Curb Your Judgement?

Mrs. H. is a strong-willed woman who likes to stay in shape. While living here in western Maine, she fought off a man who tried to assault her sexually as she was jogging. She avoided rape but emerged bruised, battered, and traumatized, which is why she wants anonymity. She lives in Florida now where she is suing Planet Fitness for revoking her membership after she complained about a man ogling women in the locker room. She contacted me recently about the situation.

Attorney Mathew Staver describes the case: “‘Mrs. H.’ is a survivor of a violent rape attempt. On May 29, 2018, staff at the Leesburg location revoked ‘Mrs. H.’s’ membership after she was intimidated by and complained about the behavior of Jordan Rich in the women’s locker room. Rich claims to be ‘transgender,’ but is obviously a man and his behavior indicates he derives enjoyment from depriving women of privacy.”

Eric Stagno

Planet Fitness declares itself a “judgement-free zone” which has been problematic in at least two other cases. Last month, Eric Stagno was arrested in the Plaistow, New Hampshire Planet Fitness facility and charged with indecent exposure, lewdness and disorderly conduct because he was walking back and forth and doing poses on a yoga mat in the nude. The Lawrence Eagle Tribune reported: “The only statement police said Stagno made during the arrest was that he thought the gym was a ‘judgement free zone,’ apparently referencing the workout chain's slogan.”

CNN reported that Yvette Cormier of Michigan lost her Planet Fitness membership after warning other women about a man who called himself “Carlotta” in the locker room. “If you have male parts you don't need to be in the women's locker room,” said Cormier. “I don't care what you are; I don't care if you're gay lesbian, transgender or transvestite. I am uncomfortable with you as a male in my locker room, in my restroom.” Planet Fitness got support from the Michigan ACLU and the Human Rights Campaign — a national homosexual lobbying group, as well other LGBT pressure groups. Cormier’s lawsuit was dismissed in two lower courts but then upheld by the Michigan Supreme Court last month.

Cormier and "Carlotta"

Jordan Rich is a man who says he’s a woman and Mrs. H. was uncomfortable changing while he watched her in a big locker room mirror two feet away. She politely asked him to leave, but he refused. When she left, he chased her into the parking lot, then called 911 as she drove off to report that she had sexually harassed him. Police responded, but evidently didn’t take Mr. Rich’s charge seriously.

Jordan Rich

Mainstream media habitually champion “transgenders” who say they feel uncomfortable in the locker rooms or bathrooms corresponding to their actual sex. Such people comprise less than 1% of the population but don’t seem to mind making others uncomfortable when they take either their clothes off in the presence of women, or watch women undress in women’s locker rooms. Yvette Cormier won her case in Michigan, but will it be appealed to federal courts? Will Eric Stagno sue the Plaistow, New Hampshire police who arrested him? Will Jordan Rich file suit against Mrs. H. for sexual harassment? Will more women file suits like these?

Planet Fitness is a private company and they can make any policies they want, but they should state them in their contracts so women who are joining know that men are allowed in women’s locker rooms. As stories like that of Mrs. H. and others get out there, profits may decline and they might consider changing their policies.

Meanwhile, government schools have been allowing girls in boys’ locker rooms — and mandating that boys and parents accept it. A group of parents filed suit in federal court against an Oregon school declaring the presence of a girl in the boys’ locker room was causing their sons “embarrassment, humiliation, anxiety, intimidation, fear, apprehension, and stress.”

Obama-appointed Judge Marco Hernandez threw out the suite last month declaring that: “High school students do not have a fundamental privacy right to not share school restrooms, lockers, and showers with transgender students whose biological sex is different than theirs.” He said the stress the boys felt was not "comparable to the plight of transgender students who are not allowed to use facilities consistent with their gender identity.”

Hernandez’s ruling will stand unless it’s overturned in a federal court of appeals, and that won’t likely be quick if it happens at all. What can we expect when schools open this fall? Will boys be allowed in girls’s shower rooms? After that ruling, public schools won’t be able to stop it. It’s one thing for private entities like Planet Fitness gyms to allow it; people can go to another gym — but now the federal government can force it on public schools.

