Why Catholics Are Leaving the Church – Seven Top Reasons

The sex abuse crisis

The church’s stance on homosexuality

Dissatisfaction with the priest

Uninspiring homilies on Sundays

Perception that church hierarchy is too closely tied to conservative politics

Church’s stance toward divorced and remarried Catholics

The status of women

Read more:

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/30/7-reasons-catholics-leave-church-in-trenton-1-is-sex-abuse-crisis/?hpt=hp_c2

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Bishop Chaput and his War on Obama Book, the Way, the Darkness and the Ignorance of a future Fascist America

Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia

As you well know I am no fan of Charles Chaput, the present temporary Archbishop of Philadelphia, before his papal reappointment to the Vatican.  In the interim, he is “trying” to clean up the Cesspool at “222” North 17^th Street in Philly, Regional Corporate Headquarters of the global Vatican (for profit) Inc.

I have called him Chief Outtatown in the past referencing hearsay from back there, because of his temporary assignment to Philly to paint a rosy picture and literally cheer on and applaud company perverts like Monsignor Lynn and the kiddie rape ring trial currently going on in the city of brotherly love. His sitting in the chair at Sts. Peter and Paul cathedral reminds me of the phrase from the bible – the Abomination that – is going to cause desolation in Philly IMHO.

That being said, from his past actions in Australia, Denver, Madrid and knife in the back to a dead JFK, I can only imagine that his new e-book essay attack, War on Obama, is "legitimate" considering the source, the pope's official hatchet/hit man. 

Here is an excellent review of Chaput’s current  “religious liberty” book/essay, conservative propaganda in the name of his Christ, not mine.  

Archbishop Chaput Will Have None of Your Lukewarm Catholicism

http://blogs.phillymag.com/the_philly_post/2012/03/30/archbishop-chaput-lukewarm-catholicism/

A good read.

That’s some tough talk, and in the course of Chaput’s compact essay, he smartly and eloquently states his case for what he sees as a growing sense of religious intolerance in this country, stoked by an ill-informed and biased media and a populace that’s turned its collective back on faith. He writes of “the inhuman parody we call ‘modern American culture’” and “sexual minorities [who] now routinely use the state’s power and friendly mass media to break down traditional definitions of marriage and family.” Chaput wistfully remembers the good old days, “when the word gay had more connection to joy than sexual identity.”

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New York State Textbooks Censored in favor of Religious Superstitions and continued Dumbing Down of America

http://open.salon.com/blog/annie_keeghan/2012/03/26/news_flash_new_york_educators_reject_dinosaurs

Any company submitting proposals to the state must exclude references to such topics as dinosaurs, birthdays, Halloween, slavery, swimming pools (and other allusions to wealth, such as mp3 players, video games, etc.), certain forms of dance (ballet is okay), among others. And there’s junk food of course, which unfortunately wasn’t fully defined. This means that there is great editorial debate going on in conference rooms around the country as publishers try to discern exactlywhat constitutes junk food (I know; I’ve sat in on such meetings. Pretzels? Frozen yogurt? No one is ever quite sure. Cookies? Pies? Those always yield a consensus)…

The reason for the list coming out of New York, according to one education official, is that these and other listed references have the potential to “evoke unpleasant emotions in students.” Unpleasant emotions in students? When was the last time a written reference to a dinosaur or a cupcake or an ipod left your child emotionally harmed? I suspect it’s more likely that the unpleasant emotions aren’t so muchevoked in as projected upon students by much older voices---parents and others with personal agendas, as well as those with legal credentials who are always on the hunt for anything that has the eensiest potential to offend the smallest minority in the most insignificant way. The thing is, even if these things aren’t mentioned in a state test, students are still exposed to many of these topics on a daily basis beyond the classroom. So why are they affected so dramatically only when exposed to such topics on tests but not in everyday life?

