A panel of women said that gun rights should be a feminist issue Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC.
During the discussion, Antonia Okafor, a student at the University of Texas at Dallas and campus carry advocate, said gun rights—and the ability to independently protect yourself—are the very epitome of feminism.
“How much more feminist can you get than by talking about self-defense and advocating for that,” Okafor said.
Gun advocates Kimberly Corban, Ashlee Lundvall, and Kristi McMains joined Okafor on the panel moderated by Townhall.com editor Katie Pavlich.
“We need to let women know it’s OK, it’s prudent, it’s legal, it’s moral to carry a gun for self-protection, in fact, it could save your life, because it saved mine,” McMains said.
McMains said she was attacked in a parking garage last year, and she used her concealed weapon to successfully fight off an attacker.
McMains spoke about the side of the gun control debate she said often goes unaddressed—how guns save lives.
“You can become a victim of violence anywhere, anytime, and therefore I should be able to save my own life anywhere, anytime,” McMains said. “When the time comes, should we need to, we’re gonna use [a firearm] to save our lives.”
Corban, a sexual assault survivor and vocal supporter of gun rights, said both the fear and curiosity surrounding guns can be alleviated through education.
“[Education] in it of itself is going to make a better firearms community, a better community in general,” Corban said.
“That’s the feminist movement, right?” she continued. “We want women to be educated and empowered, and feel like they can do anything and watch them do it.”
Corban said she hopes women will realize that guns are empowering, not something to be afraid of.
“Someone else already took my power away and I’m going to take it back,” Corban said.
According to a report from the National Rifle Association, women are the fastest-growing group of gun owners in the country. In 2011, 23 percent of women self-reported as gun owners, a 10 percent increase from 2005, a Gallup poll found. Additionally, 42 percent of women who own a firearm own at least three.
CPAC, the largest annual national gathering of conservative activists, runs from Wednesday to Saturday at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington. (For more from the author of “Nothing More Feminist Than Self-Defense, Gun Rights Advocate Says” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/girl-1238517_960_720.jpg584960Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-02-24 20:45:252017-02-24 20:45:25Nothing More Feminist Than Self-Defense, Gun Rights Advocate Says
Panelists told attendees of the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, that President Donald Trump has reset the tone of the pro-life movement for the better.
“President Trump … has put an end to the failed Republican strategy of … personally professing our adherence to the pro-life cause and then equivocating when it came time to vote,” Sean Fieler of American Principles Project said.
Fieler said Trump’s fearlessness of the media coupled with his life experience has made him an unlikely yet ideal spokesman for the pro-life cause:
We were afraid of the media’s narrative on abortion. President Trump is not afraid of the media’s narrative on abortion and he understood that he could communicate directly to the American people. He also understood that his personal life … he’s no Boy Scout, gave him the freedom to explain to the American people that abortion is the taking of a human life without a demoralizing tone and without suggesting even judgment.
The panel, titled “How the Election Has Changed and Expanded the Pro-Life Movement,” also included filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, and Marcie Little, creative director of pro-life organization Save the Storks.
The media, Fieler said, is one way the pro-life movement can act to bring change.
‘Engage the Media’
“We have to change political reality into cultural reality into action,” Fieler said.
Documentary filmmakers McAleer and McElhinney have made strides in using media to advance the pro-life message.
Their new documentary film, “Gosnell,” was made to help educate the public on the horrors of abortion.
“I was in Pennsylvania promoting a documentary … I saw this [court case of] this guy called Gosnell,” McAleer said.
McAleer said that he was intrigued and followed the case, which eventually led him to convince his colleague and spouse, McElhinney, to create a documentary film on convicted abortionist Kermit Gosnell.
Gosnell was sentenced to three life terms in prison for murdering three babies that were born alive at his abortion clinic.
Gosnell’s abortion clinic, Women’s Medical Society clinic in Philadelphia, was called a “house of horrors” by some due to Gosnell’s illegal practices.
McAleer and McElhinney are screening their new film at CPAC.
“I think for too long we have not challenged the assumption that abortion is good for women,” Little said.
Little of Save the Storks, a pro-life organization that offers alternatives to abortion, said she has seen firsthand the struggles post-abortive women face.
“I help run social media for Save the Storks … and I sit on the receiving end of the stories we get on a weekly and sometimes daily basis of women who have had abortions and walked through that struggle … and they are full of regret,” Little said.
Be Where the Need Is
Little said she believes that one of the best things activists can do for the pro-life movement is to be where women are who find themselves in crisis pregnancies.
