凍結 天然氣 火車

You mean the Pope of the FLDS church is a crook????

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Warren Jeffs: Lawsuit says polygamist leader ordered break-in

February 10, 2012 | 11:38 am

The onetime spokesman for Warren Jeffs has filed a $100-million lawsuit against the polygamous sect leader, saying Jeffs asked him to falsify church records and arranged a break-in at his excavating business when he refused.

The lawsuit offers a window into the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and the reportedly vicious politics of Jeffs, who was recently sentenced to life in prison in Texas for sexually assaulting two young girls whom he said were his spiritual brides.

Former sect spokesman Willie Jessop said in court papers that Jeffs asked him last year to put a letter containing false information in church records, which the sect considers sacred, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. The letter was intended to cast doubt on allegations that Jeffs had married two different underage girls in Texas.

Jessop said he knew the information in the letter was false and refused to add it to the records, according to the lawsuit. In response, Jeffs had him excommunicated and demanded he leave the sect's enclave, which straddles the Utah-Arizona border. Jessop wouldn’t budge.

In April, Jessop said in court papers, someone broke into his excavating business and stole computers, hard drives and other files, the Tribune reported. Jessop blamed Jeffs and his associates. Jeffs is well-known for aggressive acts of retaliation, including expelling hundreds of teenagers -- the so-called “Lost Boys” -- reportedly to reduce competition for the sect’s women.

A few months after the alleged break-in, Jeffs was sentenced to prison in Texas. He remains the sect’s leader, however, and recently ordered members to hand over their personal possessions to church officials, who’d determine if they're worthy of getting them back.

Russell Pearce a soldier in Christian ‘war on women’

Letter: Pearce a soldier in ‘war on women’

Posted: Thursday, March 22, 2012 3:41 pm

Letter to the Editor

Russell Pearce is back saying that he is “100 percent pro-life” and “100 percent for freedom”. It is unfortunate that Pearce does not recognize that by denying women the right to make decisions concerning their bodies, there is no freedom. Pearce is just one more foot soldier in the Republican Party’s War on Women.

Tom Kenney

Gilbert

The Priest loves your child (in a Biblical sense)

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Trial under way for priest in sex abuse

Pa. monsignor accused of covering up assaults

Mar. 26, 2012 10:21 PM

Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA - A high-ranking monsignor who is on trial "won't run" from the Catholic Church's sex-abuse crisis, his lawyer said Monday amid opening statements in a landmark child-endangerment trial.

Monsignor William Lynn supervised more than 800 priests as the secretary for clergy in Philadelphia from 1992 to 2004. He is the first U.S. church official charged over his handling of abuse complaints.

Prosecutors charge that he kept dangerous priests in parish work around children to protect the church's reputation and avoid scandal.

Defense lawyer Thomas Bergstrom said in opening statements: "There is documentary evidence that the sexual abuse of children happened in the Catholic Church. We're not going to run from that. He (Lynn), perhaps alone, is the one who tried to correct it."

Bergstrom said his client had prepared a list of 35 accused priests in 1994, based on his review of secret archives kept in a locked room at the archdiocese's headquarters. Lynn gave the list to Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and other superiors, but Bevilacqua had it shredded, Bergstrom said.

A copy was found in 2006 in a locked safe at the archdiocese and was turned over by a church lawyer this year. The document is something of a smoking gun in the case.

Defense lawyers say the document shows Lynn trying to assess the scope of the problem. Prosecutors say it shows the church was mostly concerned about legal liability. The list notes whether the statute of limitations had run out in each case.

According to prosecutors, the church kept secret files dating to 1948 that show a long-standing conspiracy to doubt sex- abuse victims, protect priests and avoid scandal.

Assistant District Attorney Jacqueline Coelho called the case "a battle between right and wrong within the archdiocese and the office of secretary for clergy."

Lynn, 61, appears solemn in court, where he has spent much of the past few months attending pretrial hearings and jury selection. He has been under investigation for eight years, through two city grand-jury investigations. The grand juries blasted Bevilacqua and his successor, Cardinal Justin Rigali, saying they covered up child-sex complaints lodged against more than 60 priests. But Lynn was the only supervisor charged.

Lynn had the "ugly job" of overseeing sex-abuse complaints, but Bevilacqua alone determined priest assignments and transfers, Bergstrom said.

The cardinal died in January, although the jury may see the videotaped deposition he gave weeks earlier. The trial could last several months.

Lynn is on trial with the Rev. James Brennan, who is charged with raping a 14-year-old boy in 1996. Both men entered not guilty pleas Monday.

Defense lawyers have long planned to attack the credibility of the two accusers, who have struggled with drug addiction and have criminal records.

But that strategy took something of a hit when a third co-defendant, defrocked priest Edward Avery, entered a surprise guilty plea to some of the charges Thursday.

Avery, who moonlighted as a disc jockey and adopted six Hmong children during his years in the priesthood, admitted that he sexually assaulted a 10-year-old altar boy in a church sacristy in 1999. That victim accused another priest and his sixth-grade teacher of raping him during his parochial-school years. They will go on trial separately because neither was an archdiocesan priest reporting to Lynn.

Brennan's accuser has convictions for theft and filing a false police report and called none other than the person he accused of abusing him when he needed to do court-ordered community service, a defense lawyer said.

"If you don't believe (him) ... the case is over," said lawyer William Brennan, who is not related to his client.

Avery's plea also acknowledged that the archdiocese kept him in ministry despite being aware of an earlier complaint. That complaint, dating to 1992, was detailed in court Monday by the first trial witness. A Philadelphia detective read a 1992 letter from a medical student that said Avery had once gotten him drunk and molested him after a DJ stint at a West Philadelphia nightclub and later on a ski trip.

"I do not want money or any kind of media scandal," the accuser wrote. "I need to know that he has been evaluated and treated for this disorder and his threat to other impressionable young men is gone."

The archdiocese interviewed Avery, who denied the allegations before saying they could have happened when he was drunk.

"I thought he was a potential (priest). I was so good to him," Avery told Lynn and Bishop Joseph Cistone in a 1992 interview, according to an archdiocesan memo read in court.

Avery was sent for inpatient therapy for eight months before returning to ministry. He sexually assaulted the altar boy seven years later, he admitted Thursday.

Lynn faces up to 28 years in prison if convicted of two counts each of conspiracy and child endangerment.

Jail may await Afghan women fleeing abuse, rape

Jail may await Afghan women fleeing abuse, rape: HRW

Reuters

By Jack Kimball | Reuters

KABUL (Reuters) - For Afghan women, the act of fleeing domestic abuse, forced prostitution or even being stabbed repeatedly with a screwdriver by an abusive husband, may land them in jail while their abusers walk free, Human Rights Watch said.

Running away is considered a "moral crime" for women in Afghanistan while some rape victims are also imprisoned, because sex outside marriage - even when the woman is forced - is considered adultery, another "moral crime".

