Friday, May 11, 2012

Video: Lincoln, Nebraska hearings on proposed LGBT ordinance; Best In Show hater, Catholic Church willing to sacrifice homeless on altar of carve outs; 3 health care providers we wouldn't want to meet

Some new advice from
Jane after passage of
ordinance
NEW! Lincoln passes LGBT ordinance 5-0; Jane Svoboda not amused. Nebraska Family Council Launches petition drive to block law and a propaganda blitz on radio and the Internet against Lincoln gays

To see all videos and AKSARBENT coverage of the hearing, click on the "Lincoln LGBT Ordinance" label between the bottom of this post and the comments.

More on Lincoln LGBT Hearing:
  • GOP council member Jon Camp reveals his bias...
  • Psych student vs. psych student, and how Big Red homophobia is probably about to deprive the state of another future rural MD...(Note to Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman, who never met an anti-gay law or policy he didn't like: Is this part of the brain drain you claim to be concerned about?)
Unrelated, but interesting election news: Omaha World-Herald company loses 30% of votes in South Bronx precinct (Did you know that a company owned by Nebraska's biggest newspaper counts more votes in the U.S. than anyone? And that California decertified at least one of their products?)
Readers, please understand that contrary to the headline (written before AKSARBENT confirmed that the woman is indeed schizophrenic), it is unlikely that she is a hater. She is deluded — an excuse that several of the more homophobic, manipulative and mean-spirited medical professionals at the hearing cannot proffer. Certainly, she is NOT responsible for what she says. And to those who think that schizophrenia can't create homophobia if it didn't already exist, psychologists say you're wrong. Locals should worry more about people like Omaha's "Mean" Jean Stothert or Dr. Franklin Thompson!




Left: The woman behind hat lady had HER say too, and it was the perfect antidote. She lives in a state of grace. Video of her testimony is rapidly spreading. Help do that.



Brad Chapin's devastating testimony
is at the 11:30 mark in the video below
Below: Fr. Chris Kubat plays hardball with the Lincoln City Council, followed by the most deeply affecting testimony (at 11:30) that AKSARBENT has seen in Omaha, Lincoln or anywhere else in months, by PFLAG volunteer, Brad Chapin, who is doing his best trying to pull suicidal gay kids out of a dark whirlpool of Catholic psychological terrorism, indoctrination and hopelessness. Some days he wins and some days he doesn't



Lincoln Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz,
who has described gay sex as
"intrinsically disordered" and as not
coming "from a genuine affective
and sexual complementarity"
whatever the hell that means.
Quote and photo from Wikipedia.
The Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, under Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz's leadership, has become one of the most iron-fisted and reactionary in North America. Example: it is now the last United States diocese which still prohibits girls from being altar servers.
   Several years ago, Bishop Bruskewitz pugnaciously refused to participate in a voluntary annual audit of diocesan policies against child sexual abuse requested by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. John Krejci, a South Omaha native ordained in 1962 who left the priesthood in 1971 to become a professor of social work, was excommunicated by Bruskewitz, along with several other other local members of a Catholic reform group known as Call to Action.

Below: Drs. Edward Stringham, Richard Wurtz and Timothy H. Fischer testify against  Lincoln's proposed ordinance.

Dr. Edward Stringham is a Lincoln psychologist who has repeatedly lobbied against legal measures which would give LGBT Nebraskans legal recourse when subjected to arbitrary discrimination.



Regarding employment, for example, there does not appear to be any compelling need for this action. I have attended probably a dozen hearings at the legislature as well as in other venues and up until today I have never once heard an allegation that any Lincoln employee suffered discrimination or job loss as a result of their sexual orientation...
     This was a convenience sample of volunteers recruited from activist organizations such as Rebel Interactive and Gay Pride parades. Most who identify as LGBT do not participate in organizations such as these.
In Dr. Stringham's reality, Gay day partiers are all "activists," as presumably are Mexicans, Irish, Italians and Chinese who participate in Cinco de Mayo, St. Patrick's Day, Columbus Day and Chinese New Year celebrations.
     (This reminds AKSARBENT of when George Will attempted to sell his idiot mantra that gay St. Patrick's day celebrants who wanted to march in New York City with their own banner had an "agenda." George Stephenapolous shut him down with a glare and the curt observation that "Saying who you are is not an agenda, George.")
     In the video, Stringham asserts that "sexual orientation by its very nature is highly fluid." He than cited a Dr. Edward Laumann of the University of Chicago, who Stringham said claims said that over half of those who profess it, eventually "spontaneously exit homosexuality."
     "Homosexuality is 0% genetically inheritable, according to the Human Genome Study," Stringham claimed, without attribution. "That's just one example of the so-called pseudo science that we've been given today."
     Here's what Dr. Francis Collins, respected geneticist and head of the Human Genome Project, has actually said about the subject after having been misquoted before by the ideological fellow travelers of people like Dr. Edward Stringham:
The evidence we have at present strongly supports the proposition that there are hereditary factors in male homosexuality — the observation that an identical twin of a male homosexual has approximately a 20% likelihood of also being gay points to this conclusion, since that is 10 times the population incidence. But the fact that the answer is not 100% also suggests that other factors besides DNA must be involved. That certainly doesn’t imply, however, that those other undefined factors are inherently alterable.

