Tag Archives: homosexuality

One of America’s Great Student Newspapers

The Pitt News bills itself as “one of Amercia’s great student newspapers”. If only it were. Then again, maybe it is. *shudder*

In the 11 years I’ve been in Pittsburgh, I’ve watched the quality of writing and journalistic integrity of the Pitt News wax and wane with the arrival and graduation of classes. When it’s good, it’s no worse than any other small paper. When it’s bad, it’s awful. Sadly, it’s been bad more often than it’s been good. There have been years when the only feature I looked forward to reading was the comics page. Some years even that sucked. I’ve read articles that would make the journalism department go apoplectic – if Pitt had a journalism dept.

In the last couple years, though, I think the paper inproved a great. Perhaps there was an editor that was more interested in relatively unbiased news than sensationalism and sex columns. Those halcyon days may be over, though. Observe exhibits A and B:

Prices up for birth control

Joseph Mance remembers a time when packets of birth control pills cost $8 each. Today he is trying to spread the word to his student clientele that prices have hiked up once again, this time to the $40 range. “I hate telling these kids, ‘We’re raising your pill price,'” he said with a troubled look. “It’s like pulling a gun on them.”

Telling kids their birth control pills will cost more is “like pulling a gun on them”? First of all, if they’re kids, they’re too immature to be having sex. Secondly, what ever happened to advising people to keep their hormones in check? If expensive birth control is either going to majorly disrupt students’ lives or result in a lot of unintended pregancies, Pitt has much biggers problems than government economic policies. Granted, the Pitt News can’t be faulted for Mance making an ass of himself by allowing himself to be quoted uttering that nonsense, but the article is entirely one-sided. The entire front-page piece is written from the point of view that the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which is responsible for the price hike, is a bad law, at least as it pertains to offering cheap birth control for the masses. Reporting on the price hike is just fine and a public service announcement, but the second half of the article pertains to the politics of birth control discounts, which should have been presented in a more balanced fashion.

Gay sheep should look to Jesus, not science for cure

…[S]cientists have attempted to change the sexual orientation of sheep to help farmers, who have accused gay sheep of causing them financial loss. The scientists gave the sheep injections, adjusting the hormone levels in their brains and, amazingly, some previously gay rams became attracted to female sheep. Naturally, the gay and lesbian community was not happy. Their fear is that this success could be a gateway to experiments involving human sexuality and may one day be used to “breed out” homosexuals entirely. Personally, I think this experiment is debauchery. The scientists responsible should be tarred and feathered – or maybe tarred and wooled. Altering sexuality is a very slippery slope. But it seems as though these scientists have forgotten an important fact: If those sheep would just accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior, they could easily overcome their homosexuality.

At least this tripe was printed as opinion rather than news. Still, any newspaper that would print this should be embarassed and ashamed. It’s a sophomoric attempt at satire of Christian bioethics that reads like a secular Jack Chick‘s poor imitation of a “A Modest Proposal“. The kind of Christian presented in this article is straw man. Sure, there are Christians like the charicature the author presents; after all, stereotypes don’t appear out of thin air. Still, the author needs to realize that we’re not all fans of the 700 Club, any more than all gays are fans of Will and Grace.

You don’t have to be Fred Phelps to think active homosexuality is wrong. You also don’t have to hate or fear science if you’re a Christian. Heck, you can even believe that homosexuality has a biological component and still think it’s wrong to perform homosexual acts.

Christianity aside, arguing that a disorder of lower animals is natural and therefore acceptable in humans is ridiculous. Lots of lower animals practice cannibalism and incest. Will it soon be PC to defend those behaviors?

In summary, this article isn’t just bad satire, it’s ironically full of the kind of disgusting malice and prejudice that seems to have offended the author, and the ignorance and denial he specifically mentions.

Be sure to let the editor of the Pitt News know how you feel about these articles. Regarding the latter, you might want to let ACLJ and the Catholic League know, too.

I Think I’m Going to be Sick

The latest madness planned by the misanthropes in Fred Phelps’ flock makes me nauseous.

Bible-Spouting Group Plans to Picket Amish Funerals

A Kansas-based group that says “God hates fags” plans to picket the funerals of the Amish girls killed by a disturbed man in Lancaster County, Pa.

The Westboro Baptist Church — described as a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League — has made a name for itself by picketing the funerals of U.S. troops killed in Iraq. The troops are dying as punishment for America’s tolerance of homosexuality, the group says.

The Westboro group says the Amish school girls were “killed by a madman in punishment for Gov. Ed Rendell’s blasphemous sins against Westboro Baptist Church.

Sometimes I have hard time not confusing the Westboro Baptist Church with the Landover Baptist Church.

Reflections on a Homosexual Bible Study (Part IV)

Read Part I of "Reflections on a Homosexual Bible Study"
Read Part II of "Reflections on a Homosexual Bible Study"
Read Part III of "Reflections on a Homosexual Bible Study"

So, we addressed the first part of Sodom’s sin. How about the second part?

