Excerpted from Sex, Meth and Internet Spark New AIDS Fears, by Matthew Verrinder, published Jan 17, 2007, by Reuters:

An hour after speaking at a Crystal Meth Anonymous meeting about the benefits of sobriety to dozens of other recovering addicts, Charlie was alone in his Chelsea apartment, logged onto the Web site Adam4Adam.com.

He cruised the site’s profiles of muscular gay men who want to meet for sex while high on methamphetamine…

In New York, thousands of gay men use the Web sites Adam4Adam.com, Manhunt.net and Craigslist.org as an easy way to meet for sex marathons at underground orgies while high on the addictive stimulant.

Similar sites exists in other cities. The phenomenon — while affecting only a small part of the gay community — underscores the spread of meth from the U.S. rural areas where it gained an early foothold.

Health officials worry that the ease in using the Web to find meth — which erases inhibitions and judgment and creates a voracious sexual appetite — and people to do it will fuel a resurgence among gays in infections of HIV, the virus which causes AIDS.

About half of new patients diagnosed with HIV by counselors at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, New York’s largest private clinic for gay men, said that meth or alcohol was a factor, said Gal Mayer, the center’s medical director.

Men who are high on meth are four times more likely to have unprotected sex than those who aren’t, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Continue reading at Reuters…

UPDATE — Also see Newsday story published Feb 25, 2007.

Excerpted from Millions At Stake In Gay Adult Adoption Case, published Jan 15, 2007, by the pro-homosexuality 365Gay:

…In 1991 Olive F. Watson used [a Maine adult adoption] law to adopt her partner of 14 years, Patricia A. Spado. Even though the couple lived in Connecticut Watson owned a summer home in Maine.

Watson was the daughter of former IBM executive Thomas J. Watson Jr., who was the CEO of the company from 1956 to 1971…

When Watson adopted Spado there were no same-sex partnership agreements in the country and Watson believed it would provide Spado with security if anything happened to her.

But a year later the couple broke up.

When Thomas Watson’s widow died in 2004 his fortune went into a trust and her 18 grandchildren became eligible to receive income from two trusts until they turned 35, at which time they would receive the principal outright.

Several months later a lawyer representing Spado notified the trust that there was a 19th grandchild, Spado, and that she also was entitled to a share of the trust.

Continue reading at 365Gay…

Excerpted from European Transgender Groups Unite, published Jan 16, 2007, by the pro-homosexuality 247Gay:

A new coalition of European Transgender and Transsexual Groups, TransGender Europe, has received recognition by the Austrian authorities this week.

This was just too entertaining to pass over (pardon the pun)…

Excerpted from Bleating Hearts, by Mark Steyn, by Jan 8, 2007, at Washington Times:

As part of this column’s ongoing commitment to in-depth coverage of the issues that matter, we’re pleased to present the first of a new series: Sheep In The News. Here are two headlines from the last week.

From The Wall Street Journal: “Ritual sacrifice? Not on my street, some Belgians say.” And from The Sunday Times of London: “Science told: Hands off gay sheep.”

The first story is about the 25,000 sheep in Brussels who a few days ago found themselves pointed toward Mecca and then slit through the throat and bled to death.

Muslims do this to celebrate Eid al-Adha, which commemorates Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son to God and God’s willingness to settle for a ram in lieu. The Belgian Muslim population has grown so fast that there aren’t enough places in the city to perform the ritual sacrifice, and come Eid it’s like sheep drivetime at every Brussels slaughterhouse, with rams backed up ram-to-ram as far as the eye can see.

As reported by the Journal, Mohamed Mimoun grabbed his sheep, took a number and realized he was in for a two-hour wait. Even worse, en route to the slaughterhouse, he was stopped by a cop and fined for having the sheep in the trunk of his Toyota. By law, the sheep is supposed to ride in the rear passenger seats. Baa, baa, back seat.

On which note, let us turn to the gay sheep. Apparently, researchers at Oregon Health and Science University and Oregon State University have been experimenting with ovine hormonal balances to persuade homosexual rams of the error of their ways. It seems they’ve had “considerable success” with injecting hormones into the rams’ brains. Suddenly the lads are playing the field and crooning a couple of choruses of “Embrace me, my sweet embraceable ewe.”

