Media campaign against Bolivian President Morales claims he said chicken causes men to become gay!

[Better Believe It]

Three different quotes have now appeared in the media regarding President Morales claiming he said eating chicken turns men gay.

Which quote is accurate? You tell me.

Here's the quotes:

Quote #1. Evo Morales told a conference on climate change: "The chicken we eat is loaded with female hormones. So, when men eat it, they tend to deviate from their manhood."

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2010/04/22/bolivian-president-says-eating-chicken-turns-men-gay/

Quote #2. "When we talk about chicken, it's pumped full of female hormones," Morales said, "and so when men eat this chicken, they stray from being men" (literally tienen desviaciones en su ser como hombres in Spanish).

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1984064,00.html#ixzz0m2iipFb9

Quote #3. He said chicken producers inject birds with female hormones and "when men eat those chickens, they experience deviances in being men."

http://www.myfoxphilly.com/dpps/news/dpgonc-eating-chicken-can-make-men-deviant%2C-bolivia-leader-warns-mh-20100421_7175804

I don't believe that President Morales and the Bolivian government along with the left are preparing to launch an attack on the gay community. Whatever he actually did say can easily be misinterpreted and be used by political opponents in the corporate media. I'm sure President Morales meant no harm with his comments and was certainly not engaged in any gay bashing. Like the United States, Bolivia has a long way to go in establishing equal GLBT rights. But, progress is being made according to GLBT leaders. The left is learning in Latin America, as it learned over time in the United States, and most in the Latin American left have become strong advocates of gay and lesbian rights.

Here's the Bolivian Foreign Ministry response:


When Bolivian President Evo Morales took the stage to inaugurate the World People's Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth on Tuesday, April 20, in Cochabamba, he gave his thousands of politically correct attendees a surprise. Somewhere between appealing for an international climate-change court and questioning why the U.N. still uses plastic cups, Morales went after genetically modified foods — by making a comment that some think meant that hormones cause homosexuality.

"When we talk about chicken, it's pumped full of female hormones," Morales said, "and so when men eat this chicken, they stray from being men" (literally tienen desviaciones en su ser como hombres in Spanish). The comment went over non–Spanish speakers' heads, so it wasn't until sundown that it rippled its way through the 35,000-participant gathering. By the next morning, the international press had gotten wind of it, Bolivian newspapers had plastered it on their front pages and Spain's national LGBT federation had issued a statement calling the comment "homophobic."

The Morales government swears he meant no harm. "He made no mention of sexuality," the Foreign Relations Ministry said on Thursday, April 22, in response. "Rather, he said that eating chicken that has hormones changes our own bodies. This point of view has been confirmed by scientists, and even the European Union has prohibited the use of some hormones in food," the government asserts, citing studies that have shown that sexual hormones in food can cause genital abnormalities in boys. The document has not assuaged all critics — especially since the Latin left, which Morales represents, has historically been considered less than sympathetic to homosexuals — but it has taken some of the heat off Morales.

Bolivia's President also called Coca-Cola the poor man's Drano. "If the plumber comes to your house and can't get the job done with all his tools," Morales quipped, "have him pour Coca-Cola down the clogged toilet, and problem solved." This jab was better received, since Bolivians think the beverage company unfairly benefits from the country's traditional coca leaf. The leaf, an integral part of Bolivian indigenous culture as well as the base ingredient for cocaine, is banned outside the Andes. Bolivia therefore can't export its popular tea, for example. However, the U.N. Convention on Narcotics offers an exception when the leaf is used as a "flavoring agent." The Coca-Cola company refuses to disclose any part of its secret formula, but reporting suggests the coca leaf is in the recipe. Morales may have timed this remark on purpose: just last week, a small company in Bolivia introduced "Coca-Colla" into the local market (Colla refering to the native Andean highland people), a new energy soda that proudly uses coca as a main ingredient.

Though the off-color remarks took center stage in the press, summit participants chalked them up to quirky humor and kept focus on what few consider a laughing matter — the growing climate crisis. Morales called for this "people's" summit back in January after what he and many in the global south saw as unwillingness on the part of developed-world leaders to set out a sustainable path in Copenhagen. Workshops and panels in Cochabamba echoed with harsh criticism of the Copenhagen Accord's back-door birth and complaints that it falls short of what's needed to curb climate problems.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1984064,00.html

[RandomThoughts]

1. I thought there was more to that.

Sounds like he is commenting on the hormones in poultry, a valid comment.

Also some have said it could be part of the problem with US obesity.

[malaise]

2. Divide and rule

The rational and those who pay attention know what Morales said. Of course he is anti-imperialist and on the enemy list so he's fair game to the hacks from M$Greedia.

[EFerrari]

6. An assassination plot against him was broken up in March 2009.

Four of the plotters are fugitives in the US.

And of course, bucking the imposition of the Copenhagen agreement puts him right in the crosshairs. It's very specific now. I expect more of this.

[subsuelo]

13. I had just posted in Lat/Am forum ...

... about how the media was as a whole ignoring the whole climate event in Bolivia this week. (even NPR only carried an AP article with a small paragraph at the end about it)

And now we observe this - suddenly lots of focus and attention in an attempt to vilify Morales.

Sad thing is the vast numbers of people swept away by corporate media lies and manipulation. What can one do :shrug:

[EFerrari]

15. We can remind people that equality is the law in Bolivia.

And that Evo is a true progressive now under fire by our whore media. That's about all I can think of.

