Tag Archives: #Homosexuality

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Whenever there is a truth you cannot tell, that is a truth you must tell!

We have previously noted that the Most Rev Salvatore Cordileone has stated that the Archdiocese of San Francisco would probably have to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Well, the time has come. From The New York Times:

Archdiocese of San Francisco Becomes the Latest to File for Bankruptcy

About a dozen dioceses and archdioceses in the United States are currently in bankruptcy proceedings as a result of multiple lawsuits alleging sexual abuse of children.

by Ruth Graham | Monday, August 21, 2023

Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone, photo from Archdiocese of San Francisco.

The Archdiocese of San Francisco, known for its outspoken conservative leadership, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone announced on Monday. The filing is intended to protect the archdiocese from what Archbishop Cordileone described as more than 500 civil lawsuits filed against it under a state law passed in 2019 that extended the statute of limitations for civil claims in child sexual abuse cases.

“We believe the bankruptcy process is the best way to provide a compassionate and equitable solution for survivors of abuse while ensuring that we continue the vital ministries to the faithful and to the communities that rely on our services and charity,” Archbishop Cordileone said in a letter addressed to Catholics in San Francisco.

Archbishop Cordileone signaled the bankruptcy earlier this month, warning publicly that the filing was “very likely.”

The article author, Ruth Graham, “is a Dallas-based national correspondent covering religion, faith and values for The New York Times. She graduated from Wheaton College and previously worked as a writer and reporter at Slate.” Telling us that she used to write for Slate is telling us that she’s a liberal, but what else would you expect from the Times? While she was very good at telling readers that several other diocese and archdiocese have been forced to file for bankruptcy over the cover ups of sexual abuse claims, she managed to write 547 words, and never mention what everybody already knows, that this is a crisis of having homosexual priests. Continue reading →

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Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain An Anglican priest really, really doesn't want you to see Sound of Freedom

One thing is certain: the movie Sound of Freedom sure has the left tied up in knots! As we reported previously, the movie, which stars Jim Caviezel, who had played Jesus in The Passion of the Christ, is about Tim Ballard, a former U.S. government agent who embarks on a mission to rescue children from sex traffickers in Colombia. It is produced by Eduardo Verástegui, who also plays a role in the film. The plot centers around Mr Ballard’s Operation Underground Railroad, an anti-sex trafficking organization. As we noted then, Kathleen Parker Cleveland[1]Though the columnist is married to Sherwood M. “Woody” Cleveland, she hasn’t shown him enough respect to have taken his name. While she may not have shown him such respect, The … Continue reading, of The Washington Post, knows that no decent person can support child sexual abuse and trafficking, but, gosh darn it, the movie Sound of Freedom just has too many supporters on the wrong side of the political divide. Mrs Cleveland thought it important enough to stress Mr Caviezel’s role as Jesus, just to let readers know that, why, he must be a Christianist kook, so maybe don’t take the movie too seriously!

Now comes this, from Canada’s The Globe and Mail. The author, Michael Coren, is an Anglican priest.

The far right’s fixation on pedophilia is dangerous

by Michael Coren | Friday, August 11, 2023

I’ve just experienced another attack on social media. The harassment on X, as Twitter now calls itself, usually lasts around 36 hours, and while most of the nasties are trolls and bots, I can’t pretend that the hundreds of comments don’t have an effect. I’m a priest, progressive, outspoken. No point in complaining. But a disturbing new aspect of these bombardments are the repeated and constant false accusations of pedophilia – not a libellous dribble, but a flood.

Normally, I prefer not to copy and paste the photographs which come with articles, but this one is important. Online, it falls right between the headline and byline, and the first paragraph of the Rev Coren’s article, and the caption, long for a photograph, makes certain that you know that Mr Caviezel is connected to QAnon:

Actor, Jim Caviezel who currently stars in the film Sound of Freedom speaks during a Catholics for Catholics anti-abortion ‘rosary rally’ on Aug. 6, 2023, in Norwood, Ohio. Caviezel frequently endorses a QAnon-based conspiracy theory where abducted children are seen to be victims of ‘adrenochroming’, a fictional practice of extracting adrenochrome from adrenal glands in a living human.

Mrs Cleveland did the same thing; are you turned off about the film now?

Then there’s the “anti-abortion ‘rosary rally'”, a reference to reference to an article by Daniel Panneton in The Atlantic, originally entitled “How the Rosary Became an Extremist Symbol“, about which I have previously written.

The Atlantic got plenty of pushback about it, and twice changed the article headline and subheading — the title “How Extremist Gun Culture Co-Opted the Rosary: The AR-15 is a sacred object among Christian nationalists. Now “radical-traditional” Catholics are bringing a sacrament of their own to the movement” isn’t shown in the screen captures tweeted by Taylor Marshall — imaged to the left, but the internet is forever.

My good friend — OK, OK, I’ve never actually met her, but people can become good friends over Twitter these days — Christine Flowers used to have in her Twitter biography, that she has an “open carry permit for (her) assault rosary.” 🙂

Back to the Rev Coren’s original:

It’s not really about me of course, and I’m in good company. Last month in Belleville, Ont., when Justin Trudeau was swarmed by a right-wing mob, one of the hysterical shouts clearly heard was that he was a child molester. It’s grotesque nonsense about the Prime Minister that swamps social media. In fact, there aren’t many politicians and activists on the left who haven’t been accused of this awful crime.

Well, it’s true enough that Mr Trudeau was mocked when he announced that his wife and he were separating, with some people speculating that both of them found new boyfriends. But the Rev Coren wrote that he was accused of pedophilia, though he didn’t state why the accusations were leveled; perhaps it’s just because he’s a priest.

And with a horribly convenient timing, a new movie, Sound of Freedom, is currently the talk of the far right. Jim Caviezel (who played Jesus in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ) stars as Tim Ballard, a former government agent who rescues children from sex traffickers. As the critic Sam Adams wrote perceptively for the online magazine Slate, it “arrived in theatres surrounded by a cloud of innuendo put forth by its star and its noisiest right-wing supporters – conspiratorial insinuations about who doesn’t want this story to be told and what real-world traffickers are really up to.”

