Florida Legislature Once Published Anti-Gay Pamphlet Full of Softcore Porn

Florida Legislature Once Published Anti-Gay Pamphlet Full of Softcore Porn

June is officially LGBT Pride Month in America, but Miami-Dade’s only local celebration — Miami Beach’s gay pride party — is held in April. So instead of showing you footage of parades or slide shows of revelers, we decided to take the opportunity to look back at one of the gayest things ever produced by the Florida state government — which conversely was also one of the most homophobic things ever published by the Florida government.

How gay? Well, this was the title page of the officially published state document:

Florida Legislature Once Published Anti-Gay Pamphlet Full of Softcore Porn (2)

The pamphlet, dubbed the “Purple Pamphlet” for its lavender-hued front cover, was the work of the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee. The committee was the brainchild of Charley Eugene Johns, a former governor who had taken office only after the death of his predecessor and was then promptly kicked out by voters and forced to return to the legislature. Because hunting for commies was all the rage in the late 1950s, Johns and his committee tried to do just that.

They searched everywhere — the NAACP, the historically black college Florida A&M University, anti-Castro groups, pro-Castro groups — OK, not everywhere, but you get the picture.

Turns out the committee wasn’t very good at rooting out communists in Florida, so in the ’60s, it turned its sights on homosexuals. As people are now generally aware, homosexuals, unlike organized communists, have existed everywhere throughout human history, so the committee was much more successful at finding them in the Sunshine State.

The committee first went searching Florida’s schools, causing the firing of 39 professors and deans from Florida universities for suspected homosexuality and the revoking of the licenses of 71 public schoolteachers. Several students were also expelled for being homosexual.

Emboldened, the committee members then took a look at homosexuality in Florida outside the world of academics — and, boy, did they find some things that excited them. The result of their work was the so-called Purple Pamphlet, whose introduction stresses that the document may be of use to “every individual concerned with the moral climate of the state.”

Take a look at page 6 of the pamphlet!

Florida Legislature Once Published Anti-Gay Pamphlet Full of Softcore Porn (3)

“Homosexuality is, and far too long has been, a skeleton in the closet of society,” the pamphlet begins, and then it’s just a bunch of homophobic garbage from there on.

But in between the anti-gay rants is a liberal sprinkling of softcore gay photos. How about some more of those pics?

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There are more photos in the pamphlet, but they include images of little boys, so we won’t reproduce them here.

Aside from the photos, of particular note is the pamphlet’s extensive glossary, which painstakingly details gay slang. Some of the words are still in use today, and some are decidedly not.

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Florida Legislature Once Published Anti-Gay Pamphlet Full of Softcore Porn (6)
Florida Legislature Once Published Anti-Gay Pamphlet Full of Softcore Porn (7)
What came first, the chicken or the twink?
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It turns out the printing of this pamphlet did not go over too well. Some critics called it state-sponsored pornography, and fellow legislators voted to cut all funding for the committee in the next session.

Naturally, the pamphlet has gone on to achieve cult status in Florida.
Complete Article HERE!

Gay Catholics Will Be Silenced During Pope Francis’ Philadelphia Visit: Archbishop

By Philip Pullella

Homosexuals can attend a Catholic family congress in Philadelphia during Pope Francis’ U.S. visit this year but won’t be allowed to use it to attack Church teachings, the city’s archbishop said on Thursday.

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“We don’t want to provide a platform at the meeting for people to lobby for positions contrary to the life of our Church,” said Archbishop Charles Chaput. The Catholic Church teaches homosexuality is not sinful but homosexual acts are.

“We are not providing that kind of lobbying opportunity,” he told a news conference presenting the September 22-27 congress known as the World Meeting of Families.

Gay Catholic groups and families headed by gay Catholics had asked for an official presence at the gathering to present their view that homosexuals should be fully welcomed in the Church.

The pope will attend the last two days of the Philadelphia meeting at the end of a trip that will take him to Cuba as well as New York and Washington.

About 15,000 people from around the world are expected to attend the family congress to hear lectures and take part in workshops on family issues before the pope arrives to close the gathering.

“We hope that everyone feels welcome and certainly people who have experienced same-sex attraction are welcome like everyone else,” Chaput said.

Bishop John McIntyre, also of Philadelphia, said the only event dedicated to gay issues at the congress will be one by Ron Belgau, a celibate gay Catholic and founder of the Spiritual Friendship Initiative.

Belgau blogs and lectures about how Catholic gays can live by the Church’s teaching.

McIntyre said Belgau “will talk about his own coming to terms with his sexual orientation and the manner in which he embraced the teachings of the Church” and his mother will also speak.

The program for an event Belgau addressed last year at the University of Notre Dame said he spoke of “a faithful and orthodox response to the challenge of homosexuality”.

Catholic gay couples have contested the Church’s ban on homosexual activity, saying it deprives them of the intimacy that is part of a loving relationship.

It will be the eighth World Meeting of Families since the event was started by the late Pope John Paul in 1994 to promote traditional family values. It is held every three years in a different city.

