Pro-Lifers Respond to Planned Parenthood’s Florida Zika Push

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For several weeks, public policy experts have sounded a warning as Zika has spread in the state of Florida. Last week, NPR highlighted how Planned Parenthood has answered the call, joining other groups to knock on thousands of doors and warn people of the dangers associated with the virus, all while promoting its anti-life agenda.

Like many other groups that back abortion, Planned Parenthood says a large part of reducing Zika’s harm is the use of contraceptives to stop women from getting pregnant and passing various disorders onto their children, with abortion as a backup plan. “This is a natural extension of the work we do with reproductive health care and sexually-transmitted infections,” Chief Medical Officer for Planned Parenthood of South, East and North Florida Dr. Christopher Estes told NPR. “It just made sense. And this is a time of a public health crisis. When you have something like this going on, it’s, ‘All hands on deck.’”

Pro-life groups, however, told The Stream that Planned Parenthood’s approach to Zika prevention is causing more harm than good.

“The biggest problem is that an accurate estimate of” how Zika will affect unborn children “not available,” said Dr. Donna Harrison, Executive Director of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “No one can tell a pregnant mom infected with Zika how likely it is that her child will have any of these things.”

“These things” are a number of disorders associated with a pregnant mother’s Zika virus infection. According to the Centers for Disease Control, “Zika virus infection during pregnancy is a cause of microcephaly and other serious brain anomalies; however, the clinical spectrum of the effects of Zika virus infection during pregnancy is not yet known. A wide range of neurologic abnormalities, in addition to microcephaly, has been observed among infants with presumed or confirmed congenital Zika virus infection.”

Microcephaly, which can cause small heads and varying levels of brain disorders, has received the most amount of attention. Harrison, though, says “The absolute risk of problems to fetuses whose mother is infected during pregnancy is still being evaluated by the CDC.” She pointed out that maternal infections in the first trimester are by far most likely to affect a child, but that “the best studies show that of all woman infected during the first trimester, 98-99 percent of those infants will not have microcephaly.

“We have a lot of fear,” concluded Harrison, “and very little information at the moment. And fear breeds abortion.”

Jor-El Godsey, president of the pro-life pregnancy care center umbrella group Heartbeat International, said that “What we need to focus on in times like these are cures, treatments and preventing the spread of infectious diseases. Abortion promises none of these societal goods, but instead, promises to end the life of a person who is already alive. That is simply the opposite of health care.”

“The vast majority of women who abort their children do so not because they think it’s the best choice, but because they feel it’s their only choice,” continued Godsey in an e-mail to The Stream. “Women deserve to know the whole truth. A pregnant mother needs to know that Zika and microcephaly are not death sentences for themselves or their precious children.”

“Every life has value and is worth living, regardless of circumstance or the challenges we are called to overcome,” he explained.

According to NPR, Planned Parenthood is not relying solely on birth control and abortion, though it describes that “Family planning is a key part of the Planned Parenthood message.”

“The organization is also distributing Zika prevention kits, including condoms and mosquito repellent, to pregnant women at its health centers,” reports NPR.

Despite the message of the abortion industry, one Florida mother is speaking up to describe the joy she has because of her two children with microcephaly. “[I]t’s not the end of the world because you have these kids,” Haneefa De Clercq, told ABC25. “They will teach [mothers] so much. They’ll teach them how to love, they will teach them patience.”

De Clercq’s disabled children are Andrea, 37, and Robbie, 33, with the respective maturation of a three-year-old and a seven-year-old. “I never expected that I could give them an instruction and that they would follow that instruction and do it properly,” she said. “I see the love between them and it gives me tears of joy.” (For more from the author of “Pro-Lifers Respond to Planned Parenthood’s Florida Zika Push” please click HERE)

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University of New Mexico Dept. Head Confirms Aborted Baby Brains Dissected for High School Students

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A recent video shows the chancellor of the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, Paul Roth, admitting that one of the university’s summer science programs for high school students dissected baby brains for research.

