Wednesday, October 26, 2016


Donald Trump slams ‘ridiculous’ transgender reforms in attack on ‘politically correct military’

Comments below from "Pink News"

Donald Trump today agreed with a soldier who complained about “social engineering” allowing transgender people to serve in the military.

Five years after lifting the ban on openly gay and lesbian soldiers serving openly in the military, earlier this year the Obama administration made reforms to allow trans people to also serve.

The plan altered decades-old regulations that listed “transgenderism” as a mental illness.

However, today Donald Trump hinted he would roll back the move when asked by a soldier who claimed it had harmed military readiness..

In a Q&A with the right-wing American Warriors PAC chaired by anti-LGBT hate group leader Tony Perkins, Mr Trump was asked whether he would reinstate the ban.

He was asked: “Under this administration the warrior ethos has been under attack and undermined by the forces of political correctness – the military has become an institution for social experiments, and as a result the military has undergone a number of changes with regards to women in combat, transgender rights and other issues.

“None of these PC actions were combat-effective or readiness driven… the opposite is happening. Deployability, readiness and morale are all adversely affected. What will you do about the social engineering that’s been imposed on our military?”

Trump replied: “We’re going to get away from political correctness – we’re going to have to do that.

“You’re right, we have a politically correct military and it’s getting more and more politically correct every day. A lot of the great people in this room don’t understand how it’s possible to do that. That’s through intelligence, not through ignorance.

“Some of the things they’re asking you to do and be politically correct about are ridiculous. I will say, I would leave many of the decisions about the things you mentioned to the generals, the admirals and the people on top.

“We’d get our military people to make recommendations to me and I will follow those recommendations.”

At the same event, Mr Trump was also asked about the case of anti-gay Navy chaplain Lt. Cmdr. Wes Modder – who was reprimanded after homophobic rants in which he told troops that “the penis was meant for the vagina and not for the anus” and God had sent him to “save” homosexuals – and former Air Force Senior Master Sergeant Phillip Monk, who attracted seven homophobia complaints for his actions towards trainees but claims he’s just being targeted because of his religion.

Trump said: “It’s a great question… have we ever had a time like this?

“There has to be a melding of both, we’re living in a time where there has to be a melding of both, but it’s very unfair what they’re doing to religion in this country.”

The Republican had already previously reversed his support for domestic transgender rights, siding with North Carolina over a contentious ‘Bathroom Bill’

Mr Trump was once a moderate within the Republican Party on LGBT issues, suggesting that people shouldn’t be fired because of their sexuality.

But he has reneged since, saying he would “consider” appointing ultra-conservative Supreme Court justices to repeal equal marriage, and confirming he would sign a Republican-backed law to directly permit homophobic discrimination.

On September 23, Trump confirmed he would sign the so-called First Amendment Defence Act, which bans the government from taking any “action against a person, wholly or partially on the basis that such person believes or acts in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is or should be recognised as the union of one man and one woman, or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”

The broadly written law would effectively legalise all discrimination against LGBT people in all sectors – from employment to retail to healthcare – as long as the person discriminating claims it was due to their religion.

The shocking move would require the repeal of Barack Obama’s landmark LGBT discrimination protections, which Trump also confirmed he would axe.

He said in a statement: “Religious liberty is enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

“It is our first liberty and provides the most important protection in that it protects our right of conscience. Activist judges and executive orders issued by Presidents who have no regard for the Constitution have put these protections in jeopardy.

“If I am elected president and Congress passes the First Amendment Defense Act, I will sign it to protect the deeply held religious beliefs of Catholics and the beliefs of Americans of all faiths.”

Mr Perkins, who chaired today’s event, is an extreme anti-LGBT activist who made a number of extremely disturbing claims about LGBT people in the past, insisting that gays will attempt a ‘Christian Holocaust’.

Perkins also compares gays to paedophiles, insisting: “While activists like to claim that paedophilia is a completely distinct orientation from homosexuality, evidence shows a disproportionate overlap between the two. It is a homosexual problem.”

