Free Republic

YMCA creates a PR disaster almost overnight Published December 22, 2004 When you say "YMCA" and feel you should mention that it doesn't stand for "Young Men's Cross-dressers Association," the YMCA might have a public relations issue. Not that there's anything wrong with public relations issues, and I promise not to mention the Village People, but you may have heard about the recent confrontation at the New City YMCA on Chicago's North Side. Parents and children were gathering for a 7 a.m. Sunday morning swim meet. Meanwhile, the participants of an all-night transgender fashion show and ball were still partying...

In an incident the YMCA is calling "a very regrettable scheduling error," kids arriving for an early-morning swim meet Sunday walked into a gender-bending scene of the kind most of them wouldn't be allowed to watch on TV. Several of the kids' angry parents clashed with participants in a transgender fashion show, which had been under way at the New City YMCA since about midnight, resulting in a chaotic melee that was eventually broken up by private security guards and East Chicago District police. A YMCA member had reserved the entire facility, at 1515 N. Halsted, from 11 p.m. Saturday...

As the world swoons over France's soaring beauty of a bridge, S.F. gets slapped with an eyesore And did you hear the one about how those gul-dang baguette-sucking antiwar French just completed work on this astounding new bridge, a soaring, airy, delicate thing erected in southern France, and it's all over the international press and the French people are justifiably proud and even the venerable Le Monde has deemed the new Millau bridge a "work of art," and the amazing pictures are being featured everywhere, for good reason? And you look at the photos and see the breathtakingly elegant architecture...

Legal pot? Legal gay marriage? Universal health care? What's next, free porn and candy? Did you hear the screams? Did you feel the menacing chill? Did you see the black and ominous clouds, moving north? Did you sense, in other words, the very presence of Satan himself as he laughed maniacally and tossed around bucketfuls of ultrathin condoms and little travel-size packets of Astroglide like confetti while riding his Harley Softail up to Toronto or maybe Edmonton to join the ghastly and sodomitic celebrations? Because it's happened. Canada's high court just ruled that the government can, if it so desires,...

Did you hear the screams? Did you feel the menacing chill? Did you see the black and ominous clouds, moving north? Did you sense, in other words, the very presence of Satan himself as he laughed maniacally and tossed around bucketfuls of ultrathin condoms and little travel-size packets of Astroglide like confetti while riding his Harley Softail up to Toronto or maybe Edmonton to join the ghastly and sodomitic celebrations? Because it's happened. Canada's high court just ruled that the government can, if it so desires, redefine marriage to include gay couples, which it has declared it will do almost...

The odds are very good that you are on drugs. Right now. This minute. As I type this and as you read this and as false Texas dictators rise and sad empires crumble and as this mad bewildered world spins in its frantically careening orbit, there's a nearly 50/50 chance that some sort of devious synthetic chemical manufactured by some massive and largely heartless corporation is coursing through your bloodstream and humping your brain stem and molesting your karma and kicking the crap out of your libido and chattering the teeth of your very bones. Maybe it's regulating your blood...

Well folks, it appears that there is a VERY interesting nexus between the Mayor Hickenlooper/no Merry Christmas sign controversy, and the Parade of Lights/Gay Indians OK, church group not OK outrage. The Chinook Fund (www.chinookfund.org) is an organization which Denver Mayor Hickenlooper co-founded before becoming Mayor. According to their website, the Chinook Fund issued a $7,000.00 grant to the Two Spirit Society of Denver (gay Indian group) in 2004. When asked by 630 KHOW radio if he agreed with the Downtown Denver Partnership's decision to allow the Two Spirit group to have a float in the Parade of Lights, while...

This is what you won't see in the paper. This is what you won't see on CNN or on MSNBC or CBS News or on any major media Web site anywhere and especially no goddamn way ever in hell will you see it within a thousand miles of Fox News. You aren't supposed to see. You aren't supposed to know. You are to remain ignorant and shielded, and, if you're like most Americans, you have been very carefully conditioned to think Bush's nasty Iraq war is merely this ugly little firecracker-like thing happening way, way over there, carefully orchestrated and...

Here's my suggestion: let them have it. Just do it. Let the sexually bitter and morally frantic conservative groups now dictating governmental policy and FCC agendas and paranoid media attitudes have their time, their brief cultural burp, their little speed bump on the great and beckoning highway that will still lead us all, inexorably, irreversibly, though often agonizingly, toward grinning open-thighed progress. Because here's the fabulous thing: no matter what these faux-Christian groups do, no matter how hard they oppress and protest and clamp down, this is a road that leads, despite all dour headlines and sour prognostications otherwise, toward...

