The bishop of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, who is one of the most Catholic media voices, called out the theatrical opening of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris for mocking Christianity and the Last Supper, and asked if the Olympic organizers would consider insulting the Muslim faith.

“A question I would pose--we all know the answer to it: ‘Would they ever have dared mock Islam in a similar way?’” asked Bishop Robert E. Barron, who is also the founder of the “Word on Fire” ministry, in an X-post.

Barron said the enemies of Christianity are putting Christians on notice that the struggle is being fought right now: //

Throughout the city, the French erected statues honoring the 10 golden heroines of French history: Olympe de Gouges, Alice Milliat, Gisèle Halimi, Simone de Beauvoir, Paulette Nardal, Jeanne Barret, Louise Michel, Christine de Pizan, Alice Guy and Simone Veil.

Somehow, St. Joan of Arc, did not make the cut. //

“France felt, evidently, as it's trying to put its best cultural foot forward, the right thing to do is to mock this very central moment in Christianity where Jesus and his Last Supper gives his body and blood in anticipation of the Cross,” he said.

 Earlier this month, a handful of teenagers were charged with felonies for leaving marks on an LGBT mural that was painted on the road. In fact, there's a rash of these kinds of vandalizations happening all over the nation and each one is treated like a massive hate crime by Democrats and activists.

So holy is the LGBT cause to the left that they're willing to go above and beyond to make you accept it.

So, you'll pardon me if I'm not too moved by complaints from the left, the LGBT activist community, and elected Democrats when they clutch their pearls and run to their fainting couches over the Ten Commandments being displayed in school. //

Let's be real here. These activists aren't mad about religious symbols going up in schools. They put theirs up in schools every chance they get. They preach the word of queer activism to children as young as four, and try to hide it from parents if they know there would be backlash about it. These people are zealots.

Their issue with the Ten Commandments is that these laws come from a rival religion. One they hate more than any other, despite it being a religion that allows for these people to live, work, and commit their sin without worrying about being murdered, tortured, or imprisoned for it. Hilariously, they'd much rather show their support toward religions that would do horrendous things to the LGBT community if their dominance was established here in the West, but they don't like talking about that.

REPORTER: Your office told us that you plan to appeal the gender-affirming ruling from yesterday. So my question today, since we're talking about the budget of taxpayer dollars, why should taxpayer dollars go to this case for the appeal?

DESANTIS: Because it's wrong to mutilate minors. It is wrong to perform a sex change on a 16-year-old. You're not allowed to get a tattoo, but somehow, you can have your privates cut off? Give me a break. //

It's ridiculous. Of course, a state can protect children. //

DESANTIS: This idea of using tax dollars because the media will point out, "Oh, the state is spending money to do." So if you say that we shouldn't do that, you're saying that any liberal judge should be able to veto the policy of the State of Florida because they go to the same judges every time, we lost almost every time, and we win on appeal almost every time.

That's what happens so if you're not willing to defend Florida's duly-enacted statutes against liberal jurisprudence, then you're basically saying the people of Florida shouldn't govern themselves and that we should just turn over our destiny to some trial judge somewhere. That I refuse to do.

DESANTIS: What this is doing, when they're doing a sex change on a teenager, there's a lot of people that want to make money off that, consequences be damned, their lining their pockets and they could care less about what's going to happen to that teenager when they become 25, which many regret and have big-time problems as a result of that.

But it's also just a fact of, you used the term "gender-affirming-care," which is what media uses and what the left uses. You're not affirming that. You're trying to change their basic biology, which you can not do. You can not do that. How you're born is what you are. And so I think it's about, are we going to be rooted in truth as a society or not? And if we're rooted in truth, then you would say, of course, you can't do these surgeries because it's not going to take and transform somebody that's a male into a female.

Again, and you must note this objective fact, notwithstanding those old denominations that long ago started in the United States as egalitarian with male and female pastoral roles, every single denomination that has decided to abandon traditional male pastoral roles for men and women has ultimately moved from embracing just female pastors to also embracing gay ordination and gay marriage.

