MICHIGAN: Mother Says Outed "Grindr Pastor" Told Her Gay Son To Kill Himself UPDATE: The Son Speaks Out Himself

Via the CBS affiliate in Flint, Michigan:

A mother came forward with new accusations against the local pastor who resigned after being outed as gay. She said what that pastor told her son nearly drove him to suicide. Jennifer Kish is angered over the recent revelation that Matthew Makela might be gay, not because of his alleged sexual preference, but because of how he treated her son while they were parishioners at his church. Makela is a Midland pastor who resigned after being outed by a website. The website said it outed Makela because of his outspoken stance in recent years against homosexuality, a stance one woman said was particularly harmful to her family. Kish said her then 17-year-old son Tyler suffered from serious depression and was considering suicide because he was told by Makela he was going to hell because he was gay. "If he's going to hell for being gay then he might as well commit suicide," Kish said. Makela is the subject of scrutiny because of the alleged hypocrisy. The website Queerty posted a conversation it claims shows Makela soliciting sex with another man on the app Grindr, an app geared toward gay and bisexual men.

UPDATE: Some readers have noted that the mother in the above story may be putting words into the mouth of the so-called Grindr Pastor, who may have "only" told her son that being gay was as bad a sin as committing suicide. In the clip below, the teenager tells the story himself.

Queerty Outs Closeted Anti-Gay Pastor

Queerty reports:

Until 2 p.m. on Monday, the ‘Our Church Staff’ section of St. John’s Lutheran Church and School’s website described Reverend Matthew Makela as an associate pastor who enjoys, “family, music, home improvement, gardening and landscaping, and sports.” Screenshots obtained by Queerty from a source who asked that his name be withheld shed light on some of the Reverend’s other favorite past times — namely nude make out sessions and sex with other men. Of course, how someone behaves between the sheets is really nobody’s business but his own, except when he’s actively doing damage to others. We’ve seen it time and time again. The lawmaker who spends his days fighting against gay rights and his nights cruising for bottoms, or the ex-gay activist who isn’t quite as ex-gay as he’d like everyone to believe. Which brings us back to Makela. The married father of five from Midland, Michigan doesn’t just preach Jesus’ love and help with bake sales. He also uses his position of authority and respect in his community to broadcast his self-loathing view on same-sex attraction.

Hit the link for much more, including anti-gay and anti-trans statements from this totally gay pastor.

Press Release Of The Day

Just in from Gay Cities / Queerty:

In lieu of the national Stoli boycott by some in the LGBT community, GayCities has convinced SPI (Stoli's parent company) to donate $5 for each person whom RSVP's and attends The Most Original Stoli Guy Live in San Francisco, San Diego, Dallas and D.C. The participating charities include local chapters of Equality CA, Equality Texas and the HRC, all whom will be present at the events to accept the donation. GayCities is currently in discussions with SPI to select an international beneficiary that works directly in affecting change for LGBTs in Russia. The organization will be revealed live at The Most Original Stoli Guy finale, which GayCities will stream live from NYC this September.

RELATED: Two weeks ago members of ACT UP disrupted a Stoli Guy promotion at NYC's now-closed Splash Bar in Chelsea.

UPDATE: Equality California denies participating in this promotion and says they never even responded to the publicist who sent the above press release. I'm waiting on a response from the Human Rights Campaign.

UPDATE II: "The Human Rights Campaign is not participating in The Most Original Stoli Guy events and is not accepting any donations related to these events or otherwise from Stoli. The press release indicating our participation was flat out wrong and the event organizers have unfortunately not provided any information to substantiate their claim."

UPDATE III: From the comments of this post: "Equality Texas does not have any relationship with Stoli Vodka or GayCities. We do not have local chapters, and we have no involvement in the Dallas event planned for August 17th. Equality Texas would not accept donations from Stoli."

NOM Cheers Queerty "Admission"

Once again, Queerty says something the wingnuts love to hear.

Even LGBT organizers agree that they’d rather pass marriage equality by legislature than at the ballot because at the ballot WE ALWAYS LOSE. People who oppose the ballot also like saying that if America voted on interracial marriage in the 60s, that still might be illegal too. But is that really our only defense against the ballot argument? If so, it’s no wonder that Obama hasn’t articulated a reason to support marriage that doesn’t fly in the face of the democratic process that had denied us our rights.

