Tuesday, August 16, 2016



The false rape claims never stop coming in Britain

A daughter admitted lying about being raped by her father after reading Fifty Shades Of Grey - because she wanted to 'teach him a lesson'.

The girl confessed she had 'made the whole thing up' after just seven minutes of questioning by her father's defence barrister, who asked her about the 'striking similarities' between her story and the E.L. James novel.

Her father was cleared of eight counts of incestuous rape over a six year period after the judge directed the jury to acquit him.

Writing on her blog, barrister Cathy McCulloch said: 'She had described not only what her father had allegedly done, but how her body felt as a result.

'The only odd thing was the use of certain words, phrases and descriptions of how she felt which seemed beyond her years.'

She said her client mentioned his daughter's favourite book was 'about a millionaire who takes a young woman under his wing and “teaches her about art”', adding: 'He had no idea what Fifty Shades of Grey was about'.

Ms McCulloch said her instructing solicitor's representative bought a copy of the novel and overnight found 'too many striking similarities' between the daughter's police interview and the book to be a coincidence.

She continued: 'I raised the striking similarities between her interview and the book. She suddenly broke and said I was absolutely right. 'She had made the whole thing up because she was angry with her father and wanted to teach him a lesson.

'I asked her whether she had got all the ideas from Fifty Shades of Grey. She confirmed this book, and others – which she named.'

SOURCE






Civilization Causes 'The Patriarchy'? Fire, Alphabets Called Sexist

Much of feminism has bucked traditional gender roles. Feminists of bygone eras have argued women deserved the right to vote, have the ability to work in many of the same jobs as men, and even that men were just as capable of cooking and cleaning as women were. They were absolutely right.

However, present-day feminism has gone completely off the rails.

For example, a supposed science article published in the New York Times presents the idea that the discovery of fire led to The Patriarchy (TM). Yes, the article actually says that:

Negative cultural consequences came with fire, too -- and continue to leave an imprint.

Anthropologists have speculated that inhaling smoke led to the discovery of smoking. Humans have long used fire to modify their environment and burn carbon, practices that now have us in the throes of climate change.

Fire is even tied to the rise of patriarchy -- by allowing men to go out hunting while women stayed behind to cook by the fire, it spawned gender norms that still exist today.

Um ... really?

To state the obvious, one could easily argue that the fact that men are unable to nurse might have also had a significant impact on why women were left behind on hunts. Since they were home, it just made sense for them to cook while they were there.

Oh, but fire's not the only mark of civilization that is to blame for the rise of the evil Patriarchy.

If you're reading this, you're familiar with something called the alphabet. In any language, an alphabet is necessary to form a written set of symbols used to represent sounds.

And writing is all sexist and stuff. At least that's what Leonard Shlain, uh, writes:

Of all the sacred cows allowed to roam unimpeded in our culture, few are as revered as literacy. Its benefits have been so incontestable that in the five millennia since the advent of the written word numerous poets and writers have extolled its virtues. Few paused to consider its costs ...

One pernicious effect of literacy has gone largely unnoticed: writing subliminally fosters a patriarchal outlook. Writing of any kind, but especially its alphabetic form, diminishes feminine values and with them, women’s power in the culture.

So, today's lunatic argument appears to be that civilization itself causes The Patriarchy.

Well, if that's the case, then feminism is really and truly screwed.

After all, I know plenty of women who prefer civilization to the uncomfortable and dangerous life of prehistory. Women dying at the ripe old age of "in childbirth"? Men being ripped apart by wild beasts as they battle to put sustenance on the rock that serves as their "table"? That may sound like utopia to the New York Times and Leonard Shlain, but let's see if they follow through and really live like that.

More importantly, how many feminists want to live like that?

That's what I thought.

SOURCE






Poll: Religious Liberty, Homosexuality Top List of Political Issues U.S. Churchgoers Hear from Pulpit

A new Pew Research Center poll released Monday reveals that most American churchgoers, 64 percent, hear about political and social issues from the pulpit and the top three social and political issues that churchgoers hear discussed are religious liberty, homosexuality, and abortion.

Thirty-two percent of churchgoers surveyed said they’ve heard clergy preach in defense of religious liberty and just two percent said their clergy doesn’t believe that religious liberty is really under attack. Forty percent total have heard the issue mentioned.

Thirty-nine percent of churchgoers have heard homosexuality mentioned by clergy, with 20 percent hearing their clergy speak out against homosexuality and 12 percent speaking in favor of its acceptance.

