Sunday, December 16, 2018



‘Christmas miracle’: Mall overturns nativity set ban after Christians protest with living nativity

A shopping mall in Scotland has overturned its ban on displaying a Christmas nativity scene after Christians protested the decision by staging a living nativity, right within the mall.

Thistles Centre in Stirling released a statement today saying that they had changed their minds and would allow a representative from the Legion of Mary to set up a nativity scene as part of their Christmas decor. 

“We’ve listened carefully to everyone who contacted us about the installation and have decided to reverse our original decision," it said.

"We have offered Mrs Patterson the opportunity to host a nativity scene at the centre this Sunday in line with her original request and we are delighted that she has accepted,” it continued.

Thistles Centre’s decision not to permit the display on the grounds that it “prides itself on being religiously and politically neutral” made national headlines and was covered on LifeSiteNews.

Both the Catholic Archdiocese of St. Andrews and Edinburgh and the Church of Scotland had voiced disappointment at the mall’s “Grinch-like” decision.

On Monday, Scottish Catholics John Mallon and Elena Feick protested actively by visiting the mall dressed as St. Joseph and the Blessed Virgin Mary. Mallon chatted with shoppers and discussed the “crib controversy” with them. A video of the dynamic duo “looking for a place at the inn” has been viewed thousands of times on social media.

John Mallon is delighted by Thistles’ change of heart. “It’s a Christmas miracle,” he told LifeSiteNews via social media. “What great news! The real reason for the season!”

Mallon has a message for Scottish readers, too. “If you are shopping in Thistles Shopping centre this Advent, why not pay a visit to the Crib and share your picture with us to spread the peace and joy of the Christmas season to all, “ he suggested.

Mallon is an administrator of Glasgow’s Holy Family Roman Catholic Church Facebook page.

The Scotsman has reported that the Archdiocese of St. Andrews & Edinburgh has likewise expressed great satisfaction that Thistles Centre has responded with “generosity and inclusivity” to Christians.

“The management of the Thistles Centre, along with owners Standard Life Investments, are to be commended and congratulated for listening to the general public and responding with such generosity and inclusivity, recognising that contemporary Scotland should be a place that both respects and upholds religious liberty in the public square,” an archdiocesan spokesman said.

“We wish the management, staff and shoppers at Thistles a very happy and very peaceful Christmas indeed.”

SOURCE







'I believe I'm proof no man can truly become a woman'

It's a hugely controversial statement, but Leanne, who's never really found happiness after a sex-change operation 23 years ago, wants to warn others that surgery isn't always the answer

On the phone, Leanne Mills’s voice is gentle and could never be mistaken for a man’s. When she opens the front door of her neat house in a quiet English village, I am greeted by a trim blonde with feminine hands and a perfect complexion.

Yet a few minutes later, as she serves coffee in her sitting room, Leanne says with feeling: ‘I can never be a woman. I was born male and it has taken me years to accept the truth that I am biologically still a man, whatever female hormones I swallow and whatever bits have been cut off me.

‘Today it’s trendy to be trans, especially among the young. I want to warn them that a man can never become a real woman, or vice versa. They are being oversold an impossible dream. They are being tricked.’

Leanne speaks with emotion. She is a transsexual who, at 34, had sex reassignment surgery — as it was then called — on the NHS at a clinic in Hove, East Sussex, after years of dressing sometimes as a man and sometimes as a woman. She is now 57 and says that, since then, she has lived in a twilight world where — despite being bright and having passed the 11-plus — she has had only a string of dead-end jobs, has never found the love she craves, and remains to this day (as male or female) a virgin.

Although she says she doesn’t regret having had surgery herself — what else, she reasons, could she have done? — she advises others not to rush into it.

Born a boy and called Lee Antony, she began to feel she was in the wrong body at the age of four, when she tried on a Native American woman’s costume at a children’s dressing up party because ‘it made me feel like one of the girls’. At seven, she was being bullied at her all-boys primary school because she appeared so feminine and loathed football and playground rough-and-tumble.

