Open Letter to Cardinal Timothy Dolan

On April 23, 2012, I sent a letter to Cardinal Timothy Dolan in New York City. My letter was in response to the controversy surrounding the Cardinal's response to the director of the Ali Forney Center, Carl Siciliano. On HurffingtonPost.com Siciliano made public the Cardinal's snide remarks concerning the director's request for the Cardinal to visit.


Cardinal Dolan was appointed by Pope Benedict Cardinal Dolan, and has since become famous for his recent suit against Pres. Barack Obama because of the contraception mandate.


I was shocked by this.It's not the Church I grew up in. Saddened, I sat down to write a private letter. However, since there has been no response,  I feel it's necessary to share it with the world. Below is the letter I sent to Cardinal Dolan:

Dear Cardinal Dolan:
My name is Jennifer Morgan. I am a Catholic, raised in the Biloxi diocese. I am also a lesbian.

Please, Your Eminence, don't stop reading. I have much to say, but I say none of it with hatred or condemnation. I have been hated and condemned too much in my life to do that to you.

I have been reading of the controversy surrounding a letter sent to you by Carl Siciliano, the director of the Ali Forney Center in New York City, and the subsequent resignation of a Catholic Charities board member. To say that I ran a gauntlet of emotions is an understatement. Anger did creep in, but the most pervasive emotion was sadness.

Sadness is an emotion I am used to, but in my life when I am sad, the safety of Catholic Church has seen me through the darkness. I could not write you this letter if it wasn't for a Catholic priest who saved my life multiple times. I would have been emotionally broken years ago if not for an empty church on a weekday where I could talk out loud to God, or sit in silence and safety.

You see, I owe the Catholic Church in my hometown-both the building and the pastor- my life. I owe my faith in Jesus Christ to a man who decided to love me despite my sexuality, and who never ceased to lift me up when I'd fallen. Friends and family members failed to look at me as my priest did. Family and friends' love withered and faded. However, a priest with a large congregation, and many outside responsibilities, decided to never give up on me. Because of him, my faith in God-damaged by hateful comments by other Christians- grew immeasurably.

As I write this, tears are streaming down my face, and I can't stop them. They aren't tears for me, but tears for all of those in the LGBT community who never had the opportunity to be loved as I was. I weep for those that once held Christ deep within themselves, only to have Him replaced with cynicism and hate because of condemnation by others.

How could this be what Christ wanted?

I can't begin to count the number of friends I've seen kicked out of their homes and families, and I can't count on both hands the number of friends I've lost to suicide. Did they call out to Him before they took the pills or shot the gun? Did they scream to God for clarity and peace? Did they huddle homeless in the streets, and pray for guidance? Or did they let cynicism and hate—the greatest weapons of Satan—kill their mind, body and soul?

Then there are the funerals. The funerals for my brothers and sisters lost to the pain of being LGBT in this country. The thing about a funeral, as I'm sure you know, is that you don't see your friend. He/she is dead, and closed in a casket in front of the altar. What we see at the funerals are the family and friends of the deceased. We see the mother, torn by the inevitable questions and guilt. We see the father struggle to comprehend the loss. We see the siblings caught in between their own anger/guilt, and the guilt of the parents. We feel pain so immense that it strangles us.

Why does any of this have to happen? Why must a child be homeless in the streets? Why must a mother weep in loss? Why should families be separated all because of someone's sexuality? Why must moral superiority trump an individual's humanity?

I'm afraid that the question of why is one that we don't ask enough. It is the question of humanity, and if we fail to ask the question, we fail to understand the individual.

So why am I writing you today? Cardinal Dolan, it is my sincere  hope and greatest wish that you will reconsider visiting the Ali Forney Center. I can't ask you to reconsider your stance without seeing those of us that suffer the most.

You were blessed with four siblings, and two parents. What if, in your youth, your parents had hated you for something you couldn't change, and kicked you out? What if one day you were told how loved you were, only to be told you are no longer welcome?

It is the most painful and damaging feeling in the world, Your Eminence. It breaks your heart and soul simultaneously. I don't believe that you hate LGBT people. I believe that you might even have friends, maybe even family, that are members of my community. Wouldn't you want them to feel love? Would you ever wish them to walk alone? Maybe I'm naive , or maybe it's just my faith in Jesus Christ. Either way, I refuse to believe that you have simply cast us aside as "evil," or "barbarians" like so many have.

You would not have to go to the Center as a Cardinal. This shouldn't be a PR stunt. You don't have to go to the Center as anything but a man. After all, Christ didn't walk amongst the least of His children with condemnation, or even with a sense of superiority. Instead, He walked amongst the people that society condemned, asking and posing the question of why. By asking why, He lifted up the downtrodden, and brought love and understanding.

