Jonathan Hartman, a former Salvation Army youth pastor, was accused in April of last year of molesting multiple young girls over a three-year period. He’s been in jail and in court preparing to defend himself.
Now we discover he tried to hire someone to kill the three accusers and the child of one of them.
Montgomery County, Maryland, schoolchildren got a little something extra in their report card folders this week. A pamphlet from Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX), given out legally it would seem, makes some amazing claims:
Societal acceptance does not prevent emotional disturbances felt by homosexuals in their lifestyle. (How would they know? Homosexuality has not been widely accepted by any society since Christianity and Islam took hold.)
Gays pass the following diseases around: HIV/AIDS, Infectious hepatitis (A&B), multiple bowel and other infectious diseases, syphilis, human papilloma virus (HPV), genital warts, herpes, gonorrhea, & other viral and non-viral STDs. (Gee. As I understand, heterosexuals can and do pass all of these diseases around as well, and it’s well documented that lesbians have far and away the lowest STD transmission rate of all straight, gay, and bi groups.)
Change therapy [psychiatric efforts to change sexual orientation] works. (No, it doesn’t. The AMA and the American Psychiatric Association–we’re talking professionals here–unequivocally state that “change therapy” is not recognized as a valid course of treatment.)
There appear to be many dissatisfied homosexually-oriented individuals who seek psychological or spiritual intervention to achieve a goal they identify as a change in sexual orientation. (I’m sure there are gays who seek psychiatric help to change their orientation to straight through medical means. However, I’m also sure there are a number of psychiatric patients who want to be King Ozymandias and wear a shiny hat.)
Here’s the cover of this charming pack of wingnut homophobic lies:
There are a few cases where gays “became” straight, but there are many, many more cases that such efforts lead to psychosis, violence, and death. After all, you can jam a square peg into a round hole, but there’s usually a lot of collateral damage as a result.
“Cold-blooded murder” has a good ring to it.
It happens all over the world, though the media has paid particular attention lately to “cold-blooded murders” within Middle Eastern communities. It often happens in Muslim communities, but other ethnicities indulge in this crime as well.
The latest report is from Turkey, where the body of Medine Memi, a 16-year-old girl, was buried alive (soil was found in her lungs) at the hands of family members who decided to commit a “cold-blooded murder” for Memi’s sin of…
…talking to boys who were not blood relatives.
Look into the face of Evil.
This woman, Samira Jassam of Iraq, proudly proclaimed that she orchestrated the rape of 80+ Iraqi women, and then convinced the women to “redeem” themselves…
…by committing suicide bombings.
There is no punishment cruel enough for this alleged human being.
There is no punishment vile enough for those who use induced shame for political ends. (And make no mistake. This isn’t about religion; it’s about power and politics.)
Mourn for those whose lives are ended by “loved ones”. Mourn those who escape emotional trauma by seeking death for themselves.
“Honor killings” do not begin to describe this horror. “Cold-blooded murder” comes closer.
The Rabbinical Alliance of America, an Orthodox Jewish organization, has a reputation for being a fundamentalist but usually reasonable group of clergy.
No longer. Here is their spokesman, Rabbi Yehuda Levin, letting his homophobia and wingnuttery hang out where everyone can see it:
“When Americans are suffering economically and millions need jobs, it’s shocking that the Administration is focused on its ultra-liberal militantly homosexualist agenda forcing the highlighting of homosexuals and homosexuality on an unwilling military. This is the equivalent of the spiritual rape of our military to satisfy the most extreme and selfish cadre of President Obama’s kooky coalition.
“We agree with Eileen Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness that this will hurt the cohesiveness of the military, cause many to leave the army, and dramatically lower the number of recruits, perhaps leading to the reinstatement of a compulsory draft.
“Thirteen months before 9/11, on the day New York City passed homosexual domestic partnership regulations, I joined a group of Rabbis at a City Hall prayer service, pleading with G-d not to visit disaster on the city of N.Y. We have seen the underground earthquake, tsunami, Katrina, and now Haiti. All this is in sync with a two thousand year old teaching in the Talmud that the practice of homosexuality is a spiritual cause of earthquakes. Once a disaster is unleashed, innocents are also victims just like in Chernobyl.
“We plead with saner heads in Congress and the Pentagon to stop sodomization of our military and our society. Enough is enough.”
Sodomization. Oooookay.
Religious wingnuts are everywhere, it would seem.
The Center for Spirituality and Healing appears to be an organization, supported by my tax dollars through the University of Minnesota system, for spreading non-science and wishful thinking to both the academic and non-academic community.
If the Center supports “rigorous research” (their words), how could it possibly pass off as true such disproved practices as homeopathy? What does taking a “holistic approach to 2010 to foster total well-being, nurturing your mind, body, and spirit” have anything to do with academic achievement?
A news link on the CfSaH website trumpets “Healthy Giving, Healthy Living”. Visiting the web page, one sees the claim:
“[S]tudies show that with even the most modest of giving, people actually feel better about themselves, and that translates into improved physical and mental well-being. Giving strengthens the sense of connection to family and community, and offers a concrete way to improve the lives of others.”
