Monday, May 19, 2014


News Clips For The Day


1939 letter found, plea to FDR to save Jewish kids – NBC
May 18, 2014

Last month, 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon told the remarkable story of Sir Nicholas Winton, a stockbroker in London who saved 669 Czech children-- most of them Jewish--from the Nazis during WWII.

England took in almost all of the 669 children. Winton, now 104 years old, told 60 Minutes he had made a desperate plea for help to the United States back in 1939. He said he had written a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, describing the plight of the Czech children and asking that America grant refuge to a number of them.
"But the Americans wouldn't take any, which was a pity," Sir Nick said on the 60 Minutes broadcast. "We could've got a lot more out."

David Langbart, an archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration, happened to be watching 60 Minutes when the story aired, and he was struck by Winton's story.

"The man has an incredible amount of chutzpah," Langbart says in an interview with 60 Minutes Overtime. "I thought this is an incredibly caring man who put himself on the line to help people that he didn't even know."

After seeing the story, Langbart decided to look for evidence of Sir Nick's letter to FDR in the Department of State records at the National Archives. "And lo and behold, I came up with hisoriginal letter to President Roosevelt," Langbart says. The whereabouts of the document had been a mystery for almost 75 years.
Vanessa Fica, the story's co-producer, says she got "goose bumps" when she learned of Langbart's discovery.

"Winton scholars and even his own children were shocked when we told them the letter had been found," Fica tells 60 Minutes Overtime. "I am grateful that Winton, now approaching the age of 105, will be able to see his letter for the first time in 75 years."

Winton's "craft" is evident in the letter he wrote to Roosevelt, says Fica: "He kept it poignant and respectful while conveying a real sense of urgency."

The letter, dated May 16th, 1939, addresses President Roosevelt as "Esteemed Sir."

"Perhaps people in America do not realize how little is being and has been done for refugee children in Czechoslovakia," the letter reads. "Is it possible for anything to be done to help us with this problem in America?... It is hard to state our case forcibly in a letter, but we trust to your imagination to realize how desperately urgent the situation is."

Also in the archives, Langbart uncovered a chain of internal government communications about Winton's letter.

According to Langbart, after the White House received Winton's letter, it referred the request to the Department of State for action. Shortly thereafter, the Department of State forwarded the letter to the President's Advisory Committee on Political Refugees, suggesting that organizations involved might be interested in Winton's cause.

Langbart also found another memo from the Department of State that instructed the U.S. Embassy in London to "acknowledge receipt of Mr. Winton's letter" and "advise him that the United States Government is unable, in the absence of specific legislation, to permit immigration in excess of that provided for by existing immigration laws."

The U.S. officially denied Winton's request in a letter sent by the U.S. Embassy in London. The original copy of that note, which Winton kept in his personal scrapbook, appeared on the 60 Minutes broadcast.

When asked for his reaction to the U.S.'s response to Sir Nick's plea, Langbart shared that he had roots in Eastern Europe and members of his family had perished in the Holocaust.
"Personally, I wish that the United States government could have done more," Langbart says. "I'm not sure that anybody really recognized what was coming as far as the Holocaust. The United States opened its doors to the extent that the law allowed at the time. I wish it could have been more-- but it wasn't."

Winton's full letter to President Roosevelt is as follows:


"Esteemed Sir,

Perhaps people in America do not realize how little is being and has been done for refugee children in Czechoslovakia. They have to depend entirely on private guarantors to get into England, which means that somebody has to take full responsibility for maintenance, upkeep, and education, until they are 18 years of age. No other country is taking an interest in them except for Sweden, which took 35 children last February. We at this office have case-papers and photos of over 5000 children, quite apart from a further 10,000 whom we estimate have to register. Actually, so far, we have brought only about 120 into England.

In Bohemia and Slovakia today, there are thousands of children, some homeless and starving, mostly without nationality, but they certainly all have one thing in common: there is no future, if they are forced to remain where they are. Their parents are forbidden work and the children are forbidden schooling, and apart from the physical discomforts, which all this signifies, the moral degradation is immeasurable. Yet since Munich, hardly anything has been done for the children in Czechoslovakia. Many of the children are quite destitute having had to move more than once since they originally fled from Germany.

Is it possible for anything to be done to help us with this problem in America? It is hard to state our case forcibly in a letter, but we trust to your imagination to realize how desperately urgent the situation is.


Believe me, Esteemed Sir, with many thanks,

Your obedient Servant,

Nicholas Winton."




