Posted on 11/21/2003 9:50:23 AM PST by scripter
"... “Bob has been a very strong asset for this caucus and for glbt issues in NEA,” reported Connections, the newsletter of the NEA Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual, Transgender Caucus, in its September 2002 edition.
On October 7, 2000, Chase gave a plenary address to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network’s annual conference in Arlington, Illinois, in which he lambasted conservatives. “The NEA does not have what the right wing has branded a ‘radical pro-homosexual agenda’, we have a radical pro-civil rights agenda, a radical human rights agenda – the agenda of promoting equal respect, dignity and educational opportunities for all,” he said. GLSEN advocates pro-homosexual messages in public schools, beginning in kindergarten.
“Under Bob Chase’s leadership, the NEA effectively became a driving engine for promoting homosexuality to schoolchildren. When we are told that someone’s ‘sexual orientation’ is of no consequence, we need to remind them of this,” said Robert Knight, director of CWA’s Culture & Family Institute. “There are jobs in which someone’s sexual propensities probably don’t impact the work environment much, unless they engage in activism or inappropriate behavior. But Bob Chase’s tenure at NEA is living proof that homosexual activists are taking direct aim at our children, and that so-called ‘sexual orientation’ is crucial when it comes to school leadership.”
In July 2001, Chase denounced as “demagoguery” a pro-family rally and press conference in Los Angeles outside the NEA convention. Hundreds of parents and teachers had gathered to urge the NEA delegates not to pass a resolution that would have urged teachers to integrate pro-homosexual materials into every subject, beginning with kindergarten and extending through senior year in high school. In the face of the protest and media coverage, delegates decided to table the measure and form a task force to study it.
In addition to promoting homosexuality among schoolchildren, the NEA discriminates against the ex-gay movement. When Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX) applied for booth space at the 2002 NEA national convention in Washington, D.C., its $550 application check had already been cashed when they were suddenly told the event was “sold out.” PFOX has filed a discrimination complaint with the District of Columbia Office of Human Rights. This year, the NEA told PFOX directly that the organization was not welcome at the national convention, which was held the first week in July in New Orleans, Regina Griggs, PFOX’s executive director, told Culture & Family Report...
According to a 1997 Eagle Forum report, “Gay and lesbian activists may have become the most influential single group within the NEA convention.” During the ’97 convention, the activists changed their demand from “tolerance” to “acceptance.”
According to one handout distributed during the convention, “Diversity is the word and acceptance is the order.”
According to the NEA-GLBTC website, pro-homosexuality NEA resolutions include:
Student Sexual Orientation - calls for school districts to provide counseling for students struggling with their sexual/gender orientation.
Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Curriculum – calls for the development of a curriculum that recognizes the contributions of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual persons with acknowledgement of their sexual orientation.
Salaries and Benefits – calls for comprehensive health, dental and vision insurance for school employees’ spouses, domestic partners and dependents.
Family Life Education – calls for sex education programs that include discussions regarding the diversity of sexual orientation.
“Under Chase’s leadership, the NEA has also promoted homosexuality in the Democratic Party,” Knight said. “Observers at the last two party conventions reported that NEA-affiliated delegates, many of them wearing homosexual pins and hats, made up a quarter of the delegates, and threw their weight around effectively.
“The nation’s public school system is in the grip of a powerful, politically active homosexual lobby..."
Gay Editor Questions "Sighting" About Molestation, Massachusetts News, February 25, 2004
"... In addition to the children’s pre-institute conference, the event will include another institute titled, “Exploring Erotic Touch,” where “We will use touch, massage, imagination and self-pleasuring to awaken the connection between erotic energy and spirituality and between the feminine and masculine in ourselves.”
The website description further states, “Men are asked not [to] ejaculate for 48 hours before the workshop. All participants are asked to refrain from the use of alcohol or recreational drugs 72 hours before and during the workshop.”
The description indicates that bodily fluids are likely to flow at the event, leading Peter LaBarbera, senior policy analyst for the Culture & Family Institute, to observe: “The involvement of GLSEN and Advocates for Youth in such a perverted event should by itself disqualify them from any future involvement with schools. No taxpayer dollars should go to these organizations, which are obviously more interested in promoting radical sexual agendas than the health and safety of children...”
