Thursday, August 27, 2015



Citing 'Discrimination,' Denver City Council Questions Opening of New Chick-fil-A Store at airport

But having Planned Parenthood abortionist services there is OK?

Plans by the restaurant chain Chick-fil-A to open a location at Denver International Airport have run into turbulence. At a meeting last week, members of the Denver City Council questioned whether the chain discriminates against gays and lesbians.

“Denver has been at the forefront of honoring gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees and their families with non-discrimination clauses and partner benefits for many of these decades,” read a statement made by several members of the council.

“These are longstanding values Denver has held. When Denver International Airport proposed a concession with a company that had a history of funding opposition to this recognition, it was important that we as a City Council take a pause to ensure that all the policies are in place with all of the entities involved to ensure there will be no discrimination, and that benefits will be provided equally to all employees and their spouses, regardless of their sexual orientation.”

The first to raise the issue of Chick fil-A’s politics at the meeting was Robin Kniech, the council's first openly gay member. Kniech said he was most worried about a local franchise generating "corporate profits used to fund and fuel discrimination."

The council voted to take two weeks “to look at the policies involved” before deciding on the issue. Several members had questions about Chick-fil-A’s religious values, which include closing stores on Sunday. Others brought up past remarks made by Chick-fil-A's CEO Dan Cathy supporting traditional marriage.

In a statement, Chick-fil-A corporate officials said that their company is "focused on providing everyone great food in an atmosphere of genuine hospitality. We hope to welcome all guests to any of our locations, including a proposed licensed location at the Denver International Airport."

SOURCE






Atheists Warn Football Coaches and Chaplains Not to 'Instill Christianity in Vulnerable Young Men'

An atheist group is demanding that publicly funded universities take immediate steps to bar Christian coaches and chaplains from "converting football fields into mission fields."

"The words of coaches and chaplains make clear that their purpose is to instill Christianity in vulnerable young men," the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) says in a new report, titled "Pray to Play."

"Public universities and their employees cannot endorse, promote, or favor religion," the report states. "Yet, many football coaches at public universities bring in chaplains -- often from their own church or even members of their own family -- to prey on and pray with students, with no regard for the rights of those students or the Constitution.

"These coaches are converting playing fields into mission fields and public universities are doing nothing to halt this breach of trust. They are failing their student athletes."

FFRF says the purpose of its report is to "expose this unconstitutional system, encourage universities to fix it, and stimulate further efforts to protect students’ rights of conscience."

The report quotes various team chaplains to make its point that public universities are bankrolling Christian ministers who mix the roles of "coach, parent and minister, all while promoting their personal religion to athletes."

FFRF says this is a problem, even if team chaplains aren't on the school's payroll:

"No matter how chaplaincies are set up, the chaplains are treated as an official part of the university and team. Chaplains often attend team events, host team chapel services, lead teams in prayers, travel with the team, patrol the sideline, wear team apparel, have special access to coaches and players, help with recruiting, and have athletic department offices."

Moreover, the report says most universities do not have policies regarding chaplains: "They set no limitations, guidelines, or expectations for their coaches or chaplains regarding religious activities. Chaplains who appear to be school employees, are given access as school employees, and act as school employees inflict the same legal liability on schools as any other employee."

FFRF’s report cautions that it is in the "best interest" of public universities to adopt policies that protect student athletes from discrimination and unlawful religious coercion.

In an August 18 letter to the University of Missouri chancellor, FFRF warned of the "legal liability that the University of Missouri exposes itself to by allowing its chaplaincy to continue," adding, "it is not a matter of if but when an issue will arise from this entanglement."

To prevent lawsuits, FFRF recommends that public universities adopt a "model policy" in which a "character coach" or a "player development coach" replaces the chaplain in instilling secular values such as respect, perseverance, humility, sportsmanship, and teamwork.

FFRF said any character development coach would be "explicitly prohibited from promoting a particular religious viewpoint, pressuring student-athletes to choose religion over non-religion, or directly or indirectly coercing student-athletes to participate in any type of religious activity."

Qualified candidates should have training in psychology, psychiatry, sports psychology, secular therapy, or a substantially equivalent field. FFRF insists that mere "divinity or religious counseling experience" does not qualify a person to hold the character development position.

SOURCE






Women more ‘flexible’ than men on sexual leaning

Sexuality is hardwired, social commentators insist, with ­people exercising little choice over their sexual leanings, yet new ­research suggests women let circumstances dictate which way they swing.

A 15-year study of almost 10,000 Americans has uncovered differences in the sexual identities of the genders, with men firmly in one camp or the other, but women happier to switch. The study, unveiled at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association in Chicago, found that women were three times more likely than men to change their sexual identities during their 20s. And while attractive women grav­itated to heterosexuality, looks made little difference to men’s sexuality.

