Federal education officials are investigating a school district in a Central California town where a 13-year-old boy committed suicide after allegedly being harassed by classmates because he was gay, a spokesman for Education Secretary Arne Duncan confirmed Tuesday.
The probe was launched in response to a complaint from Seth Walsh's mother that Tehachapi Unified School District employees failed to adequately address the years of bullying that preceded her son's death last Sept. 28, spokesman Justin Hamilton said.
Seth's mother Wendy Walsh said U.S. Department of Education investigators spent two days in Tehachapi last week interviewing students, teachers and administrators. She said she contacted them when her son, who hanged himself from a backyard tree on Sept. 19, was still hospitalized in a coma.
"They put this on their very important list, their priority list," Walsh said of the federal review. "Obviously, there must be a big problem that needs to be addressed, and it isn't just around Seth. It's the whole nation."…
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Gay Catholic Minnesota Student – “Student who penned coming out op-ed deals with sudden fame”
by Sasha Aslanian,
December 23, 2010 - Minnesota Public Radio
Related links:
GAY YOUTH SUICIDE | BENEDICT XVI & BISHOPS Child Sexual Abuse Cover-ups – Negligence Protecting (1) Children & (2) LGBT Children | Family of Rutgers suicide victim lends name to bill – November 19, 2010 – CNN
Dehumanization – “The Lucifer Effect” by Philip Zimbardo (2007) | BENEDICT XVI & BISHOPS - Child Sexual Abuse COVER-UPS & Implicit Child Abuse of LGBT Children
GAY YOUTH CATHOLIC SILENCING | The student newspaper editorial Benilde-St. Margaret's doesn't want you to see - By David Brauer, November 15, 2010 – MinnPost.com
400,000 Anti-gay marriage DVDs - $1 million Nienstedt "Minnesota Bishops on Gay Marriage" October 29, 2010 - RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY PBS – video (NP)
(NP) Lesbians, Feminism, and Psychoanalysis - The Second Wave
By Judith Glassgold, and Suzanne Iasenza. 2004
Gay Conversion | Religious Conversion - Transforms The Damned Into The Saved | COVERING - Kenji Yoshino – 2002 - The Yale Law Journal
Excerpts
I. INTRODUCTION
Assimilation is the magic in the American Dream. Just as in our actual dreams, magic permits us to transform into better, more beautiful creatures, so too in the American Dream, assimilation permits us to become not only Americans, but the kind of Americans we seek to be. Justice Scalia recently expressed this pro-assimilation sentiment when he joined a Supreme Court majority to strike down an affirmative action program. Calling for the end of race-consciousness by public actors, Scalia said: “ In the eyes of government, we are just one race here. It is American.”1 Packed into this statement is the idea that we should set aside the racial identifications that divide us—black, white, Asian, Latino—and embrace the Americanness that unites us all…
P. 772
…I believe that the gay context demonstrates in a particularly trenchant manner that assimilation can be an effect of discrimination as well as an evasion of it. My goal here is to develop this idea in the context of orientation, and then to demonstrate the applicability of this insight to the race- and sex-based contexts.
I believe gays may have theorized some dimensions of the relationship between assimilation and discrimination differently from either racial minorities or women. This is because gays are generally able to assimilate in more ways than either racial minorities or women. In fact or in the imagination of others, gays can assimilate in three ways: conversion, passing, and covering. Conversion means the underlying identity is altered. Conversion occurs when a lesbian changes her orientation to become straight. Passing means the underlying identity is not altered, but hidden. Passing occurs when a lesbian presents herself to the world as straight. overing means the underlying identity is neither altered nor hidden, but is downplayed. Covering occurs when a lesbian both is, and says she is, a lesbian, but otherwise makes it easy for others to disattend her orientation…
P.784
A. Gay Conversion
…What does it mean to convert? Generally defined as a “ [c]hange in character [or] nature,” 37 conversion encompasses mundane, value-neutral, and reversible transactions such as changes of measure or currency. Yet as the above account of electroshock therapy suggests, this general definition may fail to capture what conversion denotes for human identities. In such cases, I believe conversion often has a more specific meaning inflected by the instance of religious conversion—“ [t]he turning of sinners to God; a spiritual change from sinfulness, ungodliness, or worldliness to love of God and pursuit of holiness.” 38 Conversion in this formulation is not a mundane event, but a sacred one; not a value-neutral event, but one that transforms the damned into the saved; and not a reversible event, but in theory a unique occurrence.
