Thank You All!

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has the data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit fact." - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Blogging For Truth Week officially ended yesterday. But the search for truth is a never ending one, so don't be surprised to see a new post now and then until next year!

I want to personally thank each and every one of the following bloggers for participating and for continuing to blog about what is true and what is love. Their blogs are always worth reading:

The Bi Avenger from Cowtown Bisexual

All the United Queers at Queers United

Jay from Jay Says

Jendi Reiter from Reiter's Block

Bridgeout from Burning or building bridges in the community?

Kittredge Cherry from Jesus In Love

Goombah from Goombahs Rainbow

Truthspew from Spewing Truth in the face of Lies

The Surprised Dyke from Ramblings of the Surprise Dyke

WeLoveTea from Love With The Hands Wide Open

Ceara from The Lesbian Said What?

MJ, Kim and Jude from It Is Always Today.

Furtive Life from The Furtive Life

BioGal from Panoptifier: Making all things visible...

Miss Katherine from Katherine's Activism A student who created a blog, solely so she could participate!

LLnL from Love,Lust and Life

Truth and Love After 40 and those two delicious ladies who write it.


And I want to thank the following sites for promoting Blogging For Truth to their readers:

PopMaxNow

The Blue Door

SheSquared
Selected highlights from some of the posts:

People who hate cannot accept those who love, but people who love CAN accept those who hate. That is our true power. Love is stronger than hate. -- Kittredge Cherry

All of us "Bloggers for Truth" have stories we can tell about our own partnerships or those of our parents, teachers, pastors and friends--all GLBT people whose lives have been touched by the Spirit. But we also have to make the Scriptural case that stories are truths, on a par with or superior to the truths of abstract reasoning, at least when it comes to practical ethics. Time and time again I hear anti-gay Christians argue that we are biased by our personal desires (either lust or pride) while they are merely following "what the Bible says". Their epistemology doesn't allow for scrutiny of the human element in interpretation, nor of their own emotional biases, because they need the Bible to remain magically exempt from the human condition of partiality and uncertainty. -- Jendi Reiter on Reiter's Block

What goes through the mind of someone who is gay? If you listen to the Christian right, somewhere there is a magical place where people wait in line for hours to sign up to be gay. Because it’s a choice, right? “Hmm. I’ll choose the life where I will face discrimination, fear, loneliness, rejection, lack of rights and possibly risk my life. Yea, that one sounds better.....”

"......If you are straight and reading this, contemplate for one minute how it would feel to have these feelings every day. Every minute. Could you endure this? The shame, the fear, the loneliness? This is what homophobia and anti-gay speech is doing to real human beings. They are daughters, sons, brothers and sisters. They are your neighbors. Are you the kind of person who wants to make people feel this way?" -- Jude on Jaysays

I regret none of my relationships with men, but if I'd understood the role of attraction in sexuality I might have rejected the idea that all girls were meant to respond to the advances of boys. I didn't understand that attraction was not supposed to be something separate from my relationships with men, so it took me too long to understand my cultivated sexual relationships with men weren't normal as I'd always assumed, and what I was meant to feel with a man was what I felt with women. -- Furtive Life

I am a Christian who not only accepts but values the gay community (LGBTQ or whatever other letter you want to use to describe it). I don’t feel threatened by that community (which is actually OUR community, not some separate community, as that phrase might suggest). I don’t feel that by accepting that community’s right to exist, I am somehow degrading my own (straight) sexuality. That community includes friends and family who mean the world to me, who are beautiful people, who deserve a medal for the courage it takes for them to stick up for themselves in ways large and small on a day-to-day basis. -- WeLoveTea

You can call me naive, whatever. I don't care. Hate and anger just breed more hate and anger. I'd rather take the high road and while I might not change that particular person, maybe it will influence someone who is observing that maybe, just maybe, we are good people-just like them. -- The Surprised Dyke