Joe Wenke
DR. JOE WENKE, an outspoken and articulate LGBT rights activist, is the owner and managing partner of Xperience, a multi-million dollar marketing communications and production company with offices in New York, Boston and Detroit. He is also the founder and publisher of Trans Über, a publishing company with a focus on LBGT rights and promoting freedom and equality for all people.
He began his career as an editor at the Foundation Center in New York City. He was a speechwriter at Avnet for Tony Hamilton, the founder of the global electronics distribution industry, and wrote speeches for George Conrades, the head of IBM US. As a senior vice president at Caribiner International he served as the company’s lead communications strategist and head of global accounts.
Wenke received an M.A. in English from Pennsylvania State University and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Connecticut. He is a regular columnist in the Huffington Post. His books look into the religious underpinnings of LGBT discrimination in America, including YOU GOT TO BE KIDDING! The Cultural Arsonist’s Satirical Reading of the Bible. His next book, PAPAL BULL: An Ex-Catholic Calls Out the Catholic Church, will be published later this Fall. He is also author of “Mailer’s America” about the lifework of Pulitzer-prize winning American author Norman Mailer.
“Fear God. Based on everything we’ve seen of God in the Old Testament, this is pretty good advice. God is jealous. God is angry. God is crazy. If he thinks you’re messing around with other gods or doing anything he doesn’t like, he’ll kill you as soon as look at you—and not just you but your whole family and all of your livestock, too.”
“How does the capacity to do evil exist, if that capacity is not within the creator as well? It’s just not possible. The fruit that Adam and Eve eat is from “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Interesting. So according to Genesis the knowledge of good and evil existed before Adam and Eve ate the fruit and thereby gained access to that knowledge, and if the knowledge of good and evil existed, then good and evil existed as well, and it all came from God, the creator. Obviously. Also, God didn’t have to unleash suffering and death on everybody who ever lives forever and ever until the end of the world because two people ate a piece of fruit. He just felt like it.”
“But hey, what’s the big deal? Nothing’s perfect, including the Bible.”
“They say the Bible is perfect, but it appears that God needs an editor.”
“God’s decision to flood the entire earth and kill everybody and everything is without a doubt far and away the greatest single act of genocide in the history of the world. It makes you wonder what God thought of the pathetic attempts of Hitler, Stalin and Mao to compete in the genocidal sweepstakes. They may have slaughtered millions, but there were still plenty of people left when they were done.”
“Fruit—it’s one of the weirdest motifs in the Old Testament.”