"From the first time I came to this world my destiny was destroyed," 17-year-old Amina, who has spent months in jail after being forced into prostitution, told researchers from Human Rights Watch in a report published on Wednesday.

Despite progress in women's rights and freedom since the fall of the Taliban a decade ago, women throughout the country are at risk of abduction, rape, forced marriage and being traded as commodities.

It can be hard for women to escape violence at home because of huge social pressure and legal risks to stay in marriages.

"The treatment of women and girls accused of 'moral crimes' is a black eye on the face of the post-Taliban Afghan government and its international backers, all of whom promised that respect for women's rights would distinguish the new government from the Taliban," the New York-based group said.

"This situation has been further undermined by President (Hamid) Karzai's frequently changing position on women's rights. Unwilling or unable to take a consistent line against conservative forces within the country, he has often made compromises that have negatively impacted women's rights."

The influential rights organization said that there were about 400 women and girls being held in Afghanistan for "moral crimes", and they rarely found support from authorities in a "dysfunctional criminal justice system".

The plight of a woman called Nilofar illustrates the problem. She was stabbed repeatedly with a screwdriver in the head, chest, and arms by her husband who accused her of adultery for inviting a man into the house, the rights group said.

But afterwards, she was arrested, he was not.

"The way he beat her wasn't bad enough to keep him in jail. She wasn't near death, so he didn't need to be in prison," the prosecutor of the case told Human Rights Watch.

"HE WILL KILL ME"

The dire treatment of women was the main reason Western countries gave for refusing to recognize the Taliban government as legitimate when it was in power.

As Afghan and Western leaders seek a negotiated end to more than 10 years of war, the future for women is uncertain.

The United States and NATO - who are fighting an unpopular war as they prepare to pull out most combat troops by the end of 2014 - have stressed that any settlement must ensure the constitution, which says the two sexes are equal, is upheld.

A law, passed in August 2009, supports equality for women, including criminalizing child and forced marriage, selling and buying women for marriage or for settling disputes, as well as forced self-immolation, among other acts.

But women, especially in rural areas, lack shelters to flee abuse while only one percent of police are female, according to the report based on interviews from October to November with 58 women and girls as well as prosecutors, judges, government officials and civil society.

The ordeal for women does not stop with jail though.

Once leaving prison, women and girls face strong social stigma in the conservative country and may be killed in so-called "honor killings".

"I just want a divorce. I can't go back to my father because he will kill me. All my family has left me behind," 20-year-old Aisha, who was sentenced to three years for fleeing an abusive husband she was forced to marry, told researchers.

(Reporting by Jack Kimball; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Robert Birsel)

Jesus loves you. So does Father William Lynn!!!

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U.S. trial shows church abuse allegations strategy

by Maryclaire Dale - Mar. 31, 2012 10:31 AM

Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA -- The long, typed letter fantasizes about a seventh-grader's body, and asks if the boy wants to try various sex acts.

"You are soooo cute. I have been thinking about you for a long time. ... You're the cutest in our grade," the author wrote in a rare line that wasn't overtly obscene.

But the anonymous author was not a classmate at the boy's Catholic school in northeast Philadelphia. It was a parish priest. One with a cache of gay pornography and sadomasochistic videos in the rectory.

Files show the letter-writing priest was sent to a church-run treatment center for priests, where staff concluded he did not have "a pathological interest in children or adults." Doctors racked the letter up to a single fantasy. And they believed him when he said he hadn't sent it -- or acted out with children.

"Cardinal Bevilacqua is granting him a health leave, and that should be the announcement to the (St. Anselm's) parish," reads a December 1995 memo, found in secret personnel files at the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

The memo, along with the priest's letter, aired in court this week in a landmark criminal trial in Philadelphia. Accused is Monsignor William Lynn, the first U.S. church official charged with child endangerment for allegedly leaving predator-priests in ministry, and conspiring with others to cover up the festering problem.

Prosecutors call the archdiocese of 1.5 million Catholics "an unindicted co-conspirator."

Defense lawyers counter that Lynn took orders from the archbishop during his 12-year run as secretary for clergy, when he supervised about 900 priests. Lynn, 61, faces years in prison if convicted.

By August 1996, the priest had been released, and reassigned to a far suburb. Lynn recommended that he return to full ministry, with no limits on his work with children. Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, who died this year, approved the plan, initializing Lynn's memo with his ornate "AB."

The priest's therapy notes -- describing the "release of guilt" he felt after childhood whippings by his father and his "compulsive" interest in pornography and masturbation -- were shipped to "File 3," archdiocesan code for the locked, secret archives room.

"That kind of information coming out through these trials, regardless of the verdict, is of enormous significance, for the church and also for our understanding of how sexual abuse was handled in institutions outside the church. ... That includes schools and prisons and youth groups and sports teams," said Timothy Lytton, an Albany Law School professor who wrote a book on the priest-abuse crisis.

The Catholic church is far from alone in protecting predators, he said, but its hierarchical nature gives authorities a long paper trail.

Philadelphia prosecutors have been investigating the archdiocese for 10 years, since the priest-abuse scandal exploded in Boston. Around the country, about 500 Roman Catholic priests have been convicted of child sex abuse, and dioceses have paid out more than $1 billion to victims.

Yet there's never been a man in Lynn's shoes.

When he took over the headquarters job in 1992, after serving as dean of the Philadelphia seminary, Lynn combed through the secret files. He drew up a list of 35 accused, still-active priests, and noted whether the accuser could still sue. In keeping with church protocol, he deemed priests 'guilty' only if they had admitted the account.

Lynn gave the list to Bevilacqua, but memos show the late cardinal had it shredded. A copy was nonetheless found in a safe at the archdiocese in 2006.

Lytton noted that church leaders like Bevilacqua and his contemporaries, including Boston Cardinal Bernard Law and Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahoney, courageously fought for civil rights, immigrants and the underprivileged, yet somehow failed society's most vulnerable.

"They were so focused on how to help the priests. In many cases, they lost sight of the children, and that's partly because I don't think they could appreciate the damage done to the children or the family structure. They're not fathers. And they don't have children," Lytton said.

Phil Gaughan never told anyone what a priest allegedly did to him until he had a son of his own. Then he saw someone innocently hug his toddler. His grief erupted.

"That's when I decided to tell," Gaughan, 32, said Friday. He told his family their beloved priest had molested him throughout high school, when he worked weekends at their northeast Philadelphia church.

"Nobody would have believed it (then)," said Gaughan, who sued the archdiocese last year. "I couldn't leave, or I'd lose my job. I was basically trapped in the back of the church with him."

The Associated Press generally does not identify people alleging sexual abuse, but Gaughan wants his name used in hopes of helping sex-abuse victims.

