Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

'Poo poo' pastor Martin Ssempa causes church to lose partnership

From the area of "you got what you deserved" comes this item:

A Nevada public health organization has cut ties with the Las Vegas church that counts controversial Ugandan anti-gay pastor Martin Ssempa as a mission partner.

As Salon reported on July 2, the Canyon Ridge Community Church has an ongoing relationship with Ssempa, who has become the public face of Uganda's "kill the gays bill." At the same time, the church has been working with the Southern Nevada Health District in Las Vegas to provide a location for HIV testing and AIDS awareness activities. But late Friday, in a letter to Canyon Ridge pastor Kevin Odor, the agency's chief health officer, Lawrence Sands, severed the relationship, citing the church's support for Ssempa.

Dr. Sands stated that "Pastor Ssempa's support of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which would criminally penalize homosexuals, is in direct conflict with the overarching public health goals of the health district."

As written, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill would impose the death penalty on HIV-positive people caught in homosexual intimacy. Non-HIV positive gays could get life in prison. In Uganda, support for the bill is driven by a coalition of Muslim and evangelical clergy, with Martin Ssempa leading the charge via local demonstrations and the international media. Despite Ssempa's vocal promotion of the bill, Canyon Ridge Christian Church has stuck by him, declining to condemn his harsh anti-gay rhetoric or the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

In the past, Southern Nevada partnered with Canyon Ridge church to offer HIV testing on site, most recently on June 27, the National HIV Testing Day. Calling it "unfortunate that we will be unable to continue to work together as community partners," Sands said the action was necessary to remain consistent with basic principles of public health practice.

You lie down with dogs, you end up with fleas. Of course knowing Ssempa's penchant for showing "scat porn" in church, I guess the better saying would be you hang around with folks who like to play in #^@, you end up getting some of it on you.

Sorry to those who thought that was sufficiently nasty.

Related posts:

Martin Ssempa claims to be misunderstood

Martin Ssempa celebrates his homophobia via a blog

'Kill the gays' bill supporter reduced to showing gay porn in church

Martin Ssempa talks about 'poop' to demonize lgbts

Martin Ssempa's obsession with gay sex . . . and poo?

Monday, July 12, 2010

Fired University of Illinois professor accused gays of 'dangerous sex acts'

The blogsphere is all a flutter today about a University of Illinois adjunct professor who got fired for comments he said about homosexuality. Now the spin seems to be - including unfortunately in the Huffington Post - that the professor in question, Kenneth Howell, got fired for merely stating the Catholic position against homosexuality:

An adjunct professor who taught courses on Catholicism at the University of Illinois has lost his teaching job there, and he claims it is a violation of his academic freedom.

Kenneth Howell was told after the spring semester ended that he would no longer be teaching in the UI's Department of Religion. The decision came after a student complained about a discussion of homosexuality in the class in which Howell taught that the Catholic Church believes homosexual acts are morally wrong.

Howell has been an adjunct lecturer in the department for nine years, during which he taught two courses, Introduction to Catholicism and Modern Catholic Thought. He was also director of the Institute of Catholic Thought, part of St. John's Catholic Newman Center on campus and the Catholic Diocese of Peoria. Funding for his salary came from the Institute of Catholic Thought.

One of his lectures in the introductory class on Catholicism focuses on the application of natural law theory to a social issue. In early May, Howell wrote a lengthy e-mail to his students, in preparation for an exam, in which he discusses how the theory of utilitarianism and natural law theory would judge the morality of homosexual acts.

"Natural Moral Law says that Morality must be a response to REALITY," he wrote in the e-mail, obtained by The News-Gazette. "In other words, sexual acts are only appropriate for people who are complementary, not the same."

He went on to write there has been a disassociation of sexual activity from morality and procreation, in contradiction of Natural Moral Theory.

