AIDS Activists Arrested At Rehberg’s Office

Mar22 by D Gregory Smith

…for protesting the needle exchange ban “sneaked” into the Federal Funding Bill in December- despite scientific research which shows that it does not promote drug use, but does stem the progress of infectious disease. From The Missoula Indy:

via wikipedia

A demonstration by AIDS activists Wednesday morning targeted Rep. Denny Rehberg of Montana and other congressmen for their role in “sneaking in” a federal ban on clean needle exchange programs. Ten activists were arrested outside Rehberg’s office. Capitol Police put the total number of those arrested at 29; activist organizations say the number was actually 32.

The Huffington Post described the background of the demonstration:

“Rehberg was targeted for his role as chair of the House Appropriations subcommittee on health and human services, where he led the effort to ban funding for needle exchange programs, adding it to a House spending bill that funded the federal government through fiscal year 2012…

The ban was originally adopted in 1989 but was finally lifted by Congress in 2009. Republicans lawmakers quietly slipped the ban back into their spending bill in December of last year.”

In addition to Rehberg, activists targeted Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). There were also rallies in New York outside the offices of Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand. The groups taking credit for the demonstrations were Housing Works, Health Global Access Project and Citiwide Harm Reduction.

Activists are against the ban because studies show that clean needle programs help curb the spread of HIV and hepatitis C, and reduce the rate of new HIV infections among injection drug users by as much as 80 percent. The Huffington Post article also notes that additional research shows “syringe exchange programs do not increase the numbers of injection drug users and can further reduce long-term healthcare costs for people with HIV or hepatitis C.”

Indy reporter Jessica Mayrer wrote a 2010 cover story about outreach workers across Montana working on HIV and hepatitis C prevention programs, and how drastic cuts to funding were affecting their efforts.

The false meme that is promoted is this: clean needles encourage drug use and do not prevent the spread of disease.
The truth is this: clean needles do not significantly increase drug use and do prevent the spread of disease.

The only logical conclusion is this: the lawmakers who promoted this ban want those who use needles to spread and to die of deadly disease.

They are not interested in public health, they are interested in shaming people with disease (addiction, Hep C, HIV). Completely and utterly irresponsible.

AIDS activists detained following sit-ins in Boehner, Cantor offices (thehill.com)
“25 Things Montana Voters (And Media) Need To Know About Dennis Rehberg” (dgsma.wordpress.com)
CDC reports fewer drug users who inject are testing positive for HIV (ctv.ca)
The Photos Rep Denny Rehberg Doesn’t Want You to See (itsgettinghotinhere.org)
AIDS: “The Unnecessary Epidemic” (dgsma.wordpress.com)

Gay Marriage – A Mystery – Church History

Mar20 by D Gregory Smith

Scott Terry’s sculpture about Proposition 8 is now a YouTube video:

From his website:

When the religious right campaigned to repeal the right of California gays and
lesbians to marry, I was silent. It’s not that I didn’t care or was uninterested…I
just didn’t care enough to get involved. I don’t ever see myself getting
married, so I did not join the fight.

That was a mistake.

So while I did not voice my opinions or feel alarmed at the potential for
California voters to feel strongly enough about gay marriage to amend the
state constitution, I do have a really short fuse when people take their
religious dogma out of their respective churches and expect everyone else to
adopt it. I get even more impatient with the “it’s the way it’s always been”
argument. I mean, get real. If we lived by the way it’s always been, we’d still
believe in slavery and child labor.

This art piece is my late entry into the argument and an apology for my earlier
silence.
On December 5th, 2008 when I first envisioned the creation of this piece, I
sent an email to the ProtectMarriage group, inquiring where I might obtain
some YesOn8 lawn signs. Here’s the text of that email:

Me: “Hi. I need some YesOn8 lawn signs. Can you tell me where I could get
them?”

The ProtectMarriage folks reply: “Your best option would be visiting your
local church. They might have some leftover from the campaign.”

Powerful message, I think.

Me, too. Thanks Scott!

Screening Tomorrow In Bozeman: “For The Bible Tells Me So”

Mar20 by D Gregory Smith

Can the love between two people ever be an abomination? Is the chasm separating gays and lesbians and Christianity too wide to cross? Is the Bible an excuse to hate? We’re going to discuss this after a screening of “For the Bible Tells Me So” Wednesday March 21st 7pm at The Procrastinator Theater in the SUB at MSU- sponsored by BridgerCare. From the movie’s website:

Through the experiences of five very normal, very Christian, very American families — including those of former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt and Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson — we discover how insightful people of faith handle the realization of having a gay child. Informed by such respected voices as Bishop Desmond Tutu, Harvard’s Peter Gomes, Orthodox Rabbi Steve Greenberg and Reverend Jimmy Creech, FOR THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO offers healing, clarity and understanding to anyone caught in the crosshairs of scripture and sexual identity.

I’ll be facilitating a discussion which will include persons who have ben involved in ex-gay reparative “therapy”, and members of local Christian communities.

From my friend Ted Hayes:

Greg, your audience is in for a great time at this movie. Daniel Karslake, the producer, is a personal friend of about 15 years and a great guy. We had a showing in 2008 at the State University of New York, New Paltz, with both Dan and Mary Lou Wallner, who is featured in the film, on the scene for that particular weekend. It literally poured rain that evening but did not dampen the spirits of the more that 200 persons who braved the storm to be in attendance.

The film is wonderful, the stories are wonderful and the people involved with it are wonderful. Wish I could be there to share in this experience with all my fellow Montanans-in-law (my late partner was from Lewistown).

Hope to see you there!

For the Bible Tells Me So (lessfruit.wordpress.com)
5 Reasons We Need to Rebrand Evangelism – Part 4 (richwendling.wordpress.com)
What does the Bible say about OMG? (defendingcontending.com)
I may be lonely, but I’m never alone (sandypineapple.wordpress.com)

Instant Gratification Has Made Us Impatient

Mar20 by D Gregory Smith

Take a look at this infographic which illustrates how impatient the Google Society has become:

Created by: Online Graduate Programs
Thanks, Tony Shin!

Cebull Resignation/Impeachment Petitions Update

Mar20 by D Gregory Smith

When I first looked at the internets regarding public discontent regarding Richard Cebull’s lack of professional judgment, (Cebull Petitions Pepper The Internet- And They Should) there were 5 petitions circulating in the informational ether.

Now, the number is up. On Change.org alone there are 10.

Will anything happen? Will the complaint by the Montana GOP (against Senators Baucus and Tester for filing an investigation request with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics to take a look) get any traction? Will the story just fade away?

Nope.

Not as long as I have a computer and internet access….

The Call For Cebull To Step Down Gets Louder- Petition Edition (dgsmith.org)
MT Federal Judge Admits Racist Obama Email (dgsma.wordpress.com)

Sullivan: “The Hierarchy Versus The Future”

Mar19 by D Gregory Smith

In one of the most concise analyses I’ve read on the issues created and faced by the Roman Catholic Church, Andrew Sullivan offers some articulate insight:

Image via Wikipedia

Here in America, we see a Catholic hierarchy all but joining forces with the Republican party to insist on their right to control what is offered as healthcare to their employees in religiously-affiliated schools and hospitals and public services. In Britain, we see a furious campaign to prevent gay couples from having civil marriage licenses, a reform backed by the Conservative prime minister, and both opposition parties. And for much of the moment, this will be what the Church presents to the world: an attempt to control the medical care for women in its employ and its determination to keep homosexuals out of the word “marriage” and, thereby, “family.”

There is a spiritual and religious cost to this. And I do not mean that the Church should always “keep up with the times.” There are moments when a Church’s role is precisely to abandon the contemporary world in order to uphold what it takes to be eternal truths. But the narrowness of the current crusades – against a pill used by 98 percent of Catholic women, whose consciences are their own, and against people of a different sexual orientation that the Church acknowledges is unchosen – damages Christianity in the culture, and, in my view, misses the forest for the trees.

Christianity is not about the control of others; it is about the liberation Christ brings to each of us, and how we can learn to trust that incarnated love in escaping our daily failures, sins, weakness, cruelties – in order to bring love into being in the world.

Exactly what I’ve been saying (although not as eloquently). The alignment with a particular party is dangerous precisely because politics and religion are partners of convenience, not of allegiance or ideology. Those shift much more often than does dogma.

Andrew further quotes Fr Ceirion Gilbert, a Welsh priest who sums up the situation in The Tablet thus:

As a priest who deals daily with young people, teachers and catechists, I fear that yet again the Catholic Church is aligning herself with the wrong side, portraying herself as the “defender” of a position and an interpretation of society and humanity at odds with that of younger generations and almost incomprehensible to them in its rigidity and – to use an admittedly “loaded” term, bigotry.

Is it possible, also taking into account Bishop Robinson’s public comments last week, that some people are actually getting it? When will the bishops get it?

The church is going to have a tough row to hoe if it believes it can play offense on sexuality while simultaneously playing defense on clerical sexual misconduct and abuse. That kind of ridiculousness is what is seriously undermining her credibility today.

Read Fr Gilbert’s full essay here. It’s fantastic.

A Bishop Talks About (gasp) Sex (dgsmith.org)
The Catholic Hierarchy: “Suffer The Little Children.” (dgsma.wordpress.com)
Catholics Defend The President (dgsma.wordpress.com)
Catholic Hierarchy’s Slipping Moral Authority (pinkbananaworld.com)
Fugitive Catholic Priest Arrested In India (lezgetreal.com)

A Bishop Talks About (gasp) Sex

Mar18 by D Gregory Smith

Many of you have probably heard the news that (from New Ways Ministry Blog):

“On the second day of New Ways Ministry’s Seventh National Symposium, From Water to Wine: Lesbian/Gay Catholics and Relationships in Baltimore, Bishop Geoffrey Robinson of Australia summoned the Catholic Church to rethink its teaching on sexuality- for heterosexuals and lesbian/gay people. (The full text of his talk can be found on his website.)

The National Catholic Reporter news account of the bishop’s talk cites his call for

‘a new study of everything to do with sexuality’ — a kind of study that he predicted ‘would have a profound influence on church teaching concerning all sexual relationships, both heterosexual and homosexual.’

‘If [church] teaching on homosexual acts is ever to change, the basic teaching governing all sexual acts must change,’ he said. . . .

‘If the starting point [as in current church teaching] is that every single sexual act must be both unitive and procreative, there is no possibility of approval of homosexual acts,’ Robinson said.

Bishop Geoffrey Robinson

He proceeded, however, to question that natural law argument, especially as laid out by recent popes, and to suggest that a more nuanced reading of divine commandments in scripture and of Jesus’ teaching would lead to a different set of moral norms — starting with a change in church teaching that every sexual act or thought that falls outside a loving conjugal act open to procreation is a mortal sin because it is a direct offense against God himself in his divine plan for human sexuality.

‘For centuries the church has taught that every sexual sin is a mortal sin. The teaching may not be proclaimed as loudly today as much as before, but it was proclaimed by many popes, it has never been retracted and it has affected countless people’, Robinson said.

‘The teaching fostered a belief in an incredibly angry God,’ he added, ‘for this God would condemn a person to an eternity in hell for a single unrepented moment of deliberate pleasure arising from sexual desire. I simply do not believe in such a God. Indeed, I positively reject such a God.'”

Terrific.

And “Amen”.

This is startling- not only because of its sensibility- but for the courage of a man who has jumped over the traces, so to speak, of his fellow magisterial wizards. Dare we hope that this is the first voice of many?

Bishop, Governor, and Theologian Highlight Symposium’s Second Day (newwaysministryblog.wordpress.com)
Bishop urges change in all church teaching on sexual relationships (queeringthechurch.com)

The Myth Of Obama And Gas Prices

Mar18 by D Gregory Smith

Image via Wikipedia

Pursuant to a conversation I had yesterday, it is ridiculous that one man has the power to raise and lower prices at the pump- unless it’s the chairman of BP, etc.

Yet the myth lives on that the President has that power- and is, ridiculously in an election year- not using it. From Robert Semple, jr in The New York Times:

The issue of gas prices has not only been misunderstood but thoroughly distorted by relentless ideological spin from industry and its political allies, mainly Republican. Hardly a day goes by that some industry cheerleader somewhere — be it Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana or Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma — does not flay President Obama for driving up oil prices by denying the industry access to oil and gas deposits and imposing ruinous environmental rules. Senator John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, said last week that Mr. Obama should be held “fully responsible for what the American public is paying for gasoline.”

If only the president had the power to give us $2.50-a-gallon gasoline, as Newt Gingrich promised to do if he got to the White House. It is ridiculous to think that a president can.

The reality is much more complex and nuanced than the “Obama’s making us suffer” meme. And yet, the flames of this meme are fanned by populists and Republicans running for re-election. Why? Because it’s popular. And it’s easy. It preys on a simple fear, like the myth of the creature in the dark under the stairs.

Which basically amounts to a cheap shot.

So, if you want to fill yourself in on the full story behind gas prices, read the full article here.

If not, enjoy listening to the myth in your head. Just don’t confuse it with the facts.

Obama: End tax breaks for oil companies (washingtontimes.com)
Rachel Maddow Debunks Climategate Myths Using Skeptical Science (skepticalscience.com)
Zakaria: Republicans are pandering on gas prices (globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com)
Newt Gingrich Blames Price of Gas on ‘Obama’s Policies’ (crooksandliars.com)

Who was St Patrick?

Mar17 by D Gregory Smith

Happy St Patrick’s Day!

If you feel like you need a little brush-up on (one of) Ireland’s patron saint(s), check this out.

If you want a somewhat controversial take on St. Patrick, go here.

And if you want to know some interesting Irish Fun Facts, go here.

And yes, I’m mostly Irish. And yes I have pride in my heritage, but I’m not much of a fan of public drunken brawling and slurring. I find myself agreeing with Frank Delaney’s take on celebration of St Patrick’s Day…”Drowning The Shamrock”.

Sigh.

Here’s a picture of me in Ireland in 2007: