Transgender Inmates Should Have Bras, Make-Up, Corrections Department Says

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Transgender California prison inmates would be allowed to have bras, cosmetics and other personal items corresponding to their gender identities under proposed rules filed with state regulators on Tuesday . . .

Transgender female inmates housed in men’s facilities could have feminine undergarments, lip gloss and mascara, for instance, while transgender male inmates in women’s prisons could wear aftershave and boxers.

A federal magistrate previously ordered the state to provide some of the items. However, attorneys for transgender inmate Shiloh Quine are still sparring with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation over the details, with another court hearing set for April 27. (Read more from “Transgender Inmates Should Have Bras, Make-Up, Corrections Department Says” HERE)

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Left and Right Unhappy With Repeal of North Carolina’s Bathroom Law

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A legislative compromise watering down North Carolina’s “bathroom law” leaves access to public bathrooms muddier than ever, conservative opponents of the change say, and it removes the standard of privacy espoused last year by state officials.

“They’ve taken away that baseline of privacy that ensured that [use of] every multi-occupancy restroom, locker room, and shower in the state’s public buildings would be based on a person’s biological sex,” Kellie Fiedorek, counsel at the Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Thursday.

This means, Fiedorek said, that a man won’t be arrested for entering a women’s restroom, unless someone decides to press charges.

“If a male wanted to use the females’ restroom, there’s nothing to really prevent him from doing that, unless someone finds him in there and they want to file a trespass action,” she said.

The state Senate passed the bill Thursday by a vote of 32-16, and the House then passed it 70-48.

The deal, the work of Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, and the Republican leaders of the state Legislature, repeals the bathroom law, also known as House Bill 2.

That law, praised by some and assailed by others, required that individuals use restrooms and locker rooms in schools, public universities, and other government buildings that correspond with their biological sex.

The main provision of the bill reads:

State agencies, boards, offices, departments, institutions, branches of government including the University of North Carolina and the North Carolina Community College System, and political subdivisions of the state, including local boards of education, are preempted from regulation of access to multiple occupancy restrooms, showers, or changing facilities, except in accordance with an act of the General Assembly.

Advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans had labeled the law as hateful and encouraged businesses and tourists to boycott North Carolina as a result.

The state’s Republican governor, Pat McCrory, lost re-election to Cooper by a close margin in November, conceding four weeks later, after signing the bathroom bill into law in March 2016.

Cooper hailed the deal to repeal the law.

“l support the House Bill 2 repeal compromise,” Cooper said. “It’s not a perfect deal, but it repeals House Bill 2 and begins to repair our reputation.”

The bill prevents any local government from adopting or amending an existing law regulating employment practices and public accommodations until Dec. 1, 2020, Fiedorek noted.

Senate Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, and House Speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, helped craft the deal.

“Compromise requires give and take from all sides, and we are pleased this proposal fully protects bathroom safety and privacy,” Berger and Moore said in a joint statement.

U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he approved of the repeal. In a prepared statement, Tillis said:

North Carolina’s brand and continued economic prosperity should not be beholden to the loudest voices on either the far left or the far right who don’t have our state’s best interests in mind. I’m glad that state lawmakers were able to reach a commonsense compromise to repeal House Bill 2.

Democrat lawmakers opposing the measure for not going far enough to protect transgender individuals included state Sens. Jay Chaudhuri of Raleigh; Mike Woodard and Floyd McKissick of Durham; Valerie Foushee of Hillsborough; Jeff Jackson of Charlotte; and Don Davis of Greenville, The News & Observer reported.

But Ryan T. Anderson, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal in an email that North Carolina lawmakers gave in to special interests.

“North Carolina’s political leaders caved to the demands of big business and special interests,” Ryan said, adding:

This is a prime example of what I have called ‘cultural cronyism‘—when the left can’t win on an issue through normal political persuasion, they get progressive big businesses to use their outsized market share to make economic threats to pressure the government to do their bidding—at the expense of the common good.

Jackson tweeted his reason for opposing the measure:

McKissick called the measure a “heartless compromise” and said he “couldn’t support it as a matter of philosophy and principle.”

The Human Rights Campaign, which advocates LGBT rights and calls itself “America’s largest civil rights organization,” called the legislative deal “dangerous”:

The organization also tweeted that lawmakers who supported the measure “betrayed” those who aren’t heterosexual:

(For more from the author of “Left and Right Unhappy With Repeal of North Carolina’s Bathroom Law” please click HERE)

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New ‘Children’s’ Book Has Prince Charming Finding True Love With Farm Boy

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Here is a short argument to keep in mind as you read about a new “children’s” book that promotes homosexual relationships.

