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The Christian Civic League of Maine's Mike Hein calls Pam's House Blend:
"a leading source of radical homosexual propaganda, anti-Christian bigotry, and radical transgender advocacy."

He is "praying that Pam Spaulding will "turn away from her wicked and sinful promotion of homosexual behavior." (CCLM's web site, 10/15/07)


Ex-gay "Christian" activist James Hartline on Pam:
"I have been mocked over and over again by ungodly and unprincipled anti-christian lesbians."
(from "Six Years In Sodom: From The Journal Of James Hartline," 9/4/2006, written from the "homosexual stronghold" of Hillcrest in San Diego).

"Pam is a 'twisted lesbian sister' and an 'embittered lesbian' of the 'self-imposed gutteral experiences of the gay ghetto.'" -- 9/5/2008



Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth Against Homosexuality heartily endorses the Blend, calling Pam:

A "vicious anti-Christian lesbian activist."
(Concerned Women for America's radio show [9:15], 1/25/07)

"A nutty lesbian blogger."
(MassResistance radio show [16:25], 2/3/07)


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who monitors yours Bevis ?? Just thought I would drop you a line,so the rest of your life is not wasted.
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An Online Magazine in the Reality-Based Community.



Paul Mero: Sexual orientation is an illusion.

by: Chino Blanco

Thu Nov 12, 2009 at 12:53:18 PM EST


( - promoted by Pam Spaulding)

LDS Apostle Elder Jeffrey R. Holland:  Salt Lake City gay-rights measures could work statewide.

Utah's Sutherland Institute responds:

As a public relations opportunity, the LDS Church's statement before the Salt Lake City Council may assuage the minds and soften the hearts of advocates of "gay rights" in Utah. As a policy statement, it is problematic. The approved ordinances before the Salt Lake City Council are unsound in principle, clarity, and effect.

We, once again, call on the Utah State Legislature to overturn these local ordinances on the basis of sound public policy.

Sutherland's president, Paul Mero:  The Gloves Must Come Off
Sexual orientation is an illusion. Your idea of rights is an illusion. Your equality is illusory.

Complete transcript after the break.

Chino Blanco :: Paul Mero: Sexual orientation is an illusion.
Excerpt from Paul Mero's opening remarks at the Common Ground debate with Equality Utah:
The gloves must come off.  The fact remains that we don't just disagree with you over the Common Ground Initiative, we disagree with you over nearly every motivating assumption that underlies the initiative.  

We're dealing here with two separate realities: one truth, one illusion.  The intellectual, legal and moral chasm between the two sides is so great that true common ground is nearly impossible to achieve.  And so, for my part anyway, I'm here to argue that the Equality Utah version of reality is an illusion.  

The CGI bills constantly refer to sexual orientation.  Sexual orientation is an illusion.  It only exists in the minds of activists, and their academics, who need to explain away why people do what they do even when they don't want to do it.

There are no replicable scientific or medical studies about that issue of sexual orientation that exist.  Never mind that the only way it can be identified is through sexual behavior.  There's no reasonable argument to be made that subjective feelings or attractions toward another human being means anything deeper than what it actually is.  

The truth is that we are born male and female with moral agency.  Because it's behavior, our sexuality is always a choice, and any other sexual construct is an illusion.  

Your idea of rights is an illusion.  With the backing of every miserable misanthropic philosopher of the post-Enlightenment era, your initiative feeds on the unreasonable notion that you have these magically organic rights to do whatever you desire.

These rights are usually couched in terms of equality, but because you constantly confuse what you do for who you are, your equality is illusory.  You think your equality is about who you are, when it's really only about what you do.  In terms of human behavior, there's no equality as you try to imagine.

Check out the first comment left in response to Sutherland's statement on this thread:
I am not sure what the Sutherland group thinks they are doing, but the Brethren have spoken. No more needs to be said.
Folks like Sutherland's Paul Mero have built careers in Utah peddling the notion that "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" are figments of disordered minds. With the LDS church now suddenly supporting ordinances that include this supposedly "make-believe" terminology, is the Sutherland Institute finally being left out to dry?

Popcorn time.

