Here I stand.

I spend too much time reading all the blogs over on the right, and following links from them. By the time I finished today, the sun was shining on the area I needed to weed in the garden (and it is hot down here in Oz). I could (should?) do some housework. Naah, might as well stay at the computer. The joys of being retired.
One comment (among 100's) on "Father Jake Stops the World" I feel really needs promoting. It so much ties in with my own life experience.
My own witness:

I've been listening to the excluding, abominating and fear/hate-driven nonsense "arguments" directed against LGBT sisters/brothers, pals/parents, coworkers/fellow students, both in and outside of Church/everyday life, since I can remember.

It's mostly ALL emotionally/spiritually "damaged" and ugly/sick, frigtening and dangerous to human beings.

Earlier on I kept my mouth shut and listened, sometimes agreed to hate myself while listening to the "blanket" slander spread and directed against people like me.

At college, early 60's, I sought "professional help" (for the first time) to come-to-terms with the Gay man in me (many did and there was a secret weekly "group therapy" on campus "secret location" lead by first-rate Psychologists). We attempted to address the self-destructive/loathing aspects of actually believing/buying into the ignorance/feardriven social outcasting that was running rampant and being "expressed" around us in our everyday lives...most often we listened to that kind of demoralizing crap silently (we discovered in our "group") yet the ugly words and injustice in the demeaning/outcasting somehow sunk in and sometimes caused severe emotional difficulties and sometimes even suicide (often attempted and sometimes completed).

Afterall, LGBT people are (according to many biggoted folks both in and outside of Church) "disgusting" and it didn't matter if we were/are celibate, A or F students/sport enthusiasts or bookworms, thieves or honorable, black, brown, yellow or white, wanting to be married/committed to a single loved ONE or fallen into non-stop sexually obsessed adventurers (like many "free love" heterosexuals of our time) or rich or poor.

Moving fast-forward to now:

We, at The Episcopal Church, are finding a simple way to EXPOSE these basic and prejudiced "icky" fear/hate factor that generate discrimination and the excluding of LGBT "others" from Christs family. We've found a way out from under the demoralizing of one another.

It's time for everyone to focus on THEIR own (individual) character/sin(s) and stop yammering, with non-stop, and deadly, illwill, for the humilation, degradation and EXCLUDING of heterosexual women and LGBT people at all levels of Churchlife and beyond.

I believe a great part of OUR MISSION is to EXPOSE some "religious" actions/selective Scriptural "believing" that has inspired crimes of hate, at Church/beyond.

+Akinola and +Orombi and +Venables/others are revealing themselves to be extemely dangerous to most fellow human beings...spreading/preaching the message of hate/exclusion/intolerance and the demeaning lie of "abomination" towards LGBT Christians/others IS the core problem with Christianity. Preaching exclusion/fear/hate contaminates "believing" in many innocent Christians/others in Africa and beyond.

We've found a way to say no to discrimination, persecution and the generating of fear/hate and we'll never be religiously "contaminated" again by anyone...there is no going back.

Trust God
Leonardo Ricardo |