Most of the items on New York's list aren’t new to publishers. When it comes to junk food, we haven’t been able to use the words cake, cookie, cupcake, and ice cream for as long as I can remember. The only reason pizza is allowed—veggie with a wheat crust, please…

Certainly some topics make sense to avoid—terrorism, divorce, disease. No one wants to upset the poor kids any more than they already are on testing day. But even a Jehovah’s Witness has to live in a world where most of the population celebrates birthdays, and an evangelical has to live in a world of museums that generally include things like, say, dinosaur fossils. Halloween? Is there a child alive who doesn’t either know about the existence of this holiday or participate in the celebration of it? Are there scores of students standing up en masse declaring, “I’m offended by this reference to paganism.” Or course not. Most don’t even know what paganism is. But those with agendas do. The more we try to sanitize education to appease a one-size-fits-all mentality, the more we’re going to create a one-size-fits-none curriculum which does nothing to advance what should be the goal—academics, not politics….

Hate Your Neighbor - Ayn Rand - Antichrist

Hate your neighbor.


Greed is good.


Selfish is best.


Screw you, I got mine. 


Pay my taxes boy. 


--- from the gospel of the antichrist Ayn Rand




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War on Humanity, War on Modernity Continues

The War on Women or the War on Gays via marriage equality boils down to a War on Intelligence and or a War on Modernity.  Parts of the Christian church, the RCs, have been at war with the secular western world for the past two hundred years since Napoleon.

There are blind spot words and concepts floating around the ether via the MSM and they match the blind spot ignorance of Mormons like Romney, Fundamentalists like Palin or Crusaders like Santorum.

But the biggest blind spot words and concepts these days have to do with sexuality.

The War on most everything in the media these days boils down to the RC church’s ignorance of definitions of sex that do not fit modern standards or modern definitions.

Child abuse, clergy abuse has to do with the inability of a global institution’s inability to understand sex.

To this institution, everything within a heterosexual Catholic marriage and dealing with procreative sex is the only definition of sex.

That if the church wants, as in recent months and years, wants to blame homosexuality for clergy abuse, it is only mouthing a modern word invented by the Victorians that catalogued a sexual venue, but did little to further explain it.

That everything sexual outside of Catholic marriage is not defined in pre-nineteenth century terms.  Sexuality is a sin outside of marriage.  Everything else, fornication, sodomy, masturbation, pedophilia is merely some sin that must be confessed and absolved – it does not have to be understood.

This march toward the past in terms of a NOM world that can only understand sexuality in marriage and no place else is a shill for organized religion, that still in the twentieth-first century, remains clueless on all things sexual.

They are supposed to start a big clergy abuse trial in Philly today.  This whole mess is a very tragic comedy of sexual errors by a clerical bureaucracy that did not, has not tried to understand sexuality since the Great Schism in 1054 C.E..

That when Rome created celibacy, it was part of a total ban on sexuality.  That the majority homosexual clergy and their excesses were supposed to become chaste and stop the sex thing, like human nature as part of natural law, like gravity, could stop on a papal decree.  That misery from the pope on down and abstaining from gay sex demanded that the heterosexual clergy should not enjoy sex either, thus the band-aid blind spot word/concept associated with sex and the word celibate.

Little wonder world war or the Crusades started as a diversion soon after as a result of this grand sexual dysfunction as a result of this new f---ed up official front office mission statement of reality.

That whenever any Christian official or their ex-Pennsylvania Senator type stooges these days are using any term sexual, they are in the past, the pre-modern world in thought and understanding of the subject.

They are mimicking the language.  They are clueless. Beware.

That the War on Women and the War on Marriage Equality is an attempt to dumb the modern world back to the stopped Church calendar of 1799 C.E..

Who will win next year’s national election? Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson or Burr?

Be careful with whom you speak or have conversation with or listen to in the media.  Anybody can use words, have them written for them, and mimic intelligence.

The truth is in the heart and few of the soldiers in this current War on Humanity, War on Modernity have minds or hearts. 

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Christ the King Statue on a UFO and Souvenir Shop - Silao Guanajuato Mexico

Pope Accepts Protection from Bloodthirsty Drug Gangs in Mexico

Pope Benedict's Temporary Swiss/Mexican Guard

Perhaps a temporary ceasefire in the bloody civil drug wars in Mexico is a good thing as Benedict XVI is in town to sell the product.