You can say that will never happen to you, but that is what they all said. Look at the PCUSA, ELCA, United Church of Christ, Episcopalians, and now the United Methodist Church. If your church thinks contemporary times mean updating the role of pastor to women, it won’t be long before those same contemporary times mean updating even more.

There is no greater example before you now than the United Methodist Church where the majority of congregants rejected gay ordination and marriage. But progressives promoted themselves within, taking over leadership roles, and ultimately, despite a majority against them, took over and forced a schism.

I don't hate LGBT people in the least, but I do get a kick out of seeing pride flag murals defaced when painted on roads, and that's because what that flag actually represents isn't love, or unity, or equality. What it represents in tyranny. It's the flag of the LGBT activist community, which has, on many occasions, declared itself to be my enemy.

The Pride flag is usually accompanied by hate and division from the LGBT activist community. Pride Month, for instance, isn't the celebration of people who identify themselves as "queer," but it's an opportunity for corporations and politicians to display their willing submission and obedience to a political cause so that they get their ESG money and don't get canceled by the elite or have business-to-business opportunities taken away.

While corporations might bend the knee, everyone else has to sit and watch as a cause that only applies to a very small fraction of our civilization takes over everything and forces us to take notice in some way, shape, or form. You can't escape it, and that's going to generate a pretty hefty amount of spite. //

The pride flag represents a kind of social dictatorship in our society. //

And if you speak out against any of it, you run the risk of being painted as a social pariah. You could lose your job. You could be harassed by strangers. You could even face a lawsuit or two.

This isn't "love," it's tyranny.

And that's why when a pride flag is vandalized, people cheer or laugh. It's not born out of hate for gays and lesbians, many of whom are lovely people, but out of a disgust for a controlling activist cabal that most reject. They force themselves on society.

anon-89ic
a day ago
There is something else going on here that you would think the American Left would be all over--namely, what Israel is learning about life inside Gaza, which reminds so many Jews of what the Americans found when they entered the death camps at the end of World War 2. While Israel is not engaging in genocide, Hamas is engaging in a sort of its own, not seen since Bosnia in the 90s. Namely, Hamas is using this war to kill not only its own people who it views as collaborator with israel, but, increasingly, its war on girls. Hamas needs boys for fighting, but girls are basically useless. It appears that Hamas is intentionally murdering thousands of girls--deaths that they then blame on Israel. Hamas hates women and doesn't want them, except the few they need for sex slaves. This gives us insight why the American Left loves Hamas so much--between abortion and the trans thing and girls sports, the American Left hates girls as much as Hamas does. It's the only way to explain why the Left supports Hamas--because the Left and Hamas believe in the same thing and Biden is their standard bearer. Report that, I dare them. //

anon-89ic anon-8w73
a day ago
I've been needing some light reading this spring, so I've been re-reading old Agatha Christie and Ellis Peters mysteries for the first time in probably 40 years and I noticed something about these books, written by similar English women. At the end of each book, not only is the murderer dealt with, but also order is fully restored which means all the women are securely locked down in the control of strong men. Feminism was supposed to erode this restriction on women running wild, but modern Democrat women seem to be yearning for that order, and if American men won't give it to them, the Imams will. Weird, huh? //

Someone should interview the head of "Queers for Palestine" and find out what they think about all this. These groups were supposed to be "allies," but as always happens, when you get a bunch of aggrieved leftwingers together, they end up fighting over who's the bigger victim.

For their part, Hamas supporters (and most Muslims) see themselves at the very top of the intersectional hierarchy. It's an extremely odd dynamic given that Muslim culture is largely antithetical to far-left orthodoxy on essentially all cultural issues. That's left many scrambling to figure out how to make the pieces all fit together. They might as well be trying to fit a car into a dog house.

