Excerpted from Student: Teacher Gave Me HIV, published Nov 3, 2006, by WNBC Channel 4:

…Hassan Vann, 29, a former music teacher at West Side High School in Newark, was indicted Thursday, accused of sexually abusing a student who now has AIDS, the Essex County prosecutor’s office said.

Vann faces up to 30 years in prison and 14 charges, including sexual assault and contact, official misconduct, child welfare endangerment, giving drugs and alcohol to a child and failing to notify a sexual partner that he had a sexually transmitted disease.

“Mr. Vann’s alleged conduct involving his former student was vile and has forever changed this young man’s life,” said Essex County Prosecutor Paula T. Dow…

Paul Loriquet, spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, said the victim told authorities he’s only had unprotected sex with Vann and that prosecutors plan to ask a judge to order Vann to undergo an AIDS test. The student believes the frequent, unprotected sex with Vann led to him contracting the virus, Loriquet said.

Essex County Assistant Prosecutor Mark S. Ali said the indictment covers a period from September 2000 to June 2004, with the initial incident happening in December 2000 when the then-14-year-old male was pushed against a high school wall and sexually abused.

The student graduated in 2004 and tested positive for HIV in May 2005, which is when the prosecutor’s office said it was notified.

Continue reading at WNBC Channel 4…

Excerpted from ECUSA’s Incoming Leader: Homosexuality Not a Choice, Jesus Not the Only Way, by Jody Brown and Allie Martin, published Nov 2, 2006, by Agape Press:

Where does [Katharine Jefferts-Schori] stand on the issue of homosexuality? The Episcopal Church has been embroiled for years in a debate over the ordination of homosexual clergy and “blessing” ceremonies for same-sex couples. Jefferts-Schori supports both — and in fact, she voted in 2003 to confirm her denomination’s first openly homosexual bishop, V. Gene Robinson. She told AP that she does not believe the Bible condemns “committed” homosexual relationships. God, she says, made some people “gay.”

“Sexual orientation is pretty clearly defined at a very early age, before the age of reason. It’s not a choice,” she said. “In that case, a person of faith would need to say that it’s a piece of how one is created.” Consequently, she says, the Church should offer what she calls “a sacramental container” to help homosexuals find “holy ways of living in relationship.”

Scriptures in the Bible about homosexual acts being sinful, she says, are misunderstood. “They’re not about what today we see as mature human beings entering into committed relationships with each other on a full and equal basis,” says Jefferts-Schori, who believes such “committed” relationships can be blessed. “The religious community’s job, really, is to help all human beings find healthy and whole and holy ways of living in relationship.”

Run, Don’t Walk
Canon David Anderson is president of the American Anglican Council, a group of conservative clergy and lay people from the Episcopal Church. Anderson says he’s not surprised at the recent comments by Jefferts-Schori, and offers what he sees as the only option for those still in churches aligned with ECUSA.

“I think they need to run, not walk, to the exit and find an orthodox Episcopal church,” suggests Anderson.

According to Anderson, the Episcopal Church cast off biblical beliefs long ago in favor of postmodernism. Jefferts-Schori’s comments, he claims, is merely in harmony with that. “Her remarks with regard to the plurality of ways to God are consistent both with what she has said before and with what the top level of leadership in the Episcopal Church has been saying now for probably a decade,” says Anderson.

Continue reading at Agape Press…

You, too, can make a difference – and here’s how…

October 26, 2006

Mr. Lee Scott
CEO, Wal-Mart
702 SW 8th Street
Bentonville, AK 72716

Dear Mr. Scott:

My husband and I have written to you before to tell you how very disappointed we are that you have led Wal-Mart into a pro-homosexual stance. Because we know what the medical consequences of homosexual activities are, we are worse than disappointed that you have chosen to tarnish the wonderful family friendly reputation of Wal-Mart in order to chase after the business of a small percentage of the American public.

The medical consequences are clear:

• The Centers for Disease Control reports (Statistics and Surveillance, Table 11, end of 2004) that 87% of all full-blown AIDS cases are the result of homosexual practices and/or drug use while only 11% have occurred through heterosexual contact.

• HIV statistics cannot be trusted because as of 2004, only 33 states reported HIV data. Among the 17 states which did not report HIV data are California which has more same-sex couples than any other state in the country (Houston Chronicle, 7.10.06, “Gay-Rights Fight Turns to San Francisco Appeal).

• Dr. Ruth Jacobs, MD stated in an article in The Washington Times (5.8.05):

“Homosexuals account for less than 3 percent of the population. Yet in 2003 men having sex with men accounted for more than 63 percent of newly reported HIV cases in males. Gay and bisexual men account for 10 percent of all new hepatitis A infections and 15-20 percent of all new hepatitis B infections in the United States…”

• Dr. Ronald Stall, Ph.D., research chief for of HIV/AIDS prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, has said:

‘Substance abuse is pervasive among gay men and is so intricately intertwined with epidemics of depression, partner abuse and childhood sexual abuse that adequately addressing one issue requires attention to the others as well. … We have at least four epidemics going on among gay men that are associated with each other and making each other worse.’ (Internal Medicine News March 1, 2004 Volume 38:5 ‘Drug Use Pervasive Among Gay Men.’)”

