Behind the Mask the African LGBT website reports in an article written by Ken Were, African Anglican Bishops are ready to sever ties with the Anglican Church in the West over the issue of homosexuality.
Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni, whose government has frequently criticized gay movements in the country, hosted the bishops for dinner at Imperial Resort Beach where he called on the spiritual leaders to focus on economic empowerment of their believers.
Prelates ignored concurrent calls by local and international gay activists who petitioned them to speak out forcefully against the pending anti-homosexuality.
“We are not gathered in Uganda to discuss about homosexuality. This has not been our agenda and will never be one. Homosexual lifestyle is not part of our biblical ideology nor Christian teachings, Bishop Benea Salala Mumias who attended the conference told Behind the Mask.
In his speech in Kampala, Williams asked the African bishops to be focused on issues that afflict the mankind.
He avoided commenting on homosexuality, which has divided the Anglican Church since the consecration of a gay Bishop in America more than seven years ago.
The are allegations of the church also being rocked by homosexual scandals in the West among its high ranking priests, some of whom are calling for the recognition of gay marriages by the church.
Kenya’s Anglican Bishop, Dr. Eliud Wabukala, said Anglican churches have resolved to cut links with any church abroad that supports same sex marriage.
How often do the “blogger elite”, Gay Inc and orgs like GLAAD call for a boycott and a “call to action” to contact advertisers of talk show hosts or TV programs who have in one way or another disparaged the LGBT community.
Too many times in this writer’s opinion.
In much the same way it happened recently with Dr. Laura and her more than abundant use of the “N” word on her show which has caused her to “throw in the towel” and give up her show when her contract ends later this year because as she feels to paraphrase “her Freedom of Speech has been compromised” due to the fallout over losing advertisers because of that one show and the cloud of that threat ever hanging overhead. I’m no fan of Dr. Laura, however I stand behind her right and the rights of others to say what they wish in the context of talk radio, the printed word and television including programs and even motion pictures and documentaries short of inciting mayhem in our Country and society.
There is a very fine line between activism and censorship. There is also a finer line between corporate profit and censorship as anyone who has seen the movie “The Insider” knows. The film which dealt with the CBS News program 60 Minutes and a whistle blower who brings forth evidence against tobacco giant Brown & Williamson, one of the “seven dwarfs” of Big Tobacco and how because of potential corporate loss or gain of profit “the suits at Black Rock” coerced the executives at 60 Minutes to present a watered down version of the original report they had planned to air. 60 Minutes later aired the full version.
While doing some background research for this piece I found an article written by Lawrence Soley back in 1997 titled “The Power Of The Press Has A Price“.
Soley begins his article with this, Sixty years ago, reporter and press critic George Seldes wrote in Freedom of the Press that advertisers, not government, are the principal news censors in the United States. Not only do advertisers pressure newspapers to kill or alter stories, he concluded, but newspapers censor stories out of deference “toward the sources of their money” without being told.
Sixty years later, advertisers are still muscling newspapers. A survey of 55 members of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers at the society’s 1992 conference revealed that advertiser pressure was common. Eighty percent reported that the pressure was a growing problem, and 45 percent knew of instances where news coverage was compromised by advertisers. “Business journalists have always struggled against advertiser pressures, but our members are telling us it’s getting worse,” said Sandra Deurr, the business editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal and former society president.
A survey of local news editors described in Advertising Age (1/11/93) found that automobile dealers were the most frequent sources of pressure. “They want all stories involving auto sales to have a rosy outlook,” one editor observed, “and they whine about negative economic stories, even if they’re on a national level from AP.”
Advertisers appear to be muscling broadcasters as well. In Los Angeles, veteran KCBS-TV consumer reporter David Horowitz was let go in 1996 after automobile advertisers repeatedly complained to management about his stories on car safety. According to Horowitz, management had first tried to stop his investigations with comments such as, “I’m concerned about the story not because it’s right or wrong, but because it may cost us advertising.” According to Chicago Sun-Times columnist Robert Feder (2/12/96), Chicago’s WLS-TV killed a story on fire hazards in Ford vehicles because it “didn’t want to risk offending auto dealers who advertise heavily on the station.”
In much the same way that news gets censored as Soley writes regarding the automobile industry so too has “the words of thought” become censored due to these so-called “call to action” campaigns by the aforementioned in the LGBT community much like a political behemoth.
However there is currently one shining example albeit sans the involvement of LGBTs where corporate profit is not censoring news and in particular investigative reporting. That is happening now at KPHO-TV the CBS affiliate in Phoenix, Arizona which Rachel Maddow profiled on her program Wednesday evening in the video below.
