Churches Could Be Forced to Comply With Transgender Law

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Churches in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts have grave concerns about a new anti-discrimination law that could force congregations to accommodate the transgender community – under the threat of fines and jail time.

The law, which goes into effect in October, does not specifically mention churches or other houses of worship. However, the attorney general, along with the government commission assigned to enforce the law, have a different point of view. Attorney General Maura Healey wrote that places of public accommodation include: “auditoriums, convention centers, lecture halls, houses of worship, and other places of public gathering.”

The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, the commission responsible for enforcing the anti-discrimination law, reinforced that interpretation in a document titled, “Gender Identity Guidance.”

“Even a church could be seen as a place of public accommodation if it holds a secular event, such as a spaghetti supper, that is open to the general public,” the document states. “All persons, regardless of gender identity, shall have the right to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities and privileges of any place of public accommodation.”

The Massachusetts Family Institute has launched a petition drive to repeal the law – warning that pastors and parishioners could find themselves in serious legal trouble.

“The law bootstraps the idea of gender identity onto existing Civil Rights laws,” MFI president Andrew Beckwith tells me. “Even having a sign in your church that says “This Bathroom is for Biological Women Only” could subject the pastor of the church to up to 30 days in jail.”

Beckwith said under the law, the sign would be treated the same as if it had said, “Whites Only.” He said the MFI reached out to the attorney general’s office for clarification on the law and they were instructed to “get an attorney.” “Churches are left not knowing whether it applies to them or not,” he said.

So who is going to be deciding what is and what is not a secular event?

“It shows religious tone deafness on the part of whoever is writing these regulations,” Beckwith said. “Any pastor I talk to is going to say their services and ministries and programs are open to the general public. That’s the whole point – to spread the Gospel and minister to the whole community.”

That’s a fact.

I’ve seen revival break out over the potato salad — during a dinner-on-the-grounds at a Baptist church in Mississippi.

Beckwith said he hopes churches will join their campaign to repeal the law — warning that “it’s going to have very real consequences on religious liberty.” “If the church doesn’t defend itself from these attacks on religious liberty, they are going to cease having the ability to make the pastoral decisions they need to be able to make,” he said.

I reached out to the Mass. Commission Against Discrimination and they told me Commissioner Sunila Thomas George said there’s really no need for alarm. “By and large, places of worship are not held to the Massachusetts Anti-Discrimination statutes that deal with places of public accommodation,” she said. “We are not by any means saying that the anti-discrimination laws absolutely apply to them.”

But, they could.

“There are circumstances where places of worship hold activities at their facilities or in their buildings that are purely secular events,” she said. Among the activities that the state considers secular are soup kitchens, day care, housing, and polling places. “In those circumstances, places of worship could be seen as open to the public,” Ms. George told me. “The operative word is ‘could.’”

So let’s use MCAD’s example of a church spaghetti supper. Under the state’s guidelines, that supper could fall under the anti-discrimination law.

I asked MCAD what the church would need to do to comply with the law.

“You would want to make sure that people are treated with regard to their gender identity and treated fairly and equitably,” Ms. George told me.

So what, specifically, does that mean?

“As long as people who are transitioning or who have transitioned are able to use a restroom they identity with, I think you are complying with the law,” she said. “You would want to make sure they are accommodated. In other words, churches that hold spaghetti suppers would have to let men who identify as women use the same bathrooms as the little Sunday school girls.

The Baptist Convention of New England is among the religious groups in the region opposing the law – warning that it’s an attack on the First Amendment. “Any attempt by a small vocal activist group to strip churches of that right should be vehemently opposed by all people,” executive director Terry Dorsett told Baptist Press. “If they can take a church’s right to practice their faith away, imagine what else they can do.”

For starters, they can tell good churchgoing folks what they can do with their spaghetti and meatballs. (For more from the author of “Churches Could Be Forced to Comply With Transgender Law” please click HERE)

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This Senator Wants to Ban Doctors From Dismembering Unborn Babies in the Womb

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Sen. James Lankford introduced legislation last week that would ban late-term dismemberment abortion across the country, in efforts to build consensus and find common ground among Americans.

“There are a lot of arguments right now about life and about its role in American society,” Lankford told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Friday.

“Obviously, not all Americans agree on the issue of life and when life begins and abortion,” the Republican from Oklahoma said. “I have asked the question, ‘Can we at least agree on some basic thing?’”

A dismemberment abortion, one of the methods that can be used in a late-term abortion, should not be used, Lankford told The Daily Signal.

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., introduced identical legislation in the House last year.

The Dismemberment Abortion Ban Act defines a dismemberment abortion as an abortion that uses “clamps, grasping forceps, tongs, scissors or similar instruments” to “slice, crush or grasp a portion of the unborn child’s body in order to cut or rip it off or crush it,” with the purpose of causing death to the unborn child.

When a child is too large to suction, physicians “will actually go in and rip the child’s legs and arms off and pull it apart piece by piece and then will suck out each piece of the child,” Lankford said.

