David Salisbury (@davidsalisbury) describes himself as “a queer, vegan, Witch . . . chief of the DC Bureau of the Pagan Newswire Collective . . . High Priest of Coven of the Spiral Moon . . . involved with street activism with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and . . . a full time employee with the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBT civil rights organization.” Salisbury’s employment by HRC means that his various forms of “activism” necessarily reflect on the “civil rights organization” that pays him a full time salary.
HRC supported the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) which voters in Houston overwhelmingly rejected at the ballot box earlier this month, in large part because of concerns that the measure would have endangered girls and women by compelling “transgender” access to public restrooms and locker rooms. William Bigelow reported:
On October 5, campaign finance reports showed that the group supporting the measure, Houston Unites, had raised $1.2 million, while the group opposing it, Campaign for Houston, had raised only $275,000.
The Washington Times reported, “The ordinance, which included fines of up to $5,000 for preventing someone from using public accommodations, such as business-owned bathrooms open to the public, based on gender identity.” . .
HERO was openly supported by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton . . .
Despite a 4-to-1 money advantage, and despite the fact that Houston is a Democrat Party stronghold with a lesbian mayor, voters rejected HERO by a 61%-39% margin — a decisive defeat for the effort to “mainstream” transgenderism. The defeat of HERO was widely seen as a conservative victory. Hillary Clinton blamed “the far right” which she said created “a lot of fear, and a lot of anxiety” about “the bathroom issue . . . that was totally without merit, that there was no basis for it.”
The problem with such a claim, however, is that it is rejected by radical feminists, who believe that “the bathroom issue,” as Mrs. Clinton calls it, does have “merit.” There is a petition to “Drop the T” from LGBT:
We are a group of gay/bisexual men and women who have come to the conclusion that the transgender community needs to be disassociated from the larger LGB community; in essence, we ask that organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, Lambda Legal and media outlets such as The Advocate, Out, Huff Post Gay Voices, etc., stop representing the transgender community as we feel their ideology is not only completely different from that promoted by the LGB community (LGB is about sexual orientation, trans is about gender identity), but is ultimately regressive and actually hostile to the goals of women and gay men. . . .
The vilification and harassment of women and gay/lesbian individuals who openly express disagreement with the trans ideology; a simple disagreement over an issue can result in responses that range from insults (“transphobic bigot”) to threats of physical harm (often, in the case of women, rape) and even death . . .
The infringement of the rights of individuals, particularly women, to perform normal everyday activities in traditional safe spaces based on sex; this is most pernicious in the case of men claiming to be transgender demanding access to bathrooms, locker rooms, women’s shelters and other such spaces reserved for women. . . .
Radical feminist Cathy Brennan says David Salisbury is “harassing lesbians who signed the Drop the T petition,” showing a message in which Salisbury wrote:
And while we’re doing the work of calling out horrible transphobic “elders”, I present you with this, posted just a few days ago. Trying to take the “T” out of LGBT, and claiming that transwomen are actually men who are lying to get into spaces … that too is anti-trans violence that mustn’t be condoned. I ask us all to end this silence. If you support spaces where people like [name redacted] teach, ask yourself, is this really in line with your values?
I am proud to work for the organization that has authored the Equality Act. Because we will NEVER be equal unless we bring everyone along with us.
David Salisbury accuses “horrible transphobic ‘elders'” of engaging in “anti-trans violence” just because they don’t want men in dresses and wigs invading the women’s restroom. Meanwhile, David Marcus at The Federalist interviewed the gay man who authored the Change.org “Drop the T” petition:
Any attempt to rationally discuss issues that gays/lesbians/bisexuals are concerned about regarding the trans movement is met with unparalleled vitriol, harassment, death threats, and silencing—demanding that the person commenting contrary to the trans narrative be banned from forums, for example.
I know that lesbians have for several years been the object of attack from trans activists for their (rightful) desire to enjoy exclusively lesbian and women-only events such as the now shuttered Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, in the wake of the Stonewall brouhaha as well as the recent proliferation of stories about effeminate boys and masculine girls being directed by their parents and health professionals into the trans identity. So many gays and lesbians were “sissies” and “tomboys” as kids, I think they see themselves in these children and are concerned about them being directed down an inaccurate path.
Read the whole thing. This is a serious issue involving real human beings and, as with so many issues today, certain “progressives” (evidently including Hillary Clinton) want to exercise a totalitarian authority to tell us what to think and control what we are allowed to say. It’s like the climate change “consensus” — a clique of influential insiders have anointed themselves Official Experts, decided what the Correct Opinion is, and the rest of us are just supposed to nod our heads in mute assent. How dare we question the Official Experts?