A letter to FDR is published in this article from Sir Nicholas Winton, 105 years old, who was a stockbroker in London when he saved 669 Czech children-- most of them Jewish--from the Nazis during WWII was. Like Oskar Schindler he was moved by the children's plight to intervene. I looked on the Internet for more such good Samaritans and found a long list of entries. Before the US entered the war many people around the world were trying to help the Jews. That warms my heart. The efforts of good people to make a difference almost makes up for the lack of support for the underdog which so many times the majority will show. So many people are either lacking in sympathy themselves, or afraid to step up and help for fear of being injured. Embarrassingly, when Winton wrote FDR he declined to take any of the children into US custody. I would like to know the reason why he didn't help. Was he afraid of Hitler?

David Langbart, an archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration, speaks admiringly of Winton, saying “'The man has an incredible amount of chutzpah,' in an interview with 60 Minutes Overtime. 'I thought this is an incredibly caring man who put himself on the line to help people that he didn't even know.'” Langbart then looked in the National Archives until he came up with the letter. Continuing to track documents, he found references to the letter and finally the reason for the denial of aid. The “Department of State 'instructed the U.S. Embassy in London to 'acknowledge receipt of Mr. Winton's letter' and 'advise him that the United States Government is unable, in the absence of specific legislation, to permit immigration in excess of that provided for by existing immigration laws.'"

I think if FDR had really wanted to intervene he would have at least made a strong effort to push Congress to change the laws and admit some of the children, if all of them couldn't be accepted into the US. Was the anti-Jewish feeling in the US involved in that, I wonder?

The following information about US policy around 1938 is from the “about.com” website. It blames US isolationism for our slowness to enter the war or help the Jews. The US government did recall our ambassador to Germany in 1938 and revoked trade agreements with them. Like much of Europe at the time, however, they didn't want to go to war again. There was widespread “war weariness” after WWI.


http://usforeignpolicy.about.com/od/countryprofil2/p/usgermany.htm
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Jewish Persecution:

Tensions resurfaced when Hitler starting targeting the Jewish population which eventually escalated into the holocaust. Trade agreements between the United States and Germany were eventually revoked and the American ambassador recalled in 1938. However some critics state that, due to the isolationist tendency of the U.S. politics at the time, America did not take sufficient steps to prevent Hitler's rise and the persecution of Jews.

World War II:

As in World War I, the U.S. initially took a neutral position. In the early phase of the war, the U.S. enacted a trade embargo against all the warring nations and this isolationist position did not change until the fall of France and the real prospect of the fall of Britain when the United States began supplying weapons to the anti-German side. Tensions escalated when the United States began sending warships to protect weapon supplies, which eventually fell under attack from German submarines. After Pearl Harbor, the United States officially entered the war which ended with the surrender of Germany in 1945.




Putin orders Russian troops back from Ukraine border, Kremlin claims again – NBC
APMay 19, 2014

MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered troops deployed in regions near Ukraine to return to their home bases, the Kremlin said Monday.

The move appears to indicate Putin's intention to de-escalate the crisis over Ukraine, the worst in Russia's relations with the West since the end of the Cold War.

The West has protested the deployment of 40,000 Russian troops near the border with Ukraine, seeing it as a possible preparation for grabbing more land after the annexation of Crimea in March.

Putin has previously said he has ordered troops to return from the area near the Ukraine border, but the United States and NATO have said they see no sign of a pullout and have threatened more sanctions if Russia tries to derail Ukraine's presidential vote set for Sunday.

Speaking to the Reuters news agency Monday about the reports of Putin's new order, an unnamed NATO officer said the military coalition had still not seen any evidence that Russian forces were pulling back from the border.

"We haven't seen any movement to validate (the report)," the officer told Reuters on the condition of anonymity.

The Russian Defense Ministry insisted that there were no buildup near the border, saying that the troops in the regions in western Russia are involved in regular training.

Putin went one step further Monday, ordering Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to pull out forces involved in such training in the Rostov, Belgorod and Bryansk regions, according to a statement released by the Kremlin.

Putin also voiced support for round tables in Ukraine, which were held last week under a peace plan brokered by Switzerland, which currently chairs the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

He urged the Ukrainian authorities to immediately end a military operation in eastern Ukraine.




40,000 Russian troops is enough to invade Ukraine, and more than are needed to simply reestablish their control of Crimea. In spite of Putin's claim that he has ordered these troops away from the Ukrainian border, a NATO officer says that there has been no troop movement so far. “He urged the Ukrainian authorities to immediately end a military operation in eastern Ukraine.” As far as this article goes, there has been no response by Kiev to Putin's “urging” that they remove their troops from Eastern Ukraine. Clearly, Russia should move it's troops first. They are the aggressors. Kiev is simply defending its territory.




