Tribune Editorial Board Savages Cardinal George and Plays it Safe

Chicago Tribune posted this last month to illustrate the Penn State Scandal -now, wonders about bizzare analogies.


"I knew very early that I was gay, so it was very uncomfortable growing up. I don't really have very happy memories," Henry van Ameringen told Advocate.Com

Henry Van Ameringen is an American angel, scion to a fragrance fortune and leader of the Homosexual Justice League - known as The Caninet.

I would bet a shiny penny that not one member of the Tribune Editorial Board knows who Henry Van Ameringen might be, let alone not see that blitzkrieg of howling, threats and orchestrated faux outrage over Cardinal George's equating some member Gay Activists with the Ku Klux KLan of the early decades of the last century.

America is gay friendly after all. Glee has taught us that. Oprah has spoken ex cathedra. All of the best people believe a the conjugal bed is gender neutral. If two men want to have a baby together it is their Civil Right.

Henry Van Ameringen is the George Soros of the Gay Movement. Mr. Van Ameringen is not alone. He has used the family fortune to help promote gay lifestyles, combat any and all opposition to the gay agenda and punish those in the way of Homosexual Marriage -written by openly gay journalist Mike Cloud and published in Time Magazine:

A few weeks before Virginia's legislative elections in 2005, a researcher working on behalf of a clandestine group of wealthy, gay political donors telephoned a Virginia legislator named Adam Ebbin. Then, as now, Ebbin was the only openly gay member of the state's general assembly. The researcher wanted Ebbin's advice on how the men he represented could spend their considerable funds to help defeat anti-gay Virginia politicians.

Ebbin, a Democrat who is now 44, was happy to oblige. (Full disclosure: in the mid-'90s, Ebbin and I knew each other briefly as colleagues; he sold ads for Washington City Paper, a weekly where I was a reporter.) Using Ebbin's expertise, the gay donors — none of whom live in Virginia — began contributing to certain candidates in the state. There were five benefactors: David Bohnett of Beverly Hills, Calif., who in 1999 sold the company he had co-founded, Geo-Cities, to Yahoo! in a deal worth $5 billion on the day it was announced; Timothy Gill of Denver, another tech multimillionaire; James Hormel of San Francisco, grandson of George, who founded the famous meat company; Jon Stryker of Kalamazoo, Mich., the billionaire grandson of the founder of medical-technology giant Stryker Corp.; and Henry van Ameringen, whose father Arnold Louis van Ameringen started a Manhattan-based import company that later became the mammoth International Flavors & Fragrances. he five men spent $138,000 in Virginia that autumn, according to state records compiled by the nonprofit Virginia Public Access Project. Of that, $48,000 went directly to the candidates Ebbin recommended. Ebbin got $45,000 for his PAC, the Virginia Progress Fund, so he could give to the candidates himself. Another $45,000 went to Equality Virginia, a gay-rights group that was putting money into many of the same races.

On Election Day that year, the Virginia legislature stayed solidly in Republican hands; the Democratic Party netted just one seat. But that larger outcome masked an intriguing development: anti-gay conservatives had suffered considerably.

(emphases my own)



Henry Van Ameringen and four friends had created the Cabinet -

The group that donated the money to use against Black and the others is known as the Cabinet, although you won't find that name on a letterhead or even on the Internet. Aside from Bohnett, 52; Gill, 55; Hormel, 75; Stryker, 50; and Van Ameringen, 78, the other members of the Cabinet are Jonathan Lewis (49-year-old grandson of Joseph, co-founder of Progressive Insurance) and Linda Ketner, 58, heiress to the Food Lion fortune, who is running for Congress against GOP Representative Henry Brown Jr. of South Carolina.

Ketner's is something of a long-shot bid — her district has been reliably Republican for years — but recently Congressional Quarterly described her "suddenly strong run" against Brown as "the biggest surprise" in this year's House races. Ketner, who was invited to join the all-male Cabinet as a way of diversifying it, declined to discuss her role in the group.

Among gay activists, the Cabinet is revered as a kind of secret gay Super Friends, a homosexual justice league that can quietly swoop in wherever anti-gay candidates are threatening and finance victories for the good guys. Rumors abound in gay political circles about the group's recondite influence; some of the rumors are even true. For instance, the Cabinet met in California last year with two sitting governors, Brian Schweitzer of Montana and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, both Democrats; political advisers who work for the Cabinet met with a third Democratic governor, Wisconsin's Jim Doyle. The Cabinet has also funded a secretive organization called the Movement Advancement Project (MAP), which a veteran lesbian activist describes as the "Gay IRS." MAP keeps tabs on the major gay organizations to make sure they are operating efficiently. The October 2008 MAP report notes, for example, that the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force fails to meet Better Business Bureau standards for limiting overhead expenses.

According to the online databases Opensecrets.org and Followthemoney.org, the seven members of the Cabinet have spent at least $7.8 million on political races since the beginning of 2004, although their true level of giving is doubtless far higher, since Followthemoney.org — which is run by the nonpartisan National Institute on Money in State Politics — does not capture all contributions to PACs (for instance, the Cabinet money that went to Ebbin's PAC in 2005 doesn't show up on the website). The Cabinet spends at least as much each election cycle as does the PAC run by the Human Rights Campaign, the world's largest gay political group. And yet the Cabinet has operated in stealth, without accountability from watchdogs. (The Cabinet does not subject itself to MAP analysis.)