KPHO-TV has been investigating the ties between Governor Jan Brewer and Chuck Coughlin, Brewer’s campaign chairman, policy adviser and a lobbyist for the largest private prison company in the country. And he’s one of two people in the Brewer administration with ties to Corrections Corporation of America.
The other administration member is communications director Paul Senseman, a former CCA lobbyist. His wife still lobbies for the company.Brewer’s campaign chairman, policy adviser and a lobbyist for the largest private prison company in the country. And he’s one of two people in the Brewer administration with ties to Corrections Corporation of America.
The other administration member is communications director Paul Senseman, a former CCA lobbyist. His wife still lobbies for the company.
Even though Brewer’s campaign pulled advertising money from KPHO-TV while not doing the same at other media outlets in Phoenix or other markets in the state, station management has not come to the newsroom and ordered the continuing investigation to stop.
Whenever “Freedom of Speech” or the “Freedom of The Press” is threatened with monetary blackmail it leads to a slippery slope down to a cliff looking into the deep abyss the same as governmental control of media, press and thought.
I daresay there are many in various countries, journalists and citizens alike, who are censored who would look at these “call to action” campaigns and other forms of censorship threats, corporate or otherwise, to one of this Country’s most sacred rights, Freedom of Speech, and shake their heads in disbelief.
Last evening former President George Bush prayed to God for intervention during The Rachel Maddow Show and his prayer was answered when Maddow’s mic suddenly went off.
Fearing what America’s most popular lesbian might say about him in a segment about President Obama’s speech on Iraq, a source told this writer that Bush went out into a barn on his ranch in Texas and nestled among cows and sheep got on bended knees and prayed to the Lord.
Moments after Bush began praying a burning bush appeared and told George, He would intervene on his behalf.
While George’s prayer was answered, it came with a cost.
The burning bush set hay in the barn afire and according to local authorities the barn was a total loss.
Neither former President Bush nor the cows or sheep were injured. The source said after the fire and hearing about the snafu on The Rachel Maddow Show Bush said “Mission accomplished. So the barn burned down. You always get collateral damage in victories.”
Oh sure, four years after Mother CBS showed myself and 100 plus others the front door in a nationwide downsizing at CBS Radio, now Mother is becoming overly LGBT friendly with its new LGBT affinity group ANGLE.
“ANGLE will hold kick-off meetings in New York and Los Angeles for CBS, Showtime, Simon and Schuster and other CBS division employees,” according to a group spokesman. “ANGLE plans personal and professional development events, speakers bureaus as well as social gatherings each month.”
While CBS had a ”strict policy” in regards to discrimination against sexual oreintation while I worked there, it’s nice to see they have stepped up to the plate and started this group.
Meanwhile all is not well at the Tiffany Network as its once top diamond has lossed a lot of its sparkle and more cuts are on the way to CBS News … good going Katie Couric. Many former CBS News greats starting with Edward R. Murrow to Walter Cronkite are turning over in their graves, not to forget William S. Paley who created CBS as The Daily Beast reports.
Four years and a reported $60 million later, Couric now sits atop a news division that is in many ways unrecognizable as the one-time home of Walter Cronkite—or even the deep-pocketed, star-struck company that lured Couric to Cronkite’s vacant chair with promises of wealth, fame, and a place in history.
But even as Couric and her team racked up plaudits, CBS News has withered. Layoffs and cutbacks, the most recent in February, have trimmed the division close to the bone, and according to senior staffers, another round is coming this fall. The network’s two premier daily broadcasts, Couric’s Evening News and the CBS Early Show, are recording particularly dismal ratings this summer.
In the last two weeks, the CBS Evening News has drawn just 4.89 million viewers on average, the lowest ratings recorded in the 20 years Nielsen Media Research has been keeping track. During the first of those two weeks, Couric traveled to Afghanistan and landed an exclusive interview with Gen. David Petraeus, among others. The CBS Early Show has logged around 2.2 million viewers on average this summer, less than half the ratings of NBC’s Today.
The person who handled ordering business cards vanished, and staffers haven’t been able to get them since. Cell phone services are blocked on company-provided BlackBerrys for many producers, who are now encouraged to communicate by text. The communication between CBS brass, including news division president Sean McManus, and their staff has all but vanished.
“There’s no email,” said one producer. “There is no sense at all that you’re at a network.”
Nice huh ? But don’t expect Couric to give up any of her money to save staff members. She didn’t when the first volley of cuts started with us in the Radio Division in 2006. Hell what does Couric care. She’s got a nice contract as do no doubt others who are responsible for sinking CBS News almost as fast as the Titanic went down. At least when the Titanic went down some were offered life jackets and life boats while the band played. Today you get stoon-gots as Mother shows you the door.
