Idiot of the Week: Rhode Island Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin: Homophobe, Bigot

This week's IDIOT is a Catholic Bishop who stated that Catholics should not support gay people. What a hateful, stupid bastard. I grew up Catholic and fled the church because of this hateful intolerance. Even this idiot's response to the offense taken by thousands wasn't an apology. 
    Is that what the Catholic church is all about today? Promote the current administration's right-wing agenda of hatred and intolerance of people who are not white, straight, christians? This Bishop should be thrown out of the church immediately. I guess he missed the message from his god that says "Love and welcome all people." What an IDIOT.

R.I. bishop issues  homophobic Pride Month tweet

ByThe AP 

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Rhode Island’s Roman Catholic bishop on Sunday defended a tweet urging Catholics to not support or attend LGBTQ Pride Month events, saying it was his obligation to teach the faith ‘‘clearly and compassionately, even on very difficult and sensitive issues.’’

Diocese of Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin sparked a backlash beginning Saturday when he tweeted, ‘‘A reminder that Catholics should not support or attend LGBTQ ‘Pride Month’ events held in June. They promote a culture and encourage activities that are contrary to Catholic faith and morals. They are especially harmful for children.’’

HERE'S WHAT THE IDIOT SAID:    "A reminder that Catholics should not support or attend LGBTQ “Pride Month” events held in June. They promote a culture and encourage activities that are contrary to Catholic faith and morals. They are especially harmful for children."

— Bishop Thomas Tobin (@ThomasJTobin1) June 1, 2019

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MY  NOTE: I think that Bishops and priests' physical and sexual abuse of children have caused FAR MORE HARM to them than a celebration for gay pride ever could.

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 The posting spurred rebukes by thousands of people who replied on Twitter, including actresses Mia

The BIGOT: Bishop Thomas Tobin

Farrow and Patricia Arquette. Many invoked the scandals of clergy sexual abuse of children in the church.

 

‘‘This is pure ignorance  ; bigotry,’’ Farrow wrote. ‘‘Ignore this hate-filled hypocrite. His mind set leads only to suffering. He brings to mind those priests who molested my brothers. Of COURSE we should embrace our LGBTQ brothers and sisters and children. Jesus spoke of love.’’

Kids are in far more danger at a catholic church than at a gay pride gathering.

— Mia Farrow (@MiaFarrow) June 2, 2019

Arquette tweeted, ‘‘Shame on you. LGBT kids are thrown out on the streets and abandoned because of poisonous thinking like yours.’’

Shame on you. LGBT kids are thrown out on the streets and abandoned because of poisonous thinking like yours.

— Patricia Arquette (@PattyArquette) June 2, 2019

The diocese on Sunday released a statement by Tobin. ‘‘I regret that my comments yesterday about Pride Month have turned out to be so controversial in our community, and offensive to some, especially the gay community,’’ Tobin said. ‘‘That certainly was not my intention, but I understand why a good number of individuals have taken offense. I also acknowledge and appreciate the widespread support I have received on this matter.’’

Tobin added that he and the Catholic Church have ‘‘respect and love for members of the gay community.’’

‘‘As a Catholic Bishop, however, my obligation before God is to lead the faithful entrusted to my care and to teach the faith, clearly and compassionately, even on very difficult and sensitive issues,’’ he said.

As of Sunday afternoon, 69,000 people had replied to the tweet, about 15,800 liked it and nearly 4,700 retweeted it. Many of those who replied supported the bishop.

    

      The LGBTQ group Rhode Island Pride held a rally outside the diocese’s headquarters in Providence on Sunday evening.

‘‘Jesus never said a word about homosexuality, about Pride, or the Queer community,’’ the group’s president, Joe Lazzerini, said in a statement. ‘‘Rhode Island Pride respectfully calls on Bishop Tobin to do some self-reflection as the majority of Catholic Rhode Islanders in this state reject the idea that to be Catholic is to be complicit to intolerance, bigotry, and fear.

‘‘Bishop Tobin doesn’t represent the majority of Rhode Island Catholics who support the LGBTQIA+ community in Rhode Island,’’ he wrote.

Tobin is a conservative bishop who has said that he was aware of incidents of sexual abuse reported to church officials while working in Pennsylvania, but that it wasn’t his job to deal with them. He was auxiliary bishop of Pittsburgh from 1992 until 1996. A Pennsylvania grand jury report last year detailed decades of abuse and cover-up in six dioceses, including the Pittsburgh diocese.

