That’s what happens when you order a tall drip instead of a whipped, half-caf, blended, soy, mocha frappicino, blended chocolate burst!!! they brought this on themselves – Facebook Friend
Joking aside, one should know at the outset, that I agree with the coffee shop owner. He should be able to serve whom he wants and whom he does not. I posted elsewhere that if he puts up a sign saying,
“No One Allowed But Gay Middle-Aged Men In Borat Bathing Suits.”
He has that right – dammit! JUST LIKE a Christian business owner can deny service celebrating same-sex marriages. This should only be used as an example of Leftist hypocrisy, but people should be ready to provide FREEDOM to counter this. I will expand on this more with media and examples… this post may be long.
RED STATE notes the following about this incident:
…I don’t think I need to point out the hypocrisy here. When Indiana Pizza shop Memories Pizza merely said they couldn’t cater a gay wedding to the wrong journalist looking for a head to hunt, they were threatened, vandalized, and harassed to no end. When Colorado baker Jack Phillips refused to bake a cake for a gay wedding ceremony, politicians tried to force him into reeducation programs, and called him a Nazi.
However, this is hardly getting a blip. It’s certainly not getting the same media attention Phillips or Memories Pizza did. This coffee shop owner will never be forced into reeducation programs, or have to go to battle within the Supreme Court to preserve his right to refuse service to people.
Apparently, if you fall into a protected group, you can be as bigoted and intolerant as you please, while demanding everyone else straight up applaud you for so much as breathing out of your right nostril.
GAY PATRIOT wryly notes this about Red States post:
My favorite part is when he threatens to sodomize his boyfriend in front of them. The LGBT activists used to claim it wasn’t about buttsex, but this guy seems pretty sure… it’s about buttsex
BTW, no one would sit and watch a straight couple do the same.
In a past post of mine — “Gary Johnson Is a Cake Fascist” — an example used to compare equal application of the law (a Constitutional ideal) of Bruce Springsteen cancelling his tour in North Carolina :
Springsteen explained his decision in a lengthy statement to fans.
“As you, my fans, know I’m scheduled to play in Greensboro, North Carolina this Sunday. As we also know, North Carolina has just passed HB2, which the media are referring to as the ‘bathroom’ law. HB2 – known officially as the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act – dictates which bathrooms transgender people are permitted to use. Just as important, the law also attacks the rights of LGBT citizens to sue when their human rights are violated in the workplace. No other group of North Carolinians faces such a burden. To my mind, it’s an attempt by people who cannot stand the progress our country has made in recognizing the human rights of all of our citizens to overturn that progress. Right now, there are many groups, businesses, and individuals in North Carolina working to oppose and overcome these negative developments.”
The rocker added he felt it was not the right time for him and the E Street Band to perform in North Carolina.
GAY PATRIOTnoted years back that Springsteen should be forced to perform in that state, using the understanding of Leftists, Christian apologist FRANK TUREK agrees:
…When Bruce Springsteen refuses to do a concert in North Carolina for moral reasons he’s a hero to the liberals and the media, which are the same thing.
Imagine what would have happened if Bruce had a wedding band that refused to perform at a gay wedding? He’d go from hero to zero!
Yet, when a conservative band, florist, or photographer refuses to work at a gay wedding for moral or religious reasons, the left and the media bully those folks mercilessly as intolerant bigots. And they do so while claiming to be against bullying and for “tolerance”! (As Ryan Anderson pointed out, if it wasn’t for double standards, liberals would have no standards.)
In America, a gay T-shirt maker should not be forced to print up anti-gay marriage T-shirts. And a Christian or Muslim photographer should not be forced to photograph a gay wedding.
If Bruce has the right to deny service, so does everyone.
One person i know succinctly posted this:
The free market is the great equalizer of inequities while protecting freedom at the same time.
This idea is what Barry Goldwater was running on. Freedom. Here Dennis Prager comes to the realization that his position on Goldwaters “anti-Civil Rights Act” platform was wrong all these years:
The thinking that special rights apply to different groups of people are what totalitarian regimes proffer. Here is an example of freedom being diminished, really a backfiring of Leftist ideals on the Gay Left.
Gay Patriot writes about a recent logical conclusion of the Gay Left and their wanting to force private businesses to participate in gay wedding celebrations. With all the BIG government laws their is surely an aspect of backfire involved… I mean, the BIGGER government gets, the smaller the individual is:
A Denver bar has been cited by the state’s Division of Civil Rights for discrimination because it refused to let a gay man dressed in drag enter. The bar is the Denver Wrangler, and despite what its name might suggest, it is not some Country Western joint. It is, in fact, a gay bar. So the state has determined that a gay bar has discriminated against a gay person
Wha-a-a-a-a-a….?
Gay Patriot proceeds to explain the bars target audience, what in the gay lifestyle apparently are called “bears”?
… [the bar] caters to a gay subculture known as “Bears,” which are bisexual or gay males which tend to place importance on presenting a hypermasculine image and often shun interaction with men who exhibit effeminacy. This is evident from the pictures and statements made by employees regarding the “Bear” culture of the club and several links on the Respondent’s webpage referencing “Bear” clubs … .”
That’s right… a taxpayer-paid Government employee investigated and found out about the Bear subculture and interviewed bar patrons to find out what that was.
So, Gay Fascist Left, you wanted the Government in the business of policing businesses and their clientele, and now a bear bar is being cited for twink-discrimination.
Well done.
Indeed, if wanting to strip one’s self of individual rights and freedoms… well done. But some gays “GET IT” and fight for freedom!
Even the “supposed” Libertarian candidate wants the state large enough to force, fine, and run out of business citizens acting according to their conscience. Here is the debate portion that showed Gary Johnson was a Leftist and not a Libertarian:
I even called into the Michael Medved Show to challenge Gary Johnson on this debate:
The REAL march toward freedom was realized in this GREAT EXAMPLE of these two freedom loving lesbians fighting against the LEFT in oprotecting the freedoms of a Christian T-Shirt company owner:
Gay Patriot shot me over to The Blaze’s article on this… good stuff, and I LOVE these two ladies.
[Kathy Trautvetter and Diane DiGeloromo, a lesbian couple who own and operate BMP T-shirts, a New Jersey-based printing company, sat down with Glenn Beck Thursday night to explain why they are standing up for an embattled Christian printer who refused to make shirts for a gay pride festival.]
[….]
The lesbian couple are standing up for Christian t-shirt maker Blaine Adamson, who refused to print shirts for a gay pride festival because it compromised his values. Adamson has come under attack for his stance, but this couple supports him. The story is a microcosm for what should be happening in America as we navigate the way the world is changing.
“As a business owner, it struck a chord with me when I read the story, because I know how hard it is to build a business. You put your blood and your sweat and your tears into every bit of it. When I put myself in his place, I immediately felt like if that were to happen to us, I couldn’t create or print anti-gay T-shirts, you know, for a group. I couldn’t do it,” Kathy explained.
Diane added, “We feel this really isn’t a gay or straight issue. This is a human issue. No one really should be forced to do something against what they believe in. It’s as simple as that, and we feel likewise. If we were approached by an organization such as the Westboro Baptist Church, I highly doubt we would be doing business with them.”“Everybody votes with their dollars, you know?” Kathy said. “And why you would want to go with somebody who doesn’t agree with you, [when] there’s others who do agree with you, that’s who I want to do business with.”
Nice. If only all gay people were so tolerant and open-minded.
So ~ to be clear ~ we use this as an example of the Left being hypocrites, but offer a way that increases people’s freedom.
“The larger the government gets, the smaller the person gets. The smaller the government gets, the larger the individual gets.”
I wanted to isolate sections of a larger post for both ease of referencing as well as updating and adding a point-or-two. This post deals with the 14th Amendment and peoples use of it to say gay men and women are considered a minority under its clause. I show that far from being “immutable,” there are many factors that play into being gay, and this “self-designation” is fluid. And often times people cease being gay. In contradistinction to someone ceasing being black.
Here is the text of Section I of the 14th Amendment:
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
As we will see, this section used in application to the gay community is misused.