The student complaint came in a May 13 e-mail to Robert McKim, head of the religion department. The author of the e-mail said he was writing on behalf of a friend – a student in Howell's class, who wanted to remain anonymous. The e-mail complained about Howell's statements about homosexuality, which the student called "hate speech.

Now the argument could made - and will be - that the university overreacted. Howell has retained the services of the Alliance Defense Fund, so I imagine we will hear ad naseum about the so-called gay agenda.

But there seems to be another side of this that no one is discussing.

Granted, I am not defending anyone but I would like to refer everyone to the email in question; the reason Howell was fired after a student complained. There seems to be more in it than simply stating a religious position against homosexuality. Particularly this passage:

One example applicable to homosexual acts illustrates the problem. To the best of my knowledge, in a sexual relationship between two men, one of them tends to act as the "woman" while the other acts as the "man." In this scenario, homosexual men have been known to engage in certain types of actions for which their bodies are not fitted. I don't want to be too graphic so I won't go into details but a physician has told me that these acts are deleterious to the health of one or possibly both of the men. Yet, if the morality of the act is judged only by mutual consent, then there are clearly homosexual acts which are injurious to their health but which are consented to. Why are they injurious? Because they violate the meaning, structure, and (sometimes) health of the human body.

Again, maybe the university overreacted.

But then again, what if Howell had made negative generalizations regarding the African-American community or the Latino community or the Jewish community?

Maybe he shouldn't have been fired. But it seems to me that this isn't a case about a man who was fired merely for stating his religious beliefs. Howell crossed the line when he began making comments - inaccurate generalizations - about gay sex.

But who cares about delving behind the story to get the facts when there is a "hot angle" to exploit.

National Organization for Marriage continues hypocrisy tour and other Monday midday news briefs

NOM's stock-photo-collection-on-wheels finds one incredibly off-message driver - The National Organization for Marriage insists that they are not bigots while at the same time teaming up with a guy who thinks that lgbts for the most part are pedophiles. Talk about trying to have it both ways.

Gay-to-straight camp run by local man praised, panned - I read the article and I didn't find it accurate either.

Mel Gibson's Long, Hateful History - Mel Gibson has slurred lgbts, African-Americans, women, and Latinos. I hear that he is going after Native Americans next so they don't feel left out.

Tough Love For State's Transgender Inmates - A story that needs to be told.

Why Is the Military Polling the Troops About Gays? - An excellent piece by Time magazine.

Robert Knight cites nonexistent poll to make case against DADT repeal

Maybe Coral Ridge Ministries writer (and perennial anti-gay activist) Robert Knight is getting jealous of Peter LaBarbera, Matt Barber, Andrea Lafferty, and the rest of that bunch.

He seems to be using the issue of Don't Ask, Don't Tell to move himself back into the spotlight where he had been plaguing the lgbt community for over 30 years during sojourns with the Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, and the Media Research Center.

Last week, Knight made the incredibly wild accusation that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military would lead to "forced abortions."

This week, he tries to top that accusation with one attacking the Log Cabin Republicans. He is accusing them of not being Republicans, but a group of "infiltrators" out to weaken the Republican party. I kid you not. Those are his inferences:

"It's important to understand that the Log Cabin Republicans aren't really a Republican group; they're a group of homosexual activists who are inside the Republican Party, trying to neutralize the party on the issue of homosexual activism," he explains. "It's sort of a voluntary disarmament that they're advising the Republicans to undertake."

He thinks it is clear that lifting the ban on homosexual service would be extremely detrimental to America's armed forces.

"This would destroy the volunteer military as we know it, because 25 percent of people in the military have said they'll either resign or they wouldn't re-enlist," Knight reports. "It would hurt recruitment because the military draws from traditional populations that have very traditional values. It would hurt unit cohesion."

Knight isn't skipping a beat when it comes to misleading folks. The 25 percent figure he refers to is a lie.

