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Another Extremist

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Openly gay South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg was supposed to be “a moderate” alternative. Not quite, it seems:

Mr. Buttigieg argued the deal would actually boost the economy, including the industrial Midwest. For instance, his county recently increased the number of union jobs in the auto industry through electric-car manufacturing.
“I think a Green New Deal would support that,” he said.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/feb/10/pete-buttigieg-endorses-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-s/

Democrats struggled Sunday to defend the Green New Deal after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s botched roll-out threatened to turn the sweeping climate plan into a national punchline.
Pete Buttigieg, a Democrat running for the 2020 presidential nomination, called it “the right beginning” and “right direction”…
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/feb/10/democrats-stumble-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-green-n/

More. If he ever was a moderate, he isn’t one now. From the Washington Post:

“His message for 2020 will be centered on a clean, sharp break with the Lite Republicanism that Democrats embraced in the 1990s. While older voters still tell pollsters they favor keeping taxes low and ambitions modest, millennials overwhelmingly support Medicare-for-all, free college, heavy spending to tackle poverty and climate change, and major infrastructure investments — social democracy, in a nutshell.”

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The Cory Booker Spectacle

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Chaser:

Meanwhile, Democrats torpedoed the nomination of Patrick Bumatay, an openly gay man, for the 9th Circuit.

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Mrs. Pence’s New Job

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It actually does not bother me that Karen Pence, a traditionalist Christian, is teaching art at a conservative Christian school in Springfield, Virginia that does not accept homosexual behavior by students or teachers (or parents, it seems). The Pences aren’t saying that all schools should hold these views, whereas those who are protesting Mrs. Pence for her new teaching post seem to suggest that no schools should be allowed with these views.

Via Scopes: “The school does not explicitly bar gay, lesbian or bisexual persons from teaching there, but rather states that homosexual sexual acts (as opposed to same-sex preferences) are considered unacceptable “moral misconduct.” … It is a matter of subjective personal opinion, rather than objective fact, whether the ban on teachers’ engaging in homosexual sexual acts is tantamount to a de facto ban on gay, lesbian and bisexual teachers.”

I disagree with the views of the Immanuel Christian School, but I wouldn’t want to live in a country that did not allow conservative Christians, Orthodox Jews and others to have schools that comport with their faith traditions.

More. Apparently, some who have no problem requiring religiously pro-life taxpayers to help foot the bill for abortions, or with forcing nuns to pay for abortifacients for their employees, are upset that Karen Pence is teaching at a school that’s not accepting of LGBT behavior while receiving secret service protection.

More. Columnist William McGurn writes in the Wall Street Journal:

Now look at the Immanuel Christian School. Those who run it know they and those who think like them are the big losers in America’s culture war. All they ask is to be allowed, within the confines of their community, to uphold 2,000 years of Christian teaching on marriage, sexuality and the human person. …

[But] it isn’t enough for the victors to win; the new sense of justice requires that those who still don’t agree must be compelled to violate their deepest beliefs, whether this means forcing the Little Sisters of the Poor to provide contraception or dragging a baker in Colorado through the courts until he agrees to make a cake celebrating “gender transition.”

Today’s militant secularists ironically resemble the worst caricatures of religious intolerance of early America.

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Gay Youth at Risk

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Quillette is one of the few outlets willing to address the issue of how radical transgender activism endangers gay and lesbian youth, in no small measure by promoting the idea that gender nonstereotypical behavior (“effeminate” boys/”masculine” girls) indicates not homosexual orientation but transgender identity, and that these kids should be placed on puberty blockers as the first step to transitioning into the other gender (after which, presumably, they can live heterosexual lives). That sounds a lot like conversion therapy except with surgical finality. And yet LGBTQ movement groups have made transgender theory and activism their new central mission, and woe to anyone who questions the new transgender orthodoxy. Helen Joyce delves into these risks in great depth in her article “The New Patriarchy: How Trans Radicalism Hurts Women, Children—and Trans People Themselves.” Here’s another excerpt from Helen Joyce’s article:
Some gay people think that organizations set up to fight for gay rights made a mistake in throwing their weight behind trans activism. In an open letter in the Times in October, some prominent gays and lesbians accuse Stonewall, Britain’s biggest LGBT charity, of “uncritically adopting a form of transgender politics which undermines…the concept of homosexuality itself.” (It added “T” for transgender to its “LGB” (lesbian, gay and bisexual) mission in 2015.) More than 7,000 people have now signed a petition in support of the letter. Yet Stonewall’s CEO, Ruth Hunt, has denied any need for a rethink, saying that “trans equality is at the heart of our mission for acceptance without exception.”

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Who Are the ‘Haters’?

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From CampusReform:

Following a discussion on the Masterpiece Cakeshop ruling hosted by the George Washington University Federalist Society, the Student Bar Association and law school dean sent emails condemning the invited speaker from the Alliance Defending Freedom.

The event, “Religious Freedom or Discrimination: A Discussion of Masterpiece Cakeshop,” featured American Civil Liberties Union General Counsel Kenneth A. Klukowski and Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Jordan Lorence.

So, according to the lawyers to be and their leftwing administrators at GW, you shouldn’t even debate whether small business owners should be forced by the state to provide creative services for a same-sex wedding, because to defend religious freedom is hate.

But let’s recall the Justices Kennedy, Breyer and Kagan were part of the Court’s majority that found it was the Colorado Civil Right Commission that had shown animus toward baker Jack Phillips’ religious beliefs. So, who is the hater (hint: not those defending religious freedom).

Relatedly:

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Hate Is Not a Virtue Because You’re a Progressive

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I hope that sharing power in a divided government will make Democrats less likely to continue inciting mob hatred of anyone who dares commit the heresy of disagreeing publicly with progressive and identitarian dogmas. But I’m not hopeful.

Via Tucker Carlson:

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Modern Times

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The Washington Post looks at a gay male couple who decide not to tell their almost 3-year-old child whether she/he is a boy or a girl. Naya’s parents, Jeremy and Bryan, posted on Facebook: “If you interact with our kid, please make an effort to use Naya’s name, rather than a gendered pronoun.” In addition:

Jeremy and Bryan found themselves explaining [to Naya] that some people have penises and some have vaginas, and some have neither. Sometimes, having a vagina means feeling like a girl, but not always. They used their friends and relatives’ pictures to explain: Grandma is a woman; she likes to be called a she. Daddah is a man; he likes to be called a he. And Naya, they emphasized, could choose whatever Naya wanted.

Ultimately, readers are told that Naya decided to be a “she,” but we aren’t told whether Naya is biologically male or female.

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