Anthrax contaminated letter sent to Senator Tom Daschle

Anthrax contaminated letter sent to Senator Tom Daschle

Anthrax suspect also supporter of American Family Association

Our friends at the American Family Association (AFA) have been linked to the accused anthrax scientist, Bruce Ivins. According to Right Wing Watch, Bruce and his wife were supporters of the AFA, and Ivins’ wife, who has not been named, ran an anti-abortion group. Evidently abortions are bad, but anthrax murder by mail is A-OK by the folks on the “right” side of the issue.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that the association with AFA was one of the many circumstantial items the FBI used in pinpointing Ivins as the the source of the September/October anthrax attacks in the U.S.

“Bureau investigators also connected the fictitious return address on the second round of anthrax letters - the “Greendale School” of Franklin Park, N.J. - to a charity well-known to Ivins. He had donated numerous times to a group called the American Family Association, which in 1999 had filed a lawsuit on behalf of parents at the Greendale Baptist Academy in Wisconsin in a dispute involving corporal punishment.”

Right Wing Watch rolls all this up into a nice tidy package by summing up:

“Knowing more about Ivins’ background may help explain a great deal about the attacks, especially the targets. The anthrax letters were sent almost exclusively to prominent Democrats - Senator Pat Leahy and then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle - and large, New York media outlets. Interestingly, Senators Leahy and Daschle and the mainstream media have consistently served as punching bags for the AFA.”

I guess it’s mail bacteria for Jesus season.

Right-wing news agency finds an alleged smoking gun for Obama’s support for gay marriage

The folks over at CNS News have published a piece where they alleged Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president “tips his hand” on the issue of gay marriage.

The group states its mission as follows:

CNSNews.com endeavors to fairly present all legitimate sides of a story and debunk popular, albeit incorrect, myths about cultural and policy issues.

The site writes the following, quoting Obama:

“… (W)e also have to do more to support and strengthen LGBT (Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgendered) families. Because equality in relationship, family, and adoption rights is not some abstract principle; it’s about whether millions of LGBT Americans can finally live lives marked by dignity and freedom.

“That’s why we have to repeal laws like the Defense of Marriage Act. That’s why we have to eliminate discrimination against LGBT families. And that’s why we have to extend equal treatment in our family and adoption laws,” Obama wrote.

“I’ll be a president that stands up for American families - all of them,” he added.

What the “news” service fails to mention is presumptive Republican nominee for president Sen. John McCain, R. Ariz., said in an interview with The New York Times that he was opposed to gays being able to adopt — then promptly sent his spin machine into action saying the Senator had no plans to address the issue nationally, but would leave to states to decide. McCain has also voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment, but has happily thrown his hat in the ring supporting anti-gay measures in Arizona, Florida and California. Obama has opposed the state initiatives as well.

In the meantime, the advocates for the ban on gay marriage in California are sending out doom and gloom letters as fund-raising appeals. According to a letter sent out by the National Organization to Save Marriage of New Jersey, executive director Brian Brown reports during a pastor’s conference call on the issue:

Pastor Jim Garlow of Skyline Church in San Diego told the group of clergy: “One of the dumbest things the devil ever did was attack the institution of marriage.” Rev. Jim Franklin from Cornerstone Church in Fresno told the group: “We must be consumed with a holy anger . . . this is the time to fight.”

Brown also says in his fundraising letter that:

With now less than 90 days remaining before the November 4 elections, the future of marriage hangs in the balance, not only in California, but in the rest of the nation as well. “[T]he Armageddon of the culture war,” is how Chuck Colson referred to the Prop 8 campaign in California. Or as Don Wildmon of the American Family Association explained, if we lose in California, “it will open the floodgates for same-sex marriage in all the other states.”

No mention from Brown about whether or not God might use his holy soldiers to unleash another anthrax attack on America.