He said he was molested from 1993 to 1997. Two brothers confronted the same priest with decades-old allegations in 1994. The priest wanted to apologize, but Lynn -- and church therapists -- advised against it on legal grounds, according to the 2005 grand jury report. At least three other men, including a Philadelphia policeman, filed other complaints before Gaughan called the archdiocese last year.

Gaughan, now a portrait photographer in Delaware, accepts that Lynn didn't act alone. But he calls him "a big part" of the problem.

"There's a responsibility that comes with that job title," said Gaughan, who hopes to attend some of the trial. "It's a step in the right direction."

Afghanistan sees rise in ‘dancing boys’ exploitation

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Afghanistan sees rise in ‘dancing boys’ exploitation

By Ernesto Londoño, Published: April 4

DEHRAZI, Afghanistan — The 9-year-old boy with pale skin and big, piercing eyes captivated Mirzahan at first sight.

“He is more handsome than anyone in the village,” the 22-year-old farmer said, explaining why he is grooming the boy as a sexual partner and companion. There was another important factor that made Waheed easy to take on as a bacha bazi, or a boy for pleasure: “He doesn’t have a father, so there is no one to stop this.”

A growing number of Afghan children are being coerced into a life of sexual abuse. The practice of wealthy or prominent Afghans exploiting underage boys as sexual partners who are often dressed up as women to dance at gatherings is on the rise in post-Taliban Afghanistan, according to Afghan human rights researchers, Western officials and men who participate in the abuse.

“Like it or not, there was better rule of law under the Taliban,” said Dee Brillenburg Wurth, a child-protection expert at the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, who has sought to persuade the government to address the problem. “They saw it as a sin, and they stopped a lot of it.”

Over the past decade, the phenomenon has flourished in Pashtun areas in the south, in several northern provinces and even in the capital, according to Afghans who engage in the practice or have studied it. Although issues such as women’s rights and moral crimes have attracted a flood of donor aid and activism in recent years, bacha bazi remains poorly understood.

The State Department has mentioned the practice — which is illegal here, as it would be in most countries — in its annual human rights reports. The 2010 report said members of Afghanistan’s security forces, who receive training and weapons from the U.S.-led coalition, sexually abused boys “in an environment of criminal impunity.”

But by and large, foreign powers in Afghanistan have refrained from drawing attention to the issue. There are no reliable statistics on the extent of the problem.

“It is very sensitive and taboo in Afghanistan,” said Hayatullah Jawad, head of the Afghan Human Rights Research and Advocacy Organization, who is based in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif. “There are a lot of people involved in this case, but no one wants to talk about it.”

An open secret

A recent interview with Mirzahan and a handful of his friends who sexually exploit boys provided a rare glimpse into the lives of men who have taken on bacha bazi.

The men agreed to be interviewed together in a mud hut in this tiny village in Balkh province, accessible only by narrow, unpaved roads and just a few miles from areas where the Taliban is fighting the government for dominance. The men insisted that only their first names be used. Although the practice of bacha bazi has become something of an open secret in Afghanistan, it is seldom discussed in public or with outsiders.

Sitting next to the 9-year-old Waheed, who was wearing a pink pants-and-tunic set called a shalwar kameez, Mirzahan said he opted to take on the boy because marrying a woman would have been prohibitively expensive. The two have not had sex, Mirzahan said, but that will happen in a few years. For now, Waheed is being introduced to slightly older “danc­ing boys.”

“He is not dancing yet, but he is willing,” Mirzahan said with pride.

Asked how he felt about becoming a dancing boy, Waheed responded shyly.

“I feel so happy,” the boy said. “They are so beautiful.”

Sitting nearby was 23-year-old Assadula, who said he’s an Afghan soldier assigned to a unit in the southern province of Kandahar. Assadula said he has been attracted to teenage males for as long as he can recall. Two years ago, he took on a 16-year-old as his bacha. The relationship will end soon, he said, sitting next to his companion, Jawad, who is now 18.

“When he starts growing a beard, his time will expire, and I will try to find another one who doesn’t have a beard,” Assadula said.

Many of the men who have bachas are also married. But Assadula said he has never been attracted to women.

“You cannot take wives everywhere with you,” he said, referring to the gender segregation in social settings that is traditional in Afghanistan. “You cannot take a wife with you to a party, but a boy you can take anywhere.”

Boys who become bachas are seen as property, said Jawad, the human rights researcher. Those who are perceived as being particularly beautiful can be sold for tens of thousands of dollars. The men who control them sometimes rent them out as dancers at male-only parties, and some are prostituted.

“This is abuse,” Jawad said. “Most of these children are not willing to do this. They do this for money. Their families are very poor.”

Although the practice is thought to be more widespread in conservative rural areas, it has become common in Kabul. Mohammed Fahim, a videographer who films the lavish weddings in the capital, estimated that one in every five weddings he attends in Kabul features dancing boys.

Authorities are well aware of the phenomenon, he said, as he played a video of a recent party that featured an underage boy with heavy makeup shaking his shoulders seductively as men sitting on the floor clapped and smiled.

“Police come because they like it a lot,” Fahim said, referring to parties with dancing boys.

When the boys age beyond their prime and get tossed aside, many become pimps or prostitutes, said Afghan photojournalist Barat Ali Batoor, who spent months chronicling the plight of dancing boys. Some turn to drugs or alcohol, he said.

“In Afghan society, if you are raped or you are abused, you will not have space in society to live proudly,” he said.

When Batoor completed his project on dancing boys, he assumed that nongovernmental organizations would be eager to exhibit his work and raise awareness of the issue. To his surprise, none were.

“They said: ‘We don’t want to make enemies in Afghanistan,’ ” he said, summarizing the general response.

A post-Taliban revival

Afghan men have exploited boys as sexual partners for generations, people who have studied the issue say. The practice became rampant during the 1980s, when mujaheddin commanders fighting Soviet forces became notorious for recruiting young boys while passing through villages. In Kandahar during the mid-1990s, the Taliban was born in part out of public anger that local commanders had married bachas and were engaging in other morally licentious behavior.

Afghanistan’s legal codes are based mainly on sharia, or Islamic law, which strictly prohibits sodomy. The law also bars sex before marriage. Under Afghan law, men must be at least 18 years old and women 16 to marry.

During the Taliban era, men suspected of having sex with men or boys were executed. In the late 1990s, amid the group’s repressive reign, the practice of bacha bazi went underground. The fall of the Taliban government in late 2001 and the flood of donor money that poured into Afghanistan revived the phenomenon.

Wurth, the U.N. official, who is leaving Kabul soon after three years of work on child-welfare issues in Afghanistan, said the lack of progress on combating the sexual exploitation of children is her biggest regret. Foreign powers have done little to conduct thorough research or advocate for policy reforms, she said.

“It’s rampant in certain areas,” Wurth said. “But more than that we can’t say. Nobody has facts and figures.”