The pope is actually in Mexico on church business and no truth to the rumors that crates of cash are going back with him on the papal plane to the Vatican bank (?).

No big deal accepting protection from followers of the Santa Muerte Mexican Catholic Crime Cult?

Mexican drug gang guards pope for the weekend

Looks like Pope Benedict won't need his bulletproof popemobile for his trip to Guanajuato this weekend. The Knights Templar, one of Mexico's most vicious drug cartels, has bizarrely anointed itself as the makeshift security force for His Holiness, proclaiming a ceasefire during his three-day visit and hanging up banners around the state warning rival gangs not to get trigger-happy. The group purged its own bloodthirsty urges ahead of time,dumping 10 severed heads outside a Teloloapan slaughterhouse this week. Don't think that gang members might have a spiritual reawakening after the pope's visit -- the murder moratorium is just for the weekend, so they can begin their carnage-heavy workweek again on Monday.

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Orange – the Color of Protest? - 14 Wage Slaves in Florida Fired for Wearing Orange Shirts on Pay Day Friday

First it was eyeglasses, then watches that identified intelligence to Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge communists to set up the killings fields of millions of innocent people in Cambodia.

Now, some lunatic law firm in Florida, Elizabeth Wellborn, that processes foreclosures for Fannie Mae (the government dime?) got all paranoid and Tea Party like when its clerical workers wore orange on pay days in order to be identifiable as a group when hanging out after work.

Florida is a fire at will state, no notice or time required to terminate.

The GOP and its anti-human, anti-humane campaign of terror against the little people of this world continues.

What the hell kind of dope are they smoking in the Lawyers Lounge at Elizabeth Wellborn in Florida?

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/14-office-workers-wear-orange-work-fired-article-1.1047960?localLinksEnabled=false

Big Brother is watching and he don’t like Orange.

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Vatican Money Too Dirty Even for J P Morgan – Pot Calling the Kettle Black

Can the Catholic Church’s Vatican banking system be laundering money for drugs, arms and human trafficking?  Good question.  In all likelihood, this Vatican account closed by J P Morgan had to be closed because of Vatican secrecy and refusal to comply with the simplest of banking rules worldwide.

JP Morgan closes Vatican bank's account

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Morgan+closes+Vatican+bank+account/6327334/story.html

Thirty years after it was entangled in a scandal involving the mafia, money laundering and the mysterious death of the man nicknamed "God's banker," the Vatican bank faces fresh controversy. 

The bank - formally known as the Institute for Works of Religion or IOR - has suffered the ignominy of having one of its accounts closed by JP Morgan after stone-walling requests for information.

The sanction came less than two weeks after the U.S. State Department listed the Vatican as being potentially vulnerable to money laundering.
A Milan affiliate of JP Morgan said it will shut the account by the end of the month after revealing Vatican bankers had been "unable to respond" to requests for details about payments into the account. 

A spokesman for JP Morgan in Milan declined to comment, citing client confidentiality.

The Milan branch had been seeking information since 2010, when the Vatican bank was accused by authorities in Rome of contravening money-laundering regulations. 

In an unusual move, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, president of the Vatican bank, was placed under investigation and a judge in Rome ordered a freeze on $30 million held in one of the bank's accounts. 

The scandal prompted the Vatican bank to initiate anti-money-laundering legislation, which is currently being debated by the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy.

My thanks to Betty Clermont’s recent Daily Kos article that shed some well defined light on the above tidbit presented in the global MSM.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/15/1074617/-The-Mightiest-SuperPAC-of-All

The Mightiest SuperPAC of All

Integration in an international monetary network Each bishop, archbishop and cardinal is hand-picked by the pope and each “official” Catholic organization is tied to the pope through its approving hierarch. Also obedient to the pope are lay associations like the Knights of Columbus which, as of 2007, claimed assets of over $14 billion. Supreme Knight, Carl Anderson, former member of the Reagan administration, sits on the Board of Superintendence of the Vatican Bank or IOR (Istituto per le Opere di Religione). They are all part of a world-wide financial network run from the Vatican. 

