About the Florida Shootings

This is very simple. Please clean out your ears and listen. I will NOT repeat myself.

THIS WAS NOT A MUSLIM CRIME. THIS WAS AN ANTI-QUEER CRIME.

The skin colour and religion of the shooter is FUCKING IRRELEVANT. His targets were QUEER PEOPLE. In a country where Christian Republicans have introduced over 600 bills in the past 6 months alone to limit or erase LTBGQI rights. This is NOT about fucking Islam. It's about America's rampant hate for Queer people reaching it's logical conclusion. When you go out of your goddamned way to dehumanize and other us, some asshole with a gun is GOING to eventually try to gun us down like animals. 

Islam did not cause this to happen America. YOU FUCKING DID.

Stop blaming foreign brown people. Take responsibility for YOUR hatemongering.

You yell and scream about trans women in bathrooms but it's somehow the entirety of Islam's fault a guy murdered a bunch of queer folks.

Fuck you, fuck your bullshit fake "outrage" at all the "American lives lost". YOU DIDN'T CARE ABOUT US TIL A BROWN MAN SHOT US.

So don't fucking act like you give a flying fuck about us NOW just so you can pimp your Islamaphobe Agenda. Don't use queer people to justify hating brown people. Don't use an act of hatred to create and spread more of it. YOU got us killed today, NOT Islam.

Grow the fuck up and take responsibility for the climate YOU created America.

A Note to Gentlemen Living in the Middle East using Dating Sites To Harass Canadian Women For Sex

I know, as I read extensively and watch news feeds from your part of the world, thart in most of your countries, women are treated as subhuman second-class citizens, the mythical superiority of men is just accepted as fact, and you're used to women being meek, submissive and never challenging you.

I know you also don't think lesbians exist. Canada is not one of your countries.

In MY country men and women are equals under the law. We don't need any man's permission for anything we choose to do with our own lives. We have the right to think, feel and speak as we wish to. Lesbians very much DO exist and can, under Canadian law, legally marry.

So if you Middle Eastern men who for some reason haven't found a slave to marry in your own country are going to insist on harassing me for sex or marriage, PLEASE stop acting surprised when I don't blindly obey you.

Stop acting shocked when I tell you NO.

Stop acting flustered and amazed when I refuse to obey your demands that I be humble and respectful towards you when by talking to me at all YOU are disrespecting ME through ignoring my clearly posted boundaries.

Stop laughing at the idea of me being a lesbian as if I was just being silly. It isn't something I say to dissuade men. It never dissuades ANYONE.

Stop trying to gloat that I'll never find a husband if I don't learn to be a good little girl and be nice to assholes like you. I never have nor ever will WANT a husband. You're just being stupid.

I am allowed to not want you. And I am not obligated to respect you when you refuse to respect me. I am CANADIAN, and Canadian women will kick your ass if you push your luck.

OUR women don't take bullshit from ANYONE.

An Open Question To The Extreme Right

Crossposted on Pam's House Blend

Morally bankrupt monsters like Matt Barber, Brian Fischer Maggie Gallagher, Tony Perkins and Peter LaBarbera, to name even just a handful of these deplorable people, have spent the past month at the absolute height of their reprehensible dishonest tactics. They and those like them, the soldiers fighting the evil homuh-seckshual agenda in God's name, (despite not a one of them actually having the first clue what the Bible actually says, using popularly distorted passages to justify their hate-we-swear-isn't-really-hate-honest-now-stop-picking-on-us), have been desperately bleating out excuse after excuse as to why they think there's no blood on their hands when gay or rumoured to be gay teenagers kill themselves.

These brain-hurtingly offensive and morally bankrupt excuses range from simple dishonest bullshit to utterly deplorable backpeddalling and buck-passing. They've blamed equality activists for it, (these confused kids only killed themselves because T3H G4YZ tried to convince them they were *GASP* normal!), and worse, the kids themselves, (These kids really knew deep down how sick and disgusting they were, so that's why they offed themselves!). ANYTHING to avoid accepting even the possibility that the hateful bigotry they bust their asses to spread at every opportunity could possibly be a big factor in the cause of the homophobic bullying these kids endured.All because they're so entrenched in their delusional hate-fuelled belief that being gay is ungodly, unnatural, and serves no positive function to society, that they refuse to ever allow room for debate in their own minds.

Sorry but no, homosexuality is hardly socially useless. It reduces over-rampant hetero breeding that overpopulates a world that CANNOT sustain so many humans, and provides nurturing parental options for all the abandoned children that irresponsible self-absorbed hetero people give up because they had no interest in being parents but couldn't be assed to use condoms.

(That is not a knock against those who are poor or otherwise unable to keep a child they actually do want and give them up for adoption hoping their child has a better life than they can provide. To THOSE people my heart goes out to.)

What, however, truly DOES have absolutely no constructive value to society is hatred, bigotry, homophobia and lying in the name of God. Because these things cause only harm, leading to people being beaten, crippled nd murdered, or young people driven to suicide, because they're different, and for no other reason BUT that.

So here is an open challenge to those liars and killers on the extreme religious right, who very much DO have blood on their hands. I want all of you, especially the extra slimey ones like Porno Pete and Bamm Bamm Barber, to close your eyes, and imagine the following. If you can find any actual morality in your shriveled evil hearts, try to do so with a completely open mind.

Imagine that you have a teenage son, and that son is gay. He of course hasn't told you so because every day he hears your hurtful abusive dishonest anti-gay preaching and he internalizes it. Your son is miserable and unhappy, not because he's gay, but because you make him feel like there's something wrong with him. You make him feel like he's sick somehow, so he does all he can to bury it, hoping it will go away. He dates girls carelessly, fucking girls at random trying to man himself up, to chase the gay away, but with every girl he beds, inside he dies a little, because deep down it's still his football buddies that he thinks about.

But you just keep preaching that gays are sick and unnatural, and your son hates himself even more. And then one day at school, someone spots him looking at a boy for just a few seconds too long, and the rumours start. And because idiots like you keep teaching kids that gay people are diseased and sick, kids at school, with no proof your son IS gay, but based solely on those new rumours, start taunting him, ostracising him, even beating him up after school calling him faggot. And after that harassment and abuse at school he still has to come home to your garbage, reinforcing his feelings of self-loathing, cementing in his mind that he's a worthless deviant. And no matter how hard he tries to be straight, the gay feelings never go away.

And one day you come home from work and you find your son, dead on your kitchen floor after cutting his wrists open, because he felt so sick and worthless and abused that he finally decided being dead was better than living, that suicide was his best option.

All because of the kind of ignorant hate you and those like you spread.

YOUR son. Not someone else's. Not some poor kid you read about in the news and want to evangelize for your pet bigotry causes. YOURS.

YOUR son. This is very important. Imagine it's YOUR son laying there dead, YOUR son who ended his own life.

Don't deflect the question by insisting you'd never have a gay son, or by claiming that it's only gay activists convincing him he's fine as is that would cause him so much turmoil. We both know that's a cop-out, an excuse bigots use to avoid admitting to the harm they cause. Don't whine your bullshit about how your faith is being persecuted, we both know you don't actually have any. Don't sidestep the question by misquoting the bible or by distorting legitimate studies whose authors have publicly chastised you for distorting their work. It's cheap and cowardly and will only further prove your deplorability.

Just go look in the mirror and ask yourself honestly.

If you had a son and that son killed himself directly because the kind of hate you preach made him feel like death was his best option..... could you really live with that? Would you really tell yourself this was what God wanted? Would you accept any blame at all for your part in making him feel so worthless he had no better choice than to die?

Any of you among the Extreme Right who can answer anything except a plain simple "No" best enjoy your empty hate-filled lives while you can, because whenever your time comes, there's only one place your souls are booked for, and it's going to be awfully hot down there.