Wurth said she was encouraged by recent discussions with Afghan government officials, who she said have begun to acknowledge the problem and have expressed concern about the rising popularity of the practice. The sexual exploitation of boys recruited to the Afghan police force was one of the reasons it was added in 2010 to a U.N. list of armed groups that recruit underage fighters, Wurth said.

But, so far, the government has taken few meaningful steps to discourage the abuse of bachas. Wurth said she was not aware of any prosecutions.

“A kid who is being sexually exploited, if he reports it, he will end up in prison,” she said. “They become pariahs.”

Orthodox Church patriarch's expensive watch causes buzz

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Patriarch's expensive watch causes buzz

Apr. 6, 2012 07:39 AM

Associated Press

MOSCOW -- Russia is abuzz with talk of the value of the Orthodox Church patriarch's watch after it mysteriously disappeared from his wrist in a website picture.

Speculation about Patriarch Kirill's timepiece reached a climax this week when bloggers spotted a photo of him wearing the watch, which allegedly costs some $30,000.

By Thursday, the site's editors had doctored the photo, erasing the watch but failing to get rid of its reflection.

Reacting to bloggers' indignation, the patriarch's office promptly apologized for "a mistake" of an employee.

The scandal has revived a discussion about the church's wealth and close links to the Kremlin.

Critics have said the church lost its impartiality when Kirill signaled support for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin shortly before March's presidential vote.

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$30,000 Watch Vanishes Up Church Leader’s Sleeve

By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ

Published: April 5, 2012

MOSCOW — Facing a scandal over photographs of its leader wearing an enormously expensive watch, the Russian Orthodox Church worked a little miracle: It made the offending timepiece disappear.

Editors doctored a photograph on the church’s Web site of the leader, Patriarch Kirill I, extending a black sleeve where there once appeared to be a Breguet timepiece worth at least $30,000. The church might have gotten away with the ruse if it had not failed to also erase the watch’s reflection, which appeared in the photo on the highly glossed table where the patriarch was seated.

The church apologized for the deception on Thursday and restored the original photo to the site, but not before Patriarch Kirill weighed in, insisting in an interview with a Russian journalist that he had never worn the watch, and that any photos showing him wearing it must have been doctored to put the watch on his wrist.

The controversy, which erupted Wednesday when attentive Russian bloggers discovered the airbrushing, further stoked anger over the church’s often lavish displays of wealth and power. It also struck yet another blow to the moral authority of Russian officialdom, which has been dwindling rapidly in light of recent scandals involving police abuse, electoral fraud and corruption.

Aleksei Navalny, an anticorruption crusader, called the episode “shameful,” and bloggers gleefully ridiculed the church as hypocritical.

The church, after removing the doctored photo, blamed photo editors in its press service for the “technical mistake.”

“A gross violation of our internal ethics has occurred, and it will be thoroughly investigated,” the church said in a statement. “The guilty will be severely punished.”

It is not likely that the apology will end the debate about the watch or dampen the increasingly barbed discussions of the church’s role in Russian society. Over the past decade, the church has grown immensely powerful, becoming so close to the Kremlin that it often seems like a branch of government. It has extended its influence into a broad range of public life, including schools, courts and politics. Patriarch Kirill publicly backed Vladimir V. Putin in last month’s presidential election.

Recently, church officials stoked the ire of Russian liberals by seeking the imprisonment of members of a female punk rock group who held an impromptu concert inside Moscow’s main cathedral in February to protest the church’s political ties. Three members of the group are now in jail awaiting trial.

Then there is the question of the church’s wealth. Russian bloggers have published rumors that the patriarch has a large country house, a private yacht and a penchant for ski vacations in Switzerland, though none of this has been proved.

The watch, on the other hand, has been an object of fascination for years, and there is little question of its existence. It was first sighted on the patriarch’s wrist in 2009 during a visit to Ukraine, where he gave a televised interview on the importance of asceticism.

A Breguet watch “is virtually a sine qua non of any depiction of the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie or, quite simply, a life of luxury and elegance,” the company says, noting that its products have been worn by Marie Antoinette and Czar Aleksandr I and cited in works by Dumas and Hugo.

Coincidentally, the patriarch addressed the watch issue on Sunday, three days before the photo-doctoring scandal hit the blogosphere, in an interview with a prominent Kremlin-friendly television journalist, Vladimir Solovyov.

After the rumors about the watch began appearing, “I started looking for it out of interest and horror,” Kirill said, according to Mr. Solovyov, who conducted the interview off camera and related the patriarch’s comments.

Sorting through gifts he had received over the years, the patriarch discovered that he did indeed own the Breguet, Mr. Solovyov said. But he insisted that he had never worn it and said he suspected that any photos of him wearing it had been altered with Photoshop.

Watches, particularly those of the high-end Swiss variety, have been problematic for the Russian authorities. Many officials have come under fire after being photographed wearing timepieces with price tags far exceeding their annual salaries. Vladimir Resin, a former deputy mayor of Moscow, was once photographed wearing a DeWitt, the Pressy Grande Complication, reportedly worth more than $1 million.

But the patriarch has presented himself as the country’s ethical compass, and has recently embarked on a vocal campaign of public morality, advocating Christian education in public schools and opposing abortion and equal rights for gay people. He called the girl punk band protest at the cathedral “sacrilege.”

While Americans are used to hearing public positions on social issues from religious leaders, they were novel here, and they leave Patriarch Kirill and the church vulnerable to criticism, said Aleksei Makarkin, a political analyst who has written about the church.

“Now, the church has lost its symbolic immunity,” Mr. Makarkin said. “People will now say it has become the same as any other government structure.”

Russia’s often acerbic bloggers reacted to the scandal with something approaching glee. Bloggers have been uploading their own altered photographs of the patriarch to the Web, including one in which he has been erased and only the watch remains.

“The church can, of course, inspire fear or evoke respect, and even make mistakes,” Vladimir Varfolomeyev, a prominent liberal commentator, wrote on Facebook. “But it cannot be funny. Before our eyes we are witnessing the destruction of this institution.”

The Rev. Vsevolod Chaplin, a senior church cleric, played down the episode. In a telephone interview, he said that the controversy over the watch was distracting attention from more serious questions, like “the borders of artistic freedom and the meaning of the Gospels today.”

“Tomorrow, they will be talking about what kind of glasses the patriarch wears,” Father Chaplin said.

Not all priests are pedophiles! Some priests like hot women!!!

San Diego priest put on probation by court for groping 19-year-old woman

April 21, 2012 | 10:01 am

A Roman Catholic priest in San Diego has been sentenced to probation after admitting to a misdemeanor charge of "unlawful touching of an intimate part" of a 19-year-old woman.

