HIV Is Reported Cured in a Second Patient

One of the things one encounters as a gay male is the effort of the far right and Christian extremists to depict all gays as diseased and a health care threat.  While HIV/AIDS is no longer the virtual death sentence it was three decades ago, treatment remains expensive.  Likewise, thanks to the greed of American pharmaceutical companies, preventive medications such as PrEP outrageously expensive in the USA - in contrast to Europe and Canada - and out of the financial reach of the majority of those in need of it.  The result is that a permanent cure remains the hope of many, including in the black community where heterosexuals are increasingly at risk of the disease in part due to the lack of access to preventive health care and the continued homophobia of black churches (much of the support for the anti-gay vote in the United Methodist Church came from African delegations).  Now, the New York Times is reporting on a second time where HIV seemingly has been cured. While the treatment regime is not of a nature making it easily replicated on a wide scale basis, it may give rise to future treatments.   Here are article highlights: 

For just the second time since the global epidemic began, a patient appears to have been cured of infection with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.

The news comes nearly 12 years to the day after the first patient known to be cured, a feat that researchers have long tried, and failed, to duplicate. The surprise success now confirms that a cure for H.I.V. infection is possible, if difficult, researchers said.

Publicly, the scientists are describing the case as a long-term remission. In interviews, most experts are calling it a cure, with the caveat that it is hard to know how to define the word when there are only two known instances.

Both milestones resulted from bone-marrow transplants given to infected patients. But the transplants were intended to treat cancer in the patients, not H.I.V.

Bone-marrow transplantation is unlikely to be a realistic treatment option in the near future. Powerful drugs are now available to control H.I.V. infection, while the transplants are risky, with harsh side effects that can last for years.

But rearming the body with immune cells similarly modified to resist H.I.V. might well succeed as a practical treatment, experts said.

“This will inspire people that cure is not a dream,” said Dr. Annemarie Wensing, a virologist at the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands. “It’s reachable.”

The new patient has chosen to remain anonymous, and the scientists referred to him only as the “London patient.”  “I feel a sense of responsibility to help the doctors understand how it happened so they can develop the science,” he told The New York Times in an email. Learning that he could be cured of both cancer and H.I.V. infection was “surreal” and “overwhelming,” he added. “I never thought that there would be a cure during my lifetime.”

The London patient has answered that question: A near-death experience is not required for the procedure to work. He had Hodgkin’s lymphoma and received a bone-marrow transplant from a donor with the CCR5 mutation in May 2016. He, too, received immunosuppressive drugs, but the treatment was much less intense, in line with current standards for transplant patients.

He quit taking anti-H.I.V. drugs in September 2017, making him the first patient since Mr. Brown known to remain virus-free for more than a year after stopping.

Although the London patient was not as ill as Mr. Brown had been after the transplant, the procedure worked about as well: The transplant destroyed the cancer without harmful side effects. The transplanted immune cells, now resistant to H.I.V., seem to have fully replaced his vulnerable cells.

Most people with the H.I.V.-resistant mutation, called delta 32, are of Northern European descent. IciStem maintains a database of about 22,000 such donors.

Several companies are pursuing gene therapies but have not yet been successful. The modification must target the right number of cells, in the right place — only the bone marrow, for example, and not the brain — and tweak only the genes directing production of CCR5. Several teams are working on all of these obstacles, Dr. McCune said. Eventually, they may be able to develop a viral delivery system that, when injected into the body, seeks out all CCR5 receptors and deletes them, or even a donor stem cell that is resistant to H.I.V. but could be given to any patient. Mr. Brown says he is hopeful that the London patient’s cure proves as durable as his own. “If something has happened once in medical science, it can happen again,” Mr. Brown said. “I’ve been waiting for company for a long time.”

If one looks to Africa, HIV/AIDS is not a gay disease.  It impacts millions of heterosexuals contrary to the propaganda of the far right and Christofascist.  Let's hope for a successful cure available for widespread use in the near term. 

The Christofascists' New Anti-LGBT Rallying Cry

Mitch McConnell with hate group leader/white supremacist linked Tony Perkins.

Over the weekend Family Research Council ("FRC") - a certified hate group - held it disingenuously named "Value Voters Summit" in the nation's capital.   The key note speaker was Mike Pence - a religious extremist in his own right.  Also addressing the group was Mitch McConnell who disgustingly praised FRC Tony Perkins, a man with well documented ties to white supremacy organizations.  Such is the state of today's GOP that someone like Perkins could have Trump's ear and have McConnell basically groveling to Perkins and assured the Bible thumpers that Kavanaugh would be confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court no matter what issues or damning facts might arise. As is the norm for such gatherings of Christian extremists, abortion and gays were the topics of rants and lies.  This year, a new anti-LGBT rallying cry was formulated pursuant to which lies and disinformation will be disseminated.  A piece in Rewire looks at this latest nastiness.  Here are excerpts:

“Gender ideology” took center stage at this weekend’s Values Voter Summit (VVS) in Washington, D.C. And side stage. And student mixer. In each instance, it was used as a handy catchall: Objecting to “gender ideology” allows Christian conservatives to consolidate all their objections to treating LGBTQ people with dignity into one scary talking point.

