- American Idol ratings are apparently headed downward – but don’t blame the bad singers and performers. It’s all Ellen DeGeneres’ fault, because she likes  girls instead of boys and God can’t let a program succeed with a lesbian on it – like, say, a popular daytime talk show.

- Bryan Fischer at the American Family Association is one scary dude. He thinks Jesus was a capitalist and would sign Arizona’s immigration law “in a heartbeat.” Now, he’s doing the scripture twist on Numbers 25 to advocate killing anyone he considers “sexually immoral” – like, y’know, gay people. So much for that “love your neighbor as yourself” crap.

- Rick Warren tells “fake Christians” to get out of his church. Good news for Warren, all that property Saddleback owns should fetch a nice price for him to retire on.

-Posted by Candace Chellew-Hodge

Most of us remember the Pepsi commercial showing a scene from the 1960 movie, “Spartacus.” One by one the slaves revolt, standing up and declaring “I’m Spartacus!” Kirk Douglas looks on with a tear in his eye, drinking his Pepsi in inspiration.

It worked for the rebels who stood up for Pepsi. I think it could work, as well, for the churches that say they want to welcome us wholeheartedly but don’t dare.

Whether the designation is called “Open and Affirming,” “Welcoming and Affirming,” “Reconciling in Christ” or whatever, only a brave few congregations in mainline denominations are coming out in full support of us. Many say they want to, yet timidly demur because they would face punishment from their denomination. How can this nonsense be ended?

I think we can, indeed, take a lesson from the friends of Spartacus. What if all the churches that really want to support full LGBT inclusion got together and stood as one? There’s no way a denomination would dare to persecute them if they took it on this way. They couldn’t discipline that many congregations at once without revealing themselves to be the bullies and tyrants they are.
We should, by all means, suggest this. We could call it the “I’m Spartacus” movement. There is strength and courage in numbers, and if all our allies stood together, they would be invincible.

“We welcome them!” one congregation would say.  “So do we,” another would proudly second.  “Us, too!” a third would chime right in.  Before any steps could be taken to squash the declaration, all the true hearts of our allies would be revealed.

Why did it take a “mad man” (or woman) in New York City to think up such a bold idea? It’s been right under the churches’ noses all along.

“I’m Spartacus!” Think about it. In our community around this world, we have already discovered what unity and solidarity can do.

Perhaps it’s just me, but it seems like 2009 really just got underway, then Christmas hit me upside the head. Anyone else experiencing that? This year really seems to have flown right by.

I remember when I was kid, it was like Christmas would never come – the months just dragged on. As a child, time just does that – it drags. Kids are eager to celebrate their next birthday. They’re never five or six, they’re five and a half or six and three quarters. They’re always marking time in  ways adults never do. I happen to celebrate anniversaries of my 39th birthday. Next year will be my five year anniversary.

When I reflect on this past year, however, I realize that I have done something I hate more times than I have ever done it before – fly in an airplane. I loathe flying, but because you can’t promote a book without making live, rock-star like, appearances, I have flown on more planes this year than I have ever flown in over the previous 40 some odd years – and believe me, there have been some odd years.

I’ve been everywhere it seems, Canada, California, Texas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio – the list goes on. Over the weeks and months that I flew, however, takeoffs and landings got easier. There really was only one flight that was incredibly bumpy and uncomfortable, and another trip that took nearly 12 hours when it should have taken five, but all in all, I give a thumbs up to our air transportation system.

It hit me this week, though, that right now, each and every one of us is in flight. We’re all aboard a blue and green spaceship, hurtling through the galaxy. Every 365 days we complete our annual circle around the sun – a day we mark with celebration, with a renewed sense of ourselves, with a determination to make the next 365 days the very best that we can.

Sometimes, on this constant flight around the sun, though, I feel like I missed the safety demonstration. Though, before this year’s successful dieting plan, my seat could have certainly served as a floatation device. But, years can be rough on us – the turbulence can knock us around as we experience despair, anger, frustration, loss, or grief in our lives.

The year can also be good to us, like we’re sitting in first class, being served champagne and caviar. The joys, the triumphs, the good fortune, the dreams that come true – they come to us in equal measure throughout each year.

As we fly together on our blue green spaceship we see it all – the hunger and the plenty, the joy and the despair, the triumph and the defeat, the greed and the generosity, the new lives beginning and other lives passing away. Life aboard our spaceship is one of both bitter and sweet, of blessing and curse, of sacred and profane.

