If you’re not familiar with “The Cool Church,” (aka Tucson Community Church) you’re missing out on the freshest approach to spirituality in town, a “this-ain’t-your-father’s-ministry”-type experience unparalleled in this elevated valley of ours.
Pastor Dave McAllister (that is one cool dude!) is all about rocking for God, using movie clips and props to drive home his Christian message, all while wearing sneakers, an earring, and sporting spiky blond hair! Plus he and his band of grownup Bart Simpsons have put out four cd’s of Christian rock! If that’s not cool, I don’t know what is!
Oh, wait — this isn’t cool — the Arizona Daily Star reports today that McAllister has some nasty things about homosexuals on The Cool Church’s website! Doesn’t he know that queers are way cooler than breeders? Sheesh, it’s like the second or third rule of cool, right up there with black people being cooler than white people, because, like, duh.
Anyway, for a “cool” guy, McAllister is deeply fucking uncool. Among the misdeeds of the gay community that he “documents”:
- Homosexual sex activists continually try and deceive the general population by telling them that the Bible doesn’t condemn homosexuality
- Contrary to what homosexual sex activists have tried to convince us, there is no medical or scientific evidence that people are born homosexual; it is a choice of sexual behavior
- In light of the total farce of what they call “gay marriage,” studies show that less than 2% of practicing homosexuals could be referred to as being in a monogamous relationship.
…and the list goes on from there. Dude is obsessed with the big faggy boogeyman and his activist homosexual agenda.
Over at Wingspan, they have yet to post the recent newsletter wherein they object to all The Cool Church’s nonsense, but the Star interviewed Wingspan president Laura Olguin and program director Cathy Busha for the piece. Olguin’s succinct summary of TCC’s abuse of “cool”: “Scratch the surface of their clever rhetoric about being hip, welcoming and intellectually curious, and a stream of anti-gay rhetoric spews forth.”
Indeed. Such attitudes are distressingly prevalent for a so-called modern society, and it’s good that there are organizations like Wingspan to call them out when they are found.
This article appears in Jun 28 – Jul 4, 2007.
News flash: Bigotry-brainwashing churches like this are in every town and city in America.
>>News flash: Bigotry-brainwashing churches like this are in every town and city in America.
Does this mean they should be overlooked, rather than condemned?
Particularly for such an institution that expends a lot of energy on public image and marketing…
Ryan, you’re right. It’s just that they’re like weeds.
By all means write an expose on one of the weeds. Maybe even get everybody to pull that weed.
Just watch out for all the other weeds.
(This metaphor brought to you by Hector’s Gardening and Landscaping Inc.)
Just reading over their Sex Facts–
When women depend on condoms as contraception, there is a 10%-20% chance of becoming pregnant every year. Now pregnancy can only occur in one 24-hour period each month. If a female has that high of a chance of getting pregnant, how high is her chance of getting a sexually transmitted disease that she can contract every day of the year?
10-20% chance? Isn’t that dependent on how often they have sex?
Substitute “Christians” for “gays” in the six point plan. See how accurate? Yeah.
If gay men, on average, die by age 41, then I’ve only got about 15 years to have sex with thousands of partners. How am I going to do that while also meeting my monthly homosexual-recruitment quota?
Thanks for setting me “straight,” Cool Church! This is just the motivation I need.
Hey, Saxon, are we still on for tonight?
Hey, Nintz, I’ll meet you underneath the boardwalk. Winkwink.
Gay people are so gay.
Went to this church once with a friend, searching for something that actually WAS open and spiritual. It was an awful experience, and seemed to highlight all of the hypocrisy in the church that has finally driven me away for good.
An observation: Its kind of ironic that the Weekly links off to the Star for a story that should have run first in the Weekly. Don’ you guys take the Star to task for not publishing articles just like this one?
JB (nice initials, by the way): Compare the staff sizes of the Star and the Weekly. Then compare how much space the Star has, and how much we have, not to mention our frequency of publication. Then, ask yourself that question again. Compare what we do with our resources to what the Star does with theirs.
