Ruth Pakaluk

Ruth Pakaluk (March 19, 1957 - September 23, 1998) was a Catholic convert, mother, housewife and pro-life activist who lived in Worcester, Massachusetts with her husband, Michael Pakaluk, and their children.
Personal life.
Ruth Van Kooy was born in 1957 and met Michael Pakaluk when both were Harvard undergraduates, which has caused some to compare them to the famous couple in the book and movie "Love Story". She died of cancer in September 1998 at age forty-one.
Activism.
The head of Massachusetts Citizens for Life (MCFL), Ruth had her own television show which focused on opposition to abortion and other socially conservative issues.
Legacy.
After her death, her husband compiled the letters she had written to family and friends throughout her adulthood and published them in a book called "The Appalling Strangeness of the Mercy of God". In an introduction to the book, Boston College professor Peter Kreeft writes that "people in Worcester wished to consider opening her cause for sainthood" soon after she died. Her cause for canonization as a Catholic saint is now underway.


Thing-Fish

Thing-Fish is an album by Frank Zappa, originally released as a triple album box set on Barking Pumpkin Records in 1984. It was billed as a cast recording for a proposed musical of the same name, which was ultimately not produced by Zappa, but later performed partially in 2003, ten years after his death.
The album's storyline is inspired by Broadway theatre, AIDS, eugenics, conspiracy theories, feminism, homosexuality and African American culture. It involves an evil, racist prince/theater critic who creates a disease intended to eradicate African Americans and homosexuals. The disease is tested on prisoners who are turned into "Mammy Nuns" led by the story's narrator, Thing-Fish. The story within a story is a satire of a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant couple, Harry and Rhonda (actually played by Italian-Americans), who attend a play performed by the "Mammy Nuns", and find themselves confronted with their pasts: Harry presented as a homosexual boy, Rhonda presented as a sex doll brought to life.
The story was constructed during the recording sessions, which included producing new overdubs for recordings which previously appeared on Zappa's albums "Zoot Allures", "Tinseltown Rebellion", "You Are What You Is" and "Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch". The release of the album was delayed when Barking Pumpkin Records' previous distributor, MCA, refused to distribute the album. It was instead released by Capitol Records in the United States, accompanied by a "Warning/Guarantee" written by Zappa himself. "Thing-Fish" was initially received poorly by critics, who criticized the use of previously recorded material, but has since been reappraised for its highly satirical content.
Background.
Before leaving for London to record with the London Symphony Orchestra, Frank Zappa was home during Christmas season in 1982, and kept busy by writing, producing treatments for three films and a Broadway musical called "Thing-Fish". Between 1981 and 1982, Broadway theatre had shifted from conservative musicals to experimental plays that were viewed as either being pretentious or vulgar. "Thing-Fish" satirized statements made by theater critics at the time, as well as arguing against the "dumbing down" of American culture. Previously, Zappa unsuccessfully attempted to stage two musicals on Broadway, "Hunchentoot", which formed the basis for the compact disc reissue of "Sleep Dirt", and a musical adaptation of William S. Burroughs' "The Naked Lunch". "Thing-Fish" also drew conceptual themes from AIDS, feminism, gay chic, conspiracy theories and issues of class, greed and race.
The script was developed by recording songs beforehand; much of the songs in the play were previously recorded for other albums, including "Zoot Allures", "Tinseltown Rebellion", "You Are What You Is" and "Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch". New vocals were combined with previously released tracks and new Synclavier music. In addition to the new songs, the previously recorded songs include new overdubs moving this storyline forward. As the recording process continued, Zappa brought in revised scripts and improved the work by editing or changing aspects with which he was dissatisfied.
Zappa attempted to produce "Thing-Fish" as a Broadway production. In promotion of the planned musical, a photo sequence based upon the "Briefcase Boogie" scene was shot for the pornographic magazine "Hustler", accompanied by plot excerpts from the scene. The sequence was 28 pages long. While the album was released, Zappa was unable to raise the $5 million budget in order to produce the play, and shelved the project. Subsequently, "Thing-Fish" dialogue appeared on the album "Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention", during the piece "Porn Wars". The album was adapted for a limited stage production that took place in England in 2003. Many elaborate details were changed due to the small scale of the production.
Style and influences.
Lyrics and story themes.
The Thing-Fish characterization was performed by Ike Willis, who helped shape the dialogue himself using African American Vernacular English According to Willis, "in my family, we sort of joke around with dialects, and what it sounded like to me was [the poet] Paul Laurence Dunbar. [...] I asked Frank if he had ever heard of this guy, and he said, 'No,' so I started giving him examples of Dunbar's work, and eventually, that ended up being a big influence on the Thing-Fish dialect."
Minstrel shows served as a source of satire within the storyline. The Thing-Fish characterization is also seen as satirizing "Amos 'n' Andy", a successful radio series and controversial television series which drew protests from the NAACP, who perceived the dialect spoken by the main characters and supporting character Kingfish as being portrayed as being "too dumb to speak English." Additionally, Zappa satirized the Mammy archetype; the AIDS-like disease in the storyline turns prisoners into "Mammy Nuns" which are round and dress like Aunt Jemima. The Mammy archetype derives from the fictional character Mammy, as portrayed by Hattie McDaniel in the film "Gone With The Wind".
"Thing-Fish" is delivered as a story within a story, focusing on a spoiled White Anglo-Saxon Protestant couple, Harry and Rhonda, who attend a play that initially begins as being about and starring the Mammy Nuns. The story ultimately ends up following these characters through a series of ideological fads. It is revealed that Harry had become a homosexual as a result of the women's liberation movement, which caused him to lose all sexual desire for women; the younger versions of the characters are portrayed in the characters "Harry-As-A-Boy" and "Artificial Rhonda", with the young Rhonda being portrayed as a rubber sex doll, while her older counterpart becomes increasingly fascistic and feminist towards the end of the story.
Music and performance.
The prologue is delivered as a spoken monologue over an instrumental piece with a heavy rock guitar riff. It is followed by the song "The Mammy Nuns", which originated as a hard rock instrumental, which appears in a live recording as "The Mammy Anthem" on "You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 1", and opened performances in June and July 1982. "Galoot Up-Date" is an altered version of the recording "The Blue Light", which appeared on Zappa's album "Tinseltown Rebellion". As Harry and Rhonda express admiration for the "performance" of the Evil Prince, an early version of Zappa's Synclavier composition "Amnerika" is heard. "Clowns on Velvet" was performed live as a "spirited, playful instrumental". A recording of the instrumental version featuring guitarist Al Di Meola was planned for release on the album "Tinseltown Rebellion", but DiMeola refused its release.
Johnny "Guitar" Watson, appearing as the character Brown Moses, delivered running commentary in the song "He's So Gay", and sang the song "Brown Moses", which was influenced by soul and gospel music. The play's first act is concluded with "Artificial Rhonda", a rewrite of the song "Ms. Pinky", which appeared on "Zoot Allures".
The next track begins with early Synclavier music by Zappa, and the computerized voice of "The Crab-Grass Baby", followed by the Mammy Nuns singing "The White Boy Troubles". The Evil Prince, defeated at his own hands, delivers a soliloquy in the form of a Broadway piano ballad, "Wistful Wit a Fist-Full".
Release.
The "Thing-Fish" album was identified as an "original cast recording". Barking Pumpkin Records prepared to release the album with distribution by MCA Records. MCA produced a test pressing of the triple LP set, but withdrew their distribution after a woman in their quality control department became offended and upset by the album's content.
A deal was quickly made with EMI Records, which would allow "Them Or Us" and "Thing-Fish" to be distributed by Capitol Records in the United States. Zappa wrote a "warning" which appeared on the inner sleeves of these albums, as well as "Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention", which stated that the albums contained content "which a truly free society would neither fear nor suppress", and a "guarantee" which stated that the lyrics would not "cause eternal torment in the place where the guy with the horns and pointed stick conducts his business."
The original vinyl mix of "Thing-Fish" was only briefly available on CD via a 1987 EMI release in the United Kingdom. All other CD releases contain modifications, edits, re-equalization, and some minor remixing (the most significant difference—Johnny "Guitar" Watson's spoken vocals during "He's So Gay"—was not implemented immediately). This new version was initially released on CD by Rykodisc, and along with most of Zappa's catalogue was reissued in 1995, also by Rykodisc.
In 2012, after the Zappa Family Trust had regained the rights to Zappa's catalogue, Zappa Records, along with Universal Music reissued the album (still in revised form) on CD.
Reception.
"Thing-Fish" was poorly received by critics upon initial release; a common thread of criticism was that many of the songs on this album derived from previously released recordings, and some detractors considered it to be nothing more than a compilation album. Barry Miles found it to be one of his "least substantive" works.
More recently the album has been reappraised, described by Kevin Courrier in "Dangerous kitchen: the subversive world of Zappa" as "a compendium of Zappa's most explicit attacks on political and sexual hypocrisy in American culture collected together in one huge volley." In "Frank Zappa and musical theatre: ugly ugly o'phan Annie and really deep, intense, thought-provoking Broadway symbolism", "Thing-Fish" is described as "an extraordinary example of bricolage". As reviewed by François Couture for the website Allmusic, Couture described "Thing-Fish" as Zappa's "most controversial, misunderstood, overlooked album", stating that it was not a masterpiece, but "more than rehashed material".


