Political buzzwords

Inspired here, I decided to google common buzz words and sound bites that appear in various Parties.

'Working families' appears in the ALP 884 times

'petrol' and appears in the LPA 297 times

'family' and 'families' appear in FF 500 and 275

'values' appears in the CDP only 176 times but 'homosexuality' appears 99 times

'sustainable' and 'climate change' appear in the Greens...4,330 and 8,210 times! And there I was, thinking that 'working families' couldn't be outdone.

UPDATE: I searched the above words for the other parties for the Greens. They appear (in original order): 296 times, 1,630 times, 1,970 and 2,100 times, and 1,390 and 57 times.

The most important article in the world (or close to it)

I've linked to it in the past, and I'll no doubt link to it in the future, but for now, just read this.

God's Own Baby-Killers: Abortions Soar Where Religious Zeal Abounds

by Chris Floyd

Countries with the most fervent religious faith have the greatest number of abortions. This stems directly from one of the primary aims of organized religion: the control of women, especially their fertility.

Tuesday, 26 February 2008—George Monbiot reports on a study revealing -- surprise, surprise! -- that countries with the most fervent religious faith have the greatest number of abortions.

As Monbiot notes, this stems directly from one of the primary aims of organized religion: the control of women, especially their fertility. The zealous pursuit of this goal leads to rejection of contraception and sex education, which in turn gives rise to more unwanted pregnancies -- hence more abortions. In fact, studies show that the country with perhaps the most "liberal" and "permissive" sexual policies -- the Netherlands-- has the lowest rate of abortion in the world. Monbiot:

A study published in the Lancet shows that between 1995 and 2003, the global rate of induced abortions fell from 35 per 1,000 women each year to 29. This period coincides with the rise of the "globalised secular culture" the Pope laments. When the figures are broken down, it becomes clear that, apart from the former Soviet Union, abortion is highest in conservative and religious societies. In largely secular western Europe, the average rate is 12 abortions per 1,000 women. In the more religious southern European countries, the average rate is 18. In the US, where church attendance is still higher, there are 23 abortions for every 1,000 women, the highest level in the rich world. In central and South America, where the Catholic church holds greatest sway, the rates are 25 and 33 respectively. In the very conservative societies of east Africa, it's 39...

I am not suggesting a sole causal relationship: the figures also reflect changing demographies. But it's clear that religious conviction does little to reduce abortion and plenty to increase it. The highest rates of all -- 44 per 1,000 -- occur in the former Soviet Union: under communism, contraceptives were almost impossible to obtain. But, thanks to better access to contraception, this is also where the decline is fastest: in 1995 the rate was twice as high. There has been a small rise in abortion in western Europe, attributed by the Guttmacher Institute in the US to "immigration of people with low levels of contraceptive awareness". The explanation, in other words, is consistent: more contraception means less abortion.

There is also a clear relationship between sex education and falling rates of unintended pregnancy. A report by the United Nations agency Unicef notes that in the Netherlands, which has the world's lowest abortion rate, a sharp reduction in unwanted teenage pregnancies was caused by "the combination of a relatively inclusive society with more open attitudes towards sex and sex education, including contraception". By contrast, in the US and UK, which have the developed world's highest teenage pregnancy rates, "contraceptive advice and services may be formally available, but in a 'closed' atmosphere of embarrassment and secrecy"....The more effectively religious leaders and conservative [media] anathemise contraception, sex education and premarital sex, the higher abortion rates will go.

Monbiot also points out that while these attitudes cause much suffering in rich nations, "it doesn't compare to the misery inflicted on the poor":

Chillingly, as the Lancet paper shows, there is no relationship between the legality and the incidence of abortion. Women with no access to contraceptives will try to terminate unwanted pregnancies. A World Health Organisation report shows that almost half the world's abortions are unauthorised and unsafe. In East Africa and Latin America, where religious conservatives ensure that terminations remain illegal, they account for almost all abortions. Methods include drinking turpentine or bleach, shoving sticks or coathangers into the uterus, and pummelling the abdomen, which often causes the uterus to burst, killing the patient. The WHO estimates that between 65,000 and 70,000 women die as a result of illegal abortions every year, while 5 million suffer severe complications. These effects, the organisation says, "are the visible consequences of restrictive legal codes".

