Thursday, December 25, 2014

Definition of Coward: Nameless and faceless haters on the Newspaper sites


In response to the bullies and nameless on-line thugs who hate-bombed those who tried to help the children below. There is a space in hell for you.  

 December 6, 2014






DECLARATION: I, and others who helped Stephanie Randall will continue to help those in need - even if the outcome is not guaranteed. This is the only way unconditional giving can occur. 

The only thing lower than a crack head are those that get angry when their completely innocent children are helped. The same people who hide behind aliases. 

Comment on TL site:  I, like many others, led with my heart and not my head. I was 

way more worried about the children than the mother of seven . Betty's remarks reflect the 

"conflicts" all of us felt. Some of us were brave enough to give anyway. The nameless "20/20 

hindsight" cowards had a field day from their bleacher seats when this woman fell. They took 

the anger out on those who took a chance and actually helped this person and more 

importantly the kids. They, faceless and nameless, consumed an entire weekend attacking 

those that were busy helping. My name is Mark Rbbbins and I am proud to put my ame behind

 what I stand for. The "jackals" and bullies that took joy in Stefanie Randall's misery are lower

 than she is. As for me an others... we will continue to help .



FROM SUNDAY TIMES LEADER



We’ve been called “The Valley With A Heart.”

The truth of that is never more evident than when we learn of someone in need, whether it’s a neighbor who lost everything in a fire or someone who requires a serious operation he can’t afford.

It’s the holiday season, and those of us who’ve been blessed with happy childhoods and magical Christmases may forget sometimes that there are children among us whose Christmases aren’t so merry.

Or their lives for that matter.

Last week we learned about two such children living in Wilkes-Barre with their mother Stephanie Randall, a 39-year-old recovering drug addict.

The powerful story, written by Times Leader staff writer Bill O’Boyle, caught fire. And Clark Van Orden’s photo boldly illustrated her plight.

Randall was shown sitting on the floor of a bare apartment with her daughter Allyah, 8, and son Isaish, 9. No furniture, little food, not much of anything.

Formerly addicted to crack cocaine, Randall told O’Boyle she returned to Wilkes-Barre to escape a drug-infested environment in the Bronx, New York, to give her children a better life. She’s been clean for 12 years, she said.

After The Times Leader published her story a week ago, the Valley with a Heart came through, filling the family’s refrigerator to the brim, providing furniture, bedding, clothing and two decorated Christmas trees. And it gave her something money can’t buy, an instant outpouring of love and concern from total strangers who embraced her and her children.

Melissa Reynolds, 31, of Wyoming, said O’Boyle’s article broke her heart. She rounded up her sister and some friends who went to Randall’s apartment with a car full of donated items.

“I didn’t want them to live in an empty house. I wanted to help,” she said.

Negative reactions

Randall said students from Wilkes and Misericordia universities also came by with donations and encouraging words.

“It’s been a blessing,” she said. But in addition to the good will, she said she’s received some negative responses. That’s not entirely surprising. Actually, it’s quite understandable.

Randall said she’s scraping by on $721 per month in Social Security disability payments, $569 a month in food stamps and $151 every two weeks in welfare for her kids. She also signed up for Medical Assistance.

Some online readers questioned her assertion that she and her children, who also include a 16-year-old daughter, sometimes go without eating three meals a day when she receives $140 a week in food stamps. That’s a fair question considering that the children likely are fed some of those meals at school and that with careful planning one can prepare enough decent meals with $140 a week.

Randall says she’s proud that she’s stayed clean for 12 years. She should be. And it took courage to bare her life on the front page of a newspaper. But it doesn’t sound as though she’s done very much to help herself and her children. She has four others, ages 17 to 20. Their whereabouts weren’t revealed.

Like so many others, I was moved by Randall’s story – to a point. I was also struck by something else.