The senator says this is similar to partial-birth abortion where a physician kills the baby partway through delivery. Partial-birth abortions are banned in the United States.

“We have as a nation already said we don’t do partial-birth abortions, where we have this late-term procedure where they deliver the child partially and then kill it while it’s only partially in the womb,” Lankford said.

“We know now that children who are in the womb in late-term can feel pain,” he added. “At least we should agree that in the womb when a child can feel pain, we shouldn’t pull them apart limb by limb.”

A physician that knowingly ends the life of an unborn child through a dismemberment abortion would be subject to fines and imprisonment for up to two years, according to the bill.

A woman on whom an abortion has been performed in violation of the dismemberment ban could seek civil action, including seeking “objectively verifiable money damages for all injuries, psychological and physical, occasioned by the violation” and “statutory damages equal to three times the cost of the abortion.”

“I do pray, not only for those that are yet to be born, but I pray a lot for moms that have had an abortion and the grief that they experience based on that after the fact,” Lankford said. “I pray for those that actually perform abortions that they will at some point awaken to what’s happening right in front of them.”

The legislation’s ban excludes dismemberment abortions that are performed “to save the life of a mother whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself.”

Six states—Kansas, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana—have taken similar action to ban dismemberment abortion.

Clearly this is an effort to take some of the tactics of the past—using very graphic descriptions and inflammatory language—to ban access to abortion,” Elizabeth Nash, the states issue manager at the Guttmacher Institute, told ThinkProgress in January 2015 in response to states introducing similar legislation on dismemberment abortion.

The Dismemberment Abortion Ban Act does not limit abortions that are performed by a method other than dismemberment.

In the House, the legislation was referred to the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice in October 2015. Twenty-four representatives currently co-sponsor the bill. Lankford introduced his identical bill Thursday in the Senate. The legislation was referred to the Judiciary Committee.

“Surely we can all agree that dismantling a child in the womb during a late-term abortion is inhumane and is not reflective of American values,” Lankford said in a prepared statement Thursday. (For more from the author of “This Senator Wants to Ban Doctors From Dismembering Unborn Babies in the Womb” please click HERE)

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This New Reg Will Punish Churches That Use ‘Discriminatory’ Gender Practices

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A draft form of gender identity regulations released by the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination says churches that hold “secular” events “open to the public” must conform to gender identity pronouns and not challenge gender identity with respect to housing, employment and restrooms.

Released earlier this month and set for implementation on October 1, the updated version of the state’s “Gender Identity Guidance” declares that “places of public accommodation may not discriminate against, or restrict a person from services because of that person’s gender identity.”

A footnote declares “all charges” of discrimination “are reviewed on a case-by-case basis,” though the regulation language says, “Even a church could be seen as a place of public accommodation if it holds a secular event, such as a spaghetti supper, that is open to the general public.”

Additionally, the “Guidance” states, “Moreover, it is a violation of the law for any individual to aid or incite another in making a distinction, discriminating against or restricting an individual from a place of public accommodation on the basis of gender identity.”

Legislators passed the law mandating the changes on July 7, according to the LGBT group MassEquality, and it was signed by the state’s Republican Governor the next day.

MassEquality Executive Director Deborah Shields, JD, MPH, said in a statement that “the guidelines are clear, fair, and protect the safety of all people in Massachusetts. Finally, transgender people have safe and secure access to all public accommodations in the state.”

A footnote explains, “Violation of the law shall be punished by a fine of not more than twenty-five hundred dollars or by imprisonment for not more than one year, or both…. In addition, the violator shall be liable to the aggrieved person for damages.”

Groups that qualify as being under the purview of the “Guidance” must take people at their word about gender identity, according to the state. “The statutory definition of gender identity does not require the individual to have gender affirming surgery or intend to undergo surgery, nor does it require evidence of past medical care or treatment.”

But the line between a religious event and a “secular” isn’t always clear cut. “Churches hold events ‘open to the general public’ all the time — it’s often how they seek new converts,” wrote Eugene Volokh at The Washington Post. “And even church ‘secular events,’ which I take it means events that don’t involve overt worship, are generally viewed by the church as part of its ministry, and certainly as a means of the church modeling what it believes to be religiously sound behavior.”

Volokh continued:

Indeed, a church might be liable even for statements by its congregants (and not just its volunteers, who are acting as agents) that are critical of transgender people. Tolerating such remarks is generally seen as allowing a “hostile environment,” and therefore “harassment.” Indeed, the statement I linked to specifically encourages people to “prohibit derogatory comments or jokes about transgender persons from employees, clients, vendors and any others, and promptly investigate and discipline persons who engage in discriminatory conduct” (emphasis added). But that’s not just encouragement; it simply reflects hostile work environment harassment law, which has long required employers to restrict derogatory speech by clients, to prevent “hostile environments.” See 29 C.F.R. § 1604.11. The same logic applies for places of public accommodation, which Massachusetts says can include churches.