Jose Davila, 53, was sentenced Friday by Judge Jeffrey Fraser to three years' probation, a $200 fine and 150 hours of volunteer work. Davila is an associate pastor of St. Jude's Shrine of the West.

Davila admitted touching the woman on Dec. 30 while she was visiting his home.

Churches want government handouts!!!!!

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Shannon: Charities need help of government in protecting the poor

by Terry Shannon - Apr. 21, 2012 12:00 AM

My Turn

Deficit reduction is an important national priority, vital to our long-term economic opportunity and security. But just because it's important doesn't mean that it can be undertaken without regard to our national values.

Unfortunately, the U.S. House left values on the sideline this week when it moved forward with a shocking proposal to cut food assistance for our nation's hungry by more than $33 billion.

That it was done in the name of deficit reduction does not excuse the fact that cuts to anti-hunger programs, at a time when need has never been greater, are both reckless and shortsighted.

Taking care of our neighbors is an American value, and feeding our neighbors is a shared responsibility.

Every day, St. Mary's Food Bank Alliance sees this partnership reflected in the generous support of our volunteers and donors, and we are grateful that this value is reflected in Washington through important anti-hunger programs like SNAP, formerly food stamps.

Some like to point to the great work that local food pantries are doing to suggest that hunger is better solved by charity at the community level. Speaking from the front lines, charity cannot do it alone. In fact, estimates suggest that charity provides only about 6 percent of all the food assistance in the United States.

Hunger is a national problem, and it is one that needs a national solution, and that starts with a strong federal commitment to programs like SNAP.

St. Mary's Food Bank Alliance is struggling to meet the tremendous increase in need from the recession. We can barely keep up as it is because of declining federal support for the Emergency Food Assistance Program, which provides nutritious commodities for distribution through local charities. There is no way that we would be able to make up the difference if SNAP were cut. Food banks like ours need more supply, not more demand.

Protecting the poor is not a partisan issue, and balancing the budget does not have to be, either. Our nation has a long, bipartisan commitment to protecting low-income safety-net programs like SNAP in past deficit reduction agreements.

The three major deficit-reduction packages of the past two decades -- the 1990, 1993, and 1997 packages -- all adhered to this principle, as did the recent bipartisan Bowles-Simpson Commission.

The American people deserve a thoughtful dialog about real solutions, not political showmanship.

Congress should put the nation's interests first and meet in the middle to craft policies that spur economic recovery, ensure broad and sustainable opportunity, and protect families when opportunity remains out of reach, including making sure that SNAP and food pantries are here to put food on the table until struggling Americans are back on their feet.

Terry Shannon is president and CEO of St. Mary's Food Bank Alliance.

Hindus in Pakistan accuse Muslims of kidnapping teens as wives

Hindus in Pakistan accuse Muslims of kidnapping teens as wives

By Alex Rodriguez, Los Angeles Times

April 22, 2012, 11:42 p.m.

JACOBABAD, Pakistan — Rachna Kumari, 16, was shopping for dresses in this city's dust-choked bazaar when it happened.

The man who her family says abducted her was not a street thug. He was a police officer.

Nor was he a stranger. Rachna's family knew and trusted him. He guarded the Hindu temple run by her father, an important duty in a society where Hindus are often terrorized by Muslim extremists, and he had helped Rachna cram for her ninth-grade final exams.

After she disappeared from the market, he did not demand a ransom. According to her family, he had an entirely different purpose: to force her to convert to Islam and marry him.

In a country where Hindu-dominated India is widely reviled as Enemy No. 1, Pakistan's Hindu community endures extortion, disenfranchisement and other forms of discrimination.

These days, however, Hindus are fixated on a surge of kidnappings of teenage girls by young Muslim men who force them to convert and wed. Pakistani human rights activists report as many as 25 cases a month.

Most occur in the northern districts of Sindh province, on the border with India and home to most of Pakistan's 2.5 million Hindus. The Hindu community is shrinking as families flee the area, which is run largely by Muslim feudal chiefs who own vast tracts of farmland and wield wide influence over politics, law enforcement and the courts.

Hindus say the forcible conversions follow the same script: The victim, abducted by a young man related to or working for a feudal boss, is taken to a mosque where clerics, along with the prospective groom's family, threaten to harm her and her relatives if she resists.

Almost always, the girl complies, and not long afterward, she is brought to a local court, where a judge, usually a Muslim, rubber-stamps the conversion and marriage, according to Hindu community members who have attended such hearings.

Often the young Muslim man is accompanied by backers armed with rifles. Few members of the girl's family are allowed to appear, and the victim, seeing no way out, signs papers affirming her conversion and marriage.

"In court, usually it's just four or five members of the girl's family against hundreds of armed people for the boy," says B.H. Khurana, a doctor in Jacobabad and a Hindu community leader. "In such a situation when we are unarmed and outnumbered, how can we fight our case in court?"

Prominent Pakistani Muslims have joined Hindu leaders in calling attention to the problem.

President Asif Ali Zardari's sister, lawmaker Azra Fazal Pechuho, told parliament last month that a growing number of Hindu girls are being abducted and held at madrasas, or Islamic religious schools, where they are forcibly converted. She and other lawmakers have called for legislation to prohibit the practice.

The issue was thrust into the spotlight by the case of Rinkle Kumari, a 17-year-old Hindu girl from the town of Mirpur Mathelo in the southern province of Sindh. The case was one of three that recently went before Pakistan's Supreme Court.

Kumari's parents, who are not related to Rachna's family, allege that five men broke into their house in late February, subdued Rinkle with a chloroform-soaked cloth and took her away. The parents say the girl was forced to convert to Islam and marry Naveed Shah, a neighbor.

Shah contends Rinkle acted willingly.

"She was not forced at all," said Shah's lawyer, Malik Qamar Afzal. "She embraced Islam freely, and afterward agreed to marry."

The day after the alleged abduction and conversion, Rinkle was allowed to meet with her mother at a district court.

"She told me, 'I have been kidnapped and I want to go with you,'" recalled her mother, Sulchani Kumari. "She was sobbing as she told me, 'For God's sake, take me away from that hell.'"

Hindu community leaders acknowledge that in some cases, Hindu girls convert and marry Muslim men willingly. Determining which cases involve coercion has been difficult for authorities.

Asha Kumari, a 16-year-old Hindu girl not related to Rinkle or Rachna, disappeared March 3 from a beauty parlor in Jacobabad where she was taking a beautician's course, according to her brother, Vinod Kumar, 22.

Neither her family nor police could find her until April 13, when she appeared before the Supreme Court, accompanied by her new husband, Bashir Lashari.

Like Rinkle, she told the court she had willingly married and embraced Islam.

As in Rinkle's case, the conversion took place at a Sufi Muslim shrine run by the brother of Mian Abdul Haq, a Muslim lawmaker with the ruling Pakistan People's Party and a wealthy landowner in northern Sindh.