Author Elizabeth McClintock said “contextual and experiential factors” shaped women’s sexual identities. “Women have a greater probability than men of being attracted to both ­(genders), which gives them greater flexibility in partner choice,” she said.

The study crunched data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, tracking about 5000 women and 4200 men from their mid-teens to their late 20s. It is not the first to report women’s higher propensity towards bisexuality, with previous studies finding more than one in five ­females acknowledged same-sex attraction.

A 2011 US study found 60 per cent of heterosexual women were sexually attracted to other females, and that women’s bisexual tendencies increased as they aged. Evolutionists have suggested that women’s sexual fluidity benefits their offspring by increasing the pool of potential co-parents, and helps them bond with their fellow wives in poly­gamous marriages. Other theorists suggest “hetero-flexibility” has no evolutionary function.

Dr McClintock, a sociologist with the Catholic-run University of Notre Dame, said it was an ­underpinning characteristic.

Her research found that more educated women, and those rated more attractive, were more likely to identify as “100 per cent heterosexual”, but women who had children by their early 20s were less cut and dried. This suggested that promising options in the “heterosexual partner market” encouraged women to ­assume a “hetero-conformist identity”, she said. “Women who are initially successful in partnering with men may never ­explore their attraction to other women. However, (those) with the same sexual attractions but less favourable heterosexual ­options might have greater ­opportunity to experiment.”

The study found that more educated men, unlike women, were less likely to identify as completely heterosexual.

SOURCE




Australia: Homosexual propaganda  should be kept out of schools

Burwood Girls High School sent a flyer to parents last week saying all students would attend a special screening of the documentary Gayby Baby this week

BURWOOD Girls High principal Mia Kumar has failed the parents of her pupils by embracing political propagandists who have seized her school’s agenda. And Education Minister Adrian Piccoli has failed the people of NSW with his lily-livered approach to a serial offender.

Last Saturday, Miss Kumar, who, with her deputy, Karyn O’Brien, would not speak to The Daily Telegraph, not only cancelled two school periods to facilitate the screening of an overtly political documentary on homosexual parenting to all students this Friday but urged all pupils to wear purple in support of LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer).

The planned school screening of the PG-documentary Gayby Baby and the purple dress code are in clear breach of NSW Education Department guidelines as they advance the interests of a particular political group, don’t serve a curriculum objective and fail to take into account the ages of all of the students.

Instead of suspending or reprimanding Ms Kumar yesterday, Mr Piccoli told The Daily Telegraph he had “spoken to the secretary of my department and reminded her that the government expects schools to remain apolitical places and that schools must comply with all departmental policies.”

If this is the best he can do in the face of a deliberate flouting of the rules by a principal who has institutionalised a political campaign in her school’s agenda, he should be sacked.

Documentary director Maya Newell, an old girl of Burwood Girls High is a “gayby” in as much as she says she has lesbian “mums”.

Ms Kumar should tell her that she actually has only one biological mum and any other mother is adoptive.

After numerous complaints, the school belatedly told parents that their daughters may opt-out of the screening but “purple tops, pants, jackets, scarfs, shoes, jewellery and/or hair colour” was still rig of the day and the school will give a prize to the “most purple” student.

The Right Rev Mark Powell, who until July was the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in NSW and the ACT, was contacted by a number of parents concerned that their daughters would be ostracised within the school community and subjected to bullying and discrimination from fellow students and some teachers if they refused to go along with the directives from Ms Kumar and Ms O’Brien

A review highlighted on the Gayby Baby website describes it as an “intrinsically political” documentary and says children of “queer” parents are being used to counter opponents of so-called marriage equality.

In the trailer, one prepubescent boy is shown applying lipstick as he says: “I don’t really know when you’re manly.” He is later shown bare-chested and pumping his fist in the mardi gras parade.

Twelve-year-old Ebony is quoted saying: “ ‘It’s not normal. You’re not normal.’ They’re the kind of things that go through my head.”

Well, Ebony, normality is the state of being usual, typical, or expected according to the Oxford Dictionary and according to the 2011 Census, there were only around 33,700 same-sex couples in Australia, with 17,600 male same-sex couples and 16,100 female same-sex couples. Same-sex couples represented about 1 per cent of all couples in Australia — which would indicate they do not meet the definition “normal”.

Children in same-sex couple families are one in a thousand of all children in couple families (0.1 per cent). Statistically, you are not in a “normal” family, no matter how many LGBTIQ-friendly docos you may be forced to watch by politically-driven school principals.

The drive to create the fantasy that homosexual families are the norm has come from the politically left-leaning Teachers Federation which is also pushing the Safe Schools Coalition, another political front group, which claims that anyone not involved in promoting safety for the “same-sex attracted, intersex and gender diverse young people, staff, families and communities” are bigots.

Mr Piccoli has permitted Ms Kumar to install this agenda into her curriculum. A government intent on ensuring an apolitical school system would get rid of them both.

SOURCE

*************************

Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here

***************************


No comments: