From: Paul Seymour Area: Metaphysical To: All 1 May 94 15:43:52 Subject: UK Report - "Satanic Abuse" UpdReq * Forwarded from "SPIRIT" * Originally by Todd Rourke * Originally to All * Originally dated 28 Apr 1994, 22:08 U.K. STUDY FINDS NO EVIDENCE OF SATANIC ABUSE OF CHILDREN EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS BLAMED FOR SPREADING SCARE - by Rosie Waterhouse, _London Independent_ Reprinted _San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle_, April 24, 1994, #A5 LONDON - Satanic child abuse does not exist in the United Kingdom, a government inquiry has concluded. A three-year investigation funded by Britain's Department of Health has found no evidence to substantiate any of the 84 cases in which it was alleged that children were sexually abused during satanic, black magic rites. Similar stories of satanic abuse first surfaced in the United States in 1983 and have since spread to other countries, including the Netherlands, Norway, and Australia, but no evidence has been found. The official report, which was commissioned in 1991 after children had been snatched from their homes in dawn raids by social workers and police in the northern town of Rochdale and on the Orkney islands off the coast of Scotland, is due for publication next month. It blames the evangelical Christian movement and self-proclaimed U.S. "experts" for spreading the satanic-abuse scare. And it suggests that social workers and others believed in it because involvement with the devil explained why parents could harm their own children, reviving "an age-old myth" of cults controlled by unknown, powerful, and dangerous strangers. Providing the first official definition of satanic abuse, the report explains: "Rites that allegedly include the torture and sexual abuse of children and adults, forced abortion and human sacrifice, cannibalism, and bestiality may be labeled satanic or satanist." "There is no evidence that these have taken place in any of the 84 cases studied," the report said. The report was conducted by Jean La Fontaine, professor of social anthropology at the London School of Economics, an expert on child abuse and on cults. Professor La Fontaine, who refused to comment on her report until it is published, had access to the files of every police force and social services department that investigated allegations of satanic ritual abuse in Britain since 1988. Allegations were investigated by police forces from Kent to Strathclyde, including Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, and Merseyside, but no evidence was found to corroborate the claims. The report attempts to explain how the stories began. "The alleged disclosures of satanic abuse by younger children were influenced by adults. A small minority involved children pressured or coached by their mothers. "The interviews during this period (1988-91) were frequently poorly conducted. Too-frequent interviewing, leading questions, contamination, pressure, and inducements to agree to suggestions may have resulted from the anxiety of the interviewers to find out what happened." The report also tries to explain how the satanic abuse scare spread. "The evangelical Christian campaign against new religious movements has been a powerful influence encouraging the identification of satanic abuse. "Equally, if not more important in spreading the idea of satanic abuse in Britain are the 'specialists', American and British. They may have few or even no qualifications as professionals but attribute their expertise to 'experience of cases'. Their claims or qualifications are rarely checked." In some of the cases investigated, the children really had been sexually abused but treating them as victims of satanic abuse caused further problems. 201434369420143436942014343694201434369420143436942014343694718 From: Paul Seymour Area: Metaphysical To: All 1 May 94 15:44:12 Subject: bible/homosexuality UpdReq * Forwarded from "SPIRIT" * Originally by Todd Rourke * Originally to All * Originally dated 28 Apr 1994, 22:56 The following is a column taken from the April 26, 1994 San Francisco Chronicle. The author's name is Scott Marley. Scott Marley THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO --The `sin' that obsesses some Christians did not rate a mention by Christ himself. Why do Christian fundamentalists hate gays? Because (so they tell us) they believe the Bible is infallibly true. And the Bible (so they tell us) condemns homosexuals. I've heard that over and over again all my life: The Bible condemns homosexuals. And I accepted it without question -- until the last couple of years when I've started reading the Bible for myself. And I'm more than a little surprised at how little it actually says about homosexuals -- and how much it says about those who condemn them. The Bible's alleged condemnation of homosexuals boils down pretty much to three passages: the story of Sodom, two verses from Leviticus, and the first chapter of Romans. The Sodom story is Genesis 19. Some angels came to Sodom to visit Lot, and the men of Sodom gave the angels a hard time, so God destroyed the city. If you think the word "know" in verse five means "have carnal knowledge of" (which it occasionally does in the Bible, though not nearly as often as people seem to think), then maybe the men wanted to rape the angels, and I suppose that's a homosexual act of a sort. But there are dozens of later references to Sodom, and not once is any kind of sexual behavior mentioned. In Ezekiel 16:48-49, God Himself even spells out the sins of Sodom. Homosexuality is not on His list. And the Bible is infallibly true. Leviticus condemns homosexuality twice, in 18:22 and 20:13. It's part of the Mosaic law, a long list of foods and acts that were considered unclean, from eating shellfish to cursing your father. And one of the big themes of the New Testament, I've been discovering, is that Christians are not bound by Mosaic law. If the Bible is infallibly true, then Christians may use their own judgment in choosing whether to follow the Mosaic law, and should stop all this fretting about those who choose differently. And there's the first chapter of Romans, where Paul describes people who worship idols instead of God, "wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness," and they turned to homosexuality and a long list of other wrongs running the gamut from murder and deceit to whispering. I've never heard any of these fundamentalists quote this passage all the way to its punch line: "Therefore art thou inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself." Paul isn't telling this story to condemn the homosexuals: He's condemning the people who condemn the homosexuals. Read Romans all the way through and its hard to miss Paul's point: He's writing to a group of Jewish Christians who have been criticising gentile Christians for not keeping the Mosaic law, and Paul is telling them, politely but firmly, to knock it off. If the Bible is infallibly true, it's wrong to use Leviticus as a basis for condemning homosexuals. Jesus wasn't faced with AIDS, of course, so we can't be sure what he would have said or done about it. But he did know another disease much like AIDS, both in its incurability and in the way that society shunned its victims. I've read the New Testament a couple of times through, and I just haven't come across the passage where Jesus goes to the funerals of lepers carrying a picket sign. So it seems to me that a real fundamentalist would be preaching that it's wrong for a church to exclude people solely because they're gay, and it seems to me that a real fundamentalist would be following Jesus' example and trying to bring comfort to people with AIDS, and perhaps even working toward a cure. The more I get to know the Bible for myself, the less I think these so-called fundamentalists are any such thing. I think they're wolves in Lamb of God's clothing. --Scott Marley is a writer and editor in the Bay Area. THE PRECEDING WAS A COLUMN WRITTEN BY SCOTT MARLEY AND PRINTED IN THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE. IT DOES NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS AND OPINIONS OF THE PERSON WHO ENTERED IT IN THIS ECHO CONFERENCE. 201434369420143436942014343694201434369420143436942014343694718 From: Albertus Magnus Area: Metaphysical To: Greymage 2 May 94 19:02:40 Subject: The Cube of Shalube UpdReq Gr> This echo is for magazine-style posts only. Any replies should be channeled to Mundane or MagickNet. Please do not reply to this message. .\ .\.\ ... Jesus saves, but Judas picks up the rebound. Pass to Satan... SCORES!! 201434369420143436942014343694201434369420143436942014343694718