PJ Media’s Tyler O’Neil commented, “Ideally, the First Amendment should uphold the religious freedom of churches, Christian schools, and other faith-based organizations even in Massachusetts,” and noted that the Supreme Court probably would get “the last word on this restrictive legislation.”

But for now? “Christian ministries need to get ready for the onslaught of lawsuits leveled against them, and it might also be acceptable for them to leave, if they believe they can effectively do their ministry elsewhere,” O’Neill said. “It could be argued, however, that Massachusetts needs them now, more than ever.” (For more from the author of “This New Reg Will Punish Churches That Use ‘Discriminatory’ Gender Practices” please click HERE)

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IRS Redefines ‘Husband’ and ‘Wife’ to Eliminate Sex

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In a far-reaching response to the U.S. Supreme Court striking down natural marriage laws last summer in Obergefell v. Hodges, the IRS and Department of the Treasury have changed the meanings of the words “spouse,” “marriage,” “husband” and “wife.” This change was also a response to the Court’s 2013 decision in United States v. Windsor, which ruled that the words “spouse” and “marriage” could not be limited to heterosexual marriages.

“Husband” and “wife” now refers to “two individuals lawfully married to each other,” regardless of sex. The new definitions will give same-sex marriage couples job-protected leave to take care of their spouse’s family members under the Family and Medical Leave Act, and applies to the marital status of taxpayers for purposes of the income, estate, gift, excise and payroll taxes.

Of course, same-sex couples will now also face the “marriage penalty” for filing their taxes jointly. The “penalty” is the higher tax rate some married couples must pay if they are a middle to upper class couple with roughly similar incomes.

The proposed rule changes were announced in October, left open for comment, and finalized on Friday, with barely any fanfare or objections. One submitted comment to the proposed rule — to replace the words “husband” and “wife” with “spouse” — might have made more sense. Congress could still make that change in the future.

Another commenter suggested the IRS include the words “same-sex marriage” to better explain the changes, but the IRS dismissed the concern. According to The Washington Examiner, “Treasury and the IRS believe that the definitions in the proposed regulations apply equally to same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples, and that no clarification is needed. Amending the regulations to specifically address a marriage of two individuals of the same sex would undermine the goal of these regulations to eliminate distinctions in federal tax law based on gender.”

The changes do not apply to domestic partnerships or civil unions, in order to allow couples to choose alternative tax treatment that might benefit them more than being married. (For more from the author of “IRS Redefines ‘Husband’ and ‘Wife’ to Eliminate Sex” please click HERE)

Watch a recent interview with the author below:

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Tampons in the Men’s Room and Other Campus Insanity

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Brown University, located in Providence Rhode Island, was founded by Baptist leaders in 1764 with the Latin motto In Deo Speramus, in God we hope. I imagine these godly founders would be quite surprised with the recent announcement that “Brown University’s student body president will be hand-delivering menstrual products to all nonresidential bathrooms on campus, including men’s rooms, with the help of 20 other students.”

As reported by Sydney Hutchison on CampusReform.org, “The initiative is intended to communicate the message that ‘pads and tampons are a necessity, not a luxury,’ and that not all people who menstruate are women.”

So there are menstruating men who need tampons?

And note that this is being done by Viet Nguyen, President of the Undergraduate Council of Students, who hopes that by “putting menstrual products in women’s, men’s and gender-inclusive bathrooms” the school can “‘set a tone of trans-inclusivity, and not forget that they’re an important part of the population.’”

In nearby Worcester, Massachusetts, Clark University’s new chief diversity officer has put forth guidelines for incoming students, including: don’t say “you guys,” since that could be interpreted as excluding women; don’t ask an Asian student for help in math or ask a black student if he plays basketball, since to do so would be to stereotype and thereby commit a “microaggression.” These must be avoided at all costs.

Ironically, an article announcing this stated that these guidelines were for “freshmen” — but doesn’t that very term exclude women? Isn’t this a microaggression in and of itself? Perhaps, just as Princeton University is trying to ban the “m” word from campus (meaning, the infamous “man” word), Clark U needs to follow suit, referring to the “freshmen” class as the “freshpeople” class or the “freshindividuals” class? Now we’re talking.

Campus Trigger Warnings Gone Batty

Across the country, at California State University, San Marcos, a “trigger warning” was sent out notifying all students and faculty that there would be a pro-life display on campus next week. An email from the university’s Office of Communications, obtained by CampusReform.org, pointed out that the “presentation is not a university sponsored presentation,” that it could be “disturbing and offensive,” but that presentations like this on campus were “protected under the First Amendment.” Oh, the evils of free speech.

The email also explained that resources would be available for students “who may need assistance” after being exposed to the pro-life display. They must not be traumatized by the reality of abortion. God forbid.

