VP of Exodus Randy Thomas shows concern over LGBT abuses abroad.

Randy Thomas: Alan posted some links I found for him this afternoon (mostly through Towleroad) to stories about people being killed around the world because they have, or are reported to have same sex attractions.

I literally wept when I read about the anal torture and the young boy who was hanged. … Please pray for those with same sex attraction to be delivered from terror and allowed to live in freedom. I would like for them to know the freedom I know in Christ but I want them to stay alive long enough to get the chance! Please pray for those who are literally in jail and/or being tortured and murdered because of this.

Alan Chambers: Like what is needed with the issue of bullying in the public school, can't a broad coalition of non-like-minded people band together and say, despite our agenda (and we all have one), "violence against people who are different from what is considered normal is wrong and must end." No religious or social cause is promoted, just love and respect for our fellow man.

I lambaste Randy, Alan, Exodus et al, enough and will continue to do so when appropriate. But despite the shortcomings of these posts (no mention of US casualties), I felt their attention to these stories worthy to mention.

Most of these are the stories Randy links to, but I've taken the liberty to give some quotes from each story:

RIGHTS-BRAZIL: Gay-Bashing Murders Up 55 Percent
2009

RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 22 (IPS) - In 2008, 190 homosexuals were killed in Brazil, one every two days, representing a 55 percent increase on the previous year – a veritable "homocaust" according to gay rights activists.

According to the report, Brazil is the regional "champion in homophobic crimes," followed by Mexico, with 35 gay-bashing murders in 2008, and the United States, with 25 such killings last year out of a population that is 100 million people bigger than Brazil’s.

(Photo and link to story courtesy Towleroad)
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Iraqi gay men face 'lives of hell' Saturday, 18 April 2009

"They kill the gays, they beat them up… I have a lot of friends that have been killed - 15 or 16, something like that, too much."

Gay activists believe the campaign emerged as police, militias and tribes took their cue from the clerics. ...But officials in all categories deny that they support the persecution or killing of homosexuals. [sound familiar?]

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Six gay men killed in Iraq
BAGHDAD, Apr 5, 2009

...two gay men were slain after they were disowned by relatives, CNN reported...four men were fatally shot in Baghdad under similar circumstances.
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More from Towleroad, 4-20-2009:
Report: Iraqi Militia Killing Gay Men with Painful Anal Glue Torture

Iraqi militia have deployed a painful form of torture against homosexuals by closing their anuses using 'Iranian gum.' ... After they glue the anuses of homosexuals, they give them a drink that causes diarrhea. Since the anus is closed, the diarrhea causes death.

More on that from The Edge - Wednesday Apr 22, 2009, which links to another story - Monday, 13 April 2009:

Iraqi leaders are accused of turning a blind eye to a spate of murders of homosexuals after 25 young men and boys were killed in recent weeks.

Gay groups claim the Iraqi government is giving tacit support to the death squads targeting young homosexuals who venture outdoors.
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Re: Iran, Thursday, 6 March 2008
A life or death decision

Peter Tatchell, of the gay rights campaign group Outrage "It is just the latest example of the Government putting the aims of cutting asylum numbers before the merits of individual cases. The whole world knows that Iran hangs young, gay men and uses a particularly barbaric method of slow strangulation. In a bid to fulfil its target to cut asylum numbers the Government is prepared to send this young man to his possible death. It is a heartless, cruel mercenary anti-refugee policy."

I Should Not Be Allowed To Say The Following Things About America

Going through some post-it notes here...

This was one of my absolute favorites -- pre-blog days -- I actually read this in paper form. (From the Onion):

By Ellen Dunst
April 2, 2003

As Americans, we have a right to question our government and its actions. However, while there is a time to criticize, there is also a time to follow in complacent silence. And that time is now.

It's one thing to question our leaders in the days leading up to a war. But it is another thing entirely to do it during a war. Once the blood of young men starts to spill, it is our duty as citizens not to challenge those responsible for spilling that blood. We must remove the boxing gloves and put on the kid gloves. That is why, in this moment of crisis, I should not be allowed to say the following things about America:

And tragic comedy ensues...