I Am Purple Every Day

Crossposted on Pam's House Blend

It's no secret to those that know me that I'm a tad obsessed with purple. I own a lot of purple clothing, a fair chunk of my digital art is purple, and I've had my hair dyed purple more than once.

What very few people know is why. And since a well-meaning campaign has declared today Spirit Day and encouraging people to wear purple to raise awareness of teenage GLBT suicides, now seems as good a time as any to tell you all why.

I've seen several examples today on Twitter alone of trans youth being ignored, ungendered, or lumped in unfairly with gay youth and ignoring the different struggles they face. I know gay kids go through a lot of bullshit, yes, but Trans kids have several completely different struggles on top of those, so before I begin, let me remind you, honor EVERY kid in turmoil today. Do NOT gayjack or ungender trans kids by lumping everyone together as if one universal solution will fix everyone's problems.

When I was young, my femininity was not exactly subtle. I knew at age 3 something was wrong. I knew I was supposed to be a girl. I didn't know I actually WAS a girl surgically jiggered at birth. But I knew I was supposed to BE a girl. And every time I expressed femininity I got beaten up.

If I asked to see a Barbie doll at recess, I got beat up.

If I didn't want to join in at sports or play War or Tackle Tag, I got beat up.

If I said I actually liked cooking my own breakfast, I got beat up.

Anything I expressed interest in that the boys saw as even bordering on stereotypically girly, I got beat up.

I ended up suspended from Grade 3 for a week because I admitted to liking Jem and the Holograms, and when the teacher pulled the bullies off of me and said I should expect to get beat up if I was going to be a sissy and not like GI Joe instead, I told him to go fuck himself. I got beat up and yet it was ME who got suspended, because I stood up to a teacher reinforcing stereotypes and condoning the bullying.

When I started to grow breasts, I got beat up.

When I tried to resist my rapists in Juvey, I got beat up.

And every time I got beat up, I waited til the next day. And the next day, when the bruises formed, I saw my only friend, Purple.

Purple, who appeared on my skin to remind me I was different and had to fight to survive.

Purple, who reassured me I had survived another hate fuelled beating.

Purple, who told me I was still alive, that they hadn't broken me.

I love purple. Purple tells me I'm alive. That I'm strong enough to survive the abuse. Purple tells me I'm allowed to be me.

I admire the girl who came up with the idea of a Spirit Day. It's a noble thought, even if some idiots are already distorting her noble idea to ungender trans kids. I wish there were less such idiots and more kids like Brittany McMillan who want to do something positive.

But I'm purple every day of my life. And so should all of us be. Every day should be a day we talk about and support young GLBT folks. ALL of them.

I love purple.

When A Stupid Choice Outweighs A Deplorable Crime

Crossposted on Pam's House Blend

I'm very sad and angry about the recent spate of gay teen suicides. Two 13 year old boys and one 15 year old boy in the past two weeks have killed themselves because of relentless homophobic bullying. These poor young boys were abused to ridiculous extremes not only by hateful classmates, but by school officials who did absolutely nothing fearing conservative reprisals.

These were children, who, regardless of their actual sexuality, (two were openly gay, one had never said he was or wasn't, and his misguided mother seems more concerned that people are told he wasn't than with fighting what drove him to kill himself), were abused and threatened and harassed and made to feel worthless until death felt like the only option for peace. These are tradgedies, crimes against vcompassion and humanity. They deserve what media coverage they're getting, because homophobic bullying in American schools is an epidemic that has lethal consequences.

While the so-called and extremely erroneously defined "family values" wingnut groups like Focus on the Family and the American Family Association constantly oppose every effort to address homophobic bullying, pulling all sorts of bullshit out of their ass to explain why they are perfectly content to let innocent children die as long as "the homuh-seckshuals" don't get a foothold in schools, these suicides should be a wake-up call to anyone with actual morals and compassion that things need to change in the USA. Once again, it deeply disturbs me that I can brag about Canada's superiority to the USA in yet another area, when our countries should be on par.