I'm not writing this believing you will walk into the Center, and immediately change all Church policy. Honestly, I'm not. Instead, I am praying that you will walk into the Center and listen. We spend so much time internalizing the hateful comments of others, that when someone is there to listen it is empowering. It sounds so simple, but even just a hug and a nice word can save someone in my community's life.

Your Eminence, when someone condemns my love of Christ because of my sexuality, I say that I will not spend my life hating Christ because of six verses in the Bible. If on the day of my death, the Lord says that my sexuality negates any good I've done, then so be it. I look forward to the day I am judged based on the totality of my life. If Christ sends me to hell, no angel will have to throw me into the Lake of Fire. I'll swan dive in. I'd rather walk in the light of the Lord, then drown in the shadows of hate.

All I want for my community is for each individual to at least have the opportunity to feel the same. All I want for the families of the members of my community is to never see them struggle through loss because of ignorance.  That opportunity comes through love, and understanding. Please, Cardinal Dolan, reconsider!

Thank you for your time, and may God's blessing be upon you,

 Jennifer L. Morgan

Kansas Pastor: U.S. Government Should Start Killing Gay People

Didn't have your cravings for insanity and bigotry sated by Mississippi Rep. Andy Gipson, who cited a biblical passage calling for gay people to be put to death and equated them to disease carriers? Not even by North Carolina Pastor Charles L. Worley, who called for gay men and lesbians to be put behind separate electric fences (because if we just separated gay men from lesbians, they would stop reproducing and gay people would die out)? Well, Kansas to the rescue.

In a sermon last Sunday, New Hope Baptist Church Pastor Curtis Knapp unequivocally called for the government to put gay people to death. That's unlike when Andy Gipson, who, despite citing Leviticus 18:22, which calls for gay men to be put to death, denied that he intended to insinuate that gay people should be put to death. Yet Knapp didn't shy away from what that scripture clearly says. In his sermon, Pastor Curtis Knapp told the church thus:

"They should be put to death. That's what happened in Israel. That's why homosexuality wouldn't have grown in Israel. It tends to limit conversions. It tends to limit people coming out of the closet. — 'Oh, so you're saying we should go out and start killing them, no?' — I'm saying the government should. They won't but they should. 'Oh, I can't believe you you're horrible. You're a backwards neanderthal of a person.' Is that what you're calling scripture? Is God a neanderthal backwards in his morality? Is it his word or not? If it's his word, he commanded it. It's his idea—not mine. And I'm not ashamed of it."

Is it just me, or has President Obama's embrace of marriage equality really brought the nutters out of the woodwork? Or at least, out of the closets.

Listen to audio from the sermon below:

Romney: Who Cares About Trump's Birtherism? I Need His Help to Become President, for Pete's Sake

Mitt Romney continued on with a fundraiser with Donald Trump last night, despite the fact that Trump made news by continuing to play the birther card in an interview last week. In an interview with The Daily Beast last week, Trump argued that President Obama admitted to being Kenya born before he knew he was going to be running for president, "so he told the truth."

Trump was referring to a 1991 pamphlet uncovered by conspiracy theorists last week. The pamphlet, which was made to promote an upcoming book by Obama, erroneously stated that Obama was born in Kenya. Despite the fact that the editor of the text, Miriam Goderich, admitted that the mistake was a mere fact-checking effort on her part, Trump and other birthers continued to insist on pointing to the pamphlet, a published document, as proof that Obama is not an American. And while this one pamphlet is hailed as proof of Obama's non-American origins, the long form birth certificate that he released last year and the newspaper articles announcing his birth in Hawaii mean nothing to Trump.

What's really embarrassing, though, is that Trump's embrace of the looney birther conspiracy means nothing to Romney, either. Brushing off criticisms for his continued acceptance of Donald Trump's endorsement and fundraisers, Mitt Romney's answer was essentially that he needs Trump's help to become president:

"You know, I don't agree with all the people who support me and my guess is they don't all agree with everything I believe in. But I need to get 50.1 percent or more and I'm appreciative to have the help of a lot of good people."

In other words, who cares about principle? Who cares about truth? Who cares about integrity? Romney is the same guy who turned his back on the precedent that John McCain set when McCain stood up to a voter who tried to paint Obama as a Muslim (which, like the "Kenyan born" conspiracy, is just another way of describing Obama's "otherness"). McCain responded by shooting down the woman's assertion and describing Obama as "a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues." He also told supporters, to boos, that Obama was a person "who you don't have to be scared of as President of the United States."

Romney was put in a similar situation recently when a woman he was speaking with said Obama should be tried for treason. Romney didn't even bother to correct her or show any sign of discomfort with her words. Unlike John McCain, Romney cares nothing for civility, integrity, or honesty. That's why, as Newt Gingrich admitted last week, Romney doesn't mind throwing the kitchen sink at opponents and doing whatever it takes (including lying) in order to win. That's why Mitt Romney doesn't mind walking hand-in-hand with the likes of Donald Trump and the birther brigade.

