OH dear, we appear to have upset the Rev Michael Bresciani.
Yesterday, I put up a piece about this “American Prophet” and his attack in Christian Voice on Barack Obama regarding LGBT month in the US.
Rev Bresciani
This morning I selected several comments left by readers of this blog, and posted them on the Christian Voice site, hoping that Bresciani would address the issues they raised.
Did he heck!
Instead, he reacted angrily by telling me:
I care little where you have posted your objections, and as for name-calling I believe you may be straining the protocol of this fine website to the limit. I will not enter this debate with you any further suffice it to say that ‘I have written what I have written’.
Granted, I did say on CV site that:
This outrageous article exposes the Rev Michael Bresciani as both an imbecile AND a fascist.
These are the comments I reposted on Christian Voice:
• So gay people can`t be “fathers, soldiers and patriots” then? The implications of this bigot`s statements are obvious!
• Wonderful that this guy mentions D-Day first, without any apparent awareness that the Nazis rounded up and murdered homosexuals, and that (by any reasonable assessment) thousands of Allied troops who hit the beach at Normandy must have been gay. Jaw-dropping imbecility.
• The man does indeed espouse fascist views. If homosexuals are not “warriors and patriots”, then they must, by implication, be cowards and traitors!
• He also forgets that plenty of gay people want to be “warriors and patriots” but our military bans them from doing so (though many still serve anyway).
• Nevermind that June is the anniversary of Stonewall, a glaring omission from that ridiculous rant.
• Occupations that are particularly attractive to gays, since they provide access to lots and lots of men without women, include the priesthood, the boy scouts, and the military. While the statistics do not apply to conscripts, volunteer armies tend to be overwhelmingly gay. If America purged its armed forces of all gays, there would not be enough fighting men left to defend against an invasion from Grand Fenwick.
• Where have these morons been? June has been Pride Month for decades. Obama has nothing to do with it and that “proclamation” was likely written by a jr. level staffer. Obama doesn’t give a toot about us and only throws a few crumbs our way whenever he feels he absolutely must to avoid all of the LGBT supporters deserting the Democratic party completely.
One point Bresciani did address concerned the D-Day Landing. This is his answer:
‘Thousands of those dropped on Normandy may have been gay’?? This little gay re-writing of history is more proof enough that you live in an alternate world of your own creation. Addressing this nonsense would not be a good accounting of my time.
At this point someone called Cognitive Dissident weighed in:
Approximately 130-150,000 troops were landed at Normandy on D-Day, which puts the number of gays in the initial invasion force at between 1,300 (1% of 130K) and 7,500 (5% of 150K), to make a conservative estimate. That’s not a ‘gay re-writing of history’, that’s simple math. (This does not include any portion of the 850,000 or so that followed over the next few weeks.)
Your holy text -or your understanding of it – may be immovable, but morality will nonetheless continue to progress. You can allege ‘slaps in the face’ as much as you wish, but most Americans have come to understand homosexuality in a far more accurate way than was possible thousands of years ago.
You can see Bresciani’s full rant here. It is interesting to note that he is attracting very little support – a sign perhaps that America is finally learning to treat religious loonies with the contempt they so richly deserve.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
June 25th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
I`m really miffed, Barriy! You posted TWO of my comments, but not the one about the Gay Hussar!!
June 25th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
I`m really miffed, Barry! You posted TWO of my comments, but not the one about the Gay Hussar!!
June 25th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
It didn't take much to bait the crazy out did it
One guy even called me a "typical arrogant little queen." XD
June 25th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
This nutter should read a bit of history. The Spartans had a military system where older man mentored the younger warrior. Gay relationships were common although not in every case. Leonidas at Thermopylae encouraged his men by saying, "Let us breakfast well; tonight we feast in hell." Or words to that effect. He had no shortage of warriors. One Spartan committed suicide because he failed to get to the battle in time. What's the point? Nothing convinces these bigots and their carapace of ignorance and bigotry is impenetrable. However, I still support the prod in the ass as supplied by Barry.
