[Active-l] (NEWS) Today's Cultural Warfare Update

[Dara (R'ykandar Korra'ti)]

I'm swamped with end-of-the-quarter/end of the year school stuff;  
that's why there haven't been any CWUs in a while. Here are some bits  
I've collected for the next major round that aren't from my usual  
sources.

This summer, things should get more back to normal. Sorry about the  
lame. My last final is Wednesday. Monday, I had to turn in a quarter- 
long group research project (normally 3-4 people) that I had to do  
myself; yesterday I had a lab practical (which sucked); tomorrow I  
have a major _de facto_ final that is not technically a final exam  
but pretty much is and I need around 100% on it. Monday I have voice  
jury and Wednesday the technical final for Zoology.

Anyway, here's my nonstandard-sources CWU for today.

The founder and president of Abstinence Clearinghouse condemns - and  
rather goes crazy about - the new fewer-periods version of the birth  
control pill on Fox News; the Slog link I'm pointing to contains a  
clickthrough to original video. One thing interesting about this is  
that the current chief executive, Mr. Bush, spoke to the group's  
national conference in 2004;

Presidential candidate and current Senator John Edwards (D-NC) quoted  
by an ex-aide as being "not comfortable with those people," where  
"those people" = t3h gayz; his campaign says he was quoted "out of  
context" but doesn't deny it; the Washignton Blade has rather  
critical commentary;

Russian nationalist crowd attacks gay rights supporters, including  
European Parliament members; Russian police arrest the victims, and  
are commended for doing so;

Reuters story on the young-earth Creationist pseudo-natural-history  
museum;

The C|Net story on the "Warriors for Innocence"-sparked mass journal  
deletion on Livejournal; most of the deleted journals have been  
reinstated with apologies. What's relevant about this is that if you  
do a little digging on the WfI founder/leader, she considers gayfolk  
to be exactly as bad as paedophiles;

A link to Sue of WfI's original letter to Livejournal; unfortunately,  
she's taken her journal friends-only, but I had previously captured  
key paragraphs;

A link to Sue's journal, discussing Cardinal Mahoney; the relevant  
parts for this LJ are where she comments on GBLT people;  
unfortunately, she's taken her journal friends-only, but I had  
previously captured key paragraphs;

Johann Hari writes about a previous PM of the UK who was apparently  
gay, and various condemnations for bringing it up at all;

Chief Executive Mr. Bush nominates anti-gay church activist - Dr.  
James  Holsinger, Jr., mentioned in these Updates before - to be new  
Surgeon General; ABC News is kind enough to include a link to the  
paper, which I also provide.


----- 1 -----
“This is a real war on women, and a war on children.”
Posted by Dan Savage on May 24 at 19:56 PM
The Stranger

http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/05/ 
this_is_a_real_war_on_women_and_a_war_on

A war on women and children? You mean economic insecurity? Millions  
of children without health insurance? A food stamp program amounts to  
starvation rations?

No, the war on women is about these new fangled birth control pills  
that eliminate a woman’s periods for as long as she takes ‘em.

[Blog entry includes original video. Abstinence Clearinghouse's  
homepage is here ( http://www.abstinence.net/ ), and features a top- 
level link to video of Mr. Bush's address to their 2004 convention.]


----- 2 -----
Edwards uncomfortable with ‘those people’
Blade Blog
Washington Blade Online
(Undated but online as of 28 May 2007)

http://www.washblade.com/blog/index.cfm?blog_id=12834

Perennial Democratic strategist Bob Shrum drops a bombshell in his  
new book, according to a report in today’s Washington Post.

In the book, he says he asked former Sen. John Edwards at the outset  
of his 1998 Senate campaign, “What is your position, Mr. Edwards, on  
gay rights?”

“I’m not comfortable around those people,” was Edwards’ reply,  
according to Shrum.

To say the denials today from Edwards’ camp are unconvincing would be  
a gross understatement.