If there is nothing morally wrong with same-sex relationships, then there is nothing wrong with exposing children to same-sex relationships. After all, kids will see same-sex relationships around them in our culture. And some kids will go on to form same-sex relationships. So, if there is nothing wrong with such relationships, why not show kids stories about men in love?

This was the implicit reasoning used by authors Adam Reynolds and Chaz Harris who wrote Promised Land. This is a picture-book about how “a young Prince and a farm boy meet in the forest and their newfound friendship blossoms into love.”

The Prince’s mother is divorced and has taken up living with an evil man. The evil man covets Farm Boy’s land. The land sits, as expected, in an Enchanted forest.

The book ends with a lovely picture of the Prince and Farm Boy smacking each other on the lips over the words, “They got married and started their own family.”

That is, of course, impossible. Two men cannot marry. And two men certainly cannot start a family. That is biologically impossible. These are not only theological truths. They are scientific realities as well.

Well, nobody expects Reality in a children’s fantasy. Magic isn’t real either, but that didn’t slow sales of, or enthusiasm for, Harry Potter. We shouldn’t therefore be critical of fantastical elements. But can we say anything against positive portrayals of homosexual love?

We cannot. Not if we cannot also say, out loud and in public, that homosexual love is immoral. Now love between two men, or two males, need not be immoral. A father loves his son. A man loves his friend. But if homosexual love is different than the love of two friends, what is that difference? It is sexual desire. Yet that desire is objectively disordered. The desire, if one indulges it, often leads to homosexual acts, which are immoral and sinful.

But if we cannot say that, then we cannot say that Promised Land should not be shown to children. And we cannot say that it should not be shown to children in schools. The only argument we can muster against it would be based on some bad effects of doing so. “We cannot show the book,” the utilitarian might argue, “because we do not want to pay for it.” What happens when a generous soul then donates copies?

We have reached a point in our culture where we could teach Promised Land in schools, but we could not teach about the Promised Land!

“And God almighty bless thee, and make thee to increase, and multiply thee: that thou mayst be a multitude of people. And give the blessings of Abraham to thee, and to thy seed after thee: that thou mayst possess the land of thy sojournment, which he promised to thy grandfather” (Genesis 28:3-4).

What an inversion.

The press is in love with Promised Land. Huffington Post says the book is about a place “where all people are equal no matter what they look like or who they love.” It’s obvious the author of that sentence has not thought through all its implications. Should men who love children be celebrated? Doesn’t Equality demand such a thing?

Harris told Huffington Post a truth: “The [kinds of media] we consume as kids and young adults form our attitudes towards those around us. … Most importantly, they influence our attitudes towards ourselves. … If we can be heroes in stories, we’re seen more positively in the real world.”

That homosexual relationships will be seen in a more positive light is just the effect Promised Land will have.

Teen Vogue calls Promised Land “required reading” and that says that the book “smashes any taboo around the subject” of homosexual relationships. It does, too.

The book has already set off a debate in New Zealand (home of the authors). Women’s Weekly asks, “Should children be taught about homosexuality in school?” The question was, as you might guess, mostly rhetorical.

What this book is doing is no different than what Disney did in Beauty and the Beast. That’s the new movie to made a point to show “an exclusively gay moment.” And they did it in a charming way. Kids who saw the movie would, as calculated, look with a kinder eye on homosexual relationships.

As they should, if there is nothing wrong with homosexual relationships.

Update: Santa Claus to be “Gay” Too

Just in is news that another picture-book will feature Santa Claus in a homosexual relationship with a black man. Time reports the book will be titled Santa’s Husband and will go on sale on 10 October. (For more from the author of “New ‘Children’s’ Book Has Prince Charming Finding True Love With Farm Boy” please click HERE)

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The Truth About the Economic Impact of North Carolina’s ‘Bathroom Bill’

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When then-North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed H.B. 2, the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act (commonly known as the “bathroom bill”), into law on March 23, 2016, critics argued that corporate backlash against the measure would cost North Carolina dearly.

Now, more than a year later, the Associated Press has provided an updated estimate of the economic fallout:

The Associated Press used dozens of interviews and multiple public records requests to determine that North Carolina’s ‘bathroom bill’ will cost the state more than $3.76 billion in lost business over a dozen years.

The overwhelming majority of the reported impact, or $2.66 billion over 12 years, is attributable to PayPal’s cancellation of a planned 400-employee operations center less than two weeks after the bill was passed.

The effects of similar site location decisions by Deutsche Bank, CoStar, Voxpro, and Adidas total $912 million. The loss of sporting events, conventions, concerts, etc. totals $196 million.