Monbiot goes on to note something we have been condemning here and elsewhere for years: that the supposedly "pro-life" policies of George W. Bush and his ideological fellow travellers are directly responsible for killing thousands of the most vulnerable people on earth. As Monbiot says:

When the Pope tells bishops in Kenya -- the global centre of this crisis -- that they should defend traditional family values "at all costs" against agencies offering safe abortions, or when he travels to Brazil to denounce its contraceptive programme, he condemns women to death. When George Bush blocks aid for family planning charities that promote safe abortions, he ensures, paradoxically, that contraceptives are replaced with backstreet foeticide. These people spread misery, disease and death. And they call themselves pro-life.

I first wrote about this issue in 2003, after Bush had cut off funding to family planning services and health clinics all over the world to stoke the zeal of his religious base. Nothing much has changed. As I wrote then:

The defining issue of modernity is control of women's fertility. It is this question – more than religion, politics, economics or the "clash of civilizations" – that forms the deepest dividing line in the world today. It is a line than cuts through every nation, every people, from the highest level of organized society down to, in many cases, the divided minds and emotions of individual men and women.

Control of fertility – and its active principle, sexuality – has always been an organizing principle of human society, of course, but modernity has presented the world with a revolutionary concept that overthrows millennia of received wisdom and tradition: namely, that an individual woman should control her own fertility. This notion destabilizes state structures and religious dogmas, and uproots cultural mores whose origins reach back to prehistoric times. It is a profoundly disturbing development in the life of humankind.

Little wonder, then, that anxieties over fertility and sexuality are the chief engines driving the frenzied and increasingly violent fundamentalist movements now sweeping through the world. It is here that extremists of every stripe make common cause against modernity. Almost every other aspect of "the modern" – science and technology, high finance, industrialization, etc. – has been absorbed, in one form or another, by the most "traditionalist" societies. But what today's fundamentalists – from Osama bin Laden to George W. Bush to Pope John Paul II, from the American-backed warlords of Afghanistan to the anti-American mullahs of Iran – cannot accept, at any cost, is the freedom of a woman's body.

This frenzy, this primitive fear – understandable perhaps in the face of such a wrenching upheaval – does not in itself make a fundamentalist an evil person. But it can – and does – lead them into evil: sometimes blindly, in ignorance and panic; but sometimes knowingly, with eyes wide open, a willing embrace of primitive emotions to serve selfish and cynical ends.

And so: last month, George W. Bush quietly cut off funding for a highly praised AIDS program for refugees from Africa and Asia. Why? Obviously, to keep his helots on the Christian Right frothing with passion to do battle for him in 2004. He has already given them control of American social policy, particularly in international negotiations, where they routinely form alliances with Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and other repressive states to derail treaties on women's rights.

But what was his public reason? Bush says he gutted the program because one member of the non-profit consortium running the project is also working with a UN program that was falsely accused of colluding with China's policy of forced abortions. That charge was investigated not once but twice by Bush's own State Department, as well as by the UN, and was shown each time to be completely untrue. The only "evidence" produced to support the slander was an allegation that in a single office in a rural Chinese province a few years ago, the desk of a UN official touched the desk of a Chinese Health Ministry official. That's it. The truth, of course, is that the UN program, and all the non-profit organizations associated with it, are trying to end China's forced abortions.

Of course, this heinous practice that has never stopped Bush from granting massive trade benefits to the "baby-killing Communists." Nor has it ever disturbed the orgy of investment in China's repressive regime by the corporate barons of the U.S.-China Chamber of Commerce, headed by that genial old aristocrat, Prescott Bush Junior – known as "Uncle Prescott" to the current president. Naturally, any punishment for China's forced abortions must not fall on the Beijing government itself – not when Uncle Press has choice deals on the line. No, instead it must land – like a ravening MOAB – on the poorest of the poor, in Angola, Congo, Rwanda, Somalia, Eritrea, and other poverty-stricken areas where the Bush family has no investments.