Harrison Hickman, Edwards’ pollster, who the Post says was in the  
room at the time he made the remarks, claims that Shrum, “is  
sensationalizing and taking out of context what was an honest  
discussion about [Edwards’s] lack of exposure to these issues and  
openly gay people. I don’t remember anything that expressed any kind  
of venom or judgment about gay people.”

Eric Schultz, an Edwards spokesperson, says Shrum is more interested  
in selling books than in the truth.

But Edwards’ people don’t deny the accuracy of the quote; it was  
conveniently “taken out of context,” they say.

“Those people?”

[More at URL]


----- 3 -----
Russian Police Detain Gay Activists
By JIM HEINTZ
Associated Press Writer
May 27, 6:14 PM EDT

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/R/RUSSIA_GAY_RIGHTS? 
SITE=7219&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2007-05-27-16-29-46

MOSCOW (AP) -- Police detained gay rights activists, among them  
European lawmakers, as they tried to present a letter to Moscow's  
mayor Sunday in a demonstration that also attracted a hostile crowd  
of people who punched and threw eggs at the activists.

The letter, signed by some 40 European lawmakers, appealed the city's  
ban on a march that would have taken place Sunday to mark the 14th  
anniversary of Russia decriminalizing homosexuality.

Police quickly grabbed about a dozen demonstrators and forced them  
into a bus, including the Russian gay rights movement leader Nikolai  
Alexeyev. Police then hustled away others, including German  
parliament member Volker Beck, as opponents threw eggs and shouted:  
"Moscow is not Sodom!"

Marco Cappato, a European Parliament deputy from Italy, was kicked by  
one opponent as he spoke to journalists. Cappato began shouting:  
"Where are the police? Why don't you protect us?" and officers hauled  
him away as he struggled.

[...]

The Interfax news agency quoted a Moscow city spokesman, Mikhail  
Solomentsev, as praising the "cooordinated and polite actions of the  
police, who acted in strict accordance with the law."

[More at URL]


----- 4 -----
New museum says dinosaurs were on Noah's Ark
Reuters
Sat May 26, 2007 2:51PM EDT
By Andrea Hopkins

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN2621240720070526

PETERSBURG, Ky (Reuters) - Like many modern museums, the newest U.S.  
tourist attraction includes some awesome exhibits -- roaring  
dinosaurs and a life-sized ship.

But only at the Creation Museum in Kentucky do the dinosaurs sail on  
the ship -- Noah's Ark, to be precise.

The Christian creators of the sprawling museum, unveiled on Saturday,  
hope to draw as many as half a million people each year to their  
state-of-the-art project, which depicts the Bible's first book,  
Genesis, as literal truth.

"What we've done here is to give people an opportunity to hear  
information that is not readily available ... to challenge them that  
really you can believe the Bible's history," said Ken Ham, president  
of the group Answers in Genesis that founded the museum.

While the $27 million museum near Cincinnati has drawn snickers from  
media and condemnation from U.S. scientists, those who believe God  
created the heavens and the Earth in six days about 6,000 years ago  
say their views are finally being represented.

[More at URL]


----- 5 -----
Mass deletion sparks LiveJournal revolt
By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: May 30, 2007, 3:47 PM PDT

http://news.com.com/Mass+deletion+sparks+LiveJournal+revolt/ 
2100-1025_3-6187619.html

Thousands of LiveJournal customers are rebelling against the  
company's recent decision to censor hundreds of sex-themed discussion  
groups, a broad swath that has led to the removal of literary  
critiques and fan-written fiction about Harry Potter.

LiveJournal, which is owned by San Francisco-based Six Apart,  
confirmed Wednesday that it deleted around 500 journals this week in  
hopes of better "protecting children." It said the deletion was  
prompted by activist groups, including one called Warriors for  
Innocence that claims to track sites promoting pedophilia, the sexual  
abuse of minors, and other illegal activities.

[...]

"As a queer, feminist writer who explores the darker aspects of human  
nature, many of my stories deal with incest, rape and child  
molestation," a LiveJournal member named "bitterfig" wrote. "As such,  
I belonged to and contributed to several of the communities which  
have been suspended and frankly I'm pretty offended. I don't like  
being lumped in with rapists and pedophiles and other 'monsters on  
the Web.'"