This confirms what the House Select Panel on Infant Lives exposed in its report when it referred the university to the New Mexico attorney general for criminal charges for possibly violating New Mexico’s Jonathan Spradling Revised Uniform Anatomical Gift Act.

Roth, who is also the dean of the medical school, is shown in a video released by the New Mexico Alliance for Life (NMAFL), admitting that some baby brains were used in research:

The person questioning repeatedly tells him she is videotaping the conversation and asks Roth to repeat what he said earlier about using human remains with high school students. Roth replies on camera:

Yes, we had a faculty member who obtained some tissue, and during one of these summer workshops, uh, dissected I think one or two fetal brains.

(Read more from “University of New Mexico Dept. Head Confirms Aborted Baby Brains Dissected for High School Students” HERE)

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Movie About Obamas’ First Date Flops at Box Office in Opening Weekend

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A romantic comedy about Barack Obama’s first date with his future wife opened over the weekend to unimpressive numbers.

Southside With You depicts young lawyer Obama’s outing with Michelle Robinson, a summer associate at his Chicago law firm, in 1989.

The film finished at No. 13 in the weekend box office, grossing a mere $3 million.

The low ranking came despite the promotional efforts of Southside With You‘s stars, Parker Sawyers and Tiki Sumpter, as well as executive producer John Legend.

After its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, writer and director Richard Tanne said the Obamas were “excited” about the movie, but also “a little baffled by its existence.”

The movie, which had a limited release of 813 theaters, fared relatively well in some cities.

Southside With You had its post profitable showing at the Magic Johnson theater in Harlem, N.Y.

It also drew larger audiences in Atlanta, Chicago, Memphis, Los Angeles and Washington.

Howard Cohen, co-president of Roadside Attractions, said, “We’re very happy with the opening. … We had sellouts in many markets and the movie is playing to both an African-American audience and to arthouse audiences.”

Southside With You also received mostly positive reviews.

The film has a “freshness” rating of 92 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and the site’s Critical Consensus states, “Southside With You looks back on a fateful real-life date with strong performances and engaging dialogue, adding up to a romance that makes for a pretty good date movie in its own right.”

Odie Henderson with RogerEbert.com said, “This down-to-earth approach works surprisingly well because Southside With You never loses sight of the primary tenet of a great romantic comedy: All you need is two people whom the audience wants to see get together — then you put them together.”

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone remarked, “Both Sawyers and Sumpter are terrific, world-class charmers who suggest the powerhouses they’re playing without undue mimickry.”

But The New York Times’ Manohla Dargis said Tanne “mistakes faithfulness for truthfulness. He’s obviously interested in the Obamas, but he’s so cautious and worshipful that there’s nothing here to discover, only characters to admire.”

“Mr. Obama hasn’t even left office, but the cinematic hagiography has begun,” Dargis concluded.

Despite its weak weekend at the box office, Southside With You still managed to outperform Hands of Stone, a Weinstein Co. film about professional boxer Roberto Duran, portrayed by Edgar Ramirez, and his trainer Ray Arcel, played by Robert DeNiro.

That movie opened in 810 venues and grossed $1.7 million.

The top-grossing movie of the weekend was the horror film Don’t Breathe, which opened in 3,051 theaters and grossed $26 million. (For more from the author of “Movie About Obamas’ First Date Flops at Box Office in Opening Weekend” please click HERE)

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Gun Ownership, Concealed-Carry Permits up Among Women and Minorities

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Antonia Okafor, a Dallas resident, says she believes a gun can be the great equalizer for women to defend themselves—one reason she is now the southwest regional director for a group called Students for Concealed Carry.

State laws allowing residents to carry concealed weapons have been enacted in all 50 states, with varying degrees of regulation—most recently on college campuses.

“We see ourselves as doing this as a means of empowerment,” Okafor, 26, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “Real feminism is about empowerment and taking our safety into our own hands.”