Focus On The Family Picks Up On Queerty's Now-Infamous "Indoctrination" Post

Add Focus On The Family to the list of hate groups gleefully jumping on Queerty's now-infamous post about "indoctrinating" students. Last month Queerty's article was republished by NOM, the Family Research Council, and the Concerned Women for America.

Queerty Vs. NOM

Queerty writes:

We criticized the NYC pro-equality ads featuring two milquetoast lesbians as failing to meet the emotional pitch and engagement of their “queers will turn all kids and churches gay” ad. Well, this week NOM delivered totally predictable mailers with more of the same blather, but we thought, “Why not take off the kid gloves and aggressively respond with some of our own anti-NOM postcards turning their own words back on them?”

Hit the link for Queerty's ten anti-NOM postcards.

Family Research Council Picks Up Queerty's "We DO Want Your Kids" Post

On Friday the Family Research Council fired out the above press release "celebrating" the news that thanks to this Queerty post, the "truth" about the real goal of the LGBT movement has now been exposed. Last week NOM and the Concerned Women of America issued similar statements about Queerty's article.

Concernstipated Women Of America: The Gays Are Coming After Our Children

The Concernstipated Women of America have joined NOM in trumpeting this Queerty post as a huge "SEE? They admit they want our children!!!" moment.

A recent Queerty blog entry written by Daniel Villarreal, admits that the “gay activists” actually do want to indoctrinate America’s children. Villarreal wrote, “We want educators to teach future generations of children to accept queer sexuality. In fact, our very future depends on it.” He bragged that their agenda was even broader than mere indoctrination, “I and a lot of other people want to indoctrinate, recruit, teach, and expose children to queer sexuality AND THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT” (emphasis Villarreal’s). So, there is nothing wrong, in his view, with vulgarities and crudities in talking about sex or with graphically depicting homosexual sex to children as young as pre-school. The “rights” and goals of these adults supersede concerns about the well-being of children. In fact, our nation’s children are nothing more than fodder in their gay activist campaign.

(Image via Good As You)

Maggie Gallagher: Gay Marriage Advocates Want Christians Fired From Their Jobs

"Surrendering on the legal definition of 'civil marriage' is not a prelude to winning any of those other deeper battles. It is a prelude to an ever deeper surrender to the main idea now being propagated: if you believe in the message of Genesis, as repeated by Jesus—that marriage from the beginning has been the union of male and female, husbands and wives called to give themselves to each other and to their children—then you are a bad person. You are like a racist. You should be ashamed and shamed in public. You should, ideally, lose your job." - Maggie Gallagher, in a column citing this Queerty post as evidence of the true gay agenda.

Queerty Relaunches "Without Snark"

Several weeks after announcing its own demise, Queerty has relaunched this morning with the below promise.

While we are committed to maintaining the best of Queerty, we also recognize that you have demanded change. In recent months the Queerty patented wit devolved into predictable snark, eviscerating everyone and everything in its path. Some of the comments simply piled on. We will maintain the independent voice at all cost, going after with a vengeance the powerful, the hypocritical and the just plain foolish. But now we’ll also strive for a better sense of journalistic balance and fairness. In other words we’re going to keep afflicting the comfortable; only now we’ll take care to comfort the afflicted as well.

More on the relaunch from departing owner David Hauslaib.

The End Of Queerty

After spending the last week offline due to "technical difficulties," it appears that the long-running and popular LGBT news/gossip site Queerty is no more. Gay porn site The Sword (NSFW) has an email from the site's founder which reads in part:

As many of you know, last year Queerty partnered with the folks at 353Media to handle its operations. I transitioned out of my original role to make time to tackle some unrelated projects, and a trusted crew took the reins. Sadly last week, in a scenario that began with some technical headaches, has ended with 353 opting not to continue operating the site. It is a decision I was saddened to hear, and I worked to find an amenable solution that would keep Queerty online. That effort was unsuccessful.

UPDATE: Queerty has posted the below message.

