For anyone wondering where the republican anti-civil rights don’t say gay / anti-woke / banning drag laws are going, here is your answer. The goal of these people in the US is to undo Lawrence v. Texas. That was the court case that got rid of anti-sodomy laws. For those that don’t understand, yes sodomy also means anal sex. Some times can mean oral sex, but in this case it doesn’t matter. It also doesn’t matter that cis couples (opposite sex / gender) couples also enjoy blow jobs, Cunnilingus, and anal sex. This law was only enforced when the authorities thought it was two or more men. Regardless of if it was in private such as the case I cited which was two men in the privacy of one of the men’s own home in their own bedroom which when cops burst into their home violently they found the men in the bedroom in disarray. Because a religious conservative neighbor called in a report to police. He did not feel two men should have the right to do in their home something both men were consenting to and did not harm anyone. Seems to me they were lucky, as today the police would have been met by gunfire.
This is the goal of the Christian republican right, to make being LGBTQ+ illegal. They have been following the Russian model of making anything that looks like or shows support for gays (LGBTQ+) illegal so that the entire public cis straight. Anything not cis straight is illegal. And yes I am so sick of it. The red states are attacking drag queens, getting away with it because people don’t see the next moves on what they plan next. But I and others are watching what has been happening in other countries that show how this progresses, and we have seen in history how this makes people like me targets.
The question becomes what kind of country under what laws do you want to live in? One where religion rules or one where people have the right to be themselves even if it offends others occasionally. Hugs
Is it now a crime in Russia to have private relations with another adult?
A man in handcuffs holds a Russian and Pride flagPhoto: Shutterstock
Russia has convicted a 40-year-old German teacher of violating the country’s ban on LGBTQ+ “propaganda” for inviting a 25-year-old man to have private, consensual sex behind closed doors in his hotel room. The teacher’s conviction demonstrates how Russia’s recently expanded law is now being used to punish LGBTQ+ people just for existing.
The unnamed teacher had stayed at a hotel in the far-eastern city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, according to the global news site DW. It’s unclear how legal authorities learned about his sexual invitation. The teacher reportedly admitted to his “crime,” was fined approximately $1,880, and will be deported back to his home country via Turkey.
In March, the same law was used to prosecute a young male bi-national couple who are popular content creators on the TikTok video-sharing platform. It’s unclear if the couple was prosecuted for publishing gay-related content online or for some other reason. After their arrest, the couple relocated outside of the country — leaving their homes, jobs, and possessions. The member of the couple, who is a Russian native, has a court date scheduled in Russia on May 11, according to the couple’s Telegram account.
Russian President Vladimir Putin first signed a law banning so-called “gay propaganda” in Russia in June 2013. The law ostensibly sought to “protect children” from any “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relationships,” as stated in the law’s text. The new law extends the restrictions to not just children but Russians of all ages.
The law has mostly been used to silence LGBTQ+ activist organizations, events, websites, and media, as well as to break up families and harass teachers. It has also been roundly condemned by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, the human rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, as well as civil rights activists around the world.
Last December, Putin signed a law expanding the country’s prohibition on LGBTQ+ “propaganda.” The newly signed law effectively outlaws any public expression of LGBTQ+ life in Russia by banning “any action or the spreading of any information that is considered an attempt to promote homosexuality in public, online, or in films, books or advertising,” Reuters reported.
Critics say the updated law will further endanger the lives of Russia’s LGBTQ+ population, which has already suffered increased harassment, violence, and hostility in recent years.
Anti-LGBTQ+ religious leaders and right-wing political figures in the U.S. have praised Putin for his law. Indeed, Republican legislators, so-called “parents’ rights groups,” and right-wing pundits have increasingly moved to ban American kids from accessing any LGBTQ+ content, gender-affirming healthcare, or drag shows over untrue claims that these “sexualize” and “groom” children.
In 2013, Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) President Austin Ruse said Russia’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws were a “good thing” that “most of the people in the United States” would support. In 2014, anti-LGBTQ+ evangelical leader Franklin Graham also defended the law.