The reported figures probably overstate the economic impact of each individual item. They are based on input-output models, which assume that dollars spent in initial transactions—such as by a business that decides to locate in a given area—will automatically cycle through the economy, creating a ripple effect and stimulating further economic growth.

But this ignores supply-side constraints, such as the number of available workers.

If North Carolina were still in the midst of a recession and had an unusually large number of people looking for work, this model would prove more accurate. But that is not the case.

North Carolina’s average unemployment rate fell from 5.8 percent to 5.1 percent between 2015 and 2016, when it was not significantly different from the national average.

In 2016, the national unemployment rate was only 0.2 percentage points above its underlying long-term rate, down from a gap of 4.7 percentage points in 2010. Those two rates are expected to be equal in 2017.

Across the nation, labor market slack—that is, the excess number of people out of work and available for hiring—is vanishing.

Input-output model results also depend heavily on the division of income between parties.

In the case of the PayPal expansion, the model shows that the 400 “nondepository credit intermediation and related services” jobs were expected to result in annual sales of $207 million, of which $30 million would go to employee compensation, $28 million would go to other business expenses, and the remaining $149 million would be proprietor’s income.

While the forecasted effects on the North Carolina economy result mostly from proprietor’s income, PayPal is a publicly traded company headquartered in California, so the bulk of these profits would most likely be distributed outside of North Carolina, with little further impact on the state.

Even if the reported estimates of the impact of H.B. 2 prove to be accurate, they should be considered in the context of North Carolina’s half trillion-dollar gross domestic product.

In that case, the estimated impact is actually quite modest, resulting in a loss of no more than 0.1 percent of the state’s GDP, or about $1 for every $1,000 of income earned in the state.

This cost of roughly a dollar a week for the median North Carolina household would be a small price to pay to protect the privacy and safety of women and girls. (For more from the author of “The Truth About the Economic Impact of North Carolina’s ‘Bathroom Bill'” please click HERE)

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Mom Says TSA Agents Traumatized Son With ‘Horrifying’ Security Check

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A mother who asked TSA agents at DFW International Airport for alternative screening for her son with special needs said they were “treated like dogs” and forced to miss a flight during an extensive security check, according to her Facebook post that has since gone viral.

But the Transportation Security Administration said in a prepared statement that it followed approved procedures to “resolve an alarm of the passenger’s laptop.”

Jennifer Williamson wrote Sunday morning that her son has a sensory processing disorder and that she asked agents to “screen him in other ways per TSA rules.”

An accompanying video shows a TSA agent patting down her son. The agent pats down his backside before moving to his front. She writes in the post they were kept for more than hour in the “horrifying” incident.

TSA disputed Williamson’s account, noting in its statement that the passengers were at the checkpoint for about 45 minutes, including the time it took to discuss screening procedures with the teen’s mother and the inspection of three carry-on items. The pat-down took about two minutes, according to the agency. (Read more from “Mom Says TSA Agents Traumatized Son With ‘Horrifying’ Security Check” HERE)

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Rockville Rape Defense: 14-Year-Old Girl Sent Explicit Pictures, Texted About Sex

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Defense attorneys for one of the two male high school students accused of violently raping a 14-year-old girl are claiming the victim agreed to have sex with one of the suspects over text message and sent him explicit photos.

Both suspects — 17-year-old Jose Montano and 18-year-old Henry Sanchez — were in the country illegally after being detained and then released by federal officials . . .

According to police, they forced the girl into a bathroom stall at school and made her perform oral sex on them while they took turns raping and sodomizing her as she begged them to stop. Police found blood and DNA at the scene . . .

The rape drew attention from White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who last week pointed to the case as reason for President Trump’s immigration policies.

“Part of the reason the President has cracked-down on illegal immigration, and made it such a big deal is because of tragedies like this,” Spicer said. “Immigration pays its toll on our people if it’s not done legally.” (Read more from “Rockville Rape Defense: 14-Year-Old Girl Sent Explicit Pictures, Texted About Sex” HERE)

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Dad Finds out Daughter Plotting School Bombing by Reading Her Diary

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A Thurmont, Md., father discovered his 18-year-old daughter was planning to bomb and shoot up her high school after reading her diary, according to local reports.

Honor roll student Nichole Cevario, 18, bought a shotgun and bomb-making materials in preparation for the attack, which was planned for April 5. It is unclear if the date had any special significance, or what Cevario’s motivations were, but her diary showed she had meticulously planned out the attack.