Alice Jenkins

Alice Jenkins or Alice Brook; born Alice Glyde (1886–1967) was a British abortion campaigner. She co-founded the Abortion Law Reform Association which reformed UK abortion law. Her book "Law For The Rich" proved pivotal in the creation of the UK's 1967 Abortion Act which made abortion accessible in mainland Britain eight days before she died.
Life.
Jenkins was born, Alice Glyde, in Ilkley in 1886. Her mother, Charlotte Glyde, had six children and they all became involved in politics. Her mother was a servant. In 1907 she started a partnership with William James Jenkins, they never married, but they had three children.
On 17 February 1936, Jenkins along with Janet Chance and Stella Browne began the Abortion Law Reform Association (ALRA). At the end of their first year they had 35 new members, and by 1939 they had almost 400. The membership were gathered from the working class using labour groups and women’s branches of the co-operative movement. These women wanted the privileges that “moneyed classes had enjoyed for years.”
The ALRA was very active between 1936 and 1939 sending speakers around the country to talk about Labour and Equal Citizenship and attempted to have letters and articles published in newspapers. They were in the frame when a member of the ALRA’s Medico-Legal Committee received the case of a fourteen-year-old girl who had been raped, and she received a termination of this pregnancy from Dr. Joan Malleson, a progenitor of the ALRA.
Jenkins wrote an important book titled "Law For The Rich" which was published in 1960. He book drew attention to the double standards that faced women with unwanted pregnancies. Abortion was illegal so many women had to give birth to unplanned children, however rich women could persuade their private doctors that their mental health was at risk. The doctors were then able to carry out an abortion that was denied to most women in Britain.
The ALRA's major victory was to gain the support of the liberal politician David Steel. He was a liberal M.P. who had been lucky enough to win a third chance of placing a private members bill through the house of commons. He rejected a call to amend the rights of plumbers and homosexuals and decided to reform the laws of abortion. He cites Alice Jenkin's argument in her book "Law For The Rich" as being pivotal in his decision. Steele put forward a private members bill that was backed by the government and it resulted in the 1967 Abortion Act.
Death and legacy.
Jenkins died on Christmas Day 1967. She was the only surviving member of the original ALRA executive and she did see the act pass into UK law eight days before she died.


Lynda Schraufnagel

Lynda Jean Schraufnagel (October 29, 1950January 4, 1991) was an American poet and activist for feminist and socialist causes. Despite a brief literary career cut short by her early death, she was featured in "The Best American Poetry" twice and was the subject of a long tribute in verse by her teacher, Richard Howard.
Life.
In the 1970s, while waitressing in Seattle, she joined the Freedom Socialist Party and its affiliate Radical Women and worked on the party's official newspaper, "The Freedom Socialist", as a proofreader. She also contributed an editorial defending abortion rights and calling feminists' attention to the death of Rosie Jimenez. In the 1980s, Schraufnagel began focusing on poetry, helping to found the feminist magazine "". She then moved to Houston to pursue an M.A. in creative writing at the University of Houston, where she also taught. She graduated in 1987 with a collection of poems, titled "The Lighted Face of the Bar Clock," as her thesis. She was awarded a fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown for the academic year 1989 to 1990. She died at the age of 40 in 1991.
Work and recognition.
Schraufnagel's poems explored the troubled experience of American women with deep sympathy; when her "Carnival" was published in "Feminist Studies", the editors described it in their preface as "a forgiving fantasy" of "a mother's oppressive marriage and subsequent abandonment of her children." Her poem "Trappings" was included by editor Donald Hall in "The Best American Poetry 1989". At the time of her death she was described as "relatively obscure."
After her death, an outpouring of grief coincided with wider publication and appreciation of her work. Her poem "Trial" was included by Charles Simic in "The Best American Poetry 1992", accompanied by a note from Richard Howard, her former teacher at Houston, mourning her "manic glee." In a review of the book, Stephen Margulies singles out her poem as "a trial by funkiness, a vitally weary, broken-neon-sign account of drugs and Vietnam veterans and working at diners and the guilt of refusing guilt, the numb shame of denying mercy." Howard also published a long poem describing her "inordinate life" and fierce radicalism, "To the Tenth Muse," saying that "she would tolerate my classroom in order to show cause / for later parlays"; the poem's final stanzas state: "Merely I observed / in her (and with her / in myself) that our deepest desire aims at transformation." Howard sketches out her life in brief: "the nuns had taught her / to bear the ennui / of almost any routine"; she had been a "bank-teller, waitress"; "she had been married, / "yes, but he was a transvestite""; she was "Angular, graceful" and bore "the mask of a scornful dyke." Several other poems and books published in the 1990s were dedicated to her memory, including Nancy Eimers's "In the New Year" and "Space Life" and Cathleen Calbert's "Bad Judgment".


Mike Johnson (Louisiana politician)

James Michael Johnson (born January 30, 1972) is an American attorney, politician, and former talk radio host serving as the U.S. Representative for Louisiana's 4th congressional district. First elected in 2016, he is also the Vice Chairman of the House Republican Conference. He previously served as chairman of the House Republican Study Committee, the largest caucus of conservatives in Congress, and a coalition of socially- and fiscally-conservative members of the larger House Republican Conference.
From 2015 to 2017, Johnson served as a representative in the Louisiana House of Representatives for District 8 in Bossier Parish.
Early life and education.
Johnson was born in Shreveport, the oldest of four children of Jeanne Johnson and the late James Patrick Johnson, a firefighter who founded the nonprofit organization, the Percy R. Johnson Burn Foundation, named after his partner Percy R. Johnson, The cities first African-American Fire Instructor and Captain who died in the line of duty. Johnson was also critically burned and disabled in the line of duty during the fire. Johnson has two brothers, Chris and Josh, and a sister, Laura.
During Johnson's high school time, he was a member of Louisiana Boys State. Johnson graduated from Captain Shreve High School in Shreveport. He received an undergraduate degree in business administration from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He holds a Juris Doctor from Louisiana State University Law Center, and worked as constitutional attorney in Benton, in Bossier Parish seat of government located north of Bossier City, Louisiana.
Legal career.
Prior to his election to Congress, Johnson was also a partner in the Kitchens Law Firm and a senior attorney and national media spokesman for the Alliance Defense Fund, now known as Alliance Defending Freedom, which describes itself as "a non-profit legal defense and advocacy organization dedicated to religious liberty, traditional family values, and the value and sanctity of life." Johnson was also formerly chief counsel of the non-profit law firm Freedom Guard.
Johnson served as co-counsel for the state defendants in the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Louisiana state ban on same-sex marriage in both 2004 and again in 2015. He was driving home from a hearing on the matter before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans when he learned from a radio broadcast that he would run unopposed in his bid to succeed Thompson.
Johnson served as a trustee of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission within the Southern Baptist Convention from 2004 to 2012.
Louisiana House of Representatives.
Johnson ran unopposed in the special election called for February 21, 2015 to select a successor to Jeff R. Thompson, a Republican who had resigned to become a judge in Louisiana's 26th Judicial District Court. The election was cancelled when only Johnson filed for the seat. Johnson was re-elected on October 24, 2015, again running without opposition.
Johnson was endorsed by United States Senator David Vitter and United States Representative John Fleming, as well as the political action committee of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry.
Louisiana Marriage and Conscience Act.
In April 2015, Johnson proposed a bill titled the Marriage and Conscience Act, similar in content to Indiana's controversial Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed a few days earlier, though Johnson denied that his legislation was based on the Indiana law.
Johnson's Marriage and Conscience Act would have eliminated the state of Louisiana's ability to withhold a "state license, certification, accreditation, employment, state contracts, state benefits, or tax deductions" from a person or entity based on their views on the institution of marriage. Critics denounced the bill as an attempt to protect people who discriminate against same-sex married couples.
Then-Governor Bobby Jindal pledged to sign Johnson's bill into law if it passed both houses of the legislature. IBM and other employers in the region expressed their opposition to the bill, including concerns about the hiring difficulties it would likely produce. Other politicians also objected, including fellow Republican, Baton Rouge Metro Councilman John Delgado, who described Johnson as a "despicable bigot of the highest order" for proposing the bill.
On May 19, 2015, the House Civil Law and Procedure Committee voted 10–2 to table the bill, effectively ending its chances to become law. Both Republicans and Democrats voted against the bill; other than Johnson, only Republican Ray Garofalo voted for it. After the bill was tabled, Governor Jindal said that he would issue an executive order to enforce its intent. Johnson planned to reintroduce his own bill in 2016.
Other.
In March 2016, Johnson opposed a one-penny increase in the state sales tax proposed to help address Louisiana's $940 million budget deficit. The one-penny increase was approved by a vote of 76 to 27, with one vacancy. A House and Senate conference committee subsequently changed the duration of the tax from five years, as recommended by the state Senate to twenty-seven months, effective from April 1, 2016 to June 30, 2018.
In 2015 and 2016 Johnson led an anti-abortion "Life March" in Shreveport-Bossier City.
Johnson opposed the Common Core State Standards Initiative.
U.S House of Representatives.
Elections.
2016.
On February 10, 2016, Johnson announced his candidacy for the 4th congressional district seat held for eight years by John Fleming, who was running, ultimately unsuccessfully, for the United States Senate seat vacated by David Vitter.
In a runoff election held on December 10, 2016, Johnson defeated Shreveport Democratic attorney Marshall Jones, 87,369 votes (65 percent) to 46,578 (35 percent). He won all fifteen parishes in the district, with 78 percent in Bossier Parish but only 52 percent in his native neighboring Caddo Parish, also the home of opponent Jones. Eliminated in the November 8 primary election were Republicans Trey Baucum, a Shreveport cardiologist, former State Senator Elbert Guillory of Opelousas, Shreveport attorney Rick John,
Oliver Geoffrey Jenkins (born July 1966), a member of the Shreveport City Council.
2018.
In 2018, Johnson won his second term in the U.S. House, having led a three-candidate field with 139,307 votes (64 percent). Democrat Ryan Trundle trailed with 72,923 votes (34 percent).
2020.
In 2020, Johnson won his third term to the U.S. House, with 185,265 votes (60 percent) to Democratic opponent Kenny Houston's 78,157 votes (25 percent).
Tenure.
Johnson was sworn into office on January 3, 2017. He is Vice Chairman of the Republican Conference, an Assistant Whip for House Republicans, a member of the Judiciary Committee, the Armed Services Committee, and a member and former Chairman of the Republican Study Committee.
Jeffrey Hayden Haynes, a great-grandson of the late Webster Parish Sheriff O. H. Haynes Jr., is Johnson's chief of staff. He was formerly an aide to former U.S. Senator David Vitter. In 2018, Haynes was named campaign manager in Johnson's bid for re-election.
Johnson voted in favor of the American Health Care Act of 2017.
In December 2017, Johnson voted in favor of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. After voting for the act, Johnson described the economy as "stunted" and as a "burden" on Americans. Additionally, "The importance of this moment cannot be overstated. With the first comprehensive tax reform in 31 years, we will dramatically strengthen the U.S. economy and restore economic mobility and opportunity for hardworking individuals and families all across this country."
115th Congress (First Term).
In his first term, Johnson's legislative priorities focused on immigration reform, deregulation, stewardship of taxpayer resources, and values issues. Bills introduced by the Congressman included the Streamlining Environmental Approvals Act, the Securing our Borders and Wilderness Act, the History and Tradition Protection Act, and the Increasing Transparency in Federal Audits Act.
116th Congress (Second Term).
During his tenure as Chairman of the Republican Study Committee, Johnson oversaw the development of The Conservative Playbook, a publication of over 400 policy proposals aimed at improving health care, national security, access to the American Dream, government efficiency and accountability, and the U.S. budget. Johnson was also able to secure passage of several legislative items to combat Chinese espionage activities in the United States, shore up the United States defense industrial base, and streamline Army Corps of Engineers projects.


