Film shows how North profited from slavery
JOANNE OSTROW; The Denver Post
Last updated: June 23rd, 2008 01:23 AM (PDT)
Katrina Browne’s wealthy Rhode Island clan has a secret. The well-mannered Yankees would rather not speak of it, but their forefathers were perhaps America’s biggest slave-trading dynasty.
After introducing her ancestors via distinguished-looking oil paintings in the family mansion, now a museum, Browne sets out to retrace the physical route and the rocky emotional terrain of how her forefathers built their fortune.
The journey – from tearful soul-searching to squirming at the dinner table when confronted with the family’s obvious elitism – makes for a stunning documentary.
“Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North,” airing Tuesday on PBS’ “P.O.V.,” is eye-opening and important, digging deeper than what may be comfortable into what stands in the way of race relations in this country.
The filmmaker, Browne, is a seventh-generation descendant of Mark Anthony DeWolf, the family’s first slave trader. From 1769 to 1820, the DeWolfs trafficked in human beings as part of what was know as the “Triangle Trade.”
They sailed their ships from Bristol, R.I., to West Africa with rum to trade for African men, women and children. Captives were taken to plantations that the DeWolfs owned in Cuba or were sold at auction in Havana or Charleston, S.C. The proceeds bought sugar and molasses in Cuba, which were shipped to the family-owned rum distilleries in Bristol.
Rum traded for slaves, slaves traded for sugar, sugar used to make rum.
Over the generations, the family owned 47 ships that transported thousands of chained Africans across the Middle Passage into slavery. By the end of his life, James DeWolf was reportedly the second-richest man in the United States. He was also a U.S. senator who was granted political appointments and other favors from none other than Thomas Jefferson.
The film upends stereotypical notions about the American North fighting for abolition while slaves toiled away down South. Browne documents how crucial the slave trade was to New England for more than 200 years.
Individual homes may have acquired one or two slaves, as opposed to the masses on plantations in the South, but the textile mills, banks and insurance companies in the North were built on profits from the slave trade.
The documentary, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, follows 10 of DeWolf’s descendants (ages 32-71, ranging from sisters to seventh cousins) as they retrace the steps of the Triangle Trade: the DeWolf mansion in Bristol, slave forts on the coast of Ghana and the ruins of a family plantation in Cuba.
Family archives document various trades: In one entry, nine slaves (one woman and eight men) were swapped for “tobacco, rum, hats, bread, mackerel.” James DeWolf once gave his wife two African children, a boy and a girl, as a Christmas present.
Back home, Browne delves into questions of repair: How do the sins of the fathers weigh on the sons and daughters; what should be done about it? Are financial reparations due, and what spiritual/emotional work is owed, as well?
The film was nine years in the making and ought to spark conversations on race for at least that long. “Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North” airs as part of “P.O.V.”
When: 10 p.m. Tuesday
Where: KCTS, Channel 9
Monday, June 23, 2008
P.O.V.: Traces of the Trade | PBS
Friday, May 30, 2008
Catholic Priest rips Fox News a new one
Looks like Fox News thought they were going to embarass Obama supporter Father Michael Pfleger, by sending out one of their henchmen to ambush him over his ties to and support of Barack Obama. Instead they got their tiny, little bigoted and ignorant heads handed to them.
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Breakdown FM Immortal Technique-Sean Bell & Police Terrorism
LISTEN TO INTERVIEW: (put mouse over link, when player opens, click play)
Breakdown FM Immortal Technique-Sean Bell & Police Terrorism
Breakdown FM: Immortal technique Interview pt2
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Jeremiah Wright NAACP Dinner Full Speech April 27, 2008
OBM: Great speach.....The Rev. Jeremiah Wright delivered an unapologetic speech on Sunday, alternately fiery and humorous as he defended the preaching that has taken center stage in the presidential campaign.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Homosexuality Explained in 17min.
Is homosexuality genetic, or is it something people choose? What if it's neither! Dr. Julie Harren, a Licensed Marriage and Family ... all » Therapist in private practice in Palm Beach, Florida, discusses the meaning and causes of homosexuality. Dr. Harren is also an Assistant Professor of Psychology in the Graduate Counseling Psychology program at Palm Beach Atlantic University. Dr. Harren speaks in churches in churches, schools, and other settings on the topic of homosexuality.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Michael Eric Dyson Puts It Down
SEE VIDEO HERE
Author and cultural critic Michael Eric Dyson talked about his body of writing, the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the presidential candidacy of Senator Barack Obama and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Professor Dyson talked about issues such as the role of the church in black culture. He discussed the problem of black people who excel being considered exceptions while those who do unacceptable things being considered part of the norm. Professor Dyson reacted to a video clip of John McWhorter from March 2, 2008, talking about hip hop. He also responded to a video clip from July 1, 2004, of Bill Cosby talking about personal responsibility. He responded to telephone calls and electronic mail.
