Wednesday, January 22, 2014


Newly chosen cardinal Fernando Aguilar says homosexuality is a defect than can be cured

What's wrong with calling it a defect?  It leads to a lot of problems  -- JR

POPE Francis's newly chosen Spanish cardinal, 84-year-old Fernando Aguilar, has described homosexuality as a "defect" that can be corrected with treatment, sparking condemnation from gay rights groups.

"A lot of people complain and don't tolerate it but with all respect I say that homosexuality is a defective way of manifesting sexuality, because that has a structure and a purpose, which is procreation," Archbishop Aguilar told Malaga newspaper Sur.

The interview was published on Sunday, a week after Archbishop Aguilar was named as one of 19 new cardinals chosen by the Pope, to be officially appointed February 22.

"We have a lot of defects in our bodies. I have high blood pressure. Am I going to get angry because they tell me that? It is a defect I have that I have to correct as far as I can," said Archbishop Aguilar, who is the archbishop emeritus of the northern city of Pamplona.

"Pointing out a defect to a homosexual is not an offence, it is a help because many cases of homosexuality can be recovered and normalised with adequate treatment. It is not an offence, it is esteem. When someone has a defect, the good friend is the one who tells him."

Aguilar was asked in the interview if he shared the view of Pope Francis, who said in July last year: "If someone is gay and seeks the Lord with good will, who am I to judge?"

The Spanish archbishop, who, because of his age, will not hold a vote in the conclave that elects pontiffs, said the pope shows respect to all people but is not changing the teaching of the Church.

"It is one thing to show welcome and affection to a homosexual person and another to morally justify the exercise of homosexuality," Archbishop Aguilar said.

Gay and lesbian rights group Colegas called on the archbishop to retract his comment.

"We hope that Fernando Sebastian will correct his words and we note that homosexuality is not a curable disease, but homophobia is," it said in a statement.

Nicolas Fernandez, head of the Malaga-based gay and lesbian rights group Entiende, added his condemnation.

"It is not the first time the cardinals have said we are defective," he said, calling for non-discrimination legislation that would condemn such "repugnant" statements.

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Secretive, political and awash with cash: Damning report attacks British police 'union' that 'targeted' Plebgate minister and tells it to come clean about its shadowy millions

The powerful body which represents 130,000 rank-and-file police officers came under scathing attack yesterday for being secretive, overly political and awash with cash.

The Police Federation must change radically to survive, an independent review by a former Whitehall mandarin declared.

Sir David Normington attacked the organisation for sinking to the politics of ‘personal attack’ and said some senior figures were too keen to play political games.

He strongly criticised representatives who ‘personally targeted’ former Tory chief whip Andrew Mitchell, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary Tom Winsor and successive Home Secretaries.

They were ‘wrong-headed’ to respond with shouting to the reform of pay and conditions, the ex-Home Office permanent secretary said.

He also raised questions about almost £95million held by the police ‘union’ in reserves and assets.

Only three out of 43 federation branches were willing to come completely clean about the money they control.

Sir David said the cash reserves and secrecy ‘create suspicion that they have something to hide’.

He added that although he found no evidence of corruption, hidden assets were ‘not a recipe for a trusted, professional, united organisation’.

Police Federation chairman Steve Williams said the report’s findings made uncomfortable reading. ‘It shows that the organisation is failing to perform its role effectively and efficiently, is ineffective and uninfluential, has lost the confidence of its members, and is in need of urgent reform,’ he said. ‘There is no doubt that root and branch change is required.’

The review was commissioned by the Police Federation itself in December 2012 after widespread criticism of the organisation and its working practices.

The federation wields huge influence over officers across England and Wales and is responsible for campaigning on their behalf. But its name has been tarnished by scandal, including the Plebgate affair.

Sir David recommended changing it from the ‘top to bottom’ after finding a ‘worrying loss of confidence and competence’.

He said the federation is riven by in-fighting, with some local branches guilty of empire building and resisting modernisation. A vocal minority remain impervious to calls for reform, greater professionalism and transparency. ‘Sometimes they love the politics of office, rather than representing their members,’ he said.

As ministers drove through changes to police pay and conditions, the federation’s response was to ‘oppose rather than engage’, which left it with a divided and weak voice.

Sir David said federation members must stop booing the Home Secretary and other reformers when they speak in public because it is ‘tactically inept’.

The review called on federation representatives, who are paid from the public purse, to begin publishing their expenses and details of hospitality they receive.

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Shriver presents report highlighting the gender wage gap to an employer – Obama – who pays females 13% less than men

Maria Shriver visited the White House this week to meet with President Obama and deliver a copy of her new report “The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back from the Brink” (co-sponsored by the Center for American Progress). One of the main issues being addressed in the Shriver report is the gender wage gap.

Shriver’s report tells us that the average woman is paid only 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. For minority women it’s even worse – black women earn only 64 cents and Hispanic women only 55 cents for every dollar made by a white man. And that wage gap is not only unfair, it explains why so many women in America are poor. Here’s Shriver:

As the son of a single mother, President Obama said he is very sympathetic to these issues that one in three women is living on the brink of poverty in the United States of America. And one of the main reasons is the persistent wage gap that exists between men and women. While President Obama has pledged to fix the problem, Congress has been slow to respond.