Okafor, who is black, said more female role models, such as Olympic gold medalist Kim Rhode, have inspired more gun ownership among women.

But Okafor—a graduate of the University of Texas at Dallas, where she became involved in the movement—said her mother is opposed to guns.

In an April poll by ABC News of issues millennial women are most concerned about, gun rights scored even with equal pay and abortion, each getting 11 percent.

A study by the Crime Prevention Research Center earlier this month found concealed-carry permits have boomed nationally, but particularly among women and minorities. “In eight states where we have data by gender, since 2012 the number of permits has increased by 161 percent for women and by 85 percent for men,” the report says.

From 2007 through 2015, concealed-carry permits issued by state and local governments increased about 75 percent faster among nonwhites than whites, according to the report.

Okafor noted that those living in the inner city “are the most likely to benefit” from self-defense.

“A lot of minority homes didn’t have father figures growing up,” Okafor told The Daily Signal. “The right to bear arms is a way to protect our community. Every weekend people are dying in cities riddled with gun control.”

Okafor said increasing gun ownership could mark a political shift among both women and minorities away from pro-gun control Democrats to pro-gun rights Republicans in the longer term.

However, JaQuan Taylor, a senior at Georgia Tech, is a Democrat and president of the college group that advocates allowing students and faculty to carry concealed firearms while on campus. Taylor, who is black, said he doesn’t plan on switching parties, but he is more open now.

“It’s more challenging for me to pick a politician that wants to take away guns or prohibit them in anyway,” Taylor, 22, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “I vote for the person more than the party, but I usually vote Democrat because they are pro-education. Since I’ve gotten a gun, I’ve begun to look at Republicans.”

Taylor said he joined a marksmanship club at Georgia Tech and then “became comfortable with getting a gun to protect myself.”

He said he believes as more African-Americans learn about gun laws, more are buying for self-defense.

He doesn’t see the gun issue as a left-right matter, but more of an issue of freedom, Taylor said.

“It seems like with the push for gay marriage, there is a push for freedom in all directions. That’s a good thing,” he said.

The data on women and minorities should come as no surprise, said Crime Prevention Research Center President John Lott, a noted economist and author of the recent book, “The War on Guns.”

“Women benefit more from having a gun than a man because of the large strength differential between a male-to-woman attacker compared to [a] male-to-male attacker,” Lott, the author of the August study, told The Daily Signal.

Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control group founded by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, questions the research but said any increase in recent ownership is driven by fear.

“The rate of American gun ownership has been in serious decline over the last 40 years, so it’s not surprising that gun manufacturers are desperately seeking to tap into new markets and that they’re using the politics of fear to drive new sales,” Everytown for Gun Safety spokesman Andrei Berman told The Daily Signal in an email.

Lynne Roberts, the Massachusetts state coordinator for the pro-gun Second Amendment Sisters, said classes at a Braintree, Massachusetts, shooting range went from about five women per month a decade ago to 35 in the past year.

“We have to tell them to call before so we’ll have enough instructors,” Roberts told The Daily Signal. “Now we have to limit it to 26, and it always fills.”

She added that in recent years, an increasingly diverse group of women has sought to learn about guns for the first time. They include single mothers and married women, from 22 to 82, in occupations such as nurses, small-business owners, social workers, accountants, and lawyers. They travel from Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Maine, as well as other parts of Massachusetts.

Roberts also sees a potential political shift.

“Women are voting typically on the Democratic side because over the last two or three generations self-defense and firearms were demonized,” she said. “Women were told they can’t take care of themselves. That’s changing.”

Responsible gun ownership does not represent a political shift, said Brendan Kelly, spokesman for the Brady Campaign and Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a gun control group.

“Owning a gun and supporting sensible laws that keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people are not mutually exclusive,” Kelly told The Daily Signal in an email, adding:

In fact, what we know is that 90 percent of the American public, including more than 70 percent of NRA members, support expanded Brady background checks. Expanded Brady background checks are more popular with the general public now than they ever have been.

