Sunday, 29 November 2009:

As reported by Fridae.com in Buenos Aires okays gay marriage in Latin America First, a court in the Argentinian capital affirmed for a male couple the right to be married under the city’s laws. Clearly, the idea that Latin America is still bound by dated notions of heterosexual machismo, needs revision. The fact is, there has been a lot of progress for gay equality on that continent in the last 20 years. This precedent-setting court decision is a fruit of a long period of organising and campaigning, news of which has rarely comes to Asia.

As luck would have it, I am here in Trinidad and Tobago with an Argentinian activist. Marcelo Ferreyra is currently the Coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), but before this he was actively involved in the gay rights struggle in his home country. I sat him down and asked him for the back story to that groundbreaking court decision.

“The movement actually began way back in 1967,” he said. “At that time, though, it was related to the feminist movement.”

And it got erased by the military dictatorship that took over in 1976.

After the military withdrew from government, there was a wave of democratisation, and people began to work on LGBT issues from about 1984 onwards again. “We had an association called Communidad Homosexual Argentina (CHA), and our main goal was to get institutional recognition for this group.”

An attempt to get a ruling by the Supreme Court was rejected in 1991; the court delivered a very homophobic argument.

What were CHA’s aims in those days?

Ferreyra: “In those days, each province had codes that made homosexuality and similar same-sex activity a misdemeanour. Buenos Aires City for example, had in addition a code that prohibited two people of the same sex dancing together. Our aim was to take out the laws.”

Slowly, things were beginning to change. Someone discovered a law that almost nobody knew of, that denied homosexuals voting rights. When this discovery was reported, “it was a big scandal,” recalled Ferreyra.

Then, in the early 1990s, Carlos Menem (President 1989 – 1999) was “parading about in North America and Europe, boasting about human rights and trying to get funding for the country.

“We helped organise protests everywhere the president went.”

This reached a climax when he went to Columbia University in New York. “A gay student asked him why if he boasted about human rights, CHA was denied legal recognition. Menem said he would take care of it personally, and he did. When he returned to Argentina, CHA was registered. After that, other gay groups could also be registered.”

Around the same time, Ferreyra was involved in a new group, called “Gays for Civil Rights” in its English translation. Its objective was to change society’s values with a five-year process: Engage the media; challenge the church; have a strong litigation strategy bringing cases to show discrimination in action.

“We had pro-bono lawyers, but we didn’t want funding.” Why not? I asked. “We didn’t want to be driven by the agenda of funders.”

One curious thing learnt through experience was that the “yellow newspapers” – i.e. the sensationalist tabloids – liked to write about homosexuality. “The subject sells,” said Ferreyra. “They were the first newspapers to publicise our case.”

Other newspapers soon followed and now even rightwing media will carry gay-related news.

Challenging the church was another aim. “We needed to show that the hate speech coming from the church was an inducement to hate crimes.” This was especially as in the early 1990s, Cardinal Antonio Quaraccino emerged as a very vocal opponent.

“He had a spot on national TV every Sunday morning, and he often used it to bash gays,” Ferreyra said. “On our part, we had someone monitoring what he said and getting our answer to the media immediately.”

They even sued him under hate speech laws twice. “In 1993, the judge, a Catholic woman, exonerated him, saying he had a right to say what he said because it was Easter!”

In 1994, even though they lost our case again, the timing of the case worked in their favour in terms of social opinion. “He delivered his homophobic speech just about a week after a terrorist bomb exploded at a Jewish community centre, reminding everybody of the anti-semitism of the Nazi period. So when the Cardinal said that if homosexuals want to escape, they should be sent to a special island, people became angry with him.”

Headlines in newspapers made it clear that such speech was abhorrent.

The court judgement – by a gay male judge this time – agreed that it was hate speech, but unfortunately, Argentinian anti-discrimination law didn’t include sexual orientation. So the Cardinal was let off.

But it was enough. “This episode made a major difference to social opinion.”

Only two years later, in 1996, Buenos Aires wrote a new constitution. There was a strong push to include sexual orientation as a protected class. “Even politicians who did not really support the idea didn’t dare oppose it,” said Ferreyra.

Further progress was made in 2003 when the national legislature voted for a civil union law. “After that, the strategy was to push for same sex marriage,” and the rest is history.

Last month, the African nation of Uganda proposed an anti-homosexuality bill, making anyone caught engaging in homosexuality liable to be sentenced to life in prison. Homosexuals, who are HIV positive and knowingly take part in a sexual act or engage in sex with an individual under the age of 18, are liable to be sentenced to death under the crime of “aggravated homosexuality”.

Speaker Edward Sekandi told Daily Monitor that the new legislation was necessary “to do whatever we can to stop” homosexuality in Uganda. “We don’t support that practice.”

However, the global response has been anything but supportive of the initiative.

Scott Long, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch, said, “This draft bill is clearly an attempt to divide and weaken civil society by striking at one of its most marginalized groups.  The government may be starting here, but who will be next?”

The United States has said they will continue  President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) funding to Uganda despite the antigay violence.  QUEERTY, a gay blog, writes that the PEPFAR coordinator’s decision is  “…propping up a nation that still treats HIV as “the gay disease,” that further stigmatizez the queer community, and is now calling for the murder of anyone who dares involve themselves in same-sex sex.”

Truthwinsout.org comments on why they don’t support the PEPFAR decision. “HIV/AIDS in Uganda is primarily a heterosexual phenomenon; Goosby falsely contends that it is a homosexual phenomenon that threatens the “general population and the bill would criminalize key aspects of comprehensive HIV/AIDS prevention education and imprison health-care workers who refuse to report sexually active gay patients to the police.”

Uganda, the outgoing chair of the Commonwealth,  is expected to promote, among other issues, human rights as part of their membership in the international organization.

But, Times Online quoted Stephen Lewis, the former UN envoy on Aids in Africa, as saying Uganda’s bill goes against the Commonwealth’s principles, stating, “Nothing is as stark, punitive and redolent of hate as the Bill in Uganda.”

The proposed anti-homosexual bill also threatens anyone found promoting homosexuality or anyone who fails to report known homosexuality activity.

The bill is currently making its way through the country’s Parliament.

Homosexuality is illegal in most African countries.  Currently, South Africa is the only nation on the continent that legally allows gay marriage.

Voddie Baucham gives us the  the answers to the questions:

Who am I?…Why am I here?…What is wrong with the world?…How can what is wrong, be made right?

***SOME OF THE IMAGES IN THE VIDEO ARE VERY GRAPHIC***

From fbomb:

I decided that because this woman thought it was okay to make me feel uncomfortable in my home, I would retaliate and make her feel just as uncomfortable, if not more.

thanks, erin!

Ross Douthat half admits to the intellectual bankruptcy of his opposition of to same-sex marriage and then tacitly demonstrates it with his pathetic reply when pushed to address the topic last month at the New School:

“I am someone opposed to gay marriage who is deeply uncomfortable arguing the issue in public.”

Mr. Douthat indicated that he opposes gay marriage because of his religious beliefs, but that he does not like debating the issue in those terms. At one point he said that, sometimes, he feels like he should either change his mind, or simply resolve never to address the question in public.

He added that the conservative opposition to gay marriage is “a losing argument,” and asked rhetorically if committed homosexual relationships ought to be denied the legal recognition accorded without hesitation to the fleeting enthusiasms of Britney Spears and Newt Gingrich.