Rescuing children is one thing, and entirely admirable, but this phenomenon goes much further than that. Mr. Caviezel himself has spoken of “the whole adrenochrome empire,” describing the substance as “an elite drug that they’ve used for many years” that is “10 times more potent than heroin” and “has some mystical qualities as far as making you look younger.”

Adrenochrome, zealots claim, can only be obtained from adrenal glands in a living human body, thus the need to abduct children. It’s obscene and dangerous quackery, but that doesn’t help convince the cult of the credulous. This rubbish has its origins in a QAnon belief that powerful, international figures intent on resetting the world, controlling people and destroying religious freedom are also kidnapping little boys and girls.

That was the lunacy behind Pizzagate in 2016, when thousands believed that a pedophilia ring led by those at the highest levels of the Democratic Party was operating out of a Washington pizza restaurant. More than a million messages were sent on Twitter supporting the fantasy, eventually leading to employees being harassed, followed by a shooting and then an arson.

Has the Rev Coren managed to turn you off of seeing the movie yet? Sure, he tells us that “Rescuing children is one thing, and entirely admirable,” but immediately continues to tell readers what a kook the actor is.

There’s always been a strong dose of homophobia involved, through the venomous old canard of gay men being groomers, in spite of all the facts and evidence. Facts and evidence, however, are the last things relevant in all this. The trans issue magnified the paranoia, and it’s been pushed into the mainstream by a new generation of right-wing politicians.

And here we go again! The left want so very much to tell us that homosexuality has nothing to do with “grooming” the young, saying that “all the facts and evidence” tell us otherwise.

But as an Anglican priest, one who, according to Wikipedia,

In an interview with the National Post on 1 May 2015, .  .  . cited the Catholic Church’s teachings on homosexuality and contraception as some of the reasons for his conversion to Anglicanism.

he has to know about the famous John Jay Report, concerning sexual abuse by Catholic priests and deacons, all of whom are male, which noted that rather than prepubescent children, abusers targeted older children:

The largest group of alleged victims (50.9%) was between the ages of 11 and 14, 27.3% were 15-17, 16% were 8-10 and nearly 6% were under age 7. Overall, 81% of victims were male and 19% female. Male victims tended to be older than female victims. Over 40% of all victims were males between the ages of 11 and 14.

Only willful, deliberate ignorance could contend that such numbers don’t indicate a problem with homosexuality among priests.

It isn’t just evil reich-wingers who are ignoring “facts and evidence”; the Rev Coren has just done so.

The Archdiocese of San Francisco is about to declare bankruptcy, as now we have this news:

Archbishop Cordileone: Chapter 11 bankruptcy for San Francisco ‘very likely’

by Daniel Payne | Washington, D.C. Newsroom | Saturday, August 5, 2023 | 12:22 PM EDT

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone on Friday revealed that it was “very likely” that the archdiocese would be filing for bankruptcy in the near future due to the hundreds of clerical abuse lawsuits that have been filed against it.

The prelate revealed the news in an announcement on the archdiocesan website Aug. 4 in which he noted that, following a 2019 California law that lifted the statute of limitations on certain sexual abuse claims, the archdiocese was ultimately served with “more than 500 civil lawsuits” related to clerical sexual abuse.

The “vast majority of the alleged abuse occurred in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s and involved priests who are deceased or no longer in ministry,” Cordileone noted, while others involved “unnamed individuals or named individuals who are unknown to the archdiocese.” The archdiocese has been “investigating the best options for managing and resolving these cases,” Cordileone said.

“After much contemplation and prayer, I wish to inform you that a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization is very likely,” Cordileone said.

Don’t be fooled: the Archbishop is one of the good guys, who supported the Tridentine Mass, opposes homosexual ‘marriage’ and allowing Catholics in homosexual relationships to receive the Eucharist, and is strongly pro-life. But for decades and decades, our bishops swept accusations of sexual offenses by priests under the rug, paying off victims quietly and rather than reporting them to law enforcement just moved them around to other, unaware parishes. But in San Francisco, of all places, you know that the victims have mostly been boys.

We also recently noted that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia just settled, for $3.5 million, a sexual abuse case in which a now-deceased priest, who was shuffled from parish to parish to sweep his abuse under the rug, molested, you guessed it, a boy. And outside the Catholic Church, a Fayette County high school teacher, and “youth volunteer” at Faith Lutheran Church in Lexington, has just been charged with producing media of a 9-year-old boy in a sexual performance.

This was all in just the past week.

Scratch the surface of modern conspiracy theory and antisemitism often appears, but today the accused are usually singled out not by race but ideology, and that includes politicians and public figures considered to be left-of-centre, or even people who support vaccinations, abortion rights, LGBTQ equality, or climate justice policies. This might sound fanciful, but the evidence is sadly abundant.

Naturally, along with QAnon, the Rev Coren wants to link this concern about child trafficking to anti-Semitism, just another ploy to get people to not watch the movie. Heaven forfend, if you go to see it, you are literally Hitler!

It’s particularly tragic as children increasingly suffer under a culture of poverty, food insecurity and forced migration. Ironically, those roaring about pedophile rings tend to ignore all of this and are often downright opposed to legislation that may help children. As well, child abuse and human trafficking are genuine issues and have to be taken extremely seriously; baseless and hateful hyperbole only worsens the situation.

That’s nothing but a sop, to let you believe that yes, the Rev Coren really, really is worried about child trafficking, but he doesn’t want you to get too incensed about it, because what about other problems.

Even the National Institutes for Health, in 2021, under President Joe Biden, not the evil conservative Donald Trump, wrote:

Our meta-analysis results suggest that political conservatives are significantly more charitable than liberals at an overall level, but the relationship between political ideology and charitable giving varies under different scenarios.

Conservatives see private efforts to help the poor as preferable and are more opposed to government action to do so.