Cabinet spending shows up in races all over the country where pro-gay candidates have a good shot. For instance, Bohnett, Gill and Van Ameringen have given $143,000 this year to New York Democrats, who are within two seats of controlling the state senate. A Democratic New York legislature would likely approve equal marriage rights.

Gay became powerful. Anything with enough money behind it is powerful. The Catholic Church used to be politically powerful. Men doing with boys has been its undoing, but ironically homosexuals argue that such horrific abuses have nothing to do with pedophilia. Likewise, GLBTQ activists and their cowed friend in the media can not allow Cardinal George to point out, quite correctly, that political intimidation by gay activists is not unlike those used by the KKK. They are.

Gays activists are much better organized and funded than the Klan was and though the KKK was very mainstream in the early decades, it never became part of American Culture. Recently, the Gay Lifestyle has as been touted as no different from Ward and June and Ozzie and Harriet.

The Catholic Church is the only insititutional religion stand up to the Gay Activists. So, hostile is the Chicago Gay Community that even Cardinal Bernardine, once remembered as a friedn to Gay Chicago is being excoriated - Here is Windy City Times editor Tracy Baim -

Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop of Chicago, is not the only person hiding prejudice in the heavy robes of religion, but he is a powerful leader in the Catholic Church, and therefore his words have more meaning and power than your average street preacher or member of the church choir. . . .Other religious facilities have long endured the Pride Parade passing their doors on Pride Sunday, with no "anti-religious" problems reported in four decades. In fact, religious groups, including gay Catholics, have been a part of Pride almost since it began. Ironically, the KKK did march against the Pride Parade in its early years, and many spiritual people helped counter their presence.

But Cardinal George could not let the parade pass by his Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church on Belmont Avenue. He fought back, and did so using a vile comparison to the KKK. The Parade will still pass by the church, just at a later time. The change in time really is not what upset most LGBT people; rather, it was what George said about the KKK. He told FOX News Chicago: "You don't want the gay liberation movement to morph into something like the Ku Klux Klan, demonstrating in the streets against Catholicism.

At this point, an apology is not enough. George has proven that he is out of touch with the progress of the LGBT movement in this city and country, and he should pass the torch to a new generation of Catholic leadership. Like Joseph Cardinal Bernardin before him, George has tried to use the church's power to keep back civil rights; Bernardin lobbied against Chicago's gay-rights bill in the 1980s, and George has spoken out against gay civil unions and women's rights."

Tracy Baim has been joined by the Tribune Editorial Board this morning, offering a simperingly gutless bitch slap Cardinal George.

Hours after Chicago's archbishop raised that astounding notion, organizers of the city's annual gay pride parade announced that they would delay the start of next year's march to avoid disrupting morning Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church.

That should have been the end of it.

A week later, gay rights groups are still demanding the cardinal apologize — or resign — and George is defending what he calls "an obvious comparison." Is this how anyone wanted to spend their Christmas season?

The gay community wasn't trying to antagonize Catholics when it drew up a plan that would send its floats past the Belmont Avenue church next June. Last year's Chicago Pride Parade drew more than 700,000 spectators, and organizers and city officials agreed it had outgrown its old route. . . .Responding to the blowback, a diocesan spokeswoman said the remarks were taken out of context and suggested people listen to the entire interview. We did. They aren't. George reiterated them on Wednesday, issuing a statement just when things might have been dying down.

"When the pastor's request for reconsideration of the plans was ignored, the organizers invited an obvious comparison to other groups who have historically attempted to stifle the religious freedom of the Catholic Church," the statement read. "One such organization is the Ku Klux Klan which, well into the 1940s, paraded through American cities not only to interfere with Catholic worship but also to demonstrate that Catholics stand outside the American consensus. It is not a precedent anyone should want to emulate."

That's right: As recently as 70 years ago, the KKK openly demonstrated against the Catholic Church. What that has to do with the pride parade is lost on us.

Hours after? The parish and the pastor asked the Gay organizers months ago about altering the times or the route, but after the oily Mike Flannery and the dim Dane Placko played WTTW on Cardinal George and the national network of gay activists, leftists bloggers, and petition drive roll-out via Henry Van Ameringen 's Truth Will Out ( TWO) and the Soros funded Change.org did the orgabizers roll out their cooperation.

Cardinal George, did not roll over or retreat on his analogy. It is correct. Catholics are not hostile to homosexuals. Catholic teaching does not allow adultery to be considered a matter of conscience - it is a sin for breeders, gays, onanists and deep thinkers. No bribe, threat, or legislation can change that.

The Chicago Tribune continues in the tradition of its founder Joe Medill, a wild anti-Catholic bigot. How's that analogy.


http://www.answers.com/topic/international-flavors-fragrances-inc
http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2010/11/08/Gay_Donor_Named_New_Yorker_of_the_Week/
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-cardinal-20111230,0,1589078.story