A popular misconception is that the Vatican itself is sitting on top of some huge fortune. Relative to other hordes, that’s not the case. The IOR itself is reported to hold only $5 billion on deposit.  The art, antiquities and architectural treasures actually cost the Vatican a great deal of money to preserve. The real value comes from having been an unregulated “offshore” tax haven for Italian account holders and a clearing house for the international financial community to move clandestine funds around the globe.

It was reported this week that the Vatican was included in a list of 67 Countries which could be potentially susceptible to money-laundering according to the U.S. Department of State’s annual drug-trafficking report. “To be considered a jurisdiction of concern merely indicates that there is a vulnerability to a financial system by money launderers. With the large volumes of international currency that goes through the Holy See, it is a system that makes it vulnerable as a potential money-laundering center” said Susan Pittman of the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement.  

The London Telegraph had reported that the Vatican Bank was the eighth most popular destination for laundered money, ahead of the Bahamas, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. The reason for this is that you cannot trace any movement of cash within the bank. “This corruption is continuing on a regular basis in the Vatican,” claimed attorney Jonathan Levy. “There’s no reason for a religion to have a bank that does worldwide commercial activities, dealing in gold, dealing in insurance, dealing in property and then hiding behind the Roman Catholic Church.”

U.S. Army Massacre Specialist Robert Bales Also a Ponzi Stock Broker – Unbelievable!

Can I interest you guys in some Enron stock?

He'll get off scot free.  He worked for Wall Street.

This story gets stranger by the hour.  Kind of like the whole Bush/Obama Foreign Policy.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2117354/Robert-Bales-Wife-U-S-staff-sergeant-accused-Afghanistan-massacre-breaks-silence.html

The U.S. soldier accused of gunning down 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children, was more than $1million in debt and had defrauded a pensioner out of his life savings, it has been claimed.


Federal documents show how Staff Sgt Robert Bales scammed pensioner Gary Liebschner of Carroll, Ohio, of more than $800,000 in a stock scam just before he enlisted in the army.


Financial regulators found in 2003 how Bales 'engaged in fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, churning, unauthorised trading and unsuitable investments'. Liebschner claims the then stock broker, working for Ohio brokerage firm MPI, took his life savings of $852,000 in AT&T stock and reduced its value to nothing through a series of trades.


Alongside his associates, Bales was ordered to pay his victim $1,274,000 in compensatory and punitive damages. But he has not yet done so.


Liebschner told ABC News he recognised 'smooth talker' Bales after news reports about the massacre.

He said: 'He robbed me of my life savings. We didn't know where he was. We heard the Bahamas, and all kinds of places.' When asked if he was a conman, he said: 'You've hit the nail on the head.'

Doctor Nicola Riley Essay of being caught performing a legal abortion, a female medical procedure, in Maryland and how that has changed her life

November 1, 2011

Karl G. Perry (USB 2570)

Assistant Attorney General

Mark L. Shurtleff (USB 4666)

Utah Attorney General

Commercial Enforcement Division

160 East 300 South, 5th Floor

P.O. Box 140872

Salt Lake City, UT 84114-0872

Attorneys for Division of Occupational & Professional Licensing

To Messrs. Perry and Shurtleff:

I would like to thank the Utah Board of Medicine for the opportunity to put into words

what I have learned over the past year about myself, how inaccurate reporting on professional

applications affected my license and my medical practice.

As everyone now knows, twenty years ago, while serving in the military, I was convicted

of a felony. The actions that led to the felony conviction caused me a profound sense of shame

that I still carry with me today. My behavior at the time was uncharacteristic of anything I had

done before, or since. I embarrassed my family, my country and myself.

When I was discharged from Ft. Leavenworth Military barracks in 1992, I did everything

possible to put the past behind me. I did not want my terrible mistake to define who I was. In

retrospect, I understand that I was in denial of what I had done. I rarely discussed my criminal

actions with my family and had chosen to tell only a few very close friends. I never reviewed

my discharge papers. I could not face doing so. My denial was so all encompassing that it

never even occurred to me to obtain another set of discharge papers after I lost the originals.

