The Archdiocese of Washington has been battling the D.C. government for the right to discriminate against gays and lesbians since D.C.’s same-sex marriage legislation got rolling last year.
One major point of contention: Once gays and lesbians are allowed to marry, the Archdiocese—which employs plenty of locals through Catholic Charities—will be required to provide health benefits to same-sex spouses, an act which it says would fly in the face of the Catholic church’s teachings on homosexuality.
The solution? No spousal benefits for anybody.
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I wonder why Catholic Charities isn’t whining about the fact that they’re already providing health care benefits to gay people. It’s obvious they know they have gay and lesbian employees by the fact that they’re instituting this ridiculous and hateful policy. Why aren’t they demanding their right to refuse to provide benefits to these employees? It would be a natural extension of their “religious freedoms” after all. Then again, I probably shouldn’t give them any ideas….
Here’s the memo:
I am writing to you to inform you of an important change to our group health care benefit plan that will take effect on March 2, 2010 due to a change in the law of the District of Columbia. It is important to note that the existing health coverage of current employees will not be affected by the change. New employees and current employees requesting revisions in benefit coverage will be affected by this change.
Catholic Charities will continue to honor the health plan coverage that current employees have as of March 1, 2010. As of March 2, a new plan will be in effect that will cover new employees and requests for benefit changes by current employees. …..
We sincerely regret that we have to make this change, but it is necessary to allow Catholic Charities to continue to provide essential services to the clients we serve in partnership with the District of Columbia while remaining consistent with the tenets of our religious faith.
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Actually if Catholic Charities were truly remaining consistent with the tenets of their religious faith they would be denying benefits to the divorced and anybody who’d had premarital sex, among others. But they choose to target gay people and pretend they’re just upholding their religious tenets while they ignore all of the other “sinners” in their employ.
Ultimately Catholic Charities will screw hundreds, even thousands, of straight people in their quest to stick it to the gays. Once again they prove they aren’t about charity but instead about pushing their personal flavor of religion on everyone. This is yet another reason I detest such organizations receiving any taxpayer money. If they’re going to push their arbitrary religious dogma on employees and/or service recipients they don’t deserve a penny of support from the very people they are harming in the process.
They’re being particularly efficient and lethal with their proposed bill, despite claims to the contrary. They want to fully isolate gay people by ensuring nobody will wish to associate with them (who would, when the penalty is death?). And of course this will lead to an all-out witch-hunt to weed out gay people and gay-sympathizers. In the process countless people who aren’t either will fall prey to this heinous law. But as I’ve said before, no amount of collateral damage is too much for the anti-gay bigots who want to exterminate us in order to sate their own hatred.
Do not hold back discipline from the child,
Although you strike him with the rod, he will not die. Proverbs 23:13
That verse has been heartily embraced by many ultra-conservative religious parents and groups, particularly those who follow the teachings of individuals like James Dobson, Debi and Michael Pearl, or Jack Hyles. Many children have been harmed and even killed by parents using the “godly discipline” that’s nothing more than sadistic child abuse.
Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz apparently are of the “spare the rod, spoil the child” mindset. They are in jail after one of their adopted daughters died and the other was hospitalized following an alleged extensive “discipline” session.
OROVILLE — A fundamentalist religious philosophy that espouses corporal punishment to “train” children to be more obedient to their parents and God is now being investigated in connection with the death of a young Paradise girl and serious injuries to her sister.
Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey confirmed Thursday that other children in the home who have been interviewed told investigators “this philosophy was espoused by their parents.”
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In court Thursday, a judge granted a two-week postponement before the children’s parents, Kevin Schatz, 46, and Elizabeth Schatz, 42, enter a plea to murder and torture charges that could carry two life terms in prison.
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The Schatzes were arrested Saturday morning after their adopted daughter, Lydia, age 7, stopped breathing. She was subsequently pronounced dead.
Her 11-year-old sister, Zariah Schatz, remains in critical condition at a Sacramento children’s hospital, though she is showing some signs of recovery. The two were adopted at the same time with an infant girl, now 3, from the same African orphanage about three years ago,
Prosecutors allege the two victims were subjected to “hours” of corporal punishment by their parents on successive days last Thursday and Friday with a quarter-inch-wide length of rubber or plastic tubing, which police reportedly recovered from the parents’ bedroom.
Police allege that the younger girl was being disciplined for mis-pronouncing a word during a home-school reading lesson the day before she died.
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He said investigators are researching a possible connection to an Internet Web site set up by “fundamentalist Christian people” that recommends use of the same whip-like implement “as an appropriate tool for biblical chastisement … to train a child from infancy to make them a happier child and more obedient to God because they are obedient to the will of their parents,” said Ramsey.
