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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: goldworldnet who wrote (702388)	9/19/2005 11:52:53 AM
From: E. T.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

A homosexual hunt Monday, September 19, 2005 The Vatican is sending investigators into each of the 229 seminaries in the United States to uncover homosexuals. It is doing this in the wake of pedophilia scandals that have blackened the name of the Roman Catholic Church and cost it more than $1-billion in settlements with victims. This looks and feels like a witch hunt. The church considers homosexual acts "intrinsically disordered." But it has tolerated gay priests for decades. As long as the priests took a vow of celibacy, they were tacitly permitted in the priesthood. This tolerance for homosexual priests was not to blame for the pedophilia scandal. There are heterosexuals who are pedophiles; there are homosexuals who are not. The vast majority of homosexuals, like the vast majority of heterosexuals, are not pedophiles. Predators are to blame for pedophilia, and the church willfully turned a blind eye to predatory behaviour. By one estimate, 10,000 minors were molested, 80 per cent of them boys (perhaps so many more males were molested than females simply because priests have easier access to altar boys). The church received many warnings, but put protecting its image ahead of protecting children. Rev. Paul Shanley, the once-famous "street priest" who ministered to Boston youth, defended pedophilia at a meeting of the North American Man-Boy Love Association in 1979, yet the Boston Archdiocese permitted him access to children into the 1990s, and gave him good references. Another reason for the pedophilia was the unquestioned power that church leaders held in many communities. Power, combined with official tolerance for its abuse, is a dangerous combination. The investigators will, according to a report in the New York Times, interview all 4,500 students, plus each faculty member, and ask (among other things), "Is there evidence of homosexuality in the seminary?" They will ask faculty if they watch for "signs of particular friendships." There is apparently concern in the Vatican that the presence of homosexuals in the priesthood subjects other homosexuals to temptation, and is unfair to heterosexual priests. Pope Benedict XVI is reportedly considering publishing a religious document that would prevent gay men from being priests. At a time that the church desperately needs priests, it is preparing to turn aside potentially fine ones because of their inclinations, not their actions. The church has no intention of ending the vow of celibacy, nor of ordaining women as priests with the Pope's approval. Instead, it is belatedly trying to root out pedophilia by scapegoating homosexuals. For shame. theglobeandmail.com

To: goldworldnet who wrote (702388)	9/19/2005 11:56:22 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 769670

Looters' caches popping up in New Orleans AP ^ \| 9/19/5 \| BRETT MARTEL contracostatimes.com NEW ORLEANS - It was like a modern-day treasure map - a computerized diagram of neighborhoods with codes marking the addresses where National Guard soldiers came upon caches of goods taken by looters in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. "There's probably still loot out there" hidden in various homes, Capt. Gregg McGowan said from his Oklahoma National Guard unit's makeshift headquarters. "We're not going house-to-house looking for it, but if we find it, we secure it so police can check it." In the chaos that followed Katrina's flooding, looters targeted everything from grocery stores to gun shops to trendy women's clothing boutiques. Now that the city is mostly empty of civilians, military patrols making house-to-house checks for remaining residents or the dead are finding some of the hiding places for the stolen goods. New Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan said he intends to prosecute as many looters as he can. However, few arrests have been made thus far because authorities have been primarily concerned with reaching stranded residents, Jordan said. The guardsmen recently thought they had caught a looter coming back into town to load his stash onto a moving truck. Inside his home, the soldiers found automobile parts stacked 8 feet high, a new off-road motorcycle and various electronics, including a video game system with a pawn shop ticket still attached. But the man told the soldiers he had no idea where the goods came from and that someone else must have broken into his home and stashed them there after he evacuated. Skeptical, the soldiers detained him until police arrived, filled out a report and seized the goods. They took the man's name and address, but did not arrest him. "You could be technical and say, 'I'm going to book him with possession of stolen property,' but then you have to find out who the owner is, find out whether that person had permission take that property," New Orleans Police Capt. Marlon Defillo said. "So what we're generally doing is seizing the goods as found property and writing a report." That way, he explained, authorities can return the goods if they figure out where they came from - rather than holding them as evidence pending the resolution of often drawn-out criminal cases. In other homes, McGowan's unit found automatic teller machines that had been broken open and emptied of cash and bags of ammunition still packaged in 500-round bundles, not the individual boxes of 20 rounds usually sold over the counter. A smashed-open video poker machine, likely taken from a bar, was left lying on the sidewalk of an Uptown residential street. In a church-run assisted living home close to a heavily looted Wal-Mart in the lower Garden District, a team of guardsmen found new bicycles, stereos and clothing. Someone associated with the church, who refused to give his name, said at least seven rooms in the four-story residence were filled with goods believed to be stolen. New Orleans police are storing seized loot in a makeshift warehouse near the city's train station, Defillo said. He declined to provide details on how many goods had been found, how many businesses or homes had been looted, or if authorities had any long-term plan to track down some of the culprits. "We haven't even had time to deal with that yet," he said.