Monday, April 07, 2008
The Church of Oprah Exposed
OBM:For thoes who call themselves Christians....If this is not enough I do not know what is!!!! People.....Ladies.....Sista's....Please wake up!!!!
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Sunday, March 23, 2008
FOX & the Media Lies!! Barack Obama Pastor Wright
FOX lied! Here's the whole context!
Different Standards for Black and White Preachers
OBM: Massa Amerikkka & racist white men....please excuse Pastor Wright for stating facts about some of the damage Amerikkka has and is doing to other people. Please don't pay him no mind. He’s just one of thoes field hands who's always complaining. Massa...we's lov's you...and want to say thank you for bringing us negro's here, giving us longer jail sentences for the same crimes, hiring a few of us in your fine companies, for providing our neighborhoods with fine alcohol stores and drugs, for taking the time to under educate & brainwash our children with the lies of this great country, and best of all...we'll always remember those good "no-wage" paying jobs that you use to build our beautiful country. Thank you Massa!!!!
Posted March 19, 2008
Cenk Uygur
The Huffington Post
Rudy Giuliani's priest has been accused in grand jury proceedings of molesting several children and covering up the molestation of others. Giuliani would not disavow him on the campaign trail and still works with him.
Mitt Romney was part of a church that did not view black Americans as equals and actively discriminated against them. He stayed with that church all the way into his early thirties, until they were finally forced to change their policies to come into compliance with civil rights legislation. Romney never disavowed his church back then or now. He said he was proud of the faith of his fathers.
Jerry Falwell said America had 9/11 coming because we tolerated gays, feminists and liberals. It was our fault. Our chickens had come home to roost, if you will. John McCain proudly received his support and even spoke at his university's commencement.
Reverend John Hagee has called the Catholic Church the "Great Whore." He has said that the Anti-Christ will rise out of the European Union (of course, the Anti-Christ will also be Jewish). He has said all Muslims are trained to kill and will be part of the devil's army when Armageddon comes (which he hopes is soon). John McCain continues to say he is proud of Reverend Hagee's endorsement.
Reverend Rod Parsley believes America was founded to destroy Islam. Since this is such an outlandish claim, I have to add for the record, that he is not kidding. Reverend Parsley says Islam is an "anti-Christ religion" brought down from a "demon spirit." Of course, we are in a war against all Muslims, including presumably Muslim-Americans. Buts since Parsley believes this is a Christian nation and that it should be run as a theocracy, he is not very concerned what Muslim-Americans think.
John McCain says Reverend Rod Parsley is his "spiritual guide."
What separates all of these outrageous preachers from Barack Obama's? You guessed it. They're white and Reverend Jeremiah Wright is not. If it's not racism that's causing the disparity in media treatment of these preachers, then what is it?
I'm willing to listen to other possible explanations. And I am inclined to believe that the people these preachers go after are more important than the race of the preacher. It's one thing to go after gays, liberals and Muslims -- that seems to be perfectly acceptable in America -- it's another to accuse white folks of not living up to their ideals.
I think there is another factor at play as well. The media is deathly afraid of calling out preachers of any stripe for insane propaganda from the pulpits for fear that they will be labeled as anti-Christian. But criticism of Rev. Wright falls into their comfort zone. It's easy to blame him for being anti-American because he criticizes American foreign and domestic policy.
If Rev. Wright had preached about discriminating against gay Americans or Muslims, there probably would not have been any outcry at all. That falls into the category of "respect their hateful opinions because they cloak themselves in the church."
But one thing is indisputable -- the enormous disparity in how the media has covered these white preachers as opposed to Rev. Wright. Have you ever even heard of Rod Parsley? As you can see from what I listed above, all of these white preachers have said and done the most outlandish and offensive things you can imagine -- and hardly a peep.
If the disparity in coverage isn't racist, then what is it?