I also never tried to have my record expunged. When I was asked to answer questions about

my past, I did everything possible to continue to minimalize what I had done. I did so not to

defraud anyone, but because I did not want to confront my own past. It was and remains terribly

painful. But it is my past, not my present.

Each less than perfect act that I have ever done has been laid bare before the public. My

patients have questioned me extensively about my past. I answer them as openly and honestly

as I can. I know now that I must not flinch away from the past. I have no secrets to withhold.

For the first time, a patient under my care suffered a medical complication and I have had to live

with that knowledge and these subsequent repercussions.

Despite the newspaper reports, internet stories and local news, I still have family, friends,

patients and other doctors who support me. Although my practice is a shadow of what it once

was, every week there are patients that make the decision to trust me again. I feel blessed and

humbled by their trust in me. Their faith in me must be repaid by giving them the best and most

ethical treatment that I can. I pledge that to them.

Finally what I have lost professionally is profound based on the unfortunate events of the

last year and the Utah DOPL sanctions:

1 A summary suspension of my Maryland medical license;

2 The surrender of my Wyoming license since I did not have the financial means to

defend myself in multiple legal venues;

3 Revocation of my American Board of Family Medicine certification, with

subsequent job position termination due to revocation of board certification;

4 Loss of my hospital privileges at Alta View l and St. Mark’s hospitals in Utah;

5 Termination of participation in several major insurance panels, with subsequent

loss of longstanding patients;

6 A malpractice claim and termination of insurance coverage;

7 An agreement with DOPL to cease performing termination procedures; and,

8 A  public reprimand by DOPL, a $10,000 fine and this essay.

Although I am essentially unemployable in Salt Lake City and my income is

approximately sixty percent of what it once was and I am struggling to keep my home and

provide for my family; the most difficult obstacles I face are those that involve rebuilding the

trust of my family, patients and colleagues.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Nicola Riley, MD

SMP Family Medicine & Homecare, PC

Arizona is a Toxic Place to more than just Women

The toxic work environment of Arizona many times parallels and reflects a very harsh natural environment. The toxic work environment of not wanting to pay minimum age, let alone health care benefits, to employees is reflected in many of these anti-female, anti-immigrant legislative bills sponsored by low paying women’s jobs of $24,000 per year as with these female state legislators.

That women get low wages is a fact of life in America.  That many times, and from my own experience of having lived and worked in Arizona, it is the female spouse who is the primary bread winner in many Arizona households.  That and being the primary providers of Health Care coverage as well for the family.

The Arizona state legislature is far from a part time enterprise but for the time involved and the wages paid, I often wonder when I hear of anti-female laws passed or proposed by Kimberly Yee or Debbie Lesko, what is their real day job to supplement the minimum wage and per diem paid by the state to pass these draconian laws against women.

Being an anemic economic entity whereby big corporations come and go from Arizona as soon as tax breaks disappear is only part of the reason for these corporations leaving.  Cronyism is quite rampant in a thin economy.  Right to work is a means to eliminate union competition to get your son or brother in law on the payroll of whatever company happens to pull into Phoenix and Tucson for an average of two years.

That corporations see wages as less than half of what they are paying elsewhere and executives see the golf courses and the game is on.  Half the wages and one third the productivity from the average Arizona worker becomes rapidly evident and the company leaves town when the tax break runs out.  Some stay for whatever reasons, mostly poor management, or tax losses.  

The productivity issue is I think related to education issues and the inability of the state to maintain modern training or staying, building long term economic growth other than handouts from Washington that are rapidly divvied up by the McCain/Kyl Country Club crowd.

So, when I hear that a female employer or her husband holding the primary health plan has to ask permission to get Birth Control, the only thing I thought was that competition is tough and females needing Birth Control can be eliminated from the payroll in favor of your sister-in-law to get that job who is past child bearing years or a son who gets his healthcare on his spouse’s dime. 

