Georgia megachurch pastor and father of four comes out as a gay man to save gay teens from suicide

I re-arranged my newsfeed in the sidebar over the last couple of days to include headlines from five Leftist gay blogs: AmericablogGAY, Good As You, Joe.My.God, The Bilerico Project and Towleroad. I wanted to include Pam’s House Blend, too, but the feed from her blog is too large and stops all the others from loading. (I e-mailed her about why I didn’t include her blog so she would know there is no malice.) I put these in the newsfeed because I am just as interested in engaging the gay Left about conservatism, both as fiscal policy and as having the winning arguments for gay equality, as I am in engaging the Right about gay equality and the distinctions between the aspirations of fiscal conservatism and social conservatism.

So, thanks to AmericablogGAY and Towleroad, I saw the news video embedded above of Georgia megachurch pastor and father of four, Jim Swilley, coming out as a gay man with the support of his ex-wife, Debye, who urged him to be true to himself. Swilley says he is coming out now, after a recent rash of gay teen suicides, to try to save the lives of other teens.

Here is the video of Swilley’s 50-minute sermon in which he told his congregation he is gay and that being gay is something that he cannot change:

Watch live streaming video from bishopjimswilley at livestream.com

I missed noting the anniversary, but the contemporary gay equality movement began on October 6, 1968, when Baptist evangelical minister Troy Perry founded the Metropolitan Community Church. This means the gay equality movement’s foundation and first priority was a connection with God. I predict that Swilley is going to be amazed at his spiritual growth now that he is relating to God and his congregation as a whole and honest man. That kind of growth is magnetic, so for all the congregants he may lose, I believe he will attract more than enough good people to replace them.

Marie Claire editor asks anorexic blogger who hates television to write about a new TV romantic comedy about a fat couple

Promotional photo of the title characters of the romantic comedy on CBS, "Mike and Molly," played by Billy Gardell and Melissa McCarthy.
"Mike and Molly" is a new hit romantic comedy on CBS. The title characters are played by Billy Gardell and Melissa McCarthy.

What could go wrong?

The link goes to a reaction piece by my dear friend, Jenny Lawson, at Ask The Bloggess, who links the post at the fashion magazine Marie Claire by Maura Kelly about the new TV show Mike and Molly. I encourage you to read both. Jenny points out that Ms. Kelly is an anorexic, which is an eating disorder that has severe dysmorphia as a symptom. This means Ms. Kelly is unable to control her anxiety that her body is defective. For anorexics, this results in the perception of being fat, regardless of how emaciated they may be, and obsessive dieting, exercise, vomiting and laxative abuse. It’s hard to imagine a subject on which anorexics would be LESS qualified to write than body image.

Ms. Kelly’s anorexia is quite severe judging from the fact that she has weighed less than 70 pounds more than once as an adult. Her advice to the obese on how easy it is to lose weight is comparable to all the advice she certainly received that she could conquer her anorexia if she just ate a little more — here, have a cookie, it’s so yummy, you’ll love it! — which clearly she has been unable to do, even when her emaciation was life-threatening. (Force-feeding an anorexic doesn’t work, either — it has a lot in common with putting your head in the mouth of a psychotic tiger on PCP. Neither one of them takes it very well.)

In an update in which Ms. Kelly apologizes for hurting people while pretty much standing her ground defiantly on the actual hurtful points, she defines morbid obesity as being 100 percent over your ideal weight. I find myself wondering if her own dysmorphia caused her to exaggerate this definition. The actual definition of morbid obesity is being more than 20 percent over your ideal weight.

I had an anorexic lesbian partner for about two years when I was in college. I also got to know her mother, who never allowed my partner to develop her inner self — which is what I believe is the underlying cause of anorexia. I had to learn a lot about anorexia in order to heal myself from these two very destructive women. To the people wishing Ms. Kelly in hell, I assure you she is already there.

P.S.

Since June I’ve lost over 27 pounds. Another time I’ll write about why I got fat and what I have had to do — and am doing — to recover my health and lose weight.

Althouse’s bravura critique of Obama’s duplicity to gays at his meeting this week with progressive bloggers

Frankly, I was browsing my newsfeed for something easy and funny to post when I came across Instapundit’s post on Obama’s Oct. 27 meeting in the White House with five progressive bloggers in which he links Ann Althouse and JustOneMinute. The five progressive bloggers were Joe Sudbay of Americablog (this post includes a transcript of Joe’s Q and A with Obama on the Defense of Marriage Act and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and has a number of comments that are worth reading), Barbara Morrill from DailyKos, Duncan Black (Atrios), and Oliver Willis and John Amato from Crooks and Liars.

Click on the link above to Althouse because I can’t improve on her bravura critique of Obama’s shuck-and-jive replies to Sudbay’s questions.

Last October I linked a post by John Aravosis of Americablog in which he noted that the Democratic leadership told gays on 9/3/09 that now was not a good time for the overwhelming Democratic majority to take any action to repeal DADT and DOMA or do even the tiniest thing for gays — and later wasn’t looking very good, either. I pointed out that gays should interpret this to mean that Obama will NEVER support gay equality and gave the reasons why conservatives DO and WILL.

Updated Sat., 10/30/10: Thank you, Moe Lane, for the link! You are correct — I did NOT vote for that man, Obama. Frankly, I voted for THAT WOMAN, Sarah Palin, and considered the prospect that she would only be a heartbeat away from the presidency to be a feature, not a bug, what with her being the only one of the four candidates with executive branch experience and therefore the only one actually qualified for the office.

Bill Whittle reminds the world that fiscal conservatism is founded on the principle that wealth comes from ideas, not rich people, poor people or a black box

The Left’s paradigm for the origin of wealth is that it comes from a black box and there’s only a limited amount of it, so if one person has more it means another person must have less. This is the rationale for the redistribution of wealth in a nutshell.

In contrast, fiscal conservatism is founded on the realization that wealth is created from ideas and requires the right conditions to grow, such as low taxes and smaller government. This is the core message of fiscal conservatism and it is the one that is the most inspiring and magnetic. Yet it also is the one that fiscal conservatives never mention, perhaps in the mistaken belief that it is too obvious to miss.

But Leftists really do not know how to create wealth, so I was very pleased to find this video by Bill Whittle explaining how wealth is created and showing the Left the errors in their paradigm so they can start learning to make the most of themselves by creating wealth rather than trying to figure out new ways to re-distribute it that wind up strangling the economy for everyone.

Sorry to be away for so long — I’ll be back soon

I’ve been neglecting my blogging because I’m still getting over my cough. I usually write after seeing my father to bed, but if I stay up late, it will take longer to get well. It may sound like I’m being a princess about this, but my big motivation for taking care of myself and trying to get well as fast as I can is that this is the kind of thing that can take the life of an elderly person, especially one who uses a respirator while sleeping, as my father does.

I’ve also been getting a project under way and darned if Stuart Lichtman’s prediction that this can bring up self-defeating patterns hasn’t turned out to be right on the money. I feel fortunate to have a paradigm that matches the phenomenon and techniques from Stuart’s book — the one I advertise after each post — to deal with them. I’m building the foundation for being able to support myself in the future and I have to do it now. So my plan is to get well and get my project under way, deliver posts I’ve promised to RightNetwork and then resume posting here. I have plenty I want to write about as soon as I’ve cleared the backlog and gotten my other projects in hand. I miss my dear gentle readers and I appreciate your bearing with me.