So the room heats up with every emotion possible as everybody has a mutual mass debate shun session.

I’m going to have to take a pass on that one. I have tickets to see the Cirque El Jerques.

As someone once said here, it’s like everything he writes has been poorly translated from its original, colloquial, non-tortured language.

The cliche in the translation biz is, A translator must be fluent in one language: His own. Swank’s original language–and may I suggest that language is the language of FAITH?–has been badly served by its translator or, of course, translatrix.

“So the room heats up with every emotion possible as the two go at it.”

I laughed so hard I scared the cat.

Hmmm, I like the B4B clock better!

You know, I’m always annoyed at certain feminist, liberal types who insist that men who dislike homosexuals and enjoy hyper-masculene entertainment like “300” or “Top Gun” are actually closeted homosexuals themselves!

So the room heats up with every emotion possible as the two go at it.

Damn it Swank! You’re not helping here!

Just wait until he heats up Lilek’s manhole of glory with the aggressive sausage. With toys like that, who needs bacon and Play-doh, eh?

The good pastor goes on to say that some are born gay, and that homosexual orientation is not a sin. Granted, he also says that homosexual activity is a sin, but he seems to be straying off the reservation a bit.

#7: Naw, that’s not off the reservation. The right wing has been divided between the ‘moral disability’ and ‘moral degeneracy’ camps for some time. If anything, the former group are more loathsome for their belief that people with a natural, harmless sexual orientation should be condemned to lifelong abstinence due to their novel reading of a few vague lines in their ancient totem-book.

I do think it’s interesting that Swank refrains from invoking Sodom and Gomorrah. Maybe they’ve actually given up on that one, considering how fucking stupid it was. However, he’s still leaning heavily on that ludicrous passage from Romans, which clearly has nothing to do with homosexuality and everything to do with sex mystery cults.

The terrible truth that homophobe Christians and Jews have to face is that their holy books barely mention homosexual conduct, even in the most broad (and, dare I say, least fundamentalist) reading. Where Leviticus condemns ‘a man laying with a man as with a woman’ twice (in the midst of other duplications), that same book contains a great many more injunctions demanding a level of social justice that these bible-bashers would condemn as Communist.

That damage impregnates everything, including the sexual nature of male and female.

In the heterosexual, not all is well, for sure. For instance, there is always the striving to return to marital paradise between heterosexual husband and wife.
Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t.

You know, he sort of sounds like Dr. Bronner.

All one! All one! Heavenly Father Heavenly one!

RodeoBob, are you suggesting Pastor Swank might enjoy sharing a ‘manhole of promise’ with Lileks?

ifthethunderdontgetya…

since you asked, now I have to plot through the whole column… thanks!

Tuaolo, native of Hawaii, went into severe depression over his orientation, so much so that at times when driving at high speeds he contemplated twisting the wheel in the direction of ending-it-all. His head got that bad.

Swank really likes football. He’s really interested in watching the game.

-for the sportsmanship! And the technical aspects!

That damage impregnates everything, including the sexual nature of male and female

How exactly does one impregnate men, I wonder? I’m sure the good Rev. has some detailed, lengthy fantasies on the matter…

However, if one can understand biblical truth, one can begin to grapple with the spiritual aspect of the situation … the snake is the one to blame

Grapple with that spirtual snake! Hold it down. Or get help from a well-oiled friend if you need to!

Eve and Adam went for snake’s bait.

Damn it Swank! I said you’re not helping things!

Wow, that excerpt needs a bow-chicka-bow-wow soundtrack. And Big Swanky should grow himself a Joseph Farah-esque ‘stache.

May I ask a small favor, Gavin? As long as your going to put Pastor Swank’s mug on a clock, couldn’t you at least set the hands to 4:20?

Thankyew….

mikey

His head got that bad.

I just wanted bit that to shine out on its own.

Um, that bit.

Why yes, it did!