“We tell their stories and we go right where they are,” Little said.
Little said that one way Save the Storks goes where the women are is through its medical mobile unit outreach.
“We offer them free resources right outside the door of the abortion clinic. Our messaging is women-centric—it is women first, we focus on how empowering it is to give women real information so they see … their child perfectly formed, to hear their heartbeat, and are motivated to choose life,” Little said.
CPAC, the largest annual national gathering of conservative activists, runs from Wednesday to Saturday at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington. (For more from the author of “Activists Discuss What Can Be Done to Advance Pro-Life Cause” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/640px-University_of_Toronto_pro-life_protest_1.jpg480640Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-02-24 20:31:152017-02-24 20:31:15Activists Discuss What Can Be Done to Advance Pro-Life Cause
You probably saw the breathless reports suggesting, as CNN did, that “same-sex marriage may decrease teen suicide attempt rates, study says.” A yes, a study. A statistical study. That’s supposed to give it gravitas. In fact many, perhaps even most, statistical studies simply can’t be trusted. Certainly not this one.
The study in question is the peer-reviewed paper “Difference-in-Differences Analysis of the Association Between State Same-Sex Marriage Policies and Adolescent Suicide Attempts” by Julia Raifman, Ellen Moscoe, and S. Bryn Austin, in the once-prestigious journal JAMA Pediatrics.
This widely touted work purports to have discovered, using statistical methods, “that same-sex marriage policies were associated with a 7% reduction in the proportion of all high school students reporting a suicide attempt within the past year.” The authors say there is now “empirical evidence for an association between same-sex marriage policies and mental health outcomes.”
Association.
Think about what the authors are implying: that the mere presence of gmarriage — government-defined marriage, as opposed to marriage defined by reality — stops teens from reporting suicide attempts.
Implications
If what these authors are eager to imply is true, it must have been that some teenagers before gmarriage reported trying to kill themselves because there was no such thing as gmarriage. Or it must be that some teenagers after gmarriage became the “law of the land” thought to themselves, “You know, I was going to report trying to kill myself. But now that Bert and Ernie can be gmarried, I won’t report it.” (Both could be true.)
About the number of teenagers who actually killed themselves because of the absence of gmarriage — or because of the presence of gmarriage — nobody knows. The study only relates how many kids self-reported suicide attempts. Since most of the kids giving answers were 15-16, it can’t have been because of actual forbidden gmarriage or marriage ceremonies that caused reporting suicide attempts (of course, there could have been a handful of child brides or grooms in the data).
This is among all teens, mind you, and not just the minority reporting same-sex attraction or other non-biologically oriented sexual desires. The authors claim the effect was greater in the sexual minority.
Weighted Realities
Forgive the dive into the details, but it’s necessary to see what’s really happening. Via a complicated massaging of numbers, the authors say that before gmarriage
a weighted 8.6% of all high school students and 28.5% of 231 413 students who identified as sexual minorities reported suicide attempts before implementation of same-sex marriage policies. Same-sex marriage policies were associated with a 0.6-percentage point…reduction in suicide attempts, representing a 7% relative reduction in the proportion of high school students attempting suicide owing to same-sex marriage implementation.
A weighted 8.6% to a weighted 8%, they say. This is a 7% reduction, all right, but a minor tweak in the actual weighted number. Thee numbers are weighted averages across several states and the result of a statistical model called a linear regression. The 0.6 drop is not observed, but is the output from a model.
What’s odd is that the authors report the rate for teens reporting non-traditional sexual desires (a modeled 4% drop from 28.5%), and also for all teens (that modeled 0.6% drop), a group which includes the sexual minority. But they don’t report numbers for normal teens (did this number increase?). This omission leads one to suspect the authors are fooling themselves. This is suggested in two ways.
Complication
The first is that these numbers are modeled averages across states. The numbers within states is anything but straightforward (the authors provide graphs). For instance, some states show reported suicide attempts increasing after gmarriage (New York, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, for example). The graphs also indicate a general decline in rates before gmarriage and continuing afterwards (see their Fig. 3). What makes this even more curious is that there are only a couple of years of data after gmarriage (there are many before), making comparisons more prone to error.
But those are all quibbles. Forget them if you like. The second reason is more to the point. The year each state imposed gmarriage was put into the authors’ model: this created a before and after period. The attempted suicide rates in the before period were caused by any number of things, but, the authors imply, some of the attempts were because of the lack of gmarriage.
