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Christian College Bans Homosexuality After Two Gay Athletes Come Out

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A private Christian college in South Carolina, after two gay athletes came out in the media, has very publicly banned homosexuality, and issued a threatening statement.

Last year volleyball players Drew Davis and Juan Varona, both openly gay at Erskine, a rural South Carolina private Christian college founded in 1839, were featured in a very intimate Outsports article. The piece detailed how Davis was inadvertently outed by his ex-boyfriend, how his father disowned him and his mother told him he’d be unemployed for the rest of his life, and how he attempted suicide. It also told of the strong support Davis and Varona have received from their fellow teammates.

This year, under the leadership of Dr. Paul Kooistra (photo), the school’s new president, Erskine has just released a damning policy statement that bans homosexuality, labeling it “sin and contrary to the will of the Creator.”

Under a section titled “In Action,” the Erskine policy notes, “We believe the Bible teaches that all sexual activity outside the covenant of marriage is sinful and therefore ultimately destructive to the parties involved.”

The policy statement is also foreboding and threatening, commanding, “members of the Erskine community are expected to follow the teachings of scripture concerning matters of human sexuality and institutional decisions will be made in light of this position.”

How are Erskine’s two openly-gay students expected to interpret that statement, that “institutional decisions will be made in light of this position,” and how are the students who are LGBTQ expected to feel safe in that environment?

That’s not an extreme question.

Hidden at the bottom of a financial report to the college’s trustees, a statement on the school’s website reads, “the Student Services and Athletic Committee submitted and the full board approved a Statement on Human Sexuality. The administration will add the statement to its official manuals and determine how it will be integrated into campus culture and procedures.”

Doesn’t that sound like the school is targeting its two gay players?

Varona told Outsports’ Cyd Zeigler he is “disappointed” by his school’s statement, “sad and worried for other gay people,” and added it took him “by surprise.” He says, “the school took several steps back instead of progressing towards a future where everyone can be treated as an equal.”

“I understand the religious stand on adultery, which is part of the Ten Commandments in the Bible, and that would apply to heterosexual and homosexual people.”

Zeigler has a few thoughts for Erskine College’s leadership.

It’s insightful that Varona would mention the Ten Commandments. There’s another Commandment among the 10 that’s given higher priority in all versions of the Bible: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.”

We’re assuming this means that Erskine College will also ban all of its athletic teams from practicing or competing on Sundays. That’s unfortunate, because on Sunday, April 19, the men’s volleyball, men’s golf and women’s golf teams have tournament games scheduled. The following Sunday four teams – softball, women’s lacrosse, women’s tennis and men’s tennis – have matches scheduled.

For the school to ban homosexuality but not ban these competitions on the sabbath would be the highest form of hypocrisy.

 

Editor’s note – 03.01.15: Links to Erskine’s anti-LGBT statement have been updated after the college moved it in an apparent attempt to hide it from media reports.

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DOJ Takes Down Thousands of Epstein Documents After Privacy Concerns Raised

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The Trump Department of Justice reportedly has removed thousands of documents from its Friday dump of millions of pages of Epstein files.

Politico senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney reported on Monday that the DOJ told “the court that it has taken down ‘several thousands’ of documents from the Epstein Files website after victim privacy concerns were raised.”

In its message to two U.S District Court judges, the DOJ wrote: “The Department has worked all hours through the weekend from the point when the first victim-related concerns were raised. To that end, out of the larger production described above, the Department now has taken down several thousands of documents and media that may have inadvertently included victim-identifying information due to various factors, including technical or human error.”

The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the DOJ had “exposed the names of dozens of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, including many who haven’t shared their identities publicly or were minors when they were abused by the notorious sex offender.”

READ MORE: Trump to Bongino: ‘Republicans Ought to Nationalize the Voting’

“A review of 47 victims’ full names on Sunday found that 43 of them were left unredacted in files that were made public by the government on Friday, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Several women’s full names appeared more than 100 times in the files,” the Journal noted, “The Justice Department was required to redact all victims’ names prior to releasing the files. Officials said they had spent weeks doing so after receiving lists of names from victims’ attorneys.”

Late Monday morning, attorney and journalist Aaron Parnas identified two of the Epstein files he said were missing. According to Parnas, they included references to Trump having parties at Mar-a-Lago called “calendar girls.”

