The gay mafia
'Gay mafia' book claim priest accuses church of bullying
BBC Scotland
A priest who wrote a manual accusing the Catholic Church in Scotland of being sprint by a "powerful gay mafia" says he has been bullied by church hierarchy.
Father Matthew Despard was suspended from parish duties in 2013 after making the claims in a self-published book.
A Vatican court verdict in 2016 cleared the way for a possible repay - but the church says he will not be allowed to come back until he makes a public apology.
Father Despard said he was not sorry for telling the truth.
He was suspended from his parish at St John Ogilve's in Blantyre, South Lanarkshire, after publishing a publication called Priesthood in Crisis.
He was forbidden from carrying out certain religious duties, like saying Mass, but has remained employed by the church.
Father Depard refused to leave his parish home but was evicted through court action in 2014. He now lives in a flat which is paid for by the church.
His appeal against his suspension was taken to the Roman Rota in Italy in 2016 - an internal Catholic court system.
Its ruling cleared the way for a possible retu
Adam Carolla: The Same-sex attracted Mafia Is Real
After making comments in 2011 that some said were anti-gay, Adam Carolla came under fire from a number of lesbian, gay, double attraction and transgender (LGBT) media watchdog groups.
Now the comedian has continued his diatribe about gays and political correctness in an interview with Salon, where he claimed that the same-sex attracted mafia is a reality. “If you can’t work with gay people, you’re gonna have a difficult time in Hollywood,” he said in the Q&A.
The source of the original outcry was an August 2011 rant that included commentary on lgbtq+ marriage stemming from Sesame Street‘s Bert and Ernie gay controversy, in which Carolla said gay people should “get married and shut up.” He also apparently said that LGBT people should just call themselves “Yuck,” then ended the tirade with a question: “When did we start giving a shit about these [transgender] people?” His subsequent apology and claim that he is “a comedian, not a politician” left watchdog groups like GLAAD wanting more.
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In his latest interview, Caro
The Mafia and the Gays - Softcover
Synopsis
The Mafia and the Gays meticulously documents how the mob restricted gay bars for decades in New York and Chicago due to their once illicit status, and relies upon an extensive collection of primary sources including FBI files many of which were not publicly available until acquired by author Phillip Crawford Jr. through the Liberty of Information Act.
Mr. Crawford illustrates how the queer bars historically were integrated into the Mafia rackets. For example, the establishments often were financed through mob-tied coin-op vendors and their related loan companies. Jukebox king Alfred Miniaci funded dozens of lgbtq+ bars and other joints controlled by the Mafia in the 1950s and 1960s including the Peppermint Lounge. Miniaci supplied slot machines in the 1930s to Frank Costello, and had dined with the mob boss on the May 2, 1957 evening he was shot. Lgbtq+ bars sometimes served as drug drops. Forget about the pizza connection; this was the pansy connection. Club 82 in Modern York's East Village was a popular club with drag revues, and in the 1950s also was part of the distribution network in the Genovese family's heroin trade for which boss Vito
Phillip Crawford Jr. is a retired attorney from the New York bar.
He attended Bates College in Lewiston, Maine from which he graduated with a B.A. in English in 1985. At Bates he was President of the Gay-Straight Alliance in 1983, and spearheaded a campaign to oust military recruiters from the campus for their discriminatory policies against the LGBT community.
Following college Phillip attended George Washington University Statute School where he was a Notes Editor for the Rule Review. After graduating with utmost honors as class salutatorian in 1988 he clerked for Principal Judge Judith W. Rogers on the D.C. Court of Appeals, and then with Judge George H. Revercomb on the Combined States District Court for the District of Columbia. He practiced law for fifteen years in New York City including several years with the plaintiffs' class action bar, and then retired after exposing his concerns about billing practices. Professor Lester Brickman characterized him in "Lawyer Barons" as a "whistle blower."
Crawford was interviewed for VICE about his first book "The Mafia and the Gays." Culture Trip includes the book on its list of "10 Books About the Ma