By her early teens, she was secretly rooting through the wardrobe of her mother, Mavis, trying on her clothes.

‘I hated my male self and couldn’t even look at my body naked in the mirror,’ she says. ‘Dressing as a woman made me feel happy.’

By her 17th birthday in January 1978, her ‘girly feelings’ were overwhelming. It was a day she will never forget. She blurted out to her astonished parents that she didn’t want to be a boy any more.

At the family’s dormer bungalow in Nottinghamshire, first came the tears, then profound shock.

Her father Geoff, a police officer and former traffic warden, put his arm around his then teenage son and said: ‘Oh Lee, all the doctors can do for you is cut it off.’

Today, of course, these sound like harsh words. But Leanne says: ‘I realise now my father was right. He knew, as I do, that I could never become a biological girl. I am only a facsimile of a woman.’

Leanne — then still Lee, of course — buried her head in those delicate hands and wept at her father’s pronouncement. The teenager had learnt about transsexualism — a term coined only a decade or two before — from a Seventies book by a U.S. psychiatrist that was on her parents’ shelves. It was called Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid To Ask) and contained a short reference to transsexuals.

To the horror of her distraught parents, Leanne then threatened to commit suicide if she couldn’t become a girl. Her determination to change sex marked the start of a rift with her parents that lasted, on and off, until they died.

‘I have seen my family torn asunder, friends turning away and my hopes of ever finding love dashed,’ she says. ‘I have been denied children and, therefore, grandchildren — the important relationships that other women enjoy at my time of life.

‘I want to warn others of the reality of being a transsexual, and the tragedies it can bring.’

She was out shopping recently when she saw a man who used to be a pupil at the same school as her when she was still Lee. The old schoolmate was standing in front of Leanne, who said: ‘Hello, don’t you recognise me? It’s Lee.’

She explained she had transitioned and was now a woman. His response was to shake her hand, after which he turned on his heel and walked off.

No wonder Leanne says her life now is lonely. When I visited, she’d not had a caller at home for five weeks. So it is little surprise that she warns others who feel they were born in the wrong body not to make hasty decisions, especially when young.

‘The propagandists tell them it’s a bed of roses and they will be accepted by society. They think they’ll find the right partner, that it will all be wonderful.’ She shakes her head sadly. ‘

SOURCE






A Democrat Christmas








Australian Federal Government vows to keep gender on birth certificates

The Morrison Government has vowed gender will remain on birth certificates as it plans to override states that wish to make it optional.

The Morrison Government is planning to override state laws to prevent a person’s gender from being stripped from their birth certificate.

Assistant Treasurer Stuart Robert said the “identity wars” now posed serious risks to planning for hospitals and schools, and would destroy the function of the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

“This identity war now poses some pretty serious risks. I can’t allow states to do it (remove gender),” he told The Daily Telegraph.

“This data is essential for sensible planning across Australia. Governments at all levels use it for planning including where hospitals and schools go. It’s used by housing developers.

“It will make planning exceptionally difficult for the Department of Health which has to make decisions about where obstetrics wards go and fertility services.

“We provide cervical cancer vaccines for free. How will we know how many to order? “Cervical cancer doesn’t care about how you identify, it cares about whether you have a cervix.”

The decision follows landmark reforms in Tasmania which could make it a crime not to call a person by their preferred gender pronoun.

The proposed law would also give parents in Tasmania the authority to decide whether their child’s gender is recorded on birth certificates, and allow people aged 16 or over to legally change their gender.

Last week, the Western Australia Government abandoned its plans to remove a baby’s gender from birth certificates.

Under growing pressure from church groups and with questions about how proposed changes would affect West Australians applying for documents such as passports, the government confirmed earlier this month it would not take gender off birth certificates.

It had been considering the idea as part of a raft of changes around gender reassignment laws.

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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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