This is followed by
“So please give a generous gift to the Center for Spirituality & Healing, another way of Taking Charge of Your Health.”
Quite aside from the abuse of language (poor syntax, grammar, and logic abound), using a “news” item to stage a request for donations is quite appalling. Trying to disguise a blatant request for money as something “spiritual” and “healthy” smacks of fraud.
The Center recently sponsored a Homeopathy Acute Care Workshop in the Health Sciences Tower on the UM main campus. How a paragon of learning and science like our state university could possibly condone such a travesty of science and medicine is far beyond me.
I urge the president of the University of Minnesota to review the activities of the Center and take an opportunity to ask why the hell a group that promotes quackery, wishful thinking, and a complete disregard for truth, scientific method, or reality continues to enjoy being under the auspices of an institution of learning.
I went to see Moore’s Sicko when it came out, and I must admit that I fell for his spiel hook, line, and sinker.
How naive I was when I was younger.
Moore, a documentarian whom I used to admire, has turned into a propaganda machine worthy of Faux News Network. He regularly takes interviewees out of context, distorts facts to match preconceived conclusions, and very carefully lies by omission.
Moore waxed poetic about Canadian health care in particular. (“Oh, we only had to wait 20 minutes to be seen in the ER here.”) Have a look at how well the socialist health care system in Canada really works:
I had a recent news article wafted in my direction (thanks, Cindy!) that underlines this point well. The premier of Labrador/Newfoundland had to come to the United States to get proper heart surgery. My favorite quote from the story?
“Having the surgery done in the province was never an option”
I haven’t any right to criticise books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Everytime I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.
- Samuel Clemens, in a letter to Joseph Twichell, 13 September 1898
eHarmony, that witless collection of fundies who discriminates against gay applicants, created a parallel website called Compatible Partners last year to settle a lawsuit brought by Eric McKinley, who claimed that the company regularly rejected gay applicants.
Now a second lawsuit has forced the company to merge the two sites into one, claiming that discrimination was still ongoing. Eww, the straights now have to mix with the gays.
eHarmony is owned by Xtian fundies with ties to Focus on the Family and other unsavory types. Not only does eHarmony discriminate against gays, they also reject people who admit to non-vanilla sexual preferences.
Last week the U.S. Supreme Court decided 5-4 that corporations, entities created to emulate a single person, have one more “right”–the right to contribute without limitation to political and referenda campaigns.
This quote is from Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority:
“Because speech is an essential mechanism of democracy — it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people — political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it by design or inadvertence.”
Writing for the minority, Justice John Paul Stevens opines:
“The conceit that corporations must be treated identically to natural persons in the political sphere is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify the Court’s disposition of this case.”
What does that mean? It means that, as far as the lotus-eaters of the Supreme Court is concerned, Citibank is the political equal to John Doe and Jane Roe.
Who the hell does the Court think it is kidding? Corporations now have no limit to financing the election campaigns for the sock puppet politicians that do their political bidding.
If Wal-Mart decides that labor unions should be outlawed in a given state, or a latter-day Enron decides to cook their accounting books out of the eyeshot of regulators, it can happen. And will.
Be afraid.
Very afraid.
Newsday, the Long Island newspaper, went behind a pay-to-view firewall three months ago. The paper spent $4 million for the website redesign and paywall setup.
Care to guess how many $260 per year subscriptions the paper has sold in those three months?
35.
The number of people in a large elementary school classroom.
I hope the New York Times gets this message.
Hooray!
Creation will be released in the United States this Friday! It’s about damned time.
Go see this movie.
Bill Gates, through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has donated many millions of dollars to the fight against AIDS, particularly in third-world countries.
In a recent interview, Gates expounds upon the proposed law that the Ugandan government is considering:
“There’s a tendency to think in the U.S. just because a law says something that it’s a big deal. In Africa if you want to talk about how to save lives, it’s not just laws that count. There’s a stigma no matter what that law says, for sex workers, men having sex with men, that’s always been a problem for AIDS. It relates to groups that aren’t that visible. AIDS itself is subject to incredible stigma. Open involvement is a helpful thing. I wouldn’t overly focus on that. In terms of how many people are dying in Africa, it’s not about the law on the books; it’s about getting the message out and the new tools.” (emphasis mine)
It is already illegal to perform homosexual acts in Uganda, but the proposed law would dictate
Just what the hell should we focus on, Bill? That sounds like a pretty goddamned big deal to me.
P.S. Microsoft has a “big deal” going with the Ugandan government. Sounds like Bill doesn’t want to upset any apple carts. Or multi-million dollar deals.
Sidney Allen Elyea recently posted anti-Islamic flyers on utility poles in his area (St. Cloud, Minnesota).
Included in the flyers were cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed engaging in bestiality and sodomy, and Islamic crescents with swastikas inside them. The pictures were hung near a mosque and a Somali-run grocery store.
Mr. Elyea claims he’s exercising his right of free speech. (He’s being prosecuted for illegally posting material on public property–utility poles.)
Should Elyea be protected by the U.S. First Amendment?
