tagged w/ HIV
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Better treatments are extending the lives of people with HIV, but aging with the AIDS-causing virus takes a toll that will challenge the health care system, a new report says. :http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/645011.htmlBetter treatments are extending the lives of people with HIV, but aging with the... more
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Meet Jordan, a college student giving up XBOX for http://www.ForgottenVoices.org. Jordan is part of a super rad event called Nervosity, which raises money for orphans every summer. What would you do to help the orphans we love to serve?Meet Jordan, a college student giving up XBOX for http://www.ForgottenVoices.org.... more
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by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) in New York City may soon have to level with the public about their real agenda. At the Ms. Blog, Michelle Chen has an update on proposed legislation which would force CPCs in New York to disclose that they aren’t reproductive health centers.
CPCs are anti-choice ministries that masquerade as full-service reproductive health clinics. They typically set up shop near real clinics to trick unwary clients. Real clinics dispense medical advice from doctors, nurses, and other licensed health care professionals. They are required to tell clients about the risks and benefits of all their treatment options. They don’t push clients towards abortion or adoption. CPCs are typically staffed by volunteers. Instead of medical advice, they hand out over-the-counter pregnancy tests and medically inaccurate information about the risks of abortion. They use pseudoscience and high pressure sales tactics to derail as many women seeking abortions as they can.
Chen reports that if the bill becomes law, New York CPCs will have to post signs disclosing that “they do not provide abortion services or contraceptive devices, or make referrals to organizations that do.” If the facility lacks licensed on-site medical professionals, the center would have to inform prospective clients of this fact. This is an excellent piece of consumer protection legislation. If CPCs are honest about who they are and what they do, they should have no problem with the law.
Christine O’Donnell: not (just) a joke
In an essay for the Women’s Media Center, organizer Shelby Knox explains why Delaware’s Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell represents more than an anti-masturbation punchline:
Not ironically, O’Donnell is a loyal disciple to the religious agenda that equates sexuality, especially female sexuality, with evil and the decline of humanity. [...] To most mainstream Americans, O’Donnell’s concerted battle against solo sexual pleasure in particular is so fringe, so bizarre, it’s laughable. Yet, those of us deeply familiar with the ideology of the extremist right wing have long understood the condemnation of sex and sexual pleasure for anything other than the purpose of conception within marriage to be the underpinning of public policies that invite (Christian) God and (big, big) government into our bedrooms.
Knox notes that the same underlying suspicion of human sexuality finds expression in more mainstream areas of American politics, like federally-funded abstinence-only education, which substitutes religious homilies and gender stereotypes for science-based sex ed. (I would add federal funding for some of the nation’s aforementioned “crisis pregnancy centers” to Knox’s list of examples of anti-sex religious ideology replacing science-based health services.)
This week, O’Donnell drew audible gasps from a crowd when she claimed that the separation of church and state isn’t part of the U.S. Constitution, as Monica Potts reports for TAPPED.
O’Donnell may seem bizarre to the average voter, but Knox reminds us that she’s pretty typical of a rising tide of anti-sex, anti-science conservatism that we ignore at our peril:
But more accurately she’s the poster girl for more than 78 candidates running this election season who share her anti-sex, anti-woman views. These candidates believe abortion should be illegal in all cases, without exception for rape and incest. Some have promised a GOP majority would signal a return to funding failed abstinence-only policies. Ken Buck, the GOP Senate candidate in Colorado, even went so far as to refuse to prosecute a rape because the accuser had “buyer’s remorse” over an abortion he alleged she’d had a year before the assault.
Condoms and porn
A porn actor in California became the latest performer to test positive for HIV last week. His diagnosis sent shockwaves through the San Fernando Valley’s porn industry because the actor was reportedly a star who worked with a lot of big names in an industry where condoms are the exception rather than the rule.
The case has reignited controversy over the fact that straight porn companies aggressively flout California law that mandates condoms on porn sets. The industry maintains that it doesn’t need condoms because it has a rigorous testing program for talent. As I report in Working In These Times the industry is being allowed to investigate the HIV outbreak on its own, which is a little like asking BP to monitor oil spills. The same industry-allied non-profit that administers the tests, and does PR about how great the testing program is, also investigates cases of HIV in the industry. Does anyone else see a potential problem?
