Michele Bachmann is garnering some mucho serious heat over the fact that her husband makes money by trying to cure people of homosexuality despite their denial of the fact. And now, naturally, Mrs. Bachmann is denying that she herself believes in the gay cure, but I've got audio to prove she's lying about that too.
In this clip, you'll hear Michele Bachmann lionizing NARTH-affiliated pray-away-the-gay Love Won Out Ministries for their efforts to cure gays. Additionally, she claims that referring to homosexuals as gay is 'part of Satan', that gays are sexually dysfunctional individuals who should be treated with compassion, that it's wrong to legitimize gay families, and a bunch of other things. Her language parrots that of the gay-cure therapy groups proving that she does indeed endorse efforts to alter the immutable.
That noise you hear is Michele Bachmann's campaign imploding.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Yo California : Stop With The NARTH Thing
California has certainly been a state that, as a whole, is considered one of the more socially liberal states in the Union. Millions of folks flock to the Golden State from all corners of the Earth to enjoy sun and sand to be sure, but also a climate in which they can be themselves without being arrested or murdered by law enforcement. Knowing numerous people who reside in the state and being a fan of it myself, I was shocked when I opened my browser this morning.
The folks over at Towleroad received an email from a member of the medical community who is disturbed that the state that allows kids to have gay heroes in class projects has National Association For Research and Therapy of Homosexuality as an accredited organization from which members can gain credits toward license renewal.
I was wondering if you could help me raise awareness about in issue. I am a Licensed Educational Psychologist here in Los Angeles. The California Board of Behavioral Sciences is responsible for licensing LEPs, MFTs, and LCSWs here in California. I was recently looking at BBS website in order to determine which organizations I could obtain my continuing education credits from in order to renew my license. Much to my shock and sadness, the BBS accepts CEUs from NARTH. I am absolutely appalled. No therapist in California should be able to renew their license by obtaining CEUs from this hateful organization. "Homosexual conversion therapy" is not supported by the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, or the American Counselors Association. I have written the the BBS with my concerns, but I have not heard back.
If you're unaware, NARTH is not what in any way could be considered a legitimate therapeutic network. Yes, they do indeed have doctors on their board, but their mission statement leaves no doubt as to their actual motives: "The National Association For Research And Therapy Of Homosexuality is a self-described non-profit, educational organisation dedicated to affirming a complementary, male-female model of gender and sexuality".
NARTH itself is not a religious organization, but does partner with numerous religious 'ex-gay' groups like JONAH and Exodus, pretending to conduct studies about how dreadful The Gay is and why it must be cured. It's an interesting fact that one of the founding fathers of NARTH was Dr. Charles Socarides, a man who dedicated 50 years of his life to attempting to cure gays and in his book, stated that we're all secretly Jeffrey Dahmers. It should be noted that Dr. Socarides' obsession was with male homosexuality exclusively and that his son, Richard, is an emotionally balanced, successful attorney and the president of Equality Matters, a gay rights organisation. Cofounders Benjamin Kaufman and Joseph Nicolisi also seem to be preoccupied with male homosexuality, simply dismissing the female as the result of some molestation or what-have-you that can be fixed with marriage.
These folks may be guys you haven't heard of, but there's one NARTH honcho you probably have seen on the news before. Former NARTH board member and scientific advisor George Rekers is a psychologist and Baptist minister (!) who was one of the founding members of the Christian hate group Family Research Council. Dr. Rekers' invented research has been used to defend Boy Scouts of America's ban on gays, and attempts to ban gay adoption in Arkansas as well as trying to ban gays and Native Americans from being foster parents in Florida. He also sells anti-gay and Abstinence-related materials to schools and has become a wealthy man offering up his 'expertise' to bigots all over North America. The fact that Dr. Rekers has had so-called 'cured' patients kill themselves wasn't a deterrent, but something that happened recently is.
Okay, so you still don't know who he is, right? I'll give you one word- Rentboy. Dr. Rekers was caught on tape on vacation with a young male masseur he met on Rentboy.com. Rekers claimed that he'd hired the kid to carry his luggage because of an old injury, but George is on the security video doing it himself. He then got on Christianity Today that his "travel assistant was more than a person raised in a Christian home". In reality, the kid was hired to provide nude massages that involved happy endings. Jovanni Roman, the young fellow, was convinced that the person talking to him about Jesus whilst getting a rubdown was certainly far from heterosexual.
If the tale of George Rekers proves anything, it's that gay repairative therapy does not work. 18, 000 members of the American Medical Association petitioned for the removal of homosexuality from the DSM-II manual of psychological diseases. Over 65% of AMA members voted to stop curing a nonexistent disease in the early 1970's. Think about that for a second.
NARTH and its associated religious groups primarily use shame and guilt in order to convince their patients that being gay is a moral or natural wrong. The treatments which usually include mentoring by someone that claims to have been cured have been known to involve shouting in anger at one's mother for causing the gay, electric shocks, and administering of drugs that are designed to make one feel ill while flashing repeated gay images in front of the person. Individuals subjected to sexual orientation conversion therapy are often presented to hospitals with severe anxiety, depression, drug overdoses, and suicide attempts. So damaging is conversion therapy that the AMA, American Psychiatric Association, American Psychological Association, American Association For Marriage and Family Therapy, National Association of Social Workers, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Counselling Association, and many others have issued statements critical of the practice.
This all leads me to wonder exactly why the California Board of Behavioral Sciences allows mental health professionals to obtain credit by working for an organisation whose entire basis for existence is something that has been completely discredited. Why is NARTH listed as an accredited group when their members have been referred to as quacks and pseudoscientists many times by judges in cases that they've testified?
If Californians want to fly that freedom flag, they need to address the accreditation of people who earn their living by teaching young people to hate themselves. No longer endorsing a group which openly violates the APA code of ethics is something that will affect change across America because NARTH is headquartered in California and their reports are the primary source of 'science' that all of the anti-gay hate groups rely upon to justify their ridiculous claims. It is an insult to the dedicated people who counsel abused kids to allow their license to also be given to those who are dedicated to abusing kids.
To tell the California Board of Behavioral Sciences to take NARTH off of their list, you can contact them vial mail, email, or online letter petition.
For the Petition, click HERE
To send a comment to Continuing Education Cooridinator Patricia Fay, click Patricia.Fay@dca.ca.gov
To express your concerns via snail mail:
Board of Behavioral Sciences
1625 N. Market Blvd. , Suite S-200
Sacramento, CA 95834
The folks over at Towleroad received an email from a member of the medical community who is disturbed that the state that allows kids to have gay heroes in class projects has National Association For Research and Therapy of Homosexuality as an accredited organization from which members can gain credits toward license renewal.
I was wondering if you could help me raise awareness about in issue. I am a Licensed Educational Psychologist here in Los Angeles. The California Board of Behavioral Sciences is responsible for licensing LEPs, MFTs, and LCSWs here in California. I was recently looking at BBS website in order to determine which organizations I could obtain my continuing education credits from in order to renew my license. Much to my shock and sadness, the BBS accepts CEUs from NARTH. I am absolutely appalled. No therapist in California should be able to renew their license by obtaining CEUs from this hateful organization. "Homosexual conversion therapy" is not supported by the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, or the American Counselors Association. I have written the the BBS with my concerns, but I have not heard back.
If you're unaware, NARTH is not what in any way could be considered a legitimate therapeutic network. Yes, they do indeed have doctors on their board, but their mission statement leaves no doubt as to their actual motives: "The National Association For Research And Therapy Of Homosexuality is a self-described non-profit, educational organisation dedicated to affirming a complementary, male-female model of gender and sexuality".
NARTH itself is not a religious organization, but does partner with numerous religious 'ex-gay' groups like JONAH and Exodus, pretending to conduct studies about how dreadful The Gay is and why it must be cured. It's an interesting fact that one of the founding fathers of NARTH was Dr. Charles Socarides, a man who dedicated 50 years of his life to attempting to cure gays and in his book, stated that we're all secretly Jeffrey Dahmers. It should be noted that Dr. Socarides' obsession was with male homosexuality exclusively and that his son, Richard, is an emotionally balanced, successful attorney and the president of Equality Matters, a gay rights organisation. Cofounders Benjamin Kaufman and Joseph Nicolisi also seem to be preoccupied with male homosexuality, simply dismissing the female as the result of some molestation or what-have-you that can be fixed with marriage.
