Censorship of this blog by Google

They don't restrict access to this blog as a whole but they do remove posts that they disapprove of. Posts here of 7th and 10th have disappeared.

They are generally well behind the date of posting when they delete so regular readers here will already have seen the posts before they disappear. So it is not a huge burden.

Additionally, the backups are all available so you can see there what Google has disapproved of. The backups for this month are here so you can just go down to the posts of 7th and 10th to defeat the censorship.

It is not at all clear to me exactly what they did not like but as long as the posts are still available to anyone who wants to read them it is no big deal

The post of 10th headlined well-known scriptures about homosexuality and the post of 7th headlined Biden's misleading unemployment statistics

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Homosexuals are less healthy

Methods

This serial cross-sectional study used 2013 through 2018 NHIS data. Adult participants were classified as lesbian or gay, bisexual, or heterosexual based on responses to a sexual orientation question. This study focused on 3 health status outcomes (self-reported health status, functional limitation, and severe psychological distress) and 3 health care access outcomes (usual source of care, health care utilization, and health care affordability).

Multivariable logistic regression models were used to compute annual outcome rates adjusted for age and region among heterosexual and gay male survey participants and heterosexual female and lesbian participants, and to compare changes within and between sexual orientation subgroups during the study period. Given the small sample size of bisexual adults, another set of models with pooled 2016 to 2018 data was constructed to compare outcomes between heterosexual, gay, and bisexual male participants and between heterosexual, lesbian, and bisexual female participants. The first set of models adjusted for demographic characteristics, and fully adjusted models included comorbidities and substance use. Additional details are provided in eMethods 1 and the eTable in Supplement 1.

This study followed the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) reporting guidelines and did not require approval from an institutional review board because it used only deidentified publicly available data. Details on study limitations are provided in eMethods 2 in Supplement 1.

Results

The study sample consisted of 183 020 adult participants, of whom 177 100 (93.8%) were classified as heterosexual, 3176 (1.6%) as lesbian or gay, and 1744 (0.9%) as bisexual. Between 2013 and 2018, significant annual reductions in poor or fair health status were observed among heterosexual male participants (−0.21%, 95% CI, −0.40 to −0.03), but not among gay male participants (Table 1). Significant annual reductions in forgoing or delaying medical care due to cost were observed among heterosexual female participants (−0.48%; 95% CI, −0.69 to −0.28), but not among lesbian female participants. Gaps in all measures of health status and health care access between heterosexual and gay male participants and between heterosexual and lesbian female participants did not change significantly during the study period.

During the 2016 to 2018 period, compared with heterosexual male participants, gay male participants had higher odds of poor or fair health status (odds ratio [OR], 1.39; 95% CI, 1.06-1.80), severe psychological distress (OR, 2.30; 95% CI, 1.55-3.40), and forgoing or delaying medical care due to cost (OR, 1.37; 95% CI, 1.07-1.74), and lower odds of lacking a usual source of care (OR, 0.66; 95% CI, 0.50-0.86) and not seeing a health care professional during the past year (OR, 0.44; 95% CI, 0.32-0.60) (Table 2). Similar patterns were observed among bisexual male participants, although there was no significant difference in lacking a usual source of care. Compared with heterosexual female participants, lesbian female participants had higher odds of any functional limitation (OR, 1.34; 95% CI, 1.06-1.70), lacking a usual source of care (OR, 1.51; 95% CI, 1.10-2.07), not seeing a health care professional during the past year (OR, 1.46; 95% CI, 1.07-1.98), and forgoing or delaying medical care due to cost (OR, 1.36; 95% CI, 1.05-1.75). Similar patterns in addition to higher odds of poor or fair health status (OR, 1.67; 95% CI, 1.18-2.34) and severe psychological distress (OR, 2.37; 95% CI, 1.71-3.27) were observed among bisexual female participants.

Discussion

The findings of this nationally representative study indicate that differences in health status and health care access between sexual minorities and their heterosexual counterparts did not change from 2013 through 2018. Nearly all subgroups of LGB adults continued to report higher levels of poor or fair health status, functional limitation, severe psychological distress, and difficulties with health care affordability than their heterosexual counterparts. Study limitations included survey response biases, limited sample size of bisexual adults, and lack of gender identity data.

Health inequities among LGB individuals are posited to be driven by minority group stress and multifaceted societal marginalization.4 The persistence of these inequities highlights the need for renewed action at the policy, legislative, sociocultural, and health system levels. In the midst of attacks on the fundamental rights of LGB individuals by state legislators, federal legislation through the Equality Act5 could ameliorate minority group stress by explicitly prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The health sector could also promote health among sexual minority groups by ensuring that all clinicians receive adequate LGB-related training and by increasing access to practitioners with expertise in sexual minority health

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2801433

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Ancient pagan sex worship returns

Sex worship -- of such Gods as Baal of Peor -- was one of the things that the ancient Israelites struggled against. The pagans concerned would seem to have dedicated successors in the Church of England. The C of E has elevated perverse sex to a defining doctrine of their faith. They worship the right of a man to insert his penis into the behind of another man. They have cast aside the Biblical horror at such behaviour. Their God is as much a penis as it was for the Baals of old

Conservative Anglican archbishops say the Church of England has forfeited its traditional leadership role in the worldwide Anglican Communion by approving the blessing of same-sex relationships, opening a historic rift in one of the world’s biggest Christian denominations.

