News Weakly - 4/8/2017

Even She Gets It
Erin Gloria Ryan from the Daily Beast wrote a piece on Mike Pence's "Billy Graham Rule". She admitted that "Mike Pence respects his wife" and thought it was understandable albeit somewhat childish and foolish that he would refuse to be alone with another woman without his wife being present. Her primary concern was that Pence preferred to save babies' lives rather than enlarge abortion options. She was, therefore, not a Mike Pence fan and she was not even a fan of Christian values. So I thought it was pretty amazing that she made this statement. "Pence’s choice to avoid being alone with women is a function of his religious faith. It’s hard to fathom similar left-wing backlash if Pence’s conduct were informed by a non-Christian faith." Wow! In all the errors she wrote, she really hit that nail on the head.

You asked for it ... you got it
Play with fire and you get burned. Redefine words and you'll find it coming back around to bite you. Move "life" to "what we want to call it" and you get ... Himalayan glaciers as "living entities". There ya go. It used to be that "life" meant something. It used to be the thing that distinguished plants and animals from inorganic matter. No longer. Now it means whatever we say it means. Because India has given two rivers "human rights" and declared Himalayan glaciers as "legal persons", something we couldn't do with actual human babies. We have truly redefined reality ... except, of course, we haven't. Just because we feel something is true (or not) doesn't make it so.

Given global climate change and that "any injury or harm caused to these bodies shall be treated as injury or harm caused to human beings", I wonder who's going to get prosecuted first for murder? (I think India is currently one of the biggest contributors to global climate change, isn't it? I told you it will come back and bite you. Karma?)

Eyes Wide Open
Vimeo is a leading video-sharing platform. Last week Vimeo removed 850 videos from Pure Passion Ministries and deleted their account. Why? Dr. Foster, director of Pure Passion Ministries and a former homosexual, offers a "cure" for homosexual behavior -- Christ. "The healing," he said, "comes through faith in Christ." Vimeo says, "We consider this basic viewpoint to display a demeaning attitude toward a specific group, which is something that we do not allow." Or, to put it more correctly, "We do not allow a demeaning attitude toward a specific group unless it's a specific group we wish to demean ... like Christians who disagree with our celebration of homosexuality." Of course, this shouldn't be a surprise. "The John Milton Project list of censorship offenders includes Facebook, Google, Twitter, GoFundMe, and Apple." You should have seen this coming, right?

1984 All Over Again
So Tuesday was a "global Trump protest" where nearly 200 movie theaters worldwide planned to screen the film version of George Orwell's 1984. Orwell's book found a resurgence of interest recently after senior Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway used the term "alternative facts" on a news show. Apparently a lot of the Left sees the Trump administration in a "Big Brother" light.

Funny thing. I, too, reread 1984 recently for the same reason. I was struck by Orwell's amazing characterization of the 21st century Left. They've been the ones rewriting history, redefining terms, and arguing "a boy isn't a boy until he says he is" kinds of things. Does Trump tell the truth? Don't be ridiculous. It has been a standard maxim for a long time: "How do you tell if a politician is lying? If his lips are moving." But it seems to me it's Progressives that are most concerned with "thoughtcrime" like "microagression", "intolerance", "hate", and "bigotry" where they don't exist and controlling the masses by rewriting the language. I'm not at all sure this was a well-aimed protest.

And they're at it again
So, I'm not protesting the ruling, but I am pointing out the logic. According to NBC News, "A federal appeals court in Chicago ruled Tuesday that long-standing federal civil rights laws prohibit discrimination on the job against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender employees." Fine. Okay. How you prove that they didn't give you the job because of your sexual orientation is a bit vague, but, fine. The reasoning, however, was amazing. "Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is a form of sex discrimination." You see, federal law prohibits workplace discrimination on several grounds including "sex". That is, what gender you are. But the court said "it would require considerable calisthenics to remove the 'sex' from 'sexual orientation.'" Because, you see, who you have sex with is the very same thing as what gender you are. Which is really odd since we don't appear to be clear on the definition of gender either.

As I said, I'm not commenting on the ruling. I'm just wondering when what "sex" you are became synonymous with what gender you like to "have sex" with. Chief Judge Diane Wood said, "It is actually impossible to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation without discriminating on the basis of sex." Perhaps her great learning has muddled her brain, because I have no problem telling the difference between orientation and gender.

A Couple of Last Thoughts
This last week saw Equal Pay Day, addressing the gender gap in pay. I was just wondering. If there are ... oh, I don't know ... what ... 50+ genders out there, what does that do to the "gender pay gap" calculations? Just musing ... you know. I don't suppose I'll actually expect studies and numbers and rallies for "equal pay for pangenders" or the rest.

You remember the furor the previous week over the outrageous behavior of the vice president in refusing to let himself get into any questionable situations with women-not-his-wife. You know, the "Billy Graham rule". Because only an immoral, sexist perpetuating patriarchy and pushing prophylactic gender separatism would do such a thing. I was just wondering if anyone noticed 1) the sharp distinction between the president's view ("Hey, you get whatever sex you can get.") and the vice president's view ("You publicly and carefully limit sex to the wife.") and 2) the outrage of loud-mouthed America toward both. "No, no! You can't be coming on to women whenever you want! And, no! You can't avoid it, either. You two are evil, evil men." The other side of the double-standard coin, where you're castigated if you do and castigated if you don't.