Things are tough in Arizona.  It is more than the coyotes that eat their young there. 

Vaginal Probing - As American as the GOP

McDonnell of Virginia

Perry of Texas

Brewer of Arizona

Santorum of $


Gee, we don't get it.

(And you probably never will, sad to say.)




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Joan Baez - Michael

In the time spent in the foggy dew 
With the raven and the dove 
Barefoot she walked the winter streets 
In search of her own true love 

For she was Mary Hamilton 
And lover of John Riley 
And the maid of constant sorrow 
And the mother of the doomed Geordie 

One day by the banks of the river 
Midst tears and gossamer 
Sweet Michael rowed his boat ashore 
And came to rescue her 

And fill thee up my loving cup 
Fast and to the brim 
How many fair and tender maids 
Could love as she could then? 

For he was likened to Pretty Boy Floyd 
And also John Riley 
And a rake and rambling railroad boy 
And the Silkie of the Sule Skerry 

And there in the arms of Michael 
In their stolen hour 
Loud rang the bells of Rhymney 
From the ancient church bell tower 

And there in the night with Michael 
While he lay fast asleep 
She put her head to the window pane 
And in the fullness of love did weep 

And fill thee up my loving cup 
Fast and to the brim 
How many fair and tender maids 
Will love as she did then? 

You've heard of the House of the Rising Sun 
And what careless love can do 
You've heard of the wildwood flower 
That fades in the morning dew 

And of the ship that circles three times round 
And sinks beneath the sea 
You've heard of Barbary Allen 
And now you've heard of me 

So fill thee up my loving cup 
Fast and to the brim 
How many fair and tender maids 
Will ever love again 

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Santorum’s Coming Crusade Against IRAN – Onward Christian Soldiers!

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/02/rick-santorum-the-crusades-get-a-bad-rap.php

If you were worried there wouldn’t be a 2012 candidate touting the pro-Crusades platform, then today is your lucky day!

“The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical,” former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) told a South Carolina audience yesterday. “And that is what the perception is by the American left who hates Christendom.”…

Referring to the “American left,” Santorum observed: “They hate Western civilization at the core. That’s the problem.” Santorum also suggested that American involvement in the Middle East is part of our “core American values.”

“What I’m talking about is onward American soldiers,” Santorum continued. “What we’re talking about are core American values. ‘All men are created equal’ — that’s a Christian value, but it’s an American value.”

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Decadence vs. Vitality in America - Allistair Cooke

Murder Charges Dropped – Dr. Nicola Riley Utah – Thoughts from a Transgender Patient - “Dexter”

Doctor Riley of Utah, the abortion murder charges against her, got dropped almost in a middle of the night scenario and were first reported in a local Maryland news site.  The prosecution could not find any reputable expert witnesses to testify at their pro-life political election year witch trial.

I do not want to say anything further on that.

I was however touched by a blog of one of Dr. Riley’s transgender patients named “Dexter” whose words I cannot equal except in the joy that she is free to go on doing her much needed work.

The Arrest of My Doctor - Nicola Riley

My pharmacy is now charging around $85 for a generic (Watson) 10ml 200mg/ml testosterone cypionate. Up from $58. They said there’s a shortage or something… 

Anyway, I felt pretty nervous about bringing this prescription in due to the sudden arrest of my doctor, Nicola Riley, on December 28th. I’ve wanted to blog about this for a while, but haven’t been able to until now. During my last appointment with her just a week before her arrest, she forewarned me, “I’m involved in a trial and I’m not sure how it is going to go. So, just in case, I’m writing your prescription out for as long as I can.” Now that she’d been arrested, I wasn’t sure if the pharmacy would accept the prescription or not. Fortunately, they did.

She had been arrested under Maryland’s 2005 fetal homicide law, in connection to a 2010 abortion she’d performed there while working under a doctor named Steven Brigham. She was deemed a “monster” by the local media and various online sources. However, a few weeks later a more sympathetic article came out about her in the Salt Lake Tribune that included interviews with a couple of her transgender patients.