Homosexuality is often times due to trauma early in the person’s life. So, for instance, a woman I knew had met quite a few lesbians throughout her life as an ex hippie/druggy, who now loves Jesus. In her mobile-home park living experience she has become friends, acquaintances with and met quite a few lesbians over the years. She told me that most had been abused by some older man (often a family member) when they were young.
ENVIRONMENT
Similarly, the men I have known well-enough to intimate to me their early lives also have corroborated such encounters (one was a family member, the other not). Which brings me to a quote by a lesbian author I love:
“Here come the elephant again: Almost without exception, the gay men I know (and that’s too many to count) have a story of some kind of sexual trauma or abuse in their childhood — molestation by a parent or an authority figure, or seduction as an adolescent at the hands of an adult. The gay community must face the truth and see sexual molestation of an adolescent for the abuse it is,* instead of the ‘coming-of-age’ experience many [gays] regard it as being. Until then, the Gay Elite will continue to promote a culture of alcohol and drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, and suicide by AIDS”
Tammy Bruce, The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left’s Assault on Our Culture and Values (Roseville: Prima, 2003), 99.
* By the age of 18 or 19 years, three quarters of American youth, regardless of their sexual orientation, have had sexual relations with another person. Gay males are more likely than heterosexual males to become sexually active at a younger age (12.7 vs. 15.7 years) and to have had multiple sexual partners. The ages at the time of the first sexual experience with another person are closer for lesbians and heterosexual females (15.4 vs. 16.2 years).
“It’s sad—though not surprising—that many celebrity lesbians like Ellen DeGeneres, Rosie O’Donnell, Melissa Etheridge, and others have publicly stated they were sexually abused as children.”
You see, much like this man who had a sex operation, lived as a woman for 8-years, and then was forced to deal with his early life after taking some courses to get a degree in counseling via U.C. Irvine, his gender problems came because of trauma at a young age (http://tinyurl.com/b5c9elj). To put a stamp of approval via society on a “choice” that is caused by anothers “choice” in making these relationships equal, is doing more harm to the individual that good (as Walt Heyer also points out in his book, mentioned in the link). Many have changed their sexual orientation from gay to hetero, as shown above. But if this is the case, then it is very UNLIKE ethnic origins (an ex-gay tells his story: http://tinyurl.com/anrvm64; a man raised by lesbians and who’s own early sexuality was in flux tells his story: http://youtu.be/MeNrPJ42Xoo).
…One study followed approximately 10,800 adolescents between the ages of 16 and 22 years old. Of the 16 year-old males who had exclusively SSA, 61% had opposite-sex attraction at age 17. For same-sex attracted females, 81% changed to opposite attraction in just one year.
The study also compared sexual attraction at ages 17 and 22, with similar results. For example, 75% of adolescent males with SSA at age 17 had opposite-sex attraction at age 22.
Dr. Neil Whitehead, a research scientist who worked for the New Zealand government for 24 years and the United Nations for another four years, analyzed this study. He notes that although a small percentage of heterosexual adolescents developed homosexuality, the vast majority transitioned in the opposite direction. Based on the data, 16 year-olds with SSA are “25 times more likely to change towards heterosexuality at the age of 17 than those with a heterosexual orientation are likely to change towards bi-sexuality or homosexuality.” That means that heterosexuality is 25 times more stable than homosexuality. It also seems to suggest that heterosexuality is more of a “default” orientation…
Dr. Michael Brown notes as well two well known gay “civil” rights leaders own stories in his book, Outlasting the Gay Revolution:
That’s why almost no one in the gay community bats an eyelash when they hear about Harvey Milk’s sexual history (yes, I’m talking about the slain political leader who has taken on iconic status in our culture). To be specific, according to acclaimed gay journalist Randy Shilts, at age eleven, Milk began attending performances of the New York Metropolitan Opera, where he met with “wandering hands” and soon was engaged in “brief trysts [with grown men] after the performances.” While still in junior high, he “dove headfirst into the newly discovered subculture,” and by fourteen, Milk was “leading an active homosexual life.” As he grew older, the pattern reversed itself to the point that, at age thirty-three, Milk hooked up with a sixteen-year-old named Jack McKinley, one of a number of younger men with whom he was intimate.
Has this tarnished his legacy? Not at all. Why? Because it is not that unusual.
Dr. Brown continues:
As gay journalist and radio host Michelangelo Signorile explained:
[W]e’ve been so focused in recent years on how we’re all the same [meaning as heterosexuals]—we want many of the same things in life, including a job, a home, a relationship—that we’ve obscured some real differences in how we’ve constructed our community and our relationships. Historically, gay men have engaged in inter-generational sexual encounters, brief romances and long-term relationships—among consenting adults—probably much more than straight people have.
And those “consenting adults” were often men in their teens. (The situation that Signorile was defending involved Hollywood screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, age thirty-nine, and British diving champion Tom Daley, age nineteen. Other gay leaders were critical of the relationship.) That’s why it was not surprising to hear that Terry Bean, one of the founders of the influential HRC—and a major player in Democratic politics and gay activism—was arrested on November 19, 2014, “on charges of sex abuse in a case involving a 15-year-old boy. [Bean was 66 at the time.]… The arrest comes after a five-month investigation that began with allegations Bean secretly made video recordings of men having sex in his bedroom.”
As argued by conservative journalist and law professor Matt Barber, “The cases of Bean and [Larry] follow a long-established pattern as old as the ancient Greek bathhouse. It’s not just homosexual priestly predators on the prowl in the Catholic Church. From pedophile “LGBT” hero Harvey Milk, to high-profile “gay activists” like Duke University’s Frank Lombard and USC’s Walter Lee Williams, the homosexual lust for young flesh seems insatiable”
In support of this statement, which some would find extreme and unfair, Barber cited Harry Hay, the iconic pioneer of the gay rights movement, who (in)famously said,
“It seems to me that in the gay community the people who should be running interference for NAMBLA [the North American Man/Boy Love Association] are the parents and friends of gays. Because if the parents and friends of gays are truly friends of gays, they would know from their gay kids that the relationship with an older man is precisely what 13-, 14-, and 15-year-old kids need more than anything else in the world.”
Michael L. Brown, Outlasting the Gay Revolution: Where Homosexual Activism Is Really Going and How to Turn the Tide (Washington, DC: WND Books, 2015), 151-152.
The harm of the recent movement to fully endorse gay-lifestyles harms children in a way never before in history. For example, in California if a young child starts to act out in a way that seems to the school counselor as signs of sexual abuse, the counselor now can be fired for asking questions of a young pre-teen boy about home life. In other words acting “gay” at such a young age more often than not means there is some sexual abuse happening to the child.
Another point made by myself in the past and reiterated by Dr. Brown is that often times the female daughters of lesbians end up being gay at a much higher rate that the general populace. One activist he mentions has three daughters, and they are all gay.
THE LOVING thing to do is to allow society to not make the private actions of individual illegal, but not to normalize these actions when there is another root cause, or a combination of root causes, other than genetics.
A liberal society might, then, find it prudent to ignore homosexuality. It might well deem it unwise to peer into private bedrooms. However, this is not the issue before us. Today the demand is that homosexuality be endorsed and promoted with the full power of the law. This would require us to abandon the standard of nature, the one standard that can teach us the difference between freedom and slavery, between right and wrong. (Source)
For many this is a settled question. The “experts” have spoken. Change is not possible and ex-gays don’t exist. This is a bold assertion, though, since finding just one person who changed would falsify it.
First, note that a two-thousand-year-old report claimed this change actually happened. In 1 COR. 6:9-11, Paul says some of the Christians in Corinth had been homosexual (“Such were some of you…”), suggesting they no longer were.
Some might dismiss this account because they don’t believe the Bible is the Word of God. This is irrelevant to my point, though. Paul’s epistle to Corinth, at the very least, is an ancient letter to a community of people in a city still existing in modern Greece. It testifies to the fact that some people left homosexuality behind.
