The website World Net Daily is known as “World Nut Daily” for good reason in many progressive circles, particularly in the lgbt blogging community.

A writer on the site, Les Kinsolving, has in the past referred to the lgbt community as the “sodomy lobby.” In October of this year, he called a judge’s order to stop enforcement of the military’s ban on gay and lesbian troops in the military as a “disease ridden judicial decision.”

In August of this year, the publication dropped conservative writer Ann Coulter as a keynote speaker from a conference it held because she earlier spoke at a conference held by a gay Republican group.

And in February of this year, another writer on World Net Daily, Molotov Mitchell, spoke out in favor of Uganda’s “Kill The Gays” bill, even evoking Martin Luther King Jr’s name in defense of it.

But apparently that’s not the extent of World Net Daily’s homophobia.

At its online superstore (yes World Net Daily has a “superstore”), interested individuals can buy a discounted copy of The Pink Swastika. According to the description on the page:

The Pink Swastika is a thoroughly researched, eminently readable, demolition of the “gay” myth, symbolized by the pink triangle, that the Nazis were anti-homosexual.

In other words, The Pink Swastika supposedly gives proof that the gay community was behind the Nazi Party in Germany during World War II.

Not exactly.

The Pink Swastika is actually a discredited book written by Scott Lively and Ken Abrams. Lively has a long history of maligning the gay community. He is probably most famous as one of the prime instigators of Uganda’s “kill the gays” bill.  According to Box Turtle Bulletin:

In March 2009, Lively was one of three American anti-gay activists to deliver what he called his “Nuclear Bomb against the gay agenda” at a conference in Kampala, Uganda which ultimately led to the introduction of the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda’s Parliament. That bill calls for the death penalty against LGBT people under certain circumstances, and virtually criminalizes knowing or providing services to gay people. Lively has called that bill “a step in the right direction” and “the lesser of two evils,” although he claims to oppose the death penalty and has falsely claimed on multiple occasions that the death penalty has been removed from the bill.

And let’s not forget the fact that his organization, Abiding Truth Ministries, has been declared an official anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

However in the case of The Pink Swastika, Lively clearly outdoes himself. It was written in 1995 (although World Net Daily seems to be selling an “updated version”) and since that time, it has been routinely criticized. According to SPLC:

The Pink Swastika has been roundly discredited by legitimate historians and other scholars. Christine Mueller, professor of history at Reed College, did a line-by-line refutation of an earlier (1994) Abrams article on the topic and of the broader claim that the Nazi Party was “entirely controlled” by gay men. Historian Jon David Wynecken at Grove City College also refuted the book, pointing out that Lively and Abrams did no primary research of their own, instead using out-of-context citations of some legitimate sources while ignoring information from those same sources that ran counter to their thesis.

Now in all fairness, Amazon.com also sells The Pink Swastika from its site. However, the difference is that Amazon.com allows its patrons to post reviews of books. And in the case of The Pink Swastika, several patrons have condemned it for its errors and homophobia.

World Net Daily doesn’t give its patrons the same courtesy.

What’s more significant is the fact that World Net Daily claims to be a site devoted to truth, even hosting a “Taking Back America” conference featuring many famous speakers, including Congressional leaders.

One has to wonder just who is the site trying to “take back America” from.

Hat tip to Kyle Mantyla of People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch.

When will we change the course of corporate media? When will sane Americans take media to task? Can’t we end this media madness before the fabric of our society irreversibly tears?

Across America people suffer end-of-life illness. They agonize in pain. They agonize in fear. They’re in drug induced stupors. Modest people soil themselves in front of friends and family. They avert their eyes in shame. They lose and regain consciousness. They welcome the unconscious moments that shield them from feelings of helplessness and burdening those they love.

This is no way to live. This is no way to die.

Throughout the recent debate on the health care bill, the media – in particular cable TV and talk radio – inflamed the rhetoric on the bill; on the bill’s size, its number of pages, its fiscal impact, its social impact, excluding abortion, surviving death panels…

DEATH PANELS?!

The bill had no death panels. There was simply a plan to consult a doctor every five years for end-of-life planning. That was it. Sensitive, helpful, humane, necessary, professional end-of-life planning to comfort and protect the dying and guide their families through a difficult time.

But corporate media perverted the plan. It afforded Sarah Palin, media’s most caustic creation, round the clock amplification of her death panel misnomer. Rather than quell Palin’s toxic distortions and present the plan factually by name and content, corporate media appropriated Palin’s death panel fabrication and amplified it even more, spending weeks misrepresenting the plan and rendering it unrecognizable from its original form.