HIV Diagnoses Climbing Among Gay and Bisexual Men
"New HIV diagnoses among gay and bisexual men in some states increased for the third consecutive year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced today. CDC also released preliminary 2002 data showing a slight increase in AIDS incidence, although AIDS deaths continue to decline. Harold Jaffe, M.D., Director of CDC’s National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention (NCHSTP), presented the data at the 2003 National HIV Prevention Conference in Atlanta.
Data from 25 states (see list) with long standing HIV reporting show the number of new HIV diagnoses among gay and bisexual men increased by 7.1 percent, from 2001 to 2002, supporting recent findings that this population remains at high, and perhaps increasing, risk for HIV infection. HIV diagnoses for gay and bisexual men have increased by 17.7 percent since the lowest point in 1999. The data also show that HIV diagnoses in other vulnerable groups have remained stable since 2001. Dr. Jaffe cautioned that the new data reflect the number of people newly diagnosed, regardless of when they were infected, and increases may reflect increases in HIV testing as well as potential increases in new infections.
"These findings add to the growing concern that we are facing a potential resurgence of HIV among gay and bisexual men," Dr. Jaffe said..."
Educators' Honoree Challenged on Alleged Sex Abuse Cover-Up
"(AgapePress) - The founder of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), who was recently honored by the largest teachers union in America, is defending himself against allegations of engaging in unethical and illegal behavior. But a researcher of ex-homosexual issues says Kevin Jenning's response to charges he covered up an incident of child sex abuse raises more questions than answers.
California teacher Diane Lenning recently criticized the National Education Association (NEA) for giving a human rights award to GLSEN founder Kevin Jennings this summer. Lenning says Jennings broke Massachusetts law in 1988 by not telling authorities about a high school sophomore's homosexual affair with an older adult male.
But in a letter to the Washington Times, Jennings accused Mrs. Lenning of both "misstating Massachusetts state law" and "grossly mischaracterizing a situation with a student who needed a teacher to talk to."
Dr. Warren Throckmorton is a conservative columnist and professor of college counseling at Grove City College. Like Lenning, Throckmorton questions whether Jennings -- given his apparent failure to report child sex abuse -- should have received the award from the NEA. He explains that Jennings was required by Massachusetts state law to report the illicit affair.
Dr. Warren Throckmorton "The fact that he did not do that was confirmed by the Washington Times -- and in his letter, Mr. Jennings never disputes the fact that he did not make the report," Throckmorton says. "So I don't know how his involvement has been mischaracterized."
In his book One Teacher in 10: Gay and Lesbian Educators Tell Their Stories, Jennings says he counseled the teen regarding his relationship. But Throckmorton says no teacher should "wink at" or overlook a sexual offense that has been committed.
"Whether the student was complicit in any level or not really is not the issue for a minor," the college professor explains. "If I'm a parent and I send my kids to school and they're being taken advantage of in some way and a teacher finds out about it, I certainly hope that the teacher would let the authorities and let me know about it."
Although Jennings does not deny failing to report child sex abuse in 1988, he acknowledges that if any teacher realizes a student is being physically, emotionally, or sexually abused, they are mandated by law to report that abuse to authorities.
As for the allegations leveled against him by Lenning, Jennings says they are politically motivated and an attempt to distract him from doing his work and undermine his personal reputation.
"As a teacher, it's incredibly painful to have someone call into question my commitment to ensuring the kids in my classroom were anything but safe every day. Mrs. Lenning did just that with her remarks about me," Jennings says, "and the remarks are both misleading and they're unfair. In fact, our attorney has concluded that some of Mrs. Lenning's remarks are potentially libelous."
GLSEN has written a letter to Lenning, demanding she retract her accusations or face a lawsuit.
'Fistgate' Connection
Throckmorton also believes Jennings should be held accountable for his involvement as keynote speaker at the highly publicized "Fistgate" workshop at Tufts University, in which young students were given graphic "how to" lessons on performing homosexual acts. But Jennings says people often wrongly claim the pornographic workshop for teens was conducted by GLSEN.
"I made it clear then, and I'll make it clear again now: we found the content presented in that workshop age-inappropriate and wrong," Jennings explains. "We worked to make sure that there would be no reoccurrence of such a workshop ever again at a GLSEN workshop."
According to Jennings, that workshop occurred more than four years ago -- and there has never been a similar incident since then."