"This is the way it always happens," said Vinod Kumar. "These girls are kidnapped, and then later they show up in court and say they have converted."

Hindu community leaders took the cases of Rinkle and Asha and that of a third Hindu woman all the way to the Supreme Court.

On Wednesday, the court ruled that the three could choose whether to stay with their new husbands or return to their parents. All three decided to stay.

At the heart of the problem, Hindu community leaders say, is a lack of will on the part of police and courts.

"When someone gets kidnapped, Hindus lodge kidnapping charges, but authorities don't respond," said Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, a leader of the Pakistan Hindu Council. "After 20 days, the kidnapper and his people pressure the girl and say, 'If you don't accept Islam and give wrong answers in court, you know what will happen.' That's coercion."

In the case of Rachna Kumari, police themselves stand accused.

Pakistani authorities have periodically assigned police officers to Hindu temples as a precaution since the 1992 demolition of a mosque in Ayodhya, India, triggered unrest between Indian Hindus and Muslims.

Barkat Talani, an officer at the Jacobabad temple run by Rachna's father, began helping her with her studies as a favor to the family.

After she was abducted in August, Talani was arrested and suspended from his job.

At a court hearing a month later, Rachna appeared in a black burka, surrounded by about 100 of Talani's supporters, many of them armed, said the girl's uncle, Rakesh Kumar. The judge accepted a statement written by Rachna that indicated she had willingly converted and married. Her family contends the document was drafted by Talani's lawyer.

A few weeks later, while out shopping with her new husband's female relatives, Rachna appeared at her grandmother's door and asked for a drink of water.

"I asked her, 'Why did you leave us?'" the grandmother, Maharajni Andhrabai, recalled. "She said, 'I was forced to.' She was weeping."

Later, Talani reported that Rachna had disappeared. Talani and her family both say they do not know where she is.

Talani is back at work, according to Jacobabad's police chief, Jam Zafrullah Dharejo, who said the allegations against the officer were unfounded.

Now the Kumari family has a singular focus: safeguarding Rachna's 13-year-old sister, Bharti. They've withdrawn her from school and forbidden her to set foot in the bazaar.

"We're so sad about what happened to Rachna," the grandmother said, "but we're also worried about what else could happen."

alex.rodriguez@latimes.com

Mormons sure believe crazy things????

Student ordered to remove Jesus custom on "fictional character day"???

Student dressed as Jesus wins atheist award

by Maria Giordano - Apr. 26, 2012 05:49 PM

Tennessean

SPRING HILL, Tenn. -- A Tennessee high school student has been awarded a $1,000 scholarship by an atheist group for dressing like Jesus Christ on the school's "fictional character day."

Jeff Shott, a sophomore at Summit High School, was not disciplined for his action back in January, but Principal Charles Farmer did advise him that if the costume caused a distraction during the day he would have to remove it. Shott voluntarily removed his robes and sash, a costume that included a hammer and nail.

But Shott's pluck was not overlooked by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the organization, located in Madison, Wis., said Shott exhibited "spunk and a light touch with his actions."

"We wanted to encourage him, and we know the cost of higher education. This is just a small stipend toward that," Gaylor said. Shott is the first to receive the Paul Gaylor Memorial Student Activist scholarship, named for Annie Laurie Gaylor's father, who recently passed away, she said.

The foundation, established in 1978, promotes the separation of state and church, and maintains a legal staff.

In the foundation's account of what happened, Shott was approached by Farmer, assistant principal Sarah Lamb and a school resource officer about his costume, who said they wished he were dressed like Zeus, a Greek mythological deity.

"We understand the student felt he should remove the costume to avoid problems with school administrators," said Rebecca Markert, a Freedom From Religion Foundation staff attorney.

Gaylor said the student had contacted the organization, and in turn, they sent a letter to Director of Schools Mike Looney calling the costuming incident a violation of the student's constitutional rights protected under the First Amendment. In addition, they questioned a classroom discussion where a physical science teacher at the school had said she believed men and women came from Adam and Eve.

Looney said the district delegates responsibility to the principal and in this case he supports Farmer's actions in having the discussion with Shott.

He referred to recently signed legislation in Tennessee known as the saggy pants bill, which prohibits students from exposing "underwear or body parts in an indecent manner that disrupts the learning environment."

"We're not trying to tell him what to believe or not believe. What we are saying is he's not allowed to create a distraction," Looney said.

Ken Paulson, president and chief executive officer of the First Amendment Center in Nashville, echoed Looney's comments, explaining students have First Amendment rights like anyone else.

But the U.S. Supreme Court has carved out guidelines that give public school officials the right to limit free expression when it poses a threat of substantial disruption to education.

Paulson said it was appropriate for the administrators to approach the incident the way they did rather than turning it into a controversy.

"You apply that ruling to this case, there is no question that a student wearing a Jesus costume and describing him as fictional character has a significant potential for disrupting school activities €1/8 under the circumstances, the school had a right to remove the costume," he said.

Shott is not the first student to receive an award from the organization.

Last year, a student from Ohio who dressed as Jesus Christ for a similar costume day and was disciplined also received an award, Gaylor said.

Church abuse inquiry: 5 U.S. priests unsuitable

Source

Church abuse inquiry: 5 U.S. priests unsuitable

May. 4, 2012 11:43 AM

Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA -- Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput says five priests have been found not suitable for ministry due to substantiated allegations of sexual abuse or boundary violations.

Chaput says three priests will be returned to ministry, and another died during the investigation.

Chaput says 17 other cases have been investigated, but the findings are not being announced Friday.

The cardinal also offered his profound apology to the victims of clergy abuse.

The announcements come as a former church official stands trial in the city on child-endangerment charges for allegedly helping the archdiocese cover up abuse complaints.

A February 2011 grand jury report that spawned that case alleged that dozens of accused priests were still active in Philadelphia, despite a zero-tolerance policy among U.S. bishops. The accusations ranged from sexual abuse to inappropriate boundary issues.

Legion of Christ Rocked By More Sex Charges

Source

Legion of Christ Rocked By More Sex Charges

ABC News

By RYM MOMTAZ

A prominent American priest in the Legionaries of Christ, a troubled Catholic order whose founder was denounced by the Vatican for sexual improprieties, has admitted having a sexual relationship with a woman and fathering her child.

Father Thomas Williams, who has appeared on CBS and NBC and was interviewed by ABC News for a 2010 report on the Legion, made the acknowledgment after an activist who had sought reform in the order contacted the Vatican with his suspicions.

"I am truly sorry to everyone who is hurt by this revelation," said Williams in a statement. He said that he would be taking a year's leave from his public duties "to reflect on my commitments as a priest."

According to the National Catholic Reporter, the Legion has confirmed that seven other priests are now being investigated for the alleged abuse of minors. The Legion has more than 800 priests.