The left is one giant contradiction. Nothing has to make sense because, as I've explained before, the cause isn't the point. The shiny object of "justice" continually changes, but the goal of cultural and political domination always remains. What happens when those pursuing that singular goal end up in conflict? //

Walter Sobchak‘s doppelgänger
2 hours ago
Gays for Palestine = chickens for Col. Sanders. //

SDL701
2 hours ago
It recall's Henry Kissinger's response when someone asked him which side we favored during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s: "It would be in our best interest if they would both lose."

Go Queers! Go Jihadists! Destroy each other!

Pelican State officials have approved a proposal that says sex is “immutable,” that a “female” is someone who produces eggs absent a biological anomaly, and that a “male” is someone who produces sperm.

The proposal also says that K-12 educators must call a minor-age student by the name or pronoun listed on the child’s birth certificate.

Those provisions are similar to The Heritage Foundation’s model bills—and are bulwarks against dangerous gender ideology threatening women and girls. (Heritage founded The Daily Signal in 2014.)

Gov. Jeff Landry’s signature would make Louisiana the eighth state to adopt a version of a “Given Name Act,” which requires parental permission before a teacher can socially affirm a child’s confusion about his or her sex by using a name or pronoun that does not correspond to the student’s official records.

Lawmakers should insert parents back into important health-related conversations educators may have with the parents’ students. Children confused about their sex need compassion and wise counsel—and for their primary caregivers to be a part of those conversations.

A scathing report by three federal judges on the “misconduct” of plaintiff lawyers in a challenge to Alabama’s ban on gender-transition medicine for minors illustrates something we learned a long time ago: Many on the far Left, including radical lawyers employed by self-proclaimed civil rights organizations, believe the ends always justify the means and that rules of ethics don’t apply to them. //

After the case was assigned to Judge Burke, the lawyers dismissed the lawsuits, then refiled almost immediately to get a different judge. //

Yes, Charles—a lawyer who now works for the Department of Justice—lied to the panel of judges under oath until he was confronted with hard evidence that exposed the lie.

Last year, Democrats split up the terms “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” in the Minnesota Human Rights Act, and that meant religious organizations still had an exemption for not hiring on the basis of “sexual orientation,” but that exemption no longer applies to “gender identity.”

When these two terms were split in the Minnesota Human Rights Act, we thought the ramifications on religious exemptions were accidental. //

Throughout this year’s committee process, it became very clear that the folks who pushed this change had no intention of extending the exemptions to “gender identity.”

Recently, the Senate Judiciary Committee heard the bill during an evening hearing but waited until 12:30 a.m. to bring the bill up for discussion. Issues of this significance should never be discussed under the cover of darkness. Republicans offered an amendment that would have extended the religious exemption to include to the new “gender identity” term, but Democrats did not support that change. This bill will now be considered for inclusion in the Omnibus Judiciary bill.

This is alarming because in this bill S. F. 4292, it means that religious organizations can now be held legally accountable if they choose to not hire someone of a certain “gender identity,” regardless of their religious beliefs. This is a blatant infringement on constitutional rights. The government cannot prohibit the free exercise of religion according to the 1st Amendment and the U.S. Supreme Court has reaffirmed this throughout our history. That means we are dealing with an unconstitutional law.

Earlier this year a Democrat senator went on record stating that constitutionality shouldn’t matter when legislators are writing their bills. I disagree – it is our duty to know the potential constitutional ramifications that our laws may have. The government cannot compel churches and religious organizations to abandon their deeply held religious beliefs.

J.K. Rowling is arguably the most successful author in the history of publishing, with the possible exception of God. And Harry Potter was a kind of bible for my generation. Since its publication beginning in the late ’90s, the series has taught tens of millions of children about virtues like loyalty, courage, and love—about the inclusion of outsiders and the celebration of difference. The books illustrated the idea of moral complexity, how a person who may at first appear sinister can turn out to be a hero after all. //

When she gave the Harvard commencement address in 2008, she was introduced as a social, moral, and political inspiration. Her speech that day was partly about imagination: “the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.”