These people are mostly religiously driven, and they use fake or misleading information from debunked failed studies to push their hatred. They chose their name to confuse people who mistakenly think they are the highly-regarded American Academy of Pediatrics. They are behind a lot of the misinformation about abortion. One of their main targets right now is trans children. This includes pushing schools to adopt junk science painting transgender youth as carriers of a pathological disorder, one that’s capable of spontaneously causing others–à la the dancing plague–to adopt similar thoughts and behaviors. There is a lot more in the article. How ever since I reloaded my computers the classic editor is not working like it use to allowing me to color in the pages easily. I have to figure out if it is a setting on my security programs or if WordPress changed the editor. Hugs
A Google Drive left public on the American College of Pediatricians’ website exposed detailed financial records, sensitive member details, and more.
PHOTOGRAPH: ROHANEH/GETTY IMAGES
A DOCTORS’ ORGANIZATION at the center of the ongoing legal fight over the abortion drug mifepristone has suffered a significant data breach. A link to an unsecured Google Drive published on the group’s website pointed users last week to a large cache of sensitive documents, including financial and tax records, membership rolls, and email exchanges spanning over a decade. The more than 10,000 documents lay bare the outsize influence of a small conservative organization working to lend a veneer of medical science to evangelical beliefs on parenting, sex, procreation, and gender.
The leaked records, first reported by WIRED, offer an unprecedented look at the groups and personnel central to that campaign. They also describe an organization that has benefited greatly by exaggerating its own power, even as it has struggled quietly for two decades to grow in size and gain respect. The records show how the College, which the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) describes as a hate group, managed to introduce fringe beliefs into the mainstream simply by being, as the founder of Fox News once put it, “the loudest voice in the room.”
The Leak
A WIRED review of the exposed data found that the unsecured Google Drive stored nearly 10,000 files, some of which are compressed zip files containing additional documents. These records detail highly sensitive internal information about the College’s donors and taxes, social security numbers of board members, staff resignation letters, budgetary and fundraising concerns, and the usernames and passwords of more than 100 online accounts. The files include Powerpoint presentations, Quickbooks accounting documents, and at least 388 spreadsheets.
One spreadsheet appears to be an export of an internal database containing information on 1,200 past and current members. It contains intimate personal information about each member, including various contact details, as well as where they were educated, how they heard of the group, and when membership dues were paid. The records show past and current members are mostly male and, on average, over 50 years old. As of spring 2022, the College counted slightly more than 700 members, according to another document reviewed by WIRED.
Data visualization: DataWrapper
The breach exposes some material dating back to the group’s origin. It includes mailing lists gathered by the group of thousands of “conservative physicians” across the country. (One document outlining recruitment efforts states in bold, red letters: “TARGET CHRISTIAN MDs.”) The ongoing recruitment of doctors and medical school students seen as holding Christian views has long been its top priority. The leaked records indicate that more than 10,000 mailers were sent to physicians between 2013 and 2017 alone.
While the group’s membership rolls are not public, the leak has outed most if not all of its members. A cursory review of the member lists surfaced one name of note: a recent commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, who after joining in 2019 asked that his membership with the group remain a secret. (WIRED was unable to reach the official for comment in time for publication.)
The SPLC’s “hate group” designation, which the College forcefully disputes, haunted its fundraising efforts, records reveal. A barrage of emails in 2014 show that the label cost the group the chance to benefit from an Amazon program that would eventually distribute $450 million to charities across the globe. Amazon would deny the College’s application, stating that it relied on the SPLC to determine which charities fall into certain ineligible categories.
A strategy document would later refer to a “unified plan” among the College and its allies to “continue discrediting the SPLC,” which included a campaign aimed at lowering its rating at Charity Navigator, one of the web’s most influential nonprofit evaluators. One of the group’s admins noted that despite SPLC’s label, another charity monitor, GuideStar, listed the College as being in “good standing.”
The College’s GuideStar page no longer says this and appears to have been defaced. It now reads, “AMERICAN COLLEGE OF doodoo fartheads,” with a mission statement saying: “we are evil and hate gays :(((”
The Google Drive containing the documents was taken offline soon after WIRED contacted the American College of Pediatricians. The College did not respond to a request for comment.