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Pasror Manning attacks Obama
OBM: I checked several of this guys clips out on youtube and I suggest you do the same. First this guy is no Christian pastor. A pastor is able to make his point without attacking and degrading people. I'll pray for this guy. Second...he is a shining example of why blacks can not criticize blacks like this in public. The racist are going to use what he says a weapon and justification for themselves. I do agree that blacks have areas of physiological improvement that are desperately needed. Can you say “Willie Lynch”….So many of us are still asleep and focusing on material possessions, rap music, sports, and who's gettin' wit' who. We need to spend more time focused on education of ourselves and or kids, learning our history, learning truthful corrupt American history and not “his-story” full of lies, local and national employment issues, crime and police brutality, health issues, and our spirituality to name a few. I do agree with the point of the reason middle age and elderly whites like Obama. Obama is not a confronter on issues of race. I also agree that God often has a leader experience jail either to break the person first so he can use them later or as a test of the leader’s faith and an example to those who follow them, but I disagree that jail time makes a leader.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Charles Barkley call conservatives fake christians
Sir Charles gives his views on conservatives by calling them fake christians.
OBM: While I only agree with one of his reasons, I still am given him a little credit for saying it. Also while I hold conservitive views on some issues I can think of several additional reasons most conservatives are fake christians: a lot of them are Racist, Fascist, Sinfully Greedy, Thieves, Sadistically Ignorant, Destructively Selfish, Control Freaks, and Racial/Class Supremacist to name a few.
Friday, January 18, 2008
High School Track Star Disqualified from Meet Because of Muslim Clothing
By Adam Howard, AlterNet
Posted on January 17, 2008, Printed on January 18, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/www.alternet.org/74165/
This is ridiculous, bigoted insanity. When is it ever going to stop?
A Muslim DC high school track star competed with no trouble Wednesday, despite a speed suit that covers her head, neck and ankles, in deference to her faith.
On Saturday, Juashaunna Kelly was disqualified at a Montgomery County meet because she declined to change it. That's created a nationwide controversy on the internet, some of it vicious and filled with hate.
The 17 year old Gatorade Athlete of the Year took to the track this time with a huge smile instead of tears. The head of the DC Interscholastic Athletic Association told her it was fine to run in the multi-colored speed suit that serves as her Muslim headcovering when she competes.
"I'm not going to let no one stop me from competing," says the Roosevelt High School senior. "I'm just going to use what I have and go out there and do my best."
On Saturday, officials at the prestigious Montgomery Invitational told Kelly that the custom made outfit in her school colors violates the rules of the national athletic federation.
But DC officials said at the DC Invitational Wednesday that the national rules are just guidelines.
You can tell from this story and from this video that Ms. Kelly is a strong, proud and decent young person and I applaud her for sticking by her principles but it still saddens me that she has to and that she's been abused in this way. Apparently now both Juashaunna's family and the track meet director have been the subjects of hate and threat filled emails. The situation as of right now has not been resolved. Check out the video to your right for more.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
How The Bible Became
By Rev. Ted Pike
10-30-7
Recently, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law S.B. 777, outlawing Biblical criticism of homosexuality in CA public schools (See, California 'Mom,' 'Dad' ban garners international scorn). California's Christians face the alternatives of withdrawing their children to private education or watching them progressively corrupted by an educational system that demonizes their religious bias against sodomy.
This ban on the Bible is not a recent capricious edict from Sacramento liberals or the Republican "Terminator" Governor Schwarzenegger. It's the result of massive social engineering throughout the past half century but begun in earnest in 1985 by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. ADL is architect of "anti-bias" educational programs worldwide. Here's how this Jewish activist group helped make it criminal to criticize sodomy in California--and intends to do so everywhere.
Re-Defining Hate
America was founded on tolerance--as a place where people of widely diverse races, religions, and creeds could follow their convictions free from persecution. But America's founders hardly believed that vice should be tolerated or that it's wrong to be prejudiced against it! Early American social ethics (as taught in homes, schools and churches) said the opposite: Families, social groups and even government should encourage "bias" against all forms of vice. These include robbery, graft, prostitution, etc. and that vice so unnatural that for thousands of years it was virtually unmentionable--sodomy.
Yet, in the early 1980s, Jewish-dominated media determined to create as much damage as possible from the sixties' sexual revolution (which they promoted). I vividly remember how, more than ever before, they encouraged not just the drug culture, abortion and fornication but especially "gay rights." In fact, sodomy is being pushed down the throats of Christian America until it will soon become criminal not to be a homosexual but a Christian! (See, http://truthtellers.org/alerts/judaismhomosexuality.html) Judaism and Homosexuality: A Marriage Made in Hell and Jews Confirm Big Media Is Jewish)
In league with the Jewish media, ADL's social re-engineering of America and the world has been largely accomplished through its massive "World of Difference" educational program. In 1985, ADL began an educational thrust that encompassed all levels of public education, government, corporations, and social organizations. ADL relentlessly taught millions that we are entitled to no bias against race, religion, or "sexual orientation." All bias, ADL teaches, is very bad. No one is entitled to claim that he, his religion, or sexual orientation is right and others wrong. "When we convince ourselves that our way is the "right way," we are more likely to strike out at those who are different. In fact, intolerance of differences is at the roots of most violence." (http://www.adl.org/guide/default.asp)
ADL teaches that, for practical purposes, bias and "hate" are the same. Biblical bias expressed against homosexuality constitutes "harassment" and "verbal violence," the precursor of hate-motivated violence (hate crimes).
