Remember you haters! Calling them ‘groomers’ and saying that ‘they’re coming after our kids’ is sexist, homophobic, transphobic and just plain false!

There are times I think that I’ve written on the subject of ‘transgenderism’ too frequently, but it keeps coming up in the news. I wouldn’t care if Jack wanted to call himself Jill, if the ‘transgendered’ weren’t trying to use the power of the state to force other people to go along with their delusions.

You will not find this story many places, and certainly not in the leftist part of the credentialed media. From the New York Post:

California school suspends 2 children for misgendering classmate

By Hannah Grossman , Fox News | Friday, July 7, 2023 | 3:31 PM EDT | Updated

A California school district suspended two children for five days after a misgendering incident took place, and then subjected them to a training called “restorative justice,” according to an email reviewed by Fox News Digital.

The email was sent by a recently departed principal of Herbert Hoover High School located in the Glendale Unified School District. It was first reported by GUSD Parents Voices.

The former principal, Jennifer Earl, described two students who misgendered a transgender student, and then ran away as the teacher attempted to correct them.

There’s some disagreement here. The Post story states that the students correctly referenced a student’s sex “misgendered a transgender student,” but the local Fox 11 report has the suspended student “misgendering” a teacher.

So, what is “restorative justice” in the Glendale United School District? The district has a handy graph of its system, as shown in a photo in the Post. It has “Control” on one axis, defined as “Pressure Limits (and?) Expectations”, which can only mean that the district believes that, in the case of “restorative justice”, high pressure is acceptable, as long as it is accompanied with high levels of “Support – Encouragement – Nurturing”.

Further down:

GUSD explained to Fox News Digital that they make determinations if a misgendering – generally defined as using the wrong pronouns – is considered bullying based on whether a student’s perceived intent.

“A student has never been punished, much less suspended, for accidentally using the wrong pronoun to refer to a peer or staff member. However, a student could be suspended if the action escalated to harassment or bullying,” a spokesperson said.

Translation: if we assume that the school district’s spokescritter is telling the truth, the district decided that the “action escalated to harassment or bullying”.

Now we get to the district’s definition of a re-education camp “restorative justice”

The district’s website explains restorative justice on its website.

Restorative justice is a re-education of students and gaining control over a situation based on the perceived wrongs they committed.

So, even the district uses the term “re-education”. Got it!

First the person making the restorative justice circle will ask “barrier breaking” questions, such as:

“What is the greatest value that guides your life?”

“What gives you the most security?”

“If you could smash one thing… what would you smash?”

If I could smash one thing, it would be the cockamamie idea that girls can be boys and boys can be girls.

“Describe the ideal family.”

Simple: a mother and father, married to each other, living with and rearing their minor children. Anything else, anything else, is less than ideal. This is the system which successful human societies have had for as far back into the past as we have any real knowledge of human sociological structures.

The district’s website continues, “When there is harm or conflict within the established community, restorative responses help to repair the damage. This is done through processes that bring harmed and harmers together to address root causes of the conflict, support accountability for those responsible, and promote healing for impacted individuals. As a result, community is once again restored bringing back a sense of belonging to all.”

So, “restorative justice” exists when the “harmed and harmers” are brought together, but note the rest: “to address root causes of the conflict, support accountability for those responsible, and promote healing for impacted individuals.” Simply put, “restorative justice” cannot be achieved unless the two students who correctly recognized the ‘transgender’ person’s sex who “misgendered” someone agree that the Special Snowflake™ person they correctly referenced “misgendered” is actually the sex the transgender individual claims to be rather than the sex they actually are, and say that they are oh-so-sorry.

Simply put, the Glendale Unified School District is teaching that transgenderism is real, that a person actually can change his ‘gender,’ and if you decline to go along with that notion, you will be punished.

Remember how we have been told that the government may not establish a religion? Well, the Catholic Church, the majority of Protestant Christian denominations, Judaism, and Islam all agree that transgenderism is not something with which their faiths agree, yet the Glendale Unified School District, apparently as required by law in California, are teaching something major which is against the religious faiths of most Americans.

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.

Dumb as a box of rocks

Were intelligence indicated by a light, there is a good chance that Dylan Mulvaney would be represented by a 15-watt refrigerator bulb. The backlash against Bud Light for using Mr Mulvaney in any form resulted in a customer backlash and boycott that not only hasn’t faded, but seems to be gaining steam three months after the incident. Executives Alissa Heinerscheid and Daniel Blake, initially reported to have taken ‘leaves of absence,’ have reportedly been terminated.

