Friday, December 13, 2019



Utah Republican Chris Stewart's 'Fairness for All' bill tries to balance LGBT rights and religious liberty.  But neither side of politics is happy with it

Opposition from the ACLU is here and Ryan T. Anderson gives below a conservative view. The bill imposes a new sexual orthodoxy that must not be questioned

The "Fairness for All" legislation would treat reasonable disagreement as if it were discrimination, impose sexual and gender ideology, and penalize those who dissent.

Working to find legislative compromise can be a good thing. But not every bill that calls itself a compromise is a good compromise.

And that, sadly, is the case with the so-called “Fairness for All” legislation introduced Friday.

Over the past several years I’ve been in dialogue with the main scholars and civic leaders promoting and drafting this legislation (including participating in a conference on it at Yale Law School in 2017 and authoring a chapter on the approach—and suggesting a better approach—in a Cambridge University Press book published this year). I have reviewed the 69-page legislative draft over the past several weeks.

Despite the undoubted good will of those who drafted and introduced the legislation, and despite some meaningful though insufficient protections for religious liberty, the bill is not in fact fair for all. Its protections for religious liberty come at the high cost of enshrining a misguided sexual and gender ideology into federal law. This will allow the federal government to use our civil rights laws as a sword to punish citizens who dissent from the reigning sexual orthodoxy. This is certain to create significant harm to the common good, especially for the privacy, safety, and equality of women and girls.

The high costs of the Fairness for All compromise shouldn’t be surprising, because the compromise the bill sought was misframed from the beginning.

In a letter to fellow lawmakers asking them to co-sponsor the bill, Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, the lead sponsor, revealed why the compromise is flawed.

Stewart writes that his bill is meant to be “a balanced legislative solution for preserving religious freedom and protecting LGBT civil rights.” But these aren’t the only two values at stake in this legislative area, so a compromise that is framed only between these two values is certain to leave out important considerations.

Unsurprisingly, the bill introduced Friday does just that.

Stewart argues that his bill will deliver “greater freedom for everyone by creating robust protections for religious individuals and organizations and comprehensively amending the Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity.”

But elevating “sexual orientation and gender identity” to a protected class in the Civil Rights Act will cause serious harms. What Stewart fails to acknowledge, and what his bill fails to wrestle with, are the harms it would cause to people’s privacy, safety, equality, and other forms of liberty—not just for religious people, but for anyone who disagrees with contemporary sexual and gender ideology.

A bill that was truly fair for all would not allow the government to use civil rights law as a sword to punish citizens for disagreement on sexual ideology.

A bill that was truly fair would explicitly say that no institution could be forced by the government to allow boys who identify as girls to compete against girls in athletics; that no institution could be forced by the government to allow men who identify as women into women-only spaces, such as locker rooms and shelters; that no institution could be penalized because it lives out its creed that marriage unites a husband and wife.

A bill that was truly fair for all would explicitly say that no physician would have to engage in any “gender-affirming” care that they thought unethical, and that no child could be denied assistance to help them identify with their bodies.

And yet, to take just one example, Fairness for All says that an “entity unlawfully discriminates against a child by” treating a child “inconsistently with the child’s gender identity,” and by providing the child with “any practice or treatment that seeks to change the child’s … gender identity.”

So children must be affirmed in their gender confusion, and adults may not attempt to help them—all in the name of fairness. The bill limits these provisions to foster children and others in custody of the state.

But if this is what “fairness” requires for those children, why not for all children?

These outcomes are unsurprising given that the goal was to protect only religious liberty, not advance the totality of the common good.

Real fairness for all would protect people who identify as LGBT from truly unjust discrimination while explicitly stating that acting on the conviction that we are created male and female, and that male and female are created for each other, isn’t discriminatory. And so it would also protect people who hold those convictions and their freedom to act on them in the public square.

Not only does Fairness for All misframe the policy arena as one between “LGBT rights” and “religious liberty,” but it fails to precisely target the needs of LGBT-identifying people that require a policy solution.

In a press release supporting Fairness for All, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints argued that “No American should lose their home or job simply for being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.” That’s true. But the Fairness for All legislation goes well beyond cases where people are fired or evicted simply for identifying as LGBT.

