Why the Self-righteous are dangerous...

Via http://www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4351

http://www.washblade.com/thelatest/thelatest.cfm?blog_id=16289

Outing campaign roils D.C. black Baptist church
More than 100 members named as gay in e-mails to pastor, congregation
By LOU CHIBBARO JR. | Jan 30, 2:14 PM

One of Washington’s largest black Baptist churches was rocked by a female member of its choir who sent separate e-mail messages to the pastor in December and January outing more than 100 church members as gay, mostly male choir members.

The outings added to the inner turmoil experienced by a large number of gays who attend services at the 7,000-member Greater Mount Calvary Holy Church, located on Rhode Island Ave., N.E., according to a gay former member who provided copies of the e-mails to the Blade.

“I will be leaving the choir at the top of the year because 80 percent of the tenors are homosexuals and act more like a female in choir rehearsal than I do,” the church choir member said in one of her e-mails to Bishop Alfred Owens Jr., the church pastor.

The e-mail, sent in December, identifies about 45 fellow church members as gay. She sent a second e-mail to Owens on Jan. 2 identifying another 62 church members as gay.

“The following people I am asking you to monitor very closely and my prayer is that you will sit them down from their ministries,” she told Owens in the December e-mail. “Because they are ushering in the presence of sin, lies, a spirit of homosexuality and sexual spirits.”

She sent a copy of her e-mails to a Yahoo list group that goes to more than 300 church members, the gay former church member said.

The gay former church member redacted all of the names from the copies of the e-mails he sent to the Blade, including the name of the choir member who orchestrated the outings.

Officials with the National Black Justice Coalition, a Washington-based group that advocates for African-American gays, and the D.C. Coalition of Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Men & Women, said they have seen or spoken with people who have seen un-redacted copies of the e-mails.

“There’s no doubt that these e-mails included all those names and they were read by a lot of people,” said Brian Watson, president of the D.C. Coalition.
Owens and Greater Mount Calvary Associate Pastor T. Cedric Brown did not return calls seeking comment by press time.

Rest here:http://www.washblade.com/thelatest/thelatest.cfm?blog_id=16289


So now she has totally and completely smashed people's lives to smithereens with her self-righteous, holy bullying. Is this kind of bullshit REALLY what Jesus would do? Is this lowly, intolerant dreg of humanity really expecting to go to heaven after causing this much pain and suffering to her victims? Is bringing down the wrath of the homophobia in that particular church (the pastor is KNOWN for being a particularly hateful git when it comes to this topic) righteous? Shame on those black churches who defile the legacy of civil rights and tolerance by so callously and unrighteously treating their gay members! Wasn't it not too long ago that the Bible was being used to oppress based on skin colour? And now they do the same thing to people based on sexual orientation? Immoral. Unrighteous. Downright evil. That's the only way to describe this kind of behaviour.

What I will say is this. African-American LGBT's and allies can no longer afford to sit down in openly homophobic churches. We'll are going to have to stand up, group together, and fight, either from the inside of the homophobic churches, or from the outside in the many and growing tolerant and progressive churches and organizations. But no more time and money can be wasted on those who oppress in the name of god. No more. To paraphrase Bob Marley, we are all going to have to get up and stand up for the rights of our brothers and sisters.

If you're the gov't do you spend money helping the 1000s made homeless by Katrina, or expand a port?

Well we all know what the Bush Admin. would do, right? Here's compassionate conservativism for ya...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22805282/


toosense has a masterful breakdown here:http://halfricanrevolution.blogspot.com/2008/01/bush-admin-still-exploiting-katrina.html


I just want highlight the part that really hits the spot:

Of course, supporters of putting corporations ahead of regular people contend that the development will bring needed jobs to the region.


Supporters see the money switch as sound economic policy that will help the port capture additional business and provide a bonanza of high-paying jobs.

“In order to remain a viable port, we have to do a good job with this repair and redevelopment,” said Gulfport Mayor Brent Warr.


Anyone who has ever filled out a job application knows the deal: no phone, no home, no job. It doesn't really matter how many available jobs there are if the people who would do them don't have homes to live in or phone numbers where they can be contacted. Whatever jobs they have in mind, they aren't for those who really need them.