Don’t be fooled here. The Rev Coren, who has a wife and children of his own, so I assume that he is sexually normal, wants to defend homosexual males from accusations of “grooming”, to let people know that heterosexual males can be just as guilty. Jerry Sandusky, after all, was married to a woman, even though he liked 10-year-old boys’ butts. But the “facts and evidence,” to use the Anglican priest’s formulation, indicate an outsized number of boys being molested by adult men, when, if homosexuality were not a risk factor, we should see fewer than 5% of sexual abuse victims of adult males being boys.

I am not a psychologist, I am not a sociologist, I am not a behavioral expert of any kind. But what I do know and understand, and know and understand well, are numbers, and the numbers say that the last thing a priest, a priest of any Christian religion, should run his keyboard about is the notion that homosexuality has no relationship to child sexual abuse.
_______________________________________

That was the part I finished last night, but scheduled for publication at noon on Saturday. But the Rev Coren used Twitter to publicize his article, and soon got the negative responses you’d expect, and quickly started blocking people who questioned him . . . including me.

I am trying to figure out his thinking, and quite frankly failing at it. As a priest, even an Anglican one, he had to know that any article written by a priest which in any way tried to minimize the response to child sex trafficking and child sexual abuse would draw plenty of negative response. His Twitter handle reads “Reverend Michael Coren,” and not everyone who read his tweet clicked on the article — which is now paywalled, though perhaps not a first time Globe and Mail visitor — and saw that he is an Anglican priest, not a Catholic clergyman, and many mocked and dismissed his article as somehow justifying sexual abuse among Catholic priests. It doesn’t do that, and it does not somehow excuse child sex trafficking and sexual abuse, but it definitely shows that he sees those as lesser problems than children reared in poverty or opposition to the homosexual and transgender agendas.

Then there was this tweet by Frank Rizzo (@FrankRi68868220):

MAPs are a stigmatized community, thank you for taking a stand in support.

MAPs are “minor attracted persons”. Mr Rizzo — no, not the former Police Commissioner and later Mayor of Philadelphia, who has long since gone to his eternal reward — has no indication that he actually is a minor attracted person, and I assume that his tweet was meant sarcastically, but this is the kind of response that the Rev Coren should have expected.

There are some things about which a person should just keep his mouth, or keyboard in this case, closed, and the Rev Coren has just found his. You cannot defend, or even minimize, child sex trafficking as somehow not that serious, because no matter how nuanced your point, no matter how well you write, you will not truly make your point, and just draw criticism and scorn.

References

References
↑1 Though the columnist is married to Sherwood M. “Woody” Cleveland, she hasn’t shown him enough respect to have taken his name. While she may not have shown him such respect, The First Street Journal does not similarly show such disrespect.
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Odd question: will LGBTQ+ population decrease with end of Affirmative Action?

The Wall Street Journal is on top of the trends in business, as you’d expect, and reported that Chief Information Officers are worrying that employee ‘diversity’ — and how I’ve come to hate that word — will decrease following the Supreme Court’s  decision  in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, declaring what we all knew, that the equal protection clause in the 14th Amendment prohibited Affirmative Action using racial preferences in collegiate admissions.

CIOs Say Affirmative Action Ruling Could Set Back Progress in Tech Diversity

Executives are questioning what a landmark Supreme Court decision on college admissions means for diversity hiring efforts

by Belle Lin | Monday, July 17, 2023 | 7:00 AM EDT

Business technology leaders said that last month’s Supreme Court’s ruling that colleges can’t consider race in admissions policies could have a chilling effect on initiatives aimed at diversifying the information-technology workforce.

The court’s decision is likely to alter the pipeline of diverse graduates entering the job market, they said, and may introduce challenges to companies’ existing hiring and promotion practices.

By removing race from college admission considerations, the pool of tech talent entering the workforce may not only be less diverse, it could also be smaller if underrepresented minorities don’t see the field as a welcoming or viable option, those executive say.

There’s more at the original.

The Court’s decision applied to universities, public and private, that accept federal money, including in the form of student financial aid. However, as Chief Justice John Roberts noted in the Court’s opinion, roughly 60% of colleges and universities admit all applicants. If the pool of graduates from certain technical specialties from Ivy League colleges becomes less diverse — there’s that word again! — then corporations might look at graduates from Middle Tennessee State (Acceptance rate = 87.1%) or Eastern Kentucky (Acceptance rate = 98.3%) or Jacksonville State University of Alabama (Acceptance rate = 76.3%), Robert Stacy McCain’s alma mater. After all, Alissa Heinerscheid proved that being a Hahvahd graduate was no guarantee that stupid decisions wouldn’t be taken!

Then I saw these interesting paragraphs in another Journal article:

The elevation of victimhood over achievement has led many to misrepresent their racial and gender identities in pursuit of advantages in professional and academic positions. Students at selective colleges are identifying as non-heterosexual at rates several times higher than historic or national averages, though University of London political scientist Eric Kaufmann noted that there hasn’t been a corresponding increase in sexual behavior tied to those identities. I’ve heard of parents at elite private high schools using genetic testing services hoping to identify any ethnic heritage that would boost their children’s college applications and of young professionals falsely identifying as bisexual for a career boost.

Racial and gender quotas result in liberals’ willful hypocrisy and convoluted rationalizations when they are confronted with the reality that aptitudes, interests and effort aren’t always evenly distributed among their superficial and shifting politicized racial categories. Liberals have translated their calls for increased diversity into demands that colleges admit and employers hire black and Hispanic applicants in proportion to their group’s share of the U.S. population.

Wait, what? “Students at selective colleges are identifying as non-heterosexual at rates several times higher than historic or national averages” but “there hasn’t been a corresponding increase in sexual behavior tied to those identities”? From the linked report:

  • When we look at homosexual behavior, we find that it has grown much less rapidly than LGBT identification. Men and women under 30 who reported a sexual partner in the last five years dropped from around 96% exclusively heterosexual in the 1990s to 92% exclusively heterosexual in 2021. Whereas in 2008 attitudes and behavior were similar, by 2021 LGBT identification was running at twice the rate of LGBT sexual behavior.
  • The author provides a high-point estimate of an 11-point increase in LGBT identity between 2008 and 2021 among Americans under 30. Of that, around 4 points can be explained by an increase in same-sex behavior. The majority of the increase in LGBT identity can be traced to how those who only engage in heterosexual behavior describe themselves.
  • Very liberal ideology is associated with identifying as LGBT among those with heterosexual behavior, especially women. It seems that an underlying psychological disposition is inclining people with heterosexual behavior to identify both as LGBT and very liberal. The most liberal respondents have moved from 10-15% non-heterosexual identification in 2016 to 33% in 2021. Other ideological groups are more stable.