These folks may be guys you haven't heard of, but there's one NARTH honcho you probably have seen on the news before. Former NARTH board member and scientific advisor George Rekers is a psychologist and Baptist minister (!) who was one of the founding members of the Christian hate group Family Research Council. Dr. Rekers' invented research has been used to defend Boy Scouts of America's ban on gays, and attempts to ban gay adoption in Arkansas as well as trying to ban gays and Native Americans from being foster parents in Florida. He also sells anti-gay and Abstinence-related materials to schools and has become a wealthy man offering up his 'expertise' to bigots all over North America. The fact that Dr. Rekers has had so-called 'cured' patients kill themselves wasn't a deterrent, but something that happened recently is.
If the tale of George Rekers proves anything, it's that gay repairative therapy does not work. 18, 000 members of the American Medical Association petitioned for the removal of homosexuality from the DSM-II manual of psychological diseases. Over 65% of AMA members voted to stop curing a nonexistent disease in the early 1970's. Think about that for a second.
NARTH and its associated religious groups primarily use shame and guilt in order to convince their patients that being gay is a moral or natural wrong. The treatments which usually include mentoring by someone that claims to have been cured have been known to involve shouting in anger at one's mother for causing the gay, electric shocks, and administering of drugs that are designed to make one feel ill while flashing repeated gay images in front of the person. Individuals subjected to sexual orientation conversion therapy are often presented to hospitals with severe anxiety, depression, drug overdoses, and suicide attempts. So damaging is conversion therapy that the AMA, American Psychiatric Association, American Psychological Association, American Association For Marriage and Family Therapy, National Association of Social Workers, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Counselling Association, and many others have issued statements critical of the practice.
This all leads me to wonder exactly why the California Board of Behavioral Sciences allows mental health professionals to obtain credit by working for an organisation whose entire basis for existence is something that has been completely discredited. Why is NARTH listed as an accredited group when their members have been referred to as quacks and pseudoscientists many times by judges in cases that they've testified?
If Californians want to fly that freedom flag, they need to address the accreditation of people who earn their living by teaching young people to hate themselves. No longer endorsing a group which openly violates the APA code of ethics is something that will affect change across America because NARTH is headquartered in California and their reports are the primary source of 'science' that all of the anti-gay hate groups rely upon to justify their ridiculous claims. It is an insult to the dedicated people who counsel abused kids to allow their license to also be given to those who are dedicated to abusing kids.
To tell the California Board of Behavioral Sciences to take NARTH off of their list, you can contact them vial mail, email, or online letter petition.
For the Petition, click HERE
To send a comment to Continuing Education Cooridinator Patricia Fay, click Patricia.Fay@dca.ca.gov
To express your concerns via snail mail:
Board of Behavioral Sciences
1625 N. Market Blvd. , Suite S-200
Sacramento, CA 95834
Monday, July 11, 2011
What's That Smell?
The advance politicking related to the 2012 U.S. presidential election is certainly more rabid than any campaign in my memory, and it's certainly bringing out a brand of insanity that can only be described as Gary Bauer on steroids.
One of the scariest hopefuls that the new social conservatism is Michele Bachmann. The peculiar thing about her, other than her scary eyes, is her admission of adherence to evangelical Christianity. So religious is Mrs. Bachmann that she signed a pledge which claimed that black families were better under slavery and took a not-so-subtle potshot at Mormons, which include Mitt Romney. However, there are other scary things about the former employee of the IRS, and that is her string of lies.
A quick look into the finances of her husband's clinic yields the knowledge that they accept government financial contributions. This wouldn't be such a huge deal if Marcus and Michele Bachmann didn't a) claim not to take government money, b) claim to be morally opposed to Medicaid, and c) claim to not engage in so-called gay reorientation therapy.
So we know that Marcuss Bachmann takes the money his wife claims to hate, but what about the ex-gay stuff? Well, as it turns out, Marcus Bachmann is a huge fan of the discredited and sometimes life ending pseudoscience.
