Sunday, June 07, 2015 10:53:58 PM
Vatican Official Denounces Ireland’s Vote for Same-Sex Marriage
By GAIA PIANIGIANI
MAY 27, 2015
ROME — In the Vatican [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/roman_catholic_church/index.html ]’s eyes, the referendum in Ireland [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/ireland/index.html ] that legalized same-sex marriage [ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/24/world/europe/ireland-gay-marriage-referendum.html ] last week was a “defeat for humanity,” a top Vatican official said in remarks published late on Tuesday.
“I was very saddened by this result,” said Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, according to the Vatican Radio website. “I don’t think we can speak only about a defeat for Christian principles, but a defeat for humanity.”
The Roman Catholic Church opposes same-sex marriage [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/same_sex_marriage/index.html ] and regards homosexual relations as sinful, but many Catholics, especially young people in Western Europe and North America, pay little heed to the church’s teachings on the subject. In Ireland, where the vast majority of citizens consider themselves Catholic, the constitutional amendment to allow same-sex marriage passed easily, with 62 percent of votes in favor.
Afterward, the archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said the church was growing out of touch with young people and needed a “reality check [ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/25/world/europe/church-faces-murky-future-as-irish-support-same-sex-marriage.html ].”
Cardinal Parolin’s comments were the first by a high-level Vatican official since the referendum. He said the church needed to register that reality “in the sense of reinforcing all its commitment, and make an effort to evangelize.”
Though the church has not changed its view of homosexuality, Pope Francis has been perceived as more open and compassionate on the subject than his recent predecessors, especially after a widely reported comment he made in 2013 concerning the sexual orientation of priests. “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Francis told reporters then [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/world/europe/pope-francis-gay-priests.html ], during his first trip abroad as pope.
The pope has opened a two-year synod to discuss issues surrounding the family and better ways to preach to Catholics today. In a recent meeting in Rome, Catholic bishops said it was necessary to welcome gays into the church, though they continued to rule out same-sex marriage.
Before Francis became pope, the tone and language used by the church was sterner. The Vatican compared homosexuality to an “objective disorder,” and Pope Benedict XVI, when he was still a cardinal, defined it as a “tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil.”
Francis did not directly mention the Irish referendum in his regular weekly address to the faithful on Wednesday. But when he spoke about the importance of the engagement period before marriage, he repeated traditional church teaching, calling marriage a “love alliance between a man and a woman.”
Same-sex marriage is not legally recognized in Italy, which like Ireland is heavily Catholic, and even Italy’s progressive Democratic Party has struggled to find a unified position on the issue. A recent campaign by gay rights activists and local officials [ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/24/world/europe/unable-to-marry-gay-couples-some-italian-mayors-rebel.html ] has led to cities formally registering same-sex marriages that were performed abroad. The government of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has promised new legislation to allow same-sex couples to join in civil unions, but not marriages.
© 2015 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/28/world/europe/vatican-official-denounces-irelands-vote-for-same-sex-marriage.html
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Catholic Archdiocese in Minnesota Charged Over Sex Abuse by Priest
Curtis Wehmeyer, a former priest in Minnesota, was sentenced in 2013 for criminal sexual conduct and possession of child pornography.
Credit Minnesota Department of Corrections, via Associated Press
By MITCH SMITH
JUNE 5, 2015
CHICAGO — Prosecutors in Minnesota filed criminal charges on Friday against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, accusing church leaders of mishandling repeated complaints of sexual misconduct against a priest and failing to follow through on pledges to protect children and root out pedophile clergymen.
The charges [ http://stmedia.startribune.com/documents/Archdiocese+of+Saint+Paul+and+Minneapolis+6.5.15.pdf ] and accompanying civil petition, announced by the Ramsey County prosecutor, John J. Choi, stem from accusations by three male victims who say that from 2008 to 2010, when they were under age, a local priest, Curtis Wehmeyer, gave them alcohol and drugs before sexually assaulting them.
The criminal case amounts to a sweeping condemnation of the archdiocese and how its leaders have handled the abuse allegations — even after reforms were put in place by church leaders to increase accountability — and the charges are among the most severe actions taken by American authorities against a Catholic diocese.
“Today, we are alleging a disturbing institutional and systemic pattern of behavior committed by the highest levels of leadership of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis over the course of decades,” Mr. Choi said in a statement.
Mr. Wehmeyer, 50, who was dismissed as a priest in March, was sentenced to five years in a Minnesota prison in 2013 for criminal sexual conduct and possession of child pornography. He also has been charged with sex crimes in Wisconsin [ http://www.twincities.com/crime/ci_26953842/st-paul-pedophile-priest-charged-wisconsin-case ].
The six criminal charges filed Friday, misdemeanors with a maximum fine of $3,000 each, accused the archdiocese of failing to protect children. Mr. Choi also filed a civil petition against the archdiocese that he said was intended to provide legal remedies to prevent similar inaction from happening again.
The 44-page criminal complaint states that concerns about Mr. Wehmeyer date to the 1990s, when he was in seminary and supervisors suggested that his past sexual promiscuity and alcohol abuse made him a poor candidate for the priesthood.
Fellow clergy members and parishioners voiced repeated concerns about Mr. Wehmeyer after his ordination in 2001, prosecutors said. The archdiocese allowed Mr. Wehmeyer to continue as a priest [ http://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2013/09/clergy-abuse/#timeline ], and even placed him in charge of his own parish, despite learning about his attempts to pick up young men at bookstores and his encounters with law enforcement at known “cruising” spots where men were known to meet other men for anonymous sexual encounters.
The charging documents also say that archdiocese officials knew that Mr. Wehmeyer used a boys’ bathroom at a parish elementary school instead of the staff restroom; tried to give an elementary-age boy a tour of the rectory in violation of policy; and took camping trips with boys where some of the sexual abuse was said to have occurred.
The archdiocese placed Mr. Wehmeyer in a monitoring program for priests facing complaints of abuse or other problems, but prosecutors said in court documents that the supervision and follow-through was “lax or nonexistent.”
“The archdiocese’s failures have caused great suffering by the victims and their family and betrayed our entire community,” Mr. Choi said in his statement.
Civil cases against the archdiocese and priests have poured in since 2013, when the Minnesota State Legislature passed the Child Victims Act [ http://www.startribune.com/abuse-law-unleashes-firestorm-on-church/260547781/ ], which opened a three-year window for filing lawsuits involving claims of sexual abuse that were beyond the criminal statute of limitations.
Many people have made such claims since that law’s passage, bringing new attention to decades-old cases, and creating public records of accusations against some priests.
David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said he was pleased by the indictment, “but the credit goes to Minnesota lawmakers, not this prosecutor.”
An auxiliary bishop for the diocese, Andrew Cozzens, said in a statement Friday, “We deeply regret the abuse that was suffered by the victims of Curtis Wehmeyer and are grieved for all victims of sexual abuse.”
He added that the archdiocese would continue to cooperate with prosecutors. “We all share the same goal: to provide safe environments for all children in our churches and in our communities,” Bishop Cozzens said.
Criminal prosecution of an entire Catholic archdiocese is rare, but not entirely unprecedented, in American courts.
An Ohio judge in 2003 convicted the Archdiocese of Cincinnati of failing to report sexually abusive priests in the 1970s and ’80s. The judge fined the archdiocese $10,000, the maximum allowed, after the archbishop entered a no-contest plea.
But the Minnesota allegations are especially stark because the sexual abuse is said to have occurred relatively recently, long after sexual misconduct by priests had been widely reported and after Catholic institutions implemented programs aimed at preventing further abuse.
“Naming the archdiocese as a corporation implicates the wrongdoing and the failure to protect children by all of the top officials, past and present,” Jeff Anderson, a lawyer in Minnesota who has represented clergy sex-abuse victims, said in a statement.
Laurie Goodstein contributed reporting from New York.
Related Coverage
Calls for Resignation Mount for Minnesota Archbishop in Scandals
JULY 15, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/us/calls-for-resignation-mount-for-minnesota-archbishop-in-scandals.html
© 2015 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/06/us/catholic-archdiocese-in-minnesota-charged-over-sex-abuse-by-priest.html
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Gay Activists Hail Vote, 3 Decades After a Fatal ‘Queer Bashing’ Hate Crime
By DOUGLAS DALBY
MAY 23, 2015
DUBLIN — Many of the young voters so pivotal to the successful campaign to legalize same-sex marriage in Ireland were not even born when the country’s version of New York’s Stonewall [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/stonewall_rebellion/index.html ] Riots occurred. In 1982, Declan Flynn, a 31-year-old gay man, was kicked and beaten to death with sticks by a gang of four youths in Fairview Park in Dublin’s north inner city.
His assailants admitted they had attacked him because they had been “queer bashing.” The leniency of their sentences — between one and five years, all suspended — was the catalyst for the first widespread demonstration for gay rights.
More than 30 years later, the heinous crime that produced a movement also led to a singular distinction for Ireland: It became the only country to legalize same-sex marriage [ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/24/world/europe/ireland-gay-marriage-referendum.html ] by popular vote.
Ireland’s paradigm shift from quasi theocracy to gay rights beacon has not happened by accident. It is the result of a calculated campaign for equality by gay activists and the coincidental decline of the Roman Catholic Church.
“Commentators just don’t seem to have grasped that this has been the culmination of a 10-year campaign to change attitudes in this country,” said Colm O’Gorman, chief executive of Amnesty International-Ireland and a leading gay rights campaigner.
“We stuck to our single message that this was about equality. We were determined not to get involved in vitriol or mudslinging and that this campaign would be joyful and positive.”
Mr. O’Gorman also said that the series of clerical pedophile scandals hastened the end of the Catholic Church hegemony over social affairs.
“There is no doubt the political and moral authority of the church was fatally undermined and this had a huge impact: It no longer had the sense of entitlement to direct people how to think and act.”
The veteran gay rights campaigner David Norris remembers Declan Flynn as a “shy, decent young man.” He recalls the crime and how the revulsion it engendered was compounded by the judge’s refusal to jail the four, who ranged in age from 14 to 19.
Afterward, about 900 people marched to the park to protest the crime and the sentence. Some 33 years later, Mr. Norris, who is now a government senator, was at Dublin Castle along with thousands of others celebrating Ireland’s transformation.
It took 16 years of legal battles before Mr. Norris ultimately succeeded in decriminalizing homosexuality in 1993, and only after the Irish government had been dragged before the European Court of Human Rights [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/e/european_court_of_human_rights/index.html ].
The next major step toward the successful referendum came in 2003 when a lesbian couple, Catherine Zappone and her partner, Ann Louise Gilligan, began a legal action to force the state to recognize the marriage vows they had taken three years earlier in Canada. Despite legal reversals, the case galvanized support for same-sex marriage, putting it on the agenda for the first time.
“Initially, we were a small determined group, but we grew to be a large determined group,” Mr. O’Gorman said.
In Dublin Castle on Saturday, Ms. Zappone and Ms. Gilligan were met with rousing cheers. Ms. Zappone said the result had robbed the couple of their day in court, but it was a loss they were more than happy to bear.
“People say it has happened in such a short time, but it feels like forever,” she said. “We would have loved to have been vindicated by the Irish Supreme Court, but this win has been even sweeter, no doubt about that — I’d have settled for this any day.”
After weeks of speculation about a so-called silent no vote, the size of the eventual margin — nearly two to one — took even the most optimistic yes supporters by surprise. After the surprising election results in Britain this month, few people trusted opinion polls that showed 70 to 30 in favor.
“Our door-to-door canvasses were reflecting the polls, so we were hopeful of their accuracy, and we were also confident about the existence of a ‘silent yes’ too, which had gone unreported,” said Brian Sheehan, co-director of the Yes Equality campaign who coordinated the strategic drive for constitutional change.
Yes Equality ran a campaign of military precision. They set up a network of support groups around the country, combining a grass-roots movement with the latest social media techniques to turn the once implausible into a landslide.
A registration drive brought in more than 100,000 new voters since last November, tens of thousands of doors were knocked on, extensive leafleting campaigns took place and posters were ubiquitous.
A series of powerful, emotional videos went viral and helped to bridge a perceived gap between generations.
“We also married online with offline, using campaigns such as ‘go ask your granny’ to vote, which really did work when it came to engagement,” Mr. Sheehan said. “Above all, we knew we needed to engage straight people, too, with a message that was about hope, tolerance, fairness and the kind of Ireland they and their children would want to live in.”
In 2012, the government set up the Constitutional Convention to recommend changes designed to bring the 1937 Constitution more up to date. Yes Equality lobbied hard for a specific amendment on same-sex marriage.
When the official result was announced, there were tears of joy and sadness at Dublin Castle. Many noted the absence of men like Declan Flynn and so many others who could not be there to see the day.
© 2015 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/24/world/europe/3-decades-after-galvanizing-hate-crime-irelands-gays-hail-vote.html
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Neil deGrasse Tyson - "Do you believe in god?"
Published on Sep 15, 2014 by Kristi dela Cruz [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTuvLCPqR1Rx8K-MQu37hHg , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTuvLCPqR1Rx8K-MQu37hHg/videos ]
Walla Walla, WA September 12th, 2014
During the Q&A, a ten year old boy asks Dr. Tyson if he believes in god.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sApQ80QRiE [no comments yet; comments apparently disabled]
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Sean Fieler Is Out And Proud About His Anti-Gay Marriage Donations Even As The Country's Opinion Shifts
Sean Fieler is one of the last remaining donors publicly writing large checks to anti-gay marriage initiatives.
hrc.org
By Paul Blumenthal
Posted: 06/05/2015 7:28 am EDT Updated: 06/05/2015 7:59 am EDT
WASHINGTON -- In an era when opponents of gay marriage have less and less political power, Sean Fieler has staked out a position as the leading funder of efforts to turn back the tide of marriage equality.
Fieler, president of the hedge fund Equinox Partners and the Kuroto Fund, has spent more than $4.6 million on state and federal political campaigns and super PACs since 2010, and millions more on anti-gay marriage groups and organizations that produce questionable studies of same-sex relationships. He and his wife, Ana Fieler, have also started funding anti-transgender rights efforts across the country.
A devout conservative Catholic, Sean Fieler is unabashed in his opposition to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. He once argued in The New York Times [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/us/in-shift-blankenhorn-forges-a-pro-marriage-coalition-for-all.html ] that gay marriage “promotes a very harmful myth about the gay lifestyle” because “it suggests that gay relationships lend themselves to monogamy, stability, health and parenting in the same way heterosexual relationships do. That’s not true.”
While Fieler’s name remains relatively unknown to the general public, he’s emerged as a major player in the movement. “Sean Fieler is a good man,” Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage -- arguably the most influential anti-gay marriage group -- wrote in a mass email to the group’s supporters in September 2012. “An investor and philanthropist, he supports dozens of good causes, including NOM's work to protect marriage.”
“Sean could have kept his support for marriage private,” Brown continued. Instead, he “refuses to be silenced or intimidated.”
Conservative pundit Bill Kristol introduced Fieler at a 2012 summit [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhcyFteBWTs (next below; no comments yet)]
In fact, Fieler’s public policy interests range from reviving the gold standard to opposing abortion. But it is his position as one of the few donors publicly increasing their investment in the gay marriage opposition, just as Americans are increasingly embracing marriage equality, that makes him stand out. Fieler declined to comment for this article.
A Washington Post/ABC poll [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/23/same-sex-marriage-poll_n_7128112.html ] in April found that 61 percent of Americans support legalizing same-sex marriage. Through judicial or legislative action, 37 states now allow it. And the Supreme Court could extend same-sex marriage to the entire country in June when it's expected to rule in Obergefell v. Hodges [ http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/obergefell-v-hodges/ ].
Meanwhile, groups like NOM have seen a precipitous drop in donations. The Mormon Church ceased funding anti-gay marriage work [ http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/prop-8-mormons-gay-marriage-shift ] after the backlash to its role as a primary backer of NOM’s Proposition 8 campaign in California in 2008. Members of the church were responsible for millions in donations to that effort to ban same-sex marriage [ http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/15/us/politics/15marriage.html?pagewanted=all ] and constituted the vast majority of the grassroots volunteers. Another major Proposition 8 donor, foundation chief John Templeton Jr., died in May [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/19/john-templeton-jr-dies_n_7336836.html ] from brain cancer. Templeton and his wife had donated more than $1.6 million to NOM and other Proposition 8 advocacy in 2008.
The retreat of anti-gay marriage funders has left Fieler as one of the very few still aggressively pushing that agenda. “He’s very proud of his check-writing, where most of these donors have either stopped contributing or gone underground in their contributions,” said Fred Karger, a former Republican strategist turned gay rights activist who has tracked NOM over the last seven years.
Fieler supports NOM, as well as efforts to defeat Democratic lawmakers who back gay marriage. Perhaps more notably, he’s spending money to try to push the Republican Party to put conservative religious issues front and center again, and investing millions to defeat Republican candidates who either support gay marriage or appear squishy on the issue.
Much of Fieler’s activism flows through a series of nonprofits and a super PAC that funnel money into elections, policy debates, controversial social science studies and groups advocating against gay marriage in America and gay rights worldwide.
He is chairman and chief underwriter of the American Principles Project and American Principles in Action, a pair of nonprofits founded by Princeton professor Robert P. George. A Catholic co-founder of NOM and the leading intellectual voice opposing gay marriage, George is the mind behind the legal argument that the essential purpose of marriage is procreation. “The plain fact is that the genitals of men and women are reproductive organs all of the time -- even during periods of sterility,” he has written [ http://www.thenation.com/article/princeton-tilts-right ].
The rise in popular support for gay marriage can be traced to a shift in the view of marriage from a procreation pact to “mere sexual romantic companionship,” according to George [ http://www.aleteia.org/en/society/article/interview-with-robert-george-we-will-bring-scorn-upon-ourselves-yet-we-must-continue-to-fight-same-sex-marriage-5816831537315840 ]. He sees this trend stretching from the spread of no-fault divorce to the rise of "promiscuity" and cohabitation since the 1960s. All of this will ultimately lead down the slippery slope to legalized polygamy and more, George argues. When then-Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) made his infamous argument that acceptance of gay marriage would lead to “man on dog” relationships, George wrote an extended defense in National Review titled “Rick Santorum Is Right [ http://www.nationalreview.com/article/207032/rick-santorum-right-robert-p-george ].”
George has called for a fight to restore what he calls the traditional Catholic view of marriage. And Fieler, a father of four, has funded George’s nonprofits, although the total amount of those contributions is not known since the groups are not required to disclose their donors.
The American Principles groups also promote the work of anti-gay marriage activists like Maggie Gallagher, another NOM co-founder, and Luis Tellez, head of the anti-gay Witherspoon Institute and of the Princeton chapter of the ultra-conservative Catholic sect Opus Dei. Fieler also sits on the board of Witherspoon and, through his personal foundation, has donated more than $230,000 to the group. A spokeswoman for both Principles groups declined to comment.
Following the GOP's 2012 loss of both the White House and a number of Senate seats, American Principles in Action released a report [ http://www.americanprinciplesinaction.org/gop-autopsy-report-2013/ ] urging the party to continue pushing conservative social issues. To win, the nonprofit argued, candidates must embrace a principled stance against gay marriage and abortion.