…[They] went and served other gods and adored them, gods whom they did not know and whom he had not let fall to their lot… (Deuteronomy 29:25)

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Reflections on a Homosexual Bible Study (Part III)

Read Part I of "Reflections on a Homosexual Bible Study"

Read Part II of "Reflections on a Homosexual Bible Study"

Finally, verses from the Old Testament were featured. First we studied the story of Lot and the men of Sodom in Genesis.

The two angels reached Sodom in the evening, as Lot was sitting at the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he got up to greet them; and bowing down with his face to the ground, he said, "Please, gentlemen, come aside into your servant’s house for the night, and bathe your feet; you can get up early to continue your journey." But they replied, "No, we shall pass the night in the town square." He urged them so strongly, however, that they turned aside to his place and entered his house. He prepared a meal for them, baking cakes without leaven, and they dined. Before they went to bed, all the townsmen of Sodom, both young and old–all the people to the last man–closed in on the house. They called to Lot and said to him, "Where are the men who came to your house tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have intimacies with them." Lot went out to meet them at the entrance. When he had shut the door behind him, he said, "I beg you, my brothers, not to do this wicked thing. I have two daughters who have never had intercourse with men. Let me bring them out to you, and you may do to them as you please. But don’t do anything to these men, for you know they have come under the shelter of my roof." They replied, "Stand back! This fellow," they sneered, "came here as an immigrant, and now he dares to give orders! We’ll treat you worse than them!" With that, they pressed hard against Lot, moving in closer to break down the door. But his guests put out their hands, pulled Lot inside with them, and closed the door; at the same time they struck the men at the entrance of the house, one and all, with such a blinding light that they were utterly unable to reach the doorway. Then the angels said to Lot: "Who else belongs to you here? Your sons (sons-in-law) and your daughters and all who belong to you in the city–take them away from it! We are about to destroy this place, for the outcry reaching the LORD against those in the city is so great that he has sent us to destroy it." So Lot went out and spoke to his sons-in-law, who had contracted marriage with his daughters. "Get up and leave this place," he told them; "the LORD is about to destroy the city." But his sons-in-law thought he was joking. As dawn was breaking, the angels urged Lot on, saying, "On your way! Take with you your wife and your two daughters who are here, or you will be swept away in the punishment of the city." When he hesitated, the men, by the LORD’S mercy, seized his hand and the hands of his wife and his two daughters and led them to safety outside the city. As soon as they had been brought outside, he was told: "Flee for your life! Don’t look back or stop anywhere on the Plain. Get off to the hills at once, or you will be swept away." "Oh, no, my lord!" replied Lot. "You have already thought enough of your servant to do me the great kindness of intervening to save my life. But I cannot flee to the hills to keep the disaster from overtaking me, and so I shall die. Look, this town ahead is near enough to escape to. It’s only a small place. Let me flee there–it’s a small place, isn’t it?–that my life may be saved." "Well, then," he replied, "I will also grant you the favor you now ask. I will not overthrow the town you speak of. Hurry, escape there! I cannot do anything until you arrive there." That is why the town is called Zoar. The sun was just rising over the earth as Lot arrived in Zoar; at the same time the LORD rained down sulphurous fire upon Sodom and Gomorrah (from the LORD out of heaven). He overthrew those cities and the whole Plain, together with the inhabitants of the cities and the produce of the soil. But Lot’s wife looked back, and she was turned into a pillar of salt. Early the next morning Abraham went to the place where he had stood in the LORD’S presence. As he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and the whole region of the Plain, he saw dense smoke over the land rising like fumes from a furnace. Thus it came to pass: when God destroyed the Cities of the Plain, he was mindful of Abraham by sending Lot away from the upheaval by which God overthrew the cities where Lot had been living. (Genesis 19:1-29)

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Reflections on a Homosexual Bible Study (Part I)

Inspired by Funky’s recent exchange with Amba, I’ve decided to share my opinions regarding Christian acceptance of gays.

At the University of Pittsburgh (aka Pitt), in the fall semester of 1999, I attended a bible study series sponsored by the Pitt Rainbow Alliance and lead by Dr. Michael Penn-Strah, a protestant minister from Pittsburgh’s Northside. They used the study book Claiming the Promise by Mary Jo Osterman. I would like to share some reflections of that Bible study that stuck in my mind along with some other intermingled comments. (As a matter of disclosure, I am a Catholic Christian who before and after the Bible study believed that a homosexual tendency is not a sin but that engaging in homosexual sex, even in same-sex “marriage”, is sinful.)

I attended the study for personal as well as “professional” reasons. I was an opinions writer for The Pitt News. There was another writer, Michael Mazza, who always wrote pro-gay columns. I thought that I should balance out his columns with at least one from the other side.

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