Not content with slapping AIDS-stricken refugees around, Bush has also cut off all U.S. funding to countless family planning services in the poorest regions of the world. This ban applies to any clinic that so much as mentions abortion as an option to its clients, even if it doesn't provide abortions or referrals itself – and even if the woman has been raped (perhaps by the goons of a Bush-backed warlord), even if she will die in childbirth. A clinic will also be cut off if its workers take part in lobbying campaigns to secure legal abortion in their countries. Such rights, hard-won by Western women, are to be denied to the world's poor. (Meanwhile, Bush's helots are scheming to roll them back in America as well.)

Many of these clinics provide the only maternal and post-natal care available for millions of destitute women and their children. They are the only place where the world's most downtrodden and uneducated women can receive information about reproduction and birth control, or treatment for AIDs, genital mutilation and rape. All across Africa and Asia, these clinics – including many run by Bush's beloved "faith-based organizations" – are closing up as they lose their American funding. Yet this funding itself is a mere pittance from the war-fattened federal purse – less than one day's spending on Bush's rape of Iraq.

It is simply a fact that thousands of women and infant children will die needless deaths in the coming years because of Bush's edicts. He could have saved them; instead he has killed them. He has chosen to stand with terrorists and tyrants in the fundamentalists' war against women.

(I promise I'll try not to have another Lazyboy Moment for my next post)

Neoconservative politics and ideology in Arabia: PWNED

As George Bush limps to November, his Presidency shot to pieces from the war in Iraq, it’s always good to know this. And this.

Pope officially declared a fundie

Evidence: unable to comprehend irony, black-and-white thought system.

POPE Benedict XVI has marked his triumphal entry to the World Youth Day festival with a "boat-a-cade" on Sydney Harbour and a trademark message of hope and warning against the "poison" that threatened to corrode and distort young lives.

This "poison" being equality for gays, perhaps? Or that women should have the same rights as men?

Addressing hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who turned out to see him by the harbour at Barangaroo, the 81-year-old pontiff said the world had "grown weary of greed, exploitation and division, of the tedium of false idols and the pain of false promises", and urged them to seek the true, the good and the beautiful.

The Pope's lack of comprehension of irony is more of a "poison" then anything I've seen lately. Greed? Exploitation? Division? Wanna cite a few examples that DON'T make you out to be a total hypocrite, Ben?

Delivering his first major speech in Australia, the Pope also lamented the advent of television and computer entertainment exalting violence and sexual degradation. "I ask myself, could anyone standing face to face with people who actually do suffer violence and sexual exploitation 'explain' that these tragedies, portrayed in virtual form, are considered merely entertainment?

I've been playing Grand Theft Auto 3 since I was 14. I'm a more moral person then you ever will be.

"Do not be fooled by those who see you as just another consumer in a market of undifferentiated possibilities, where choice itself becomes the god, novelty usurps beauty, and subjective experience displaces truth. Christ offers more. Indeed, he offers everything!"

If I ever become a Christian, I won't ever worship you, you hypocritical, homophobic misogynist.

Like a good politician, the Pope stayed on the main message of his three-year papacy in his address to pilgrims, as he warned against secularism and relativism.

"Relativism? Oh no! People might actually think that there are different interpretations of the truth, and that no-one has a total monopoly on morality! If our flock start to think this, they'll be leaving our churches in droves!"

But I can understand why the church is so terrified of secularism. It weakens their grip on power, and has a tend to prove religion somewhat wrong.

He said something sinister stemmed from the fact that freedom and tolerance were so often separated from truth.

"This is fuelled by the notion, widely held today, that there are no absolute truths to guide our lives. Relativism, by indiscriminately giving value to practically everything, has made experience all important," he said.

Way to build your own strawman, asshat. That isn't relativism at all. Relativism says that morality is heavily based on cultural experience, and that no-one has, as I said before, a monopoly on truth and morality.

And apparently "freedom and tolerance were so often separated from truth." That's the whole f*cking point, you idiot! We have freedom and tolerance because one person's 'truth' may be totally different from another person's 'truth!' Do you honestly not understand that we have cultural freedom in society because those cultures may not be entirely truthful?

But this led not to genuine freedom but to moral or intellectual confusion, lower standards, loss of self-respect, and even to despair. While secularism presented itself as neutral and inclusive, in reality it imposed a world view, he said.