Recent studies indicate the same thing. An article published in Psychological Reports in 2000 investigated 882 dissatisfied homosexuals. After pursuing some form of therapy, 34% of the participants reported shifting their orientation to an exclusively or almost exclusively heterosexual orientation. They experienced statistically significant reductions in “homosexual thoughts and fantasies” and improvements in their “psychological, interpersonal, and spiritual well-being.”26
One long-term study completed in 2007 by Drs. Jones and Yarhouse was recently published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy.27 It’s been hailed as one of the most methodologically rigorous studies ever designed to investigate the possibility of change. The researchers followed 98 individuals with unwanted same-sex attractions for six to seven years. They found 15% of the participants reported “substantial reductions in homosexual attraction and subsequent conversion to heterosexual attractions and functioning.” The most surprising result, though, was that subjects classified as “truly gay”—the ones with the highest levels of homosexual attraction, fantasy, and behavior—reported the greatest amount of change.
Clinicians and other scientists have reported successes for over a century. Jean-Martin Charcot, the “father of modern neurology,” described how “the homosexual became heterosexual” through his treatments back in 1882. Sigmund Freud reported change in sexual orientation using psychoanalysis in the 1920s. Researchers continued to report similar findings throughout the 20th century: Wilhelm Stekel in the 1930s, Frank Caprio and Albert Ellis in the 1950s, Russell Monroe and Edward Glover in the 1960s, Irving Bieber in the 1970s, Karolynn Siegel in the 1980s, and Houston Macintosh in the 1990s, to name just a few.
Given such convincing evidence, it’s not surprising a recent psychiatry textbook, Essential Psychopathology & Its Treatment, concluded that homosexual orientation can change and that therapy isn’t necessarily harmful:
While many mental health care providers and professional associations have expressed considerable skepticism that sexual orientation could be changed with psychotherapy and also assumed that therapeutic attempts at reorientation would produce harm, recent empirical evidence demonstrates that homosexual orientation can indeed be therapeutically changed in motivated clients, and that reorientation therapies do not produce emotional harm when attempted (e.g., Byrd & Nicolosi, 2002; Byrd et al., 2008; Shaeffer et al., 1999; Spitzer, 2003).28
Given this clinical data, thousands must have personally experienced this change. Each year, more people publicly declare they are no longer homosexual.
Dr. Nicholas Cummings, past President of the American Psychological Association (APA), was Chief of Mental Health at Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco for 20 years. He personally worked with over 2,000 patients with same-sex attraction. His staff (six of whom were gay) saw an additional 16,000 homosexuals. Cummings estimates that hundreds of people under his care changed their sexual orientation. He also notes that approximately 7% of those 16,000 patients experienced some measurable change, many going on to marry and live heterosexual lives. 29
Cummings’s data can’t be dismissed. He’s been a lifelong champion of gay and lesbian rights and was the first leader, while President of the APA, to appoint the Task Force on Lesbian and Gay Issues.
Given this evidence, how can some still claim that sexual orientation change isn’t possible? They’d have to believe multiple and independent lines of evidence were all mistaken or fraudulent. They’d have to believe that over the last 100 years, hundreds of scientists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and physicians who’ve treated homosexuals were mistaken or lied about their findings. Therapists who treat homosexuality today would also have to be fabricating their success stories. Religious and secular organizations providing counseling to homosexuals would have to be misrepresenting their results. Thousands of heterosexuals around the world who once lived as homosexuals must be faking. And every friend I know and person I’ve met over the years who has claimed to have changed has been lying to me and everyone around them. As Tiffany Barnhouse, a professor of psychiatry, has said, “The frequent claim by ‘gay’ activists that it is impossible for homosexuals to change their orientation…accuses scores of conscientious, responsible psychiatrists and psychologists of falsifying their data.”30
Does this mean change is easy? No. Is everyone successful? Not at all. Does success always entail total transformation? Rarely. Should we try to change people who don’t want to change? Of course not. But is it possible for some homosexuals to experience substantial and enduring change? Absolutely….
A page later he responds to critique of the idea that if a person even has feelings for the same sex… therapy has failed:
… Clinical psychologist Mark Yarhouse criticizes researchers who insist ex-gay men who still struggle with occasional temptations are not, in fact, changed. “Continued struggles with same-sex arousal may be expected residual effects from years of homosexual fantasy and behavior. Psychologists certainly refrain from decrying chemical-dependency programs because someone experiences cravings following treatment.”31
Allegedly, the Alcoholics Anonymous success rate is only 25%. Yet few would deny AA works for some people. My point: low success rates or relapses are not proof that therapy never works.
This next bit of info comes by way NARTH, in an audio posted the “genetic” aspect of this debate has been prevalent… so this is a rejoinder to it:
Identical Twin Studies Demonstrate Homosexuality is Not Genetic
Eight major studies of identical twins in Australia, the U.S., and Scandinavia during the last two decades all arrive at the same conclusion: gays were not born that way. “At best genetics is a minor factor,” says Dr. Neil Whitehead, PhD. Whitehead worked for the New Zealand government as a scientific researcher for 24 years, then spent four years working for the United Nations and International Atomic Energy Agency. Most recently, he serves as a consultant to Japanese universities about the effects of radiation exposure. His PhD is in biochemistry and statistics.
Identical twins have the same genes or DNA. They are nurtured in equal prenatal conditions. If homosexuality is caused by genetics or prenatal conditions and one twin is gay, the co-twin should also be gay. “Because they have identical DNA, it ought to be 100%,” Dr. Whitehead notes. But the studies reveal something else. “If an identical twin has same-sex attraction the chances the co-twin has it are only about 11% for men and 14% for women.”
Because identical twins are always genetically identical, homosexuality cannot be genetically dictated. “No-one is born gay,” he notes. “The predominant things that create homosexuality in one identical twin and not in the other have to be post-birth factors.”
Dr. Whitehead believes same-sex attraction (SSA) is caused by “non-shared factors,” things happening to one twin but not the other, or a personal response to an event by one of the twins and not the other. For example, one twin might have exposure to pornography or sexual abuse, but not the other. One twin may interpret and respond to their family or classroom environment differently than the other. “These individual and idiosyncratic responses to random events and to common environmental factors predominate,” he says.
The first very large, reliable study of identical twins was conducted in Australia in 1991, followed by a large U.S. study about 1997. Then Australia and the U.S. conducted more twin studies in 2000, followed by several studies in Scandinavia, according to Dr. Whitehead. “Twin registers are the foundation of modern twin studies. They are now very large, and exist in many countries. A gigantic European twin register with a projected 600,000 members is being organized, but one of the largest in use is in Australia, with more than 25,000 twins on the books.”
A significant twin study among adolescents shows an even weaker genetic correlation. In 2002 Bearman and Brueckner studied tens of thousands of adolescent students in the U.S. The same-sex attraction concordance between identical twins was only 7.7% for males and 5.3% for females—lower than the 11% and 14% in the Australian study by Bailey et al conducted in 2000.
In the identical twin studies, Dr. Whitehead has been struck by how fluid and changeable sexual identity can be. “Neutral academic surveys show there is substantial change. About half of the homosexual/bisexual population (in a non-therapeutic environment) moves towards heterosexuality over a lifetime. About 3% of the present heterosexual population once firmly believed themselves to be homosexual or bisexual. Sexual orientation is not set in concrete.”
And just to be absolutely clear, discrimination for the gay segment of society is nothing like other segments have experienced. In fact, the false impression the public has is amazing.
PERSECUTION?
Dr. Brown quotes Notre Dame professor Gerald Bradley as saying:
Gay Americans are afforded all their rights. They can vote, can have almost any job they are qualified for, live where ever they want to, travel unburdened, just like everyone else. Demographics show they are among the wealthiest and best educated people in the United States. No one wants to take anything away from them. But the question becomes, can a tiny sliver of our population change the definition of marriage not only for the 243,000,000 adult Americans alive today, but for all those who will come after us?
Michael L. Brown, Outlasting the Gay Revolution: Where Homosexual Activism Is Really Going and How to Turn the Tide (Washington, DC: WND Books, 2015), 144.
Many years ago the Wall Street Journal noted the same:
Average Household Income:
Homosexuals – $55,430
African Americans – $12,166
Percentage of College Graduates:
Homosexuals – 60%
African Americans – 5%
Holding Professional Positions:
Homosexuals – 49%
African Americans – 1%
Taken Overseas Vacations:
Homosexuals – 66%
African Americans – 1%
Ever Denied the Right to Vote:
Homosexuals – No
African Americans – Yes
Ever Faced Legal Segregation:
Homosexuals – No
African Americans – Yes
Ever Denied Access to Public Restrooms:
Homosexuals – No
African Americans – Yes
Ever Denied Access to Businesses and Restaurants:
Homosexuals – No
African Americans – Yes
Wall Street Journal, 7/18/91, B1
Not only is being gay not immutable, being “gay” isn’t harmful to one’s lifestyle… monetarily speaking. It seems to enhance it in fact.