What stays consistent is God’s presence through it all – even in those times when we feel like God has abandoned us – God remains present in the air we breathe, the food we eat, the friends and family we love, and even within the very bodies that God has blessed us with.

Breathe deeply.

As we approach this New Year, I invite you to find new ways to connect with the holy and with each other. I invite you to remember that we need one another – because none of us is flying solo on this blue green spaceship called Earth.

Happy New Year!

We all know (spoiler alert!) that Santa isn’t “real.” That our gifts really come from people who love us. But in their own way, they, too, are a manifestation of the love that started it all — the love from which all human love proceeds: the love of God, revealed to us in the Baby Jesus.

The love of God, in this world, must be made real largely through human beings. That’s exactly what Jesus was born to show us two thousand years ago.

Most of us won’t get a lump of coal in our stocking this Christmas. God has been good to us, even in this difficult year. That was not always true for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Christians — or so it seemed. For most of those two thousand years, amid the colorfully-wrapped packages, there was a lump of coal to remind us that our love — our very being — was not counted quite as real to other people as that of our straight brothers and sisters.

Here in Phoenix, where I live, there are still many LGBT young people who have no cozy home at Christmas. Tossed out of their homes by families who don’t understand them, they must do the rest of their growing up on the streets, where life is cold and hard.

My church wanted them to know they were still loved by God at Christmas. We took up a collection — successful beyond our wildest dreams — and bought the homeless LGBT teens in our city shoes, socks, blankets and personal care items this year. They were distributed through our local organization for LGBT youth.

Somewhere near you, a child still shivers in the cold. We may not be able to bring her or him “silver and gold,” as the carol proclaims, but we can, perhaps, spare some change so they might have some tangible evidence God loves them.

One surprisingly simple gesture may mean more to them than all the frankincense and myrrh in the world.

There are ways to help them throughout the year. Your local LGBT community center would be glad to help coordinate any effort you might make on their behalf.

Merry Christmas and a happy 2010 from all of us at Whosoever.

Well, the dark forces have prevailed again, this time in Maine. Voters there, by a narrow margin, vetoed marriage rights for same-sex couples.

The narrowness of our loss is not much comfort. The “Yuck” Vote strikes again.

Basically, the argument of the anti-equality crowd was the same as always: “Eeeewww, those scary, icky gays wanna do WHAT?!”

Though they try to cloak their revulsion in religious terms, in truth it has nothing to do with moral rectitude.

Straights have been obsessed with sex for at least the last forty years. They have shown — time and time again — that NOTHING: not their own marriages, not their human dignity, not even their supposedly-so-precious children, is as important to them as their own gratification. Which must neither be delayed nor dampened by anybody.

Especially the likes of us.

Everyone and everything must please them. Must entertain them. Because, you know, for them it is always all about themselves.

This is the deep, dark heart of why these people behave as they do. We have cramped their self-indulgent style. Instead of the sexual, sensual “yum” for which they so voraciously hunger, we — quite unforgivably — make them go “yuck.”

It isn’t their sterling morality we violate by wanting to marry for love and properly care for our loved ones. It is their demand for — their obsession with — their own, insatiable pleasure.

Marriage is never what they cared about. It is their own fun. Quite simply, we bum their trip.

They protest that they don’t like imagining “what we do” in bed. Inquiring minds must ask, why do they spend so much time imagining it in the first place? We never invited them on that trip; they took it on their own.

We need to stop allowing these sexual obsessives to hide behind their make-believe morality. THEY are the ones who want the issue of our marriages to be about sex. WE are the ones who want it to be about something much, much more.

Until we reveal our tormentors’ twisted little psyches for what they really are, we will not be able to give our love the protection it deserves.

Much of my family are addicted to Fox “News” swearing that it is an oasis of “fair and balanced” coverage in a swamp of “librul” media like my former employer CNN. I try to tell them – based on my two decades of experience in the media – that there’s no such thing as “librul” media – not mainstream media anyway. That, over the years, all mainstream media has become “corporate media” as big corporations began to swallow up places like CNN – first with the takeover by Time Warner and then the takeover by AOL. Murdoch’s News Corp started Fox, so it BEGAN as corporate media. GE owns NBC and it’s other manifestations including MSNBC. The media is basically owned by a handful of corporations.

That’s why you’ll see angry, right wing backed mobs at town hall meetings talked about like they’re some organic grass roots movement angry over health care reform. Bullshit. It’s the corporate media protecting it’s corporate assets – nothing more, nothing less. The corporations tell the newsrooms what they’ll be putting on the air that day – because the corporate bigwigs are in on the morning news meeting, every single day. From CNN to FOX to all the other news outfits. They are owned and run by corporations.