Mr. Boegle
I am well aware of your respective sizes, having lived here for 39 or my 48 years and been a reader of both for a long time (the entire existence of the Weekly). I am also aware of the bigotory of “the Cool Church”, having read about it in the Explorer a few years back in an article written by their faith reporter. I know nothing about newspaper publishing, so I have to defer to you on this one. But I find it hard to believe that this one is due (totally) to staffing issues. This crap is right there on their website-a Google search could have found it. My point is that the Weekly SHOULD be the paper that reports on such hate groups. I was surprised to read it in the Star and not yet another love letter to to respective managers of the City of Tucson and Pima County-which passes for journalism there. I work in the government and know about limited resources. However, I believe that “limited resourses” is not a proper defense of an action or lack thereof. The proper defense is how the resourses were better allocated. But in any event, I appreciate the response-something one never gets at the Star.
JB
Speaking purely as an outsider: Just because the Tucson Weekly criticizes the Star for some of its management and editorial policies, that doesn’t mean they’re making a blanket condemnation of the journalists who work there, many of whom are very informed and talented.
The articles written by the editor were obviously extremely biased. Stephanie Innes neglected to mention that her source for validation of her facts was none other then one of the executive board leaders of Wingspan, Stephen T. Russell, and a practicing homosexual himself. Not to mention that Wingspan financially supports the Daily Star. The reality of this statement would cause us to wonder if maybe Stephanie Innes pushed toward one side of the debate. I believe the answer is pretty obvious. I’ve attended the Cool Church for many years now and I found that Pastor David is a man of great integrity, knowledge, and love. With the church being one of the fastest churches growing in America it’s hard for me to believe that he is this evil conniving man that some of you are making him out to be. Some have stated that he “hates” the LGBT community. That is SO FAR from the truth. He has stated multiple times that he loves the people themselves but he knows what they are involved in is harmful to their life so he cares enough to tell them the truth, EVEN though it may not be exactly what they want to hear. People respect those who stand up for what is right whether or not you like hearing it. If you love someone you tell them the truth to help them to improve their life and make it the best that it can be. If you want to be blissfully ignorant in the facts that have been shown then that is your choice but Pastor David is sharing his knowledge and research with those who need help. Many have been quick to shoot down Pastor David’s facts but I’m curious as to where all of the research is of the opposing side. Pastor David did his research and has cited all the facts which were stated. I have not seen the written and cited facts of the opposing side. It is the constant denial that Pastor David’s are false. It seems like all were getting on the opposing side are “not uhs” and “he’s wrong,” answers that carry no weight.
I just wanted to shed some light from the other side. He is a GREAT man and deserves more respect then you’re giving him!!
A practicing homosexual! Quick, hide the kids!
Dear Alexia,
You say that Pastor David is sharing his knowledge and facts. But he uses some extremely weak citations and arguments. Go to the link of Pastor David’s Cool Church, and here is what he writes:
“Homosexual sex activists have tried to convince our society that 10% of our population practices homosexual sex to give it credibility, yet study after study continues to consistently come up with only 1-2%.”
Pastor David’s documentation for this immediately contradicts itself by referring to the Kinsey Report (from 1948…rather outdated) finding that only 4% of those surveyed were “exclusively” homosexual. This leaves a lot of room for another non-exclusive 6%, and it is double David’s stated 1-2%. If the guy can’t even be trusted to use figures that are consistent with his own evidence, what else might he get wrong?
“Contrary to what homosexual sex activist have tried to convince us, there is no medical or scientific evidence that people are born homosexual; it is a choice of sexual behavior.”