Now please bear in mind that this is the same gov't that gave out toxic trailors to the survivors of Katrina:http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/01/29/fema_coverup/

and
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/28/cbsnews_investigates/main3761948.shtml


So,lets recap. The gov't, to whom the poor pay taxes and elect to take care of them, will not build back low-income housing for the poor, but instead will spend that money further enriching corporations. Since the people living in trailers do not have addresses or phones, the jobs that this port building investment are going to generate will not come their way. And the trailers are contaminated and will cause illness, which, they probably won't be able treat because of a lack of health insurance. And any rise in crime and other societal ills will be blamed on those same people who are homeless and jobless through no fault of their own. Right then.


If you all want become activists and find out more go to:

http://www.equityandinclusion.org/

and

http://www.solvingpoverty.com/

The blogger "The Redstar Perspective" is also very informative:http://www.grahamad.com/blog/, just scroll down a bit.

How to out a sundown town.

Via: http://pamshouseblend.com/

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-to-out-sundown-town.html



-- by Sara



Dave and I refer often to James Loewen's research on "sundown towns" -- American towns that once had small African-American communities -- which, at some point, simply up and vanished.



The historical fact is that if you're a middle-class white American living in the north or west of the country, the odds are overwhelmingly good that the town you live in, right now, is a sundown town -- or was one at some point in the not-so-distant past.



This fact came home forcefully to Loewen as he studied the censuses of small towns and suburbs all over America. After the Civil War, newly-freed black families spread out across the country, looking for places to start over. By 1890, there was hardly a town in America that didn't have at least a small community of black tradesmen or farmers -- aspiring families putting down roots and planning better futures. There was no town too small, no corner so remote, that a handful of African-Americans didn't take refuge there -- hoping against hope they'd finally found a place that was far enough away from Jim Crow.



But Loewen noticed something else. Starting in the 1890 census -- and continuing up until the 1950 one -- these communities started to vanish from the census figures. Towns that had 50 or 60 African-Americans in one census had exactly zero in the next. It was like watching these small lights just wink out, as these communities one by one went sundown.



As I said: if you live in a predominantly white town or suburb, the odds are overwhelming that one of them was yours. It wasn't an accident. It didn't happen just because the houses were too expensive, or the winters were too cold, or they just never got around to moving there. Loewen's research shows that black families settled absolutely everywhere -- almost certainly including where you are. The reason they're not there now is that somebody in your community, at some point in the past, decided to force them out.



This happened in a couple of different ways. Loewen notes that when he began his research, he assumed he'd find three different types of all-white towns. First, there were the small towns that had deliberately sundowned themselves at some point. Second, there were sundown suburbs, which were built from the beginning with restrictive covenants excluding blacks, Asians, and often Jews. Third, he expected to find places that where African-Americans had simply never bothered to go -- places that were all-white by accident. As his project progressed, however, Loewen found that every all-white town he found fit into one of the first two groups; and that, statistically, the third group simply didn't exist at all. He was shocked to discover that sundowning and covenanted suburbs, between them, told the entire story of all-white America.



This is one enormous and still very-much-present piece of our silent shared history that black Americans know and white Americans do not. African-Americans have a completely different sense of geography than white Americans do: even now, there are places they avoid, places they know they're not welcome, places where they expect to find trouble. I have African-American friends my own age who remember being on road trips with their parents in the 1970s, overhearing the quiet debates between the adults in the front seat over whether or not this town was a safe place to stop. I've also been on the other end of this myself, when I was 15 and working my first job in a diner attached to a motel. Once in a while, the manager would get a phone call from a motel at the other end of town, warning him that a black family had come in to try to get a room. The motel managers' phone tree went into action, and within 5 minutes every "No Vacancy" sign on Main Street would suddenly flicker on -- including ours. Going north or south, it was a three-hour drive to the next town where a black family could get a room. And they'd have no choice but to drive it --civil rights laws be damned.



Read rest here:

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-to-out-sundown-town.html



James Loewen's book on Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Sundown-Towns-Hidden-Dimension-American/dp/0743294483/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201828129&sr=8-1