First Step: Make Bias Socially Taboo
Wanting to eventually criminalize bias against homosexuality, ADL first had to make it a violation of social norms. Since 1985, "more than 375,000 elementary and secondary school teachers, responsible for nearly 12 million students," have participated in ADL's "World of Difference" program. These included anti-bias programs beginning as early as age 3-5. Lesson formats such as "I Belong to Many Groups" foster global--not religious or national--loyalties in young people.
ADL sensitivity training programs in corporate America taught business owners to defer to homosexuals as almost a protected species in regard to hiring or firing. After decades of conditioning, American business has been prepared for ADL's workplace bias crime laws on the federal and state level. (This includes ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, now before Congress.)
ADL also teaches law enforcement at all levels how to recognize and report bias crimes. It conditioned US Justice Department officials, FBI, and all police departments to believe that verbal "intimidation" of homosexuals is virtually a hate crime and that "gay bashing" may well be traceable to evangelical pulpits.
The Fruits of ADL's Labors
In the 1980s, ADL led countless young people away from Christians' "homophobic" bias against homosexuality. They are now the teachers, police officers, jurists, and administrators who guide America's public policy. As exists in Canada and now in California, this policy increasingly empowers legislative provision for stiff protection of homosexuals as beleaguered victims of Christian intolerance.
For 23 years, ADL has cultivated, watered and fertilized the moral and cultural soil of America toward acceptance of homosexuality. This contradicts moral standards that prevailed for at least the last 5,000 years.
So it was no surprise when the first openly lesbian member of California's state assembly, Sheila Koehl, submitted a bill banning criticism of homosexuality in the public school systems. Gov. Schwarzenegger then enshrined on the legislative level a program of moral transformation begun more than 20 years earlier by ADL.
Yet ADL remains unexposed, unidentified, and uncriticized by Christian evangelicals and their leaders. Why the silence? ADL is 100% Jewish. The majority of evangelicals believe that God will "curse" the nation or person who criticizes Jews. (Gen. 12:3) Their leaders, who are becoming more aware of ADL origins of hate laws and organized anti-Christianity, fear they will be cursed by a mass exodus of support if they criticize God's chosen people.
Yet, if the church remains silent concerning those who invented and foment "anti-bias" laws, there is little to ultimately restrain passage of a virtual epidemic of hate laws identical to S.B. 777. Like poisonous mushrooms sprouting in profusion after extended rain, such laws will crop up in state and federal capitals and dominate the moral and political landscape, not only in America but throughout the world.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Same-Sex Family Video Shown to 3rd Graders - Now Banned
SEE VIDEO HERE
A New Jersey school district bans a video after it was shown to 3rd grade kids that teaches about same-sex marriages and families.
Friday, July 20, 2007
Wal-Mart Selling Jesus, Religious Action Figures
WATCH VIDEO HERE
Dolls Aimed At Christian Families
POSTED: 2:58 pm EDT July 18, 2007
BENTONVILLE, Ark. -- Wal-Mart said 425 of its stores will sell Biblical action figures aimed at Christian parents who prefer their children play with Samson, David or Noah rather than with a comic book character or Bratz doll.
Wal-Mart Stores spokeswoman Melissa O'Brien said the world's largest retailer believes there's demand for faith-based toys.
The toy line will be in some Wal-Mart shelves starting in August, mainly in the Midwest and South, but also in California and as far northeast as Pennsylvania.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Half Human - Half Animal embryo Experiments to be debated by Parliament this Year.
By Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:03am BST 27/06/2007
Human-animal hybrid embryos conceived in the laboratory - so-called “chimeras” - should be regarded as human and their mothers should be allowed to give birth to them, the Roman Catholic Church said yesterday.
Under draft Government legislation to be debated by Parliament later this year, scientists will be given permission for the first time to create such embryos for research as long as they destroy them within two weeks.
But the Catholic bishops of England and Wales, in a submission to the Parliamentary joint committee scrutinising the draft legislation, said that the genetic mothers of “chimeras” should be able to raise them as their own children if they wished.