 This year, Vice President Mike Pence gave the keynote address following evangelical and conservative darlings like the Benham Brothers (house flippers and sons of Operation Save America’s Flip Benham), Michele Bachmann, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, David Daleiden (of Planned Parenthood hit-video fame), Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, HUD Secretary Ben Carson, Masterpiece baker Jack Phillips, and many others. The turn to “gender ideology” marks a change for this conference and for conservative talking points in general, which in the past have focused more directly on bathroom bills and specious fears for the safety of children. If you’re not familiar with the term, that’s not surprising. More popular with European conservatives, “gender ideology” as a conservative rallying cry has only grown in domestic U.S. circles in the past year or two. Among conservatives, “gender ideology” encompasses a broad range of horrors: LGBTQ-inclusive nondiscrimination laws, transgender-inclusive school and ID-document policies, and comprehensive sex education, to name a few. Rather than ginning up support around specific topics, the broader lens of “gender ideology” allowed speakers to talk about a range of theoretical harms to religious freedom if politics are permitted to be overrun by the “new secular orthodoxy” of sexual orientation and gender identity, as Emilie Kao of the Heritage Foundation called it during her presentation on religious liberty.

[O]n Saturday, moderator Peter Sprigg—researcher at FRC and author of many a [anti-gay] blog about LGBTQ people and policies—introduced the panelists to talk about “How Gender Ideology Harms Children.” First up was disreputed former head of Johns Hopkins Department of Psychiatry head Dr. Paul McHugh. In 1977, Dr. McHugh ended Johns Hopkins’ groundbreaking trans-affirmative medical program. Johns Hopkins reversed the ensuing decades of anti-trans pseudo-scientific rhetoric in 2017, when it reopened its Center for Transgender Health. At VVS, Dr. McHugh gave the same speech he’s been giving at conservative conferences since his retirement, comparing transgender people to people with eating disorders: “We work not to affirm their belief [that they are transgender], but to correct it.”

Throughout his remarks, Dr. McHugh cited discredited research, misrepresented data on trans children, and flat-out lied.

Elizabeth Johnston, known for her Activist Mommy blog and her campaigns against comprehensive sex education, was the last to speak from the stage on Saturday morning. Johnston is a fiery speaker who was the perfect closer for an audience primed to hear her lies and misinformation. Schools are teaching our kids “gender confusion” and how to have oral and anal sex, she claimed. She described comprehensive sex education as “sexual abuse and grooming.”

The week before last, a similar panel was held at the World Congress of Families, in Moldova. Peter Sprigg was there too, giving a PowerPoint presentation on “Five Myths of Gender Identity.” Sprigg was joined by several European anti-transgender activists, and the talking points they shared were very similar to those sprinkled throughout VVS on Saturday.

The similarity is no coincidence: Right-wing and Christian conservatives have been trading tactics and talking points across the ocean for several years now as they try to fight the gains made by the LGBTQ community. And the broadening of their rhetoric is also not a coincidence: Framing support for the LGBTQ community as “gender ideology” allows anti-LGBTQ activists to scare, confuse, and galvanize their voters as we move into an important election season here in the United States, and into a crucial moment in political history across the world.

I dealt with and corresponded with Peter Sprigg some years ago.  He has NO legitimate credentials, continually disseminates deliberate lies about LGBT individuals, and has covered up for "ex-gay" frauds whom he knows are not "cured" of their homosexuality.    Combine Sprigg and other bogus "experts" with Tony Perkins' white supremacist ties, and the only values upheld by "values voters" are lies, bigotry, racism and homophobia.

The Rising Global Tide Against LGBT Individuals

I generally do not view myself as paranoid, but if one looks at what is happening both here in America and around many places in the world, if one is LGBT, there is much to worry about.  Here in America the Trump/Pence regime is waging a relentless war against LGBT Americans and has already taken measures rolling back LGBT protections put in place by the Obama administration, has intervened in a case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit arguing that existing federal civil rights laws do not apply to LGBT individuals and that gays can be fired at will, and had its representative to the United Nations recently voted against a U.N. Human Rights Council resolution that condemned the death penalty for those found guilty of committing consensual same-sex sexual acts.  Meanwhile, Betty Price, a member of the Georgia House of Representatives and wife of former Trump Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, asked this week whether the government could quarantine people with HIV to limit transmission of the virus that causes AIDS.  In doing so, Price parroted a long time talking point of Christofascist organizations - much like what the Nazis did toward Jews - that gays are diseased and pose a public health crisis.  In her ignorance, Price ignored the fact that the exploding HIV crisis now is among blacks, but then again the Trump regime and evangelical Christians do not like blacks anymore than they like gays.