The Legion of Christ was founded by Mexican priest Marcial Maciel in 1941, who built it into a powerful international order with 70,000 followers and many wealthy benefactors. Maciel, however, was accused of sexual abuse, drug abuse and of fathering multiple children with women in Europe and Mexico. In 2006, Pope Benedict banned Maciel from active ministry after 20 men testified that he had molested them when they were teens.

After Maciel's death in 2008, the Legion issued a public statement acknowledging "reprehensible actions" by its founder. The Vatican began investigating the Legion's finances. In 2010, the Vatican denounced Maciel and appointed an outsider to oversee the Legion and manage its reform. The Vatican said Maciel had committed "objectively immoral acts," committed "true crimes," and lived a "life without scruples or authentic religious sentiment."

The Legion's top official in North America sent a letter to members Tuesday after Williams made his public statement. "In the wake of all we have been through as a movement in the past several years, it won't surprise me if you are disappointed angry or feel your trust shaken once again," said Father Luis Garza.

Williams did not say give an age or gender for his child or identify the mother. "A number of years ago I had a relationship with a woman and fathered her child," he said. "I am deeply sorry for this grave transgression and have tried to make amends. . . . I am truly sorry to everyone who is hurt by this revelation, and I ask for your prayers as I seek guidance on how to make up for my errors."

The activist who alleged that Williams had fathered a child also claimed that Williams had been involved in sexual relationships with female students while stationed in Rome. Williams did not comment on those charges. Williams, a Michigan native, has appeared on CBS, NBC and other networks as a religion analyst and has authored more than a dozen books.

Pastor suggests building electric fence around ‘queers and homosexuals’

Source

Pastor delivers anti-gay rant, suggests building electric fence around ‘queers and homosexuals’

By Dylan Stableford | The Lookout

A North Carolina pastor's disturbing anti-gay sermon has gone viral, and it's easy to see why.

In a rant delivered just days after President Barack Obama's historic public support for same-sex marriage, the pastor, Charles L. Worley of Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden, N.C., suggested rounding up all "queers and homosexuals" and quarantining them inside an electric fence.

"I figured a way to get rid of all the lesbians and queers," Worley told churchgoers on May 13. "Build a great big large fence—50 or 100 mile long—put all the lesbians in there. Fly over and drop some food. Do the same thing with the queers and the homosexuals and have that fence electrified so they can't get out. And you know what, in a few years, they'll die out. Do you know why? They can't reproduce!"

"It makes me pukin' sick to think about," Worley added. "Can you imagine kissing some man?"

Worley's comments—while shocking—are sadly not uncommon for pastors in North Carolina, a state that voted overwhelmingly in favor of a constitutional amendment defining marriage "as solely between a man and a woman."

Earlier this month, Ron Baity, founding pastor of Winston-Salem's Berean Baptist Church and leader of Return America, said gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people should be prosecuted.

"For 300 years, we had laws that would prosecute that lifestyle," Baity said. "We've gone down the wrong path."

Before the state's vote, Pastor Sean Harris of the Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville instructed parents to use force if their kids start acting gay:

So your little son starts to act a little girlish when he is four years old and instead of squashing that like a cockroach and saying, "Man up, son, get that dress off you and get outside and dig a ditch, because that is what boys do," you get out the camera and you start taking pictures of Johnny acting like a female and then you upload it to YouTube and everybody laughs about it and the next thing you know, this dude, this kid is acting out childhood fantasies that should have been squashed. Can I make it any clearer? Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. OK?

Mesa council acting above the law

Letter: Mesa council acting above the law

Posted: Friday, May 25, 2012 8:14 am

Letter to the Editor

I just read that the city of Mesa is going to doling out millions of dollars in corporate welfare to bring three Christian universities to the city of Mesa.

Just what part of Article 2 Section 12 of the Arizona Constitution don’t they understand? It says: No public money or property shall be appropriated for or applied to any religious worship, exercise, or instruction, or to the of any religious establishment.

I guess the members of the Mesa City Council consider themselves royal rulers who are above the law!

Mike Ross

Tempe

First-edition Book of Mormon stolen in Mesa

Source

First-edition Book of Mormon stolen in Mesa

by Jim Walsh - May. 30, 2012 11:47 PM

The Republic | azcentral.com

For years, Mormon missionaries would come to Helen Schlie's bookstore near the Mesa Arizona Temple to have their pictures taken with a first-edition copy of the Book of Mormon.

Some missionaries would cry as they touched the rare book, one of 5,000 printed in 1830 after Joseph Smith found the gold plates that he translated into the Book of Mormon, which members of the faith consider to be scripture alongside the Bible.

"I tell people they are sharing their DNA with Joseph Smith himself," said Schlie, 88, a Mormon convert who bought the book in the late 1960s from a man so desperate for money that he was willing to sell a family heirloom.

Sometime over the Memorial Day weekend the book was stolen from Schlie's crowded shop, Rare and Out of Print Books and Art, and now it is Schlie who is desperate to get it back.

When she discovered the book was missing Monday, "it really hurt my heart," Schlie said. "I'm hoping someone will bring it back, let it finish its mission."

Mesa police Sgt. Tony Landato confirmed that Schlie reported the theft about 3 p.m. on Memorial Day and said a detective has been assigned to investigate.

"Certainly, it is someone who had access and knowledge of it," Landato said.

Schlie said the fact that she owned an original Book of Mormon was well-known within the Mormon community in the Valley and that hundreds of people have stopped by the bookstore, which more resembles a storeroom filled with stacks of books, to see it.

Schlie said she discovered the theft when two young women, Mormon missionaries from Asia, stopped by about 1 p.m. Monday to have their pictures taken with the book.

The last time Schlie and her assistant, Ken Hankins, saw the book was at 7 p.m. Friday, when they placed it in a fireproof box and set that in an unlocked filing cabinet.

No one asked to see the book Saturday, and the store was closed Sunday.

Hankins said he lives at the store, describing himself as a struggling artist and Schlie's "night watchman and chief bottle washer." He said he is very security-conscious.

Schlie valued the book at $100,000 when she reported it stolen. She said the book was not insured.

In 2005, Schlie became somewhat of a controversial figure among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when she announced plans to sell pages from the book for $2,500 to $4,000 apiece. She estimated she has sold 40 of the book's 588 pages, each mounted in a wooden frame.

Some critics consider divvying up the book as sacrilegious or disrespectful of its history. But Schlie and one of her customers, Gary Hyde, a winter resident of Mesa, said the LDS Church gave its blessing to the project, viewing it as a way of strengthening people's faith.

Hyde said his page is an effective teaching tool in his missionary work, which is appropriate because his page contains a passage about the importance of missionary work.

"Oh my goodness," said Hyde, when he learned about the theft. He said that grasping the book at Schlie's store was a very personal and powerful religious experience for many people.

