THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT
Once again the attention of the
United States is focused on the mythical
concept of “sodomy”
as the highest court in the land wrestles with
illegal, unjust,
dishonest, homophobic, abusive, inconsistent,
repressive state
laws that are based on religious misunderstanding and
ignorance.
Many states have removed their state “sodomy laws.”
The kind of
arguments that the Texas Attorney General has made to
the Supreme Court
would require the Court to demand that these
states put back their
medieval “Sodomy laws” for the
common good! The entire “sodomy” issue
is a bogus
cause and unworthy of any serious intelligent debate and
dispute.
(See links below.)
“SODOMY”
No word for “sodomy”
exists in biblical Hebrew or Greek! A “Sodomite”
is
simply someone who lived in the city of Sodom, just as a “Moabite”
lived in Moab. Any use of the words “sodomy” or
“sodomite” in biblical
translations is a vicious
mistake that attempts to read incorrect
interpretation into the
text itself and thereby discredit all
translations. No word for
“homosexual” or for “homosexuality” exists in
biblical Hebrew or Greek. In fact, no word for “sex”
exists in the
biblical languages! (Look in the major
concordances, and you will not
find even one reference to “sex”.)
The cultural world of the biblical material is vastly
different from
ours today, and not one word means exactly today
what it meant 2,000 to
3,000 years ago in a different world and
in languages that are not used
any more as they existed at that
time.
SEE MY WEB SITE MATERIAL ON ALL OF THIS. (Links are given
below).
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
The city of Nashville is locked in a
great community-dividing battle
over the issue of protecting the
civil and human rights of GLBT people.
The presence of
headquarters for nine major fundamentalist religions in
Nashville
has greatly muddied the community values regarding LGBT
people.
Southern Baptists, United Methodists and National Baptists are
among
those with publishing and administrative offices in Nashville.
The
Church of Christ and other similar groups have their colleges in
Nashville.
When I became pastor of MCC Nashville in 1993, the state of
Tennessee
still had state laws against “sodomy”. One
of my best friends, [Plaintiff who
asked to be removed from this
article], was a graduate student at Vanderbilt
University at the
time studying for [a] PhD in clinical psychology. [Plaintiff
who
asked to be removed from this article] joined with several other
young
GLBT students who were preparing for careers in counseling
and challenged
the Tennessee state laws against sodomy as
unconstitutional in view of the
Tennessee State Constitution
guarantee of the individual’s right to privacy.
They won in
1995.
After several court decisions and appeals, the Tennessee State
Supreme
Court agreed that the
state sodomy laws were a violation of the State
protection
of the right to privacy. All sodomy laws were removed from
the
state statutes. (See related links below)
The local Nashville lawyer who handled this case for
[Plaintiff who asked to
be removed from this article] and
[her/his] friends was Abby Rubenfeld, a
prominent civil rights
attorney, who happens to be the sister of Paul Rubens,
who is
also known as “Pee-Wee Herman.” I talked to my friend
[Plaintiff
who asked to be removed from this article] in
Nashville this morning, and [s/he]
told me that the ordinance to
protect GLBT human rights in Nashville was
just defeated.
THE IGNORANCE FACTOR
Recent arguments against homosexuals
and against GLBT civil and human
rights at the Supreme Court
along with a lot of the questions asked by
the Justices
themselves reflect an incredible level of ignorance
concerning
the facts about GLBT people. Dedicated purveyors of
ignorance and
misinformation have done a great job of confusing and
distorting
the truth about homosexuality and homosexuals.
The “Ex-Gay Fraud” (See link below) and related
religious distortion
ministries by such groups as “Focus on
the Family” and “Family Research
Council” have
distracted multitudes of people away from the facts about
religious
and social abuse of GLBT people.
Correcting misinformation and distortions takes a lot of
research and
ever-changing approaches to reaching out with the
facts in ways that
will be heard and accepted. My web site has
been available since
September 1997, and I have continuously
revised and added updates to
deal with current events. The
detailed information that is on my web
site answers the
distortions and misinformation, but it takes a lot of
time to
work through all of the material.
GLBT CONFUSION
One of the most destructive results of the
religious, political
distortions and misinformation about GLBT
people has been the
self-destructive behavior including a steady
rate of suicide among our
own people who have believed the lies
forced upon them by their own
families, churches, politicians,
friends and other sources of dedicated
ignorance. No simple easy
remedy exists to the dilemmas faced by LGBT
people in our
society.
For every web site and book that tells the truth about GLBT
life and
issues, hundreds of anti-gay homophobic religion based
sources of
misinformation flood the Internet, bookstores, media,
and public
institutions. We need each other. We need clear
convincing
presentations of the facts. We need allies in every
level of society
who can stand with us, stand in our shoes,
understand us, accept us, and
affirm us in our human value and
human rights.
WHERE DO YOU FIT IN?
What are you personally doing to make
a difference for truth, reality
and the facts? Are you well
informed with the facts that you need to
know? The sources of
information are endless. You have to be selective
and
undistracted by false voices and uninformed people. Learning what
you need to know in order to make a difference in this world for
yourself and for other GLBT people will demand and require
everything
that you can give of yourself, your time, your
relationships, and your
opportunities to touch others.
My web site gives a lot of information, but it also directs
you to many
other web site sources and books that can help you to
know the facts and
act with confidence in your own truth. New
issues and new situations
emerge every day.
[Plaintiff who asked to be removed from this article] and
Barbara Purdom
through their ministry of information “Religion
at Critpath” as part of Interfaith
Working Group (Link
below) have helped me for years to keep up with
what’s
happening in our world.
BECOME INFORMED
The present debates and decision of the
United States Supreme Court will
have a long-term powerful effect
on GLBT people everywhere. Take the
time to become informed about
all of the details of these developments.
Do whatever you can to
make a difference where you are.
Rembert Truluck
<http://www.truluck.com/>
Thank you for passing this on to others.
“Steps to Recovery from Bible Abuse” <
http://www.truluck.com/ >
“THE EX-GAY FRAUD”: (read and study all pages and sub
pages.)
<
http://www.truluck.com/html/sexual_orientation_and_the__ex.html
>
Supreme Court related sites:
<http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/qtr1_2003/0326-144.html>
Links and stories from Washington Post:
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/nation/courts/supremecourt/20022003/>
Lambda Legal Challenge:
<http://www.lambdalegal.org/cgi-bin/iowa/documents/record?record=1176>
See all pages and sub pages in these links:
<http://www.truluck.com/html/the_bible_and_homosexuality.html>
<http://www.truluck.com/html/sexual_orientation_not_in_bibl.html>
See a history of the Sodomy Law issue in Tennessee:
<http://www.sodomylaws.org/sensibilities/tennessee.htm>
Other related sites:
<http://www.qrd.org/qrd/usa/tennessee/1993/sodomy.challenge>
<http://www.aclu-tn.org/privacy01-02.html>
Family Research Council: <http://www.frc.org/>
Focus on the Family: <http://www.family.org/>
Focus on the Family and James Dobson recently devoted time and
money to
promoting the totally bogus book by Dr. Joseph Nicolosi
on “Preventing
Homosexuality”. Nicolosi is a
professionally discredited psychologist,
whose war against
homosexuals has extended through many years and many
books that
form the foundation for the “Ex-Gay” disaster that
confuses
and distorts all issues related to GLBT people.