Joseph Fred Naumann

Joseph Fred Naumann (born June 4, 1949) is an American prelate of the Catholic Church. He serves as the fourth and current Archbishop of Kansas City, Kansas.
Life and Church.
Naumann was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to Fred and Louise (née Lukens) Naumann. He graduated from St. Louis Preparatory Seminary South in 1967 and from Cardinal Glennon College in 1971. After serving as a deacon in Florissant and completing his theological studies at Kenrick Seminary in 1975, Naumann was ordained to the priesthood on May 24 of that same year, for the Archdiocese of St. Louis.
He then served as an associate pastor of St. Dominic Savio Parish in Affton until 1979, and of Our Lady of Sorrows Parish in St. Louis until 1984. From 1984 to 1989, Naumann was a part-time curate at Most Blessed Sacrament Parish in St. Louis, while working as Coordinator of the Archdiocesan Pro-Life Committee as well until 1995. He was later pastor of Ascension Parish in Normandy (1989-1994) and vicar general of the Archdiocese of St. Louis (1994-2003).
Auxiliary Bishop of St. Louis.
On July 8, 1997, Naumann was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of St. Louis and Titular Bishop of "Caput Cilla" by Pope John Paul II. He received episcopal consecration on the following September 3 from Archbishop Justin Rigali, with Bishops Edward O'Donnell and Edward Braxton serving as co-consecrators.
Archbishop of Kansas City in Kansas.
Naumann, after becoming Apostolic Administrator of St. Louis in October 2003, was named Coadjutor Archbishop of Kansas City, Kansas on January 7, 2004, serving under Archbishop James Keleher. He later succeeded Archbishop Keleher as Archbishop of Kansas City upon the latter’s resignation on January 15, 2005.
The Archbishop sits on the committees on Pro-Life and on Communications within the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, as well as Kenrick-Glennon Seminary Board of Trustees and the Board of Regents for Conception Seminary. He is also Chairman of the Kansas Catholic Conference.
On April 21, 2015, Naumann was also appointed Apostolic Administrator for the Diocese of Kansas City–Saint Joseph.
He was elected chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops's Committee on Pro-Life Activities on November 14, 2017, defeating by a narrow margin Cardinal Blase Cupich. Naumann interprets Canon 915 as directing ministers to deny communion to Catholic politicians who support legal abortion and euthanasia. He stated that he tried to persuade Kathleen Sebelius, then Governor of Kansas, to change her pro-choice stance on abortion, and after her refusal in doing so, he denied her communion.


Jean R. Anderson

Dr. Jean R. Anderson (born 1953) is an internationally recognized obstetrician and gynaecologist, most well known for being the founder and first director of Johns Hopkins HIV Women's Health Program (1991).
Dr. Jean Anderson was also the director of Division of Gynecologic Specialties, coordinator of Global Women's Health Fellowship, and a professor of Gynecology and Obstetrics. Her expertise included cervical cancer, gynecology, HIV/AIDS, pregnancy and childbirth, uterine fibroids, and women's reproductive health.
Dr. Anderson received her undergraduate degree in chemistry from David Lipscomb College. After helping bandage injured animals with her grandmother as a child, Anderson discovered her passion for medicine. She started out at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, being one of only five women in her class. In 1987, she began working for Johns Hopkins Hospital, where she was asked if she'd like to work for their new clinic made to help women with HIV. Her decision to take the job helped establish the clinic as a vital resource for the care needed for women with HIV and AIDS, being one of the first hospitals to use peer counseling.
In her lifetime so far, Jean Anderson has written over 75 articles on women with HIV, as well as the book "The Manual for the Clinical Care for Women With HIV". Her efforts have garnered her international recognition, as well as four teaching awards, a membership at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Academy of HIV Medicine. Today, she continues to serve as a director at Johns Hopkins HIV Women's Health Program.


R v Morgentaler

R v Morgentaler, [1988] 1 SCR 30 was a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada which held that the abortion provision in the "Criminal Code" was unconstitutional because it violated women's rights under section 7 of the "Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms" ("Charter") to security of the person. Since this ruling, there have been no criminal laws regulating abortion in Canada.
Background.
Prior to this ruling, section 251(4) of the "Criminal Code", allowed for abortions to be performed solely at accredited hospitals with the proper certification of approval from the hospital's Therapeutic Abortion Committee.
Three doctors, Dr. Henry Morgentaler, Dr. Leslie Frank Smoling and Dr. Robert Scott, set up an abortion clinic in Toronto for the purpose of performing abortions on women who had not received certification from the Therapeutic Abortion Committee, as required under subsection 251(4) of the "Criminal Code". In so doing, they were attempting to bring public attention to their cause, claiming a woman should have complete control over the decision on whether to have an abortion.
Morgentaler had previously challenged the abortion law at the Supreme Court in the pre-"Charter" case of "Morgentaler v R", in which the Court denied having the judicial authority to strike down the law.
The Court of Appeal for Ontario found in favour of the government. On appeal, the main issue put before the Court was whether section 251 violated section 7 of the "Charter". A secondary issue put to the Court was whether the creation of anti-abortion law was "ultra vires" ("outside the power") of the federal government's authority to create law.
Ruling.
The Court ruled 5 to 2 that the law violated section 7 and could not be saved under section 1. Morgentaler's previous acquittal was restored. There were three different opinions given by the majority, none having achieved more than two signatures. As such, no "Morgentaler" precedent is binding.
Dickson.
Perhaps the most prominent majority opinion was that of Dickson CJ, with Lamer J (as he then was) concurring. Dickson began by examining section 7. He found that section 251 forced some women to carry a fetus irrespective of her own "priorities and aspirations". This was a clear infringement of security of person. He found a further violation due to the delay created by the mandatory certification procedure which put the women at higher risk of physical harm and caused harm to their psychological integrity.
Following a standard section 7 analysis, Dickson examined whether the violation accorded with the principles of fundamental justice. He found that it did not because the excessive requirements prevented smaller hospitals from providing such services thus preventing many women from even applying for certification. Moreover, he found that the administrative system failed to provide adequate evaluation criteria which allowed the committees to grant or deny therapeutic abortions arbitrarily.
Dickson found that the violation could not be justified under section 1, focusing on the means chosen by the government to achieve its objectives. In the end, the law failed on every step of the proportionality test. First, he found the administrative process was often unfair and arbitrary. Second, the resultant impairment of the women's rights was beyond what was necessary to evaluate their case. Third, the effect of the impairment far outweighed the importance of the law's objective.
Beetz.
Beetz J, joined by Estey J, wrote a second opinion finding the abortion law invalid. In it, Beetz noted that by adopting section 251(4), the government acknowledged that the interest of the state to protect the woman is greater than its interest to protect the fetus when "the continuation of the pregnancy of such female person would or would be likely to endanger her life or health". The Justice's reasoning closely resembled that of the Chief Justice. He found a violation of section 7 as the procedural requirements of section 251 were "manifestly unfair".
Beetz's reasoning in the section 1 analysis was also similar to that of Dickson. He found that the objective had no rational connection to the means, meaning the law could not be justified. He also speculated that if the government were to enact a new abortion law, this law would require a higher degree of danger to the woman in the later months rather than the early months for an abortion to be allowed. In this case, it could be sufficiently justifiable under section 1.
In examining whether the law was "ultra vires", Beetz examined sections 91 and 96 of the "Constitution Act, 1867". He decided that the law was within the power of the federal government on account that the committee was not given any power over any provincial jurisdiction under section 91 nor did it function in any sort of judicial manner under section 96.
Wilson.
Wilson J wrote her own concurring opinion taking a significantly different approach. She held that section 251 violates two rights: liberty and security of person. She emphasized how section 251 violated a woman's personal autonomy by preventing her from making decisions affecting her and her fetus' life. To Wilson, a woman's decision to abort her fetus is one that is so profound on so many levels it goes beyond being a medical decision and becomes a social and ethical one as well. By removing the women's ability to make the decision and giving it to a committee would be a clear violation of their liberty and security of person. Wilson scathingly noted the state is effectively taking control of a woman's capacity to reproduce.
Wilson went on to agree with the other judges that section 251 (prohibiting the performance of an abortion except under certain circumstances) is procedurally unfair, adding that the violation of section 7 also has the effect of violating section 2(a) of the "Charter" (freedom of conscience) in that the requirements for a woman to be permitted to obtain an abortion legally (or for a doctor to legally perform one) were in many cases so onerous or effectively impossible that they were "resulting in a failure to comply with the principles of fundamental justice". The decision to abort is primarily a moral one, she noted, and therefore by preventing her from doing so, the decision violates a woman's right to conscientiously-held beliefs. With the abortion law, the government was supporting one conscientiously-held belief at the expense of another, and in effect, was treating women as a means to an end and depriving them of their "essential humanity".
Wilson also stated that
In her analysis of section 1, Wilson noted the value placed on the fetus is proportional to its stage of gestation and the legislation must take that into account. However, here, the law cannot be justified because it takes the decision-making power away from the woman absolutely and therefore cannot pass the proportionality test.
Dissent.
A dissent was written by McIntyre J, with La Forest J concurring. McIntyre found that there was no right to an abortion under section 7 nor under other laws. His argument was based on the role of judicial review and how the courts must not go about creating rights not explicitly found in the "Charter" nor interpret "Charter" rights to protect interests that the rights were not initially intending to protect. He said that nowhere in any constitutional texts, history or philosophies is there support for any such rights. Furthermore, there is no societal consensus that these interests should be protected either.
Even if a right could be found, said McIntyre, the case would not have been sufficient to prove a violation. The provisions of section 251(4) cannot be said to be "manifestly unfair" on the basis that some women do not have access. The problems with administrative procedure are external to the legislation and cannot be the basis of a violation.
Aftermath.
When the decision was announced, it was sometimes reported to be more broad than it was; the decision did not declare a constitutional right to abortion nor "freedom of choice".
The Progressive Conservative government of Prime Minister Mulroney made two attempts to pass a new abortion law. The first proposal, in the spring of 1988, did not pass the House of Commons. The second attempt, introduced by the Minister of Justice as Bill C-43 in late 1989, would be defeated on a tie vote by the time it came to third reading in Senate on January 31, 1991, leaving Canada without criminal legislation governing abortion.
, Parliament had not acted to replace the abortion law, meaning Canada does not criminalize abortion. Provinces have taken action to restrict access to abortion in various ways that do not involve criminal law.
The case has often since been compared to the American decision "Roe v Wade", . However, "Morgentaler" is actually much closer in terms of the issues to the decision (also in 1973) of the Supreme Court of the United States in "Doe v Bolton" 410 U.S. 179, than to those in "Roe".
At the 25th anniversary of the decision in early 2013, and upon Morgentaler's death three months later, the extent and nature of "Morgentaler" was discussed in the media.


