They Hope You're Stupid Enough To Fall For This
My inbox was filled this morning with forwarded copies of the Citizens for a Responsible Whatever's latest blast, trying to get their people to oppose the state gender-identity discrimination bill. This email just goes on and on ...
Here's a good one.
They hope you're stupid enough to fall for this.
We are talking here about a bill to give fair treatment to people regardless of their gender identity, whether their gender is ambiguous or obvious, whether it is what you expect or it surprises you, whatever, you won't be able to discriminate against them just because of their gender identity.
Even if you have a dissenting view of laws protecting transgender individuals, you will have to agree that the story the CRW is trying to connect to the issue is completely irrelevant. Let me follow that link from their newsletter and show you the ABC News story they want you to think about, the "Glen Burnie assault:"
Here you have the story about a crazed pervert who attacks a young girl and starts strangling her. He catches her by sliding under the door of a stall in a ladies room.
Do you see anything in this story to indicate the monster was dressed as a woman, or was in any way unusual in his gender identity? No, I don't either. Do you see where he uses some nondiscrimination law to justify his crime? No, you don't see that. Do you see where the proprietor of the establishment where this happened was "reluctant to challenge [this man] entering females restrooms," as the CRW suggests? No, you don't see that. And the new law will also not make a proprietor reluctant to keep men out of the ladies room, they can kick them out whenever they want. The Maryland Retailers Association worked out language in the bill to make sure businesses are given all the latitude they need to keep their customers safe.
A sicko pervert assaulted a girl, it has nothing at all to do with the law under consideration.
The Citizens for a Responsible Whatever think that you are so stupid that you can't see that there is no connection between the proposed bill and this assault in Glen Burnie. They think that by mentioning the assault while they're talking about the bill, you are so stupid you will believe that the bill will somehow result in perverts attacking innocent girls.
No, perverts will assault girls at some steady rate, no matter whether transgender people are treated fairly or not. It's something that happens, perverts assault girls, if we're lucky -- as in this case --the cops catch them and lock them up. I wish these things didn't happen, but they do. And it has nothing at all to do with the proposed nondiscrimination bill.
The proof of that can be seen here in Montgomery County, where we have had such a law since September, and women and children have been just as safe as they ever were. I know the CRW wishes there would be some assaults, and we halfway expect for them to arrange another hoax like the Rio incident. But the fact is, no one has been inconvenienced by transgender people abusing their new rights in our county. They simply have the weight of the law behind them when they are wronged.
Here's a good one.
Damages can be up to $400,000 plus punitive damages for employers, and operators of public accommodations (restrooms) can be heavily fined. Thus restroom operators will be reluctant to challenge men entering females restrooms, as in the in Glen Burnie assault.
They hope you're stupid enough to fall for this.
We are talking here about a bill to give fair treatment to people regardless of their gender identity, whether their gender is ambiguous or obvious, whether it is what you expect or it surprises you, whatever, you won't be able to discriminate against them just because of their gender identity.
Even if you have a dissenting view of laws protecting transgender individuals, you will have to agree that the story the CRW is trying to connect to the issue is completely irrelevant. Let me follow that link from their newsletter and show you the ABC News story they want you to think about, the "Glen Burnie assault:"
A 36-year-old man is behind bars after police say he slid into a bathroom stall in a Glen Burnie fast-food restaurant and started strangling a teenage girl. The girl managed to fight the suspect off.
Anne Arundel County police say Keith Darell Jones went into the women's bathroom in a Wendy's in the 1200 block of Crain Highway and slid under a partition in a stall occupied by a 17-year-old girl. The man choked the girl, but she fought him and he ran out of the restaurant and across Crain Highway.
Officers used police dogs and found the man hiding under a large pile of dirt and plants in the back yard of a home in the 1100 block of Somerset Drive.
Jones is charged with first- and second- degree assault and a fourth-degree sex offense. Man Attacks Girl in Bathroom Stall
Here you have the story about a crazed pervert who attacks a young girl and starts strangling her. He catches her by sliding under the door of a stall in a ladies room.