Under such an account, human conversion differs profoundly from either passing or covering. Passing and covering are both perceived to be compromise formations in which the underlying identity is ostensibly preserved, modified only for popular consumption. In contrast, conversion is thought to be a more complete embrace or surrender. It is believed to change not only the expression of an identity, but the underlying substance of it.39
In this discussion, I describe the history of attempts to convert homosexuality into heterosexuality in the nonlegal field of mental health, as well as in the legal field. In both contexts, I document the same trend. I observe that before Stonewall, homosexuality was believed in many quarters to be a literal disease—a bona fide psychiatric mental disorder. his conceptualization powerfully justified conversion: To figure homosexuality as a disease was to figure conversion as an unimpeachable medical cure.40 Since Stonewall, that conceptualization has gradually lost its hold. This is not to say, however, that the disease rhetoric surrounding homosexuality disappeared. Even as the concept of homosexuality as a literal disease (i.e., a mental disorder) waned, a concept of homosexuality as a figurative disease (i.e., a disfavored social condition that was contagious) remained. This contagion metaphor for homosexuality still continues explicitly and implicitly to license many subtler forms of conversion today…
P. 803
2. Legal Contexts
In law, as in medicine, the most physically invasive attempts at conversion are largely a thing of the past. This is no accident, as the most aggressive legal attempts at conversion often relied upon the medical profession. Bill Eskridge has documented that in the years leading up to World War II, state legislatures enacted a series of laws targeting sex offenders, a category that at the time included homosexuals.165 These laws imposed penalties on sex offenders tantamount to attempts at conversion, including indefinite incarceration until “ rehabilitation,” or even castration.166 Eskridge contends that authorities enforced these laws with relative vigor in the years immediately after the war, sentencing some homosexual offenders “ to hospitals or special prison wards, where they were subjected to experimental medical treatments, sometimes castration, but more typically electrical and pharmacological shock treatments and lobotomies.” 167 The courts upheld these laws against constitutional challenges and sometimes took an even more active role.168 Eskridge observes that “ [b]etween 1933 and 1947, California Judge Frank Collier allowed forty-seven sex offenders, most homosexual, to be relieved of long prison sentences by agreeing to castration, which the judge thought ‘completely cured their unnatural sex desires.’” 169
The legal profession’s dependence on the medical profession for the most physically invasive forms of conversion meant that the latter’s retirement of these practices made them unavailable to the former. At the same time, in areas where law was not as directly dependent on medicine, legal actors continued to pathologize homosexuality long after medical actors ceased to do so. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) held homosexuality to be a mental disease for seventeen years after the APA repudiated that exact stance. The INS had occasion to take such a position because the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 required the INS to exclude individuals “ afflicted with psychopathic personality.” 170 Until 1990, the INS interpreted “ psychopath” to include “ homosexual.” 171…
P. 938
V. CONCLUSION
I conclude with my aspiration for the model of discrimination I have been propounding. My critique of the current paradigm of discrimination is that it fails to focus on the question of assimilation, or, more broadly, on the question of change. This failure is somewhat puzzling. Civil rights practice, after all, is fundamentally about who has to change: The homosexual or the
homophobe? The woman or the sexist? The racial minority or the racist? Yet the current paradigm errs prescriptively in extending greater protections to those who cannot change, and errs descriptively in characterizing identities like race and sex as being incapable of any kind of change. I believe that it could not err in either of these ways if it more closely examined the ubiquity of assimilation. When we see how much we all can and do change along every axis of our identity, we should apprehend that any account of discrimination that does not take assimilation into account is fundamentally impoverished. Just thinking of such change, I hope, will change us.
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By Kenji Yoshino
Impending rules
on gay priests create Catholic divide
by Charles Honey – October 8, 2005
The Grand Rapids Press
…"Kids as young as 4 or 5 know they're different," said Kurylowicz, a psychotherapist… "They grow up with this pervasive guilt, which sabotages their growth and motivation." The result is thousands of dollars in therapy to accept their natural orientation, he said, adding, "Does the Vatican want to take that on, like the tobacco industry had to take on for the damage it caused consumers? "…
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by Charles Honey
Religion Editor
The Grand Rapids Press – Archives
More below:
American Psychiatric Association
1000 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 1825,
Arlington, Va. 22209-3901
Psychiatric Treatment and Sexual Orientation
POSITION STATEMENT
Approved by the Board of Trustees, December 1998
Approved by the Assembly, November 1998
The Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the DSM in 1973 after reviewing the evidence that it was not a mental disorder. In 1987, ego-dystonic homosexuality was not included in the DSM-III-R after a similar review.