When she was photographed, she was sitting on the floor of her empty $650-a-month apartment in what appears to be a bathrobe in the middle of the day. I couldn’t help but wonder what she’s done over the past 12 years, being drug-free, to improve her situation and that of her children, who depend on her.

“Everybody makes mistakes. But I truly feel I am a better mother now,” she said.

Ms. Randall is 39 and has brought seven children into the world, children she obviously couldn’t afford to take care of and thus has depended on the government and the kindness of strangers to provide for them.

As our area has just proven, there are many good people willing to step up and help those in need.

But there’s a fine line between helping and enabling.

Without giving it a second thought, our valley with a heart and the government, with an even bigger heart, helped Stephanie Randall. Now it’s her turn. She needs to help herself and, more importantly, her children. That is her responsibility.

Public assistance was never meant to be an indefinite personal entitlement. Unfortunately, many believe it’s just that.

Betty Roccograndi is a business owner, Wyoming Valley resident and award-winning journalist. Zeroing In appears weekly.
Keywords:

Monday, December 22, 2014

WE ARE SORRY!!


(After it became known that "Reparative" therapy does not work (Gay orientation is NOT a choice)... these humble and brave Christians apologized at the Chicago Gay Parade)


I will be spending the next year helping LGBT's nation-wide 

who have been treated coldly by the church and who have 

been treated ignorantly. I will be working side by side with 

some of the best authors and ministers in the country.

The Reformation Project HERE
My web site: LGBT and Scripture   HERE

I am a "straight ally" to many friends and extended family membersd who are part of this community.

ACCEPTANCE LETTER: Mark, we've spent the past couple weeks reviewing applications, and we are thrilled to invite you to participate in the cohort. We were very impressed by your application and are excited to partner with you more closely through this process and beyond!

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

This short video got me kicked out of WB Council Meeting

ENJOY THIS TOE-TAPPING HOLIDAY SPOOF CLASSIC... 


"Grandma Got Towed by LAG-ee"



Featuring…


Grandma (82 year old Natalie Aleo who had her car demolished by LAG Towing. No reimbursement of course... no help from Dessoye or Leighton.)





also featuring...


Leo Glodzik of LAG Towing (above)





Leighton (above)


Dessoye (above)



WB Council President Bill Barrett (above)




JJ Murphy (above)


Kathy Kane (above)


The pump Leighton stole gas from (above)






Glodzik never lost in front of a Magistrate or city council (above)



… and the Wilkes-Barre Taxpayers


Monday, December 15, 2014

TOP TEN LIST: MOST BIGOTED ANTI-GAY REMARKS


THESE "CHRISTIANS" HIDE BEHIND OLD STEREOTYPES. EVIDENCE ABOUNDS FROM EVERY CORNER THAT GAYS DO NOT SELECT THEIR ORIENTATION ANY MORE THAN HETEROSEXUALS DO.

GAY ORIENTATION IS NEVER REFERRED TO IN THE BIBLE AND WAS RECOGNIZED ONLY IN 1892. THIS MEANS ALL REFERENCES TO HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVIOR IN THE BIBLE IS NOT SPEAKING TO THOSE WITH GAY ORIENTATION.

ESSENTIALLY, WE ARE LEFT WITH: HOW WOULD JESUS HAVE TREATED GAYS AND WOULD HE WANT ALL PATHS OF HAPPINESS AVAILABLE TO THEM?

LASTLY, CONSIDER THE FACT THAT SOME OF THESE MEN MAT BE GAY THEMSELVES. THESE ARE OFTEN ONES THAT PROTEST THE LOUDEST! THERE IN FACT IS EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THIS.
   


Franklin Graham: Claims Satan is behind LGBT rights and advocacy. (Is that what your dad Billy Graham thinks?)



Tony Perkins   Family Research Council
"They are intolerant. They are hateful. They are vile. They are spiteful."  (Is this what your "research" shows?)

Image result for Bryan Fischer

Bryan Fischer    American Fanily Association 
"The gay rainbow is the mark of the beast." (What does this have to do with family?)