So, what do we have here? A significant increase in the number of younger people who are also mostly self-identified liberals? Does this mean that these people might be more open to take a walk on the wild side, but mostly haven’t yet, or is it some sort of ‘siding with the oppressed’ help, or could it possibly, just possibly, going the Elizabeth Warren/Rachel Dolezal route of ‘identifying’ with a particular minority for some real or perceived Affirmative Action benefit?

  • Very liberal ideology and LGBT identification are associated with anxiety and depression in young people. Very liberal young Americans are twice as likely as others to experience these problems. 27% of young Americans with anxiety or depression were LGBT in 2021. This relationship appears to have strengthened since 2010.
  • Among young people, mental health problems, liberal ideology, and LGBT identity are strongly correlated. Using factor analysis in two different studies shows that assuming one common variable between all three traits explains 40-50% of the variation.

LOL! I have long believed that “very liberal ideology” is indicative of some sort of mental problem, because, especially with the new #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading left, to be that far left requires a delusional mindset, ignoring the reality that is all around us. As we have previously reported, the areas in Philadelphia which were most seriously impacted by violent crime recently voted for a tougher-on-crime candidate, while the more ‘progressive’ candidates had far greater support in the wealthier, whiter — Philly is very internally segregated — areas.

You can’t pay attention to the news in Philadelphia without realizing that crime is a serious problem, but the anti-police, anti-incarceration leftist candidate won her votes in the areas experiencing far less crime.

There is, at least at the margins, some socialization concerning what is and is not acceptable when it comes to sex. For boys growing up, the idea of fellating another boy, or receiving anal intercourse from such, is strongly reinforced as something which is humiliating, completely unmanly, and just about every other negative connotation that can be put on it. It is at least arguable that forces pushing acceptance of male homosexuality can lessen the effects of the normal socialization, and perhaps some teenaged and twenty-something males might not be quite so averse to trying something, if the right situation arose. Porn has lessened the stigma against female homosexual liaisons.

But if actual homosexual activity is being reported at significantly lower rates than abnormal sexual identification — and let me be explicit here: anything other than strictly heterosexual identification is considered abnormal by me — then there must be some other incentive for people to identify as something other than normal.

  • College students majoring in the social sciences and humanities are about 10 points more LGBT than those in STEM. Meanwhile, 52% of students taking highly political majors such as race or gender studies identify as LGBT, compared to 25% among students overall.

Realistically, what can the incentive be other than politics or some perceived advantage to be gained? And if the perceived advantage would be the shortcuts offered by Affirmative Action, shouldn’t the elimination of Affirmative Action in collegiate admissions reduce the percentage of those claiming abnormal sexual orientations and identities?

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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It doesn’t matter how smart a criminal is, eventually he will do something boneheadedly stupid

Can we tell the truth here? Most criminals get caught because they are just plain stupid.

There can’t be more than 14 people in the country who haven’t heard about Hunter Biden’s laptop, which he took to a computer repair shop, and simply abandoned there. Mr Biden is a cocaine addict, so it’s entirely possible that he just forgot about leaving it there, but it eventually became public knowledge that it was left there, and that the contents were made public.

So, if you were a homosexual male who not only drugged and raped random men, but put the evidence on your laptop, would you send the hard drive out for repair?

Former Louisiana Catholic priest pleads guilty to drugging and molesting 17 men, sentenced to prison

Stephen Sauer was sentenced to 25 years in prison for crimes such as sexual battery, rape and video voyeurism

By Greg Wehner | Fox News | Sunday, July 9, 2023 | 9:52 PM EDT

Stephen Sauer, photo by Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office and is a public record.

A former Louisiana priest pleaded guilty to drugging and molesting 17 men he picked up in the French Quarter and was sentenced on Friday to 25 years in prison.Stephen Sauer, 61, of Metairie admitted that he targeted men who looked lost or intoxicated. He would then drug the men as he offered them help, sometimes putting drugs in their drinks at bars.

Other times, the former Catholic priest used an eyedropper to feed sleep-inducing substances to men who passed out from alcohol, according to a press release from Jefferson Parish District Attorney Paul D. Connick, Jr.’s office.

Investigators with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office learned that Sauer shared the images on a website, and sometimes traded images with others using email.

The DA’s office said many of the victims were from out of state, separated from their friends, or lost when Sauer approached them.

There’s more at the original. And then there’s this, from The Washington Post:

Soccer coach’s lost phone contained videos of him raping boys, police say

By Annabelle Timsit | Monday, July 10, 2023 | 8:43 AM EDT

A soccer coach in Tennessee has been arrested after police said they found hundreds of videos and images of him appearing to rape unconscious boys on a phone he left behind at a restaurant.

Police in Franklin, Tenn., said in a Sunday statement that Camilo Hurtado Campos, 63, recruited boys onto his soccer team and then sexually abused them. They said Campos drugged and raped at least 10 boys as young as 9 years old and recorded footage ofhis crimes.

He is being held in custody on charges of raping a child and sexually exploiting a minor, police said. In Tennessee, rape of a child is a Class A felony that carries a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison. Sexual exploitation of a minor is a Class B felony when the suspect possesses more than 100 images or materials that show a minor engaged in sexual activity. . . . .

Police said employees at a local restaurant found a customer’s phone and went through it to try to reach the owner so they could return it. After stumbling upon “unconscionable videos and pictures of children,” they called the police, the department said.

Detectives found “hundreds of disturbing videos and pictures” on the phone, the department said. “In many of them, Campos recorded himself raping unconscious boys between approximately 9 and 17 years old,” its statement said.

There’s more at the original.