Do you see anything in this story to indicate the monster was dressed as a woman, or was in any way unusual in his gender identity? No, I don't either. Do you see where he uses some nondiscrimination law to justify his crime? No, you don't see that. Do you see where the proprietor of the establishment where this happened was "reluctant to challenge [this man] entering females restrooms," as the CRW suggests? No, you don't see that. And the new law will also not make a proprietor reluctant to keep men out of the ladies room, they can kick them out whenever they want. The Maryland Retailers Association worked out language in the bill to make sure businesses are given all the latitude they need to keep their customers safe.
A sicko pervert assaulted a girl, it has nothing at all to do with the law under consideration.
The Citizens for a Responsible Whatever think that you are so stupid that you can't see that there is no connection between the proposed bill and this assault in Glen Burnie. They think that by mentioning the assault while they're talking about the bill, you are so stupid you will believe that the bill will somehow result in perverts attacking innocent girls.
No, perverts will assault girls at some steady rate, no matter whether transgender people are treated fairly or not. It's something that happens, perverts assault girls, if we're lucky -- as in this case --the cops catch them and lock them up. I wish these things didn't happen, but they do. And it has nothing at all to do with the proposed nondiscrimination bill.
The proof of that can be seen here in Montgomery County, where we have had such a law since September, and women and children have been just as safe as they ever were. I know the CRW wishes there would be some assaults, and we halfway expect for them to arrange another hoax like the Rio incident. But the fact is, no one has been inconvenienced by transgender people abusing their new rights in our county. They simply have the weight of the law behind them when they are wronged.
posted by JimK at 9:35 AM
16 Comments:
Andrea-not anon
Well, the showerheads figure their followers will buy anything they write- so why not tell lies? It has worked for them before with their kind of folks and even people who should know better.
works well enough for TTF
there is no need for this bill in Maryland
there was no need in MC
There´s no need for you, either, AnonBigot...but you seem to stick around.
Good news - the number of non-religious people in the U.S. has doubled since 1990:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,506849,00.html
"A wide-ranging study on American religious life found that the percentage of Christians in the nation has declined and more people say they have no religion at all.
Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey.
The current survey, being released Monday, found traditional organized religion playing less of a role in many lives. Thirty percent of married couples did not have a religious wedding ceremony and 27 percent of respondents said they did not want a religious funeral.
About 12 percent of Americans believe in a higher power but not the personal God at the core of monotheistic faiths."
These figures coincide with other surveys that show respect for Christianty has declined because it is now seen as primarily about being anti-gay. As the main theme of Christinity continues to be about gay oppression Christianity is destroying itself.
Since the 1900's when virtually everone on the planet was religious atheism has continued to grow to the point where now 1 billion atheists populate the planet. As education continues to eradicate religion some prominent Christians predict that within a couple of generations Christianity will be dead.
A U.S. study shows that the more religious and conservative a state is the more porn it consumes:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Business/story?id=6977202&page=1
Once again religious conservatives practice the opposite of what they preach.
Priya
We've discussed that here before. The numbers are very slight and it could be that, rather than more people looking at porn in those states, more people do it secretly because that type of exploitation of women is not as commonly accepted there as in places like bleak Western Canada and New Orleans.
anon-deluxe
Wonder if It could also be that those places have less porn shops, video stores that carry the stuff, topless bars, etc. so people who want the porn go to the Internet. I could go on and on -- lots of different explanations can be offered.
seems reasonable to me
"A U.S. study shows that the more religious and conservative a state is the more porn it consumes.
Once again religious conservatives practice the opposite of what they preach."
What state is composed completely of religious conservatives?
Once again, interpretation of this data is propaganda of the worst kind.
Here's some food for thought:
Utah is No. 1 - for online pornography consumption
By DAWN HOUSE, Salt Lake Tribune
Updated: 03/03/2009 08:02:15 AM MST
Besides its political bent, Utah's per capita appetite for online pornography makes it the nation's run-away red-light state.
A study by a Harvard Business School professor shows that Utah outpaces the more conservative states -- which all tend to purchase more Internet porn than other states.
Online porn subscription rates are higher in states that enacted conservative legislation banning same-sex marriage or civil unions and where surveys show support for conservative positions on religion, gender roles and sexuality, according to an analysis published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives.