Lesbian Feminist Liberation

Lesbian Feminist Liberation was a lesbian rights advocacy organization in New York City formed in 1972.
Formation.
Lesbian Feminist Liberation was originally the Lesbian Liberation Committee and a part of the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA). In 1972, when the members felt the GAA was not giving enough focus to lesbian and feminist issues, they left GAA and formed the Lesbian Feminist Liberation. The departure was coordinated by Jean O'Leary. The formation of Lesbian Feminist Liberation left the Radicalesbians (RL) group with few members. The Lesbian Liberation Committee, and initially the Lesbian Feminist Liberation as well, met at an old firehouse at 99 Wooster Street in SoHo, the location was known as "The Firehouse."
Activities.
In 1973, Lesbian Feminist Liberation participated in the campaign to lobby the New York City Council to add sexual orientation to the city's anti-discrimination city ordinance.
Twenty-five members of the organization attended "The Dick Cavett Show" and disrupted his interview with George Gilder, an author the organization believed was anti-feminist and anti-lesbian.
The organization also organized a demonstration with 200 participants, and a large fake lavender colored dinosaur outside the National Museum of American History to protest sexism at the museum.
They picketed at a Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts movie theater that was showing Rainer Werner Fassbinder's "The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant", which some feminists found offensive for its depiction of lesbian sadomasochism.
The organization opposed the performance by drag queens at the 1973 LGBT Pride March in New York City. As they passed out flyers, Sylvia Rivera, of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, took the microphone from emcee Vito Russo and spoke against the sentiment and spoke of the harassment and arrests of drag queens on the street, some of whom had been involved with the Stonewall riots. Lesbian Feminist Liberation's Jean O'Leary then insisted on responding by denouncing drag as misogynist and criticizing the march for being too male-dominated. This prompted Lee Brewster of Queens Liberation Front to denounce anti-transgender lesbian feminists. The increasingly angry crowd only calmed when Bette Midler, who heard on the radio in her Greenwich Village apartment, arrived, took the microphone, and began singing "Friends". This was one of many events in early 1970s where lesbian and transgender activists clashed.
When NBC aired "Flowers of Evil", an episode of "Police Woman" about a trio of lesbians murdering nursing home residents for their money, the organization staged a zap at NBC's New York City headquarters on November 19, 1973. Ten women entered the building in pairs at 15-minute intervals, traveling by elevator to different floors before converging on the Standards and Practices offices. Advised that vice president Herminio Traviesas would not return to the office until the following week, demonstrators announced their intention to wait until he returned and occupied his office overnight. Around 75 women demonstrated in front of the building. The following morning half of the women left, along with the children of the lead protester. The remaining protesters unfurled a twenty foot long banner from the balcony of vice president Herminio Traviesas's office reading "LESBIANS PROTEST NBC". They and street-level picketers chanted slogans like "NBC works against lesbians" and "Lesbians are sitting in". The demonstrators hoped to attract both network news coverage and arrests. When they realized neither was forthcoming, they left the building. While the networks ignored the story, it was picked up by local media and the wire services. Ultimately, NBC agreed not to rerun the episode.
In 1974, the organization worked with New York Radical Feminists to increase the visibility of women at the New York City LGBT Pride March.


Blind Willie Walker

Blind Willie Walker (April 1896 – March 4, 1933) was an early American blues guitarist and singer, who played the Piedmont blues style. He was described by blues musicians such as Reverend Gary Davis and Pink Anderson as an outstanding guitarist. Josh White called him the best guitarist he had ever heard, even better than Blind Blake: "Blake was quick, but Walker was like Art Tatum." In his performances, he was often accompanied by guitarist Sam Brooks.
Biography.
Walker was born in Greenville County, South Carolina, and was blind from birth. He spent most of his life in and around Greenville. He worked as an itinerant musician, and spent time with Gary Davis in 1912/13. From 1923 he was led occasionally by Josh White, and later by Sam Brooks, who was Walker's cousin.
On 6 December 1930, Walker recorded for Columbia Records in Atlanta, Georgia. This session produced his only known titles, including "South Carolina Rag", later recorded by John Jackson. Walker played in an exceptionally fast style, and his "clear, minstrelsy vocals complemented his delicate yet strongly structured guitar lines." He specialized in playing in the key of C.
Blind Willie Walker died in Greenville in 1933, aged about 36, of congenital syphilis, which may have been the reason for his blindness. On his death certificate he was listed as being a professional musician.
The compositions "Make Believe Stunt" and "Cincinnati Flow Rag" ("Slow Drag"), made famous by Reverend Gary Davis, were attributed to Walker, who had taught Davis how to play the guitar.
Discography.
Also recorded, but never issued, were the songs "Rider Blues" and "Da Da Da". A second take of "South Carolina Rag" has appeared on several compilation albums, including "Ragtime Blues Guitar 1928-30" (1982, Matchbox Records).


Membranous urethra

The membranous urethra or intermediate part of male urethra is the shortest, least dilatable, and, with the exception of the urinary meatus, the narrowest part of the urethra.
It extends downward and forward, with a slight anterior concavity, between the apex of the prostate and the bulb of the urethra, perforating the urogenital diaphragm about 2.5 cm below and behind the pubic symphysis.
The hinder part of the urethral bulb lies in apposition with the inferior fascia of the urogenital diaphragm, but its upper portion diverges somewhat from this fascia: the anterior wall of the membranous urethra is thus prolonged for a short distance in front of the urogenital diaphragm; it measures about 2 cm in length, while the posterior wall which is between the two fasciæ of the diaphragm is only 1.25 cm long. The anatomical variation in membranous urethral length measurements in men have been reported to range from 0.5 cm to 3.4 cm.
The membranous portion of the urethra is completely surrounded by the fibers of the Sphincter urethrae membranaceae.
In front of it the deep dorsal vein of the penis enters the pelvis between the transverse ligament of the pelvis and the arcuate pubic ligament; on either side near its termination are the bulbourethral glands.