“If you believe in equal rights, then what do ‘women’s rights,’ ‘gay rights,’ etc., mean? Either they are redundant or they are violations of the principle of equal rights for all.” — Thomas Sowell
FETUS (Latin)That which is born, an offspring (usu of beast occ. of human being, ect) b (sg. collect.) the young (of an animal), the children (of a parent). c the young born at one time, brood, litter. d the young while still in the womb – Oxford Latin Dictionary
DAILY CALLER has a story that will pick up steam across the Net:
The Texas Supreme Court struck down a lower court’s ruling that same-sex couples are entitled to marriage benefits Friday.
The Court ruled in Pidgeon v. Houston that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, while legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide, did not adequately address the issue of government subsidized marriage benefits and whether states are obligated to extend such benefits to same-sex couples.
The city of Houston extended marriage benefits to same-sex couples days after SCOTUS’ ruling, but two Houston citizens, Jack Pidgeon and Larry Hicks, sued on the grounds that the legalization of same-sex marriage does not “entail any particular package of tax benefits, employee fringe benefits or testimonial privileges,” according to the Texas Tribune. The Texas Supreme court reversed a lower court’s ruling that commanded marriage benefits be offered to same sex couples by employers, but also sent the case back for reconsideration in a lower court.
“We agree with the Mayor [of Houston] that any effort to resolve whether and the extent to which the Constitution requires states or cities to provide tax-funded benefits to same-sex couples without considering Obergefell would simply be erroneous,” Boyd wrote in the court’s opinion.“On the other hand, we agree… that the Supreme Court did not address and resolve that specific issue in Obergefell.”
[….]
“Today’s unanimous ruling from the state supreme court is a huge win for Houston taxpayers and for those who support the state’s marriage laws,” Saenz said.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said of the ruling that he was “extremely pleased that the Texas Supreme Court recognized that Texas law is still important when it comes to marriage.”
Since this is a large post, I would suggest picking a topic or section and going through it… and then coming back to cover another section. We are often busy and so must manage time wisely. The reason for this post was a short paragraph written by an awesome gal who quickly explained her positions of why she (and other women) marched in the Women’s March that recently took place the day after the election. I took her small paragraph and bullet pointed a few issues I wish to address, and these can be seen in numbers one through four – below right. They are easily jumped to by clicking on the number. I will respond with media, quotes, and commentary in a way that steps beyond the mantras of the professional Left.
I would suggest combining this post with an earlier post of mine to understand just how much culture and the media can misrepresent things during an election season.
Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts” statement was loudly rejected. However, if such importance is placed on false facts… then this should help the student of truth to wade through the “alternative facts” apparently infuriating women of the Left.
EQUALITY
The mottos of our country are: E Pluribus Unum, In God We Trust, and Liberty. The motto of our Revolution was basically: “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” While the Constitution requires those who stand before the law to be treated equally (equal under the law)… “equality” is not part of liberty. You can have either liberty or either equality – but not both. You will see this fleshed out in number three, bellow., but a good example of this in history is the French Revolution. It had a motto: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” This was an experiment done around the same time as the American Revolution and it collapsed on itself. Here is a good recap of these foundation philosophies:
French Revolution
Let’s take the idea of equality. For the Americans, it was largely a matter of equality before the law. When Jefferson wrote in the Declaration, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” he meant that human beings were equal in their possession of legal rights. He did not mean that all people were equal in talent, merit, wealth, or social status. Rather, they were equal, as human beings, in their right to pursue their interests and their dreams without interference by the government or other people.
Writing in the Federalist Papers No. 10, James Madison made it clear that he had no use for the French idea of absolute equality. He wrote, “Theoretic politicians have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would at the same time be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.” For Madison, there was no single or general will in mankind. Rather, there was only a society of individuals with diverse interests and opinions whose natural freedoms needed to be preserved by government.
The French idea of equality, or égalité, is one of the three national mottos of the French Republic, but it is derived from a certain view of freedom. Since freedom is collective—an expression of the general will—and it is not individually determined, then naturally its truest expression is equality of the masses. You can be truly free only if you are in sync with the general will.
But that implies that everyone’s will must be equal; otherwise, what’s the use of it being general? If everyone was allowed to have different interests, statuses, opinions, they would not be united in a single will, would they? As Saint-Just put it during the height of the Reign of Terror, “Private happiness and interest are a violence against the social order. You must forget yourselves…. [T]he only salvation is through the public good.”
The “public good” is just another word for collective freedom, which leads us to the third motto of the Revolution, fraternité, or the appeal to national unity. The first celebration of the storming of the Bastille, called the Féte de la Fédération and held on the Champ-de-Mars in 1790, was not a Victor Hugo–like celebration of Les Misérables, but a mass rally celebrating the fraternité of the Revolution and the unity of the French nation. It was the French ideas of liberty and equality all wrapped up in one. Free citizens would come together as equal partners in the unified French nation.
But there was, in the French Revolution, a paradox in this passion for unity. All nations celebrate national unity, even our own, but it can be taken to extremes. The fraternal desire for consensus and accord ended up in violence and discord.
Hearing the guilty verdict at his trial during the Terror, a member of the Girondin party joked that the only way for him and his compatriots to save their skins was to proclaim “the unity of their lives and the indivisibility of their heads.” Exactly! Pushing for agreement to the extreme of violence is the most divisive—and exclusionary—thing you can possibly do.
In the history of ideas and political movements, the legacy of fraternité is twofold: One, it gave birth to the populist nationalisms that would roil Europe and the world for the next two centuries, and two, taken to extremes, it led to the rise of totalitarian democracy in the 20th century.
All these differences in interpreting freedom, equality, and unity led the Americans and the French to very different notions of government.
The modern Left and the French of centuries past have a similar view of equality. It is an illiberal view of nature. To create equality IN THIS SENSE (guaranteed equal outcomes) is an impossible task. I will give you a couple examples of what I mean. The first deals with “special rights” in the attempt to create the [illusion] of choice. In an oft used example of mine I note that by defining when life begins at a later stage of a humans life-span, we see gender abortions (typically a girl is aborted due to cultural preferences for males), but here is a hypothetical of a newly forming protected class:
“If homosexuality is really genetic, we may soon be able to tell if a fetus is predisposed to homosexuality, in which case many parents might choose to abort it. Will gay rights activists continue to support abortion rights if this occurs?”
Dale A. Berryhill, The Liberal Contradiction: How Contemporary Liberalism Violates Its Own Principles and Endangers Its Own Goals (Lafayette, LA: Vital Issues Press, 1994), 172.
Mmmm, do you see an issue here? Under the “health of the mother” as the courts interpret Doe v. Bolton, ensuring a gender outcome or wanting a straight child would be allowed since “stress” or maladies like the baby having a cleft palate, or the mother is struggling financially, or one wished to pursue a career — are grounds for aborting children. Legally. Heck, if financial worries is reason enough… what’s left? Another example of the impossibility of reaching the equality spoken of here is those who felt marginalized BECAUSE of the march. Here are a couple examples:
… In fact, though conventional wisdom would suggest that progressives everywhere were pleased with the demonstration, it turns out some transgender people thought the prevalence of “pussy hats,” vagina costumes and paintings of female genitalia were “oppressive” toward their community.
“[P]ussy hats set the tone for a march that would focus acutely on genitalia at the expense of the transgender community,” Mic . com staff writer Marie Solis reported. “Signs like ‘Pussy power,’ ‘Viva la Vulva’ and ‘Pussy grabs back’ all sent a clear and oppressive message to trans women, especially: having a vagina is essential to womanhood.”…
Transgender activists are upset that the women‘s march over the weekend was not inclusive to biological men who identify as women, as the protest presented an oppressive message that having a vagina is essential to womanhood.
