Judge: Anti-gay group allowed to hand out bibles at LGBT Pride

I would ignore the Johnsons, and hope that they have to bring all those Bibles back home where they came from. Just ignore them. Move on. Enjoy the day!

Everyone should take one and then do whatever they want with it… maybe a burning of some sort? Just to make them spend more money on bibles.

I hope each person stops, and pulls out the right passages of rape, slavery condoning, murder, genocide, sex slaves, child abuse and ask them how they can condone those things.

They should burn in hell…Those hypocritical christians!

This will provide Brian Johnson with gay masturbation fantasies for WEEKS!

Bibles indeed.

If this man isn’t gay, I’ll eat those bibles.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

It’s interesting that in, I believe, California, Christians with signs calling people to Christ were *arrested* for standing on the outskirts of a Muslim festival.

Hopefully Johnson and his family, whom I believe also stages protests against gays at the funerals of fallen service members, will receive a more militant response from gays than grieving family members are allowed to give him. Let’s hope someone re-creates the Anita Bryant moment and serves each and everyone of these people up a healthy helping of whipped-cream pie in the face.

Epic Fail: While trying to allow freedom of speech, you blatantly disregard the right to privacy of the park that has been paid for by the Twin Cities Pride Committee. I think I’ll remember this the next time a church group “rents” the park and show up in the middle of them and pass out Christopher Hitchen’s “god is not great: How Religion Ruins Everything.”

Caroline: here’s the article. It was in Dearborn, MI.
http://action.afa.net/Blogs/BlogPost.aspx?id=2147495845

While it is tempting, don’t take the offered bible/literature and do something with it as that could be very provoactive (we know how quickly the right-wing extremists will use such actions for further bashings) as well as potentially upsetting to LGBT-supportive Christian allies who may be attending.

The potential for arrest for disorderly conduct or even assault by touching the Johnsons is too great. It is not worth it.

Just ignore them. Move on. Enjoy the day! (And let the Johnsons get themselves arrested by their own actions …)

Sigh …

I’m an out-gay seminarian…and I’m disappointed with the Judges’ decision to allow hate speech in the form of evangelizing. I kinda like Jill’s idea to point out some other troublesome verses in the Bible. Clearly Brian Johnson (who we should definitely refer to as “BJ”) assumes that the Bible is as anti-gay as he is…hardly.

Here are some verses you might thump back at him. On Saturday maybe try Exodus 35:2 (whoever does work on the Sabbath…Saturday…should be put to death.) I wonder how his literalism deals with that one? Then maybe quickly fire back with Prov 11:9 about a hypocrite needing to listen. If that fails maybe just remind him that Jesus didn’t ever marry, so we don’t have any clues to his possible sexual orientation, or gender identity. What we do know is that he wanted people to love one another (John 13:34) and that’s actually at the core of Pride.

Of course, I’m not a fan of “proof-texting” and it might be best just to ignore him, but it might be fun if some LGBT folks decided to give him a bible too. Turns out, it has plenty of uplifting verses for marginalized peoples and some harsh words for members of the dominant groups, namely BJ himself.

If you’d like some great stuff about why homophobic people like BJ think the Bible corroborates their ignorant homophobia, I suggest Theodore W. Jennings Jr.’s new book “Plato or Paul.”

The Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board is a powerful entity independent of the City of Minneapolis. I went to the MPRB website. The permit basically is a written permission to use the land and facilities subject to rules set forth in http://www.minneapolisparks.org/default.asp?PageID=131&previd=25

“The following rules govern the use of Park Land and facilities for picnics, celebrations, and fundraisers that are open to and invite the general public (other than a particular body or aggregation of people).”

I did not see anything that would imply a contract that would have given TC Pride the ability to screen who may or may not attend the Festival.

In retrospect, the Johnsons should have been given a booth assigned to a lonely corner near the freeway with the fee an additional source of revenue for the Committee. I remember walking past the booth being startled at this most unwelcome sight, thinking “WTF is this doing here?” Of course, there was almost no one visiting their booth at that moment.

I didn’t see anything about how the $36,000 fee was arrived at as I thought that might imply a contract …

I love how when it’s a religious function (such as the muslim gathering mentioned above) or a political function (such as the IMF or G8), protestors have to be across the street and far away.

But when it’s the LGBT community, every bigot in town is SO welcome to come and be pushy with us. It’s like the Judge is saying “Yea, well, maybe you SHOULD read that bible, you sinful f*gg*t, and you might figure out that you COULD be saved if you WANTED to.”

There is glaring precedent that the First Amendment is NOT the retreat of the Right-Wing whenever it wants to enforce policy through Judicial activism.

Funny: TC Pride’s legal team was SPOT ON about SCOTUS precedent. Conveniently, Free Speech only exists if you’re a Religion or a Politician, and only of a certain persuasion I might add.

I’m really sick of this country. No one acts like an adult, everyone tries to pass the buck, and taking responsibility for yourself has gone right out the window.

Another news account says $32,000 … In any case, whatever the amount was, it was an awful lot!

I just take the bibles from the people until they will not give anymore, poor red die on them, and toss them in the trash not far from where they distribute them.

The money they waste on pamphlets, etc would be better served by providing food to disadvantaged families. It rerally gets under my skin that so much money is wasted on hate. I find these people and their message to be offensive. Hate disguised as love.

Take the Bible–place it in the nearest round file, (trash can) right in front of these people.

I agree with this judge. I do NOT agree with the judge who ruled in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church, who protested the funeral of a Marine, because of their idea that the young man was another soldier who died as a result of my country’s acceptance of homosexuality. Didn’t know America was so tolerant, but that’s okay. As long as you are not causing abusive or any other severe emotional damage to those in the situation protested, be as stupid as you want to be.

What I’d rather see is this group staying home to take the time and effort to read this book they are handing out. There are a lot of vile things published in The Bible. Many of them have not been rejected by these groups that reject to same-gender love. Hypocrisy is something to truly awe at times, but never something to honor.

wow…

A lot of words being thrown around here without the realization of what is being said.

1.Hypocrisy/hypocritical: Are you(the comment posters) not doing the same? People in this country have the freedom of speech, in which you are practicing. Or do you think that only you are allowed this freedom and others not? that the right to free speech only comes into play when it most benefits you.

2.Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Regardless on where this comes from or what book it is written its a pretty powerful statement. Telling someone that they should burn in hell because you don’t like it when they say the same is pretty hypocritical.

3. Trashing ones beliefs. The purpose of the event is because of beliefs and life style. Having pride and showing the world that you are proud and stand up behind these beliefs wonderful thing. But then turning around and trashing someones elses beliefs because they are different from yours defeats the entire purpose.

4. Not everyone at the event is a non-Christan. There are many GLBTs out there who follow the christen faith and would be happy to have a free bible and would take offense if you protested their faith.

People – Be Smart! Not everything needs to be a battle and when/if a battle is needed – choose wisely and fairly.

In fact, they did not actually give out any Bibles at Pride.

I was working at a booth near the horseshow courts where they posted themselves all Saturday afternoon (odd — I thought they were required to keep moving, and I didn’t see them actually giving out any Bibles. Perhaps they were just too cheap to actually give any away?