After the panel, Mr. Douthat told the Observer: “If I were putting money on the future of gay marriage, I would bet on it.”

He added: “The secular arguments against gay marriage, when they aren’t just based on bigotry or custom, tend to be abstract in ways that don’t find purchase in American political discourse. I say, ‘Institutional support for reproduction,’ you say, ‘I love my boyfriend and I want to marry him.’ Who wins that debate? You win that debate.”

So let’s recap all of what Douthat, who is generally taken to in some way represent the intellectual vanguard of the conservative movement concedes:

(1) Because of his religion he uncomfortably and embarrassedly holds beliefs for which he has almost no independent intellectual warrant and as a result of this he does not even want to bother trying to defend them on rational or moral grounds.

You know that his religion must really give him the truth about things if what it makes him believe is something that he cannot even pretend to stand up for with intellectual, emotional, or moral credibility.  His religion must be a source of good beliefs since he cannot with a clear conscience recommend its teachings to other people of honest thought, feeling, and moral sentiment by appealing to their intellects and their powers of moral judgment.  I mean, beliefs which only are acceptable to those who accept the same dogmatic pronouncements based on shoddy abuse of the concept of moral teleology to rationalize outdated barbaric prejudices must be intellectually and morally justified even if they cannot stand up to independent investigation by non-dogmatic, rational, moral people.

(2) Arguments based on bigotry and custom are not adequate secular reasons for opposing gay marriage.

Yet, I’m sure this concession is compatible with Douthat’s commitment to the authority of Church tradition.  That’s clearly distinct from mere “custom” or Douthat wouldn’t defer to it to the point where he held positions which were indefensible based on common reason and morality in the public sphere.   Plus, I’m sure there is just no way that either the book of Leviticus or the pope could possibly make that “secular” mistake of simply opposing homosexuality from bigotry.  After all, the religious arguments provide so many non-bigoted, non-custom-based reasons that stand up so well to intellectual and moral test that Douthat is embarrassed to try to explain them publicly for all rational and moral people to independently assess them.

(3) His best example of a non-religious argument against same-sex marriage is the desire to give institutional support for reproduction and even that argument is indisputably ineffective.

On this concession though Douthat does not go far enough and admit that this argument fails because it is simply more stupid, empty rationalization of custom, bigotry, and religious custom and religious bigotry.  Instead he blames the argument’s failure on its “abstractness.”  Apparently it just goes above the heads of all of us gay marriage supporters.  I admit that if this argument has any credibility whatsoever it must be too abstract for me. I mean, I do not see how heterosexual marriage will stop giving institutional support for reproduction just because in addition to heterosexual marriages there will also be homosexual ones.  I guess I don’t see how exactly, the institution of gay marriage would replace, rather than merely complement, the institution of heterosexual marriage.   I guess I don’t know how to abstract hard enough to see how society is forced with a choice between only heterosexual marriages on the one hand and only gay marriages on the other hand.  That kind of abstraction to a simple either/or scenario really does go beyond my mental powers.

My superficial, surface level mind keeps thinking that it’s possible to let gay people marry without stopping any single heterosexual couple from marrying or reproducing.  I feel so embarrassed that I cannot think smarter about this.  I feel like Douthat is doing calculus and I cannot even master simple addition and subtraction here.  His level of abstraction to a world of such clear black and white either/or is something I cannot comprehend, stuck as I am on the facts of the world in which heterosexual people don’t stop reproducing just because gay people have sex.

I admit the other time I felt my powers of abstraction to be ridiculously enfeebled was when another opponent of same-sex marriage, Heather MacDonald, offered her own subtle “secular” argument against it.  Her argument was that those irresponsible, marriage averse, homophobic black men that plague our society would be turned off to marriage altogether because it would be a “gay thing to do.”

It’s clear my powers of abstraction are inferior to Douthat’s simply from the fact that I cannot pull off his amazing trick of holding positions so intellectually, morally, and emotionally indefensible that I am embarrassed to support them publicly.  I cannot abstract myself from my conscience so thoroughly that I can advocate positions for which I do not have supporting reasons, just so that I can be obedient to regressive, ancient institutions which stubbornly refuse to rethink their positions in light of increased modern moral understanding.  I do not have such gifts of abstraction that let me feel it is okay to vote in secular elections based on religious beliefs which do not admit of secular justification.

Alas, I really wish I had such abilities with abstraction since apparently they can get you an awesome job as a columnist for The New York Times!

Your Thoughts?

Adam Lambert kissed a male band member at the recent American Music Awards. I tried to track down a video, but they’ve all been taken off the web due to copyright issues. But that hasn’t stopped the controversy.

Many news and family groups are up in arms. But they are also up in amnesia. Just a few years ago, Brittney kissed Madonna at the AMA, and people loved it. Why? It was just as gay, just as “deviant” and sensational. But it was also “hot.” Women kissing women can be capitalized upon as a turn-on for heterosexual male culture, and thus plopped back into our heteronormative way of life. And that my friends, is called hypocrisy. A gay couple can get your rocks off, but they can’t just be themselves. You gonna eat that hashbrown?

Can I just put in a shout out for the ridiculousness of calling kissing obscenity, gender aside?

Religious leaders from many different denominations have joined together to create and sign the “Manhattan Declaration”. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? A little over a week ago it was released, at least that is my understanding. The declaration covers three specific areas: sanctity of life, marriage, and religious liberty. It’s a well written document, and so far about a quarter of a million people have “signed” their name to it. I ran into a few problems from the beginning though. While the writers acknowledge that the church has failed throughout our existence, they point out the areas they say the church has been a leader in influencing change: democracy, slavery, women’s suffrage, civil right’s movement, etc. The influence of the church on the foundation of democracy was huge- but it was one small part of the church, in opposition stood the Roman Catholic church, the Anglican church, and the Lutheran church. Essentially it was one group (Calvinists) against three. So while the church was important in the movement, it was against it generally speaking. Women’s suffrage is one I can’t speak on well as I have little knowledge of the actual movement, but I know that of all the women recognized as leaders only one had any real connection to Christianity. My experience leads me to find it hard to believe the church/Christians truly were behind the suffrage movement. As for slavery: Christians were across the board. Some were pro slavery, some decided to ignore the issue, and some were anti slavery.  I realize the writers are not trying to say that all Christians or that the church as an institution was a significant part of these things, but I find it hard to take these examples and say in response, “yeah Christians were really a big part of these things, let’s follow in the steps of those who have gone before and join this cause today”.

“Like those who have gone before us in the faith, Christians today are called to proclaim the Gospel of costly grace, to protect the intrinsic dignity of the human person and to stand for the common good. In being true to its own calling, the call to discipleship, the church through service to others can make a profound contribution to the public good.”  (Manhattan Declaration) I fully agree with this, and through the reading of this document believe the writers truly believe this, but there are still issues.