The district attorney said some of the Schatzes’ six biological children, who were removed from the family home for their protection following the parents’ arrest, have made statements suggesting the ridge couple shared this philosophy.
The other children in the home said the same rubber or plastic tube was used on all of them “as a standard method of discipline, but certainly not to the extent of these two girls,” Ramsey added.
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Why we continue to allow “biblical punishment” to be promoted in any way is beyond me. Some people try to frame it as religious freedom and parental rights (generally code-speak for “I own my child and can do whatever I want to him/her no matter what you bleeding hearts say”). It is not. It is clear-cut child abuse.
In the twelve years it took to get the Matthew Shepard Act passed, and even in the months since it was finally signed into law, members of the RRRW have whined about how their precious “religious freedoms” will be denied because they can no longer beat and kill homos with impunity. But the MSA didn’t only add sexual orientation and gender identity to existing hate-crimes laws. It also added gender and disability. Of course the RRRW would have gladly seen these individuals go without hate-crimes protections just to see LGBT people do so. Such is the intensity of their hatred for us; that no amount of collateral damage is too much in their quest to see us suffer. Jennifer Daughtery would be part of that collateral damage if they’d had their way.
A bloody metal crutch, a knife, a pair of white high-top shoes and a plastic bag full of hair were among the items detectives pulled from an apartment where a woman was held captive and tortured last week, according to a police report that offers new glimpses into her slaying.
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The items, listed in an inventory of seized property, fit disturbingly with what police said unfolded in the apartment over 36 hours — that the group beat Ms. Daugherty with household items including the towel rack, the crutch and a vacuum cleaner hose, bound her with Christmas decorations, painted her face with nail polish, cut her hair, and forced her to write a fake suicide note.
They fed her medication, oil and urine and stabbed her to death for reasons police said are still unknown. Ms. Daugherty’s body, found in a garbage can at Greensburg Salem Middle School on Thursday, was the first in a string of gruesome discoveries for detectives investigating the crime and the tangled relationships of those charged in it.
Jailed without bond on charges of homicide, kidnapping, aggravated assault and conspiracy are Ricky Smyrnes, 23, Robert Masters Jr., 36, Melvin Knight, 20, Peggy Miller, 27, Amber Meidinger, 20 and Angela Marinucci, 17.
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Still unknown was how Ms. Daugherty came to know her attackers. Her relatives have said she had the mental capacity of an adolescent, a disability that made her especially trusting and kind. She went to the apartment willingly, police said, boarding a bus from Mount Pleasant, where she lived with her mother and stepfather, on Feb. 8.
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Further charges under the recently signed Hate-Crimes Act are being considered though it’s too early to tell if such charges will be added.
I worked for 20 years with adults who had developmental disabilities. I find it despicable that anybody would prey on such vulnerable individuals. I’d like to see the accused, if found guilty, put away for the maximum allowable time–including any hate crimes enhancements.
In the meantime, my thoughts go out to Jennifer’s family. She was a beautiful woman and what happened to her was an abomination.
Nothing new, of course. Christians have been using “missionary” work and “charity” as a means to push their religion on the needy for centuries. But it’s still sick when people actually consider this a form of help for people who are hungry, injured, sick, homeless, and even dying.
Not any Bible. These are solar-powered audible Bibles that can broadcast the holy scriptures in Haitian Creole to 300 people at a time.
Called the “Proclaimer,” the audio Bible delivers “digital quality” and is designed for “poor and illiterate people,” the Faith Comes By Hearing group said. It added 600 of the devices were already on their way to Haiti.
The Albuquerque-based organization said it was responding to the Haitian crisis by “providing faith, hope and love through God’s Word in audio.”
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They could be providing food, potable water, medicine or shelter. Instead they’re preying on people in their most desperate hour. That’s truly despicable.
And I wonder if the Haitians know the “gift” they’re about to receive was designed for “poor and illiterate people”. Their so-called benefactors are condescending prats as well as predators.
Thankfully I never plan to be in Jordan so I don’t have to worry about this effed up new law. I do, however, feel for those who have to suffer under it.
The Jordanian government has ruled that electronic communication like websites will be subject to the country’s Press and Publications Law, prohibiting speech that insults religion, according to reports from the region.
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Critics of the ruling worry that the law will be widely applied to social media, possibly even SMS and to websites that allow reader comments to be posted. Supporters appear to argue that free speech comes with responsibilities along these lines and that the legal framework actually facilitates online communication.
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A blasphemy law in Ireland, the UN resolution against “defamation of religion” and now this? Where are all the RRRWers who rend their garments over “thought crimes laws” when you need them?
What else can I say about someone who calls for the assassination of world leaders, equates hate-crimes protections for LGBT people with hanging Christians and loves to turn tragedies into a game of “It never would have happened if they’d been as good a Christian as I am”?