In the after period, there were still myriad causes of suicide attempts, but one cause was removed (lack of gmarriage). Thus some kids who would have tried to unsuccessfully kill themselves did not try because of gmarriage access (but not for themselves, because they were too young).
Correlation is not Causation!
But — and this is a big but — since no questions about why kids tried to kill themselves were asked, the demarcation of before and after is entirely arbitrary. The year most cited for gmarriage was 2014. Thus not only could access to gmarriage by others (but not for themselves) be used, so could the Ebola epidemic becoming a global health crisis, which also happened in 2014, and which was one of the biggest news stories of the year, according to ABC.
Think: putting Ebola in the model works equally well with gmarriage to explain the data. So do the disasters of those crashing Malaysian airliners, or the fighting in Ukraine and Crimea. So does the 2014 Winter Olympics! And the death of sad-funny-man Robin Williams (all mentioned by ABC).
Or any of an uncountable number of events. The truth is the data do not say, and cannot say, what caused the observed changes. It is sloppy statistics — it is bad science, period — to suggest the one thing the authors thought of had to be the one and only cause of the changes.
It is made worse when this cause has so little bearing on the lives of the people purported to be affected. Fifteen and 16-year-olds do not often marry, and nobody has (yet?) heard of any same-sex “weddings” between teenagers.
And it grows worse yet again, when it is implied, as the authors do imply, that the increases after gmarriage in specific states were actually decreases — because the (modeled) mean across states decreased.
If suicide attempts increased in a state after gmarriage, as it did in several states, could it be that the presence of gmarriage is causing more kids to try and kill themselves?
If not, why not? (For more from the author of “No, a Study Did Not Show That Same-Sex “Marriage” Laws Reduce Teen Suicide Rates” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/girl-1098612_960_720.jpg635960Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-02-23 19:56:242017-02-23 19:56:24No, a Study Did Not Show That Same-Sex “Marriage” Laws Reduce Teen Suicide Rates
The Trump administration acted Wednesday night to fix the Obama administration’s unlawful “gender identity” school policy and return authority to parents and teachers in the states.
Civil rights officers in the Department of Justice and the Department of Education issued a joint letter saying the administration was rescinding the policy, which had required schools to allow transgender students to use the restrooms, locker rooms and similar facilities of their choice—or face loss of federal funds.
In the letter, they said the Obama mandate did not show “due regard for the primary role of the states and local school districts” in making education policy.
The Trump administration is doing the right thing in correcting Obama’s unlawful overreach, which imposed a one-sided solution on all 50 states. Parents and teachers in local schools now can work to find win-win solutions that protect the dignity, privacy, and safety of all students.
For years, the Obama administration unilaterally had redefined bans on “sex” discrimination to include “gender identity.”
The problem came to a head May 13, when Obama’s Justice and Education departments sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to our nation’s schools, informing them that “both federal agencies treat a student’s gender identity as the student’s sex for purposes of enforcing Title IX,” a 1972 law prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded schools.
With this decree, the Obama administration directed all schools to allow “students to participate in sex-segregated activities and access sex-segregated facilities consistent with their gender identity.”
Schools were told they had to allow students access to bathrooms, locker rooms, dorm rooms, and hotel rooms for overnight field trips based entirely on the self-declared gender identities of their students.
On Aug. 21, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor ruled the Obama administration’s attempt to redefine sex was unlawful, and blocked the decree from going into effect.
O’Connor held that it “cannot be disputed that the plain meaning of the term sex as used … following passage of Title IX meant the biological and anatomical differences between male and female,” and he placed a nationwide injunction on the administration’s guidance to schools.
The Justice Department, under Attorney General Loretta Lynch, appealed this ruling Oct. 20.
But on Feb. 10, with Jeff Sessions as the nation’s new attorney general, the Justice Department withdrew that motion for a stay and cancelled the scheduled oral arguments.
The Trump administration rescinded the Obama guidance saying officials would interpret the word “sex” in Title IX to mean “gender identity.” Instead, the administration will allow parents and teachers to work together in local schools to find nuanced solutions that address the needs of everyone.
Wednesday night’s moves signaled a change in position that could have a significant impact on the Justice Department’s controversial Title IX lawsuit against North Carolina’s Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act (known as HB2), which the Trump administration inherited.
The actions also could affect a Title IX gender identity case, currently set for oral argument at the Supreme Court next month, that depends in large part on the Department of Education’s position.
Dignity, Privacy, and Safety Concerns
Last week at The Heritage Foundation, a panel of women explained the many policy problems with “gender identity” laws.