For simplicity and because my issues with the other sections are more philosophical than personal I am simply going to focus on the issue of marriage as put forth in this declaration. First, I applaud the writers for acknowledging the failure of the church to uphold the institution of marriage. That is something that is too often ignored, and admitting our failing in that area is important. They continue saying “We must work…to instill in young people a sound understanding of what marriage is, what it requires, and why it is worth the commitment and sacrifices that faithful spouses make”. I also appreciate that the writers have recognized that there are Christians who have a differing view on marriage from theirs, and they are respectful of that position, at least in the declaration. I got pretty far into this section on marriage before running into a real issue. It’s an issue that people just don’t seem to grasp: you cannot say a homosexual disposition is acceptable but the action is not. It doesn’t work. You don’t say having a desire to murder someone is okay as long as you don’t. I also feel that the writers have done an excellent job of arguing for marriage in society but their argument also seems to suggest that we should not allow adults to remain single. Biological arguments are pretty status-quo as well, but the thing that irritates me is that they use vague scripture to support this. Also, the definition provided of marriage as being when one man and one woman “forsaking all others and pledging lifelong commitment [found] a sharing of life at every level of being- the biological, the emotional, the dispositional, the rational, the spiritual…completed and actualized by loving sexual intercourse” could apply to homosexual marriage as well. Finally, I have a huge issue with the writers calling the desire for homosexual marriage a “fashionable ideology” because this is a base human desire, as established by the writers of this declaration.

 I appreciate the attempts made in writing this declaration. I appreciate that the writers have done their best to stand firmly in their convictions and beliefs but yet don’t fall hard on those of differing views. But at the end of the day, I cannot say that I support this declaration, and it isn’t because I am gay. It’s because I feel it does not move beyond the same arguments that have been given time and time again. It may do it more respectfully and more ecumenically. But the arguments have not changed. What do you think of the Manhattan Declaration?

From http://www.reuters.com:

The Diocese of Ottawa is “testing” same sex blessings:

Bishop John Chapman has given a church in the diocese of Ottawa permission to begin offering a rite of blessing to same-gender couples who are civilly married.

The Church of St. John the Evangelist could offer its first blessing as soon as a married couple asks. At least one person in the couple needs to be baptized.

Bishop John Chapman is now scouring Canada trying to find a homosexual couple who want to get their marriage blessed in his church. I understand that he did find one couple but lost them to Bishop Michael Bird after a brief scuffle.

At the morning watch…

A lie:

A truth:

The UA Board of Regents are meeting on the UAA campus this week to discuss budgetary matters with students. In addition, a group of students from Fairbanks plan to attend in support of amending the non-discrimination clause to include sexual orientation. And, so, of course, Jim Minnery of the Alaska Family Council has once again gone into hate-heat like it’s spring in Texas. The irony here is that the board of regents are not comparable to elected officials who tend to squirm when facing reelection in the wake of the Tea Party insurgency. The Board consists of appointments that tend to last as long as the board members wish them to, are not up for a vote, and only result in termination or resignation if the board decides so.

Thus, if hellfire, damnation, and demonic possession through fashion sense are the topics left in the board members’ inboxes, one might suspect that rather than the “quaking in the boots” effect intended, Minnery’s minions might just end up supremely pissing them off. We should all voice our support, but probably not by blunt force stupid to the head, as is usually the case with the Alaska Family Council. We should all let our support be known. Just… Respectuflly, calmly, and in the pursuit of equality.

Here’s the latest from Minnery’s super fun hate camp:

“We have learned that activists in the homosexual movement are attempting to convince the University of Alaska Board of Regents to change the university non-discrimination policy so as to give special recognition to homosexuals. If successful, individuals engaging in homosexual behavior will be afforded the same recognition as members of racial and ethnic minorities.”

Oh, the horror. And, really? We’re riding the “special” train again?

“This is just another attempt by homosexual extremists to demand public affirmation for their lifestyle. It is also the same tactic used this past summer in the Municipality of Anchorage to force AO-64 on the citizens of Anchorage. We prevented our freedoms from being infringed then by standing together. Let’s do it again.

The University of Alaska is a state institution that is supposed to serve all Alaskans”

Equally?

“Therefore, it should be subject to the same laws that apply to ALL state agencies with respect to discrimination. The university’s anti-discrimination policy should mirror the policy that the Legislature sets for ALL state entities. Nothing more, nothing less. If they wanted, the Alaska Legislature could prohibit discrimination based on ’sexual orientation.’ The legislature has wisely chosen not to do so, for good reason — because homosexuality has to do with behavioral choices, rather than a characteristic such as race that is in-born.”

Apparently sociology isn’t Minnery’s thing. Looking past the I’ve-been-locked-in-a-bomb-shelter-for-thirty-years use of the term “in-born”, the actual concept of “Race” is largely a social construct. You might be thinking of “ethnicity,” or you may just be dreaming about jogging again. And behavioral choice? Do you wake up in the morning and thinking about sleeping with men twenty times before making the choice not to? Sexual orientation and identity isn’t religion; it isn’t a choice.

“Many colleges and universities across the country have adopted policies on ’sexual orientation.’ These policies are advocated in the name of creating an open, tolerant, and ‘welcoming’ environment on campus. In reality, these policies are often used to muzzle free speech and discriminate against Christian student groups who may want to speak against homosexuality. Any speech or advocacy AGAINST homosexual behavior is deemed to be ‘hate speech’ and therefore it is branded as ‘discrimination’ against persons based on sexual orientation. It is a back-door attempt to crush freedom of speech.”

No. Unless you’re referring to cases where there is physical violence, threat of physical violence, or attempt to incite violence. That actually is hate speech and should be muzzled. Have you been to UAA Jim? The right-to-life club hands out fliers with a revolver aimed at a fetus. We’re not in any danger zone that threatens the suppression of free speech, nor is anyone impeding the free exercise of religion… Unless it’s hate speech. You’re the one asking people who are otherwise in no way affiliated with UAA to flood board member inboxes and voicemail, and if that doesn’t work, barge into a board meeting and scream bloody murder. Again.

“NOW is the time you can make a difference by contacting each member of the Board of Regents and ask them to not consider such a significant and harmful change to university policy. Remember, the University of Alaska is the property of the People of Alaska. The Regents are ultimately accountable to the very same… People of Alaska… YOU!

Make your voice heard. Make a difference. It only takes eleven phone calls and/or eleven e-mails. If you don’t have time for that…contact as many as you can. Please click HERE for contact information for the UA Board of Regents.

The Board of Regents will be meeting in Anchorage, November 30th through December 1st, at the campus of UAA, so there is no time to waste. If this issue is not considered then it will be considered at the next meeting in February but the Board of Regents needs to hear from you NOW.

Thanks again for your support. Your involvement in our culture makes this organization possible.”

And what culture is that, exactly?

The bottom of the mailer contains this link which takes you to a recruitment page for a faux-college video called “Indoctrinate U; Our Education, They’re Politics,” and finally ends in uniformity with this humble plea:

“Standing firm for your religious liberties is an effort we take seriously and is an undertaking that simply put – requires resources. If you are in a position to do so… please consider financially partnering with our ministry by making a secure on-line contribution today.

Standing for families… in His name !

Jim Minnery – President

Alaska Family Council”

*Sigh*

Finals week just got a whole lot dumber.

Nov. 29: Rick Warren,talks with David Gregory

MR. DAVID GREGORY: This Sunday, giving thanks and giving back. As we take a break from the rough and tumble world of politics here in Washington, we sit down with three very well-known Americans who are blessed with good fortune and who are using those fortunes to help those with far less.

His “Purpose Driven Life” has sold more copies than any other book in history other than the Bible, and he leads one of America’s largest congregations at his Saddleback Church in California. Pastor Rick Warren joins us for an exclusive discussion of faith and charity.

Then he’s the world’s richest man, founder of computer giant Microsoft. Together with his wife, Melinda, Bill Gates also runs the largest private charitable foundation in the world. They’re here exclusively to discuss their mission to improve global health and education.