As The Nation discovered, Marcus Bachmann's clinic has been telling people to pray away the gay for a long time, and even counsels children:
So that's old news, right? Not entirely. Truth Wins Out's John Becker, a happily married gay man, recently decided to go undercover as a struggling gay Christian and went for 8 days of treatment sessions at Bachmann & Associated this month. Mr. Becker experienced the typical circus of justification as the therapist looked to find the supposed reasons for his gayness, and treatment for the supposed secret femininity that all gay men secretly have. Not once was Mr. Becker told that anti-gay therapy was linked to depression, suicide, and drug abuse. It was certainly not mentioned that the vast majority of the leaders in the churches he was referred to had disassociated themselves with such things and either gone on to live happy gay lives or succumbed to one of the negative side effects. But then again, everything's fair game as long as we can cure something that this god supposedly created but still hates.
At his clinic, he sells a book by paid bible-thumper and ex-gay contrepreneur Janet Boynes. The book includes this ringing endorsement: “Janet is a friend. I recommend this book as she speaks to the heart of the matter and gives practical insights of truth to set people free. – Marcus Bachmann, PhD.”.
Ms. Boynes has been featured on television and has a moneymaking ministry, where she enjoys the fruit of selling her wares to humble servants who are petrified that their kid may have been exposed to The Gay. Indeed, the ex-lesbian that Andrew Ramirez was set up with may well have been her. She is a woman who claims to cure gays, but clearly hates herself almost as much as male gays, who she has a weird fixation on that echoes that of her Exodus cohorts.
Janet also buys into the same lies that I was told by a psychiatrist who tried to de-gay me when I was 19. I had self-admitted for depression (that turned out to be really bad PMS) and the shrink locked me up for 6 weeks because I had a supposed gender identity problem. I obviously didn't know that was his reasoning until a well-meaning doctor acquired a copy of his notes and let me read them. It was right there- my butchness and declared sexual orientation were the reason for him sticking me in a building with schizophrenics and paedophiles and trying to make me wear ugly dresses. It also explains why I was released 2 days after requesting a new doctor. (I used the excuse that he was violating privilege, which he was.)
Ex-gay therapy, whether psychological or aversion, does not work, and I'm living proof. Despite what Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Scientologists all believe, you can't cure something that is not a disease. Forcing people to gender conform will not alter their inner workings and trying to 'fix' as many gays as possible does not a heterosexual make. (I'm looking at you Ms. Boynes) If all it took was wearing a skirt to make a dude gay every Scotsman, priest, Buddhist monk, and kid who has dressed up as a girl for Halloween would have an unquenchable thirst for man-sausage.
My pop says that such theories are hatched up by those who are hiding what they hate about themselves, and I agree. No amount of praying or punishment can alter orientation, and Marcus Bachmann's clinic is a circus of quackery. Marcus Bachmann's fruitless efforts to change the innate are not only a violation of the Hippocratic Oath, but they make his wife look hypocritical. The federal government should not be giving Bachmann and Associates money to psychologically damage people. B & A is a front for a religious organization and permitting them to obtain monies from taxpayers is not only an an endorsement of discredited pseudoscience, but a fundamental violation of the separation of church and state.
One of the scariest hopefuls that the new social conservatism is Michele Bachmann. The peculiar thing about her, other than her scary eyes, is her admission of adherence to evangelical Christianity. So religious is Mrs. Bachmann that she signed a pledge which claimed that black families were better under slavery and took a not-so-subtle potshot at Mormons, which include Mitt Romney. However, there are other scary things about the former employee of the IRS, and that is her string of lies.
A quick look into the finances of her husband's clinic yields the knowledge that they accept government financial contributions. This wouldn't be such a huge deal if Marcus and Michele Bachmann didn't a) claim not to take government money, b) claim to be morally opposed to Medicaid, and c) claim to not engage in so-called gay reorientation therapy.
So we know that Marcuss Bachmann takes the money his wife claims to hate, but what about the ex-gay stuff? Well, as it turns out, Marcus Bachmann is a huge fan of the discredited and sometimes life ending pseudoscience.