South Korea says North Korea "must disappear soon" after racist, sexist slurs
CBS/AP May 12, 2014

SEOUL, South Korea -- A rhetorical battle between the rival Koreas intensified Monday with a South Korean official saying North Korea "must disappear soon."

The comments, which will likely draw a furious response from Pyongyang, followed a series of sexist and racist slurs by North Korea against the leaders of South Korea and the United States. Pyongyang's state media likened South Korean President Park Geun-hye to an "old prostitute" and U.S. President Barack Obama to a "wicked black monkey" in recent dispatches.

South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok told reporters at a briefing in Seoul that North Korea isn't a real country and exists for the benefit of only one person, a reference to dictator Kim Jong Un. He said the North has no human rights or public freedoms.

South Korea has been highly critical of North Korea's nuclear and missile programs, including recent rocket and missile tests and apparent preparations for a fourth nuclear test. But the comments from Seoul on Monday are stronger than normal. South Korea tries to avoid publicly talking about anything that could be interpreted as a collapse of the North Korean government because of worries that Pyongyang would raise tensions.

Pyongyang has been ramping up its rhetoric against Seoul and Washington since Obama and Park met in Seoul last month. During that visit, Obama said that it may be time to consider further sanctions against North Korea and that the U.S. will not hesitate to use its military might to defend its allies.

South Korea has called the North's verbal insults against Park immoral and unacceptable. The U.S. State Department described the North's racist slurs against Obama as "disgusting."

"While the North Korean Government-controlled media are distinguished by their histrionics, these comments are particularly ugly and disrespectful," said National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden, according to Sky News.

Worries about renewed tension on the Korean Peninsula have recently deepened with Pyongyang threatening to conduct its fourth nuclear test to protest what it calls U.S. and South Korean hostility.

North Korea's barrage of rocket and missile tests earlier this year drew condemnation from South Korea, the United States and others. The North says the tests were part of military training aimed at coping with annual Seoul-Washington springtime military drills that Pyongyang calls an invasion rehearsal.




"'Pyongyang's state media likened South Korean President Park Geun-hye to an 'old prostitute' and U.S. President Barack Obama to a 'wicked black monkey' in recent dispatches. 'While the North Korean Government-controlled media are distinguished by their histrionics, these comments are particularly ugly and disrespectful,' said National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden, according to Sky News.”

I must say that I personally find Kim Jong Un to be singularly immature and uncivilized – not the sort of person I expect to see as a head of state. In a search to find whether or not North Korea has any friends, I pulled the following information from Wikipedia. They do have some friends, but who they are does them no credit. See below.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_North_Korea
Foreign relations of North Korea
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“....North Korean foreign policy is usually decided upon by the Workers' Party of North Korea. Specifically, Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, decides the basic guidelines for the foreign affairs and the principal operating agency enacts the related provisions. …. Since the Korean War armistice in 1953, the North Korean government has been largely isolationist, becoming one of the world's most totalitarian and oppressive societies.[citation needed] Ever since North Korea signed the Armistice Agreementwith the United Nations Command, it has maintained relations with China, Moscow(Soviet Union to 1991, Russian Federation onward), Pakistan and often limited relations with other nations. It has not maintained relations with Japan, the United States, or South Korea. “




Wis. dad files restraining order against daughter's bully, 5
By CRIMESIDER STAFF CBS NEWS May 16, 2014

PLEASANT PRAIRIE, Wis. - A Wisconsin father has filed a temporary restraining order against a kindergartner after his 6-year-old daughter complained of being bullied at school, reports CBS affiliate WDJT.

Brian Metzger told the station that his daughter wasn't just being picked on, she was being threatened by a 5-year-old boy at Prairie Lane Elementary School in Kenosha County, Wis.

"It started with, 'I want to slit your throat and watch it bleed,'" Metzger told WDJT, relaying a threat that his daughter allegedly received from the boy. "To getting her pushed around on the playground, getting rocks thrown at her."

Metzger was not satisfied with the school's response and decided to file a police report and temporary restraining order against the boy in an attempt to keep him away from his daughter, according to the station.

"Now that I've done all this, they finally took him out of the classroom my daughter is in, but it's not enough," Metzger said. "I want him removed from the school district, period."