Saturday’s event to oppose the inauguration of Donald Trump was largely a “white cis women march,“ with too many pictures of female reproductive organs and pink hats, according to trans women and nonbinary individuals
The women‘s march had an over-reliance on slogans and posters depicting gender norms, like using pink to represent women and girls, said some transgender activists who boycotted the march.
Sorry, trannies, but until you can have abortions, the feminist movement isn’t that interested in you.
So just by having an inclusive march many were excluded. This is the trouble with the Left’s egalitarianism. It cannot work and merely creates more division and eventual cannibalism, as Christian Hoff Sommers notes:
FIRST and FOREMOST… when categories are compared properly, we see women tend to make more than men…
Among college-educated, never-married individuals with no children who worked fill-time and were from 40 to 64 years old— that is, beyond the child-bearing years— men averaged $40,000 a year in income, while women averaged $47,000.30 But, despite the fact that women in this category earned more than men in the same category, gross income differences in favor of men continue to reflect differences in work patterns between the sexes, so that women and men are not in the same categories to the same extent.
Even women who have graduated from top-level universities like Harvard and Yale have not worked full-time, or worked at all, to the same extent that male graduates of these same institutions have. Among Yale alumni in their forties, “only 56 percent of the women still worked, compared with 90 percent of the men,” according to the New York Times. It was much the same story at Harvard:
A 2001 survey of Harvard Business School graduates found that 31 percent of the women from the classes of 1981, 1985 and 1991 who answered the survey worked only part time or on contract, and another 31 percent did not work at all, levels strikingly similar to the percentages of the Yale students interviewed who predicted they would stay at home or work part time in their 30’s and 40’s.
Thomas Sowell, Economic Facts and Fallacies (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2008), 70.
What typically happen with women around age thirty? The word rhymes with manly.
…The Department of Labor’s Time Use survey shows that full-time working women spend an average of 8.01 hours per day on the job, compared to 8.75 hours for full-time working men. One would expect that someone who works 9% more would also earn more. This one fact alone accounts for more than a third of the wage gap.
Choice of occupation also plays an important role in earnings. While feminists suggest that women are coerced into lower-paying job sectors, most women know that something else is often at work. Women gravitate toward jobs with fewer risks, more comfortable conditions, regular hours, more personal fulfillment and greater flexibility. Simply put, many women—not all, but enough to have a big impact on the statistics—are willing to trade higher pay for other desirable job characteristics.
Men, by contrast, often take on jobs that involve physical labor, outdoor work, overnight shifts and dangerous conditions (which is also why men suffer the overwhelming majority of injuries and deaths at the workplace). They put up with these unpleasant factors so that they can earn more.
Recent studies have shown that the wage gap shrinks—or even reverses—when relevant factors are taken into account and comparisons are made between men and women in similar circumstances. In a 2010 study of single, childless urban workers between the ages of 22 and 30, the research firm Reach Advisors found that women earned an average of 8% more than their male counterparts. Given that women are outpacing men in educational attainment, and that our economy is increasingly geared toward knowledge-based jobs, it makes sense that women’s earnings are going up compared to men’s….
Another reason there is a broad variance in pay are for a few reasons. Women tend to choose different career paths than men (choice), and also take time out to care for children (nature).
…various countries’ economies, there are still particular industries today where considerable physical strength remains a requirement. Women are obviously not as likely to work in such fields as men are— and some of these are fields with jobs that pay more than the national average. While women have been 74 percent of what the U.S. Census Bureau classifies as “clerical and kindred workers,” they have been less than 5 percent of “transport equipment operatives.” In other words, women are far more likely to be sitting behind a desk than to be sitting behind the steering wheel of an eighteen-wheel truck. Women are also less than 4 percent of the workers in “construction, extraction, and maintenance.” They are less than 3 percent of construction workers or loggers, less than 2 percent of roofers or masons and less than one percent of the mechanics and technicians who service heavy vehicles arid mobile equipment.
Such occupational distributions have obvious economic implications, since miners earn nearly double the income of office clerks when both work full-time and year-round 20 There is still a premium paid for workers doing heavy physical work, as well as for hazardous work, which often overlaps work requiring physical strength. While men are 54 percent of the labor force, they are 92 percent of the job-related deaths.
Thomas Sowell, Economic Facts and Fallacies (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2008), 64-65.
The first thing to say is the Higher Court settled this — I says settled with “air quotes.” However, many fine gay men and women I know would reject this decision either because they think marriage between heterosexuals has benefits for society same-sex marriages cannot offer. And/or they support the idea in the Constitution that what isn’t clearly enumerated in the Constitution for the Federal Government to concern itself with, then these decisions should be left to the states.
In our sometimes misguided efforts to expand our freedom, selfish adults have systematically dismantled that which is most precious to children as they grow and develop. That’s why I am now speaking out against same-sex marriage.
By the way, I am gay.
A few days ago I testified against pending same-sex marriage legislation in Minnesota’s Senate Judiciary and House Civil Law Committees.
The atmosphere at these events (I’ve also testified elsewhere) seems tinged with unreality—almost a carnival-like surrealism. Natural law, tradition, religion, intellectual curiosity, and free inquiry no longer play a role in deliberations. Same-sex marriage legislation is defended solely on grounds of moral relativism and emotions.
Pure sophistry is pitted against reason. Reason is losing.
[….]
Same-sex marriage will do the same, depriving children of their right to either a mom or a dad. This is not a small deal. Children are being reduced to chattel-like sources of fulfillment. On one side, their family tree consists not of ancestors, but of a small army of anonymous surrogates, donors, and attorneys who pinch-hit for the absent gender in genderless marriages. Gays and lesbians demand that they have a “right” to have children to complete their sense of personal fulfillment, and in so doing, are trumping the right that children have to both a mother and a father—a right that same-sex marriage tramples over.
Same-sex marriage will undefine marriage and unravel it, and in so doing, it will undefine children. It will ultimately lead to undefining humanity. This is neither “progressive” nor “conservative” legislation. It is “regressive” legislation.
Another examples comes from respected Canadian sociologist/scholar/homosexual, Paul Nathanson, writes that there are at least five functions that marriage serves–things that every culture must do in order to survive and thrive. They are:
Foster the bonding between men and women
Foster the birth and rearing of children
Foster the bonding between men and children
Foster some form of healthy masculine identity
Foster the transformation of adolescents into sexually responsible adults
Note that Nathanson considers these points critical to the continued survival of any culture. He continues “Because heterosexuality is directly related to both reproduction and survival,… every human societ[y] has had to promote it actively…. Heterosexuality is always fostered by a cultural norm” that limits marriage to unions of men and women. He adds that people “are wrong in assuming that any society can do without it.” Going further he stated that “same sex marriage is a bad idea”… [he] only opposed “gay marriage, not gay relationships.”
…moving on…
Not Immutable
Some persons think being gay is immutable, and so apply the 14th Amendment to the issue. However, this is not the case. Homosexuality is often times due to trauma early in the person’s life. Or sexual activity at a young age:
So, for instance, my mom knew quite a few lesbians throughout her life as a hippie/druggy, who now loves Jesus. In her mobile-home park living experience she has become friends, acquaintances with and met quite a few lesbians over the years. She told me that most had been abused by some older man (often a family member) when they were young. Also, the men I have known well-enough to intimate to me their early lives also have corroborated such encounters (one was a family member, the other not). Which brings me to a quote by a lesbian author I love:
“Here come the elephant again: Almost without exception, the gay men I know (and that’s too many to count) have a story of some kind of sexual trauma or abuse in their childhood — molestation by a parent or an authority figure, or seduction as an adolescent at the hands of an adult. The gay community must face the truth and see sexual molestation of an adolescent for the abuse it is,* instead of the ‘coming-of-age’ experience many [gays] regard it as being. Until then, the Gay Elite will continue to promote a culture of alcohol and drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, and suicide by AIDS”
Tammy Bruce, The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left’s Assault on Our Culture and Values (Roseville, CA: Prima Publishers, 2003), 99.
*By the age of 18 or 19 years, three quarters of American youth, regardless of their sexual orientation, have had sexual relations with another person. Gay males are more likely than heterosexual males to become sexually active at a younger age (12.7 vs. 15.7 years) and to have had multiple sexual partners. The ages at the time of the first sexual experience with another person are closer for lesbians and heterosexual females (15.4 vs. 16.2 years).
