Historic John Kerry apology deleted from US State Department website

• Joseph Patrick McCormick
• 24^th January 2017, 2:05 AM

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The apology by John Kerry was removed from the State Department website

In the first week of the Trump administration, a historic apology by John Kerry has been deleted from the State Department’s website.
America’s most powerful diplomat earlier this month issued a formal apology for discrimination “on the basis of perceived sexual orientation.”

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The apology applies to US diplomats who gave experienced prejudice and discrimination over the years.
Kerry has issued a statement saying that discrimination against LGBT State Department workers has gone on since the 1940s.
In a strongly worded statement, he says denying some people jobs and forcing diplomats out of the foreign service was “wrong then” and “wrong today.”

But the apology disappeared some time after Sunday.
The Wayback Machine, which shows archived versions of websites, shows that the apology was still showing as recently as Sunday.
Other information relating to the State Department’s special envoy for the human rights of LGBT persons, as well as Pride month observances has gone missing from the site.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) expressed concerns about the missing information.
“With each passing hour, the Trump administration continues to show the extent of their contempt for the enormous progress made over the past eight years,” said HRC President Chad Griffin.
“Secretary Kerry’s apology to LGBTQ employees and their families who were targeted, harassed, and fired set the right tone for the State Department, even if it couldn’t undo the damage done decades ago. It is outrageous that the new administration would attempt to erase from the record this historic apology for witch hunts that destroyed the lives of innocent Americans. The apology, along with the other important LGBTQ content that has been removed, should immediately be restored, and President Trump should condemn such behaviour at all departments and agencies.”
The press secretary for the Trump administration also today said he “doesn’t know” whether the new President will repeal discrimination protections for LGBT people.
The Trump administration took control at the weekend, immediately deleting all mention of LGBT rights from the White House website.
As Donald Trump and Mike Pence were sworn in today, a mostly-seamless transition took place online, with the new administration taking control of the official Presidential media channels.
But amid the exchanges of Twitter account handles and Facebook profiles, the official White House website has also been relaunched reflecting the new administration’s agenda.
The new President has never released a policy plan on LGBT issues, and also has no policy plan on HIV/AIDS. He failed to detail policies on either issue during his election campaign.
One of the new President’s only direct policy pledges it to sign the Republican-backed First Amendment Defence Act, a law that would permit forms of anti-LGBT discrimination on the grounds of religion.

Senate Confirms Dangerous Christian Extremist as CIA Director

Senate Confirms Dangerous Christian Extremist as CIA Director
by Michael Stone
The new head of the CIA is a dangerous Christian extremist who believes the U.S. is at war with Islam. Earlier today, the U.S. Senate confirmed Representative Mike Pompeo as the new head of the powerful Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Pompeo, a Kansas Republican and prominent member of the House Intelligence Committee, is a radical [Read More...]

Christian activists are losing their minds over these ads for shoes

By Jeff Taylor 13 hours ago

Volley Australia has launched an ad campaign called #Grassroots that has drawn the ire of one of the heads of the Australian Christian Lobby.
Wendy Francis, ACL Queensland director, tweeted out a warning to parents over the campaign, noting that the brand also sells shoes for children.
“Rooting” is slang for sex.
Samuel Leighton-Dore, one of the campaign’s models, told Mashable via Messenger, “I’m not sure she’s offended by the images so much as what they seem to represent, which is freedom, sexuality, and … footwear.”
Related: 20 advertisers that made 2016 gayer than ever
“I think when recognisably Australian brands start to embrace diversity and sexuality in their branding, it’s a sign that organisations like ACL are fighting the tide,” he added.
The campaign’s website has text on the homepage reading:

We’re sick of being socially engineered and we shun political correctness.
We’re young and we’re rooting for change.
We are children of the sun and are comfortable in our own skin, so don’t tell us who to love or how to be.
Our campaign is all about the celebration of sexual expression whilst remembering to stay safe.
For this reason we’ve joined arms with Ansell condoms in support of safe sex, as whilst we’re all about rooting, we believe in ‘safety first’.
So stay safe this summer and root for us, root for change, root for VOLLEY.
GET BEHIND US
#GRASSROOTS

Related: Another cute commercial, another Million Moms meltdown
Head here to watch the ad.

President Obama commutes sentence of Chelsea Manning

January 17, 2017

President Obama commutes sentence of Chelsea Manning

President Obama has sharply reduced the sentence of Chelsea Manning, the U.S. Army private convicted of leaking thousands of classified reports to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks in 2010, it was announced today.
Read more >>

The argument for paying for insurance with a credit card

Pogue’s Basics: Money - The argument for paying for insurance with a credit card

Progressive, GEICO, State Farm, Allstate, Esurance — all major insurance companies let you pay for your insurance with a credit or debit card.

And you know what? You should. Because if you have a rewards or cash-back credit card, you’re getting rewards or cash back on a big expense: the thousands a year you spend on insurance. If you have a typical $900-a-year car-insurance plan, your card will kick back $18 each year; if you spend $3,000 a year on homeowners insurance, your card will refund $60 every year.

You’ve got several kinds of insurance to pay. You’ve got utility bills, too—same trick. It adds up handsomely.

As a handy bonus, you can set up a recurring, automatic charge to your card each month. That way, you never forget to pay your premium (and never have to bother).