So, Mr Sauer sent his computer hard drive to someone else, to someone he knew would look through it, while Mr Campos kept images on his cell phone, and then got careless and just left it around. An obvious question would be: why would Mr Campos want to carry those images around portably?

Both of the accused are in their early sixties, which raises another obvious question: for how long had they actually been doing this stuff before they were caught? Do men guys suddenly wake up in their late fifties/early sixties and say, ‘I think I’ll take a walk on the wild side’ and ‘Where can I get me some rape drugs?’ Mr Sauer was formerly a Catholic priest, who had served as pastor of Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church in New Orleans from 2008 to 2012. He was a Jesuit, who left the order at his own request in 2020, and Jesuits are not stupid, but well-educated men. All priests are well-educated, as seminary is more than just prayer and contemplation, but an intellectually rigorous collegiate education.

Yet he got caught because he somehow felt compelled to do something just boneheadedly stupid.

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Killadelphia: What the Philly media won’t tell us

With the Kingsessing mass shooting being a Philadelphia story, it’s unsurprising that The Philadelphia Inquirer would have several follow-up stories on it.

As soon as the name of Kimbrady Carriker was released, his social media were investigated, and photos of Mr Carriker in female dress led to immediate speculation that he was, like Audrey Hale in Nashville, yet another transgender killer. Well, that led to Philly officials quickly denying it:

While he acknowledged the social media images that appear to show Carriker wearing women’s clothing and jewelry, Asa Khalif, a member of the LGBTQ advisory committee for the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, condemned the “violent” language coming from the “conservative press” about Carriker’s gender identity and shared what the district attorney’s office knows firsthand about Carriker’s gender identity.

“Appear to show”? No, there’s no “appear to show” here, but actually show. Why would Mr Khalif, who supports the homosexual and transgender community, and must surely not be offended by, or see anything wrong, with cross-dressing, want to mealy-mouth things?

“The suspect has not identified themselves as trans. They have only identified themselves as male,” Khalif said at Wednesday’s news conference. “But the language spewed out by the conservative press is violent and is dangerous, and it’s targeting trans women of color. It’s rallying the community to be violent, and we’re better than that.”

I saw a video of Mr Khalif’s statement, and while he stated that Mr Carriker had not identified as transgender or anything other than male, I also noticed that he went out of his way to use “they/them” pronouns to refer to the suspect. Did Mr Carriker express a preference for such to be used? If so, it hasn’t made the credentialed press, but speaking with the District Attorney at his side, he might have been clued in to something the DA’s office knew but hasn’t been made public.

Khalif condemned those who label trans people as “killers.”

“They are the most vulnerable to violence,” he said. “They want to live their lives, and they have every right to do so, and we will not allow conservative bigots to use that type of language to attack trans people.”

District Attorney Larry Krasner expressed similar sentiments.

“There are some people for whom hate is a full-time job,” Krasner said. “And if they can stay away from the facts and talk about nonsense, that’s what they’re going to do.”

Mr Khalif, who tweeted on the Fourth of July, “So when i say Fuck The Police..don’t tell me that’s disrespectful..the violence against black people is beyond disrespectful!”, keeps telling us, through multiple tweets, and retweets that the alleged shooter isn’t transgender. The Philadelphia Inquirer also jumped on that bandwagon:

Conservative media outlets claimed Carriker was transgender based on Facebook photos of him dressed in feminine clothing. However, Carriker is identified as male on public records and district attorney officials said Wednesday that he identifies as male.

I actually avoided making such a claim, writing on Independence Day:

Everybody who pays any attention to Philadelphia news had heard, hours before the Post’s article was time-stamped, that the (alleged) shooter has been identified as Kimbrady Carriker, a 40-year-old black male, and he has a history of posting photos of himself on Facebook in women’s clothing, including earrings, tank tops, and at least one in which the outlines of a bra are showing. It has not been reported that he somehow thinks he’s really a woman, whether he’s just a cross-dresser, or whether he’s just clowning around, but that’s part of what we do know, and have known since well before the Post updated this article, yet the newspaper has kept this information from readers, readers who are paying good money for their subscriptions, because, Heaven forfend!, it isn’t politically correct.

But, you know what I also haven’t seen in the Philly media? You know what Mr Khalif, a member of the LGBTQ advisory committee for District Attorney Larry Krasner, hasn’t yet told us? Mr Carriker’s grandmother said that he was homosexual:

Ms Carriker said her grandson was gay and would sometimes dress in women’s clothing, but had not undergone gender transition surgery or treatment.

She said she made it clear to Carriker that she disapproved of him wearing women’s clothes due to her Christian beliefs.

“I saw him one time in female clothes, and from the expression on my face, from that point on, he never came in female clothes around me because he knew how I felt about it,” she told The Independent.

“He was trying to find himself. He didn’t know where he belonged. I used to talk to him about it, but he didn’t like to converse with me about things like that.”

The Philadelphia media, so quick to tell us some of Mr Carriker’s political views, his support for the Second Amendment, admiration of Tucker Carlson, and hating of President Biden, but soft-peddling his support of #BlackLivesMatter and the riots in many cities in the wake of the unfortunate death during the arrest of the methamphetamine-and-fentanyl-addled convicted felon George Floyd, and telling us that he wasn’t transgendered, never mentioned, at least as far as I could find, that he is homosexual. It took a report from a newspaper in London, England, for us to get that news.

It is not a surprise to anyone who pays attention to the Philly media that they would keep such under wraps.

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Today’s left really, really, really hate Freedom of Speech, and normality

There has been all sorts of leftist angst and hollering and combitching about laws, passed in several states, which ban hormone and surgical ‘treatments’ for minors who believe themselves to have been born the wrong sex. It’s discriminatory, it’s wrong, it will hurt people, and lead to suicides, we are told.

Yet, oddly enough, I never read one thing about this, in a single sentence from Newsweek:

Last week, Michigan banned conversion therapy, the controversial practice trying to “cure” LGBTQ+ people of their sexual orientation and gender identity, for minors in the state.

Yet:

Research shows that lesbian, gay, bi, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) teens are at increased risk of suicide and mental health issues like depression and anxiety. One of the most startling statistics: LGBTQ teens consider suicide and make suicide attempts at about twice the national rate for all adolescents.