Pastor David’s evidence for this is very selective. He mentions twin studies where one twin is gay and the other isn’t, which demonstrates a misunderstanding of the nature of sexuality. People aren’t “gay” or “not gay” like a binary switch that is either “off” or “on.” People have levels of sexual attraction; this is why some people are bisexual, and can more easily “go either way,” while for others that might not be possible. David also claims that failure to find a “gay gene” proves it is purely a choice, which is a bogus argument since one need not reduce homosexuality to a single gene in order for it to be scientific. Instead, there is evidence that many homosexuals have structural differences in their brains, which you can find studies on via a simple Google or Wikipedia search. Pastor David continues by noting that if homosexuality is scientific then it should have disappeared due to natural selection, which is an interesting argument since David seems to be using biological evolution as an assumption (I take it he’s not a fundamentalist Christian?). But this itself is a misunderstanding of evolution, since humans are a group animal and the existence of a percentage of homosexuals in a group would — assuming their presence was beneficial — make the group more likely to survive than other groups, preserving all of their genes. Finally, Pastor David seems to have completely missed (or is avoiding the subject of) the vast amount of scientific study that clearly shows homosexual behavior among a great many animal groups, from frogs to monkeys. The bottom line is that homosexuality is no less “natural” than anything else in the animal kingdom. There is no one “right” sexual form of existence. Plants have been known to switch from sexual to asexual repoduction to adapt to changing conditions. Some animals reproduce by parthenogenesis, which eliminates the need for males. And so on. Pastor David is pushing a view of science based on ignorance, and what little evidence he provides is cherry-picked and misleading.
Continued:
“Virtually every STD increases astronomically among homosexuals compared to the general population, as do violence and the various addictions – practicing homosexual sex is a risky, dangerous choice.”
Pastor David’s evidence here runs the gamut from obvious to completely misleading. Though there was misinformation in the 1980s trying to make it seem heterosexuals and homosexuals were equally at risk for AIDS, is is obviously much more prevalent among gay men, especially those who are promiscuous. But Pastor David cites information about HPV (papilloma virus) that is completely misleading and seems to suggest gays are more at risk than heterosexuals, which is almost certainly not the case. He only provides evidence that HPV is more likely among gay men with HIV than among gay men who do not have HIV. Well, duh. This is an example of Pastor David purposely using evidence to confuse or mislead people. Either Pastor David has a low level of understanding of the basics of science, or he is being willfully deceptive. Pastor David also completely fails to demonstrate that lesbians are at a higher risk for sexually transmitted diseases.
As for higher incidence of violence or addiction among homosexuals, this could easily be a correlation vs. causation issue. That homosexuals are more prone to alcoholism, for example, might be the result not of gayness itself but of the very public stigma that Pastor David is promoting. In other words, Pastor David might be making the opposite argument he intends.
“Practicing homosexually – even taking out the issue of AIDS – reduces the life expectancy of a person by OVER 30 YEARS.”
Read Pastor David’s evidence for this. It is laughable. It comes from a Christian group who surveyed obituaries in homosexual publications and compared their ages to those of obituaries in regular newspapers, using a tiny sample size. This is far from scientific and omits a number of important questions, such as “What is the average age group reading these publications?” A gay publication is not going to have many 60-70 year olds reading it, whereas those age groups represent a huge chunk of the average daily newspaper’s readership. The obits will reflect that. Pastor David’s evidence puts the average median age for a homosexual male who doesn’t have AIDS at 42. There is scant explanation for where this figure comes from, and again, the correlation/causation question comes into play. That said, there is indeed evidence that married men live longer than single men, and one would assume a single man’s behavior would be closer to that of a gay man’s — i.e. driving more than staying home, looking after his health less vigilantly, and so on.
“While the average number of sexual partners in a lifetime in the heterosexual community is around 10, in study after study, the average number of partners in the homosexual community is consistently in the hundreds with over 1/4 claiming over 1,000 partners, many of these encounters anonymous, one time events.”
This may be true in the gay male community, but is very likely completely untrue for lesbians. It also doesn’t really amount to an argument against homosexuality, since each individual is free to choose how many partners to have (Wilt Chamberlain claimed to have bedded over 20,000 women).
“In light of the total farce of what they call “gay marriage”, studies show that less than 2% of practicing homosexuals could be referred to as being in a monogamous relationship.”
The first study Pastor David cites is from 1970 — hardly cutting-edge research — and shows that “only 14 percent of gay males, and only 40 percent of lesbians” had monogamous relationships. So here we see yet again Pastor David not being upfront and honest with his facts and figures. The evidence he cites later states that only 2% of gay MALES (females are mysteriously omitted) have LIFELONG monogamous relationships. Gosh, with no options for marriage and a public stigma against an arrangement in its lieu, why would this be?
