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Archbishop John Nienstedt Accused Of "Inappropriate Sexual Relations" With Priests And Other Men

Virulently anti-gay Minneapolis Archbishop John Nienstedt isbeing investigated for having had "inappropriate sexual relations" with priests, seminarians, and other men.

The archdiocese confirmed the investigation, which was first reported by Commonweal, a Catholic magazine based in New York. Nienstedt, 67, said in a separate statement that the allegations “are absolutely and entirely false” and he said he himself authorized the internal investigation, which he called “independent, thorough.” “The allegations do not involve minors or lay members of the faithful, and they do not implicate any kind of illegal or criminal behavior,” Nienstedt said. “The allegations involve events alleged to have occurred at least a decade ago, before I began serving in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.” Commonweal’s story cites Jennifer Haselberger, former top canon lawyer for Nienstedt, as saying she learned of the investigation when she was questioned by attorneys from the firm that the archdiocese hired, Greene Espel.

Nienstadt said today that the Vatican has been made aware of the investigation. More from Commonweal:

“I have never engaged in sexual misconduct and certainly have not made any sexual advances toward anyone,” Nienstedt told me. “The allegations are a decade old or more, prior to my service as archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis,” he continued, emphasizing that “none of the allegations involve minors or illegal or criminal behavior.” The “only accusation,” Nienstedt explained, is of “improper touching (of the person’s neck),” and was made by a former priest. The archbishop has been under intense scrutiny since September 2013, when Haselberger went public with damning accounts of the way the archdiocese had dealt with clerics accused of sexual misconduct. One of those priests was Curtis Wehmeyer, a man with a history of inappropriate sexual behavior who was nevertheless promoted by Nienstedt to become pastor of two parishes. Wehmeyer went on to molest children at one of those parishes. One of the questions investigators have been asking is whether the archbishop had an unprofessional relationship with Wehmeyer.

In 2012 Nienstedt supported NOM in the failed campaign to place a ban on same-sex marriage into the Minnesota state constitution. The Minneapolis Archdiocese reportedly committed $650,000 to the referendum.

North Carolina Republican Paul Stam Compares Pedophilia, Masochism With Homosexuality

In a debate Tuesday, North Carolina Republican Representative Paul Stam compared pedophilia, incest, masochism and other illegal sexual practices with homosexuality.

In 2011, Stam compared homosexuality with polygamy and incest while calling for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

During a debate Tuesday on a proposal to prevent charter schools from discrimination based on sexual orientation, Stam suggested that, like homosexuality, adult sexual attraction to children is a sexual orientation.

Stam passed out a two-page paper at the debate titled “What is Sexual Orientation?” which listed what he said were 30 different sexual orientations. He argued that the definition of sexual orientation should be narrowed, otherwise it would include pedophilia, incest, sadism and masochism along with homosexuality and heterosexuality.

The list was taken from the American Psychological Association’s “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,” which actually classified many of the definitions as disorders at one time and in 2013 said “pedophilia is a mental disorder; that sex between adults and children is always wrong; and that acting on pedophilic impulses is and should be a criminal act.”

Of Stam’s list, Democratic Representative Tricia Cotham stated:

“This is shameful. He needs to understand that his words and his actions are offensive and cannot be tolerated.”

The House approved the changes to the charter school law, removing a provision prohibiting charter schools from discriminating against applications on the basis of ethnicity, national origin, gender or disability.

Stam said later he was only trying to get the author of the amendment to define sexual orientation.

Salt Lake City Police Officer Placed on Leave After Refusing to Work At Gay Pride Parade

An officer with the Salt Lake City Police Department has been put on paid administrative leave after reportedly refusing an assignment at this weekend’s gay pride parade, KSL News reports:

"We don't tolerate bias and bigotry in the department, and assignments are assignments," said department spokeswoman Lara Jones.

The officer is on paid administrative leave as the internal affairs unit reviews the situation, Jones said. He had been given a traffic control and public safety assignment.

The department has provided services at the Utah Pride Festival since its inception, as well as a host of other community events.

"We serve a variety of community events with similar functions, and to allow personal opinion to enter into whether an officer will take a post is not something that can be tolerated in a police department," Jones said.

Added executive director of the Utah Pride Center Steven Ha:

“Clearly the officer’s act was more than just smelling of bigotry, but I think the act was bigotry, choosing to not do a duty that is sworn by police officers to do,”

Liberty Counsel Defends Michigan’s Ban on Same-Sex Marriage Because Gay People Have 'Inherent' Diseases

The anti-gay Christian law firm Liberty Counsel has filed an amicus brief urging the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold Michigan’s ban on same-sex marriage, which was struck down by U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman back in March. 

Among Liberty Counsel’s arguments made in the brief is the assertion that “not only is there no bodily good or function toward which two same-sex bodies can coordinate, but there are in fact inherent harms associated with same-sex unions."

The brief continues:

The personal, social and financial costs of these homosexual-specific health problems concern not just those who engage in homosexual activity, but also the larger community of citizens who help provide services and who must bear part of the burdens imposed by the health challenges. It would be rational for the voters of Michigan to seek to minimize the deleterious effects of these conditions on public health, safety and welfare by affirming that marriage in Michigan remains the union of one man and one woman.