Dennis Marcellino Says Democrats, Blacks, Hispanics Will Go to Hell

All Democratic voters — especially blacks and Hispanics who are under the false impression that they are Christians — will burn in eternal hellfire if they do not repent of their vote before they die. At least, that's what Dennis Marcellino says.

Who is Dennis Marcellino, you ask? According to his Wikipedia page, he's a musician, vocalist, songwriter, arranger, author, speaker, engineer, philosopher, psychologist, theologian, and has been a member "of some famous music groups." Oh, alright then.

This impressive jack-of-all-trades arranged to author a philosophical yet mostly theological smack down of Democrat voters in a piece on ConservativeByte.com ("Take a Byte Out of Liberalism"®). There, he offered this totally inoffensive, fact based analysis:

"This is not meant to be emotional or inflammatory, it is simply stating a fact and to warn. The Bible does say that if a person votes for a democrat [sic] (the promoters and supporters of sin) and were to die without repenting of that, he or she is going to hell. I think this is an important message for blacks and hispanics [sic] who think they are Christians and don't want to offend God but who vote lock step [sic] for democrats [sic]."

Marcellino then goes on to explain that the justification for his analysis is that liberals support a litany of sins and sinners that God detests: gay people, lesbians, slander, gossip, strife (the past three being things Republicans never, ever, ever do; birtherism, for example, is pure fact), and God-haters (also called atheists). He then explains that these things are all "primary attributes of liberals." Ah. The pieces are starting to fit.

As stupid as Marcellino sounds, I have to admit that it's nothing I haven't heard before. Having grown up visiting fundamental Baptist churches and Pentecostal churches in rural Mississippi, I've heard liberals accused of all these things before. And yes, I have explicitly heard preachers say that "you can't possibly vote for a Democrat and be saved." In 2008, after the election of President Obama, a preacher I knew quite well took the pulpit to announce to his church that "Barack Obama doesn't worship the Jesus we worship."

The idea that a vote for a Democrat is tantamount to casting one's lot in with Satan is not such a distant reality for some people. Just ask my state's governor, Phil Bryant, who said that if the anti-contraception, anti-in-vitro, anti-abortion Proposition 26 failed to pass in Mississippi, "Satan wins." That was just before the November election in 2011, and not only did Satan win, but Phil Bryant also became Governor of Mississippi. Coincidence?

We have reached a point as a country where a sizable number of voters, preachers, and politicians (often available as a 3-in-1 deal) actually do believe that the fires of hell await just across the political aisle. Sorry, founding fathers.

Chris Hayes Thinks It's "Problematic" to Call Fallen Soldiers "Heroes." Is He Wrong?

MSNBC commentator Chris Hayes lit up social media this Memorial Day weekend after articulating his discomfort with automatically assigning the word "hero" to any fallen American soldier. Speaking with obvious trepidation, Hayes offered this explanation on his show Up With Chris Hayes (video):

"I think it's interesting because it is, I think, very difficult  to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the word 'heroes' . . . I feel uncomfortable about the word hero because, it seems to me, that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war. And I don't want to obviously desecrate or disrespect the memory of anyone that's fallen, and obviously there are individual circumstances in which there is genuine tremendous heroism — a hail of gunfire, rescuing fellow soldiers, and things like that — but it seems to me we martial this word in a way that is problematic, but maybe I'm wrong about that."

Predictably, Hayes' comments were trashed by conservatives, with commenters on Breitbart.com trotting out the tired attacks on Hayes as a "pansy" and a "more feminine" Rachel Maddow. Ann Coulter tweeted that Marines were responsible for "protecting his right to menstruate." Just as predictably, status-quo liberals ran for the hills, either not acknowledging Hayes' comment or working overtime to reassure conservatives that his words were not indicative of their own thoughts; after all, the last thing liberals need is for conservatives to have another reason to accuse them of not being sufficiently pro-war and pro-military. Certainly not on Memorial Day weekend.

Alas, the notion that Chris Hayes might actually have a point was largely lost in the firestorm. All Americans, regardless of political affiliation, are expected to express fierce devotion and reverence for all the men and women who serve; to fail to do so is often perceived — and portrayed — as a sort of cultural and political death knell. In a scathing criticism of Hayes and the "liberal chattering class," Mark Finkelstein introduced the video of Hayes' skittish delivery thus: "Watch the hesitant Hayes in what almost seems a parody of the conflicted intellectual."

Finkelstein actually made a good point. Hayes did seem conflicted in his delivery, offering an apologetic "maybe I'm wrong" at the end as if pleading for merciful retribution from Ingsoc for his sin of thoughtcrime. Surely, if he had been a politician (or a journalist on Fox News), his career would be over. It almost takes an act of heroism to state such a socially unacceptable point of view. But for the sake of the truth, he needn't have apologized. Taken in the proper context, his point was not only loaded with truth, but a display of true honesty and respect for the true heroes in our military.