You see, much like Walt Heyer, a man who had a sex operation, lived as a woman for 8-years, and then one day started to confront the “demons” from his childhood. He started to deal with these earlier issues in his life after taking some courses to get a degree in counseling at U.C. Irvine — he realized his gender dysphoria was because of trauma at a young age (HERE). To put a stamp of approval via society on a “choice” that is caused by anothers “choice” in making these relationships equal, is doing more harm to the individual than good (as Walt Heyer also points out in his book, mentioned in the link). Many have changed their sexual orientation from gay to hetero… but if this is the case, then one’s fluid sexuality is very UNLIKE ethnic origins (an ex-gay tells his story; a man raised by lesbians and who’s own early sexuality was in flux tells his story).
Here we find the indomitable Camille Paglia, a lesbian scholar, noting some of the above:
More than twenty years ago, the influential lesbian author Camille Paglia had this to say about the “born gay” myth: “Homosexuality is not normal. On the contrary it is a challenge to the norm…. Nature exists whether academics like it or not. And in nature, procreation is the single relentless rule. That is the norm…. Our sexual bodies were designed for reproduction…. No one is born gay. The idea is ridiculous… homosexuality is an adaptation, not an inborn trait.”
But she was just getting started as she asked:
“Is the gay identity so fragile that it cannot bear the thought that some people may not wish to be gay? Sexuality is highly fluid, and reversals are theoretically possible. However, habit is refractory, once sensory pathways have been blazed and deepened by repetition—a phenomenon obvious with obesity, smoking, alcoholism or drug addiction—helping gays to learn how to function heterosexually, if they wish is a perfectly worthy aim. We should be honest enough to consider whether or not homosexuality may not indeed, be a pausing at the prepubescent stage where children band together by gender…. Current gay cant insists that homosexuality is not a choice; that no one would choose to be gay in a homophobic society. But there is an element of choice in all behavior, sexual or otherwise. It takes an effort to deal with the opposite sex; it is safer with your own kind. The issue is one of challenge versus comfort.”
Michael L. Brown, Outlasting the Gay Revolution: Where Homosexual Activism Is Really Going and How to Turn the Tide (Washington, DC: WND Books, 2015), 162.
IN CASE you are not tracking… one cannot change his or her ethnicity/color.
Equality – LGBT [Must] Be Accepted By Everyone
Here is the actual quote from the paragraph mentioned at the top of the post:
“LGBT WOULD have just the same rights to be married, get a job, be accepted by EVERYONE”
In order to impose some essence of equality, the government has to homogenize ALL interactions. In doing so, and getting to the “accepted by everyone” level, you would have to have something more that what Orwell wrote of in 1984. This is in actuality impossible, and is a sign of the Utopian goals of the Left.
For thousands of years human beings have dreamt of perfect worlds, worlds free of conflict, hunger and unhappiness. But can these worlds ever exist in reality? In 1516 Sir Thomas More wrote the first ‘Utopia’. He coined the word ‘utopia’ from the Greek ou-topos meaning ‘no place’ or ‘nowhere’. But this was a pun – the almost identical Greek word eu-topos means a good place. So at the very heart of the word is a vital question: can a perfect world ever be realised?
All societies and movements that have attempted this have failed, miserably. This is no different. It curbs the freedom of contract between two individuals for a product or a service. Same-sex marriage as pushed by liberals is in direct conflict to enumerated protections in the Constitution. In Massachusetts, and now it is happening in Illinois. The oldest (in the nation), most successful foster and adoption care organization has closed its doors because they would be forced to adopt to same-sex couples. Lets peer into who this would affect:
“Everyone’s still reeling from the decision,” Marylou Sudders, executive director of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (MSPCC), said yesterday. “Ultimately, the only losers are the kids,” said Maureen Flatley, a Boston adoption consultant and lobbyist. (more on RPT & WT)
And business are bankrupted by government to impose these unreachable norms.
Again, this is not a straight versus gay category. This is a Left/Right issue in our body politic. For example, here is a Christian, conservative, apologist — Frank Turek — making a point:
“….Imagine a homosexual videographer being forced to video a speech that a conservative makes against homosexual behavior and same sex marriage. Should that homosexual videographer be forced to do so? Of course not! Then why Elane Photography?….”
Now, here is a “conservatarian” blogger, Gay Patriot’s, input:
“…it’s a bad law, a law that violates natural human rights to freedom of association and to freely-chosen work. It is not good for gays; picture a gay photographer being required by law to serve the wedding of some social conservative whom he or she despises.”
AGAIN, there are many gay men and women that GET IT:
GAY PATRIOT shot me over to The Blaze’s article on this… good stuff, and I LOVE these two ladies.
[Kathy Trautvetter and Diane DiGeloromo, a lesbian couple who own and operate BMP T-shirts, a New Jersey-based printing company, sat down with Glenn Beck Thursday night to explain why they are standing up for an embattled Christian printer who refused to make shirts for a gay pride festival.]
[….]
The lesbian couple are standing up for Christian t-shirt maker Blaine Adamson, who refused to print shirts for a gay pride festival because it compromised his values. Adamson has come under attack for his stance, but this couple supports him. The story is a microcosm for what should be happening in America as we navigate the way the world is changing.
“As a business owner, it struck a chord with me when I read the story, because I know how hard it is to build a business. You put your blood and your sweat and your tears into every bit of it. When I put myself in his place, I immediately felt like if that were to happen to us, I couldn’t create or print anti-gay T-shirts, you know, for a group. I couldn’t do it,” Kathy explained.
Diane added, “We feel this really isn’t a gay or straight issue. This is a human issue. No one really should be forced to do something against what they believe in. It’s as simple as that, and we feel likewise. If we were approached by an organization such as the Westboro Baptist Church, I highly doubt we would be doing business with them.”“Everybody votes with their dollars, you know?” Kathy said. “And why you would want to go with somebody who doesn’t agree with you, [when] there’s others who do agree with you, that’s who I want to do business with.”
Nice. If only all gay people were so tolerant and open-minded.
Love is Love
A story via GAY PATRIOT and his very humorous way to bring to light the deeper issue at hand, we find another example of the deteriorating acidic colloquialisms of the Left falling apart at the expense of civil society:
A mother and son whose forbidden love affair could land them each a lengthy jail sentence have declared they are ‘madly in love’ and nothing will tear them apart.
Monica Mares, 36, and her son Caleb Peterson, 19, face up to 18 months in prison if found guilty of incest at a trial later this year in New Mexico.
But the mother and son couple have vowed to fight for their right to have a sexual relationship and are appealing to the public to donate to their legal fund.
Can you believe that The Patriarchy actually wants to put them in jail for being in love? Probably because of Thoecracy and stuff. “Government everywhere but in our bedrooms, yo!”
However, here is GAY PATRIOT noting what is really going on:
“Don’t be ridiculous,” they said. “No way does same sex marriage lead to legalized polygamy. The slippery slope argument is a complete fallacy, because enactment of one liberal social policy has never, ever led to the subsequent enactment of the logical extension of that liberal social policy. Ever!”
Well, they may have been wrong about the coefficient of friction on that particular incline. Commenter Richard Bell notes the following: Judge Cites Same-Sex Marriage in Declaring Polygamy Ban Unconstitutional.
[….]
Since marriage is no longer about creating a stable environment for children, and has become (and this mainly the fault of heterosexual liberals) about personal fulfillment, validation, and access to social benefits, there literally is no constraint on how much more broadly it can be redefined.
Goals
There have been quite a few admissions like this, but here is one example by a wel known LGBT activist cataloged by THE BLAZE:
A 2012 speech by Masha Gessen, an author and outspoken activist for the LGBT community, is just now going viral and it includes a theory that many supporters of traditional marriage have speculated about for years: The push for gay marriage has less to do with the right to marry – it is about diminishing and eventually destroying the institution of marriage and redefining the “traditional family.”
The subject of gay marriage stirs powerful reactions on both sides of the argument. There are those who argue that legalizing it would diminish traditional marriage. And those advocating for gay marriage have long stated that the issue will not harm traditional marriage. Ms. Gessen’s comments on the subject seem to contradict the pro-gay-marriage party lines.