As The Nation discovered, Marcus Bachmann's clinic has been telling people to pray away the gay for a long time, and even counsels children:
In the summer of 2004, Andrew Ramirez, who was just about to enter his senior year of high school, worked up the nerve to tell his family he was gay. His mother took the news in stride, but his stepfather, a conservative Christian, was outraged. “He said it was wrong, an abomination, that it was something he would not tolerate in his house,” Ramirez recalls. A few weeks later, his parents marched him into the office of Bachmann & Associates, a Christian counseling center in Lake Elmo, Minnesota, which is owned by Michele Bachmann’s husband, Marcus. From the outset, Ramirez says, his therapist—one of roughly twenty employed at the Lake Elmo clinic—made it clear that renouncing his sexual orientation was the only moral choice. “He basically said being gay was not an acceptable lifestyle in God’s eyes,” Ramirez recalls. According to Ramirez, his therapist then set about trying to “cure” him. Among other things, he urged Ramirez to pray and read the Bible, particularly verses that cast homosexuality as an abomination, and referred him to a local church for people who had given up the “gay lifestyle.” He even offered to set Ramirez up with an ex-lesbian mentor.
Ramirez was not impressed. After his second appointment, he resolved not to go back, despite the turmoil it might cause in his family. “I didn’t feel it was something that I wanted to change, and I didn’t think it could be changed,” he says. “I was OK with who I was.”
So that's old news, right? Not entirely. Truth Wins Out's John Becker, a happily married gay man, recently decided to go undercover as a struggling gay Christian and went for 8 days of treatment sessions at Bachmann & Associated this month. Mr. Becker experienced the typical circus of justification as the therapist looked to find the supposed reasons for his gayness, and treatment for the supposed secret femininity that all gay men secretly have. Not once was Mr. Becker told that anti-gay therapy was linked to depression, suicide, and drug abuse. It was certainly not mentioned that the vast majority of the leaders in the churches he was referred to had disassociated themselves with such things and either gone on to live happy gay lives or succumbed to one of the negative side effects. But then again, everything's fair game as long as we can cure something that this god supposedly created but still hates.
At his clinic, he sells a book by paid bible-thumper and ex-gay contrepreneur Janet Boynes. The book includes this ringing endorsement: “Janet is a friend. I recommend this book as she speaks to the heart of the matter and gives practical insights of truth to set people free. – Marcus Bachmann, PhD.”.
Ms. Boynes has been featured on television and has a moneymaking ministry, where she enjoys the fruit of selling her wares to humble servants who are petrified that their kid may have been exposed to The Gay. Indeed, the ex-lesbian that Andrew Ramirez was set up with may well have been her. She is a woman who claims to cure gays, but clearly hates herself almost as much as male gays, who she has a weird fixation on that echoes that of her Exodus cohorts.
Janet also buys into the same lies that I was told by a psychiatrist who tried to de-gay me when I was 19. I had self-admitted for depression (that turned out to be really bad PMS) and the shrink locked me up for 6 weeks because I had a supposed gender identity problem. I obviously didn't know that was his reasoning until a well-meaning doctor acquired a copy of his notes and let me read them. It was right there- my butchness and declared sexual orientation were the reason for him sticking me in a building with schizophrenics and paedophiles and trying to make me wear ugly dresses. It also explains why I was released 2 days after requesting a new doctor. (I used the excuse that he was violating privilege, which he was.)
Ex-gay therapy, whether psychological or aversion, does not work, and I'm living proof. Despite what Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Scientologists all believe, you can't cure something that is not a disease. Forcing people to gender conform will not alter their inner workings and trying to 'fix' as many gays as possible does not a heterosexual make. (I'm looking at you Ms. Boynes) If all it took was wearing a skirt to make a dude gay every Scotsman, priest, Buddhist monk, and kid who has dressed up as a girl for Halloween would have an unquenchable thirst for man-sausage.
My pop says that such theories are hatched up by those who are hiding what they hate about themselves, and I agree. No amount of praying or punishment can alter orientation, and Marcus Bachmann's clinic is a circus of quackery. Marcus Bachmann's fruitless efforts to change the innate are not only a violation of the Hippocratic Oath, but they make his wife look hypocritical. The federal government should not be giving Bachmann and Associates money to psychologically damage people. B & A is a front for a religious organization and permitting them to obtain monies from taxpayers is not only an an endorsement of discredited pseudoscience, but a fundamental violation of the separation of church and state.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Flashback: The Awesome Prank
There are a lot of people who spend their entire lives destroyed by the horrible memories of their past, and I do understand why, but I try not to be one of them. It's not because I had a fantastic childhood, because it was horrendous for the most part, but because I like to pick out the one or 2 good things versus the bad.