In other words: If the problem is more gays not being monogamous, then wouldn’t it make sense to make it easier for them to make a monogamous commitment? And let’s not forget that lesbians are statistically just as monogamous as heterosexuals.
“People who participate in homosexual sex are extremely more likely to suffer psychological disorders and consider or attempt suicide and have a less happy, satisfying life than the general population.”
Correlation versus causation yet again. It is not only possible but likely that the public stigma against homosexuality, and the shame and alienation this spurs, is one of the primary causes of those psychological disorders.
“Here’s what God says in the Bible.” (The link goes to various bible quotes, including Soddom and Gomorrah.)
It’s funny to bring the bible into the debate, since if you actually read the Soddom and Gomorrah story, so much of what happens there is completely FUBAR that it hardly makes a convincing argument. It’s not even clear that the Sodomites were homosexuals. The whole episode begins because somebody was inhospitable to a couple of angels, doesn’t it? Then someobody looks back at something and gets turned into salt. Then Lot and his daughters go into a cave and the daughters take turns getting daddy drunk and raping him while he’s semi-conscious. This is discussed as if it’s completely normal.
If you get your moral/behavioral guidance from the bible, especially the Old Testament, then you’ll have to avoid trimming the sides of your beard. You’ll also have to be pro-abortion since God treats a forced miscarriage as a vastly lesser sin than murder (those who cause miscarriage are to be fined, say the Lord, while those who murder must be killed).
In conclusion, Pastor David is just another Christian bigot in snazzier clothing.
Everyone: Be sure to check out this week’s issue (the one coming out Thursday, online Wednesday) for more on this.
WOW…… I have just read the article written by Saxton Burns and the opinion by Jimmy Boegle and I have never seen so much wrong information printed in a paper. You attended a service at Tucson Community Church already having your opinion formed and you turned everything Pastor David said into what you wanted it to be for your attack article! Pastor David actually spent very little time talking about the recent articles in the paper and his teaching was planned way before this happened and was in no way talking about not forgiving homosexuals. (Anyone wanting to hear the truth can buy the DVD at the church)
This was said by Jimmy Boegle “What he found was an unrepentant Christian church, hiding behind vague Bible verses and refuted pseudoscience to spread a message that basically equated all homosexuals to mass murderer Jeffrey Dahmer.”
That is a flat out lie! If you were at the service you know that Pastor David absolutly did not equate homosexuals to Jeffery Dahmer, once again this was fabricated to make the article more interesting. Good journalists are supposed to print the truth about what happens, not make up the truth they want their readers to believe.
As for the “unrepentant Christian church”, why would we repent for standing up for God’s truth that is written clearly in the bible?
The McAllisters started TCC for one reason… to help people build a relationship with God and to teach biblical truths, not opinons, to help people with their eternal life! That is the most loving thing that one person can do for another!
Matt& Kristina Gipson
Matt and Kristina: Please, please go back and read your Bible and tell me where it mentions homosexuality (outside of the Old Testament, which we can pretty much agree doesn’t govern your lives much). Please show me anywhere where Jesus said anything negative about anyone. Thanks! Love, a Christian and former Sunday School teacher
“Biblical truths”? Come on. The Bible is about as accurate on verifiable historical points as were Soviet textbooks during the Stalin era–the authors were shaping accounts of the past to suit their own purposes. As for moral verities, the various books of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament were written by individuals and redacted by committees living in the most backward culture in the Mediterranean basin two to three thousand years ago. Biblical tenets (which are often internally contradictory) must be regarded as metaphor, not literal truth, and employed very selectively if they are to be applied successfully to contemporary society. I suppose it’s romantic, this Gatsby-like notion that you can bring back the past if you just wish it so, but Jay Gatsby wound up dead in the pool, and, intellectually speaking, hard-core Christians are floating there beside him.
Jimmy: The bible mentions homosexuality in the New Testment. Please read Romans1:26-37, I Corintians 6:9, I Timothy 1-10.