For Swank, who likes to cite Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13:

[Theodore W. Jennings, Jr.’s] book “Jacob’s Wound: Homoerotic Narrative in the Literature of Ancient Israel” convincingly makes the case that Leviticus is but one of many biblical voices on the subject of homosexuality — and that many others are far less condemning.

[…]

[T]he argument is not that there is an illicit “gay” subtext to the biblical text. Rather, Jennings argues that biblical text — whether in the David story, or in the tale of Joseph, or in the many ways in which prophets referred to the nation of Israel as a woman — makes use of the range of human relationships of which its readers were aware in order to describe the relationship between people and God. “Israel was not anomalously homophobic,” Jennings argues at the end of the book. “It was as worldly wise about same-sex as it is about cross-sex desire and behavior.” And it used this knowledge in its poetic retellings of the relationship between God and Israel.

[…]

Of course, it is anachronistic to read those cultures’ myths in terms of our own sexual categories and typologies. But it would be equally anachronistic to project back our associations of religion and homophobia to cultures that flourished 2,000, even 3,000, years ago, or to assume that because the priestly writer of the Levitical holiness code had one view of same-sex behavior, the writers of other portions of the Bible agreed with him.

From Jay Michaelson’s review of Jennings’ book, in The Forward (7/18/07).

Sisyphus at B4B is giving Swank a run for his money. His grammar is better, and his word images are more powerful –

“Brownback should take the state (Florida) in November 2008. But it’ll be a very, very close call indeed. Still, I am confident that God will remember His beloved nation. He will keep the sodomites and pornographers and Helioleftists and Marxists away from the polls, while the good Christian patriots vote unhindered. God’s will has been done this way before, it will be done again. Thy will be done, Lord. Amen.”

BTW, what’s a helioleftist?

BTW, what’s a helioleftist?

Hmm. This requires guessing. Turkey Volume Guessing, in fact.

Lessee…

Could be a liberal woman named “Stella”?

Could be a liberal capable of vertical takeoff?

Could be the “sun” of left-handed parents? (This would be the “Sinister Sun Theory”)

Could be a typo, and he was attempting to refer to Cornholio’s liberal brother?

Liberal Clog Dancer? Ok, now I’m reaching…

mikey

BTW, what’s a helioleftist?

It’s like when Beria used to crack Stalin up by inhaling from balloons. What a communist cardholder.

I just learned the other day that D. Aristophanes was a fellow SF dweller. D. and any other Sadlies are cordially invited to BARBARian drinkfests this Saturday and the next. It’s a great opportunity to get wasted with people who actually know what the fuck you’re talking about when you bring up the latest blog drama.

This thingie that Atrios pointed out has comments disappearing from it like crazy:

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2007/07/fishy-behavior.html

Al Gore’s daughter ate some fish that isn’t endangered which is just like David Vitter paying for diaper-fun down at the brothel.

As long as your going to put Pastor Swank’s mug on a clock, couldn’t you at least set the hands to 4:20?

Yeah, but then we’d lose the cat’s-whiskers, Simon-Legree effect.

Shorter J. Grant Swank: It’s psychologically distressing to be a closeted homo but don’t blame it on us, blame it on that bitch Eve.

It is not pleasant being homosexual.

One wonders if Swanky speaks from experience…?

Perhaps we should introduce him to some happy, well-adjusted homosexuals who can show him how…pleasant it can be. >;-)

BTW, what’s a helioleftist?

It’s a B4B original term used to deride those idiot leftists who believe in the godless theory of heliocentrism. There is a truly awesome post on that blog that derides heliocentrism as evil and wicked and basically, along with evolution, part of the secular left’s science-based assault on all things good and rational and wholesome. It’s a fantastic bit of spoofery–just a very small step removed from the kind of crap people like Swank or Mark Noonan vomit up daily.

You know, I’m NOT gay, and once I did not like myself.

Heck, I’ve not liked myself MORE than once. In fact, I didn’t like myself earlier today for a little bit – I’ve been sort of down in the dumps lately.

