Posted on 01/23/2002 8:43:27 AM PST by tdadams
(CNSNews.com) - Need money for college tuition? A group of employees from telecommunications giant AT&T will help pay the bills of students who identify themselves as homosexuals.
Grades and extra-curricular activities don't count as much as sexual orientation for this type of financial help.
The scholarship comes from the AT&T Foundation's LEAGUE, which is an acronym for Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay & Transgendered United Employees.
LEAGUE is one of seven "Business Resource Groups" at AT&T, serving as a homosexual advocacy resource for the telecommunications giant, its customers, shareholders, colleagues, families and the global community.
For the past six years, LEAGUE at AT&T Foundation has awarded a handful of $1,500 academic scholarships to self-identified homosexual youth. LEAGUE Foundation spokesperson Charles Eader noted that applications have doubled every year since the fund was launched.
And for those homosexual students who have demonstrated leadership in promoting diversity and understanding in the community, the LEAGUE Foundation offers a $2,500 scholarship dedicated to the memory of Matthew Sheppard, whom it considers a model of courage.
Sheppard, who was homosexual, was tortured and beaten to death by two men on Dec. 28, 1998 in Wyoming. He was 21 at the time.
LEAGUE Foundation said it hopes Shepherd's memory will inspire lesbian, bisexual, gay & transgendered applicants and recipients of scholarships to persevere against anti-homosexual intimidation both in and out of the classroom.
According to Eader, applicants must be high school graduates; identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered; have achieved a cumulative grade point average of at least 3.0 on a 4.0 scale; be actively and substantially involved in community service; live in the United States; and have been accepted to attend an accredited college or university in the United States.
But conservatives are outraged by the notion that homosexuality is being rewarded by corporations such as AT&T.
"It's sad that teenagers are being deceived about sexuality and recruited into a lifestyle that is unhealthy and immoral," said the Family Research Council's Kristin Hansen. "It's definitely evidence that homosexual activists are organized at many facets of society -- in the corporate world, in schools and in the media."
Eader noted that LEAGUE Foundation is funded wholly by donations and does not receive any financial support from the AT&T corporation. AT&T allows LEAGUE Foundation to conduct its communication and planning activities -- including phone calls, faxes, and emails -- on corporate premises. However, Eader noted that LEAGUE and LEAGUE at AT&T Foundation "are 2 different and distinct, even though related, organizations."
Membership in the AT&T Business Resource Group LEAGUE is reserved solely for AT&T employees. According to Eader, any homosexual advocacy group or its members may become part of the 501(c)3 LEAGUE at AT&T Foundation charity . This charity also "welcomes financial support from the larger LGBT community and its allies," according to the group's Web site, which is hosted by AT&T.
"The level of organization is not a surprise," Hansen said of LEAGUE's wide-open membership requirements and financial practices.
Eader said homosexual scholarship recipients who have been outspoken in their communities are encouraged to continue such activism when they get to college, but he said they have no obligation to do so. Eader added that the names of scholarship recipients remain anonymous, no matter what path they choose to follow.
But scholarship recipients are not discouraged from performing acts of "community service." In fact, Eader said LEAGUE and its supporters would benefit from having a fresh voice on campus promoting the homosexual issues and diversity.
Hansen said LEAGUE's scholarship offering is just another example of incentives encouraging behavior. "And if there's money available," she added, "it legitimizes a behavior."
Wow I see your point!!! Now that you spelled it out so clearly. Please tell me more. How is it moronic?
That's what I thought it meant. Are you answering your own question (what would Jesus do) by suggesting that Jesus would have us "jail all openly homosexual people"?
Religion is a personal thing. I'm a Christian. Someone else can be an atheist. No problem.
Get your facts straight. Hitler was a sexual deviant and may have had homosexual tendencies and associated with homosexuals (S.A. chief Roehm), but he was by no means a flaming homosexual. I believe that Alan Bullock inferred that Hitler frequented prostitutes while in Vienna, and it is pretty well surmised that he had a consummated love affair with a niece who was later killed under the orders of Heinrich Himmler.
The line that the Christians always parrot is that homosexuality is a behavior, not a tendency (and hence can be changed). Thus, under your own set of definitions, in the absence of clear evidence of homosexual beharior, Hitler was a heterosexual.
Also, the Christian persecution complex here is evident with your revisionist history. Yes, Hitler killed Christians, but he did not specifically target them. He did specifically target Jews, and to a lesser extent homosexuals. And he wouldn't have been able to accomplish this without playing to the fears and superstitions of millions of God-fearing German Christians.
I agree with TJ. This is moronic. Then, you have the audacity to ask why it's moronic? You're only showing yourself to be a tremendous mental lightweight if you can't form a better debate than that.
What does murder (committing a violent act against another in violation of their rights) have to do with a homosexual relationship (a private affair between two consenting adults not harming anyone)?
I guess you jumped the gun. I already know the answer to that question, You don't represent God's views. That's why I wouldn't occur to me to ask.
The actual question of "What would Jesus do" is a good one for people to ask themselves before they do things. In your case, before you advocate violence and incarceration of sinners who are non violent and are not violating anyone's rights you might want to ask that question to yourself.
I love you so much I have to put you in jail. Amazing.
Fair enough. Then tell me how you would handle the case of two committed homosexuals in a long term relationship who wanted to get married. You wouldn't try to stop them? If yes, then you're not being honest in your statement above. If no, then where do we differ?
It isn't a behavior that should be encouraged. It doesn't have the dignity of a monogamous heterosexual marriage. It is base, and it degrades the human being.
I'm sorry, but I think you are so entrenched in a self-serving set of values that you can't even understand where someone who's not just like you is coming from.
"How necessary was the care of the Creator in making the moral principle so much a part of our constitution as that no errors of reasoning or of speculation might lead us astray from its observance in practice." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Law, 1814. ME 14:139
"I believe... that [justice] is instinct and innate, that the moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing; as a wise Creator must have seen to be necessary in an animal destined to live in society." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1816. ME 15:76
"The nation who [has] never admitted a chapter of morality into her political code,... [will] boldly [avow] that whatever power [she] can make hers is hers of right." --Thomas Jefferson to John Langdon, 1810. (*) ME 12:375
But remember morality is not part of our heritage...
But do you have the right to commit murder? No! How can you be arrested and put in prison for something you have a right to do???
Now, I don't think you're an idiot, but you're continuing to make stupid anologies and obfuscating because you know very well that you can't defend your idiotic statements!
I believe in equal protection of the law, like the Constitution says. If there are benefits derived from marriage granted to heterosexuals, those same benefits should not be denied to homosexuals. As it is, which group is receiving "special" rights?
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