Did you read the latest nonsense about two more preachers of the Gospel ("Good News") preaching violence...?

A pastoral letter from Rev. Durrell Watkins, the Senior Pastor at my MCC church in Fort Lauderdale
May 31, 2012

Did you read the latest nonsense about two more preachers of the Gospel ("Good News") preaching violence and hatred against same-gender loving persons? If not, prepare for some horrifying, odious, and appalling statements delivered in the name of religion. The disturbing comments can be read by clicking the following link:

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Curtis Knapp of the New Hope Church in Seneca, KS and Dennis Leatherman (obvious joke will not be inserted, despite great temptation) of the Mountain Lake Church in Oakland, MD are the latest to make vile statements from Christian pulpits demonizing and dehumanizing LBGT people and using violent language against them.

Of course, recently, we have also heard similarly disturbing comments from Sean Harris and Charles Worley, and we know, sadly, that Billy Graham actually endorsed the hateful anti-gay marriage amendment in North Carolina. Not to be left out of the Homophobia Hit Parade, Leatherman and Knapp have now chimed in.

One of these unenlightened souls says the government should kill same-gender loving people because God (famous author, apparently, and instigator of hate according to the diatribe) says so in "his (sic) word."

The other preacher of pugnacity likes the idea of killing queers but admits to follow through with it would be wrong.

I find it interesting (and amusing) that those who pretend their hatred and intolerance of difference are righteous blame their bigotry on a deity who they describe as male and who has no female consort. Mr. God, in their theology, has no Mrs. God, but somehow insists on heterosexual coupling. Funny that...

All snark aside (but in the spirit of needing to laugh to keep from crying, this tragic kind of gay-bashing for Jesus deserves a bit of snark!), these kinds of hateful quips presented in and as homilies show why our ministry at Sunshine Cathedral is so important.

The rhetoric that these peddlers of prejudice are using contributes to violence in our society. The less mature and less well adjusted in society hear these messages and convince themselves they are doing something good when they attack people they perceive to be gay or lesbian.

And the victims aren't limited to those who are attacked by the bullies; there are other victims - those who become so despondent and hopeless because of such verbal abuse directed toward them that they actually try to harm themselves because they can't imagine a lifetime of being targeted simply because they are attracted to (and might fall in love with) persons of their own gender.

To everyone looking for a relevant, contemporary, intellectually honest, ever evolving spirituality that affirms the sacred value of all people and that celebrates genuine love shared between consenting adults regardless of the genders involved, we at Sunshine Cathedral are here for you!

And our message isn't simply that gay is good (and it is part of the wonderful diversity of creation), but that bodies are good, that sexuality is good, that love is good, that thinking is good, that questions are good, that science is good, that learning is good, that life - YOUR LIFE - is good!

Those who use the names of the Sacred to promote fear, hatred, and violence are using those names in vain. Those who quote ancient texts to protect ancient (and modern) prejudices dishonor the very spiritual traditions they claim to represent. Those who say God is love and then teach you in the name of God to hate yourself are perverting what is meant to be "Good News." I say with prophetic authority: Homosexuality is not a sin; but homophobia is!

Let me state it another way: being wired to love someone of your same gender is not wrong, but using religion as an excuse to hate those who are different from you is.

Not all religious communities preach hatred. Not all religious people promote violence. Not all readers of sacred texts read into those texts their own prejudices, insecurities, and bigotry. There is a different kind of church!

"Sunshine Cathedral is a different kind of church, where the past is past and the future has infinite possibilities." Sunshine Cathedral is here to affirm you, to celebrate your uniqueness, and to help quench the fiery darts of hatred and misunderstanding that have been hurled at you.

Continue to support the church that supports you; and continue to share the word that there is a different kind of church in the world - The Sunshine Cathedral.

Yours in shared service,

Rev. Durrell Watkins, D.Min.

Senior Minister

Sunshine Cathedral

Click me to see the website for Sunshine Cathedral.

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Appeals Court Rules Against Federal Marriage Act

May 31, 2012
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE, The New York Times
A federal appeals court ruled unanimously Thursday that the Defense of Marriage Act, passed by Congress in 1996, discriminates against married same-sex couples by denying them the same federal benefits afforded to heterosexual couples.

The decision will have no immediate effect because it anticipates an appeal to the United States Supreme Court.

In upholding an earlier decision by a lower court, Thursday’s ruling, by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Boston, is the first time an appeals court has declared the federal law unconstitutional.

The ruling dealt narrowly with the question of federal benefits for same-sex couples, not with the legality of same-sex marriage itself.

“We think today is a great day and look forward to the next round,” Mary L. Bonauto, who argued the case for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, told reporters on a conference call.

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Research studies showing the benefits of class size reduction

Research studies showing the benefits of class size reduction

Institute of Education Sciences, US Department of Education, “Identifying and Implementing Educational Practices Supported by Rigorous Evidence: A User Friendly Guide,” Dec. 2003. Class size reduction identified as one of four K-12 education reforms proven to increase learning.

Raj Chetty et. al. “How Does your Kindergarten classroom affect your earnings? Evidence from Project Star,” NBER Working Paper 16381, http://www.nber.org/papers/w16381; Smaller classes in Kindergarten shown to lead to greater likelihood of attending college, owning a home and a 4101K as adults more than 20 years later.