Organizers said they expect up to two million people to attend the final event, a Mass by the pope on Benjamin Franklin Parkway, a boulevard that runs through they city.

Catholic priest says he was fired from New Jersey college’s ministry over support of pro-gay marriage No H8 Campaign

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he former director of New Jersey school Seton Hall University’s campus ministry lost his job because he agreed on social media with a gay marriage equality group, Rev. Warren Hall said Friday on Twitter.

The tweet, which has been taken down, said he got canned for using his Facebook page to back California-based NoH8 Campaign, which began in 2008 in response to the state’s Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage.

“I’ve been fired from SHU for posting a pic on FB supporting LGBT ‘No H8’.” Hall previously wrote, according to NJ Advance Media. “I’m sorry it was met with this response. I’ll miss my work here.”

Representatives for the South Orange-based Roman Catholic university told the publication that the priest was appointed by the Archbishop of Newark and “serves at his discretion.”

A screenshot shows the tweet in which Hall announced he was fired Friday.

A spokesman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, Jim Goodness, declined to disclose the reasons for Hall’s dismissal in an interview with NJ Advance Media. He said Hall was being reassigned within the archdiocese, which covers Bergen, Union, Hudson and Essex counties.

Goodness didn’t immediately return a request for comment early Sunday morning.

The move immediately provoked alumni and students, who started a Change.org petition demanding his reinstatement.

A file photo shows an entrance to Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J., where controversy has erupted over the firing of the Catholic university’s campus ministry director.

“The Archdiocese of Newark’s decision to fire Father Warren Hall from Seton Hall University is in line with neither the teachings of Jesus Christ nor the words of Pope Francis,” the group’s letter to the archdiocese said.

The petition, which had garnered 1,225 signers by early Sunday morning, said Hall “contributed greatly to the academic and spiritual lives of the students.”

Efforts to contact Hall on Sunday morning were unsuccessful. He thanked his supporters in a Tweet he posted later Friday.

warren hallThe controversy over a mainstay who provided spiritual guidance to the school’s sports teams erupted as the Pirates men’s basketball team attempted to recruit potential University of Massachusetts transfer Derrick Gordon, the first ever openly gay Division I player, the Asbury Park Press reported.

In 2010, the school began offering a course on the politics of gay marriage over the objections of Newark Archbishop John J. Myers, who heads both the Board of Regents and the Board of Trustees, the Newark Star-Ledger reported at the time. The school went ahead with the undergraduate seminar despite Myers’ objection that the class legitimized a point of view “running contrary to what the church teaches,” according to the publication.
Complete Article HERE!

German Catholic Church opens labour law more to divorced and gays

By Tom Heneghan

(CURA Catholic hospital in Bad Honnef, Germany, February 2014/Leit)
CURA Catholic hospital in Bad Honnef, Germany

Germany’s Roman Catholic Church, an influential voice for reforms prompted by Pope Francis, has decided lay Catholic employees who divorce and remarry or form gay civil unions should no longer automatically lose their jobs.

Catholic bishops have voted to adjust Church labour law “to the multiple changes in legal practice, legislation and society” so employee lifestyles should not affect their status in the country’s many Catholic schools, hospitals and social services.

The change came as the worldwide Catholic Church debates loosening its traditional rejection of remarriage after a divorce and of gay sex, reforms for which German bishops and theologians have become prominent spokesmen.

“The new rule opens the way for decisions that do justice to the situations people live in,” Alois Glueck, head of the lay Central Committee of German Catholics, said after the decision on new labour guidelines was announced on Tuesday.

Over two-thirds of Germany’s 27 dioceses voted for the change, a Church spokesman said, indicating some opposition.

There is no worldwide Catholic policy on lay employees. German law allows churches to have their own labour rules that can override national guidelines.

But German courts have begun limiting the scope of Church labour laws and public opinion reacts badly when a Catholic hospital’s head doctor is fired for remarrying or a teacher is sacked after her lesbian union is discovered.

Munich Cardinal Reinhard Marx, head of the bishops conference and a senior adviser to Pope Francis, has been a leading proponent of making the two-millennia-old Church more open to modern lifestyles that its doctrine officially rejects.

A worldwide synod of bishops at the Vatican last October was split on how flexible the Church should be in welcoming openly gay or divorced and remarried Catholics. A follow-up synod is due this October, with its result in doubt as debate continues.

Cologne Cardinal Rainer Woelki, the Francis-style pastor the pope appointed to Germany’s richest diocese, said the labour law did not negate official Church teaching that marriage is indissoluble, but brought it into line with actual practice.

“People who divorce and remarry are rarely fired,” he told the KNA news agency. “The point is to limit the consequences of remarriage or a same-sex union to the most serious cases (that would) compromise the Church’s integrity and credibility.”

Passages in the new version of Church labour law say that publicly advocating abortion or race hate, or officially quitting the Church, would be a “grave breach of loyalty” that could lead to an employee being fired.