“The Church of England has chosen to break communion with those provinces who remain faithful to the historic biblical faith,” the archbishops wrote, adding that their fidelity to traditional teaching makes it impossible for them to remain connected to it or to other Anglican churches that have adopted liberal teaching on homosexuality. “This breaks our hearts and we pray for the revisionist provinces to return” to tradition.

The statement said the archbishops were “no longer able to recognise the present Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, as the ‘first among equals’” among Anglican bishops worldwide.

The outspoken denunciation of the Church of England by 12 leading Anglican archbishops from around the world marks a watershed in a long-running crisis of unity in the Anglican Communion over teaching and practice on homosexuality.

Over the past three decades, Anglicans in Africa and other parts of the global south have become increasingly critical of the socially progressive tendency of churches in the West, clashing particularly on LGBT rights.

Conservative Anglican churches, including some in Africa that represent nearly half of the world’s estimated 100 million Anglicans, have already broken off relations with churches that espouse liberal teaching and practice on homosexuality, including the Episcopal Church in the US.

But a break with the Church of England, the historical progenitor of Anglican churches around the world, could threaten the very survival of the Anglican Communion, a loose federation whose bishops recognise the Archbishop of Canterbury in England as their spiritual leader.

The full impact of the statement will depend on how many of the 42 national Anglican churches sign on. Absent among the signatories was Archbishop Henry Chukwudum Ndukuba of the Church of Nigeria, the largest member church in the Anglican Communion with 25 million adherents in 2020, according to the World Christian Database.

The statement is in any case a clear setback for Archbishop Welby, who has dedicated much of his 10 years on the job to trying to bridge the growing gap between progressives and conservatives over gay rights.

“It would very difficult for Archbishop Welby to restore his position – and that of the Church of England – after this, unless, perhaps, he were to get the English bishops to row back from their recent proposals to bless same-sex sexual relationships,” said the Reverend Lee Gatiss, director of the Church Society, a group that promotes traditional teaching in the Church of England.

Breaking ties would leave progressives in the Church of England freer to pursue their agenda, said some advocates for gay rights. The Church of England’s bishops should stop “looking over their shoulders” at foreign churches and “move toward full affirmation and welcome for LGBTI people”, said the Reverend Andrew Foreshew-Cain, chaplain of Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford, who has been in a same-sex marriage under civil law since 2014.

“The recognition that the independent, autonomous churches of the Communion are free to act independently of each other is unsurprising and an indicator of our historic reality,” he said.

The 12 conservative archbishops who called for a break on Monday (Tuesday AEDT) are primates, or elected leaders, of their respective national churches. They are all from countries in the global south except for Archbishop Foley Beach, head of the Anglican Church in North America, a conservative church that was founded in 2009 after the Episcopal Church elected an openly gay bishop in 2003.

The 12 conservative archbishops pointed to Archbishop Welby’s support for the Church of England’s decision on February 9 to allow priests to bless same-sex civil marriages in church.

The Church of England decided not to allow church marriage of same-sex couples, a decision that drew protests from liberal members.

“The deep disagreements that exist across the Anglican Communion on sexuality and marriage are not new,” a spokesperson for Archbishop Welby said on Monday. “It is a fundamental principle of the Anglican Communion that no province can bind another province.”

The archbishop has expressed pleasure at the Church of England’s decision to allow blessings of same-sex relationships but has said that he will not perform such blessings himself so as not to compromise his unifying role in the Communion.

At a meeting of global Anglican leaders earlier this month in Ghana, he stressed his understanding of cultural and theological differences on sexuality within the Communion and repeatedly said that he was ready to renounce his leadership role in the global church if it was no longer accepted.

The 12 conservative archbishops said on Monday they were ready to work with like-minded leaders “to reset the Communion, and to ensure that the reset Communion is marked by reform and renewal”. They didn’t provide details of a proposed reorganisation but said that they were ready to provide “pastoral oversight, guidance and care” to conservative dioceses in countries where the national Anglican church has adopted “revisionist” liberal teachings.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/the-wall-street-journal/conservatives-split-from-church-of-england-over-samesex-blessings/news-story/188beb721995a4fe2c7c49890109aff5

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Objectivity’s out in US newsrooms

In today’s information war, words are weapons, so the advent of new media terms can be telling. A weighty new report on US journalism, Beyond Objectivity, released last month, denounced what it called the ‘dangerous trap’ of ‘bothsides-ism’, an awkward term that seems designed to box, label and dismiss the idea of balance, of two sides to every story. The report said, in a nutshell, objectivity has got to go. (Mind you, plenty would say objectivity has already left the building – try finding sceptical climate change reporting at the ABC.)