Eventually, corporate media’s constant drumming of death panel lies resulted in Section 1233 (which allowed Medicare to provide advance planning doctor visits every five years) being eliminated from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that passed in 2010.

On Christmas Day, the New York Times reported that President Obama would issue a Medicare regulation January 1st, which provides that “the government will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment.” Sadly, but not surprisingly, corporate media didn’t hesitate to jump on this report and revive the death panel deception.

Witness CNN reporter Randi Kaye, sitting in for Anderson Cooper, ignite the death panel rhetoric between Democrat Maria Cardona and Conservative Nancy Pfotenhauer:

This is my Network moment. I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore from CNN, MSNBC, Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS and talk radio. We-the-people deserve better.

This wretched corporate media cheered us into Iraq. It’s made downtown Manhattan the flash point for xenophobia and racism over the building of a community center intended to unify neighbors. It’s given a platform to birthers. It’s undermined global warming. It’s created the monster Sarah Palin and it craves creating more. It’s desecrating the living and it’s desecrating the dying.

Enough!!

My mother died in 1977. She had cancer. Before she died, I flew to her hospital bed in New York. When I arrived at the hospital, I ran down the hall and charged into her room. I hadn’t seen her in months. She was surrounded by family. My knees buckled the instant I saw her. A relative caught me and carried me into the hall. I shook from head to toe. My mother was a skeleton.

We took her home from the hospital. Her sister flew in to help care for her. The last months of her life were living hell. She was robbed of her dignity. She was ashamed of being helpless, of needing to be fed and bathed, of being seen naked. She couldn’t look us in the eye.

After a while, the weak pain killers the doctor prescribed couldn’t stop her pain. I drove to her doctor’s office in the snow and demanded a stronger medication. He prescribed injectable morphine. I took the prescription and had it filled. Later that day a visiting nurse came to teach me to inject my mother. We rehearsed on the skin of an orange. That night my mother cried in pain. I went to her with the syringe and told her to relax; that it would be okay. She was semi-conscious.

I filled the syringe and positioned myself to inject her. I was shaking. My tears clouded my eyes. I held the syringe to her skin and I MISSED. At that moment my mother came to. She looked at me and said, “it’s okay.” I was never able to inject her. Her suffering went on…

My family’s story is not unique. This happens every day to families across our nation. Millions have similar stories, and yet our media, our whoring media, for ad revenue and ratings, trivializes and falsifies the truth. About death. About war. About our planet. About what Americans want.

It’s time to stop this madness!

Sometimes, it doesn’t take much to demonstrate just how nasty and hateful some members of the religious right choose to be.

All you have to do is just give them free reign to talk.

Take for example the recent overturning of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The American Family Association’s phony news service, One News Now published the following piece:

Fighting back against sodomized military

A national defense analyst and Pentagon advisor says the new Congress can take a number of actions to blunt the impact of the new law that allows homosexuals to openly display their lifestyle in the U.S. military.

Many pro-military pundits said they were sickened and angered last week when President Barack Obama ended 235 years of wholesome tradition by signing the bill that will effectively sodomize the U.S. military. One of those specialists is Lt. Col. Bob Maginnis (USA-Ret.), who was part of the military working group that helped craft the 1993 homosexual service ban that the lame-duck Congress and President Obama have now overturned.

“You have a very corrupt regime running the country,” he laments. But he expects there to be a backlash when the 112th Congress replaces the lame-duck body that was repudiated by the American people last month.

Where does one start with this one?

Sodomized military? So according to the AFA, the overturning of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell means that automatically the American Armed Forces is facing an “epidemic” of butt-sex?

Also, while the article claims that many “pro-military pundits” (which is a bizarre description. Just who are these “pro-military pundits” and does that mean there are “anti-military pundits”) who oppose the overturning of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, it only quotes one person, Maginnis. And while Maginnis may be a former military person, he isn’t exactly a legitimate source of information.

He just happens to be with the Family Research Council (another religious right group) as the “Senior Fellow for National Security.”  Before being quoted by this article, he said in another article that “America is no better than Sodom and Gomorrah” for allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military.

It’s important to remember that the Southern Poverty Law Center has declared both the AFA and FRC as anti-gay hate groups due to their need to demonize and dehumanize the lgbt community. Granted both organizations claim they are being unfairly victimized for “upholding” Christian values.

And they may have a point . . . only if causing a panic about anal sex is a “Christian value.”

