More culture war stories from around the interwebs.
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The censors over at Press Progress (and in the rest of the media, for that matter) are continuing their attempts to purge the public square of those who disagree with them. In this case, those who believe adult nudity is unacceptable in the public square, especially in front of children. From Press Progress:
A controversial socially conservative BC Liberal MLA’s riding association president has submitted her resignation in response to newly surfaced social media posts criticizing Pride parades for being “obscene” and displaying “lewd behaviour.” Susan Mathies resigned Monday as president of BC Liberal MLA Laurie Throness’ Chilliwack–Kent riding association after PressProgress asked the party to verify the authenticity of a series of anti-LGBTQ Facebook postings.
“Mathies has now resigned as president of the Chilliwack–Kent riding association,” BC Liberal Communications Director Deanie Wong told PressProgress. “The BC Liberal Party will continue to work hard to advance inclusion, diversity, and equality for all British Columbians,” Wong added.
Throness, an outspoken social conservative, sent his party into a tail spin last month after he ignored party leader Andrew Wilkinson and pledged to continue using tax dollars to advertise in an anti-LGBTQ magazine. The BC Liberals were ultimately banned from both the Vancouver and Tri-Cities Pride Parades after failing to take action against Throness.
Mathies, who previously served as Throness’ campaign manager in the 2013 and 2017 provincial elections, has shown an extensive pattern of posting on anti-LGBTQ themes in recent years. In one example, Mathies shared an article from a social conservative blog claiming that taking children to Pride parades is a form of “child abuse,” because they will see “public nudity” and “the genitals of adult men.”
The blog referred to, as you might have guessed, is this one, and I notice that the folks at Press Progress quote the article as if it was packed with misrepresentations. In fact, the CBC article states, point blank, that “your kids will probably see boobs and penises.” Instead of defending the idea of children seeing the genitals of adults in a public space, Press Progress attacks folks like Mathies, who hold to the quaint idea that this is very, very inappropriate.
So, what is it–is it now okay for children to see nude adults? When did this get decided? There are many photographs of children displaying their natural modesty by cringing and wincing as they see middle-aged, male men dressed up in various sexual costumes, prancing past families. And yes, the first problem here is that parents take their kids to these sorts of events in the first place. But back to the main point: If we took a poll asking whether it was appropriate for children to see nude adults, I’m willing to bet that the vast majority of Canadians would side with Susan Mathies, not Press Progress.
I also happen to know a few writers who would object to the idea of someone opposing children seeing nudity in public being called “anti-LGBTQ.” In fact, a gay columnist noted in the National Post a couple of years back that he was opposed to “exposing children” to the “debauchery” of Pride celebrations. I suppose he’s anti-LGBTQ now, too.
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Trans activists have scored a victory in the “bathroom wars,” which will inevitably end up at the Supreme Court (where the “conservative” majority may well use the Bostock ruling to side with the trans movement.) From Global News:
A Florida school district was wrong when it forced a transgender high school student to either use the girls bathroom or a single-stall gender neutral bathroom, a federal appeals court ruled. The ruling issued Friday sides with Drew Adams, who sued the St. Johns County School District because he wasn’t allowed to use the boys restroom. It could have a wide-ranging impact on how schools treat transgender students. Though his assigned gender was female at birth, Adams began the transition to become a male before he enrolled in Allen D. Nease High School in Ponte Vedra Beach.
The school district, however, pointed to forms filled out when Adams was in fourth grade that listed him as a girl, and said he couldn’t use the boys bathroom. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that in a 2-1 decision. “A public school may not punish its students for gender nonconformity. Neither may a public school harm transgender students by establishing arbitrary, separate rules for their restroom use. The evidence at trial confirms that Mr. Adams suffered both these indignities,” the court wrote in its opinion…The ruling would cover schools in Florida, Georgia and Alabama, and could carry the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court. But the victory is considered a milestone for transgender rights that will resonate beyond high school bathroom use.
…The ruling dismissed school board claims that male students’ privacy would be compromised if he used the boys restroom and that some boys might claim to be “gender fluid” in order to be voyeurs in the girls restroom. The court said there was no evidence that either was the case.
In other words, they didn’t want to look at such evidence.
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The abortion pill is continuing to usher in an era of “at-home” or “do-it-yourself” abortions, especially as the abortion industry uses the COVID-19 pandemic to push for the wide-spread availability of RU-486 (which is happening in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K.) Now, Italian health minister Roberto Speranza tweeted on August 8 that new guidelines would “foresee the voluntary interruption of pregnancy with the pharmacological method in a day hospital and up until the ninth week” of pregnancy. Formerly, taking RU-486 required a three-day hospitalization, and was used to eject babies prior to seven weeks (about 20% of abortions in Italy.) Speranza has clearly not been following what is taking place under the UK’s new at-home abortion regime, where women have been hospitalized and even died after taking the abortion drugs.