Overseas, things are just as disturbing.   In Russia, that country's awful law that fines anyone expressing support for LGBT rights in public could get even harsher after a senior official in the Ministry of the Interior suggested making it a criminal offense.  A piece in the Washington Post lists other anti-LGBT efforts fueled by religious belief and opportunist politicians only too happy to scapegoat gays to divert attention from their failing policies.  Here are excerpts:

This week, a government journal in the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan announced that the country's interior ministry had compiled a registry of “proven” gays and lesbians. The list named 319 men and 48 women, whom Tajik federal prosecutors identified in operations they called “Morality” and “Purge.”

A purge — likely in the form of mass incarcerations — is exactly what human rights organizations are afraid will happen. But the phenomenon would not be unique to Tajikistan: Over the past few months, police in Egypt, Azerbaijan, Tanzania, Indonesia and the Russian republic of Chechnya have rounded up people suspected of being gay — and in many cases tortured or publicly humiliated them.

What's more, many of the crackdowns look like “copycats” of one another. “There are a lot of ways in which these crackdowns follow the same sequence of events,” said Kyle Knight, a researcher on LGBT rights at Human Rights Watch. “And there's reason to believe that what's happening in Tajikistan now is based on things their government there has learned from, say, what Azerbaijan just did.”

The sequence generally starts with someone — most likely a religious figure or government official — publicly denigrating acts of alleged sexual deviance. In countries where homosexuality is taboo and driven underground, such comments may be the first thing a person has heard in public about LGBT people. “It is easy to say that these particular people are spreading disease, that they are foreigners or sinners. From a starting point of ignorance, prejudice is an easy next step,” said Knight.

Then things get dangerous. . . . In most of the countries listed above, homosexuality is not illegal. But there also aren't any nondiscrimination laws that include sexuality. Without them, political leaders have to expend their own political capital to step in — assuming they think LGBT communities deserve protection at all. Instead, leaders usually side with the denunciations, or even calls for criminalization, and obscenity and prostitution laws are often turned against sexual minorities.  My colleagues in Jakarta, Moscow and Cairo have all recently documented that sequence.

As of this Tuesday, at least 20 people in Egypt had received prison sentences ranging from six months to six years, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights told our Cairo bureau chief, Sudarsan Raghavan. Four people were sentenced to three years each, and rights groups say some have already been beaten and forced to undergo anal examinations.  Of the 20, some were arrested for waving rainbow flags at a concert, others for Facebook posts supporting the LGBT community, and some were tracked down by police on gay dating apps and chatrooms.

In Azerbaijan, meanwhile, more than 80 people have been arrested since mid-September for suspected homosexuality.

The United Nations and Human Rights Watch have interviewed some of those arrested in Azerbaijian, who claim they were subjected to “electric shocks, beatings, forced shaving and other forms of humiliation to force them to incriminate themselves before being released,” according to a U.N. spokesman.

That torture and humiliation is reminiscent of what rights groups were hearing out of the Russian republic of Chechnya earlier this year. Roughly 100 people, mostly young men, were allegedly detained and mercilessly beaten as police attempted to force them to confess their homosexuality. This week, Maxim Lapunov became the first of them to lodge a formal complaint with Russia's Investigative Committee, which has previously dismissed allegations that any such “gay pogrom” ever took place.

Knight, of Human Rights Watch, said conditions are ripe for similar crackdowns in countries all over the world, pointing to Malaysia, Kyrgyzstan and Moldova as examples.

 International out cry can push back against these horrific agendas.  Yet the United States in the age of Trump has signaled that it will not champion human rights for all even as it strives to give Christian extremist at home special rights to ignore non-discrimination and public accommodation laws. Here in Virginia, extremist GOP attorney general candidate John Adams has made it clear that he thinks religious belief should trump the Constitution's right of freedom of religion for those who are not right wing Christians.  It is indeed a worrisome time to be LGBT.  