The bishops said that they did not see why these “interspecies” embryos should be treated any differently than others.
The wide-ranging draft Human Tissue and Embryo Bill, which aims to overhaul the laws on fertility treatment, will include sections on test tube babies, embryo research and abortion. Ministers say that the creation of animal-human embryos - created by injecting animal cells or DNA into human embryos or human cells into animal eggs - will be heavily regulated.
They insist that it will be against the law to implant “chimeras” - named after the mythical creature that was half man and half animal - into a woman’s womb.
The bishops, who believe that life begins at conception, said that they opposed the creation of any embryo solely for research, but they were also anxious to limit the destruction of such life once it had been brought into existence.
In their submission to the committee, they said: “At the very least, embryos with a preponderance of human genes should be assumed to be embryonic human beings, and should be treated accordingly.
“In particular, it should not be a crime to transfer them, or other human embryos, to the body of the woman providing the ovum, in cases where a human ovum has been used to create them.
“Such a woman is the genetic mother, or partial mother, of the embryo; should she have a change of heart and wish to carry her child to term, she should not be prevented from doing so.”
The draft Bill will also allow the screening of embryos for genetic or chromosomal abnormalities that might lead to serious medical conditions, disabilities, or miscarriage. It will permit doctors to check whether an embryo could provide a suitable tissue match for a sibling suffering from a life-threatening illness.
The Bill would abolish the requirement for fertility clinics to consider the need for a father when deciding on treatment. This means clinics will no longer be able to deny treatment to lesbians and single mothers.
The Catholic bishops said that most of the procedures covered by the Bill “should not be licensed under any circumstances”, principally on the grounds that they violate human rights.
Monday, June 25, 2007
How America Went Gay
by Charles W. Socarides, M.D.
Charles W. Socarides, M.D., is clinical professor of psychiatry at Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center in New York. He is president of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, and author of Homosexuality: A Freedom Too Far (Adam Margrave Books, Phoenix, Arizona).
For more than 20 years, I and a few of my colleagues in the field of psychoanalysis have felt like an embattled minority, because we have continued to insist, against today's conventional wisdom, that gays aren't born that way. We know that obligatory homosexuals are caught up in unconscious adaptations to early childhood abuse and neglect and that, with insight into their earliest beginnings, they can change. This "adaptation" I speak of is a polite term for men going through the motions of mating not with the opposite sex but with one another.
For most of this century, most of us in the helping professions considered this behavior aberrant. Not only was it "off the track"; the people caught up in it were suffering, which is why we called it a pathology. We had patients, early in their therapy, who would seek out one sex partner after another-total strangers-on a single night, then come limping into our offices the next day to tell us how they were hurting themselves. Since we were in the business of helping people learn how not to keep hurting themselves, many of us thought we were quietly doing God's work.
Now, in the opinion of those who make up the so-called cultural elite, our view is "out of date." The elite say we hurt people more than we help them, and that we belong in one of the century's dustbins. They have managed to sell this idea to a great many Americans, thereby making homosexuality fashionable and raising formerly aberrant behavior to the status of an "alternate lifestyle."
You see this view expressed in some places you would least expect. The Pope says same-sex sex is wrong, but a good many of his own priests in this country (some of whom are gay themselves) say the Pope is wrong. Indeed, in much of academe and in many secondary school classrooms gays are said to lead a new vanguard, the wave of the future in a world that will be more demographically secure when it has fewer "breeders" (which is what some gay activists call heterosexuals these days).
How did this change come about? Well, the revolution did not just happen. It has been orchestrated by a small band of very bright men and women-most of them gays and lesbians-in a cultural campaign that has been going on since a few intellectuals laid down the ideological underpinnings for the entire tie-dyed, try-anything-sexual Woodstock generation. In various ways, Theodore Reich, Alfred Kinsey, Fritz Perls, Norman O. Brown, Herbert Marcuse and Paul Goodman preached a new countercultural gospel: "If it feels good, do it."
It was all part of a plan, as one gay publication put it, "to make the whole world gay." I am not making this up. You can read an account of the campaign in Dennis Altman's The Homosexualization of America. In 1982 Altman, himself gay, reported with an air of elation that more and more Americans were thinking like gays and acting like gays. There were engaged, that is, "in numbers of short-lived sexual adventures either in place of or alongside long-term relationships." Altman cited the heterosexual equivalents of gay saunas and the emergence of the swinging singles scene as proofs that "promiscuity and 'impersonal sex' are determined more by social possibilities than by inherent differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals, or even between men and women."
