tagged w/ Discrimination
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You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear.
You’ve got to be taught from year to year.
It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear.
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a different shade.
You’ve got to be carefully taught.You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear.
You’ve got to be taught from... more
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ATLANTA (AP) - The retired NBA All-Star and a friend claim they were ousted from the bar of a ritzy Atlanta restaurant because they were black. The restaurant says they weren't the victims of a discriminatory policy, but a long-standing practice rooted in Southern hospitality that allows women a seat at the bar when the place is packed.
Those arguments were made Monday at the start of the weeklong federal trial of a lawsuit filed by Joe Barry Carroll and attorney Joseph Shaw. The two say they were humiliated when a security guard escorted them from the Tavern at Phipps when they refused to give up their seats to a couple of white women, an action they say was part of a broader pattern of discrimination against blacks.
"You're probably thinking: Two black gentlemen go to a bar - this is a joke,'' Jeffrey Bramlett, an attorney for the men, told the jury during opening arguments. "But it's no joke. The evidence will show a serious civil rights violation.''
The restaurant's lawyers said the men were asked to give up their seats as part of a long-standing "good manners'' practice that's been in place at the restaurant for 20 years. Attorney David Long-Daniels said thousands of men have complied with those rules, from stars like Michael Jordan to the other men at the bar the night of the incident.
"Chivalry is not dead,'' he said. "And it's not a civil rights violation to give up your seat to a woman.''
The standoff over the seats took place on a Friday night in August 2006 when Carroll, who played parts of 10 seasons in the NBA starting in the 1980s, and Shaw sat and the end of a bar and ordered a few beers, a few appetizers and some liquor. As the crowd grew thicker, a bartender offered them complimentary drinks to move, but they declined.
They were soon asked several more times to give up their seats to women, but each time they refused, according to court testimony. A manager eventually threatened to call security if they didn't relent, and an off-duty Atlanta police officer who works for the restaurant was summoned to the scene.
"That's the way we do it here,'' attorneys from both sides said the guard told the men as he ushered them out.
"They were embarrassed. They were humiliated,'' said Bramlett. "And part of the reason it was painful is they had an unobstructed view of seats where white patrons were seated.''
The restaurant is attached to an upscale mall in Atlanta's Buckhead district and on weekend nights it's a place to see and be seen, filled with well-dressed, attractive clientele. Bartenders toss and juggle bottles, putting on a show while they mix specialty drinks.
Bramlett said interviews with current and former employees show that Greg Greenbaum, the restaurant's head, feared that "black thugs'' would follow if blacks started flocking to his business. He said the restaurant systematically encouraged managers to avoid hiring too many black staffers and limited black hostesses on peak nights.
Staffers were also told to "slow serve'' black patrons during hectic times, he said. And during the February 2003 NBA All Star game, when young black basketball fans crowded the city, the restaurant hung large "Welcome Rodeo Fans'' banners and played country music, according to court records.
It was all aimed at attracting "white businessmen and well-endowed women'' at the expense of black patrons, Bramlett said.
Patrick Kelly, who was the bartender serving the men, testified that no other men were at the bar when Carroll and Shaw were kicked out. And attorney Long-Daniels said bartenders routinely offered free drinks, free food and new table seating to men sitting at the crowded bar to convince them to give way to women.
The restaurant's hope, Long-Daniels said, was to become a safe haven for women so they could come for food and fun after a long day of shopping at the adjoining mall.
"If they feel comfortable, they'll stay. And if they stay, the men will come. It's not about race, it's really about green,'' he said.
"Everything in life is not about race and the evidence will show this has nothing to do with race,'' he said. "The evidence will show it's more to do about personality and ego. And in the end, it's all about good manners.''
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/basketball/nba/wires/09/12/2080.ap.bkn.restaurant.discrimination.lawsuit.2nd.ld.writethru.0933/ATLANTA (AP) - The retired NBA All-Star and a friend claim they were ousted from the... more
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It is important that non-violence be used in this fateful revolution and that there be a revolution because these ageless human issues cannot be addressed by conventional means.It is important that non-violence be used in this fateful revolution and that there be... more
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In today's episode of The Sphincter People, we take you to the Blanco Independent School District in San Antonio, where uniformity takes precedent over helping cancer victims. 6-year-old Gareth Shand and his mother Kandi had the misfortune of recently moving there...