Practically any attempt to sort works of fiction into tidy piles of  
acceptable and unacceptable material, of course, is likely to invite  
controversy. Works by noted authors such as James Joyce, Henry Miller  
and William S. Burroughs have been lauded as masterpieces--and at  
other times prosecuted as obscene.

What has outraged the LiveJournal protesters is that the purging of  
discussions and accounts went far beyond what they say was necessary  
to target pedophilia. One post noted that two journals were deleted  
on the grounds that "they in some way encouraged illegal behavior"  
even though the accounts belonged to clearly labeled fictional  
characters in a role-playing game. Another deleted community was  
reportedly home to Spanish-language discussions of Vladimir Nabokov's  
famous novel Lolita.

[More at URL]


----- 6 -----
Copy of "Warriors for Innocence" letter to Livejournal
Sues Views
Online as of 27 May 2007

http://suesviews2.blogspot.com/2007/05/livejournal-and-six-apart-its- 
time-to.html

[Editor's note: This blog has since gone friends-only, presumably  
since it got discovered.]

Dear Six Apart,

I have found many ads on very inappropriate web pages that are hosted  
by LiveJournal.com. These ads are in close proximity to such subjects  
as Child Rape, Child Molestation, Child Abuse, Child Pornography, and  
other disturbing topics. I am sure that as a responsible and well  
respected company, you know nothing about this, just as the  
advertisers on LiveJournal do not.

[...]

Since there are literally thousands of sick pedophile and child sex  
sites like this on LiveJournal, merely requesting to have the ad  
removed from a single page or site will not stop the problem. The  
advertising companies have had to ask to withdraw their ads from all  
of LiveJournal.com in order to protect themselves and the reputations  
of their companies. I have emails from several advertising companies  
who have done just that.

[...]

It’s time to value child safety above free speech. It’s time to do  
the right thing. If morals will not compel you to do this, then maybe  
loss of advertising dollars will.

[More at URL]


----- 7 -----
I Hate Roger Mahoney
Sues Views
Online as of 27 May 2007

http://suesviews2.blogspot.com/2006/05/i-hate-roger-mahoney.html

[Editor's note: This blog has since gone friends-only, presumably  
since it got discovered.]

This is old news, but I still want to rant. Roger Mahoney (I refuse  
to call him Cardinal because he doesn’t deserve it) is sick, twisted,  
and should be in prison. He abuses his position of authority to  
further his twisted agenda: Pedophilia, Homosexuality, Rape and  
sexual abuse, Racketeering, Fraud, and many others.

[...]

In 1993 Mahoney help fund and produce the video A Journey for  
Understanding Gays and Lesbians in the Church. The video affirmed  
that there was nothing wrong with any “gay” or lesbian person  
whatsoever, that “being gay was a blessing and a gift,” and had  
“something prophetic toward remodeling the Church”. 2 ~ Sick bastard.

[More at URL]


----- 8 -----
Britain's gay Prime Minister
It was only forty years ago
johannhari.com
2 June 2007

http://johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=1129
	
Has Britain already had a gay Prime Minister - only a few decades  
ago? The answer now seems to be yes. Brian Coleman, a Tory member of  
the London Assembly, finally pushed the rumours into the public  
domain last month when he said it was "common knowledge" in Tory  
circles that Edward Heath, Conservative resident of Number Ten  
Downing Street from 1970 to 1974, was gay.

[...]

But should we care? Does this submerged history matter? Peter  
Tatchell thinks it does. He says that the gay rights movement has  
been "fighting a great liberation struggle handicapped by an almost  
total lack of knowledge of our own past. Our minds are colonised by a  
straight version of history, where we gay people are invisible. Our  
existence has been erased from the historical record. Apart from  
Oscar Wilde, the only gay people who come to attention in the history  
books are mass murderers, spies, child abusers and men entrapped by  
the police in public toilets."

[...]

