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A O Hell
As I have said before I hold
AOL and those who use it in low esteem. This has recently been reinforced.
I became aware that recently Steve Case, the Chief Executive Officer of
AOL donated 8.35 million dollars to the Westminster Academy in Fort Lauderdale
Florida. This alone is of no concern, but coupled with the fact that the
academy is owned by the Coral Ridge Ministry, caused me distress. Coral
Ridge Ministry, as you will recall are those fine folks who plastered ads
claiming they can "cure" homosexuality in the nation’s newspapers a few
years back.
I will pause a moment to
state the obvious:
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Homosexuality is neither a mental
nor a physical illness. Both the American Psychiatric Association and American
Psychiatry Association have removed homosexuality from their roster of
mental illnesses, and Sigmoid Freud, the father of contemporary Psychiatry
never saw a problem with it. Homosexuality is not an illness, and does
not need to be cured.
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Though groups like Exodus International
claim to be able to "cure" homosexuality, they refuse to document their
success/failure rates. Instead, they offer anecdotal evidence in the form
of selected spokes people who tell of how they were "cured".
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They offer no qualification
of their "cure". Recently John Polk, the former poster boy of Exodus International
was discovered attempting to pick up men in a notorious Washington DC gay
bar.
What I find most troubling about
the Coral Ridge Ministry is the how subtly they attack homosexuals and
homosexuality. A visit to their web page reveals nothing about their agenda.
The language used to present their message is carefully chosen to present
them as warm, caring and healing. They suggest that with "the love of Jesus
you can be free from the bonds of homosexuality" and claim theirs is a
message "of Hope… Not hate", but with all the sugar coating, the message
they are preaching is that there is something inherently wrong with homosexuality,
and only by being "cured" can a homosexual hope to find happiness.
Understanding all this, one
must wonder why the CEO of AOL, which offers gay and lesbian chat rooms
and other gay-themed web pages, would choose to financially support, directly
or indirectly, a church that is actively campaigning against homosexuals.
Mr. Case had made a statement about this, claiming he was unaware of the
organization’s past. Are we to believe anyone could give over eight million
dollars to any organization without doing basic research into the group’s
goals, objectives and history? I think not.
What remains to be seen is
how the gay community responds. AOL, despite it’s MANY faults, remains
the most popular ISP among homosexuals because it caters to them. What
will it take for people to open their eyes and see that this second rate
ISP, under developed and over burdened, has been taking advantage of them,
offering them a poor quality product at a premium price? If the knowledge
that a portion of you’re monthly service fee is going to support an organization
that publicly declares all homosexuals are "sick" is not enough to motivate
you into finding a REAL ISP, then I strongly believe you will get what
you deserve.
JM
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