Officials at the Kenosha Unified School District said they cannot comment on specific cases but acknowledged to WDJT that they are aware of the issue. The station also reports that a second family has filed a police report against the same boy.

Efforts by the station to speak with the boy's family were unsuccessful. A hearing on the restraining order is scheduled for May 20.




“'I want to slit your throat and watch it bleed,' doesn't sound like something a 5 year old would be verbally advanced enough to say, but maybe the boy is very bright. It certainly is shockingly aggressive, if it is a true quotation, and the fact that yet another set of parents have filed a police report against the same boy argues in favor of Brian Metzger's truthfulness. "'Now that I've done all this, they finally took him out of the classroom my daughter is in, but it's not enough,' Metzger said. 'I want him removed from the school district, period.'”

One article I read said that bullying behavior has been seen in 18 month olds. Parents need to catch those things and curb the behavior while the kids are young enough to change. He may be abusing his own little sister or brother at home. It is clear that the boy is on his way to being a genuinely dangerous bully – perhaps he has heard his father say words like that to his mother. I think he should be put in mental health counseling with a child psychologist, appropriate to his age range. He may already be being beaten daily by his parents, which tends to reinforce violence rather than eliminating it. Somebody needs to nurture his conscience and empathy levels.





U.S. files economic espionage charges against Chinese military hackers
CBS/AP May 19, 2014

WASHINGTON - The Department of Justice announced Monday charges against five Chinese military hackers, accusing them of stealing trade secrets and other proprietary or sensitive information.

The DOJ specifically named "Wang Dong, Sun Kailiang, Wen Xinyu, Huang Zhenyu, and Gu Chunhui, who were officers in Unit 61398 of the Third Department of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA)," as perpetrators in the first-ever case of economic espionage charges against hackers working for a foreign government.

Unit 61398 of the PLA has been openly recruiting computer experts for at least a decade, but only recently came to wider renown for a host of alleged hacking activities.

Federal prosecutors say four major manufacturing firms that are based or do much of their work in western Pennsylvania were the victims of the group, which one official said engaged in nothing more than "21st Century burglary."

The indictment unsealed Monday says Westinghouse, U.S. Steel, Alcoa, and Allegheny Technologies Inc., or ATI, a specialty steelmaker, were targeted in the scheme that allegedly began in 2006.

Federal prosecutors from Pittsburgh will handle the case, which was announced Monday in Washington by Attorney General Eric Holder.

The other companies that were targeted are SolarWorld AG, a German company with operations in Oregon, and the United Steelworkers of America, which is headquartered in Pittsburgh.

"The range of trade secrets and other sensitive business information stolen in this case is significant and demands an aggressive response," Holder said.

Intelligence officials have estimated that American companies are losing about $250 billion per year in intellectual property -- much of that to the Chinese, reports CBS News correspondent Bob Orr.

"For too long, the Chinese government has blatantly sought to use cyber espionageto obtain economic advantage for its state-owned industries," said FBI Director James B. Comey.

Chinese hackers have also breached the computer systems of American media companies including the New York Times and Washington Post to monitor U.S. coverage of Chinese politics.

"This is the new normal," said Bob Anderson, Jr., executive assistant director of the FBI's criminal, cyber, response and services branch. "This is what you're going to see on a recurring basis."

It's not yet clear if federal prosecutors can actually succeed with a case against foreign suspects. Since the accused are allegedly working for the government itself, it's unlikely China would cooperate.

In fact, most cyber experts believe the charges will bring some kind of retaliation, reports Orr.

China has itself said that it faces a major threat from hackers, and the country's military is believed to be among the biggest targets of the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command.

Last August, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying repeated China's assertion that it is firmly opposed to cyberattacks and that it is one of the countries that has suffered most from them. She said the country cracks down on such hackers according to the law.

Hua said: "Cyberspace needs rules and cooperation, not wars. China is willing to have constructive dialogue and cooperation with the global community, including the United States."

Last September, President Barack Obama discussed cybersecurity issues on the sidelines of a summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

White House spokesman Ben Rhodes said at the time that Obama had addressed concerns about cyber threats emanating from China. He said Obama told Xi the U.S. sees it not through the prism of security but out of concern over theft of trade secrets.

In late March, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel revealed that the Pentagon planned to more than triple its cybersecurity staff in the next few years to defend against Internet attacks that threaten national security.

Hagel's comments at the National Security Agency headquarters in suburban Washington came as he prepared to visit China.

