I'm consolidating my Blogs.

Like a glutton whose eyes are bigger than his stomach in an "all you can eat" cafeteria, I ended up with too many blogs on my plate so I'm consolidating them down to two:

1. My church blog at www.christchurchsatx.blogspot.com (with a links to and from Christ Church, San Augustine, Texas web site .)

2. My "literary" blog Glynns Book Reviews, which is linked to and from my Glynns Books Web site.

Both the Christ Church, San Augustine blog and the Glynns Book Reviews blog have RSS links that enable you to be notified by email whenever the content changes at either of the blogs and either of the web sites.

I will no longer upload posts to his blog after May 31, 2006. This blog will be deleted after six months from that date.

I'm Back

Sorry to have been gone so long, but I've been busy on other things. I'll spend some time tomorrow catching up, but I also want to get a major revision done at my web site www.glynnsbooks.com too, so it may take me awhile.

See you.

AFA Action Alert
The American Family Associate is at it again. Their most recent "Action Alert" sent out by email urges recipients to write, call, and email the Parent Teachers Association (PTA) protesting that the PTA has excluded an organization styled "Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Ex-Gays" (PFOX) from exhibiting at the June PTA conference. The PTA allows the legitimate organization PFLAG to exibit at the convention. I have written the following letter to the PTA and urge you to write a similar letter. You can email the PTA at info@PTA.org. If you had rather call or fax, the numbers are:

Phone: 312-670-6782
Toll-Free: 800-307-4PTA (4782)
Fax: 312-670-6783

Mr. Michael W. Cathey
Public Relations Manager
National PTA
541 N. Fairbanks Ct.
Ste. 1300
Chicago, IL 60611-3396

Dear Mr. Cathey

I have learned that the American Family Association has targeted the PTA with an email “Action Alert” protesting your excluding advocates for Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Ex-Gays PFOX) as an exhibitor at your convention in Columbus, OH. Their email urges recipients to write you protesting your action. Interestingly the AFA did not provide your address; all letters of protest are to be sent to AFA and forwarded to you.

I want you to know that your are entirely correct in excluding PFOX. Although PFOX has a superficial similarity to the pro-gay group PFLAG, the two groups are similar only in name. PFLAG has the goal of providing education and support to Gay men and women and their friends in combating and correcting the unfairness and ignorance of those who would use this legitimate and natural sexual orientation for ideological and political purposes. PFOX on the other hand exists only to undermine the work of PFLAG by perpetrating the lie that constitutionally homosexuals can somehow ‘change.’ So-called ‘ex-gays’ surface periodically with persons and organizations making claims that homosexuality can be ‘cured.’ This false and dangerous practice has been debunked over and over again and exists only to persecute homosexuals, not to cure
them. Allowing PFOX representation at your convention would be the equivalent of allowing advocates for phrenology at an AMA conference.

I applaud your decision not to allow PFOX at your conference. Please stick to your principals.

Sincerely,
Glynn C. Harper

Which Famous Homosexual Are You?
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On Moral Values and religion, so called.

The following quotation from Charles Dickens' preface to his Pickwick Papers seems particularly apt (as well as Dickens' quote from Jonathon Swift) during our present day discussion of moral values, Christianity, and religion in general.

"Lest there be any well-intentioned persons who do not perceive the . . . difference between religion and the cant of religion, piety and the pretense of piety, a humble reverence for the great truths of Scripture and an audacious and offensive obtrusion of its letter and not its spirit in the commonest dissensions and meanest affairs of life, to the stand that it is always the latter, and never the former which is satirized here. Further, that the latter is here satirized as being, according to all experience, inconsistent with the former, impossible of union with it, and one of the most evil and mischievous falsehoods existent in society – whether it establish its headquarters, for the time being in Exeter Hall, or Ebenezer Chapel, or both. It may appear unnecessary to offer a word of observation on so plain a head. But it is never out of season to protest against the coarse familiarity with sacred things which is busy on the lip and idle in the heart, or against the confounding of Christianity with any class of persons who, in the words of SWIFT, have just enough religion to make them hate, and not enough to make them love, one another."

A Good Quote for Sunday


Slapping the Other Cheek by MAUREEN DOWD
NY Times OP-ED COLUMNIST
Published: November 14, 2004

"You'd think the one good thing about merging church and state would be that politics would be suffused with glistening Christian sentiments like 'love thy neighbor', 'turn the other cheek,' 'good will toward men,' 'blessed be the peacemakers' and 'judge not lest you be judged.'

"Yet somehow I'm not getting a peace, charity, tolerance and forgiveness vibe from the conservatives and evangelicals . . .I'm getting more the feel of a vengeful mob - revved up by rectitude - running around with torches and hatchets after heathens and pagans and infidels.

"Sounding more like the head of a mob family than a ministry, Dr. [James] Dobson [founder and chairman of Focus on the Family] told Mr. [George] Stephanopoulos about a warning he issued a White House staffer after the election that the president and Republicans had better deliver on issues like abortion, gay marriage and conservative judges or 'I believe they'll pay a price in the next election.'

****

"Mr. Stephanopoulos asked Dr. Dobson about his comment to The Daily Oklahoman that 'Patrick Leahy is a '"God's people-hater."' I don't know if he hates God, but he hates God's people," noting that it was not a particularly Christian thing to say about the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. (Especially after that vulgar un-Christian thing Dick Cheney spat at Mr. Leahy last summer.)

"'George,' Dr. Dobson haughtily snapped back, 'do you think you ought to lecture me on what a Christian is all about?' Why not? The TV host is the son of a Greek Orthodox priest."

Perhaps "Do as I say and not as I do." is in the Bible somewhere, but I can't find it.