As one of them said, “when gender identity wins, women always lose.”
The panelists—a rape survivor, a lesbian, a feminist activist, a stay-at-home mom, and a conservative—explained how people who identify as transgender should be free to live as they want, but that the law shouldn’t therefore eliminate women-only spaces or redefine what it is to be a woman.
While we must be sensitive to the dignity, privacy, and safety concerns of people who identify as transgender, that is not a reason to ignore the dignity, privacy, and safety concerns of everyone else.
Unfortunately, the Obama-era policies were entirely one-sided. They favored the concerns of people who identify as transgender while entirely discounting the concerns of others.
Safe Spaces for Women, a group that “provides survivors of sexual assault with care, support, understanding, and advice,” recently submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court explaining how gender identity policies can negatively impact sexual assault survivors:
Safe Spaces for Women has a strong interest in ensuring that the voices of women who have suffered sexual abuse are heeded when policies are made that may directly affect their physical, emotional, and psychological well-being. This includes policies that require educational institutions covered by Title IX to admit to female showers, locker rooms, and restrooms biological males who identify as female. While Safe Spaces for Women bears no animus toward the transgendered community, it is deeply concerned that … survivors of sexual assault are likely to suffer psychological trauma as a result of encountering biological males—even those with entirely innocent intentions—in the traditional safe spaces of women’s showers, locker rooms, and bathrooms.
The brief goes on to note that the guidance from the Obama administration was issued “without giving those affected a voice in the process. … improperly circumvent[ing] the notice and comment process when that process was needed most.”
Likewise, Kenneth V. Lanning, a 40-year veteran law enforcement officer who specialized in sex crimes for the FBI at Quantico for 20 years, explains the problem with “gender identity-based access policies” for sex-specific intimate facilities.
Lanning says “the problem with potential sex offenses is not crimes by transgendered persons,” but rather “offenses by males who are not really transgendered but who would exploit the entirely subjective provisions” of such policies “to facilitate their sexual behavior or offenses.” Lanning explains that:
Allowing a man, based only on his claim to be [a] transgendered woman, to have unlimited access to women’s rest rooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, showers, etc. will make it easier for the type of sex offense behavior previously described to happen to more women and children. Such access would create an additional risk for potential victims in a previously protected setting and a new defense for a wide variety of sexual victimization.
Indeed, as The Daily Signal previously noted, such sexual victimization already is occurring by men who have disguised themselves as women.
What to Do Now
Wednesday night’s actions by the Justice and Education departments will lead to good policy outcomes, which is why it should not be limited to Title IX.
The Trump administration should extend this decision to every area where federal agencies have imposed new “gender identity” rules on the American people without basis in law, without congressional authorization, without considering legitimate countervailing concerns, and without the support of the American people.
Congress should make such administrative actions permanent by reintroducing and passing H.R. 5812, the Civil Rights Uniformity Act, which clarifies that the term “sex” does not mean “gender identity” for the purpose of interpreting civil rights statutes. This would have the benefit of undoing the past and current abuses of Title IX, as well as preventing future abuses of other civil rights law.
Passing the Civil Rights Uniformity Act would ensure that unelected bureaucrats and judges would not get to unilaterally reshape policy affecting women and girls. It would allow schools to continue providing separate bathroom and locker room facilities and sports teams based on biological sex, not gender identity.
It also would address other unilateral Obama-era “gender identity” reinterpretations in health care, emergency shelters, housing, and employment. At the same time, such legislation would properly leave states and private entities entirely free to provide nuanced, sensitive, and reasonable accommodations of people who identify as transgender.
Up until last year’s prime-time interview of the celebrity then known as Bruce Jenner, few Americans ever had had a conversation about transgender issues. It’s a conversation we need to have.
But the Obama administration tried to shut down these discussions before they’ve even begun. The Obama administration attempted to force a one-size-fits-all policy on the entire nation rather than allow parents and teachers and local schools the time, space, and flexibility to find solutions that work best for everyone.
The Trump administration has taken the first steps to correct this.
While the Obama administration attempted to rewrite law to impose a federal “gender identity” policy on the entire nation, the Trump administration is respecting federalism, local decision-making, and parental authority in education.
For most Americans, concerns related to transgender students are a new reality. Rather than follow the Obama administration’s rush to impose a top-down solution on the entire country, the Trump administration is allowing the American people to have these conversations, consider all the relevant concerns, and make policies that will best serve all Americans.
