I have always believed in the evolution of consciousness. Especially from
those who blabber every Sunday morning from pulpits about something called
"love." However, ugly and vicious internal battles are going on today in
Episcopalian churches, as well as Methodist, Presbyterian and others. And of
course all fundamentalist churches are in homophobic trauma. I am having
doubts about the evolution of consciousness.
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A roll call of the brilliant gays and lesbians of history who have made giant
contributions to our evolution as a species and to our cultural heritage,
would include the following.
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King James (yes, of King James bible fame)...Plato...Alexander the
Great...Leonardo Da Vinci...Gore Vidal...Michelangelo...Walt Whitman...Emily
Dickinson...Gertrude Stein...Rock Hudson...Greta Garbo…W.H. Auden...Amy
Lowell...Tennessee Williams...Thornton Wilder...Willa Cather...Jane
Austen...Henry James...George
Santayana...Babe Zaharias...Christopher Isherwood....Peter
Tchaikovsky...Oscar Wilde...Clifton Webb...Ethel Waters...Frederick the
Great...Liberace...Rudolph Valentino...James Dean...James Hormel...Ramon
Navarro...Malcolm Forbes...Christopher Marlowe...Phillip Johnson...Van
Cliburn...Edward Everett Horton...John Gielgud....George
Gershwin....Adrian... Aristotle...Hadrian...Chastity Bono...Noel
Coward....Agnes Moorehead...Montgomery Clift....Anthony Perkins...Virginia
Woolf...Edward Albee...Andre Gide...Sumner Welles...Cole Porter...George
Cukor...Marcel Proust....Rudolph Nureyev...Dag Hammarskjold...Martina
Navratilova....John Chever...Aaron Copeland....A.E. Housman...William
Tilden...Greg Louganis...Ian McKellen...Richard Halliburton...Lawrence of
Arabia...William Haines...Horatio Alger...Jean Genet...Sumner
Welles...Leonard Bernstein.... Space limitations preclude my listing
thousands more of the most creative and brilliant representatives of our
species.
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Robert Bernstein, former Senior Trial Lawyer for the U.S. Dept. of Justice,
wrote an excellent book, "Straight Parents, Gay Children." He and his wife
were told by their daughter that she had always been a lesbian. They embraced
her with love, and marched with her in gay parades. Bob went on to become
the National President of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays),
one of the finest and most loving organizations in America. He had a full
house when he spoke to my Sunday Symposium in Palm Springs.
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When is the good Christian love going to extend to the over 600,000 lesbian
and gay youth under 18 years of age in California alone. The suicide rate is
the highest in gay and lesbian children because of their families’ inability
to accept who they are and to give them the Christian "love" they prattle
about every Sunday in church.
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The Christian church has a 2000 year old history of opposing scientific truth
and blocking moral issues: the brutal persecution of Copernicus, Galileo,
Bruno, Vesalius and others; supporting slavery with biblical references;
fighting against the rights of women, including voting -- still an issue
today where wives are told to stay in their place as biblically defined.
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How many future generations of morally sensitive people are going to be
amazed, and laughing, at the homophobic ignorance and superstitions of
today’s churches?
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In the name of Christian love, the thin-lipped witch hunting moralists are at
work. Poor things. They can hardly get out of bed in the morning without
knees shaking, hands shaking and lips quivering. The sexual world they have
to face each day is full of fantasized goblins, devils, evil spirits and
bogeymen.
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When are Christians going to start living the "love" they drivel about every
Sunday?
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