Trump Domestic Adviser: Gays Can be Changed

If local Trump voters who betrayed their supposed LGBT "friends" and neighbors want a clear picture of what they have done to the LGBT community - and why many of us will never be trusting of them again - look no farther than a piece in the Virginian Pilot that looks at the extremism of Donald Trump's domestic policy adviser Ken Blackwell formerly of Family Research Council ("FRC"), a certified anti-gay hate group that for years has disseminated deliberate lies and untruths and sought to denigrate LGBT individuals. Much of FRC's anti-gay propaganda reads almost identical to that of the Nazi regime lies against those who were Jewish with the word "gay" merely substituted for the word "Jew." Among the other things that the mentally unstable Blackwell says is that gays can be "changed" - never mind that every legitimate medical and mental health association in America disagrees and says such "conversion therapy" is dangerous and harmful.  Here are excerpts from the Pilot piece:

Ken Blackwell, tapped last week by President-elect Donald Trump to head domestic policy during the businessman's transition to the White House, has made anti-LGBT statements for years. Among them: Homosexuality is a sin, and gay people, just like petty thieves and fire-setters, can be rehabilitated.

The former Cincinnati mayor has long endorsed a controversial mental health practice known as conversion therapy or reparative therapy. The goal is to cure a person of his or her homosexuality, and in the case of transgender people, to reaffirm the gender into which they were born.

In the past, treatments have included everything from inducing vomiting to using mild electric shock while patients viewed homoerotic images. Since the 1990s, however, the therapy has been denounced by many medical and scientific societies and even outlawed in a handful of states. In 2015, the Obama administration expressed disapproval of the practice after Leelah Alcorn, a 17-year-old transgender teen in Ohio, took her life after being forced by her parents to undergo conversion counseling.

While Blackwell will be overseeing a wide swath of domestic issues facing the new administration, one big question facing the LGBT community is whether a Trump administration will promote the discredited therapy.

Two years ago, in a radio interview with Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, which has been deemed a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Blackwell appeared to blame the deaths of six individuals in a 2014 mass shooting in Isla Vista, Calif., on the LGBT rights movement, saying it undermined "natural marriage."

In an unsuccessful gubernatorial bid in 2006, the former Ohio secretary of state claimed that being gay was a "choice" that could be "changed."

"I think it's a transgression against God's law," he told the Columbus Dispatch at the time. "And I think you make good choices and bad choices in terms of lifestyle. Our expectation is that one's genetic makeup might make one more inclined to be an arsonist or might make one more inclined to be a kleptomaniac. Do I think they can be changed? Yes."

The American Psychiatric Association de-pathologized homosexuality in 1973, when it was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Other professional groups quickly followed suit . . . . In 1981, the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses.

Vice President-elect Mike Pence has also appeared to support conversion therapy. When he was running for Congress in 2000, Pence's website declared that money set aside by the federal CARE Act, to help indigent HIV/AIDS patients, also be "directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior." (The Trump transition team has not responded for a request for comment.)

Experts around the world have condemned conversion therapy as not only lacking empirical validity but as unhealthy, especially for young people, causing depression, anxiety, addiction and even suicide.

At least five states and the District of Columbia have passed legislation forbidding mental health professionals from offering conversion therapy to minors. Last year, a New Jersey judge ruled that a conversion therapy group called JONAH had violated the state's consumer protection statute by fraudulently advertising a cure for being gay. The judge also found the group's business practices "unconscionable." 

"The promotion of reparative or conversion therapy goes beyond its obvious market of disaffected lesbian, gay and bisexual people. This campaign attempts to influence public opinion and justify anti-gay discrimination by inaccurately portraying homosexuality as a mental disorder and a social evil. Conversion therapy, then, is more than just a clinical issue. It figures prominently in the national debate over lesbian and gay civil rights."

In 1999, a report titled "Just the Facts About Sexual Orientation" was released specifically denouncing reparative therapy as having little or no effectiveness and instead contributing to discrimination against LGBT people. It was co-signed by 10 prestigious organizations: the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Counseling Association, the American Association of School Administrators, the American Federation of Teachers, the American Psychological Association, the American School Health Association, Interfaith Alliance, the National Association of School Psychologists, the National Association of Social Workers and the National Education Association.

Those who supported Trump not only signed on to a racist agenda but also the embrace of ignorance and religious extremism.  If they now claim that they did not know what Trump's agenda included, shame on them for their laziness and irresponsible conduct.  Belatedly saying "I'm sorry" simply doesn't  cut it.  Do NOT expect forgiveness or understanding from your LGBT neighbors and friends. 

Trump To Meet With Leading Anti-LGBT Hate Groups

Hate and bigotry continue to be the unifying theme of Donald Trump's presidential campaign: hatred of non-whites, hatred of immigrants, hatred of Muslims, hatred of non-Christians, etc. - and now, hatred of LBGT individuals.  Indeed, the only people seemingly not targeted for hatred the uneducated, racist whites who make up the core of Trump's constituency.  If nothing else, Trump's candidacy has shown just how ugly a sizable portion of the Republican Party base is in fact. As Right Wing Watch reports, Trump is now scheduled to meet with a veritable who's who of anti-LGBT hate group leaders, a group that has been in the forefront of disseminating lies and untruths about LGBT citizens and, when possible sought to criminalize LGBT Americans.  Here are highlights:

Next month, Donald Trump will host a meeting with some of the country’s most radical anti-LGBT and anti-choice leaders in New York City. Trump, who has already recruited a variety of far-right activists and conspiracy theorists to his campaign, is set to take part in a convening organized by Ben Carson, a former rival turned campaign surrogate, aimed at bringing reluctant Religious Right leaders to his side.