Randy Thomasson
Founder of RescueYourChild.com. This is a site to help parents remove their kids from public schools because those schools are too LGBT-inclusive. (I guess he feels that gay kids should be bullied and harrassed more.)

Sunday, December 14, 2014

CHRISTIANS: STRUGGLING TO BELIEVE AGE OLD LIES ABOUT GAYS

Best article I have read on "gay choice" and the "lifestyle" (a term biased Christians use to imply that there's a "choice.")
LINK  HERE   Article posted below (from a Pastor of 18 years)
History is no guarantee of legitimacy.
Thinking sustained over time doesn’t always equal Truth. Sometimes it just equals tradition.
Just because many religious people get something wrong over and over and over again, doesn’t eventually one day make it right.

In fact, when it comes to things that we come to believe corporately as a people, sometimes history and tradition and religion are the enemy of progress. We become intellectually lazy; wrong but comfortable in that wrong-ness and unwilling to dig deeper.

Ever since Christians have been talking about homosexuality, many have been trying to begin with an assumption that is simply incorrect and dangerous, that it’s something that all gay people choose.

Here’s part of a conversation between myself and a blog reader, a straight Christian man who was repeatedly, rather matter-of-factly, and quite judgmentally telling gay people that their sexual orientation was simply a choice; a willful decision, (and because of that he reasoned, a decision to sin). It’s an all-too familiar song sung to the LGBT community by the religious community.

He did what so many well-meaning but misguided straight people of faith do: try to tell a gay person how their hearts work.

On a comment thread where literally hundreds of people had previously talked about their own experience as LGBT, many of them Christians; (trying for decades to deny and change and pray away what was so clearly inherent in them), this man simply refused to listen. I don’t think he was doing this to purposefully hurt them or shut down the conversation, he was simply trying to protect a part of his faith that was being threatened by actual people’s experience to the contrary. After watching the discussion devolve into a series of predictable religious sound bites, I jumped in and we shared this exchange:

Reader: Sexuality is a choice.
Me: When did you choose heterosexuality?

Reader: I made my choice as a teenager when I started to date girls.

Me: Were you ever sexually or physically attracted to boys, or are you now?
Reader: No, never.
Me: Not really much of a choice then, is it? A choice, implies different possible options. But dating guys wasn’t ever really an option for you, was it? If you had been attracted to men, but began dating women anyway, then your sexuality would have been a choice. As it is, you simply went with what felt completely right and natural, rather than with what would have been disgusting and distasteful to your sensibilities. It was a consenting to instinct, not a decision in opposition to it.

I went on to share with this man, a devout Christian, what I want to share with those of you who echo his views on sexuality as a choice; with as much compassion and care and understanding as I can:

I feel for you, and I’m sorry, but I think you’re wrong.

I’ve been a pastor for 18 years, and been shoulder-to-shoulder and face-to-face with thousands of wonderful, God-loving men and women, who were and are living an inherited lie: the lie that gay* (or straight) people can choose the objects of their affections and the inclinations of who they love.
You may not believe me when I tell you this, but I understand.
I know well, the difficult spot that you’re in as a believer.
I know that if you can believe that homosexuality is indeed a choice, it can allow you to feel negativity or judgment or disapproval toward gay people without guilt—but for the vast majority of people who identify as LGBT it isn’t a choice, but simply an acceptance of what is most real and most true. 
As a straight person, you can disagree with that statement if you’d like, but know that when you do, you’re not being honest with how your own heart works and how you yourself have experienced attraction, and affection, and love, and the desire for intimacy with another.

I know as a Christian, how hard you’re straining to believe this old lie, and the tug-of-war that is happening in your spirit as you fight for an idea you may not quite have peace with anymore.
I know that you’re desperately holding on to a damaging prejudice, despite so much evidence in the face of it, because you really need that prejudice to reinforce the faith perspective you’ve grown-up with and grown comfortable with; and the one you feel you need to keep in order to please God.