“[B]ecause Romney and his associated PACs had pledged to run no ads on social issues, President Obama never had to pay the price in Ohio, Virginia, or elsewhere for embracing gay marriage. He could please the Left and be confident that the GOP would not make an issue of it,” the report says.
Two years later, the vast majority of Republican elected officials at the federal level remain opposed to same-sex marriage. But there is a growing movement encouraging GOP candidates to, if not change their view entirely, at least de-emphasize it as a campaign issue. There is also a shift among Republican voters toward support of same-sex marriage. A May 19 Gallup poll [ http://www.gallup.com/poll/183272/record-high-americans-support-sex-marriage.aspx ] found 37 percent of Republican voters support gay marriage, more than double the share a decade ago.
Karl Rove, the architect of President George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign that called for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, has even stated that the party might one day accept a presidential candidate who favors it [ http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/03/karl-rove-i-could-imagine-gop-presidential-candidate-supporting-gay-marriage/ ].
Fieler forcefully rejects this thinking. “When it comes to what are euphemistically referred to as the ‘social issues,’ we promise not to talk about life and marriage, the literal future and irreplaceable foundation of our society,” Fieler said at an American Principles Project event in 2012, referring to Republican efforts to downplay those debates. “To win, we need but to make one change -- to emphasize, rather than run away from, our principles.”
His political involvement at the federal level has mostly been conducted through the super PAC American Principles Fund. Fieler is by far the group’s biggest funder, donating more than $1.1 million since 2013. The group’s director is Sarah Huckabee Sanders, daughter of religious conservative presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.
American Principles Fund’s biggest splash came in the brief 2014 Republican Senate primary campaign in Wyoming. Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, was seeking to oust incumbent Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.).
The super PAC ran an ad hitting Liz Cheney, whose sister Mary is gay and married, for prior supportive statements she had made about same-sex marriage. “In Wyoming, Cheney campaigns as a conservative,” the ad’s narrator says. “In Washington, she appears on MSNBC to campaign against a marriage amendment and support government benefits for gay couples.” Cheney’s response that she was actually opposed to gay marriage opened a family rift, with her sister and her sister's wife publicly denouncing the candidate and declaring they wouldn’t be spending Thanksgiving with her. Cheney dropped out of the race three months later.
Fieler has donated to a range of other super PACs as well, including $50,000 to a super PAC supporting then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s 2012 presidential campaign, which featured one of the most strident anti-gay ads [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V78ReJbjdxo (next below; with {over 15,000} comments)]
Fieler has also invested heavily in state contests. He has backed anti-gay marriage politicians like Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and onetime Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, and he has donated more than $350,000 to state Republican Party groups.
In New York in 2011, he spent nearly $30,000 to defeat Republican state senators who had supported legislation legalizing gay marriage. Fieler accused them of having “folded under pressure from the gay lobby.” The Fieler-backed candidate defeated pro-gay marriage Republican Roy McDonald in one primary challenge that year.
In 2013, Fieler was the top donor to City Action Coalition, a religious-right super PAC active in New York City council elections. A report by Gay City News found that the majority of City Action Coalition’s spending targeted just three candidates [ http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2013/09/surprise_anti-a.php ] for defeat: Rosie Mendez, Ritchie Torres and Carlos Menchaca. All three candidates are gay, and all three won.
Beyond his electoral spending, Fieler has donated millions to anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage advocacy groups, mostly through his Chiaroscuro Foundation. The nonprofit group, named after a Renaissance painting style favoring high contrast between dark and light, has received more than $19 million from Fieler since 2010.
Most of the foundation’s contributions have gone to Catholic, anti-abortion and anti-birth-control organizations, but some funding has gone to anti-gay groups as well. The foundation has directed at least $220,000 since 2010 to the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, a nonprofit that advocates against LGBT rights [ https://c-fam.org/friday_fax/editorial-sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity-are-not-human-rights/ ] at the United Nations. C-FAM backed the anti-gay laws in Uganda [ https://c-fam.org/friday_fax/uganda-laws-on-homosexuality-set-aside-for-now/ ] that have been denounced as criminalizing homosexuality and deployed lawyers to help defend Belize’s anti-gay laws [ http://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/downloads/publication/dangerous_liaisons_splc-report.pdf ]. It voiced support for the anti-gay laws adopted by Russia [ http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/25/putin-is-not-the-gay-bogeyman/ ] in 2013 and encouraged the United States to adopt such policies.
Another recipient of the Chiaroscuro Foundation’s money is University of Texas-Austin sociology professor Mark Regnerus. In 2012, Regnerus released an infamous report claiming to show that same-sex parents negatively impact their children. The study -- which defined same-sex parents as those who had, at some point or other, engaged in a same-sex act -- was widely panned [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/05/10/new-criticism-of-regnerus-study-on-parenting-study/ ] and rejected [ http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/13/opinion/la-oe-frank-same-sex-regnerus-family-20120613 ] by the American Sociological Association, American Medical Association and American Academy of Pediatrics [ http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/07/11/514974/medical-groups-attack-faulty-parenting-study-in-anti-doma-amicus-brief/ ].
The Witherspoon Institute (where Fieler serves as a trustee) funded that study. Regnerus also received $250,000 for his Austin Institute from the Chiaroscuro Foundation in 2013, after the controversy over the report. The Chiaroscuro Foundation donated another $237,500 to the Witherspoon Institute that year.
As American attitudes on sexual orientation and gender identity have been shifting overall, Fieler has also moved on to fighting the acceptance of the transgender community and has called upon Republicans to campaign against transgender rights. This is more fertile ground, Fieler argued recently [ http://www.newsweek.com/what-republicans-dont-get-about-lgbt-movement-336876 ], because “unlike the gay lifestyle, the transgender lifestyle has not been, and perhaps never can be, normalized. Americans still believe that a man, even a man who thinks he is a woman, is still a man.”
Fieler has already put his money to work against transgender rights in California. After the governor signed legislation giving transgender students the right to use the restroom of the gender with which they identify, Fieler pumped $200,000 into a 2014 ballot initiative campaign to impose strict new rules on transgender bathroom use. The so-called Privacy for All Act would have overturned the transgender students’ rights law [ http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-transgender-bathrooms-20150420-story.html ] and allowed people who felt their privacy was violated by transgender use of a restroom to file suit against the operator of that restroom. It would even have allowed those who chose not to enter a restroom due to their own discomfort with possibly encountering a transgender individual to file suit against the restroom owner.
The initiative ultimately failed to gain enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, and Fieler was forced to pay a fine [ http://www.fppc.ca.gov/agendas/2015/4-15/07%20Fieler%20-%20Stip.pdf ] for failing to properly report his donations to the anti-transgender rights effort.
But the battle isn’t over. Privacy For All, the group that had been backed by Fieler’s largesse, is planning another ballot initiative campaign for 2016. This time, it will call on California voters to pass an initiative requiring government buildings to allow restroom access based only on biological sex [ http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article19064163.html ].
Similar bills have been proposed in other states across the country. Most have failed to pass [ http://time.com/3734714/transgender-bathroom-bills-lgbt-discrimination/ ].
Still, Fieler believes that if religious conservatives want to roll back the advance of gay marriage and other LGBT rights, they’ll need to start in the restroom. As he put it in Newsweek [ http://www.newsweek.com/what-republicans-dont-get-about-lgbt-movement-336876 ] last month, “principles of the Republican Party that would result in a return to America’s founding vision should hold more appeal for the American people than principles that will result in men in women’s bathrooms.”
Copyright ©2015 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/05/sean-fieler-gay-marriage_n_7511614.html [with comments]
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Rubio Warns of 'Clear, Present Danger' to Christianity
Bt David Brody
CBN News Chief Political Correspondent
Tuesday, May 26, 2015
WASHINGTON -- Nearly eight years have passed since a young Democrat named Barack Obama captured the White House. Now, another up-and-coming politician has a chance to take a similar path.
This time it's a Republican and his name is Marco Rubio.
The Florida senator sees Iowa as the first stop on his road to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It's the ultimate American dream, and for this 43-year-old, the future is now.
"I've been told, 'Why don't you wait? You could be the candidate of the future.' And I say, 'Well that's good news because this election is in the future,'" Rubio told a hundred gatherers at a local house party in Iowa.
That philosophy of the future will be the centerpiece of his presidential run. His campaign theme is "A New American Century." While on the road in Iowa, Rubio told CBN News his overall plan.
"We have to have policies, tax policies, regulatory policies, debt policies, healthcare policies that make us globally competitive," he explained.
"We are engaged in a massive global competition for investment and for innovation and we are falling behind because our government has policies that are holding us back," he charged.
An American Success Story
Rubio supporters see him as American success story. Raised in a Spanish-speaking home to Cuban-born parents, he grew up in a working class family. After arriving in America, both parents worked hard.
Their rich family spirit made up for any financial shortcomings. It's a lesson that sticks with the young senator to this day.
"The family is the original cell of society," Rubio told CBN News. "It is the first and most important government. It is the first church. The family is the singular most important institution in society. It existed before government. It existed before laws."
A strong faith is also key. He grew up Roman Catholic, though at one point the family tried Mormonism. Rubio says that didn't feel right.
"As I got more theologically aware and more engaged and learning about Catholicism, I wanted to go back and so we did," Rubio recalled. "I did first communion on Christmas Day in 1984. That was probably in 7th or 8th grade."
As a young adult, Rubio admits he fell away from his faith so his wife started attending a Baptist church. They went there for a number of years, but eventually Rubio felt a tug back to his Catholic roots.
"In an ironic way, the more I learned about the written Word, the more I fell in love with the Roman Catholic teachings and we ended up going back to that church," he told CBN News.
"And so today we're in a place where we are Roman Catholics, fully aligned with the theology and the Magisterium, the teaching authority of the Church – but also with a tremendous appreciate for, and often interaction with our brothers and sisters in Christ who attend other denominations," he said.
Christianity's 'Real and Present Danger'
Today, his deep faith drives public policy positions on social issues such as traditional marriage.
"If you think about it, we are at the water's edge of the argument that mainstream Christian teaching is hate speech," Rubio told CBN News. "Because today we've reached the point in our society where if you do not support same-sex marriage you are labeled a homophobe and a hater."
"So what's the next step after that?" he asked.
"After they are done going after individuals, the next step is to argue that the teachings of mainstream Christianity, the catechism of the Catholic Church is hate speech and there's a real and present danger," he warned.
Rubio said he's ready to face danger, here and around the world.
"You don't want to be engaged in every conflict on the planet. We're not the world's policemen," he said. "But I question - what would happen in the alternative? If America doesn't lead, what happens? Well, what happens is chaos."
A Bumpy Road Ahead
His positions and early standing in the polls put Rubio in a good position even this early in the race. His backers like a General Election scenario of a young Marco Rubio vs. Hillary Clinton, who's been around awhile.
He does face some challenges with the base though - specifically his work with Democrats on comprehensive immigration reform, something that he knew could hurt his chances of becoming president when he discussed this issue with CBN News two years ago [ http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/politics/2013/June/A-Tough-Sell-Rubio-Takes-on-Immigration-Reform/ ].
Keeping Priorities Straight
That moment crystalized the importance of family in Rubio's life.
"I believe that at home my most important job is to be a husband to my wife and a father to my children. If I can't do that right, I can't lead a nation," he told CBN News.
"One day I will no longer be in politics. One day I will no longer be a senator or a president or anything else. But I will always be a father and I will always be a husband," he said.
As for president, he'll leave that up to the American people and almighty God.
"Ultimately my view of it is you go out and do the very best you can and ultimately it's going to turn out the way voters and God decide," he said.
© Copyright 2015 The Christian Broadcasting Network
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/politics/2015/May/Rubio-Warns-of-Clear-Present-Danger-to-Christianity/ [with embedded non-YouTube version of the YouTube of the segment, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsriYIdReGM (with comments, also at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNI2D462GYc {with comments}), included above, and comments]
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This Week in God, 5.30.15
A woman holds a Bible.
Photo by Robertus Pudyanto/Getty
Matthew 25:34-40
New International Version (NIV)
34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
[ https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2025:34-40 ]
By Steve Benen
05/30/15 08:50 AM
First up from the God Machine this week is an unexpected scriptural debate over how to read one of the more widely known verses in the Christian Bible.
Matthew 25:40 includes a phrase that many have likely heard, regardless of their faith tradition: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” The phrasing is generally seen as championing the needs of the poor – to turn your back on those struggling is to turn your back on God.
But my colleague Will Femia this week flagged [ https://twitter.com/WillAtWork/status/603730387395878912 ] an amazing report from Glenn Beck’s conservative website, The Blaze, which put an incredible twist [ http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/05/28/if-everything-you-thought-you-knew-about-this-popular-bible-verse-wrong/ ] on Biblical interpretation.
Denny Burk, professor of Biblical Studies at Boyce College in Louisville, Kentucky, most certainly isn’t the first to make the claim [ http://www.dennyburk.com/the-least-of-these-are-not-the-poor-but-the-christian-baker-photographer-and-florist/ ] that the “least of these” is actually a reference to Christians who face struggles in sharing their faith, but his stated view on the matter is the most recent proclamation to spark interpretive discussion.
“This text is not about poor people generally. It’s about Christians getting the door slammed in their face while sharing the gospel with a neighbor,” Burk wrote. “It’s about the baker/florist/photographer who is being mistreated for bearing faithful witness to Christ. It’s about disciples of Jesus having their heads cut off by Islamic radicals.”
I see. So, against the backdrop of the right-to-discriminate debate, conservatives want “the least of these” to refer to themselves.
No, really. As Ana Marie Cox joked [ https://twitter.com/anamariecox/status/603971743984717824 ], when conservatives see Matthew 25:40, they’ve effectively concluded it’s “actually about Memories Pizza.”
[...]
©2015 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/week-god-53015 [with comments]
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Marco Rubio makes a clown of himself: The twisted logic behind his anti-gay “hate speech” insanity
Marco Rubio
(Credit: AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Equal marriage doesn't criminalize Christianity. But if you want to defend "traditional" marriage, there's a fix!
Katie McDonough
Wednesday, May 27, 2015 12:08 PM CDT
Republican presidential contender and super thirsty guy
[ https://storify.com/globalpost/marco-rubio-reactions-water-chugging-and-bootstrap , http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2280308/Marco-Rubio-raises-100k-selling-3-100-water-bottles-State-Union-gaffe.html , http://i.ytimg.com/vi/hf5fG311EXU/maxresdefault.jpg ] Marco Rubio is worried that marriage equality is the first slippery step onto a very slippery slope toward labeling the Bible hate speech. Or something.
“If you think about it, we are at the water’s edge of the argument that mainstream Christian teaching is hate speech,” Rubio, who is Catholic, said Tuesday during an interview with CBN News [ http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/politics/2015/May/Rubio-Warns-of-Clear-Present-Danger-to-Christianity/ (just above)]. “Because today we’ve reached the point in our society where if you do not support same-sex marriage you are labeled a homophobe and a hater.”
“So what’s the next step after that?” he continued. “After they are done going after individuals, the next step is to argue that the teachings of mainstream Christianity, the catechism of the Catholic Church is hate speech. And there’s a real and present danger.”
It’s hard to imagine that even Rubio believes what he’s saying here, but who knows. Massachusetts has been issuing marriage licenses to gay couples since 2004, and, last I checked, the state hasn’t moved to raze its Catholic churches or strip Boston College of its charter. Ditto for seriously every other state that has legalized equal marriage.
And while Indiana “fixed” its beefed up version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, it is still completely legal to discriminate against LGBTQ people [ http://www.salon.com/2015/04/02/the_united_states_of_indiana_discrimination_is_perfectly_legal_in_america_wheres_our_outrage/ ] in the state. It is, in fact, legal to discriminate against LGBTQ people in most states.
Rubio’s “real and present danger” is an absurd claim, but it’s a line like that plays well with audiences like the people watching him on a conservative Christian network. But beyond the tired slippery slope argument, Rubio’s framing about his opposition to equal marriage not being hateful or homophobic is worth looking at, too. Particularly because it’s an increasingly popular refrain among conservative holdouts on the issue.
Mike Huckabee, newly declared in the GOP primary, likes to beat the same drum. In 2014 at the Iowa Faith and Freedom convention, Huckabee invoked the same defense while explaining while he wanted to continue to deny gay and lesbian couples equal protection under the law.
“I’m not against anybody. I’m really not. I’m not a hater. I’m not homophobic. I honestly don’t care what people do personally in their individual lives,” he said at the time [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/09/mike-huckabee-homophobic_n_5117775.html ]. “When people say, ‘Why don’t you just kind of get on the right side of history?’ I said, ‘You’ve got to understand, this for me is not about the right side or the wrong side of history, this is the right side of the Bible, and unless God rewrites it, edits it, sends it down with his signature on it, it’s not my book to change.”
The man’s got a point! Never once in human history has the legal or cultural definition of marriage ever once changed, so why start now? (Just kidding. Men in the Bible have multiple wives. They have children with other women when their wives can’t conceive. There are forced marriages and rape. Not to mention the fact that our cultural and political understanding of marriage as an institution has never been stable [ http://www.stephaniecoontz.com/articles/article25.htm ].)
But if Rubio and Huckabee are truly concerned about being labeled haters, but also very much want to stick to their interpretation of traditional marriage, they should probably change tactics and — rather than oppose equal marriage — start campaigning to ban civil marriage for everyone.
Civil marriage is a contract. As it stands, gay and lesbian couples who live in states without equal marriage can still marry in churches that recognize their relationships. (Presbyterian and Lutheran churches can perform ceremonies for same-sex couples, for example.) Churches also have discretion when it comes to straight couples: Catholics who get divorced can’t remarry in some churches unless they get an annulment.
But those same Catholics can get married many times over at their local court house. Because there’s a difference between a religious ceremony and a civil ceremony. One means something in the eyes of your faith, the other means something in the eyes of the state. But when it comes to tax breaks or getting a green card for your partner, only the latter matters.
So if guys like Rubio and Huckabee want to hold fast to their version of marriage, they should campaign to end a system that confers more than 1,000 rights and legal entitlements contingent exclusively on a contract you sign because you promise to have sex with the same person until you die. Unless, of course, they really like a system that actively excludes consenting adults from entering into legally binding contracts. Then, you know, they’re just haters and homophobes.
Copyright © 2015 Salon Media Group, Inc.
http://www.salon.com/2015/05/27/marco_rubio_makes_a_clown_of_himself_the_twisted_logic_behind_his_anti_gay_hate_speech_insanity/ [with comments]
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Chattanooga, Tennessee TV Station Refuses To Air Gay Republican Soldier's Right To Marry Ad
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/30/jesse-ehrenfeld-right-to-marry_n_7476514.html [with comments], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMEd350_gQY [embedded; with comments]
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Conservative presidential hopeful Marco Rubio’s religion of many colors
Marco Rubio, who wants to be President, has been a Catholic, a Mormon, a Catholic again, then a fundamentalist Christian church member and a Catholic Church member.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio is a Christian and a Catholic.
SEBASTIEN BOZON/AFP/Getty Images
Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio, a man of several religions, is seen here at the Georgia Republican Convention in May.
