Iraqi cleric wants gays killed in "most severe way"

[schoolboi]

Iraqi cleric wants gays killed in "most severe way" (http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid28049.asp)

[Zerbie]

I wish this were surprising news. But it isn't. I also wish that world leaders would speak out against this kind of blatant and obvious incitement to genocide. As far I have observed so far, they haven't.

[SolInvictus]

Unfortunantly, killing gays for simply being gay is common in the Middle East, esp. in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

[pnggrad79]

Hey you guys,
If Fred Phelps had his way, we would be killed in the most severe way in this country. We are deluding ourselves if we think it can't happen in this country. Pardon me for sounding alarmist, but we are doomed to repeat history if we don't learn from it. Can we say Pre-WW2 German Jews?
These Islamic fundamentalists are the same as Phelps, Falwell, Dobson, and Robertson with different clothes on.
It strikes me as peculiarly funny that people like these guys stick to the letter of the law like it is salvation itself, when all of the OT points to the fact that the law is death, and there is no way to make yourself acceptable to God. That was the whole point of the law, to show us we needed a Savior because we CAN'T DO IT OURSELVES. Jesus was the payment for our sinful humanity and all the laws we hide behind don't save us. His death on the cross saved us because the law and our faulty adherence to it couldn't save us. But we cling to it like Jesus' sacrifice meant nothing. It is a shabby fortress we hide behind because we are scared to death of the freedom of grace. We don't understand it and we don't live it in this country.

[maklelan]

Hey you guys,
If Fred Phelps had his way, we would be killed in the most severe way in this country. We are deluding ourselves if we think it can't happen in this country. Pardon me for sounding alarmist, but we are doomed to repeat history if we don't learn from it. Can we say Pre-WW2 German Jews?
These Islamic fundamentalists are the same as Phelps, Falwell, Dobson, and Robertson with different clothes on.

I think there's a pretty big difference. Granted these guys are full of it, but our country does obey the Rule of Law, and your situation is only going to improve from here. If you want everyone to respect you equally then respect others as well. They think you're just as messed up as you think they are.

It is a shabby fortress we hide behind because we are scared to death of the freedom of grace.

Grace is not a license to sin, ever though millions of people teach that it is. WE are saved by grace after all that we can do. No one can be saved due to their own efforts, but it's ridiculous to think that a person who accepts Christ and then utterly ignores His teachings for the rest of his life will receive an equal recompense with someone who wears out their life trying to develop and perpetuate righteousness and charity. Faith without works is dead. It cannot save a person.

[Joe Brummer]

Grace is not a license to sin, ever though millions of people teach that it is. WE are saved by grace after all that we can do. No one can be saved due to their own efforts, but it's ridiculous to think that a person who accepts Christ and then utterly ignores His teachings for the rest of his life will receive an equal recompense with someone who wears out their life trying to develop and perpetuate righteousness and charity. Faith without works is dead. It cannot save a person.


There seems to be debate about his teachings and what they really say. So even when one claims they are saved, and they believe they are living by his teachings. THere will always be someone who will claim the opposite. This is exactly why so many people hold the misinformation you cannot be saved and be gay.

[keltic63]

Grace is not a license to sin, ever though millions of people teach that it is. WE are saved by grace after all that we can do. No one can be saved due to their own efforts, but it's ridiculous to think that a person who accepts Christ and then utterly ignores His teachings for the rest of his life will receive an equal recompense with someone who wears out their life trying to develop and perpetuate righteousness and charity. Faith without works is dead. It cannot save a person.

why do you say this?
does the parable of the servants in Matthew 20:1-16 apply here? although some servants worked all day, and some only a few hours, all were paid what was promised to them, and all were paid an equal amount.
it's God's grace to give, and to give as God is so inclined. We may not like it, but it may be possible that someone accepts Christ then just doesn't do much in the way of following Christ's teachings and would still enter heaven. That's not for us to decide.

[pnggrad79]

Mak,
I agree-grace is not a license to sin, so what is your point? Being gay is not a sin. But all these Bible thumpers want to pick and choose what they say is valid in the Bible. I never said grace was a license to sin, but what I did say was that fundamentalists don't any attention to grace but the letter of the law which they use to beat us up with.:o

[schoolboi]

I think there's a pretty big difference. Granted these guys are full of it, but our country does obey the Rule of Law, and your situation is only going to improve from here. If you want everyone to respect you equally then respect others as well. They think you're just as messed up as you think they are.


Less then one hundred years ago a “civilized” country much like ours was overrun by fascism. Millions of people were exterminated. Who would have thought that could have ever happened? During that same time period we rounded up thousands of our own citizens and put them in to internment camps. Who would have thought that could have ever happened?