Even though Merck’s Gardasil and GSK’s Cervarix are highly advertised to doctors and patients, women are Just Saying No to the vaccines according to research presented at the American Association for Cancer Research in Philadelphia last month.

The vaccines protect against the Human papillomavirus (HPV), the virus which causes cervical cancer. In 2007, 12,280 women in the U.S. were diagnosed with cervical cancer and 4,021 died.

Fewer than a third of 9,658 teenagers and young women who were eligible for the vaccine actually began the three-injection series between 2006 and 2010 according to data analyzed at the University of Maryland. Others started the regimen but didn’t get their second or third injection.

Of course there are many reasons women may veto the vaccine for themselves or their children. Even though the vaccine is nearly 100 percent effective in preventing precancerous cervical lesions and protects against the two HPV strains that cause 70 percent of cervical cancers and 90 percent of genital warts, it isn’t effective against all HPV strains. It is also not more effective against cervical cancer than a Pap smear and even when it does work, requires a booster. Nor do researchers know how long protection lasts.

The HPV vaccine is also the most expensive of all recommended vaccines at $359.25 for all three doses says Pew Research.

And then there’s the morality issue.

“I was greatly offended that Merck suggest I vaccinate my nine-year-old daughter against an STD,” says Kelley Watson, a mother of two in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park. “Especially insulting to me was that there was never any mention of HPV as being a sexually transmitted disease. It was presented as something women can contract through tampons or nylon stockings — as if men played no part.”

Actually, men’s part in transmitting HPV is beginning to be acknowledged. Last year FDA also cleared the vaccine for boys, in whom the virus can cause genital warts and anal cancer. Even when an individual declines vaccination, his or her chances of infection are lessened as more people, both men and women, vaccinate — a concept called herd immunity.

But mostly, people are spurning the HPV vaccine because of its safety record. Or lack of safety record.

In addition to causing fainting, allergic reactions, Guillain-Barré Syndrome and blood clots, 56 girls have died from the vaccine as of September says the CDC. 14-year-old Natalie Morton died last year, soon after being vaccinated for HPV at her school in Coventry, UK though authorities now say she died of a tumor. And the vaccine was suspected in the deaths of six children in trials in India last April.

Critics ask why the primary endpoint in trials was not cervical cancer but lesions that could become malignant and why placebo data was spun to make the vaccine look more effective.

And medical professionals increasingly question the safety of organomercurial thimerosal and aluminum salt adjuvants in vaccines and the possibility of zoonotic DNA transfer. Earlier this year FDA found pig virus in rotavirus vaccines made by both Merck and GSK, given to infants to protect against severe diarrhea and dehydration. Oops.

There are also transparency questions. Why did former First Lady Laura Bush work with Merck-funded citizen front groups to promote the original vaccine and why are governors like Texas’ Rick Perry trying to mandate vaccination of all girls?

University of Queensland lecturer Dr. Andrew Gunn was silenced by his university when he dared to question the vaccine and ordered to apologize to the vaccine maker, CSL, according to the Courier Mail.  Dr. Gunn expressed doubts about the vaccine’s “marketing as a solution to cancer of the cervix when at best it’s expected to prevent about two-thirds of cases” and “the incorrect and dangerous perception that it might make Pap smears unnecessary; and the difficult question of the best age to give a vaccine whose effect might yet prove to wear off before many recipients even start having sex.”

And one of Gardasil and Cervarix’ original developers, Dr. Diane Harper, a consultant to the World Health Organization, also questioned the vaccine’s lack of safety and effectiveness at last year’s 4th International Public Conference on Vaccination in Reston, Virginia only to appear to retracted her remarks later.

It’s no secret that Big Pharma is pushing vaccines as many of its expensive blockbuster pills go off patent or are no longer waved through by insurers. Drug companies are even marketing the HPV vaccine in poor countries whose real problems are malaria, potable water or Dengue fever.

Continuing Medical Education (CME) programs, which doctors are required to take to keep their licenses but are widely criticized as being Big Pharma commercials, have also been promoting the vaccine.

One, which ran on the CME giant Medscape, was titled Quadrivalent HPV Vaccine May Be Effective in Women 24 to 45 Years Old and granted credits for “studying” a Lancet article written by authors that included two Merck employees.

“What was the main conclusion of the current study,” the CME asks takers of the course as if they’re at a time-share presentation instead of clinicians. Upon completion on this activity, you’ll be able to “specify the currently recommended age range for the administration of the quadrivalent human papillomavirus vaccine,” the doctors are told.