Fairness for All takes the existing Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was passed by Congress to, among other things, combat racism, and expands its reach while adding “sexual orientation and gender identity” as protected classes. The bill never defines what constitutes discrimination against such classes. So it takes a law meant to combat racism, broadens its reach, and fails to define a key term.

But properly defining unjust discrimination and targeting legislation at those actions is essential. Part of the problem with Fairness for All is that it leaves it entirely at the whim of hostile bureaucrats and judges to declare that commonsense actions may count as discrimination.

What exactly would the proposed ban on “discrimination” on the basis of “gender identity” entail? Can the bill’s drafters and sponsors tell us what elevating gender identity to a protected class in civil rights law will mean long term? Can they even tell us what it would legally require today?

It is irresponsible to rewrite our civil rights laws to make “gender identity” a protected class when we can’t even define what gender identity is, or how many there are.

According to the most up-to-date gender theory, gender identity exists along a spectrum and can be fluid. Possible gender identities include “boy/girl,” “gender-hybrid,” and “gender ambidextrous.”

How is it fair for all to pass a law saying it’s illegal to discriminate on the basis of these gender identities without even defining what constitutes discrimination? This is legislative malpractice and will lead to endless, costly litigation.

Activists currently claim that combating gender identity discrimination requires new bathroom, athletic, pronoun, and health care policies mandating “gender affirmation” care. But when you consider the fact that most Americans hadn’t even heard the phrase “gender identity” five years ago, it seems premature to suggest that elevating it to a protected class status is what “fairness for all” requires.

Now is not the time to rush to conclusions, but to think critically and prudently.

In the midst of the redefinitions of marriage, sex, and gender, all Americans—wherever they fall on the political spectrum and whether they are religious, secular, or agnostic—should join the effort to find ways to coexist peacefully.

Fairness for All would not achieve this goal. Instead, it would treat reasonable disagreement as if it were discrimination, impose sexual and gender ideology, and penalize those who dissent. But that doesn’t mean we need to succumb to an endless culture war.

While Fairness for All is an unsuccessful legislative compromise, we should still work to develop good legislation. A better approach would carefully consider the needs of people who identify as LGBT that require a policy response, and then target legislation at those needs.

Such legislation would specifically define what constitutes unlawful behavior, while explicitly protecting everyone’s freedom to engage in legitimate actions based on the conviction that we are created male and female, and that male and female are created for each other.

Such legislation must protect the privacy and safety of women and girls, the conscience rights of doctors and other medical professionals, parental rights, and the free speech and religious liberty rights of countless professionals.

This would leave all Americans free to act on those convictions. It would also protect diversity and promote tolerance. It would promote true fairness for all.

SOURCE  






Feminism's collateral damage is the breakdown of society

by Suzanne Venker

I'm convinced Tucker Carlson is the only television host who understands the fallout of feminism and is willing to discuss it on national TV. During a recent interview with me on his program, Carlson noted the following: “I don't think anything has changed our society more for the worse” than feminism.

Indeed, nothing has.

When I said something similar in 2011, I was called out by NPR's Meghna Chakrabarti in an interview about my book, The Flipside of Feminism. In it, I wrote that feminism is the "single worst thing to happen to women," that it didn't liberate them at all.

On the contrary, feminism has made women's lives (and by extension, men's and children's lives) immeasurably worse. According to a 2009 paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, “As women have gained more freedom, more education, and more power, they have become less happy."

When this study was released, countless articles and news reports inquired about the irony of it all. How is it possible that women can be less happy after having been "liberated"?

In fact, it isn't surprising at all when you consider that women have been lied to for decades about what constitutes a happy life. Academic and elite feminists, who reside in our universities, in the media, in politics, and in Hollywood, have told women all kinds of things that just aren't true. Things that make women (and by extension, men and children) very unhappy.

Such as the idea that women don't need a man and that children don't need fathers: "Women are realizing more and more that you don't have to settle, they don't have to fiddle with a man to have that child," noted Jennifer Aniston in this 2010 interview about an upcoming film.

Or that men and women must make the same life choices with respect to work and family to be deemed "equal": “An equal world will be one where women run half our countries and companies and men run half our homes. We will not rest until we reach that goal,” said Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg in 2018.