There are many people in this country today who would love to see homosexuals done away with. Even as a child I heard people say about gay men, “We should just round them all up and put them on an island.” I heard this from “good Christian people.” They might have been exaggerating, but the sentiment was sill there.

Things are not guaranteed to get better for us. As a matter of fact I truly believe its going to get worse before it gets better. I can’t wait for everyone to read Mel’s new book when it comes out. I have been very luck to be allowed to read the first few chapters. It is eye-opening to the reality of the state of Christianity and our nation.

[Foeke]

Less then one hundred years ago a “civilized” country much like ours was overrun by fascism. Millions of people were exterminated. Who would have thought that could have ever happened? During that same time period we rounded up thousands of our own citizens and put them in to internment camps. Who would have thought that could have ever happened?
I'm not sure that the comparison here is quite fair. I agree that there's room for a lot of improvement for gays and lesbians in the United States, but hate crimes are (as far as I am aware) not as widespread as they were against jews in pre-Hitler Germany and Austria. As early as 1909 laws against participation of jews in public events were enacted in Austria; the infamous Kristallnacht of 1938 was a government sponsored physical attack on jews, and to my knowledge the US government is not yet declaring homosexuality a crime fit for capital punishment. The Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I was not written by jews, but it caused such widespread poverty and discontent in Germany that the hunt for scapegoats, an utterly despicable but nonetheless human characteristic, was inevitable; the jews (and to a lesser extent communists) were perfect for the role since they had been perceived as thieves and liars for ages. During the same period that anti-semitism increased once more in Europe, the gay rights movement was taking its first steps, along with the first feminist wave.

For all the discriminatory flaws in your system that cause inequality, misunderstanding and distrust, there have been improvements with the implementation of same-sex marriages or similar - though I give you, inferior - institutions and the invalidation of sodomy laws. Internationally speaking, particularly in Canada and western Europe, things are looking even brighter.

As for the right-wing zealots at "Focus on the Family" and "Concerned Women for America", they might be desperately trying to make it look as if the gay community IS waging war on America, there is a big difference between trying to alienate an entire group of citizens from equality and dropping an atom bomb on them.

Perhaps things will get worse before they get better, but I do think it's important to treasure what HAS been achieved so far.

[SolInvictus]

Just a comment: Paragraph 175, the law that forbade homosexual relations, wasn't taken off the law books in Germany until the late 1960s. The Nazis committed many, many attrocities and genocide against minorities - unfortunantly, the persecution against homosexuals is similar to Abu Ghraib or Guantanimo Bay as the Nazis used humiliation and "sodomized" their victims (i.e. metal poles deeply inserted into the posterior of individuals, etc). See the documentary,
Paragraph 175, for more information.

[keltic63]

For all the discriminatory flaws in your system that cause inequality, misunderstanding and distrust, there have been improvements with the implementation of same-sex marriages or similar - though I give you, inferior - institutions and the invalidation of sodomy laws. Internationally speaking, particularly in Canada and western Europe, things are looking even brighter.

As for the right-wing zealots at "Focus on the Family" and "Concerned Women for America", they might be desperately trying to make it look as if the gay community IS waging war on America, there is a big difference between trying to alienate an entire group of citizens from equality and dropping an atom bomb on them.

Same sex marriage is legal in only 1 of our 50 states. Civil Unions or Domestic Partnerships are available in about 6 of the states. according to HRC, at least 47 states have some type of law banning same sex marriage. Many states, including the one in which I live, are attempting to pass amendments to the state constitutions in order to ban same sex marriages. From here, it does not look like things are improving.

I know it is just anecdotal evidence, but I have seen mild hate crimes against the glbt community in the past 2-3 years. Just last week as my partner and I were leaving a gay bar, we noticed that the entrance of the bar had been egged. I'll admit that's tame, but it is an indication that someone thinks it's ok to do this based on the orientation of the people inside. Extreme religious zealots give tacit approval of violence against the glbt community by reminding people that the Bible says homosexuals should be stoned. Their continued hate speech inspires more violent types to take that action into their own hands and commit violent hate crimes. That said, I'm not so sure that FotF and CWA would restrain themselves from dropping the bomb on us, if a) given the opportunity, b) could get enough of us in one place, and c) thought they could get away with it.

[Foeke]

a) given the opportunity, b) could get enough of us in one place, and c) thought they could get away with it.

I'm not American so perhaps I'm not properly informed, but I was told courts in several states had already invalidated the constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriages? I also got an e-mail recently about the legalization of gender neutral marriage in Maryland and California, although I keep hearing mixed reports about the latter being vetoed (or not) by Schwarzenegger.