According to a copy of the invitation to the event obtained by the National Review, Trump will be joined by Religious Right activists including Tony Perkins, James Dobson, Penny Nance, Jim Garlow, Rick Scarborough, Phil Burress, Ken Cuccinelli, Lila Rose, E.W Jackson, Harry Jackson, Tim Wildmon, Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson and Cindy Jacobs.

The meeting will be co-hosted by the Family Research Council [a certified hate group], Vision America and AFA Action, the political arm of the American Family Association, [a certified hate group] three of the most vicious anti-LGBT hate groups in the country.

Trump has already pledged to use nominees to the Supreme Court to pave the way for the reversal of the landmark rulings on abortion rights and marriage equality and has vowed to defund Planned Parenthood, key priorities of right-wing activists.

The piece also gives a run down of some of the hate merchants who will be in attendance.  Having followed some of the groups involved for well over a decade and a half, it is noteworthy that many have very strong white supremacist tendencies.  Indeed, Tony Perkins has documented ties to white supremacist groups.

Dennis Hastert Demonized Gays While He Was the True Predator

Dennis Hastert is the poster boy for all of the anti-gay Republicans who demonize and strive to stigmatize gays even as they seek gay sex on the down low or, in the case of Hastert, molest under aged boys.  Indeed, the pattern is so consistent, that the "godly folk" - if they had any brains (admittedly, a very big if) - ought to start immediately questioning Republicans who jump on the anti-gay bandwagon.   A piece by Michelangelo Signorile at Huffington Post looks at the utter hypocrisy of Hastert - and by extension other GOP homophobes.  Here are column excerpts:

No, it wasn’t African-American young men of the ‘90s — supposedly feral, “fatherless” and “godless” urban youth hell-bent on murder and mayhem — who were “super-predators,” a myth since exposed and which was created by the Princeton political science professor John DiIulio (who later became George W. Bush’s first director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives) based on junk science.

The same twisted ideas that led to the “super-predator” myth, which we’ve seen raised and debunked again during the current Democratic primary race amid discussion of the 1994 crime bill, have been used by anti-LGBT religious conservatives to argue against marriage equality. They promoted the notion that gays would destroy “traditional marriage,” which supposedly would contribute to a breakdown in the family, causing deviant and dangerous consequences.

Some of those arguments against marriage equality were informed by a similarly debunked myth that gay men are likely to be sexual predators, the lie perpetuated by anti-LGBT hate mongers for decades, using junk science to exploit and further rampant homophobia in society in same the way the “super-predator” myth used it to exploit and further racism.

Meanwhile, the true example of a “super-predator” appears to have been former GOP House Speaker Dennis Hastert, a man who prosecutors now say molested at least 4 boys, including a 14-year-old and one who years later took his own life.

Worse yet, through the years, as he covered up the sexual assaults he committed as a wrestling coach back in Yorkville, Illinois, Hastert pushed policies and positions as a House member and as the Speaker of a far-right GOP majority from 1999 to 2007 that demonized gays in part by portraying gay men as sexual predators.

[As] a Politico report last year . . .  revealed that Hastert had a file in his office labeled “Homosexuals,” which included the sexual predator smear against gay men:

The records show that Hastert’s office kept a legislative file titled “Homosexuals,” filled with policy statements from social conservative groups like the Traditional Values Coalition and the Family Research Council that criticized same-sex marriage and Clinton administration efforts to prevent discrimination against gays and lesbians. The file also includes a 1996 Weekly Standard article, “Pedophilia Chic” that warned that “revisionist suggestions about pedophilia” were being embraced by the left.

The scurrilous Weekly Standard piece raged on about teens supposedly being lured into sex by adult gay men. The Family Research Council, whose statements filled Hastert’s “Homosexuals” file, has perpetuated the lie that gays are more likely to engage in sexual assault against boys — among the defamatory claims that earned it the label of “hate group“ by the Southern Poverty law Center — and its leader, Tony Perkins, has called pedophilia “a homosexual problem.”