D. McLaughlin and Gili Drori, School-Level Correlates of Academic Achievement, U.S. Dept. of Education, 2000. The most authoritative study showing the importance of class size is in all grades, analyzing the achievement levels of students in 2,561 schools , as measured by performance on the NAEP (national) exams. After controlling for student background, the only objective factor found to be positively correlated with student performance was class size, not school size, not teacher qualifications, nor any other variable that the researchers could identify. Student achievement was even more strongly linked to smaller classes in the upper rather than the lower grades.

Spyros Konstantopoulos and Vicki Chun, “What Are the Long-Term Effects of Small Classes on the Achievement Gap? Evidence from the Lasting Benefits Study,” American Journal of Education 116, November 2009. A summary of the effects of smaller classes on the achievement gap through eighth grade. Effects significant in all tested subjects, and for those in smaller classes for four years, very substantial. “The results f… provided convincing evidence that all types of students (e.g., low, medium, and high achievers) benefit from being in small classes (in early grades) across all achievement tests…. in certain grades, in reading and science, the cumulative effects of small classes for low achievers are substantial in magnitude and significantly different from those for high achievers. Thus, class size reduction appears to be an intervention that increases the achievement levels for all students while simultaneously reducing the achievement gap.”

Peter Blatchford et.al. “Do low attaining and younger students benefit most from small classes? Results from a systematic observation study of class size effects on pupil classroom engagement and teacher pupil interaction,” paper delivered to the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting 2008: Paper showing that there is no threshold effect in terms of class size reduction yielding benefits; show gains for middle school students from smaller classes, which “can benefit all pupils in terms of individual, active attention from teachers, but that the lower attaining pupils in particular can benefit from small classes at secondary level.”

Thomas Dee, “Teachers, Race, and Student Achievement in a Randomized Experiment,” Review of Economics and Statistics, February 2004. Study showing that student/teacher racial differences appear to negatively effect student achievement in regular size classes. Yet in small classes, students learn more, and racial disparity between teacher and student has no significant effect.


Peter Muennig and Steven H. Woolf, “Health and Economic Benefits of Reducing the Number of Students per Classroom in US Primary Schools,” American Journal of Public Health, published online September 27, 2007. Reducing class sizes may be more cost-effective than most public health and medical interventions, with large savings in health care costs and almost two years of additional life for students who were in smaller classes in the early grades. See also Oct. 16, 2007 summary in Slate magazine by Dr. Sydney Spiesel.

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Maureen Dowd: "Here Comes Nobody"

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May 19, 2012


Here Comes Nobody
By MAUREEN DOWD, The New York Times
May 19, 2012
WASHINGTON
I ALWAYS liked that the name of my religion was also an adjective meaning all-embracing.

I was a Catholic and I wanted to be catholic, someone engaged in a wide variety of things. As James Joyce wrote in “Finnegans Wake:” “Catholic means ‘Here comes everybody.’ ”

So it makes me sad to see the Catholic Church grow so uncatholic, intent on loyalty testing, mind control and heresy hunting. Rather than all-embracing, the church hierarchy has become all-constricting.

It was tough to top the bizarre inquisition of self-sacrificing American nuns pushed by the disgraced Cardinal Bernard Law. Law, the former head of the Boston archdiocese, fled to a plush refuge in Rome in 2002 after it came out that he protected priests who molested thousands of children.

But the craziness continued when an American priest, renowned for his TV commentary from Rome on popes and personal morality, admitted last week that he had fathered a child with a mistress.

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Robin Gibb, a Bee Gee With a Taciturn Manner, Dies at 62

Robin Gibb, a Bee Gee With a Taciturn Manner, Dies at 62
By BEN SISARIO, The New York Times
May 20, 2012
Robin Gibb, one of the three singing brothers of the Bee Gees, the long-running Anglo-Australian pop group whose chirping falsettos and hook-laden disco hits like “Jive Talkin” and “You Should Be Dancing” shot them to worldwide fame in the 1970s, died on Sunday in London. He was 62 and lived in Thame, Oxfordshire, England.

The cause was complications of cancer and intestinal surgery, his family said in a statement.

Mr. Gibb had been hospitalized for intestinal problems several times in the last two years. Cancer had spread from his colon to his liver, and in the weeks before his death he contracted pneumonia and for a while was in a coma.

Mr. Gibb was the second Bee Gee and third Gibb brother to die. His fraternal twin and fellow Bee Gee, Maurice Gibb, died of complications of a twisted intestine in 2003 at 53. The youngest brother, Andy, who had a successful solo career, was 30 when he died of heart failure, in 1988.

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Chinese Dissident’s Arrival in U.S. Ends Diplomatic Drama

May 19, 2012
By ANDREW JACOBS and STEVEN LEE MYER, The New York Times
BEIJING — Chen Guangcheng, the blind legal advocate who made an improbable escape from virtual house arrest and sought refuge in the American Embassy here, arrived in Newark on Saturday, ending a fraught diplomatic drama that threatened to disrupt relations between China and the United States.

The arrival of Mr. Chen, one of the country’s most prominent dissidents, and the negotiations that led up to it, appeared to reflect careful calculations in both countries as they seek to cooperate on a range of economic and security issues.

The American role in aiding Mr. Chen — spiriting him into the embassy after he escaped with the help of other dissidents — infuriated the Chinese, who complained fiercely about what they considered interference in their internal affairs, but in the end they quietly engaged with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and a team of diplomats to defuse what could have evolved into a full-blown diplomatic crisis.

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