According to this article, she had accepted a job from Brigham. He would start abortions in New Jersey and Riley would finish them in Maryland where state law allowed later-term abortions (i.e. after 25 weeks). After working there for two weeks, one of her patients experienced a problem during the procedure. Riley immediately rushed her to the ER, where it turned out that the patient’s uterus had been punctured. This is a known risk of abortion and was Riley’s first complication in five years of performing abortions. She lost her license in Maryland, due to “endangering” this patient and for working with an unlicensed doctor for two weeks. The anti-abortion group Operation Rescue was, of course, involved in that investigation and deemed her license loss “a victory for the pro-life movement”.

The same group had spearheaded the witch hunt in Utah, where Dr. Riley was one of three doctors who would perform abortions in the entire state. I remember about a year ago when a local Fox news report ran with the headline, Do you know who your doctor really is?. It was, of course, all ominous and about Nicola Riley.

It’s been a huge knot in my stomach since this has all happened. To see my genuinely passionate doctor raked through the mud who has dedicated her life to providing services to women in need and marginalized communities. Especially when, like many other doctors, she could have easily chosen to turn her back due to the risks. My friend, Dominique Storni, summed it up well when she said of Dr. Riley:

“She is a woman who cares about humanity. The bulk of her practice was helping marginalized populations — people with no jobs, lower income, racial minorities, gender minorities,”

Practically every trans person I know has been a patient of Dr. Riley’s at some point. I can’t say this for any other physician - especially when every doctor I’d gone to before her had been ludicrously trans-ignorant. Something that’s not a problem for most cisgender women, a pap smear, is traumatic for me as a trans person. I had avoided ever getting one. When physicians tried, they would become confused and frustrated. Eventually, they would get angry at me and just give up. Some went as far as to tell me that I didn’t need pap smears - ever, just to save themselves the trouble of dealing with me.

When I saw Dr.Riley, I did my best to avoid anything to do with a pap smear. She was not fooled. She knew what was going on and deftly countered all of my diversions and excuses. She cornered me into getting a pap smear right there and then. Knowing how traumatic this was for me, she took extraordinary measures to make it as comfortable and non-traumatic as possible. What is normally a quick procedure took her three hours. While I’m not going to assume that she hasn’t made any mistakes just because my experience with her has been so positive, I am certainly not going to accept every allegation as fact.

I’ve been stunned by how the pro-life propaganda against her has been uncritically regurgitated by the media and by many people who should know better. Even some pro-choice people are soaking this up like a sponge. A procedure went wrong. This happens all of the time in hospitals. When a patient checks in for a surgical procedure they’re required to fill out a number of forms acknowledging the risk involved (e.g. injury or death). Every surgeon in every hospital is not a murderer because they require patients to sign these forms. They know procedures can and do go wrong.

What would have happened if there had been complications with my top surgery? I was warned in advance that there was a real risk of complication - even the possibility of death. My top surgery took place in a clinic. If something had gone wrong, the plan was to take me to the E.R., unconscious. This is exactly what happened in the case of Dr. Riley. Does this imply that all surgeries done in clinics, outside of a hospital, are shady, back alley operations? And that every doctor who performs surgery in clinics outside of a hospital must have their license to practice revoked? Of course not. 

I feel so sad for her. Because she goes out on a limb for those who need her the most, she’s being witch hunted and even some people she has helped are going right along with it. Death threats, harassed, chased out, and now - being tried as a murderer under an entirely bogus and very strategic anti-choice “fetal death” law. At the very least, she deserves the presumption of innocence.  We have an obligation to stand up for her and look at these allegations with responsible skepticism. Think hard about whether the allegations make sense or not, whether there are possible explanations - or if they might be entirely false. 

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Row Houses Philadelphia

Row Houses Philadelphia

St. Mark's Episcopal Church - Frankford - Philadelphia

A city on a hill structure in Philly, 4442 (King's Highway) Frankford Avenue, old town of Frankford.

1869

circa 1907

circa 1910

1917

1907

Philadelphia & Reading R.R. Station Frankford

Present

http://www.phillychurchproject.com/stmarkimages.htm
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