I suppose from this we should conclude that it is not pleasant being NOT homosexual.

Oh, fuck off Gavin. It is a crime agasint womanhood for a guy as gorgeous as Richard Chamberlain was when I was in my 20s (in the age f the dinosaurs) to be gay. It devastated. It explains my every psychological problem to this day. So, it only follows, that Swank is right.

It’s pleasant being a homosexual in Canada. Y’all are welcome here.

So God made some people be attracted to people of the same sex, and then decided that these people could never act on their attraction, for some mysterious reason.

Even in my most conservative Christian days I could never understand what was immoral about homosexuality outside of the Bible. The answer is that it’s “immoral” because it subverts male dominance. Otherwise, it’s fine. Hell, it even doesn’t damage male dominance, as ancient Greece shows. So give it up, haters.

BTW, what’s a helioleftist?

Coperinicofascists.

I think the women win the thread. Except me,being late to the party and not feeling at all witty.

It never really occured to Teh Swankster that maybe gay people sometimes don’t like themselves because of,oh,people like Teh Swankster’s judgemental,moralizing horseshit? Oh never mind,it’s all so hopeless sometimes.

I picked a bad year to quit smoking cigarettes and drinking. I could use a little of both at the moment.

HW,

Usually, the christofascists say that TEH GHEY is the work or the one who must not be named. The adversary is called “The Prince of Earth” not like Jeebus who is “The Prince of Heaven”.

Satan offered all the kingdoms of earth to teh keerist, and teh lourde said something about gaining the whole world and losing one’s soul.

It is impossible to argue with these fanatics–they have an excuse for everything.

The devil made me do it!

Copernicofascists…ok Mo’s Bike Shop for the win…

Bwahahahaha!!!

Wow, Mo’s, that’s cool. Can I try that?

Darwinofascists?

Einsteinofascists?

Newtonofascists?

Rutherfordofascists?

Galileofascists?

Mendelofascists?

Dayamn! This is fun.

Oh Shit! I forgot Schoedingerofascists.

We may need to borrow “Copernicofascists.”

a helioleftist?
Could be a liberal capable of vertical takeoff?

For some reason this reminds me of Thomas Pynchon’s explanation that the word Hübschraüber (‘cute-looking robber’) — when called out by someone with a congenital inability to pronounce umlauts — sounds like Hubschrauber (‘hub-screwer’), and inspired the invention of the helicopter.
Mind you, it was funnier in Pynchon’s version.

“I still think his is better. The man is some kind of negative genius.”

MY GOD! THAT’S IT! Don’t you see? “Pastor Swank” is the front name for the autonomous collective of a million monkeys with a million type writers! He’s Bizarro Monkey Shakespeare!

Some Guy, that explains a lot.

Bizarro Monkey Shakespeare!

May I risk stating the obvious and say that’s a superb band name?

No, WITH the exclamation point.

Dork…

mikey

So . . . if you don’t like yourself, you’re gay? Or, rather: all heterosexuals like themselves? Since it’s hard to be a homo, it’s easy to be hetero? Or something.

Shorter Swank: some are born gay, some achieve gayness, some have gayness thrust upon them.

…”some have gayness thrust upon them.”

That’s in them, if you want to get technical about it.

Hey, if anyone wants to snatch that stage gem up, go right ahead. I’m not using it for anything. There are starving kids in China who could use the names you don’t want!

Come to think of it… “Starving Kids in China” isn’t a half-bad name, either… I should start a business.

go right ahead. I’m not using it for anything.

This is only a small part of why I like you, Some Guy. Wait, does someone else liking you mean you can’t be gay? Man, Swank has confused me again. Also, I’m bi. I think this means I’m ambivalent about myself.