The so-called Brady bill of 1993 required gun dealers to run all purchasers through a national system for instant criminal background checks. In 2013, President Barack Obama pushed for legislation to require sales at gun shows to go through the same checks, but the measure died in the Senate even while it was controlled by Democrats.

Restricting guns isn’t the answer, said National Rifle Association spokesman Catherine Mortensen. Violent crime in cities such as Chicago is one reason why traditional Democratic constituencies are buying guns for self-defense.

“Americans have seen the government can’t always protect them—from the terrorist attack in San Bernardino to the shooting in Orlando,” Mortensen told The Daily Signal.

Mortensen added the NRA is the “oldest civil rights group” in the United States.

“We are proud to defend the right to self-defense of everyone regardless of race, religion, or sexual orientation,” Mortensen said.

Larry Pratt, president of Gun Owners of America, said he believes the increase in gun ownership and concealed carry could represent a political realignment.

Pratt recalled a friend, a college professor who was a liberal Democrat and an atheist in favor of gun control. Then, after two of the professor’s friends were robbed and murdered, he got a gun. The professor gradually became more conservative on other issues and became a Christian, Pratt said.

“Owning a gun marked the break with the tenets of liberal orthodoxy—that government can take care of me,” Pratt told The Daily Signal. “That opened the door to a broader realignment.” (For more from the author of “Gun Ownership, Concealed-Carry Permits up Among Women and Minorities” please click HERE)

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The Dumbing Down of College Curriculums

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Let’s concede at the outset that many students find their college years enlightening and enriching. But something is rotten in the state of academia, and it is increasingly hard not to notice.

There once was a time when employers could be reasonably certain that college graduates had a basic sense of the world and, as a minimum, could write a coherent business letter. That is simply no longer the case, as some academic leaders appear ready to admit.

Harvard’s former president, Derek Bok, mildly broke ranks with the academic cheerleaders when he noted that, for all their many benefits, colleges and universities “accomplish far less for their students than they should.” Too many graduates, he admitted, leave school with the coveted and expensive credential “without being able to write well enough to satisfy employers … [or] reason clearly or perform competently in analyzing complex, nontechnical problems.”

Bok noted that few undergraduates can understand or speak a foreign language; most never take courses in quantitative reasoning or acquire “the knowledge needed to be a reasonably informed citizen in a democracy.” Despite the massive spending on the infrastructure of higher education, he conceded, it was not at all clear that students actually learned any more than they did 50 years ago.

Indeed, a recent survey of the nation’s top-ranked public universities by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni found that only nine of them required an economics course for graduation; just five required a survey course in American history; and only 10 required that students take a literature course. Despite the lip service given to “multiculturalism” on campus, the study found that: “Fewer than half required even intermediate study of a foreign language.”

This knowledge deficit has been a long time coming.

By 1990, the cost of four years at an elite private college had passed the median price of a house in the United States. But a survey sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1989 found that a majority of college seniors would flunk even a basic test on Western cultural and historical literacy: 25 percent could not distinguish between the thoughts of Karl Marx and the United States Constitution (or between the words of Winston Churchill and those of Joseph Stalin), 58 percent did not know Shakespeare wrote “The Tempest,” and 42 percent could not place the Civil War in the correct half-century.

Most seniors were unable to identify the Magna Carta, Reconstruction, or the Missouri Compromise; they were “clearly unfamiliar” with Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment,” and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail.”

These concerns now seem almost—quaint. The fact that college students had huge gaps in their knowledge was old news by the early 1990s. But today the question is no longer whether students have learned specific bodies of knowledge; it is whether they are learning anything at all.

In their widely cited book “Academically Adrift,” Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa concluded that 45 percent of students “did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning” during their first two years of college. More than a third (36 percent) “did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning over four years of college.”

Traditionally, the authors wrote, “teaching students to think critically and communicate effectively” have been claimed as the “principal goals” of higher education. But “commitment to these skills appears more a matter of principle than practice,” Arum and Roksa found.