The Hastert story is revolting on so many levels. He sexually assaulted boys who trusted him as their wrestling coach, scarring them for life. And while he covered it up over a period of decades, he also assaulted an entire minority group that was under a barrage of attacks from religious conservatives, continually denying them civil rights and demonizing them and pummeling gay people over and over again, with bill after bill, informed by lie after lie. If there’s a true definition of a super-predator, Dennis Hastert is it.

If there is a Hell, Hastert should have a special reserved seat - along with all the predator Catholic priests and the Popes, cardinals, bishops and others who covered up for them and aided and abetted their molestation of children and minors.  They are all cut from the same hypocrisy filled cloth. 

Salt Lake Tribune Slams Anti-Gay Judge

I previously noted the anti-gay bigotry of Utah judge who ordered a foster child removed from a legally married lesbian couple.  Judge Scott Johansen cited utterly discredited "research" bankrolled by and orchestrated by anti-gay "Christian" organizations.  Johansen chose to disregard the rulings of the 9th Circuit, 10th Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court that found his cited research to be wrong.  Now, after widespread outrage and a damning denunciation in the Salt Lake Tribune, Johansen is apparently rethinking his bigoted ruling.  As a had argued, the Tribune editorial indicates that Johansen's remaining on the bench should now be in doubt.  Coupled with some backtracking and PR damage control by the Mormon Church in the wake of its recent anti-gay guidelines, the last week has proved to be bad news for the Utah religious extremists.  Here are editorial highlights: 

Spare a thought, if you will, for Judge Scott Johansen.  The juvenile court judge in Utah's 7th District over the last week was the target of local despair, official puzzlement and national derision when he, on his own initiative, moved to undo the proper placement of an infant child with a state-approved foster family because the big-hearted parents involved happen to be two women. Two women who are legally married to one another.

The negative reactions were correct. The judge's order was wrong. The foster parents and the relevant state agencies are correct to be appealing it. The foster parents' plan to adopt the child should proceed with all deliberate speed.

The whole matter should be resoundingly disposed of just as soon as the relevant appeals court can sweep Johansen's bigoted order aside.

And, despite the fact that the judge is apparently rethinking his position, Johansen's continued position on the Carbon County bench should also be in question.

But, remember, it wasn't all that long ago that the transparently bogus reasoning Johansen claimed to be relying on in ordering the 9-month-old baby girl removed from her foster home and placed with "a duly married, heterosexual foster-adoptive couple" was part and parcel of the state's case against the acceptance of same-sex marriage in Utah.

As recently as the summer of 2014, the state of Utah, Gov. Gary Herbert and Attorney General Sean Reyes were trying to convince the local federal court and, having failed there, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, that same-sex marriage should be banned because any children raised in a household so configured would be at a serious disadvantage compared to those brought up in families headed by heterosexual parents.

The state backpedaled slightly on that claim as the appeal went along. But the opinion of the 10th Circuit went out of its way to shoot it down anyway, calling it, "an argument based only on pure speculation and conjecture."

Other appeals courts and, eventually, the Supreme Court of the United States, also rejected the case against raising children in same-sex households as being without scientific or legal merit. The state of Utah has complied.

Thus were all involved apparently stunned at Johansen's Nov. 10 ruling, an order that violated not only the Supreme Court's rulings but also current state law and administrative practice, which now allow foster placement in, and adoption by, legally married same-sex couples.

After the fallout, which ranged from tears in the home of the foster parents to a raised eyebrow by Herbert — who called the judge's ruling an example of improper "activism on the bench" — Johansen seems to have given the matter more thought.

Instead of ordering the child removed by Nov. 17, he has left the status quo in place through a hearing now set for Dec. 4. If he does anything other than fully repudiate his previous order, with a lot of apologies to all concerned, the state should have the appeal already drafted and ready to file.

This judge's retrograde opinion on the legal acceptance of same-sex marriage in case of foster care and adoption, if not fully squelched, threatens to spill over into other matters, such as custody disputes. That is particularly a problem given the recent policy statement from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints denying full church participation to children living with same-sex parents. 

Judge Johansen has created an opportunity for himself to right this wrong. If he doesn't, other state officials must do it for him. Immediately.

Ouch!!

Sex, Lies and Houston

Frank Bruni has a column in the New York Times that looks at the hate and bigotry, and most importantly, outright lies that triumphed in Houston last week.  What is chilling is the fact that the anti-gay forces utilized the same type of tactics used against Europe's Jews in the 1930's and during World War II.  Tactics that resorted to vicious lies and efforts to make Jews into "the other" and thus worth of discrimination and ultimately extermination.  Leading the anti-gay charge in Houston were, of course, the "godly folk" who have inflicted so much harm on so many over the centuries.  Here are excerpts from the column:

I USED to be a child molester. Not in actuality. In the popular imagination. In public debate.