"If God is irrelevant to public life, then society will be shaped in a godless image, and debate and policy concerning the public good will be driven more by consequences than by principles grounded in truth."

Uh...what? Can you give any examples that such an event could happen? Must you build non-existent strawmen to support your arguments?* "Principles grounded in truth?" What did the most outspokenly 'Christian' President do in 2003 that was so "grounded in truth?" As for "imposing a world view"-Christianity has never done that, I'm sure.

He also used his harbourside speech to criticise the plundering of natural resources. "Perhaps reluctantly we come to acknowledge that there are scars which mark the surface of our earth — erosion, deforestation, the squandering of the world's mineral and ocean resources in order to fuel an insatiable consumption," he said.

Excellent point. Sadly, one of the only two made in this drivel.

Earlier, in a speech at Government House, Pope Benedict hailed the Rudd Government's apology to indigenous Australians as "courageous", saying its reconciliation agenda offered hope to people around the world who had been denied human rights.

Hmmm...I wonder if the Pope will ever do the same. I doubt it.

In comments that harked back to Pope John Paul II's 1986 speech to Alice Springs Aborigines — and which were credited with fuelling the land rights movement — Pope Benedict reaffirmed that indigenous heritage "forms an essential part of the cultural landscape of modern Australia".

And he encouraged Australia in its bid to close the gap between indigenous and other Australians in health, education and economic opportunities.

Closing the gap would be a bit easier if you didn't follow a 19th century ideology.

"This example of reconciliation offers hope to peoples all over the world who long to see their rights affirmed and their contribution to society acknowledged and promoted," the pontiff said.

Unless any Aborigines are gay. In which case, it's off to hell with them.

So it's official-the Pope is a class C fundie,** but a fundie nonetheless. I still can't understand how many people believe that he's the genuine Pope. Only a white, heterosexual, elderly man can become the Pontiff, which excludes almost all of the world's population. What if the next representative for God was-brace yourself-a woman? Is that so impossible? For the Vatican, it certainly is.

*Actually, that's a stupid questions. Clearly, you do.
**Classes A and B fundies are more anti-environment and more bigoted in general.

Lazyboy moments with religiophobia

To celebrate the new term 'religiophobia', I'll have another Lazyboy Moment (I'll try to find the link):

The fear of Muslims

Compiled by Vikki Leone, The Age Education Unit
The Age, Wednesday December 4

Are Australians becoming less tolerant?

Having many cultures and religions flourishing in relative harmony has long been one of Australia's great achievements. Some are concerned, however, that since the terrorist attacks of September 11 last year, there has been a growth in ``Islamophobia'', a fear of Muslims. Robert Manne, an associate professor of politics at La Trobe University, says: ``Islamophobia now represents by far the most serious threat to the idea of multiculturalism, and even to the ideas of religious and ethnic toleration, that Australia has witnessed for very many years.''

Has fear of terrorism increased racist behaviour?

The September 11 attacks, the Bali bombings, public alerts about terrorism, the Washington sniper and the Monash University shootings have all fuelled concerns about personal safety in Australia.

The attacks in New York and Bali have allegedly been carried out by a small number of Islamic fundamentalists.

Few would suggest that Muslims in Australia - many of whom were born here - are anything but law-abiding citizens who share the same desire to live in peace and freedom as other Australians. Muslim community leaders have repeatedly condemned fundamentalist terrorism and expressed concern about growing resentment towards Muslims.

However, there is evidence of increased racist attacks on Muslim Australians and those of Middle Eastern appearance. Mosques have been vandalised and subjected to bomb threats, and Muslims have reported growing harassment. The hijab, the Islamic headdress which so visibly links Muslim women to their religion, has made some feel so vulnerable that they avoid public places for fear of harassment.

Some argue that any racist behaviour comes from a small intolerant minority, just as an unrepresentative minority carries out terrorism.

Recent developments

Recently, a NSW MP, the Reverend Fred Nile, caused controversy when he urged the government to consider banning the wearing of the hijab in public places as a security precaution, because it could be used by terrorists to conceal weapons and explosives.