"Our nation's reliance on cyberspace outpaces our cybersecurity," Hagel said at the time. "Our nation confronts the proliferation of destructive malware and a new reality of steady, ongoing and aggressive efforts to probe, access or disrupt public and private networks, and the industrial control systems that manage our water, and our energy and our food supplies."


Related to today's news article is the following from last month.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/08/cyber-warfare-institute-west-point-academy/7463249/

West Point to house cyber warfare research institute
Joe Gould, Army Times April 8, 2014

The Army's academy has established a cyber warfare research institute to groom elite cyber troops and solve thorny problems for the Army and the nation in this new war-fighting domain.

The U.S. Army Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., plans to build a cyber brain trust unprecedented within the service academies, filling 75 positions over the next three years — including scholars in technology, psychology, history and law, among other fields.

The chairman of the organization, called the Army Cyber Institute, will be retired Lt. Gen. Rhett Hernandez, the first chief of Army Cyber Command, according to Col. Greg Conti, the organization's director.

The institution, which aims to take on national policy questions and develop a bench of top-tier experts for the Pentagon, will be defining how cyber warfare is waged, to steer and inform the direction of the Army.

"It's a very exciting time," Conti said. "It feels a bit like we're at the birth of the Air Force, like we're that kind of historic era."

The institute's interdisciplinary approach will join civilian doctorate-level experts in cybersecurity and cyber operations with psychologists, attorneys, policy experts, mathematics experts and historians within its walls.

"I think we're building a unique team that's never been done before," Conti said. "People think of technology, and maybe policy, but it's never been done before in this holistic way."

Cyber experts from the operational cyber force would rotate through the institute as students and faculty, bringing hands-on experience and emerging with a broader perspective, better equipped as leaders, Conti said.

The institute will strive to connect to the "constellation" of expertise in academia, industry and national labs, with its own "fresh, agile organization," Conti said.

The plan is to recruit and hire about 25 people per year when competition is hot to hire cyber experts, but Conti was confident West Point's reputation and relationships would attract the right people.

There is no shortage of questions for personnel at the institute to noodle over. How does a unit "maneuver" in cyberspace? How do troops fight and win in a large scale cyberwar? What would a cyber Ranger School look like?

"We want to get ahead of doctrine," Conti said.

West Point has offered cyber education for years under various names, including information assurance or information warfare, but it launched a small dedicated cyber security program in 1999 that has grown significantly since. Graduates and faculty worked to launch Army's cyber four years ago.

Though Conti said the interdisciplinary model for the Army Cyber Institute is novel, officials there looked to the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Estonia, the Georgia Tech Information Security Center, Stanford Center for Internet and Society, among others.

Army senior leaders 18 months ago approved the expansion of the Army cyber center to take on national-level problems and develop a bench of top-tier experts for Army. It follows the creation of Army Cyber Command and comes amid the command's ongoing reorganization and the consolidation of the Army signals school into the Army Signal Center of Excellence, at Fort Gordon, Ga.

The idea for the institute comes after Odierno emphasized the importance of cyber in a National Press Club talk on Jan. 7, saying cyber would, "impact future warfare." He said it is in the national security interest to resolve fundamental legal and policy issues.

"As a national issue, this is about our ability to protect our financial networks, our infrastructure, and it's an important issue," he said. "We have to recognize this is a new way for people to potentially influence what's going in in the United States, so it's incumbent upon us to improve our capability.




The US Department of Justice has made espionage charges against Wang Dong, Sun Kailiang, Wen Xinyu, Huang Zhenyu, and Gu Chunhui of China, who were officers in Unit 61398 of the Third Department of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) in the first case of such charges against a foreign government. Internet spying is finally being brought as an issue, though I've been hearing about it for at least ten years. “Unit 61398 of the PLA has been openly recruiting computer experts for at least a decade, but only recently came to wider renown for a host of alleged hacking activities.”

"Westinghouse, U.S. Steel, Alcoa, and Allegheny Technologies Inc., or ATI, a specialty steelmaker... SolarWorld AG, a German company with operations in Oregon, and the United Steelworkers of America, which is headquartered in Pittsburgh... American companies are losing about $250 billion per year in intellectual property -- much of that to the Chinese.”

Chinese military spokeswoman Hua Chunuing has said about hacking problems in general: 'Cyberspace needs rules and cooperation, not wars. China is willing to have constructive dialogue and cooperation with the global community, including the United States.'" Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in March, 2014, “'Our nation's reliance on cyberspace outpaces our cybersecurity,' Hagel said at the time. 'Our nation confronts the proliferation of destructive malware and a new reality of steady, ongoing and aggressive efforts to probe, access or disrupt public and private networks, and the industrial control systems that manage our water, and our energy and our food supplies.'”