My advice to anyone these days thinking of taking journalism or broadcasting in college. Forget it, get into nursing as us boomers get older and move to states like Florida or Arizona where they can’t find enough help for geriatrics.
In an article from the Associated Press and at the website of CBS News it reads in part, In the 1960s and early 1970s, Cuban officials fired homosexuals from state jobs, imprisoned them or sent them to work camps. Castro told (Mexican newspaper) La Jornada, “Yes, we did it, us,” but also said, “I am trying to limit my responsibility in all this because, of course, I personally do not hold those kinds of prejudices.”
Still, when pressed if the Communist Party or some other entity was behind what occurred Castro said, “No, if any person was responsible, it’s me.”
He said he had been too busy coping with events such as the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis to stop what occurred. “We had so many and such terrible problems, problems of life or death, that we didn’t pay it enough attention.”
Government media campaigns now discourage homophobia and the state has even paid for a few sex-change operations for transsexuals.
Also, Fidel’s niece Mariela, the daughter of President Raul Castro, is today the country’s leading gay rights advocate.
Castro’s comments to La Jornada elaborated on past acknowledgments of his government’s mistreatment of gays.
“I’d like to think that discrimination against homosexuals is a problem that is being overcome,” he said during interviews with French journalist Ignacio Ramonet between 2003 and 2005. “Old prejudices and narrow-mindedness will increasingly be things of the past.”
Well well well boys and girls I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks. Are you listening OutQ ?
In July it was reported via an article at the Bay Area Reporter that future of Cleveland holding the 2014 Gay Games was in doubt. But now according to The Plain Dealer Cleveland will hold onto it’s hosting position for the games.
The Federation of Gay Games remains committed to holding the 2014 Gay Games in Cleveland and Akron despite the fact that FGG has cut ties with the local group that lured the Games here, an FGG spokesman said Friday.
Rumors have been circulating that Cleveland and Akron might lose the Games because of the group’s problems with Cleveland Synergy Foundation, the nonprofit group that spearheaded a successful bid for the 2014 Games.
The spokesman, Kelly Stevens, said those rumors are false. The Federation of Gay Games’ General Assembly cast a nearly unanimous vote during the recent Games in Cologne, Germany, on a resolution to keep the quadrennial Games in Cleveland and Akron in 2014, he said.
Organizers and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities in Boston and Washington, D.C., have been upset and perplexed that their cities, which have reputations as being gay-friendly, had lost out to Cleveland.
UPDATE - September 2 – OutSports is reporting Cleveland Synergy Foundation, the group granted the right to host the 2014 Gay Games until the Federation of Gay Games stripped them of that right in July, filed a lawsuit today against the Federation of Gay Games. The City of Cleveland and two other defendants are also named in the suit. The FGG is being sued for alleged breach of the license agreement between the FGG and Cleveland Synergy, interference with contractual and business relations, civil conspiracy, false light and defamation. Cleveland Synergy is demanding a jury trial.
Akermanis has since defended himself by saying he was merely responding to rumours about certain players that were raised during a question-answer segment. But Mitchell, who has met and spoken with senior AFL figures about how the league approaches homosexuality and homophobia, says that is no excuse. He is particularly incensed given he was involved in providing Akermanis with statistics about youth suicide and depression before the sacked Western Bulldog wrote his now-infamous ”Stay in the Closet” newspaper column earlier this year. ”It’s grossly irresponsible. Because the research tells us, and Jason Akermanis knows this research, that the people who are at highest risk of committing suicide are the people who are thinking of doing so to avoid disclosure of their sexual orientation – whether it’s gay, bisexual or whatever. So for Jason Akermanis to be engaging in this sort of behaviour, I think he would seem to be intent on keeping funeral directors busy,” Mitchell said.
The above and below is from an article written by Samantha Lane in The Age. As has been noted several times on this blog, while sports in general here in the United States have a long way to go in doing away with homophobia beginning with the NFL, rugby seems to be one sport (including it fans) and in particular in Australia which can’t seem to shake and make inroads in doing away with its view of homosexuals being involved in sports. Akermanis (left in above photo) who is no stranger to “opening mouth insert foot” might be well off to “open mouth and insert a big dick“. Hopefully then he’ll just shutup on the matter.
The appetite for ”outing” gay AFL players is putting lives of young Australians wrestling with their sexuality at risk, says an expert in the field who has advised the AFL Players’ Association on the topic.
