I have been increasingly alarmed by the manner in which high ranking military officers have been recruited into the Christianist ranks and then seem unable to distinguish between the fact that this is a secular nation, not a theocracy. This story in the Virginian Pilot involves one general - Maj. Gen. Jack Catton (pictured at left) - almost literally in my back yard (http://content.hamptonroads.com/story.cfm?story=129880&ran=143555&tref=po). Here are some high lights:
A general at Langley Air Force Base could face discipline for violating regulations by wearing his uniform in a fund-raising video for an evangelical Christian group, according to a government report. Maj. Gen. Jack Catton, a director at Air Combat Command, improperly promoted Christian Embassy, the Inspector General of the Department of Defense concluded after a seven-month investigation. Seven Air Force and Army officers appeared in video segments filmed in the Pentagon, according to the 45-page report.
Catton remains at his job, which includes planning for planes and parts, said Maj. Thomas Crosson, a spokesman for the command. He said Catton announced July 5 that he will retire on New Year’s Day after 31 years of service. According to the report, released late last month, the Pentagon Chaplain’s office sponsored a group from Christian Embassy in 2004.
The nonprofit group is dedicated to evangelical Christian teachings and relies on donations, according to its Web site. It hosts weekly prayer meeting at the Pentagon and is affiliated with Campus Crusade For Christ International.
The group filmed at the Pentagon over several months, despite receiving permission for a single day of shooting, inspectors found. The video showed various military scenes, emblems and symbols, spliced with interviews of uniformed officers in Pentagon offices. Appearing in the video, the report said, were Catton, Air Force Maj. Gen. Peter Sutton, Army Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks, Army Brig. Gen. Robert Caslen Jr. and retired Army Chaplain Ralph Benson.
I urge every reader in the USA to contact their representatives in Congress and urge them to take action that will firmly punish service members who endorse religious organizations while in uniform. This phenomenon is only one of many which has been allowed - if not encouraged - by Chimperator Bush's regime. Meanwhile the Chimperator threatens to veto legislation providing health coverage to poor children and gays in the military need to live in the closet.
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If you have not already viewed the 2006 documentary, "Jesus Camps," you may wish to peruse it (from Netflix, for example). These "religionists" are not Christians, but what they are I could not tell anyone.
But, BEFORE holding Right-Wing Evangelicals culprit, or CHURCH OF ROME Prada Popes in contempt, or Orthodox Jewish homophobes in disdain, much less the MUSLIM fanatics lynching teen gays for their love, notice the common denominator: The Levitical Code of Holinesss!
Antiquity prized most homophile relationships and experiences. Only a small nomadic Mesopotamian tribe practiced hyper-scrutiny of "social, religious, moral, and tribal" disgust. If Christianity had not fostered that homophobia (or menses phobia), or if Islam had not fostered the same, both from the Levitical Code, homophiles would be a normal aspect of modern societies as it was in ancient ones.
Power and Other-Disgust have always been powerful allies, as even Hitler's Germany, Lenin-Stalin's socialism, Mao Zedung's Chinese Revolution, and most megalomaniac psychosexual displacement by men (straight or gay) demonstrate with other men and/or women. Even Fidel Castro's Cuba turned homophobic when Che would not return Fidel's affections, or vice versa, and the PURGE of homophiles followed. Latin cultures, especially, have indulged boys-men as boys-men, but introduce "power" to the dynamics, and then it changes into deviance, homophobia, and psychosexual aberrations. Some suggest that homophobe Albert Ellis turned against gay men when his sex with them did not feed his psychosexual need to dominate, which women allowed.
The conjunction of "power" and "sexual displacement" in modern societies is beyond the "alarm" point, and Regressive Repressive Republicans are a deviant group for this precise reason. In denial of self-loathing homophilia, turned against them by psychosexual betrayal and revenge, they persecute what they ordinarily would most embrace. As America's psychosexual deviance multiplies vis-a-vis former CATHOLIC countries who embrace same-sex relations, one detects the "disgust-factor" operating in the few societies where Levitical Homophobia is permitted and tolerated.
It's NO chance happenstance that homophobia and circumcised men go hand-in-hand. Those societies and cultures without the hyper-disgust of their natural flesh and desires, including male foreskins, are, and always have been, welcoming to sexual diversity. 90% of all homophobia is perpetuated in circumcised societies. Holland, Belgium, Spain, Brazil, Columbia, etc. do not practice circumcision, but America, Israel, and Arab countries DO. It's not the "cut" itself that creates the problem, it is the psychosexual attitudes of the societies that PERMIT male genital mutilation in the first place, that create the homophobia. Those who mutilate female genitals are right up there with homophobic societies, with the "disgust" of women and their menses.
The CULTURAL "disgust-factor" is at root of much homophobia, as it is of the denigrations of women, despite BOTH being BIOLOGICAL normal! Biologists nailed this correspondence decades ago, and now power-dynamics only push the envelope further. Power is frequently the psychosexual displacement of normal biological homoerotic desires. Whether Bush-Cheney, Evangelicals, Zionists, Arabs, Psychoanalysts, Military Corps, or Transgressive Pornographers into S&M/B&D.
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