In July 2018, Tobin deleted his Twitter account, calling it a major distraction, an obstacle to his spiritual life and an ‘‘occasion of sin’’ for himself and others. But he resumed tweeting in January, according to his current Twitter account.

Photos from the Annapolis Pride Parade

Today, Saturday, June 29, we went to the first Annapolis Pride Parade and festival. We thought there would just be a few people there, but there were thousands!  In this time when our country is being led by a party who endorses intolerance and hatred, it was refreshing to see so many come out to support diversity and embrace all people.

THE PARADE PARTICIPANTS- The parade route was packed with people and it was elbow to elbow. We walked through the vendor area and were impressed and happily surprised at the number of businesses and companies that are so inclusionary and supportive of LGBTQ people - including Veterans organizations, hospitals, churches, State, county and city police departments, local politicians, non profit organizations, high school groups, Colleges and universities, parents of LGBT people, hotels, veterinarians, Wawa convenience stores, Northrop Grumman, Parsons contracting company, and a huge aerospace employer.


  Despite the temperature being near 95 degrees Fahrenheit with a heat index of 105, the streets were lined with people for the entire parade route. We even got to see our friends Joe and Tom marching in the parade, and met our friend Scott, a professional cartoonist, selling his amazing books, posters and cards at the vendor area. 
  Of course, we had lunch at Dunkin' Donuts. :)  Here are the photos.

Madame Butterfly!

Wawa Convenience Store and Gas

Leather guy in a dog flag

License Plate

Hot Firemen!

Policemen and women

 

 

 

A young girl dressed for the parade

Learn About Tenafly, New Jersey - and a GREAT Bakery

Earlier this month I told you about the PetResQ fundraiser in Tenafly, New Jersey where I was the featured speaker.
I was so impressed and happy to see Tenfly hosting it's own gay pride day, too. 
Before the event, I had a couple of hours to walk around this quaint little town and explore it, so I wanted to share some insights, fact, famous people and pictures with you in Today's Blog>>

TENAFLY FACTS: Tenafly is a borough in Bergen County, New Jersey. There are only about 15,000 people living there.  It seems to have two main streets that intersect and both have storefronts. On one street is an old railroad station, complete with old tracks that run alongside it. New Jersey Monthly magazine ranked Tenafly as the 7th best place to live in New Jersey in its 2013 rankings of the "Best Places To Live" in New Jersey.

Mauro's Restaurant in old Train Station

BEST DESSERT! - MAURO'S RESTAURANT- The old railroad station is now a restaurant called Mauro's. I stopped there and had one of the BEST DESSERTS I've ever had. It was a rounded chocolate tort. 

THE OLD RAILROAD AND BUILDING- From the mid 1850s until September 1966, Tenafly was served by rail along the Northern Branch, originally to Pavonia Terminal, and later to Hoboken Terminal. CSX now provides freight service along the line. The former Tenafly Station, currently a restaurant, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979; it is one of four surviving stations on the Northern Branch

HOW DID THE TOWN GET IT'S NAME? - The first European settlers in Tenafly were Dutch immigrants, who began to populate the area during the late 17th century. The name "Tenafly" is derived from the early-modern Dutch phrase "Tiene Vly" or "Ten Swamps" which was given by Dutch settlers in 1688.

Mauro's Restaurant in old Train Station

FAMOUS PEOPLE FROM TENAFLY: 
People who were born in, residents of, or otherwise closely associated with Tenafly include: 

1) Hiroaki Aoki (1938–2008), founder of Benihana Japanese restaurant chain
2) Peter Balakian (born 1951), Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and author
3) Yogi Berra (1925–2015), player and manager for the New York Yankees.
4) Jimmy Dean (1928–2010), singer turned breakfast meat entrepreneur

Tenafly was having a PRIDE DAY! - how cool!

5) Lesley Gore (1946–2015), singer (she attended Tenafly High School) 
6) Jon-Erik Hexum (1957–1984), actor. (He was a HOT, Handsome actor who since passed)
7) Glenn Miller (1904–1944), bandleader. (lived in Tenafly!) 