The American Psychiatric Association does not currently have a formal position statement on treatments that attempt to change a persons sexual orientation, also known as reparative or conversion therapy. There is an APA 1997 Fact Sheet on Homosexual and Bisexual Issues which states that there is no published scientific evidence supporting the efficacy of reparative therapy as a treatment to change ones sexual orientation.
The potential risks of reparative therapy are great, including depression, anxiety and self-destructive behavior, since therapist alignment with societal prejudices against homosexuality may reinforce self-hatred already experienced by the patient. Many patients who have undergone reparative therapy relate that they were inaccurately told that homosexuals are lonely, unhappy individuals who never achieve acceptance or satisfaction. The possibility that the person might achieve happiness and satisfying interpersonal relationships as a gay man or lesbian is not presented, nor are alternative approaches to dealing the effects of societal stigmatization discussed. The APA recognizes that in the course of ongoing psychiatric treatment there may be appropriate clinical indications for attempting to change sexual behaviors.
Several major professional organizations including the American Psychological Association, the National Association of Social Workers and the American Academy of Pediatrics have all made statements against reparative therapy because of concerns for the harm caused to patients. The American Psychiatric Association has already taken clear stands against discrimination, prejudice and unethical treatment on a variety of issues including discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
Therefore, the American Psychiatric Association opposes any psychiatric treatment, such as reparative or conversion therapy which is based upon the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or based upon the a priori assumption that the patient should change his/her sexual homosexual orientation.
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American Psychological Association
750 First Street NE,
Washington, DC 20002-4242
Telephone: 800-374-2721; 202-336-5500.
TDD/TTY: 202-336-6123
August 5, 2009
Insufficient Evidence that Sexual Orientation Change Efforts Work, Says APA
Practitioners should avoid telling clients they can change from gay to straight
TORONTO—The American Psychological Association adopted a resolution Wednesday stating that mental health professionals should avoid telling clients that they can change their sexual orientation through therapy or other treatments.
The "Resolution on Appropriate Affirmative Responses to Sexual Orientation Distress and Change Efforts" also advises that parents, guardians, young people and their families avoid sexual orientation treatments that portray homosexuality as a mental illness or developmental disorder and instead seek psychotherapy, social support and educational services "that provide accurate information on sexual orientation and sexuality, increase family and school support and reduce rejection of sexual minority youth."
The approval, by APA's governing Council of Representatives, came at APA's annual convention, during which a task force presented a report that in part examined the efficacy of so-called "reparative therapy," or sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE).
"Contrary to claims of sexual orientation change advocates and practitioners, there is insufficient evidence to support the use of psychological interventions to change sexual orientation," said Judith M. Glassgold, PsyD, chair of the task force. "Scientifically rigorous older studies in this area found that sexual orientation was unlikely to change due to efforts designed for this purpose. Contrary to the claims of SOCE practitioners and advocates, recent research studies do not provide evidence of sexual orientation change as the research methods are inadequate to determine the effectiveness of these interventions." Glassgold added: "At most, certain studies suggested that some individuals learned how to ignore or not act on their homosexual attractions. Yet, these studies did not indicate for whom this was possible, how long it lasted or its long-term mental health effects. Also, this result was much less likely to be true for people who started out only attracted to people of the same sex.
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Psychologists Reject Gay ‘Therapy’
by The Associated Press,
August 5, 2009 – The New York Times
The American Psychological Association declared Wednesday that mental health professionals should not tell gay clients they can become straight through therapy or other treatments.
In a resolution adopted by the association’s governing council, and in an accompanying report, the association issued its most comprehensive repudiation of so-called reparative therapy, a concept espoused by a small but persistent group of therapists, often allied with religious conservatives, who maintain that gay men and lesbians can change.
No solid evidence exists that such change is likely, says the resolution, adopted by a 125-to-4 vote. The association said some research suggested that efforts to produce change could be harmful, inducing depression and suicidal tendencies.,,
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SEXUAL CONVERSION THERAPIES - Jack Drescher, M.D.
Jack Drescher, M.D. is Past Chair (2000-2006) of the Committee on Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Issues of the American Psychiatric Association. He is also a Past President of the New York City District Branch of the APA.
Lectures
Interviews
He is a Training and Supervising Analyst at the William Alanson White Psychoanalytic Institute, Adjunct Clinical Professor at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at both New York Medical College and the State University of New York—Downstate. Photo
Dr. Drescher has edited two volumes on sexual conversion therapies: Sexual Conversion Therapy: Ethical, Clinical, and Research Perspectives and Ex-Gay Research: Analyzing the Spitzer Study and Its Relation to Science, Religion, Politics and Culture.