So, if the left are arguing that not allowing minors who believe themselves to be the opposite ‘gender’ from the sex they were born to receive ‘gender-affirming’ care increases suicide risk, why would they concomitantly want to ban homosexual minors from treatment for their homosexuality if being homosexual increases their risk of suicide?

The homosexual lobby contend that conversion therapy is both harmful and ineffective, and whether it is ineffective medically, those claims have certainly been effective politically. But the real issue is one of reproduction: since homosexuals cannot naturally reproduce without stepping into heterosexuality, ‘losing’ homosexuals to normal sex is an attack on all of them. They hate being called “groomers”, but what else is it when they try their hardest to keep every kid growing up sexually confused, and to reduce the societal stigma attached to homosexuality, what else can we call it?

And now we have this:

Michigan Pronouns Law Declared an ‘Abomination’ by Former Judge

by Giulia Carbonaro | Monday, July 3, 2023 | 9:00 AM EDT

Michigan’s recent bill making it a felony for people to harass or intimidate someone by misgendering them and using the wrong pronouns has sparked controversy in the state, with former judge and television personality Joe Brown calling the measure an “abomination.”

The new measure, House Bill 4474, is part of a package of legislation that would replace Michigan’s existing Ethnic Intimidation Act and would make it a hate crime to cause someone to “feel terrorized, frightened, or threatened” with words.

It expands the existing law to cover sex, sexual orientation, age, gender identity or expression, and physical or mental disability. Religion, ethnicity and race were already included in the previous legislation and will still be covered under the new law.

Michigan has recently been pushing reforms and new measures that would expand the protection of LGBTQ+ rights in the state, going against a nationwide trend that has seen other states moving to limit rights for transgender youth.

There’s more at the original.

Apparently the great state of Michigan, in which Governor Gretchen Whitless Whitmer, a Democrat of course, imposed illegal and draconian executive orders to fight the COVID-19 panicdemic, believes that the Freedom of Speech guaranteed to all of us under the Constitution of the United States can, should, and must be regulated to spare the precious feelings of the ‘transgendered.’ I wonder: while I do not live in Michigan, and have never set foot in that state, could I be punished because my website is available there?

Under the bill — which makes it a hate crime for a person to threaten another by deliberately using the wrong pronouns with an intimidating purpose — offenders would be guilty “of a felony punishable by imprisonment for not more than 5 years, or by a fine of not more than $10,000.”

This is what today’s left do: they elevate ‘group rights’ over those of the individual, to support the goals of the State — at least, as long as they control the State — above the individual rights protected by our Constitution. If the law passes, which has not yet happened, it will take someone actually charged and convicted of this ‘crime’, appealing the conviction through multiple layers of courts, to get it reversed, even though simply referring to Bruce Jenner as Bruce Jenner doesn’t hurt anyone. Such a person could wind up serving a sentence in prison before it could ever be reversed.

If someone wants to refer to Bradley Manning as ‘Chelsea,’ that’s perfectly up to them, and no skin of my nose, even if I see it as both silly and stupid; that’s within their free speech rights. But the lower house of the Michigan state legislature would make it a crime to refer to Mr Manning as Bradley, or as Mr Manning.

Bill Blankschaen and Erick Erickson coined the phrase, “You will be made to care“. An issue about which most sensible people would not care — it’s none of my business if Harry wants to become Sally — is becoming one in which the homosexual/transgender lobby are trying to use the power of the State to force people to go along with their kinks and delusions; that makes it other people’s business.

We have pointed it out previously: the left are smart enough to know that if they can control the language used, they can subtly, and perhaps not-so-subtly, direct your thinking. If you can get acclimated to calling someone like Richard Levine “Rachel,” and referring to him with the feminine pronouns, the job of the left is half-way done. That some of us stubbornly insist on calling the ‘transgendered’ by their birth names — if we can find them; sometimes I cannot — and using the pronouns and honorifics appropriate to their actual sex not only fights back against the left, but angers them so much that at least some of them want to make it illegal shows just how important they believe it to be.

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Today’s #woke left sure do hate Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, and democracy . . . when those things go against leftist values

I will admit it up front: when I saw the article on the front page of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website main page, and cited below, I expected one dripping with liberal bias, but it was actually mostly balanced reporting.

Why Moms for Liberty was designated an ‘extremist’ group by the Southern Poverty Law Center

Born out of opposition to COVID-19 mandates in schools, Moms of Liberty pivoted to targeting diversity education and how LGBTQ issues are handled by schools.

by Maddie Hanna | Wednesday, June 28, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

Moms for Liberty calls itself a parent empowerment group. But as the polarizing organization arrives in Philadelphia this week for its annual summit, it’s being identified as something else: an “antigovernment extremist group.”

That’s according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the veteran civil rights organization that tracks domestic extremism. This year, the group added a number of “parental rights” groups — the Southern Poverty Law Center refers to them as “anti-student-inclusion” — to its tally of hate and antigovernment extremist groups.

Robert Stacy McCain has done a lot of reporting on the Southern Poverty Law Center, SPLC, and pointed out, in an article asking “What counts as hate?“, writing:

by continually expanding the definition of “hate” and “extremism,” and by encouraging censorship and suppression of anyone who dissents from their liberal agenda, the SPLC compels people with more or less mainstream beliefs to engage in the kind of activism practiced by Moms for Liberty. Furthermore  (and, again, I think SPLC staff are too stupid to grasp this), by denoting mainstream groups as proponents of “hate,” the SPLC undermines its own credibility and causes people who are not remotely “extremist” to question the whole rationale of this type of “hate”-hunting enterprise. Like, why should we even care if someone is prejudiced against gay people or black people or Jews or whatever? So long as they are not engaged in any actual criminal behavior, or advocating violence against others, people are free to form their own opinions. This whole business of “exposing” people as holding allegedly dangerous beliefs — which is to say, acting as Thought Police — is antithetical to liberty. And I think more Americans are beginning to reject the type of Thought Police agenda that SPLC pursues.