The vaccine is also promoted directly to consumers. Poster-sized ads for Gardasil ran this spring on Chicago’s CTA trains pretending to sell real estate in sought after neighborhoods. A closer look revealed descriptions of women in those neighborhoods who thought they didn’t need the HPV vaccine but did. And, in March GSK rolled out Cervarix at the 2010 Oscars as if it were a fancy perfume.

In October, GSK even launched TV ads depicting twentysomething women flashing “cool” Cervarix tattoos in front of the camera that read “armed against cervical cancer.”

Some would say we need to be armed against such advertising.

Registered Nurse Estella Chavez (Photo by Linda Milazzo)

With support from California Assemblyman Bob Blumenfield and California State Senator Fran Pavley, along with an enthusiastic nod from Governor-elect Jerry Brown and sanctioning from LA Federation of Labor, Central Labor Council of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, registered nurses from Riverside Community Hospital (Riverside) and West Hills Hospital (San Fernando Valley) took to the streets at 5:30AM on December 23rd to begin a five day permitted strike against the world’s largest for profit hospital chain and billion dollar felon, Hospital Corporation of America (HCA).

At issue are HCA’s abandonment of negotiations with nurses’ Union SEIU 121RN and HCA’s failure to respond to the matters (listed below) that the Union contends are critical to the needs of nurses and patients:

Staffing by Acuity: Our Union is proposing language that addresses issues with the system that reviews a patient’s acuity. The sicker our patients, the fewer we should have under one RN’s care. This is needed to protect our patients, allow them to heal, get well and go home to their families.

Rest and Meals: We want to ensure that rest and meal breaks are guaranteed and enforceable by our contract. RNs work very long hours; if a nurse cannot rest and recharge, patients are at risk.

Clinical Ladder: Our Clinical Ladder proposal would encourage RNs to attain additional education and training and receive small, usually temporary pay increases for doing so. Our Clinical Ladder proposal is achievable and is a win for the hospital, patients and RNs.

Call-Off: Nurses in some areas of the hospital are reporting significant loss of pay because of call-offs. Our Union is proposing that the hospitals establish a bank of time to compensate nurses for involuntary call-off. RNs need a stable pay check just like everyone else. (Call-off refers to times nurses are sent home from their jobs when patient loads are low).

The strike is scheduled to go from December 23rd through December 27th (no strike on Christmas), beginning each day at 5:30AM at both hospital locations. By sanctioning this strike, LA Federation of Labor and Central Labor Council of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties authorize their affiliate members (delivery drivers, electricians, etc.) not to cross the nurses’ picket lines to do hospital business.

State Senator Pavley endorsed the nurses concerns in her letter to Edward Battista, Vice President of Human Resources at West Hills Hospital:

“The nurses who have come into my office have been concerned primarily with improvements to patient care, staffing, and pay and benefits. … I encourage West Hills Hospital & Medical Center to offer benefits that will recruit and retain the best employees and will ensure that West Hills Medical Center continues to provide quality care to our community.”

Assemblyman Blumenfield similarly endorsed the nurses concerns in his letter to Vice President Battista:

“On behalf of the Registered Nurses and the community of West Hills, I’m asking your hospital to bargain in good faith with SEIU Local 121RN; to make sure that workers are treated fairly and equitably; to insure that changes in staffing or working conditions do not put patients and caregivers at risk; and, finally, to agree on a contract with strong protections for patients and workers.”

At the West Hills strike site, two nurses, Estella Chavez who has worked at West Hills Hospital for nearly twenty years, and Elley Langsam who has worked there for thirty years, informed me that patient services, patient products and hospital effectiveness have declined radically since the hospital was purchased ten years earlier by Hospital Corporation of America. Prior to that, West Hills Hospital had been owned and operated by Humana, another for-profit mega corporation that both women praised highly.

Nurses Estella Chavez and Elley Langsam (video by Linda Milazzo)

Although Humana has been the focus of multiple lawsuits and used in Michael Moore’s film Sicko to spotlight the downside of managed care, the breadth of Humana’s settled and alleged crimes pale in comparison to the proven crimes of HCA, the mega-corporation founded by the family of former Republican Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist. Interesting how several current and former politicians have connections in some way to HCA. Bill Frist through his vast profits from his family’s ownership, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney through his former company, Bain Capital, the current owner of HCA, Florida Governor-elect Rick Scott, who was forced to resign his post as HCA’a Chief Executive amid the scandal of the company’s Medicare fraud.

HCA ultimately admitted to fourteen felonies and agreed to pay the federal government over 600 million dollars. According to the Department of Justice, “HCA settled the largest health care fraud case in the history of the United States, netting the government a record $1.7 billion in damages.” Despite his involvement with HCA, Rick Scott was still elected Governor of Florida in November, 2010.

The nurses striking West Hills Hospital and Riverside Community Hospital this holiday season are defiant in their stance against massively wealthy HCA, which placed private security officers along the perimeter and grounds of West Hills Hospital to respond to the strikers. Nurses Chavez and Langsam shared their bemusement at the stepped up security, explaining how their requests to HCA for adequate hospital and grounds security have long gone unanswered.

I attempted to meet with West Hills Hospital’s Chief Executive Officer Beverly Gilmore, but she was unavailable for an interview. I did meet briefly in the hospital lobby with Zachary McVicker, a well dressed young man toying with his iPad, from Mustang Marketing, West Hills Hospital’s private public relations representative. McVicker shed little light on the hospital’s position on the issues or the strike, except to assure me the hospital had the situation well under control, using nurses who didn’t strike along with temporary nurses to cover for the strikers. McVicker did not know how many hospital nurses did not strike, but the striking nurses told me the non-strikers comprised about 20% of the nursing staff.

In lieu of meeting with CEO Gilmore, McVicker provided me the phone number of Dr. Lee Weiss, Medical Director of West Hills Hospital’s Emergency Department, whom he said would answer my questions. In my subsequent phone call with Dr. Weiss, the doctor stated categorically he had nothing to do with the strike and knew absolutely nothing about it. Weiss was amiable in our short talk but wanted no part of the fray. I had observed some doctors out striking with the nurses, and the nurses let me know they had many doctors’ support. It appears McVicker had placed Dr. Weiss in an uncomfortable position. So much for the contracted PR skills of Mustang Marketing.

Whatever the outcome of this strike, these nurses are standing up to their felon corporate employer and fighting valiantly for their rights and the rights of their patients. Their strike leaflet reads, “When we fight, we gain respect.” After listening to their stories and hearing their dedication to their patients and their jobs, they’ve surely gained my respect. I wish them the best in this endeavor.

Merry Christmas Eve!

A few years ago I proposed what I was sure would be a… permanent solution to the Christian “oy-what-do-I-give-if-anything-at-all-to-my-Jewish-friends” dilemma. I know what you’re thinking my gentle gentile-souled friends:

• Is it offensive to give people a gift on a holiday they traditionally and historically don’t celebrate? Or is it worse to give everyone in your office Christmas presents except for the Jews?
• These Jews are really into reading and analysis and they’re kinda neurotic and think that everyone is out to get them so if I give them a present celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ are they going to deconstruct that as an accusation of murdering Jesus Christ?
• If I give my Jewish friend a gift and he doesn’t give me one am I, consciously or subconsciously, latently or blatently, perpetuating the cheap parasitic outsider Jew stereotype?
• If Jews don’t get a present, do they not… kvetch?

I suggested a brilliant idea that, to my surprise, has not caught on. But it’s not too late! Christians, you still have a day to make yourself and your Jewish friends happy. So in the interest of interfaith harmony, peaceful coexistence, and tolerant egalitarian commercialist commodification, and in the tradition of my ancestors before me, allow me to re-post what should have been — and hopefully will become — very prophetic words.

I would like to give birth to a new holiday tradition. Forget the happy Hanukkah cards. How about a thank you note?

Who killed Jesus is a topic of much debate: was it the Jews, the Romans, a combination, Jesus’ own father, a plot requirement? Yet the question of who gave birth to baby Jesus is answered without equivocation: Mary. Yes, she did so with the help of God, but it was Mary who schlepped from inn to inn before settling on a perfectly acceptable no-frills manger (a real find.) And it was her zaftig, child-bearing hips which really delivered the goods. I happen to like Jesus, who was a real mensch, and wish that the Church followed his teachings more closely. And I’m not trying to take all the Jewish credit for Christ’s birth.  I just think that since we have, throughout history, been blamed for his death, we deserve, at the very least, a little credit for his birth. So here are some sample cards I would like to see. Nothing fancy, don’t go crazy. Just something like “Thanks so much for the best Christmas present ever! Jesus Christ.” Or “We were thrilled with a lord. But a lord and savior! You really outdid yourself.” So Christians, send a thank you note to every Tom, Dick and Harry — or Tov, Dov, and Heschie — you know.

Follow Katie Halper on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kthalps

Creating art sends a message. Destroying art also sends a message. One wonders what message was intended by the destruction of an anti-war-for-profit mural at the Museum of Contemporary Art in L.A.