Good for them. (For more from the author of “Trump Right to Fix Obama’s Unlawful Transgender School Policy” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/5440603914_97c06d6eaa_b-1-1.jpg6831024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-02-22 20:08:152017-02-22 20:08:15Trump Right to Fix Obama’s Unlawful Transgender School Policy
A U.S. district judge has blocked the state of Texas from cutting off Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid funding. This is the sixth instance in which a court has prevented a state from denying Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood: Arkansas, Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana have also attempted to make Planned Parenthood ineligible for funds.
On Dec. 20, 2016, the Office of Inspector General at the Texas Health and Human Services Commission sent a final notice informing Planned Parenthood that its participation in the state’s Medicaid program would be discontinued.
Referencing Center for Medical Progress videos released by pro-life activists in 2015, the notice informed Planned Parenthood that the inspector general “finds you are not qualified to provide medical services in a professionally competent, safe, legal and ethical manner under … state and federal law pertaining to Medicaid providers.”
According to Judge Sam Sparks’ ruling, the notice outlined specific alleged violations of accepted standards of medical practice by Planned Parenthood:
1. “A history of deviating from accepted standards to procure samples that meet researcher’s needs.”
2. “A history of permitting staff physicians to alter procedures to obtain targeted tissue samples needed for their specific outside research.”
3. “A willingness to convert normal pregnancies to the breech position to ensure researchers receive intact specimens.”
4. “An admission that ‘we get what we need to do to alter the standard of care where we are still maintaining patient safety, still maintaining efficiency in clinic operations, but we integrate research into it.’”
5. “An admission that Planned Parenthood gets requests for ‘information from our study sponsor on what data they need that is not our standard of care,’ and that [Planned Parenthood] provides what is needed by creating a separate research protocol or template that can include medically unnecessary testing.”
6. “A willingness to charge more than the costs incurred for procuring fetal tissue.”
Planned Parenthood sought a preliminary injunction claiming that Texas violated a federal statute commonly referred to as the Medicaid “free choice of provider” provision, which says that beneficiaries may obtain medical services “from any institution, agency, community pharmacy, or person qualified to perform the service or services required … who undertakes to provide him such services … ”
On Tuesday, Sparks sided with Planned Parenthood and issued the requested injunction.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton immediately announced plans to appeal the decision, sharply criticizing the judge’s decision to rule that “willingness to violate state and federal law on manipulating abortion procedures and profiting from the sale of fetal tissue, making false statements to law enforcement, and misleading multiple courts were insufficient grounds for Texas to exclude Planned Parenthood” from the state’s program. Planned Parenthood has denied any illegal activity.
In a press release, Texas Right to Life expressed disappointment in the decision, but added that it “hopes Texas will soon prevail in the decision to award Medicaid contracts to ethical providers that offer health services to Texas women and families”
Congress should follow Texas’ lead and end federal funding to Planned Parenthood affiliates and other abortion providers.
Disqualifying Planned Parenthood affiliates and other abortion providers from receiving Title X family planning grants, Medicaid reimbursements, and other grants and contracts does not reduce the overall funding for women’s health care.
The funds currently flowing to abortion providers can instead be distributed to health centers that offer comprehensive health care without entanglement with abortion on demand.
Congress should take this step in the context of the upcoming budget reconciliation bill to repeal Obamacare, ensuring that package includes a provision (just as the 2015 version of the bill did) that would make Planned Parenthood affiliates ineligible from receiving Medicaid reimbursements for one year after the enactment of the bill.
Ultimately, Congress should send the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, which passed in the House of Representatives in January, to the president’s desk for signature. (For more from the author of “Latest Court Decision Blocking Texas’ Attempt to Defund Planned Parenthood Shows Need for Congressional Action” please click HERE)
A federal judge ruled Tuesday that Texas can’t cut off Medicaid dollars to Planned Parenthood over secretly recorded videos taken by anti-abortion activists in 2015 that launched Republican efforts across the U.S. to defund the nation’s largest abortion provider.
An injunction issued by U.S. District Sam Sparks of Austin comes after he delayed making decision in January and essentially bought Planned Parenthood an extra month in the state’s Medicaid program.
Texas is now at least the sixth state where federal courts have kept Planned Parenthood eligible for Medicaid reimbursements for non-abortion services, although a bigger question remains over whether President Donald Trump will federally defund the organization. (Read more from “Judge Blocks Texas Cutting Medicaid to Planned Parenthood” HERE)
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg says he wants to use his platform to build a worldwide “inclusive community.” However, a Christian ‘vlogger’ found out there appears to be no room in it for her as long as she quotes Bible passages about homosexuality.