In this vein, I'm going to tell you a very real and personal story that involves, me, my dad, and sports. Ladies may wish to secure a supply of Kleenex. I'll try to be brief, but no promises.
I was born...okay, we don't have to go back that far. My parents split up in 1979, when I was pretty small. I lived with my mum, assorted weird relatives, and my dad and uncles on various occasions. Sometime around 81 or 82 I moved back in with my mum and saw my dad pretty sporadically for the next 10 years, but occasionally he caused some really cool memories, and this is where I'm going here.
In October of 1992, the Toronto Blue Jays were battling Atlanta in the World Series. Amazingly, my dad showeed up on his bike to pick me up and we went to Toronto to find a place to watch the game. Every joint was packed, save for an A&W that had a little TV set in it. We went in, stuffed our faces, and celebrated when our team took the crown. The party downtown was absolutely insane- hundreds of thousands of folks going nuts. No flaming cop cars or fights, just random strangers of all ages and colours high-fiving and hugging. Needless to say, this sports geek was in her absolute glory.
Cue to the following October. The Jays were in the finals again, and this time the potential deciding game was at home. Pop showed up without notice to pick me up and we sped off to the Big Smoke to go find some fun. We departed to go find the same A&W that we previously hung out at. Dad made me stop at one of the street stands. It was a lady who painted faces in exchange for donations. The very serious me did not want to have her mug oiled and I grumbled a bit, but finally relented. I got the lady to put Juan Guzman's number on one side of my face (he'd lost the previous game, so it was kind of a forgiveness dealio) and the Jays logo on the other. I really was not feeling this but the girl was cute and pop was insistent.
As the lady was finishing the little maple leaf in the logo, my dad pulled a pair of tickets out of his pocket. I stood there completely stupefied and then uttered the first cuss word my dad had heard from me. The paint lady cried . I gave my dad shit for scaring the hell out of me and he told us we had to go and fast. We bought peanuts and a program and found our seats that were behind home plate. There were 2 troopers sitting next to us, but most of the folks occupying these high-priced seats were corporate, like the person my dad was supposed to take to the game. We shared loads of fun with the troopers. Every time a big moment occurred, they would spill beer on the businessdorks below. Some of them even left, which is too bad because they missed the epic battle between Mitch Williams and his high-voltage mullet and Joe Carter in the bottom of the 9th that culminated in this most glorious of sporting moments:
Needless to say, I was stoked. I jumped up and down and may have even proposed to Mr. Carter as he approached the plate. It was the greatest moment in modern Toronto sport history in retrospect, but it was an immensely cool moment in my life because I got to do it with my dad. We enjoyed our night and went back to the normal, which included a 12 year gap in which we never even spoke, but this remains one of the greatest single evenings imaginable and the memory is a supersized bandaid for any previous wounds.
Cheers to you pop for totally punking me large and your newfound sobriety. I'm certain that the latter is far more monumental.
Footage courtesy of Major League Baseball.
In this vein, I'm going to tell you a very real and personal story that involves, me, my dad, and sports. Ladies may wish to secure a supply of Kleenex. I'll try to be brief, but no promises.
I was born...okay, we don't have to go back that far. My parents split up in 1979, when I was pretty small. I lived with my mum, assorted weird relatives, and my dad and uncles on various occasions. Sometime around 81 or 82 I moved back in with my mum and saw my dad pretty sporadically for the next 10 years, but occasionally he caused some really cool memories, and this is where I'm going here.
In October of 1992, the Toronto Blue Jays were battling Atlanta in the World Series. Amazingly, my dad showeed up on his bike to pick me up and we went to Toronto to find a place to watch the game. Every joint was packed, save for an A&W that had a little TV set in it. We went in, stuffed our faces, and celebrated when our team took the crown. The party downtown was absolutely insane- hundreds of thousands of folks going nuts. No flaming cop cars or fights, just random strangers of all ages and colours high-fiving and hugging. Needless to say, this sports geek was in her absolute glory.
