Every year, there are about 820,000 cases of gonorrhea diagnosed in the U.S. And thanks to increasing antibiotic resistance, our ability to treat the sexually transmitted infection is becoming more and more difficult.

According to the CDC, rates of super-gonorrhea (called such not because it’s super awesome, but because it’s super resistant to treatment) are on the rise in a number of U.S. cities, including Denver, Honolulu, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle.

Penicillin and various tetracyclines are already ineffective against most of the prevalent strains. As the Verge informs us, ‘this means that today’s gonorrhea patient has very few treatment options left” for symptoms that may include ‘burning, swelling of the testicles, vaginal discharge and anal itching.”

And one of those few remaining treatment options, the antibiotic cephalosporin, is probably on its way out as well.

Here’s more from the Verge:

By analyzing long-term surveillance data for 17 US cities between 1991 and 2006, researchers were able to trace how gonorrhea became resistant to ciprofloxacin, an antibiotic that lost its CDC recommendation in 2007 because studies demonstrated that 13.8 percent of patient samples were resistant to the drug.

The study’s results are alarming, but […]

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When my in-laws moved from India to the United States some 35 years ago, they couldn’t believe the low cost and abundance of our milk-until they developed digestive problems. They’ll now tell you the same thing I’ve heard a lot of immigrants say: American milk will make you sick.

It takes HOW much water to make a glass of milk?!

It turns out that they could be onto something. An emerging body of research suggests that many of the 1 in 4 Americans who exhibit symptoms of lactose intolerance could instead be unable to digest A1, a protein most often found in milk from the high-producing Holstein cows favored by American and some European industrial dairies. The A1 protein is much less prevalent in milk from Jersey, Guernsey, and most Asian and African cow breeds, where, instead, the A2 protein predominates.

“We’ve got a huge amount of observational evidence that a lot of people can digest the A2 but not the A1,” says Keith Woodford, a professor of farm management and agribusiness at New Zealand’s Lincoln University who wrote the 2007 book Devil in the Milk: Illness, Health, and the Politics of A1 and A2 Milk. “More than 100 studies suggest links between […]

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John Benefiel, the self-proclaimed “apostle” who was involved in Gov. Rick Perry’s “The Response” prayer rally came to our attention a few years ago after we discovered videos of him proclaiming that the Statue of Liberty is a demonic idol and that homosexuality in an Illuminati conspiracy, was the guest on Cindy and Mike Jacobs’ “God Knows” program recently where he detailed his efforts to break Baal’s control over the United States of America.

Benefiel, who believes that his prayers can cause earthquakes, explained to the Jacobs that Baal is a “counterfeit Jesus,” meaning that while Jesus is the son of God, Baal is the son of Satan and wields control not only over America but over many of nations on the earth.

How exactly did Baal come to rule over America, you ask? Not because of homosexuality or abortion or any of the other reasons that we normally hear from these sorts of Religious Right activists, but rather because ancient Egyptians sailed to this continent thousands of years ago and dedicated this land to him.

Citing the work of pseudo-scholar Barry Fell, Benefiel asserted that it is an established fact that ancient Egyptian Baal-worshipers came to America and left thousands of rock […]

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Pat Robertson believes that watching horror films gives demons direct ‘permission” to attack you. The octogenarian televangelist responded to a viewer who told him that she had been watching ‘a horror movie the other day on the recommendation of others” and a few days later got into ‘an accident leaving church.” She asked Robertson (God only know why) if the ‘creepy movie caused a curse – or the Lord’s protection to be lifted from me?”

Robertson, of course, went for it, and suggested that by choosing to watch the “creepy movie” might have given a demon ‘permission” to possess her – or to cause a car wreck. Or something.

‘This thing may be living around you and what you need to do again is speak it – command this thing to leave – and ask God to forgive you. I know that’s weird but these things can happen.”

Pity he didn’t mention anything about ‘The Exorcist.”

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Some absolutely sickening news out of Kentucky this month: Sunrise Children’s Services, which shelters and feeds more than 2,000 abused and neglected children every year, is facing a $7 million budget shortfall-a shortfall entirely manufactured by the Kentucky Baptist Convention in order to prevent Sunrise from hiring gay people.

The trouble started last year, when Sunrise’s then-president and CEO, Bill Smithwick, suggested that the group end its ban on hiring gay people. Smithwick reasoned that, with LGBT nondiscrimination legislation on the horizon, Sunrise’s anti-gay policies could cause the charity to lose its taxpayer funding, which accounts for about 85 percent of its operating budget. Kentucky’s Baptist community, however, wasn’t so enthusiastic. As soon as Smithwick introduced the proposal, the Kentucky Baptist Convention encouraged its affiliates to blacklist Sunrise until it abandoned its proposed nondiscrimination policy. Church donors across the state immediately began withholding their usual contributions, refusing to donate a penny to an organization that might hire openly gay people.

Smithwick’s fall from grace was swift and brutal. The Sunrise board quickly voted down his proposal, and soon after, the Kentucky Baptist Convention as a whole passed a vote of no-confidence in Smithwick. This vote-really a public shaming-essentially forced Smithwick to resign. […]

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