Heady stuff. Gays said they could "reinvent human nature, reinvent themselves." To do this, these reinventors had to clear away one major obstacle. No, they didn't go after the nation's clergy. They targeted the members of a worldly priesthood, the psychiatric community, and neutralized them with a radical redefinition of homosexuality itself. In 1972 and 1973 they co-opted the leadership of the American Psychiatric Association and, through a series of political maneuvers, lies and outright flim-flams, they "cured" homosexuality overnight-by fiat. They got the A.P.A. to say that same-sex sex was "not a disorder." It was merely "a condition"-as neutral as lefthandedness.
This amounted to a full approval of homosexuality. Those of us who did not go along with the political redefinition were soon silenced at our own professional meetings. Our lectures were canceled inside academe and our research papers turned down in the learned journals. Worse things followed in the culture at large. Television and movie producers began to do stories promoting homosexuality as a legitimate lifestyle. A gay review board told Hollywood how it should deal or not deal with homosexuality. Mainstream publishers turned down books that objected to the gay revolution. Gays and lesbians influenced sex education in our nation's schools, and gay and lesbian libbers seized wide control of faculty committees in our nations' colleges. State legislatures nullified laws against sodomy.
If the print media paid any attention at all, they tended to hail the gay revolution, possibly because many of the reporters on gay issues were themselves gay and open advocates for the movement. And those reporters who were not gay seemed too intimidated by groupthink to expose what was going on in their own newsrooms.
And now, what happens to those of us who stand up and object? Gay activists have already anticipated that. They have created a kind of conventional wisdom: that we suffer from homophobia, a disease that has actually been invented by gays projecting their own fear on society. And we are bigots besides, because, they say, we fail to deal with gays compassionately. Gays are now no different than people born black or Hispanic or physically challenged. Since gays are born that way and have no choice about their sexual orientation, anyone who calls same-sex sex an aberration is now a bigot. Un-American, too. Astoundingly now, college freshmen come home for their first Thanksgiving to announce, "Hey, Mom! Hey, Dad! We've taken the high moral ground. We've joined the gay revolution."
My wife, Clare, who has an unerring aptitude for getting to the heart of things, said one day recently in passing, "I think everybody's being brainwashed." That gave me a start. I know "brainwashing" is a term that has been used and overused. But my wife's casual observation only reminded me of a brilliant tract I had read several years ago and then forgotten. It was called After the Ball: How America Will Conquer its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 1990's, by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen.
That book turned out to be the blueprint gay activists would use in their campaign to normalize the abnormal through a variety of brainwashing techniques once catalogued by Robert Jay Lifton in his seminal work, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of Brainwashing in China.
In their book Kirk and Madsen urged that gay activists adopt the very strategies that helped change the political face of the largest nation on earth. The authors knew the techniques had worked in China. All they needed was enough media-and enough money-to put them to work in the United States. And they did. These activists got the media and the money to radicalize America-by processes known as desensitization, jamming and conversion.
They would desensitize the public by selling the notion that gays were "just like everyone else." This would make the engine of prejudice run out of steam, i.e., lull straights into an attitude of indifference.
They would jam the public by shaming them into a kind of guilt at their own "bigotry." Kirk and Madsen wrote:
All normal persons feel shame when they perceive that they are not thinking, feeling, or acting like one of the pack....The trick is to get the bigot into the position of feeling a conflicting twinge of shame...when his homohatred surfaces. Thus, propagandistic advertisement can depict homophobic and homohating bigots as crude loudmouths....It can show them being criticized, hated, shunned. It can depict gays experiencing horrific suffering as the direct result of homohatred-suffering of which even most bigots would be ashamed to be the cause.The best thing about this technique, according to Kirk and Madsen: The bigot did not even have to believe he was a loathsome creature:
Rather, our effect is achieved without reference to facts, logic, or proof. Just as the bigot became such, without any say in the matter, through repeated infralogical emotional conditioning, his bigotry can be alloyed in exactly the same way, whether he is conscious of the attack or not. In short, jamming succeeds insofar as it inserts even a slight frisson of doubt and shame into the previously unalloyed, self-righteous pleasure. The approach can be quite useful and effective-if our message can get the massive exposure upon which all else depends.Finally-this was the process they called conversion-Kirk and Madsen predicted a mass public change of heart would follow, even among bigots, "if we can actually make them like us." They wrote, "Conversion aims at just this...conversion of the average American's emotions, mind, and will, through a planned psychological attack, in the form of propaganda fed to the nation via the media."