Gessen shared her views on the subject and very specifically stated;
“Gay marriage is a lie.”
“Fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we’re going to do with marriage when we get there.”
“It’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist.” (This statement is met with very loud applause.)
As mentioned above, Gessen also talked about redefining the traditional family. This may have something to do with the fact that she has “three children with five parents”:
“I don’t see why they (her children) shouldn’t have five parents legally. I don’t see why we should choose two of those parents and make them a sanctioned couple.”…
Here again we run into the issue of EQUALITY as the Left views it. Not an equality in the sight of the law but an equality in outcomes. This is actually REALLY easy to show as wrong. But the 100% thingy made me chuckle. It reminded me of this call into the Larry Elder show:
Too Funny! But this is the thinking of these egalitarian tyrants. Take note that I will deal with the SHOOTING OF BLACK MEN first, then deal with Traffic stops. Remember, studies show police officers are MORE likely to shoot a white criminal than a black (cue shocked faces): Shootings
A study by a Harvard professor released this month found no evidence of racial bias in police shootings even though officers were more likely to interact physically with non-whites than whites.
The paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, which examined thousands of incidents at 10 large police departments in California, Florida and Texas, concluded that police were no more likely to shoot non-whites than whites after factoring in extenuating circumstances.
“On the most extreme use of force — officer-involved shootings — we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account,” said Harvard economics professor Roland G. Fryer Jr. in the abstract of the July 2016 paper.
Mr. Fryer, who is black, told The New York Times that the finding of no racial discrimination in police shootings was “the most surprising result of my career.”
At the same time, the study found blacks and Hispanics were more than 50 percent more likely to experience physical interactions with police, including touching, pushing, handcuffing, drawing a weapon, and using a baton or pepper spray.
The 63-page study, “An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force,” appears to support research conducted at Washington State University showing that officers in simulation tests were actually less likely to shoot at blacks than whites.
The paper also challenges the contention by the new wave of civil-rights groups such as Black Lives Matter that racist police are singling out blacks for shootings….
Listen, these next two media pieces are a bit long, but you get to hear real-world statistics. The first pice of media is from Larry Elder via my YouTube channel. The video following Elder is a Bill Whittle production… good stuff for the serious student of truth:
Where to start with actor Jesse Williams’ widely praised rant on police brutality and white racism delivered at this year’s Black Entertainment Television awards show?
To his enthusiastic audience, Williams reeled off lie after lie, all in the name of black “resistance” over the “oppressor” – meaning anyone he believes benefits from “this invention called whiteness.” Time magazine called his discourse “powerful.”
Where are fact-checkers when the fact-devoid desperately need fact-checking? After all, Williams practically begged to be fact-checked when he said, “What we’ve been doing is looking at the data, and we know that police somehow manage to de-escalate, disarm and not kill white people every day.”
The “police … manage to … not kill white people every day”?
Let’s start with 2014, the last year for which there are official records. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the police killed 261 whites and 131 blacks. The CDC also found that from 1999 to 2013, the police killed almost twice the number of whites compared to blacks, 3,160 and 1,724, respectively.
Activists promptly note that whites account for nearly 65 percent of the population and that, therefore, one would expect whites to comprise most of those killed by cops. And we are told that blacks, while 13 percent of the population, represent a much greater percentage of those killed by cops. Institutional, systemic, structural racism!
Here’s what those promoting the “police disproportionately kill black people” narrative consistently omit. Whites, despite being almost 65 percent of the population, disproportionately commit less of the nation’s violent crime – 10 percent. Blacks, at 13 percent of the population, disproportionately commit more violent crime. As to murders, black commit nearly half. Yet whites are 50 percent of cop killings.
Criminology professor Peter Moskos looked at the numbers of those killed by officers from May 2013 to April 2015 and found that 49 percent were white, while 30 percent were black. “Adjusted for the homicide rate,” says Moskos, “whites are 1.7 times more likely than blacks to die at the hands of police.” So if anything, whites have more to complain about than Mr. Williams….
Just a very quick explanation of the above. Using newer stats, if you had 100 black men lined up on a street on one side, and on the other side you had one-hundred white men lined up on the street, and a white man walked down the middle of the street… he would be 27-times more likely to be assaulted and then killed by the black men. Again, keep in mind that blacks make up almost 12.6% of the population and whites make up 77.35% of the population.
Traffic Stops
Here Larry Elder (a statistician in his own right) notes reports from the DOJ and other sources to bring the reader into alignment with something beyond a false narrative they heard from a friend:
…The National Institute of Justice is the research and evaluation agency of the DOJ. In 2013, the NIJ published its study called “Race, Trust and Police Legitimacy.” Unlike when responding to dispatch calls, police officers exercise more discretion when it comes to traffic stops. Thus, the supposedly “racial profiling” cops can have a field day when it comes to traffic stops, right?
But according to the NIJ, 3 out of 4 black drivers admit being stopped by police for a “legitimate reason.” Blacks, compared to whites, were on average more likely to commit speeding or other traffic offenses. “Seatbelt usage,” said the NIJ, “is chronically lower among black drivers. If a law enforcement agency aggressively enforces seatbelt violations, police will stop more black drivers.” The NIJ conclusion? Numerical disparities result from “differences in offending” in addition to “differences in exposure to the police” and “differences in driving patterns.”
President Obama, backed by research from the left and from the right, said, “Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of school and 20 times more likely to end up in prison.”
Richmond, Virginia, is a city of 214,000, with a black population of 50 percent. Eighty-six percent of black Richmond families are headed by a single parent. Of Ferguson’s 67 percent black population, how many kids grew up in fatherless homes?
Whatever the answer, isn’t this a far more relevant statistic?
Roe v. Wade — which ruled that the U.S. Constitution effectively mandates a nationwide policy of abortion on demand — is one of the most widely criticized Supreme Court decisions in America history.
As Villanova law professor Joseph W. Dellapenna writes,
“The opinion [in Roe] is replete with irrelevancies, non-sequiturs, and unsubstantiated assertions. The Court decides matters it disavows any intention of deciding—thereby avoiding any need to defend its conclusion. In the process the opinion simply fails to convince.”
Even many scholars sympathetic to the results of Roe have issued harsh criticisms of its legal reasoning. In the Yale Law Journal, eminent legal scholar John Hart Ely, a supporter of legal abortion, complained that Roe is “bad constitutional law, or rather … it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.” He wrote:
“What is unusual about Roe is that the liberty involved is accorded … a protection more stringent, I think it is fair to say, than that the present Court accords the freedom of the press explicitly guaranteed by the First Amendment. What is frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferable from the language of the Constitution, the framers’ thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation’s governmental structure. Nor is it explainable in terms of the unusual political impotence of the group judicially protected vis-a-vis the interests that legislatively prevailed over it. And that, I believe … is a charge that can responsibly be leveled at no other decision of the past twenty years. At times the inferences the Court has drawn from the values the Constitution marks for special protection have been controversial, even shaky, but never before has its sense of an obligation to draw one been so obviously lacking.”
Below are criticisms of Roe from other supporters of legal abortion.
“One of the most curious things about Roe is that, behind its own verbal smokescreen, the substantive judgment on which it rests is nowhere to be found.” — Laurence H. Tribe, Harvard law professor
“As a matter of constitutional interpretation and judicial method, Roe borders on the indefensible. I say this as someone utterly committed to the right to choose. … Justice Blackmun’s opinion provides essentially no reasoning in support of its holding. And in the … years since Roe’s announcement, no one has produced a convincing defense of Roe on its own terms.” — Edward Lazarus, former clerk to Justice Harry Blackmun
“The failure to confront the issue in principled terms leaves the opinion to read like a set of hospital rules and regulations. … Neither historian, nor layman, nor lawyer will be persuaded that all the prescriptions of Justice Blackmun are part of the Constitution.” — Archibald Cox, Harvard law professor, former U.S. Solicitor General
“[I]t is time to admit in public that, as an example of the practice of constitutional opinion writing, Roe is a serious disappointment. You will be hard-pressed to find a constitutional law professor, even among those who support the idea of constitutional protection for the right to choose, who will embrace the opinion itself rather than the result. This is not surprising. As a constitutional argument, Roe is barely coherent. The court pulled its fundamental right to choose more or less from the constitutional ether.” — Kermit Roosevelt, University of Pennsylvania law professor
“Roe, I believe, would have been more acceptable as a judicial decision if it had not gone beyond a ruling on the extreme statute before the Court. … Heavy-handed judicial intervention was difficult to justify and appears to have provoked, not resolved, conflict.” — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
“In the Court’s first confrontation with the abortion issue, it laid down a set of rules for legislatures to follow. The Court decided too many issues too quickly. The Court should have allowed the democratic processes of the states to adapt and to generate sensible solutions that might not occur to a set of judges.” — Cass Sunstein, University of Chicago law professor
“Judges have no special competence, qualifications, or mandate to decide between equally compelling moral claims (as in the abortion controversy). … [C]lear governing constitutional principles … are not present [in Roe].” — Alan Dershowitz, Harvard law professor
“[O]verturning [Roe] would be the best thing that could happen to the federal judiciary. … Thirty years after Roe, the finest constitutional minds in the country still have not been able to produce a constitutional justification for striking down restrictions on early-term abortions that is substantially more convincing than Justice Harry Blackmun’s famously artless opinion itself.” — Jeffrey Rosen, legal commentator, George Washington University law professor
“Blackmun’s [Supreme Court] papers vindicate every indictment of Roe: invention, overreach, arbitrariness, textual indifference.” — William Saletan, Slate columnist, writing in Legal Affairs
“In the years since the decision an enormous body of academic literature has tried to put the right to an abortion on firmer legal ground. But thousands of pages of scholarship notwithstanding, the right to abortion remains constitutionally shaky. … [Roe] is a lousy opinion that disenfranchised millions of conservatives on an issue about which they care deeply.” — Benjamin Wittes, Brookings Institution fellow
“Although I am pro-choice, I was taught in law school, and still believe, that Roe v. Wade is a muddle of bad reasoning and an authentic example of judicial overreaching.” — Michael Kinsley, columnist, writing in the Washington Post.
A story via GAY PATRIOT (now sadly defunct, but the posts title was: “Love Is Love Update) and his very humorous way to bring to light the deeper issue at hand, we find another example of the deteriorating acidic colloquialisms of the Left falling apart at the expense of civil society:
A mother and son whose forbidden love affair could land them each a lengthy jail sentence have declared they are ‘madly in love’ and nothing will tear them apart.
Monica Mares, 36, and her son Caleb Peterson, 19, face up to 18 months in prison if found guilty of incest at a trial later this year in New Mexico.
But the mother and son couple have vowed to fight for their right to have a sexual relationship and are appealing to the public to donate to their legal fund.
Can you believe that The Patriarchy actually wants to put them in jail for being in love? Probably because of Thoecracy and stuff. “Government everywhere but in our bedrooms, yo!”
(read it all)
GP also notes a satirical site (BABYLON BEE) noting the acronym that represents”sexual identity” being longer (not satirical) than the alphabet:
✦ L G B T T Q Q F A I P B G D 7 @ b R s ? P L W b + 2 Z 9 A2 ✦
Here is a list of just the Facebook “gender options” available. BTW, some of these are “explained” here, and here:
Agender Androgyne Androgynous Bigender Cis Cisgender Cis Female Cis Male Cis Man Cis Woman Cisgender Female Cisgender Male Cisgender Man Cisgender Woman Female to Male FTM Gender Fluid Gender Nonconforming Gender Questioning Gender Variant Genderqueer Intersex Male to Female MTF Neither Neutrois Non-binary Other
Pangender Trans Trans* Trans Female Trans* Female Trans Male Trans* Male Trans Man Trans* Man Trans Person Trans* Person Trans Woman Trans* Woman Transfeminine Transgender Transgender Female Transgender Male Transgender Man Transgender Person Transgender Woman Transmasculine Transsexual Transsexual Female Transsexual Male Transsexual Man Transsexual Person Transsexual Woman Two-Spirit
Dennis Prager tackles a couple issues and takes some calls on the matter of how far the left is/has moved to the left as compared to how far the right has moved.
A wonderful post by Professor Thies ~ at Libertarian Republican ~ noting the impossibility of the various options outside the “one-male/one-female” classical view of marriage:
….The progressive socialist view of marriage is that it is an institution that the state finds convenient for various purposes. In this case, equal treatment under the law compels the recognition of homosexual unions as well as heterosexual. The liberal-conservative view is that marriage enables the state to identify paternity and, thus, better protect the rights of the children of the marriage. In the liberal-conservative view, the purpose of the state is to protect us, especially the most vulnerable among us. These contrasting views of marriage were spelled out in the majority and minority decisions in the landmark Massachusetts court case, Goodridge v. Department of Public Health.
The craziness of where we are at this time is that the state recognizes civil unions among gay couples as marriages, from which children cannot be produced, but doesn’t recognize civil unions among three or more consenting adults, from which children can be produced. Furthermore, the state only recognizes civil unions based on sexual relationships, and discriminates against others who would like the tax treatment and benefits associated with marriage but whose attraction isn’t erotic. Think of sisters who are spinsters, but there are innumerable possibilities.
In the liberal-conservative view, bigamy is two distinct marriages, and establishing paternity is not a problem. Polygamy has a long history, and is or has been recognized by religions as well as states. Polyandry, on the other hand, is problematic with respect to paternity. Modern technology challenges the former presumptions. One of the men in a gay marriage might contract with a women to acquire one of her eggs, and with a second woman to bring the fertilized egg to term, and upon the birth of the child agree that his gay partner be the co-parent. But, the real advances in technology that undermined the former presumptions are the pill and penicillin. The pill made sexual relations and maternity into two choices, and penicillin in theory made promiscuity less risky.
As to where we are headed is clear. It is to the collectivization of children as was contemplated by Plato in The Republic a long time ago. The other side knows and has always known what it’s all about. An absolute totalitarian and communist state. They call it utopia….
“Don’t be ridiculous,” they said. “No way does same sex marriage lead to legalized polygamy. The slippery slope argument is a complete fallacy, because enactment of one liberal social policy has never, ever led to the subsequent enactment of the logical extension of that liberal social policy. Ever!”
Well, they may have been wrong about the coefficient of friction on that particular incline. Commenter Richard Bell notes the following: Judge Cites Same-Sex Marriage in Declaring Polygamy Ban Unconstitutional.
[….]
Since marriage is no longer about creating a stable environment for children, and has become (and this mainly the fault of heterosexual liberals) about personal fulfillment, validation, and access to social benefits, there literally is no constraint on how much more broadly it can be redefined.
Some Denver City Council members have stalled consideration of Chick-fil-A’s bid for a 7-year concession to operate a restaurant at the Denver International Airport, citing the company’s stance against same-sex marriage.
According to the Denver Post, Business Development Committee member Paul Lopez believes that having the chicken chain at the airport is a “moral issue on the city.”
Openly gay councilwoman Robin Kniech, while addressing the council Tuesday, said: “We really want to look into the policies and practices of these companies, and just make sure that they conform to ours in the city, the State of Colorado. We have a marriage decision nationally. This is really about policies and it’s about practices.”
During the meeting none of the 10 members in attendance defended Chick-fil-A.
Kniech later told the Denver Post she was worried about a franchise in Denver generating “corporate profits used to fund and fuel discrimination.”….
“Modern Family” ~ Mitch & Cam Eat at a Boycotted Restaurant
Gay Patriot notes the story and comments well [as usual] on the issue facing freedom loving Americans:
…It’s kind of a sour-leftist twofer. They get to revel in that smug exclusion of alternative viewpoints the left calls “tolerance,” and they get to deny people the pleasure of eating a chicken sandwich and waffle fries.
Meanwhile, the Christians who were attacked by the Lesbian Gay Bullying Totalitarians (LGBT) and nearly lost their business for declining the opportunity to bake a cake for a lesbian wedding, in an act of charity and forgiveness, sent cakes to 10 gay rights groups with messages of love.
What do you bet at least 9 of those cakes were tossed in the dumpster amid a string of profanity that would shame a sailor?