The Talk
Leaked communications between members of the group and minutes taken at board meetings over the course of several years speak loudly about the challenges the group faced in pursuing its deeply unpopular agenda: returning America to a time when the laws and social mores around family squared neatly with evangelical Christian beliefs.
Many of the College’s most radical views target transgender people, and in particular, transgender youth. The leak, which had been indexed by Google, includes volumes of literature crafted specifically to influence relationships between practicing pediatricians, parents, and their children. It includes reams of marketing material the College aims to distribute widely among public school officials. This includes pushing schools to adopt junk science painting transgender youth as carriers of a pathological disorder, one that’s capable of spontaneously causing others–à la the dancing plague–to adopt similar thoughts and behaviors.
This is one of the group’s most dubious claims. While unsupported by medical science, it is routinely and incuriously propagated through literature targeted at schools and medical offices around the US. The primary source for this claim is a research paper drafted in 2017 by Lisa Littman, a Brown University scholar who, while a medical doctor, was not specialized in mental health. The goal of the paper was to introduce, conceptually, “rapid onset gender dysphoria”—a hypothetical disorder, as was later clarified by the journal that published it. Littman would also clarify personally that her research “does not validate the phenomenon” she’d hypothesized, since no clinicians, nor individuals identifying as trans, had participated in the study.
The paper explains that its subjects were instead all parents who had been recruited from a handful of websites known for opposing gender-affirmative care and “telling parents not to believe their child is transgender.” A review of one of the sites from the period shows parents congregating to foster paranoia about whether there’s a “conspiracy of silence” around “anime culture” brainwashing boys into behaving like girls; insights plucked in some cases straight from another, more insidious forum (widely known for reveling in the suicides of the people it has bullied).
A 2021 prospectus describing the group’s focus, ideology, and lobbying efforts encapsulates a wide range of “educational resources” destined for the inboxes of physicians and medical school students. The materials include links to a website instructing doctors on how to speak to children in a variety of scenarios about a multitude of topics surrounding sex, including in the absence of their parents. Practice scripts of conversations between doctors and patients advise, among other things, ways to elicit a child’s thoughts on sex with the help of an imaginative metaphor.
While the material is not expressly religious, it is clearly aimed at painting same-sex marriage as aberrant and immoral behavior. Physicians lobbied by the group are also told to urge patients to purchase Christian-based parenting guides, including one designed to help parents broach the topic of sex with their 11- and 12-year-old kids. The College suggests telling parents to plan a “special overnight trip,” a pretext for instilling in their children sexual norms in line with evangelical practice. The group suggests telling parents to buy a tool called a “getaway kit,” a series of workbooks that run around $54 online. The workbooks methodically walk the parents through the process of springing the topic, but only after a day-long charade of impromptu gift-giving and play.
These books are full of games and puzzles for the parent and child to cooperatively take on. Throughout the process, the child slowly digests a concept of “sexual purity,” lessons aided by oversimplified scripture and well-trodden Bible school parables.
Another document the group shared with its members contains a script for appointments with pregnant minors. Its purpose is made evidently clear: The advice is engineered specifically to reduce the odds of minors coming into contact with medical professionals not strictly opposed to abortion. A practice script recommends the doctor inform the minor that they “strongly recommend against” abortion, adding “the procedure not only kills the infant you carry, but is also a danger to you.” (Medically, the term “fetus” and “infant” are not interchangeable, the latter referring to a newborn baby less than one year old.)
The doctors are urged to recommend that the minor visit a website that, like others shared with patients, is not expressly religious but will only direct visitors to Catholic-run “crisis pregnancy centers,” which strictly reject abortion. The same site is widely promoted by anti-abortion groups such as National Right to Life, which last year held that it should be illegal to terminate the pregnancy of a 10-year-old rape victim.