Students Fight For Teacher After Nebraska Catholic School Fires Him For Being Gay

Skutt Catholic High School declined to renew the contract of teacher and speech coach Matt Eledge after he told them he was getting married to a man. He said school officials told him he’d have to end the relationship to keep his job.

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Matt Eledge, center, with members of his speech team. Facebook: skyhawkspeech

In March, Skutt Catholic High School speech coach Matt Eledge led his team to their fourth consecutive state championship. Pictures from the day show the group of students, from Nebraska, beaming and clutching a huge gold trophy with Eledge in the center.

But soon after those photos were taken, school officials told Eledge his contract would not be renewed for the following school year. The decision came after Eledge informed the school that he and his partner, Elliot, were planning on getting married.

Eledge told BuzzFeed News that he realized he could lose his job if he married another man – but he hoped the school, overseen by the Archdiocese of Omaha, would overlook it.

“I had a thought, maybe they will make this work out,” he said.

But, according to Eledge, the school wouldn’t budge.

Now, former and current students, parents, and other community members are rallying behind Eledge and petitioning the school to allow the beloved teacher to remain at the school.

“A living example of what it means to be a SkyHawk, Mr. Eledge has spent hundreds of hours striving to make sure that the students at Skutt have an incredible high school experience,” an online petition reads. “He soars above the rest in accolades, talent, and character for Skutt Catholic.”

The petition has nearly 68,000 signatures as of Tuesday.

Matt Eledge with his speech team. Facebook: skyhawkspeech

Eledge said his experience teaching and coaching at Skutt has been everything he had hoped his career would be. He said he considers the Skutt community a family.

“It’s a job that I feel gives me joy and gives me meaning,” he said.

But he was later told by the administration that if he wanted to return to the school, he would have to end his relationship with his partner.

Officials from Skutt told BuzzFeed News they could not comment on employment matters. However, the school defended its decision to not ask Eledge back in a letter to its school community.

“If a staff member cannot commit to Catholic Church teachings and doctrines, he or she cannot continue to be on staff at Skutt Catholic,” the school president John F. McMahon said in the letter, which was reviewed by BuzzFeed News. “As a Catholic school we stand firmly with the Archdiocese of Omaha and our Catholic church in the support and upholding of the Church’s teachings as they are defined.”

Eledge said he was completely shocked by the request. But he was also surprised by the petition, started by former student Kacie Hughes.

Matt and his former student, Kacie Hughes. facebook.com

Hughes, who is now a student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, told BuzzFeed News that if Skutt wants to fire Eledge for being gay, they would need to fire every other teacher who has broken any Catholic teaching.

“If you want to fire him for not abiding by Christian law, then you better start firing every teacher on the pill, a teacher who has gotten a divorce without an annulment or a teacher who has gotten a vasectomy,” she said. “They won’t fire these teachers, but it’s okay for Matt because he’s gay.”

Hughes said she thinks Skutt should “follow in the footsteps of Pope Francis and realize that this is no longer 1950.”

“Times are changing, and they need to get with it,” she said. “I started this petition to make a difference, which is something that my alma mater Skutt Catholic instilled in me.”

Matt and Elliot Facebook: skyhawkspeech

The 28-year-old was hired at Skutt after graduating from college and said he realized the implications of working at a Catholic school as a gay man.

At the time he was young and single and happy to be working, he said, but he knew he never could be open with who he really was.

“It always was a bit fearful for me to work in that environment,” he said.

Eledge said that as part of their contract, teachers at Skutt must agree to “support the teachings of the Catholic church.”

Deacon Timothy F. McNeil of the Archdiocese of Omaha told BuzzFeed News that the school would not renew the contracts of teachers who conduct themselves in “violation of Catholic Church teaching.”

“Teachers know what they are getting into and accepting when they sign the contract,” he said.

A federal judge struck down Nebraska’s same-sex marriage ban, but an appeals court stayed that decision – keeping the ban in place until further legal arguments are made.

Eledge said in practice he operated on a so-called “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. He never spoke openly spoke about his sexuality at work, even after he began dating his partner, Elliot, a few years ago.

But in 2014, Elliot’s mother was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer. Eledge said that although he and Elliot had talked about marriage before, they decided to go ahead with it so that she could be at the ceremony.

Along with the petition, former and current students and others are also showing support for Eledge on social media using the hashtag #LetMattTeach.

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Eledge said he was reluctant at first to address the issue because he wanted to make sure he wasn’t just speaking with his “ego.”

However, he said, he’s come to realize that his story has “represented something way bigger.”Eledge said both he and Elliot are “more than anything totally and 100% moved and humbled and in awe of the way people are reaching out.”

“The support from the community has made me feel very loved and accepted,” he said.

Eledge said that he is not sure what the future holds for him. He will continue to teach at Skutt until the end of his current contract in May, and he said he has been exploring possible future teaching opportunities.

However, he said it breaks his heart to leave his students and team, which is a community that he considers family.

“Despite some of the pain from this situation,” he said, “I love and care about everyone at my school.”

Complete Article HERE!