On the abortion issue, 22 percent say they have heard sermons against abortion, while three percent have heard clergy argue in support of abortion. Twenty-nine percent say they’ve heard the issue brought up.

Sixty-four percent of those who said they regularly (at least once or twice a month) attended religious services say they heard clergy at their church or other place of worship speak about at least one of the following issues: religious liberty, abortion, immigration, environmental issues, homosexuality, and economic inequality.

On immigration, 19 percent of churchgoers report that their clergy have emphasized the need to welcome and support immigrants, compared with four percent whose clergy argued for stricter immigration enforcement.

Churchgoers reported that 16 percent of their religious leaders spoke out in favor of protecting the environment, while one percent said they’ve heard their clergy speak out against environmental regulations.

In general, respondents indicated that discussion of political issues is not all that common in their congregations. Twenty-nine percent said that political and social issues were discussed only sometimes, and 49 percent said they were discussed rarely or never. Only seven percent said their clergy spoke “often” on social and political issues.

The Pew survey was conducted online and by mail June 5 - July 7 among a nationally representative sample of 4,602 adults.

SOURCE





ADF Int’l. Lawyer On European Hate Speech Laws: ‘Subjective Feelings' Cannot Be Policed

Paul Coleman, senior counsel and deputy director of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International, says that European hate speech laws are based on people’s “subjective feelings,” which cannot be policed.

But their goal is “to silence those who go against the political or cultural orthodoxy of the day.”

“The process is the punishment,” said Coleman, author of Censored – How European Hate Speech Laws are Threatening Freedom of Speech.

Speaking at a Heritage Foundation event in Washington, Coleman, who is British, said that one flawed justification for hate speech laws is that certain speech directly harms other people. 

“The problem with this justification is it is impossible to police. You just can’t police people’s subjective feelings and people’s subjective response to hurt,” he explained.

Coleman pointed out that there are countless hate speech laws, especially in the European Union, which deal with hot button issues that are “clamped down on by the state,” such as Islam, immigration, gay marriage, sexuality and gender identity.

He explained that multiculturalism and establishing a “global village” are valued in European society to the point that those who seek “absolute truth” have to be “put down.”

Hate speech laws have "devastating effects, but it's not necessarily about convictions; it's not necessarily about people being locked up in jail,” said Coleman. Rather, “the process is the punishment in many of these cases.” 

In one case he cited, "you have a conversation that leads to a prosecution that leads to an acquittal, and in the process, a business and a livelihood is destroyed."

Coleman argued that one of the multiple problems with European hate speech laws is the difficulty of even defining hate speech.

“What we find is [that the term] hate speech is vague. It has just a lot of vague synonyms that struggle to define what it means,” Coleman said.

“What one person considers to be hate speech another person certainly wouldn’t consider that to be hate speech, and a lot of the laws are based not on objectively what was said,  but on the subjective response of the hearer.”

Coleman also pointed out that because “words change over time,” hate speech laws force citizens to keep up with specific words in order to know what is and isn’t legal.

But even though the premises of many hate speech cases are “ridiculous,” Coleman points out that “a lot of them are used to silence debate and to silence those who go against the political or cultural orthodoxy of the day.”

Coleman also criticized the rationale that certain speech, even if it is not criminal in and of itself, “will lead to violence.”

He pointed to Germany during the Weimar Republic, the predecessor to Nazi rule, saying that its “primitive forms of hate speech laws” were “absolutely useless at stopping the rise in Nazism.”

According to Coleman, the same logic applies to present-day Europe.

“We are seeing the rise in extremism, we are seeing a rise in violence, we are seeing a rise in terrorist attacks, we are seeing a huge rise in political and societal tension, all of which is in a context of more and more and more criminal restrictions on speech.

“So the narrative, the idea that these laws are somehow helping to stem this is not supported.”

Coleman expressed concern with the trajectory of hate speech laws, pointing out that many Europeans are willing to give up their “freedom of expression” and “civil liberties” because they think that “this is the price we pay for the peace that we have.”

But Coleman noted that hate speech laws are not “static.” At first, they only dealt with race, but were later expanded to include religion, sexual orientation, gender identity and sexism.

Not only is the scope of the laws increasing, but the “threshold of what’s being caught by hate speech laws is getting lower and lower,” while the “means of restricting speech” is expanding, he said.

Coleman concluded by rhetorically asking if these sorts of restrictions on speech could happen in the United States.

“As we look at the course of the last century, as we look at legislation needing to be passed to protect the First Amendment, I think we have to say that it most certainly could happen here,” he said.

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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