Synopsis
This paper begins with a historical review of mental health attitudes toward homosexuality. Starting in the 19th century, and continuing into the modern era, there have been ongoing scientific, legal and political debates about whether homosexuality is a normal variation of human sexual expression, a psychiatric illness, or a form of psychological immaturity.
The view of homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder first emerged in the late 19th century. In the early 20th century, Freud considered homosexuality a developmental arrest, rather than an illness, but by the 1940s, neo-Freudians reclassified homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder. Their view dominated American psychiatry until it was challenged by sexologists of the same era whose research supported a view that homosexuality is a normal variant of human sexual expression. In 1973, following a process which is reviewed here, the American Psychiatric Association adopted the normal variant view and removed “homosexuality” from its diagnostic manual. By 1992, the World Health Organization followed suit and removed the diagnosis from the International Classification of Disease.
In the ensuing years, what was once a scientific dispute has become a sociopolitical debate in the “culture wars.” The two broad views of homosexuality being debated are the normal/identity model and the illness/behavior model. While the mental health mainstream has rejected the latter and embraced the former, religious social conservatives now pathologize homosexuality. However, because illness arguments are not supported by scientific research, conversion therapists, much like adherents of the intelligent design movement, have argued most of their case before the general public. They have also overstated the likelihood of change in ways that support political arguments and legislation that deny equal civil rights for lesbians and gay men.
This paper then goes on to critically review some clinical, research and ethical issues associated with sexual conversion therapies, including the Spitzer study.
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Supreme Court Overturns Texas Sodomy Law
by Nina Totenberg,
June 23, 2003 – NPR
In a victory for gay rights activists, the Supreme Court overturns a Texas law that makes it a crime for people of the same gender to engage in consensual sex. Justices rule that the law violates the constitutional right to privacy. The 6-3 decision reverses a high court ruling issued 17 years ago. NPR's Nina Totenberg reports.
Listen:
Charlie Rose - A discussion about the Supreme Court’s Ruling in
Lawrence v. Texas
Lawrence v. Texas
A discussion following a landmark Supreme Court decision striking down a Texas law that banned sodomy. Guests include: attorney Michael Carvin, professor Kenji Yoshino of Yale Law School, and NPR correspondent Nina Totenberg.
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US court overturns gay sex ban
BBC June 26, 2003
BBC June 26, 2003
A ban on homosexual sex in Texas has been overturned by the US Supreme Court in what is being seen as a landmark gay-rights ruling.
The case was brought by two Texas men, John Lawrence and Tyron Garner, who were caught having sex on private premises in 1998.
On Thursday, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said for the majority of the judges in the 6-3 ruling that the two men "are entitled to respect for their private lives".
BBC News Online's Washington correspondent Steve Schifferes says the ruling is likely to make laws that still regulate sodomy illegal, and provide an important assurance for the 600,000 openly gay households in the country.
Gay rights and civil liberties groups hailed the ruling as "historic", but there was an outcry from conservatives who said it was an attack on the family and the "moral norms" of the nation.
Matt Foreman, director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force said: "It's saying to everyone all across the country that the government has no right peering behind your bedroom door or knocking it down and arresting you."
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Bowers v. Hardwick, 1986
Court ruling: 5-4
In Bowers v. Hardwick, the Supreme Court considered a Georgia anti-sodomy law and determined that the constitution gave no protection to consenting adults engaging in homosexual acts in private. The case in question involved a gay man, Michael Hardwick, who was found having sex with another man when a police officer entered his home to inquire about an unpaid fine for an unrelated offense. Justice Byron White wrote the slim majority opinion, for which Justices Lewis and Powell provided the swing votes. White found no evidence that homosexuality was protected in the constitutional right to privacy, and wrote that state legislatures had the right to reflect "majority sentiments" and enact laws "based on notions of morality."
In his dissent, Blackmun argued that the case was not just about homosexuality, but the fundamental "right to be let alone" in one's home. In an unusual move, Blackmun chose to read his dissent from the bench, expressing his deep conviction on the issue. Later he told Yale Law professor Harold Koh that it was a "bedrock opinion in my own view, despite the fact that it was a dissent," and thought of it as an important development in the jurisprudence of privacy.
LAWRENCE et al. v. TEXAS - Supreme Court of United States. Decided June 26, 2003Responding to a reported weapons disturbance in a private residence, Houston police entered petitioner Lawrence's apartment and saw him and another adult man, petitioner Garner, engaging in a private, consensual sexual act. Petitioners were arrested and convicted of deviate sexual intercourse in violation of a Texas statute forbidding two persons of the same sex to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct. In affirming, the State Court of Appeals held, inter alia, that the statute was not unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court considered Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U. S. 186, controlling on that point.