“We do not need magic to transform our world,” Rowling told the rapt audience. “We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already.”

The uproarious applause that greeted her in 2008 is hard to imagine today. It’s hard to imagine Harvard—let alone any prestigious American university—welcoming Rowling. Indeed, I’m not sure she’d be allowed to give a reading at many local libraries. //

It all blew up in the summer of 2020.

“‘People who menstruate,’” Rowling wrote on Twitter, quoting a headline. “I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”

She continued: “If sex isn’t real, there’s no same-sex attraction. If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.”

It’s hard to capture the breadth of the firestorm that followed. //

I was born into the Westboro Baptist Church, a tiny congregation founded by my grandfather that was a world unto itself. From the age of five, I protested with my parents, siblings, and extended family on sidewalks across America—including outside the funerals of AIDS victims and American soldiers. //

But when I took the church’s message to Twitter in my mid-twenties, I encountered strangers who—through kindness, friendly mockery, and civil conversation—helped me see that it was me who needed to change.

Ten years ago, at age 26, I left the church and lost all of my family who stayed behind. Those strangers from Twitter became some of my dearest friends—among them, the man I would eventually marry, the father of my two children.

Like Rowling, I knew what it was like to be an object of intense hatred. But I also knew the value of good-faith conversation, and the role it can play in bridging even the deepest divides. //

But the story of J.K. Rowling is not just the story of one author, or one woman, or one issue. It is a microcosm of our time. It’s about the polarization of public opinion and the fracturing of public conversation. It’s about the chasm between what people say they believe and how they’re understood by others. It’s about what it means to be human—to be a social animal who feels compelled to be part of a tribe. And it’s about the struggle to discern what is right when our individual view of the world is necessarily limited and imperfect.

The NAIA’s Council of Presidents approved the policy in a 20-0 vote. The NAIA, which oversees some 83,000 athletes at schools across the country, is believed to be the first college sports organization to take such a step.

According to the transgender participation policy, all athletes may participate in NAIA-sponsored male sports but only athletes whose biological sex assigned at birth is female and have not begun hormone therapy will be allowed participate in women’s sports.

A student who has begun hormone therapy may participate in activities such as workouts, practices and team activities, but not in interscholastic competition.

The folks who want to trans children aren’t going to like this one. Another study has revealed the dangers of subjecting children to “gender-affirming care,” especially when it comes to the use of puberty blockers.

This study is one of several disproving the leftist narrative about how best to treat children suffering from gender dysphoria. It reveals that using these treatments can cause significant harm to these individuals -- especially after they grow into adulthood.

Researchers in the Netherlands collected data from 2,700 children beginning at age 11 until they turned 25. In doing so, they polled them on their level of discontent with their gender and found that a majority grew out of any confusion they were experiencing. //

What this means is simple: The current institutionally-pushed trend, from the White House to the American Medical Association, of "affirming" and "transitioning" children is leaving them permanently damaged and unable to naturally work through their issues. From surgeries to hormone blockers, the "care" being given isn't care at all and is counter-productive to a child becoming comfortable with their natural body.

Confusion among children about gender is not new. What is new is treating it as a medical issue instead of a mental health issue. Children who feel uncomfortable about their bodies don't need adults pumping them full of drugs and telling them to dress like the opposite sex. They need adults to tell them the truth and guide them through what has always been a chaotic, confusing period for adolescents. //

Unfortunately, there is a lot of money to be made by "transitioning" children, and the medical establishment is firmly behind the practice. //

How do you change a status quo like that? It won't be easy, and it doesn't appear any amount of data will be enough. That means a lot more children are going to be harmed by those seeking to "affirm" their gender confusion. At its core, the practice is taking advantage of adolescent realities for personal and ideological gain.

The end goal here isn't ambiguous. It's not to just promote radicalism. It's to make it preeminent and to raise it above everything that you believe in and hold dear. It's only going to get worse from here. The far left is playing for keeps, and dominance is the point.