As for the meaning of “trigger warnings,” the Urban Dictionary offers a definition replete with what I would call sarcastic sanity. A trigger warning is

A phrase posted at the beginning of various posts, articles or blogs. Its purpose is to warn weak-minded people who are easily offended that they might find what is being posted offensive in some way due to its content, causing them to overreact or otherwise start acting like a dip***t. Popular on reddit SRS or other places that social justice warriors like to hang out.

Trigger warnings are unnecessary 100% of the time due to the fact that people who are easily offended have no business randomly browsing the internet anyways. As a result of the phrase’s irrelevance, most opinions that start out with this phrase tend to be simplistic and dull since they were made by people ridiculous enough to think that the internet is supposed to cater to people who can’t take a joke.

How dare the Urban Dictionary post such insulting stuff without a trigger warning!

Gender Pins and Privilege

Over at Champlain College in Vermont, “In an effort to become more inclusive for gender nonconforming students,” the school “handed out hundreds of pronoun pins during first-year orientation advertising the wearer’s preferred gender pronouns.”

What exactly did this look like? “Options included ‘she/her,’ ‘he/him,’ ‘xe/xer,’ and even ‘Hello, my pronouns are fluid. Please ask me!’”

And at Pomona College in California, new students “were welcomed to campus with posters in their dorms giving instructions on ‘How to be a (Better) White Ally’ and stating that all white people are racist.” (Note carefully: If you are white and you differ with this assessment, then you are definitely racist.)

“The signs state white people should ‘acknowledge your privilege’ and ‘apologize if you’ve offended someone,’ adding that offensive language includes words like ‘sassy’ and ‘riot,’ which are ‘racially coded.’”

Yes, “‘Understand that you are white, so it is inevitable that you have unconsciously learned racism.’” And don’t you dare deny it! So say the so-called social justice warriors.

Segregation Good Again?!

Also in California, reports earlier this week claimed, “Segregated housing will now be available to black students at California State University Los Angeles as a means of combating ‘microaggressions’ and ‘racially insensitive remarks’,” with these alleged infractions coming from both students and faculty.

Wouldn’t the only solution, then, be fully segregated schools, where no such offenses could take place (at least theoretically)? Could it be that segregation is the new way forward, the path of progressivism, the wave of the future? Asian schools, black schools, Hispanic schools, white schools … what utopias they will be!

Of course, this probably won’t be enough, because microaggressions can still occur, which would necessitate perhaps breaking these down into all male and female schools as well, and perhaps requiring LGBT schools vs. straight schools as well, thus you could go to an all-Asian, female, lesbian school or an all-black, male, straight school. Progress is wonderful, isn’t it?

The New York Times is denying these reports, citing Cal State campus spokesman Robert Lopez to the effect that the school had simply created dorm space for 24 students “oriented around the black community,” although the dorm space is “open to all students.”

Am I the only one who doesn’t follow exactly what this means? Either way, whether or not this is segregation, it’s not the first time this has been done in recent years.

Anti-Semitism Gets a Pass

Finally, at Cal Berkeley, a course is being offered entitled, “Palestine: A Settler Colonial Analysis,” sponsored by faculty member Dr. Hatem Bazian, who is so adamantly anti-Israel that he has called for an “American intifada.”

As Abraham H. Miller notes on Observer.com, Dr. Bazian “is co-founder of the militant Students for Justice in Palestine, an organization so virulently anti-Israel that it can shut down any speaker it disagrees with on almost any campus even before you could enunciate the monosyllabic word ‘Jew.’”

And while Dr. Bazian denies that he is anti-Semite, “he blocked the appointment of a Jewish student to San Francisco State University’s Student Judicial Council on the grounds that the individual supported the State of Israel and was thus a racist by definition.”

With good reason Miller’s article claims that the course is intended “to Erase Jewish History from Israel.”

Yet there are no trigger warnings or concerns about microaggressions here. After all, it’s only Jews who will be offended!

But with that, I’m out of space and will have to stop here, with one last word of wisdom: Parents, think twice before sending your kids off to a particular college. Some campuses are better than others, and your kids are anything but guinea pigs to be thrown into the latest social experiment. (For more from the author of “Tampons in the Men’s Room and Other Campus Insanity” please click HERE)

Watch a recent interview with the author below:

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When ‘Liberty’ Forces 18 Girls Into a Single-Stall Shower Room

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In recent years, a common refrain accompanying nearly every demand for newly invented “rights” has been: “It doesn’t affect you, so you can’t be against it.”

This claim—whether false or true, subjective or objective—has been played as the ultimate trump card.

If you could not point to a direct, immediate, and significant intrusion on your life, then your concerns—no matter how thoughtful and legitimate—were sacrificed at the altar of the New Regime.

Times change.

On Wednesday, Alliance Defending Freedom filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of high school students and parents, asking the court to strike down a Minnesota school district policy that empowers a male student to enter the girls’ locker room and disrobe.

Not surprisingly, many girls have been distressed by the actions of the male student, which include twerking, grinding, and other sexually explicit actions. The response of the district and other authorities to the concerns has been a collective yawn.