[Cleita]

3. I never took it to mean that men would become gay although Rachel

Maddow interpreted it that way. I took it to mean that the female hormones would make men effeminate. Now effeminate men can be gay or not gay in my experience. A business acquaintance of mine who is very sweetly pretty with soft hands and delicate mannerisms has five children and another one on the way and is definitely not gay!

[EFerrari]

4. You bet! For people who are paying attention, Evo just stood up bigtime

to the PTB by hosting a real world global climate change forum in response to Copenhagen which excluded the peoples most directly affected. His event was largely "ignored" by our media.

Washington tried to scare him out of it by withdrawing "climate aid" to Bolivia ahead of the event but Morales didn't back down and held the conference any way.

So, he is the new Chavez!

For DUers that don't know this, Bolivia protects GLBT equality, in part because of Morales. And his comments were about Franken food, not teh gay.

In order to interpret his comments about virility to mean "gay", you'd have to think that gay men aren't virile. It's ridiculous.

Don't take the bait.

[madokie]

10. Some will take the bait anyway

Because some want too. Morales is the best thing to happen to Bolivia in our lifetimes. Due to his policies of giving back to the indigenous people he will be targeted.

[EFerrari]

12. Yep. But it's worth noting that in Bolivia it's illegal to discriminate

against GLBT folk unlike here in the US. This story is about attacking Morales because he's standing up against US hegemony and that's all it is.

[Better Believe It]

5. Some interesting comments on "American blog Gay"

marcos

As a proud member of PFLAG, as a member of a city human rights commission that was able to place a LGBT as a protected class in our city regulations, as somebody that worked with Dennis Kucinich, the only Democratic presidential candidate that embraced the rights of same sex marriage, and as a proud father and father in law of two incredible loving and caring women, I ask you to understand what Evo said, and how you are being used by the reactionary forces that are desperate to overthrow Morales' presidency.

Granted, Evo did not use the best phrase, but he never said anything disparaging against male homosexuals. Moreover, it *is* a fact that the hormones added to chicken feed can produce physical alterations in males (no, nothing to do with sexual preferences, but to do with how fat accumulates differently in males and females, and the variations --or "deviations", that those hormones can produce in males, and preliminary studies about sperm count and sperm strength.)

I would ask you that instead of joining the "anti-Evo" reactionary bandwagon, you look for ways to *educate* this courageous leader of the amerindians and to show him and others how the struggle of the LGBT community is no so different from the native americans' struggle. I will do so.

In solidarity
Peace with Justice
¡Sí se puede!

jimhadstate

It would be nice if you folks would actually learn to read Spanish before you went off with some asinine "National Enquirer" headline that doesn't even come close to what President Morales said. What he was talking about, for you imbeciles who want to actually know what you are talking about, was genetically modified food. He was addressing the early research coming out of Europe (because our corporate sponsored universities and government won't do it) that seems to indicate that hens fed female growth hormone and then fed to people seem to cause certain adverse reactions in humans. In men, among other adverse reactions, it appears to cause premature balding. That is what he said.
It would have been nice if he had added (and perhaps he didn't know) that these studies have not been peer reviewed yet so they are only preliminary. But is seems that even the "Progressive Blogosphere" has become as bad at shooting form the lip and not understanding a single thing they say except that socialism bad, neoliberal capitalism good.

richardgrabman

The Venezuelan source is one of the far right networks that makes FOX news looks, well... like the "Liberal Media" by comparison. Here, from the Bolivian News Agency is what Evo Morales actually said:

" "Cuando hablamos del pollo, el pollo que comemos, está cargado de hormonas femeninas, por eso los hombres cuando comen este pollo tienen desviaciones en su ser como hombre", entre otras deficiencias, tales como la calvicie prematura, como así aceleraciones irregulares en el metabolismo en las mujeres al nacer a la vida reproductiva."

He was talking about hormones fed to factory farm chickens, which do indeed pass on female hormones to men and are thought to have physical effects.

http://gay.americablog.com/2010/04/bolivian-president-says-genetically.html

[Bluebear]

7. This sheds a whole new light on the Lowden Plan.

[Turbineguy]

8. This is really

going to screw up the new republican health plan.

[EFerrari]

11. And that's exactly what Evo wants to do.

:)

[bridgit]

9. Men "tend to deviate from their manhood" when they expect women to choke & then cook their chicken

For that matter

[Warpy]

14. I pointed out yesterday that the statement made him look silly

but that he's far from being a silly man. It stands to reason that the problem would be with translation, some phobe seeing any use of the word "deviate" as automatically denoting homosexuality.

Morales was right that hormone laced chickens are an abomination. Still, it's more growth hormones and steroids rather than estrogens.

One hopes he manages to end the factory farming that is so destructive to life in Bolivia and that the idea catches like wildfire elsewhere.

There is nothing like threatening holy manhood to cause a wholesale rebellion against something. He might just be crazy as a fox.

[EFerrari]

16. He was talking about virility (and in general, health)

not gay or straight.

And he's not crazy in any way except to stand firm against the damage that climate change is doing to Bolivia. That's his real crime.

[Laughing Mirror]

17. An obvious smear campaign

Devious and very vicious in its lies. And a lot of people in this forum seemed to have fallen for it, of course. What kind of a fool could equate being a gay man with being a man who has lost his manhood? The same fools that equate being gay with pedophilia and incest, and what have you, I suppose.

Lies. Nasty and horrible lies. And this lie will be repeated and repeated until it will be accepted as truth.

[Better Believe It]

18. Pseudo liberals easily fall for such smear campaigns against "radicals".