"Just to have it in their hands brings a little bit of inspiration to them," Hyde said. "This is one of the original Books of Mormon, and they feel the spirit."

Although the book is now missing, the pages that Schlie sold are still touching many people, he said.

"I use it in various testimonies. I put the page to good work," Hyde said.

Cindy Packard, an LDS spokeswoman in the Valley, said she had no comment on the theft, but that the Book of Mormon is considered to be another testimony of Jesus Christ by church members and has equal standing with the Bible.

David LeSueur, another church spokesman, said in statement, "I hope whoever took it reads it, ponders it carefully and returns it."

Grace Community Church wants $2.47 million in government welfare!

Tempe neighbors oppose plan for low-income units

by Dianna M. Náñez - May. 30, 2012 09:51 AM

The Republic | azcentral.com

The Tempe City Council is expected to decide Thursday whether to allow an out-of-state developer to bypass height and density rules for a proposed low-income housing complex along the light-rail line.

More than 100 residents from neighborhoods flanking the land oppose Gorman & Co.'s request to build Gracie's Village, a four-story apartment that would replace the single-story Gracie's Thrift Store on Apache Boulevard west of McClintock Drive.

Grace Community Church owns the 2-acre site and is working with the Wisconsin-based developer to build the apartments. Several church members, who do not live near the proposed development, said they support the project because it would serve needy families.

But scores of residents near the proposed Gracie's Village want the developer to stick to the current zoning, which would allow a maximum of 40 units and a building no taller than 35 feet. Gorman is seeking a waiver for 50 units and a 54-foot building with areas that would reach 64 feet for an emergency staircase and elevators.

Nearby property owners have filed a legal protest against the proposal. The protest requires a supermajority 6-1 vote of the council for approval of the zoning amendments.

The proposed development is surrounded by several historic neighborhoods, including Borden Homes, which is nominated for the National Register of Historic Places.

Residents have spent the past year fighting to protect their neighborhood and property values.

Gorman officials have argued that they have scaled back their proposal from an initial plan that called for a six-story building with 75 units. Residents have scoffed at that argument, saying that it is ridiculous for the developer to characterize the new proposal as a compromise when it still does not meet zoning standards.

The developer has argued that the complex is in line with the city's General Plan guidelines and is essential to providing affordable housing for residents who cannot pay typical rental rates in Tempe.

Gorman's Brian Swanton told residents at a recent community meeting that individuals and families earning 40 to 60 percent of the area median income -- about $18,000 to $50,000 per year -- may apply for a rental unit.

Existing older apartments and rental homes in the area, which is close to Arizona State University, already provide affordable rates, said Chuck Buss, a Tempe real-estate agent who lives in the University Heights neighborhood near the proposed apartments.

Buss said he does not oppose low-income or workforce housing. However, he said the council should not grant the developer a waiver to build a towering apartment that would harm existing homeowners.

Residents in the historic Borden Homes neighborhood are worried the project would lower their property values and damage the quaint character of their neighborhood.

"The reason we're digging our heels in on zoning is we didn't want them (Gorman) to get an exception and then set a precedent that every single project ... in the future along Apache would get extra height and extra density," Buss said.

Several areas along the light-rail line east and west of Gracie's Thrift Store are zoned for the density the developer seeks. But the pocket where Gracie's Village would sit was zoned in consideration with the proximity of mature residential communities. Visits with council members

The fight over the past year has become so heated that residents have begun to question whether city leaders are too focused on appeasing developers.

Gail Martelli, who lives near the proposed complex, said she does not understand why the council would even consider granting an exception for a future project when hundreds of area residents oppose it.

"We're not really asking for that much. We're just asking for them (Gorman) to stay within the current zoning," Martelli said. "How does it help my neighborhood to lower the standards that we set as a community?"

Martelli is among the many residents who worried the added building height will give future residents of the apartment a bird's-eye view into their backyards. "We would lose all our privacy," she said.

Martelli thought it would help council members to visit her house to see firsthand the impact of the development on her place.

Martelli said she appreciated Councilmen Corey Woods and Joel Navarro visiting her and listening to her concerns. She said Councilwomen Onnie Shekerjian, Shana Ellis and Robin Arredondo-Savage declined her offer.

"They said they were nervous about meeting with me at my home on such an emotional issue," Martelli said.

To ease their concerns, Martelli said she offered to pay for an off-duty Tempe police officer to guard the council members during the visit, but the councilwomen would agree only to meet at a city building with staff present.

"I think they really needed to see the situation we're dealing with from our backyard," she said, adding that she accepted the meeting at the city site as it was better than nothing. Tax-credit application

Residents have been concerned that council members may feel obligated to give the developer what it wants because more than a year ago the city offered financial backing for the project as well as written support to the state for the project.

A Tempe development director sent Gorman a letter stating Tempe would consider providing $300,000 toward the project if it meets standards and is approved by the council.

The developer also had applied for federal low-income housing tax credits, which are allocated by the Arizona Department of Housing. A low-income housing tax credit is a credit against the federal income-tax liability of the developer.

As part of the application for the tax credit, Tempe development officials supplied a form to the state saying that the city would allow 74 apartment units on the site.

"The city basically told the state, months before they even told us about the project, that the developer could ignore the (zoning) standards," Martelli said.

This month, Mayor Hugh Hallman told residents at a council meeting that the form to the state did not obligate the city to approve a waiver for the developer.

"I'd like to believe that's true," Martelli said.

If Gorman builds the project, it is eligible for up to an estimated $2.17 million in federal tax credits, which can be claimed annually for a 10-year period. The property must maintain low-income rent restrictions for at least 30 years.

Kuwait blogger gets 10 years for insulting prophet Mohammed

Kuwait blogger gets 10 years for insulting prophet Mohammed

By Douglas Stanglin, USA TODAY

A Kuwaiti court has sentenced a blogger to 10 years in prison for insulting the prophet Mohammed and for harming Kuwait's interests with disparaging tweets about the regimes in neighboring Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, Gulf News and other media report.

The court convicted Hamad Al-Naqi, 26, of Kuwait, of blasphemy for tweets about the prophet Mohammed, his companions, and his wife, Aisha, in February and March.

Al-Naqi was also accused of posting remarks that "denigrated Islam as a religion, ridiculed its beliefs and teachings and scorned its iconic figures."

The prosecutor told the court that the tweets "were likely to stoke sedition within the community and mobilize segments alongside sectarian lines," Gulf News reports.

Al-Naqi had pleaded not guilty, saying that his Twitter account had been hacked and that he did not post the messages, Reuters reports.

Gulf News also reports that several lawmakers called for his execution.

Gulf News says the Kuwaiti parliament, which is dominated by "Islamist and tribal representatives," has passed an anti-blasphemy draft law that calls for the death penalty for anyone convicted of insulting God, Mohammed, or his companions or relatives.

More articles on mixing government and religion