This, along with recent actions by President Barack Obama’s Department of Education and Justice Department, illustrates the evolution of the push to manufacture special privileges for a select few.

The pretense that such demands don’t affect the lives of others now has been abandoned, replaced by two options: (1) get over it and get in line; or (2) be pushed to the margins of society, losing your reputation—and possibly your career—in the process.

In version 2.0 of the New Regime, even if you can point to a direct, immediate, and significant intrusion on your life, your opinion is irrelevant (and perhaps bigoted) when compared to “social progress.”

For example, when the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled that wedding photographer Elaine Huguenin and her husband Jonathan must set aside their freedom to peacefully live according to their faith, a concurring justice stated that the pair “now are compelled by law to compromise the very religious beliefs that inspire their lives.” Chillingly, the justice added that this compulsion “is the price of citizenship.”

As the situations in Minnesota, North Carolina, and elsewhere demonstrate, the latest test sites for this theory of “social progress” are locker rooms, showers, and other private changing facilities.

In what would have been an unthinkable battleground just a few short years ago, these tile-floored, plastic-stalled, chrome-fixtured, and (formerly) sex-specific sanctuaries are now ground zero for experiments in the subjective theory of gender.

And the wisdom of the New Regime 2.0 goes like this:

The march toward true liberty requires 18 girls to squeeze into a prison cell-sized changing space or abandon their bodily privacy, and their right to safety and comfort in the most intimate and vulnerable of settings.

Why? So that a “bearded individual” can fully disrobe in the girls’ locker room at a parks department swimming pool on New York City’s Upper West Side. Empowered by the mere proclamation that he is a woman, he appropriates the entire space for himself.

Use whatever analogy you want:

The New Regime has flushed common sense down the toilet.

The New Regime has pulled back the curtain and washed away any remaining vestiges of bodily privacy.

The New Regime has transformed locker-room peepholes into doorways.

The point is, the New Regime embraces the idea that individuals can stride with impunity into any private space they choose, regardless of biology. This dismissal of biological fact in bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers reeks of irony, in what may be the best example to date of the lengths to which the New Regime will go to impose its orthodoxy.

These spaces, perhaps more than any other physical location, exist for and because of biological differences. Bathroom doors easily could have been labeled as the kid in “Kindergarten Cop” would have it, but decorum prevailed and we used “men” and “women” instead.

Separate locker rooms for men and women do not symbolize a sinister effort to force anyone’s conformity with “gender stereotypes.” They exist because men, women, and children should not be forced to encounter the opposite sex in private spaces or be viewed by the opposite sex while in various stages of undress.

There are reasonable solutions. There are ways to accommodate men and women and boys and girls who struggle to align their subjective beliefs with biological realities.

Consider the family changing room that 18 girls in New York now are forced to use to avoid encountering a man in the girls’ locker room. Indeed, one of the purposes of single-use or “family” facilities like these is to allow fathers to assist their young daughters, or mothers to assist their young sons.

It is an acknowledgement that neither the men’s or women’s restroom is an ideal solution in such circumstances. The same fact holds true for individuals who do not personally feel comfortable entering the private space that corresponds to their biology.

These accommodations protect the privacy of all individuals, not just a select few at the expense of everyone else.

Reasonable solutions are available that protect everyone from unwelcome bodily exposure. But under the New Regime, “social progress” trumps reason. (For more from the author of “When ‘Liberty’ Forces 18 Girls Into a Single-Stall Shower Room” please click HERE)

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Hillary: Saying I’m Too Serious Is Sexist

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In one of her first press conferences since last year, Hillary Clinton today accused Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus of sexism for tweeting that Clinton appeared “angry” in last night’s national security forum.

“I’m going to let all of you ponder that last question,” said the Democratic presidential candidate after being asked about Priebus’ comments. “I think there will be a lot of PhD theses and popular journalism writing on that subject for years to come.”

Clinton went on to criticize both the RNC and her opponent, Republican candidate Donald Trump. “I don’t take my advice and I don’t take anything seriously that comes from the RNC. We were talking about serious issues last night. I know the difference between what we have to do to fix the V.A., what we have to do to take the fight to ISIS, than just making political happy talk. And I had a very short window of time in that event last night to convey the seriousness with which I would approach the issues that concern our country.”

“Donald Trump chose to talk about his deep admiration and support for Vladimir Putin. Maybe he did it with a smile, and I guess the RNC would have liked that.”

Priebus Tweeted that Clinton was displeased when asked about her continuing email scandals by moderator Matt Lauer. Clinton’s campaign responded in kind shortly thereafter.

Clinton’s verbal response to Priebus came thanks to a question from ABC News. A reporter asked if Clinton could “react to that,” and said that Clinton has “suggested that there is a double-standard. Do you think you’re treated different in this race because you’re a woman?”

Clinton surrogates and others have used the sexism card throughout the 2016 campaign, including against Lauer last night and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) during his primary run against Clinton. Lauer was slammed by partisans on both sides, but especially Democrats for interrupting Clinton several times in what some said was a sign of sexism. Lauer also didn’t challenge Trump when the Republican falsely said he “was totally against the war in Iraq.”