When I first became aware of this conflict in January 2014, I had a lot of laughs about the absurdity of this conflict:
The Competitive Victimhood Derby is ultimately a zero-sum game, you see. There can only be one winner, and the transgender claim to equal victimhood is rejected by radical feminists, who view this as an attempt to usurp their own categorical claim.
It’s like a traffic jam on the Crazyville Road, where two politicized groups of wackjobs are compelled by the implicit logic of their arguments to fight each other for supremacy.
Over the past 22 months, however, I have come to appreciate the seriousness of this issue in the post-Obergefell era. The “vitriol, harassment [and] death threats” directed against Cathy Brennan and other radical feminists who refuse to back away from a scientific fact — i.e., female is a matter of biology, involving XX chromosomes — should alarm everyone who cares about truth. The ideology behind the transgender movement demands that we pretend that Bruce Jenner deserves recognition as “Woman of the Year.” Lunatics want to compel us to cooperate with their delusions, and we are condemned as hateful bigots if we refuse to play along with their make-believe game. So the “Woman of the Year” is 66 years old and has a penis, and you’re not even allowed to call him “Bruce” or mention that he is a grandfather.
Having examined this issue in depth (see “The Queering of Feminism: Why Does ‘Equality’ Require Promoting Perversion?”), I cannot be accused of ignorance in regard to these arguments, and I am indifferent to accusations of “hate.” One can scarcely have any opinion at all nowadays without being accused of “hate,” and the fact that these accusations are flung around so haphazardly should tell us that the Official Experts are afraid of honest debate. The question we should be asking is this: Who authorized these people to tell us what to think?
Are we going to listen to common sense, or are we going to listen to the High Priest of the Coven of the Spiral Moon?
David was first introduced to the Craft at the age of 11 by his stepmother, and then on a deeper more intentional level by a childhood friend at the age of 12. That same year, he began training with a friend’s family coven and initiated a year later.
That’s how you become a “human rights” advocate, I guess.
David Salisbury, LGBT "activist," has been
worshipping at Wicca altars since he was 12.
@BadhbhCatha @JenderFatigue pic.twitter.com/iNs93VTzJW
— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) November 12, 2015
+ + + + +
My research into radical feminism is funded by readers in response to the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:
Whatever you can give — $5, $10, $20 — is sincerely appreciated.
That’s actually a subject that I prefer to leave alone most of the time.
Whatever Christians may think, Jews don’t necessarily agree that Christianity is a continuation of Judaism. Modern Christianity may be inspired by Judaism, but it has left out more than it included.
Ah, there we’re going to disagree.
This is simplifying things some, but it’s what an old online friend called my T.I.T. theory. Basically, the more contact that a culture has with other cultures, the healthier it becomes. This contact is most easily measured in trade (both ways), immigration/emigration, and tolerance (living near the Other who did not share the same cultural norms).
The rule of law and trade did more for Western Civilization than the RCC. That didn’t stop the RCC from taking credit though.
I was wearing a beard before they were cool, and I shall continue wearing one after they stop being cool.
Because I am neither cool not hip, and do not wish to be.
See, as long as they remain in the monkey house and howl and fling feces at each other, normal people don’t give a rip.
It’s when they slip through the bars and demand that the rest of us howl and fling feces, normal people tell them to STFU and leave them alone – as happened in Houston.
In this instance I define “normal” as not equating disagreement with violence.
Reputable historians estimate that prior to about 70 AD, up to 10% of the subjects of the Roman Empire were Jews. Later, Jews were far fewer in number.
Those millions of people didn’t just disappear .. they became Christians.
All is well with the world!
Probably. It seemed to me when I visited Salem a couple of decades ago that the modern town’s only reason to even exist was to profit off “witches” visiting — and profaning — the graves of good Christian people who were murdered because someone accused them of being witches.
Well that is an overly simple but here is was Auster wrote
As a result, Western civilization is not a single thing, but an amalgamation of (1) the culture of the destroyed classical world, (2) the Christian religion, and (3) the cultures of the Northern barbarians. This amalgamation took place during the 500 years that you dismiss as the Dark Ages. Yes, they were “dark,” in that civilization had come to an end and Europe was prey to continual barbarian raids that made a safe and settled life impossible. But in this darkness a new culture and civilization was taking shape. Read the Venerable Bede’s History of the English Church about how, starting in 597, Roman Catholic bishops were sent by the Pope to Engand and began converting the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, and how that common religion made the separate pagan Anglo-Saxon kingdoms into the English nation. Or read how the Carolingians (Pippin, Charles Martel, Pippin the Short, and Charlemagne) over generations slowly subdued the barbaric German tribes and Christianized them, helped by Irish and English monks such as Boniface who spent their lives traveling and preaching and converting in the wild forests of Germany. Or read how the Benedictine Order, whose rule was obedience to God, re-civilized vast ruined areas of Europe and created prosperity by combining monastic devotion with productive agriculture. Or read of the great period of Irish Christianity (also during the Dark Ages), when the illuminated manuscripts such as the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Book of Kells—creations that are at the absolute summit of our civilization—were made, and also many classical works were preserved from barbarian destruction.