“An astounding proportion of students are progressing through higher education today without measurable gains in general skills,” they wrote. “While they may be acquiring subject-specific knowledge, or greater self-awareness on their journeys through college, many students are not improving their skills in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing.”

But those are precisely the skills that employers increasingly expect from college graduates. A 2013 survey of employers on behalf of the Association of American Colleges and Universities found that 93 percent of employers say that a demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems is more important than a candidate’s undergraduate major.

More than three-quarters of the prospective employers of new college graduates said they wanted colleges to put more emphasis on such basic skills as “critical thinking, complex problem solving, written and oral communication, and applied knowledge.”

Trashing the Curriculum

So how could we spend so much for so little? The most obvious answer is that colleges and universities frankly don’t care whether students learn much of anything.

Once again, Harvard’s Bok is willing to admit that administrators have few incentives to worry about something as irrelevant as student achievement because student learning can’t be monetized and doesn’t do anything to advance academic careers. “After all,” he writes, “success in increasing student learning is seldom rewarded, and its benefits are usually hard to demonstrate, far more so than success in lifting the SAT scores of the entering class or in raising the money to build new laboratories or libraries.”

There are, of course, other factors at work. The dumbing down of elementary and secondary education has made its way to the collegiate level; too many unprepared students are admitted despite their inability to do college-level work. Nearly four out of 10 college faculty now agree with the statement “Most of the students I teach lack the basic skills for college-level work.” This inevitably contributes to the flight from teaching (few professors want to teach remedial courses) and the overall lowering of standards.

This general indifference to what, if anything, students learn is embodied in the modern curriculum that enables students to study just about anything, without necessarily learning much at all. (For more from the author of “The Dumbing Down of College Curriculums” please click HERE)

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Patriotic NFL Players Show Colin Kaepernick How to Properly Honor America

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San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has welcomed the overwhelming criticism he has received in the wake of his refusal to stand for the playing of the national anthem before NFL games.

“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick told NFL Media Friday night following the 49ers’ preseason loss to the Green Bay Packers. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

But there are many in the league who have condemned Kaepernick’s decision to use his First Amendment rights to disrespect the anthem, which many Americans regard as a national symbol of true American values — the sort of values Kaepernick claims to want upheld for blacks. Apparently they saw it as hypocritical. Imagine that.

The day after Colin Kaepernick’s pregame demonstration, New York Giants players and staff decided to show the quarterback how true Americans conduct themselves, standing in rigid formation ahead of their game against the New York Jets.

This photo, posted on Twitter by The Record’s Tara Sullivan, captures the team’s “pretty deliberate” act of reverence:

Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz told USA Today Saturday night why he disagreed with Kaepernick’s decision to exercise his freedom of expression by spitting in the face of the country that grants him that freedom:

“I think, personally, the flag is the flag. Regardless of how you feel about the things that are going on in America today and the things that are going on across the world with gun violence and things like that. You’ve got to respect the flag and stand up with your teammates. It’s bigger than just you, in my opinion. I think you go up there. You’re with your team, and you pledge your allegiance to the flag and the national anthem as a team, and then you go about your business, whatever your beliefs are. Colin is his own man. He decided to sit down and sit out and that’s his prerogative. But from a personal standpoint, I think you have to stand out there with your team and understand that this is a game and understand that what’s going on in the country.”

Kaepernick’s former teammate, Minnesota Vikings guard Alex Boone, was also explicit in his criticism of the quarterback.

“It’s hard for me, because my brother was a Marine, and he lost a lot of friends over there,” Boone, who played with Kaepernick for five seasons, told USA Today Sunday. “That flag obviously gives (Kaepernick) the right to do whatever he wants. I understand it. At the same time, you should have some (expletive) respect for people who served, especially people that lost their life to protect our freedom.”

Boone called his former teammate’s actions “shameful.”