Priebus’ Tweet was tame compared to one issued by then-Democratic National Chairwoman (DNC) Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL) last year, when she accused Trump of “racism”:

Earlier this year, interim DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazile accused Trump of “soaking up … hate and … spilling it back out.”

Partisan attacks are normal in election years, especially when the White House is at stake. Republican candidates are especially targets of vitriol by their political opponents. (For more from the author of “Hillary: Saying I’m Too Serious Is Sexist” please click HERE)

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Dangerously Daft New Study Calls Ohio Abortion Pill Restrictions Dangerous

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The mainstream media is warning us in anxious tones that an “Ohio abortion pill law led to worse health outcomes.” Allow me to briefly describe the new law and show why the case against the law is at best weak, and at worst, dangerously confused.

The drugs mifepristone and misoprostol are sometimes injected into pregnant women to kill the lives inside their wombs. The procedure is called a “medical” or “medication abortion” to distinguish it from other methods of killing the unborn, usually involving sharp objects or vacuums.

In 2000, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a version of the mifepristone + misoprostol method of killing. This version requires medium doses of both drugs to be given at an abortionist’s office on different days. To ease demands on their time, some abortionists instead prefer another, “off-label” combination of these drugs, one not approved by the FDA: a high dose of mifepristone at the office and a low dose of misoprostol self-administered at the would-be mothers’ homes.

The distinction is important because Ohio in February 2011 passed a law requiring abortionists to use only the FDA-approved method. The law was passed in dispute. Some abortionists complained that the work of killing was better using the off-label method.

Apples, Oranges and the Unborn

A group of researchers led by Ushma D. Upadhyay tried to investigate the questions, studying pre-law and post-law abortion data. They published their attempt in “Comparison of Outcomes before and after Ohio’s Law Mandating Use of the FDA-Approved Protocol for Medication Abortion: A Retrospective Cohort Study” in the journal PLOS: Medicine.

The researchers found four abortion sites willing to cooperate with their research. The immediate finding was that the fraction of medication abortions dropped dramatically at all four of the abortion sites after the law passed. The average rate was 22% of all abortions were medication before the law, which dropped to only 5% some time after. One site even discontinued medication abortions for a period of almost two years.

The researchers do not say if the medication abortions that were performed post-law were all the FDA-approved method or if any were the now illegal off-label method. This is not surprising, because admitting to use of the off-label method would be admitting violating the law. Given that the sympathies of the abortionists and the researchers was not with the law, it is possible biases creep in, both in the analyses and in way treatments themselves are administered. Confirmation bias is ever a possibility.

That sort of bias might account for why the researchers did not trouble to report what fraction of FDA-approved medication abortions were performed before the law. All? None? We never learn. And it is a crucial number to know if we are to compare pre-law with post-law adverse events, especially if it is to be asserted that the FDA-approved method causes greater harm to the would-be mothers (both methods, of course, cause ultimate harm to the lives inside their wombs).

Further muddying matters, many of the characteristics of the women given medication abortions changed pre- to post-law. For instance, pre-law only about 15% of would-be mothers had at least a Bachelor’s degree, compared to over 23% post-law. Blacks represented 21% of the pre-law sample but only 16% of the post-law sample. Importantly, only about 27% of the women had private insurance pre-law, jumping to 34% post-law. Better educated women with insurance might be more willing to be checked for adverse effects, which would boost reported rates.

Number of Gestation Days Before Killing

The oddest discrepancy was in the number of gestation days, i.e. number of days the women were pregnant before seeking an abortion. In the pre-law sample, 13.4% of women had medication abortions at 34 gestation days or fewer, contrasted with only 7.2% post-law. Also, 52.2% of women pre-law had abortions between 42 and 49 days, versus 63.6% after. These figures are notable because it has been found that the greater the gestation period before the lives inside the women are killed, the greater the likelihood of an adverse effect upon the women.

Before the law, medication abortions were legal for gestations greater than 49 days. In the new law, all medication abortions had to be performed before 50 days. So the greater number of post-law abortions in the 42-49 day period could be accounted for by women who might have rushed in before the new deadline. But this doesn’t explain why fewer women opted for earlier abortions. Whatever the reasons, the changes imply that the characteristics of the women, or the practice of abortionists, changed after the law.

And there was another questionable maneuver by the researchers. All pre-law medication abortions greater than 49 gestation days were excluded from the researchers’ analysis. Of the rate of adverse events in this important and risky group we therefore never learn. This exclusion really makes it impossible to compare health effects pre- to post-law, as do the other points made above. Nevertheless, the researchers soldiered on.

Medication Abortion: Dangerous Medicine

About those adverse events: these included “acute hemorrhage, or infection.” Nasty business, abortion.