Haitians caused the earthquake because of their “pact with the devil”? Does Robertson actually plan his deluded, hateful ravings before he gets on camera or does he just pull them out of his backside as he goes along? I’m not sure which option I’d find more frightening.
If you want to donate to assist the people in Haiti, who did not make a “pact with the devil” or in any way create the situation they are now in, there are many organizations through which you can do so. One I would recommend is Direct Relief International. They are secular and 100% of your donation will go to programs.
Scott Lively has made it his life’s mission to promote intolerance toward LGBT people. He tours the world spreading virulent lies including his particular brand of Holocaust revisionism. He visited Uganda to push the meme that gay people are a menace to society, and to humanity.
Now that Uganda wants to implement barbaric, lethal anti-gay legislation Lively denies he had anything to do with it, and that he is a victim in all of this.
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For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”
Now the three Americans are finding themselves on the defensive, saying they had no intention of helping stoke the kind of anger that could lead to what came next: a bill to impose a death sentence for homosexual behavior.
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Donor countries, including the United States, are demanding that Uganda’s government drop the proposed law, saying it violates human rights, though Uganda’s minister of ethics and integrity (who previously tried to ban miniskirts) recently said, “Homosexuals can forget about human rights.”
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The three Americans who spoke at the conference — Scott Lively, a missionary who has written several books against homosexuality, including “7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child”; Caleb Lee Brundidge, a self-described former gay man who leads “healing seminars”; and Don Schmierer, a board member of Exodus International, whose mission is “mobilizing the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality” — are now trying to distance themselves from the bill.
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Mr. Lively and Mr. Brundidge have made similar remarks in interviews or statements issued by their organizations. But the Ugandan organizers of the conference admit helping draft the bill, and Mr. Lively has acknowledged meeting with Ugandan lawmakers to discuss it. He even wrote on his blog in March that someone had likened their campaign to “a nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda.” Later, when confronted with criticism, Mr. Lively said he was very disappointed that the legislation was so harsh.
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Uganda has also become a magnet for American evangelical groups. Some of the best known Christian personalities have recently passed through here, often bringing with them anti-homosexuality messages, including the Rev. Rick Warren, who visited in 2008 and has compared homosexuality to pedophilia. (Mr. Warren recently condemned the anti-homosexuality bill, seeking to correct what he called “lies and errors and false reports” that he played a role in it.)
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Men like Scott Lively and Rick Warren incite genocide in the name of their “deeply held religious beliefs” while pretending it is they who are under attack. How long are people going to allow Lively, Warren and other proponents of anti-gay hate to continue this cycle? How many people have to suffer and die before the rational world declares “enough is enough”?
It should seem self evident that rape wouldn’t lead to positive results, but sadly some misguided and downright hateful people seem to think that it is an acceptable form of “correction” for gay and lesbian individuals. They believe this so fervently that they’ll even have it done to their own children. So much for “family values”.
A ROCKHAMPTON dad is accused of forcing his son to have sex with a prostitute because he feared the 14-year-old was gay.
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The prostitute took the boy into a motel room while the father waited on a balcony.
The dad walked in and out of the room to check on his son and told him he wanted to see a used condom as proof that they’d had sex. After the boy and the prostitute had finished the dad took his son home.
A magistrate yesterday found there was enough evidence against the father for him to stand trial for the rape of his son.
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He’s got my vote for Father of the Year. Not.
Sky News has found evidence of widespread abuse against the lesbian community - resulting in a new trend of so-called “corrective rape”.
In the the township of Khayelitsha, on the outskirts of Cape Town, Sky spoke to a group of women who said they live in fear of their lives.
All of them said they know someone who has been violently dragged off the streets and raped because they had come out as a lesbian.
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Desire Dudu told Sky she had come out as a lesbian but, in her view, in South African society you risk your life if you make your sexuality clear.
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One man roared with laughter as he said lesbians should be “whipped”. “There is no mention of lesbians in the bible,” he said.
They said they approved of lesbians being raped to “correct” them and to “teach them a lesson”.
They said “women should behave like women” and this was a way of “teaching” them that.
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Perhaps somebody could tell me how beating and raping women falls under the umbrella of “moral values”. Being a lowly atheist I need to have these things explained to me.
Shadix, known for roles like “Otho” in the movie Beetlejuice , was subjected to painful electric shocks as part of his “reparative therapy”. Is it any wonder many of us don’t buy it when the RRRWers claim they “love” us and want to “help” us? Help? Sounds more like sadistic torture to me. Thankfully Shadix came through on the other side.
Apparently bigotry trumps family for some allegedly “pro-family” types. Catholic Charities in D.C., the same folks who ended their foster care program over the pending law that legalizes same-sex marriage, will now cease providing health care benefits to employee’s spouses lest they be required to give them to one with Teh Gay. 