According to Media Matters, the 25 percent claim came from a World Net Daily column by conservative black activist Mychal Massie. Here is the exact quote:

A reader who is in a position to know told me that the "last survey among military folks [revealed] that 25 percent won't re-up if this happens. This means that to allow [the] 2 percent of those out there who choose this lifestyle into the military, we'd lose 25 percent of the experienced military folks who have morals."

You got that? Massie never cited a specific poll or gave the name of "the reader" who told him about the poll. For all we know, Massie could have thought up the 25 percent figure and the mysterious "reader" out of thin air.

And from what we know about World Net Daily (or as it is called in some circles -World Nut Daily due in part to its constant inferences that President Obama isn't a United States citizen), the idea that its columnists push false facts and figures isn't totally implausible.

As for Knight, a man who freely cited the discredited work of Paul Cameron, exploiting a nonexistent poll is par for the course.

Related posts:

Robert Knight gets too homophobic even for me

'Porno Pete' LaBarbera wants to instruct the next generation

Why doesn't Robert Knight want to talk about Paul Cameron?

Robert Knight: Obama and gays are trying to destroy American values!

Friday, July 09, 2010

Know Your LGBT History - Making Love

Anita Bryant returns to plague us again and other Friday midday news briefs

Anita Bryant returns to the 'culture wars' - Judging from the company she is keeping at the event in question, it will be like she never left.

Obama US Attorney expected to stand behind federal gay marriage ban, plaintiffs say - DON'T YOU DARE, PRESIDENT OBAMA!

Welcome to the Andrea Lafferty offense boat, entire state of Massachusetts! - And where would the religious right be without an offensive comment on yesterday's anti-DOMA ruling by Andrea Lafferty and the Traditional Values Coalition?

NOM Is Furious — Just Furious! - And of course the National Organization for Marriage is extremely upset over the ruling. It's been a good day ;p

The Palm Center releases the DADT survey - Some of these questions are interesting, to say the least.

Woodstock benefit for lesbian teen raises $30K - And Constance McMillen continues to kick ass. Way to go, girlfriend!

Cure for HIV around the corner?

No comments on the religious right this morning. Just a focus on some good news:

American scientists are touting a major stride toward a vaccine that can ward off HIV, after finding two key proteins that neutralize 91 percent of the virus' 190 strains.

The team of researchers with the National Institutes of Health's Vaccine Research Center hopes the antibody discovery can spur successful work toward a method of preventing HIV, which already afflicts an estimated 33 million people worldwide.

The discovery, published in this week's Science, is courtesy of Donor 45, an unidentified African-American man whose body produced the antibodies, called VRC01 and VRC02.

Scientists have already identified the 12 cells in his body that produced the proteins. If they can harness the mechanisms by which the antibodies were made, they might be able to create a vaccine that would spur anybody's body to make the HIV destroyers.

"We're going to be at this for a while," Gary Nabel, director of the center and a leader on this research, told The Wall Street Journal.

The last few years has seen a flurry of effort -- much of it futile -- toward creating a vaccine for HIV, much like those that helped eradicate small pox and polio. Until now, however, single antibodies only appeared to block one or two HIV strains.

Trials on the first promising vaccine, AIDSVAX, were largely a disappointment. In American and Thai trials, the vaccine yielded success rates that varied from statistically insignificant to 30 percent.

In this case, researchers seem to have found a sweet spot on the surface of the human immunodeficiency virus.

"The antibodies attach to a virtually unchanging part of the virus, and this explains why they can neutralize such an extraordinary range of HIV strains," Dr. John Mascola, one of the study's researchers, said in a statement.

Turning these newly discovered antibodies into a useful HIV vaccine remains a tall order. Scientists would need to isolate the specific part of the virus that the antibodies latch onto, then craft a vaccine using that viral snippet to train the body to produce VRC01 and VRC02.

More here.

HIV/AIDS affects all of us. I've lost a few friends to disease, including my older brother. This is definitely a step in the right direction. Let's hope that progress continues so that one day, HIV/AIDS goes the way of the dinosaur.