Iraq Body Count up one since embedding counter.

was 91,713

now 91,714

OF WAR AND GOLF

Olbermann Special Comment *Mr Bush SHUT THE HELL UP!!! pt.2



FULL TRANSCRIPT HERE:

Then came Mr. Bush's final blow to our nation's solar plexus, his last re-opening of our common wounds, his last remark that makes the rest of us question not merely his leadership or his judgment but his very suitably to remain in office.


"Mr. President," he was asked, "you haven't been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq?


"Yes," began perhaps the most startling reply of this nightmarish blight on our lives as Americans on our history.

"It really is. I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died, to see the Commander-in-Chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as -- to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."


Golf, Sir?

Golf sends the wrong signal to the grieving families of our men and women butchered in Iraq?

Do you think these families, Mr. Bush, their lives blighted forever, care about you playing golf…

Do you think, Sir, they care about you?

You, Mr. Bush, let their sons and daughters be killed.

Sir, to show your solidarity with them you gave up golf?

Sir, to show your solidarity with them you didn't give up your pursuit of this insurance-scam, profiteering, morally and financially bankrupting war.

Sir, to show your solidarity with them you didn't even give up talking about Iraq a subject about which you have incessantly proved without pause or backwards glance, that you may literally be the least informed person in the world?

Sir, to show your solidarity with them, you didn't give up your presidency?

In your own words "solidarity as best as I can" is to stop a game? That is the "best" you can?

4,000 Americans give up their lives and your sacrifice was to give up golf!


Golf.

Not "gulf" -- golf.

And still it gets worse.

Because it proves that the President's unendurable sacrifice, his unbearable pain, the suspension of getting to hit a stick with a ball, was not even his own damned idea.


"Mr. President, was there a particular moment or incident that brought you to that decision, or how did you come to that?"


"I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man's life. And I was playing golf -- I think I was in central Texas -- and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, it's just not worth it any more to do."


Your one, tone-deaf, arrogant, pathetic, embarrassing gesture, and you didn't even think of it yourself?

The great Bushian sacrifice, an Army private loses a leg, a Marine loses half his skull, four thousand of their brothers and sisters lose their lives, you lose golf and they have to pull you off the golf course to get you to just do that?

If it's even true.

Apart from your medical files, which dutifully record your torn calf muscle and the knee pain which forced you to give up running at the same time,coincidence no doubt,the bombing in Baghdad which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello of the UN and interrupted your round of golf, was on August 19th, 2003.

Yet CBS News has records of you playing golf as late as October 13th of that year, nearly two months later.

---

Mr. Bush, I hate to break it to you six-and-a-half years after you yoked this nation and your place in history to the wrong war, in the wrong place, against the wrong people.

But the war in Iraq is not about you.

It is not, Mr. Bush, about your grief when American after American comes home in a box.

It is not, Mr. Bush, about what your addled brain has produced in the way of paranoid delusions of risks that do not exist, ready to be activated if some Democrat, and not your twin Mr. McCain succeeds you.

The war in Iraq, your war, Mr. Bush, is about how you accomplished the derangement of two nations, and how you helped funnel billions of taxpayer dollars to lascivious and perennially thirsty corporations like Halliburton and Blackwater, and how you sent 4,000 Americans to their deaths for nothing.

It is not, Mr. Bush, about your golf game!

And, Sir, if you have any hopes that next January 20th will not be celebrated as a day of soul-wrenching, heart-felt Thanksgiving, because your faithless stewardship of this presidency will have finally come to a merciful end, this last piece of advice:

When somebody asks you, Sir, about Democrats who must now pull this country back from the abyss you have placed us at...

When somebody asks you, Sir, about the cooked books and faked threats you foisted on a sincere and frightened nation…

When somebody asks you, Sir, about your gallant, noble, self-abnegating sacrifice of your golf game so as to soothe the families of the war dead.

This advice, Mr. Bush…

Shut the... hell up!

Good night, and good luck.