In the movie "Philadelphia" we see the shaming technique and the conversion process working at the highest media level. We saw Tom Hank's character suffering (because he was gay and had AIDS) at the hands of bigots in his Philadelphia law firm. Not only were we ashamed of the homophobic behavior of the villainous straight lawyers in the firm; we felt nothing but sympathy for the suffering Hanks. (Members of the Motion Picture Academy felt so much sympathy they gave Hanks an Oscar.) Our feelings helped fulfill Kirk and Madsen's strategy: "to make Americans hold us in warm regard, whether they like it or not."
Few dared speak out against "Philadelphia" as an example of the kind of propaganda Kirk and Madsen had called for. By then, four years after the publication of the Kirk-Madsen blueprint, the American public had already been programmed. Homosexuality was now simply "an alternate lifestyle." Best of all, because of the persuaders embedded in thousands of media messages, society's acceptance of homosexuality seemed one of those spontaneous, historic turnings in time-yes, a kind of conversion. Nobody quite knew how it happened, but the nation had changed. We had become more sophisticated, more loving toward all, even toward those "afflicted" with the malady-excuse me, condition.
By 1992 the President of the United States said it was time that people who were openly gay and lesbian should not be ousted from the nation's armed forces. In 1993 the nation's media celebrated a huge outpouring of gay pride in Washington, D.C. Television viewers chanted along with half a million marchers, "Two, four, six, eight! Being gay is really great." We felt good about ourselves. We were patriotic Americans. We had abolished one more form of discrimination, wiped out one of society's most enduring afflictions: homophobia. Best of all, we knew now that gay was good, gay was free.
Excuse me. Gay is not good. Gay is not decidedly free. How do I know this? For more than 40 years, I have been in solidarity with hundreds of homosexuals, my patients, and I have spent most of my professional life engaged in exercising a kind of "pastoral care" on their behalf. But I do not help them by telling them they are O.K. when they are not O.K. Nor do I endorse their "new claim to self-definition and self-respect." Tell me: Have we dumped the idea that a man's self-esteem comes from something inside himself (sometimes called character) and from having a good education, a good job and a good family-and replaced that notion with this, that he has an affinity to love (and have sex with) other men?
In point of fact, many of my patients had character; they had an education; they were respected ad men and actuaries and actors. But they were still in pain-for one reason and one reason alone. They were caught up in this mysterious compulsion to have sex with other men. They were not free. They were not happy. And they wanted to see if they could change.
Over the years, I found that those of my patients who really wanted to change could do so, by attaining the insight that comes with a good psychoanalysis. Others found other therapies that helped them get to the bottom of their compulsions, all of which involved high motivation and hard work. Difficult as their therapeutic trips were, hundreds and thousands of homosexuals changed their ways. Many of my own formerly homosexual patients-about a third of them-are married today and happily so, with children. One-third may not sound like a very good average. But it is just about the same success rate you will find at the best treatment centers for alcoholics, like Hazelden in Minnesota and the Betty Ford Clinic in California.
Another third of my patients remain homosexual but not part of the gay scene. Now, after therapy, they still have same-sex sex, but they have more control over their impulses because now they understand the roots of their need for same-sex sex. Some of these are even beginning to turn on to the opposite sex. I add this third to my own success rate-so that I can tell people in all honesty that my batting average is .667 out of more than a thousand "at bats."
Of course, I could bat .997 if I told all my patients in pain that their homosexuality was "a special call" and "a liberation." That would endear me to everyone, but it would not help them. It would be a lie-despite recent pieces of pseudo-science bolstering the fantasy that gays are "born that way." The media put its immediate blessing on this "research," but we were oversold. Now we are getting reports, even in such gay publications as The Journal of Homosexuality, that the gay-gene studies and the gay-brain studies do not stand up to critical analysis. (The author of one so-called "gay-gene theory" is under investigation by the National Institutes of Health for scientific fraud.)
I was not surprised to hear this. My long clinical experience and a sizable body of psychoanalysis research dating all the way back to Freud tell me that most men caught up in same-sex sex are reacting, at an unconscious level, to something amiss with their earliest upbringing- overcontrolling mothers and abdicating fathers. Through long observation I have also learned that the supposedly liberated homosexual is never really free. In his multiple, same-sex adventures, even the most effeminate gay was looking to incorporate the manhood of others, because he was in a compulsive, never-ending search for the masculinity that was never allowed to build and grow in early childhood.
When I tried to explain these dynamics to the writer who helped me put together a kind of popular catechism on homosexuality, I found he had a hard time understanding what this "incorporation" meant. He said, "Your patient would be more manly if he took in the penis of another man? Sounds a little dumb. Would I run faster if I ate the flesh of a deer?"