Or that staying home to raise a family is less important, valuable, or satisfying than earning a living: "These women who act like staying at home, leeching off their husbands or boyfriends, and just cashing the checks is some sort of feminism because they're choosing to live that life. That's bullshit." now-Sen. Kyrsten Sinema said in 2006.

Or that there's no such thing as the biological clock: "Be cautious about metaphors like the 'biological clock'— don’t take them literally," writes Catherine Aponte Psy.D. at Psychology Today.

These are all lies. Unfortunately, women listened, and men followed. What choice did they have? And now here's what we have to show for it:

* The complete breakdown of marriage. Over the past 30 years, America has witnessed a meteoric rise in cohabitation, creating a bona fide "shack up" culture. Many women can't find "economically attractive" husbands with whom to settle down and start a family. And father-absent homes are rampant because of unilateral divorce initiated largely by women (around 70%) for no other reason that she isn't "happy."

* A persistent and relentless gender war. With gender roles thoroughly dismantled, men and women no longer know who's supposed to do what. They have no idea how the other sex thinks and behaves or even wants, and as a result, are locked in a battle about who works harder than whom. Moreover, sexual activity among unmarried men and women has become a minefield, as evidenced by the excesses of #MeToo and the so-called campus rape culture.

* An explosion of kids who are in full-time day care and who are home alone after school, resulting in an epidemic of childhood obesity, and of lonely, disconnected kids who have ample opportunity to get into all kinds of trouble, including devising ways to shoot up their schools.

* A full-scale war on men. The utterly absurd notion that male nature is toxic or even diseased, resulting in a made-up concept known as "mascupathy," has become the status quo. Ergo, half the U.S. population is now disenfranchised.

How dare Carlson say nothing has changed our society more for the worse than feminism! Where did he get such a crazy idea?

SOURCE 





Who is doing the child rapes in America?

Ann Coulter

With the impeachment nonsense making TV news unwatchable, I’ve been catching up on “Law & Order SVU” recently.

The scripts involve the sort of real-life crimes that are a lot more common since our country has become “diverse,” such as child rape and incest. But the child-rapists are never diverse, as they are in real life. No, the perps are always blond, blue-eyed American men.

In fact, the modern American white male is the least rapey, most gentle, protective, chivalrous creature God has ever created. Get ready for a gigantic I TOLD YOU SO when American women realize that, from 1620 to the day Ted Kennedy’s 1965 immigration act kicked in, they never had it so good.

I wouldn’t mention it, except for “Law & Order SVU.” It would be as if the writers portrayed New York City as a sleepy little burg and Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, as a fast-paced metropolis, jam-packed with skyscrapers.

In one episode titled “Zero Tolerance,” a white American male sells illegal alien girls to other white American men in a sex trafficking scheme that was somehow enabled by Trump ... SEPARATING CHILDREN FROM THEIR PARENTS AT THE BORDER!!!

(The theory of causation is a little vague, but it was definitely Trump’s fault.)

Also, according to “Law & Order SVU,” the main demographic with a sexual fetish for pre-pubescent Hispanic girls is: handsome, married American white men.

Thus, the john having sex with a 9-year-old illegal alien in this episode was a white businessman, married with two sons, who was in New York specifically to have sex with underage girls.

You have to admire television writers who have taken a vow to never leave their homes, have any human contact or read.

Reviewing my years of research on child sex crimes, I see that this has happened NEVER. It’s kind of the opposite. I ended up with so many immigrant child rape cases for “Adios, America!” that most of them had to be left on the cutting room floor -- or the book would have been twice as long.

Since 2013, an average of 34 illegal aliens have been charged in North Carolina with 151 counts of raping or sexually assaulting a child per month -- and that’s based on police data from less than a third of the counties in a single state.

Shocking child sex crimes that you’d expect to happen about once a century now come at a clip of “every few years.” Within a five-year timespan, for example, the same California judge presided over these two cases:

-- Guatemalan Willy Alejandro Jimenez grabbed a 4-year-old girl in a Palo Alto parking lot, raped her, beat her unconscious, then threw her naked body from a moving car.

-- Fifty-year-old immigrant Paul Narvios repeatedly raped his girlfriend’s 9-year-old daughter, getting her pregnant and making her one of only four girls under the age of 10 to give birth in the United States.

Since 1990, the media have reported on 53 specific girls aged 10 or younger who have given birth in Latin America. In the United States, with a population about 70 percent the size of the nine countries where those births occurred, there were four reported births to girls that young.