Signs of the times, Missouri elects openly gay man to state House

Whether it’s the wave of change blowing across America, or the fact that Americans really care more about $4 a gallon gasoline and high unemployment then about homosexuals, Missouri has elected an openly gay man to its state House. Democrat Mike Colona will take the 67th district seat, after winning his Democratic primary Tuesday. He is unopposed in the general election.

A.J. Bockelman, executive director of PROMO, a Missouri gay rights group, stated, “Mike ran a strong campaign. He began accumulating endorsements from around the district early on and amassed widespread support for his candidacy. This is also a district heavily populated by the members of the LGBT community, and Mike will serve us well.”

PROMO worked to identify LGBT households in the district and focused get-out-the-vote efforts in order to increase the LGBT community representation in the Legislature. Colona also received the support of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund. Colona becomes the second openly gay elected representative in the state. The first was Tim Van Zandt, elected in 1993 from the Kansas City area.

Oops- sorry Bruce, I am straight

The coyly named men’s magazine, Details, has an interesting tidbit in its online edition this week. In it, the writer introduces readers to gay men who woke up one morning and realized they were actually straight. Mind you these are not gay men who are transformed by the power of Jesus; these are gay men who up and decided they were straight all on their lonesome.

Writer Anna David writes in the story of these gay-men-turned-straight:

“Despite the insistence of many - straight and gay - that switching between sexual preferences can’t technically happen, Rothenberg isn’t the only man to have believed he was homosexual before deciding that he was wrong. These aren’t gays who attend faith-based programs to be “cured,” or bisexuals who rotate between male and female sex partners the way the rest of us alternate pairs of shoes. And they’re not the type who hide gay urges in public while privately trotting off to the local bathhouse.”

Um, sure. Maybe the 1913 cure for homosexuality discussed in the Journal for the American Medical Association really does work. In the Box Turtle Bulletin, blogger Jim Burroughway provides us with the insight from the period before the homosexual rights movement gained any ground in the U.S.

As we are dealing with a psychic manifestation, the hope for a cure of homosexuality lies in psychotherapy. I can never comprehend why physicians invariably resort to bladder washing and rectal massage when they are consulted by homosexuals, unless it be to kill the homosexual cells in the prostate so that their place may be taken by heterosexual cells, as one physician expressed himself when one of my patients asked him now massage of the prostate would cure his inversion. It is an unfortunate fact that such ridiculous ideas are often heard in the discussion of psychosexual disturbances. Only a few months ago a patient told me that he was told by two physicians that his hope for a cure lay in castration.

So wrote Abraham A. Brill in 1913 after he introduced the subject with this lovely, almost modern introduction:

Of the abnormal sexual manifestations that one encounters none, perhaps, is so enigmatical and to the average person so abhorrent as homosexuality. I have discussed this subject with many broad-minded, intelligent professional men and laymen and have been surprised to hear how utterly disgusted they become at the very mention of the name and how little they understand the whole problem. Yet I must confess that only a few years ago I entertained similar feelings and opinions regarding this subject. I can well recall my first scientific encounter with the problem, ten years ago, when I met a homosexual who was a patient in the Central Islip State Hospital. Since then I have devoted a great deal of time to the study of this complicated phenomenon, and it is therefore no wonder that my ideas have undergone a marked change. Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner, I have met and studied a large number of homosexuals and have been convinced that a great injustice is done to a large class of human beings, most of whom are far from being the degenerates they are commonly believed to be…

Investigators agree that homosexuality is no sign of mental or physical degeneration. Thus Ivan Bloch says: “I no longer entertain any doubt that homosexuality is compatible with perfect mental and physical health.” This same author quotes Magnus Hirschfeld as saying that homosexuality may occur in persons just as healthy as normal heterosexual persons. Similar ideas are expressed by Näcke and others. My own findings concur with these views. Most of the inverts I know belong to our highest types both mentally and physically and show absolutely no hereditary taints. Without entering into a detailed discussion of this question I will say that I am convinced that homosexuality as such is entirely independent of any defective heredity or other degenerative trends.

Well, maybe if I keep trying those prostate massages, I too can be the straight man who thought he was gay.