Elizabeth Johnston, aka the “Activist Mommy,” says there is a big disconnect between Zuckerberg’s recent call for a global “inclusive community” and Facebook’s “censorship of Christians.”
“They are muzzling me and my biblical message while Mark Zuckerberg claims that FB is unbiased,” she stated in a news release.
She has had her page frozen three times now, twice in seven days, because of her posts. Last week, she posted her argument that the Bible condemns homosexuality, using Old and New Testament sources. Facebook summarily removed the post and suspended her access to the page. It also stripped her of her ability to respond to private comments for three days.
Once she was unfrozen, she complained about censorship and restored the original blog. Facebook removed it again. She was frozen for another seven days and cut off from her 70,000 followers. (Read more from “Facebook Freezes out Christian Mom for Quoting Bible About Homosexuality” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/facebook-257829_960_720.jpg540960Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-02-20 22:52:302017-02-20 22:52:30Facebook Freezes out Christian Mom for Quoting Bible About Homosexuality
The Washington State Supreme Court today unanimously upheld a judgment against a florist who declined to create a floral arrangement for a same-sex marriage. She had previously provided the gay couple flowers for other occasions, but told them she couldn’t supply flowers for their “wedding,” because same-sex marriage was incompatible with her Christian beliefs.
The court held that the government can force individuals to provide artistic works and participate in events they disagree with. The nine justices claimed that Barronelle Stutzman violated anti-discrimination and consumer protection laws. The court found her personally accountable, meaning the state can seize her home, personal property, savings and bank accounts to pay any damages fines or attorneys fees awarded against her.
The Court Says: No Violation of Her Rights
A Southern Baptist, Stutzman lives in Richland, one of the most conservative areas in Washington state. She has been in the florist business for 30 years, having started out delivering flowers in her mother’s business. She now owns Arlene’s Flowers.
Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson and the gay couple sued her in 2013. Ferguson has been making a name for himself aggressively pursuing a liberal activist agenda as attorney general, with aspirations for higher office.
In 2016, Benton County Superior Court Judge Alexander Ekstrom fined Stutzman and awarded attorney’s fees against her. Stutzman appealed the lower court’s decision to the state’s highest court.
The Washington State Supreme Court found forcing her to provide flowers for a gay wedding did not violate her constitutional rights. She provided services for people of other religions, the judges argued, and had no grounds for refusing service to anyone else. “As Stutzman acknowledged at deposition, providing flowers for a wedding between Muslims would not necessarily constitute an endorsement of Islam, nor would providing flowers for an atheist couple endorse atheism,” the opinion said.
However, Stutzman was not objecting on the grounds that her services would constitute an endorsement of another religion. She was objecting on the grounds that doing that would condone and aid something against her religion, thus violating her freedom of religion.
She also objected on the grounds of free speech, not just freedom of religion. The court rejected her claim that its interpretation of Washington’s anti-discrimination law violates her right free speech.
A Case About Crushing Dissent
Kristen Waggoner, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom which is representing Stutzman, denounced the decision. “This case is about crushing dissent. In a free America, people with differing beliefs must have room to coexist,” she said. The ADF issued a press release explaining how the activist ACLU operates to force through these types of cases.
I will mention that the ACLU raised $24 million in a single weekend recently. And this is what is does with its treasure: file suit against a humble grandmother who was literally minding her own business on the day when she referred a long time customer (who she served dozens of times fully aware that he is gay) to nearby florists who would be willing to celebrate same-sex weddings. While ADF is providing, as we do for all of our clients, free legal representation, the ACLU can and will come after her for legal fees that may top out north of a million dollars.
The organization said the decision marked “a decisive blow against fundamental freedoms: freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion.”
ADF intends to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. However, the Supreme Court declined to hear a similar case in 2014 involving a photographer who refused to service a same-sex wedding.
A page has been set up to help Stutzman. An effort is being made to encourage President Trump to sign an executive order protecting religious freedom. Others are talking about raising funds for her.
