Nobody is ‘Born that Way,’ Gay Historians Say

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Andrew Winning

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Andrew Winning

Sexual orientations cannot be innate

Journalists trumpet every biological study that even hints that gayness and straightness might be hard-wired, but they show little interest in the abundant social-science research showing that sexual orientation cannot be innate. The scholars I interviewed for this essay were variously dismayed or appalled by this trend.

For example, historian Dr. Martin Duberman, founder of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, said “no good scientific work establishes that people are born gay or straight.” And cultural anthropologist Dr. Esther Newton (University of Michigan) called one study linking sexual orientation to biological traits ludicrous: “Any anthropologist who has looked cross-culturally (knows) it’s impossible that that’s true, because sexuality is structured in such different ways in different cultures.”

While biology certainly plays a role in sexual behavior, no “gay gene” has been found, and whatever natural-science data exists for inborn sexual orientations is preliminary and disputed. So to date, the totality of the scholarly research on homosexuality indicates gayness is much more socio-cultural than biological.

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Jailed Marine's Mom: 'My Heart is Breaking

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

For weeks, the mother of a U.S. Marine who made a wrong turn at the Mexican border and ended up over the international boundary has waited for President Obama to respond to a petition on behalf of Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi, 25.

Without results.

Even though the threshold for a response of 100,000 signatures at a White House petition website was reached.

In fact, the number of signatures was surging past 130,000.

So when the question about presidential intervention in Tahmooressi’s case was brought up at a press availability with White House press secretary Josh Earnest, hopes were raise again.

But only briefly.

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Police: Al Qaeda Magazine Suggesting Attack On US Open

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Photo Credit:: Getty Images

Photo Credit:: Getty Images

The US Open Tennis Championship appears on a wish list of terror targets in an al Qaeda magazine, an NYPD official said Wednesday.

In a briefing for New York City’s private security community, Rebecca Weiner, the NYPD’s director of intelligence analysis, warned that Inspire magazineis instructing would-be terrorists on how to make bombs and where to set them off, WCBS 880′s Marla Diamond reported.

The magazine lists targets in Washington, D.C.; Virginia; and New York — including the US Open, which begins Aug. 25 in Flushing Meadows, Queens.

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Nonprofit Loses Grant Over Gay Marriage Stance

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Photo Credit: Jim, the Photographer

Photo Credit: Jim, the Photographer

A Catholic organization has decided to cut off long-standing funding to a Portland immigrant rights group that works with day laborers over its affiliation with an organization that supports same-sex marriage.

Voz Workers’ Rights Education lost a $75,000 grant in June from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, which is the national anti-poverty, social justice program of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Catholic Campaign director Ralph McCloud said the group asked Voz to cut ties with the National Council of La Raza, a large Latino civil rights organization that endorses marriage equality, to be considered for the grant. Voz has been an affiliate of NCLR since 2009, primarily as a grantee.

After Voz refused to cut its ties, the organization “self-disqualified” itself from the funding process, McCloud said.
In June, the bishops approved more than $14 million in grants to 205 organizations. The bishops had supported Voz since 1994, via 10 grants, McCloud said.

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'Lessons' From this Election Season So Far

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Just past the midway point: It’s been 132 days (or about 4 months and two weeks) since the first primaries of the midterm season — March 4 in Texas — and there are 113 days to go until Election Day (about three months and three weeks). Just past the midway point, what have we learned from this midterm season? A few things:

…

3. The Democratic firewalls of Alaska and Arkansas: If you were to ask before this election season started which Democrats winning or losing could tell us what happens on election night — whether Republicans take back the Senate or not — most observers would have said to watch places like Louisiana and North Carolina. While it’s still true that Mary Landrieu and Kay Hagan’s fates in those states, respectively, will tell us a lot about what happens on election night, few would have said the red-state Democratic Marks — Begich and Pryor — might be the plugs in the dams for Democrats. Begich and Pryor have looked surprisingly strong in states that at the presidential level have gone heavily Republican. If they win, it makes Republicans’ path to a majority much more difficult. Republicans acknowledge they are doing well so far, but most expect — because of those national trends and President Barack Obama’s struggling approval ratings — for that to change. Whether that trajectory does change may, in fact, hold the key to the election. Watch the polls after this summer…

Quote of the day: “I’ll be a thorn in his [posterior].” — Sen. Mark Begich, a Democrat from Alaska, being edited by The Washington Post for language after telling the paper that part of his strategy for winning re-election is to separate, or perhaps attach himself, to President Obama.

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Obama’s ‘Congress Has Blocked Every Single Serious Idea’ Earns 3 Pinocchios From Washington Post

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Photo CRedit: IJ Review

Photo CRedit: IJ Review

During Barack Obama’s weekly address last Saturday, he once again trotted out one of his favorite mantras:

“So far this year, Republicans in Congress have blocked every serious idea to strengthen the middle class.”

The question is, is it true? I mean, it has to be, right? After all, he’s said it before. A lot. For example, on June 27 during a speech in Minneapolis:

“So, let me just be clear I want you to think about this, so far this year the Republicans in Congress have blocked or voted down every single serious idea to strengthen the middle class.”

Then again on July 1:

“So far this year, Republicans in Congress have blocked or voted down every serious idea to strengthen the middle class.”

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America: No Longer 1 Nation, 1 People

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Photo Credit: Serfs UP ! Roger Sayles

Photo Credit: Serfs UP ! Roger Sayles

Speaking to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Albuquerque in 2001, George W. Bush declared that, as Mexico was a friend and neighbor, “It’s so important for us to tear down our barriers and walls that might separate Mexico from the United States.”