As the authors emphasize, but fail to realize the importance of, post-law women were required under the law to go to the abortion site “a minimum of four visits instead of two,” and so there was greater opportunity post-law to report or discover adverse events (in addition to the other reasons noted above).

Now 4.9% of the pre-law women required “additional interventions,” which were things like aspiration (vacuuming up the remains inside the womb), repeated misoprostol doses, and blood transfusions. These interventions rose to 14.3% post-law. Some 12.6% of pre-law women had “at least one side effect during their medication abortion” compared to 15.6% after. Side effects included nausea, vomiting, pain and so on. These numbers comprise the authors’ main “findings.”

Yet even if it were true, as the authors suggest, that the FDA-approved method is causing the boost in rates of interventions and side effects, the number of women who suffer ill effects caused by medication abortion could still shrink. Why? Because even though the rates of ill effects increase, the number of medication abortions procured fell sharply under the law.

The calculation that could prove this is tough to do because we don’t know about the adverse rates for women with gestations greater than 49 days pre-law (a shocking omission) — nor do we know them for other abortion methods. Plus, for the many reasons given above, we do not know that the FDA-approved method is causing the boost in rates for medication abortions, even though the researchers are anxious to suggest that it is.

Perhaps most interesting is the finding (admission?) that such large percentages of women undergoing medication abortions will require “interventions” or will suffer an adverse effect. That is news worth spreading. (For more from the author of “Dangerously Daft New Study Calls Ohio Abortion Pill Restrictions Dangerous” please click HERE)

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A California University’s Troubling Ties to Terrorism

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San Francisco State University (SFSU), which has a well-deserved reputation as a breeding ground for anti-Israel radicalism, became national news in April. That’s when campus police stood by as a hate-Israel group, the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS), shouted down and disrupted a lecture by Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, prompting much criticism of SFSU’s president, Leslie Wong.

But there’s worse. As revealed by an investigation into SFSU by Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum, SFSU has partnered with a Palestinian university that’s a hotbed of radicalization.

What our investigation turned up:

SFSU signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with An-Najah University of Hebron in 2014 at the behest of Rabab Abdulhadi, director of SFSU’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative (AMED) and founding member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

Najah states on its website that the MOU was signed on September 10, 2014 and Abdulhadi sang its praises at an April 2015 reception:

“The memorandum of understanding that President Wong signed with An-Najah National University in Palestine … is the first time that we have any agreement with any university in the Arab or Muslim world and we are very excited about that.”

Wong also trumpeted the MOU at the 2015 reception, boasting of his role in helping bring it to fruition:

“When I returned from Palestine two years ago, I said I want to be one of the first major universities to sign an agreement with An-Najah or any of the other Palestinian universities, or any of the universities in the Arab world.”

Given this public preening, it is disturbing to learn that SFSU’s administration officially only corroborates the MOU indirectly on its website. Worse, in an arrogant disregard for the public’s right to know, Wong has refused to respond to repeated inquiries from Campus Watch about the agreement’s specific contents. What are the terms? The duration? The financial arrangements? And so forth.

This reticence may be due to Najah U being lauded by Hamas itself as a “greenhouse for martyrs.”

Matthew Levitt, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, says it’s known for “terrorist recruitment, indoctrination and radicalization of students,” while the Anti-Defamation League reports that its student council “glorifies suicide bombings and propagandizes for jihad against Israel.”

For example, Najah student Maram Hassoneh was killed attempting her second knife attack on IDF soldiers in 2015. At the June 2014 graduation ceremony, students held up three fingers to represent Hamas’s kidnapping of three Israeli teens. On another occasion, Najah students constructed a gruesome replica of the 2001 suicide bombing in a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem.

Despite Najah’s notoriety as a repository for terrorism, Abdulhadi singled it out as a desirable partner for SFSU. Little wonder that, after pledging to set up a student exchange program with Najah in November 2015, she added this disclaimer:

“We do not want to … teach students how to grow up and build bombs and destroy other people.”

President Wong’s silence following repeated inquiries is unacceptable. Californian taxpayers fund SFSU and they have a right to know the details of and the implications of its MOU with Najah. To that end, Campus Watch has prepared a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to SFSU to make public the MOU.

Campus Watch also calls on the chancellor of the California State University, Timothy P. White, to investigate SFSU’s memorandum of understanding with Najah; and on the education committees of the California state legislature and U.S. Congress to hold hearings into this matter.

In a time of global jihad, the public deserves to know the full truth about one of its universities aligning itself with the enemy. (For more from the author of “A California University’s Troubling Ties to Terrorism” please click HERE)

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Her Child Was Killed by an Illegal Alien. Now They Call Her a Racist Nazi

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Sabine Durden is many things. She’s a German immigrant, an avid Trump supporter, and an outspoken advocate for legal immigration. But above all of these things, she is a proud mother.

Durden’s son, Dominic, was killed four years ago in a fatal motorcycle crash. On July 12, 2012, Dominic, 30, was on his way to work when an illegal immigrant driving an unlicensed pickup truck took a wrong turn. Dominic was killed instantly.