Gay groups (human gay groups, that is: Even America does not yet have a 24/7 gay sheep lobby group with offices on K Street) are not happy about this. Martina Navratilova, the nine-times Wimbledon champ, has called for the project to be abandoned and for scientists to respect, as the Sunday Times put it, “the right of sheep to be gay”…

Continue reading at Washington Times…

Americans For Truth’s Sonja Dalton offers a few thoughts on the San Francisco Chronicle story below about four “transgender” girls:

• “Real women” have two X chromosomes, and they do not have a male sex organ;
• Adult homosexual and “transgender” activists, like lesbian writer Chris Beam, often affirm confused “GLBT” youth in dangerous and wrong behaviors;
• Nothing is sadder to see than a confused young person who has been deceived into renouncing his God-given identity and sexuality;
• Churches need to prepare to intervene with vulnerable boys and girls (kids from dysfunctional, broken, or abusive homes; kids that don’t “fit in”; kids that have been molested). Godly men and women need to come alongside vulnerable kids, put their arms around them, reinforce their God-given identity, and motivate them with a vision of the fulfilling life they can enjoy.

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The following is excerpted from Shaking Up Transgender Assumptions, a book review by Julie Foster, published Jan 7, 2007, by the San Francisco Chronicle:

Transparent: Love, Family, and Living the T with Transgender Teenagers
by Cris Beam

Real women can have penises. And “the brain and the heart are the only organs with a gender, and … all genital modification or lack thereof is simply a personal aesthetic choice.” These are some of the titillating ideas explored in “Transparent,” Cris Beam’s first book.

…In 1998, [Cris Beam] was a freelance magazine writer with spare time. She began volunteering at a high school in Los Angeles for gay and transgender teens.

After 2 1/2 years Beam burned out and quit. But she loved her students, even with “their attitudes, and the occasional danger and regular tragedies,” and she maintained contact with several of the kids.

“Transparent” is the result of those meetings, which occurred from 1998 through the summer of 2005. Beam found her way into this nuanced world through the lives of four transgender girls, Christina, Domineque, Foxxjazell and Ariel, genetic males living as females…

It hasn’t always been so. Beam reveals the “rich history of transsexuality — or cross-gender behavior — documented back to the pre-Christian era.” She cites examples from early American Indian cultures, including the Mohave, Navajo and Lakota, which seem to have not been so hung up on the male-female dichotomies. “For these tribes, there weren’t just two genders posted at opposite ends of a field, with a rule against hanging out in the middle.”

She chronicles the tragic homelessness, common to many transgender teens, which exacerbates their already complicated lives. She weaves in the story of Foxxjazell, “a really great drag mother,” and one of the many “transsexuals who have already been living in their rightful gender and are in the position to teach their younger counterparts.”…

Five years after Beam began her interviews, things changed. Beam and her partner, Robin, moved back to New York. Domineque committed a serious crime and was sentenced to time at an all-male prison. And 19-year-old Christina, who by then had become a part of Beam’s family, reached her goal of getting a social outreach job with a Latino AIDS organization…

Continue reading in San Francisco Chronicle…

“Being queer is more than setting up house,
sleeping with a person of the same gender,
and seeking state approval for doing so…

“Being queer means pushing the parameters of sex, sexuality, and family,
and in the process, transforming the very fabric of society…

“As a lesbian, I am fundamentally different from non-lesbian women…

“In arguing for the right to legal marriage,
lesbians and gay men would be forced to claim
that we are just like heterosexual couples,
have the same goals and purposes,
and vow to structure our lives similarly…

“We must keep our eyes on the goals
of providing true alternatives to marriage and
of radically reordering society’s view of reality.”

We trust that you have enjoyed a blessed Christmas this year. We know that your year-end giving opportunities are plentiful, but please consider a tax-deductible gift to Americans For Truth (AFTAH) to assist us in our mission of helping Americans confront the homosexual and transsexual lobbies — which are serious about converting the next generation to their harmful agenda.