Even the great labor economist Beyoncé Knowles-Carter made this contribution to the Shriver report:

"We need to stop buying into the myth about gender equality. It isn’t a reality yet. Today, women make up half of the U.S. workforce, but the average working woman earns only 77 percent of what the average working man makes."

Data on the 23% gender wage gap in the Shriver report are echoed on the White House website, where we also find out that:

Decades of research shows that no matter how you evaluate the data, there remains a pay gap — even after factoring in the kind of work people do, or qualifications such as education and experience — and there is good evidence that discrimination contributes to the persistent pay disparity between men and women. In other words, pay discrimination is a real and persistent problem that continues to shortchange American women and their families.

MP: OK, fine. Let’s ignore for now the extensive body of research that explains all or most of the 23% raw gender wage gap after controlling for the multitude of relevant variables that contribute to earnings differentials (hours worked, education, experience, continuous/uninterrupted experience, marital status, age, number of children, safety conditions of the workplace, desire for flexible work hours, etc.). In other words, let’s just ignore the empirical evidence, ignore the relevant variables that explain pay differences, and just accept the Shriver/Obama/Beyonce narrative that the raw 23% pay gap exists mainly or only because of gender discrimination on behalf of employers. I’m on board with Maria, Barack and Beyonce about the pay gap.

But now what are we to think about the fact that women working in Obama’s own White House are paid only 87 cents for every dollar paid to men working for Obama? The chart above illustrates the pay gap at the White House, based on salary data from the “2013 Annual Report to Congress on White House Staff.” An analysis of White House payroll data reveals that the 229 female employees in the Obama White House are being paid a median annual salary of $65,000 this year, compared to a median annual salary of nearly $75,000 for the 233 male White House staffers. Only gender discrimination could explain that disparity, and therefore Obama must be a sexist.

Little did Shriver know when she presented her report to the President, and got his support to address the gender wage gap, that she was meeting with a sexist employer who pays his female staffers 13% less on average than he pays his male employees. So hopefully, Obama can work with Shriver and Beyonce and set an example for the rest of America by addressing the 13% gender pay gap at the Obama White House.

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Pro-Aborts Oppose Free Speech

It’s no surprise why pro-abortion forces in America don’t want free speech when it comes to raising awareness about this issue of, literally, life and death.

The more people understand the reality of abortion, the more they don’t want it as a legal, easily accessible part of American life.

Now, as 650,000 plus pro-life demonstrators are about to arrive in Washington, DC for this year’s March for Life on January 22, noting in protest the 41st anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, the Supreme Court has just heard arguments on a critical case involving freedom of speech on this issue.

Seventy-seven year old Eleanor McCullen’s challenge to a 2007 Massachusetts law, which forbids anyone other than patients and employees to stand within a 35 foot radius of the entrance to an abortion clinic, has made it’s way to the nation’s highest court.

Arguments that this prohibition is about the physical safety of women entering these clinics are absurd. There already are federal and state laws that prohibit physical interference or intimidation of clinic patrons.

This law is aimed solely to abridge the free speech of pro-life activists and prevent them from communicating with women arriving to these clinics. This abridgement of speech is a clear and flagrant violation of freedom of speech guaranteed in the constitution’s first amendment.

What a distortion it is that the pro-abortion contingent has managed to get itself labeled “pro-choice.” Choice is about light not darkness, about knowledge not ignorance.

Why do those who claim to favor “choice” fight so hard against efforts to assure that women who are considering the horrible decision to extinguish life they are carrying make as informed a decision as possible?

Unfortunately, this is often driven by elitism and racism.  Abortion clinic clientele are disproportionately poor and disproportionately black.

Across the board, poor communities and black communities have been devastated over many years by policies designed by liberal elitists convinced that they know what is best for these unfortunate souls.

The abortion clinic is often the last stop in a chain of bad information delivered into low-income communities that creates the government-dependent culture that fosters the never-ending cycle of poverty.

But good information at any stage of the cycle can change things forever. That good information can be a pro-life Christian standing at an abortion clinic.

I wrote a number of years ago about a young black woman named Ebony. When she became pregnant her boyfriend encouraged her to abort the child. She found little problem in arranging an appointment at a clinic, where they assured her she was making the right decision because abortion would be “cheaper” than having the child.

But Ebony was uneasy. Sitting up late, she called into a Christian radio talk show where she was referred to a crisis pregnancy center. At the center, she saw her baby via ultrasound and changed her mind. At the center they helped her birth and provided clothes, food, and counseling.

When I wrote about Ebony her son was four years ago and she had no doubt about the correctness of her decision. A decision made because she had the good fortune to get information.

In 1995, 56 percent of Americans polled by Gallup self- identified as “pro-choice” compared to 33 percent as “pro-life.” The last Gallup poll in 2013 showed 48 percent identifying as “pro-life” and 45 percent as “pro-choice.”

As I tour the country to speak at crisis pregnancy centers I hear the stories of sorrow, regret, and guilt from those who went down the one way street of destroying the child with which they were blessed.

America cannot be a free country without free speech.  Free speech leads us to a deeper realization that we cannot be a free country without proper respect for life.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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