But first, our focus on giving thanks and helping others during a tumultuous period in our country economically and politically. With us: pastor, best-selling author and no stranger to Washington Rick Warren.

Pastor Rick Warren, welcome back to MEET THE PRESS.

MR. RICK WARREN: Good to be back. Thank you.

MR. GREGORY: And I will call you Pastor Rick, as I know you like to be called.

MR. WARREN: Yeah, just call me Rick. Just call me for dinner.

MR. GREGORY: What is testing the faith of Americans, do you think, as we approach this holiday season?

MR. WARREN: Well, no doubt about it, the economy, the, the war in Afghanistan; but also I just think the political divisions are a big deal, that the, the coarsening of our society, that we’re, we’re demonizing differences. Those things need to be dealt with.

MR. GREGORY: We think about Thanksgiving, we think about giving and being thankful for blessings.

MR. WARREN: Mm-hmm.

MR. GREGORY: You have talked about giving in your own life. You’ve acted on giving. You give.

MR. WARREN: Yeah.

MR. GREGORY: And you say that it’s not a sin to be rich, but it’s a sin to die rich.

MR. WARREN: I believe that. That’s a personal conviction of mine. You know, thanks and giving go together. You, you can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving. You spell love G-I-V-E. Probably the most famous verse in the Bible is John 3:16, “God so loved the world that he gave his son.” The Bible says every good gift comes from God. We’re most like God when we’re giving, when we’re generous, because everything we have is a gift. And I’ve gone on this journey for many years. When Kay and I got married 35 years ago, we began the biblical practice of tithing 10 percent. Ten percent we would give away to help other people. At the end of our first year we raised it to 11 percent; at the end of our second year, raised it to 12; the end of our third year, raised it to 13. And each year–now, the Bible doesn’t tell you to do this. We were just–every time I give, it breaks the grip of materialism in my life. My heart grows bigger. And on years that things were financially tight and we didn’t have a lot of money, we’d still raise our giving maybe a quarter of a percent. And then when I’d get a raise or something, we’d raise it 4 or 5 percent. Well, now, after 35 years, we actually give away 90 percent and live on 10. And I play this game with God where God says, “Rick, you give to me and I’ll give to you and we’ll see who wins.” I’ve lost it for 35 years.

MR. GREGORY: But also in the Bible, in Deuteronomy it says, “Do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your impoverished brother.” But at a time…

MR. WARREN: Absolutely.

MR. GREGORY: …of so much economic fear, of resentment, of anxiety…

MR. WARREN: Yeah.

MR. GREGORY: …how do you encourage people to, to avoid hardening their heart?

MR. WARREN: Well, you can get compassion fatigue, because you see it all the time. But it is always possible to give thanks by giving. All–you can see–what God looks at is not the amount you give, he looks at the amount left over compared to what you give. And, you know, even if you didn’t have any money, you can give time, which is actually far more valuable. You can always get more money. But when you give your time, you’re giving away your life. So it’s possible to always give something. By the way, when some people talk about giving, they, they stop at nothing.

MR. GREGORY: Right.

MR. WARREN: Yeah.

MR. GREGORY: We’ve seen that giving has–in 2008, charitable giving was down.

MR. WARREN: Mm-hmm.

MR. GREGORY: But not to religious institutions.

MR. WARREN: Mm-hmm.

MR. GREGORY: It was as strong as ever. Why?

MR. WARREN: Well, I think because faith communities teach the importance of generosity, that it’s, it’s a Godly quality. As I said, we’re most like God when, when we’re giving. The, the issue of, of, of God is love, as I said, is a matter of giving back, and I, I think it’s just a spiritual discipline. If you don’t have that spiritual discipline, it’s pretty easy–by the way, it’s not an accident the word “miser” and “miserable” come from the same root word.

MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm. It’s interesting, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin in his book “A Code of Jewish Ethics” writes something that caught my eye.

MR. WARREN: Yeah.

MR. GREGORY: I’ll put it on the screen here. “We become good people not by thinking good thoughts but by doing good deeds again and again.” And it’s the repetition of that. But how do you see a distinction between a lot of people who get caught up in giving where it may be that they’re checking a box, they’re sending in a check.

MR. WARREN: Right, right.

MR. GREGORY: But, but they’re not emptying themselves.

MR. WARREN: Right, right.

MR. GREGORY: Or they’re not really giving a gift of their heart.

MR. WARREN: Right.

MR. GREGORY: Are there differences?

MR. WARREN: Well, I think there are different kinds of levels of giving. There is–at, at the shallowest level is what I call the impulsive giving. And that is, I see a commercial and I give or I see somebody on the street and I give and it’s just an emotional response. That’s good, it’s better than nothing. But moving from impulsive giving up to regular giving, where I make it a habit in my life. The–as–whether I need–whether other people need it or my temple or church needs it or not, I’m giving for my own benefit to, to be, to become generous. Then there’s systematic giving, there’s proportional giving and then there’s sacrificial giving, which is, is giving when you really can’t afford it. And, and that is really the highest, giving yourself away when you can’t afford it.

MR. GREGORY: Let’s talk about the stewardship of influence and affluence.

MR. WARREN: Sure.

MR. GREGORY: Something that you’ve talked about before.

MR. WARREN: Sure.

MR. GREGORY: What kind of influence…

MR. WARREN: Mm-hmm.

MR. GREGORY: …are you having on fighting some of the most difficult problems around the world, including your work on the continent of Africa?

MR. WARREN: Mm-hmm. Well, David, in, in 2002 when I wrote “Purpose Driven Life,” and then it became a, a big best-seller and sold a lot of copies, it, it honestly brought in tens of millions of dollars. When you write the best-selling hardback in American history and the most translated book in the world except for the Bible, it’s tens of millions of dollars. And frankly, when this money started coming in, I–it scared me. I thought, I’m a pastor, I live a pretty simple lifestyle and I don’t need money, and so what am I supposed to do with this? And when you write a book and the first sentence says, “It’s not about you,” then you figure the money’s not for you, too.

So we made five decisions. The first one was we’re not going to change our lifestyle one bit. I still live in the same house I’ve lived in 16 years. I drive a 10-year-old Ford truck, bought my watch at Walmart. You know, to me if you’ve got a good pair of jeans and a comfortable T-shirt, you don’t have a whole lot of needs. So we didn’t change it. Second thing is I stopped taking a salary from Saddleback Church now seven years ago. The third thing is I added up all the church had paid me in the first 25 years and I gave it all back. And I did that because I didn’t want anybody thinking that I do what I do for money. I do this because I love Jesus Christ and I love God, and it’s, it’s out of my motivation–and I love people that do this.

We set up some charities. We have one called Acts of Mercy which my wife leads that helps people infected and affected with AIDS, and another one called Equipping Leaders, and we pay for leadership training all around the world. We set up a program called the PEACE Plan, P-E-A-C-E, which stands for Promote reconciliation, equip servant leaders–ethical leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, educate the next generation. By the end of December next year, we will have–we will have, the PEACE Plan, have been to every single country in the world. There’s 195 countries, 193 in the U.N.–North Korea and Bosnia aren’t in the U.N. We will have been in every country doing these humanitarian works.

MR. GREGORY: Where is the need the greatest?

MR. WARREN: Well, the most oppressed country by far is North Korea, there’s no doubt about it. The, the people there are suffering because of the idolatry of their own leader and things like that.