The Professionals
The effort to ban mifepristone, which the Supreme Court paused last month pending further review, faces significant legal hurdles but could ultimately benefit from the appellate court’s disproportionately conservative makeup. Most of the legal power in the fight was supplied by a much older and better funded group, the Alliance Defending Freedom, which has established ties to some of the country’s most politically elite—former vice president Mike Pence and Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett among them.
A contract in the leaked documents dated April 2021 shows the ADF agreeing to legally represent the College free of charge. It stipulates that ADF’s ability to subsidize expenses incurred during lawsuits would be limited by ethical guidelines; however, it could still forgive any lingering costs simply by declaring the College “indigent.”
In contrast to the College’s some 700 members, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)–the organization from which the College’s founders split 20 years ago–has roughly 67,000. The rupture between the two groups was a direct result of a statement issued by the AAP in 2002. Modern research, the AAP said, had conclusively shown that the sexual orientation of parents had an imperceptible impact on the well-being of children, so long as they were raised in caring, supportive families.
Data visualization: DataWrapper
The College would gain notoriety early on by assailing the positions of the AAP. In 2005, a Boston Globe reporter noted how common it had become for the American College of Pediatricians “to be quoted as a counterpoint” to anything the AAP said. The institution had a rather “august-sounding name,” he wrote, for being run by a “single employee.”
Internal documents show that the group’s directors quickly encountered hurdles operating on the fringe of accepted science. Some claimed to be oppressed. Most of the College’s research had been “written by one person,” according to minutes from a 2006 meeting, which were included in the leak. The College was failing to make a splash. In the future, one director suggested, papers rejected by medical journals “should be published on the web.” The vote to do so was unanimous (though the board decided the term “not published” was nicer than “rejected”).
A second director put forth a motion to create a separate “scientific section” on the group’s website, strictly for linking to articles published in medical journals. The motion was quashed after it dawned on the board that they didn’t “have enough articles” to make the page “look professional.”
The College struggled to identify the root cause of its runtedness. “To get enough clout,” one director said, “it would take substantial numbers, maybe 10,000.” (The College’s recruitment efforts would yield fewer than 7 percent of this goal in the following 17 years.) Yet another said the marketing department advised that “the College needs to pick a fight with the AAP and get on Larry King Live.” Another board member, the notes say, felt the organization was too busy trying to “walk the fence” by neglecting to acknowledge that “we are conservative and religious.”
WTF is happening in the US? This idea of the US being founded as a Christian Nation is a complete fiction, yet there are so many republican governors and legislators pushing it. When did the bible become more important than the constitution? I remember that shit being push on James when he was a teen and he is now 3o years old. We have a serious problem that generations since the 1980s have grown up being taught this fiction as fact. This was done through homeschooling and church schools. This fiction was / is promoted by churches to increase their political power and the income from adding more asses in pews. I have to tell you this drive to turn the US into a theocracy is terrifying to me and should be to others. We have seen it happen in other countries where a fundamentalist religion get governmental power, and they use it to wipe out personal freedoms in order to establish a religious doctrine enforced by the power of the state. Look at Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Afghanistan. Those restrictive laws entrench the political power and funds of the religious leaders but restrict any kind of growth or advancement for the public. I can not imagine how devastating it would be for the US people to be forced to live according to the dictates of people who think morals and science was at its peak 2,500 years ago. Hugs
“Oklahomans, we have a clear choice in front of us. When it comes to our schools, do we want the radical ideology in our classroom that pushes gender theory? That pushes graphic pornography in order to push a social experiment on our kids?
“Or do want the US Constitution? Do we want documents like the Federalist Papers and the bible? So that our kids understand our history and how our government was put together?
“Those core fundamental principles have made us the greatest country in the history of the world. Real Americans know that we’ve got to support our kids by giving them a great understanding of our history.
“Radical leftists and Biden administration, they would prefer to sexualize our kids.” – Oklahoma superintendent of public schools Ryan Walters.
Walters, who was appointed state secretary of education by Christianist Gov. Kevin Stitt in 2020, faced calls to resign in 2022 after it was revealed that a Koch-funded group that advocates for privatizing public schools was paying him $120,000/year.
Stitt rejected calls for Walters’ resignation and attempted to reappoint him again earlier this year, but the state Senate refused to allow him to hold the elected superintendent and appointed secretary of education posts at the same time.