As a result of this slow Christianizing and civilizing process, and the fact that the Catholics of Europe, led by the Carolingians, were able to drive back the Arab Moslem invaders from France in the early 8th century, subdue the gangster realm of the Avars in Eastern Europe, and rescue the Papacy from the barbarian Lombards, and the fact that other barbarian invasions quieted down, Europe by the 11th century emerged as a dynamic, prosperous civilization again, no longer besieged, and the High Middle Ages (1000 to 1300) had begun. That’s what made the first Crusade possible. For the first time, the European Catholics, instead of being attacked by the Moslems, were in a position to try to re-take the once-Christian Eastern lands that had been conquered by the Moslems in the 7th century. The High Middle Ages also brought the Norman architecture and then the Gothic architecture—further summits of civilization that nothing modern can match.
The High Middle Ages were the product of the Early Middle Ages (the Dark Ages), and in turn served as the foundation of modern Western civilization.
The ambiguity of “paganism” in common parlance is why I referred to Pseudologos in my earlier comment.
Specifically I was thinking about 1 Timmothy 4:2 the word translated into English as “lies” or “speaking in lies” depending on the translation, which is ?????????? (Pseudologos). Only used once in Scripture, meaning “a liar passing on false conclusions because working with false premises”
“My first wiccan alter age 12”
Mommy issues?
Daddy issues?
Why didn’t he get help instead of festering until queer?
As in the modern phenomenon known as Wicca
Well, that overlooks some things. Such as the Constantine and Jovian actively “destroying” the “classical world” and Constantine consolidating Christianity into one church controlled by the Emperor while suppressing all other faiths. These weren’t particularly civilized actions, even by the standards of the time. And granted, the major “pagan” temples of the time were fairly corrupt due to Imperial patronage over generations.
Which brings us to another one of mine.
Religion can not be allowed the coercive power of the state and the state can not be allowed the moral justification of faith.
You can’t trust law to do the right thing. You have to watch it. You have to argue with it. And sometimes you have to fight it.
I think of Christianity as the Daughter of Judaism.
How is it “ignorance” if it comes from study?
Do you know what words actually mean?
A sense of the sacred, in the old meaning of the world?
Huzzah.
I’ve gotta disagree with that, too, JV. Maybe, I guess if you mean people escaping the RCC, or trying to, maybe that’s it.
In my studies, I haven’t seen Constantine suppressing other faiths. More like he consolidated, or tried to consolidate, Christianity and paganism. That is why we see an timing intersection between some pagan festivals and “Christian” holidays. (And you can tell by the scare quotes that I don’t celebrate them.)
As well, the Virgin and child artwork came out of Constantine’s consolidation. He rebranded older pagan goddess and child fertility art into supposed Christian art. His supposed “vision” and “priestly instruction” notwithstanding, Constantine himself was raised a pagan and was more pagan than Christian his entire life. He hoped that by consolidating the two belief systems, he could prevent uprisings and attacks on his authority. And it worked for a long time. I’d guess that a lot of the ritual aspects of the RCC could be traced back to this time.
Any time. I actually respect the fact that you’ve got the cojones to be a libertarian-conservative Pagan, and also defend your Path against the calumny you get here.
*grins*
Close enough.
What Constantine did was withdraw Imperial protection from the older temples. They shouldn’t have had it in the first place. The result was the older temples were looted to build the new Christian churches.
My hunch is that Constantine was less interested in Christianity than he was in increasing the power of the Imperial Throne. Christianity at the time didn’t have the institutional baggage and could be controlled and influenced by Imperial favor.
That opinion has not made me popular in certain Christian circles.
Jews don’t agree now, because as Paul explains, they are partially hardened until the “Time of Jacob’s Trouble”. And, in fact, even now, we can see the beginnings of a “softening action” in Israel that is not well-publicized, as one might expect, and the growth of Messianic Judaism both here and in Israel. This is similar to the Jews who started trickling back into the Holy Land beginning in the latter part of the 19th century and early part of the 20th century, later becoming a flood of people after the Balfour Declaration (in fulfillment of the Valley of the Dry Bones prophecy of Ezekiel).
Evangelicals, such as myself, believe that after the Rapture, the 144,000 Jewish evangelists of Revelation will be sealed by God, and will preach Christianity around the world during the early part of the Tribulation.
Since I know you don’t believe this (though I don’t know why…a history of fulfilled prophecy speaks for itself), all I can say is wait and watch and see what happens.
I do have an ulterior motive.
I need allies.
I can trust conservatives to keep their word and not stab me in the back while telling me how amazingly fantastic I am. If conservatives don’t like me or what I’m doing they’ll usually tell me to my face.