Held: The Texas statute making it a crime for two persons of the same sex to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct violates the Due Process Clause. Pp. 564-579.
(a) Resolution of this case depends on whether petitioners were free as adults to engage in private conduct in the exercise of their liberty under the Due Process Clause. For this inquiry the Court deems it necessary to reconsider its Bowers holding. The Bowers Court's initial substantive statement—"The issue presented is whether the Federal Constitution confers a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy . . .," 478 U. S., at 190—discloses the Court's failure to appreciate the extent of the liberty at stake. To say that the issue in Bowers was simply the right to engage in certain sexual conduct demeans the claim the individual put forward, just as it would demean a married couple were it said that marriage is just about the right to have sexual intercourse. Although the laws involved in Bowers and here purport to do no more than prohibit a particular sexual act, their penalties and purposes have more far-reaching consequences, touching upon the most private human conduct, sexual behavior, and in the most private of places, the home. They seek to control a personal relationship that, whether or not entitled to formal recognition in the law, is within the liberty of persons to choose without being punished as criminals. The liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to choose to enter upon relationships in the confines of their homes and their own private lives and still retain their dignity as free persons. Pp. 564-567.
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Cornell University Law School
State Law Prohibiting Unmarried Cohabitation Challenged
by Adam Hochberg – May 10, 2005 – NPR
The American Civil Liberties Union is suing North Carolina over a law that prohibits unmarried couples from living together. A former sheriff's deputy claims that she had to quit her job or get married after living with her partner for three years. She chose to quit.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
In North Carolina, the American Civil Liberties Union is challenging a 200-year-old state law that bans unmarried couples from living together. More than a hundred thousand couples now do. And the plaintiff in the ACLU's suit says that she was forced to give up her job at a local sheriff's department because she shared a home with her boyfriend. NPR's Adam Hochberg reports.
ADAM HOCHBERG reporting:
North Carolina is one of seven states with laws banning cohabitation, and Deborah Hobbs says that law cost her her job. Early last year Hobbs went to work as a police dispatcher in Pender County on the North Carolina coast. But according to her lawsuit, after two weeks on the job, the sheriff issued an ultimatum. Noting that Hobbs was living with her boyfriend, the sheriff said the two must either get married or find separate homes. Hobbs refused and says she was forced to leave her job. Jennifer Rudinger heads the North Carolina ACLU.
Ms. JENNIFER RUDINGER (North Carolina ACLU): Ms. Hobbs is just really surprised about this law existing, let alone the fact that she was forced out of her job for living with her boyfriend.
HOCHBERG: The ACLU has filed a lawsuit on Hobbs' behalf seeking to overturn the 1805 law that says unmarried men and women shall not, quote, "bed and cohabit together." Rudinger says the law infringes on people's freedom of association, expression and privacy.
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Navy Cans Officer Over ANTI-GAY VIDEOS
January 4, 2010 – Slate Magazine
The Navy relieved USS Enterprise Captain Owen Honors of his commanding duties on Tuesday, following a Norfolk paper's release of the sexually offensive videos Honors produced a few years ago. In the videos, leaked by The Virginian-Pilot, Honors uses gay slurs, pretends to masturbate and stages lewd shower scenes. He screened the movies as a morale-booster to an audience of about 6,000 sailors and Marines riding the Enterprise in 2006 and 2007…Read more:
NYTimes. com - Photo
ANTI-GAY VIDEOS - Navy Firing Over Videos Raises Questions of Timing
By Anne Flaherty and Pauline Jelinek,
Associated Press, January 4, 2010 – ABC News
Navy fires carrier's captain years after raunchy videos _ only after they're leaked to public…
The episode has raised serious questions about whether military leaders can behave badly so long as the public doesn't find out.
"He showed bad judgment and he embarrassed the Navy. Those are things that are going to be hard for the Navy to ignore or to forgive," said Stephen Saltzburg, the general counsel of the National Institute of Military Justice and a law professor at George Washington University.
Just two days after the videos were shown repeatedly on television, the Navy called a news conference Tuesday in Norfolk to announce that Honors was stepping down as ship commander and being reassigned to administrative duties ashore.
"After personally reviewing the videos created while serving as executive officer, I have lost confidence in Capt. Honors' ability to lead effectively," said Adm. John Harvey, head of U.S. Fleet Forces Command, in Norfolk. Harvey declined to answer questions from reporters.
The Pentagon said the disciplinary system isn't foolproof but generally works.