Concussions in the NFL
Football season is in full swing, but for Dave Zirin of The Nation and many other football fans, it’s getting harder and harder to reconcile their love of the game with our growing awareness of the toll that it takes on players:
In August, to much fanfare, NFL owners finally acknowledged that football-related concussions cause depression, dementia, memory loss and the early onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Now that they’ve opened the door, this concussion discussion is starting to shape how we understand what were previously seen as the NFL’s typical helping of off-field controversy and tragedy.
Zirin appends a list of over 30 players who have sustained concussions since the pre-season. Peter King of Sports Illustrated is calling for the NFL to start kicking excessively violent players out of the game, but Zirin says that’s not enough to stem the tide of concussions. Devastating brain injuries can come from routine, legal hits. A lot of the cumulative brain trauma leaves players demented in their fifties is actually sustained during practice.
The carnage is built into the game. Concussions are unavoidable given anatomy of the human brain and the physics of huge guys crashing into each other. Helmets only help so much because they can’t prevent the brain from smashing against the cranium. Zirin thinks football fans need to do a lot of soul searching. He argues that every fan should think hard about whether it’s really that much fun to watch guys get their brains pulped in the name of sport. Zirin’s not ready to give up football yet, but he thinks the gnawing guilt may eventually outweigh his love of the game.
This update brought to you by the Media Consortium, and the letter C.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) in... more
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California's multi-billion dollar adult film industry is in disarray after one of its performers tested positive for HIV. Several production companies have halted filming while doctors try to establish who the actor in question performed with, as the BBC's David Willis reports.
Nothing about the drab stucco-fronted building on a suburban street in the Van Nuys district of Los Angeles invites a second glance.
Sandwiched between a beauty salon and an auto repair shop, a building more at odds with its exotic and uninhibited clientele it would be difficult to find - until you remind yourself that there is nothing sexy or glamorous about a sexual diseases clinic.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11561576California's multi-billion dollar adult film industry is in disarray after one of... more
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Darren James has stated during an interview with the Times that “I know it was going to happen. Darren James has come up after the San Fernando Valley clinic that focuses on the porn industryDarren James has stated during an interview with the Times that “I know it was... more
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mky786
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You’re watching the Punk Patriot. You can subscribe to my channel by clicking here.
So I will not be at the Rally to Restore Sanity. I will be at work, in a factory repeating the same motions for hours on end, making things that you will one day use without thinking about the labor that went into it. My friend Davis Fleetwood however, he WILL be there. I’m interested to see what he comes away from it with as far as analysis and such. You can subscribe to his channel here.
I’m wondering how far this rally will go to restore sanity. First, you have to ask-- did we ever HAVE it? Sanity is an odd and elusive thing. When you are surrounded by a collective insanity, insanity seems sane, and it’s deviation from that insanity that seems insane. In conditions such as these, the craziest people in the nuthouse will point their fingers at the sane and berate them for their insane behaviour.
As you know, I covered a gathering of some of the most truely sane people in America, the Veterans For Peace National Convention. They’ve been at the front lines of our empire. They know what is going on outside of the iron gates of the nuthouse.
I came away from that convention with my head filled with their stories, and it dawned on me, there really should be a new field of psychology, not for diagnosing individuals, but for diagnosing societies. Because the Society of USA, at it’s core, is mentally ill.
It’s not like traditional mental illness, where it’s just something that happens to you. Oh no, this social mental illness is a contagion, like a virus. And we are pumped full of the viruses of this illness every day. It’s not anything deliberately done by anyone. It’s just a viral illness, like the common cold, Herpes, or HIV.
Television is the main culprit for spreading this disease. TV spends all day trying to convince us that the abnormal is normal, and the normal is abnormal.