Bush succeeded. And during his tenure, millions from Mexico exploited his magnanimity to violate our laws, trample upon our sovereignty, walk into our country and remain here.

In 2007, supported by John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Teddy Kennedy and Barack Obama, Bush backed amnesty for the 12 million people who had entered America illegally.

The nation thundered no. And Congress sustained the nation.

The latest mass border crossing by scores of thousands of tots, teenagers and toughs from Central America has killed amnesty in 2014, and probably for the duration of the Obama presidency.

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Deficit To Soon Skyrocket To Historic World War II Heights

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Jonathan Ernst

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Jonathan Ernst

The Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) latest report says that although the federal deficit this year is the lowest of the Obama era, in the near future, it is expected to skyrocket to World War II heights.

The years between 2009 and 2012 saw the largest recorded federal government deficits since 1946, based on percentage of the economy. And although the White House also reported that the deficit this year is the lowest of the Obama administration, there is little reason for celebration.

Currently, the amount of federal debt is exactly 74 percent of the economy, and if measures aren’t taken to reign in the deficits, the CBO projects that by 2039 the U.S. will see a debt to GDP ratio of 106 percent. According to the CBO, the rate of debt growth is expanding at an undeniably unsustainable rate.

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GCHQ's Dark Arts: Leaked Documents Reveal Online Manipulation, Facebook, YouTube Snooping

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Photo Credit: GCHQ via CNET

Photo Credit: GCHQ via CNET

GCHQ has developed a toolkit of software programs used to manipulate online traffic, infiltrate users’ computers and spread select messages across social media sites including Facebook and YouTube.

The UK spy agency’s dark arts were revealed in documents first published by The Intercept, and each piece of software is described in a wiki document written up by GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG). The document, which reads like a software inventory, calls the tools part of the agency’s “weaponised capability.”

Some of the most interesting capabilities of the tools on the list include the ability to seed the web with false information — such as tweaking the results of online polls — inflating pageview counts, censoring video content deemed “extremist” and the use of psychological manipulation on targets — something similar to a research project conducted with Facebook’s approval, which resulted in heavy criticism and outrage levied at the social media site.

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Hundreds of Cities Fight Back Against 'Invasion'

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

By Leo Hohmann.

A massive protest scheduled for July 18 and 19 across the United States is aimed at stopping the influx of Central American children flooding across the border, and more than a dozen smaller community protests already have played roles in stopping the children from being brought there.

Citizens in Westminster, Maryland; Oracle, Arizona; Vassar, Michigan; Greece, New York, and many other places have blocked the importation of illegal aliens into their communities through public protests, letters and official resolutions from elected leaders.

…

Radio host Rush Limbaugh led his show Tuesday with stories about the successful pushback against the illegals going on across America.

“Here’s what you do not know,” he said. “There are towns all over America standing up to this invasion, just like they did in Murrieta, California. You’re not hearing about it, however, and I am here to tell you why you’re not hearing about it. Westminster, Maryland, is a town standing up to it, just like Murrieta, California, did. Oracle, Arizona, is standing up to it.

“In Nebraska they’re gonna stand up to it when they find out. The governor is fit to be tied,” Limbaugh continued. “Upper Michigan, same thing. There are towns all over America standing up to this. There are protests happening, but they’re not being covered.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Reid: Southern border is secure

By Alexander Bolton.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday asserted the southern border is secure despite the massive surge of illegal minors from Central America that has overwhelmed federal agencies.

“The border is secure,” he told reporters after the Senate Democrats’ weekly policy lunch. “[Sen.] Martin Heinrich [(D-N.M.)] talked to the caucus today. He’s a border state senator. He said he can say without any equivocation the border is secure.”

Reid said lawmakers need to worry less about border security and focus instead on President Obama’s $3.7 billion request to help process the tens of thousands of children from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador who have been apprehended on the border.

Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson warned Congress last week that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is due to run out of money by mid-August because of the large number of minors attempting to cross into Texas. He said Customs and Border Protection would run out of funding by mid-September.

He estimated that as many as 90,000 illegal minors would be apprehended by the end of September.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

SESSIONS WARNS ALL OF CONGRESS: OBAMA’S NEW IMMIGRATION STRATEGY ‘THREATENS FOUNDATION OF OUR CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC’

By Matthew Boyle.

Senate Budget Committee ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has warned all of his colleagues in Congress that President Barack Obama’s new immigration strategy—his plans to legalize millions of illegal alien adults through executive power—could destroy America as we know it.

“I write to inform you of a development that threatens the foundation of our constitutional Republic,” Sessions, Congress’s top immigration hawk, wrote in a letter that was hand-delivered to all 535 members of Congress on Monday and provided exclusively to Breitbart News.

Sessions cites a recent report from the National Journal, in which reporter Major Garrett detailed how, despite the ongoing crisis at the border, Obama plans to legalize anywhere from five to six million illegal alien adults in much the same way he did for illegal alien minors through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in summer 2012.

“Obama made it clear he would press his executive powers to the limit,” Garrett wrote on July 3, as cited by Sessions. “He gave quiet credence to recommendations from La Raza and other immigration groups that between 5 million to 6 million adult illegal immigrants could be spared deportation under a similar form of deferred adjudication he ordered for the so-called Dreamers in June 2012.”

Sessions cites another paragraph from that National Journal piece as well, in which Garrett reported that President Obama has “now ordered the Homeland Security and Justice departments to find executive authorities that could enlarge that non-prosecutorial umbrella by a factor of 10.”

Read more from this story HERE.