I don’t believe I have to ask Mrs. H. what she thinks of this development.

Social Engineering By Census

Does racial discrimination still exist in the United States? If so, how does it show? One manifestation, perhaps the biggest, is in the US Government. As it prepares to fulfill its constitutional responsibility under Article I, Section 2 to count how many people live here, let’s ponder what the Census has become. Its original purpose was to figure out how many seats in the US House of Representatives each state gets as our population grows and shifts, but America’s obsession with race has expanded the function of this basic count. Right now, there’s a political struggle to add even more racial categories to the 2020 census. Why? Well, the Census Bureau itself brags that the data it collects determines how and where $400 billion of federal money is spent, much of it according to race.

Article I Section 2 originally mandated that Congress count: “the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons… within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.”

Linda Sarsour

The “Manner” Congress has subsequently directed leads us to look at ourselves not as Americans, but as members of some oppressed minority competing for taxpayer funds. Left-wing activist Linda Sarsour is lobbying the Office of Management and Budget to include another racial category President Obama wanted: “MENA” for “Middle East and North Africa.” Sarsour calls herself a Palestinian American. She wants Persians, Arabs, Turks, Lebanese, and Somalis and Sudanese to be categorized under that label too. Why? She explains:

“When we look at accessing federal, you know, any types of federal support, for example, we lose out dramatically because we don’t have a separated category … because we are quote ‘white,’ we are not seen as a priority area for city or state or federal funding.”

At least she’s honest about it. According to the Heritage Foundation, Sarsour wants: “Another ‘oppressed’ group that will be eligible for racial preferences (‘affirmative action,’ ‘disparate impact,’ ‘underrepresentation,’ etc.) in employment, college admissions, federal contracts, and congressional redistricting.” She wants a bigger slice of the $400 billion pie.

Under the first census conducted in 1790, the head of household was listed as well as number of “free white males” over and under sixteen, the number of “free white females,” the number of “free persons” (boarding in household) and the number of slaves. That was all. No questions about race, but we can assume the slaves were black. Ten years later more questions about the ages of both free white males and free white females were asked. Twenty years later, data on the number of factories in a given district were gathered. In 1820, the census takers asked the ages and sexes of slaves, as well as whether people worked as farmers, factory workers, or other commerce, and counted “foreigners not naturalized.” In 1830, more specific data on ages of white males and females, slaves, as well as the number of all who were deaf, dumb, or blind was determined.

In 1850 came the first questions on race. There were two broad categories: “Free Inhabitants” and “Slave Inhabitants,” but free non-white inhabitants were differentiated between “black” and “mulatto.” Also gathered were values of real estate owned, data on occupation, place of birth, marital status, schooling, literacy, and if person was "deaf, dumb, blind, insane, idiotic, pauper, or convict.” Slaves were given numbers, not names, and classified black or mulatto. Listed under “Owner” were “uncaught escaped slaves in the past year”; “the number of slaves freed from bondage in the past year” and, “is the slave deaf and dumb, blind, insane, or idiotic?”

More race questions came in 1870 with categories for Chinese and [American] Indian. In 1890: “Enumerators were instructed to write ‘White,’ ‘black,’ ‘Mulatto,’ ‘Quadroon,’ ‘Octoroon,’ ‘Chinese,’ ‘Japanese,’ or ‘Indian.’”

More questions about Indians came in 1900, including tribal affiliation, “Fraction of person's lineage that is white”; “Is this person living in polygamy?”; “Is this person taxed?” A note on the Census site explained: “An American Indian was considered "taxed" if he or she was detached from his or her tribe and was living in the White community and subject to general taxation.

“Mulatto” was dropped in 1930 and “Mexican” added, but only that year. “Hindu” was called a race. Mixed black and white was marked as Black. Mixed Indian and white was marked as “Indian.” Ethnic questions were increased in 1970, asking about Cuban, Puerto Rican, Mexican, Central American, or “Other Spanish” descent. Now those groups also want to be classified as a “race” separate from white in 2020. If you’re not white, you're eligible for a piece of the pie.