Prime Minister John Howard initially did not clearly rule out supporting such a ban. Mr Howard's ambiguity drew fierce criticism from political opponents, unions, the Anglican church and the Islamic community, who claimed he was allowing peaceful Australians to be vilified because of their religious beliefs.

Mr Howard more clearly distanced himself from the proposal the following day. The Greens leader, Bob Brown, accused Mr Howard of fostering anti-Muslim sentiment by default, and opposition leader Simon Crean said: ``National leaders have responsibilities to respond to these statements immediately and unequivocally; to speak up for the nation and the need for tolerance; not to promote division, blame or scapegoating.''

Recent headlines

• ``Muslims in the middle'' The Sunday Age, November 24, 2002.
  ``Crean blasts PM over stand on Muslim clothing'' The Age, November 23, 2002.
  ``Our leaders should mind their tongues'' The Age, October 21, 2002.
  ``Beware the new racism'' The Age, September 16, 2002.

What The Age says

``It is a very sad state of affairs that Australians whose only difference is their religion should exist in a climate of mutual fear and suspicion. It is the responsibility of Muslims and non-Muslims alike to see that this does not continue. Attacks on Muslims are to be deplored, but Muslim leaders also need to state, strongly and often, their condemnation of the terrorism that has been conducted in the name of their religion. Muslim Australians have as much interest in preventing terrorism as other Australians. We are in this fight together.''
Editorial, The Age, November 6, 2002.

What people say

``It is a sad day when an MP feels the best way to fight terrorism is to wage a war against Muslim women. The Australian Arabic Council is not only appalled that an elected politician would so clearly scapegoat Australians, but that senior political figures should let him get away with it.''
Roland Jabbour, chairman of the Australian Arabic Council, The Age, November 25, 2002.

``They'd have understood Nile in Moscow when those Muslim women invaded a theatre with bombs under their burkas.''
D. Smith, The Age , November 25, 2002.

``Fred Nile points out that as world terrorism is coming from mainly Muslim extremist sources, and because Muslim women are now joining their menfolk in acts of terror - as recently happened in Russia and has happened on several occasions in Israel - it would be prudent to ban Muslim burkas, which could be used to conceal weapons. Some of your readers have argued (22/11) that we then must ban all such garments worn by judges, priests and nuns - but that is to miss the point that none of these is associated with a culture of terrorism.''
R. Walker, The Age , November 25, 2002.

``Indeed, no country in the world is as conscious of terrorism as Israel is; no country, unfortunately, has had more experience. Yet Israel has never banned its Muslim citizens from wearing anything, and I'm yet to hear of an Israeli expert who thinks such a method would be effective in combating terrorism.''
Sol Salbe, The Age , November 25, 2002.

``The IEU is appalled that anyone, particularly a MP, would come out and promote such religious intolerance. There is nothing Christian about this attitude; it is divisive and plays into the hands of extremists.''
Dick Shearman, NSW/ACT Independent Education Union.

``Perhaps Fred Nile might also ban maternity smocks, beer guts, oversized jeans, sombreros . . . the list is endless.'' Diana Greentree, The Age , November 23, 2002.

``Before the (ASIO) raids, Australian Muslims had frequently encountered an outrageous and vitriolic discourse of hate on talkback radio, and in tabloid columns. We observed our government's manipulation of mostly Muslim refugees in a scare campaign to retain power in the 2001 election. It is natural then that Muslims viewed ASIO's horrific and unnecessary tactics to raid Muslim homes as either a calculated message, or an involuntary expression of an underlying paradigm.''
Waleed Aly, president of the Melbourne University Islamic Society, The Sunday Age, November 21, 2002.

``Just last week, molotov cocktails nearly set alight the Doncaster East mosque at which my family and I worship. One of my closest girlfriends, who only last month commanded the personal courage to decide to wear hijab, went home in tears after being harassed and sworn at by a car-load of women while filling her car with petrol.''
Randa Abdel-Fattah, The Age, October 21, 2002.

Your view

Students are encouraged to share their views. Have you seen or been subjected to anti-Islamic behaviour? Is Australia's identity as a tolerant and peaceful multicultural society at risk? Have Muslims become an undeserving target of suspicion? Do religious garments pose a security risk? Submit your view online.