In the breaks between shows, some celebrity is talking to you, in a deliberate and calm voice, like a sane person, about how they are so scared of being seen in public with skin blemishes that she avoids leaving her house. So much so that it interferes with her lifestyle. She can’t go grocery shopping anymore. She’s afraid of doing publicity to promote her TV shows. But she was able to cure this by using Proactive, and now she “loves it” and feels that “she can never be without it.”
I’m sorry but you don’t need a skin cleanser. You need therapy.
The History Channel has a running series of shows dedicated to glorifying the latest, most effective tools for killing on the market, as though they were toys, or lawnmowers, or refrigerators-- something that everybody should have. As if this fetish for killing was normal, rather than indicative of a cultural psychosis.
This same show parades “non lethal weapons” used on peaceful protesters here in the USA, but doesn’t talk about that fact. Instead they say that they are for nonviolent interventions in Foreign Wars. If that’s true, are we waging a war on Dissent and Freedom of Expression here in the USA? Because those ideas certainly seem foreign as of late.
“Fun Facts” are presented between commercial breaks for this weapons show, and include the factoid that “prolonged exposure to loud music has been used by the US military to ‘soften up prisoners for interrogation’” The playlist includes Eminem, Rage Against the Machine, and Barney the Dinosaur.
What they leave out is that this took place in Guantanamo, that the prisoners were chained in stress positions and exposed to volume levels capable of damaging hearing permanently, and is legally defined as TORTURE. But they don’t say this. They present it as though it were harmless fun. Something funny to laugh about at the water cooler. It’s no wonder, with this as our normal, that we’re raising a nation of psychotics, that our kids shoot and kill one another at school.
Take a good look at yourself America. You’ve completely lost your shit.
When you hit rock bottom you are going to hit so hard-- but on account of how your head is so wrapped up in the flag that you can’t see where you are going, you also can’t see the ground rushing up to meet your face, and you won’t shake off your denial that you are falling until all your teeth are broken, your lips shredded, and you pull your head up from the dirt, your mouth bleeding, your gums receding, your eyes no longer seeing stars and bars as you finally pull the flag away from your face, and you’ll come to learn that your body has been entirely eaten by cancer, America. You’ll have no legs to stand on any longer-- atrophied from the fact that you haven’t actually stood for anything for a long long time.
This is the Punk Patriot signing off. To Life, Liberty, and pursuit of a less fucked up Government.You’re watching the Punk Patriot. You can subscribe to my channel by clicking... more
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asherp
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Meet Jordan, a college student giving up XBOX for http://www.ForgottenVoices.org. Jordan is part of a super rad event called NervosityMeet Jordan, a college student giving up XBOX for http://www.ForgottenVoices.org.... more
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http://www.nation.co.ke/image/view/-/1024374/highRes/200348/-/maxw/600/-/13c009k/-/PIX3.jpg
More than 74 churches have petitioned President Kibaki to sack Cabinet minister Esther Murugi over her last week remarks on gay rights in the country.(http://bit.ly/bsZoX2)
The churches, under the aegis of the Federation of Evangelical Indigenous Christian Churches of Kenya (FEICCK) warned of street demonstrations against the Ms Murugi, the Special Programmes minister.
In a statement, Dr Methu said Ms Murugi discredited her reputation and was unfit to hold public office.
The minister, while speaking last week in Mombasa, asked Kenyans to learn to co-exist with homosexuals and lesbians saying this is 21st century.
“This should happen in the shortest time possible; failure to which we shall not be left with any other option other than to ask those who care about righteousness and morality to demonstrate against her, “said FEICCK chairman Bishop Dr Joseph.
Dr Methu stressed unless intended to invite God’ wrath, Kenyans should not dare to allow homosexuality and lesbianism to thrive in the country.
“God will punish all forms of immorality despite who is promoting it and are at whatever level. We have observed Hon Murugi Transforming herself to becoming a trouble shooter and one who makes statements focused on demeaning and antagonizing the faith community in Kenya , “he further state in his statement to the Nation.
The FEICCK chairman said the faith community in Kenya respects the rights of all persons but will oppose all forms of propagation of ungodliness and immorality.