The Beehive State briefly experimented with a state-funded porn czar until 2003. The study examining online porn usage from 2006 to 2008 shows those efforts apparently failed.
Utah has the nation's highest online porn subscription rate per thousand home broadband users, at 5.47, while the nearby states of Idaho and Montana showed the lowest rates of 1.98 and 1.92, respectively, according to the study.
Utah's No. 1 score may have to do with its demographics, said the author of the study, Benjamin Edelman.
For instance, Internet porn subscriptions are particularly widespread in states with young populations, in the 15 to 24 age group, while people over 65 are less likely to subscribe. Income can be a another factor, with each $1,000 increase in average household income pushing up the number of subscribers. Rates also go up with a college education and among people who are divorced, although marriage and graduate degrees have the opposite effect.
"Even when I control for income, age, education, and marital status, Utah residents still consume disproportionately more than people from other states," said Edelman.
Another possibility for Utah's top porn billing may be the scarcity of adult entertainment outside the home.
"If it is distinctively difficult to get this material in retail locations in Utah, Utah residents who seek such material may have to get it online," said Edelman, in an e-mail. "On net, then, Utah residents would be buying more online adult entertainment -- but perhaps not more total adult entertainment. That said, I analyzed only online adult entertainment, so I'm not in a position to assess the magnitude of this effect."
Although Utah is headquarters for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Edelman found that regions where people regularly attend religious services are not statistically different from their counterparts in more secular regions. But users who do attend religious services tend to shift their adult entertainment sessions to other days of the week than the day of services.
Pamela Atkinson, head of the Utah Coalition Against Pornography, said other indications, such has Utah ranking second in Google searches for "hot sex" and "naughty," back up what Edelman has found.
"What I do know is that from all accounts the problem is really growing in Utah," she said. "People spending more time on the Internet are realizing this is something they can do in the privacy of their own rooms and their own homes."
Rep. Carl Wimmer, R-Herriman, who worked in law enforcement, said he has never dealt with a sex offender who didn't get his start with pornography.
"I'm not a huge fan of censoring the Internet, but this is definitely something to look into to see if we can stop the influx of pornography into our society, because pornography is such a plague. It's rotten to the core and it hurts families and it hurts children."
Daniel Weis, spokesman for the Colorado-based Christian group, Focus on The Family, said the study "is credible only for what it is studying, which is very little."
"My caution is that people do not extrapolate that this is a report for the entire nation," he said. "The fact that conservative-minded people are fighting porn doesn't mean that they go home and look at it."
The study used data from anonymous credit card sales from a top-10 Internet porn provider that operates hundreds of Web sites offering a wide variety of adult entertainment. Edelman then correlated that data with ZIP code information for his analysis.
-- Robert Gehrke contributed to this report.
So the bottom line is that nobody knows the answer. I guess I have a question regarding why we're even talking about this porn issue. Is the thinking here that conservatives are against porn and liberals are for it? Is being pro pornography a liberal thing? I always thought that it was opposed by both groups -- sort of like murder and robbery. Would it matter whether liberals or conservatives committed more 2 percent or 5 percent more murders? This seems like a pointless discussion in the context of conservatism and liberalism?
Anon, I think it works like this. Conservatives are against pornography and liberals figure people can make up their own minds about it.
Is the thinking here that conservatives are against porn and liberals are for it?
No. The issue is that conservatives are two-faced about pornography. They say things like it's exploitation of women and should be banned, but in the privacy of their own homes, they eat it up like candy. This reminds me of Senator Craig's public stance on homosexuality vs. his closeted airport bathroom behavior or Ted Haggard's public stance vs. his closeted dalliances with homosexual prostitutes.
Apparently both conservatives and liberals enjoy their freedom to partake of adult entertainment, but conservatives, for some reason, prefer to publicly pretend they don't.
GREAT NEWS: The Washington State Senate passed on Tuesday night the Domestic Partnership Expansion bill of 2009 (Senate Bill 5688) by a vote of 30-18. The bill now goes to the State House where a majority of members are co-sponsors.
Governor Chris Gregoire, who signed the last two domestic partnership bills into law, has already stated that she supports the bill. If enacted, registered domestic partners will have all the rights and responsibilities of marriage under state law as LGBT advocates continue to pursue full marriage equality. All the legislators that were targeted by anti-LGBT advertisements stood strong and supported the bill - as did three Republicans and one senator who voted against domestic partnerships last session.