But I would say the greatest need right now are the 146 million orphans in the world. There are 146 million kids growing up without mommies and daddies. That is anarchy waiting to happen. And whoever gets there first and loves them first will have their heart and devotion. And I always say to our government leaders that, that health care and poverty and relief is–and orphan care, that’s–this is good foreign policy. I, I discovered in–during the President Bush years that–during PEPFAR that when you save a life, people tend to like your country. They say, you know, “My husband’s alive because of PEPFAR. My”–and so these things are important that we, we continue them because people will die, but also it’s, it’s good policy.

MR. GREGORY: It raises the point about what our priorities are. Bill and Melinda Gates, who we’re also talking to in this program…

MR. WARREN: Right. Hm.

MR. GREGORY: …make the point that, that even a foundation like the Gates Foundation, which has the resources, which has scale…

MR. WARREN: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

MR. GREGORY: …it’s still the government that has to be involved…

MR. WARREN: Mm-hmm.

MR. GREGORY: …to really have the, the biggest impact that’s possible on this kind of problem.

MR. WARREN: Yeah. Well, actually, there, there, there are three different sectors, and they all have a role. I’ve spoken at Davos several times, and when I go I hear them talking about we need public/private partnerships. And they’re talking about public/private partnership for ending poverty, for ending malaria, for, you know, all of these chronic global issues. And they say we need this partnership, but actually, they’re missing the third leg of the stool. A one-legged stool will fall over, two-legged stool will fall over. There is the public sector, which is government and the NGOs, the nonprofits; there is the profit sector, which is business; and there is the faith sector. There’s three sectors to society, not, not two, and each of them bring something to the table that the other doesn’t have. Government has agenda-setting ability, priority-setting ability. Somebody’s got to pave the roads and, and they–and government often will take the lead in this. Business brings things to the table like expertise, like capital and a, a really good thing is management, because most governments, most churches and most businesses are poorly managed. But temples and churches and houses of worship, mosques, they bring things to the table that government and business will never have. They have volunteer manpower, they have local credibility, they have the widest distribution. I could take you to 10 million villages around the world, the only thing in it’s a church. They don’t have a government, they don’t have a hospital, they don’t have a school, but they got a church. The church was global 200 years before anybody started talking about globalization.

MR. GREGORY: How close are we to getting an AIDS vaccine?

MR. WARREN: I don’t think it’ll be soon. My prayer is that we get it in this–within this generation. But I think what we have to do is even while we’re waiting for the vaccine, we just keep on working for education. So much of AIDS is behavioral based and, I mean, you don’t just get it out of the air. And we want to, we want to stop AIDS, we want to end AIDS, and we work with anybody and everybody who’s willing to work. This is an important thing that I think even at this Thanksgiving, as we move into the holiday seasons, you don’t have to agree with everybody to work with them on something. I can work with Muslims and atheists and other religions and gays and straights and–I can work with any–if you want to save a life, that’s a human issue. And, and so you don’t have to water down your beliefs, but you, you can work for the common good. And that’s what we need. I believe in the good news and I believe in the common good.

MR. GREGORY: As you have, you and Kay have embraced people living with AIDS…

MR. WARREN: Oh, yeah.

MR. GREGORY: …has it changed your views at all about homosexuality?

MR. WARREN: Oh, oh, absolutely, much more sympathetic and understanding the pains and the reactions. I, I have understood that so many people today get stigmatized for different things. Now, of course, I have biblical beliefs on–about homosexuality. But when somebody’s dying on the side of the road, you don’t walk up to them and say, you know, “What’s your nationality?” or, “What’s your lifestyle?” or, “What’s your, your gender preference?” or, you know, anything else. You just help the guy. And this is the, by the way, the difference–I was asked the other day about illegal immigration, things like that. The role of a pastor and the role of the government are different things. My role is to love everybody. I am called to love everybody. In fact, the Bible says love your enemies. I am forbidden to hate anyone, OK? So I can’t–I am to love everybody. And if someone’s hurting, I don’t walk up and say, “Are you illegally here?” I just want to hurt–help the person. But the government does have a right to decide who’s in and who’s out and things like that.

MR. GREGORY: Well, when you think about the debate about Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in California, and you think about how much money, the tens of millions of dollars spent on both pro–for and against Proposition 8.

MR. WARREN: Mm-hmm.

MR. GREGORY: And as you look back at that do you say, well, maybe that money’d be better spent trying to fight AIDS and find a vaccine for AIDS rather than having that fight?

MR. WARREN: I could give you a hundred campaigns where that would be true. I mean, I think we spend…

MR. GREGORY: Is it true in this one, though?

MR. WARREN: Oh, of course. I spend–we spend way too much money on everything else that, that–and not on what matters. If–you know, as a pastor, I’m always looking at how do we relieve the suffering, and I’m also looking at how do we increase prosperity for everybody? For instance, you know, you’ve heard the phrase, “Don’t give a man a fish, teach him to fish.” Well, that’s not even good enough. If you–I’ve discovered if you teach a man to fish, you create a village of fisherman; they all catch the same fish and they have a, a subsistence economy. You need to teach a man how to sell a fish. You need to teach him how to build a business. You need to teach to some build the nets and some builds the boats and, and create a free enterprise so that the, the society raises itself out of, out of just subsistence on a, a more complex economy.

MR. GREGORY: Just sticking with that topic for just a moment. If the issue of legalizing gay marriage comes up again…

MR. WARREN: Mm-hmm.

MR. GREGORY: …on the ballot in California…

MR. WARREN: Mm-hmm.

MR. GREGORY: …would you work to fight that?

MR. WARREN: You know, my position on gay marriage is very clear and it hasn’t changed. What I do believe in is that it is my job to love everybody, no doubt about it.

MR. GREGORY: So you would fight it?

MR. WARREN: Well, again, I’m not a politician. I didn’t fight it in the last issue. What was misunderstood is people, people on both sides tried to make me the campaign leader. I only mentioned it one time, and I mentioned it to my own congregation when I was asked, “What is our position on this?” and I made a video for our congregation. Well, that was dumb, because it immediately went everywhere and then all the sudden it looked like I was the big campaigner. And–but I wasn’t. Of course I have a position on it. As a pastor, I happen to believe what the Bible says. But I also believe that I understand the pain that people feel from rejection. So I care about both angles.

MR. GREGORY: Let me talk a little bit about leadership. We’re in Washington…

MR. WARREN: Sure.

MR. GREGORY: …and we’ll talk about President Obama. You were chosen to give the invocation at the inauguration, and here’s a portion of what you said that day. Let’s watch.

(Videotape, January 20, 2009)

MR. WARREN: Give to our new president, Barack Obama, the wisdom to lead us with humility, the courage to lead us with integrity, the compassion to lead us with generosity.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY: How’s he done?

MR. WARREN: Well, I think he’s–I think this president came with a, a number of cards stacked against him, that’s for sure. He entered the presidency with more on the plate than many of the previous presidents entered with. And my biggest fear is that there’ll be too much on the agenda and that things will get bogged down. I, I personally believe that the number one thing we need to do is get America back to work. I think before, I think before health care or anything else, we need to get people back to work. There’s nearly 10 percent unemployed. That’s the equivalent of Canada being unemployed. And so we have to look at this fact that if we get people back to work, then we can work on some of these other issues. Now, Afghanistan, of course, was already going on. But that’s what leadership is, is being able to balance balls and juggle things like that. And, you know, I certainly pray for him.

MR. GREGORY: Would you give him a grade so far of how he’s conducting…

MR. WARREN: I don’t–I wouldn’t grade. You know, again, my, my whole goal is–as a pastor, my goal is to, to encourage, to support. I never take sides. I have friends who are Republicans and I have friends who are Democrats, and I’m for my friends. People ask me, “Are you left wing or right wing?” and it’s pretty well known I say, “I’m for the whole bird,” because I’m for America. And so I want the president to succeed, I want the Congress to succeed.

MR. GREGORY: You talk–you mentioned health care just a minute ago. It’s interesting, do you–you say it shouldn’t be as high a priority…

MR. WARREN: Mm-hmm.

MR. GREGORY: …as getting people back to work. Is there a moral obligation, though, for–of leadership to provide health insurance more widely in our society?

MR. WARREN: Well, let’s go back to that issue of the stewardship of influence. When the book came out and all the sudden I started getting interviews–requests to, like, be on MEET THE PRESS, and this was new for me. I said, “I’m just a pastor. I’m not a politician, I’m not a pundit.” And so I began to say, “What am I supposed to do with this, this platform?” And I don’t believe God gives you money or influence for your own ego, so you can just be a fat cat and be a celebrity. We need more heroes, fewer celebrities. Heroes sacrifice for others, celebrities sacrifice for themselves.

Now, I found one day as I was praying in the–and reading the Bible, in Psalms 72 we have Solomon’s prayer for more influence. And when you read this prayer, it wounds like the most self-centered prayer you could imagine, because he says, “God, I want you to make me famous.” He said, “I want you to spread the fame of my name through many countries. I want you to give me power. I want you to bless me.” And then you read why Solomon prayed that. He says, “So that the king may support the widow and orphan, care for the sick, defend the defenseless, speak up for the oppressed.” He talks about the marginalized of society. Today he’d talk about those in prison, he’d talk about the elderly, the handicapped mentally and things like that. And out of that passage God spoke to me in a personal way and said, “The purpose of influence is to speak up for those who have no influence.” So absolutely, one of the stewardships of leadership is to speak up for those who have no voice. Now, I personally believe that includes the unborn, because they have no voice. But speaking up for the poor, for the sick, for those who are disenfranchised is part of what leadership’s all about.

MR. GREGORY: You bring that up. What more should the president do, in your mind–and you talked about this during your, your forum that you had with both McCain and Obama last year.

MR. WARREN: Yeah. Yes.

MR. GREGORY: What more should he do to restrict abortion?

MR. WARREN: Well, you know, to me–who was it, Peggy…

MR. GREGORY: Noonan?

MR. WARREN: …Noonan said it.

MR. GREGORY: Yeah.

MR. WARREN: She said, you know, “If you ask the question when does life begin,” she said, “any 16-year-old boy who’s bought a condom knows when life begins.” And I happen to agree with that.

MR. GREGORY: And so how should–what should the president do?

MR. WARREN: Well, I, I certainly am–I think we’ve had 46 million Americans who aren’t here, those who could be here since Roe v. Wade who are not voting. And I, I think that, in a sense, is a holocaust. I really do. Now, I think that we have to get beyond the, the name-calling and find common ground to work on, on these issues. Now, I don’t understand the, the idea of it should be rare and, and less. Well, either you believe it’s life or you don’t. It–why would you believe it should be rare? Because if, if it’s not–if a baby, a fetus is not a life, then why restrict it?

MR. GREGORY: It’s interesting. This is playing out in the healthcare debate about whether…

MR. WARREN: Yeah.

MR. GREGORY: In, in the House there was an amendment to prohibit public funds be used…

MR. WARREN: Yeah.

MR. GREGORY: …to pay for abortion if there’s a public plan in health care.

MR. WARREN: Yeah.

MR. GREGORY: E.J. Dionne wrote this in The Washington Post recently about the involvement of Catholic bishops, saying, “Catholic bishops…have a long history of supporting universal coverage,” health insurance…

MR. WARREN: Mm-hmm.

MR. GREGORY: …”but [have] devoted most of their recent energy to the abortion battle. How much muscle will the bishops put behind the broader effort to pass health-care reform? Their credibility as advocates for social justice hangs in the balance.” Raising the question, is there a moral equivalency between fighting for the unborn but also fighting for universal coverage? Should there be equal energy to both efforts?

MR. WARREN: Well, this is what I call–I’m not pro-life, I’m whole life, which means I don’t just want to protect that little baby girl before she’s born; I want to make sure she gets an education, she’s not raised in poverty, she gets her vaccinations. And so this is what I call the whole life platform, which, beyond just pro-life of protecting that unborn child, goes on. And, and part of my goal has been to not deny what I believe, that historically Catholics and evangelicals have stood firm on together, but expand the agenda to say we can’t just care about that, we’ve got to care about the child after she’s born and make sure she gets an education, she grows up healthy and grows up to be a productive human being.

“Gay” sex is morally good and is as “wonderful” as heterosexual relations, according to Chai Feldblum, President Obama’s nominee to become commissioner for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Well, this isn’t nothing new to many, but the ignorant ones in society are up in arms against the presidents EEOC pick attempting to normalize homosexuality. And can’t you hear the Right wingnuts and ignorant Negros cry: “my dear, we gotta protect the children.”

“This is a war that needs to be fought, and it’s not a war overseas where we are killing people in the name of liberating them. It is a war right here at home where we need to convince people that morality demands full equality for gay people,” Feldblum said at the symposium.

LGBT Rights Activists

This is going to be a strange post from me, since I usually keep silent on LGBT issues in Uganda.  After reading about a 2002 campaign by Ugandan activists to deport American journalist Katherine Roubos during her internship with the Kampala-based Daily Monitor for her analytical coverage of a gay rights’ court case, I’ve never wanted to comment.  Although the articles were assigned to Roubos by her editor, who praised her “enterprising and reliable reporting,” and she did not take an editorial perspective, hundreds of Ugandans gathered that August in a rugby field to demand her deportation, calling her a “homo propagandist.”

Martin Ssempa, who I interviewed last summer for an unrelated story, spoke during the rally, and shared his google search of Roubos with the crowd.  Using the search engine, he saw that Roubos had been involved with Stanford University’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Resource Center, and accused her of being a lesbian involved in spreading not journalism, but “criminal propaganda.”  For my Ugandan readers, such centers and programs are not uncommon in the U.S., especially at colleges.  Many hold events that celebrate diversity and support the campus’ LGBT students.

Despite my silence on these issues in the past, I have to speak up.  I can’t even begin to describe how disturbing I find the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which is in a Ugandan parliamentary committee right now.  The bill is so severe it’s practically laughable; it would be satire if it wasn’t, well, real.

Homosexuality has always been illegal in Uganda, due to my favorite country’s (dated) colonial law, but this bill practically makes that draconian law look like a pride parade.  (The current law classifies homosexuality as a “crime against the order of nature.”)

Some low points:
-The bill would nullify any international treaties that don’t have an explicit anti-homosexuality sentiment.
-People engaging in homosexuality will face life imprisonment.  Those found spreading HIV through homosexual acts will be put to death, as will those who engage in homosexuality with minors and the disabled.
-Those with knowledge of homosexuals living in Uganda and don’t report the individual to the police within 24 hours can face three years in jail.
-Ugandans in the diaspora in gay relationships could be extradited back to Uganda and put in jail for life.