"The BGLTSA, as a wing of the radical homosexual movement, is looking to broaden the definition of normality to include deviant behavior. They're not looking for passive tolerance. They're looking for active acceptance. Now, ignoring homosexuality is no longer allowable; we must instead champion it, equating it with heterosexuality. In fact, homosexuality must be prized over heterosexuality; an open homosexual may proclaim to his heart's content that "dreams can come true -- you can find a same-sex partner," but an open heterosexual may not state that marriage constitutes "having it all."
Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan noted such a broad societal trend toward normalizing the deviant as early as 1993, when he coined the term "defining deviancy down." He posited that "the amount of deviant behavior in American society has increased beyond the levels the community can 'afford to recognize' and that, accordingly, we have been re-defining deviancy so as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatized, and also quietly raising the 'normal' level in categories where behavior is now abnormal by any earlier standard."
Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer pointed out that alongside the movement to "define deviancy down," there was a concurrent movement to "define deviancy up": "As part of the vast social project of moral leveling, it is not enough for the deviant to be normalized," Krauthammer wrote. "The normal must be found to be deviant." One of the agendas of the "defining deviancy up" movement, Krauthammer noted, was promoting "an underlying ideology about the inherent aberrancy of all heterosexual relationships."
The Moynihan-Krauthammer prediction has come to pass. Straight men and women may no longer consider themselves normal, unless they also consider homosexuality normal. The rage against "heteronormalism" is rage against traditional societal standards as a whole. Exclusive morality has always offended the immoral. The only difference is that now offensiveness receives a stiffer societal sentence than blatant immorality. This is what political correctness -- the "live and let live" societal model -- has wrought.
The rise of the homosexual movement is a textbook example of societal amorality devolving into societal immorality. The rationale behind societal amorality is the myopic question: "How does my immoral behavior hurt you?" The answer is: It may not, in the short term. But when society sanctions your immoral behavior, that does hurt me. If millions of people accept the deviant as normal, that reshapes society in vastly destructive ways. Your moral self-destruction may have no consequences for me, but destruction of societal standards always has consequences.
When the stigma left single motherhood, society felt the sting in rising rates of single motherhood and juvenile crime. When the stigma left sexual licentiousness, society felt the sting in rising rates of teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, emotional emptiness and nihilism. Your immoral personal behavior may not affect me, but exempting your immoral behavior from societal scrutiny certainly does. A society without standards is an unhappy, unhealthy society -- a society with no future. And all of us have to live in that society.
The BGLTSA isn't asking for tolerance on a person-to-person level. Instead, they're asking us to continue lowering societal standards. If we must choose between alienating the immoral and ravaging societal standards for the personal comfort of the immoral, then choosing the former is the only rational decision. "
See also:
Culture of Vice - ( excerpt posted here )
An excerpt from "Homosexual Groups Unite to Push Agenda"
"For those who ridicule the whole notion of a homosexual "agenda," a recent press release from a new coalition of lesbian, "gay," bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) groups was unwelcome news.
In a joint statement released January 13, an alliance of 22 organizations spoke of a "shared vision," which includes the legalization of same-sex marriage, the continuation of promotional efforts throughout the nation's public school systems, the inclusion of "sexual orientation" in federal hate crimes and nondiscrimination laws, and an end to the ban on homosexuals in the military.
The coalition consists of LGBT groups such as the Human Rights Campaign; Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation; Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network; the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and the American Civil Liberties Union Lesbian & Gay Rights Project.
"The speed with which our movement is advancing on all fronts is absolutely historic -- and it hasn't happened by chance or by accident," said the press release. It cited the LGBT movement's "instruments" of change: "lobbying, electoral politics, impact litigation, grassroots organizing, public education, media advocacy and more ...."
The statement also accused pro-family groups of continuing to "confuse, distort and subvert the public debate," even while homosexuality continues to become more acceptable in the hearts and minds of the American public..."
See also:
Recommended Reading for Teenagers? A Closer Look at P-FLAG
The World According to PFLAG: Why PFLAG and Children Don't Mix
GLSEN and PFLAG - Why We Must Stop These Groups from Influencing Youth
Mission America: Fighting the Gay Agenda in Schools Articles
"A homosexual person has all the dignity that corresponds to him/her as the human person that he/she is," the note states. "The Catholic Church does not insult, attack or incite the discrimination of any person; on the contrary, it defends, respects and promotes the dignity of each and all, also homosexuals."The bishop clarified that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. However, a distinction must be made between the homosexual inclination and homosexual acts. The inclination is disordered in itself, but it does not, on its own, constitute a fault if there is no intention to fuel that inclination through homosexual acts."