It seems the young lad not only has a diamond stud in his ear, but he's also growing his curly locks so he can eventually donate his hair to Locks of Love, a charity that makes wigs for cancer victims.
This was never a problem back in South Carolina, one of the nation's most conservative states. But administrators at the Blanco district take their dress code very seriously. It bans kids from wearing earrings. It also says boys' hair must be neat, clean and well-groomed.
There are no exceptions for 6-year-old boys who wish to help cancer victims. Exceptions would require administrators to think and make judgment calls. And everyone knows that thinking and exercising judgment has no place in an educational setting.
So during the first week of school, Gareth was suspended. He now has to sit outside the principal's office until he conforms with the dress code. After all, there's nothing more important to a child's development than teaching him to be exactly like everyone else.
But Gareth's mother isn't about to acquiesce. She believes the rules discriminate against boys, and she wants to protect her son's sense of individuality. So she plans to take her case to the school board.
The district, meanwhile, refuses to comment on the matter. Administrators reportedly couldn't come to the phone, since they were all in the middle of an Assholes Anonymous meeting.
http://www.truecrimereport.com/2011/08/gareth_shand_6_suspended_from.phpIn today's episode of The Sphincter People, we take you to the Blanco Independent... more
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My birth name is Michael Foley, I am 22 years old and was 20 during the time which I was working for the ((which I was employed from early march to late august, I also previously held a job with AAFES working at the on-base theatre for 2-3 years where my family lived prior to this happening)) NEX a branch of AAFES overseas while my father was stationed at a NATO base. I've known for years that I am not in the right body and growing up in a military environment has increased the stress with the majority of people in the community being very anti-gay due to "Don't ask don't tell."
Due to the strong rhetoric and anti-gay presence that is felt in military I kept it a secret for a long time that I felt this way for fear of embarrassment and my father getting the brunt of it at work. However turning 21 in august and finally getting a fulltime job at the NEX I felt it was time to let my family know and seek help at the Naval hospital on base.
I sought help at the naval base of which they were very unresponsive and told me there was nothing they could do for me eventually sending me to the psychiatric ward where they questioned me about suicide and things I hadn't gone there for. Although many talks were about my gender identity they always lead to them not being able to do anything or simply unwilling to help me. I tried many times to make appointments with doctors. This eventually lead to me buying hormones and trying to self-medicate online. ((this landed me in the emergency room twice on both occasions little to nothing was done and the recommendation was that I stop taking the pills.))
So eventually I stopped taking them. Things got worse at work, I had begun to paint my nails and put on light makeup to support how I felt inside, which lead to me being called into the back by management several times and being sent home and told to take it off or not to come back. They eventually made moves to have me fired, everytime I asked for what they would pull me into HR and to talk to management written down on paper they refused. I'm convinced that alot of what they were saying was completely illegal, I am a civilian my father served proudly in the military for years no decades and they are cornering me for being transgender? At the time unfortunatly that's not how I saw things I was getting severely depressed and not leaving my house, when they finally sent me home for good I stayed home and cried for days not leaving my room at all, I thought it would be different that because I had the strength to confront my fears that everything would go well but they didn't and it felt horrible I felt crushed, I still feel crushed. It didn't end there my mom convinced me to see JAG of which I went to and they called the NEX turns out they did very little as well, I've never felt so horrible in my life. I never thought that a branch of the american government would actually stoop this low to treat a civilian like this and I don't even know what to do. If anyone knows what do I would like help I'm still living with my parents and I haven't left the house since this incident took place.
I've attached a picture I took of one of the write-ups I received during my employment at AAFES.My birth name is Michael Foley, I am 22 years old and was 20 during the time which I... more
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ScYx
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9 months ago
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A Ghanaian minister is "promoting hatred" by urging people to report those they suspect to be homosexual, a human rights group has told the BBC.
Ghana's Centre for Popular Education and Human Rights said Paul Evans Aidoo's comments could endanger the nation's underground gay community.
Mr Aidoo said he wanted to rid society of gay people and take them to court.
Homosexual acts are illegal in Ghana but someone would have to be caught having sex to be prosecuted.
Mr Aidoo was reacting to reports that 8,000 gay people in the Western Region had registered with Aids charities.
"I don't believe it; nobody believes it," the Western Region minister told Ghana's Joy FM radio station earlier this week.
e urged people - "landlords and tenants" - to come forward if they suspected someone was gay.