David Goldman/AP
Republican presidential candidate is a Christian and a Catholic, he says, though he sharply criticized Pope Francis for helping renew diplomatic relations between Cuba, where Rubio’s parents were born, and the U.S.
FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images
The religious trail of GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio included a stop in the Mormon faith when his family lived in Nevada.
Rick Bowmer/AP
This 1980s photo shows Marco Rubio, second from left in back row, with his younger sister Veronica, right, back row, and their neighbors in Las Vegas, where the Rubios converted to Mormonism.
Bonnie Thiriot/AP
GOP Sen. Marco Rubio has lost and found religion many times [tab headline]
BY Deborah Hastings
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Saturday, June 6, 2015, 11:51 AM
Republican presidential wannabe Marco Rubio, a conservative, anti-gay marriage candidate from Florida, has lost and found his religion several times.
As a child in Miami, he was a Roman Catholic. When his family moved to Las Vegas, he became a Mormon. When the family moved back to Florida he became a Catholic again.
And then, in 2000, he began attending Christ Fellowship in Miami, a fundamentalist mega church that is rigidly opposed to homosexuality and asks employees to sign a declaration saying they've never been in a gay relationship.
Now he attends both Christ Fellowship and a Catholic church, he says.
All of which has sparked intense debate over just what, exactly, Rubio believes when it comes to God. His coat of many religious colors has led political pundits to declare the baby-faced aspirant is courting voters of all conservative faiths.
If he can't decide something as fundamental as religion, experts say his changing beliefs could lead to questions about how he would run the country.
"Some voters may be put off that he can't seem to make up his mind and it's certainly possible that it's a political strategy," said Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor who specializes in theological issues at the University of Central Florida.
Political experts were hard pressed to identify another presidential candidate who regularly worshipped in two different churches.
"It is rare to have a candidate with so many faiths, and who now has one foot squarely in a major religion and one foot squarely in another", he said.
The 44-year-old son of Cuban immigrants, who was elected to the Senate in 2010, says he attends Christ Fellowship on Saturday nights and goes to Mass on Sundays at St. Louis Catholic Church.
A Rubio spokesman declined an interview request from the Daily News, saying the candidate was too busy on the campaign trail, where the number of GOP hopefuls seems to grow by the day.
But recent polls have shown Rubio leading the pack, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who is the presumptive frontrunner and has the greatest name recognition in a Republican crowd that includes Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, former New York Gov. George Pataki, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and Bobby Jindal, the outgoing governor of Louisiana.
Rubio is not the only politician who's changed his religion. Jeb Bush converted to Catholicism, his wife's religion, 20 years ago.
Being Catholic no longer has the divisive taint that John F. Kennedy experienced ; nor does belonging to a non-mainstream religion such as Mormonism, political experts say.
Chad Pecknold, a theology professor at the Catholic University of America, says religious voters may disagree over doctrine, but when it comes to morality issues, Catholics, Christians and other believers are united when it comes to what they deem to be great sins.
"There is a new alliance between evangelicals and Catholics," he said. Especially on issues such as "abortion, euthanasia and the nature of marriage."
Despite a recent Pew study that found one out of five people have no religious affiliation, Republican candidates have long known that they can't win without the support, and the votes, of the religious right.
Though Rubio has appeared to flit from one religion the next, he has done so without antagonizing its adherents, Pecknold said. Yet, he could be faulted by voters who see his faith as "vacuous because it's constantly changing."
Rubio's "never turned his back on the Mormons, He's never turned his back on the Catholics, and he's never turned his back on the evangelicals, which are very important to the Republicans," Pecknold said.
Rubio addressed religion in his "Native Son" autobiography, saying he was baptized a Catholic in Florida, but when his family moved to Nevada when he was young boy, he embraced Mormon teachings, along with his mother and sister, taking comfort in the religion's sense of community.
He even chided his father, who was a bartender, about serving alcohol, a substance abhorred by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
By the time he was 13, the Rubios were back in Florida, the family returned to the Catholic Church.
In 2000, Rubio began attending the Miami megachurch with his wife. And for four years, he worshipped nowhere else, according to his book. A phone message left with the church by The News was not returned.
But then the politician went back to Catholicism, saying he missed the Eucharist, the rite of taking communion. And he's been going to both churches ever since.
"Some unifying principles bind all Christians: that God became a man and died for our sins, and that without that sacrifice, all of us would be doomed," he wrote in his book.
He strongly opposes gay marriage. He says Christianity is endangered by evil in the world. He believes Jesus Christ was, and is, the son of God, and that his crucifixion guarantees Rubio a place in heaven.
What he can't seem to pinpoint is a specific religion.
"He's got a complicated belief system," said Joe Carter, senior editor for the Acton Institute, a Michigan-based religious think tank. And without adhering to a single religion, Rubio may play well to millennials who haven't committed to a church, as well as the so-called spiritual "seekers," who still haven't found what they're looking for.
Rubio has "been very open about it. He could have easily just switched to one church," Carter said. "Whether you're a Christian or a Mormon or a Baptist, you believe that your rights come from God, not from the state."
© Copyright 2015 NYDailyNews.com
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/gop-sen-marco-rubio-lost-found-religion-times-article-1.2244263 [with comments]
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Dave Foley - Atheists (Stand up Comedy)
Published on Jan 7, 2014 by Comedy Dynamics [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDUhp92NhqVc0K3jSmWhgvA / http://www.youtube.com/user/NewWaveDyn , http://www.youtube.com/user/NewWaveDyn/videos ]
Dave Foley debunks some myths, and gives his take on being atheist in America.
Off his special Relatively Well, available to buy as an album from iTunes here:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/relatively-well/id706092715
Or on DVD here:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DCLT9X8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7f2eXQxfHk [with comments]
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Rick Santorum Presidential Announcement Full Speech (C-SPAN)
Published on May 28, 2015 by C-SPAN [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb--64Gl51jIEVE-GLDAVTg / http://www.youtube.com/user/CSPAN , http://www.youtube.com/user/CSPAN/videos ]
Former Senator Rick Santorum [on 5-27-15] announced his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. He made the announcement from Penn United Technologies in Cabot, PA. Watch the complete Rick Santorum Presidential Campaign Announcement event here: http://www.c-span.org/video/?326137-1/former-senator-rick-santorum-rpa-presidential-campaign-announcement
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDUxXftJkP8 [with comments] [also included, beginning at c. the 13:30 mark, in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2TZn6WQvH4 (with comments)]
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Who Is Rick Santorum?
Published on Jun 3, 2015 by TestTube News [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgRvm1yLFoaQKhmaTqXk9SA / http://www.youtube.com/user/TestTubeNetwork , http://www.youtube.com/user/TestTubeNetwork/videos ]
The race for the 2016 presidency is filling up fast, especially on the Republican side. Now, it's ex-senator Rick Santorum's turn. So who is Rick Santorum?
Learn More:
Rick Santorum
http://www.ontheissues.org/Rick_Santorum.htm
Everybody hates Rick Santorum: How the former GOP heavyweight became a political irrelevancy
http://www.salon.com/2015/04/09/everbody_hates_rick_santorum_how_the_former_gop_heavyweight_became_a_political_irrelevancy/
"As Americans brace themselves for Rand Paul's just-announced presidential campaign, it is appropriate to take a quick look at the increasing political irrelevancy of another likely candidate, one who less than four years ago nearly wrested the Republican nomination from Mitt Romney."
Santorum Rose Quickly From Reformer to Insider
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/us/politics/santorum-rose-quickly-from-reformer-to-insider.html
"Rick Santorum arrived on Capitol Hill as a new member of Congress in January 1991, 32 years old and bristling with the impatience of a man looking to kick up a fuss."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxKpzXdAE9U [with comments]
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Lewis Black: Rick Santorum - Idiot
Published on Apr 9, 2012 by Andrew Stewart [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjf90wQlvs0-glnGwQhMAjA / http://www.youtube.com/user/stew3128561 , http://www.youtube.com/user/stew3128561/videos ]
The fact this is taken from the Carnegie Hall recording produced several months after Hurricane Katrina and predates this election by half a decade proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Lewis Black is indeed a Jewish prophet of democracy akin to Abby Hoffman.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWH7CvqhfZs [with comments]
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Rick Santorum Defends His Anti-Gay Comments On Glenn Beck Radio Show
Uploaded on Apr 14, 2011 by SuchIsLifeVideos [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQDvaGCnbOY8YKeZ2So-yvA / http://www.youtube.com/user/SuchIsLifeVideos , http://www.youtube.com/user/SuchIsLifeVideos/videos ]
"It's not homophobic. It's a legal argument, and it's a correct legal argument. In fact, that's exactly what's happening. We went from Lawrence v. Texas to now a constitutional right to same-sex marriage and they're going into a constitutional right to polyamorous relationships. This is the slippery slope that we're heading down, and I can't buy it."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmEhL6qljLI [with comments]
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Bill Maher & Dan Savage - Blast Michele Bachmann & Rick Santorum
Published on Oct 1, 2013 by Sane Man [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjra7hQbqp7SM5NGgpYKpkA , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjra7hQbqp7SM5NGgpYKpkA/videos ]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRtmJ9JEZRQ [with comments]
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Game On - Song for Rick Santorum - Super Tuesday Surprise Original By First Love (Band)
Published on Mar 6, 2012 by FirstLove's Channel [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwUJVUN2gTmGU9R2aAtTY1w / http://www.youtube.com/user/FirstLoveBand , http://www.youtube.com/user/FirstLoveBand/videos ]
Click this link to watch our NEW MUSIC VIDEO for our new single "Ain't Your Fool"!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUEP9piqzf0
https://www.facebook.com/FirstLoveBand
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7pv7sO5Gng [comments disabled]
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Ted Cruz at South Carolina NSAS
Published on Mar 18, 2015 by securefreedom [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPPw4A4ZmhK_e95S2Ka0Xaw / http://www.youtube.com/user/securefreedom , http://www.youtube.com/user/securefreedom/videos ]
Senator Ted Cruz speaks at South Carolina National Security Action Summit
March 14, 2015
Columbia, SC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H2ebC59cDo [with comments] [the complete South Carolina NSAS live stream, all 8 hours and 45 minutes of it, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL4_gsNUe3k (with comments)]
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Atheists Are Perverts & Molesters, Says Ted Cruz's Dad
Published on Nov 15, 2013 by The Young Turks [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1yBKRuGpC1tSM73A0ZjYjQ / http://www.youtube.com/user/TheYoungTurks , http://www.youtube.com/user/TheYoungTurks/videos ]
"In an appearance before a gathering of OK2A, an Oklahoma Second Amendment advocacy group, Rafael Cruz, father of freshman Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said that atheism leads to sexual abuse of children.
In his talk, which took place earlier this month, the elder Cruz railed against atheism and secular humanism, which he said are two of the main ills facing our society...".* The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.
* Read more here from David Ferguson / The Raw Story:
http://www.rawstory.com/2013/11/rafael-cruz-atheism-leads-to-child-molestation-and-perversity/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/13/rafael-cruz-sexual-abuse_n_4269503.html
Download audio and video of the full two hour show on-demand + the members-only post game show by becoming a member at http://www.tytnetwork.com/member-options/ . Your membership supports the day to day operations and is vital for our continued success and growth.
Like Us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/TheYoungTurks
Follow Us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TheYoungTurks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOIXCj-yppU [with comments]
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Ted Cruz's Dad Explains "The Average Black"
Published on Sep 5, 2014 by Sam Seder [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-3jIAlnQmbbVMV6gR7K8aQ / http://www.youtube.com/user/SamSeder , http://www.youtube.com/user/SamSeder/videos ]
Ted Cruz's dad, Rafael Cruz, in an effort to "reach out" to African-Americans for Republicans, says that "the average black does not understand” the minimum wage...
This clip from the Majority Report, live M-F at 12 noon EST and via daily podcast at http://Majority.FM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ4jN8bPHPs [with comments]
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Rick Santorum at South Carolina NSAS
Published on Mar 18, 2015 by securefreedom
Former Senator Rick Santorum speaks at South Carolina National Security Action Summit
March 14, 2015
Columbia, SC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bj8M6SA0_8 [with comments] [the complete South Carolina NSAS live stream, all 8 hours and 45 minutes of it, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL4_gsNUe3k (with comments)]
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Glenn Beck - Rick Santorum
Uploaded on Feb 23, 2012 by sidepipe360 [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4XK4b5Od3pNAfYdJlt9w6A / http://www.youtube.com/user/sidepipe360 , http://www.youtube.com/user/sidepipe360/videos ]
GBTV Thursday February 23, 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzGPfwBm22M [with comments]
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Sh*t Santorum Says
Uploaded on Feb 16, 2012 by SantorumExposed.com [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQpdgvz5IpOZfbn95KWuzYA / http://www.youtube.com/user/SantorumExposed , http://www.youtube.com/user/SantorumExposed/videos ]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_Liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_Happiness
Visit http://santorumexposed.com or http://www.facebook.com/exposesantorum to see more of the crazy sh*t that Rick Santorum says.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaJ0z3hx51s [with comments]
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Santorum: Mainline Protestants Are Not Christians
Uploaded on Feb 17, 2012 by ThinkProgress6's channel [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUMrf7Ap3pPN7AuP0ffbC1w / http://www.youtube.com/user/ThinkProgress6 , http://www.youtube.com/user/ThinkProgress6/videos ]
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/02/18/427529/santorum-excommunicates-45-million-christians-mainline-protestants-are-gone-from-the-world-of-christianity/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT9bbadUapo [with comments]
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Santorum: Satan Attacking America!
Uploaded on Feb 22, 2012 by The Young Turks
Rick Santorum made some radical remarks regarding Satan (aka, The Devil) and his attack on America, universities and Protestants. The 2012 Republican Presidential candidate and his radical Christian beliefs are discussed by The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/22/rick-santorum-satan-_n_1293658.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ekdUjjvPEM [with comments]
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Sh*t Homophobic People Say
Uploaded on Jan 13, 2012 by lambdalegal [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfRNrQvEOglQOp1K-AQ7Crg / http://www.youtube.com/user/lambdalegal , http://www.youtube.com/user/lambdalegal/videos ]
Sh*t Homophobic People Say: no spoofing necessary, 100% real commentary by antigay public figures.
Lambda Legal fights for the rights of LGBT people and people with HIV. Follow us on Twitter @lambdalegal and visit http://www.lambdalegal.org to learn more!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVEmHcz-SBs [comments disabled]
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Santorum: Marriage is like water, not beer
Uploaded on Aug 9, 2011 by ThinkProgress6's channel
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2011/08/09/292121/santorum-marriage-is-like-water-not-beer/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLbAFNbVSEE [with comments]
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Sh*t Santorum Says - Part II
Published on Mar 13, 2012 by SantorumExposed.com
Watch Sh*t Santorum Says about Mitt Romney:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJS-rDLgsyQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RakkpnfQV0 [with comments]
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1950s Education on "Homosexuals"
Uploaded on Jan 29, 2009 by Adam Freeman [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UClXPGw8p0UYrccFIlt_Ewbw / http://www.youtube.com/user/WhoMadeWho33 , http://www.youtube.com/user/WhoMadeWho33/videos ]
This short film entitled "Boys Beware" and honestly I just uploaded it to see what everyone's opinions would be.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmqNiFJyI28 [with (over 10,000) comments]
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Rick Santorum confirms his craziness on Face the Nation
Uploaded on Feb 19, 2012 by rdonalds12's channel [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM2upnvSl0pZVcOduKHeJvA / http://www.youtube.com/user/rdonalds12 , http://www.youtube.com/user/rdonalds12/videos ]
Rick Santorum is NUTS! Not qualified to lead a girl scout troop, much less our entire country! WAKE UP AMERICA!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qNklfEnCCk [comments disabled]
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Santorum: "Raped Women Should Accept The Gift of A Child"
Published on Mar 16, 2012 by The Young Turks
Fox & Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson went on the O'Reilly Factor and said that Rick Santorum never said that if your raped you should have the baby, Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian show Rick Santorum's actual statement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg5m4Oo7TqM [with comments]
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The Worst Of Rick Santorum
Published on Aug 5, 2013 by Secular Talk [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCldfgbzNILYZA4dmDt4Cd6A / http://www.youtube.com/user/SecularTalk , http://www.youtube.com/user/SecularTalk/videos ]
Rick Santorum is considering a presidential run in 2016, I compiled a compilation to remind you guys how dumb he is...
Read More At:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/04/rick-santorum-presidential-run_n_3704114.html
Clip from the Monday, August 5th 2013 edition of The Kyle Kulinski Show, which airs live on Blog Talk Radio and Secular Talk Radio monday - friday 5-7pm Eastern.
Check out our website - and become a member - at:
http://www.SecularTalkRadio.com
Listen to the Live Show or On Demand archive at:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/kylekulinski
Follow on Twitter:
http://www.twitter.com/kylekulinski
Like on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/SecularTalk
Friends Of SecularTalk:
http://www.facebook.com/beastofreason
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrJBtyheacI [with comments]
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Rick Santorum calls President Obama a "nig"
Published on Mar 30, 2012 by Unlucky 13 [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCggGqCKkbt_XdlWE_ObAPdA / http://www.youtube.com/user/Unlucky137 , http://www.youtube.com/user/Unlucky137/videos ]
Rick Santorum catches himself before uttering the second syllable of "nigger" when referring to President Obama.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgrhJSAaYIc [with comments]
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Santorum: Look At Who The Candidates Lay Down With
Uploaded on Oct 7, 2011 by tpmtv [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTcCX_XY4l-W2ba5IxIRhsg / http://www.youtube.com/user/tpmtv , http://www.youtube.com/user/tpmtv/videos ]
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/election2012/rick-santorum-when-selecting-candidate-look-at-who-they-lay-down-with-at-night-video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAoXS14zs9o [with comments]
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Piers Morgan Confronts Rick Santorum On His Bigotry
Uploaded on Aug 31, 2011 by SuchIsLifeVideos
Piers Morgan talks to Santorum about his anti-gay views.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ic5EAO8RqVE [with (nearly 5,000) comments]
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for the BIBLE tells me so
Published on Jul 10, 2014 by FlyingFree333 [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSSeZsQZlBnUs_8HnpUKGnA / http://www.youtube.com/user/FlyingFree333 , http://www.youtube.com/user/FlyingFree333/videos ]
Documentary on Christian bigotry against homosexuals in the USA.