Here's local Utah TV coverage of the controversy:

And a couple of links that provide further background/news re this interesting development:

Paul Mero Splits From The Church

Strange bedfolk

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BTW: Utah ranks dead last in pro-gay attitudes
Per a recent study: Utah's percentage who favor gay protections and rights (38%) is 5% lower than the next lowest state - Oklahoma; and 30% below the highest ranked state - Massachusetts (68%).

50th: Adoption
50th: Hate Crimes
50th: Health
50th: Housing
50th: Jobs
50th: Civil Unions
50th: Overall

Source:

http://mormon-chronicles.blogs...

PDF:  Jeffrey Lax and Justin Phillips, "Gay Rights in the States: Public Opinion and Policy Responsiveness," American Political Science Review, p.41.

twitter.com/ChinoBlanco | youtube.com/ChinoBlanco


Umm... and yet, religion is protected.
Setting aside the utter BS of his position, so what?

There are also no replicable scientific or medical studies showing that religion is anything other than subjective feelings and actions, and exist "to explain away why people do what they do even when they don't want to do it."

The stronger these people make the religious case for their opposition to gay rights, and the stronger they claim it to be choice and behavior, the more of a case they make for gay rights to be based on religious freedom.

This claim by churches that absolutely nothing that is not provably genetic can be the basis of any rights whatsoever continues to utterly baffle me.

Even if sexual orientation is nothing but a choice, WTF is being a Mormon?


We should start statewide constitutional amendments banning religion
in government and make it a high crime.

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.-- Thomas Jefferson

eee gads....
Im glad I dont come across someone like this asshole....cause' I could NOT restrain myself from the Illusion of my Fist crossing his eye....people like him, make me sick...how they look at themselves in the mirror is beyond me.....kinda like a murderer who feels he's done nothing wrong,while calmly combing his hair in the mirror I guess?  How do these people find love from another person, obviously the person has no requirements on human behavior,or dignity/self respect.  

Your religion is an illusion
Your God is an illusion. Your "golden plates" and your "holy prophet" are illusions." Your religious rights are an illusion.

And so, too, is your right to dictate my reality based on your fantasy.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même merde.


*eyetwitch*
This right here?

Right here? Enough to make you slap the asshole. Yep, I don't know how people stay so civilized 'cause I would have basically gone from 0 to 60 and cursed him the fuck out and told him about my illusion of you know, loving a man, being with one, sharing my life with people I love and calling it a family vs. his illusion of some invisible realm where God sits in judgment and makes and creates all things and figure out which one was more real.

Asshole. And people wonder why we're ready to get rabid over this issue- because of guys like this. Because they pick and support people like this to attack our lives.

Hmm. If there was a God, this SOB would have spontaneously combusted a looong time ago.

Prays to Satan for that to happen


Honey, you and that eyetwitch!
As for this video (which I refuse to look at for now) the evidence exists that many (if not most) fundamentalist religious folk have disordered minds and they infest the world and everyon else with their BS.

[ Parent ]
Rabid g-d dogs
The crazy ranters can keep spewing hate because the "Diagnostic Service Manual" for psychology says they are NOT delusional because society accepts the mythology.

I'm quite sure that the panels writing these guidelines were for the most part xtan. That works well for their proselytizing religion.

It sets these dangerously delusional individuals loose on society.


[ Parent ]
Wow
O.K, first off, ignorant, but second off ignorant.

I mean "subjective feelings or attractions" IS sexual orientation moron. It is the state of being of being attracted sexually or not and the orientation of those sexual attractions.

I know he doesn't care, because he was trying to basically say "gays don't exist, they're all lying because they are possessed by demons who want my soul", but still ignorant plus.

And that's before getting into the fact that biology has put out whole books, some rather famous on sexual orientation in humans and nature.


He's so confusing "illusory" for "social construct,"
Of course I'm not saying that anyone's core orientation is completely socially constructed - any more than ancestral origin is false; but the binary gender concept, HOW orientation is expressed, etc. is as socially defined as "race."

Well, WELCOME TO HUMANITY. EVERYTHING is socially constructed, unless you are a totally independent hunter-gatherer living in a cave (and even then, how did you get into this world in the first place?)