Mauro's Dessert case

Danube River Cruise #19: Slovakia: Russian Block Apartments, The Iron Curtain

bratislava communist architecture petrzalka. Credit: TheCrowdedPlanet

In this final blog of our visit to Bratislava, Slovakia, we're going to take a look at the Cold War Era Russian cement block housing that still exists there today. This style of building is called a "Panelak" and it's really awful and drab.To make it "more attractive," the property owners have painted these cement apartment buildings in yellow and green (It doesn't help). Here's the story about these buildings and the architecture and you'll learn about the "Iron Curtain": You'll also learn WHEN Slovakia became it's own country..>>>>



The Website called Thecrowdedplanet.com provided a great overview of the drab Soviet-era concrete apartment housing that still stands in Bratislava. It's in a neighborhood called "Petržalka."

PANELAKS - The name of the blocky, cement apartment buildings. 

Soviet block housing in neighborhood called "Petržalka"

The 1960 creative burst came to an end with the Prague Spring, when several architects fell from grace and the regime started promoting functionalist, bare-bones architecture. Looking southwards from the top of the UFO Bridge you’ll notice Petržalka, a neighborhood made up of square, blocky apartment buildings. These panelaks are the iconic Communist time accommodation for the new working classes.

THESE WERE BUILT BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN - These Panelaks were true depictions of Communist life.  They depicted an existence divided between the factory, queuing for food and living in cramped flats on concrete high-rises (and the lift would never work). 

WHY BUILT?  The district was built in the 1970 to house workers of a nearby refinery, and it soon became the most densely state housing development this side of the Iron Curtain. Yet, it was one of the most innovative projects in the whole of Czechoslovakia – besides housing it included transport links, and it was supposed to be surrounded by a network of parks and canals. Needless to say, money ran out. Nowadays,Petržalka is still inhabited by over 100,000 people. 



WHAT IS THE IRON CURTAIN? 
The Iron Curtain is the political, military, and ideological barrier erected by the Soviet Union after World War II to seal off itself and its dependent eastern and central European allies from open contact with the West and other noncommunist areas.

Europe -Iron Curtain (red)divided East from West. Credit: Shutterstock.com.

SLOVAKIA NOT SLOVAKIA THEN - Slovakia was part of Czechloslovakia at the time of the "Iron Curtain" and it fell under Soviet rule.  

WHAT HAPPENED BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN? -
The USSR strictly used the actual and ideological Iron Curtain boundary to keep its people within their preferred ideological control and physical area.
 
WHEN DID THE IRON CURTAIN FALL? - One by one, the Soviets embraced openness and economic restructuring which culminated in the 1989 Revolution in the Eastern Bloc. Poland led the way by electing anti-communist politicians that triggered peaceful anti-communist revolutions that led to the fall of communism.

WHEN DID SLOVAKIA BECOME ITS OWN COUNTRY? - The Dissolution of Czechoslovakia, which took effect on 1 January 1993, was an event that saw the self-determined split of the federal state of Czechoslovakia into the independent countries of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

NEXT: ARRIVAL IN VIENNA, AUSTRIA 

Danube River Cruise #18: Bratislava's Korzo Stone and Sewer Man Statue

The sewer man of Bratislava

In this final blog about our trip through the city of Bratislava, Slovakia, we'll highlight two pieces of artwork in the city. The statue of a man coming out of a sewer and the famously photographed Korzo Stone. Read On!

The Korzo Stone

THE SEWER MAN - Apparently the city thought putting up a statue of a man crawling out of a sewer would garner a lot of attention. So, they did it and it worked. When we walked by the statue was surrounded by tourists about 5 people thick. We couldn't tell what they were looking at and getting a photograph with until it cleared out. It turned out that this is Bratislava's monument to working man. Rumor has it that if you rub his head, money will be yours forever.


THE KORZO STONE - The Korzo Stone

a busy main street in Bratislava

is a monument in the Old Town, carved out of granite. It is located at the intersection of Michalski and Sedlarskoy streets.
It is said to be popular with locals and tourists who like to dress up in their finest clothes and get their picture taken with it.  

FAST FACTS -
In 2017, Bratislava was ranked as the third richest region of the European Union by GDP (PPP) per capita (after Hamburg and Luxembourg City). GDP at purchasing power parity is about three times higher than in other Slovak regions.
Bratislava also receives around 1 million tourists every year

NEXT: RUSSIAN BLOCK APARTMENTS and THE IRON CURTAIN (and when Slovakia became it's own country!)