And it's revealing that the people most keen to scorn these  
revelations about the gay Prime Ministers in our past are the people  
who would be most hostile to gay Prime Ministers in our future.  
Andrew Roberts, a far right historian, sniped in the Daily Express  
that discussing the sexuality of dead figures is "a baleful  
phenomenon" which "adds to a new terror to death - that someone can  
be accused of performing then-criminal acts such as cottaging." He  
insisted Heath was suffering from "a rare for of thyroid complaint"  
that made him "asexual".

A gaggle of ugly right-wing commentators has declared that Britain  
will never again tolerate a gay leader. Simon Heffer of the Daily  
Telegraph says it is "undesirable" that "political parties or  
governments should have an unrepresentative number of homosexuals in  
their upper ranks. As the present Labour administration has  
demonstrated, it is difficult for ministers to grasp problems  
affecting the family if you don't have one." Glossing over the  
bizarre idea that gay people don't have families - does he think we  
hatch from an egg? - he continued, "The obsessive nature of politics  
that so absorbs homosexuals may also deny them a sense of  
perspective, and deny them a hinterland in which to retreat."

Similarly, Bruce Anderson - a colleague of mine at the Independent,  
who once charmingly called me "an uppity little queer" during a  
drunken rant - says, "A homosexual who seemed to be a contender for  
the premiership might be subjected to the most intense scutiny.  
Though homosexuals may be the beneficiaries of increasing tolerance,  
this would not extend to an attempt to adopt children. 'Jonny lives  
with Bob and Jerry' - possibly, but not in Downing Street."

[More at URL]


----- 9 -----
'Homosexuality Isn't Natural or Healthy'
Bush's Choice for Top Doc Compared Human Genitalia to Pipe Fittings  
and Said Homosexual Practices Can Cause Injury or Death
By JAKE TAPPER
June 7, 2007

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3251663&page=1

President Bush's nominee for surgeon general, Dr. James W. Holsinger  
Jr., wrote a paper in 1991 that purported to make the medical  
argument that homosexuality is unnatural and unhealthy. Doctors who  
reviewed the paper derided it as prioritizing political ideology over  
science, and Democratic aides on Capitol Hill say the paper will make  
his confirmation hearings problematic, if not downright bruising.

Holsinger, 68, presented "The Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality"  
in January 1991 to a United Methodist Church's committee to study  
homosexuality. (Read the paper here.) The church was then considering  
changing its view that homosexuality violates Christian teaching,  
though it ultimately did not do so. Relying on footnotes from  
mainstream medical publications, Holsinger argued that homosexuality  
isn't natural or healthy.

[...]

Noting that Holsinger also belongs to a church that offers a ministry  
to "cure" gays of the sexual orientation, gay and lesbian rights  
advocates immediately protested Holsinger's nomination. "His writings  
suggest a scientific view rooted in anti-gay beliefs that are  
incompatible with the job of serving the medical health of all  
Americans," said the Human Rights Campaign in a statement. "It is  
essential that America's top doctor value sound science over anti-gay  
ideology."

[...]

Professor Eli Coleman, Director of the Program in Human Sexuality at  
the University of Minnesota Medical School said that the paper seems  
to have a pre-1970s view of human sexuality. "I an't imagine that any  
scientific journal would be able to publish this material because of  
its very narrow views of homosexuality," he said.

In fact, if one of his students handed the paper in, Coleman would  
give it a failing grade, he said. "I find it rather outdated in terms  
of its scientific knowledge and also narrow in its view of  
homosexuality," Coleman said. "It concerns me because I think our  
public policy really should be based upon best available science."

"It's a totally faulty paper. The man doesn't know anything about  
human sexuality," said June M. Reinisch, Ph.D., director emeritus of  
the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender & Reproduction.  
"There's clearly a political agenda in this paper. This is not a  
scientific paper."

[Ed. Note: Dr. Holsinger's paper is online here:

http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/Holsinger_on_Homosexuality.pdf

This is not his most recent anti-gay work; he's involved with a "gay  
conversion" church in Kentucky.]