Cheetah penis


Ephraim Mirvis

Ephraim Mirvis (born 1956) is an Orthodox rabbi who serves as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. Traditionally the Chief Rabbi serves as the head of all British Jews as the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth. He served as the Chief Rabbi of Ireland between 1985 and 1992.
Early life and education.
Mirvis was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1956, the son of Rabbi Dr. Lionel and Freida Mirvis. His father was the Rabbi of the Claremont and the Wynberg Hebrew Congregations in Cape Town. He also served as Rabbi in Benoni for a while and attended local schools. Mirvis has written that his father preached against the apartheid system, and visited political prisoners held on Robben Island, while his mother was the principal of the Athlone teacher training college, which was then the country’s sole college for training black pre-school teachers. His grandfather, Lazar Mirvis, was a Jewish Minister in Johannesburg.
Mirvis attended Herzlia High School in Cape Town from 1968 to 1973. After moving to Israel in 1973, Mirvis studied at Yeshivat Kerem B'Yavneh from 1973 to 1976 and Yeshivat Har Etzion, in the West Bank Israeli settlement of Alon Shvut, from 1976 to 1978. He studied at Machon Ariel in Jerusalem from 1978 to 1980 and received his rabbinic ordination there.
At the same time, Mirvis obtained a BA in Education and Classical Hebrew from the University of South Africa and received certification from Yaakov Herzog Teachers College as a high school teacher in Israel.
Mirvis has a deep interest in chazanut and has studied voice and Jewish cantorial music in Jerusalem. He has also been certified as a shochet and mohel. He is a supporter of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club.
Career.
Rabbinical appointments.
In 1982, Mirvis was appointed Rabbi of Dublin's Adelaide Road Synagogue and Chief Rabbi of Ireland in 1985, serving at this post until 1992. From 1992 to 1996, he was the rabbi of the Western Marble Arch Synagogue in London, after the previous holder of the position, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, became Chief Rabbi in 1991.
In May 1996, Mirvis was appointed rabbi at the Finchley United Synagogue, also known as Kinloss, in London. There, he founded and directed a community-based, adult education programme, the Kinloss Learning Centre, which has drawn hundreds of participants on a weekly basis since 2003 and has served as an educational model emulated by other communities. Mirvis is the founder rabbi and honorary principal of Morasha Jewish Primary School and founder and President of the Kinloss Community Kollel.
Other positions held.
While living in Ireland, Mirvis was Chairman of the Board of Governors of Stratford Jewish Schools, in Dublin, from 1984 to 1992.
Mirvis has been a member of the Steering Committee of the Conference of European Rabbis since 1986 and has served as its Associate President since 2013. In 1992, he arranged and hosted the Biennial Conference of European Rabbis at the Western Marble Arch Synagogue and in 2001, he led the first group visit by United Synagogue rabbis to the United States.
Mirvis has been the Religious Advisor to the Jewish Marriage Council since 1997. He has served on the Council of the London School of Jewish Studies, on the Steering Committee of the Encounter Conference and the Singer’s Prayer Book Publications Committee.
He was Chairman of the Rabbinical Council of the United Synagogue from 1999 to 2002. As the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations, he is also the President of the London School of Jewish Studies.
Interfaith collaboration.
Mirvis served as the President of the Irish Council of Christians and Jews (CCJ) from 1985 to 1992. He has participated in dialogue with Church leaders in the UK at Windsor Castle and Lambeth Palace. In 2005 he addressed a CCJ meeting at the Synod of the Church of England.
Mirvis was the first United Synagogue rabbi to host an address by an imam, Dr. Mohammed Essam El-Din Fahim, in his synagogue. He has also led a delegation of members of his community to the Finchley Mosque and initiated a joint project between his synagogue and the mosque for a Jewish-Muslim public service day on 25 December.
In 2016, Mirvis launched the ‘In Good Faith’ programme, in partnership with Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The initiative is a way of bringing Anglican and Jewish clergy together so that they might encourage their respective congregations to work on interfaith projects together.
Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom.
In 2012, Mirvis was named as a possible successor to Jonathan, Lord Sacks as Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, along with Rabbi Harvey Belovski, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Rabbi Michael Broyde, Rabbi Warren Goldstein, and Rabbi Michael Melchior.
Mirvis was named his successor as Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth on 17 December 2012. He took office on 1 September 2013.
His appointment was welcomed by the Conference of European Rabbis. Jeremy Newmark, chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council in the UK, called the appointment “immensely popular.” Laura Janner-Klausner, the head rabbi of the Movement for Reform Judaism in Great Britain, said: "I welcome the appointment of Mirvis as another powerful voice for British Jewry. I look forward to working closely with him as a partner on areas of common interests to the Jewish and wider community." The Orthodox Union in the United States also welcomed Mirvis’ selection as the Chief Rabbi.
Views and achievements.
Mirvis was an advocate for the freedom of Soviet Jewry as Chairman of the Irish National Council for Soviet Jewry from 1984 to 1992. In 1986 he lobbied successfully against the request of a Dutch Nazi war criminal, Pieter Menten, to reside in Ireland. Mirvis has led campaigns to improve the quality of life, safety and security in and around shuls in the United Kingdom and London in particular.
As Chief Rabbi of Ireland and before the opening of an Israeli Embassy in Ireland, he represented Israel’s interests at government level and in the media. In 1999, he led a group of British rabbis on a solidarity trip to Israel. Since 1997, he hosted the annual Bnei Akiva Yom Ha'atzmaut service at Finchley shul where it is still held. Regarding the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, while deploring the loss of life in Gaza, Mirvis defended Israel's right to protect itself from Hamas rocket attacks, adding that the conflict was used as a cover to voice antisemitic sentiment.
Following his appointment, he created the ‘Centre for Community excellence’. This new department of the Office of the Chief Rabbi provides guidance and seed funding to Jewish communities, in order to promote the most creative and dynamic programming ideas.
One of his most successful campaigns is ‘Shabbat UK’ which was based upon the Shabbat Project, which originated in South Africa. The campaign encourages all Jews, regardless of religious affiliation or level of observance to engage better with Shabbat and reaches tens of thousands of people across the country.
Shortly after beginning his tenure, Mirvis announced that he would become the first Chief Rabbi to attend the annual Limmud Conference, a move which was considered extremely controversial at the time and a departure from the approach of his predecessor Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks.
Mirvis has also supported the expanding of women's roles in Orthodox Judaism. In 2012, he appointed Lauren Levin as Britain’s first Orthodox female halakhic adviser, at Finchley Shul in London. He also supports Shabbat prayer groups for Orthodox women, saying, "Some of our congregations have women prayer groups for Friday night, some Saturday mornings. This is without women reading from the Torah. But for women to come together as a group to pray, this is a good thing." He also supports women becoming United Synagogue trustees, and Orthodox women reciting Kaddish. In 2016, Mirvis launched a new qualification for female educators to be advisers on Jewish law in the area of family purity and as adult educators in Orthodox shuls. The part-time training course, known as the Ma’ayan Programme, is 18 months long and is the first such course in the United Kingdom.
Mirvis has also made strides to encourage women to take their Jewish learning seriously, creating a series of events to encourage them to do so under the brand ‘Neshama’.
Mirvis, however, also upholds the normative Orthodox Jewish positions that female rabbis and same-sex marriages are not permitted.
In September 2018, Mirvis issued a guide on the well-being of LGBT+ pupils in Orthodox Jewish schools. The guide was the first of its kind anywhere in the world. It upheld the traditional prohibitions against the act of homosexuality, but made clear that the Torah still demands "sensitivity to the feelings of everyone, including LGBT+ people" and that there should be a zero-tolerance approach to either homophobic or transphobic bullying or disregard for their wellbeing. He also stated "Young LGBT+ people in the Jewish community often express feelings of deep isolation, loneliness and a sense that they can never be themselves. Many are living with the fear that if they share their struggles with anyone they will be expelled, ridiculed and even rejected by family and friends. They may even be struggling with a loss of emunah (faith, trust in God) and the fear of losing their place of acceptance and belonging in the Jewish community."
In 2017, when Rabbi Joseph Dweck, the Senior Rabbi of the Sephardi Jewish community in the UK, made controversial comments about aspects of Jewish law, including on homosexuality, a bitter scandal erupted which threatened to split the Orthodox Jewish establishment. It was Mirvis who stepped in to diffuse the row, enabling Dweck to remain in his position without further controversy.
Intervention in British politics.
In late November 2019, Mirvis made an unprecedented intervention in British politics by stating in The Times that the Labour Party candidate Jeremy Corbyn was unfit for high office. While allowing that, “Convention dictates that the Chief Rabbi stays well away from party politics – and rightly so”, he added that the forthcoming elections constituted an exception, since “the very soul of our nation is at stake”. According to Mirvis, 'the overwhelming majority of British Jews are gripped by anxiety' over the possibility that Labour might win the election and over perceived inadequacies in the Labour Party's handling of anti-Jewish racism. Such racism was incompatible with British values. Arguing that Corbyn's statements that the issues have been dealt with were a 'mendacious fiction', he suggested that voters go to the polls to make a 'conscience vote'.
The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby echoed Mirvis's concerns about Jewish sensitivities. A Labour spokeswoman replied that 'Jeremy Corbyn is a lifelong campaigner against anti-Semitism and has made absolutely clear it has no place in our party and society and that no one who engages in it does so in his name.' A backlash on social media suggested that Mirvis’s comments about antisemitism may have been connected to his support for Israel’s actions against the Gaza Strip, uneasy at the Labour platform support for a Palestinian state, the withholding of arms sales to Israel in protest over violation of Palestinian human rights in occupied territories, where the yeshiva Mirvis was trained in is located.
Awards and recognition.
Mirvis received the Jerusalem Prize for Education in the Diaspora in 1990, on behalf of the Stratford Jewish Schools, from the President of Israel, Chaim Herzog. In 2015 he was awarded the Freedom of the London Borough of Barnet. He has received honorary doctorates from Touro College and Middlesex University.
Family.
Mirvis married Zimbabwe-born Valerie Kaplan, in Israel. They have four sons, Hillel, Daniel, Noam and Eitan, and twelve grandchildren. Their eldest child, Liora Graham, died of cancer in 2011.
Valerie Mirvis was a front line Child Protection Social Worker until May 2012. She is a published author and healthcare specialist. Mirvis's cousin is the American novelist, Tova Mirvis.


T.M.I. (South Park)

"T.M.I." is the fourth episode of the fifteenth season of the American animated television series "South Park", and the 213th episode of the series overall. "T.M.I." premiered in the United States on Comedy Central on May 18, 2011. The episode centers on Eric Cartman being sent to an anger management class after he protests what he mistakenly believes to be the school's publicizing the male students' penis sizes. "T.M.I." was written and directed by series co-creator Trey Parker, and was rated TV-MA-L in the United States.
Plot.
At South Park Elementary, Eric Cartman has a meltdown in the cafeteria, swearing over the publicly posted results of the students' annual school physicals, which document how much each student has grown in height, mistakenly understanding them to be a list of all the boys' penis sizes. Embarrassed because his number is the smallest, and shorter than his real length, he organizes the measurement all of his male schoolmates' penises and posts his own findings in the hall. He is then called to Principal Victoria's office, who explains what the first list actually documented. To make matters worse, Cartman has found that his penis really is the smallest of all the boys in the school. Principal Victoria observes that Cartman's habit of overreacting, and his tendency to be quick to anger, has often led to such situations, and this time, he did this to himself. She refers him to a consultation session with a psychiatrist, who tests him to see how he deals with anger. While the psychiatrist tries to incite him into anger with insults about his obesity, Cartman calmly sends some text messages. The psychiatrist then receives a phone call from his wife, who informs him that she just received a text from someone named Mitch Connor, implicating him in an affair with a 14-year-old girl, before committing suicide over the phone. Cartman then menacingly replies to the psychiatrist, "I'm not fat; I'm big-boned."
Soon after, Cartman is sent to an anger management class, which he shares with a number of other people, such as Tuong Lu Kim, Michael the tall Goth and a member of the Tea Party movement. It soon becomes apparent that every person in the class has issues with their penis size (even the masculine female of the group). Meanwhile, Randy Marsh gives a talk to the fourth grade class about human sexual behavior, presenting a ridiculously complicated formula for calculating "adjusted penis size" — or "T.M.I." — that transforms his below average penis length to above average. Soon afterward, the Surgeon General of the United States delivers her own talk to correct Randy's inaccurate information, presenting the government's official but equally bizarre T.M.I. formula that prompts Randy to beat her up in front of the class. This results in his attending Cartman's anger management class, where the two of them incite the group to riot against the federal government.
They take over a FedEx shipping center, mistakenly believing it to be a government office, Randy names their group the "Pissed Off and Angry Party" and presents their demands to a national television audience: the resignation of the Surgeon General, Obama's birth certificate, "moms to stop trippin'", and to "fuck Kyle Broflovski". The movement spreads around the country, with other FedEx locations being taken over. Even Butters joins in when his T.M.I. falls in the smaller range. In response, Cartman's psychiatrist develops a theory that the true source of everyone's anger is their embarrassment over their very small penis size. After he informs the Surgeon General, she addresses the nation on TV. She says that although the government's formula for calculating T.M.I. is accurate, the national "average" value has been re-defined downward to . The violent movement instantly breaks up, since every man involved now falls into the "above average" range—except for Cartman, whose penis remains under the new average. Cartman's frustrated remarks are dismissed by the Pissed Off and Angry Party's former members as they proclaim that "America is back!"
Reception.
In its original American broadcast on May 18, 2011, "T.M.I." was seen by 2.415 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.
"The A.V. Club", IGN, and "Assignment X" all gave "T.M.I." generally positive reviews. Sean O'Neal of "The A.V. Club" rated the episode A− and praised it as a character-based episode "that managed to turn the minute, ridiculous happenings in a small Colorado town into a microcosm of what's going on in the country." Ramsey Iser of IGN called "T.M.I." "a solid episode with plenty to like" but not "top of the line "South Park" material", giving a rating of 8 out of 10. Carl Cortez of "Assignment X" wrote that "T.M.I." was "not perfect, but good", and compared it favorably with the two preceding episodes. He praised it for its simplicity and "the inspired lunacy that makes "South Park" so great".