Keith Olbermann has run into problems and I fear Rachel Maddow will be the next to be silenced by GE as she exposes these fake mobs for what they are – corporate anti-health reform propaganda and bullying.

Here’s a great article to get you going on this issue.

Our media is not watching out for the interests of you and me. They are watching out for the interests of their corporate owners and they will relentlessly spin the news to bring the people and Congress in line with their wishes. Don’t believe the mainstream media. Look for other sources and read the foreign media – they cover the US far better than any of our “media” outlets.

My family does not believe me – they will not believe someone who sat on the inside and knows this stuff first hand. They’ll believe Hannity, Rush or any of those lying loudmouths before they’ll believe me – because y’know, I’m a “librul” who worked for the “librul” media so I’m immediately suspect.

It’s that kind of gullibility that has put us in this place. Don’t be fooled. The media ISN’T working for us. It’s working for the corporations – and doing a damn good job of misinforming and misleading us all.

First, the good news – the American Psychological Association has repudiated so-called “ex-gay” therapies that purport to change gay people into straight people.

“Contrary to claims of sexual orientation change advocates and practitioners, there is insufficient evidence to support the use of psychological interventions to change sexual orientation,” said Judith M. Glassgold, PsyD, chair of the task force. “Scientifically rigorous older studies in this area found that sexual orientation was unlikely to change due to efforts designed for this purpose. Contrary to the claims of SOCE practitioners and advocates, recent research studies do not provide evidence of sexual orientation change as the research methods are inadequate to determine the effectiveness of these interventions.” Glassgold added: “At most, certain studies suggested that some individuals learned how to ignore or not act on their homosexual attractions.

The APA is to be applauded for this statement. They came to this conclusion after reviewing all the evidence from “ex-gay” therapies over the years and found none of the research convincing – something the LGBT community has been saying for years. Thanks for catching up, APA!

The bad news is, however, that the APA has caved a bit to the “ex-gay” proponents by providing a way for therapists to ethically lead gays and lesbians away from acting on their homosexuality if the client sees it as a conflict with their religious beliefs:

As part of its report, the task force identified that some clients seeking to change their sexual orientation may be in distress because of a conflict between their sexual orientation and religious beliefs. The task force recommended that licensed mental health care providers treating such clients help them “explore possible life paths that address the reality of their sexual orientation, reduce the stigma associated with homosexuality, respect the client’s religious beliefs, and consider possibilities for a religiously and spiritually meaningful and rewarding life.”

“In other words,” Glassgold said, “we recommend that psychologists be completely honest about the likelihood of sexual orientation change, and that they help clients explore their assumptions and goals with respect to both religion and sexuality.”

So, the APA is telling their people – be upfront that therapy won’t change your sexual orientation – but go right ahead and help your client to repress it in the name of their God.

In case it’s not clear from that last paragraph that the APA is affirming this, Glassgold clarified this new policy in the Wall Street Journal:

“We’re not trying to encourage people to become ‘ex-gay,’” said Judith Glassgold, who chaired the APA’s task force on the issue. “But we have to acknowledge that, for some people, religious identity is such an important part of their lives, it may transcend everything else.”

That’s very disappointing. Instead, the APA should educate itself on how sexuality and spirituality can be reconciled instead of one or the other being dropped or denied. This is not an “either/or” situation but can be a “both/and” situation. There are plenty of gay and lesbian people who have reconciled their sexuality and spirituality and we’re not all flaming religious liberals.

In fact, some of the leading gay Christian groups are flaming evangelicals as belied in their titles like “The Evangelical Network” and “Evangelicals Concerned Western Region.”

Here’s a note to the APA – change is possible – you can change this horrible policy by educating yourself on how to move gays and lesbians to reconcile spirituality and sexuality instead of leading them down a primrose path to repression in the name of God.

Conservatives Warn Quick Sex Change Only Barrier Between Gays, Marriage

2009 Pride Choice Award

Posted by: Candace Chellew-Hodge

Whosoever has won a 2009 Pride Choice Award for the best LGBT non-profit in the Southeast region!

We’re thrilled to have this award and hope that you will visit the Great Nonprofits Web site and check out all the award winners.

Whosoever, founded in 1996 when the Internet was powered by a hamster on  wheel, has been working tirelessly to provide safe space for LGBT Christians and people of faith and to assure our community of God’s unconditional love for us just as we were created. With this award and your continued financial help, Whosoever will continue is mission for many years to come.

Thanks to everyone who reviewed Whosoever and helped us win this award!