"There are always going to be people do things they shouldn't," said Marine Corps Col. Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman. "They will be held accountable."…
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Pope Blasts U.K. Anti-Discrimination Laws
CBS NEWS
Ratzinger & Vatican
“They did as much as they had at each point in time given the public outcry, and no more.”
Katrin Bennhold – 4/27/10
The New York Times – read more
Ratzinger, Hurley, Maida & Accomplices
Kids Are Being Hurt!!!
(Sequential Order of Reactions)” November 28, 2010
“If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way.”
Emile Zola
What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs.
Luke 12:3
Institutionalized STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE – Vatican’s UNSUBSTANTIATED ANTIGAY TEACHINGS - severe harm lasting throughout a child’s lifetime | Benedict XVI & Hierarchy CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE COVER-UPS
"Covering: The Hidden Assault on our Civil Rights"
A conversation with author Kenji Yoshino about Yoshino's book.
April 20, 2006 – Charlie Rose
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Groundbreaking Study Finds Family Acceptance of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Adolescents Protects Against Depression, Substance Abuse and Suicidal Behavior in Early Adulthood – by Caitlin Ryan, PhD, December 6, 2010 - FAMILY ACCEPTANCE PROJECT.
GAY YOUTH SUICIDE | BENEDICT XVI & BISHOPS Child Sexual Abuse Cover-ups – Negligence Protecting (1) Children & (2) LGBT Children | Family of Rutgers suicide victim lends name to bill – November 19, 2010 – CNN
Benedict XVI & Hierarchy CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE COVER-UPS
Despite outrage, little progress in church scandal
January 2, 2010, Duluth News Tribune
New Rules Affirm
Pope Benedict's Stance Against Gays
By Daniel Williams,
October 8, 2005 – The Washington Post
ROME, Oct. 8 -- In the first five months of Pope Benedict XVI's reign, stern opposition to homosexuality in and outside the Roman Catholic Church has quickly become a prime public message for the Vatican. Photo Spain Gay Angels
The new pontiff plans to issue guidelines that attempt to inhibit homosexuals from entering seminaries to train for the priesthood. Church inspectors have embarked on a tour of U.S. seminaries and, according to their working papers, are tasked to ask: "Is there evidence of homosexuality in the seminary? (This question must be answered.)"
Benedict also has energetically fought legal recognition of homosexual couples. Photo Britain Gay Angels
For the church and for Benedict, taking a public stance on homosexuality is not unusual. Church observers have noted that for the quarter-century before becoming pope, Benedict, then known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, served as the Vatican's chief enforcer of orthodoxy, drafting official positions regarding homosexuality.
"No doctrinal chief has ever written and spoken about homosexuality as extensively as Ratzinger has, because homosexuals have never had the freedom to organize and demand recognition they enjoy today," wrote author John L. Allen Jr. in a biography of Benedict, published before he became pope.
His papacy's early focus on homosexuality is a reaction to outside events, some analysts have said: the spread of so-called civil unions or marriage rights to same-sex couples, and the disclosure of sexual abuse by priests. Vatican officials have largely blamed the abuse on homosexuality…
Some bishops note that the church already has prohibitions on homosexuals from entering the priesthood and suggest that a restatement will only make the church look intolerant, Vatican officials say…
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Impending rules
on gay priests create Catholic divide
by Charles Honey – October 8, 2005
The Grand Rapids Press
When the Rev. Martin Kurylowicz came out to his Sparta parish eight years ago, he said he had struggled for years with his homosexuality.
The Catholic priest says the struggle would be made harder for many others if the Vatican issues new rules that reportedly would ban gays from becoming priests…
…"I sizzled when I read it," said Kurylowicz, 55. "It's very hurtful, is what it is. In this day and age, there's no reason for it. It sends a message that there's something wrong with gays."
Kurylowicz said he spoke out then to raise awareness of violence against gays and teach others homosexuality is not a choice but an inborn trait. Church leaders still don't understand that and contribute to gays' poor self-esteem, he said…
…"Kids as young as 4 or 5 know they're different," said Kurylowicz, a psychotherapist… "They grow up with this pervasive guilt, which sabotages their growth and motivation." The result is thousands of dollars in therapy to accept their natural orientation, he said, adding, "Does the Vatican want to take that on, like the tobacco industry had to take on for the damage it caused consumers? "…
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by Charles Honey
Religion Editor
The Grand Rapids Press – Archives
July 2010
President of the United States
United States Congress
United States Supreme Court
50 United States Governors
Dear -- --------,
My name is Fr. Marty Kurylowicz, a Roman Catholic priest from the Diocese of Grand Rapids, Michigan ordained June 16, 1979.