The argument goes that if the weight of evidence heavily favours one side, it’s ‘false balance’ to pretend there’s equivalence of credibility. Trouble is, journalism is called the first draft of history for a reason, and must often be recast later. US media has had to do a U-turn on the veracity of the Hunter Biden laptop, for example. And far from being an ‘insurrection’, the January 6 Capitol riot seems increasingly to have been a set-up, and laced with FBI-linked provocateurs. Humans make mistakes, stories get debunked, allow for it.

Given the Left’s flair for propaganda (remember the same-sex marriage slogan, ‘love is love’?), it’s encouraging that ‘bothsidesism’ is the best these wordsmiths could find. It’s an implicit nod to the fact that other terms – balance, fairness, neutrality, objectivity, impartiality – are too respected to be twisted into propaganda.

Conducted by Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, the report emerged from 75 interviews with a roll-call of legacy media heavy hitters, mostly left-leaning – no Fox News interviews, for example. Lead author and ex-Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr wrote: ‘Increasingly, reporters, editors and media critics argue that the concept of journalistic objectivity is a distortion of reality… pursuing objectivity can lead to false balance or misleading “bothsidesism” in covering stories about race, the treatment of women, LGBTQ+ rights, income inequality, climate change… in today’s diversifying newsrooms, (reporters) feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.’ This is truth in the Oprah Winfrey sense, as in ‘my truth’, ‘your truth’, a great stew of different truths. These truths, self-evidently, cannot all be true, and at some point reality will intervene to give fantasists a good clip over the ears.

To be fair, complete objectivity is humanly impossible. Everyone comes armed with certain opinions and prejudices, and by their persona, tends to elicit certain responses. (An editor once said of a dorky Age colleague: ‘He engenders error in others.’) There’s no issue with an outlet with a declared political bias, such as Green Left Weekly. Trouble arises when an outlet cloaks its reporting in fairness and balance, but instead plays a partisan game, doubly so when it’s a taxpayer-funded medium with a charter requiring impartiality.

Which brings me to my second recent discovery, ‘totschweigetaktik’, or ‘totting’ for short, hat tip New York Post reporter Miranda Devine. It’s German for ‘death by silence’ and is a tactic to kill issues and stories by ignoring them into non-existence. It’s the reporting equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears and squeezing your eyes tight shut.

Totting is the preferred tactic of Voice proponents, who sought to fund only the Yes case for the referendum and not the No case, as was traditional in previous referenda, and don’t want to have a constitutional convention. Even details on how the idea would work are not to be provided. Trust us, please, and vote Yes.

The global media is currently totting the Twitter Files and a damaging recent Pfizer expose by Project Veritas, which secretly records highly placed insiders to uncover inconvenient truths. Legacy media has largely ignored Twitter boss Elon Musk’s extraordinary unmasking of the vast, hidden machinery enabling unprecedented US intelligence agency and Democrat censorship of social media.

Similar media quiet reigns on the Pfizer staffer’s revelations that, yes, the vaccines are creating mysterious problems with women’s fertility; that there is a revolving door between Big Pharma and regulators; and that Pfizer is considering ‘directed evolution’ of viruses, which many might call gain-of-function were that not illegal, to get ahead with the creation of more ‘cash cow’ vaccines.

Another useful new (to me) term is ‘limited hangout’, which is not to do with social events, but refers to admitting lesser mistakes while keeping more damaging crimes buried. It’s a spyworld term for allowing some information to be released to extinguish a media clamour; for whatever reason, overuse perhaps, it’s now moving into public discourse. Letting Joe Biden’s classified documents be found in a garage, for example, may be a limited hangout compared with exposing his being on the take from China. When the Chinese spy balloon over the US could no longer be denied, we got a limited hangout on its route and other details, but no reveal on how and why it, and apparently others, had sailed merrily past the mighty US defence forces.

These three newly popularised terms do show where US journalism is going – increasingly self-righteous and opinionated, activist yet incurious, and naively open to manipulation by the powers-that-be. The crisis of trust caused by the last few years of US media failures and hoaxes seems to be going unaddressed; a 2022 Reuters Institute Digital News Report found America’s media the least trusted among 46 nations, with only 26 per cent trusting the news. Indeed, last month the Columbia Journalism Review published a scathing takedown of the New York Times’ reporting on Russiagate – by a veteran Times reporter. Far from learning any lessons to restore public trust, US legacy media seems determined to repeat their errors.

These reflections were prompted by the jarring experience of leaving our conservative Sunshine Coast habitat, where even the tradies and neighbours are like-minded, for a holiday in the woke epicentre of Melbourne. There, we were Yin to their Yang. I had to reposition my conversational settings, and couldn’t help noticing old friends and relatives warily skirting such dangerous topics as politics, climate change, gender identity and the rest, in the certain knowledge that we would disagree.

A refreshing change came at a (necessarily) small lunch with right-wing media colleagues, quickly dubbed the Pariahs’ lunch. A well-known columnist opened the conversation with a loud, angry and frustrated: ‘Our media’s HOPELESS!’ Quite. With the internet, even semi-censored as it has been, truth will out.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/02/war-of-words-5

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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