Transgender Influencer Speaks Out After Backlash Against Bud Light

Dylan Mulvaney has faced stalking and personal attacks since featuring Bud Light on her (sic) social media in April, she (sic) said, adding that the beer maker did not contact her (sic) in light of the hostility.

by John Yoon | Thursday, June 29, 2023 | 6:49 PM EDT

A transgender influencer whose social media promotion of Bud Light drew attacks from conservatives and a boycott of the brand spoke directly about the controversy for the first time on Thursday, saying that she (sic) had been bullied and that the beer maker had failed to contact her (sic) in light of the hostility.

Since April, when the influencer, Dylan Mulvaney, featured Bud Light in an Instagram video, she (sic) has faced stalking and personal attacks, she (sic) said in videos she (sic) posted on social media.

“What transpired from that video was more bullying and transphobia than I could have ever imagined,” Ms. (sic) Mulvaney, 26, said. “I’ve been followed, and I have felt a loneliness that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.”

Throughout the controversy, she (sic) continued, Bud Light has not reached out to her (sic). She (sic) was scared to leave her (sic) home while the company failed to stand by her (sic), she (sic) said.

“I was waiting for the brand to reach out to me, but they never did,” she (sic) said. “For a company to hire a trans person and then not publicly stand by them is worse, in my opinion, than not hiring a trans person at all.”

As per our Stylebook, The First Street Journal does not change the direct quotations of others. And while we realize that many professional media organizations specify using the names and pronouns that the ‘transgendered’ claim for themselves, the use of fifteen separate pronouns plus a feminine honorific to refer to Mr Mulvaney, in the subtitle and five short paragraphs, just 191 words of story text plus 34 words of the subtitle, 7.11% of the total words in the story, seems so excessive in normal prose that we believed we needed to note each erroneous usage.

As for Mr Mulvaney’s complaint that no one at Anheuser-Busch BUD: (%) has “reached out” to him, he, and really anyone brighter than the aforementioned 15-watt refrigerator bulb, ought to realize that he’s simply toxic. Who at Anheuser-Busch, unless directly ordered to by CEO Brendan Whitworth — who has been doing his best to isolate himself from the decisions of his minions — would contact Mr Mulvaney in any way, after seeing what happened to Mr Blake and Mrs Heinerscheid? Anything that anyone from the company said to Mr Mulvaney would be reported to the media by him, possibly with a recording. If it was sympathetic to Mr Mulvaney and his plight, such would be used against the company yet again, potentially costing Bud Light even more sales. If it was of the “Get lost and stay lost” variety, it would also be used against the company, to show that they were just [insert plural slang term for the rectum here]. Any contact with Mr Mulvaney is a lose/lose proposition for Anheuser-Busch at this point. And it would be a Career Limiting Move for anyone to do unless so directed by Mr Whitworth.

Calls for a boycott followed, fueled in part by those who had previously attacked the transgender community. One of the most prominent voices included the musician Kid Rock, who posted a video of himself shooting a stack of Bud Light cases.

Bud Light’s sales plummeted. Since then, two of the company’s marketing executives have gone on leave. The company also said in May that it would focus marketing campaigns on sports and music. This month, Bud Light was dethroned as the nation’s top-selling beer. The brand is still struggling to win back customers.

Bud Light has been criticized by some members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community for its tepid response to the backlash.

But the conservative outburst has spread to brand partnerships that other companies have struck with transgender people. Like Bud Light, the retail company Target shifted its marketing because of opposition to the company’s inclusion of L.G.B.T.Q. communities. The country singer Garth Brooks was criticized when he said at a music event that his new bar in Nashville would serve many types of beer, including Bud Light.

Simply put, it doesn’t matter what the #woke think. Not everyone is ‘woke,’ and when a lot of your customers don’t go along with the far-left ideology, leave politics out of your advertising, or those customers will leave dollars out of your pocket.

“Supporting trans people shouldn’t be political,” she (sic) said. “There should be nothing controversial or divisive about working with us.”

Sorry, but regardless of how Mr Mulvaney thinks things should be, ‘transgenderism’ is controversial and divisive. While Hahvahd educated Mrs Heinerscheid wasn’t as bright as that 15-watt bulb, almost everyone else can see that it is.