The Church "has always stated that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered," Bishop Aguilar observed. "They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not stem from a true emotional and sexual complementarity. They cannot be approved in any case."
Additional reading for those interested -some links to documents and some excerpts:
104. A particular problem that can appear during the process of sexual maturation is homosexuality, which is also spreading more and more in urbanized societies. This phenomenon must be presented with balanced judgement, in the light of the documents of the Church. Young people need to be helped to distinguish between the concepts of what is normal and abnormal, between subjective guilt and objective disorder, avoiding what would arouse hostility. On the other hand, the structural and complementary orientation of sexuality must be well clarified in relation to marriage, procreation and Christian chastity. "Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained". A distinction must be made between a tendency that can be innate and acts of homosexuality that "are intrinsically disordered" and contrary to Natural Law.Especially when the practice of homosexual acts has not become a habit, many cases can benefit from appropriate therapy. In any case, persons in this situation must be accepted with respect, dignity and delicacy, and all forms of unjust discrimination must be avoided. If parents notice the appearance of this tendency or of related behaviour in their children, during childhood or adolescence, they should seek help from expert qualified persons in order to obtain all possible assistance.
For most homosexual persons, this condition constitutes a trial. "They must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfil God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition". "Homosexual persons are called to chastity".
VIII At the present time there are those who, basing themselves on observations in the psychological order, have begun to judge indulgently, and even to excuse completely, homosexual relations between certain people. This they do in opposition to the constant teaching of the Magisterium and to the moral sense of the Christian people.A distinction is drawn, and it seems with some reason, between homosexuals whose tendency comes from a false education, from a lack of normal sexual development, from habit, from bad example, or from other similar causes, and is transitory or at least not incurable; and homosexuals who are definitively such because of some kind of innate instinct or a pathological constitution judged to be incurable.
In regard to this second category of subjects, some people conclude that their tendency is so natural that it justifies in their case homosexual relations within a sincere communion of life and love analogous to marriage, in so far as such homosexuals feel incapable of enduring a solitary life.
In the pastoral field, these homosexuals must certainly be treated with understanding and sustained in the hope of overcoming their personal difficulties and their inability to fit into society. Their culpability will be judged with prudence. But no pastoral method can be employed which would give moral justification to these acts on the grounds that they would be consonant with the condition of such people. For according to the objective moral order, homosexual relations are acts which lack an essential and indispensable finality. In Sacred Scripture they are condemned as a serious depravity and even presented as the sad consequence of rejecting God. This judgment of Scripture does not of course permit us to conclude that all those who suffer from this anomaly are personally responsible for it, but it does attest to the fact that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered and can in no case be approved of.
10. It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church's pastors wherever it occurs. It reveals a kind of disregard for others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy society. The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, in action and in law.But the proper reaction to crimes committed against homosexual persons should not be to claim that the homosexual condition is not disordered. When such a claim is made and when homosexual activity is consequently condoned, or when civil legislation is introduced to protect behavior to which no one has any conceivable right, neither the Church nor society at large should be surprised when other distorted notions and practices gain ground, and irrational and violent reactions increase.
11. It has been argued that the homosexual orientation in certain cases is not the result of deliberate choice; and so the homosexual person would then have no choice but to behave in a homosexual fashion. Lacking freedom, such a person, even if engaged in homosexual activity, would not be culpable.
Here, the Church's wise moral tradition is necessary since it warns against generalizations in judging individual cases. In fact, circumstances may exist, or may have existed in the past, which would reduce or remove the culpability of the individual in a given instance; or other circumstances may increase it. What is at all costs to be avoided is the unfounded and demeaning assumption that the sexual behaviour of homosexual persons is always and totally compulsive and therefore inculpable. What is essential is that the fundamental liberty which characterizes the human person and gives him his dignity be recognized as belonging to the homosexual person as well. As in every conversion from evil, the abandonment of homosexual activity will require a profound collaboration of the individual with God's liberating grace.
II. Applications10. "Sexual orientation" does not constitute a quality comparable to race, ethnic background, etc. in respect to non-discrimination. Unlike these, homosexual orientation is an objective disorder (cf. "Letter," No. 3) and evokes moral concern.
11. There are areas in which it is not unjust discrimination to take sexual orientation into account, for example, in the placement of children for adoption or foster care, in employment of teachers or athletic coaches, and in military recruitment.