As a Canadian, I'm proud that Canada is light years ahead of the States in regard to things like same-sex marriage, gays in the military, equality under the law, and anti-bullying programs in our schools. Things that, to a rational, thinking fair-minded society should be no-brainers. As someone with family and dearly beloved friends in the USA, I'm ashamed of just how far ahead of you my country is.

And while I know a lot of you are going to be seriously pissed off at me for what I'm going to say next, it's the truth, and it bloody well needs to be addressed.

There's one more way that Canada trumps the USA, and it's the one that sickens me the most. Our GLBT groups and our media actually acknowledge the T equally, with fairness and equal standing. When a trans woman is murdered here it makes the news, and the victim is almost never ungendered in said reports, because our media follows the trans guidelines in the AP style book, and our GLBT organizations stand up for the T. Gay men, lesbian women, and straight folks of all kinds came out in proud support of trans women during the Lu's Pharmacy debacle. Trans people are protected under national law, and trans surgeries are for the most part covered in Canada.

Why am I bringing this up because of gay teen suicides in the USA? Because the suicide getting the most coverage is the one that deserves it the least, and all the massive coverage it's getting is repulsively shameful when compared to the almost non-existant coverage of the murder of a trans woman of colour that happened less than 30 miles away only two weeks before.

Seth Walsh, Asher Brown and Billy Lucas were children. They were constantly harassed, occasionally assaulted, and no one was helping them. They felt trapped and alone and lost, and they were desperate to escape. They deserve the media coverage, their deaths are tradgedies, part of an epidemic of bullying.

Victoria Carmen White was a post-op trans woman of colour, young, vibrant, attending college, and living her life. The ONLY local news report that addressed her murder did so thusly;

"Sept. 13, 2010

Newark – On Sunday, Sept. 12 at approximately 5 a.m. Victoria Carmen White, 28, of Newark was fatally shot at a private residence located at 159 Jacoby Street in Maplewood. Information released immediately following the shooting identified the victim as James White.

The victim’s legal name is Victoria Carmen White. Following an examination by the Medical Examiner and further investigation, it has been confirmed that the victim was a post-operative transgender female having undergone sex reassignment surgery. The victim’s birth certificate was legally changed to identify her as Victoria Carmen White.

The case is under active investigation. No other information is currently available."

Post-op, full legal documentation, and STILL the police and the media felt a need to ungender her post-mortum. And this is the ONLY media coverage she's gotten at all not counting a few dedicated bloggers like TransGriot and Questioning Transphobia who've tried to give her a voice in death. Like the three young boys, she too deserves massive media coverage that she's not getting anywhere, to bring to light another epidemic in this country.

Which brings me to Tyler Clementi, and the part that will likely piss people off but is nontheless true.

I feel genuinely sad for his family for their loss. And it does sadden me that another gay man is dead because straight people were idiots. But all available reports, accounts, and evidence shows that Tyler wasn't routinely bullied or harassed like the kids were. He was never relentlessly abused, or made to feel worthless by all his peers while school officials sat on their hands. Tyler Clementi had low self-esteem because his parents were reportedly deeply Catholic, and likely he himself felt conflicted about his sexuality, but the facts are he wasn't routinely bullied or harassed like the kids were.

Tyler was simply the victim of an admittedly cruel and tasteless prank, not of constant homophobic bullying. Tyler was an adult, not a child. Tyler was not trapped in a hopeless ceaseless cycle of abuse, he was embarassed by a video that invaded his privacy. And all evidence suggests Tyler killed himself because he was embarassed at being on public display.

And media across the country is harping on him as if he was the next Matthew Shepard. Gay Rights groups like HRC are loudly publicly demanding his roommate be charged with manslaughter because the video drove him to suicide. They are pushing his story past the three kids now. In most stories currently Tyler is the focal point of discussing the teen gay suicide/homophobic bullying epidemic, and Billy, Asher and Seth end up as footnotes and afterthoughts, mentioned mostly to show there were more than one suicide, while the authors focus on Tyler.