Walters last appeared on JMG in October 2022 when he called for reeducating all teachers with “Christian patriotic history” in a program operated by Michigan’s far-right Hillsdale College.
OK Superintendent of Schools says the Biden Admin is pushing graphic pornography and gender theory in schools to sexualize our kids, but he says students should be taught from important historical documents like the Bible. pic.twitter.com/fxum2wn3xx
Oklahomans, we have a clear choice in front of us. When it comes to our schools, do we want the radical ideology in our classroom that pushes gender theory? That pushes graphic pornography in order to push a social experiment on our kids?
Are people so stupid that they think teachers are hauling out their Honcho magazines into the classroom? That’s what Sunday school is for.
That’s what gets me. People eat this crap up with absolutely no proof of any of it. And hey, what happened to the kitty litter in the classrooms issue?
Think of the irrationality of this. This man started shouting obscenities and talking about oral sex in front of kids because he saw a rainbow pin. How exactly is this either protecting kids or rational? He took his self-righteous entitled anger out on store clerks, knowing they would lose their job to fight back against him. Hugs
He shouted about how letting children see rainbows is a form of pedophilia, recording his rant and posting it online.
The employee had enough of this unruly customer so he got securityPhoto: Screenshot
A man is getting roasted online after he had a temper tantrum at a Lego store because some of the employees were wearing rainbow flag pins and then posted it online.
John K. Amanchukwu Sr. – who calls himself a “faith contributor” to the far-right organization Turning Point USA (TP USA) – posted the video in which he asked an employee of a Lego store if “the Lego Group supports” LGBTQ+ people.
The employee called over another who said, “Yes.”
“But the question is,” Amanchukwu asked, “why are you all in here with those pins on? Do you think children care about what man sucks d**k at home? What girl eats vaginas at home?”
“It’s time to leave, man,” the employee responded, probably because there were children present at the store.
Amanchukwu insisted that he wanted an answer and the employee said, “I don’t think they think about that, personally.”
“They think about it when they see your pin!” Amanchukwu responded.
“No they don’t,” the employee said, who then told him to leave again while Amanchukwu said, “That’s called grooming!”
The employee said that he’ll call security and Amanchukwu threatened to tell security “that you’re in here wearing, uh, Pride flags.”
The video then cuts to when a security guard is present and Amanchukwu was still ranting about the pins.
“Most children don’t know!” Amanchukwu said, who then talked about his own kid. “He’s been educated by me. I think it’s grooming, it’s borderline pedophilia and child abuse for these weirdos to come in here and wear that and at the same time kids buy from this store!”
The security guard then told Amanchukwu to leave, and he said that he won’t spend any more money at the Lego store and started shouting to everyone at the store that “this store is intentionally promoting LGBTQ behavior on children!”
Charlie Kirk, the founder of TP USA, then posted the video to Twitter. It does not appear to be on Amanchukwu’s TikTok account anymore.
I can’t wait for the wave of videos of conservatives proudly screaming about sex acts in public any time they see rainbow anything. That’ll really keep the kids safe. https://t.co/WSMrd4Tiwf
People mocked the conservative activists for thinking that shouting about genitalia and sex acts in a Lego store would protect children.
The person yelling “sucking cocks” and “eating vaginas” in a toy store is the person being inappropriate in front of kids. This is simple. The dad is the danger to kids here. I would not want my child (who has two moms) to hear that trash.
It’s very simple. A man and a woman can say they are married and that is not inappropriate. If they talk explicitly about their sex acts in front of kids that is bad. It works exactly the same way when two ladies are married or two men. It is so incredibly easy to understand,
Such feeble-minded, tiresome nonsense. I wouldn’t worry about my kids being around LEGOs. I’d worry about them being around unhinged mooks like this one blathering on about “sucking cock” in toy stores for undeserved social media engagement.
So let me get this straight, a dude walks into a Lego store, starts shouting at workers because they're wearing pride pins, and then starts yelling about sex acts in detail inside a store *for children*, and you're annoyed he was kicked out?
