Several reports this year have shown a marked increase in violence against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and especially Transgender persons. The most recient comes from The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs 2008 Hate Violence Report:
New York - Violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people increased 2% from 2007 to 2008, continuing the trend of a 24% total increase in 2007, according to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP)'s 2008 Hate Violence Report. Bias-related murders were at their highest rate since 1999 with 29 known anti-LGBT murders committed in 2008.
Reports of violence in Milwaukee increased 64% and Minnesota and Chicago saw increases of 48% and 42%, respectively. "We are deeply troubled about the 2008 statistics for a number of reasons including the fact that increases in victimization in the Upper Midwest far exceed the national increase of 2%.
With Minnesota's 48% increase in 2008 and continued multi-year trend of such increases, we are concern for the safety of all GLBT Minnesotans even as we continue to work for equality," said Rebecca Waggoner Kloek, Anti-Violence Program Director of NCAVP member organization OutFront Minnesota.
Violence against the LGBT community is nothing new, its official state sanctioned beginnings were in the year 342 when the Christian emperors Constantius and Constans declared same-sex marriage to be illegal. (Yes, ladies and gentlemen, at one time same sex marriage WAS LEGAL and this fact is backed up by the laws overturning it on record in Rome)
In the year 390, the Roman Christian emperors Valentinian II, Theodosius I and Arcadius declared homosexual sex itself to be illegal and those who were guilty of it were condemned to be publicly burned alive. The Christian emperor Justinian I (527-565) made homosexuals a scapegoat for problems such as "famines, earthquakes, and pestilences."
Today, most of the perpetrators of hate crimes against the LGBT community have been lead to believe they are "just doing society a favor" by committing these crimes: In 1988 a Florida judge, trying a case concerning the beating to death of a gay man asked the prosecutor, "That's a crime now, to beat up a homosexual?" The prosecutor responded, "Yes, sir. And it's also a crime to kill them." Altschiller, Donald (2005), Hate Crimes: a reference handbook, ABC-CLIO, pp. 26–28
Just where do they get these ideas? They get most of these ideas from a group of people who are very influential in fundamentalist theology today. The major players in the Anti-Gay Industry have similar roots and early indoctrination into the ideas that grew out of the anti-communist, anti-semitic feelings fueled during the early cold war.
Their actions are influenced by many of the same people, they speak at each others functions, attend the same conferences and preach to the same groups of people through TV, the radio and newsletters. Their mis-information flows out into the greater community and once heard, are often times taken for the truth. It isn't a conspiracy, while each group does have an agenda, it is simply they are out there preaching the same message.
According to a new book out byLeonard Zeskind, called Blood And Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement From the Margins to the Mainstream, during the 1960's Willis Allison Carto an avid anti-Semite and white supremacist published a newsletter, and a magazine called The Spotlight, that appealed to both anti-communists and arch-segregationists.
Among those influenced by Carto and his publications, either directly or indirectly were Jerry Falwell, Pat Buchanan, David Noebel, David Duke, Phyllis Schlafly and Pat Robertson.
"And do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead expose them." - Ephesians 5:11------
One of the first and one of the most active behind the scenes players in todays Anti-Gay industry is Summit Ministries. Summit Ministries trains leaders in the "war against multiculturalism, humanism, socialism, communism and homosexuality."
David Noebel, who's anti-civil rights career began as an evangelist with the scandal-plagued Anti-Communist Christian Crusade, also started Summit Ministries in 1962, their first target was Christian college students. Summit Ministries and the Anti-Communist Christian Crusade are both currently headquartered in Manitou Springs, Colorado. David Noebel is still associated with with the ACCC.
Now an unaccredited college of its own, boasting additional campuses in Ohio and Tennessee. Summit graduates more than 1,300 students a year — all of them steeped in both Christian "dominionism" (the idea that Biblical Law should dominate society and politics), fighting communism, thinly veiled white supremacy called anti-multiculturalism and anti-gay politics. In 1977, while still a member of the John Birch Society, Noebel was one of the first to recognize that anti-gay activism could surpass anti-communism as a winning issue for fundamentalists.
The U.S. is "rotting within," Noebel warned, and "homosexuality is only an issue when a nation is rotting morally." Noebel wrote a book called The Homosexual Revolution and gave anti-gay lectures. In 1986, he teamed up with debunked "scientist" Paul Cameron (founder of the Family Research Institute) and then-Summit instructor Wayne Lutton, currently a leader in the white-supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens, to write Special Report: AIDS. Pat Buchanan writes, on the back cover "In a healthy society," Buchanan writes, homosexuality is "contained, segregated, controlled and stigmatized."
Bolstered by Cameron's studies alleging that gay people were intentionally spreading the AIDS virus, Special Report proposes a number of means to "suppress" the outbreak, concluding that it might become necessary to "exile" all "active homosexuals" from America.
In 1991 he authored the 900-page Understanding the Times: The Religious Worldviews of our Day and the Search for Truth, a textbook interpreting current intellectual movements, from Biblical Christianity, Secular Humanism, Marxism/Leninism, the New Age Movement, Islam, and Postmodernism.It is widely used among Christian schools, churches and colleges, either in its unabridged or abridged formats.
Summit Ministries continues to preach anti-gay propaganda to the next generation of fundamentalist activists, with Mike Haley, an "ex-gay" campaigner who is Focus on the Family's "youth and gender specialist" and author of a book called Straight Answers: Exposing the Myths and Facts about Homosexuality, currently on the faculty. Summit Ministries is heartily endorsed by Focus on the Family's James Dobson, who, according to SPLC: "No one has spread the anti-gay gospel as widely, or with as much political impact, as James Dobson."
Why do Americans continue to listen to these people?
Because most Americans are sheep. I'm constantly astounded by the ignorance of a lot of my fellow citizens when it comes to world events, or even what is going on in our own country.
ReplyDeleteReligion offers and easy out if you will. A way to say that I have one explanation for everything. It sees the world in black and white. The reality is that the world is really in shades of grey. But that requires too much active thinking.
I suppose you could reach the conclusion that our fellow citizens aren't just ignorant but lazy, or as a fellow co-worker used to say "I don't know and I don't care" aka ignorant and apathetic.
I hear that too truthspew, the lazy is the big one, it keeps one "happily" ignorant.
ReplyDeleteI have come to accept, sort of, that most folks don't care to know because it might cause conflict within themselves, and they don't want to deal.
But, I will keep on blogging for those who happen to stumble by and read.