In March 1997, after attending a National Symposium of the New Ways Ministry that was held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I learned that children as young as 4 and 5 years of age know that they are different. This feeling "different" is only identified in their adult years as being gay. However, the harmful influence of antigay social and religious norms -- in particular, for Catholics, the Vatican’s unsubstantiated antigay teachings -- are severe and last throughout a child’s lifetime. The harmful effects are not isolated only to these children who grow up to be gay, but also affect their families, siblings, friends and anyone whom they might consider special in their lives. They are a prescribed societal sentence of implicit isolation, which place at risk of suicide so many innocent adolescents and young adults. They stifle an enormous amount of human potential in the world that otherwise could be put to use for finding cures for diseases, offering better ways of maintaining peace among people and improving the quality of life for everyone in the world.
Gay Marriage - “SEPARATION BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE” Does Not Give Churches Or Benedict XVI - The Freedom To Abuse Children or Adults. July 2010 - By Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
Kenji Yoshino discusses California same-sex marriage ruling
on
Charlie Rose, August 5, 2010
A discussion about Prop 8 which was overturned this week with Kenji Yoshino Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law at NYU School of law, Jesse Mckinley San Francisco bureau chief of "The New York Times" and Jeff Zeleny of "The New York Times"
View video interview:
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California Prop 8
The Best Argument Against Gay Marriage - And why it fails.
By Kenji Yoshino,
December 13, 2010 – Slate Magazine
In last week's arguments in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the California same-sex marriage case, it was clear that the main secular argument for limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples is the "common procreation" rationale. The idea is that marriage is properly limited to opposite-sex couples because they, and only they, can engage in procreation within their union. The lawyers defending California's gay marriage ban, Proposition 8, did not fully elaborate the argument—the New York Times editorial page called it a "tired, and thoroughly specious, assertion."
Now conservative blogs are celebrating—as "one of the best arguments" and "outstanding work"—the more fulsome defense of the common procreation argument made in a forthcoming article by Sherif Girgis, Robert P. George, and Ryan T. Anderson. Yet the article's more comprehensive elaboration of the argument reveals why the Proposition 8 defenders were right not to shine too bright a light on it. Closely examined, the common-procreation argument denigrates not only same-sex couples but several kinds of married opposite-sex couples…
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[Unsubstantiated] --- RELIGIOUS BELIEFS that gay and lesbian relationships are SINFUL or INFERIOR to heterosexual relationships HARM gays and lesbians.
California Prop 8. August 4, 2010
NO EVIDENCE SUPPORTS THESE [homosexual] STEREOTYPES
Judge Vaughn Walker Ruling
California Prop 8. August 4, 2010
Related Links:
Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee - unyielding force supporting - DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL Repeal Act of 2010 – ENDS discriminatory policy that “forces young men and women to lie,” – to lie – “about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.”
"Someday, maybe, there will exist a well-informed, well-considered, and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child's spirit."
Homosexuality in Sodom and Gomorrah
by The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson
December 8, 2010 – The Washington Post
SEXUAL ORIENTATION is less about sex and more about LOVE, being one with another human being - ATTACHMENT THEORY “Auschwitz – Benedict XVI - Christmas 2008 - Brokeback Mountain” (NP)
Nothing in life is more precious than the intimate relationships we have with love ones. Healthy love relationships delight us give us confidence to take on challenges and support us in difficult times. Photo
Difference Between Life & Death
Being “In” And Living “Out” Of The Closet
"Why, It Is A 'Gift' From God!!!" - Monastic Wisdom - Absolute Fright For Benedict XVI
March 1997 “Coming Out”
"$126,000.00 as reported by Bishop Walter Hurley, May 27, 2006 – The Grand Rapids Press"
By Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
I thought that love
was just a word
They sang about in songs I heard
It took your kisses to reveal
That I was wrong,
and
love is real
La Vie En Rose
Edith Piaf
Gay marriage -> Restoring
"Hope of Love"
To Children In Early Childhood -> Marriage Equality
March 23, 2010 – by Fr. Marty KurylowiczMarriage Equality, like Galileo, is the truth about the facts of growing up gay. Marriage Equality will not become a reality until people learn that its most vital purpose is that it restores the “hope of love” to children in early childhood – essential to their development and well-being for life. Without Marriage Equality we teach children how to hate love and how to be mean and indifferent to people as adults. With all due respect, without Marriage Equality we would teach them in much the same way as has been shown by Benedict XVI and the hierarchy, especially in their lack of care and protection of children for decades.