The suspects would be taken to court to see if they could be charged, Mr Aidoo said.
"All efforts are being made to get rid of these people in the society," he said.
But Mac-Darling Cobbinah, the head of the Centre for Popular Education and Human Rights, said the threat was empty.
"There's no way you can be arresting people on the basis of perception," he told the BBC.
"It is promoting hatred - and it's creating a divided society where gay people will be antagonised or attacked or blackmailed," he said.
"When a minister of state and government starts relating such messages it can't help society."
Last week, the Christian Council of Ghana held a press conference to condemn homosexuality.
Homosexuality is frowned upon in many African societies.
An MP in Uganda recently tried to introduce the death penalty for some homosexual acts, sparking international criticism.
The bill has not become law.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14250170A Ghanaian minister is "promoting hatred" by urging people to report those... more
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An Indiana man says a blood donation center rejected him as a donor because he appears to be gay--even though he isn't.
Aaron Pace, 22, recently visited Bio-Blood Components Inc., in Gary, which pays up to $40 for blood and plasma donations. But during the interview process, he said, he was told he couldn't give blood because he seems gay.
Though Pace is "admittedly and noticeably effeminate," according to the Chicago Sun-Times, he says he's straight.
"It's not right that homeless people can give blood but homosexuals can't," Pace told the paper. "And I'm not even a homosexual."
Even though the blood bank sounds like it is engaging in a discriminatory practice, it would only be following the law by rejecting Pace were he gay. In 1983, amid the early panic over AIDS, the Food and Drug Administration banned all men who had had sex with other men since 1977 from giving blood. At that time, there were no effective screening tests to identify HIV-positive blood.
Nowadays, all donated blood is tested for HIV and other infectious diseases before being given to hospitals. And a recent study found that the gay ban costs hospitals 219,000 pints of blood each year.
And yet, last year, the Department of Health and Human Services decided to maintain the policy--though an FDA committee called it "sub-optimal," and suggested that it would be better to develop a screening system based on individual behavior, not broad characteristics like sexuality.
Curt Ellis, the former director of The Aliveness Project of Northwest Indiana, an HIV education group, called the ban "unfair, outrageous and just plain stupid."
As for Pace, he's still mad about being rejected. "I was humiliated and embarrassed," he said. And just to be clear: He's not gay--not that there's anything wrong with it.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/man-says-rejected-blood-bank-seeming-gay-151627659.htmlAn Indiana man says a blood donation center rejected him as a donor because he appears... more
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Stopping businesses from discriminating against gay people would be bad for the economy, or so says the governor of Tennessee.
Gov. Bill Haslam signed a bill in May that voided antidiscrimination ordinances created by cities and counties, which had barred employers and others from discriminating against gay people.
But Haslam told the Nashville City Paper that he's not only against local ordinances. If someone proposed adding gay people to the state's antidiscrimination law, he'd oppose that too.
"Why wouldn’t I add gays as a protected class? I just feel like there’s enough regulation coming down," he said in a back-and-forth with a reporter.
Haslam argues that stopping discrimination is bad for business.
"It is a business issue in the sense that businesses keep having regulations put on them," he insisted. "Let’s say I’m a Muslim subcontractor who wants to work on the convention center, and I feel very strong that regulation shouldn’t be placed on me. Is that a Christian conservative issue?"
Although Haslam repeatedly said he's against gay marriage, the governor says he's not necessarily pro -discrimination.
"It depends," he told the City Paper reporter. "How are you defining discrimination? You could say I’m discriminating already because I’m saying I’m not for gay marriage. Is that discriminating?"
"Yes," reporter Jeff Woods answered.
"Is it? OK, then I’m drawing a line there," said Haslam. "But I’m not going to draw a line when it comes to hiring practices that I’m involved in."
Haslam relegates the decision on whether to discriminate to the human resources department of any local business.
"If I’m running a business, I’m going to go out and hire the best people I can, period," he said. "On the other hand, I don’t know that I necessarily want the local city council telling me my HR practices."Stopping businesses from discriminating against gay people would be bad for the... more
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If the corporate-influenced Supreme Court will not hold major corporations accountable for for their structural gender discrimination, the people will.
In East St. Louis, a Federal jury (that's a bunch of citizens) awarded (that means they decided what to hand to the victim) a 20 year-old rental store clerk $95 million on claims that sexual harassment by her boss at a Fairview Heights rent-to-own store ended in a sexual assault.
Ashley Alford alleged that her supervisor Richard Moore began using "pet names" for her eventually leading to a sexual assault during which Moore held the plaintiff down and masturbated and ejaculated on top of her.
Aaron's Rents Inc., Richard Moore and Bard Martin were the alleged parties responsible for the plaintiff's sexual harassment and assault.
The incidents that led to the suit took place while Alford worked at the company's Fairview Heights store between 2005 and 2006.
The 20 year-old woman claimed that Aaron's had knowledge of Moore's conduct and that it violated the company's own sexual harassment policies.
She claims Moore harassed and assaulted her.
She claims that Martin did not take action to discipline Moore or remove him from his employment.
The plaintiff's suit contains eleven counts of retaliation, sexual harassment and other claims.
The plaintiff sought damages in excess of $75,000 per count and punitive damages as relief. And the jury delivered a clear statement about sexual harassment with their punitive award. Something that SCOTUS is too corrupt to do.
The jury's total verdict amounts to $95 million.
The jury's award included damages such as:
- $250,000 for pain and suffering related to the alleged sexual assault
- $ 1.25 million for emotional distress related to the alleged sexual assault
- $3 million for pain and suffering related to negligent supervision
- $3 million related to humiliation and indignity suffered
- $3 million related to the emotional distress caused by Aaron Rents' negligent control
of Moore
- $500,000 for the loss of a normal life caused by the negligent control issue
- $2 million for sexual harassment damages against Aaron's Rents and the related pain and suffering
- $2 million for loss of a normal life related to the sexual harassment
- $30 million in punitive damages against Aaron's Rents for negligent supervision of Moore
- $50 million in punitive damages related to the sexual harassment
U.S. District Court Judge Michael Reagan presided over the case. Judy Cates, Benedict Morelli, Martha McBrayer, and David Ratner represent the plaintiffs.
Now then, SCOTUS, this is a clear of example of citizens truly united think about discrimination whilst 5 of you jack off over corporate "rights." If you haven't the character to act on behalf of people, this will be commonplace until you do.
Congratulations to the plaintiff. Congratulations to women everywhere. And shame, shame, shame on the defendants and SCOTUS Inc.If the corporate-influenced Supreme Court will not hold major corporations accountable... more
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"Three factors underpin the club's popularity. Foremost, these women believe they are curing sex-related social ills such as rape, incest, prostitution and sex trafficking. On this lofty assumption rests a second factor. Its founders believe their aphrodisiac ways are a counter to "most women's groups", a veiled reference to western feminism, which ignore the repercussions when a wife does not sexually satisfy her husband.
Perhaps the most compelling factor is hinged on the belief that the club does God's work.
The Qur'an, they argue, is peppered with references to sex. To their detractors, another founding member Siti Maznah Mohamed Taufik has this to say: "God even promised sexual pleasure from beautiful bidadari [angels] in heaven for those who are good. So are you saying that God is sex-crazed or obscene?"
Men's natural proclivity for sex can be traced to Islam's first prophet, Adam, according to Royaha. "Eve was created because Adam had needs. Men have [sexual] needs which they can't control. And if the needs are not fulfilled, men will find another woman. God created them like that."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/jun/21/malaysia-obedient-wives-club"Three factors underpin the club's popularity. Foremost, these women believe... more
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I'm sorry sir. We can't give you a good printjob." "Not that we're against homosexuals at all. But because knowing that our printed products will be advertising and promoting the kind of lifestyle that goes against our morals..."I'm sorry sir. We can't give you a good printjob." "Not that... more
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On Wednesday June 15th, a 20-year-old football player from the University of New Mexico named Deshon Marman was charged for failing to pull his saggy pants on an US Airway Flight 488 out of San Francisco International airport. The following day, the San Francisco police reported that the captain of the flight made a citizen’s arrest after Mr. Marman refused to obey his command after 10 minutes. When Mr. Marman walked off the airplane he was met by San Francisco police officers and struggled not to be handcuffed according to police reports.On Wednesday June 15th, a 20-year-old football player from the University of New... more
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The Supreme Court on Monday threw out the largest employment discrimination case in the nation’s history. The suit, against Wal-Mart Stores, had sought to consolidate the claims of as many as 1.5 million women on the theory that the company had discriminated against them in pay and promotion decisions.
The lawsuit sought back pay that could have amounted to billions of dollars. But the Supreme Court, in a decision that was unanimous on this point, said the plaintiffs’ lawyers had improperly sued under a part of the class action rules that was not primarily concerned with monetary claims.
The court did not decide whether Wal-Mart had in fact discriminated against the women, only that they could not proceed as a class. The court’s decision on that issue will almost certainly affect all sorts of other class-action suits, including ones asserting antitrust, securities and product liability violations.
In a broader question in the Wal-Mart case, the court divided 5-to-4 along ideological lines on whether the suit satisfied a requirement of the class-action rules that “there are questions of law or fact common to the class.”
Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, said the plaintiffs could not show that they would receive “a common answer to the crucial question why was I disfavored.” He noted that Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest private employer, operated some 3,400 stores, had an express policy forbidding discrimination and granted local managers substantial discretion.
“On its face, of course, that is just the opposite of a uniform employment practice that would provide the commonality needed for a class action,” Justice Scalia wrote. “It is a policy against having uniform employment practices.”
The case involved “literally millions of employment decisions,” Justice Scalia wrote, and the plaintiffs were required to point to “some glue holding all those decisions together.”
The plaintiffs sought to make that showing with testimony from William T. Bielby, a sociologist specializing in “social framework analysis.”
Professor Bielby told the trial court that he had collected general “scientific evidence about gender bias, stereotypes and the structure and dynamics of gender inequality in organizations.” He said he also reviewed extensive litigation materials gathered by the lawyers in the case.
He concluded that two aspects of Wal-Mart’s corporate culture might be to blame for pay and other disparities. One was a centralized personnel policy. The other was allowing subjective decisions by managers in the field. Together, he said, those factors allowed stereotypes to infect personnel choices, making “decisions about compensation and promotion vulnerable to gender bias.”
Justice Scalia rejected the testimony, which he called crucial to the plaintiffs’ case.
“It is worlds away,” he wrote, “from ‘significant proof’ that Wal-Mart ‘operated under a general policy of discrimination.’ ”
Nor was Justice Scalia impressed with the anecdotal and statistical evidence offered by the plaintiffs.
One of the plaintiffs named in the suit, Christine Kwapnoski, had testified, for instance, that a male manager yelled at female employees but not male ones and had instructed her to “doll up.” Justice Scalia said that scattered anecdotes — “about 1 for every 12,500 class members,” he wrote — were insignificant.
He added that statistics showing pay and promotion gaps were insufficient to show common issues among the plaintiffs, as discrimination is not the only possible explanation. “Some managers will claim that the availability of women, or qualified women, or interested women, in their stores’ area does not mirror the national or regional statistics,” Justice Scalia wrote. “And almost all of them will claim to have been applying some sex-neutral, performance-based criteria — whose nature and effects will differ from store to store.” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined Justice Scalia’s majority opinion on that broader point. But the court unanimously rejected the plaintiffs’ effort to proceed under a part of the class action rules concerned mainly with court declarations and orders as opposed to money, one that does not require notice to the class or provide the ability to opt out of it.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, dissented in part. Justice Ginsburg said the court had gone too far in its broader ruling.
She said she would have allowed the plaintiffs to try to make their case under another part of the class-action rules. “The court, however, disqualifies the class at the starting gate” by ruling that there are no common issues, she wrote.
She added that both the statistics presented by the plaintiffs and their individual accounts were evidence that “gender bias suffused Wal-Mart’s corporate culture.” She said, for instance, that women filled 70 percent of the hourly jobs but only 33 percent of management positions and that “senior management often refer to female associates as ‘little Janie Qs.’”
“The practice of delegating to supervisors large discretion to make personnel decisions, uncontrolled by formal standards, has long been known to have the potential to produce disparate effects,” she wrote. “Managers, like all humankind, may be prey to biases of which they are unaware.”The Supreme Court on Monday threw out the largest employment discrimination case in... more
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Write the HRC to ask for help against discrimination and this is the boiler plate you’re given’!:
Thank you for contacting the Human Rights Campaign.
This is an automated response to your message to hrc@hrc.org. We are phasing out utilization of the hrc@hrc.org email as a contact for HRC members and supporters.This inbox is not monitored on a regular basis, and replies to this email will not be read or receive a response.