Cue to the following October. The Jays were in the finals again, and this time the potential deciding game was at home. Pop showed up without notice to pick me up and we sped off to the Big Smoke to go find some fun. We departed to go find the same A&W that we previously hung out at. Dad made me stop at one of the street stands. It was a lady who painted faces in exchange for donations. The very serious me did not want to have her mug oiled and I grumbled a bit, but finally relented. I got the lady to put Juan Guzman's number on one side of my face (he'd lost the previous game, so it was kind of a forgiveness dealio) and the Jays logo on the other. I really was not feeling this but the girl was cute and pop was insistent.
As the lady was finishing the little maple leaf in the logo, my dad pulled a pair of tickets out of his pocket. I stood there completely stupefied and then uttered the first cuss word my dad had heard from me. The paint lady cried . I gave my dad shit for scaring the hell out of me and he told us we had to go and fast. We bought peanuts and a program and found our seats that were behind home plate. There were 2 troopers sitting next to us, but most of the folks occupying these high-priced seats were corporate, like the person my dad was supposed to take to the game. We shared loads of fun with the troopers. Every time a big moment occurred, they would spill beer on the businessdorks below. Some of them even left, which is too bad because they missed the epic battle between Mitch Williams and his high-voltage mullet and Joe Carter in the bottom of the 9th that culminated in this most glorious of sporting moments:
Needless to say, I was stoked. I jumped up and down and may have even proposed to Mr. Carter as he approached the plate. It was the greatest moment in modern Toronto sport history in retrospect, but it was an immensely cool moment in my life because I got to do it with my dad. We enjoyed our night and went back to the normal, which included a 12 year gap in which we never even spoke, but this remains one of the greatest single evenings imaginable and the memory is a supersized bandaid for any previous wounds.
Cheers to you pop for totally punking me large and your newfound sobriety. I'm certain that the latter is far more monumental.
Footage courtesy of Major League Baseball.
Media Moment: What About The Children?!
On GODTV's It's supernatural!, host Sid Roth helped Messianic apologist Michael Brown pitch his new book. A Queer Thing Happened To America is Mr. Brown's 650-page tome about the terrible effects that The Gay has had on America and the author figures it should sell big. The great thing is, he's asking for a $30 donation to his ministries in exchange for the book, so you can order it and deduct it on your taxes.
Dr. Michael Brown is not a doctor in any commonly-held sense, but don't let that detract you, believers. He has a PhD in Near Eastern Languages from NYU. In addition to his loud homophobia, Michael Brown is most well-known for his efforts to convert Jews to Christianity and peculiar opinions on Israel. (Praise Jesus!)
However, his most convincing argument yet for why we should keep gays from having custody of their kids is this fantastic trailer for his book.
The 40-year theologian's great reason for taking away the kids of gays- it's weird.
Dr. Michael Brown is not a doctor in any commonly-held sense, but don't let that detract you, believers. He has a PhD in Near Eastern Languages from NYU. In addition to his loud homophobia, Michael Brown is most well-known for his efforts to convert Jews to Christianity and peculiar opinions on Israel. (Praise Jesus!)
However, his most convincing argument yet for why we should keep gays from having custody of their kids is this fantastic trailer for his book.
The 40-year theologian's great reason for taking away the kids of gays- it's weird.
Bad Religious Joke Of The Week
I usually Passover jokes such as these, but this one's funny enough to make you schvitz yourself.
A Jewish lawyer was troubled by the way his son turned out, and went to see his Rabbi about it.
"I brought him up in the faith, gave him a very expensive bar mitzvah, cost me a fortune to educate him. Then he told me last week that he has decided to be a Christian. Rabbi, where did I go wrong?"
"Funny you should come to me," said the Rabbi. "Like you, I, too, brought up my boy in the faith, put him though university, cost me a fortune, then one day he came to me and told me he has decided to become a Christian."
"What did you do?" Asked the lawyer.
"I turned to God for the answer," replied the Rabbi.
"And what did he say?"
He said, "Funny you should come to me..."
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