In Florida, a court challenge to the hotly contested Parental Rights In Education Act has ended with a settlement reached between the plaintiffs and the state. You can read through the media reports about this conclusion and see the bias plainly on display.

The Associated Press talked of “the fallout from Florida’s settlement.” The New Republic claimed the “settlement has curtailed the ‘Don’t Say Gay' Law”. The Miami Herald, in imbalanced thinking, declares “DeSantis’ homophobic law doesn’t survive court challenge intact.”

These are all very dramatic interpretations of a court agreement where the law in question was, in reality, completely upheld. //

Not a single thing about the law was affected. No elements were moved, no content was altered – not a single word has been changed. So just what are the journalism geniuses claiming? //

This new court decision has to then be regarded as a complete failure. Not only was the law upheld but no portion of it has been struck down. The settlement that was reached can better be described as a “Clarification." //

While representatives from Equity Florida pointed at the vague language of the law leading to some using it oppressively, the fact is the false negative reporting on the law created that atmosphere. Claims about the restrictions that did not exist led to adverse reactions in some areas, and it was all rooted in a lie. This is proven in the settlement terms.

The opponents are cheering all of the things they are now permitted to do today as a result, but this is coming about without having changed a single aspect of the law - meaning that all of those items were originally permitted. Yet today we have the press cheering they are allowed to do what they had always been allowed to do, and they are claiming victory while nothing has changed.

Those who refused to read the language of the law are now refusing to read the language of the settlement, and as a result, they are cheering wholesale changes taking place when they have the very same legislation in place that they had years ago. The deluded thinking is a marvel to behold. //

Quizzical
44 minutes ago
I've read the law in question. It has often been observed that the word "gay" is not contained in the law at all. For good measure, the neither the word "don't" nor "say" appears in the law, either. The word "parent" or some variation on it (parents, parental, etc.) appears 39 times. It's a law about parental rights, not about saying gay or not.

Decision of Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appels said Indiana must allow transgender students to use school bathroom consistent with their gender identity – ACLU calls it a “victory” for transgender rights. //

These three points are each important:

First, the Seventh Circuit Order, as Bloomberg points out, merely affirmed a preliminary injunction saying that it was “likely” that the student would win her case. Now the case goes back to the Indiana federal trial-level court for further litigation and trial. The school district could still win that case, at trial or on appeal of the trial results.

Second, the Seventh Circuit’s ruling is inherently weak because it relied on Bostock. In that case, as Bloomberg correctly points out, the Supreme court held for the first time that Title VII employment discrimination claims could be brought by transgender employees. But what Bloomberg omits to say is that Bostock expressly held that its ruling did not apply to any other transgender situation. //

So to the extent the Seventh Circuit relied on Bostock, it was mistaken to do so.

Third, Bloomberg points out that in a similar case in Virginia where the Fourth Circuit backed the transgender student, the Supreme Court also declined to review the case, making this the second time the Court has declined to review such a case.

But there is hope!

That is because there is a definite conflict, or “circuit split,” in how different U.S. Courts of Appeals handle this type of case. //

the Court may be sensing the tremendous turmoil across the country regarding the rights of “transgender” students, both in the bathroom context but more importantly in the school sports context, and the Court may well be waiting for an appropriate time and case to grant review and weigh in on these critical issues. //

sidwhite in reply to sidwhite. | January 17, 2024 at 11:07 am
Reading further I see that this is a rejection of having a hearing on the temporary order rather than a court decision.

The conditioning is the point. They want normal people to change the way they speak and even the way they perceive things they see in public. With enough beatings over the head, many will do just that. //

Cliff-Hanger
a day ago
LibreOffice. Completely free, of charge and open-source and, most importantly, free of microsoft (funny name for a company founded by a womanizer, ain't it?) though it is available for windows.

all the tags from https://b.plas.ml

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