Joshua Friedes, advocacy director at Equal Rights Washington, said “the debate over the domestic partnership bill has been an important vehicle to educate legislators and the public alike why gay and lesbian couples need and deserve the right to legally marry.”
Also, the Washington State Senate passed a bill by a vote of 36-12 to add gender identity to the state’s hate crimes law. The existing statute includes sexual orientation but not gender identity. This bill passed with substantial support from Republicans and conservative Democrats and now heads to the House. Josh Friedes gave kudos to the student organizations who took the lead in lobbying on the bill after several hate crimes on college campuses over the last year.
(www.hrc.org)
Rachel Maddow interviewed Meghan McCain, GOP moderate maverick on her show last night. Their discussion included Meghan's lastest blog, which is published at The Daily Beast, My Beef With Ann Coulter
Excerpt:
...I am not suggesting that extreme conservatism wasn’t once popular, nor am I suggesting I should in any way be any kind of voice for the party. I have been a Republican for less than a year. Still, even after losing the election, I find myself more drawn to GOP ideals and wanting to fight for the party’s resurgence. And if figureheads like Ann Coulter are turning me off, then they are definitely turning off other members of my generation as well. She does appeal to the most extreme members of the Republican Party—but they are dying off, becoming less and less relevant to the party structure as a whole. I think most people my age are like me in that we all don’t believe in every single ideal of each party specifically. The GOP should be happy to have any young supporters whatsoever, even if they do digress some from traditional Republican thinking.
I’m often criticized for not being a “real” Republican, and I have been called a RINO—Republican In Name Only—in the past. Many say I am not “conservative enough,” which is something that I am proud of. It is no secret that I disagree with many of the old-school Republican ways of thinking. One of the biggest issues from which I seem to drift from the party base is in my support of gay marriage. I am often criticized for previously voting for John Kerry and my support of stem-cell research. For the record, I am also extremely pro-military and a big supporter of the surge and the Iraq war...
...I am sure most extreme conservatives and extreme liberals would find me a confusing, walking contradiction. But I assure you, there are many people out there just like me who represent a new, younger generation of Republicans. It took me almost two years of campaigning across this country and hanging out, on a daily basis, with some of the most famous and most intelligent Republicans to fall in love with the Republican Party. If it took that much time and exposure for me to join the party, how can GOP leaders possibly expect to reach young supporters by staying the course they have been on these past eight years? Where has our extreme thinking gotten us? President Bush will go down as one the least popular presidents in history...
Megan discussed the split in the Republican party between what she called "the extreme" and "the moderates" with Rachel last night. She counts herself and other young people among the moderates. She said of all the McCain children, she's most like her Dad, the maverick, and is not afraid to speak her mind. I hope other moderates in the party join her in speaking up. An honest discussion within the GOP about which direction they want to go will be much better than following Rush and Steele and Coulter right down the drain.
Aunt Bea said: "No. The issue is that conservatives are two-faced about pornography. They say things like it's exploitation of women and should be banned, but in the privacy of their own homes, they eat it up like candy."
Huh? How can you say "no" and then go on with your next statement? It seems as though you are saying that conservatives are against pornography and liberals are for it? So, your answer, based upon your reasoning, should have been "yes."
It seems as though you are saying that conservatives are against pornography and liberals are for it?
Nope, I never said that.
What I said is conservatives are two-faced about pornography....both conservatives and liberals enjoy their freedom to partake of adult entertainment, but conservatives, for some reason, prefer to publicly pretend they don't.
Two-faced = action contradictory to a professed attitude
Conservatives say one thing about pornography in public (it's evil and should be banned), but turn around in private and do the opposite thing (consume it). You don't think they're purchasing it on-line to burn it, do you?
We have many examples of conservatives who say one thing in public but behave completely differently in private, like anti-gay Senator Larry Craig and Reverend Ted Haggard who each indulged in gay sex outside their marriages, and three-times divorced Rush Limbaugh and DC Madam customer Senator David Vitter, who continue to tout their "family values" stances.
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