One big change in my life that happened as a result of living in Uganda was constantly interacting with people who misunderstand and hate gay, lesbian, and bisexual people.  At first, I felt puzzled.  How could my kind, sensitive, intelligent and empathetic friends and coworkers really feel that way about gay people? I tried to keep my own background in perspective– after all, I am a child of two progressive parents who met at San Francisco State, liberal California transplants who now live in the suburbs of New York City.  I went to Sarah Lawrence College, where you can get a degree in LGBT studies.

This was very different from the background of my treasured coworkers and friends, needless to say.  I remember a professor from Sarah Lawrence, Joshua Muldavin (my don!),  who said our lives are full of many, many contradictions– and we need to hold those contradictions in our hands, and somehow draw strength from them.  This always confused me.  Don’t these contradictions weaken us, rather than strengthen us? My life in Uganda was full of many contradictions, exposing constant complexities I had never fully considered.  The twenty-year-old me would never grasp that I could have a friendship with someone who genuinely believes that gay people have to wear “Pampers” because of their anal sex lives.  But, this is what an incredibly kind coworker and neighbor told us at an editorial meeting at New Vison, and she genuinely believed it.

There is a ton of misinformation floating around in Uganda about gay people.  For instance, some coworkers at New Vision couldn’t tell the difference between homosexuality and pedophilia, perceiving homosexuality as something synonymous with, let’s say, a Ugandan male headmaster forcing his boy students into sexual acts (what that says about the education system, I don’t know!).

Homosexuality (as presented in the Ugandan media) seems inextricably linked to defilement, the English term for molestation.  My supervisor, trying to explain how homosexuality works to editors and reporters at an editorial meeting, said sympathetically that homosexuals are traumatized, formerly defiled children who repeat the cycle by defiling other boy students.  To me, homosexuality seems as linked to molestation as heterosexuality does– after all, the New Vision newspaper was full of stories of female students being molested by men in their communities, from teachers to relatives.  But to many of my colleagues, they couldn’t explain the difference between the two.

My SIT urban host mom also did not know what the term gay meant.  One time, in Kanyanya, she asked me if Michael Jackson was a “lesbian,” and did he really defile boy children in America? This made me laugh in surprise, and I told her that lesbians were women who had relationships with other women, and that adults who molest children in the U.S. are called “pedophiles.”
What we do know is that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill under review in a Ugandan Parliament committee is, well, insane.  Just the nullifying international treaties part alone is rather crazy.

At the CHOGM meeting last Friday in Trinidad and Tobago, Canada was openly hostile to Uganda, and the UK prime minister Gordon Brown tried to bring the issue up with President Museveni.  Activists there called for Uganda to be expelled from the Commonwealth if the bill passes.

What is even more fascinating is how American evangelicals have been involved in this bill.  Last March, three American evangelicals traveled to Uganda for a conference, hoping to “expose the truth behind homosexuality and the homosexuality agenda.”  The first is Scott Lively, president of Defend the Family International, and the second is Don Schmierer, an American author who works with, yes, homosexuality recovery groups.  The third is Caleb Lee Brundidge, who has made a career as a “sexuality reorientation coach.”  This would all be laughable in the sentiment of the film “But I’m a Cheerleader” (I love Natasha Lyonne in that film!), if it wasn’t all so dangerous.

Scott Lively is one of three American evangelists linked to lethal anti-gay bill in Uganda's Parliament

These American leaders have been working with Uganda’s Stephen Langa, an evangelist who runs the Kampala-based Family Life Network.  ’As one parent told me,” said Langa, who accuses Uganda’s gay population of recruiting schoolchildren into homosexality.  ”We would rather live in grass huts with our morality than in skyscrapers among homosexuals.”  Pastor Martin Ssempa, who I had great conversations with over the summer, has said Uganda no longer cares about Western donors, now that they have “oil money.”

Contradictions, contradictions.  Uganda has sold its oil fields to Canadian and now Italian investors, and a huge chunk of the country’s budget is also financed by Western governments.  But I guess on the issue of homosexuality (rather than on the issue of, I don’t know, national sovereignty?), Uganda is happy to break with the Western world.  Unless, of course, you are breaking bread with the sexual reorientation coaches of the world, but we’ll leave that to Langa to explain.

The University of Memphis’ GLBT Research Team is conducting a GLBT-affirmative study on Same-Sex Parenting, and we are looking for participants.  The purpose of this study is to learn about the experiences of same-sex parents in relationship to legal parenting rights.  We believe this research is important in advocating for parents to be fully recognized in their family role and to not be discriminated against in family concerns.

Participants must be 18 years or older, currently be in a relationship with the same-sex partner with whom they have planned and created a family, and have at least one child under the age of 18 living in their home. The study should take approximately 20 minutes to complete online and meets human subjects approval by our university Institutional Review Board (E10-43).

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=jVp53YOXI6tNs1dgubIk_2bg_3d_3d

If you wish to see our past work, please read about our research on the effects of anti-GLBT amendments on GLBT individuals and their families, which is available on the American Psychological Association’s website at http://www.apa.org/releases/glbt-stress-1108.html.

An overview of our research areas can be found on our school webpage at http://www.memphis.edu/cepr/glbt-research.htm.

Thank you for your consideration in supporting our advocacy for same-sex parents and their families.

–
Sincerely,

Sharon Horne, Ph.D. &
Heidi Levitt, Ph.D., Directors
GLBT Research Team
The University of Memphis

Racism is thinking about, or thinking negatively about someones race whenever you see them.  These communist, Orwellian elements say they are striving to end racism, but like every liberal policy it has the exact opposite of its stated intent.  They are actually seeking to DIVIDE us by constantly REMINDING us of other people’s face, creed, sex (or sexual preference), or national origin.

If you want to know where all of the communist hippies from the 1960’s went, just look in our colleges and universities, as well as most of the political offices.  It was bad two decades ago when I was a college student, but this is out of control.

I’ve always taught my children that they must respect my opinion, but they don’t have to hold it as their own.  I’ve taught them, and continue to teach them HOW to think, not WHAT to think.

What universities such as the one documented in the article and video below are doing is outright Orwellian re-education.  Not only are they teaching you what you must say, they are screening people based upon what they THINK.  If there is evidence that a student or faculty member doesn’t THINK “acceptable thoughts,” then they are forced to undergo “re-education,” or denied admission or employment.  If the re-education movement kept you from reading “1984″ when you were in school, or it’s just been a while since you read it, read the book.  It’s uncanny how it fits as a blueprint for what is going on here.

My children are not yet of college age, but should any vestiges of these programs still exist at any of the prospective schools that my children might attend, I will not be paying one red cent for them to go there.  As the white collar jobs became more popular, fewer people entered the trades of electrician, plumber, etc.  These jobs are increasingly in demand now, and many in the trades can set their own rates and wages.  If the re-education efforts on our campuses continues, I’ll encourage my kids to do something more honest for a living.

Teaching plan: America ‘an oppressive hellhole’

University outlines ‘re-education’ for those who hold ‘wrong’ views

Posted: November 27, 2009
9:15 pm Eastern
+
By Bob Unruh
WorldNetDaily

A program proposed at the University of Minnesota would result in required examinations of teacher candidates on “white privilege” as well as “remedial re-education” for those who hold the “wrong” views, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. (Straight out of the pages of Orwell’s “1984″)

The organization, which promotes civil liberties on the campuses of America’s colleges and universities, has dispatched a letter to University of Minnesota President Robert Bruininks asking him to intervene to prevent the adoption of policies proposed in his College of Education and Human Development.