Galileo
Biblical quotes used to Condemn Galileo
Ecclesiastes 1:5 (New International Version)
5 The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.
Ecclesiastes 1:5 (New American Standard Bible)
5 Also, the sun rises and the sun sets; And hastening to its place it rises there again.
1 Chronicles 16:30 (New International Version)
30 Tremble before him, all the earth!
The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.
1 Chronicles 16:30 (New American Standard Bible)
30 Tremble before Him, all the earth; Indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved.
Psalm 93:1 (New International Version)
1 The LORD reigns, he is robed in majesty;
the LORD is robed in majesty
and is armed with strength. The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.
Psalm 93:1 (New American Standard Bible)
1 The LORD reigns, He is clothed with majesty; The LORD has clothed and girded Himself with strength; Indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved.
Psalm 96:10 (New International Version)10 Say among the nations, "The LORD reigns."
The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved;
he will judge the peoples with equity.
Psalm 96:10 (New American Standard Bible)
10 Say among the nations, "The LORD reigns; Indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved; He will judge the peoples with equity."
Psalm 104:5 (New International Version)
5 He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.
Psalm 104:5 (New American Standard Bible)
5 He established the earth upon its foundations, So that it will not totter forever and ever.
Read more:
AUTHORITARIAN ≠ AUTHORITATIVE – June 27, 2009 | Pope described as …"so averse to anything intellectual that everyone has to play dense and ignorant to gain his favor"-- The Trial of Galileo - by Douglas O. Linder (2002) | Benedict XVI UNSUBSTANTIATED Antigay Teachings
"If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!" Mt 6:23 | Benedict XVI – "Light of the World" | Hitler – "Mein Kampf" | NARCISSISTIC BULLY | WORLD REMAINS SILENT
Photo
Gay Marriage - WITCH HUNTS ->The Crucible (1996) -> McCarthyism 1940’s -1950’s, -> Benedict XVI 2005 Photo
30 years of Ratzinger/Benedict XVI’s - Directives To Hierarchy – To make - THREATS, SILENCE, HARM AND DISPOSAL of Catholic Personnel Supportive of LGBT Adults and Children Photo
The Truth Will Make Us Free:
A Queer Year in Review
by Rev. Patrick S. Cheng, Ph.D.,
December 28, 2010 – The Huffington Post
Anti-gay Christians love to quote John 8:32, which says that "the truth will make you free." According to them, if only lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people would simply accept the truths of the Christian faith, we would discover the error of our ways, repent of our sins and miraculously change our misdirected sexual orientations and/or gender identities.
As an openly-gay theologian, ordained Christian minister and seminary professor at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I agree that the truth will make us free. However, the anti-gay Christians have it backwards. As the groundbreaking events of 2010 have demonstrated, it is actually the truth of the fundamental goodness of LGBT people and our lives that will make us free. Ironically, this truth also will free anti-gay Christians of their own heterosexist prejudices and theological blind spots.
What were some of the truths about the goodness of LGBT people and our lives that were demonstrated in 2010? In August, the first fully-litigated U.S. federal court trial about same-sex marriage concluded that there was no rational basis for prohibiting LGBT people from entering into civil marriage. The trial court struck down California Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot initiative that stripped LGBT people in California of the right to marry. Judge Vaughn R. Walker's ruling demonstrated the truth that LGBT civil marriages are grounded in the same ethical values of love, mutual caring and commitment as non-LGBT civil marriages.
…
What if the warning of Romans 1:18-21 against the "ungodliness" and "wickedness" of those who "suppress the truth" -- and those whose "senseless minds" are "darkened" -- actually referred to those anti-gay Christians who fail to acknowledge the truth and empirical evidence about the fundamental goodness and loving nature of LGBT people and our relationships?
Read complete report:
Patrick S. Cheng is a theologian, seminary professor, and ordained minister. He is the Assistant Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He holds a Ph.D., M.Phil., and M.A. in systematic theology from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. He also holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.A. from Yale College.
Patrick is an ordained minister with the Metropolitan Community Churches, an LGBT-affirming Christian denomination that is open to all people. He is the coordinator of Queer Asian Spirit, an organization dedicated to the spiritual and religious lives of LGBT people of Asian descent around the world and their allies. Patrick lives with his husband of nearly two decades, Michael. His website is www.patrickcheng.net.
Read complete bio:
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man. - William Shakespeare
Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,' when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. - Luke 6:40-42 Photo
What you cannot do is accept injustice.
From Hitler – or anyone.
You must make the injustice visible – be prepared to die like a soldier to do so.
Mahatma Gandhi
Kids Are Being Hurt!!!
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