Music
"Simple (Live)" by k.d. lang
for the BIBLE tells me so
http://www.forthebibletellsmeso.org/indexe.htm
for the BIBLE tells me so
http://www.amazon.com/For-The-Bible-Tells-Me/dp/B000YHQNCI
for the BIBLE tells me so
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0912583/
for the BIBLE tells me so (2007)
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/for_the_bible_tells_me_so/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bU_voCz_po [with comments] [also at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePTo0Hv297s (with comment)]
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Rick Santorum Busted On Arguments Against Gays In The Military As Same Used Against Blacks
Uploaded on Oct 9, 2011 by SuchIsLifeVideos
Santorum: "It's not the same. And I know people try to make it the same, but it is not. It is a behavioral issue, as opposed to a color of the skin issue, and that makes all the difference when it comes to serving in the military,"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCXgFc5It5c [with comments]
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The "Best" of Rick Santorum
Uploaded on Feb 19, 2012 by TheCurmudgeon [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtk__VWEYdnpumJ6fSPPspw / http://www.youtube.com/user/TheCurmudgen , http://www.youtube.com/user/TheCurmudgen/videos ]
Clips and highlights of some of the more ridiculous nonsense I could find on Presidential candidate Rick Santorum
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y4EGbHwlfU [with comments]
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Kids React to Gay Marriage
Published on Nov 3, 2013 by TheFineBros [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0v-tlzsn0QZwJnkiaUSJVQ / http://www.youtube.com/user/TheFineBros , http://www.youtube.com/user/TheFineBros/videos ]
Resource links below for more information:
http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/sexual-orientation.aspx
Marriage Equality Links/Information:
http://www.freedomtomarry.org/
http://www.hrc.org/resources/category/marriage
To find information and resources on coming out visit:
http://www.itgetsbetter.org/
http://community.pflag.org/
http://www.thetrevorproject.org/
Matthew Shepard photo copyright 1998 Gina van Hoof
http://www.ginavanhoof.com
Watch the Videos Featured in this Episode:
Spencer's Home Depot Marriage Proposal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4HpWQmEXrM
Seattle+The Washington Bus+Jeanne+Alissa = wedding proposal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umdepNP5yVw
This episode featured the following amazing children.
Lucas, age 5
Maxim, age 7
Samirah, age 7
Dash, age 9
Krischelle, age 9
Jayka, age10
Elle, age 11
Lydon, age 11
Derek, age 12
Dylan, age 12
Megan & Shannon, age 13
Troy, age 13
KIDS REACT #90 - Gay Marriage
Kids React to Gay Marriage
Kids React to Marriage Equality
Kids React to Same Sex Marriage
© 2013 Fine Brothers Properties
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TJxnYgP6D8 [with (over 10,000) comments]
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On Rick Santorum
Uploaded on Jan 8, 2012 by The Amazing Atheist [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjNxszyFPasDdRoD9J6X-sw / http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAmazingAtheist , http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAmazingAtheist/videos ]
Help us create NOT PRODUCTIVE: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/not-productive#/story
My facebook: http://www.facebook.com/YoutubeTAA
My twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/amazingatheist
My forums: http://forum.thatfatatheist.com
Music for this video provided by: Kevin MacLeod, Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dHqvcgEbs0 [with (over 4,000) comments]
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Bible Belt Loves Porn
Published on Mar 15, 2012 by The Young Turks
Is porn (both gay and straight) more popular in the 'Bible Belt' red states of America (Utah, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alaska, North Dakota, and West Virginia)? Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur break it down on The Young Turks, with a mention of 2012 Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum's war on pornography.
http://www.alternet.org/story/154539/the_bible_belt%27s_love_affair_with_%28gay_and_straight%29_porn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgs5A3tHMyc [with comments]
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Santorum's War on Porn
Published on Mar 16, 2012 by The Young Turks
Republican Rick Santorum has declared war on pornography on his website. Cenk Ugyur and Ana Kasparian discuss Santorum's post about the evils of pornography.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6ROwk7srDI [with comments]
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Santorum Vs Separation Of Church And State, JFK Speech
Uploaded on Feb 27, 2012 by The Young Turks
2012 Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum said a speech from former president John F. Kennedy involving separation of church and state made him want to throw up. Should religion and politics mix? Ana Kasparian, former prosecutor Steve Oh, and Jayar Jackson break it down on The Young Turks.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/27/rick-santorum-jfk-church-state-michigan-primary-2012_n_1303757.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az9QJbM83v4 [with comments]
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Liberals & Non-Christians: 'Get Out' of America! (Santorum Pastor Intro)
Published on Mar 20, 2012 by The Young Turks
Via RightWingWatch.org: "Greenwell Springs Baptist Church pastor Dennis Terry introduced presidential candidate Rick Santorum and Family Research Council president Tony Perkins tonight in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with a rousing speech railing against liberals and non-Christians and condemning abortion rights, "sexual perversion," same-sex marriage and secular government. Terry said that America "was founded as a Christian nation" and those that disagree with him should "get out! We don't worship Buddha, we don't worship Mohammad, we don't worship Allah!" Terry, who has a long history of attacks against the gay community, went on to criticize marriage equality for gays and lesbians, and said that the economy can only recover when we "put God back" in government...".* The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.
* http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/pastor-dennis-terry-introduces-rick-santorum-tells-liberals-and-non-christians-get-out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BOwF4MuBt4 [with comments]
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Rick Santorum: Ban The 'Religion' Of Secularism
Published on Sep 10, 2014 by Secular Talk
It was just yesterday that the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer was calling for people with HIV to be quarantined in the name of protecting the public health. So naturally, Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum appeared on Fischer's radio program today to share his excitement at having partnered with the AFA on his most recent film "One Generation Away."
Read More At:
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/santorum-call-secularism-religion-so-we-can-ban-it-public-schools
Clip from the Wednesday, September 10th 2014 edition of The Kyle Kulinski Show, which airs live on Blog Talk Radio and Secular Talk Radio monday - friday 4-6pm Eastern.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgVpyVyWu_Q [with comments]
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Santorum: Put The Bible Back In Public Schools
Published on Mar 16, 2015 by Secular Talk
Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) issued a passionate call for Bibles in public schools on Saturday during an appearance at a convention of social conservatives in Orlando, Florida.
"The reason Bibles are no longer in the public schools is because we let them take them out,” Santorum said to amens and applause at The Awakening conference, hosted by the right-wing Liberty Counsel...
Read More At:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/rick-santorum-bible-public-schools
Clip from the Monday, March 16th 2015 edition of The Kyle Kulinski Show, which airs live on Blog Talk Radio and Secular Talk Radio monday - friday 4-6pm Eastern.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOHuSdsbrlY [with comments]
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Rick Santorum: Dumb Scientist Pope Francis Needs To Shut His Mouth About Climate Change
by Evan Hurst
Jun 02 4:15 pm 2015
Rick Santorum is a Catholic lawyer who likes long piggyback rides on the beach with Jesus and snuggle time with dead fetuses [ http://wonkette.com/443167/why-he-runs-rick-santorums-own-fetus-jar-story ]. Pope Francis is the boss of Catholics, and he also has a masters’ degree in chemistry [ http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/03/12/pope-francis-scientist-2/ ], from his pre-poping days. One of these men needs to stay out of trying to say words about climate change, and according to Santorum, it’s Big Dumb Pope.
What’s got Santorum all frothed up? Oh, just that Pope Francis is about to put out [ http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/28/spin-substance-and-pope-franciss-environmental-encyclical/ ] one of them “encyclical”-type things, on the subject of climate change. The pope is obviously a Gay Atheist Liberal, because he believes humans are causing climate change, and that humans need to fix it. So Santorum went on the Dom Giordano radio program [ http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2015/06/01/rick-santorum-on-pope-francis-letter-on-climate-change-leave-the-science-to-the-scientist/ ] in Philadelphia, and talked some shit about the leader of God’s One True Church:
“The perception that the media would like to give of Pope Francis and the reality are two different things…I’m a huge fan of his, and his focus on making sure that we have a healthier society…I support completely the Pope’s call for us to do more to create opportunities for people to be able to rise in society and care for the poor. That’s our obligation as a society.” […]
“I’ve said this to Catholic bishops many times — when they get involved with agriculture policy or things like that that are really outside the scope of what the Church’s main message is, that we’re better off sticking to things that are really the core teachings of the Church as opposed to getting involved with every other kind of issue that happens to be popular at the time.” […]
“The Church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think we’re probably better off leaving science to the scientists and focus on what we’re really good on, which is theology and morality. When we get involved with political and controversial scientific theories, then I think the church is probably not as forceful and credible.”
Hahaha, yes, the Church HAS gotten it wrong on science, many times before! Like that thing they believe about how contraception causes abortion [ https://www.ewtn.com/library/MARRIAGE/CCLBC.TXT ], and that other thing where they condemned Galileo for saying the Earth revolves around the sun, for instance. But the difference this time, Rick Santorum, is that human-caused climate change is not a “political and controversial scientific theory,” but rather a thing that 97 percent of climate scientists around the WHOLE WORLD agree is true. The idiots here are the conservative religious people, like Santorum, who believe that real science is a liberal conspiracy.
And New Pope — which will always be his name, even when he is retired from poping — has been going on about climate change [ http://wonkette.com/570293/new-pope-wants-to-save-planet-from-climate-change-like-thats-a-thing ] for a quite a while, despite the fact that Koch brothers-funded goon squads have been trying in vain [ http://wonkette.com/583775/koch-brothers-explain-bible-to-pope-thanks-koch-brothers ] to make him just please shut up about it. He just won’t listen, and Rick will just have to stew in a vat of his own santorum about it, while the pope saves the world.
[CBS Philly / Forbes via Crooks & Liars [ http://crooksandliars.com/2015/06/santorum-pope-should-leave-science ]]
©2015 Wonkette
http://wonkette.com/587264/rick-santorum-dumb-scientist-pope-francis-needs-to-shut-his-mouth-about-climate-change [with comments]
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Rick Santorum’s ugly Pope Francis bashing: Why the Catholic in the GOP field keeps maligning other Catholics
Pope Francis, Rick Santorum
(Credit: Reuters/Max Rossi/AP/Nati Harnik/Photo montage by Salon)
First he attacked JFK. Now Pope Francis. Is that the way to win in a party controlled by evangelical Protestants?
Joan Walsh
Wednesday, Jun 3, 2015 08:43 AM CDT
In 2012, long-ago Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum got attention as the only Catholic in the GOP presidential primary race. It’s sadly noteworthy: our country has had only one Catholic president in its history (Joe Biden is our first Catholic vice president). Rather than looking out for Catholics, though, Santorum made a big splash when he attacked that first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, and lied about Kennedy’s famous speech in defense of religious freedom [ http://www.salon.com/2012/02/26/santorums_jfk_story_makes_me_want_to_throw_up/ ].
The speech “makes me throw up and it should make every American,” Santorum told ABC in February 2012. “Now we’re going to turn around and say we’re going to impose our values from the government on people of faith, which of course is the next logical step when people of faith, at least according to John Kennedy, have no role in the public square.”
Of course Kennedy said no such thing. In a historic speech tailored to address anti-Catholic prejudice head on, he insisted the “public square” should be safe territory for people of all religions, including Catholics like him, and Rick Santorum. Santorum himself should have been shamed from the public square for telling such clumsy and ugly lies about our 35th president. But Republicans can’t be shamed.
Now it’s time for 2016, and Santorum’s back, but facing other Catholics in the primary field – including Marco Rubio and convert Jeb Bush, who took his wife’s faith when he got married. So Santorum apparently has to go one better, when it comes to insulting Catholics. This time, he’s going after the Pope [ http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/rick-santorum-blasts-pope-francis-as-not-credible-on-climate-change-leave-the-science-to-the-scientists/ ].
And it’s hilarious. Except it’s also sad. Pope Francis plans a papal encyclical on the dangers of environmental degradation, including climate change. Santorum says condescendingly the Pope should stick to “theology and morality.”
At more length, Santorum said Pope Francis would be better off “leaving science to the scientists and focus on what we’re really good on, which is theology and morality. When we get involved with political and controversial scientific theories, then I think the church is probably not as forceful and credible.”
Interestingly, virtually every credible scientist validates the view of Pope Francis: that climate change is real, and it’s caused by humans. So science is on the side of the pope. It’s funny Santorum should stand up for science anyway, since he seems not to be a big fan of higher education, having already inveighed against the notion that Americans should have the chance to go to college if they so choose. “What a bunch of snobs,” he said in 2012, maligning President Obama.
The larger issue is that the pope is becoming a huge problem for Catholic Republicans. They want to obey the pope as their faith requires, but they don’t like his pronouncements on pretty much anything: not his tolerance for LGBT Catholics, or his thoughts on climate change, or his insistence that prosperity is a fiction if it doesn’t include the poor.
In 2013 it was Catholic Republican Paul Ryan who dissed the pope [ http://www.salon.com/2013/12/27/paul_ryan_lectures_the_pope/ ] for his pronouncements on income inequality and global poverty, suggesting he doesn’t understand capitalism. “The guy is from Argentina, they haven’t had real capitalism in Argentina,” Ryan said (yeah, he called the pope “the guy”). “They have crony capitalism in Argentina. They don’t have a true free enterprise system.” Poor dumb pope.
Politico recently explored the GOP’s problems with the pope against the backdrop of the 2016 election [ http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/popes-pronouncements-making-trouble-for-gop-catholics-118234.html ]. “In northwest Iowa, we are discussing this a great deal, and sometimes it’s hard for us to reconcile the pronouncements we read from the Holy Father with our conservative principles,” Sam Clovis, a Catholic GOP political activist told Politico last month.
In fact, Clovis suggested some Republican Catholics’ disdain for the pope could hurt Catholic-come-lately Jeb Bush. “It’s going to cause a lot of problems for Jeb Bush, because Republicans are simply not going to take him seriously,” he said.
Clovis didn’t mention Santorum, oddly, even though his 2016 calling card is having won the Iowa caucus (belatedly, after a recount).
Maybe Santorum thinks he’s got to bash the Pope to do well with Iowa’s large Protestant evangelical community. Bash JFK? Check. Bash Pope Francis? Check. Proceed to a higher tier of candidates? Don’t check just yet.
Of course Santorum, covering all of his political bases, also insists he’s a “huge fan” of the Pope. “He’s someone who is as committed to the nuclear family as I am,” the fourth-tier 2016 wannabe said. But he isn’t having the pope’s campaign against environmental degradation.
Nowadays Republicans are “cafeteria Catholics,” under the leadership of the compassionate, curious Pope Francis. They loved the authoritarian Pope Benedict. Of course, liberals aren’t suggesting they be excommunicated or muzzled, the way Catholic conservatives have crusaded against Catholic liberals on issues of women’s rights. Santorum’s condescending attack on Pope Francis won’t hurt the pope. But it shows Santorum to be an irrelevant afterthought in a circus-tent race where Donald Trump has more support [ http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/2016_republican_presidential_nomination-3823.html ].
Copyright © 2015 Salon Media Group, Inc. (emphasis in original)
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/03/rick_santorum%E2%80%99s_ugly_pope_francis_bashing_why_the_catholic_in_the_gop_field_keeps_maligning_other_catholics/ [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Rick Santorum Tries To Explain Why He Can Weigh In On Climate Change But Pope Shouldn't
Alex Wong via Getty Images
By Amanda Terkel
Posted: 06/07/2015 10:37 am EDT Updated: 06/07/2015 [c.] 2:37 pm EDT
WASHINGTON -- Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) attempted to argue Sunday that it's more appropriate for him to be weighing in on climate change than it is for Pope Francis, who is not only a religious leader but also a chemist.
In the coming weeks, the pope is expected to release a groundbreaking encyclical -- a papal letter sent to all the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church -- making the case that addressing climate change [ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/28/world/europe/pope-francis-steps-up-campaign-on-climate-change-to-conservatives-alarm.html ] and its effects on the poor is a moral and religious imperative.
Santorum, a potential GOP presidential candidate and a practicing Catholic, criticized the pope last week surrounding the news.
"I think that we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/02/rick-santorum-pope-climat_n_7498768.html ] and focusing on what we're really good at, which is theology and morality," he said.
In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," Santorum attempted to defend his remarks. Host Chris Wallace pointed out that Santorum talks plenty about climate change, even though he doesn't even have a background in science, like the pope does.
"I guess the question would be, if he shouldn't talk about it, should you?" Wallace asked.
Santorum argued that politicians "have to make decision with respect to our public policy that affect American workers." He added that the pope "can talk about whatever he wants," but it might not be the best issue for him to "use his moral authority for."
"He would say he's protecting the earth," Wallace replied.
"I would say that that's important thing to do, but I think there are more pressing problems confronting the earth than climate change," Santorum said, adding that he is "someone who's trying to go out there and make sure we have a revitalization in manufacturing and energy production, things to create jobs and opportunities."
Many Republican politicians have tried to use the excuse that they are "not a scientist [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/21/republicans-science-climate_n_6023282.html ]" to get out of answering questions about man-made climate change, which scientists overwhelmingly believe is real and a problem that needs to be addressed.
The pope has already been outspoken on the need to address climate change, but his encyclical is expected to elevate the issue far further around the world. According to The New York Times, the encyclical's release "will be accompanied by a 12-week campaign [ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/28/world/europe/pope-francis-steps-up-campaign-on-climate-change-to-conservatives-alarm.html ], now being prepared with the participation of some Catholic bishops, to raise the issue of climate change and environmental stewardship in sermons, homilies, news media interviews and letters to newspaper editors."
Copyright ©2015 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/07/rick-santorum-pope_n_7529166.html [with embedded non-YouTube version of the YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6jWGWlAF50 (with comments; via http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/youre-not-a-scientist-fox-host-hammers-santorum-for-trying-to-muzzle-the-pope-on-climate-change/ ), included above, and comments]
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Louis CK - God is Like a Shitty Girlfriend (Animated)
Published on Sep 20, 2012 by 43alley [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfsX0iFWcdefP78zQpYRnvQ / http://www.youtube.com/user/43alley , http://www.youtube.com/user/43alley/videos ]
Standup by Louis CK.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQuyC3eLgVA [with comments]
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An Undeniable Prognosis (Best Atheist Arguments)
Published on Mar 25, 2014 by GodWorksOut [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzGS9FsHKahSEU3LmRQ5qhQ / http://www.youtube.com/user/GodWorksOut , http://www.youtube.com/user/GodWorksOut/videos ]
This video demonstrates the intelligence, but mostly common sense, of some of the greatest minds behind atheism.
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The new REASON website
https://www.TheSecularRoundTable.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUzExsAJLmI [with (over 15,000) comments]
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God Has Finally Been Proven To Exist - Atheism Is Dead
Published on Jan 10, 2015 by Atheism-is-Unstoppable-2 [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXyLkBdJzh3SfFw6GvHkXKw , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXyLkBdJzh3SfFw6GvHkXKw/videos ]
Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this argument is so water tight, I think it's time we cut our losses, recognize we are defeated, and go home.
Support the channel: http://www.patreon.com/atheism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzcyZHtD9v4 [with comments]
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Real Time with Bill Maher: Christianity Under Attack? – June 5, 2015 (HBO)
Published on Jun 5, 2015 by Real Time with Bill Maher [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy6kyFxaMqGtpE3pQTflK8A / http://www.youtube.com/user/RealTime , http://www.youtube.com/user/RealTime/videos ]
In his editorial New Rule, Bill Maher rebuffs conservatives’ assertion that Christianity is “under attack” in America.
Connect with Real Time Online:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybH66U72xd0 [with comments]
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By GAIA PIANIGIANI
MAY 27, 2015
ROME — In the Vatican [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/roman_catholic_church/index.html ]’s eyes, the referendum in Ireland [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/ireland/index.html ] that legalized same-sex marriage [ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/24/world/europe/ireland-gay-marriage-referendum.html ] last week was a “defeat for humanity,” a top Vatican official said in remarks published late on Tuesday.
