Exodus: Live Out Loud

Judge Rules Georgia Tech's "Safe Space" Program May Not Label Faiths "Anti-Gay"

From Southern Voice:

Georgia Tech’s Safe Space initiative, a faculty training program funded by student activity fees, cannot include information in its training materials and website that labels certain religions in a negative context because of their views on homosexuality, a federal judge ruled last week.

Ruling in a lawsuit filed by two Georgia Tech students in 2006, U.S. District Judge J. Owen Forrester said, “It is puzzling to the court that the promotion of tolerance would take the appearance of such intolerance as is contained in the religious materials distributed with the Safe Space program.”

“The handouts [included in Safe Space training] clearly take the position that churches that condemn homosexuality do so on theologically flawed grounds,” Forrester wrote April 29.

Characterizing some religions as welcoming of homosexuals while labeling others as “anti-gay” represents a “clear preference of one religion over another” and violates the First Amendment prohibition against the establishment of a religion, Forrester ruled.

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Penguin Book Tops Most Objected List

From Newsroom America:

A penguin tale that strongly hints at homosexuality as a preferred lifestyle once again tops the list of most objected to books in public libraries and public schools.

"And Tango Makes Three" is a story about a young penguin with two fathers. It was released in 2005 and co-written by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell.

"The complaints are that young children will believe that homosexuality is a lifestyle that is acceptable. The people complaining, of course, don't agree with that," Judith Krug, director of the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

A "challenge" to a book is defined by the organization as a "formal, written complaint filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness," AP reported.

University of Toledo Disciplines Administrator for Being Critical of Homosexuality

From CNA:

An administrator at the University of Toledo has been placed on paid administrative leave after writing a column in a local paper that argued against including homosexuals as “civil rights victims” and characterized homosexuality as a lifestyle choice.   

Crystal Dixon, associate vice president of human resources at the state-run University of Toledo, wrote a column for the Toledo Free Press in response to an April 4 column by the paper’s Editor-in-Chief Michael S. Miller.  Miller argued that Ohio is behind in “gay rights” and also criticized the University of Toledo’s lack of health care benefits for some domestic partnerships.

Dixon, who did not identify herself as a university administrator, argued in an April 18 column that those “choosing the homosexual lifestyle” should not be considered “civil rights victims.”  She said that while she cannot change her identity as a black woman, “thousands of homosexuals make a life decision to leave the gay lifestyle.”  Dixon referenced prominent individuals who had renounced their behavior, sometimes because of “a realization that their choice of same-sex practices wreaked havoc in their psychological and physical lives.”

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Demonstrators Harass Christian Youth in Germany

From The Local:

A traditional Christian youth festival in Germany faced unprecedented disruptions by leftists who hacked the gathering's website, interrupted speeches and threw beer bottles at visitors, organizers said on Tuesday.

Christival, a periodical gathering of Protestant Christian youth in Germany founded in 1976, was meant to be a chance for likeminded young people to meet up and celebrate their faith.

But thousands of attendees at this year’s festival in the northern city of Bremen found themselves under siege by leftist extremists determined to protest what they saw as Christian intolerance to homosexuality and abortion.

“There have never been disruptions of this kind in the entire history of the event,” Christival spokesman Steve Volke told The Local on Tuesday. “They tried to storm the festival area. They threw beer bottles at participants. The whole five days of the festival there was always something happening.”

...“The mood was stirred up beforehand that it was a festival against homosexuality and abortion,” said Volke. “But it was two seminars out of 230 – and complete nonsense to call it a fundamentalist Christian youth gathering.”

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Grace and Gay Men

Randy Thomas in Boundless:

AIDS as a social issue has been used to scare people. And it should. Over the past 20-plus years there have been valiant efforts to humanize the AIDS issue with regard to African American community, drug abusers and orphans in Uganda. The thing is, when it comes to gay identified males ... the corporate Church has been estranged and reluctant.

As the AIDS pandemic first hit, we in the Body of Christ missed an opportunity to express God's servant heart and grace. In this redemptive void, a few stepped forward to stigmatize homosexual men. Even today, the overarching consistent message coming from the Christian community has been one of stigmatization and warning.

Certainly, it's very appropriate to educate and "warn" about the dangers of sexual relationships outside of a biblical sexual ethic. But I did not and do not think it is appropriate to stigmatize a large group of men whom the Lord loves, dismissing them as unworthy of our love.

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