And Victoria? They don't mention her at all. Joe Solmonese isn't loudly calling for her killer to be brought to justice. GLBT groups aren't crying out for more attention to be paid to trans murders. While gay groups demand blood for Tyler, who made a stupid choice because someone embarassed him with a cruel prank, (which at best is worthy of a mischief charge under the law and doesn't qualify for manslaughter, or even criminally negligent homicide), no one is demanding Victoria's killer be found except a few angry bloogers.

An actual murderer is running around free and anonymous with a police force under absolutely NO pressure from ANYONE to track him down and arrest him, but a dead gay white man overreacts to being embarassed and people are calling for blood from an idiot douchebag who played a really stupid prank, who certainly deserves to be expelled from college but is NOT a murderer.

I'm sorry, but the truth is, the biggest tradgedy here is the subtle racism, trans-phobia and complete trans-erasure that has not only relegated three children's deaths to the background to focus on an adult white gay man who made a stupid choice while being nowhere near as beleagred as the three children were, but a black trans woman's murder goes ignored and forgotten completely because hey! A gay white man killed himself because a douchebag broadcast his sex life! That's way more important than some black tranny being FUCKING SHOT TO DEATH IN HER OWN FUCKING HOME!!!!!

Priorities. Canada has them. You folks don't. Give Tyler a rest. Put the focus back on Seth, Asher and Billy. And give Victoria the respect she deserves. Talk about HER death.

And people wonder why Trans folk don't trust white gay men when they want our money and swear they won't throw us under the bus again like they did with ENDA. Fuck you HRC. You don't give a shit about us.

Hat-tip to Gemma Catherine Seymour, as I'd never heard of Victoria's case until someone linked to her blog.

A Simple and Unerring Fact

People in the Religious Right involved actively in the fight to prevent true full gay equality, (with the obvious exception of the Fred Phelps mutations), love to swear up and down that they don't hate gay folks. They love us and want us to be happy, and anyone claiming that they're being hateful bigots is just a big meanie persecuting their religious beliefs who doesn't understand their motivation.

I'm sure a lot of them are actually delusional enough to honestly believe this bullshit. Reverand Dave Mapes, who has been dirtying my blog with comments to that effect rather than just answer some simple honest questions, is a perfect example. While actively tweeting anti-gay messages on Twitter every day, (such as the oh so charming "@revdavesmapes #iaintafraidtosay that homosexual marriage is wrong! :D"), and actively preaching to his congregation that gay equality must be fought tooth and nail, repeatedly reassures me he loves me and just wants what's best for me.

Of course to him what's "best" for me is for me to convert to Christianity, divorce my wife, stop daring to question the Bible and live life only according to Bible Principles. This desire on his part blatantly proves his selfish hypocrisy and complete lack of any sense of reality. Why?

Because I'm a lesbian. To convert to HIS version of Christianity, which is certainly very far from being very Christian, I would have to deny myself. And I'm not talking about denying myself lesbian sex, I barely have a sex drive to begin with. No I mean LITERALLY denying MYSELF.

To do what he asks of me would destroy me. First of all, becoming a Christian as HE sees it means divorcing Fran. I would be shunning the woman who takes care of me when I'm sick, comforts me when I'm sad, kisses me when and happy, and gives my life a sense of fulfillment and completeness I never had before. I would be surrendering peace, joy, contentment, happiness and love for the illusion of all those things under God that would foirever feel empty. Despite his belief that ONLY by giving myself over to God and Christ could I ever feel any of those things, he is in fact asking me to give those very things up for a faith I have no faith in.