Well, he may actually have something there…

I realized I liked other guys when I was six (thank you Dale Decker). At nine, I had a moment of clarity: I will never like women like Dad likes Mom. Until I was in my mid-20’s and got away from my parents and family, I bought in to the Swank-esque bullshit surrounding me. Keep in mind my realization was in 1966, moment of clarity in early 1969, i.e. pre-Stonewall, pre-Internet, when to even mention homosexuality, let alone rationally discuss it, was taboo. At the time I was going through all that, there was almost NOTHING to counteract the hate and lies and bile.

Gays in the movies and on TeeVee either were serial killers, child molesters or killed themselves. Period. To have the seriously tired stereotypes called Jack and Will would have been, erm, well, a godsend. The only people who you could even infer were *that way* like you in the media were people like Rex Reed, Paul Lynde and so on; nothing wrong with them at all, but if you weren’t a campy flamer (I loved sports from an early age, for example) it seemed you were doomed to be a quasi-woman. It was impossible to find books like my all-time favorite Maurice by the glorious E.M. Forster in a library (to be fair, it wasn’t published until 1970 🙂 but still) or bookstore. People like Tchaikovsky were depicted as heterosexual and if you even *dared* suggest that someone like Walt Whitman liked teh buttsecks you were verbally attacked (“He’s a great American! He *can’t* have been that way!”). The APA still listed homosexuality as a mental illness on par with schizophrenia. On and on and on. It was fucking tough.

Through a combination of marijuana to dull the pain and a fuck you attitude that I wasn’t going to let the fuckers grind me down, I got through all that mostly intact. Many were not so lucky, they ended up on the end of a rope slung around a tree. It did, however, make me implacably opposed to The Many bullying The Few, The Strong bullying The Weak; it’s the bedrock of my political views today. I find the tendency of some GLBT orgs to equate the gay rights struggle with the African-American civil rights struggle to be very problematic (i.e. I can hide, they can’t), but I will say, at least in very, very rare cases, blacks are never abandoned and shunned and cut off emotionally and financially from their very own families for simply being black like GLBT people still routinely are for their orientations. That’s insane, that’s the only way I can think of to describe that dynamic..

So when I see human blights like that shitstain Swank *still* peddling the same old bullshit I was forced to swim in by this deeply misogynistic culture (the root of homophobia), I want them dead. Full stop. I don’t give a fuck about “Christian charity” or “hate only engenders hate” or any of that total fucking bollocks –and I certainly don’t want to hear any of that 12-Stepish “Wow, you should get help for that anger problem” rubbish either– I want them to be maggot food or the contents of an urn of ashes, NOW. As Morrissey crooned about Maggie Thatcher

It’s people like you
That make me feel so old inside
When will you die?

*cough* sorry about harshing the mellow of people on this fine Site of Snark. I earlier read about a 15-year old who committed suicide in rural England (i.e. the English equivalent of Mississippi) last week because his friends found out he was gay and abandoned and bullied him and I’ve had it.

i was glancing at leviticus, and in chapter 19 (between the verses p-swanky quotes), i found some other stuff:

• do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly (19:15)
• …do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life. i am the LORD. (19:16)
• do not hate your brother in your heart…(19:17)
• do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. i am the LORD. (19:18)
• …do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material. (19:19)
• do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard. (19:27)
• when an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him [or her]. the alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. love him [or her] as yourself, for you were aliens in egypt. i am the LORD your god. (19:33-34)

i’m always curious why the homobigots who can’t get enough of those two verses in leviticus don’t put their money where their mouth is and give up cotton-poly blends, haircuts, immigrant-bashing, and haterism in general.

just sayin’.

and henry holland, thank you for sharing your experience. forget the mellow-harshing—things like that need to be said. thanks.

Hysterical Woman said,
Even in my most conservative Christian days I could never understand what was immoral about homosexuality outside of the Bible.

It’s simple, because god said so. For fundamentalists of any religion that is all there is to being a moral human being worthy of the delights of heaven. Something is evil or wrong not because there is an intrinsic reason why, it’s wrong because the big guy said no. Makes everything so easy, almost like you wouldn’t have to think ever again.