Francis P. Filice

Francis Pasquale Filice (August 19, 1922 – July 17, 2015) was an American priest of the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Filice was a professor of biology at the University of San Francisco (1947–1976), founder of United for Life of San Francisco (1968), co-founder of the St. Ignatius Institute (1976), co-founder of Priests for Life (1991), and founder of the Holy Family Oratory of St. Philip Neri.
Ancestry.
Filice's father, the elder Francis Filice, descended, on his father's side, from a tribe of shepherds in what is now the Calabria province of Southern Italy. Filice theorizes that his father's family were Jews who took refuge in Southern Italy after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
Filice's grandmothers were Rafaella Fortino and Nicolina Pascuzzi, both of whose families descended from the mountain peoples of Celtic descent in Southern Italy. These tribes descend from the Boii, a Celtic people that specialized in cattle raising and filled up the Apennines in Roman times.
The name "Filice" is theorized to be either a form of the word for "fern" in the Southern Italian dialect (in which case, the accent should be on the first 'i') or a corruption of the Latin word for "happy", which is "felix". Both Filice and Joseph G. Fucilla, in his book "Our Italian Surnames", support the latter theory. In later years, Fr. Filice would tell his friends that his name meant, "pure Easter joy."
The Filice Family, into which Fr. Filice would be born, went to the United States from Rogliano, a small town near Cosenza in Calabria. After spending some time in Washington State, they settled in Gilroy and Hollister, agriculturally-oriented cities south of San Francisco, near San Jose. In Gilroy and Hollister, they owned various types of orchards.
Early life.
Filice was born in Hollister, California on August 19, 1922. He was the firstborn son of Francis and Antonia (Antoinette) Filice. The elder Francis Filice died before his son's birth.
Filice grew up on Judah Street in San Francisco's inner Sunset District, but he also spent much of his childhood with his cousins in Gilroy and Hollister. When he was a young boy, his widowed mother married Francis Garofalo, a barber in San Francisco. They had one daughter, Gloria Garofalo Pizzinelli. Mrs. Pizzinelli inhabits the family home on Judah Street to this day and has three children of her own, as well as ten grandchildren.
Filice graduated from St. Anne of the Sunset Catholic School in 1935. He attended Polytechnic High School, and then the Christian Brothers' Sacred Heart High School, where he distinguished himself academically.
Education.
In 1939, Filice enrolled at the University of San Francisco - San Francisco's Jesuit university - where he took the Bachelor of Science in 1943. In 1945, he earned the Master of Science degree at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1949, he earned the Ph.D, also at Berkeley. He published his doctoral dissertation "Studies on the Cytology and Life History of a Giardia From the Laboratory Rat" (Berkeley: University of California Press) in 1952.
Academic career.
In 1947, Filice accepted a position as professor of biology at the University of San Francisco, where he would teach for almost 30 years.
Among Filice's scholarly work in the field of parasitology was a study based upon his doctoral research to characterize the life cycle of the medically significant parasite causing Giardiasis.
In the early 1950s, Filice and co-workers investigated levels of amino acids in the body tissues of various marine invertebrates including seastars, sea urchins and spoon worms. They were the first to demonstrate that various marine invertebrates maintain high concentrations of amino acids in their tissues in comparison to vertebrate animals.
Later in that decade, Filice embarked on a scientific expedition to Baja California, and he was a leader in the "Save The Bay" organization and movement in San Francisco, which sought to deter City planners from filling in the San Francisco Bay in order to increase development of the Bay Area. In this respect, he published three significant studies in the field of marine ecology:
Pro-life activism.
Also central to his work as a professor of biology was the defense of unborn human life.
Prior to the late 1960s, abortion was illegal in every state of the United States, except in cases where the pregnancy posed a risk to the mother's life. This changed in 1967 when Colorado became the first state to legalize abortion in cases of rape, incest, or when there was a threat of permanent disability to the pregnant women. During this period, when the topic of overpopulation first became widely discussed, Filice recalls that not a month would pass when he did not receive, as a biology professor at USF, a free copy of a textbook which called into question population growth. The first such book was "The Population Bomb". Dr. Filice found the arguments made in such books unconvincing and began to speak against them at various meetings.
At this time, Filice was invited to participate in a panel discussing concerns over population at a local high school, by a former student of his who was teaching biology. In his observation, the speakers affiliated with Planned Parenthood and the representative of the Human Population Institute of Stanford only talked about how to get an abortion, without addressing the population question at all. This concerned Filice, and, as a result, he called the chancery of the Archdiocese of San Francisco to ask what they were doing to respond. Finding out that they did not have a plan for action, Filice asked if they minded if he tried something. The Chancellor of the Archdiocese told him to go ahead.
Filice had a student, John Martin, who had become a Lutheran, and, when Filice expressed his concern about how things were developing, this student told him that his pastor had expressed the same concerns. As a result, he invited his pastor to have lunch with Filice at USF. Pastor Kangas was pastor of the Finnish Lutheran Church of St. Francis on Church Street in San Francisco. Pastor Kangas was from Ohio. Filice found him to be a very spiritual man.
Filice also invited to the lunch meeting Eileen Ziomeck (now Dr. Aicardi, a pediatrician in San Francisco), who, in Filice's words, was "smartest student I ever had". The four people who attended the luncheon decided to start an educational group aimed at countering the claims regarding population growth made in the media.
Pastor Kangas knew an Episcopalian minister who was of the same mind. He was Rev. Charles Carroll, chaplain at UCSF and pastor of the church that is now the Catholic chapel of St. John of God. Rev. Carroll had been a Catholic, at one time, but now served under the Episcopalian Bishop of San Francisco. His presence on the committee added a socially upscale quality to the movement.
So the four contacted Rev. Carroll and called a meeting. St. Mary’s Hospital let them use a meeting room. No doctors were at the meeting. Those in attendance at this first meeting were: Filice, Eileen Ziomeck, John Martin, John Galten, Clayton Barbeau (a Catholic author), Rev. Bernie Bush, S.J., Rev. Theodore Taheny, S.J., Rev. Carroll, Pastor Kangas, Bob Augros (a philosophy professor at USF), and others whom Filice cannot remember. He does remember that there were fourteen people present.
They decided that the political problem was impractical to address directly, and that what was needed was an educational group to counter the arguments of the pro-choice movement. Filice remembers going around the room and asking each if they wanted to be chairman, but each of them declined. So, by default, Filice became the chairman of this emergent pro-life group in San Francisco. Thus was born United for Life of San Francisco.
United for Life met every two weeks for the next seven years. At their first official meeting, Dr. Raymond Dennehy came up from Santa Clara University, where he taught philosophy. Dr. Augros and he took the task of countering the arguments of their opposition, and they developed a pamphlet in question-and-answer form that became the source of arguments against abortion for all the pro-life groups in the United States. This pamphlet was later the basis of a book by Dr. Jack and Barbara Willke from Ohio.
United for Life developed the first pro-life newsletter in the United States and contacted all the groups in California and the United States. In most densely populated areas, ad hoc groups formed. For example, across the bay in Oakland, "Voice of the Unborn" was formed by a number of housewives. In Los Angeles, a right-to-life organization was formed by a group of doctors’ wives. There was a network of such groups who brought information to their legislatures and to young people.
In addition, United for Life developed speakers bureaus: lawyers, scientists, students, and women who went to every school in the Bay Area to present the pro-life message. They purchased films which explored prenatal development. They asked to address every event in the Bay Area where their opposition would be.
United for Life organized the opposition to the bills in the California State Assembly to strike down all the abortion laws, and they "defeated it handsomely."
Mary Ann Schwab and Alice Austurias, members of United for Life, organized the Catholic Office for Life in the Archdiocese of San Francisco and staffed it for many years. Some of the members of United for Life organized the Political Action organization in California as a separate organization because of the tax laws.
The Birthright organization was started in San Francisco by Dr. Filice's second-oldest daughter, Carol Brown. A similar organization with the same name had been started in Toronto, Ontario. Brown and her helpers contacted the Toronto office, and they joined with the international organization. This helped the spread of Birthright offices on the West Coast.
Of "Roe v. Wade", Filice has stated: "A purely fabricated case went to the Supreme Court and Justice Blackmun, without shame, wrote a majority opinion that is a masterpiece of false logic. The Court struck down all the laws protecting the child. In doing so they threw our legal system into a shambles. To this day, the effects are felt in the grossly unjust decisions made by the courts to protect the capacity to kill the child in the womb".
Filice finds noteworthy that the pro-life effort was the first effort by Catholic lay people in the United States without the help of the clergy; it was an entirely lay movement, the first, in Filice's experience, in the United States where the people acted without the leadership of their pastors. This was important because the Catholic organizers wanted non-Catholics to join in. Their conviction was that abortion is a human problem and not just a religious one. The early pro-life activists felt that they, as citizens, had to educate the voters in the United States. As a result, many Catholic priests felt that it was not their fight. All that has changed by now, Fr. Filice points out: Priests for Life grew out of United for Life.
Personal life.
In 1947, Filice married Barbara Ann Fate, the daughter of Michael and Blanche Fate. Michael Fate was half Italian and half Irish, and Blanche Fate was half Irish and half Swedish. Ms. Fate had earned a baccalaureate degree at Lone Mountain College in San Francisco.
Filice had six children. The Filice Family would settle on 24th Avenue in San Francisco's Richmond District, attending St. Monica's parish and school. Filice's daughters attended Presentation High School, while his sons attended St. Ignatius, San Francisco's Jesuit high school.
In the early 1960s, Filice participated in one of the first cursillo retreats given in San Francisco, and he became a Third Order Carmelite. In 1964, he took his family on a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. From the early 1960s to the middle 1970s, Filice was involved with the St. Vincent de Paul Society and the pro-life movement.
Mrs. Filice died from complications related to kidney failure on February 11, 1976. Soon after, Dr. Filice retired from his professorship at the University of San Francisco and was accepted by Archbishop Joseph Thomas McGucken as a seminarian of the Archdiocese of San Francisco. From 1977 to 1979, he was engaged in formation for the priesthood at St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park, CA. He was ordained a priest of Jesus Christ on May 19, 1979 at St. Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco. The ordaining prelate was Archbishop John R. Quinn of San Francisco.
Filice served as a parochial vicar in various parishes of the Archdiocese of San Francisco until 1986, when, with the permission of Archbishop Quinn, he established the Holy Family Oratory of St. Philip Neri in the Archdiocese of San Francisco. The impetus for the foundation of the Oratory was an awareness of the attacks on the family in the West, which had taken deep root in the culture. Fr. Filice sought to combat these evils by engaging in a sustained and organized apostolic service to the family in the context of the Oratorian life. In addition, he saw the common life of the Oratory as a healthy form of community life for secular priests engaged in pastoral ministry. The Oratory had pastoral care of the students of San Francisco State University until 1991, when it transferred its operations to the parish of San Jose de la Mesa in Tijuana, Mexico. Fr. Filice served there until 1996, when Archbishop William Levada called him home to the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Fr. Filice was assigned to be chaplain of the Veterans Administration Hospital in San Francisco. He served in that capacity until his retirement in the early 2000s.
Filice then resided in San Francisco as senior priest in residence at St. Thomas the Apostle Church in the outer Richmond District. He also served as full-time chaplain to the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration at 771 Ashbury Street in San Francisco. He was also part-time chaplain at the San Francisco County Jail, the Richmond Jail, and the San Bruno Jail, and at the Novitiate of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta's Missionaries of Charity, at St. Paul's on Church Street in the Noe Valley neighborhood of the Mission District.
Filice died on July 17, 2015, at Nazareth House in San Rafael surrounded by many of his family members. He was 92 years of age and until recent months had remained quite active in his ministry since his ordination in 1979.