Of course, in heavily Democratic Philadelphia, where so many seem to despise freedom of speech for the people they oppose, the staff at the American Revolution Museum in Philadelphia, a revolution against the British government spread by freedom of speech and of the press, don’t support allowing the Moms being allowed to speak.

Back to the Inquirer:

Moms for Liberty has accused the Southern Poverty Law Center of espousing “hate” toward its members. Here’s why the organization says Moms for Liberty warrants the designation:

What makes Moms for Liberty an antigovernment group?

Founded in Florida in 2021, Moms for Liberty was born out of opposition to COVID-19 mandates in schools and now claims 285 chapters across 45 states. It pivoted to targeting diversity education and how LGBTQ issues are handled by schools, as part of a broader conservative movement that has accused schools of indoctrinating students around race, gender, and sexuality.

Heaven forfend! Some parents are opposed to the public schools, which have, due to the compulsory education laws in every state, what is, in effect, a captive audience, been teaching, been indoctrinating, beliefs which are opposed to some people’s religious beliefs, and opposed to simple, common sense. It wasn’t so very long ago that girls who like rough-and-tumble, who would go out and get dirty and sweaty playing ball with the boys were called, sometimes admiringly and sometimes not, tomboys, but everyone knew that they were still girls. There was a time in which boys who liked to play with dolls or do somewhat ‘girly’ things were called, never admiringly, sissies, but everyone knew that they were still boys. Now? Now, they’re not what they were born, but one of 1 × 10n new ‘genders,’ you’ve got to call them that, and it’s time to reach for the puberty blockers and surgical scalpel. No one would ever say that public school libraries should have materials showing girls fellating boys, but today’s left — which includes a lot of public school teachers and administrators — are aghast that some people are opposed to having materials in public school libraries which depict boys fellating boys. Many concerned parents do not want this kind of stuff normalized, but if you are a parent who doesn’t want that, the SPLC says that you are a hater and an anti-government extremist.

That messaging is what landed Moms for Liberty on the SPLC’s list, said Maya Henson Carey, a research analyst with SPLC’s Intelligence Project.

“It’s really looking at their overall narrative: that public educators and public schools are attempting to indoctrinate and sexualize children through this radical Marxist agenda,” Carey said.

The SPLC notes statements from Moms for Liberty leaders, including the group’s slogan that “we do not co-parent with the government,” comments referring to “government schools,” support for abolishing the federal Department of Education, and accusations that teachers unions are responsible for indoctrination.

In one example flagged by the SPLC, Moms for Liberty said last year that “the K-12 cartel — also known as the national teachers union (NEA) — met and drafted a proposal to replace the word ‘mother’ with ‘birthing person.’” Describing the proposal as “insane,” Moms for Liberty said that “as the teachers union pushes an agenda focused on everything but educating our children, American parents are rising up, taking back our school districts and putting the focus back on educating our children.”

We have previously reported how The Washington Post kowtowed to the #woke by headlining an article with “pregnant people” in both the title and body, and a site search of the Inquirer’s website returned 2,905 references to “pregnant people,” 1,062 references to “pregnant person,” 1,643 references to “birthing person,” and 4,669 references to “birthing people.” Is that what the Inky’s stylebook now requires? Is it surprising that sensible people would note these assaults on language and attempts to normalize transgenderism and the notion that men can get pregnant and have babies?

Well, perhaps the SPLC were not surprised at that, but Maya Henson Carey said that the SPLC cited such objections as part of the reason Moms for Liberty was declared to be an “anti-government extremist” group.

After several paragraphs in which Dr Carey claimed that the Moms must be raaaaacist, comparing their objections to critical race theory, the education of which has a strong political component, she went on:

Moms for Liberty has also opposed policies accommodating transgender students and has referred to gender dysphoria as being “normalized by predators.” And while Moms for Liberty has said it’s focused on removing inappropriate sexual content, efforts to ban books from libraries have disproportionately targeted stories about LGBTQ people or people of color, Carey said.

It’s certainly true that the Moms are fighting the normalization of homosexuality and transgenderism in the public schools, but that’s what they should be doing. It’s an obvious question: why on earth would the public schools be pushing normalization of homosexuality and transgenderism in the first place? Why would the public schools be pushing something which is opposed by many religions, why would they be pushing something that is directly contrary to the religious faiths of many parents?

Is not the state pushing a particular issue which violates a lot of people’s religious faith in itself a state establishment of religion?

Carey said the education groups represent a trend of “a shift to public spaces” by extremist groups, that “comes with them showing up for school board meetings and running for public office. A lot of these antigovernment and hate groups are really infiltrating the lives of everyday Americans.”

And there you have it: an SPLC spokeswoman is complaining that conservatives are exercising their freedom of speech, and, in what must surely be a horrific attack on democracy, are doing something really radical like running for office in democratic elections!

 

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Fear-mongering from The Nation, as they fear that The South Shall Rise Again!

The Nation is a biweekly ‘progressive’ political journal, whose positions have usually been on the far left end of the American political spectrum. The magazine used a fairly simple drawing to illustrate an article this morning, but I thought a drawing of Pickett’s Charge, from the Battle of Gettyburg, would be more appropriate, because they’re worrying that The South Shall Rise Again!

In the Attacks on Trans Rights, We’re Seeing the Rise of a New Confederacy

These legislative assaults constitute the spear tip of a nation within a nation, threatening the foundations of democracy.

by Nan D Hunter | Monday, June 26, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

A right-wing inquisition is singling out young transgender Americans, their parents, their teachers, and their doctors as targets in the battle over what kind of nation we are and want to be. Since 2021, roughly half the states have passed at least one law designed to eliminate medical or educational policies that recognize trans youth and protect them from abuse. According to the ACLU, 20 states enacted 72 new anti-trans laws in the first six months of 2023; more than 200 are in the pipeline.

Anti-trans campaigners seek to create a blanket of repression. Because the recent wave of anti-trans laws was not triggered by a landmark event like the rush of anti-abortion laws enacted in the wake of the Dobbs decision, this new reality has crept up on the country. Major media outlets have struggled to keep up with which laws have been passed in which states. With the exception, perhaps, of the trans people who find themselves in the cross hairs of these new laws, almost no one saw it coming.

