Brother Fire

Dan Savage, creator of the It Gets Better Project in response to GLBT teen suicides, has created a new endeavor called Not All Like That (NALT) Christians Project.   This new project encourages Christians who support Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered people to "come out" on video to remind GLBT people, their allies and Christians that not all Christians are like some of the big-name right-wing Christians who rail against LGBT people and seem to get mainstream media attention whenever it comes to the "religious point of view" on GLBT rights issues. Here is my effort in response to this call:

I can't help but harp on John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as VP nominee. Not only is it insulting to the voters (especially to the Republican voters), but it has shined a new light on the hypocrite Republican pundits. Jon Stewart did an excellent job at illustrating their hypocrisy.

This is one speech that didn't make prime time at the DNC, but worth seeing. Peace!

Yesterday, Sen. John McCain selected Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate for this year's presidential election. There are so many worthy candidates he could have chosen to be the Republican nominee for Vice-President. And clearly there are special interest voters that he needed to consider when he made his choice: conservatives, evangelical Christians, young voters, moderates, women, environmentalists, undecideds, etc. So I imagine that he must have thought long and hard about who could produce the most votes, as well as who could fill his shoes as President of the United States if needed. So lets take a look to see which votes that John McCain is hoping to garner with this selection. According to a number of sources (take a look here , here and here ), Palin is the Governor of Alaska for only 19 months, and prior to that was a City Council Member (1992-1996) and Mayor (1996-2002) of Wasilla, Alaska (population less that 5,000). She is a staunch social conservative,...

I have some strong feelings surrounding this upcoming US election -- there's lots of reasons to vote for Barack Obama this fall. There are even more reasons to vote against John McCain. Here's another. One of the greatest causes of the volatility of the oil market is out-of-control oil futures speculation. And it all began with deregulation of the market due to "the Enron Loophole." John McCain recognized this loophole and railed against it until he started to have second thoughts following political connections with Phil Gramm and his wife, Wendy Gramm. See the video below -- it's worth watching. With all that we know about the deregulation of the oil futures market, what is McCain's solution to the problem of rising gas prices? The so-called "gas tax holiday." By the way...you can monitor local gas prices at GasBuddy.com . Search for gas prices by US Zip Code

In the Catholic world, we will be talking about the Beatitudes in a couple of weeks (4th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Cycle A, 2/3/2008) and I found this profound blog post, American Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, Part 1 from the Justice & Compassion blog. It's a vivid illustration how we Americans have distorted Jesus' message in His name. Please take a look at it and comment. Peace.

Recently, I was speaking to my dear friend Virginia Walsh about how disturbing it is that Christians go after each other in the name of Jesus. The irony is that His greatest commandment is to love each other, yet we act as if Jesus' words have no meaning. I asked Virginia to write for my blog about an idea that she has to address the anger and disdain that opposing Christian camps have for one another. She sent an email introducing the post and I thought the email was as powerful as the post itself so I'm sharing it here: I'm deeply troubled, as I'm sure we all are, by the hurtful, sniping, name-calling, and generally disrespectful "dialogue" in civil society. In many ways, I believe that those behaviors have infected the Church. Does the following paragraph sound familiar? They're out to undermine our nation. They call themselves Christians, but they have no real understanding of God or morality. They pray, but they don't actually have a living relati...