Trump has faced questions about his ties to Perkins in the past.

Earlier this year, when Trump was mocked for misquoting the Bible in a speech, he revealed it had been co-written by Mr Perkins.

SOURCE






UK: Christian bakers lose court appeal in ‘gay cake’ row

Bakery owners who refused to make a ‘gay’ cake have lost a court appeal, after claiming it is a sin to print pro-gay messages.

The owners of Ashers Bakery in Belfast were found guilty of unlawful discrimination based on sexual orientation and political or religious grounds, after the company in Newtownabbey, Northern Ireland refused to bake a cake showing the message ‘Support Gay Marriage’ above an image of Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie.

Despite losing its initial case, the bakery owners took their case to the Belfast Court of Appeal – with financial and legal help from the anti-LGBT Christian Institute.

However, the court today dismissed the appeal from Daniel and Amy McArthur, who claimed in their appeal that God considers it a sin to make cakes with pro-gay messages on.

Their appeal had challenges the grounds for a discrimination case – claiming the alleged discrimination was against the message on the cake, and not the person buying it.

However, in its ruling today, the appeals court upheld the initial verdict against the pair.

Northern Ireland’s Lord Chief Justice Sir Declan Morgan ruled: “The fact that a baker provides a cake for a particular team or portrays witches on a Halloween cake does not indicate any support for either.”

The judgement continues: “Counsel for the appellants [claimed] that a protected characteristic could not be established by a difference in treatment in respect of a message on a cake.

“We do not accept this. The benefit from the message or slogan on the cake could only accrue to gay or bisexual people.

“The appellants would not have objected to a cake carrying the message ‘Support Heterosexual Marriage’ or indeed ‘Support Marriage’.

“We accept that it was the use of the word “Gay” in the context of the message which prevented the order from being fulfilled. The reason that the order was cancelled was that the appellants would not provide a cake with a message supporting a right to marry for those of a particular sexual orientation.

“This was a case of association with the gay and bisexual community and the protected personal characteristic was the sexual orientation of that community. Accordingly this was direct discrimination.”

SOURCE






Canada:  Hijab police uniforms were politically correct publicity stunts; no demand from Muslim officers

Earlier this year I shared with you exclusive documents from the RCMP regarding its rollout of the official uniform hijab, showing that the final product was rushed after all prototypes failed testing.

We also looked into other police departments that have taken similar action, and found that political correctness rather than officer need has been the driving force.

After the Edmonton Police Service unveiled its uniform hijab, the Calgary Police Service, despite having no requests for it and no known female Muslim police officers, wanted to get in on the action itself, setting in motion a process to include hijabs in the uniform for “recruitment” purposes.

In an email to a CPS representative, an Edmonton staff sergeant said that they needed to get their policies “up to 2015, if you know what I mean.”

In fact, as media outlets were looking into police hijabs, a CPS communications staffer said that it was a “great national story to have our voice in!”

Politically correct policing has become the norm in Canada, with some departments focused on progressiveness rather than law and order.

SOURCE






‘Politically correct’ being used as cudgel, but why?

A view from the Left

I get a lot of angry mail. It goes with the turf.

To work as an opinion journalist these days is to be automatically enrolled in the Suck It Up and Move On School of Insult Response. The alternative is to subject your audience to a hand-wringing treatise on the decline of civility, a sort of kindergarten teacher’s plea to the kids to talk nice and don’t bite. You may wheedle a little sympathy, but the point is probably lost on the incorrigible biters.

Only a few critics, I can truthfully say, are so dramatically and sometimes creatively awful that I’ve had to block their messages and try to hypnotize myself into forgetting what they’ve said.

But I’ve got some regular critics who routinely unload both barrels when they don’t like my political opinions. They’re the folks who use “liberal” as a blistering taunt, who see me as marching in conspiratorial lockstep with some broader progressive agenda, and who strongly feel my views should not go unchallenged.