Hiding behind “sensitivity” for veterans, MOCA Director Jeffrey Deitch’s order to destroy artist Blu’s work on the wall of the Geffen Contemporary Building conveyed a deep ignorance about the veterans community in the United States, which includes a great many people who strongly oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Here’s how Deitch explained his decision to destroy Blu’s art:

“‘This is 100% about my effort to be a good, responsible, respectful neighbor in this historic community,’ Deitch said. ‘Out of respect for someone who is suffering from lung cancer, you don’t sit in front of them and start chain smoking.’”

This is a strange metaphor because it implies that the dissent conveyed through art is killing people, rather than the war. It implies that a strong public statement of the opposition to wars for profit hurts veterans. But, if Deitch stopped and thought about it, he’d realize that the mural wasn’t a cigarette smoked in the face of the lung cancer victim, but rather the surgeon general’s warning on the side of cigarette pack.

Much of the anti-war movement is led by veterans, who’ve seen firsthand that these wars aren’t making us safer and aren’t worth the cost. If Deitch talked to more veterans rather than making blanket assumptions about their viewpoints, he might be surprised to find that many, many veterans stridently oppose the wars being fought by the U.S. at present. For example, the video Rethink Afghanistan published on Veterans Day featured veterans denouncing the war in Afghanistan as an unjust war.

Deitch must also not be familiar with Brigadier General Smedley Butler, the most decorated soldier in our nation’s history, and his views about war which perfectly match the implications of Blu’s mural:

“War is a racket. It always has been. it is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious… It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”

Here’s MOCA’s mission & vision statement as displayed on their website:

Mission & Vision Statement
MOCA’s mission is to be the defining museum of contemporary art. MOCA engages artists and audiences through an ambitious program of exhibitions, collection, education, and publication. MOCA identifies and supports the most significant and challenging art of its time, places it in historical context, and links the range of the visual arts to contemporary culture. MOCA provides leadership by actively fostering and presenting new work, emerging media, and original scholarship.

Nothing in these statements has anything to do with avoiding making people uncomfortable. If MOCA were honestly pursuing their goal of identifying and supporting the most significant and challenging art of its time, they would be proudly featuring Blu’s mural as a cultural gem rather than treating it like that embarrassing relative who just can’t behave at family reunions.

Here’s an interesting thought experiment: imagine if Blu had painted a mural celebrating, rather than dissenting from, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What if the mural had depicted the war in Afghanistan as a conflict that served American interests, where our team, including our allies in Kabul, were the Good Guys and our adversaries the Bad Guys. In other words, if Blu had lied through his art, rather than using it to tell the truth, would Deitch have painted over it? Maybe, but I doubt it.

Creating art conveys a message. Destroying it also sends a message.

At some point we’re going to have to show our veterans some true respect rather than assuming they’re thin-skinned war-mongers who would be offended by opposition to war. A great many veterans are deeply committed to ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What message does MOCA send by frantically trying to obscure such a powerful symbol of their convictions?

Please take a moment to support Blu’s work and to share your displeasure with Deitch’s actions by sending an email to MOCA.

It’s a regular comedy of errors with the Family Research Council.

In the organization’s zeal to defend itself from the charges of being an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, it continues to make huge missteps.

And the latest just happened yesterday.

Now SPLC contends that FRC – and other so-called morality groups – either deliberately rely on junk science, distort legitimate science, or push propaganda to make the lgbt community seem like the dreaded “other” out to destroy American values.

FRC contends that SPLC is unfairly attacking them because they stand against gay marriage even though SPLC has made it clear that this isn’t the case.

FRC spokesman Peter Sprigg, who has gone on record wanting gays and lesbians exported out of the United States and  “homosexual acts” to be made illegal, said the following about SPLC’s charges in a blog post yesterday:

For the record, FRC believes that every human being, including those who experience same-sex attractions and those who engage in homosexual conduct, is created in the image of God and is loved by Him. How this qualifies as “hate” is a mystery.

We will be preparing a more detailed response to Cohen’s charge that FRC spreads “falsehoods” in our well-documented research, which does show that certain harms are associated with homosexual conduct. Those wishing to examine that research in the meantime can refer to the FRC book Getting It Straight: What the Research Shows About Homosexuality or to our recent pamphlet, The Top Ten Myths About Homosexuality.

For Sprigg’s information, I have done just that several times in the past and have found a bunch of errors in both works he cited.

I’ve talked about these errors in several blog posts, but they bear repeating.

Let’s look at the brochure The Top Ten Myths of Homosexuality.

At first glance, Ten Myths looks legitimate. However, a more intensive look reveals it to be a mishmash of inaccurate theories, cherry-picked work, and studies taken out of context created to justify homophobia

The following are just a few of the problems with Ten Myths:

1. Ten Myths repeats the lie that the Robert Spitzer study proves that homosexuality is changeable, excluding the fact that Spitzer has said on more than one occasion that his research was being distorted.

2. Ten Myths utilizes the work of  the organization National Association for  Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). The website Truth Wins Out calls NARTH  a discredited “ex-gay” fringe organization that peddles fraudulent “cures” for homosexuality.

According to Truth Wins Out, several NARTH members have been embroiled in controversies including:

Gerald Schoenwolf, PhD, a member of NARTH’ “Scientific Advisory Committee,” who wrote a piece on the group’s website that seemed to justify slavery

NARTH psychiatrist Joseph Berger, MD, another member of its “Scientific Advisory Committee,” who wrote a paper encouraging students to “ridicule” gender variant children.

Also, according to Truth Wins Out:

NARTH’ co-founder, Joesph Nicolosi encourages male clients to become more masculine by drinking Gatorade and referring to friends as “dude”. NARTH therapists have been known to practice rubber band therapy, where a gay client is made to wear a rubber band and snap it on his wrist when sexually stimulated. It is a mild form of aversion therapy meant to “snap” the client out of the moment of attraction. NARTH members have also been known to practice “touch therapy”, where a client sits in the therapist’ lap for up to an hour, while the therapist caresses him.

Earlier this year, another member of NARTH, George Rekers, resigned from the organization after caught coming from a vacation overseas with a “rentboy.”

3. Ten Myths pushes the inaccuracy that a man who molests a boy is automatically gay even though the American Psychological Association, the National Association of Social Workers, the American Academy of Child Psychiatrists and the Child Welfare League of America, all say that the homosexuality and pedophilia are not linked.

Now let’s look at FRC’s other book, Getting It Straight.

In chapter 4 – Is Homosexuality a Health Risk, there is this passage (pg. 88):

A study of 3,365 high school students published in Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine found: “Gay, lesbian, bisexual, or not sure male students were 6.50 times more likely to report a suicide attempt than heterosexual male students. Gay, lesbian, bisexual, or not sure female students were 2.02 times more likely to report a suicide attempt than their heterosexual female peers.”

Robert Garofalo, et al, “Sexual Orientation and Risk of Suicide Attempts among a Representative Sample of Youth,” Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine 153 (May 1999): 490.

In 1998, Garofalo complained that FRC and several other religious right groups was distorting his research. According to him, the groups omitted a crucial part of his findings (i.e. gay teens engage in negative behavior – suicide attempts – when faced with abuse from a homophobic society). Interestingly enough, when Garofalo complained, then FRC staff member Robert Knight questioned his credibility. (Boston doctor says ads distorted his work on gays, The Boston Globe, August 4, 1998 )

Then there is this passage in the same chapter on pg. 89:

A study published in the International Journal of Epidemiology on the mortality rates of homosexuals concluded that they have a significantly reduced life expectancy:

• “In a major Canadian centre, life expectancy at age twenty for gay and bisexual men is eight to twenty years less than for all men. If the same pattern of mortality were to continue, we estimate that nearly half of gay and bisexual men currently aged twenty years will not reach their sixty-fifth birthday. Under even the most liberal assumptions, gay and bisexual men in this urban centre are now experiencing a life expectancy similar to that experienced by all men in Canada in the year 1871.”

In 2001, the researchers of this study complained that their work was being distorted by organizations like FRC.

Chapter 5 of Getting it Straight, Do Homosexual Parents Pose a Risk to Children, is interesting in that except for a few alterations (i.e. rearranging of text) it is identical to Homosexual Parenting: Placing Children at Risk – one of the studies FRC removed from its webpage claiming that it contained “outdated sources.”

By that same token, chapter 6 of Getting It Straight, Is There a Link Between Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse? is a total rehash of Homosexuality and Child Abuse, yet another study that FRC removed from its page for having “outdated sources.”

What’s interesting about Homosexuality and Child Abuse is that a researcher cited in it, Nicholas Groth, sent a letter to FRC in 2002 complaining about how his work was being distorted to prove that gays molest children at a higher number that heterosexuals – something that his work found not to be true.

However, despite his complaint , Groth’s work is still cited in Getting It Straight (pg. 123):

Another study found that “some authors now believe that boys may be sexually abused as commonly as girls (Groth, 1978; O’Brien, 1980).”