Kaepernick defended his decision again Sunday, saying that “a lot of things need to change” before he feels like he can stand by his country. Perhaps he could start by changing his attitude.

(For more from the author of “Patriotic NFL Players Show Colin Kaepernick How to Properly Honor America” please click HERE)

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50% of Americans Are Skipping Church, but Not Because They Don’t Believe in God

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Most Americans know that 50 percent of the population doesn’t go to church on Sunday. Most probably think that people who don’t go to church are staying away because they don’t believe in God.

But, a large majority of Americans — 89 percent — still believe in God, and a new Pew Research Center study released this week found that a significant portion of people who don’t go to church are actually staying away for practical or social reasons, while others admit they are simply too lazy to make the effort.

Pew found that among Americans who hardly ever go to church, one-in-five claim they are too busy, and one-in-ten claim they are “too lazy” and have “gotten out of the habit.” Another 17 percent claim social concerns as the reason to stay away from church, including that they used to go to church with a friend or family member but don’t anymore.

There is good news though: Pew found that among people who go to church at least semi-frequently, 27 percent are actually going more regularly than they used to. One-in-five of those people told Pew that they have become more religious, while “Others found themselves desiring God or religion in their life or realized religion was important as they got older or grew more mature.”

The common liberal narrative on shifts in American church attendance attributes the decline in worship on unbelief — in the eyes of liberals, a good move toward a secular, post-religious America. But these new Pew numbers show the liberal narrative is wrong. And what’s even more reassuring is that the belief in God and desire for religion in some Americans is getting even stronger. (For more from the author of “50% of Americans Are Skipping Church, but Not Because They Don’t Believe in God” please click HERE)

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How Confused Is Our Society? Some People Now Throw ‘Divorce Parties’

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If you’re curious to know just how bad the state of marriage is in this country, we now have what can accurately be referred to as “divorce season.”

Last weekend, the University of Washington published a study that captures patterns in divorces filed based on the time of year. Associate sociology professor Julie Brines and doctoral candidate Brian Serafini presented what they believe to be “the first quantitative evidence of a seasonal, biannual pattern of filings for divorce” at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Seattle on Aug. 21.

Divorce Season

By tracking divorce filings in the state of Washington between 2001 and 2015, the researchers found that couples are most likely to split in either August or March — after the summer and winter holiday seasons. So there are, in fact, two divorce seasons.

“People tend to face the holidays with rising expectations, despite what disappointments they might have had in years past,” Brines said in a statement. “They represent periods in the year when there’s the anticipation or the opportunity for a new beginning, a new start, something different, a transition into a new period of life. It’s like an optimism cycle, in a sense.”

The researchers concluded that the consistent pattern they observed reflects “the disillusionment unhappy spouses feel when the holidays don’t live up to expectations.”

“It was very robust from year to year, and very robust across counties,” Brines said.

The pattern persisted even after other seasonal factors, such as unemployment and the housing market, were taken into account.

Divorce Culture

This is disheartening for at least two reasons.

For one, divorce signifies the end of something that was once understood to be eternal. A covenant, if you will. But even if you don’t believe that, a civil marriage is still a considerably binding legal process. So if it’s not devastating from a moral and relational standpoint, divorce at least means financial stress and mounds of paperwork. It’s inconvenient, and therefore not ideal.

Aside from the rise in emotional and financial stress a phenomenon like “divorce season” signifies, this spike points to the normalization of divorce in American society. The consequence is even more tragic than the former.

It’s fatalistic and abhorrent to normalize divorce. Like abortion — another form of family breakdown that has become more socially accepted since the Sexual Revolution — divorce is a type of death. Namely, it is the death of a marriage, something originally and ideally conceived of as eternally binding. Also like abortion, divorce is something that has largely lost its stigma and instead has become a symbol of feminism, freedom, and independence.

Divorce Parties

The culture of divorce in America has gotten so bad that it’s actually treated as an occasion for celebration among some circles. Today, people cope with marital dissolution by throwing “divorce parties.”