17 comments:

  1. I can't even follow the lady up top. Bizarre.

    As for the Catholics in Lincoln, the ones I know are nothing but kind and caring. It's just like when I hear religious people saying that all atheists are militant assholes, just because of a few loud and ignorant ones. Same thing goes with this blanket statement.

    We need to find common ground, because in the end most of us humans are NOT fundamentalists.

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    Replies
    1. I long ago stopped judging Catholics for the rhetoric of their church. Polls on gay rights show that Catholic churchgoers are about on par as most of the rest of the public, if not a bit better. However, the upper hierarchy of their religion is controlled by anti-gay jerks. Just take a look at the recent admonishment the Pope gave to the American nuns, who had been too busy helping people and not focusing enough on abortion or against same-sex marriage.

      It's not anti-religion to point out to the religious that their some of their leaders are assholes.

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    2. Pretty much. American Catholics are very liberal. It's one of the reasons the RCC spent the past 2 decades placing these insane anti-gay, highly conservative, clergy into the hierarchy. They've been attempting to get American Catholics to fall in line and that includes a whole lot of low level clergy too (priests, nuns, and monks in various religious orders) because the American clergy of the past were actively engaged in liberal causes and even worse for those conservative catholics was that American clergy embraced Pope John 23rd's Vatican II reforms which conservatives hated and JPII and the current Pope have been actively undermining.

      The RCC as a whole has never liked the fact that American and many South American catholics (eg 'liberation theology') weren't under their thumb the way other nations have been but the Americans have had too much money to lash out at the laity so they've went for installing conservatives as higher ups.

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  2. I identify as a gay man and I am so glad I don't live in Omaha. You have some very misguided and misinformed people in your city.

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    Replies
    1. I wouldn't be so quick to say that. There are many amazingly open and accepting people in Omaha and Lincoln, but the assumption is that of what is stereotypical of the Midwest. I am also a gay man and I live in Boston. I found the gay community in Omaha to be incredible, accepting and fulfilling. Great things are happening there, and I'd go back in a heartbeat if it weren't for school demands.

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  3. All you have to do is replace Black with Gay/Homosexual.
    Quote from Dr. Edward Stringham, except with the above replacement. "...A Psychologist who believes black relationships to be immoral, might have to counsel blacks..."

    It comes down to small things each of these people say which relate to whether homosexuality is a choice or not. Being black is not a choice. But you do chose Religion. So it seems odd to me that you are allowed to choice a Religion but not a sexuality. He is right though, eventually everyone spontaneously stops being Catholic.

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  4. That first lady has some screws loose; she can't even manage a coherent statement.

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  5. She's reading a transcript from the Rush Limbaugh show of 2/22/2004.

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  6. I transcribed her ramblings here http://combatpixie.tumblr.com/post/22893621693

    I think I got it pretty accurate. I listened over and over to her last statement but I can't make any sense of it, not that many of her statements have any sort of sense going for them as it is :)

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  7. I live in Lincoln and am an activist for women's & lgbt rights. I've lobbied our City Council for over a year to make fairness, an issue the lion's share of Lincolnites support, a reality in our city. I spoke in favor of the ordinance & was subject to the rants & ravings of too many insane people that came down to Lincoln from Omaha to spread their hate speech. It didn't work in Omaha & it won't work here. All they did was show how insane & full of hate they are! I think it's funny how Omaha never cares about Lincoln until this issue came up! One city trying to influence another city to discriminate & hate. These people "Claim" to love Jesus. Jesus is love & acceptance. Jesus came to give shelter & hope to the oppressed. Jesus did not come to oppress or discriminate, he came to end oppression & discrimination! How can these people think they are doing God's work when they are doing the exact opposite of what Jesus did? What's going to happen when these people meet our maker? I have to feel for them.

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  8. Religion should never be the reason for any sort of law or anything political. If they say "This shouldn't happen because it's against my religion" just kick them out and forget about them. They're religious freaks who think their religion is higher than everybody else s religion.

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  9. The only way gay marriage could threaten your heterosexual marriage, is if you're gay. That's the only way it could break you up.

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  10. These people are completely lost in their own collective identity. They see themselves as heroes fighting against the forces of evil, but they themselves are becoming evil.

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  11. Most of my republican friends are about as proud of the christian community as they are of Sarah Palin and as their moderate members leave in droves the only people left in the mainstream churches are extremist nutjobs like this. The great think is that they are head toward first marginalization the extinction. They have become snake handlers and shakers.

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  12. Dr. Carroll makes a number of on-target observations in his post. He notes that this action by the APA amounts to what's called "SLAPP," which as I discussed in HOOKED means "strategic lawsuit against public participation." In this case it would be a threatened SLAPP rather than a true SLAPP James Dreesen

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