The irony of all of this is that the title of Sprigg’s blog post is called SPLC Equates FRC to Neo-Nazis—So Who’s “Demonizing” Whom?

Based upon Sprigg’s shoddy work, created to demonize lgbts and pushed by FRC,  that is a very good question to ask, but not to SPLC.

The question should be asked of Sprigg and FRC.

Hat tip to Goodasyou.org

Quick – what was the first thing that came to your mind when you read the title of this post?

What about “Gentleman, should you ask for it?” Would this change your response? For many people the female-oriented title raises sexual connotations while the male-oriented iteration conjures thoughts of money and power.

For the record, in both cases I am talking about asking for raises at work. This is a subject that has long made my stomach churn.  As a natural people-pleaser-and-avoider-of-conflict, I’ve preferred to work hard and hope my results will speak loudly for themselves. Turns out I’m not alone in this.

Recently I talked with Carnegie Mellon Professor Linda Babcock, coauthor of “Women Don’t Ask” and “Ask For It,” two fantastic books on why and how working women should negotiate salaries.  (Professor Babcock is also very involved with motivating young girls. Thanks to her, the Girl Scouts now have a badge for negotiation skills).  Here are two of the many eye-popping statistics from Professor Babcock’s work:

• Avoiding negotiating your first salary can cost you $500,000 by age 60 (oh, and men negotiate their first salaries 4x more often than women).
• Women who consistently negotiate their salaries throughout their careers typically earn $1 million more in lifetime career earnings than women who don’t.

So what motivates negotiators? Locus of control. Professor Babcock observes that people who negotiate tend to have a worldview that is more “optimistic than fatalistic, malleable versus fixed.” Psychologists have noted that men consistently – across countries – have a higher propensity to see “the world as their oyster” than women.  Ergo, more men negotiate than women.

Alas, her research also shows that, “Men can behave anyway they want when they negotiate, but people have a strong preference for how women negotiate. Direct and aggressive doesn’t work.” For women a “more cooperative and relationship oriented” approach tends to be more effective.  When women adopt a bold can-do attitude they are often met with a “visceral reaction to strong women” and perceived as being not nice. Clearly, for women to achieve lasting pay parity, this has to change… but that’s a whole ‘nother topic.

Let’s get back to how this discussion can improve your life now.

This gut-wrenching economic environment may not seem the obvious one in which to rock the boat. But it’s also an environment when employers can’t afford to lose their best people. An innovative new website called GetRaised.com can help you make the most of your current situation.  With a few mouse clicks it will tell you if you are underpaid and for an additional $20 it will prepare a custom raise request that you can use to negotiate.  If you don’t get a raise in 6 months you’ll get your $20 back.  The company currently pegs the average raise received by users at $3,078. Not a bad return on $20.

What about you?  Have you ever asked for a raise and if so, how did it go?

Want more financial love? You can follow Manisha on Twitter at @ManishaThakor, sign up to get her email updates delivered right to your inbox here, and enroll in her innovative new online personal finance course called “Money Rules.”  Founder of the Women’s Financial Literacy Initiative, Manisha can be reached via her website: http://www.ManishaThakor.com.

Written by Amie Newman for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.

It’s being characterized as both good news and sad news.

Bishop Thomas Olmstead of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix has formally stripped St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona of its status as an official Catholic hospital after Lloyd H. Dean, President of Catholic Healthcare West, the entity that runs St. Joseph’s Hospital, refused to submit to Olmstead’s demands that the hospital never again perform a life saving procedure on a woman–if said procedure is an abortion.

St. Joseph’s could not, as the Dude would say, “abide.”In a statement released today, Bishop Olmstead explained his reasoning,

“In the decision to abort, the equal dignity of mother and her baby were not both upheld,” Olmsted said at a news conference announcing the decision. “The mother had a disease that needed to be treated. But instead of treating the disease, St. Joseph’s medical staff and ethics committee decided that the healthy, 11-week-old baby should be directly killed.”

The hospital did, in fact, treat the mother’s “disease” because if they hadn’t not only would she have died but the fetus would have as well. Olmstead’s insistence on calling the fetus, in utero, an “11 week old baby” is not only disrespectful of this woman’s life and health, it’s medically incorrect and absolutely meant to condescend to a woman whose life was saved and whose chidren still have a living mother.

According to a statement from Linda Hunt, president of St. Joseph’s, the hospital does all they can to prioritize the lives of both the fetus and the mother but, “Morally, ethically, and legally we simply cannot stand by and let someone die whose life we might be able to save.” Read more