Whenever I’m asked to describe my race, I write in “human,” and refuse to go any further. How soon before government substitutes the subjective term “gender” for the scientific term “sex” and how many categories will there be? Five? Ten? Thirty? How long before questions about sexual preference are included? They were drafted under the Obama Administration but dropped by the Trump Administration last March. Had Hillary won, they’d have been on there for 2020.

You Know You're A Progressive When...

To be a good progressive these days, you must learn to live in a constant state of cognitive dissonance, which dictionary.com defines as: “anxiety that results from simultaneously holding contradictory or otherwise incompatible attitudes [or] beliefs.”

You have to believe it’s possible to COEXIST with people who want to kill you, and put COEXIST bumper stickers on your Prius. Though Radical Muslims kill us every chance they get, you have to believe we’re not at war with them — even after they declared war on us. You also have to support treaties with countries whose leaders lead millions in chants of “Death to America!”

You have to believe that The Islamic Republic of Iran has nothing to do with Islam, and The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has nothing to do with Islam either. Nor does al Qaida, or Boko Haram, or al Nusra, or al Shabab, or Hamas, or Hezbollah, or…

You have to believe that even though climate has been changing for millions of years, including global freezing and global warming over at least five ice ages before humans existed, that human activity is causing global warming now. You must believe that when Neanderthals and Cro Magnon humans appeared, they brought on the global warming that melted the glaciers of the fourth ice age by burning too much wood in their camp fires -- because it took a lot of wood to cook all those mammoths.

You also have to believe that signing a climate change treaty which would bring skyrocketing energy prices for every American is worth it — even when China and India will continue increasing their carbon emissions for at least the next fifteen years and maybe forever. When some scientists point out there has been no global warming for the last twenty years in spite of ever-increasing carbon emissions, they should be prosecuted as climate change deniers. You have to believe John Kerry and Barack Obama when they claim global warming is a bigger threat than radical Islam.

You have to believe that even though the top 1% of Americans pay more taxes than the bottom 90%, they don’t pay their fair share. You also have to believe that even though half of Americans pay no income taxes at all, we need to give them more free stuff by increasing taxes still more on the top 1%. You put “Bernie” stickers on your Prius next to your COEXIST stickers because you believe his claims that “the top 1%” has so much money it can pay for endless free stuff for everyone and will never run out. 

You have to believe that Hillary triumphed over the House Committee on Benghazi even if they proved she lied to the families of four dead Americans and to the nation. You must believe that pretending to answer questions is more important than telling the truth. You have to believe that even though 54% of American voters don’t think Hillary is honest or trustworthy and you cannot think of anything she accomplished as a senator or secretary of state, you must support her because “It’s time we had a woman president.”

You have to believe Obamanomics has reduced our unemployment rate to only 5.5% even though there are 95 million Americans out of work who have given up looking for a job, and there are only 318 million Americans.

You have to believe that Governor O’Malley was right to apologize to “Black Lives Matter” for daring to claim that all lives matter. You have to believe that cops are racist and constantly looking for young, unarmed black men to shoot. You must believe that anyone who points out that more than 93% of young, black men are killed by other young black men is racist.

You have to believe that anyone who objects to allowing tens of millions of illegal aliens into America and paying for their food, clothing, housing, education, and health care is also racist. However, groups like La Raza (translated “The Race”) and its affiliate MEChA, who claim Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, California, Nevada and Colorado were stolen by evil white people are not.

You have to believe that abortion is not dismembering an unborn baby in its mother’s womb, but “women’s health care.” You have to be willing to declare that anyone who suggests there may be a moral problem with killing babies and selling them for parts is waging a “war on women.”

You have to believe that homosexuality is natural, but sex roles are artificial. You must declare that homosexuals are born that way, but men and women are not. Counseling for homosexuals who wish to overcome attraction to others of the same sex must be made illegal everywhere, not just in California, Oregon and New Jersey, but taxpayers must pay for surgery and hormone treatments in attempts to turn men into women and women into men.