Click HERE to give safely online or mail your check to: Americans For Truth, P.O. Box 5522, Naperville, IL 60567. Or click HERE to become a regular monthly “Truth Team” giver.

To appreciate why AFTAH’s work is so important, consider how one radical gender activist responded to our heart-warming article last week about an EX-transgender young man.

Recall the wonderful story we shared about an Illinois high school student “John” who overcame adolescent “transgender” confusion after becoming a born-again Christian. In response, two websites – one “gay” and one “lesbian” — published a reply from a terribly confused man who goes by the name Autumn Sandeen (pictured below).

Transvestite Autumn Sandeen, as interviewed by the pro-homosexuality
newspaper, San Francisco Bay Times (July 6, 2006):

“My penis doesn’t bother me as a body part…[but] as a sexual organ I’m very uncomfortable with it.
I’m going to be an op, I’m a pre-op I guess, but at the same time
I’m not really sweating how long it takes me to get there.
But at the same time love is out of the question for me.
Well, not out of the question but I feel uncomfortable with relationship stuff.
I’ve literally only had one partner in my entire life and I’m just not interested in sex.
If I could have a relationship with someone that was just as intimate
as a sexual relationship—but without sex—I would love that.”

In his response to AFTAH, Mr. Sandeen rejects wrote of his own frequent “conversions”:

Yet he concludes by denying that change (overcoming homosexuality or gender confusion) is possible.

You don’t need an academic degree to see the irony of this man — and he is still a man — being troubled at our report of a young man overcoming the pull of “transgender” deviance in his life. We live in a world in which “the experts,” often with impressive sounding credentials, dismiss healthy change yet put their stamp of approval on homosexual and gender-confused identities like that above. Science has been politicized and is being used to guide young people into harmful and unnatural behaviors.

To most Americans, religious or not, leaving homosexuality or gender confusion behind is a good thing. To homosexual and gender-bending activists, any ex-“gay” testimony threatens their central propaganda myth that some people are intrinsically (born) “gay,” bisexual or “transgender.” Some homosexual activists like Wayne Besen and the fellows at “Ex-Gay Watch” have dedicated themselves to discrediting ex-“gay” change by hyping the cases of people who have returned back to homosexual behavior. (Yes, change is difficult, but why focus exclusively on failed attempts? Imagine if someone tried to “prove” that overcoming drug addiction was impossible by popularizing only those cases of addicts who tried to go clean but fell back into their drug-abusing lifestyle.)

As you read on, give thanks that high school student “John” was transformed by Jesus Christ (rather than by modern secular psychiatrists) and will not have to suffer the severe emotional confusion and deep loneliness inherent to “transgender” delusion. “John” is truly free now — to experience gratitude for his body, to fall in love with a woman, to enjoy sex in marriage, to accept the natural blessing of children and grandchildren, to worship and serve his God, to know joy.

Please support groups like Americans For Truth that cut through the fog of the homosexual lobby’s lies and tell young people, especially, that nobody has to be “gay.” Homosexuality and gender confusion are not permanent, predestined “identities” — as evinced by the thousands of men and women who have overcome homosexuality and related deviancies in their lives.

Also offer up a prayer for Mr. Sandeen’s genuine ‘trans’-formation as well, for, as the Christmas story teaches, nothing is impossible with God. (Click HERE for a great ex-“gay” resource.) It’s certainly not too late for Mr. Sandeen to experience the only “conversion” that counts. God bless. — Peter LaBarbera

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The following commentary was carried on two homosexual activist blogs, Ex-Gay Watch and Pam’s House Blend, in response to our story on a high school student who overcame gender confusion through Jesus Christ:

Statements of Conversion: Student ‘Trans’-formed by Christ

By Autumn Sandeen
Posted Dec 22, 2006

Here on the Ex-Gay Watch I know I frequently point out logical fallacies in logical (or perhaps better said illogical) arguments, and my peers here do the same thing. My peers and I have noted ex-gay and ex-gay affirming organizations — such as NARTH and Exodus International — often use Statements Of Conversion to make their points, vice referencing statistically sound research or widely recognized subject matter experts.

