Forget business as usual. Instead, we should stop doing business with a country that is proud of its persecution against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
Our goal is to turn Jamaica into a pariah state, as long as GLBT people live in a state of terror. This means no more subsidizing the anti-gay slaughter by drinking Myers Rum and Red Stripe Beer. It requires skipping that Carnival Cruise to Jamaica — so your money won’t support murder.
If Jamaica were anymore homophobic, it would change the name of its signature music, reggae, to “ray-straight.” The national song would be, “Wasting the Gays Again in Murderitaville.” (Read More)
Stephen Langa, a leader of Uganda’s antigay vigilante movement, utilized the philosophy of ex-gay guru and longtime PFOX president Richard Cohen during the March 5-7 conference which launched Langa’s campaign of renewed violence.
Richard Cohen falsely teaches that bad parents and abuse are responsible for homosexual attraction. He has been banned for life from the American Counseling Association for inappropriate and unprofessional conduct with patients. His “treatment” methods include full-body man-to-man cuddles and symbolic beating of one’s parents.
Cohen has thus far offered no comment regarding the use of his false teachings to promote violence against gay Ugandans.
Antigay and ex-gay activists continue to incite an organized campaign of violence against gay Ugandans, possibly with misappropriated U.S. government funding. Orlando-based Exodus International — whose board member Don Schmierer keynoted the campaign’s founding conference March 5-7 — refuses to publicly condemn either the conference or its aftermath.
During the past few days in Kampala, innocent gay Ugandans have been outed by vigilantes and falsely associated with molestation by hired ex-gay activists. When Sexual Minorities Uganda held a press conference to set the record straight, it was poorly attended by the nation’s antigay official media — and vigilantes responded with further personal threats and unsubstantiated accusations which have received ample media attention.
Box Turtle Bulletin spotlights one activist in particular, George Oundo, who has been hired by pro-violence activists to proclaim himself a child molester — and to denounce his gay and transgender former friends and colleagues in lieu of punishment for his own alleged crimes.
Meanwhile, Exodus’ official position is that it supports board member Don Schmierer’s participation in the conference, and neither officially supports — nor officially opposes — imprisonment and forced ex-gay therapy.
Exodus claims to U.S. audiences that it proclaims the “truth” in “love” — but there is neither truth nor love in Exodus’ role in the Uganda vigilante campaign. There is only flight from responsibility — and apathy toward the renewal of Ugandan violence for which Exodus is largely responsible.
Exodus’ position smacks of old-fashioned imperialism:
First, Exodus refused in February and early March to tell Schmierer to abort his trip to the conference and refused to disavow the conference or its speakers
Then, Schmierer exported his long-discredited falsehoods (blaming parents and abuse instead of teaching the actual science sexual orientation) to uninformed Ugandan parents, some of whom believe as a result that homosexuality is spread via sexual molestation
Then, Exodus allowed conference leaders to import the organization’s reputation, in order to grant legitimacy to their campaign of imported Euro-American Holocaust revisionism and incitement to violence (video via Ex-Gay Watch)
Finally, Exodus continues to dismiss the human rights of native Ugandans who are being newly oppressed, assaulted, jailed, or killed to satisfy those in the United States who funded a five-year plan by Stephen Langa, Don Schmierer and Scott Lively to — in Langa’s words — “wipe out” homosexuality in Uganda by any means necessary.
Take action! Write to your local gay and mainstream media, and ask them to interview your local Exodus member ministries regarding their national office’s role in Ugandan human rights violations.
One in six British psychiatrists has tried to “cure” a gay patient, and some continue to mistreat their patients — even though ex-gay theories about sexual orientation have been disproven by mainstream research, and even though former ex-gays say that ex-gay “therapy” only worsens sexual temptation, depression, and unhealthy behavior.
A study of more than 1,400 psychiatrists and therapists in BMC Psychiatry found that 222 (17 per cent) said they had treated at least one client to alter their homosexual feelings at some point. The researchers expected the cases to be concentrated in the past, but the 400 to 500 cases recorded were distributed evenly across the decades. ‘It is happening up to the present moment,’ [Professor Michael King, of the University College Medical School] said. It might only be the ‘tip of the iceberg’.
NEW YORK — Truth Wins Out thanked Replacements, Ltd. today for awarding $5,000 to the organization. The funds will help TWO refute anti-gay misinformation campaigns and challenge programs that claim to “pray away the gay.”
“Truth Wins Out is extremely grateful for the generous support it has received from Replacements and its founder Bob Page,” said TWO Executive Director Wayne Besen. “This allows us to increase our capacity to educate Americans and set the record straight when anti-gay organizations distort research. It also assists us in helping people understand the danger of so-called ex-gay therapy programs that endanger the mental health of GLBT youth.”
Founded by Bob Page in 1981, Replacements, Ltd. (located in Greensboro, NC) has the world’s largest selection of old and new dinnerware, including china, stoneware, crystal, glassware, silver, stainless, and collectibles. Its 415,000 square foot facilities (the size of seven football fields!) house an inventory of 13 million pieces in more than 300,000 patterns, some over 100 years old.
“We proudly support Truth Wins Out; I hope others will contribute to this important organization,” said Bob Page, founder of Replacements, Ltd. “So many GLBT people‚Äîand their families‚Äîhave been damaged by groups distorting the truth about sexual orientation or gender identity. Our communities and our workplaces are impacted too, and that has a very real cost. I want us to be a part of the solution to the problem.”‚Ä® ‚Ä®Page is known as a generous philanthropist who has helped organizations that promote GLBT equality — particularly in North Carolina.
Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that defends gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people against anti-gay misinformation campaigns. TWO also counters the “ex-gay” industry and educates America about the lives of GLBT people.
The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) is known for distorting research about gay and lesbian people. Critics have long claimed that NARTH’s goal is to twist science to make it fit anti-gay religious beliefs. Today, this was confirmed by an e-mail obtained by Truth Wins Out that was sent to a potential client who asked NARTH about its methods. The “therapy” group responded with this reply:
“As an organization we are trying to maintain the ability for counselors to continue to be able to help those struggling with same sex attraction, the American Psychological Association will not listen to religious reasons so we have taken a stance to have scientific proof as to how and why we should be able to help those live a heterosexual lifestyle.”
This is precisely why NARTH cannot be trusted. NARTHcherry-picks research and dishonestly call it “proof” that their religion is backed by research. They disregard anything that does not back their agenda.
With the continued support of Exodus International for his recent pro-vigilantism conference, Uganda ex-gay activist Stephen Langa on March 15 followed through on threats to renew a campaign of antigay vigilantism across the African nation, according to Box Turtle Bulletin.
Then, on March 19, U.S. writer Richard Rosendall noted that Uganda’s antigay vigilante campaigns may be subsidized by U.S. taxpayers through evangelical groups’ misuse of former President Bush’s abstinence-only AIDS funding in Africa.
And on March 22, Langa put self-proclaimed child molester and “ex-gay” George Oundo on the soapbox before Ugandan pro-government (antigay) media, to declare that all gay Ugandans are “targeting mostly children ‘because they are easy to initiate and they like easy things.’ ” Oundo projected his own sickness onto gay people, and accused Ugandan anti-violence and pro-equality groups of enabling his alleged past acts of child molestation. Oundo, who was arrested and possibly tortured by the Ugandan government in 2008, now works for antigay pastor Martin Ssempa, who has coordinated past Ugandan vigilante campaigns that were monitored by Human Rights Watch:
Campaigns with access to millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars that were intended for AIDS prevention, but which increased the spread of AIDS through vigilantism, prejudice, miseducation, and denial of access to condoms.
The new campaign by Langa, aided without apology by Exodus, may enjoy ongoing support from U.S. taxpayers unless action is taken to stop the funding.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has identified 12 anti-gay hate groups in the United States: Hate groups are organizations that “go beyond mere disagreement with homosexuality by subjecting gays and lesbians to campaigns of personal vilification.” Among the hate groups are Peter LaBarbera’s former project the Illinois Family Institute; Lou Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition; and several organizations linked to Exodus ally, Holocaust revisionist, and ex-gay activist Scott Lively.