Secondly, he'd probably expect me to be a good Christian woman and find a husband. Except I'm a lesbian through and through. I've TRIED to have relationships with men in the past and it never worked. I'm sure he would say it was because I'd already made up my mind to "rebel against God" and not give any man a fair chance, but that's simply not the case. I had a male love for over a year that I tried my damnedest to love. He was a good man too. He was kind, gentle, affectionate without being overbearing. He respected my thoughts and feelings and always supported me. And I loved him dearly as a friend. I WANTED to love him more. I was still in denail of a lot of things about myself at the time and I DESPERATELY wanted to be a normal healthy heterosexual woman. I didn't want to be a lesbian, I was terrified of it.

But I just never felt anything romantic for him, or any other man. Because I AM a lesbian. And yes Reverand, I very much WAS born wired that way. Any religious person insisting Gay is a choice is frankly an idiot. Just look at the Uganda Homosexual Death Bill. NO ONE would ever CHOOSE to be gay in this hateful violent world. Rebelling isn't about getting murdered. A kid getting his ear pierced, THAT'S rebelling. A gay person accepting who they truly are and escaping the cycle of self-loathing that comes with denial is not rebellion. It's HONESTY. To convert as Mapes wishes me to would be tantamount to agreeing to spend the rest of my life lying to my friends, family, God, and myself. Reverand Mapes is asking me to become a liar.

Thirdly, since he has made it abundantly clear that in his version of Christianity, (in spite of the fact he blatantly picks and chooses which Bible passages he'll obey while ignoring any rules that would bite him in the ass), the Bible is the infallible unerring word of God. It is NEVER to be questioned and, given his refusal to answer simple honest questions about what the Bible says, apparently neither is he. I'd bet good money any kids who ask uncomfortable questions of him in his flock such as I have asked him are probably told with a smiling face and a cheerful voice that they'll burn in hell if they ever repeat those questions. I'm sure he'd deny this, but I also doubt he'd allow me to ask any children in his flock if such things have happened.

The problem is that I'm by nature a very curious inquisitive girl. I like knowing the reasons of things. I could never be happy in a religion that outright REQUIRES me to bite my tongue. So once again, the Reverand's idea of what's "best" for me involves asking me to lie and be unhappy.

The Reverand could give a flying fuck about what's best for ME, or for any other gay person. He doesn't care in the slightest about what's best for us. He wants what's best for HIM. He clearly hates homosexuality regardless of his protestations to the contrary. You don't actively fight AGAINST something you love. No, he hates homosexuality. And not because the Bible tells him to. I've already proven repeatedly in other blog posts that the parts of the Bible used to justify anti-gay beliefs are NOT about homosexuality and must be intionally misinterpreted to make them so.

No, judging by his own words and behavior, Mapes is uncomfortable with gayness. It bothers him. When he pictures gay people he probably thinks only of our disgusting unnatural sex lives and never thinks of anything else about us, just like all (not a) Christian bullies. We're all more than just the sex we have. My wife and I have sex MAYBE once a month, and rarely longer than a half hour. The rest of the time we're being just like everyone else. We talk, we do stuff, we clean the house, we pay the bills, we watch TV. But bullies like Mapes never think about any of that, because to do so would be to acknowledge that how we love is the ONLY real difference between gays and straight. And when you admit that we're pretty much no different than you are except for what we do in the privacy of our bedrooms, it becomes harder to personally justify fighting against gay equality. That's why Porn Peter LaBarbera and his ilk actually encourage their sheep to talk about "the grossness" of gay sex as much as possible to make sex what people think about when thinking of gay people. The hatemongers do NOT want you thinking of us as normal boring everyday people with jobs and hobbies and likers and dislikes, they want you to think of us SOLELY as sex fiends with absolutely no other facets to us.

So basically, what David is asking of me is selfish and cruel. To make HIM feel comfortable, so HE doesn't have to think about sinful lesbian sex, he would have me agree to be a miserable unhappy self-loathing liar. And he would tell himself I was happy and at peace because I accepted his version of God, and would never think about MY feelings at all. He would have me suffer to make himself feel better and would tell me it's God's will. And I refuse to believe it is God's will that I lie and be miserable to make small minded people feel better.