More than any other descriptor, they accuse me, and most of my media brethren, of being politically correct. To their mind, we’re empty-headed toadies paying automatic obeisance to the lefty cause du jour.

“PC” has been around so long that it was actually becoming an hoary old chestnut, until it emerged as the white-hot kernel of resentment at the heart of this interminable death-march political cycle.

So last week, I brought it up myself. I combed through the mailbox, identified some of my most ardent-but-not-unhinged critics, and asked them to tell me: What do you mean when you say “politically correct?” What does “political correctness” mean to you?

I’m glad I asked, because I got a lot of thoughtful, candid answers. And while these are people with strong opinions who aren’t likely to change their views any more than I’m likely to change mine, the conversation we had was an interesting one.

To me, it’s an outdated term, generally lobbed as an all-purpose insult from right to left. And if you break it down, being “PC,” to me, is observing common civilities in the way we treat each other.

But by and large, these writers described a maddening brand of repressive Orwellian Newspeak that silences dissent for fear of giving offense to specific interest groups.

P.C., one gentleman said, is “excessive restrictions on free speech that, directly or indirectly, result in attempts to squash debate or limit open discussion of a topic due to under and misplaced concerns for the feelings of others.”

Another called it the “dogma of the liberal left that someone can challenge only at the risk of being ridiculed and bullied.”

These are folks deeply offended at being called “racist,” “bigot” or “homophobe.” While such hatred certainly exists, they say, they feel they’re often labeled — and dismissed — for expressing their views.

A surprising number of them mentioned that what they view as the “political correctness” movement was a necessary response to the glaring inequalities of previous generations — but they think the movement has spun out much too far and too long.

“PC surfaced as a way to influence civil discourse,” one writer said. “Quite frankly, it was probably long overdue. It became no longer acceptable to refer to or address someone based on their ethnic background, gender, or sexual orientation.”

“Being just plain insensitive is the other extreme of the spectrum,” said another. “We certainly should not offend others.”

The sticky part, of course, is who gets to define what is or is not offensive. Several of these readers said, for instance, that the Black Lives Matter movement ignores and stifles discussion of black-on-black crime, or the cumulative social disadvantages of single parent households. They believe the danger of terrorism is soft-pedaled to avoid offending Muslims. They believe we’re ignoring the social and economic toll of uncontrolled immigration.

We’re not likely to agree on these issues. But I can’t (or shouldn’t) demonize conservatives — I have one in the house, after all.

Does “political correctness” hamper legitimate debate? I don’t think so, but plenty of people do — and they’re not all alt-right pro-Trump diehards.

And I do think it’s too easy to conflate traditional Republican conservatism with the Trumpian excesses of the alt-right. The mean little schadenfreude dance a lot of us are doing over the internecine warfare in the GOP could boomerang back on us one of these days.

A lot of the frustration I heard from these dozen or so writers was not that the “progressives” or “elites” don’t agree with them, but that they feel disrespected and heckled for their disagreement. One man cited the NBA’s decision to move its All-Star game out of North Carolina after legislators there passed a law restricting transgender access to public restrooms.

“I don’t question their right to do it, but it smacks of a certain arrogance, an indication that opposing views simply deserve to be squelched,” he wrote.

Another cited what he views as the hypocrisy of coaches and athletes who want to restrict demeaning “locker room talk,” yet try to cover up bad behavior by star players. And several said that while they don’t think much of Donald Trump as presidential candidate, his lack of appeal for the mainstream press has turned us into inappropriately one-sided cheerleaders for the Clinton campaign.

Most of these folks and I are rarely, if ever, going to be in the same political camps, especially where social matters are concerned. I’m not sure I even really subscribe to the view some of them hold about being stifled or denied a right to free speech. Of course you get free speech — but you get the consequences, too. We all do.

In all honesty, though, I enjoyed reading their sincere assessments. It was surprisingly pleasant to have straightforward conversation with some of my fieriest critics.

SOURCE

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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

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