Your question or concern is important to us, so to better serve you we provide detailed information below about how to contact the appropriate department at HRC.
Thank you for understanding, and for taking the time to contact the Human Rights Campaign.
Sincerely,
The Staff of the Human Rights Campaign
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Partners Pledge (monthly donations from $10-$99)
Please note that all Partners donations have been processed for the month of May. Any changes or cancellations you submit will not take effect until next month. Please email partners@hrc.org with future questions or concerns regarding your pledge.Write the HRC to ask for help against discrimination and this is the boiler plate... more
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Chandler said he was aware of the incident. I asked him if this was normal; using the Bible to refuse access to city owned resources. He said, "I can't say anything about it. I didn't have anything to do with that. Ya gotta call city hall or one of those people down there." I called the city manager and...Chandler said he was aware of the incident. I asked him if this was normal; using the... more
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Tennessee outlaws the word gay and legalizes gay discrimination. Why would educated adults pass such a discriminatory legislative action? Well, it gets worse. Meanwhile, I learned that horses are offered legal protection from getting sued if they hurt or kill someone. Last month they said legislators must leave their chickens and goats at home.Tennessee outlaws the word gay and legalizes gay discrimination. Why would educated... more
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http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/22/my-faith-how-i-learned-to-stop-praying-away-the-gay/?hpt=C1
Photo: Don Lemon with his grandmother on his third birthday.
May 22nd, 2011
01:00 AMET
My Faith: How I learned to stop 'praying away the gay'
Editor's Note: Don Lemon is a CNN anchor and author of Transparent, a memoir .
By Don Lemon, Special to CNN
"School day, time to get up, sleepy head. School day."
Although she's been gone since 1998, my grandmother's words ring in my head just about every morning of my life. That's how MaMe, as I called her, got me out of bed and off to my Catholic school when I was growing up and in her care.
But before I shuffled my way to the bathroom to begin my morning routine, I had to hit the floor on my knees to pray, just as I had the night before.
It was usually The Lord's Prayer ("Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name...") followed by asking God to watch and guide me through my day until I returned to the safety of my home that evening.
But MaMe (pronounced MAH-me) didn't know that at a very early age her favorite grandson had begun to pray, silently, that God would change him from being different, from having crushes on boys, from being more curious about boys than girls.
By age four or five, I was too young to sexualize my infatuations but I knew that everyone else, including my family and friends, would think it was wrong.
Perhaps it was the conversations I overheard from adults around my hometown of Port Allen, Louisiana, who'd mimic gay people, calling them "funny" or "sissy" or "fagots."
Perhaps it was Sunday mornings at our Baptist church, where preachers taught that liking someone of the same sex was a direct and swift path to hell. And that if that person would just turn to the Lord and confess his sin, then God would change him back into the person He wanted him to be - a person who only had crushes on the opposite sex.
All of which meant that, from a very early age, I began to think I was dirty and that I was going to hell. Can you imagine what that feels like for a kid who was just learning to read and perform basic arithmetic? It was awful.
And talk about guilt - I was a Baptist attending Catholic school!
I prayed the silent prayer for God to change me every chance I got until I started attending college in New York. That's when common sense began to take hold and I realized that no amount of prayer would change me into something that wasn't natural to me.
With my religious upbringing, I'd had the opportunity to study religious doctrine. But I learned from different perspectives, from Catholic Mass on Fridays to Baptist services on Sundays to vacation Bible school in the summer to Bible study with a Jehovah's Witness as a teenager.
As I got older I began to realize that all these people and institutions interpreted the Bible somewhat differently. I had a sort of epiphany: the Bible was about the lessons you learned, not about the events or words.
When I became old enough, intelligent enough and logical enough to discern the difference between metaphor and reality, everything changed. I realized that Jonah living in the belly of a whale was a parable written in the same vein as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. saying that he had "been to the mountaintop."
Neither Jonah nor King had actually been to those places. They were metaphors for lessons for those of us who cared to absorb them.
So many of us, especially in the black community and in churches, tend to think that religious teachings happened word for word as they were written in Scripture. I think that's naïve, even dangerous.
That type of thinking - or non-thinking - keeps many religious people enslaved to beliefs that they haven't truly stepped back from and examined.
That type of thinking causes people who are otherwise good to shun and ostracize young gay people.
It causes people to want to control and change people who aren't like them. And who wants to be like someone else?