And that leads me to the titular simple unerring fact of which this blog is about.

Religion IS very much a choice. Even Judaism. Isreali is a race, Jewish is a religion. Irish is a race, Catholocism is a religion. Iraqi is a race, Islam is a religion. And while SO many people ARE born into a religion, by virtue of their parents' faith, and often forced to accept that faith as their own according to parents' wishes, religion is not innate, or unalterable. This is an inarguable fact. Every single day, hundreds of people who WERE Christian reject Christianity. Some become Aethiests, some convert to a different religion that felt right to them in ways Christianity didn't. Some people who never WERE Christians BECOME Christians because they find something in the faith that speaks to them deeply. Some Christians convert to Islam. Some Muslims convert to Judaism. Some Jews even convert to Wicca. Religion BECOMES about who you are and what you believe, but it is NOT innate.

Homosexuality, like race, IS however, innate. Contrary to the ever popular (and repeatedly refuted) distortions by Religious Right groups, science HAS in fact proven that gay or straight is wired into the brain. Yes, the Family Research Council will tell you no such study exists and that more studies prove the opposite, but it's been repeatedly proven that the studies that prove Gay is a choice are either the studies of Paul Cameron whose work has been repeatedly discredited and proven to be falsified, or distortions of legitimate studies wherein the actual authors of those studies have publicly denounced the religious Right's intentional misrepresentation of them.

For example, a study showed that lesbian are more prone to alcoholism because the pressure and hatred they get from anti-gay bias and religion based bullying drives them to seek coping tools. In the hands of the Right, that study becomes "Lesbians are more likely to be alcoholics". A blatant distortion that works because the people the Right tells these lies to are easily frightened gullible people who rarely if ever look up the relevant information themselves and instead just take these "respectable Christian folks" telling the lies at face value.

So no matter that we all know Reverand Mapes would insist I chose to be a lesbian and that God would NEVER make me one intentionally, we know he's lying.

So the Simple And Unerring Fact of which this blog is about is simply thus;

You CANNOT devote time, money and energy to telling someone that who they are is evil and wrong and not be a hatemonger.

You CANNOT devote time money and energy to actively fighting to keep an entire group of people second=class and subhuman under the law solely because you don't like something about them they cannot change and NOT be a bigot.

YOU CANNOT EVER tell someone you love them and want what's best for them and then treat them as inferior and fight actively to PREVENT what is best for them.

THAT is an unerring fact.

Reverend Mapes, you ARE a bigot because you teach that my life is evil and wrong. You ARE a bully because you try to pressure, force and coerce me into accepting an unhappy life for YOUR comfort. You ARE a hatemonger because you call upon your flock to fight against equality. And you very much ARE committing evil by preaching these things, and BY preaching them you very much ARE being homophobic.

Because it has been inarguably proven that anti-gay preaching directly leads to violence and abuse against gay people. Gay teenagers commit suicide because of anti-gay bullying encouraged by homophobic preaching. Gay folks get beaten up and murdered by people who were taught that being gay is evil in God's eyes. In South Africa 1 in 4 men has admitted proudly to having committed what they're calling "Corrective rape", wherein they RAPE LESBIANS to make them straight, because it's what people like you have taught them God wants. And you can try to protest "But I never told anyone to go out and rape lesbians", and still be guilty, because these men are doing this deplorable thing only because their religious leaders, such as you, tell them God is angered by gayness and wants it stamped out, and these men decide that if God hates gayness then it must be okay with him to hurt gay people. And so no matter how you try to rationalize it, THERE IS BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS.

Of course you'll deny all of this, ignore any Biblical proof I might offer you that backs me up while weakening your position, and probably continue to insist on praying for me without my consent, which is frankly spiritual rape in my opinion, and never once will you actually have the spine to directly address any of this honestly. And that above all else is what proves that you are wrong. You don't even have enough faith in your own God to address the hard questions. You disrespect Jesus by praying for me because I challenge your viewpoint, and lie by claiming it's because I'm unfairly attacking you.