To abandon that assumption, would threaten the huge house of cards that would get exposed to the breezes of a billion follow-up questions in its wake.
I understand this, I truly do.
But this idea of anyone choosing who they love, an idea that so many Christians hold so tightly to;
It’s simply not real.
It’s a fake truth dressed up as religion.
It’s a counterfeit license to discriminate in the name of God.
People are lives, not lifestyles.

There is no such thing as a “gay lifestyle”, any more than there is a “heterosexual lifestyle”. (Other than romantic/sexual activity, just how do you define the lifestyle youlead as a straight person?)

In this world, there are only people; there are simply human beings, some who are straight and some who are not.
It’s just the simple, stark, unadorned truth of our shared humanity, regardless of how it messes with our religious convictions or makes us uneasy.
Many people are not made heterosexual, and they can’t be made into one.
Each of us has within us, desires to be known and cared for and loved, that are all far beyond what we can steer or alter. You know this, because you’ve experienced it all yourself. To tell a non-heterosexual person that they could and should somehow be convinced to choose the opposite of what their hearts say, would be to suggest that you, a heterosexual person; with enough pressure and cajoling and therapy, could possibly be convinced to be gay. (I imagine this would be an insulting proposition to most of you).

Straight, Christian friend, you can feel any way you care to about those who identify as LGBT, but you’ll need to develop your faith perspective in light of this truth about them. You can build any case you want against non-heterosexual people, but you simply can’t have choice as a weapon in your arsenal.

If you argue that gay people are making a decision regarding their sexuality, you’re essentially not accepting the logic of your own journey and history, and you’re expecting them all to make an emotional sacrifice that you haven’t ever had to make.
That’s a problem.
That’s not loving your neighbor as yourself.
That’s not the Golden Rule.
I’m pretty sure that’s not of Jesus, either.
But don’t take my word for it. After all, I’m still just another straight Christian guy talking about gay people, and that’s definitely not the solution here. We’ve had far too much of that, for far too long in the Church.

Here’s a suggestion: The next time you encounter another adult who tells you that they’re not heterosexual, ask them whether it is their choice or not, and however they respond, have the decency and respect to believe that their understanding of their own heart, is more trustworthy than your evaluation of it from a distance.

If they tell you it’s a choice, then for them, it’s a choice—but not simply because you would like it to be. If they tell you they’ve felt this way since their earliest memories, trust that they know better than you about their reality. 
Millions of LGBT people, many of them just teenagers, are being damaged, wounded, and some are quite literally dying, trying to bear the oppressive heaviness of this assumption of choice that we’ve placed on them. Frankly, I think the Church needs to own this, and do some of the “loving of the least” we hear Jesus calling his people to.
I know this message may anger you or frustrate you, or make you want to dig your heels even more deeply into the assumptions you’ve lived in for so long, but I pray you won’t. I pray you’ll ask some really tough questions about what you’ve believed about sexuality, and what you know about your own experience.
And I hope that you won’t just accept the answers you think you know.

We Christians talk about “speaking the truth in love” an awful lot, and even though you may not believe it, I can only tell you that I share 
this truth, with all the love I have; for you who are trying earnestly to reconcile a faith that you care so deeply about, balanced with the love I have for the LGBT community, who are trying to live authentically and peacefully alongside you in community—and being injured by you.

They are testifying with their words and their hearts, that they did not ask to be born compelled to love as they do, anymore than you or I did. I think they deserve to be heard and listened to; not preached or shouted at.
One of the easiest and least compassionate things we can do in this life, is to assume that the way we experience the world, is the way that everyone else does, or should.
We need to do better as a people of faith, at seeing gay people (and all people for that matter) as they are, not as we desire them to be. Our faith after all, claims that all people are made in Gods image, not in our own.

Christian, maybe you’re right; maybe love is indeed a choice, but just not in the way you’ve always thought. In a very real and tangible way, you may need to choose who and how you love.