Stutzman says this isn’t about herself, but about the bigger picture of protecting the Constitution. She warned in an op-ed in The Spokesman-Review (in Spokane), “Does anyone really believe that a government that gives itself the power to force people to believe (and not believe) things and can order artists to create state-sanctioned messages will only use that power to bend one small-town florist to its will — and then leave everyone else alone?” (For more from the author of “Washington Supreme Court Rejects Religious Liberty for Florist, Puts Her Assets at Risk” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/flower-shop-1160371_960_720.jpg617960Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-02-20 16:45:232017-02-25 22:15:06Washington Supreme Court Rejects Religious Liberty for Florist, Puts Her Assets at Risk
After more than three decades in business, the makers of the American Girl doll have released an American Boy doll. Logan Everett wears plaid, plays the drums and — you read that right — is a boy doll. There may be many nuanced reasons for this new doll — after all, girls might want to play with boy dolls a la Ken and Barbie. Or, heck, since American Girls, the dolls, and books are so popular, why shouldn’t boys join in on the fun? But given the timing of this announcement and our culture’s obsession with eradicating traditional gender roles, this is another progressive ploy, a “Holy, gender-stereotypes-are-so-2005,” sidekick sentiment, like Robin is to Batman.
Eradicating gender is sometimes okay
Given the explosion of gender-neutral clothing lines and the call for gender-neutral toys, I’m actually surprised American Girl headed in this direction. In 2015, Target removed their gender-specific labels from children’s toys and bedding. It’s hard to keep track of when gender matters and when it doesn’t. (I also hope Logan doesn’t get confused and end up wanting to be a girl? In 2020 Logan might be “Laura!”) Of course, girls will want to play with the boy — he’s a novelty after all — and I’m sure some boys will too. Especially young ones. This mom said her little boy wanted an American Boy doll so much, last year she made him one herself by hacking off an American Girl doll’s hair and the like.
Very young children aren’t always as gung-ho for or against gender-specific toys as one might think. For example, my five year-old girl has put a play dress on my three year-old boy for giggles and he’s clueless. If you must know, I gently explain dresses are for girls and we remove it, throw a do-rag on his head, and hand him a sword. (I know! I’m so antiquated!)
But does this mean boys should be as drawn to “girl” toys as “boy” toys? Does it even matter?
Boys will be boys
I think it does matter. Here’s why: Whether intentionally or not, American Girl is forcing political correctness and a discussion of gender stereotypes onto an age and gender that doesn’t want it. When boys are young, especially boys who don’t struggle with dysphoria at all — which is a very real issue — they seem generally and naturally drawn to what adults would call “boy” toys.
As a mother of two boys and two girls we have plenty of boy, girl, and gender-neutral toys.
Still, when you throw it all into the playroom and let the heathens at it, one of my girls gravitates towards really girly things like dolls; the other plays with both (but mostly her older brother).
The two boys, however, embrace their masculinity like Peter Pan embraced Neverland. Since they could talk they have gravitated towards boy toys, have made boy sounds for everything, and have chewed things into the shapes of boy toys. Once at a science museum, my son and his friends were playing in the “colonial” frontier area which had a cabin, fake firewood, and fake food. Ten minutes later they were playing Army and were shooting each other with fake bananas. Bananas.
This is actually okay. For a mother of boys, “boys will be boys” isn’t just a slogan we utter when they get toothpaste all over the counter or create a fort in the backyard out of branches and duct tape. It is — at least for me — a way to celebrate masculinity. Boys generally will be boys and why shouldn’t they be? Why shouldn’t we as a society, instead of commanding they give up their innate boy traits and be just like girls who want to play with dolls, celebrate this instead of criticizing? The joy of a boy lay in his grubby hands and loud nature and ferocious, curious spirit. From those things we see traits that carry into manhood: Men who love to fix, build, problem-solve, create, command, lead, and protect. What would we be as a society without these?
Do boys grow up to be violent criminals more than girls? Yes. Is it because they turn bananas into guns at the science museum? I doubt it. Should I encourage them to play with dolls more? I could certainly try, but when I showed my nine year-old son the picture of Logan he scrunched up his freckled face and said, “Why would they do that?”
As a mom, I’ve actually found all my children play best with toys that are basically gender-neutral and can be played with repeatedly in a myriad of ways: Think Legos versus a Nerf gun. On the other hand, Legos, blocks, Moon Sand, Play-Doh, Lincoln Logs, board games and Dominoes have all been well-loved.
Research even supports this concept. These professors found, through various studies and watching children play with very gender-specific toys, gender-neutral toys, and anything in between that range, “[S]trongly gender-typed toys appear to be less supportive of optimal development than neutral or moderately gender-typed toys.” This 2015 op-ed in the New York Times made a whole case for gender-neutral toys saying gender-specific toys can actually “negatively impact a child’s development.”