On Friday, DOJ blocked access to a document originally released as part of Friday’s Epstein files document dump. That document included language related to accusations against President Donald Trump and others. In just under an hour, access was restored after CNN anchor Jake Tapper noted the block on social media.

The DOJ’s removal of the files on Monday comes as some, including members of Congress, are asking for more files to be released.

“Where are the rest of the Epstein Files?” asked U.S. Senator Mark Warner, the prominent Intelligence Committee vice chairman, on Monday afternoon.

READ MORE: ‘We Don’t Have Much Time’: George Conway Issues Dire Warning About Donald Trump

 

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Trump to Bongino: ‘Republicans Ought to Nationalize the Voting’

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President Donald Trump called into the podcast of his former Deputy FBI Director, Dan Bongino, and said that Republicans should “nationalize” the voting process, especially in fifteen “crooked” states, while insisting that undocumented immigrants are voting in America.

Saying that there are “millions and millions” of undocumented immigrants and “we have to get them out,” Trump warned that “if Republicans don’t get them out, you will never win another election as a Republican.”

He claimed that undocumented immigrants are told, “Oh, well, you can vote, you can do whatever you want.”

“It’s crazy,” he added. “I mean, it’s crazy how you can get these people to vote, and if we don’t get them out, Republicans will never win another election.”

READ MORE: ‘We Don’t Have Much Time’: George Conway Issues Dire Warning About Donald Trump

He went on to say that “they vote illegally, and the, you know, amazing that the Republicans aren’t tougher on it. The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over. We should take over the voting,’ the voting in at least many, 15 places.”

“The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,” he added, “and we have states that are so crooked, and they’re counting votes, we have states that I won, that show I didn’t win.”

Mediaite reported that Trump “said a big issue with Minnesota is that it has too many Somalis — who he then claimed are, by and large, known for their ‘theft.'”

“Notably, the vast majority of Somalis in Minnesota came to the U.S. legally through refugee programs in the 1990s and are today U.S. citizens,” Mediaite added.

 

READ MORE: Gabbard Spokesperson Goes Off the Rails Spinning Explosive WSJ Report

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‘We Don’t Have Much Time’: George Conway Issues Dire Warning About Donald Trump

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Republican never-Trump attorney and critic turned Democratic congressional candidate George Conway issued a dire warning on Monday about President Donald Trump and his “megalomania.”

“The way things are going in America, it should be clear we don’t have much time,” Conway wrote on social media. “We certainly don’t have three years. We need to help ourselves by pushing for impeachment and removal as hard as we can and carrying it out as soon as humanly possible.”

Reiterating that he sees this as “a race against time,” Conway asked, “How quickly does the megalomaniac lose strength versus how quickly he destroy[s] everything around him. The one thing you can depend on is that the megalomaniac gets more destructive and dangerous over time before he’s done.”

Conway kicked off his social media thread with a New York Times opinion piece by history professor Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a scholar on fascism and authoritarian leaders.

He quoted Dr. Ben-Ghiat, who wrote: “I have seen this brand of strongman megalomania and the adverse effects it can ultimately have on leaders and their governments. I call it autocratic backfire.”

READ MORE: Gabbard Spokesperson Goes Off the Rails Spinning Explosive WSJ Report

“As autocrats surround themselves with loyalists who praise them and party functionaries who repeat their lies, leaders can start to believe their own hype,” the excerpt continued. “As they cut themselves off from expert advice and objective feedback, they start to promulgate unscrutinized policies that fail. Rather than course correct, such leaders often double down and engage in even riskier behavior — starting wars or escalating involvement in military conflicts that eventually reveal the human and financial tolls of their corruption and incompetence. The result: a disillusioned population that loses faith in the leader and elites who begin to rethink their support.”

Conway added that the word “megalomania” is “essentially a synonym for narcissistic sociopathy or malignant narcissism.”

“All three terms accurately describe Trump,” he charged.

He offered some “good news,” saying that, as Ben-Ghiat pointed out, “megalomaniacal leaders ultimately blow themselves up politically or militarily. The bad news is that the longer they survive, the bigger the figurative blast radius.”

Conway ended the social media thread by saying this is why he is running for Congress and posted a link to his campaign website.

READ MORE: ‘Snowflake’ Trump Mocked for 1 A.M. Lawsuit Threat Over Trevor Noah’s Epstein Island Jab

 

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