In reality, the neocons in power who push the military worship narrative have the least admiration of all for our soldiers, and certainly don't think they're all heroes. The neocon is not concerned with the individual soldier as a portrait of bravery, compassion, daring, patriotism or courage. The neocon is concerned with the soldier as a praiseworthy object of war propaganda, to be appropriated for state use as rebel leaders attempt to appropriate Katniss in Mockingjay, the third book of The Hunger Games. Was Katniss heroic? Yes,  but not because the rebel government propaganda said she was.

For neocons, soldiers are only heroic if they can be used to advance the goals of the state and the pro-war agenda. Jessica Lynch, whose rescue story is one of the greatest pieces of war propaganda ever assembled (constructed by a neocon government and obediently relayed by a complicit media), is hailed as a hero because her ordeal served to advance the pro-Iraq War cause. Yet for the same reason neocons upheld Jessica Lynch as a symbol of valor and heroism, the soldiers responsible for the highly embarrassing Abu Ghraib incident were demoted to the rank of scum-of-the-earth — not because of the fact that what they did was morally repugnant, but because Abu Ghraib severely undermined the neocon pro-war cause and defined the moment where public opinion about the Iraq War turned sour.  The notion that these people were ever "soldiers" was erased and purged from the national consciousness.

The Many Sins of "Death to the Gays" Rep. Andy Gipson

Ever since President Obama announced his support for marriage equality earlier this month, Mississippi's District 77 Representative Andy Gipson has been hard at work making a name for himself in the land of intolerance and inequality. Gipson, who is also a Southern Baptist minister, took to his Facebook page to opine that "the only opinion that counts is God's: see Romans 1:26-28 and Leviticus 20:13. Anyway [sic] you slice it, it is sin. Not to mention horrific social policy."

Leviticus 20:13, a favorite here in the South, is the one that says of gays, "They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads." Gipson went on in a separate comment to give a three-point sermon outlining why homosexuality is horrific social policy:

He offered that, "in addition to the basic principal [sic] that it is morally wrong," homosexuality is "unnatural behavior which results in disease, not the least of which is its high association with the development and spread of HIV/AIDS." In doing so, he made his forefathers of bigotry proud, who once argued that interracial marriage shouldn't be allowed "because of the physical inferiority and higher incidence of certain diseases among certain races, such as sickle-cell anemia among African Americans."

Mr. Gipson's second brilliant point was that homosexuality led to "confusing behavior which is harmful to children who have a deep need to understand the proper role of men and women in society and the important difference between men and women." In other words, Mr. Gipson feels that his manhood is threatened by the idea of a man who exhibits feminine qualities — or worse — a butchy, dominant woman. At all costs, Mr. Gipson must defend the sacred institution of male domination and female subjugation. After all, Ephesians 5:22 does command women to submit to their husbands.

Gipson's third point is that allowing gay couples to marry "undermines the long standing definition of marriage as between one man and one woman, a definition which has been key to all aspects of social order and prosperity. Anytime [sic] that definition is weakened our culture is also weakened." Personally, if prosperity is the goal, I think we should go back to the kind of traditional marriage arrangement that King Solomon had. That dude was not only the richest man in the world, but he held enormous favor with God and had 700 wives in addition to 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:1-3). Can we just go back to that, please?

Alas, failing to see the brilliance of the good lawmaker's argument, built upon the rock-solid precedents set by those who once stood against interracial marriage, many angry gays and liberals inundated Mr. Gipson with a torrential downpour of emails and Facebook messages, denouncing his message. Undeterred, Mr. Gipson stood strong in the word of the Lord, posting thus on Friday:

"To be clear, I want the world to know that I do not, cannot, and will not apologize for the inspired truth of God's Word™. It is one thing that will never 'change.' Anyone who knows me knows that I also believe that all people are created in God's image, and that all people are loved by God, so much so that He gave us the truth of His Word which convicts us of the reality and guilt of our sin, and He gave us His Son Jesus who paid the full penalty for our sins, by His grace through faith in Him as we repent of our sin. John 3:16. It is this message that I preach every Sunday. I sincerely pray God will reach someone through this message."

While Mr. Gipson's words about the nature of sin and Jesus' sacrifice are biblically sound, a quick glance through Gipson's Facebook seems to reveal that he is not walking in this Word that he so professes. In fact, it seems that God's Word™has failed at convicting him of a number of sins, which he not only commits, but proudly shares on Facebook, posting photographic evidence of his trespasses against God's truth. 2 Timothy 3:5 seems to indicate that Mr. Gipson is, in fact, a false prophet. Consider the following sins and abominations that Mr. Gipson has flaunted on his Facebook and decide for yourself.