That’s how gay men were once portrayed — not just as sexual deviants but as sexual prowlers, sexual predators, their eyes lecherously trained on the young, the vulnerable, the recruitable.

Hatemongers spread this slander to argue that we mustn’t be teachers, shouldn’t be coaches, couldn’t be trusted.

I flashed back on that when residents of Houston voted last week against an anti-discrimination law that did all sorts of unimpeachable things because it supposedly did one thing that scared the bejesus out of them: enabled men in dresses to sneak into women’s restrooms.

This specter was invented by opponents of the law, who were fixated on just a part of it: its inclusion of transgender people among blacks, gays and other classes protected from being fired or denied access to public accommodations because of their very identities.

And we’ll someday cringe about this, just as most Americans now cringe about the verbal garbage that was thrown at gay people, the lies that were told, the lies that were believed. I recently ran across some research that made reference to a 1970 survey in which 73.5 percent of Americans agreed that “homosexuals are dangerous as teachers or youth leaders because they try to get sexually involved with children” and 71.1 supported the statement that “homosexuals try to play sexually with children if they cannot get an adult partner.”

Transgender people indeed puzzle many others — including me. I readily admit that I can’t relate, not specifically, to the feeling of having a gender at odds with certain anatomical signifiers . . . .

But I’m not too myopic to see or too forgetful to remember that many of the straight people who now support and even fight for my equality and dignity understand me no better. They’ve never fallen in full-bloom love with someone of the same sex.

And I do relate to the awful, shameful, fury-making feeling of having who you are reduced to a caricature.

Don’t you? If you’re female or black or Latino or Jewish or Muslim, the likely answer is yes, and it compels you to look at what happened in Houston with sadness and a resolve that it not be repeated.

[T]ransgender people — and their bid for inclusion — were trivialized and cast aside. Either way, they’re experiencing a chill that they’ve known too long, a sting that they shouldn’t have to suffer, a slap that could be of life-or-death consequence for a teenager struggling to come to terms with his or her difference and questioning the warmth of the world.

And transgender people aren’t raising their voices and risking rejection by the voters of Houston for a mere lifestyle. They’re embracing something infinitely more profound than that.

We’ve come so far and yet not far enough. That’s one big lesson from Houston, which is going to cast a long shadow. It won’t be the last battleground on which the “bathroom myth,” as it has come to be known, is deployed.

I can see this myth creeping into the 2016 election, a weapon wielded against candidates who are trying only to be fair and decent.

I marvel at the cynical political calculations behind it. I wince at how densely packed with willful misunderstanding it is. I shudder at the license it gives to cruelty and at the wounds it inflicts. How slowly, and how uncertainly, will they heal?

We cannot let the merchants of hate prevail.  Years ago AmericaBlog had a great side by side comparison of the Christofascist lies against those made by the Nazis against Jews.  It was chilling.  Change the word "Jew" for "gay" and the wording was nearly identical.  Sadly, that page is no longer online.  Perhaps it needs to be brought back least we forget where the "godly folk" found their blue print for demonizing gays and those who are transgender.

RNC Set to Vote on Anti-Gay Resolutions This Week

This week will be another test as to whether or not the Republican Party is ready to move into the 21st century.  Previous Party Platforms on social issues have been largely authored by Christofascists and hate group extremists.  This week the Republican National Committee ("RNC") will vote on anti-gay resolutions opposing same sex marriage and opposition to sex education that includes LGBT individuals.  Many in the RNC seemingly wish gays would either disappear or be struck dead in a single stroke.     The odds are that the anti-gay resolutions will pass and the GOP will further signal younger voters that it remains the party of the hate filled past.  Here are highlights on the coming vote from the Washington Blade (note the assumption that being gay is synonymous with being HIV positive and, therefore, diseased):

In the same week Republican presidential candidates are scheduled to slug it out in their first official debate, the Republican National Committee is set to vote during its summer meeting on resolutions against same-sex marriage and in favor of anti-gay sex education in schools, the Washington Blade has learned.

The Blade obtained text of two proposed anti-gay resolutions . . .  on the table for discussion during the upcoming meeting in Cleveland, Ohio.

If the RNC were to adopt any of the non-binding resolutions next week, it would be the first official act of the Republican Party on the marriage issue following the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision last month in favor of marriage rights for same-sex couples. The initial vote could take place during the executive committee meetings on Wednesday and Thursday, where a successful vote would lead to consideration at the full committee meeting on Friday.

One resolution, titled “Resolution for Balanced Sex-Ed in Schools,” was introduced by former Michigan State House lawmaker and RNC member Dave Agema. It encourages schools “teaching the homosexual lifestyle in their sexual education class” to “also include the harmful physical aspects of the lifestyle.”

