Each Friday on The Bridgehead, I’m going to try post a quick list of columns and media stories that I think are worth taking a look at—or are at least good to be aware of. This way, a quick overview of my summaries will give you a synopsis of what’s going on without having to wade through all the crazy yourself. Here’s a few stories from this week:
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Some stories show just how far in the tank our media actually is. BBC 3 recently ran a documentary following a number of transgender teenagers “looking for love.” The problem? Well, says now-identifying-as-a-girl Claire, “straight guys just can’t get over you having male parts.” This is a real story? That guys don’t want to date a girl with a penis? Apparently so. At least there are some “happy endings” for our friends in the media—one transgender couple worked together perfectly, even though the girlfriend “used to be a boy” and the boyfriend “used to be a girl.”
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In the same strange universe, Bruce Jenner’s alter ego Caitlyn was—get this—awarded “Woman of the Year” by Glamor Magazine, causing no small amount of outrage. Radical feminist Germaine Greer wanted to know how you could be a woman just because you had your equipment “lopped off,” and the outraged widower who had received the award on behalf of his wife, who died trying to rescue people on 9/11, sent it back. He then wrote to Glamour Magazine to say what all sane people are thinking: “Was there no woman in America, or the rest of the world, more deserving than this man?”
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The Sexual Revolution is catching up to us in more ways than one. The National Postreported this week that “There’s an STD epidemic in the US—and it’s getting worse.” This should come as no surprise, as it’s been getting worse for a very long time. From the Center for Disease Control: “Reported cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis all increased in 2014. Chlamydia cases had dipped in 2013, but last year’s total of more than 1.4 million – or 456 cases per 100,000 – was the highest number of annual cases of any condition ever reported to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The chlamydia rate was up almost 3 percent from 2013, the CDC reported Tuesday.” Something must be done! a bunch of medical experts declared. But nothing will, because we mustn’t tell young people to hold off on sex, for any reason, ever.
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In the National Review, George Will makes a long overdue point about the current hysterics university students are experiencing over a variety of perceived injustices. “The cries,” he writes with entirely appropriate contempt, “were for protection (in the current academic patois, for ‘a safe space’) from the specter of the possibility that someone might wear an insensitive Halloween costume. A sombrero would constitute ‘cultural appropriation.’ A pirate’s eye patch would distress the visually challenged. And so on, and on. Normal Americans might wonder: Doesn’t the wearing of Halloween costumes end at about the time puberty begins? Not on campuses, where young adults old enough to vote live in a bubble of perpetual childhood.”
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As the Muslim population across Europe explodes in growth, we’re starting to find out just a few of the consequences. One of them, detailed over at Stream, talks about the increasing persecution of Christians by Muslims in Sweden: “According to recent numbers from the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, hate crimes with Christophobic motives have increased sharply in Sweden. In fact, hate crimes against Christians and churches have tripled in the past five years, making it the sharpest rise of hate crimes in Sweden. Compared to 2013, the number of reported crimes has increased 76 percent. But only recently have crimes against Christians started to receive media attention. Around 330 hate crimes against Christians were reported in Sweden last year (2014). Forty-nine percent were graffiti/vandalism of churches and parish houses and 35 percent were threats/harassment.” And much of the graffiti, it seems, declares that the ISIS caliphate is on its way.
