Free Republic

A federal judge has denied a transgender teenager’s request to allow him to use the same bathroom as his peers at his public school in Virginia. Instead, the judge ruled Friday, the teenager must continue using a separate, private bathroom that he has said makes him feel “singled out and humiliated.” Gavin Grimm, a teenage boy who was born female, used the boys’ bathroom for seven weeks with no problem, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought a lawsuit against the Gloucester County School Board on his behalf. But then parents heard about the teen using the boys’...

A feminist magazine has declared that men who like breasts are sexist. In an article titled, “So You’re a ‘Breasts Man’? Here Are 3 Reasons That Could Be Sexist,” Jenika McCrayer explains why men who are sexually attracted to women with breasts are misogynists. McCrayer explains that “under a patriarchal system… we’re taught to believe that the female body exists solely for a man’s sexual pleasure and entertainment.” She then explains several reasons why liking breasts is a bad thing. First, “It Dangerously Conflates Attraction and Fetishization.” She explains, “breasts are not solely for aesthetic or sexual purposes. They have...

This afternoon, Fact Check.org produced a fact-check that ostensibly criticizes U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) for his contention that there has never been an instance of ground water contamination caused by hydraulic fracturing. Of course, this piece isn’t really about Inhofe at all; but before we get into that, we can’t help but wonder why they are fact-checking Inhofe and not former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson … or Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz … or Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell — all of whom have said exactly the same thing. Rather than a “fact-check,” it reads more like an advocacy...

One of the most admirable things about Europe is that most (if not all) of the right-wing rhetoric that you hear in the US is explicitly against the law there. For example, attempting to link Islam with terrorism, saying that gay marriage isn’t really marriage, or saying that trans women aren’t really women would get you charged with discrimination and/or incitement to hatred. Numerous European public figures have been charged with hate crimes for implying that large-scale immigration is connected to higher crime. In fact, a politician in Sweden was prosecuted for hate crimes for posting statistics about immigrant crime...

The early American settlers called it "the starving time," and accounts of the winter of 1609-1610 were so ghastly, and so morbid, that scholars weren't sure if the stories were true. George Percy, then president of the English settlement of Jamestown in Virginia, wrote that settlers ate horses, then cats and dogs, then boots and bits of leather, and, finally, one another. "One of our colony murdered his wife, ripped the child out of her womb and threw it into the river, and after chopped the mother in pieces and salted her for his food," wrote Percy, who then ordered...

....Celebs spoke out and joined Elton John in calling for a boycott of Dolce & Gabbana on Sunday after its founders criticized gay adoption and “synthetic children” conceived through in vitro fertilization..... ....“Your archaic thinking is out of step with the times, just like your fashions,” he continued. “I shall never wear Dolce and Gabbana ever again. #BoycottDolceGabbana.”

Melvin Konner, a Professor of Anthropology and Behavioral Biology at Emory University, believes that women will lead the world to “a better place.” More specifically, he argues, “male biology has brought the world war, corruption, and scandal.” He wrote his opinions down in an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal titled, “A Better World, Run by Women.” Women, he believes, do not become corrupt, they are not scandalous, and shall not ever plunge nations or the world into war. Females, he explains bluntly, are “superior to men in most ways that will count in the future… because of...

Zaneta Rago, the Director of Rutgers’ Social Justice Center, said that she was surprised there were not more millennials who believed that gender exists on a spectrum. “It's wonderful that approximately half of the respondents understood gender as a spectrum, but that means we're only half way there," she said. Daniella Anconetami, a School of Arts and Sciences first-year student, said that she believes in the gender spectrum. She said that she discovered that gender “wasn’t black and white” in high school, and said that her opinions about gender identity changed after meeting someone who was transgender in high school....

Censor of the Year: Neil deGrasse Tyson Broadcast His Photoshopped Narrative of Science to Millions David Klinghoffer February 12, 2015 2:58 AM | Permalink Today is Darwin Day, celebrated by us as Academic Freedom Day. That means it's time to announce the winner of this year's Censor of the Year Award. As you already know from the headline, our recipient is Neil deGrasse Tyson. COTY, as it's called for short, recognizes achievement in thwarting an open and informed discussion of science and scientific controversies. It is a serious thing -- since censorship is serious and often but not always casting...

From science to scientism in the Obama era  | An excerpt from the newly updated edition of John G. West’s Darwin Day in America Just how far some [Obama] administration officials were willing to take the idea that science should override ethical concerns became apparent with the disclosure of a multiyear experiment funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) involving more than 1,300 premature infants. As part of the experiment, premature infants were randomly assigned to receive higher or lower levels of oxygen. Those receiving lower levels of oxygen were more likely to die, while those receiving higher levels of...