So, who are they? Who are the ones who have no problem watching a Monday Night Football game in which huge sweaty steroid pakced men in cute homoerotic tights smash each other as hard as possible hoping they break bodies, induce aneurysms and draw blood during out most violent, drug addled and corrupted national televised sporting spectatcle, but actually picked up the phone to complain to ABC about the 'racy' ad promoting 'Desperate Housewives' that led into the game? They are the same people that complained about 1.5 seconds of Janet Jackson's nipple, the same ones who complain about low...

YMCA employee accused of embezzling Susan J. Miller charged with stealing $20,000 By Juliette Rule rep9@wyomingnews.com Published in the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle CHEYENNE - Padding a bank account was as simple as getting on the Internet or swiping a debit card, investigators say. Those were the methods police say Susan J. Miller used to funnel $20,000 from YMCA coffers into her personal account at Cheyenne First Bank between June 2003 and March of this year. She was charged last week by Laramie County District Attorney Jon Forwood with seven counts of felony embezzlement, court records show. The Cheyenne woman was the...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) - A Theodore Roosevelt quote displayed on the wall of a courthouse will be covered up after critics complained the comment about Christianity violated the separation of church and state. Roosevelt's remark that "the true Christian is the true citizen" was part of a longer address the president gave at a YMCA convention more than a century ago. The words are engraved in gold letters on a mahogany wall in a Riverside County courtroom. The quote is one of several by Roosevelt that have graced the courthouse for 70 years. The Anti-Defamation League sent a letter to...

ATLANTIC CITY - Sometimes kicking a guy when he's down isn't a good thing. Especially when he's the state's newly gay governor. The announcer for minor league baseball's Atlantic City Surf was fired and the scoreboard operator resigned after dedicating the song "YMCA" to Gov. Jim McGreevey. The 1970s "Village People" hit song is widely considered a gay anthem. Team co-owner Frank Boulton called it "disrespectful."

MAN KICKED OUT OF THE YMCA FOR EVANGELIZING Living Waters via www.RepentAmerica.com July 9, 2004 We, Living Waters, wanted to bring to your attention a recent incident that took place with one of our ministry partners, Larry Lee, who lives in Marietta, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. As you read his account, we are confident that you will see the unacceptable and unfair manner in which he has been treated by the YMCA. More importantly we are confident that you will agree with us in concluding that Larry's civil and religious rights have been violated. This concerns us because it...

Kicked out of the YMCA...for witnessing??! Larry and his wife Ashley are featured as recommended speakers o­n our Events page. We wanted to bring to your attention a recent incident that took place with o­ne of our ministry partners, Larry Lee, who lives in Marietta, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. As you read his account, we are confident that you will see the unacceptable and unfair manner in which he has been treated by the YMCA. More importantly we are confident that you will agree with us in concluding that Larry's civil and religious rights have been violated. This concerns...

The U.S. Department of Justice has opened an investigation into the city of Terrell, Texas, after the city's ban on religious activities on city-owned property prompted a local church to file a lawsuit, according to the Liberty Legal Institute. As WorldNetDaily reported, the legal group helped Purpose Life Church sue the city in March after officials ousted the congregation from the Kaufman County YMCA. The church had been leasing space at the Y for church services. Though the YMCA leases the facility from the city, municipal regulations still apply in the building. The church held services at the Y for...

<p>STAUNTON -- Authorities arrested seven men Wednesday night after accusing them of performing sex acts on one another inside the men's locker room at the YMCA on North Coalter Street, the Staunton Police Department said.</p> <p>One of the men is a former aerobics instructor who taught evening classes for at least five years at the Staunton-Augusta YMCA, according to the facility's executive director.</p>

Duke threatens YMCASays it will end relationship if same-sex couples not given family rates Posted: April 6, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com Duke University has threatened to end its relationship with the local YMCA if the organization doesn't allow school's employees who are part of same-sex couples to pay the family membership rate. A spokeswoman for the YMCA of the Triangle said the organization received a letter with the ultimatum from the university on Friday, reported the Durham Herald-Sun. Duke, the largest employer in Durham, N.C., said in the letter dated last Tuesday that the school's agreement with the YMCA gives...

Duke Pushes YMCA To Extend Family Rate To Same-Sex Couples Duke Is Durham's Largest Employer POSTED: 10:31 am EST April 2, 2004 UPDATED: 11:12 am EST April 2, 2004 DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke University is joining an effort to persuade the YMCA to give family membership rates to same-sex couples and has threatened to end its relationship with the agency if it doesn't change its policy. Duke officials said in a letter dated Tuesday that if the agency does not change its policy they will end their relationship with the YMCA of the Triangle. Duke is Durham's largest employer. Duke...