Donald Spitz

Donald Spitz is an anti-abortion activist in the United States. He lives in Chesapeake, Virginia, where he runs the website of and is a spokesperson for the Army of God, an anti-abortion Christian terrorist
organization that has been identified as an active underground terrorist organization by the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security's joint Terrorism Knowledge Base.
Biography.
Spitz is a first-generation Italian American whose family immigrated from Sant'Elia Fiumerapido, Italy and settled in Paterson, New Jersey. Spitz was born in Norfolk, Virginia, into a military family. He joined the Navy at 18 and served for two years during the Vietnam War. In the early 1980s Spitz moved to New York City, where he ran a street evangelism ministry in Times Square.
Spitz was ordained in Manhattan by evangelist Leander Bolhoarst into the Pentacostal International Gospel Crusade.
In 1993, Spitz moved to Chesapeake, Virginia where he formed Operation Rescue Chesapeake then Pro-Life Virginia. He currently operates the Army of God website.
Activity.
Spitz was "best friends" with Christian terrorist Paul Jennings Hill until Hill, who murdered physician John Britton and retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel (and Britton's bodyguard) James Barrett, was executed. Spitz was Hill's spiritual adviser during the last week of his life and was with Hill when he was executed. Spitz was one of the 29 signers of the Defensive Action Statement, which he posted on the Army of God's website. The Defensive Action Statement argued that the murders Hill committed were justified to protect "unborn children".
Spitz was ordered to appear before two separate grand juries. The grand juries were held in Alexandria, Virginia and in Philadelphia during separate investigations into Hill and Clayton Waagner, a man who sent hundreds of anthrax scare letters to abortion providers in 2001.
After John Salvi attacked two reproductive health clinics in Massachusetts, he drove to Norfolk Virginia where Spitz lived at the time. It was reported by "the Boston Globe", at the time of his arrest in Norfolk, Salvi had Spitz's name and unlisted phone number in his possession. Spitz held a prayer vigil outside Salvi's jail cell. Spitz was so outspoken in defense of Salvi, he was asked not to come to Massachusetts for Salvi’s trial and he would be unwelcome if he did.
Spitz was ejected from Operation Rescue. He formed Operation Rescue Chesapeake, but after a year and a half, when Flip Benham took control of the national organization, Spitz was ordered to separate himself and his organization from the Operation Rescue name because of his support and friendship with Hill. Spitz changed the name of his organization from Operation Rescue Chesapeake to Pro-Life Virginia.
Spitz gained attention in 2001 with his support for Waagner, who was one of the FBI's ten most wanted, who sent hundreds of anthrax letters to abortion clinics throughout the United States. Spitz was also suspected of harboring Waagner and receiving phone calls from him while Waagner was on the lam.
In response to the 1998 shooting death of Barnett Slepian, Spitz said: "What would I say to the family of Slepian? They live in a $500,000 house that was paid for with blood money – the blood of those babies that Barnett Slepian murdered... He knew what he was doing, he was murdering children. That's too bad if he was killed in front of his family..."
Spitz has been watched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for over 20 years. In 1994, the FBI suspected that he and other anti-abortion figures might be developing "a conspiracy that endeavors to achieve political or social change through activities that involve force or violence."
Spitz has published prison writings of fellow extremists including Hill, Waagner, Eric Rudolph, Shelley Shannon, and Michael Bray, on the Army of God website.
Spitz was in constant contact with Scott Roeder while he was awaiting trial for the murder of George Tiller.
Shelley Shannon, an anti-abortion extremist, made her first phone call when she was released from federal prison to Spitz. It is reported they had been in close contact the whole time of Shannon's incarceration.


At the Beach LA

At The Beach, Los Angeles (ATBLA) is the organization that promotes and administers the Los Angeles Black gay pride event that occurs every summer. At The Beach is an annual beach party/Pride celebration which exists as the focal point for the black gay pride events, is the largest black gay pride event on the West Coast.
History.
At the Beach LA was born out of a small number of friends in Los Angeles, California, in 1988. They understood, as black gay men, that it was common for them to be rejected by the larger black and gay community. Though the greater black and gay community mostly refused to include them, these individuals yearned to celebrate and enjoy their identity as black gay men. They hosted a small gathering in Malibu Point Dune beach, several miles away from the LA metropolis, in a place almost hidden from the public. This gathering was a huge success and thus began a movement for black gay pride across the world.
Present.
The event, now more commonly known as L.A. Black Pride, is still the most popular and longest running black LGBT event in the western United States. However, the event has seen a noticeable attendance and interest decline in recent years, primarily due to the new great migration of blacks from the West to states more eastward seeking a more affordable cost of living and/or larger presence of black culture.


Cara-Friend

Cara-Friend was set up in 1974 "as a voluntary counseling, befriending, information, health and social space organisation for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Trans (LGB&T) community" in Northern Ireland.
Cara-Friend has a youth section for anyone between the ages of 12-25 who identifies as non-heterosexual or is questioning their sexual identity and offers support and help to them. Cara-Friend is well known as one of the most prominent groups for LGBT youth in Northern Ireland and has released "What's In Your Closet?" - a guide for parents, teachers and students to coming out.


Moshe Leib Rabinovich

Moshe Leib Rabinovich (born December 25, 1940 in Munkacs, Hungary) is the current rebbe of Munkacs.
Early life.
Rabinovich was born as the third child to his parents Rabbi Baruch and Frima Rabinovich in Munkacs, Carpathian Ruthenia, the country itself having at the time just been created with a sizable piece of Hungary, which in turn received Munkacs from Czechoslovakia with the help of Nazi Germany in 1938.
His father, Rabbi Baruch Yehoshua Yerachmiel Rabinowicz served as Chief Rabbi of Munkacs following the death of his father-in-law Chief Rabbi Chaim Elazar Spira in 1937 until the Nazis occupied Munkacs in 1944.
During World War Two, Rabinovich's father escaped the Nazis and fled with his entire family to the land of Israel (then Mandatory Palestine). Shortly after they arrived in Mandatory Palestine, Rabinovich and his siblings were orphaned with the death of their mother, Chaya Frima Rivka Rabinovich. Rabinovich studied in Israel, undertook secular studies in public schools in São Paulo, Brazil, and later studied in the United States at the Telshe yeshiva in Cleveland, Ohio, refusing to attend college, to his father’s disappointment. At Telshe, he became especially close to Rabbi Mordechai Gifter with whom he had a study partnership of several consecutive hours on a daily basis and from Rav Gifter he acquired his derech halimud. Following five years at Telshe, Rabinovich moved to Beis Medrash Elyon, a yeshiva for advanced learning in Spring Valley, New York. He also maintained a close relationship with the Satmar Rebbe Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum until his death in 1979.
While Rabinovich was in Beis Medrosh Elyon, the elders of Munkacs met in Brooklyn. Led by Rabbi Chaim Ber Greenfeld and Rabbi Shlomo Goldstein, both gabbai's (secretaries) of the Munkacser Rebbe, Rabbi Chaim Elazar Spira, the participants agreed unanimously that the time had come for Munkacs Hasidism to be born again, in America, and that Rabinovich should be their Rebbe.
As Rebbe.
Rabinovich married Nechama Perl, daughter of Rabbi Aron Bernstein of Jerusalem in 1962 and was immediately appointed as leader of the Munkacs community. At first, he settled in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York and later moved to the Boro Park section of Brooklyn. He immediately began to rebuild the community, and established religious and educational bases in the United States, Canada, Israel, England and Australia.
Rabinovich's followers and petitioners seek his advice on all issues. His counsel is frequently sought by government and elected officials for his blessings and support.
Rabinovich frequently visits his home town in Munkacs (now, Mukachevo, Ukraine), to strengthen the remaining Jews and to help rebuild the Munkacs Jewish community. In August 2006, a Jewish community center and Synagogue were dedicated by Rabbi Rabinovich to serve the needs of the community.
Rabinovich has authored numerous books on Torah and Halacha (Jewish Law), among them "Sharei Orah" and "Olas Shabbos". He also serves as honorary president of "Kollel Munkatch and Ten Suburbs" in Jerusalem, Israel.
Personal life.
He resides in Borough Park, Brooklyn, New York, which is home to thousands of Jews of Munkacs descent and which is the international headquarters of worldwide Munkacs Jewry.
Rabinovich and his wife have three children, Rabbi Chaim Elazar, married to Gittel Beila Teitlebaum, Frima, married to Rabbi Yosef Horowitz and Rabbi Yerucham Fishel, married to Malka Teitelbaum.