Same goes for what is right and moral, it isn’t right to help others because that is what we humans do, it’s right because god said it is. If he (and it’s always he) said that BBQ-ing your children and drinking their blood was the righteous thing to do why then all the little fundies would gleefully have a cookout tomorrow.

Other denominations have a different take, but for a true fundamentalist that is really all there is to it.

Shorter Swank: If we didn’t have Teh Gays and Teh Wimmen to bash, how would we distract ourselves from the soul-crushing sadness & tedium of our own pathetic little lives?

“The dude’s name is Swank”
“No way!! What does he do for a living?”
“he hates the Gay and writes about it”
“Ah come on”
“I swear dude”

He will keep the sodomites and pornographers and Helioleftists and Marxists away from the polls, while the good Christian patriots vote unhindered.

For some reason I read Helioleftists as “Halitosis.”

sarah: They’re exempted from all the rules they don’t want to follow, because God made Peter eat some pork before he baptized a Gentile. So now Christians get to ignore the entirety of Biblical law, except where it serves their prejudices.

Henry, thank you so much – not only for reminding us all of why resisting homophobia is so damn important, but for all you did as part of the generation that made it possible for the generation that followed you to be openly gay. All of us – gay, straight, and otherwise – owe you a lot of gratitude.

I agree with Jillian and sarah, but damn, after people stop recoiling from us for being gay I’m hoping to get them to stop recoiling from us for being schizophrenic, too.

Best. Pun. Ever.

Bravo!

sarah said,

July 19, 2007 at 7:20:

i’m always curious why the homobigots who can’t get enough of those two verses in leviticus don’t put their money where their mouth is and give up cotton-poly blends, haircuts, immigrant-bashing, and haterism in general.

It’s like this: you should always take the WordofGod™ literally. Except when it’s inconvenient to do so.

All of us – gay, straight, and otherwise – owe you a lot of gratitude.

Absolutely.

I find it alternately amusing and enraging that wingnuts like Swank talk about the downsides of being gay when far and away the biggest problem with being gay is having to deal with hateful assholes like Swank. The Swanky wingnut position is: “Being gay causes all sorts of social problems–mostly that we will gay bash you.”

They use their own bigotry as evidence that being gay is bad. If I were gay myself, I probably wouldn’t even be able to find it amusing and would just find it enraging. Fuck ’em all.

If I was going to make the case that there’s something dirty and sinful about being a homo, I wouldn’t mention someone as cool and good looking as THE THORN BIRDS’ Richard Chamberlain.

That guy is like a real-life Race Bannon, shooting bad guys in SCUBA-gear with a harpoon gun.

If I was going to make the case that there’s something dirty and sinful about being a homo, I wouldn’t mention someone as cool and good looking as THE THORN BIRDS’ Richard Chamberlain.

God, I know this is to much information, but Chamberlian in that series caused me to lust like, well, it was just absurd.

Yet I sadly agree he shouldn’t be locked in prison or forbidden to marry his same sex partner. I guess I’m a schizo and all egalitarian on such issues, no matter how much it fails to satisfy my hormones (if he were not gay he would have married me, of this I’ve never had the slightest doubt).

A quick request. If you ever extend the range of S,N! merchandise to include Pastor-Swank clocks, could you please make sure that they are cuckoo clocks! I like the idea of a trapdoor in his forehead popping open at random intervals while a perky little cuckoo lurches out on a spring to emit a series of Don Martin sound effects.
Thank you in advance.

From what I’ve seen, the only reason it’s not pleasant being homosexual is the people like him saying it’s not pleasant being homosexual.

[…] adds: I don’t know how he does it either. Because of that, one can never predict Rudy Giuliani’s choices. He is Opportunism Gall […]

[…] adds: I don’t know how he does it either. Because of that, one can never predict Rudy Giuliani’s choices. He is Opportunism Gall […]