“The university’s general counsel should be asked to comment as soon as possible,” said the letter from Adam Kissel, an officer with FIRE. “If the Race, Culture, Class, and Gender Task Group achieves its stated goals, the result will be political and ideological screening of applicants, remedial re-education for those with the ‘wrong’ views and values, [and] withholding of degrees from those upon whom the university’s political re-education efforts proved ineffective.”

By any “nontotalitarian” standards, he wrote, the the plans being made so far by the school are “severely unjust and impermissibly intrude into matters of individual conscience.”

Kissel wrote that it appears that the university “intends to redesign its admissions process so that it screens out people with the ‘wrong’ beliefs and values – those who either do not have sufficient ‘cultural competence’ or those who the college judges will not be able to be converted to the ‘correct’ beliefs and values even after remedial re-education.”

“These intentions violate the freedom of conscience of the university’s students. As a public university bound by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, the university is both legally and morally obligated to uphold this fundamental right,” he wrote.

WND messages left with the university requesting comment did not generate a response today.

Among the issues discussed in the plans are requirements that teachers would be able to instruct students on the “myth of meritocracy” in the United States, “the history of demands for assimilation to white, middle-class, Christian meanings and values,” and the “history of white racism.”  (This is how you fracture a society.  It just so happened that most of the people who founded America were white, but their beliefs and values were not “white,” they were indeed Christian.  Christian values do not discriminate against anyone, even non-Christians.  Christian beliefs welcome and tolerate people while informing them of what we believe and allowing them to exercise FREE WILL to decide their own course.  The radical groups that are screaming “tolerance” are practicing anything but.  Radical gay groups are an example.  Rather than trying to show that they pose no threat and trying to get along with people, they intimidate and disparage anyone who doesn’t COMPLETELY AGREE with their agenda.  Because of my religious beliefs I think homosexuality is a sin, but I don’t go around stoning gays and publicly identifying and disparaging them.  I offer them the message of what the Bible says about homosexuality and let them live their lives.  I don’t interfere with their life or force my lifestyle on them as long as they don’t force theirs on me.  The radical groups don’t respect that boundary and seek to redefine it in a way that suppresses opposition.  On the issue of marriage, they seek to redefine the term to something that encompasses things for which the term was never intended.  Marriage defines the union between a MAN and a WOMAN for the purposes of procreation.  Radical gay groups seek to change the definition of the term and cheapen its meaning.  In reference to my original statement, gays can have civil unions, or partnerships, or whatever they want to call their relationship all they want to, and under the legal recognition of such unions they can have all the same legal benefits as marriage, but the term marriage does not apply because it is a HETEROSEXUAL term with a HETEROSEXUAL meaning, and a HETEROSEXUAL history.  Forcing us to redefine the term marriage to encompass the gay lifestyle CHOICE is crossing that line of tolerance.)

The demands appear to be similar to those promoted earlier at the University of Delaware.

As WND reported, the Delaware university’s office of residential life was caught requiring students to participate in a program that taught “all whites are racist.”

School officials immediately defended the teaching, but in the face of a backlash from alumni and publicity about its work, the school decided to drop the curriculum, although some factions later suggested its revival.

FIRE, which challenged the Delaware plan, later produced a video explaining how the institution of the university pushed for the teachings, was caught and later backed off:

Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten said the developing Minnesota plan would require teachers to “embrace – and be prepared to teach our state’s kids – the task force’s own vision of America as an oppressive hellhole: racist, sexist and homophobic.”

She said the plan from the university’s Teacher Education Redesign Initiative – a multiyear project to change the way future teachers are trained – “is premised, in part, on the conviction that Minnesota teachers’ lack of ‘cultural competence’ contributes to the poor academic performance of the state’s minority students.”  (Cop out.  By their logic, I don’t play in the NBA because they are biased against athletically and vertically challenged white people.  Academics is the practice of leading students to the water of knowledge.  But just like horses at the stream, you can’t force them to drink.  We can expose students to knowledge just as we expose the horse to water at the stream, but the student has to WANT to learn just like the horse has to WANT to drink.)

“The first step toward ‘cultural competence,’ says the task group, is for future teachers to recognize – and confess – their own bigotry. Anyone familiar with the re-education camps of China’s Cultural Revolution will recognize the modus operandi,” she said.  (If earning an honest living, paying my own way, owning all that I have because of the fruits of my own labors, and believing that anyone who owns something should acquire it the same way makes me a bigot, the so be it.  This is just more of the liberal mudslinging and name calling they employ to intimidate people.)

“What if some aspiring teachers resist this effort at thought control and object to parroting back an ideological line as a condition of future employment?” she posed. “The task group has Orwellian plans for such rebels: The U, it says, must ‘develop clear steps and procedures for working with nonperforming students, including a remediation plan.’”

The plan asks: “How can we be sure that teaching supervisors are themselves developed and equipped in cultural competence outcomes in order to supervise beginning teachers around issues of race, class, culture, and gender?”

The original correct answer was to have “a training session disguised as a thank-you/recognition ceremony/reception at the beginning of the year.” The task force later edited itself to call for a required “training/workshop for all supervisors. Perhaps as part of an orientation/thank-you/recognition ceremony/reception at the beginning of the year?”

“There was no deception planned or intended as may be implied in the use of the word [disguised],” a footnote said, “We have edited this to reflect our commitment to integrity in our work. This amendment was made 11/09/2009.”

Nevertheless, FIRE’s concern included the apparent plan for demands that teachers “discuss their own histories and current thinking drawing on notions of white privilege, hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, and internalized oppression.”

Further, the letter noted, “the college in its proposal promises to start screening its applicants to make sure they have the proper ‘commitments’ and ‘dispositions.’”

“Here’s the kicker,” FIRE said in its report. “The college even realizes that its efforts to impose such a severe ideological litmus test may be unconstitutional.” (Yet they brazenly persist in following this course of action.  That clearly identifies the leftist ideology of those running this institution.)

The letter cited a proposal to consult with the university’s own lawyers.

“FIRE urges you to consider the Supreme Court’s ruling in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943), which invalidated mandated allegiances to political ideologies at public schools,” Kissel wrote for FIRE.

Writing for the court, Justice Robert H. Jackson declared: “Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order. If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

This is where issue of marriage is particularly crucial. In effect, whilst civil partnerships, unions are a step in the right direction (to borrow form the phrase pool of Rudd) they are not equal to marriage. Civil unions are legally recognised for residents within the three states and territories present within Australia. In addition these unions also vary from state to state in the level of protection offered by the Government, some may receive adoption rights, whilst in another state couples may only receive property rights. Civil union may not even be portable, two may be considered ‘life partners’ in one state, and nothing legally binding in another. Marriage offers an entirety of protection, it establishes a spouse as the next-of-kin, substitute blood relatives in the eyes of the law. This title is essential for loving couples, as it provides peace of mind, knowing that your partner may have an official say in medical, property or funeral matters. Marriage is also legally recognised by all Governments across the globe (currently between a man and a woman, but this stresses the importance of the global community to expand the notion of marriage), and it can be performed anywhere and still be recognised, which is more than what can be said for civil – unions. Theoretically these unions were designed to provide protection and equality for single sex relationships, whilst remaining separate from marriage. Why? – To keep the sanctity of marriage in tact, to not redefine the notion of marriage, to keep the status quo. On those points I feel it is essential to meticulously dissect each argument for the purpose of revealing the sheer paradoxical and illogical beliefs behind this lack of equality.