Separately, nominated MP Sheikh Mohammed Dor asked government spokesman Dr Alfred Mutua to issue official government position regarding Ms Murugi comment during HIV/AIDS symposium.
“The minister is government and we need clarification from the Dr Mutua whether she was making personal comment or speaking on behalf of the government,” he told the Nation.
The function dubbed as Most At Risks Population (MARPs) attracted homosexuals, sex workers and Injecting Drug Users (IDU) because of their behaviour that put them at the greatest risk of being infected with HIV.
Sheikh Dor also called for minister be taken through new Constitution to learn its contents saying her utterance is unconstitutional and could further land her on wrong side of laws.
Earlier, the minister's call of support for homosexuals was condemned by the Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims (Supkem) and the Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya.
Former Kibwezi MP Kalembe Ndile joined in the fray on Sunday, terming the minister “unfocused” over the remarks, saying she should instead concentrate on resettling the IDPs.
Said Mr Ndile: “Three years are gone now (since the displacement) and we still have IDPs in the camps. Why should she concentrate on gay rights instead of focusing on these suffering Kenyans?”
Mr Ndile who spoke in the minister’s constituency said she could reap more political mileage were she to resettle the IDPs than by propagating the gay agenda.
He said he had personally experienced how dehumanizing it was to live in a squatter camp and would not wish it on any other human being.
The former MP said the government must now move fast to resettle the IDPs and end their suffering once and for all.
Ms Murugi could not be reached on phone on Sunday.
Mr Ndile also accused mainstream parties of ignoring the youth, women and the poor especially in giving out tickets to vie for important seats.
“It will be the straw that will break their backs,” said Mr Ndile while saying he personally lost his parliamentary seat in the 2002 general elections because of supporting President Kibaki at a time when Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka was popular in his backyard.
Mr Ndile also asked Kenyans to give newly elected Makadara MP Gidion Mbuvi alias Mike Sonko a break.
He accused Kenyans on concentrating on petty politics such as attacking Mbuvi.
“He is just a youth who should be allowed to prove himself,” said Mr Ndile.http://www.nation.co.ke/image/view/-/1024374/highRes/200348/-/maxw/600/-/13c009k/-/PIX3... more
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(CBS) The precursor to H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, may be older than you think. Way older.
According to new research, simian immunodeficiency virus (S.I.V.) has been in monkeys for millennia, potentially putting humans at risk for the last 32,000 years and possibly much longer.
And yet, for all that time, humans didn't get sick in mass. Only in the 20th century did H.I.V. become a global scourge that has claimed 25 million lives.
Why?
According to the New York Times, for as long as monkeys have had S.I.V., humans who have butchered them have put themselves at risk of infection from a mutated form. But because the infected people in Africa were fairly isolated, the chances for an epidemic were small. That changed, some theorize, with the explosive growth of African cities and wide spread use of cheap syringes.
But the reality is, no one really knows for sure.
The new research does help explain why monkeys who have S.I.V. do not get sick from it - they have had tens of thousands of years to adapt.
In order to track S.I.V. back in time, researchers led by the University of Arizona and the Tucson and Tulane National Primate Research Center looked at the DNA of 79 monkeys from Bioko, a volcanic island off the coast of West Africa.
According to the New York Times, the island was cut off from the mainland 10,000 years ago and six species of monkeys have developed exclusively there. Four of them had S.I.V. That meant the virus was at least 10,000 years old. Scientists then measured how fast the virus mutates and calculated its age at between 32,000 and 78,000 years, the Times reports.(CBS) The precursor to H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, may be older than you... more
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dablaq
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In a discovery that sheds new light on the history of AIDS, scientists have found evidence that the ancestor to the virus that causes the disease has been in monkeys and apes for at least 32,000 years — not just a few hundred years, as had been previously thought.In a discovery that sheds new light on the history of AIDS, scientists have found... more
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Almost 200 have had a long break from testing that dates to NASA's early days, but that could end.
By Michael Haederle, Los Angeles Times
September 3 2010
Ever since the first of their number arrived in New Mexico half a century ago as test subjects in the fledgling U.S. space program, nearly 200 government-owned chimpanzees were routinely injected with viruses and used to test everything from experimental vaccines to insecticides.
They have enjoyed a decade-long respite from research at an indoor-outdoor habitat on Holloman Air Force Base near Alamogordo, but now the government wants to move the chimpanzees to a Texas laboratory, where they might face renewed testing.
The plan has animal welfare groups and elected officials squaring off against federal scientists at a time when Congress is considering legislation that could shut down federal chimpanzee testing altogether.
Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, sharing between 94% and 98% of our DNA, which is why some scientists see them as ideal research subjects. The similarity extends to their cognitive abilities. Chimps are intelligent and self-aware, even able to plan future actions.
"These animals have been put through the wringer and they deserve to be retired," says Kathleen Conlee, a program manager with the Humane Society of the United States, who has worked in a primate breeding facility and a great ape sanctuary. "The Humane Society doesn't think a laboratory environment can ever meet the psychological needs of a chimpanzee."
Moving the chimpanzees to the Southwest National Primate Research Center in San Antonio is expected to save $2 million a year in upkeep, while making more of a dwindling number of research animals available for crucial medical testing, said Harold Watson, a program director in the National Center for Research Resources at the National Institutes of Health.
John L. VandeBerg, director of the San Antonio primate center, says the chimpanzees are needed to test potential vaccines for diseases, such as hepatitis C and hepatitis B, because they are the only species other than humans that can become infected with those viruses.
"We only use chimpanzees when it's not possible to do critical experiments with any other species," VandeBerg said. The primates are well cared for, he said, and only about 100 are used in research at any time.
"They are not people, they are animals," he said. "I believe it's our ethical responsibility to do the research to alleviate the pain, suffering and deaths of millions of human beings."
VandeBerg concedes past abuses in chimpanzee experiments, but he says research now "involves procedures that are no different than those that are used every day in human clinical medicine. It generally involves drawing blood samples from a vein, just as we do with people; we've all had that done."
There are fewer than 1,000 research chimpanzees in the U.S., about half of them under NIH management. Their numbers are slowly declining because of a federal moratorium on breeding and deaths due to old age. The oldest, a female named Flo, turns 53 on Sept. 29.
Although the U.S. is virtually the last country in the world to permit invasive testing of chimpanzees, VandeBerg and others have argued for the resumption of a breeding program to permit further biomedical research.
Meanwhile, the Great Ape Protection Act, which would phase out invasive research on federally owned chimps and retire them to sanctuaries, has been introduced in Congress with bipartisan support.
Announcement of the plan to relocate the chimpanzees when the current third-party management contract at the Holloman facility expires in May 2011 prompted New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and Tom Udall, the state's junior U.S. senator, to urge the NIH to reconsider. Richardson paid a visit to NIH headquarters in Bethesda, Md., in August to press the point but made little headway.
The Holloman chimpanzee colony traces its origins to the 1950s, when NASA acquired chimps for research during the early days of Project Mercury. By the 1970s they had become part of a breeding program, and the Holloman facility was leased to the late Dr. Frederick Coulston, a controversial toxicology researcher who used them to test insecticides and cosmetics.
Later, the chimps were managed by New Mexico State University, but during the early 1990s ownership was transferred to Coulston, who by then had started the nonprofit Coulston Foundation and built a nearby private facility in which the chimpanzees were housed in cramped steel-and-concrete cages with little room for exercise.
There were persistent accusations of severe abuse and neglect on Coulston's watch, with nearly 50 chimpanzees and monkeys dying from disease, poor veterinary care and experimentation amid documented violations of the Animal Welfare Act.
By the time the Coulston lab went bankrupt in 2002, nearly 300 chimpanzees had been transferred to Save the Chimps, a nonprofit organization that operates a sanctuary in Florida. The remaining 186 chimpanzees have been housed as a reserve population at the Holloman facility, which is now managed by Charles River Laboratories under a 10-year contract that expires next year. About 60 others that were at Holloman have been transferred to other facilities over the past decade.