Merry Christmas to all of our readers! Please consider making a year-end, tax-deductible gift to Americans For Truth. There’s a reason liberal-left groups like People for the American Way are monitoring AFTAH’s every move: they don’t want the radical “gay” agenda that endangers and corrupts children exposed. We need your help to keep standing for truth, as exemplified by the heartwarming story below…

The stakes of the cultural battle over homosexuality are never made clearer than when God reaches down from heaven to bring radical change in a person’s life — in the case below, a gender-confused suburban Chicago high school student who has recovered his masculine identity through Christian rebirth (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Only a sophomore in high school, “John” last year went by the name “Joanna” and was known in school for his feminine behaviors, like putting on women’s make-up. (We will not use his real name or identify his school to protect his identity as a minor.) He was headed towards living a life as a female-imitating, “transgendered” she — when God intervened and John was “born again” through faith in Jesus Christ, he told his student newspaper.

Now “transgender” Joanna is no more and John is reestablishing his true, God-given male nature at his high school. His newfound reality is precisely the sort of story that homosexual/transsexual activist groups like GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network) do not want other teenagers to hear. Because GLSEN knows that such stories undermine the “gay” myth that people are born GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered), and that such aberrant identities are mere natural and innocuous “orientations.”

In GLSEN’s “gay” activist world, “Joanna” deserved to be recognized and celebrated based on his/her “transgendered” lifestyle. GLSEN encourages teachers and school counselors to confirm highly impressionable youth in gender-confused identities: in fact, it’s quite common now to hear teachers of young students identify gender non-conforming children as future “transgendered” adults.

GLSEN’s warped ideology has become official policy at many schools across the country.

But, of course, change is possible, because God is in the business of changing repentant sinners. If the Christ of Christmas can turn around the lives of drug addicts, murderers, and drunks, He certainly can save men and women — and adolescent children — trapped in gender confusion and homosexuality.

As you read this story, say a prayer of praise and thanks to God for working in the life of this young man. Merry CHRIST-mas, John! — Peter LaBarbera

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The following is excerpted from an article that appeared in “John’s” high school newspaper in the fall of 2006; we have changed his name and omitted source identification to protect his identity as a minor for now:

Comments left on the Myspace website of [John] displayed messages such as “Why are you moving?” and “Please don’t move away!”

Despite concerns that [John] might not begin his sophomore year at [unnamed Illinois high school], he is back, armed with a new wardrobe.

“All my friends were afraid that I was moving away. I’m not moving. Joanna [his female persona’s name] is moving,” said [John].

At the end of last year, [John] was concerned with properly applying eyeliner and picking a lip gloss that matched his belt.

[John] sold his old clothes and is now clad in [male] outfits from his new favorite stores…

The decision to change his appearance wasn’t a quick transition. Losing his feminine appearance took [John] the entire summer.

He became inspired after becoming more involved with religion and his church. [John] calls himself a “born-again Christian.”

“I started reading passages from the Bible this summer and I finally understood messages that didn’t make sense to me when I was younger,” [John] said. “Now I realize I can be who I want to be. Everybody can be who they want to be.”

…He also will remain active in his church because he feels that religion helped him decide what kind of changes to make in his life.

According to [John], although the start of the school year was “exciting” for him, he is disappointed that he received negative feedback about his changes from some of his friends.

“Mostly they say things like ‘Whoa, what happened?’ I understand that they might be shocked by my new look or that they don’t necessarily like it, but it doesn’t matter what they think,” [John] said.

According to [John], he spent “too much time” allowing his [Joanna — female] persona to be teased and mistreated last year.

“People couldn’t decide if they were going to accept me then, so I’m cautious of people who are eager to meet the new me,” [John] said.

Despite mixed reactions during the first days of school, [John] feels that his family and “true friends” have been accepting and encouraging of the changes he decided to make.

“I feel that the blessings have been pouring down on me recently,” [John] said. “Now I can finally be who I’m meant to be.”

And to that we at Americans for Truth say, Amen!