The Nation allows non-subscribers three free articles, but you can read it here without going to the magazine’s website. As this article is approaching 2,900 words, you can read the rest below the fold. Continue reading →

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Karma! The enemy of your enemy is not always your friend In a time when the left are all for 'diversity,' they have exactly zero diversity of thought or understanding.

How many times have conservatives noted that the Muslims, primarily the Palestinian Arabs, the liberals and homosexual lobbies supported because they opposed Israel, were not really their friends? Quietly and desperately they tried to ignore the fact that homosexuals were executed by hanging in Iran, and by being thrown off tall buildings by Da’ish. But this happened in the good, old United States!

‘A sense of betrayal’: liberal dismay as Muslim-led US city bans Pride flags

Many liberals celebrated when Hamtramck, Michigan, elected a Muslim-majority council in 2015 but a vote to exclude LGBTQ+ flags from city property has soured relations

by Tom Perkins in Hamtramck, Michigan | Saturday, 17 June 2023 | 6:00 AM EDT

In 2015, many liberal residents in Hamtramck, Michigan, celebrated as their city attracted international attention for becoming the first in the United States to elect a Muslim-majority city council.

They viewed the power shift and diversity as a symbolic but meaningful rebuke of the Islamophobic rhetoric that was a central theme of then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign.

This week many of those same residents watched in dismay as a now fully Muslim and socially conservative city council passed legislation banning Pride flags from being flown on city property that had – like many others being flown around the country – been intended to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community.

Muslim residents packing city hall erupted in cheers after the council’s unanimous vote, and on Hamtramck’s social media pages, the taunting has been relentless: “Fagless City”, read one post, emphasized with emojis of a bicep flexing.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” as the ancient saying goes. But, as our friend, the Soviet Union, helped the West finish off our enemy, the Third Reich, the Soviets quickly proved that, without that common enemy, they were not our friends. For the liberals in Hamtramck, the Muslims were their friends; for the Muslims in Hamtramck, the liberals were their useful idiots.

Homosexual activity has been widely condemned under Islam, and even a pro-homosexuality site notes the problems. Some try to argue that the Quran is at least somewhat ambiguous on the subject, but it is clear that the Islamic nations of the world interpret their faith as being strenuously opposed to homosexuality, and homosexual activity is a criminal offense across much of the Islamic and African nations.

In a tense monologue before the vote, Councilmember Mohammed Hassan shouted his justification at LGBTQ+ supporters: “I’m working for the people, what the majority of the people like.”

While Hamtramck is still viewed as a bastion of multiculturalism, the difficulties of local governance and living among neighbors with different cultural values quickly set in following the 2015 election. Some leaders and residents are now bitter political enemies engaged in a series of often vicious battles over the city’s direction, and the Pride flag controversy represents a crescendo in tension.

“There’s a sense of betrayal,” said the former Hamtramck mayor Karen Majewski, who is Polish American. “We supported you when you were threatened, and now our rights are threatened, and you’re the one doing the threatening.”

Could none of the non-Muslim liberals in that town read? Did none of them even wonder if the hostility to homosexuality in the Islamic world might be part of the culture of the Muslims in Hamtramck?

But it’s not only the left in Hamtramck who have deluded themselves. From The Victory Girls:

Feminism: Why The West Is Silent On Iran

by Lisa Carr | Sunday, June 18, 2023

We will attempt, once again today, to illustrate how feminism in the West has lost its way. Today, we look back on this very day in 1983, where 10 women from the ages of 17 to 57 years old were hung in an Iranian prison.

Why were they given such a horrific death sentence? Because these women were members of The Bahai Faith. They were told to renounce their religion or die. The Washington Examiner‘s Joseph D’Souza, provided an interesting commentary on the silence this past weekend:

Iranian women face daily threats of violence. More than 50 girls schools across Iran have suffered from apparent poisonings. Just last week, Iran put on trial the brave female reporters who visited Mahsa Amini in prison and told the whole world what the regime had done to her.

Women in the West have rightly asserted their own dignity and rights for decades. Can those same women not raise their voices louder in support of Iranian women and their quest for the same rights and dignity?

They must forcefully call on their governments not only to speak up but to take action on behalf of Iranian women. Tweets are not enough. They don’t create justice, tolerance, harmony, and human rights.”-Joseph D’Souza, The Washington Examiner

Women are still protesting in Iran. The violence is still happening. According to this from PBS, The Iranian government has detained over 20,000 protesters and killed more than 500, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group that has been tracking the movement. Since November, a string of suspected poisonings has taken place at more than 50 girls’ schools across the country. Iran has also since banned women who refuse to wear the hijab from health and education services.

But in our “educated” country, our Land of Opportunity, our brand of “feminism” looks different. The plight of Iranian women and women in other, oppressive cultures is largely ignored. Why? Because Western feminists are a bunch of narcissistic twits who can’t be bothered to face the inconvenient truths of what is happening in the world around them.

“(N)arcissistic twits,”? Perhaps, but I believe that ignorant twits, twits who cannot see outside of their Western civilization mindset, who simply cannot wrap their heads around the concept that not everybody in the world thinks as Westerners in general, and Americans specifically, think. Because the American and western European left have swallowed the concern for the plight of the Palestinian Arabs not just hook, line, and sinker, but the fishing rod as well, all the way down to the reel, because they are so wholly anti-Israel — though don’t you dare call them anti-Semitic! — they must support the Arabs, and the Muslims, even though a Western woman walking down the streets of Tehran or Riyadh in typical Western women’s garb would be snatched up by the police and hauled off to jail, to treatment which would be less gentle than an American jail. A Western woman outspoken about the freedom to be lesbian in those countries might well find herself facing decades in prison.

There’s a lot more at Lisa Carr’s original, and there’s no paywall on The Victory Girls, so you can check out the whole thing for free. But it just helps to illustrate that inward thinking of the left, how they just can’t understand how anyone could think or believe differently from them. In a time when the left are all for ‘diversity,’ they have exactly zero diversity of thought or understanding.