Southern Baptist Leaders Seek Softer Approach To Homosexuality – NBC
by BLAKE FARMER
May 17, 2014

Some Christian denominations around the U.S. have been slowly warming to the idea of gay marriage. A few have even made an about-face.

Not so with the country's largest protestant group, Southern Baptists. The Southern Baptist Convention still preaches that marriage can only be between one man and one woman. But some pastors are softening their message.

A Change Of Tone

The Southern Baptist Convention held a gathering of pastors at its Nashville headquarters in April. For an organization that has previously used opposition to gay marriage as a rallying point, statements here from church leaders, like Kevin Smith of Kentucky, shocked the auditorium of pastors into silence.

"If you spent 20 years and you've never said anything about divorce in the church culture, then shut up about gay marriage," Smith said.

Pastor Jimmy Scroggins of Florida went even further.

"We're all in agreement that the cultural war is over when it comes to homosexuality, especially when it comes to gay marriage," Scroggins told the pastors.

Officially, Southern Baptists aren't backing down from their belief that homosexuality is sinful. Gays and lesbians are still barred from church membership without first repenting. But Scroggins says they're sitting in his pews and shouldn't be the butt of preacher humor. He calls that "redneck theology."

"Let's stop telling Adam and Steve jokes and let's be compassionate, because these are people that are in our community," he said at the convention. "These are people that are in our churches."

Baptist voices in the recent past were not known for compassion on gay issues. Richard Land was the church's chief spokesman for 25 years, and while no longer speaking for the denomination, he can still be heard from time to time on Christian talk radio saying things like this:

"I know that the dirty little secret that nobody wants to talk about is that a high percentage of adult male homosexuals in America were sexually molested when they were children."

In recent months, the provocative former Baptist official has also called gay activists a "lynch mob." He declined to be interviewed for this story.

The man chosen to replace Land, Russell Moore, is trying to rein in the flame-throwing.
"When I hear people who are simply screaming in outrage right now, let me tell you what I hear," he says, "I hear losers."

Moore says instead of waging war on homosexuality, Baptists should accept that their view of marriage puts them in the minority of Americans.

"We're living in a different time, where we have to learn how to understand what's going on in the world around us," he says.

Step Forward Or Back?

This kind of approach is different from what gay people who were raised Southern Baptist used to hear on Sunday mornings.

"The belief was always that this was a choice people made and something that Christians needed to stand up against," says Justin Lee, of Raleigh, N.C., who had to leave the church because he is openly gay. "So that was how I saw it growing up."

Lee now leads the Gay Christian Network, and applauds what he's hearing from Baptist leaders.

"I think it's a wonderful step forward," he says. "I don't think that it is where we want to end up."

Lee says he wouldn't expect Baptists to suddenly change the way they've always read the Bible on homosexuality.

Still, what Lee sees as progress, religious conservatives view as backsliding. Radio host Janet Mefferd of Dallas has taken to the airwaves on her syndicated talk show.

"You see more pastors caving and muddling and getting more and more mealy mouthed about the issue, and 'Oh, let's have a dialogue. Let's have a conversation,' " Mefferd said. "It is a time of rapid loss of courage."

Outside of evangelical churches, the Baptist leaders' gentler rhetoric on gay issues sounds less dramatic. Emilie Townes, dean of Vanderbilt University Divinity School who is also gay, says Southern Baptists' underlying position on gay issues is a reason for the ongoing slide in church membership.

Until the change is more than talk, she says, the denomination will continue to drive gay people away.
0
"If the only thing you're saying is let's not be so harsh," Townes says, "then the attitude that's still behind it — of judging and unacceptance and damnation — will still come out and people will feel it and respond to it."




“Moore says instead of waging war on homosexuality, Baptists should accept that their view of marriage puts them in the minority of Americans....'We're living in a different time, where we have to learn how to understand what's going on in the world around us,' he says.”

Janet Mefferd, a radio talk show host, calls the change in Baptist rhetoric “a time of rapid loss of courage.” Emilie Townes, dean of Vanderbilt University Divinity School who is also gay, said the erosion in Baptist Church membership is in large part due to their stance on gay issues, and that until the church stops calling it mortal sin, the withdrawals from the membership rolls will continue.

Some religious people have started getting behind environmental issues like Global Warming, too, so the most conservative religions are opening up at least a little bit. I think more widespread liberal education will change things with time. I look forward to better times.