“I was very saddened by this result,” said Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, according to the Vatican Radio website. “I don’t think we can speak only about a defeat for Christian principles, but a defeat for humanity.”
The Roman Catholic Church opposes same-sex marriage [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/same_sex_marriage/index.html ] and regards homosexual relations as sinful, but many Catholics, especially young people in Western Europe and North America, pay little heed to the church’s teachings on the subject. In Ireland, where the vast majority of citizens consider themselves Catholic, the constitutional amendment to allow same-sex marriage passed easily, with 62 percent of votes in favor.
Afterward, the archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, said the church was growing out of touch with young people and needed a “reality check [ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/25/world/europe/church-faces-murky-future-as-irish-support-same-sex-marriage.html ].”
Cardinal Parolin’s comments were the first by a high-level Vatican official since the referendum. He said the church needed to register that reality “in the sense of reinforcing all its commitment, and make an effort to evangelize.”
Though the church has not changed its view of homosexuality, Pope Francis has been perceived as more open and compassionate on the subject than his recent predecessors, especially after a widely reported comment he made in 2013 concerning the sexual orientation of priests. “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Francis told reporters then [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/world/europe/pope-francis-gay-priests.html ], during his first trip abroad as pope.
The pope has opened a two-year synod to discuss issues surrounding the family and better ways to preach to Catholics today. In a recent meeting in Rome, Catholic bishops said it was necessary to welcome gays into the church, though they continued to rule out same-sex marriage.
Before Francis became pope, the tone and language used by the church was sterner. The Vatican compared homosexuality to an “objective disorder,” and Pope Benedict XVI, when he was still a cardinal, defined it as a “tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil.”
Francis did not directly mention the Irish referendum in his regular weekly address to the faithful on Wednesday. But when he spoke about the importance of the engagement period before marriage, he repeated traditional church teaching, calling marriage a “love alliance between a man and a woman.”
Same-sex marriage is not legally recognized in Italy, which like Ireland is heavily Catholic, and even Italy’s progressive Democratic Party has struggled to find a unified position on the issue. A recent campaign by gay rights activists and local officials [ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/24/world/europe/unable-to-marry-gay-couples-some-italian-mayors-rebel.html ] has led to cities formally registering same-sex marriages that were performed abroad. The government of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has promised new legislation to allow same-sex couples to join in civil unions, but not marriages.
© 2015 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/28/world/europe/vatican-official-denounces-irelands-vote-for-same-sex-marriage.html
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Catholic Archdiocese in Minnesota Charged Over Sex Abuse by Priest
Curtis Wehmeyer, a former priest in Minnesota, was sentenced in 2013 for criminal sexual conduct and possession of child pornography.
Credit Minnesota Department of Corrections, via Associated Press
By MITCH SMITH
JUNE 5, 2015
CHICAGO — Prosecutors in Minnesota filed criminal charges on Friday against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, accusing church leaders of mishandling repeated complaints of sexual misconduct against a priest and failing to follow through on pledges to protect children and root out pedophile clergymen.
The charges [ http://stmedia.startribune.com/documents/Archdiocese+of+Saint+Paul+and+Minneapolis+6.5.15.pdf ] and accompanying civil petition, announced by the Ramsey County prosecutor, John J. Choi, stem from accusations by three male victims who say that from 2008 to 2010, when they were under age, a local priest, Curtis Wehmeyer, gave them alcohol and drugs before sexually assaulting them.
The criminal case amounts to a sweeping condemnation of the archdiocese and how its leaders have handled the abuse allegations — even after reforms were put in place by church leaders to increase accountability — and the charges are among the most severe actions taken by American authorities against a Catholic diocese.
“Today, we are alleging a disturbing institutional and systemic pattern of behavior committed by the highest levels of leadership of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis over the course of decades,” Mr. Choi said in a statement.
Mr. Wehmeyer, 50, who was dismissed as a priest in March, was sentenced to five years in a Minnesota prison in 2013 for criminal sexual conduct and possession of child pornography. He also has been charged with sex crimes in Wisconsin [ http://www.twincities.com/crime/ci_26953842/st-paul-pedophile-priest-charged-wisconsin-case ].
The six criminal charges filed Friday, misdemeanors with a maximum fine of $3,000 each, accused the archdiocese of failing to protect children. Mr. Choi also filed a civil petition against the archdiocese that he said was intended to provide legal remedies to prevent similar inaction from happening again.
The 44-page criminal complaint states that concerns about Mr. Wehmeyer date to the 1990s, when he was in seminary and supervisors suggested that his past sexual promiscuity and alcohol abuse made him a poor candidate for the priesthood.
Fellow clergy members and parishioners voiced repeated concerns about Mr. Wehmeyer after his ordination in 2001, prosecutors said. The archdiocese allowed Mr. Wehmeyer to continue as a priest [ http://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2013/09/clergy-abuse/#timeline ], and even placed him in charge of his own parish, despite learning about his attempts to pick up young men at bookstores and his encounters with law enforcement at known “cruising” spots where men were known to meet other men for anonymous sexual encounters.
The charging documents also say that archdiocese officials knew that Mr. Wehmeyer used a boys’ bathroom at a parish elementary school instead of the staff restroom; tried to give an elementary-age boy a tour of the rectory in violation of policy; and took camping trips with boys where some of the sexual abuse was said to have occurred.
The archdiocese placed Mr. Wehmeyer in a monitoring program for priests facing complaints of abuse or other problems, but prosecutors said in court documents that the supervision and follow-through was “lax or nonexistent.”
“The archdiocese’s failures have caused great suffering by the victims and their family and betrayed our entire community,” Mr. Choi said in his statement.
Civil cases against the archdiocese and priests have poured in since 2013, when the Minnesota State Legislature passed the Child Victims Act [ http://www.startribune.com/abuse-law-unleashes-firestorm-on-church/260547781/ ], which opened a three-year window for filing lawsuits involving claims of sexual abuse that were beyond the criminal statute of limitations.
Many people have made such claims since that law’s passage, bringing new attention to decades-old cases, and creating public records of accusations against some priests.
David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said he was pleased by the indictment, “but the credit goes to Minnesota lawmakers, not this prosecutor.”
An auxiliary bishop for the diocese, Andrew Cozzens, said in a statement Friday, “We deeply regret the abuse that was suffered by the victims of Curtis Wehmeyer and are grieved for all victims of sexual abuse.”
He added that the archdiocese would continue to cooperate with prosecutors. “We all share the same goal: to provide safe environments for all children in our churches and in our communities,” Bishop Cozzens said.
Criminal prosecution of an entire Catholic archdiocese is rare, but not entirely unprecedented, in American courts.
An Ohio judge in 2003 convicted the Archdiocese of Cincinnati of failing to report sexually abusive priests in the 1970s and ’80s. The judge fined the archdiocese $10,000, the maximum allowed, after the archbishop entered a no-contest plea.
But the Minnesota allegations are especially stark because the sexual abuse is said to have occurred relatively recently, long after sexual misconduct by priests had been widely reported and after Catholic institutions implemented programs aimed at preventing further abuse.
“Naming the archdiocese as a corporation implicates the wrongdoing and the failure to protect children by all of the top officials, past and present,” Jeff Anderson, a lawyer in Minnesota who has represented clergy sex-abuse victims, said in a statement.
Laurie Goodstein contributed reporting from New York.
Related Coverage
Calls for Resignation Mount for Minnesota Archbishop in Scandals
JULY 15, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/us/calls-for-resignation-mount-for-minnesota-archbishop-in-scandals.html
© 2015 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/06/us/catholic-archdiocese-in-minnesota-charged-over-sex-abuse-by-priest.html
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Gay Activists Hail Vote, 3 Decades After a Fatal ‘Queer Bashing’ Hate Crime
By DOUGLAS DALBY
MAY 23, 2015
DUBLIN — Many of the young voters so pivotal to the successful campaign to legalize same-sex marriage in Ireland were not even born when the country’s version of New York’s Stonewall [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/stonewall_rebellion/index.html ] Riots occurred. In 1982, Declan Flynn, a 31-year-old gay man, was kicked and beaten to death with sticks by a gang of four youths in Fairview Park in Dublin’s north inner city.
His assailants admitted they had attacked him because they had been “queer bashing.” The leniency of their sentences — between one and five years, all suspended — was the catalyst for the first widespread demonstration for gay rights.
More than 30 years later, the heinous crime that produced a movement also led to a singular distinction for Ireland: It became the only country to legalize same-sex marriage [ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/24/world/europe/ireland-gay-marriage-referendum.html ] by popular vote.
Ireland’s paradigm shift from quasi theocracy to gay rights beacon has not happened by accident. It is the result of a calculated campaign for equality by gay activists and the coincidental decline of the Roman Catholic Church.
“Commentators just don’t seem to have grasped that this has been the culmination of a 10-year campaign to change attitudes in this country,” said Colm O’Gorman, chief executive of Amnesty International-Ireland and a leading gay rights campaigner.
“We stuck to our single message that this was about equality. We were determined not to get involved in vitriol or mudslinging and that this campaign would be joyful and positive.”
Mr. O’Gorman also said that the series of clerical pedophile scandals hastened the end of the Catholic Church hegemony over social affairs.
“There is no doubt the political and moral authority of the church was fatally undermined and this had a huge impact: It no longer had the sense of entitlement to direct people how to think and act.”
The veteran gay rights campaigner David Norris remembers Declan Flynn as a “shy, decent young man.” He recalls the crime and how the revulsion it engendered was compounded by the judge’s refusal to jail the four, who ranged in age from 14 to 19.
Afterward, about 900 people marched to the park to protest the crime and the sentence. Some 33 years later, Mr. Norris, who is now a government senator, was at Dublin Castle along with thousands of others celebrating Ireland’s transformation.
It took 16 years of legal battles before Mr. Norris ultimately succeeded in decriminalizing homosexuality in 1993, and only after the Irish government had been dragged before the European Court of Human Rights [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/e/european_court_of_human_rights/index.html ].
The next major step toward the successful referendum came in 2003 when a lesbian couple, Catherine Zappone and her partner, Ann Louise Gilligan, began a legal action to force the state to recognize the marriage vows they had taken three years earlier in Canada. Despite legal reversals, the case galvanized support for same-sex marriage, putting it on the agenda for the first time.
“Initially, we were a small determined group, but we grew to be a large determined group,” Mr. O’Gorman said.
In Dublin Castle on Saturday, Ms. Zappone and Ms. Gilligan were met with rousing cheers. Ms. Zappone said the result had robbed the couple of their day in court, but it was a loss they were more than happy to bear.
“People say it has happened in such a short time, but it feels like forever,” she said. “We would have loved to have been vindicated by the Irish Supreme Court, but this win has been even sweeter, no doubt about that — I’d have settled for this any day.”
After weeks of speculation about a so-called silent no vote, the size of the eventual margin — nearly two to one — took even the most optimistic yes supporters by surprise. After the surprising election results in Britain this month, few people trusted opinion polls that showed 70 to 30 in favor.
“Our door-to-door canvasses were reflecting the polls, so we were hopeful of their accuracy, and we were also confident about the existence of a ‘silent yes’ too, which had gone unreported,” said Brian Sheehan, co-director of the Yes Equality campaign who coordinated the strategic drive for constitutional change.
Yes Equality ran a campaign of military precision. They set up a network of support groups around the country, combining a grass-roots movement with the latest social media techniques to turn the once implausible into a landslide.
A registration drive brought in more than 100,000 new voters since last November, tens of thousands of doors were knocked on, extensive leafleting campaigns took place and posters were ubiquitous.
A series of powerful, emotional videos went viral and helped to bridge a perceived gap between generations.
“We also married online with offline, using campaigns such as ‘go ask your granny’ to vote, which really did work when it came to engagement,” Mr. Sheehan said. “Above all, we knew we needed to engage straight people, too, with a message that was about hope, tolerance, fairness and the kind of Ireland they and their children would want to live in.”
In 2012, the government set up the Constitutional Convention to recommend changes designed to bring the 1937 Constitution more up to date. Yes Equality lobbied hard for a specific amendment on same-sex marriage.
When the official result was announced, there were tears of joy and sadness at Dublin Castle. Many noted the absence of men like Declan Flynn and so many others who could not be there to see the day.
© 2015 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/24/world/europe/3-decades-after-galvanizing-hate-crime-irelands-gays-hail-vote.html
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Neil deGrasse Tyson - "Do you believe in god?"
Published on Sep 15, 2014 by Kristi dela Cruz [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTuvLCPqR1Rx8K-MQu37hHg , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTuvLCPqR1Rx8K-MQu37hHg/videos ]
Walla Walla, WA September 12th, 2014
During the Q&A, a ten year old boy asks Dr. Tyson if he believes in god.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sApQ80QRiE [no comments yet; comments apparently disabled]
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Sean Fieler Is Out And Proud About His Anti-Gay Marriage Donations Even As The Country's Opinion Shifts
Sean Fieler is one of the last remaining donors publicly writing large checks to anti-gay marriage initiatives.
hrc.org
By Paul Blumenthal
Posted: 06/05/2015 7:28 am EDT Updated: 06/05/2015 7:59 am EDT
WASHINGTON -- In an era when opponents of gay marriage have less and less political power, Sean Fieler has staked out a position as the leading funder of efforts to turn back the tide of marriage equality.
Fieler, president of the hedge fund Equinox Partners and the Kuroto Fund, has spent more than $4.6 million on state and federal political campaigns and super PACs since 2010, and millions more on anti-gay marriage groups and organizations that produce questionable studies of same-sex relationships. He and his wife, Ana Fieler, have also started funding anti-transgender rights efforts across the country.
A devout conservative Catholic, Sean Fieler is unabashed in his opposition to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. He once argued in The New York Times [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/us/in-shift-blankenhorn-forges-a-pro-marriage-coalition-for-all.html ] that gay marriage “promotes a very harmful myth about the gay lifestyle” because “it suggests that gay relationships lend themselves to monogamy, stability, health and parenting in the same way heterosexual relationships do. That’s not true.”
While Fieler’s name remains relatively unknown to the general public, he’s emerged as a major player in the movement. “Sean Fieler is a good man,” Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage -- arguably the most influential anti-gay marriage group -- wrote in a mass email to the group’s supporters in September 2012. “An investor and philanthropist, he supports dozens of good causes, including NOM's work to protect marriage.”
“Sean could have kept his support for marriage private,” Brown continued. Instead, he “refuses to be silenced or intimidated.”
Conservative pundit Bill Kristol introduced Fieler at a 2012 summit [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhcyFteBWTs (next below; no comments yet)]
hosted by the American Principles Project, on whose board Fieler sits, by declaring that he is “someone who will play an increasing role in our public life.”
In fact, Fieler’s public policy interests range from reviving the gold standard to opposing abortion. But it is his position as one of the few donors publicly increasing their investment in the gay marriage opposition, just as Americans are increasingly embracing marriage equality, that makes him stand out. Fieler declined to comment for this article.
A Washington Post/ABC poll [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/23/same-sex-marriage-poll_n_7128112.html ] in April found that 61 percent of Americans support legalizing same-sex marriage. Through judicial or legislative action, 37 states now allow it. And the Supreme Court could extend same-sex marriage to the entire country in June when it's expected to rule in Obergefell v. Hodges [ http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/obergefell-v-hodges/ ].
Meanwhile, groups like NOM have seen a precipitous drop in donations. The Mormon Church ceased funding anti-gay marriage work [ http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/prop-8-mormons-gay-marriage-shift ] after the backlash to its role as a primary backer of NOM’s Proposition 8 campaign in California in 2008. Members of the church were responsible for millions in donations to that effort to ban same-sex marriage [ http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/15/us/politics/15marriage.html?pagewanted=all ] and constituted the vast majority of the grassroots volunteers. Another major Proposition 8 donor, foundation chief John Templeton Jr., died in May [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/19/john-templeton-jr-dies_n_7336836.html ] from brain cancer. Templeton and his wife had donated more than $1.6 million to NOM and other Proposition 8 advocacy in 2008.
The retreat of anti-gay marriage funders has left Fieler as one of the very few still aggressively pushing that agenda. “He’s very proud of his check-writing, where most of these donors have either stopped contributing or gone underground in their contributions,” said Fred Karger, a former Republican strategist turned gay rights activist who has tracked NOM over the last seven years.
Fieler supports NOM, as well as efforts to defeat Democratic lawmakers who back gay marriage. Perhaps more notably, he’s spending money to try to push the Republican Party to put conservative religious issues front and center again, and investing millions to defeat Republican candidates who either support gay marriage or appear squishy on the issue.
Much of Fieler’s activism flows through a series of nonprofits and a super PAC that funnel money into elections, policy debates, controversial social science studies and groups advocating against gay marriage in America and gay rights worldwide.
He is chairman and chief underwriter of the American Principles Project and American Principles in Action, a pair of nonprofits founded by Princeton professor Robert P. George. A Catholic co-founder of NOM and the leading intellectual voice opposing gay marriage, George is the mind behind the legal argument that the essential purpose of marriage is procreation. “The plain fact is that the genitals of men and women are reproductive organs all of the time -- even during periods of sterility,” he has written [ http://www.thenation.com/article/princeton-tilts-right ].
The rise in popular support for gay marriage can be traced to a shift in the view of marriage from a procreation pact to “mere sexual romantic companionship,” according to George [ http://www.aleteia.org/en/society/article/interview-with-robert-george-we-will-bring-scorn-upon-ourselves-yet-we-must-continue-to-fight-same-sex-marriage-5816831537315840 ]. He sees this trend stretching from the spread of no-fault divorce to the rise of "promiscuity" and cohabitation since the 1960s. All of this will ultimately lead down the slippery slope to legalized polygamy and more, George argues. When then-Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) made his infamous argument that acceptance of gay marriage would lead to “man on dog” relationships, George wrote an extended defense in National Review titled “Rick Santorum Is Right [ http://www.nationalreview.com/article/207032/rick-santorum-right-robert-p-george ].”
George has called for a fight to restore what he calls the traditional Catholic view of marriage. And Fieler, a father of four, has funded George’s nonprofits, although the total amount of those contributions is not known since the groups are not required to disclose their donors.
The American Principles groups also promote the work of anti-gay marriage activists like Maggie Gallagher, another NOM co-founder, and Luis Tellez, head of the anti-gay Witherspoon Institute and of the Princeton chapter of the ultra-conservative Catholic sect Opus Dei. Fieler also sits on the board of Witherspoon and, through his personal foundation, has donated more than $230,000 to the group. A spokeswoman for both Principles groups declined to comment.
Following the GOP's 2012 loss of both the White House and a number of Senate seats, American Principles in Action released a report [ http://www.americanprinciplesinaction.org/gop-autopsy-report-2013/ ] urging the party to continue pushing conservative social issues. To win, the nonprofit argued, candidates must embrace a principled stance against gay marriage and abortion.
“[B]ecause Romney and his associated PACs had pledged to run no ads on social issues, President Obama never had to pay the price in Ohio, Virginia, or elsewhere for embracing gay marriage. He could please the Left and be confident that the GOP would not make an issue of it,” the report says.