As for the above quote- a) they're not, since they do try to keep an air of humanity surrounding their hate campaigns, b) they can't, or I would presume not, since not many gays are likely to respond to invitation from the CWFA or FotF to group together, and c) they couldn't. But I agree they would if they could.

[Zerbie]

Foeke,

Hello, pleased to make your acquaintance.

I am curious where you are reading this news about the state of marriage in the US. ONLY in Massachussetts is it legal, and there is a big effort there (led by nominal christians) to overturn it via ballot initiative to amendment the MA constitution.

CA nearly legalized it last year but Schwarzenegger vetoed it, that is correct.

Maryland - I know it isn't legal there, and I'm not sure what condition that state is in, regarding the marriage battles.

So that leaves only MA.

Also - I saw Paragraph 175 on TV yesterday and I could not believe what I heard in the interviews. Interviews of some 4 or 5 people (one lesbian who fled Germany, and several gay men who had been held in concentration camps) and the general sense I got from hearing them speak was that no one knew it was coming. That it was a complete surprise to them when the arrests started. It is heartbreaking, but you should watch it if you get the chance.

[Daniel]

Could gay people be subject to persecution here in the good 'ol US of A? In a word. Yes. They already are: Eleven states have Anti-Gay marriage amendment laws on the books. And there are more to come. Some of the laws proposed in these states would strip citizens of already enacted domestic-partner laws. That's a step backwards and leads, in logical lockstep, to the gates of a concentration camp. (Should these laws be litigated to what may prove to be an increasingly adversarial Supreme Court?) I, for one, believe that the only thing that separates the fundamentalists here from the fanactics there is a free press, freedom of speech and a democractic system of government. Thinking it couldn't happen here is one step towards letting it happen. That would made us all 'good Germans'.

[zephyr013]

They're going to round us up? A-hell to the no!
WE NEED TO STRIKE FIRST! Round up all heterosexuals and get them before they get us! Let's kill all the breeders... Vive La Resistance!
Could we? Yes. Should we? Our survival depends on it!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

C'mon people, seriously. These perceptions are warped. We need to be careful with loaded words like "fanatics" and "fundamentals." And we need to be especially careful when discusing the holocaust. Prevention of marriage is quite a long way from the systematic extermination of a group of people.

Could it happen? Anything can happen. Will it? I doubt it. We do need to be vigilant, but we need to keep our heads on our shoulders and keep the situation in perspective.

[Daniel]

Yes. I agree with you. Our Constitutional Republic prevents a good many bad things from happening.

My point was this: fundamentalism, of whatever stripe, leads away from religious and political freedom. Isn't that obvious? Those who take Leviticus seriously (and there are a great many people who do) in this country would, absent the aforementioned consitution, ignore the later and enforce their version of the former on everyone. They would, to my mind, be no better than Iraqi clerics. Should we let them run the country? No. Why don't they? Because of efforts like the Equality Ride. That's the right kind of preemption.

[Zerbie]

Separation of church and state. That's what will keep us from going so far in that direction. I don't think it will happen here either, but we DO need to be aware that theoretically it *can* happen anywhere when the circumstances align to make it possible, and make sure we don't allow those circumstances to be created.

No, I don't see that kind of holocaust happening here. But I do see little pieces of similarity between the US now and Germany then. Little pieces.

[Daniel]

Zerbie,

Thank you. The "Separation of Church and State" says it exactly and simply.

[Foeke]

Foeke,

Hello, pleased to make your acquaintance.

I am curious where you are reading this news about the state of marriage in the US.

Just bits and snippets from people are involved with the COC (the Dutch HRC, so to speak), who are obviously giving the US more credit than it deserves =/

[pnggrad79]

Might I remind everyone, the Constitution guarantees the rights of everyone born in the US to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, so why was there slavery? Why did it take 100 years for African Americans to get any kind of legal protection under the law? why have women been so discriminated against? Why are American Indians still the group no one knows what to do with? Yes, our government's documents guaranteeing freedom-it may say it, but unless it is practiced, it doesn't mean a dang thing. We won't have any kind of freedom until those of us who hold our freedom dearly-even though we have little-stand up and demand that the lawmakers of this country live by what is in the Constitution. It only takes a few crazy people to undo a Constitution-look at what Hitler did to the progressive Constitution in Germany!!! Can it happen here? It has already happened time and again-look at the history of black people, women, Latinos, etc.

I don't necessarily agree with Madalyn Murray O'Hair's tactics, but in principle I do agree-no one should force anyone to pray to a God they don't believe in, or to have to pray to an ambiguous God that is some cosmic afterthought that has really nothing to do with their life. Prayer is personal and should not be made into a sideshow. Furthermore, the church needs to stay out of government and vice versa.