The driver, Juan Zacarias Lopez Tzun, was an illegal immigrant from Guatemala with a record of drunk driving convictions. His initial sentence included nine months’ jail time, five years of probation, and a restitution fee of $18,800.

Thanks to the tireless work of Ms. Durden, Tzun was deported in March of 2014. Since then, Durden has continued in her efforts to fight illegal immigration and keep her son’s beautiful legacy alive.

Durden spoke with Conservative Review about her continued cause.

“The first thing I’d like to achieve is to share with everybody the incredible young man he was. The community loved him,” she said.

Durden shared that, to this day, she still receives regular feedback from individuals who knew her son dating back to grade school. Dominic’s old friends are now teaching their children about “Uncle Dominic,” a beaming teddy bear of a man who lived a life of service to his friends, family, and community.

Dominic, or Dom, as he was affectionately called by friends and family, worked as a 911 dispatcher at the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. He was a licensed pilot and a volunteer firefighter who had earned multiple awards for his service to his community. Dom was on track to realizing his goal of becoming a motorcycle patrolman, and eventually a helicopter pilot.

Early this summer, the city of Moreno Valley erected the Dominic Durden Trailhead, a memorial plaque honoring Dominic’s work as a local volunteer and public safety servant.

For Ms. Durden, the hardest part about Dominic’s untimely death was knowing that his killer was permitted to remain in a “sanctuary city” of Riverside County, California, after having demonstrated irreverence for its laws on multiple occasions.

“I want my country to be protected, and I want others to never know the kind of pain and grief this causes — not just when your child gets killed, but when it’s avoidable,” she told CR.

“I’ve been called racist, Nazi, Hitler,” she said, adding that she commonly has to report threatening Facebook messages she receives from strangers. But even more upsetting, she shared, are the biting comments from people who she “thought were friends,” telling her that she should “leave things alone and not separate families.”

“And then I remind them, ‘What about my family?’ I don’t have one left. My only child is dead,” she said.

“When they call me a racist, I show them a picture of Dominic and tell them, ‘That was my son,’” she laughed, referring to Dominic’s mixed race.

But when that doesn’t work, she offers this analogy to help other parents understand her “America first” approach to public safety as it relates to immigration.

“The other thing I always tell them is this: You live in a house that has walls and doors. And you have your kids, and you love them, and you want them protected,” she said. “Why is it so wrong for your country and for the next president to want to protect its citizens?”

“It has nothing to do with race,” she continued. “It has nothing to do with not liking a certain color … I’m talking about any illegal from any country — any color. When you want to come here — and you’re more than welcome, and America sure has been welcoming to me as a legal immigrant — you have to do it the right way.”

Speaking from experience, Ms. Durden shared that she was always proud of her journey as a legal immigrant.

“I was always telling people how proud I was for choosing to become an American,” she said.

She was sworn in at the Los Angeles Convention Center in 1994, accompanied by her own mother — who flew over from Germany to witness the special moment — and, of course, Dominic.

“He was proud of me,” she said of her son, who fondly used to refer to himself as “German chocolate,” a nod to his black American father and white German mother.

Sabine Durden was one of the earliest and most prominent members of the Remembrance Project, an organization founded in 2009 to honor the families of victims of illegal immigrant crime. The group coined the term “Angel Moms,” which has been attributed to the parents of these victims.

Without going into detail, Durden told CR that she has recently cut ties with the group.

“I had to take care of myself first. And I had to look out for my son, not being used — his image and his name,” she said.

These days, she simply goes by “Dom’s mom.”

And, as for politics, she prefers to focus on the bipartisan issues of national security and family policy. But when asked, she’ll happily tell you which presidential candidate has her vote.

“Donald Trump is my ultimate hero,” Durden, a former lifetime Democrat, said of the Republican nominee.

“He brought [illegal immigration] to the forefront,” she added. Durden said that before Trump announced his bid for the presidency in June 2015, no other national leader had taken such a firm stance against illegal immigration.

“Nobody wanted to listen to Dominic’s story. They wanted to leave the ‘illegal’ part out of it,” she said. “And I started losing ground and the depression became harder.”

On July 10, 2015, Ms. Durden received a call asking her if she would like to meet Trump. Later that month, Durden and other parents met with Trump at a hotel in L.A., with no media present. After hearing their stories, Trump escorted the group to another room, where members of the press were waiting to hear their stories.

“He listened to us,” Durden said.

Fast-forward a year, when Durden was offered a prime-time slot to speak at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, a moment she called “a highlight of my life.”

“That man not only saved my life; [Donald Trump] gave my son a voice,” she said.

Durden clarified again that she is a strong proponent of legal immigration, and she believes in helping struggling families looking to provide a better life for their children. But to this, she adds one important qualification.

“I always say Americans first,” Durden said. “Let’s take care of home first, and then help.” (For more from the author of “Her Child Was Killed by an Illegal Alien. Now They Call Her a Racist Nazi” please click HERE)

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