Pro-lifers spoke to abortionist Randall Whitney in his car. According to him, an aborted baby: “Would not have been a full baby…It is not a being..It is not a baby. The baby is when its born, it is separate from its host…[when the pro-lifer mentioned God] I grew up in the church…It’s not a human being… At this point the pro-lifer asked: “what is it, a frog?” Whitney laughed and said: “it’s a frog…. I can kill a frog. “ See full conversation below: VIDEO AND PICTURE OF FROG ON LINK.

The recent surge in abortion laws -- more were enacted between 2011 and 2013 than in the previous decade -- met both success and defeat in court challenges in 2014. That fight over women's access to abortion likely will continue in the months to come, as both houses of U.S. Congress will be Republican-led, as will even more state houses. What issues will be at the battle lines? Ten states have laws in place banning abortion after 20 weeks; Nebraska was the first to pass theirs, in 2010. Proponents argue that 20 weeks is when a fetus can begin to...

The new crusade “responds to climate change by urging universities, churches, pension funds and other big institutional investors” to destroy petroleum and coal companies by dumping their shares and reinvesting in a “fossil-free clean-energy economy,” modeled loosely on the anti-apartheid activism of the 1980s.

FULL TITLE: Christian parents accused of 'cruelty' in their 17-year-old transgender daughter's suicide note REFUSE to accept her female identity - but insist they loved 'him' The mother of a transgender teen who killed herself over the holiday season is speaking out, and making it clear she did not and does not approve of what she believes was her daughter's choice to be transgender. Carla Alcorn of Kings Mills, Ohio said in an interview that she and her husband did not 'support' their daughter Leelah Alcorn, while also refusing to acknowledge her daughter's sex, using male pronouns and referring to...

After the mass shooting at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Mel Robbins, writing for CNN, argued that blame lay not with the National Rifle Association, but with “the shooter and the mental health services he did or didn’t get.”

In single-sex classes, which are common for sex education, students must be allowed to go to the class of the gender they consider themselves to be rather than their actual gender, the U.S. Department of Education directed schools that receive federal funds in a Dec. 1 memo. The memo, from the department's Office for Civil Rights, provides guidance for K-12 schools for when they are allowed to have same-sex classes or extracurricular activities and remain in compliance with Title IX, a 1972 law to protect against gender discrimination in education programs that get federal aid. Schools may divide students by...

The New Republic magazine celebrates its 100th anniversary with a special section called “100 Years, 100 Thinkers.”Unfortunately, the categories into which these “minds who’ve defined our century” are helpfully slotted are almost parodically First World, elite-uptown-liberal:“Architecture.” “Environmentalism.” “Songwriting.” “Diplomacy.”And of course, “American Civil Rights.” (Zzzzzzzz….)Unless you count “Medicine,” no hard sciences were deemed worthy of consideration.An alien browsing this section would be forgiven for assuming that man never set foot on the moon.But who cares when someone named Alice Waters “made (local) lettuce sexy!”(And besides, The New Republic assures us that “Martians need only watch one of [Richard Pryor's] concert...

How reliable is academic research? Not very it seems, after noting that the Journal of Vibration and Control, a reputable academic publication, had to retract 60 different papers over the summer. The editors concluded that Chen-Yuan Chen, a researcher in Taiwan, had created a “peer-review and citation ring.” OK, it’s not exactly a “Sopranos” plot. But it’s pretty shady for the world of higher education. Chen went to great lengths to make up fake e-mail addresses and even assume the names of other scientists to write approvingly of his own research. In a sense, though, he was just exploiting the...

Late last month, the journal Pediatrics, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, released a policy statement entitled Contraception for Adolescents. The statement is an update to the Academy’s 2007 statement on the same topic. The update “provides the pediatrician with a description and rationale for best practices in counseling and prescribing contraception for adolescents,” according to the journal article. The abstract says: The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that pediatricians develop a working knowledge of contraception to help adolescents reduce risks of and negative health consequences related to unintended pregnancy. The American Academy of Pediatrics seems to have taken...

Zookeepers in Japan have abandoned a years-long attempt to have two spotted hyenas mate and reproduce as both turned out to be male. The Maruyama zoo in Sapporo, northern Japan, said in a statement this week that it was given the animals as a “male and female couple” in October 2010 from a zoo in the South Korean city of Daejon. “We have attempted to house them together for breeding many times but they often fought against each other and never engaged themselves in breeding behaviour,” the statement said.[SNIP]