the Constitution and how civil marriage has evolved from an institution reserved for only whites (1691) to some black (1724), to prohibiting polygamy (1899), to the more modern versions where women can own property within marriage (1981) and more. See blog post visual from 1/5 below.

We need to focus on what sentences like these mean in the context of the civil right to marry:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Thankfully, our founding fathers saw the wisdom in separating religion from government. Fortunately, you say that you do support equal rights for gay and lesbian couples. However, if you read the very well-written California Supreme Court decision legalizing same sex marriage in Spring 2008, you will see that people in some institutions understand that calling the rights of one group of people "domestic partnerships" and the rights of others "marriage" relegates same-sex partnerships to a second-class status that is justified by no constitutionally legitimate or compelling state interest. And we know from U.S. history that separate is just not equal.

I draw your attention to two notable Supreme Court marriage rulings that will pave the way to what will ultimately become the law of the land once the issue goes before the Supreme Court, whose role is to protect minorities against the political whims and prejudices of the majority:
1) 1987, Turner v. Safley. which states that marriage is a fundamental right, even for incarcerated prisoners. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said, "Prison walls do not form a barrier separating the inmate from the protections of the Constitution."
2) 1967, Loving v Virginia, where the Supreme Court struck down bans on interracial marriage, which you should know that the Bible was also used to support. Then Chief Justice -- ironically another Warren (Earl), said that "the Virginia statute violated the 14th Amendment’s guarantees of equal protection and due process" and that "the freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”

Note that the late Mildred Loving from this case made a historic stand in 2007 against religious-based bigotry that people use today to justify denying gay and lesbian individuals their right to marry the person they love. To see more, read the NY Times article, The Color of Love, or read the blog by Faith in America called, "Helping Rick Warren Understand what Mildred Loving Knew."

In conclusion, to spread Biblically-based misunderstandings of gay and lesbian people in the public sphere is morally and civilly irresponsible. It is fundamentally disrespectful to millions of your gay and lesbian fellow citizens, who are the true authorities on their own motivations and experiences -- not a rather old and inconsistent book written by men thousands of years ago. No book can trump the truth of millions of people. I challenge you to stop mistaking the Bible for the Truth.

Today medical and psychological authorities no longer view being gay as a social disease but a simple preference like left-handedness; it's time for religious authorities such as yourself to update your thinking as well.

To take the Bible at face value without understanding the human motivations of the writers and understanding its political and social context at the time it was written is simply foolish. I challenge you to offer public arguments for the common good not on Biblical but on Constitutional. Only then can we have a truly civil discourse on marriage equality.

What is Traditional Marriage?