Get your facts straight
So if that’s the case, why the sudden push for an American Boy doll for girls and boys alike? Sure, more money, more variety — it’ll make some people very happy. But it looks like progressive marketers and liberal media needs to have a pow-wow to really figure out: Does gender matter? If not does it only matter when it’s traditional — girls are doing girl stuff and boys are doing boy stuff — then there’s a monumental effort to criticize and flip it around to be more progressive?
It’s bogus for the commercial industry at-large to succumb to reversing stereotypes especially on a segment of society — young boys — who are completely comfortable being male and whom we should encourage thusly: Make bananas into guns, not boys into dolls. It plays into male psyche to provide and protect as it plays into the female psyche (in general) to nurture and comfort. Of course girls can be soldiers and guys can cook in the kitchen, but this isn’t really about that is it? Deep down, everybody knows many people fall very naturally into gender-specific roles and are just fine with it, celebrating when it’s convenient, decrying it when it’s a matter of political correctness. That needs to stop. (For more from the author of “My Son’s Response to American Girl’s New Doll Tells Me Everything I Need to Know” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/American_Girl_Star_logo.svg_.png768768Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-02-19 23:46:122017-02-25 22:05:22My Son’s Response to American Girl’s New Doll Tells Me Everything I Need to Know
As the “Roe” of the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, she would have been expected to be a staunch pro-choice advocate for the rest of her life.
She wasn’t.
Roe, whose real name was Norma McCorvey, died Saturday in Texas of a heart ailment. She was 69.
In an ad from 2008, as the Catholic News Agency noted, McCorvey detailed her change of views on abortion after she became a Christian in the mid-1990s.
“Upon knowing God, I realized that my case, which legalized abortion on demand, was the biggest mistake of my life,” she said.
“You see, abortion has eliminated 50 million innocent babies in the U.S. alone since 1973. Abortion scars an untold number of post-abortive mothers and fathers and families, too.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d spoken about her pro-life perspective.
“I believe that I was used and abused by the court system in America,” McCorvey said in testimony in 2005 before a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Instead of helping women in Roe v. Wade, I brought destruction to me and millions of women throughout the nation.”
She detailed her journey over the years from abortion advocate to pro-life activist in that testimony, in which she mentioned the baby she ultimately chose not to abort:
I am glad today that that child is alive and that I did not elect to abort. I was actually silent about my role in abortion for many years and did not speak out at all. Then, in the 1980s, in order to justify my own conduct, with many conflicting emotions, I did come forward publicly to support Roe v. Wade. …
Then around 1992, I began to work in abortion clinics. Like most Americans, including many of you senators, I had no actual experience with abortion until that point. When I began to work in the abortion clinics, I became even more emotionally confused and conflicted between what my conscience knew to be evil, and what the judges, my mind and my need for money were telling me was OK. I saw women crying in the recovery rooms. If abortion is so right, why were the women crying?
Even Sen. Hillary Clinton on January 25, 2005 was reported by The New York Times to finally admit ‘that abortion is a sad, even tragic choice for many, many women.’ Actually it is a tragic choice for every child that is killed and every woman and man who participates in killing their own child, whether they know it at the time or not. Many women will be in denial and even pro-choice for years like I was.
But participating in the murder of your own child will eat away at your conscience forever if you do not take steps to cleanse your conscience, which I will discuss later.
I saw the baby parts, which are a horrible sight to see, but I urge everyone who supports abortion to look at the bodies to face the truth of what they support. I saw filthy conditions in abortion clinics even when ‘Roe’ was supposed to clean up ‘back alley’ abortions. I saw the low regard for women from abortion doctors.
My conscience was bothering me more and more, causing me to drink more and more and more. If you are trapped in wrongdoing then all you can do is justify and defend your actions, but the pain gets worse and worse, so I drank a lot to kill the pain.
Finally, in 1995, a pro-life organization moved its offices right next door to the abortion clinic where I was working. I acted hatefully towards those people. But those people acted lovingly to me most of the time. One man did angrily accuse me at one point of being responsible for killing 40 million babies, but he later came to me and apologized for his words and said they were not motivated by love. The answer to the abortion problem is forgiveness, repentance, and love.
McCorvey was, to understate it, an unlikely pro-life activist.
But her own conversion on abortion gives hope that other Americans will follow in her footsteps. (For more from the author of “The Pro-Life Legacy of Norma McCorvey, the ‘Roe’ of Roe v. Wade” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/AntiObamaBiden.jpg23043072Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2017-02-19 23:08:232017-02-19 23:08:23The Pro-Life Legacy of Norma McCorvey, the ‘Roe’ of Roe v. Wade