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!

 

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

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.

Get #woke, go broke: this is what can happen when companies start getting involved in political controversies All too often, it's not just the #woke who go broke

Everybody has heard the expression, ‘Get #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, go broke.’

Some on the left thought that the backlash against Bud Light over the Dylan Mulvaney stunt would fade relatively quickly. In news which might call into question other corporations and their ‘celebration’ of homosexual ‘Pride Month,’ it looks like that hasn’t happened yet. From The Wall Street Journal:

Bud Light Loses Title as Top-Selling U.S. Beer

Modelo Especial in May took over the top sales spot, reflecting the enduring damage from a Bud Light boycott

By Jennifer Maloney | Tuesday, June 13, 2023 | 8:58 PM EDT

Bud Light no longer rules the American beer market.

Modelo Especial overtook the brand as the top-selling U.S. beer in May, punctuating a monthslong boycott of Bud Light that has reshuffled the beer industry.

Modelo represented 8.4% of U.S. retail-store beer sales in the four weeks ended June 3, compared with 7.3% for Bud Light, according to an analysis of Nielsen data by consulting firm Bump Williams.

Bud Light’s sales have tanked since April, when transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney posted an image on Instagram of a personalized Bud Light can that the brand had sent her as a gift. The Instagram post sparked an uproar, and brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev’s BUD: (%) response to the boycott angered even more people.

Bud Light’s sales were down about 24% in the week ended June 3 compared with the same week last year, according to Bump Williams. Other Anheuser-Busch brands also have taken a hit, including Budweiser and Michelob Ultra.

At least as of June 1th, it was “unclear” whether Bud Light’s vice president for marketing Alissa Heinerscheid remains on her ‘leave of absence’ or has returned to work. That was the latest information I could find in a Google search for Alissa Heinerscheid.

One would have thought that other corporate leaders, seeing what happened to Mrs Heinerscheid and her boss, Group Vice President for Marketing at Anheuser-Busch Daniel Blake, who also took a ‘leave of absence,’, reportedly involuntarily, would have tempered the response of other corporate executives to going all-in on ‘Pride Month,’ but some took the leap anyway.

The continued decline through May is an ominous sign for Bud Light distributors during what they say is a make-or-break stretch between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. Most Anheuser-Busch distributors are independently owned, many of them by families who have sold Budweiser for generations. Some Anheuser-Busch distributors said they are now contemplating layoffs. Others who also carry Constellation brands said their losses have been partially offset by Modelo’s surge.

“Our year is screwed,” said an Anheuser-Busch distributor who doesn’t carry Modelo.

In other words, it isn’t just Mr Blake and Mrs Heinerscheid who have suffered[2]I have not seen any public information as to whether Mr Blake or Mrs Heinerscheid are being paid during their involuntary leaves of absence.; many small business owners have lost a lot of business, and some of their employees may lose their jobs.

Since the boycott, Anheuser-Busch has accelerated production of new Bud Light ads, leaning into the themes of football and country music. The brewer also told its distributors that it would buy back unsold cases of beer that have gone past their expiration date.

In other words, ‘leaning into the themes’ that are not controversial or political, which is pretty much what sensible advertisers have been doing since advertising began. Try to get a few new customers, and don’t piss off the ones you already have. One would have thought that the Harvard-educated Mrs Heinerscheid would have already known that, but apparently if one did think that, one would have been wrong.

References

References
1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwk/) 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.

2 I have not seen any public information as to whether Mr Blake or Mrs Heinerscheid are being paid during their involuntary leaves of absence.

There are times when being courteous is harmful to society

Robert E Howard wrote, “Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.” But there are times where courteousness really is a bad thing.

President Joe Biden is both Catholic and a Democrat, and he seems to continually go out of his way to tell us just which of those two is more important to him.

Biden condemns wave of state legislation restricting LGBTQ+ rights, says ‘these are our kids’

The initiatives are designed to protect LGBTQ+ communities from attack, help young people with mental health issues and homelessness, and counter book bans, though the effects may be limited.

by Darlene Superville, Associated Press | Thursday, June 8, 2023 | 4:31 PM EDT

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Thursday condemned a wave of “cruel” and “callous” state laws curbing the rights, visibility and health care access of LGBTQ+ people, especially children, leaving them feeling under attack like never before and the White House with limited options to intervene.