Two years later, the vast majority of Republican elected officials at the federal level remain opposed to same-sex marriage. But there is a growing movement encouraging GOP candidates to, if not change their view entirely, at least de-emphasize it as a campaign issue. There is also a shift among Republican voters toward support of same-sex marriage. A May 19 Gallup poll [ http://www.gallup.com/poll/183272/record-high-americans-support-sex-marriage.aspx ] found 37 percent of Republican voters support gay marriage, more than double the share a decade ago.
Karl Rove, the architect of President George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign that called for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, has even stated that the party might one day accept a presidential candidate who favors it [ http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/03/karl-rove-i-could-imagine-gop-presidential-candidate-supporting-gay-marriage/ ].
Fieler forcefully rejects this thinking. “When it comes to what are euphemistically referred to as the ‘social issues,’ we promise not to talk about life and marriage, the literal future and irreplaceable foundation of our society,” Fieler said at an American Principles Project event in 2012, referring to Republican efforts to downplay those debates. “To win, we need but to make one change -- to emphasize, rather than run away from, our principles.”
His political involvement at the federal level has mostly been conducted through the super PAC American Principles Fund. Fieler is by far the group’s biggest funder, donating more than $1.1 million since 2013. The group’s director is Sarah Huckabee Sanders, daughter of religious conservative presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.
American Principles Fund’s biggest splash came in the brief 2014 Republican Senate primary campaign in Wyoming. Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, was seeking to oust incumbent Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.).
The super PAC ran an ad hitting Liz Cheney, whose sister Mary is gay and married, for prior supportive statements she had made about same-sex marriage. “In Wyoming, Cheney campaigns as a conservative,” the ad’s narrator says. “In Washington, she appears on MSNBC to campaign against a marriage amendment and support government benefits for gay couples.” Cheney’s response that she was actually opposed to gay marriage opened a family rift, with her sister and her sister's wife publicly denouncing the candidate and declaring they wouldn’t be spending Thanksgiving with her. Cheney dropped out of the race three months later.
Fieler has donated to a range of other super PACs as well, including $50,000 to a super PAC supporting then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s 2012 presidential campaign, which featured one of the most strident anti-gay ads [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V78ReJbjdxo (next below; with {over 15,000} comments)]
ever. Another $50,000 contribution went to the pro-Mitt Romney super PAC Restore Our Future. And he’s donated $460,000 to Women Speak Out, which was launched by the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List.
Fieler has also invested heavily in state contests. He has backed anti-gay marriage politicians like Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and onetime Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, and he has donated more than $350,000 to state Republican Party groups.
In New York in 2011, he spent nearly $30,000 to defeat Republican state senators who had supported legislation legalizing gay marriage. Fieler accused them of having “folded under pressure from the gay lobby.” The Fieler-backed candidate defeated pro-gay marriage Republican Roy McDonald in one primary challenge that year.
In 2013, Fieler was the top donor to City Action Coalition, a religious-right super PAC active in New York City council elections. A report by Gay City News found that the majority of City Action Coalition’s spending targeted just three candidates [ http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2013/09/surprise_anti-a.php ] for defeat: Rosie Mendez, Ritchie Torres and Carlos Menchaca. All three candidates are gay, and all three won.
Beyond his electoral spending, Fieler has donated millions to anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage advocacy groups, mostly through his Chiaroscuro Foundation. The nonprofit group, named after a Renaissance painting style favoring high contrast between dark and light, has received more than $19 million from Fieler since 2010.
Most of the foundation’s contributions have gone to Catholic, anti-abortion and anti-birth-control organizations, but some funding has gone to anti-gay groups as well. The foundation has directed at least $220,000 since 2010 to the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, a nonprofit that advocates against LGBT rights [ https://c-fam.org/friday_fax/editorial-sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity-are-not-human-rights/ ] at the United Nations. C-FAM backed the anti-gay laws in Uganda [ https://c-fam.org/friday_fax/uganda-laws-on-homosexuality-set-aside-for-now/ ] that have been denounced as criminalizing homosexuality and deployed lawyers to help defend Belize’s anti-gay laws [ http://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/downloads/publication/dangerous_liaisons_splc-report.pdf ]. It voiced support for the anti-gay laws adopted by Russia [ http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/25/putin-is-not-the-gay-bogeyman/ ] in 2013 and encouraged the United States to adopt such policies.
Another recipient of the Chiaroscuro Foundation’s money is University of Texas-Austin sociology professor Mark Regnerus. In 2012, Regnerus released an infamous report claiming to show that same-sex parents negatively impact their children. The study -- which defined same-sex parents as those who had, at some point or other, engaged in a same-sex act -- was widely panned [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/05/10/new-criticism-of-regnerus-study-on-parenting-study/ ] and rejected [ http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/13/opinion/la-oe-frank-same-sex-regnerus-family-20120613 ] by the American Sociological Association, American Medical Association and American Academy of Pediatrics [ http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/07/11/514974/medical-groups-attack-faulty-parenting-study-in-anti-doma-amicus-brief/ ].
The Witherspoon Institute (where Fieler serves as a trustee) funded that study. Regnerus also received $250,000 for his Austin Institute from the Chiaroscuro Foundation in 2013, after the controversy over the report. The Chiaroscuro Foundation donated another $237,500 to the Witherspoon Institute that year.
As American attitudes on sexual orientation and gender identity have been shifting overall, Fieler has also moved on to fighting the acceptance of the transgender community and has called upon Republicans to campaign against transgender rights. This is more fertile ground, Fieler argued recently [ http://www.newsweek.com/what-republicans-dont-get-about-lgbt-movement-336876 ], because “unlike the gay lifestyle, the transgender lifestyle has not been, and perhaps never can be, normalized. Americans still believe that a man, even a man who thinks he is a woman, is still a man.”
Fieler has already put his money to work against transgender rights in California. After the governor signed legislation giving transgender students the right to use the restroom of the gender with which they identify, Fieler pumped $200,000 into a 2014 ballot initiative campaign to impose strict new rules on transgender bathroom use. The so-called Privacy for All Act would have overturned the transgender students’ rights law [ http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-transgender-bathrooms-20150420-story.html ] and allowed people who felt their privacy was violated by transgender use of a restroom to file suit against the operator of that restroom. It would even have allowed those who chose not to enter a restroom due to their own discomfort with possibly encountering a transgender individual to file suit against the restroom owner.
The initiative ultimately failed to gain enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, and Fieler was forced to pay a fine [ http://www.fppc.ca.gov/agendas/2015/4-15/07%20Fieler%20-%20Stip.pdf ] for failing to properly report his donations to the anti-transgender rights effort.
But the battle isn’t over. Privacy For All, the group that had been backed by Fieler’s largesse, is planning another ballot initiative campaign for 2016. This time, it will call on California voters to pass an initiative requiring government buildings to allow restroom access based only on biological sex [ http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article19064163.html ].
Similar bills have been proposed in other states across the country. Most have failed to pass [ http://time.com/3734714/transgender-bathroom-bills-lgbt-discrimination/ ].
Still, Fieler believes that if religious conservatives want to roll back the advance of gay marriage and other LGBT rights, they’ll need to start in the restroom. As he put it in Newsweek [ http://www.newsweek.com/what-republicans-dont-get-about-lgbt-movement-336876 ] last month, “principles of the Republican Party that would result in a return to America’s founding vision should hold more appeal for the American people than principles that will result in men in women’s bathrooms.”
Copyright ©2015 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/05/sean-fieler-gay-marriage_n_7511614.html [with comments]
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Rubio Warns of 'Clear, Present Danger' to Christianity
Bt David Brody
CBN News Chief Political Correspondent
Tuesday, May 26, 2015
WASHINGTON -- Nearly eight years have passed since a young Democrat named Barack Obama captured the White House. Now, another up-and-coming politician has a chance to take a similar path.
This time it's a Republican and his name is Marco Rubio.
The Florida senator sees Iowa as the first stop on his road to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It's the ultimate American dream, and for this 43-year-old, the future is now.
"I've been told, 'Why don't you wait? You could be the candidate of the future.' And I say, 'Well that's good news because this election is in the future,'" Rubio told a hundred gatherers at a local house party in Iowa.
That philosophy of the future will be the centerpiece of his presidential run. His campaign theme is "A New American Century." While on the road in Iowa, Rubio told CBN News his overall plan.
"We have to have policies, tax policies, regulatory policies, debt policies, healthcare policies that make us globally competitive," he explained.
"We are engaged in a massive global competition for investment and for innovation and we are falling behind because our government has policies that are holding us back," he charged.
An American Success Story
Rubio supporters see him as American success story. Raised in a Spanish-speaking home to Cuban-born parents, he grew up in a working class family. After arriving in America, both parents worked hard.
Their rich family spirit made up for any financial shortcomings. It's a lesson that sticks with the young senator to this day.
"The family is the original cell of society," Rubio told CBN News. "It is the first and most important government. It is the first church. The family is the singular most important institution in society. It existed before government. It existed before laws."
A strong faith is also key. He grew up Roman Catholic, though at one point the family tried Mormonism. Rubio says that didn't feel right.
"As I got more theologically aware and more engaged and learning about Catholicism, I wanted to go back and so we did," Rubio recalled. "I did first communion on Christmas Day in 1984. That was probably in 7th or 8th grade."
As a young adult, Rubio admits he fell away from his faith so his wife started attending a Baptist church. They went there for a number of years, but eventually Rubio felt a tug back to his Catholic roots.
"In an ironic way, the more I learned about the written Word, the more I fell in love with the Roman Catholic teachings and we ended up going back to that church," he told CBN News.
"And so today we're in a place where we are Roman Catholics, fully aligned with the theology and the Magisterium, the teaching authority of the Church – but also with a tremendous appreciate for, and often interaction with our brothers and sisters in Christ who attend other denominations," he said.
Christianity's 'Real and Present Danger'
Today, his deep faith drives public policy positions on social issues such as traditional marriage.
"If you think about it, we are at the water's edge of the argument that mainstream Christian teaching is hate speech," Rubio told CBN News. "Because today we've reached the point in our society where if you do not support same-sex marriage you are labeled a homophobe and a hater."
"So what's the next step after that?" he asked.
"After they are done going after individuals, the next step is to argue that the teachings of mainstream Christianity, the catechism of the Catholic Church is hate speech and there's a real and present danger," he warned.
Rubio said he's ready to face danger, here and around the world.
"You don't want to be engaged in every conflict on the planet. We're not the world's policemen," he said. "But I question - what would happen in the alternative? If America doesn't lead, what happens? Well, what happens is chaos."
A Bumpy Road Ahead
His positions and early standing in the polls put Rubio in a good position even this early in the race. His backers like a General Election scenario of a young Marco Rubio vs. Hillary Clinton, who's been around awhile.
He does face some challenges with the base though - specifically his work with Democrats on comprehensive immigration reform, something that he knew could hurt his chances of becoming president when he discussed this issue with CBN News two years ago [ http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/politics/2013/June/A-Tough-Sell-Rubio-Takes-on-Immigration-Reform/ ].
Keeping Priorities Straight
That moment crystalized the importance of family in Rubio's life.
"I believe that at home my most important job is to be a husband to my wife and a father to my children. If I can't do that right, I can't lead a nation," he told CBN News.
"One day I will no longer be in politics. One day I will no longer be a senator or a president or anything else. But I will always be a father and I will always be a husband," he said.
As for president, he'll leave that up to the American people and almighty God.
"Ultimately my view of it is you go out and do the very best you can and ultimately it's going to turn out the way voters and God decide," he said.
© Copyright 2015 The Christian Broadcasting Network
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/politics/2015/May/Rubio-Warns-of-Clear-Present-Danger-to-Christianity/ [with embedded non-YouTube version of the YouTube of the segment, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsriYIdReGM (with comments, also at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNI2D462GYc {with comments}), included above, and comments]
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This Week in God, 5.30.15
A woman holds a Bible.
Photo by Robertus Pudyanto/Getty
Matthew 25:34-40
New International Version (NIV)
34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
[ https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2025:34-40 ]
By Steve Benen
05/30/15 08:50 AM
First up from the God Machine this week is an unexpected scriptural debate over how to read one of the more widely known verses in the Christian Bible.
Matthew 25:40 includes a phrase that many have likely heard, regardless of their faith tradition: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” The phrasing is generally seen as championing the needs of the poor – to turn your back on those struggling is to turn your back on God.
But my colleague Will Femia this week flagged [ https://twitter.com/WillAtWork/status/603730387395878912 ] an amazing report from Glenn Beck’s conservative website, The Blaze, which put an incredible twist [ http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/05/28/if-everything-you-thought-you-knew-about-this-popular-bible-verse-wrong/ ] on Biblical interpretation.
Denny Burk, professor of Biblical Studies at Boyce College in Louisville, Kentucky, most certainly isn’t the first to make the claim [ http://www.dennyburk.com/the-least-of-these-are-not-the-poor-but-the-christian-baker-photographer-and-florist/ ] that the “least of these” is actually a reference to Christians who face struggles in sharing their faith, but his stated view on the matter is the most recent proclamation to spark interpretive discussion.
“This text is not about poor people generally. It’s about Christians getting the door slammed in their face while sharing the gospel with a neighbor,” Burk wrote. “It’s about the baker/florist/photographer who is being mistreated for bearing faithful witness to Christ. It’s about disciples of Jesus having their heads cut off by Islamic radicals.”
I see. So, against the backdrop of the right-to-discriminate debate, conservatives want “the least of these” to refer to themselves.
No, really. As Ana Marie Cox joked [ https://twitter.com/anamariecox/status/603971743984717824 ], when conservatives see Matthew 25:40, they’ve effectively concluded it’s “actually about Memories Pizza.”
[...]
©2015 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/week-god-53015 [with comments]
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Marco Rubio makes a clown of himself: The twisted logic behind his anti-gay “hate speech” insanity
Marco Rubio
(Credit: AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Equal marriage doesn't criminalize Christianity. But if you want to defend "traditional" marriage, there's a fix!
Katie McDonough
Wednesday, May 27, 2015 12:08 PM CDT
Republican presidential contender and super thirsty guy
[ https://storify.com/globalpost/marco-rubio-reactions-water-chugging-and-bootstrap , http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2280308/Marco-Rubio-raises-100k-selling-3-100-water-bottles-State-Union-gaffe.html , http://i.ytimg.com/vi/hf5fG311EXU/maxresdefault.jpg ] Marco Rubio is worried that marriage equality is the first slippery step onto a very slippery slope toward labeling the Bible hate speech. Or something.
“If you think about it, we are at the water’s edge of the argument that mainstream Christian teaching is hate speech,” Rubio, who is Catholic, said Tuesday during an interview with CBN News [ http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/politics/2015/May/Rubio-Warns-of-Clear-Present-Danger-to-Christianity/ (just above)]. “Because today we’ve reached the point in our society where if you do not support same-sex marriage you are labeled a homophobe and a hater.”
“So what’s the next step after that?” he continued. “After they are done going after individuals, the next step is to argue that the teachings of mainstream Christianity, the catechism of the Catholic Church is hate speech. And there’s a real and present danger.”
It’s hard to imagine that even Rubio believes what he’s saying here, but who knows. Massachusetts has been issuing marriage licenses to gay couples since 2004, and, last I checked, the state hasn’t moved to raze its Catholic churches or strip Boston College of its charter. Ditto for seriously every other state that has legalized equal marriage.
And while Indiana “fixed” its beefed up version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, it is still completely legal to discriminate against LGBTQ people [ http://www.salon.com/2015/04/02/the_united_states_of_indiana_discrimination_is_perfectly_legal_in_america_wheres_our_outrage/ ] in the state. It is, in fact, legal to discriminate against LGBTQ people in most states.
Rubio’s “real and present danger” is an absurd claim, but it’s a line like that plays well with audiences like the people watching him on a conservative Christian network. But beyond the tired slippery slope argument, Rubio’s framing about his opposition to equal marriage not being hateful or homophobic is worth looking at, too. Particularly because it’s an increasingly popular refrain among conservative holdouts on the issue.
Mike Huckabee, newly declared in the GOP primary, likes to beat the same drum. In 2014 at the Iowa Faith and Freedom convention, Huckabee invoked the same defense while explaining while he wanted to continue to deny gay and lesbian couples equal protection under the law.
“I’m not against anybody. I’m really not. I’m not a hater. I’m not homophobic. I honestly don’t care what people do personally in their individual lives,” he said at the time [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/09/mike-huckabee-homophobic_n_5117775.html ]. “When people say, ‘Why don’t you just kind of get on the right side of history?’ I said, ‘You’ve got to understand, this for me is not about the right side or the wrong side of history, this is the right side of the Bible, and unless God rewrites it, edits it, sends it down with his signature on it, it’s not my book to change.”
The man’s got a point! Never once in human history has the legal or cultural definition of marriage ever once changed, so why start now? (Just kidding. Men in the Bible have multiple wives. They have children with other women when their wives can’t conceive. There are forced marriages and rape. Not to mention the fact that our cultural and political understanding of marriage as an institution has never been stable [ http://www.stephaniecoontz.com/articles/article25.htm ].)
But if Rubio and Huckabee are truly concerned about being labeled haters, but also very much want to stick to their interpretation of traditional marriage, they should probably change tactics and — rather than oppose equal marriage — start campaigning to ban civil marriage for everyone.
Civil marriage is a contract. As it stands, gay and lesbian couples who live in states without equal marriage can still marry in churches that recognize their relationships. (Presbyterian and Lutheran churches can perform ceremonies for same-sex couples, for example.) Churches also have discretion when it comes to straight couples: Catholics who get divorced can’t remarry in some churches unless they get an annulment.
But those same Catholics can get married many times over at their local court house. Because there’s a difference between a religious ceremony and a civil ceremony. One means something in the eyes of your faith, the other means something in the eyes of the state. But when it comes to tax breaks or getting a green card for your partner, only the latter matters.
So if guys like Rubio and Huckabee want to hold fast to their version of marriage, they should campaign to end a system that confers more than 1,000 rights and legal entitlements contingent exclusively on a contract you sign because you promise to have sex with the same person until you die. Unless, of course, they really like a system that actively excludes consenting adults from entering into legally binding contracts. Then, you know, they’re just haters and homophobes.
Copyright © 2015 Salon Media Group, Inc.
http://www.salon.com/2015/05/27/marco_rubio_makes_a_clown_of_himself_the_twisted_logic_behind_his_anti_gay_hate_speech_insanity/ [with comments]
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Chattanooga, Tennessee TV Station Refuses To Air Gay Republican Soldier's Right To Marry Ad
05/30/2015
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/30/jesse-ehrenfeld-right-to-marry_n_7476514.html [with comments], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMEd350_gQY [embedded; with comments]
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Conservative presidential hopeful Marco Rubio’s religion of many colors
Marco Rubio, who wants to be President, has been a Catholic, a Mormon, a Catholic again, then a fundamentalist Christian church member and a Catholic Church member.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio is a Christian and a Catholic.
SEBASTIEN BOZON/AFP/Getty Images
Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio, a man of several religions, is seen here at the Georgia Republican Convention in May.
David Goldman/AP
Republican presidential candidate is a Christian and a Catholic, he says, though he sharply criticized Pope Francis for helping renew diplomatic relations between Cuba, where Rubio’s parents were born, and the U.S.
FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images
The religious trail of GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio included a stop in the Mormon faith when his family lived in Nevada.
Rick Bowmer/AP
This 1980s photo shows Marco Rubio, second from left in back row, with his younger sister Veronica, right, back row, and their neighbors in Las Vegas, where the Rubios converted to Mormonism.
Bonnie Thiriot/AP
GOP Sen. Marco Rubio has lost and found religion many times [tab headline]
BY Deborah Hastings
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Saturday, June 6, 2015, 11:51 AM
Republican presidential wannabe Marco Rubio, a conservative, anti-gay marriage candidate from Florida, has lost and found his religion several times.
As a child in Miami, he was a Roman Catholic. When his family moved to Las Vegas, he became a Mormon. When the family moved back to Florida he became a Catholic again.
And then, in 2000, he began attending Christ Fellowship in Miami, a fundamentalist mega church that is rigidly opposed to homosexuality and asks employees to sign a declaration saying they've never been in a gay relationship.
Now he attends both Christ Fellowship and a Catholic church, he says.
All of which has sparked intense debate over just what, exactly, Rubio believes when it comes to God. His coat of many religious colors has led political pundits to declare the baby-faced aspirant is courting voters of all conservative faiths.
If he can't decide something as fundamental as religion, experts say his changing beliefs could lead to questions about how he would run the country.
"Some voters may be put off that he can't seem to make up his mind and it's certainly possible that it's a political strategy," said Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor who specializes in theological issues at the University of Central Florida.
Political experts were hard pressed to identify another presidential candidate who regularly worshipped in two different churches.
"It is rare to have a candidate with so many faiths, and who now has one foot squarely in a major religion and one foot squarely in another", he said.
The 44-year-old son of Cuban immigrants, who was elected to the Senate in 2010, says he attends Christ Fellowship on Saturday nights and goes to Mass on Sundays at St. Louis Catholic Church.
A Rubio spokesman declined an interview request from the Daily News, saying the candidate was too busy on the campaign trail, where the number of GOP hopefuls seems to grow by the day.
But recent polls have shown Rubio leading the pack, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who is the presumptive frontrunner and has the greatest name recognition in a Republican crowd that includes Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, former New York Gov. George Pataki, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and Bobby Jindal, the outgoing governor of Louisiana.
Rubio is not the only politician who's changed his religion. Jeb Bush converted to Catholicism, his wife's religion, 20 years ago.
Being Catholic no longer has the divisive taint that John F. Kennedy experienced ; nor does belonging to a non-mainstream religion such as Mormonism, political experts say.
Chad Pecknold, a theology professor at the Catholic University of America, says religious voters may disagree over doctrine, but when it comes to morality issues, Catholics, Christians and other believers are united when it comes to what they deem to be great sins.
"There is a new alliance between evangelicals and Catholics," he said. Especially on issues such as "abortion, euthanasia and the nature of marriage."
Despite a recent Pew study that found one out of five people have no religious affiliation, Republican candidates have long known that they can't win without the support, and the votes, of the religious right.
Though Rubio has appeared to flit from one religion the next, he has done so without antagonizing its adherents, Pecknold said. Yet, he could be faulted by voters who see his faith as "vacuous because it's constantly changing."
Rubio's "never turned his back on the Mormons, He's never turned his back on the Catholics, and he's never turned his back on the evangelicals, which are very important to the Republicans," Pecknold said.
Rubio addressed religion in his "Native Son" autobiography, saying he was baptized a Catholic in Florida, but when his family moved to Nevada when he was young boy, he embraced Mormon teachings, along with his mother and sister, taking comfort in the religion's sense of community.
He even chided his father, who was a bartender, about serving alcohol, a substance abhorred by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
By the time he was 13, the Rubios were back in Florida, the family returned to the Catholic Church.
In 2000, Rubio began attending the Miami megachurch with his wife. And for four years, he worshipped nowhere else, according to his book. A phone message left with the church by The News was not returned.
But then the politician went back to Catholicism, saying he missed the Eucharist, the rite of taking communion. And he's been going to both churches ever since.
"Some unifying principles bind all Christians: that God became a man and died for our sins, and that without that sacrifice, all of us would be doomed," he wrote in his book.
He strongly opposes gay marriage. He says Christianity is endangered by evil in the world. He believes Jesus Christ was, and is, the son of God, and that his crucifixion guarantees Rubio a place in heaven.
What he can't seem to pinpoint is a specific religion.
"He's got a complicated belief system," said Joe Carter, senior editor for the Acton Institute, a Michigan-based religious think tank. And without adhering to a single religion, Rubio may play well to millennials who haven't committed to a church, as well as the so-called spiritual "seekers," who still haven't found what they're looking for.
Rubio has "been very open about it. He could have easily just switched to one church," Carter said. "Whether you're a Christian or a Mormon or a Baptist, you believe that your rights come from God, not from the state."
© Copyright 2015 NYDailyNews.com
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/gop-sen-marco-rubio-lost-found-religion-times-article-1.2244263 [with comments]
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Dave Foley - Atheists (Stand up Comedy)
Published on Jan 7, 2014 by Comedy Dynamics [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDUhp92NhqVc0K3jSmWhgvA / http://www.youtube.com/user/NewWaveDyn , http://www.youtube.com/user/NewWaveDyn/videos ]
Dave Foley debunks some myths, and gives his take on being atheist in America.
Off his special Relatively Well, available to buy as an album from iTunes here:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/relatively-well/id706092715
Or on DVD here:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DCLT9X8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7f2eXQxfHk [with comments]
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Rick Santorum Presidential Announcement Full Speech (C-SPAN)
Published on May 28, 2015 by C-SPAN [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb--64Gl51jIEVE-GLDAVTg / http://www.youtube.com/user/CSPAN , http://www.youtube.com/user/CSPAN/videos ]
Former Senator Rick Santorum [on 5-27-15] announced his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. He made the announcement from Penn United Technologies in Cabot, PA. Watch the complete Rick Santorum Presidential Campaign Announcement event here: http://www.c-span.org/video/?326137-1/former-senator-rick-santorum-rpa-presidential-campaign-announcement
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDUxXftJkP8 [with comments] [also included, beginning at c. the 13:30 mark, in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2TZn6WQvH4 (with comments)]
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Who Is Rick Santorum?
Published on Jun 3, 2015 by TestTube News [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgRvm1yLFoaQKhmaTqXk9SA / http://www.youtube.com/user/TestTubeNetwork , http://www.youtube.com/user/TestTubeNetwork/videos ]
The race for the 2016 presidency is filling up fast, especially on the Republican side. Now, it's ex-senator Rick Santorum's turn. So who is Rick Santorum?
Learn More:
Rick Santorum
http://www.ontheissues.org/Rick_Santorum.htm
Everybody hates Rick Santorum: How the former GOP heavyweight became a political irrelevancy
http://www.salon.com/2015/04/09/everbody_hates_rick_santorum_how_the_former_gop_heavyweight_became_a_political_irrelevancy/
"As Americans brace themselves for Rand Paul's just-announced presidential campaign, it is appropriate to take a quick look at the increasing political irrelevancy of another likely candidate, one who less than four years ago nearly wrested the Republican nomination from Mitt Romney."
Santorum Rose Quickly From Reformer to Insider
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/us/politics/santorum-rose-quickly-from-reformer-to-insider.html
"Rick Santorum arrived on Capitol Hill as a new member of Congress in January 1991, 32 years old and bristling with the impatience of a man looking to kick up a fuss."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxKpzXdAE9U [with comments]
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Lewis Black: Rick Santorum - Idiot
Published on Apr 9, 2012 by Andrew Stewart [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjf90wQlvs0-glnGwQhMAjA / http://www.youtube.com/user/stew3128561 , http://www.youtube.com/user/stew3128561/videos ]
The fact this is taken from the Carnegie Hall recording produced several months after Hurricane Katrina and predates this election by half a decade proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Lewis Black is indeed a Jewish prophet of democracy akin to Abby Hoffman.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWH7CvqhfZs [with comments]
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Rick Santorum Defends His Anti-Gay Comments On Glenn Beck Radio Show
Uploaded on Apr 14, 2011 by SuchIsLifeVideos [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQDvaGCnbOY8YKeZ2So-yvA / http://www.youtube.com/user/SuchIsLifeVideos , http://www.youtube.com/user/SuchIsLifeVideos/videos ]
"It's not homophobic. It's a legal argument, and it's a correct legal argument. In fact, that's exactly what's happening. We went from Lawrence v. Texas to now a constitutional right to same-sex marriage and they're going into a constitutional right to polyamorous relationships. This is the slippery slope that we're heading down, and I can't buy it."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmEhL6qljLI [with comments]
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Bill Maher & Dan Savage - Blast Michele Bachmann & Rick Santorum
Published on Oct 1, 2013 by Sane Man [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjra7hQbqp7SM5NGgpYKpkA , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjra7hQbqp7SM5NGgpYKpkA/videos ]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRtmJ9JEZRQ [with comments]
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Game On - Song for Rick Santorum - Super Tuesday Surprise Original By First Love (Band)
Published on Mar 6, 2012 by FirstLove's Channel [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwUJVUN2gTmGU9R2aAtTY1w / http://www.youtube.com/user/FirstLoveBand , http://www.youtube.com/user/FirstLoveBand/videos ]
Click this link to watch our NEW MUSIC VIDEO for our new single "Ain't Your Fool"!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUEP9piqzf0
https://www.facebook.com/FirstLoveBand
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7pv7sO5Gng [comments disabled]
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Ted Cruz at South Carolina NSAS
Published on Mar 18, 2015 by securefreedom [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPPw4A4ZmhK_e95S2Ka0Xaw / http://www.youtube.com/user/securefreedom , http://www.youtube.com/user/securefreedom/videos ]
Senator Ted Cruz speaks at South Carolina National Security Action Summit
March 14, 2015
Columbia, SC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H2ebC59cDo [with comments] [the complete South Carolina NSAS live stream, all 8 hours and 45 minutes of it, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL4_gsNUe3k (with comments)]
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Atheists Are Perverts & Molesters, Says Ted Cruz's Dad
Published on Nov 15, 2013 by The Young Turks [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1yBKRuGpC1tSM73A0ZjYjQ / http://www.youtube.com/user/TheYoungTurks , http://www.youtube.com/user/TheYoungTurks/videos ]
"In an appearance before a gathering of OK2A, an Oklahoma Second Amendment advocacy group, Rafael Cruz, father of freshman Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said that atheism leads to sexual abuse of children.
In his talk, which took place earlier this month, the elder Cruz railed against atheism and secular humanism, which he said are two of the main ills facing our society...".* The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.
* Read more here from David Ferguson / The Raw Story:
http://www.rawstory.com/2013/11/rafael-cruz-atheism-leads-to-child-molestation-and-perversity/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/13/rafael-cruz-sexual-abuse_n_4269503.html
Download audio and video of the full two hour show on-demand + the members-only post game show by becoming a member at http://www.tytnetwork.com/member-options/ . Your membership supports the day to day operations and is vital for our continued success and growth.
Like Us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/TheYoungTurks
Follow Us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TheYoungTurks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOIXCj-yppU [with comments]
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Ted Cruz's Dad Explains "The Average Black"
Published on Sep 5, 2014 by Sam Seder [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-3jIAlnQmbbVMV6gR7K8aQ / http://www.youtube.com/user/SamSeder , http://www.youtube.com/user/SamSeder/videos ]
Ted Cruz's dad, Rafael Cruz, in an effort to "reach out" to African-Americans for Republicans, says that "the average black does not understand” the minimum wage...
This clip from the Majority Report, live M-F at 12 noon EST and via daily podcast at http://Majority.FM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ4jN8bPHPs [with comments]
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Rick Santorum at South Carolina NSAS
Published on Mar 18, 2015 by securefreedom
Former Senator Rick Santorum speaks at South Carolina National Security Action Summit
March 14, 2015
Columbia, SC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bj8M6SA0_8 [with comments] [the complete South Carolina NSAS live stream, all 8 hours and 45 minutes of it, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL4_gsNUe3k (with comments)]
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Glenn Beck - Rick Santorum
Uploaded on Feb 23, 2012 by sidepipe360 [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4XK4b5Od3pNAfYdJlt9w6A / http://www.youtube.com/user/sidepipe360 , http://www.youtube.com/user/sidepipe360/videos ]
GBTV Thursday February 23, 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzGPfwBm22M [with comments]
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Sh*t Santorum Says
Uploaded on Feb 16, 2012 by SantorumExposed.com [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQpdgvz5IpOZfbn95KWuzYA / http://www.youtube.com/user/SantorumExposed , http://www.youtube.com/user/SantorumExposed/videos ]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_Liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_Happiness
Visit http://santorumexposed.com or http://www.facebook.com/exposesantorum to see more of the crazy sh*t that Rick Santorum says.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaJ0z3hx51s [with comments]
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Santorum: Mainline Protestants Are Not Christians
Uploaded on Feb 17, 2012 by ThinkProgress6's channel [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUMrf7Ap3pPN7AuP0ffbC1w / http://www.youtube.com/user/ThinkProgress6 , http://www.youtube.com/user/ThinkProgress6/videos ]
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/02/18/427529/santorum-excommunicates-45-million-christians-mainline-protestants-are-gone-from-the-world-of-christianity/
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/santorum-satan-systematically-destroying-america , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4jopm7hYFk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT9bbadUapo [with comments]
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Santorum: Satan Attacking America!
Uploaded on Feb 22, 2012 by The Young Turks
Rick Santorum made some radical remarks regarding Satan (aka, The Devil) and his attack on America, universities and Protestants. The 2012 Republican Presidential candidate and his radical Christian beliefs are discussed by The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/22/rick-santorum-satan-_n_1293658.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ekdUjjvPEM [with comments]
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Sh*t Homophobic People Say
Uploaded on Jan 13, 2012 by lambdalegal [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfRNrQvEOglQOp1K-AQ7Crg / http://www.youtube.com/user/lambdalegal , http://www.youtube.com/user/lambdalegal/videos ]
Sh*t Homophobic People Say: no spoofing necessary, 100% real commentary by antigay public figures.
Lambda Legal fights for the rights of LGBT people and people with HIV. Follow us on Twitter @lambdalegal and visit http://www.lambdalegal.org to learn more!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVEmHcz-SBs [comments disabled]
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Santorum: Marriage is like water, not beer
Uploaded on Aug 9, 2011 by ThinkProgress6's channel
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2011/08/09/292121/santorum-marriage-is-like-water-not-beer/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLbAFNbVSEE [with comments]
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Sh*t Santorum Says - Part II
Published on Mar 13, 2012 by SantorumExposed.com
Watch Sh*t Santorum Says about Mitt Romney:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJS-rDLgsyQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RakkpnfQV0 [with comments]
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1950s Education on "Homosexuals"
Uploaded on Jan 29, 2009 by Adam Freeman [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UClXPGw8p0UYrccFIlt_Ewbw / http://www.youtube.com/user/WhoMadeWho33 , http://www.youtube.com/user/WhoMadeWho33/videos ]
This short film entitled "Boys Beware" and honestly I just uploaded it to see what everyone's opinions would be.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmqNiFJyI28 [with (over 10,000) comments]
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Rick Santorum confirms his craziness on Face the Nation
Uploaded on Feb 19, 2012 by rdonalds12's channel [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM2upnvSl0pZVcOduKHeJvA / http://www.youtube.com/user/rdonalds12 , http://www.youtube.com/user/rdonalds12/videos ]
Rick Santorum is NUTS! Not qualified to lead a girl scout troop, much less our entire country! WAKE UP AMERICA!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qNklfEnCCk [comments disabled]
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Santorum: "Raped Women Should Accept The Gift of A Child"
Published on Mar 16, 2012 by The Young Turks
Fox & Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson went on the O'Reilly Factor and said that Rick Santorum never said that if your raped you should have the baby, Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian show Rick Santorum's actual statement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg5m4Oo7TqM [with comments]
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The Worst Of Rick Santorum
Published on Aug 5, 2013 by Secular Talk [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCldfgbzNILYZA4dmDt4Cd6A / http://www.youtube.com/user/SecularTalk , http://www.youtube.com/user/SecularTalk/videos ]
Rick Santorum is considering a presidential run in 2016, I compiled a compilation to remind you guys how dumb he is...
Read More At:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/04/rick-santorum-presidential-run_n_3704114.html
Clip from the Monday, August 5th 2013 edition of The Kyle Kulinski Show, which airs live on Blog Talk Radio and Secular Talk Radio monday - friday 5-7pm Eastern.
Check out our website - and become a member - at:
http://www.SecularTalkRadio.com
Listen to the Live Show or On Demand archive at:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/kylekulinski
Follow on Twitter:
http://www.twitter.com/kylekulinski
Like on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/SecularTalk
Friends Of SecularTalk:
http://www.facebook.com/beastofreason
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrJBtyheacI [with comments]
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Rick Santorum calls President Obama a "nig"
Published on Mar 30, 2012 by Unlucky 13 [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCggGqCKkbt_XdlWE_ObAPdA / http://www.youtube.com/user/Unlucky137 , http://www.youtube.com/user/Unlucky137/videos ]
Rick Santorum catches himself before uttering the second syllable of "nigger" when referring to President Obama.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgrhJSAaYIc [with comments]
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Santorum: Look At Who The Candidates Lay Down With
Uploaded on Oct 7, 2011 by tpmtv [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTcCX_XY4l-W2ba5IxIRhsg / http://www.youtube.com/user/tpmtv , http://www.youtube.com/user/tpmtv/videos ]
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/election2012/rick-santorum-when-selecting-candidate-look-at-who-they-lay-down-with-at-night-video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAoXS14zs9o [with comments]
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Piers Morgan Confronts Rick Santorum On His Bigotry
Uploaded on Aug 31, 2011 by SuchIsLifeVideos
Piers Morgan talks to Santorum about his anti-gay views.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ic5EAO8RqVE [with (nearly 5,000) comments]
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for the BIBLE tells me so
Published on Jul 10, 2014 by FlyingFree333 [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSSeZsQZlBnUs_8HnpUKGnA / http://www.youtube.com/user/FlyingFree333 , http://www.youtube.com/user/FlyingFree333/videos ]
Documentary on Christian bigotry against homosexuals in the USA.