The plan to transfer the Holloman chimpanzees to Texas has riled national animal welfare organizations, including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the New England Anti-Vivisection Society and Animal Protection of New Mexico. An alert from the Humane Society in late July resulted in 25,000 protest letters addressed to Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIH, the society's Conlee said.
"They're certainly not going to move these chimpanzees without hearing about it from the public," Conlee said. "We're not against human disease research. We want them to use the money in a better fashion than they do."
Some experts question the scientific premise behind continued use of chimpanzees as an animal model for HIV and hepatitis research. Although it is true that chimpanzees can be infected with viruses like HIV and hepatitis C, they do not develop symptoms.
"They're an abject failure," said Dr. John Pippin, a retired cardiologist who works for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. "They have contributed nothing to the development of a vaccine for either disease."
He chalks up the continued reliance on animal models to scientific inertia. "It's an enormous industry," he said. Animal research accounts for between $12 billion and $13 billion annually in federal grant money, and 42% of NIH protocols are for animal research, he said.
Pippin contends it is more appropriate to experiment on cell cultures grown from human tissue for vaccine development. In the quest to develop an HIV vaccine, some of the most promising research is in studying the immune response of so-called elite controllers — the small number of HIV-infected people who have never gone on to develop full-blown AIDS, he said.
Watson of the National Center for Research Resources acknowledges the strides that have been made in developing new ways to develop and test vaccines, but he insists that the chimpanzees are still needed because their infection process closely mimics that in humans.
"The alternatives are something that we're very sensitive to, and our scientists are constantly looking for and finding alternatives for certain things," Watson said. "But as it stands right now, there's not really an alternative to chimpanzees for evaluating the vaccine."Almost 200 have had a long break from testing that dates to NASA's early days,... more
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Following up a pioneering 2007 proof-of-concept study, a University of Utah biochemist and colleagues have developed a promising new anti-HIV drug candidate, PIE12-trimer, that prevents HIV from attacking human cells.
LINK : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100818141553.htmFollowing up a pioneering 2007 proof-of-concept study, a University of Utah biochemist... more
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A singer from German girl band No Angels has admitted to having unprotected sex with several partners without warning them she was HIV-positive.
Nadja Benaissa, 28, was speaking at the opening of her trial in the German city of Darmstadt.
"I am so sorry," Ms Benaissa told the court. However, she denied deliberately infecting anyone.
She faces a charge of grievous bodily harm for allegedly infecting one man.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-10983227A singer from German girl band No Angels has admitted to having unprotected sex with... more
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The number of U.S. faith leaders with controversial connections to politicians and religious figures in Uganda working to pass a harsh anti-gay bill seems to get bigger and bigger by the month. By now, the world is familiar with the legislation. It's known as the "Anti-Homosexuality Bill," and if passed it would institute severe criminal penalties for LGBT people.
Those penalties include: the death penalty for LGBT people who are HIV-positive and who engage in sexual relations; lifetime jail sentences for anyone who is LGBT; and jail terms for straight people who don't disclose their LGBT friends, relatives and neighbors.
The bill is championed by several Ugandan religious leaders with deep U.S. ties, including Martin Ssempa and Julius Peter Oyet. Ssempa was once a celebrated partner to Pastor Rick Warren's ministries, and has close ties to a number of U.S. legislators and faith leaders. Though he's been discredited by many people in the U.S., at least one megachurch -- Canyon Ridge Christian Church in Las Vegas -- continues to call Ssempa a "prophet" and financially support his work to pass this anti-gay legislation.
Julius Peter Oyet may be less well known than Ssempa, but he's also done his fair share to help move the anti-gay Ugandan legislation forward. Oyet is a leader with the Born Again Federation of Churches in Uganda, and he's a self-admitted part of the network of Ugandan leaders that helped draft the "Anti-Homosexuality Bill." Oyet has attended rallies and meetings in Uganda where gay porn was showed to people in order to whip up homophobic sentiments, and also appears in a BBC segment promising that if the bill gets passed, homosexuals will be arrested.