The resolution is based on the belief the Republican Party “supports the institution of traditional marriage,” which is considered code for opposition to same-sex marriage. The proposal is also based on questionable assertions that American culture “is portraying the homosexual lifestyle as an attractive option for school-aged children” and the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes says being gay take up to 21 years off a person’s life. 

The resolution sponsor Agema is the same RNC member who has repeatedly landed in hot water for making anti-gay, racist and anti-Muslim posts on Facebook, such as an endorsement of Russia’s anti-gay propaganda law and an article saying gay people are “filthy,” frequently pedophiles and responsible for 50 percent of U.S. murders. Republican National Committee Chair Reince Preibus and Michigan Republican Party Chair Bobby Schostok have called on Agema to step down and the RNC has censured him, but no explicit mechanism exists to expel him from the RNC and he has remained in his post.

Another resolution, titled “To Reserve, Strip and Pursue,” was introduced by Republican National Committee member Ross Little of Louisiana directly.

The proposal calls on Congress to defy the Supreme Court by passing, in accordance with the Tenth Amendment, legislation saying marriage laws and recognition of marriages is the exclusive province of the states, although states shouldn’t be able to legalize polygamy or prohibit interracial marriage. Further, in accordance with Article III of the U.S. Constitution, the resolution seeks legislation stripping federal courts of jurisdiction of marriage issues.

The RNC didn’t respond to multiple requests to comment on any of the resolutions, although multiple sources have confirmed they’re on the table. 

To read the full text of the anti-gay resolutions, go to the Blade story.   Hate and bigotry remain among the hallmarks of today's GOP.  Frankly, I am surprised that the resolutions did not call for the reintroduction of bans on interracial marriage give the rampant racism in the GOP base.

"Godly Folk" Freaking Out and Lying About End of Boy Scout Gay Ban

It would almost be amusing to watch the rants of the Christofascists over the Boy Scouts of America's vote to end its ban on gay scout leaders.  The amount of hyperventilation and flying spittle is truly off the charts.  Unfortunately, these same "godly folk" who follow the Ten Nine Commandments - they don't observe the Commandment against bearing false witness and lying - are likewise off the charts in the anti-gay lies that they are disseminating.  The common thread being disseminated is that all gays are would be pedophiles and that all molestation of boys is done by gays.  The REAL truth is that HETEROSEXUAL MEN have been documented to commit the vast majority of sexual molestation.  Thus, both claims are total lies, but sadly we are indeed to a point were if these folks' lips are moving, it's about a 99.99999% likelihood that they are lying.  The big danger is that the ignorant and gullible fall for these lies and that gays will suffer violence as result.  Among those spouting this anti-gay animus are some of the usual suspects (all of whom are welcomed with open arms by the GOP):

Don Blake, president of the Virginia Christian Alliance, a coalition that encourages Christians to stand up against the rise of secular culture, told a central Virginia NBC affiliate that Christians who are involved with the Boy Scouts of America need to protect their children by either starting their own scouting programs or joining already existing programs that do not permit openly gay scout leaders.  "All the church people who believe in the Bible need to drop out of the Boy Scouts and start their own program," Blake asserted. "There are existing programs out there."

Robert Jeffress,who leads the 11,000-member Dallas First Baptist Church, urged parents to "run away" from the organization."My advice to parents who are asking me about this is: If you are concerned about the safety of your boys, you should run, not walk, away from the Boy Scouts as quickly as possible," Jeffress stated. Jeffress then contended that "100 percent" of child sex abuses cases in the Boy Scouts have been committed by "homosexuals."

Not to be outdone, anti-gay hater extraordinaire Bryan Fischer pulled out all the stops and, utterly lied about gays and sex abuse:

"The percentage of child sexual abuse cases in which men molest boys is many times higher than the percentage of adult males who are homosexual, and most men who molest boys self-identify as homosexual or bisexual." . . . . homosexuals are responsible for a staggering "one-third of the total number of child sex offenses." 

 

Ponder that: one percent of the population is responsible for 33 percent of all sex crimes against children. This is just another clear indication that there are unmistakable pathologies associated with the homosexual lifestyle. This is not a lifestyle any rational society should celebrate, endorse or promote, let alone sanction with the term "marriage."

[I]t is the height of irresponsibility to deliberately place homosexuals in positions where they have frequent access to young boys. It is inexcusable and virtually criminal.

It is the same kind of campaign of lies that the Nazis used against the Jews and that Vladimir Putin is currently employing against gays in Russia.  If you want to know why the number of "Nones" is exploding in this country, look no farther than these "godly Christians."  They are foul liars and modern day Pharisees - and most make a plush living as parasites preying on the ignorant, uneducated and gullible.  Yet people wonder why I no longer want to call myself a Christian.  Anne Rice got it right.  If this is what Christians are, count me out.