Think Progress reports that the brief goes on to highlight "a number of health concerns that are unique or specific to the LGBT community, including lower life expectancy, suicide, higher rates of substance abuse, depression, inadequate access to care, HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, certain cancers, and eating disorders.”

Notably absent from the brief, however, are the numerous studies directly linking the LGBT health inequities to the “discrimination and stigma against homosexuality” in many parts of the country.

Blast from the past - NOM's 'wedge strategy' paves the way for the group's irrelevancy

Rumor control has it that former NOM head Maggie Gallagher continues to resurface now and again as a prophet of doom to her side of the marriage equality argument. Apparently she is constantly saying that those against marriage equality have lost the argument.

With that in mind, enjoy this video of what I consider a turning point of NOM's past dominance of the marriage equality fight. In 2012, it was discovered, via court documents, that the organization had planned to play the black and gay community against one another on the subject of marriage equality. The ultimate goal was to cause a problem for President Obama in his upcoming re-election.

When news of this came out, NOM was thrown for a serious loop and the organization didn't respond to the news for a couple of days. Here is Gallagher trying to play it off on MSNBC in one of her first interviews after the news of the wedge strategy came out:

Illinois GOP Committeemen Who Tried to Boot Party Chair for Support of Marriage Equality Get Replaced

Last year, you may recall, a group of Illinois Republicans made an attempt to oust former Illinois GOP chair Pat Brady for his statements in support of marriage equality.

Six of seven Republicans who signed a letter to oust Brady have been replaced in their committee posts, according to the AP, while the seventh was re-elected to a new term.

The ideological shifts in the party's organizational structure come as Republicans in Illinois and nationally are working to expand and attract women and minority voters as they look to November.

In all, only seven of 18 committeemen were re-elected to new four-year terms.

"There were some people that have moved on that were great, and then there were others that were absolutely destructive and were not good for the party and they're gone," said Brady, who is no longer a member of the committee. "All in all, it was a good night, (bringing in) a lot of new blood.”

The thinking mirrors that of Republicans in Nevada, who recently removed opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion from the party platform.

He Used To Recruit For Them. Now He's Working Against Their Message. And They Want Him Dead.

Here's a guy who climbed out of the depths of hate and continues to risk his own safety to make positive changes in this world. We often forget that people actually are capable of change — even this kind of person.

The sudden eruption of anti-gay legislation nationwide is not a coincidence

Readers of this blog know well that 2013, and the first month or so of 2014, have been quite good for gay rights, especially marriage equality rights.

As the saying goes, for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. I think none but the most self-deluded believed that homophobic bigotry was dead, or that the bad guys would simply sit back and let gay people have lives of happiness and equality.

In the past few weeks there’s been an eruption of anti-gay measures in state legislatures across the country. And it’s not a coincidence.

Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Utah have seen efforts — always introduced by Republicans, mind you – to pass laws they claim are to “protect” the free exercise of religion. (I was going to say “radical conservative fundamentalist Republicans” — but I’d be repeating myself.)

From Mother Jones:

Republicans lawmakers and a network of conservative religious groups has been pushing similar bills in other states, essentially forging a national campaign that, critics say, would legalize discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Republicans in Idaho, Oregon, South Dakota, and Tennessee recently introduced provisions that mimic the Kansas legislation. And Arizona, Hawaii, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Mississippi have introduced broader “religious freedom” bills with a unique provision that would also allow people to deny services or employment to LGBT Americans, legal experts say.
Some of them, such as the proposals in Nevada and Ohio last year and the new one in South Dakota, came right out and specified that the reason was so conservative fundamentalists could discriminate against gays and lesbians. All three of these measures, by the way, appear to be dead.

The bills that have been under consideration now… oh boy. And there are a lot of them:

• January 16: Kansas, introduced by Republican state Representative Charles Macheers
• January 28: Idaho, by Rep. Lynn Luker (Republican, obviously)
• January 30: South Dakota, from a ‘coalition’ of Republican senators and representatives
• February 5: Tennessee, Rep. Bill Dunn (R) and Sen. Brian Kelsey (R), as well as other GOP co-sponsors

They just don’t stop at anti-gay bigotry

I’ll be honest here and admit I don’t know what the hell these homophobic Republicans are thinking now though, because these newer measures, all of which have similar language and rationales, state they want to make it legal for people to discriminate on the basis of religion.

Not ‘discriminate against gay people’ but simply ‘discriminate.’

And by the way, there’s a reason why the bills are all similar, often with the same language and all promoted with the same homophobic concern-trolling talking points. “Oh how horrible it is for that poor baker to be FORCED to use her artistic skills to make a cake and write, in buttercream frosting, ‘Best Wishes to Cindy and Eve on the joyous day of their Wedding’! Oh the humanity!”

