<div class="idc-message" id="idc-comment-msg-div-361987695"><a class="idc-close" title="Click to Close Message" href="javascript: IDC.ui.close_message(361987695)"><span>Close Message</span> Comment posted. <p class="idc-nomargin"><a class="idc-share-facebook" target="_new" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fthenewcivilrightsmovement.com%2Fcan-we-trust-christians-a-question-for-lgbt-people-and-straight-allies%2Fpolitics%2F2012%2F05%2F16%2F39558#IDComment361987695&t=I%20just%20commented%20on%20Can%20We%20Trust%20Christians%3F%20A%20Question%20For%20LGBT%20People%20And%20Straight%20Allies%20%7C%20The%20New%20Civil%20Rights%20Movement" style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="idc-share-inner"><span>Share on Facebook</span></span> or <a href="javascript: IDC.ui.close_message(361987695)">Close MessageI seem to be missing something from this piece... specifically, the answer to the question Joseph poses.

My first problem: "Can We Trust Christians" implies the person asking is not a member of the group they refer to - the "we" mentioned (implicitly, the queer community & it's supporters who are not Christians). From the article, it seems Joseph identifies as Christian. This is, shall I say, a problematic angle for asking that question... as it implies the answer "of course you can! They're people like me!"

Even if we gloss over that point, I contend the question posed is not actually answered in the article. There's mentions of how an inclusive attitude to LGBTQ-supporting Christians helps *them* - but it presupposes this is not just preferable but "necessary to win full LGBT equality", which strikes me as presumptuous. It also doesn't actually address why we can (or should) trust *them*.

At best, the message from the article implies that *some* Christians can be considered as supportive to that cause - it certainly offers no proof that those who identify as Christian are more (or less) trustworthy in this matter.

My own take on the situation (as a person raised Christian who has not been for the Jesus-man for nearly forty years, and has been queer or queer-supporting for all that time) is that *some people can be trusted, to some degree*, depending on circumstance. Their religious identifier is not actually a factor in how trustworthy they are... either as a positive or negative influence.

I certainly do not reject someone as a possible ally due to their faith. I *do*, however, hold those whose faith (whatever it may be) has a continuing history of social control and manipulation in support of opposition to queer rights to a high standard of truth and honour - they have to "prove in" for trust to happen. Considering the history of Christian interaction towards heresy and difference, I do not think this unreasonable.

And 'The Invisibles' (Vertigo)

Let us not forget that Tarot is the comic which once had the immortal line:
"Your vagina is haunted!"
A critical look at this... work here; http://www.the-isb.com/?p=980

Other good places to keep tabs on these... people (& other Dominionist xtians) are:

the long-running Dark Christianity LJ group (and its associated wiki);
http://community.livejournal.com/dark_christian/

and for deep background, there's nothing better than the work of Dogemperor - who is a walkaway (ex-congregation member) and is ruthless in tracking down their influence and revealing them for what they are;
http://dogemperor.dailykos.com/

Do not underestimate such Dominionist groups as 'fringe' - for all the idiocies of their cheap-oil-and-weak-curse-flinging troops, their officer class are smart, networked and tenacious. Their strategy of 'steeplejacking' previously moderate churches is highly successful (not only in the US - the well-known Alpha Course has been 'jacking UK churches for years). And they truly want anyone outside their faith converted or dead.

And, speaking as a worshipper of exactly the godform they hate/fear most, there are no zealots I despise more.

Well, summer *is* icumin in...

I vote for a Shelia-na-gig!

Siegfreid... I take it you did not read the link I gave above to Adrian Bott's piece? Well, to make things simpler, here is the part on Bede:

"The total sum of available information about Eostre amounts to two lines of text.

The Venerable Bede, in his De Temporum Ratione ("On the Reckoning of Time"), explains the naming of the Easter festival as follows:

Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated "Paschal month", and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.

And that is all there is. There is no hare connection, no suggestion of a bunny story, no link to eggs. Bede's passage is the only evidence we have that there ever was a goddess called Eostre; worse still, he may even have been making it up. Doctor Elizabeth Freeman of the University of Tasmania asserts exactly that, adding that 'Bede was extremely influential and his view has survived until the last 50 years when scholarship developed to the level it could show he was wrong'. Such a fabrication would, allegedly, not have been unknown; some academics propose that Bede made up quite a lot of material, or included his own supposition as fact. Perhaps significantly, Bede also assets that 'Hrethmonath', corresponding to March, was named after a Goddess Hretha, who seems to have been every bit as obscure as Eostre; she, too, is unknown outside his writings."

This does not support your thesis, I feel. And there are plenty of reasons to doubt the 'authenticity' of which you speak. Unless you've unearthed works of Bede otherwise thought lost, or have some other primary information source which carries your case which you have neglected to name... you're just following along with the standard myth and picking fights with those who know better as regards its historical authenticity. I think in this area, as so many others, you will find Hutton quite "muscular"...

One of the best summations of the pagan Easter mythologizing is by writer Adrian Bott, who's been raising this point for years:
http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/502368.html
And the whole Santa Muerte thing... somehow I don't think destroying the shrines to the loa of Death is a terribly smart move.

Why not use Snoo Wilson's work? Both his play and novel were well researched and from a perspective that saw most of the facets of this complicated man.

Or adapt RA Wilson's 'Masks of the Illuminati', getting Einstein and Joyce in there too?

Or, you know, have the director actually correct his lack of knowledge of Uncle Fester before he decides to make the frakking movie?