If you’re able to do all this, congratulations. You can call yourself a good progressive.

Crisis of Confidence

A lot going on these days, no? Sometimes I think I’ve lived too long.

Twenty years ago many of my students carried various Stephen King books along with the history book I required them to bring into my class. I told them I stopped reading horror stories because real life is often scary enough. Truth is much stranger than fiction and actual events, past or present, interest me much more than any fiction.

A week later I’d just finished “The Hot Zone” by Richard Preston. On the back was a comment by Stephen King: “The first chapter of The Hot Zone is one of the most horrifying things I've read in my whole life--and then it gets worse. That's what I keep marveling over: it keeps getting worse. What a remarkable piece of work.” So I brought it to class and read them King’s comment. At their insistence I read some of chapter one, but stopped after the first twenty pages. The following week, I noticed a few students carrying Preston’s book.

Ebola in West Africa

Last month, President Obama tried to calm Americans worried about a new outbreak of Ebola in Africa. He told us it was highly unlikely there would be an outbreak in the US. Two weeks later, though, it happened. This week, there were two more cases reported in Dallas, Texas. Hopefully things won’t, as King said back then, “keep getting worse.” Hopefully the CDC will do as it promised and stop the spread of this disease in its tracks.

However, the confidence expressed by Dr. Thomas Friedman in his first press conference was not evident after the nurse in Dallas became infected. He said we need to “re-think” hospital methods to prevent the spread of this very scary disease. As the federal government takes over more and more aspects of our lives, from health care to education, public confidence in its ability to administer them all competently is waning.

It’s been more than three years since I left the public schools. My thirty-four year career in them witnessed ever-increasing federal and state control over what was to be taught and how, from arithmetic to sex education to what can be eaten at lunch. Countless screwball ideas came down from unions and universities as well. Last week, I read a piece by Katherine Timpf in National Review Online in which she writes: “A Nebraska school district has instructed its teachers to stop referring to students by “gendered expressions” such as “boys and girls,” and use “gender inclusive” ones such as “purple penguins” instead.

Gender-bending programs like this have been trickling in for years and I’ve written about some in this space several times. If I were still in public education and instructed to say: “Good morning Purple Penquins” instead of “Good morning boys and girls,” I believe I would have refused. Are there objections out there in Nebraska? None I have heard. What is it going to take before people push back against relentless LGBT propaganda paid for by their own tax money and foisted on their children?

The “Gender Spectrum” curriculum, mandated in the Nebraska district, “…instructs teachers to interfere and interrupt if they ever hear a student talking about gender in terms of ‘boys and girls’ so the student can learn that this is wrong.”

Wrong, mind you. Students are not being told just to tolerate other students who are confused about whether they’re boys or girls. Now it’s “wrong” to refer to the sexes in a “binary manner.” Nebraska public school teachers must now: “Provide counter-narratives that challenge students to think more expansively about their notions of gender.”

Two months ago, my wife and I attended my niece’s wedding in Massachusetts. When she and her husband filled out their marriage license, there were no categories for “husband” and “wife.” No-no. Not in politically correct Massachusetts. It was “Spouse A” and “Spouse B.” How did this happen?

Several years ago, Massachusetts passed a so-called “gay rights” law which slipped in language about “gender expression.” Then came a Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling that it was then illegal to prevent homosexuals from “marrying” one another. Leftist bureaucrats took over and changed official language pertaining to marriage - for everyone in the state, getting rid of “husband” and “wife” because those terms are wrong, I guess. They’re too “binary,” exclusive of those who claim they’re neither male nor female.

The City of Houston Texas passed an “equal rights” law that included aspects of “gender identity” and conservative groups have filed suit against it. Meanwhile, city attorneys have recently issued subpoenas demanding that local pastors turn over to the city any sermons written pertaining to “homosexuality or gender identity.” Does this not violate First Amendment guarantees of freedom of religion and speech? How about Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures?

Will Houston pastors meekly comply? Will the ACLU step in on their behalf? Be interesting to see.

Say What?