Oyet is also part of an international faith network known as the College of Prayer, which has a host of locations throughout the world, and trains people to be outspoken Christian leaders "who will reach a lost world through a revived church." The College of Prayer has numerous offices and ministries in the United States, stretching from Florida to Wisconsin. But it's their Atlanta, Georgia locale that is perhaps most interesting, since Julius Oyet says that the College of Prayer provides him an office at that location.
Adding yet another layer of intrigue to this onion of religiosity, the Atlanta College of Prayer office seems to share space with a fairly influential evangelical church, Lilburn Alliance Church (Web site - lilburn4jesus.com - no joke), whose pastor, Fred Hartley, is a colleague of David Bahati, the Ugandan MP that is the chief sponsor of the "Anti-Homosexuality Bill." In fact, Pastor Hartley has called David Bahati "honorable," despite the fact that Bahati would like to criminalize homosexuality with either the death penalty or life imprisonment.
For those keeping score, it looks like this: Ugandan leaders (Oyet and Bahati) who want to criminalize homosexuality + the College of Prayer + Lilburn Alliance Church = a web of political and religious mischief that would see to it that gay people are either thrown in jail or murdered, and that straight people are criminally punished for not turning in their LGBT friends, relatives and neighbors.
Warren Throckmorton is all over this story, weaving the tight web between Ugandan religious leaders like Julius Oyet, the College of Prayer and Lilburn Alliance Church. He notes that the College of Prayer has financially supported Oyet, to the tune of over $10,000, and that both the College of Prayer at Lilburn Alliance Church have hosted Oyet in Atlanta.
Throckmorton also notes that Oyet has made it crystal clear where he stands on homosexuality, and how Uganda should deal with LGBT people. Take a look at some of these nuggets:
"We do not condemn homosexuality just because we are Africans, we condemn homosexuality because it is written in this holy book."
"The sodomy people, the homosexuals, are even more foolish than dogs ... even animals are wiser than homosexuals."
"I want to invite you to declare, no to sodomy! Everyone of you! I want us to say today, Uganda says no to sodomy!" (Oyet then led a crowd of Ugandans in a chant of "No to sodomy" at decibels that would make even Lady Gaga jealous.)
"Come on! Can we kick sodomy out of Uganda? Sodomy, out of Uganda, go!"
"My real problem with homosexuality is, number one, it is destroying human nature. Number two, it is angering God. Number three, it is a sin against the community. Number four, it is a sin against their bodies."
Oyet then goes on to tell LGBT people that they should repent from their wicked ways or face the wrath of God and Uganda, and suggests that gay people don't have human rights but instead are "a human vice."
And the College of Prayer and Lilburn Alliance Church are comfortable with that kind of rhetoric? They support Oyet, they haven't condemned the "Anti-Homosexuality Bill," and as of this year, Oyet still believes he has an office space with the College of Prayer. That sure sounds like support to me. And it also sounds like both the College of Prayer and Lilburn Alliance Church will have blood on their hands if this "Anti-Homosexuality Bill" passes Uganda's legislature, and (as Oyet promises) the arrests of LGBT people start occurring.
Send a simple message to both the College of Prayer and Lilburn Alliance Church, letting them know that religious leaders around the world have condemned Uganda's "Kill the Gays" bill, and that they should join suit. They should also stop supporting politicians and religious leaders who want to commit violence toward LGBT people. That's hardly Christian, let alone humane.
Outrageous. Send both the College of Prayer and Lilburn Alliance Church a message that they should be condemning the work to criminalize homosexuality in Uganda, not celebrating the leaders behind efforts to kill or imprison LGBT folks.The number of U.S. faith leaders with controversial connections to politicians and... more
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As we wrap up the series of athlete profiles competing in the Gay Games 2010 in Cologne Germany this week, today we have a profile from Dan Hutchins, and HIV postitive man who has conquered his addiction and competing in the Triathelon.
http://thequeertimes.com/2010/07/gay-games-dan-hutchins/As we wrap up the series of athlete profiles competing in the Gay Games 2010 in... more
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