Curriculum links

CSF II Learning outcomes

SOSE: Australia's people & places, 3.1, 3.2; Eco 4.2, 5.1; History 6.6

Web Links

Islamic Council of Victoria

Racism no way

And these two were written by Iain Lygo.

This is where religiophobia comes into play, not racism.

A new term for an old hatred

Is anybody as annoyed as I am about how 'racism' is applied to situations where it simply doesn't work? It's like trying to use the term 'sexism' when hating gays, as in on the surface it may sound right but collapses when it gets a whiff of logic. We were able to create 'homophobia' to describe hating gays, so what about now?

Hence, I am hereby creating a new term; religiophobia-an irrational fear of, or hatred of, a particular religion. This is the term that should be used when referring to anti-Semitism or Islamophobia, because that isn't racism but a hatred of a particular religion. Judging by my readership, I expect the term to catch on in a century or two.

Oppression in the name of religion is still oppression

Or, as Malcolm X would say, "wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it."

I went to a Bible study class last night, hoping to quell some of the few dozen questions I've gained from the first 3 Gospels (I'm not a Christian (not yet, anyway), merely an agnostic). There were prayers, before we studied singing and music as it relates to the Bible (whenever I think of gospel music and black Christianity, I always think of Rev. Turk).

Shortly after dinner, I was able to discuss some of those burning questions (like “how can God, a spirit, have a biological gender?” and “I don’t care what you say, my brain still melts when I try to comprehend how sin is inherited”). We talked about evolution vs. creationism (always a fascinating debate) before someone mentioned that the Bible doesn’t oppress anybody.

When I then asked “what do you think of the gay community” the concept of irony left the room (if it was ever there). And, unfortunately, therein is the problem of African Christianity. No doubt this is mostly (if not entirely) the West's fault, due to both our cultural rape of Africa and preventing her as a continent and as countless individual countries to evolve socially on their own, and currently with our shockingly low aid. However, it still remains that Africans, including everybody of African descent, were-and still are-at the forefront of the abuse of Christianity to justify slavery, and then to justify the denial of black Americans' rights. Blacks and gays have been oppressed for almost of all human history, and it is terrible that either would still hold any form of prejudice against the other.

Hence, I have compiled a small list of quotes from two brilliant black Christians:

Coretta Scott King

• I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice. But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.
• Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood. This sets the stage for further repression and violence that spread all too easily to victimize the next minority group.
• I've always felt that homophobic attitudes and policies were unjust and unworthy of a free society and must be opposed by all Americans who believe in democracy.
• For many years now, I have been an outspoken supporter of civil and human rights for gay and lesbian people. Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in Albany, Ga. and St. Augustine, Fla., and many other campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement. Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions
• We have a lot more work to do in our common struggle against bigotry and discrimination. I say "common struggle" because I believe very strongly that all forms of bigotry and discrimination are equally wrong and should be opposed by right-thinking Americans everywhere. Freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation is surely a fundamental human right in any great democracy, as much as freedom from racial, religious, gender, or ethnic discrimination.
• We have to launch a national campaign against homophobia in the black community

Desmond Tutu

• We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.
• I give great thanks to God that he has created a Dalai Lama. Do you really think, as some have argued, that God will be saying: "You know, that guy, the Dalai Lama, is not bad. What a pity he's not a Christian"? I don't think that is the case — because, you see, God is not a Christian.
• There are different kinds of justice. Retributive justice is largely Western. The African understanding is far more restorative - not so much to punish as to redress or restore a balance that has been knocked askew.
• Fundamental rights belong to the human being just because you are a human being.
• "Isn't it sad, that in a time when we face so many devastating problems – poverty, HIV/AIDS, war and conflict – that in our Communion we should be investing so much time and energy on disagreement about sexual orientation?" [The Communion, which] "used to be known for embodying the attribute of comprehensiveness, of inclusiveness, where we were meant to accommodate all and diverse views, saying we may differ in our theology but we belong together as sisters and brothers" now seems "hell-bent on excommunicating one another. God must look on and God must weep."
• If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn’t worship that God.

Homosexuality and Christianity aren't mutually exclusive. Especially since Jesus never even mentioned it.