Imagine if we had allowed Christian doctrines and teachings that supported slavery, segregation and the subjugation of women to pervade our society all the way up until the current moment. What kind of world would that be?
Instead, we got on our knees, just as I did as a little boy, and prayed that slavery, segregation and the subjugation of women would end. In the United States, at least, those prayers have largely been realized.
I'm no longer the member of any church but I do believe in a higher power.
It's time for us, especially black people, to stop trying to pray the gay away and to get on our knees and start praying that the discrimination of gay people ends.
What we're doing to our young gay people now is child abuse. It's plain old bigotry and hatred. And if African-Americans don't know what that feels like in America, I don't know who does.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Don Lemon.http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/22/my-faith-how-i-learned-to-stop-praying-away-th... more
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here is the blog he posted, that fox took down and now claims never existed. he is a bald head retarded cunt and i encourage any who meet him to do him grave bodily harm.
Inside the Mind of Chaz Bono By Dr. Keith Ablow Published May 17, 2011 | FoxNews.com
Chastity Bono, the daughter of Cher and Sonny Bono, has undergone gender reassignment surgery and now asserts she [that’s right, she] is a man. She now wants to be called Chaz.
She has written a tell-all entitled Transition: The Story of How I Became a Man, and has appeared on “The David Letterman Show” and “Oprah.” A documentary about her journey called Becoming Chaz premiered on Oprah’s OWN network. I know my thoughts on this matter will be politically incorrect, but they are entirely biologically and psychiatrically accurate.
First, Chaz Bono is not a man. She is a woman who has undergone radical surgeries and is taking male hormones in order to look like a man. That isn’t a political position, it’s a biological reality. Chaz Bono wants to be thought of as male, but she is not male.
You may disagree with me on philosophical grounds, arguing that behaving like a man and feeling like a man is tantamount to being a man, but that argument does nothing to change the biological reality.
Second, while Chaz Bono may now feel that her journey toward self-acceptance has ended, I am not convinced. I say this because, absent the gender politics involved, I was taught to consider Chaz Bono’s contention that she is male as a psychotic delusion—a fixed and false belief.
Psychosis is not a predictor of long-term emotional well-being or stability.
Mind you, I am not judging Ms. Bono. But there is nothing substantially different from a woman believing she is a man than there is about a woman believing she is a CIA agent being followed by the KGB (when in reality, she is, say, a salesperson at J. Crew).
Very few people, if any, would suggest that the proper treatment for such a woman would be to have the Central Intelligence Agency make her an honorary agent and hire a few former KGB agents to chase her around town. While that “treatment” might make her more comfortable for a while, bending reality to conform to a person’s psychosis just wouldn’t be a good idea. For one thing, it would make us all lose our sense of what is real and true. For another, it would simply perpetuate the woman’s underlying psychiatric illness.
Very few people, if any, would suggest that the way to treat someone who is petrified of death and insisting he is turning 16, not 61, would be to throw him a Sweet Sixteen party. Good psychiatrists, in particular, would be burrowing to the roots of the man’s discomfort with aging. If necessary, medications might be prescribed.
I once treated a woman who believed her children had been replaced by masquerading doubles and another who believed her parents could hear her thoughts through listening devices implanted in the walls. I did the hard work of getting to the bottom of those psychotic symptoms. I certainly didn’t hang up “Missing” posters with the first woman or start smashing holes in the walls of my office with the second.
Delusional disorders are notoriously difficult to treat. Paranoia (as in, the CIA example) can require extensive psychotherapy and anti-psychotic medication. Sometimes, that isn’t even enough. So you can imagine that believing you are a man when you are a woman could require even more vigorous and dedicated attempts to alleviate the psychotic person’s symptoms.
Is surgery to remove a woman’s breasts, close her vagina and create a makeshift penis for her really so very different (other than being far more permanent)? Is it really likely to yield a “cure” for a woman’s delusion that she is a man, or vice-versa? Does it really reach the depths of dissatisfaction, which create gender identity disturbances, to begin with?
I don’t think so.
I think Chaz Bono, who is, in fact, a woman, will not escape, through surgery or manipulation of hormones, suffering that is far more than skin deep.
Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team. Dr. Ablow can be reached via email at info@keithablow.com and his team of Life Coaches can be reached via email at lifecoach@keithablow.com. You can also visit www.keithablow.com for more information.here is the blog he posted, that fox took down and now claims never existed. he is a... more
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THIS STORY COVERS THE DISTURBING AFFECTS OF "REDLINING."
After making big financial gains in recent decades, African Americans and Hispanics are again losing ground, critics say.
Rather than blaming the lingering effects of the recession, a growing number of reports point to financial discrimination as a major cause.
“Communities of color have received the worst treatment at a very high cost,” says Michael Calhoun, president of the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL). “We estimate 20% of African-American and Hispanic homeowners will lose their homes in this housing crisis,” more than twice as high as white households.
Homeownership is the primary engine of wealth, but the housing slump only partly explains the growing gap affecting minority families, says John Taylor, CEO of National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC).
“It’s about a dual system of finance,” he says. “People of color do not have the same access that most American citizens enjoy.”
While most consumers are able to go to a full-service bank branch that offers an array of competitively priced products and services, minorities are disproportionately forced to go to payday lenders, pawnshops and high-cost mortgage lenders, Taylor says.
Those who live in minority neighborhoods — even middle-income families whose high credit scores could qualify them for a prime loan — are likely to be steered into a subprime loan, says Hilary Shelton, NAACP’s senior vice president for advocacy and policy.
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Other signs that minorities are losing financial ground:
•In December, the NCRC said that too many of the largest lenders in the FHA loan program refused to provide conventional loans to consumers with credit scores between 580 and 640, even though that violated FHA policy. It said that has had a disparate impact on communities of color.
Last May, a study compiled by seven non-profit groups including the Chicago-based Woodstock Institute, also found that from 2006 to 2008, the overall share of conventional prime mortgage lending in communities of color fell 35%, while the share of loans to predominantly white neighborhoods increased 11%.
•Minorities are much more likely to be unbanked and underbanked, which are households that have a checking or savings account but rely on alternative financial services, such as payday loans. In January 2009, 54% of black households and 43.3% of Hispanics were either unbanked or underbanked, compared with 25.6% of U.S. households, according to a survey by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
•Only 16% of people who overdraw their accounts paid 71% of all overdraft fees, but they were more likely to be minorities and low-income consumers, according to a 2006 and 2008 study by the CRL.
Excessive overdraft fees are a major reason why consumers close bank accounts and leave the banking system, according to a 2008 Harvard study.
•People of color are more likely to be payday borrowers, and a typical borrower pays back $800 for a $300 loan, says the CRL. In California, minorities represent 56% of payday borrowers but make up just 35% of the population, a 2008 CRL report said.THIS STORY COVERS THE DISTURBING AFFECTS OF "REDLINING."
After making big... more
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I thought this was an interesting read over at ThinkProgress…
Taking a cue from the Catholic Church, religious conservatives have threatened to end adoption services in Virginia if a proposed policy that would prevent adoption agencies from discriminating based on sexual orientation is adopted. The National Organization for Marriage’s (NOM) Maggie Gallagher made a call for comments on Friday, announcing that the policy would require “mandatory gay adoption“:
Rep. Anthony Weiner may have joked about “mandatory gay marriage,” at the WH Correspondents dinner, but amazingly, Virginia’s Dept. of Social Services is proposing new regulations that would require all adoption and foster-care agencies to do gay adoptions.
NOM may claim that such policies drive agencies “out of business,” but the agencies would be completely free to continue helping place children in homes so long as they do not discriminate against same-sex couples. It has already been seven years since the American Psychological Association issued a policy statement supporting full adoption rights for same-sex parents, but many agencies continue to discriminate purely on religious grounds, claiming in spite of all available psychological evidence that it’s “not healthy” for same-sex couples to raise children. In his piece at Salon, Alex Pareene offers, “if you would rather stop placing children in homes than allow a loving same-sex couple to adopt than you are seriously a detestable person.”
It’s worth noting that the proposed policy would also prevent agencies like the Mormon Church’s LDS Family Services from discriminating based on the religion of the couples.
Governor Bob McDonnell (R-VA), who previously excluded sexual orientation from his executive order barring discrimination in the workforce, suggested he would oppose the new policy so that “we don’t inhibit the very fine work some faith-based organizations are doing.” He has until the end of next week to make his decision.
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2011/04/05/conservatives-threaten-same-sex-adoption/I thought this was an interesting read over at ThinkProgress…
Taking a cue... more
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