For an attack to be unfair it has to lack any basis in truth or fact. And I have offered ONLY truth and fact, both of which you're desperate to ignore. An honest man with moral courage and integrity addresses even the hard questions honestly. A coward does everything in his power to dodge them. And Reverend Mapes has dodged them repeatedly. He makes up tired excuses. He tries to dictate terms that would limit his responses only to what he's comfortable with. He demands I verbally handcuff myself by blindly accepting his argument as God's Word so that he can answer only according to how he interprets that word.

To clarify the cowardice and absurdity of this behavior, that would be like asking Tom Cruise to answer hard questions about Scientology, and Cruise telling you he'll agree to answer your questions BUT ONLY if you first agree to not bring up the lifetime of documented lies L. Ron Hubbard or ever bringing up the people Scientology has murdered or addressing the various and ever increasing fees required to advance through the ranks. If you wanted an honest conversation about Scientology, you'd refuse those ridiculous terms because it would tie your hands by limiting you to questions Mr. Cruise was comfortable answering, questions that didn't challenge his faith.

This is what Reverend Mapes and all hatemongering bullies like him do. They try to bully and cajole anyone asking the hard questions into agreeing to a ridiculously limiting framework for the discussion. That way Mapes only has to give me cookie-cutter answers that affirm and support his glorious faith, and never has to address the hard questions, because he knows he can't give me an honest answer without being forced to admit he doesn't HAVE all the answers, and that the Bible can be wrong. And if he admits to either of these things he loses his ability to co-opt God to justify his bigotry and then he'd have to just come right out and be honest; He doesn't like gay people and wants us to go away or stop being gay. If he's forced by cold hard truth to admit that his excuse for his homophobia doesn't stand up to scrutiny, he'll loses followers, and with the flock dwindling because his lies are laid bare, he loses their donations, and he loses the fight against us.

Here's an example; He still swears the Bible, even the Old Testament, is God's unerring word and MUST be obeyed, but he has yet to address or acknowledge that he willfully diobeys some Old Testament rules. And he will continue to try and distract me from this point by goading me about how he is praying for my eternal soul, because if he actually faces the question and admits that yes, he DOES in fact disobey Bible rulings that would demand he be stoned to death for some of his actions, then he has to acknowledge that Bible passages that order a death sentence for things as harmless as wearing mixed fabrics or working on Sunday are wrong and deplorable and have no place in the modern world. And if he admits to that, then he CANNOT continue to demand that people accept that homosexuality is evil and wrong just because he THINKS the Bible says it is.

And with his whole justification for his hatred gone up in smoke, he cannot claim he is simply acting on God's will anymore. He can't claim he loves Gays but just hates their sin. And he cannot lie and trick gullible people into supporting his bigotry and intolerance.

And that is why I know I will NEVER get a straight honest answer from Mapes, or any other hatemonger. They NEED the lies to thrives, and answering the tough questions honestly would knock down their pretty looking but ultimately still flimsy house of cards.

The Religious Right is in the business of lying. Reverand Mapes IS a liar. And every single time he replies to me in which he bellows about praying God will force me to convert and stop asking questions while refusing to ever ANSWER them just further proves that I am exactly right about him.

And I will NEVER consent to become an unhappy liar to make a bigger liar comfortable.

PS - As I ask all of the Religious Right Bigots I come across, I'll ask Mapes right now; How many homeless American children could you have fed and clothed with all the money you've spent fighting against equality?

I've asked 592 religious bigots that question, icluding folks from Concerned Women For America, The American Family Association, the Family Research Council and more.

To this day, NOT ONE SINGLE ONE OF THEM has EVER even ACKNOWLEDGED that question, let alone tried to answer it.

And I doubt Mapes will be the first to break the trend.

After all, admitting you let children starve in your country so you can keep them nasty gay folks from having equal rights isn't exactly good press for someone pretending to be righteous.