“These are our kids. These are our neighbors. It’s cruel and it’s callous,” Biden said at a White House news conference with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. “It matters a great deal how we treat everyone in this country.”

Biden commented hours after the White House postponed a large Pride Month celebration with thousands of guests Thursday night on the South Lawn because of poor air quality from hazardous air flowing in from Canadian wildfires.

The president noted steps he has taken to help protect the rights of non-heterosexual people, but said “our fight is far, far from over because we have some hysterical and, I would argue, prejudiced people who are engaged in all that you see going on around the country.”

I’m old enough to remember when calling someone “queer” was an insult!

He said what is happening in some states is an “unjustified and ugly” appeal to fear and called on lawmakers to pass legislation, which has been stalled in Congress, that would protect the civil rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer individuals.

“Congress must pass, must pass the Equality Act and send it to my desk,” Biden said of a legislative measure he had named a top priority during his 2020 campaign.

So, to what legislation do the “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer individuals” object? Basically, they fall into three categories:

  1. Legislation banning physical ‘treatments’ of purportedly ‘transgender’ children, requiring that puberty blockers, hormone treatments, and surgical interventions not be allowed on individuals under 18 years of age. We generally do not allow minors to buy cigarettes or alcohol, prohibit them from buying or owning firearms, to consent to sexual intercourse, to consent to medical care, and other things, but the activists seem to believe that children who have not even reached puberty can consent to having puberty delayed or stopped. The activists claim that the state has no business in such intrafamily health care discussions, but the state is very much involved in such, with laws specifying things which constitute child abuse, incestuous relationships, compulsory education, child care arrangements, child neglect, and custody of children in the event of divorce.
  2. Action to restrict the teaching of homosexuality as something good and normal in the public schools, including the restrictions on such material in public school libraries, where compulsory education laws make students, in effect, a captive audience. Such actions do nothing to prohibit such materials in private collections, bookstores, or Amazon.com.
  3. Regulations to prohibit sexually explicit shows in situations where children are present.

Why, I have to ask, would our (purportedly) Catholic President want to take actions against things to protect minors?

Well, the answer is actually pretty simple: the normalization of drag shows and homosexual men lowers the resistance of boys to homosexual ‘curiosity,’ which means that a greater percentage of them might just try to take a walk on the wild side. The left hate that sensible people have called them ‘groomers,’ but that’s exactly what they are doing, and exactly what they are.

Reproduction is a strong, innate drive among humans, and this is how homosexuals reproduce.

The Williams Institute, which has an internal bias which would like to see the percentage of the population who are homosexual as being higher, claims that 3.5% of the population are homosexual or bisexual, and another 0.3% are transgender. The Centers for Disease Control conducted the National Health Institute Survey in 2013, when Barack Hussein Obama was still President, and found that only 1.6% of the population are homosexual, with another 0.7% bisexual, and another 1.1% either stating that they were ‘something else’ or declining to respond.

So, if 9% are ‘identifying’ themselves as sexually abnormal now, either homosexuality/ bisexuality/ transgenderism are communicable diseases, or some form of ‘grooming’ actually works. By making homosexuality more societally acceptable, more otherwise normal people might be enticed to at least try ‘it,’ especially if drugs or alcohol are involved.

Simply put, whatever the activists have been doing appears to be working.

We have reached the point, we have passed the point, at which the conservative belief in being polite, in common courtesy, has allowed abnormality to creep into acceptance, and acceptance has been hurting our children and our society. Being polite has moved things far from the live and let live and what people do in their bedrooms is nobody else’s business to you will accept and celebrate homosexuality, and we will tell you what we do in our bedrooms, and you will like it.

Sorry, but no, and not just no, but Hell no!

The left want to control your thoughts by controlling your language

To the surprise of exactly no one among The Philadelphia Inquirer’s dwindling readership, the Inky has gone all-in on the so-called Pride Month, with three out of five articles in the opinion section relating to homosexual and transgender activism.

Philadelphia Inquirer screen capture, 6-3-23 at 10:00 AM EDT.

At Central Bucks, transphobic slurs are common and adults are unwilling to intervene

Many faculty members refuse to defend LGBTQ students from the words, phrases, slurs, names, and ill-intent that other students throw their way.

by Leo Burchell and Ben Busick, For The Inquirer | Updated Thursday, June 1, 2023 | 11:00 AM EDT

We are two trans students in the Central Bucks School District, which the American Civil Liberties Union has alleged is a “toxic environment” for LGBTQ students. In our time at Central Bucks, both of us have endured homophobic or transphobic bullying from our peers.