He went into a Lego store and started loudly talking about oral sex clearly looking to just cause a problem and you think it's bad they kicked him out?
Is this the same son who got the minor girl pregnant, and she the great Christian who is against sexual education and calls teachers groomers because they provide safe spaces for gay / trans kids not to be bullied, was proud of her son for doing this. Like she personally had a hand in the selection of the girl and the act to ruin her life and her son’s life also? Stupid uneducated entitled white people …. Hugs
friend of Lauren Boebert‘s eldest son Tyler Boebert has accused the Colorado Republican of covering up details of a car crash caused by the 18-year-old boy, during which the friend, 19-year-old Noble D’Amato, was injured.
D’Amato told the Denver news site Westword that the incident occurred on September 17, 2022, at about 11:30 p.m. According to the 19-year-old, who said he was riding shotgun, the congresswoman’s son was driving his father’s SUV when he flipped into a Garfield County creek bed. At the time, Tyler Boebert was 17.
D’Amato told Westword that he wound up in the hospital with multiple concussions and a severely lacerated hand. “I still have problems with my hand,” he said. “My thumb almost got cut off. It prevented me from getting a welding job because I can’t hold a TIG torch anymore. I’m a personal-care provider now.”
U.S. Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) (C) listens alongside members of the House Freedom Caucus during a news conference on the debt limit at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on March 22, 2023. A friend of Boebert’s son Tyler has accused the family of trying to hide a car crash caused by the then-17-year-old boy.STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
After the incident, D’Amato was charged with drug offenses after Colorado State Police said they found he was carrying unprescribed Xanax pills and a marijuana grinder, together with a small amount of marijuana. Officers said D’Amato admitted to taking “a bar”—Xanax—earlier in the evening of the accident, while the 19-year-old insisted Tyler Boebert was sober.
Meanwhile, Tyler Boebert was reportedly issued a “careless driving causing bodily injury” ticket and was summoned to appear in court. But prosecutors in Glenwood Springs later dropped the boy’s case, downgrading it to “a defective vehicle for headlights” ticket following the acceptance of a plea deal, according to the Garfield County Court Clerk’s Office.
Newsweek has contacted Boebert’s team and Colorado State Police for comment by email.
The clerk’s office told Westword that Tyler Boebert was ordered by the court to attend driving school through Colorado’s “Alive at 25” driver’s awareness program and a mandatory review hearing that was scheduled for April 10 to ensure he took part in the course.
D’Amato told the Denver news site that the Boebert family was trying to “hide the fact that I was injured. They just don’t give a f***. It’s the entire family.” He also referred to a previous incident involving Lauren Boebert. In 2019, ahead of the 2020 primary for the Colorado Republican’s congressional district, Lauren Boebert was involved in an off-road incident with her son, dog, and now former sister-in-law Tori Hooper. According to the Daily Mail, which quoted an anonymous source, Lauren Boebert “begged” Hooper to keep quiet about the incident.
D’Amato said he and Tyler Boebert drifted away after the incident but are still friendly. He said he doesn’t plan to take legal action against the Boeberts but he wants Tyler Boebert to stop acting like “he’s a god” just because he’s Lauren Boebert’s kid.
The Garfield County Court Clerk’s Office said that law enforcement just got the ticket wrong the first time. Boebert’s team told Westword that the injury reported by D’Amato “was superficial at best and was addressed by medical professionals out of caution.”
I want to thank Ali for sending me this back in February. I have been meaning to post it. I followed several atheist blogs that already went over this in depth, but this is the best post on it that I can show to the followers of this blog. Hugs
Or ‘young boy molester’, in Greek. A mistranslation of the word in the 19th century, present in all modern Bibles, is the basis for today’s Xristian homophobia.
The words “homosexual” and “heterosexual” were first coined as German nouns by Austrian-born Hungarian psychologist, Karoly Maria Benkert, in the late 19th century, who wrote under pseudonym K.M. Kertbeny.