Music
"Simple (Live)" by k.d. lang
for the BIBLE tells me so
http://www.forthebibletellsmeso.org/indexe.htm
for the BIBLE tells me so
http://www.amazon.com/For-The-Bible-Tells-Me/dp/B000YHQNCI
for the BIBLE tells me so
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0912583/
for the BIBLE tells me so (2007)
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/for_the_bible_tells_me_so/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bU_voCz_po [with comments] [also at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePTo0Hv297s (with comment)]
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Rick Santorum Busted On Arguments Against Gays In The Military As Same Used Against Blacks
Uploaded on Oct 9, 2011 by SuchIsLifeVideos
Santorum: "It's not the same. And I know people try to make it the same, but it is not. It is a behavioral issue, as opposed to a color of the skin issue, and that makes all the difference when it comes to serving in the military,"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCXgFc5It5c [with comments]
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The "Best" of Rick Santorum
Uploaded on Feb 19, 2012 by TheCurmudgeon [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtk__VWEYdnpumJ6fSPPspw / http://www.youtube.com/user/TheCurmudgen , http://www.youtube.com/user/TheCurmudgen/videos ]
Clips and highlights of some of the more ridiculous nonsense I could find on Presidential candidate Rick Santorum
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y4EGbHwlfU [with comments]
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Kids React to Gay Marriage
Published on Nov 3, 2013 by TheFineBros [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0v-tlzsn0QZwJnkiaUSJVQ / http://www.youtube.com/user/TheFineBros , http://www.youtube.com/user/TheFineBros/videos ]
Resource links below for more information:
http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/sexual-orientation.aspx
Marriage Equality Links/Information:
http://www.freedomtomarry.org/
http://www.hrc.org/resources/category/marriage
To find information and resources on coming out visit:
http://www.itgetsbetter.org/
http://community.pflag.org/
http://www.thetrevorproject.org/
Matthew Shepard photo copyright 1998 Gina van Hoof
http://www.ginavanhoof.com
Watch the Videos Featured in this Episode:
Spencer's Home Depot Marriage Proposal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4HpWQmEXrM
Seattle+The Washington Bus+Jeanne+Alissa = wedding proposal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umdepNP5yVw
This episode featured the following amazing children.
Lucas, age 5
Maxim, age 7
Samirah, age 7
Dash, age 9
Krischelle, age 9
Jayka, age10
Elle, age 11
Lydon, age 11
Derek, age 12
Dylan, age 12
Megan & Shannon, age 13
Troy, age 13
KIDS REACT #90 - Gay Marriage
Kids React to Gay Marriage
Kids React to Marriage Equality
Kids React to Same Sex Marriage
© 2013 Fine Brothers Properties
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TJxnYgP6D8 [with (over 10,000) comments]
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On Rick Santorum
Uploaded on Jan 8, 2012 by The Amazing Atheist [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjNxszyFPasDdRoD9J6X-sw / http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAmazingAtheist , http://www.youtube.com/user/TheAmazingAtheist/videos ]
Help us create NOT PRODUCTIVE: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/not-productive#/story
My facebook: http://www.facebook.com/YoutubeTAA
My twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/amazingatheist
My forums: http://forum.thatfatatheist.com
Music for this video provided by: Kevin MacLeod, Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dHqvcgEbs0 [with (over 4,000) comments]
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Bible Belt Loves Porn
Published on Mar 15, 2012 by The Young Turks
Is porn (both gay and straight) more popular in the 'Bible Belt' red states of America (Utah, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alaska, North Dakota, and West Virginia)? Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur break it down on The Young Turks, with a mention of 2012 Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum's war on pornography.
http://www.alternet.org/story/154539/the_bible_belt%27s_love_affair_with_%28gay_and_straight%29_porn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgs5A3tHMyc [with comments]
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Santorum's War on Porn
Published on Mar 16, 2012 by The Young Turks
Republican Rick Santorum has declared war on pornography on his website. Cenk Ugyur and Ana Kasparian discuss Santorum's post about the evils of pornography.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6ROwk7srDI [with comments]
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Santorum Vs Separation Of Church And State, JFK Speech
Uploaded on Feb 27, 2012 by The Young Turks
2012 Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum said a speech from former president John F. Kennedy involving separation of church and state made him want to throw up. Should religion and politics mix? Ana Kasparian, former prosecutor Steve Oh, and Jayar Jackson break it down on The Young Turks.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/27/rick-santorum-jfk-church-state-michigan-primary-2012_n_1303757.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az9QJbM83v4 [with comments]
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Liberals & Non-Christians: 'Get Out' of America! (Santorum Pastor Intro)
Published on Mar 20, 2012 by The Young Turks
Via RightWingWatch.org: "Greenwell Springs Baptist Church pastor Dennis Terry introduced presidential candidate Rick Santorum and Family Research Council president Tony Perkins tonight in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with a rousing speech railing against liberals and non-Christians and condemning abortion rights, "sexual perversion," same-sex marriage and secular government. Terry said that America "was founded as a Christian nation" and those that disagree with him should "get out! We don't worship Buddha, we don't worship Mohammad, we don't worship Allah!" Terry, who has a long history of attacks against the gay community, went on to criticize marriage equality for gays and lesbians, and said that the economy can only recover when we "put God back" in government...".* The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.
* http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/pastor-dennis-terry-introduces-rick-santorum-tells-liberals-and-non-christians-get-out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BOwF4MuBt4 [with comments]
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Rick Santorum: Ban The 'Religion' Of Secularism
Published on Sep 10, 2014 by Secular Talk
It was just yesterday that the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer was calling for people with HIV to be quarantined in the name of protecting the public health. So naturally, Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum appeared on Fischer's radio program today to share his excitement at having partnered with the AFA on his most recent film "One Generation Away."
Read More At:
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/santorum-call-secularism-religion-so-we-can-ban-it-public-schools
Clip from the Wednesday, September 10th 2014 edition of The Kyle Kulinski Show, which airs live on Blog Talk Radio and Secular Talk Radio monday - friday 4-6pm Eastern.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgVpyVyWu_Q [with comments]
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Santorum: Put The Bible Back In Public Schools
Published on Mar 16, 2015 by Secular Talk
Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) issued a passionate call for Bibles in public schools on Saturday during an appearance at a convention of social conservatives in Orlando, Florida.
"The reason Bibles are no longer in the public schools is because we let them take them out,” Santorum said to amens and applause at The Awakening conference, hosted by the right-wing Liberty Counsel...
Read More At:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/rick-santorum-bible-public-schools
Clip from the Monday, March 16th 2015 edition of The Kyle Kulinski Show, which airs live on Blog Talk Radio and Secular Talk Radio monday - friday 4-6pm Eastern.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOHuSdsbrlY [with comments]
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Rick Santorum: Dumb Scientist Pope Francis Needs To Shut His Mouth About Climate Change
by Evan Hurst
Jun 02 4:15 pm 2015
Rick Santorum is a Catholic lawyer who likes long piggyback rides on the beach with Jesus and snuggle time with dead fetuses [ http://wonkette.com/443167/why-he-runs-rick-santorums-own-fetus-jar-story ]. Pope Francis is the boss of Catholics, and he also has a masters’ degree in chemistry [ http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/03/12/pope-francis-scientist-2/ ], from his pre-poping days. One of these men needs to stay out of trying to say words about climate change, and according to Santorum, it’s Big Dumb Pope.
What’s got Santorum all frothed up? Oh, just that Pope Francis is about to put out [ http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/28/spin-substance-and-pope-franciss-environmental-encyclical/ ] one of them “encyclical”-type things, on the subject of climate change. The pope is obviously a Gay Atheist Liberal, because he believes humans are causing climate change, and that humans need to fix it. So Santorum went on the Dom Giordano radio program [ http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2015/06/01/rick-santorum-on-pope-francis-letter-on-climate-change-leave-the-science-to-the-scientist/ ] in Philadelphia, and talked some shit about the leader of God’s One True Church:
“The perception that the media would like to give of Pope Francis and the reality are two different things…I’m a huge fan of his, and his focus on making sure that we have a healthier society…I support completely the Pope’s call for us to do more to create opportunities for people to be able to rise in society and care for the poor. That’s our obligation as a society.” […]
“I’ve said this to Catholic bishops many times — when they get involved with agriculture policy or things like that that are really outside the scope of what the Church’s main message is, that we’re better off sticking to things that are really the core teachings of the Church as opposed to getting involved with every other kind of issue that happens to be popular at the time.” […]
“The Church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think we’re probably better off leaving science to the scientists and focus on what we’re really good on, which is theology and morality. When we get involved with political and controversial scientific theories, then I think the church is probably not as forceful and credible.”
Hahaha, yes, the Church HAS gotten it wrong on science, many times before! Like that thing they believe about how contraception causes abortion [ https://www.ewtn.com/library/MARRIAGE/CCLBC.TXT ], and that other thing where they condemned Galileo for saying the Earth revolves around the sun, for instance. But the difference this time, Rick Santorum, is that human-caused climate change is not a “political and controversial scientific theory,” but rather a thing that 97 percent of climate scientists around the WHOLE WORLD agree is true. The idiots here are the conservative religious people, like Santorum, who believe that real science is a liberal conspiracy.
And New Pope — which will always be his name, even when he is retired from poping — has been going on about climate change [ http://wonkette.com/570293/new-pope-wants-to-save-planet-from-climate-change-like-thats-a-thing ] for a quite a while, despite the fact that Koch brothers-funded goon squads have been trying in vain [ http://wonkette.com/583775/koch-brothers-explain-bible-to-pope-thanks-koch-brothers ] to make him just please shut up about it. He just won’t listen, and Rick will just have to stew in a vat of his own santorum about it, while the pope saves the world.
[CBS Philly / Forbes via Crooks & Liars [ http://crooksandliars.com/2015/06/santorum-pope-should-leave-science ]]
©2015 Wonkette
http://wonkette.com/587264/rick-santorum-dumb-scientist-pope-francis-needs-to-shut-his-mouth-about-climate-change [with comments]
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Rick Santorum’s ugly Pope Francis bashing: Why the Catholic in the GOP field keeps maligning other Catholics
Pope Francis, Rick Santorum
(Credit: Reuters/Max Rossi/AP/Nati Harnik/Photo montage by Salon)
First he attacked JFK. Now Pope Francis. Is that the way to win in a party controlled by evangelical Protestants?
Joan Walsh
Wednesday, Jun 3, 2015 08:43 AM CDT
In 2012, long-ago Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum got attention as the only Catholic in the GOP presidential primary race. It’s sadly noteworthy: our country has had only one Catholic president in its history (Joe Biden is our first Catholic vice president). Rather than looking out for Catholics, though, Santorum made a big splash when he attacked that first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, and lied about Kennedy’s famous speech in defense of religious freedom [ http://www.salon.com/2012/02/26/santorums_jfk_story_makes_me_want_to_throw_up/ ].
The speech “makes me throw up and it should make every American,” Santorum told ABC in February 2012. “Now we’re going to turn around and say we’re going to impose our values from the government on people of faith, which of course is the next logical step when people of faith, at least according to John Kennedy, have no role in the public square.”
Of course Kennedy said no such thing. In a historic speech tailored to address anti-Catholic prejudice head on, he insisted the “public square” should be safe territory for people of all religions, including Catholics like him, and Rick Santorum. Santorum himself should have been shamed from the public square for telling such clumsy and ugly lies about our 35th president. But Republicans can’t be shamed.
Now it’s time for 2016, and Santorum’s back, but facing other Catholics in the primary field – including Marco Rubio and convert Jeb Bush, who took his wife’s faith when he got married. So Santorum apparently has to go one better, when it comes to insulting Catholics. This time, he’s going after the Pope [ http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/rick-santorum-blasts-pope-francis-as-not-credible-on-climate-change-leave-the-science-to-the-scientists/ ].
And it’s hilarious. Except it’s also sad. Pope Francis plans a papal encyclical on the dangers of environmental degradation, including climate change. Santorum says condescendingly the Pope should stick to “theology and morality.”
At more length, Santorum said Pope Francis would be better off “leaving science to the scientists and focus on what we’re really good on, which is theology and morality. When we get involved with political and controversial scientific theories, then I think the church is probably not as forceful and credible.”
Interestingly, virtually every credible scientist validates the view of Pope Francis: that climate change is real, and it’s caused by humans. So science is on the side of the pope. It’s funny Santorum should stand up for science anyway, since he seems not to be a big fan of higher education, having already inveighed against the notion that Americans should have the chance to go to college if they so choose. “What a bunch of snobs,” he said in 2012, maligning President Obama.
The larger issue is that the pope is becoming a huge problem for Catholic Republicans. They want to obey the pope as their faith requires, but they don’t like his pronouncements on pretty much anything: not his tolerance for LGBT Catholics, or his thoughts on climate change, or his insistence that prosperity is a fiction if it doesn’t include the poor.
In 2013 it was Catholic Republican Paul Ryan who dissed the pope [ http://www.salon.com/2013/12/27/paul_ryan_lectures_the_pope/ ] for his pronouncements on income inequality and global poverty, suggesting he doesn’t understand capitalism. “The guy is from Argentina, they haven’t had real capitalism in Argentina,” Ryan said (yeah, he called the pope “the guy”). “They have crony capitalism in Argentina. They don’t have a true free enterprise system.” Poor dumb pope.
Politico recently explored the GOP’s problems with the pope against the backdrop of the 2016 election [ http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/popes-pronouncements-making-trouble-for-gop-catholics-118234.html ]. “In northwest Iowa, we are discussing this a great deal, and sometimes it’s hard for us to reconcile the pronouncements we read from the Holy Father with our conservative principles,” Sam Clovis, a Catholic GOP political activist told Politico last month.
In fact, Clovis suggested some Republican Catholics’ disdain for the pope could hurt Catholic-come-lately Jeb Bush. “It’s going to cause a lot of problems for Jeb Bush, because Republicans are simply not going to take him seriously,” he said.
Clovis didn’t mention Santorum, oddly, even though his 2016 calling card is having won the Iowa caucus (belatedly, after a recount).
Maybe Santorum thinks he’s got to bash the Pope to do well with Iowa’s large Protestant evangelical community. Bash JFK? Check. Bash Pope Francis? Check. Proceed to a higher tier of candidates? Don’t check just yet.
Of course Santorum, covering all of his political bases, also insists he’s a “huge fan” of the Pope. “He’s someone who is as committed to the nuclear family as I am,” the fourth-tier 2016 wannabe said. But he isn’t having the pope’s campaign against environmental degradation.
Nowadays Republicans are “cafeteria Catholics,” under the leadership of the compassionate, curious Pope Francis. They loved the authoritarian Pope Benedict. Of course, liberals aren’t suggesting they be excommunicated or muzzled, the way Catholic conservatives have crusaded against Catholic liberals on issues of women’s rights. Santorum’s condescending attack on Pope Francis won’t hurt the pope. But it shows Santorum to be an irrelevant afterthought in a circus-tent race where Donald Trump has more support [ http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/2016_republican_presidential_nomination-3823.html ].
Copyright © 2015 Salon Media Group, Inc. (emphasis in original)
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/03/rick_santorum%E2%80%99s_ugly_pope_francis_bashing_why_the_catholic_in_the_gop_field_keeps_maligning_other_catholics/ [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Rick Santorum Tries To Explain Why He Can Weigh In On Climate Change But Pope Shouldn't
Alex Wong via Getty Images
By Amanda Terkel
Posted: 06/07/2015 10:37 am EDT Updated: 06/07/2015 [c.] 2:37 pm EDT
WASHINGTON -- Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) attempted to argue Sunday that it's more appropriate for him to be weighing in on climate change than it is for Pope Francis, who is not only a religious leader but also a chemist.
In the coming weeks, the pope is expected to release a groundbreaking encyclical -- a papal letter sent to all the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church -- making the case that addressing climate change [ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/28/world/europe/pope-francis-steps-up-campaign-on-climate-change-to-conservatives-alarm.html ] and its effects on the poor is a moral and religious imperative.
Santorum, a potential GOP presidential candidate and a practicing Catholic, criticized the pope last week surrounding the news.
"I think that we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/02/rick-santorum-pope-climat_n_7498768.html ] and focusing on what we're really good at, which is theology and morality," he said.
In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," Santorum attempted to defend his remarks. Host Chris Wallace pointed out that Santorum talks plenty about climate change, even though he doesn't even have a background in science, like the pope does.
"I guess the question would be, if he shouldn't talk about it, should you?" Wallace asked.
Santorum argued that politicians "have to make decision with respect to our public policy that affect American workers." He added that the pope "can talk about whatever he wants," but it might not be the best issue for him to "use his moral authority for."
"He would say he's protecting the earth," Wallace replied.
"I would say that that's important thing to do, but I think there are more pressing problems confronting the earth than climate change," Santorum said, adding that he is "someone who's trying to go out there and make sure we have a revitalization in manufacturing and energy production, things to create jobs and opportunities."
Many Republican politicians have tried to use the excuse that they are "not a scientist [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/21/republicans-science-climate_n_6023282.html ]" to get out of answering questions about man-made climate change, which scientists overwhelmingly believe is real and a problem that needs to be addressed.
The pope has already been outspoken on the need to address climate change, but his encyclical is expected to elevate the issue far further around the world. According to The New York Times, the encyclical's release "will be accompanied by a 12-week campaign [ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/28/world/europe/pope-francis-steps-up-campaign-on-climate-change-to-conservatives-alarm.html ], now being prepared with the participation of some Catholic bishops, to raise the issue of climate change and environmental stewardship in sermons, homilies, news media interviews and letters to newspaper editors."
Copyright ©2015 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/07/rick-santorum-pope_n_7529166.html [with embedded non-YouTube version of the YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6jWGWlAF50 (with comments; via http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/youre-not-a-scientist-fox-host-hammers-santorum-for-trying-to-muzzle-the-pope-on-climate-change/ ), included above, and comments]
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Louis CK - God is Like a Shitty Girlfriend (Animated)
Published on Sep 20, 2012 by 43alley [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfsX0iFWcdefP78zQpYRnvQ / http://www.youtube.com/user/43alley , http://www.youtube.com/user/43alley/videos ]
Standup by Louis CK.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQuyC3eLgVA [with comments]
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An Undeniable Prognosis (Best Atheist Arguments)
Published on Mar 25, 2014 by GodWorksOut [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzGS9FsHKahSEU3LmRQ5qhQ / http://www.youtube.com/user/GodWorksOut , http://www.youtube.com/user/GodWorksOut/videos ]
This video demonstrates the intelligence, but mostly common sense, of some of the greatest minds behind atheism.
Become a Patreon
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Subscribe to these channels!
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The new REASON website
https://www.TheSecularRoundTable.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUzExsAJLmI [with (over 15,000) comments]
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God Has Finally Been Proven To Exist - Atheism Is Dead
Published on Jan 10, 2015 by Atheism-is-Unstoppable-2 [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXyLkBdJzh3SfFw6GvHkXKw , http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXyLkBdJzh3SfFw6GvHkXKw/videos ]
Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this argument is so water tight, I think it's time we cut our losses, recognize we are defeated, and go home.
Support the channel: http://www.patreon.com/atheism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzcyZHtD9v4 [with comments]
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Real Time with Bill Maher: Christianity Under Attack? – June 5, 2015 (HBO)
Published on Jun 5, 2015 by Real Time with Bill Maher [ http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy6kyFxaMqGtpE3pQTflK8A / http://www.youtube.com/user/RealTime , http://www.youtube.com/user/RealTime/videos ]
In his editorial New Rule, Bill Maher rebuffs conservatives’ assertion that Christianity is “under attack” in America.
Connect with Real Time Online:
Find Real Time on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Maher
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Find Real Time with Bill Maher Official Site: http://www.hbo.com/real-time-with-bill-maher.html?cmpid=abc625#/
Find Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO GO®: http://www.hbogo.com/?camp=GoG390#home/browse&assetID=GORO1D599?assetType=SERIES?browseMode=browseGrid?browseID=category.INDB464/
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybH66U72xd0 [with comments]
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Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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