After more than five years of serving the LGBT community with news and entertainment, Queerty has come to a close. The decision to shutter the site was not an easy one to make, and it is with great pain that we say goodbye to our loyal readership. From all of Queerty's writers and contributors, from our first unto our last day, thank you for spending some time with us.

NOM Booted From Chase Contest

Chase Bank has decided that NOM is ineligible for its $5M holiday charity contest, due to the organization's blatant anti-gay bigotry.

A Chase spokesman asserted late Thursday that the antigay group headed by Maggie Gallagher is not eligible for charitable funds — even if it garnered sufficient votes — because it violates the contest's nondiscrimination rules. The database of groups was generated by GuideStar, a third-party firm that provides research on nonprofit groups. “Organizations that receive votes from the guidestar database will be reviewed to make sure that they’re in the compliance with all of our guidelines,” Joe Evangelisti, head of media relations for JP Morgan Chase, told The Advocate.

Credit goes to Queerty, who first raised the issue, and of course to all of you folks who wrote Chase to complain. Well done, all.

Jesus Christ, Superstud

Dark Alley Media is releasing a porn version (NSFW) of the Jesus story. We can't get a plot synopsis from the site for the movie, which mistakenly tells the plot of a previous Dark Alley movie, Gaytanemo, in which "an unsuspecting German tourist is mistaken for a terrorist, abducted, and taken to the sexiest secret military detention center ever."

However, Queerty has posted an interview with Passio director Matthias von Fistenberg (no, really) who says, “My Jesus is gay, stunningly beautiful and sexy. He gets aroused like all of us. The movie is a gospel, passio, version of the Jesus story according to me.”

Dan Savage posted about Passio yesterday and here are a few Scriptural comments from his readers :
-"This is my body, eat."
-"Turn the other cheek, Jesus. TURN IT!"
-"Suffer the little children, cum onto me."
-"Knock and it will be opened to you."

Sacrilege makes me happier than just about anything in the world. I guess that makes me a bad person.

Gravel Speaks To The Gays

Last night I attended the Queerty-sponsored speech of presidential candidate Sen. Mike Gravel at the Hotel Chelsea's Star Lounge. While Gravel spoke passionately about ending "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and marriage equality, he made a couple of missteps. First, when expounding on his position that closeted gays hurt the cause, which all here agree, I'm sure, he said, "Be proud of who you are, whether you're gay or lesbian or transvestitite!" Uh, "transvestitite", Senator? That caused a few rolled eyes.

Then during the Q&A, I asked, "Senator, what do think the chances are of getting ENDA passed during the current session?" Gravel responded that he had no idea what ENDA was. I gave a brief description of ENDA and he said he supported it, "of course". Gravel left the Senate in 1981, so I suppose he can't be expected to be current on all pending legislation, but I found his ignorance on ENDA to be rather unforgivable, particularly when he'd been invited to speak to gay activists.

The event was well-attended and I congratulate the Queerty guys, David Hauslaib and Andrew Belonsky, for to putting it all together.

Gay Blog Power

Press release:

Please join Queerty THIS THURSDAY, June 14, in New York City as we celebrate gay pride with special guest Sen. Mike Gravel, the U.S. Presidential Candidate.

In the running for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, Sen. Gravel has bestowed us the extreme honor of meeting Queerty's readers. He tells us that he's thrilled to be welcome at this first-ever Queerty event — so we hope you'll join us in hosting him.

WHEN: This Thursday, June 14, 8-10pm
WHERE: The Star Lounge at the Hotel Chelsea, 222 W. 23rd Street (between 7th and 8th avenues)

Cocktails Provided

ABOUT SENATOR GRAVEL
Senator Gravel supports same-sex marriage and opposes the Defense of Marriage Act. He supports expanding hate-crime legislation and opposes laws that allow discrimination against sexual orientation, as well as discrimination on the basis of one's gender identity or expression. In the absence of full marriage rights, the senator supports domestic partner benefits for all Americans. He strongly opposes the military's 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' legislation on the grounds that it is unconstitutional, as it restricts the rights of gay Americans, and he opposes any state or national constitutional amendment that restricts the rights of the LGBT community.

I will be there.