I told him, "You have to understand that we are talking about feelings that come from deep in the unconscious mind. They are very primitive. In fact, if you have ever read any Indian lore, you may remember that Indians would, in fact, eat the flesh of a deer in order to become faster afoot. To us, that is a very primitive idea. But it had a mythic significance for a young Iroquois brave. And Madison Avenue still makes use of such mythic meanings. The ad people sell us things based on the notion that we will become what we eat or drink or possess." The point I was making was this: We do not understand same-sex sex until we realize that the dynamics involved are unconscious.
This is one reason why psychoanalysis is the tool that gets us to the heart of everything. Once my patients have achieved an insight into these dynamics-and realized there is no moral fault involved in their longtime and mysterious need-they have moved rather quickly on the road to recovery. Their consequent gratitude to me is overwhelming. And why shouldn't it be? They were formerly caught up in compulsions they could not understand, compulsions they could not control. Now they are in charge of their own lives.
Their former promiscuity may have looked a lot like "liberation." But it was not true freedom. It was a kind of slavery. And it was not a lifestyle. With the onset of AIDS, as the playwright and gay militant Larry Kramer said in a 1993 interview, it turned out to be a death style. I have had some patients tell me, "Doctor, if I weren't in therapy, I'd be dead."
Testimonials from my recovered patients make me feel my work is worthwhile-despite regular demands from the gay rights community for my silence. What would they have me do? Pack my bags, find a new profession, lock up a lifetime of research and analysis, hide my truth under a bushel? It is not my psychoanalytic duty to tell people they are marvelous when they are out of control, much less ask disingenuous rhetorical questions like, "What kind of God would afflict people with an 'objective disorder' in the disposition of their hearts?"
Giving God the credit for their gayness is a persistent refrain in much gay literature today, and I am saddened to see people of evident good will become unwitting parties to the blasphemy. Gays ascribe their condition to God, but he should not have to take that rap, any more than he should be blamed for the existence of other man-made maladies-like war, for instance, which has proven to be very unhealthy for humans and for all other living things. God does not make war. Men do.
And, when homosexuality takes on all the aspects of a political movement, it, too, becomes a war, the kind of war in which the first casualty is truth, and the spoils turn out to be our own children. An exaggeration? Well, what are we to think when militant homosexuals seek to lower the age of consensual sexual intercourse between homosexual men and young boys to the age of 14 (as they did in Hawaii in 1993) or 16 (as they tried to do in England in 1994)? In the Washington March for Gay Pride in 1993, they chanted, "We're here. We're queer. And we're coming after your children."
What more do we need to know?
[This article first appeared in America (November 18, 1995). Used by permission of the author.]
Monday, June 04, 2007
Church's skit using blackface criticized
Pastor says performance was meant to honor the history of gospel music
Associated Press
GASTONIA --Local black leaders are decrying a recent performance by three white men at a church who wore blackface while pantomiming traditional black hymns.
The performance at Pilgrim Baptist Church was meant to honor gospel music history and was not meant to offend anyone, said the Rev. Thomas Holbrooks Jr., pastor at the church.
"It was in no way making fun," Holbrooks said. "Lord knows we love the old spirituals they sing. That's why they did it."
Stephen York, an S.C. resident who attends Pilgrim Baptist, said he dressed in overalls, a flannel shirt and painted his face black for an event last month that featured lip-synched performances to prerecorded hymns by black singers.
York said he's not a racist and knows that white actors in black makeup often portrayed racist stereotypes. His church performance didn't do that, he said.
"I have some real good black friends," York said.
The church should have honored black music without the makeup, said David Moore, president of the nonprofit Gaston County Organization for Community Concerns, which seeks to improve the quality of life for local minorities.
"I have no problem with anyone that wants to sing black music, but to pretend that you're a black person when you're not a black person seems to be more of a mockery than a celebration," Moore said. "It's misguided at this time in our culture, in our society."
Gaston County NAACP president Clyde Walker voiced similar concerns.
Church members were told to dress like Americans in the 19th century for the skit held at the church's mother-daughter banquet on the weekend before Mother's Day, said Teresa Holbrooks, the pastor's wife. The black makeup was her idea, she said.
Performers also lip-synched to gospel music by white artists such as Loretta Lynn and Randy Travis.
"A little tiny blond woman sang Randy Travis. So I guess Randy Travis should be offended," Teresa Holbrooks said. "My husband pantomimed playing the piano. So I guess the piano should be offended."