In return I hope to return the favor.
We may not always agree, but we should be able to trust one another.
Pardon, but I’m not one of those you have to convince. I can accept that you believe it and I can usually work with that.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/88723947fe980b320e1c5dd8bdbf8a243a88f6ea55585e79dc82f1dd3c553be3.jpg
“Mentally ill” is also available.
It’s not “toaster-oven”. The correct word is transtoaster. Denounce yourself, automotive patriarch!
I’d bet a year’s salary that the legal answer to that question would be yes, which is all you can expect, really, when psychosis is redefined as a lifestyle or gender choice.
Used to be, people got a laugh about psych wards full of guys who thought they were Napolean. Now we have guys who think they’re Josephine running around loose. And not only running around loose, but running the show.
BWAHAHAHA!
I have no power to convince you of anything. I just wonder what you might think if you look around someday and see yourself surrounded by the carnage of God’s wrath as described in pretty scary detail in Revelation. I suppose I would wonder, rhetorically of course, whether you might ever reconsider some past decisions you might’ve made.
That opinion does make you popular with me, however, because it’s correct.
Did I ever tell you this? Can’t recall, but paraphrasing Richard Wumbrand, a Romanian imprisoned by communists for his faith: God is Truth. The Bible is the truth about the Truth. Theology is the truth about the truth about the Truth. And that Christians get so caught up in the first two truths, they have forgotten the real Truth.
I believe this, and I contemplate it every day, so that I learn to focus on the Truth. And I’m not very popular at my church, as a result, lol. In fact, I asked God why I had to be there at all, and He told me it was in order to be salt and light.
Until it happens, we don’t know.
There are a great many things that I do not agree with when it comes to Christianity. There are also things that Christians did that I think made our world worse off.
However, Christians and Christianity in general are pretty neighborly when they aren’t the only game in town. I suspect that would be true of any faith system.
My past decisions brought me to this point. There was a time in my life that I Was Not A Nice Person. I didn’t like who I was then, and neither did a certain Goddess. So I owe restitution.
If it makes you a better person, then more power to you.
I disagree, but then it’s not necessary that I validate your beliefs. You answer to the Divine and not to me.
Christianity is actually the fulfillment of Judaism. However, Rabbinical Judaism begs to differ. That the jewish leaders object is neither here nor there, especially given the attitudes of Christ and the Apostles towards the religious leaders of their day. The Council of Jerusalem dealt with the issue of what gentiles should and should not do. You can read about it in Acts 15. Peter’s statement about the “yoke” (the requirements of rabbinical Judaism that Christ was talking about when he said “my yoke is easy…”) are quite illuminating. So called Orthodox Jews still bear that yoke today and don’t do any better than they did 2000 years ago.
A lot of them were killed when Rome crushed two rebellions, one in AD 70 and the other in AD 125. So many of them went into slave markets they couldn’t sell them. When a person went into slavery, they disappeared.
By the time John wrote Revelation (about AD 95), the Church was overwhelmingly gentile and the early Hebrew content had become a very small minority. With the Bar Kochba revolt, the breach between the Church and Jews was final, and a Hebrew Christian became a curiosity.
You can take a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.
Better late than never, I always say.
I shaved mine last spring in anticipation of this.
But, you are kewl in your non-hipness.
If you think he’s been calumniated here, you haven’t paid much attention.
Constantine didn’t destroy the classical world.
And, you miss the point, as usual.
Given that Judaism pointed to Christ, Christianity is fulfilled Judaism. That’s the point of the book of Hebrews.
I told you before, too many people are into religion for the politics.
You can’t control how people approach the Divine. Nor should you. That’s between them and the Divine.
So when a pagan “infidel” “lectures” you on Christian theology, he apparently doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but when you lecture about Rabbinical Law, you do?
How curious.
I was referring to the text that Jennette Victoria quoted.
I also said that the temples at the time were corrupt due to Imperial patronage.
And you miss the point, as usual.
Study of Rabbinical Judaism is part of the study of Christian Theology. Sorry you don’t know enough about christian Theology to be aware of this.
Fine. But Constantine did not destroy the classical world. This is simply false.
Constantine also did not consolidate the Church. The polity we see in the modern Eastern Orthodox Church is only one step up from the way the Church was organized then. The Church was quite decentralized and remained so in the east. Rome was able to consolidate the western church around itself, however, but that was a work of several centuries and took place long after Constantine was gone.
23 Skidoo, hubba hubba, the bee’s knees, and those darned kids should stay the hell off my lawn.
Yes, a lot of Jews were enslaved between 66-70 AD and 132-135 AD. And, yes, slaves “disappear” from society and from history. But, these were from among the Jews living in Judea and Galilee … who were just a portion of the total number of Jews subject to the Romans.