Susanne Atanus-"God created Autism as a punishment for gay rights"

A couple days ago Republican Candidate, Susanne Atanus, told the press this disturbing line: "God controls the weather and has put tornadoes and diseases such as autism and dementia on earth as punishment for gay rights and legalized abortions.”

I find it incredible that someone would genuinely believe something like that. To me personally, I find that to be an awful logic about why so many people suffer today. People like this find something considered "bad" and group every thing that is also "bad" with it. Some people don't believe in gay marriage and thats their opinion and I understand that. But when they decided to say that because of gay marriage we have disease and devastating weather, that is to much. These people try and simplify the problems by grouping everything "bad" into one problem.  

During the 80's when AIDS broke out, it was condemned as "the gay plague". Because the first man recorded with HIV/AIDS was gay, the gay people of America became the most hated minority. The epidemic was largely ignored by the government and gays were labeled as "high risk". Gay people were grouped with AIDS and they were scrutinized by america. 

People still group things today. People work to identify problems and fix them. Thats human nature, and if they can identify multiple problems and fix it with one solution, its even better. But some problems are controversial and people try and group these controversial problems with clear and obvious problems to make the controversial problems seem like an obvious problem. While the example of Atanus relating devastating weather issues to gay marriage is quite blatant, I believe people do it more often than one might think. Do you know of any groupings that are deemed 'bad'? 

Recent Cold Snap Descends on the Homeless

These past few days America and Canada have received some of the coldest temperatures in decades. Closing schools, roads, and businesses across the country. Personally, I was enthusiastic about the cold snap because it extended my winter break from school. I was looking through my Facebook feed at all the posts about the day off of school when I saw a link to a Forbes article called 'How To Help The Homeless When It Gets This Cold'

In this frigid weather many people (especially the homeless) are susceptible to health risks like hypothermia. When the homeless people have no shelter they are forced to live in the extreme weather. With wind chill well below 0 degrees I find it hard to imagine homeless men and women tucking themselves into corners with very little clothing or food.

From reading this article I was slightly reassured by the fact that many cities, including Chicago, have a hotline that brings in homeless people and gives them warm drinks, shelter and food for a little while. While this is a great project and probably saves lives, I feel that it is more for survival and I wonder if there are projects that are more long term or maybe help homeless people get a job or help them get a home.

I researched a little and found that many organizations strive to help homeless people. I found the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. A reliable and strong organization that has many projects and goals for the city of Chicago. They had many videos and pages on how to help communities with long or short term projects. They also have a blog page talking about very current issues or pointers for homeless people. They talked about the cold and what to do if you were stuck without shelter.

My family and I have volunteered at homeless shelters and donated money but I wonder if what I can do to help more with long term projects for the homeless. Or what others have done to help homeless people.