• When 1,177 HIV-positive men were interviewed about the number of sex partners in a year, these homosexuals admitted they had had from 1 to 500 partners (“The Dangerous Nature of Homosexuality,” J. Michael Sharman, 8.7.06).

You have left us no choice but to boycott Wal-Mart and to tell our friends and acquaintances to do the same. I would encourage you not to ignore those of us families who believe strongly in traditional family values. We have big Internet networks, and the word is spreading all across our country that Wal-Mart has redone its image and is courting business from the homosexual lobby.

You may think that Wal-Mart’s sales have dropped off because of the pressure from labor unions, but what you really need to know is that there are thousands of us out here who have stopped shopping at Wal-Mart because of your pursuit of the homosexual agenda. Some of us may not have said anything but have quietly stopped shopping at Wal-Mart. Others of us are more verbal about our outrage.

In our minds Wal-Mart has lost its clean family image. We used to try to change people’s minds when they would say something derogatory about Wal-Mart. Now we agree with them and shop elsewhere.

Enclosed you will find copies of the receipts showing that our family has spent $835.41 (from 9.7.06 – 10.22.06) at other stores and gas stations. We used to make most of our purchases at Wal-Mart but not any more.

Sincerely,

Mr. and Mrs. Wayne Garner
Hewitt, TX

The National Coalition of American Nuns has issued an open letter encouraging “all Catholic citizens to vote their own consciences in the November elections.” Two of their seven points are supportive of homosexuality and same-sex “marriage” even though the Catholic church stands squarely against such.

4. We believe that citizens in committed relationships – whether marriages or civil unions – should retain all rights consonant with their state including, but not limited to, adoption of children, ownership of property, inheritance, health, and end-of-life decisions.

7. We pledge ourselves to initiate, invite, and support deepening actions on behalf of social justice, particularly as these impact women, racial/ethnic minorities, and gay or lesbian persons.

Catholic Citizens has posted a “heresy update” regarding this letter.

LifeSite News has published a related story entitled American Nuns’ Group Voter’s Guide Favours Abortion, Homosexuality.

Once again we renew our call for the closure of all sex clubs and bathhouses, which as, this article shows, are helping to victimize straight spouses who are unaware of their partner’s secret perversions.– Peter LaBarbera

The following is excerpted from Double Lives on the Down Low, by Benoit Denizet-Lewis, published Aug 3, 2003, by The New York Times Magazine:

…In its upper stories, the Flex bathhouse in Cleveland feels like a squash club for backslapping businessmen. There’s a large gym with free weights and exercise machines on the third floor. In the common area, on the main floor, men in towels lounge on couches and watch CNN on big-screen TV’s.In the basement, the mood is different: the TV’s are tuned to porn, and the dimly lighted hallways buzz with sexual energy. A naked black man reclines on a sling in a room called ”the dungeon play area.” Along a hallway lined with lockers, black men eye each other as they walk by in towels. In small rooms nearby, some men are having sex. Others are napping.

There are two bathhouses in Cleveland. On the city’s predominantly white West Side, Club Cleveland — which opened in 1965 and recently settled into a modern 15,000-square-foot space — attracts many white and openly gay men. Flex is on the East Side, and it serves a mostly black and Hispanic clientele, many of whom don’t consider themselves gay…

Today, while there are black men who are openly gay, it seems that the majority of those having sex with men still lead secret lives, products of a black culture that deems masculinity and fatherhood as a black man’s primary responsibility — and homosexuality as a white man’s perversion. And while Flex now offers baskets of condoms and lubricant, Wallace says that many of the club’s patrons still don’t use them.

Wallace ticks off the grim statistics: blacks make up only 12 percent of the population in America, but they account for half of all new reported H.I.V. infections. While intravenous drug use is a large part of the problem, experts say that the leading cause of H.I.V. in black men is homosexual sex (some of which takes place in prison, where blacks disproportionately outnumber whites). According to the Centers for Disease Control, one-third of young urban black men who have sex with men in this country are H.I.V.-positive, and 90 percent of those are unaware of their infection…

Many of the men at Flex tonight — and many of the black men I met these past months in Cleveland, Atlanta, Florida, New York and Boston — are on the Down Low, or on the DL, as they more often call it. Most date or marry women and engage sexually with men they meet only in anonymous settings like bathhouses and parks or through the Internet. Many of these men are young and from the inner city, where they live in a hypermasculine ”thug” culture. Other DL men form romantic relationships with men and may even be peripheral participants in mainstream gay culture, all unknown to their colleagues and families. Most DL men identify themselves not as gay or bisexual but first and foremost as black. To them, as to many blacks, that equates to being inherently masculine.

DL culture has grown, in recent years, out of the shadows and developed its own contemporary institutions, for those who know where to look: Web sites, Internet chat rooms, private parties and special nights at clubs. Over the same period, Down Low culture has come to the attention of alarmed public health officials, some of whom regard men on the DL as an infectious bridge spreading H.I.V. to unsuspecting wives and girlfriends. In 2001, almost two-thirds of women in the United States who found out they had AIDS were black.

With no wives or girlfriends around, Flex is a safe place for men on the DL to let down their guards. There aren’t many white men here either (I’m one of them), and that’s often the norm for DL parties and clubs.

Continue reading at The Balm in Gilead…