Cevario’s father alerted the Catoctin High School of the plot after reading the diary. Hours later, she was removed from her classroom and taken to the hospital for psychological evaluation.

“We felt this was going to be carried out,” said Frederick County Sheriff Charles A. Jenkins at a news conference. “There is no doubt in our minds that we diverted a disaster up there.”

Cevario reportedly obtained her weapon and materials legally, according to the sheriff’s office. Her arsenal included a 12-gauge Remington shotgun, ammunition, pipes with end caps, shrapnel, fireworks, magnesium tape and fuse materials. (Read more from “Dad Finds out Daughter Plotting School Bombing by Reading Her Diary” HERE)

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Iowa Republicans Back ‘Fetal Heartbeat’ Abortion Legislation

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Republicans in the Iowa Legislature are backing newly filed legislation that would ban abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, prompting Democrats to threaten an all-night filibuster to delay an initial procedural vote.

A GOP-led House committee was scheduled to vote on the provision Tuesday night. It was added to a separate bill that would ban most abortions at 20 weeks of pregnancy. The new version would include several abortion restrictions.

If the heartbeat proposal goes into effect, it would be the strictest ban in the U.S. (Read more from “Iowa Republicans Back ‘Fetal Heartbeat’ Abortion Legislation” HERE)

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They Thought She Was Crazy: Doctor Extracts RFID Chip From Sex Trafficking Victim

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If someone walks into a hospital and claims that they’re being tracked, and that they need to have a tracking device removed, there’s a pretty good chance that they’re going to be sent to a mental institution instead. However, according to a doctor who wished to remain anonymous to protect his patient, that very situation occurred last October and it didn’t end how you might expect.

The patient in question was a 28-year-old woman who claimed that she had a GPS tracking device planted in her body. Normally a patient like that would be regarded as crazy, but this woman appeared totally sane, and she had an incision mark on her side. So the doctor decided to check her out anyway. The medical staff at the hospital were stunned when they finally gave her an X-ray.

Embedded in the right side of her flank is a small metallic object only a little bit larger than a grain of rice. But it’s there. It’s unequivocally there. She has a tracker in her. And no one was speaking for like five seconds — and in a busy ER that’s saying something.

It turns out that it wasn’t a GPS device, but an RFID chip. “It’s used to tag cats and dogs. And someone had tagged her like an animal, like she was somebody’s pet that they owned.”

In a way, that makes it even creepier than a GPS device. RFID chips have a very short range. To be useful for tracking someone’s position, they would have to be kept confined in an area where the right equipment is in place to send or receive signals from the chip. The doctor would later discover that this woman was a victim of sex trafficking.

Science fiction has been warning about the potential of tracking devices for years, but usually in reference to how the government might use this technology. It just goes to show that the way humans use technology in the real world is often stranger (and creepier) than fiction. (For more from the author of “They Thought She Was Crazy: Doctor Extracts RFID Chip From Sex Trafficking Victim” please click HERE)

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Vimeo Declares War on Gospel Transformation

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Did Jesus change your life and set you free from homosexual practice? If so, your testimony is not welcome on Vimeo. Not now. Not ever. And if you see homosexuality as another aspect of sexual brokenness, something Jesus died for and something you can be healed from, your opinion is not welcome on Vimeo. Case closed. Door shut. End of subject.

In the words of Dr. David Kyle Foster, director of Pure Passion TV and himself a former homosexual, “This is pure religious bigotry and censorship.”

Last December, Vimeo contacted Foster. They told him that some of Pure Passion’s videos had been marked by a moderator since “Vimeo does not allow videos that harass, incite hatred or depict excessive violence.” They instructed him to “remove any and all videos of this sort from” from his account. He had 850 videos on Vimeo at that point. They let him know that his account would be reviewed in 48 hours. If his ministry failed to remove the allegedly offensive videos, then, he was informed, “your videos and/or your account may be removed by a Vimeo moderator.”

Foster’s ministry is not the first to be unfairly censured. Last year, Vimeo closed the account of Restored Hope Network. This is an association of ministries that help people deal with unwanted same-sex attractions. Vimeo also closed the account of NARTH, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality. NARTH is an association of psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors and therapists who have had the temerity to stand up to the PC establishment and who refuse to celebrate LGBT activism. For such a horrific thought crime, their Vimeo account is no more.

Vimeo’s message is clear: If you have same-sex attractions, whatever their cause, you must embrace them, if not celebrate them.

Foster was quite aware of Vimeo’s history. But he was not about to go down without a hearty protest. So he wrote back to Vimeo. “You must have the wrong account,” he wrote. “We are an award-winning Christian ministry that only posts content that helps people, not hurts them. We never defame anyone. We never incite hatred or depict violence of any kind. Our message has been one of love from start to finish.”

He explained, “Our videos help sexual abuse victims, people who have been sex trafficked, those who are addicted or in any other condition that causes them distress. We are constantly receiving professional awards and commendations from people who have been helped by the world-class experts who populate our videos.”

He even asked Vimeo to please cite “any video that does otherwise and we will have a second look. It would be a shame to remove the hundreds of videos that help people in very desperate circumstances — some of whom have even claimed to have been prevented from suicide by the messages of hope that we produce.”

The next day, Melissa B., a “Trust and Safety Coordinator,” responded. “It seems that a number of your videos,” she said, “go against the Vimeo Guidelines of: ‘We also forbid content that displays a demeaning attitude toward specific groups, including: Videos that promote Sexual Orientation Change Efforts (SOCE).’”

By this logic, Alcoholics Anonymous would not be welcome on Vimeo, since their videos demean alcoholism. Weight loss videos would not be welcome, because they shame the overweight. Testimonies of Christian converts from Islam would not be welcome, because they shame Muslims.

In reality, all these videos are welcome on Vimeo. Why? Because none of them cross the forbidden line. None say: “If you’re not happy being gay (or bisexual or transgender), God has a better way.”

Foster wrote back again, explaining why they were targeting the wrong account. “The testimonies of people who have been significantly helped by our videos is practically endless,” he explained. “Why would anyone want to censor such a voice for the broken and helpless?”

Surprisingly, Vimeo accepted his explanation. They told Foster he did not need to remove his videos “at this time,” but they asked him to keep their guidelines in mind “for any future uploads.”

Alas, on March 16, the cycle started again. Vimeo gave Foster one week to remove the supposedly offensive videos.

He wrote back, noting that the matter had previously been resolved. He then received an email from Sean M., who explained:

Your statement equating homosexuality to “sexual brokenness” betrays the underlying stance of your organization. To put it plainly, we don’t believe that homosexuality requires a cure and we don’t allow videos on our platform that espouse this point of view.

Please remove any and all videos that discuss homosexuality as a condition requiring healing. We also consider this basic viewpoint to display a demeaning attitude toward a specific group, which is something that we do not allow.

You can see why Foster described this as “pure religious bigotry and censorship.”

Vimeo is forbidding you from agreeing with the Bible when it comes to human sin and brokenness.

Vimeo is forbidding you from preaching the gospel of transformation when it comes to homosexuality.

Vimeo is engaging in blatant, unapologetic, aggressive anti-Christian censorship.

Foster wrote to me privately, pointing out that Vimeo allows “videos of terrorists and pornographers.” This made their stand against his ministry even more hypocritical.

He and Sean then engaged in a series of emails. But this was Vimeo’s bottom line: They recognized that Foster’s ministry was not “overtly vitriolic. However, “Referring to homosexuality as a ‘dysfunction of sexual brokenness’ or ‘sexual distortion’ is not OK, nor is reference to ‘the fact that God can transform the life of anyone caught in homosexual confusion’. … Vimeo disagrees wholeheartedly with the notion that homosexuality is a form of brokenness, or something that requires healing, or something that people need to seek freedom from.”

To repeat: This is forbidden on Vimeo!

To paraphrase: Dr. Foster, we know you’re not hateful. But don’t you dare testify about Jesus transforms lives. And don’t you dare imply that there is anything wrong with being gay. Not a word!

Then, on March 24, all 850 videos were removed and the Pure Passion account was closed.

This is an outrage, and it needs to be addressed. Here’s what you can do today:

Write to Vimeo and ask them to restore immediately the account of Dr. David Kyle Foster and Pure Passion. State politely that this is a form of religious censorship and bigotry. If you can say something positive about Foster’s ministry through your own experience, do that as well.

Subscribe to Pure Passion’s YouTube channel. At least for now, it has not been shut down. There you’ll find videos from speakers like Kay Arthur and John Bevere. They address issues of sexual addiction and pornography, expose the horrors of sex-traffickin. They also provide testimony of ex-gays.

Consider getting a copy of Foster’s powerful “Such Were Some of You” DVD.

Share this article with a friend.

Pray that the message of freedom and liberty in Jesus — from ALL brokenness and sin — would be proclaimed even more loudly and powerfully in the days ahead. May Vimeo’s efforts to silence a powerful ministry (along with other excellent ministries and organizations) amplify this ministry’s message.

(For more from the author of “Vimeo Declares War on Gospel Transformation” please click HERE)

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