Some will say that this was never really a trend, but rather a fringe fad that the media blew out of proportion (HuffPo will do what HuffPo does). Nonetheless, and I hate that this is a criterion, but “divorce party” has its own Wikipedia page. So if it’s out there, it’s definable. And if it’s definable, we can discuss it.

The very concept of a divorce party is so disgustingly objectionable that it can be rightly called subhuman. Sound too extreme? Consider this: Grief is a human practice. There used to be a way to characterize those who do not lament what is truly lamentable: barbarians. Why don’t people laugh at funerals, or when a friend is fired from a job? Because these are not occasions for celebration.

“Divorce season” and “divorce parties” are symptomatic of a culture that has become so comfortable with the suboptimal that it has embraced it.

Divorce is something to be avoided. If it can’t be avoided, then it is to be survived — never celebrated. The normalization of death — in any of its forms — is chaos. (For more from the author of “How Confused Is Our Society? Some People Now Throw ‘Divorce Parties'” please click HERE)

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Trump’s Campaign Begins Selling LGBT Apparel on Website

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Only in the 2016 campaign, in a race full of both irony and the unexpected, could you ever hope to see a Republican candidate selling merchandise uniquely targeted to the LGBTQ community — and Donald Trump’s campaign is doing just that.

The GOP presidential nominee recently has tried to reach out to African-American voters.

“Tonight, I’m asking for the vote of every single African-American … who wants to see a better future,” Trump said Aug. 19 during a rally in Michigan. “Look how much African-American communities have suffered under Democratic rule. To those I say the following: What do you have to lose by trying something new like Trump? What do you have to lose?”

Now it seems that he is also looking to gain votes with the gay, lesbian and transgender communities.

The Trump campaign recently began selling “LGBTQ for Trump” shirts on its website.

LGBT Republicans appreciated the gesture. Some took to Twitter to express their approval.

The real estate mogul has said on numerous occasions that he is the best candidate for the LGBT community.

However, not everyone is convinced that Trump’s statements are anything more than empty words.

One of Trump’s biggest critics in the gay community is Michelangelo Signorile, The Huffington Post’s “queer voices editor-at-large.”

In a recent story, Signorile wrote that “there is absolutely no evidence anywhere of Donald Trump promoting gay ‘rights’ or talking openly about them — except to take them away.”

Trump, however, did make an effort to reach out to LGBT voters at the Republican National Convention.

The GOP nominee invited Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, who is gay, to speak in Cleveland.

“I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican. But most of all I am proud to be an American,” Thiel said.

In his own speech, Trump said, “As your president I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from a hateful foreign ideology … believe me.”

When his remark was met with applause, he said, “And I have to say, as a Republican, it is so nice to hear you cheering for what I just said. Thank you.” (For more from the author of “Trump’s Campaign Begins Selling LGBT Apparel on Website” please click HERE)

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American Hostage Kayla Mueller Remembered for Defending Her Faith Before ISIS

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An American hostage held by ISIS for 18 months who died in captivity is being remembered as a woman of courage and compassion who even defended her Christian faith to the executioner known as “Jihadi John” . . .

“My name is Kayla Mueller. I need your help,” an exhausted Mueller said in a “proof of life” video. “I’ve been here too long, and I’ve been very sick, and it’s very terrifying here.”

The 25-year-old endured torture, rape, verbal abuse, and slave labor at the hands of ISIS, but her fellow hostages tell ABC News she never gave up hope and put the needs of other hostages above her own . . .

A former hostage from Denmark, Daniel Rye, told ABC News how Mueller stood up to one of her captors.

“One of the Beatles started to say, ‘Oh, this is Kayla and she has been held all by herself. And she is much stronger than you guys. And she’s much smarter. She converted to Islam.’ And then she was like, ‘No, I didn’t,'” Rye said. (Read more from “American Hostage Kayla Mueller Remembered for Defending Her Faith Before ISIS” HERE)

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