Don’t tell someone to “Man Up” at Duke University. It’s “offensive language” according to an official campaign on campus called “You Don’t Say.” There are black and white posters all around picturing three wimpy-looking young men cautioning against certain words or phrases. The first proclaims: “I don’t say ‘Man Up’ because the strongest people I know have cried in front of me, regardless of their age, gender or sex.” Masculinity isn’t politically correct on today’s campuses and it’s scary for 21st century progressives.

Another claims “I don’t say ‘Tranny’ because it’s insulting to transgender and genderqueer communities.” Wasn’t “queer” deemed offensive way back in the 20th century? Did the word get a progressive pardon I didn’t hear about? And I thought a “tranny” was a transmission in a truck or a car. Boy, am I out of touch. Hope it’s still okay to say “boy.”

Duke University shouldn’t be telling anyone what to say or not say, but it is anyway. The university lost all credibility when it hung its own lacrosse team out to dry based on the false charges of an unstable woman working as a stripper. They were obviously bogus, but because the accuser was a black female and the accused were “privileged” upper-middle-class white males, eighty-eight of Duke’s faculty signed a petition that presumed them guilty “regardless of the results of the police investigation,” as part of their introductory paragraph read.

No matter that the accuser was proven to have lied and is now in prison for murder. No matter that the district attorney was removed and disbarred for his conduct in the case. No matter that the university settled out of court for an undisclosed sum in a lawsuit by the falsely-accused players. None of the eight-eight progressive faculty members have apologized for what they did to those “privileged” white guys.

What difference does it make!

Other things we shouldn’t be saying include words like “bitch” and the slang word sometimes used to describe a cat or part of the female anatomy. Heck, my mother told me not to say those things fifty years ago. I’m okay with discouraging them on campus, but other words my mother hated are fine for progressives, especially that four-letter f-word. That’s ubiquitous as an adjective, noun, verb, or any other way you wish to say it. On other campuses are campaigns to eliminate the word “bossy” when describing any female. It’s just as bad as “bitch” in progressive nomenclature. My mother was okay with us saying “bossy” when describing my sister because she definitely was. You can’t say “illegal immigrant” either, even when describing someone who immigrated illegally. Many media outlets have banned it too, including the Associated Press.

Progressives believe that if they can control what words we use, they can control how we think. The “Gay and Lesbian Advocates And Defenders” or GLAAD, issued the 8th edition of its “Media Reference Guide” in 2010. They list as “Problematic” such phrases as “sex-change” or “pre-operative” or “post-operative.” They recommend “transition,” cautioning to “avoid over-emphasizing surgery when discussing transgender people.” Got that? And never say “bathroom bill” either because “it’s a term used by far-right extremists to oppose non-discrimination laws that protect transgender people. The term is geared to incite fear and panic at the thought of encountering transgender people in public restrooms. Use non-discrimination law/ordinance instead.”

So ladies: If you see a huge man who claims he’s a woman come into the ladies’ room, don’t even think about whether he’s had his you-know-what cut off or not. It’s offensive even to let that enter your mind.

GLAAD even calls the word “homosexual” offensive. The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press evidently agree because they’ve banned the word in their style manuals. To say “homosexual relationship” is “extremely offensive” because such a phrase is “frequently used by anti-gay extremists to denigrate gay people.” Neither can you say “gay agenda” because there isn’t any gay agenda - in spite of the what their Media Reference Guide obviously embodies. It’s offensive to say so, just like it’s offensive to describe an illegal immigrant as an illegal immigrant. Got it?

“Disordered” is defamatory too says GLAAD. So when the Catholic Church teaches that homosexuality is both “intrinsically disordered” and “objectively disordered,” it’s on a collision course with GLAAD. The organization praises the Washington Post’s guidelines which caution against mentioning homosexuals in anything but a positive light, as in: “Describing a slaying, for instance, should suffice without referring to it as a homosexual slaying.” All these guidelines are voluntary, of course. If anyone might think about violating them, they should first think about what GLAAD did to Phil Robertson and Brendan Eich. If you don’t watch what you say, they’d be more than GLAAD to do it to you too.