And given that the U.S. Constitution is a social construct, as all the mundane laws that govern your day to day life, all the spoken and unspoken social rules you use to interact with other human and nonhuman beings... Then feel free to leave. I hear Mars is opening up.


Social construct?
So, is same-gender attraction in the animal world socially constructed too?  For instance, the only permanent pair-bonding ever observed among grizzly bears is between female couples.  What "social construct" leads to that?  I'd love to see you try to convince a pair of lesbian grizzlies that their pair-bond is merely a construct.

Cynic, n.  A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.  
-Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary


[ Parent ]
You know, I know you LOVE attacking me, but please read...
"I'm not saying that anyone's core orientation is completely socially constructed"

That means, the wiring is biological reality. That's what science is proving and never disproving.

How we express it, how we respond to it, how we reflect it, how we respond to it in others, what it MEANS.... that's social construction.

Just like ancestral origins dictate my phenotype and genotype, and what anthropologists would consider my ethnographic background.

But what my "race" is varies depending on what country, or even what region of the US, I'm in. Some areas of the world wouldn't consider me of African descent. Some areas would take a look at my family and apply the one-drop-rule. And hwo I define myself as a biracial multiethnic person evolves.

It doesn't change my ancestral background. What changes is how I understand it, how I apply it, and how others understand it and respond.


[ Parent ]
Good gracious me, another martyr! Tsk, tsk, tsk.
If you think having someone disagree with you constitutes an attack, you're living a very sheltered life.

Cynic, n.  A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.  
-Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary


[ Parent ]
No, it's just that you recently have been the only person to respond...
with advanced snarkitude.

I ain't offended, just observant.


[ Parent ]
If orientation is an illusion
Why did the mormons spend so much time money and effort to keep me hetro when by the fact they tried to get a child to conform is evidence enough that it is an inherent trait?

To be fair:
Mero is partially correct. It is really about what we do, and it is really about what they do. Given that the Mormon Church has used aversion therapy to try and brainwash their young feeling that they may be gay (of note, there have been various documentaries and semi-reality-TV-themed-documentaries, such as MTV's True Life), it's not entirely outside the realm of possibility that they feel it all comes down to choice.

And, when it comes to choice, what other minority has the numbers of people hiding that they are part of that minority that we do? It's no surprise to me that with all the people who live 'on the down low,' to use one phrase, that a large number of Americans see it as something to be ashamed of and a choice.

And, they're right on the latter. We can choose what we do, as we choose in every other aspects of our lives, from the clothes we wear that day, to the route we take to work, to if we even work or are instead supported by another. We can choose to be honest with ourselves and live as we are, or we can choose to supress what is normal to ourselves, and live as most of the closeted politicians so recently highlighted in that HBO documentary.

But the Mormon Church, or any other religion, is the last thing that should herald itself as the bastion of choice. As has been documented quite a few times (on the Mormon Church in particular), their idea of "choice" is to attach electrodes to a person's body and perform aversion therapy while flashing slides of what a person finds appealing, when said appealing things aren't what they consider the norm. And no, that isn't an analogy. Religion is hardly the thing one would consider a self-dependant clique to belong to, at any rate; most religions exist on the basis that your life is guided by an invisible force, and said force makes the choices for you.

In conclusion, yes, I chose to live this way. I chose not to deny who I am, and to be completely frank and upfront with others about who I am. I chose to have a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend. I choose to hope that, one day, my boyfriend and I will have the legal capacity to marry in any state we care to, so we don't have to practically hold the ceremony miles away from family and friends; instead of just choosing to marry some chick because that's what society at large cares to legislate as "normal."

Once our community as a whole makes these choices, we gain that much more solidarity in the eyes of the public. But so long as people feign interest in things that do not interest them in order to appease the naysayers, we will always be marginalized in the way Mero has attempted to do with his testimony.

You know, I bet if the Constitution came with illustrations, we wouldn't have even half the trouble we do today.


Wow, love this guy!
Because if sexual orientation is an illusion then we have an even bigger reason to push for marriage equality seeing as how heterosexuality is obviously all in their minds. Oh and what of the ex-gay clan?? All that money and all that resistance training and shock therapy to be straight when being gay straight or bi is obviously just a figment of the imagination.

Always thinking about it...

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