This bullying and discrimination has impacted our ability to learn, and Central Bucks does nothing about it.

One of us — Leo — came out as transgender and changed his name at the beginning of his senior year at Central Bucks West last September. He emailed all of his teachers about his pronouns and name. However, throughout the entire school year, one teacher consistently misgendered him, while only occasionally correcting themself.

It is hard to learn in a classroom when your teacher misgenders you to all the students present.

The authors have written this as though “Leo” Burchell is actually male, and the teachers and students must accept her as being male. It’s clear from their first paragraph, in which they stated that “both of us have endured homophobic or transphobic bullying from our peers,” that many of their fellow students have not accepted such as reality.

When entering one of the very few gender-neutral bathrooms for students to use, Leo was called a “tranny” by a student passing by. That gender-neutral bathroom also frequently lacks toilet paper, paper towels, or both. Another student hurled a homophobic slur at Leo as he handed out flyers about a protest before school one morning.

It is a legitimate complaint if the school, which has gone to the effort to establish ‘gender-neutral’ bathrooms, is not servicing them adequately. But that’s about the only legitimate complaint the authors made.

Central Bucks South, for Ben, has unfortunately not been much better. Homophobic and transphobic phrases are commonplace, and often targeted at Ben. They came out as nonbinary in their sophomore year of high school in 2021. Fortunately, many of their teachers have made a real effort to get their pronouns right and use them correctly. Their lovely AP Spanish teacher even taught Ben’s class (with Ben’s permission) about the Spanish word for nonbinary and the gender-neutral pronouns and conjugations of gendered words. She will probably never realize what an impact that simple gesture had.

“They” is, of course, a plural pronoun, making the short sentence, “They came out as nonbinary in their sophomore year of high school in 2021”, grammatically incorrect and jarring to the ears of an English-speaking person.

However, some faculty members do not try to integrate their pronouns into everyday language. These faculty often use strategies like, “I am just going to use your name so I don’t have to get your pronouns wrong,” which seems like an attempt to be inclusive at first glance but is really just a cop-out. Most transgender and nonbinary people would much rather someone make a mistake, correct themselves, and move on. (If someone with good, inclusive intentions makes a mistake, no big deal.)

Some faculty and most students at Central Bucks South, however, do not appear to have good intentions and rarely use Ben’s pronouns correctly. Even worse, many teachers witness students using the incorrect names and pronouns for transgender and nonbinary students — and do nothing about it.

If “some faculty and most students . . . do not appear to have good intentions” in this, as Miss Burchell and Mr Busick wrote, that is a clear indication that those faculty and students do not accept the claim that Miss Burchell is now a guy and Mr Busick is something other than a male. The authors have an absolute right to claim to be what they are, and to say so publicly, but just as their freedom of speech allows them to do that, the freedom of speech of other people allows other people to not only disagree with the authors’ claims, but say so publicly.

Many faculty members refuse to defend their LGBTQ students from the words, phrases, slurs, names, and ill-intent that other students throw their way. As such, we know many LGBTQ students who often dread going to school.

Sticks and stones, we were once told, could break our bones, but names would never hurt us. However, for Miss Burchell and Mr Busick, “words, phrases, slurs, names, and ill intent” do hurt, and they are demanding protection from those words. One wonders: if the homosexual, bisexual, and transgendered are to be protected from “words, phrases, slurs, names, and ill intent” aimed at their sexual orientation and identity, from what other “words, phrases, slurs, names, and ill intent” should other students, normal students, be protected, because “words, phrases, slurs, names, and ill intent” occur all the time in schools, for a myriad of reasons and just general dislike.

Perhaps they could submit a Hurt Feelings Report Form?

This is, to me, serious, because there are all sorts of attempts to legislate, censor, or otherwise ‘do something’ about ‘hate speech,’ and while the OpEd piece I selected is by high school seniors, there are (supposedly) serious adults who want the government to somehow take action against speech the left don’t like. The attempt to regulate and control speech is an attempt to regulate and control thought: if the government can somehow compel people to use language that agrees with the claims of the ‘transgendered,’ it becomes an effort to legitimize transgenderism, to push the thoughts of people who have a perfect right to reject the cockamamie claim that people can change their sex into avenues which accept that claim. Not just no, but Hell no!