Mission America, the Ohio-based nameplate for antigay activist Linda Harvey, may be envious: It’s not listed. That may be one reason why Harvey — aided by the antigay parent group Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays, according to Ex-Gay Watch — is urging antigay conservatives to write to the SPLC and demand that California supporters of open campaign-donation records be collectively branded a hate group.
Why is Mission America equating open records with hate? Not because of any actual violence or harassment of campaign donors: There hasn’t been any.
Perhaps, then, Mission America is simply hopping on the bandwagon of ProtectMarriage.com, a coalition of wealthy, out-of-state, antifamily religious-rightists who want their identities — and their antigay extremism — kept secret from California voters. Exodus International is among the coalition’s endorsers.
There’s little chance of California open-records laws being overturned, and no actual evidence that the records have been used to promote violence of any kind against members of the antigay, antifamily coalition. So the objective of P-FOX and Mission America may be twofold:
1. Deflect their supporters’ attention from their organizations’ association with certified hate groups
2. Gain inclusion in future editions of SPLC’s hate-group list, so that Mission America — a little-known outfit among the giants of the religious right — may claim victimhood at the hands of those who warn America against defamation and vilification done in the name of religion
Weeks after a now-famous victim of abstinence education, Bristol Palin, came forward and declared it a failure, Focus on the Family continues to promote unwed pregnancy and abortion through its opposition to comprehensive sex education.
Sadly, like other politically partisan pro-life organizations, Focus gets away with its promotion of abortion by diverting attention with inflammatory rhetoric about people who believe that banning all abortion and throwing women and doctors in jail are counterproductive means to a worthwhile end.
Today, Focus on the Family extended its defamation, falsely calling President Barack Obama “pro-abortion” and going one step further: Focus — an evangelical Protestant political giant — insinuated that it is somehow un-Catholic for Notre Dame, a leading Catholic university, to invite the President of the United States to speak at commencement and receive an honorary degree.
What’s really un-Catholic is Focus’s mischaracterization of those who believe Prohibition to be an ineffective and counterproductive means of reducing abortion. What’s even more un-Catholic is the organization’s effort to redefine the essence of Roman Catholicism from a traditional and historical religious creed into a flimsy ideological obsession with the use of federal law to control and micromanage every man, woman, and teen-ager’s sexuality by force.
Signaling a meaningful change from President George W. Bush’ disastrous policies, the Obama administration last week endorsed a United Nations statement calling for the worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality. The primary opponents of this measure were radical Islamist countries and the Vatican, representing a new unholy alliance across the globe.
The previous day on his way to Africa, the Pope spoke to reporters about the role condoms play in the prevention of HIV. Unbelievably, the Pontiff said they make the epidemic worse.
“You can’t resolve it with the distribution of condoms,” the Pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane headed to Yaounde, Cameroon, where he began a seven-day pilgrimage on the continent. “On the contrary, it increases the problem.”
Internationally, people were stunned at the Pope’ scientific ignorance and indifference to human suffering. Africa, after all, is a continent with more than 22 million people living with the disease. Only thin strips of latex have stopped this figure from rapidly multiplying and leaving behind an even more horrific trail of death.
How many people is this man willing to see die to defend his outdated dogma? How high must the body count be before the Pope is no longer considered pro-life?
French foreign ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier justifiably reacted with exasperation when he said, “While it is not up to us to pass judgment on Church doctrine, we consider that such comments are a threat to public health policies and the duty to protect human life.” German officials called the Pope’ statement “irresponsible” urged the availability of condoms in Africa.
How ironic that a Pope fixated on stanching the decline of the Catholic Church in Western Europe would declare something so out of touch with the modern world. His unconscionable cruelty has transformed him into crusty relic on the verge of irrelevance. (Read More)