June 25th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
I did not see a Gay Hassar comment, barriejohn – and I certainly did not delete it. This comment software has got a bloody mind of its own!
June 25th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
Well done Barrie. You obviously rattled his cage.
June 25th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Ha ha! Good work, Baz.
June 25th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
It was a reply to Dr Harwood`s comment, and is still visible as far as I can see, but it wouldn`t have stood on its own in any case!
June 25th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
The homophobic ignoramuses who base their bigotry on a deliberately mistranslated bible are correct when they assert that Leviticus says what they say it says. Two Leviticus authors (621-612 BCE, and 434 BCE) indeed criminalized gay recreation (for males only) in the optimistic belief that they could force gay men to start breeding tithe-paying believers, as Zoroaster had tried to do when he invented the taboo in the first place. After 2,500 years, it is a reasonable conclusion that it failed to work.
There is little point citing passages that show such biblical heroes as David, Solomon, Samson, and Judith having same-sex lovers, since English bibles falsify the Hebrew and Greek by mistranslating words that mean "male lover" (reykh, hetaire) into "friend".
June 25th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
But one passage in Deuteronomy is so unambiguous that, despite organized religion's best efforts to neutralize it, even the mistranslations cannot conceal the true meaning. The Deuteronomist, who has been plausibly identified as the gay "spokesman" Jeremiah (Yiremyahuw) referred (Deut. 13:6) to "the male lover who means as much to you as your own breath." Despite the mistranslation of "male lover / boyfriend" as "friend" in most bibles, and "breath" as "soul" (a concept Judaism did not have until long after the Babylonian Captivity), the true meaning comes through loud and clear. All biblical authors prior to 621 BCE regarded sexual preference as analogous to preferring tennis to golf.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:21 pm
Aye!
But if you abbreviate mathematics, and do more than one sum its "maths"- not math. Thats English
)
Don't fall for the stupidification of the language here of all places. LOL!
Besides, gays weren't invented 'til the 60's = so Bresciani has a point.
NOT!
June 26th, 2009 at 2:43 am
You're doing good things here! I appreciate my fellow freethinkers. Stay smart.
June 26th, 2009 at 6:46 am
Good point. Didn't the Thebans eventually beat the Spartans by adopting a similar system? And of course the Athenians were gay as coots and creators of pretty much the whole of 'classical culture', without which the modern West wouldn't exist to give fundamentalist dickheads a nice free ride. Oh well, I'm sure Pericles meant well.
June 26th, 2009 at 11:39 am
This guy is actually claiming that Barack Obama is the Antichrist! Of course, according to him "the best minds" amongst even Democrats and liberals agree with him. I bet he can`t name one!!
June 26th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
I don't like warriors and patriots, whatever sexual baggage they carry.
June 26th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
You sound like me when i was 15. Except i expected some warfare when "the revolution" came and established an international socialist superstate. Fortunatley i grew up.
June 26th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
We`re talking about Americans here. I think a lot of their soldiers would find it difficult to get employment elsewhere for various reasons, not least lack of intelligence, in many cases! At the time of the Vietnam War, a great many of their troops were black – far exceeding their representation in the community – and they also suffered a disproportionately high casualty rate, which was scandalous.
June 26th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
valdemar. The Spartans certainly had their ups and downs and I think they butted out ingloriously at Marathon in 490 BCE. They were also hard bastards the way they had annual slave culls, brutal repression and killed feeble infants. I still think that there was a courage there that is amazing even today. Maybe the Thermopylae battle has been over done, I don't know, but that seems to have set the legend. Thanks for your comments.
July 1st, 2009 at 1:02 am
Bresciani is yet another reminder that a large segment of society, especially those included in or influenced by the religious right, still regards gay men and women as second-class citizens – or worse. That is the salient point of my recently released biographical novel, Broken Saint. It is based on my forty-year friendship with a gay man, and chronicles his internal and external struggles as he battles for acceptance (of himself and by others). More information on the book is available at http://www.eloquentbooks.com/BrokenSaint.html.
Mark Zamen, author