Charles Brown (actor)

Charles Brown (January 15, 1946 – January 8, 2004) was an American actor and a member of New York City, New York theater troupe the Negro Ensemble Company. He was best known for his performances in Off-Broadway and Broadway plays by Samm-Art Williams and August Wilson.
Biography.
Charles Brown was born in Talladega, Alabama, and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Mack Brown Sr. His siblings included brothers Mack Jr. and Ramon and sister Shirley. After serving in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War, Brown studied theater at Howard University, in Washington, D.C. He performed with that city's D.C. Black Repertory Company, and elsewhere.
Brown became a regular member of the Negro Ensemble Company, where his roles included Southern farmer Cephus Miles in Samm-Art Williams' "Home" (1979) and military investigator Captain Richard Davenport in 1944 Louisiana in Charles Fuller's "A Soldier's Story" (1981). "Home" moved to Broadway in 1980, earning Brown a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play. In 2001 he received his second, for Best Featured Actor in a Play, for his role as the gambler and con man Elmore in August Wilson's "King Hedley II". That part won him a 2001 Drama Desk Award.
Other stage work includes roles in Neil Simon's "Rumors" (1988); John Guare's "A Few Stout Individuals" (2002); Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen's "The Exonerated"; Don Evans' "Showdown"; Leslie Lee's "First Breeze of Summer" (1975); Richard Wesley's "The Mighty Gents" (1978); Steve Carter's "Nevis Mountain Dew"; and Wilson's "Fences" (1987), in which he portrayed the older son of a character played by James Earl Jones. Television credits included the New York City-shot series "Kojak", "The Cosby Show", "Law & Order", "", and "The Equalizer". In the 1983 TV series "Kennedy", he portrayed the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
Brown was married to Renee Lescook. He died of prostate cancer in Cleveland, Ohio, where he lived.


Midi Achmat

Taghmeda Achmat, commonly known as Midi Achmat, is one of South Africa's most well known lesbian activists. Achmat co-founded the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) with her partner and fellow activist Theresa Raizenberg on December 10, 1998.
Biography.
Taghmeda "Midi" Achmat came from a family of Cape Malay anti-apartheid activists, and is a member of the Cape Coloured community. Her brother Zackie Achmat is an activist and filmmaker. Achmat met her partner Theresa Raizenberg in 1986, when the two were teenagers. Raizenberg was introduced to Achmat through the latter's aunt, and had already met Achmat's brother Zackie. Achmat and Raizenberg bonded over lesbian novels and both became active in the LGBT community of Cape Town.
Achmat, her brother Zackie, and Raizenberg were part of a group which co-founded the black-led Association of Bisexuals, Gays, and Lesbians (ABIGALE) which organized the Johannesburg Pride March in 1992. Both Midi and Zackie Achmat were ostracized by their family after coming out as gay. In addition to ABIGALE, Achmat co-founded the National Coalition of Lesbian and Gay Equality, and the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival of Cape Town.
Achmat has advocated for the implementation of HIV prevention programs in South Africa, and for improved access to healthcare for HIV positive individuals. She led TAC's civil disobedience program to pressure the South African government into implementing an HIV prevention program. She was arrested in 2003 while protesting at the Caledon Square Police Station. That same year, Achmat, Raizenberg and intersex activist Sally Gross were jointly awarded the Galactic/Allison Masters Community Award for their contributions to the LGBT community.
Achmat has remained active in the South African LGBT community, and has contributed to various academic journals in addition to collaborating with international researchers and activists. She completed her honors thesis at the University of the Western Cape on the difficulties facing Muslim women in the LGBT community, and later founded Unveiling the Hijab, a Facebook group for queer Muslim women, although she personally no longer practices Islam.
In 2007, Achmat's film "A Normal Daughter", which followed the life story of a drag queen named Kewpie, was premiered at the Gay & Lesbian Film Festival on Triangle and Stratos Television.


Royal Free Hospital

The Royal Free Hospital (also known simply as the Royal Free) is a major teaching hospital in the Hampstead area of the London Borough of Camden. The hospital is part of the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, which also runs services at Barnet Hospital, Chase Farm Hospital and a number of other sites. The trust is a founder member of the UCLPartners academic health science centre.
History.
Early history.
The Royal Free Hospital was founded in 1828 by the surgeon William Marsden to provide, as its name indicates, free care to those of little means. It is said that one evening, Marsden found a young girl lying on the steps of St. Andrew Church, Holborn, dying from disease and hunger and sought help for her from one of the nearby hospitals. However, none would take the girl in and she died two days later. After this experience Marsden set up a small dispensary at 16 Greville Street, Holborn, called the London General Institution for the Gratuitous Care of Malignant Diseases. A royal charter was granted by Queen Victoria in 1837 after a cholera epidemic in which the hospital had extended care to many victims, following which it became the Royal Free Hospital.
As demand for in-patient facilities increased, it was constituted as the Royal Free Hospital, and moved to the former barracks of the Light Horse Volunteers in Gray's Inn Road in August 1842. The north wing of the former barracks, which was rebuilt and renamed the Sussex Wing after Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, a benefactor of the hospital, re-opened in 1856 and the south wing, which was rebuilt and renamed the Victoria Wing after Queen Victoria, re-opened in 1879. Meanwhile, the western elevation on Gray's Inn Road, which was rebuilt and renamed the Alexandra Building after the Princess of Wales, was re-opened by the Prince and Princess of Wales in July 1895. Some additional land was purchased and used to develop the Helena Building, named after Princess Helena: the building was completed in 1915 and served as the Royal Free Military Hospital for officers during the latter stages of the First World War before becoming the maternity wing after the war. The Eastman Dental Clinic opened in a building adjacent to the main hospital in 1929. The Victoria Wing was badly damaged by a V-1 flying bomb in July 1944 during the Second World War.
Royal Free disease.
In 1955 an apparent outbreak of an infectious illness, involving fever and subsequent persisting fatigue along with other symptoms, affected 292 members of staff and forced the hospital's closure between 25 July and 5 October. There was subsequently some debate as to whether the episode was of an infectious cause, or just an example of mass hysteria. The outbreak turned out to be a notable case in the UK of myalgic encephalomyelitis and resulted in the coining of that disease name.
Move to Hampstead.
By the late 1960s the site on Gray's Inn Road had become too cramped, and in 1974 a modern 12-storey cruciform tower block in Pond Street, Hampstead, on the site of the former "Hampstead General Hospital", founded by William Heath Strange. It was opened by the Queen in 1978. Meanwhile, the Eastman Dental Hospital took over the whole of the Gray's Inn Road site. The Royal Free was the first hospital in the UK to appoint a consultant in HIV medicine, in 1989. Professor Margaret Johnson, a specialist in thoracic medicine, built the Royal Free Centre for HIV Medicine, which is at the forefront of treatment of HIV-AIDS. The out-patients' centre was opened in 1992 by the actor Sir Ian McKellen and is named after the actor Ian Charleson.
MMR vaccine controversy.
In February 1998, the Royal Free held a press conference to coincide with the publication in "The Lancet" of a paper by Andrew Wakefield who claimed to have found a possible link between the MMR vaccine and autism. This started a controversy which led to a crisis in public confidence over MMR and a fall in uptake of the vaccine. Wakefield left the medical school in October 2001 and was later struck off the UK medical register by the General Medical Council following an investigation by "The Sunday Times" newspaper into the MMR issue.
Education.
For a long time, the Royal Free was the only London hospital allowing women to study medicine, forming an association with the London School of Medicine for Women, under which women from the school completed their clinical studies at the hospital, from 1877. Under the Deanship of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, one of the school's founders, it became part of the University of London and in 1896 became known as the London Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine for Women.
In 1998 it merged with the University College Hospital's medical school to form the Royal Free and University College Medical School, renamed the UCL Medical School in 2008.
Facilities.
The Royal Free Hospital has a high-level isolation unit equipped to treat highly infectious diseases such as Ebola virus disease. In 2014, the British nurse William Pooley was successfully treated for Ebola virus disease at the unit. In December 2014, Pauline Cafferkey, a British health worker diagnosed with Ebola in Glasgow was transferred to the unit for treatment. The unit has also previously been used to treat a patient with Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever.
Significant advances in the fields of liver medicine (hepatology) and transplantation; renal disease and dialysis; haematology and haemophilia have been made at the Royal Free, and the trust now treats all patients needing dialysis in north and central London. The department of liver medicine is recognised as one of the leading research units of its type in the world: it was founded by Professor Dame Sheila Sherlock.
Performance.
The hospital was rated 'good' by the Care Quality Commission in September 2017. In a report of the Care Quality Commission completed in May 2019, Royal Free Hospital's overall surgical safety rating was downgraded from “good” to “requires improvement”, due to a “large number” of “never events” — incidents so serious they should never have happened — which were partially related to “poor behaviours” by a few consultants at the Royal Free London NHS Trust and failures of the Trust's management.
Transport.
The nearest London Underground station is Belsize Park, and the hospital is situated very near Hampstead Heath station on the London Overground.