For a typical American consumer, this trick will save you about 150 bucks a year.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/pogues-basics-money-the-argument-for-paying-for-insurance-with-a-credit-card-215400124.html

Were Ancient Greeks gay or not according to Solon’s 9 laws?

Tomes of books have been written about homosexuality in ancient Greece

Tomes of books have been written about homosexuality in ancient Greece, and how widely accepted and prevalent it was in mainstream society. Historians’ opinions are partly founded on ancient vases found depicting homoerotic images between males. The reality is that this pottery cases represents a minute percentage of the thousands of ancient Greek items found in antiquity. There can be now doubt that relations between same sex couples were present in ancient Greece, as they were in all civilisations throughout history. But the question of how much mainstream society accepted these, or even condoned them is a totally different matter altogether. One of the misconceptions that has prevailed over the centuries in western literature is the misinterpretation of the ancient Greek word “pederastry” as meaning homosexual activities between a boy and a man.
But the actual meaning of the word is closer to “mentorship” than sexual relations. The word in ancient Greece for homosexuality was “kinaidos”, a practice widely shunned and giving rise to great shame to those engaged in such activity, to the degree that men caught having sexual relations could be stripped of their political rights, banished or even put to death. Solon was an Athenian statesman, lawmaker, and poet who was remembered particularly for his efforts to legislate against political, economic, and moral decline in archaic Athens. If the legislations of laws is a measure of societal will and inclinations, then his laws would actually suggest that homosexuality was a shameful and immoral practice to be avoided. According to his laws, any man practising homosexuality was:

• banned from becoming a member of the council of nine;
• was banned from standing for elections as a priest;
• was banned from being a citizen’s advocate;
• was not allowed to exercise power in or outside the city of Athens;
• was not permitted to be sent an emissary of war;
• was banned from expressing his opinions;
• was banned from entering public temples;
• was banned from being wreathed in races;
• was not allowed to enter the agora.

All these violations were punishable by death, according to Solon’s Laws.
Read more here.

Salvation Army failed to protect boys from abuse for decades

Salvation Army failed to protect boys from abuse for decades, report says

Royal commission found a ‘culture of frequent physical punishment’ which was sometimes brutal and accompanied by sexual abuse

The report found much of the abuse went unreported by the victims out of fear. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP

Helen Davidson

@heldavidson

Tuesday 17 March 2015 06.09 GMT Last modified on Thursday 27 October 2016 00.27 BST

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The Salvation Army failed to protect young boys from sexual, physical and psychological abuse by officers and employees in four of its homes over decades, the royal commission has found.
The findings in a report released on Tuesday follow public hearings into abuse at four Salvation Army boys’ homes in NSW and Queensland from 1956 until their closure. Documentary evidence from the homes at Indooroopilly, Gill, Riverview and Bexley suggested the abuse stretched back to the 1940s.
The royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse examined how the Salvation Army responded to allegations and evidence it received of child abuse – sexual and otherwise – by officers and staff, including five named Salvation Army officers, and other resident boys.

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The Salvation Army had earlier revealed that 115 of 157 complaints received by January 2014 related to sexual abuse of former residents of these four boys’ homes.
The report found there was a “culture of frequent physical punishment” which was on occasion brutal and accompanied by sexual abuse. Much went unreported by the victims out of fear. In most cases when boys did report sexual abuse to a manager or officer they were punished, accused of lying or ignored.
Among its 36 findings, the royal commission noted the Salvation Army accepted that much of the alleged abuse did occur, and that accusations often went uninvestigated, including by senior officers at divisional and territorial headquarters.

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Boys lived a highly regimented life in the homes, were called by numbers and given little emotional support, the report found.
Despite state law restricting corporal punishment to a method of “last resort”, only to be inflicted with an “approved cane or strap” and never in front of other children, punishment occurred regularly and excessively in all four homes, including in “punishment parades”.
“Punishment was also brutal at times. At Riverview, one boy was dangled head first into a well. Another was tied to a tree with a chain attached to a metal collar. Others were put into a ‘cage’. One was forced to crawl around an oval naked holding a chicken in the air while others stood by laughing,” the report read.
The royal commission concluded the Salvation Army’s policies and procedures were “inadequate to oversee managers who were, in some cases, involved in abuse” and had a high degree of control over the boys and staff. Most officers began work with no child-specific training.
Of five Salvation army officers specifically examined in the hearings, two worked at all four homes and only one ever faced disciplinary proceedings. Two have died.
“The Salvation Army has since paid considerable compensation to former residents affected by [Victor] Bennett’s conduct, but Bennett himself died without facing disciplinary action or criminal prosecution,” the report found.
The Salvation Army put children at further risk of sexual abuse by not removing one man, Captain Donald Schultz, from his position at Indooroopilly in 1975. Between 1965 and 1977 officers at the centre of allegations and evidence of abuse were transferred between the four homes.

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The report found Queensland department of children’s services staff were aware of the abuse, including rape allegations, but were “slow to respond”.
The NSW department of child welfare “regularly reported on the [NSW] homes but rarely recorded allegations of child sexual abuse”. Officers’ reports were cursory, generalised and included only occasional comments on the children’s care.
During the February 2014 hearings the commission heard the Salvation Army unreservedly apologise to victims. It has also offered support for a voluntary compensation scheme for victims but said it would “resist having to contribute” to funding unless it retained some authority over staffing, decision making and the ability to question costs.
The royal commission has recommended a $4.38bn redress scheme with no fixed end date as the “ideal” proposal.