13. Including "homosexual orientation" among the considerations on the basis of which it is illegal to discriminate can easily lead to regarding homosexuality as a positive source of human rights, for example, in respect to so-called affirmative action or preferential treatment in hiring practices. This is all the more deleterious since there is no right to homosexuality (cf. No. 10) which therefore should not form the basis for judicial claims. The passage from the recognition of homosexuality as a factor on which basis it is illegal to discriminate can easily lead, if not automatically, to the legislative protection and promotion of homosexuality. A person's homosexuality would be invoked in opposition to alleged discrimination, and thus the exercise of rights would be defended precisely via the affirmation of the homosexual condition instead of in terms of a violation of basic human rights.
4. There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family. Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law. Homosexual acts “close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved”.7. Homosexual unions are totally lacking in the biological and anthropological elements of marriage and family which would be the basis, on the level of reason, for granting them legal recognition. Such unions are not able to contribute in a proper way to the procreation and survival of the human race. The possibility of using recently discovered methods of artificial reproduction, beyond involv- ing a grave lack of respect for human dignity, does nothing to alter this inadequacy.
Homosexual unions are also totally lacking in the conjugal dimension, which represents the human and ordered form of sexuality. Sexual relations are human when and insofar as they express and promote the mutual assistance of the sexes in marriage and are open to the transmission of new life.
As experience has shown, the absence of sexual complementarity in these unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children who would be placed in the care of such persons. They would be deprived of the experience of either fatherhood or motherhood. Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development. This is gravely immoral and in open contradiction to the principle, recognized also in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, that the best interests of the child, as the weaker and more vulnerable party, are to be the paramount consideration in every case.
Bump & Ping
Rare AIDS Strain Is Very Aggressive, Study Says
"A genetic study of a rare strain of AIDS that led New York City health officials to issue a public warning last month will be published today, allowing experts from around the world to more accurately evaluate the scientific basis of the alert.
The study, appearing in The Lancet, a medical journal, shows the virus to be resistant to nearly all licensed drugs and particularly aggressive. Most of the study's details were disclosed earlier during an AIDS conference in Boston. The report is based on the work of a team of researchers from the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in Manhattan led by Dr. David D. Ho and Dr. Martin Markowitz.
There has been debate about the importance of the discovery of the rare strain since the city went public with the case on Feb. 11, with some scientists saying that a single case did not warrant much concern. Some gay activist groups also reacted skeptically, saying public health officials exploited the case to scare gay men into practicing safe sex.
The City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has repeatedly defended its decision, but has remained silent about how its investigation is proceeding. For a month, investigators have been working to track down the sexual partners of the man infected with the strain, a difficult job because he does not know the names of many of his partners.
Health workers took more than a dozen blood samples from people believed to have had sex with the man, according to one official involved in the case. They are testing those samples to determine if the virus was transmitted to others, but testing is not complete, the official said.
The case involves a gay man in his late 40's who tested positive for H.I.V. in December. The virus was resistant to nearly every drug treatment and progressed rapidly from infection to fully developed AIDS.
The man last tested negative for H.I.V. in May 2003 and was said to have engaged in unprotected sex with multiple partners in the fall of 2004 while he was using crystal methamphetamine. The man had developed AIDS by January, meaning that he had been infected for as long as 20 months or, according to the scientists familiar with how the virus progresses, as little as 4 months.
On average, it takes 10 years to develop AIDS after infection, but some people develop AIDS after about 20 years, and others within a year or so.
Drug resistance and rapid progression of the virus have both been seen at different times, but the intersection of the two is what the scientists found alarming. "The public health ramifications of such a case are great," the scientists wrote in the journal. Specifically, the genetic study of the virus shows it to be particularly effective at penetrating the human immune cells by being able to latch onto its target at two separate places, called receptors, on the cell's surface. Typically, the virus latches onto only one receptor.
In an accompanying editorial, The Lancet commented, "This case serves as a reminder that H.I.V. remains a frighteningly versatile foe, one that can mutate to escape immune attack or to acquire drug resistance with surprising speed."
ping
"It's so embarrassing having you talk all the time on TV about being gay and you picking me up at school in painter's pants."
Rosie's response:
"I told him, 'Yeah, yeah, keep it for your book.'"
Spoken like a loving, supportive mother/NOT.
Just reading the exchange makes me feel dysfunctional.
I was going to write something similar. Indeed, the love her adopted son must feel is so underwhelming.
bump
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