Rob Mitchell, instrumental in the AFLPA’s anti-homophobia campaign earlier this year and a member of the state government’s Sport Governance and Inclusion project, has called on the AFL to take a stronger lead but believes the league still ”buries its head in the sand” on the issue.
Mitchell’s comments follow reports in The Age this week that Jason Akermanis speculated about individual AFL players who might be gay at a corporate function in Mildura earlier this month.
A Victorian University research report published this year, ”Come Out to Play”, found Australian rules to be the most hostile and unwelcoming football code for homosexuals.
45 per cent of the 308 surveyed gay men said they would like to play AFL but did not, or felt they could not, because of the environment they perceived to be threatening. By comparison, 10 per cent of those surveyed regarded soccer as Australia’s most hostile sporting environment for gay men.
“It escapes me, it eludes me completely, why the AFL is not going at this with hammer and tongs,” Mitchell said. ”I go back to the Mal Brown and Dipper [race-related] comments. When they came out, the AFL was like a very finely tuned machine swung into action. There was no delay and they were completely on message. They said ‘this is unacceptable’. We’re not getting that with Jason Akermanis. In many ways it’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion.
AFL Players’ Association president Brett Burton said it ”flabbergasts me” that Akermanis would speculate publicly about who, in the AFL playing ranks, may or may not be gay.
”We’ve worked so hard as a playing group to send a message to the general community that we support differences in the community, whether it be differences in culture or whether it be sexual choice,” he said.
”We’re not trying to ‘out’ people. It’s all about trying to make the environment and the community a place where people can feel comfortable if they choose to come out.
”It’s about people feeling more comfortable because we know about the suicide rates in homosexual people and we know the struggles they face with having their sexual choice acknowledged, be it by family or by friends.”
This week on MSNBC when Thomas Roberts interviewed Chris Barron of GOP Proud about former Bush henchman Ken Mehlman “coming out”, Roberts made it a tad “inclusive” when he said “me included” in this portion of the conversation when Roberts said, “I think for probably most heterosexual Americans this isn’t going to come as a big deal, but I think for millions of gay and lesbian Americans — me included — find this to be kind of a shocking admission, especially when Mehlman’s leadership, in the positions that he held, came at a time when he was part of talks that would have put discrimination into the Constitution. When they were ramping up anti gay rhetoric and now he wants to come out say, ‘hey I’m one of you.’ So how does he go about trying to get millions of gay and lesbian Americans to believe that he is not just a big hypocrite.”
Roberts first publicly “came out” in September of 2006 while speaking at the annual convention of National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association in Miami. Christie Keith, a reporter with the website AfterElton.com, published an interview with Roberts also in 2006, in which Roberts said he actually came out to co-workers back in 1999, when he was living in Norfolk, Virginia. “I was happy, I was in a relationship, and I was very proud. I had the support of family, and of my friends. It was … about not wasting any more time. I’d wasted enough time.” He further commented, on the subject of coming out, “Hopefully, everyone, gay or straight, journalists or doctors or otherwise, can overcome that obstacle, because it stands in the way of you being the best you can be, with your job, with your family, with everything, and not have to be afraid anymore.”
Roberts who has worked for CNN, CBS News, the syndicated entertainment programs Entertainment Tonight and The Insider, is the host of Advocate On-Air. In 2005 Roberts came forward to testify against Jerome F. Toohey Jr., a former priest who had abused him when he was a student at Calvert Hall College High School. Toohey pled guilty to the sexual abuse charges and received a five year jail sentence with all but 18 months suspended in February 2006. Toohey served only 10 months before his sentence was converted in December with the remaining eight months to be served in home detention. Roberts discussed his abuse in a special segment on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 called “Sins of the Father” on March 12, 2007.
While yes, Roberts is “easy on the eyes”, it’s Roberts’ journalistic background which deserves Roberts a permanent anchor position on MSNBC. In this writer’s less than humble opinion it would make MSNBC a better place if they got rid of one of the bimbos (Contessa Brewer immediately comes to mind) and added Roberts to their stable of anchors. Oh can you imagine the fodder for Faux News having Roberts and Rachel Maddow both on MSNBC. “Now we know why the NBC peacock has rainbow colored feathers”. Actually Faux News has no room to talk after all they have Shep Smith in their lineup. Too bad he can’t be swayed to the peacock.
The only problem I have with Roberts is he was born the same year I graduated high school and that makes me feel so fucking old. Imagine I’m old enough to be his … Dad. Well if I had a son I’d be proud to have one like Roberts. Excuse me kids time for my Geritol.
Behind the Mask the African LGBT website reports in an article written by Ken Were, African Anglican Bishops are ready to sever ties with the Anglican Church in the West over the issue of homosexuality.
Lyndon Evans