t r u t h o u t | Non-Christians Need Not Apply

t r u t h o u t | Non-Christians Need Not Apply | Monday 11 January 2010 | by: Krista J. Kapralos | GlobalPost

World vision hires only Christians under its $250 million in government foreign aid grants. Obama promised to change that. So why hasn't he?

Bamako, Mali - For a year and a half, Bara Kassambara kept his mouth shut.

Every day, all of his coworkers paused for prayer time. There were frequent Bible studies, and constant talk about Jesus. Kassambara attended the required events, but otherwise quietly focused on his work: bringing clean water to rural Mali.

“I think many people at World Vision just believed that I was a Christian,” said Kassambara, a Muslim in a predominantly Islamic country.

Fluent in English and with years of development work on his resume, World Vision hired Kassambara to work on the West Africa Water Initiative — a project to provide safe drinking water to stave off water-borne diseases that run rampant in the region.

It was a rare hire for World Vision, Kassambara said; he only got the job because it was a temporary position. When World Vision stepped down as lead agency on the project in late 2008, Kassambara took a similar job with another organization.

“The goal of World Vision is clearly written: to promote Christianity worldwide,” Kassambara said. “I knew this was going on. I knew the rules of the game. If their goal is to promote Christianity, why should they hire a Muslim?”

World Vision, based outside of Seattle, is one of the largest recipients of development grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the federal government’s foreign aid arm. The organization received $281 million in U.S. grants in 2008, up from $220 million in 2007 and $261 million in 2006, according to World Vision documents. Those grants, amounting to about a quarter of the organization’s total U.S. budget, came in the form of both cash and food. ...

Madfloridian's Journal - Battle Continues Over Catholic Takeover of Hospitals in Denver

Madfloridian's Journal - Battle Continues Over Catholic Takeover of Hospitals in Denver

Posted by madfloridian in General Discussion
Tue Jan 05th 2010, 01:06 AM

A controversial move to transfer operational control of three secular Denver-area hospitals to a Catholic healthcare system expected to take place on December 31 appears to be on hold pending federal approval.

Looks like the FTC is taking a second look at this move.

From RH Reality Check:

Seething Battle Continues Over Catholic Takeover of Hospitals in Denver

Backroom deals, multiple lawsuits and $600 million dollars mark the Sisters of Charity attempt to force religious medical directives on non-sectarian medical centers in Colorado. A controversial move to transfer operational control of three secular Denver-area hospitals to a Catholic healthcare system expected to take place on December 31 appears to be on hold pending federal approval.

The unexpected delay by the Federal Trade Commission to bless the transaction may provide local critics with a last gasp effort to continue fighting the deal. Community members and medical professionals contend the transfer would unfairly subject comprehensive reproductive health and end-of-life care to church doctrine over patients' needs. The Catholic church considers abortion, contraception, elective sterilization and termination of invasive life support as "intrinsically evil" and refuses to provide these medical services or respect patients' advance directives.

I did not realize this was going on.

The disputed takeover in Denver exemplifies the very serious implications for the 127 non-denominational hospitals that succumbed to merger fever with cash-flush Catholic health care systems in the 1990s. According to a study by Catholics for Choice, half of merged secular-Catholic hospitals suspended most or all of their reproductive health care services. Eighty-two percent denied emergency contraception to rape victims -- and more than a third refused to provide a referral.

..."While the cases played out in court and behind closed doors in the private arbitration hearing, Colorado state lawmakers worked to minimize the damage of losing hospital-based reproductive healthcare services.

Issues of religious doctrinal interference in physician-patient decision making came to a head in 2007 when Gov. Bill Ritter signed a law requiring hospitals and pharmacies to provide sexual assault victims information about emergency contraception. However, a conscience clause was added to the bill in order to get conservative Democrats on board after heavy lobbying by the Colorado Conference of Bishops.

Conservative Democrats won this one, it appears.

In a hospital owned by the Catholic church, that "conscience clause" would just about end certain rights of women.
...
..."The nonprofit management and operational structure of the hospitals is complex, and will remain complex if the deal is finalized. But for patients, the change means the Lafayette and Wheat Ridge hospitals would no longer provide abortions, tubal ligations or vasectomies. Also, patients' advocates worry hospital staff would no longer provide emergency contraception or other services now available but in conflict with Catholic directives.

I had not been aware that religious hospitals like these were tax exempt. Yet they can impose their religious views on women and gays.

"Keenan and O'Brien said the bishops, in accepting vast federal funding for Catholic hospitals and charities, "never question their own ability to lawfully manage funds from separate sources to ensure that tax dollars don't finance religious practices. Yet they reject the idea that others could do the same. This is the very definition of hypocrisy."

Hypocrisy compounded by what the bishops are doing in Washington, D.C., when it comes to the issue of same-sex marriage, their other primary fixation.

There, the local archdiocese has threatened to shut down its extensive social service programs for the needy if the city goes ahead and legalizes same-sex marriage.

So much for the stated mission of protecting the vulnerable.

American Christianism In Africa - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

American Christianism In Africa - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

The NYT has just discovered the Ugandan bill, inspired by key American Christianists, that will round up, jail and execute homosexuals. (Non-MSM readers would have been following this essential story for months on Box Turtle Bulletin). The multi-media page is superb. What's fascinating is that the rhetoric the Christianists use is the same in Africa as it is in America, but in Africa, the public consensus is so anti-gay already that the consequences of this demonization are felt much more immediately and brutally. Here's the American rhetoric:

For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”

If a movement is "evil" and trying to "defeat" all families, as evangelicals claim of gays (and Nazis and Communists said of gays), then of course some already predisposed against gays would believe it is essential to identify, round up, forcibly cure or execute this foul threat from within. And yet the Americans now claim they are shocked, shocked! by the results of their strategy. Maybe they are.

...

But if you ever wondered what the ultimate fantasies of the Christianist right are with respect to gay people, just look at what they say when they think no American is listening.

(Photo: an execution of two young men accused of homosexuality in Iran three four and a half years ago. American evangelicals helped craft a Ugandan law that would replicate Iran's policy in Africa.)