Ed Oxford is a scholar and researcher. A gay Christian, as well as a graduate of the Talbot School of Theology, his specialty is the history of the Bible, focusing on Bible translations, with a focus on the Greek and Hebrew translations, especially those that relate to human sexuality. Kathy Baldock is an LGBTQ+ advocate and executive director of Canyon Walker Connections, an organization dedicated to repairing “the division that exists between social and Christian conservatives and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community through education, training, and dialogue in both secular and religious environments.”
Each had been dedicated to researching the roots of antigay theology, and together have written Forging a Sacred Weapon: How the Bible Became Anti-Gay, and they are also the researchers behind the documentary, 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture. In the process of this research, they discovered boxes and boxes of notes in the Yale University archives, among them a half-century old letter written by a young seminarian named David S., to the RSV — Revised Standard Version of the Bible — committee.
Now, the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, is, according to the National Council of Churches, the “authorized revision of the American Standard Version, published in 1901, which was a revision of the King James Version, published in 1611.”
This is important to know, because the actual word “homosexual” appears for the first time on February 11, 1946 in the Revised Standard Version. In it, their translation of 1 Corinthians 6:9, they substitute the word “homosexual” for the the Greek words “malakoi” and “arsenokoitai.”
Further, as Oxford shares with Forge, a nonprofit organization that “that creates space for post-evangelical conversations, which includes tools and resources for lgbtq+ inclusion in the church,” “…we went to Leviticus 18:22 and [the translator is] translating it for me word for word. In the English where it says, ‘Man shall not lie with man, for it is an abomination,’ the German version says, ‘Man shall not lie with young boys as he does with a woman, for it is an abomination.’ I said, ‘What?! Are you sure?’ He said, ‘Yes!” Then we went to Leviticus 20:13– same thing, ‘Young boys.’ So we went to 1 Corinthians to see how they translated arsenokoitai (original Greek word) and instead of homosexuals it said, ‘Boy molesters will not inherit the kingdom of God.'”
Further from there, Oxford shares, “I then grabbed my facsimile copy of Martin Luther’s original German translation from 1534. My friend is reading through it for me and he says, “Ed, this says the same thing!” They use the word knabenschander. Knaben is boy, schander is molester. This word ‘boy molesters’ for the most part carried through the next several centuries of German Bible translations. Knabenschander is also in 1 Timothy 1:10. So the interesting thing is, I asked if they ever changed the word arsenokoitai to homosexual in modern translations. So my friend found it and told me, ‘The first time homosexual appears in a German translation is 1983.'”
Although the mistake was corrected from “homosexual” to “sexual perverts” in the Revised Standard Version in 1971, the damage had been heavily done, with the word “homosexual” appearing in most translations of the Bible, mostly in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10. This became the fuel for the antigay movement embraced by American conservative Christians, as well as others around the world.
The documentary, 1946, explores and enlightens about this issue, using research and physical evidence, as well as the testimony of scholars, academics, and experts in the field. The movie also features an original score from celebrated queer musician Mary Lambert.
As the director, Sharon “Rocky” Roggio, has said, “It is my goal to change the Christian narrative and liberate the many LGBTQIA+ people living in the dark; oppressed by bad theology. I want us all to live and be acknowledged as equals, under God’s love. There are truths that must be shared.”
This is the history of black people in the US that DeathSantis and the republican racists like Marge Greene want desperately to bury and hide. They are making laws to prevent this honest teaching of history illegal while claiming it is just to make white kids feel bad of their white skin. We need to get serious before we lose our entire true history. The Daughters of the Confederacy in both the 1920s and the 1960s raced to slap up monuments to the South, to Dixie, claiming the confederate battle flag represented heritage and the civil war was about states rights. But what right did the Southern states demand, by their own writings it was the right to own black people as property like cattle to do with them as they wished including raping them or other mistreatments. Both times it was about reminding black people that they were less than whites and that whites owned them once and would always be above them. We really have to prevent the white supremist washing of the US history. The US can be the shining city on the hill but only if the people move forward socially instead of retreating into a fake mythical past. Hugs
A man in handcuffs holds a Russian and Pride flagPhoto: Shutterstock
Scottie's Playtime 