Three were to immigrants.

Two were fathered by Hispanic immigrants, one by a Haitian illegal immigrant and one by an American. But for William Edward Ronca, there would not be a single confirmed case of a white man in the Western Hemisphere impregnating a girl 10 years old or younger.

A report from the Inter-American Children’s Institute explained that Latin America is second only to Asia in the sexual exploitation of women and children because sex abuse is “ingrained into the minds of the people.” Women and children are “seen as objects instead of human beings with rights and freedoms.”

If the “Law & Order SVU” writers are worried that Trump is preventing these child-rape-happy cultures from coming to our country, I’ve got good news!

Just two months ago, at an illegal immigrant flophouse in Immokalee, Florida, a teenaged girl got up to use to the bathroom in the middle of the night and caught an adult man in the act of raping a toddler, with blood running down both their legs.

Although the victim’s age was redacted from the police report, the child was wearing a blood-soaked diaper when she arrived at the hospital. The infant was injured so badly that she’s been in the hospital since the attack, undergoing multiple reconstructive surgeries -- with more to come.

We know the child’s rapist was an illegal alien -- there was no one else in the trailer. At the moment, it appears that the primary suspect is her “father,” Hector Gabriel-Jimenez, 23, who has been arrested for child neglect.

He entered the country illegally back in February, was apprehended by border police and sent on his merry way -- by a president who launched his campaign talking about Mexican rapists.

But Mariska Hargitay (“Detective Olivia Benson”) blames Trump for his imaginary act of enforcing the border, not for what he’s actually done, which is allow the ACLU to fling our border open to child kidnappers and child molesters.

Promoting the idiotic episode, Hargitay tweeted: "The situation at the border has been unconscionable and cruel. As we speak there are still countless children who are separated from their families because of our government's actions. We can do better. We must do better."

In fact, Trump has been doing exactly what the geniuses of “Law & Order” want! And unlike the show’s incomprehensible chain of causation, our actual border policy -- which the “Law & Order” writers and Trump agree on! -- led directly to a diapered baby being taken away from her mother and brutally raped.

As the father explained to the police: The reason he took the toddler away from her mother in Guatemala was so that "he would be allowed to stay in the U.S.A. and not have any problems with immigration for entering the U.S.A. illegally."

Incest and child rape are not native American habits. Nor is child rape common in Spain. This isn’t genetic. Bestial behavior toward women and children is a hallmark of primitive, peasant cultures -- the cultures we are importing by the million.

The hallmark of civilized cultures is to arrest and imprison child rapists. But the brain-dead writers of “Law & Order SVU” invent little stories to demoralize the defenders of civilization, so we can let the incest and child rape flow!

SOURCE 






Australia: Trannies trump feminists

As Rodney King memorably asked: "Can't we all just get along?"

A feminist group has been banned from using free office facilities normally available to community organisations because Independent MP Andrew Wilkie said it holds 'trans-exlusionary' views.

Andrew Wilkie has banned Women Speak Tasmania from using taxpayer-funded photocopying facilities in Hobart.

The federal member for Clark said his sensitivity about the issue has been heightened because his ex-wife was transitioning to identify as a man.

Women Speak Tasmania (WST) had campaigned against the idea that men can become entitled to the same legal treatment and services by identifying as female.

Mr Wilkie told The Weekend Australian he found the group was 'discriminatory' and 'exclusionary' and decided to ban them from the office facilities as a result. 'They were using it but when I learned of their discriminatory views I then stopped them using it,' Mr Wilkie said.

'One of the explicit conditions of use of the photocopier is that it shouldn't be for any material that is exclusionary. They discriminate against transgender women; men who have become women.'

He said now that his ex-wife Kate has become Charlie, he now has an appreciation of transgender issues and was sensitive to discrimination against transgender people.

WST was disappointed by the ban and accused the federal MP of discriminating against them.

They are furious Mr Wilkie is letting a 'radical trans group' continue to use the facilities despite their discrimination on female-only services.

WST spokeswoman Isla MacGregor slammed the MP and said it was a 'direct attack' on women's sex-based rights. 'Australia is in the grip of a psychosis whipped up the by gender lobby that (says) "trans women are women and anybody who opposes that is a hate group",' she said.

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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