The Arizona state Senate just passed a bill with the following provisions:

1. Expands the definition of exercise of religion to specifically include both the practice and observance of religion.
2.  Expands the definition of person to include any individual, association, partnership, corporation, church, estate, trust, foundation or other legal entity.
3.  Changes the terminology within the prohibition of burdening a person’s exercise of religion to apply to state action instead of government.
4.  Defines state action as any action by the government or the implementation or application of any law, including state and local laws, ordinances, rules, regulations and policies, whether statutory or otherwise, and whether the implementation or action is made or attempted to be made by the government or nongovernmental persons.
5.  Specifies that a free exercise of religion claim or defense may be asserted in a judicial proceeding regardless of whether the government is a party to the proceeding.

Translation: Anybody who wishes to discriminate against someone for any reason need only state it’s because it’s in their religious beliefs. According to an earlier passage, it doesn’t even matter if that belief is “compulsory or central to a larger system of religious belief.”

For example, let’s say you’re a Catholic, and identify as such. Catholicism has nothing in its tenets about racial discrimination. Doesn’t matter — you can still discriminate against African Americans or Hispanics if you feel like it, and say it’s because God’s Holy Trousers told you to.

Shorter translation: The Arizona bill attempts to nullify all civil rights legislation ever passed, including federal laws, regardless who is being protected.

Read more at AmericaBlog.com

Christian B&B Owners Who Denied Gay Couple a Room Lose Supreme Court Battle

We've been writing on and off since 2009 about Peter and Hazelmary Bull, who denied a gay couple a double room in their Bed and Breakfast, and then twice lost a court battle in an anti-bias suit brought by the couple. The inn owners, who closed their B&B in September for lack of business, brought their case to the UK Supreme Court where they lost soundly on Wednesday.

The BBC:

Five Supreme Court justices ruled against them on Wednesday after analysing the case at a hearing in London in October...

Lady Hale, deputy president of the Supreme Court, said: "Sexual orientation is a core component of a person's identity which requires fulfilment through relationships with others of the same orientation."

Mike Judge, from the Christian Institute, said after the hearing: "What this case shows is that the powers of political correctness have reached all the way to the top of the judicial tree, so much so that even the Supreme Court dare not say anything against gay rights."

Gay rights group Stonewall said in a statement: "We are pleased that the Supreme Court has defended the laws protecting gay customers that Stonewall fought so hard to secure.

Watch the Bulls give a statement outside the court,

 

Gay Teen Violently Attacked In NM Mall Only To Be Banned By The Management

A gay teen from New Mexico was the victim of a homophobic assault and though he never threw a punch, was subsequently banned for “fighting.”

One Saturday at Alberquerque’s Coronado Mall, 14-year-old “Issaic” was approached by a 16-year-old acquaintance. Issaic told KOB 4 that the other boy had been making threats following an online argument he had with a female friend.

“Whenever he wanted to fight me he was calling me a (gay slur) and a queer and everything,” he said. “He just didn’t like me being gay. I’m used to it, but I’m just like, ‘Why would you want to fight someone over that?’”

When they ran into each other at the mall, words were exchanged and both boys were asked to leave. As they left, the older boy punched Issaic in the back of the head as his friend recorded it with his cell phone.

A police officer in the mall spoke to both of the boys, informing them that Coronado management had banned them from returning for a year. Friends of Issaic’s assailant posted the 20-second video of the attack online, because, according to Issaic, they “thought it was funny.”

But perhaps the joke is lost on Issaic, who finds it unfair that the mall should ban him simply for getting hit and hopes they will reconsider his ban. “It shouldn’t happen, but it did,” he said. “I can’t change it, I mean, it’s life.”

KOB 4 attempted to show the video of the attack to Coronado Mall management to see if it might persuade them to lift Issaic’s ban, to no avail.

Russian TV Journalist Blames Gays for the Chelyabinsk Meteor Strike Earlier This Year

A well-known Russian TV journalist is taking a page out of the Christian right-wing playbook of blaming natural phenomenon on the gays. RT.com reports:

 

In a reference to the Old Testament story of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, famous journalist Arkady Mamontov said on his program that the fall of the Chelyabinsk meteorite on February 15 in Russia was related to the country's growing gay activity. Mamontov's program 'Special Correspondent' airs on state channel Rossiya 1.

The host called the meteorite a warning "to all of us that we should keep the family tradition, traditional love, or else something else - not only the Chelyabinsk meteorite - will hit us."

The Russian LGBT Network rights group filed a complaint with the prosecutor's office on Thursday. The group accused the show of hate speech, according to group chairman Igor Kochetkov. He said that Mamontov also claimed that gays and lesbians want to "destroy [traditional] Russia."

Mamontov has been on a bit of an anti-gay roll this past week, airing a documentary entitled "Litsedei" (Hypocrites) on Tuesday which detailed the alleged threat from Western countries that are trying to carry out a "gay revolution" in Russia by claiming that homosexuals are being oppressed.

As a result of the anti-gay vitriol, prominent Russian LGBT activist Nikolai Alexeyev has submitted a request to Moscow authorities to gain permission to stage a protest against Mamontov's show. Knowing Putin's oppositional stance on public 'pro-gay' rallies, however, makes approval seem unlikely.