Ever notice how phrases “pop” at you in public discourse? It can be hard to tell if it’s just you, or if the phrase came into fashion recently.

In 2017 (about since President Trump was sworn in), I’ve been seeing more about human trafficking, and more about opioid epidemic. Both are horrible things. Were we collectively talking about them before? I don’t think so. Why weren’t we? Was there some sort of political-media embargo? Or did we just not want to? Were we being distracted?

Trump has been making more of a fight against human trafficking than President Obama did. Which is good. I may post on that soon. This post will be on the opioid epidemic.

In 2014, I noted how U.S. involvement in Afghanistan strangely coincided with a 30-fold increase in opium cultivation in that nation. (Also in 2009, Bruce (the GayPatriot) acknowledged it indirectly.) Afghan heroin could certainly be contributing to the U.S. opioid epidemic.

Today I want to show you this chart seen on Zero Hedge.

The U.S. has the highest rate of drug deaths in the world. 4x of Asia; 6x of the world average; 9x of Western Europe; 16x of Africa.

I’m not sure what it means. Perhaps several things.

• Does Africa not have a drug problem? (Looks that way.)
• Is the U.S. weak on drug rehabilitation? (Probably.)
• Are drugs in the U.S. a big business? (all that Afghanistan heroin comes here? plus Latin American cocaine, etc.?)
• If yes, then surely certain U.S. political-financial forces would be out to protect the U.S. drug business? Surely those forces would hide in plain sight, as respectable authorities, or politicians of the 2 major parties?
• Are we suddenly talking about the opioid epidemic in 2017 because, say, some of those forces lost some power in a recent election – making it OK to notice? Or just because the term hit a critical mass?

One thing is for sure: the “War on Drugs” of the last 3+ decades has been a miserable failure. A city council member in Ohio proposes to handle it Darwin’s way: Deny 911 assistance to repeat drug overdosers.

His reasons have to do with saving his city’s finances. But one side effect would be to have drug overdosers face an increased (that is, a natural) death rate. That’s an unusual idea.

UPDATE: Commenters are noting the role of Medicaid and Obamacare in giving people more access to prescription opioids. Also here is a chart from the CDC (via Wiki):

It looks like a trend since 2000 in deaths from all opioids (heroin, synthetic and prescribed) that has accelerated in the last 5 – 7 years. Wiki says:

Fentanyl, a newer synthetic opioid painkiller, is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine and 30 to 50 times more potent than heroin…strong enough that police and first responders helping overdose victims have themselves overdosed by simply touching or inhaling a small amount…Fentanyl has surpassed heroin as a killer in several locales.

Yikes.

In left-wing Berlin, Germany, we now have a crackdown on advertising that would dare to depict women as “nurturing, happy to do housework, beautiful, addicted to shopping” or men as “rational, aggressive, technologically gifted”.

Get it? Ads must feature unpleasant, unattractive, angry feminists disposing of pathetically weak and foolish men.

Boys must not be shown as “liking sports, the colour blue, and playing with technology”. According to these German feminists(!), girls are so stupid and deficient by nature that when they “see images of heterosexual housewives, the consequence is that they cannot imagine themselves outside this framework.”

Meanwhile in Madrid, they banned ‘manspreading’. Because God Forfend that a man on a bus should sit a bit comfortably. Crowder explains it to women and gets some to admit to the existence of female privilege.

A commenter pointed us to this Weekly Standard interview with Camille Paglia. As in most of her work, she says true and fascinating things – on the way to wrong conclusions. As a sample, here she is on the election:

Hillary, with her supercilious, Marie Antoinette-style entitlement, was a disastrously wrong candidate for 2016 and that she secured the nomination only through overt chicanery by the Democratic National Committee, assisted by a corrupt national media who, for over a year, imposed a virtual blackout on potential primary rivals…

After Trump’s victory (for which there were abundant signs in the preceding months), both the Democratic party and the big-city media urgently needed to do a scathingly honest self-analysis, because the election results plainly demonstrated that Trump was speaking to vital concerns (jobs, immigration, and terrorism among them) for which the Democrats had few concrete solutions…

She has much more to say; RTWT. For example, she slams the transgender movement of today as dupes of Big Pharma:

…the pharmaceutical industry, having lost income when routine estrogen therapy for menopausal women was abandoned because of its health risks, has been promoting the relatively new idea of transgenderism in order to create a permanent class of customers…I condemn the escalating prescription of puberty blockers (whose long-term effects are unknown) for children. I regard this practice as a criminal violation of human rights.

And she covers President Trump’s recent “infrastructure” speech, which indeed was awesome.

But then, whom did Paglia support? (Disclosure: I supported no one; a registered Independent, I came close on Gary Johnson but even he wasn’t good enough for me.) As Paglia explains:

I am a registered Democrat who voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary and for Jill Stein in the general election. Since last Fall, I’ve had my eye on Kamala Harris, the new senator from California, and I hope to vote for her in the next presidential primary.

Which is downright silly.

In travelling the “alt” opinion world, one occasionally comes across a strange theory that women shouldn’t vote. Here is an example from the vlogger Black Pigeon Speaks (who is center-Left on many issues, but right-ish on immigration, culture and terrorism). For the record: I disagree with the theory (that is, I think women should vote). But I’m going to describe it.

The essence of the theory (which again, I think is a broken theory) is that biology has wired men to take stands on issues and to initiate projects in the world; while it has wired women instead to be concerned with immediate safety and securing benefits from the group (and/or some patron). Because of that, says the theory, women voters over time will drag a country toward both appeasement (of its enemies) and socialism. Which is not good.

Is Camille Paglia evidence for that theory? Here we have a woman with a talent for grasping and expressing truth, yet she still can’t see through the people-destroying ruse of socialism.

…but sometimes there’s justice.

Remember that UVa “campus rape culture” hoax that bubbled up in 2014? Recent news is that Rolling Stone will pay settlement damages to the fraternity they accused.

A source involved at the national level with the fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, tells TheDC that Rolling Stone will pay $1.65 million to settle the defamation suit…

In the piece, “A Rape on Campus,” Erdely relayed the story of Jackie Coakley, a Virginia woman who claimed she was brutally raped by a group of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity members during a party in Sept. 2012.

Separately, a UVa dean also got damages:

The magazine’s decision follows a settlement in April with Nicole Eramo, a University of Virginia associate dean who was also smeared in the article, which was written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely…

Erdely portrayed Eramo as dismissive of Coakley’s case. But it was later revealed that Coakley not only fabricated the attack by the fraternity members but that Eramo took her allegations seriously at the time she made them.

A jury in Virginia awarded Eramo $3 million in damages — $2 million from Erdely and $1 million from Rolling Stone.

I don’t know what has happened to the original accuser, Jackie Coakley?

While I’m at it:

• More college men are standing up to rape accusations, creating a cost for women who accuse falsely and colleges who take a “guilty until proven innocent” approach.
• This gets farther afield, but at Wichita State University, “open carry” will be allowed this summer and a couple professors are resigning over it.

  I would expect that to be a good thing. Not having checked, I’d guess that the resigning professors are extreme leftists who lack common sense. Gun-free zones are dangerous (being the zones that mass-murderers gravitate to). Carry zones are a bit safer. People who can’t figure that out, probably shouldn’t be teaching.

From Breitbart, Joss Whedon Film Imagines World Without ‘Beacon of Hope’ Planned Parenthood

The 3-minute film shows tears, frustration, and desperation in its imaginary world without Planned Parenthood, where scholarships are lost and projects interrupted all because the abortion giant isn’t present to erase the consequences of people’s sexual decisions…

As if people wouldn’t quickly move to a mix of adoption, privately-funded abortion, privately-funded birth control, non-vaginal sex, abstinence and/or condoms.

And I say that as a supporter of first-semester abortion rights. Even I can recognize when abortion advocates are dishonest.

“Planned Parenthood is a beacon of hope, and anyone trying to shut it down is committing an act of evil. It’s not just inhumane — it’s inhuman.

No, Joss. What’s evil, inhumane and inhuman (you can picture his face and voice cracking on that one) is:

1. Late-term abortion.
2. Forcing your fellow citizens to fund it.
3. Painting murderers as heroes.
4. Assuming that anything YOU like, has to be funded by taxpayers (rather than yourself).

But we know Joss has problems:

On Mother’s Day, he tweeted his gratitude for his mother’s death 25 years earlier so she wouldn’t have to live in a world where Donald Trump was president…

…and his other tweets gleefully picture graphic violence happening to Republicans.

UPDATE – Unrelated? I almost blogged on this yesterday: Man rompers. Hipsters in baby clothes.

Joss Whedon has nothing to do with this, so I can’t imagine why my subconscious connects it to him. But it does.

First, let’s catch up on some lingo. Nathan Damigo, the guy who punched Moldylocks, founded something called “Identity Evropa” (meaning European). I visited the website and I did not find any statements that call for white supremacy; only for white/European identity.

Think of it this way. We have accepted identities such as African-American, Latino-American, Asian-American, Jewish-American, etc. In general, those identities don’t intend full-on Black or Latino or Asian or Jewish supremacy. They may sometimes achieve special privileges (for example, quotas or differing standards for the alleged races). But the majority of people holding to those identities don’t intend anything like a hard apartheid (or internment camps, etc.) for the other identities. In that sense, they usually aren’t “Black supremacists” or “Latino supremacists” or “Asian supremacists”, etc.

Damigo and company seem to be saying, we can get along with those identities but let’s have one for whites, too. They reject the term “white supremacists”. In the Rebel Media interview linked above, Damigo describes himself as a “white identitarian” and says that hysterical claims about his being a Nazi, a racist, etc. are just “anti-white hate speech” to shut down conversation.

It may sound almost reasonable until you remember that all identity politics are harmful. These guys are going in the exact wrong direction. They are doing a “Me, too” on racial identity politics. Like the others, they offer a cheap identity – “join the fraternity”, says their website. A San Diego Union-Tribune article says:

[As a Marine in Iraq, Damigo] saw firsthand the conflicts between the country’s ethnic and religious groups. “I said, ‘This is dumb. Why don’t … each one of them have their own country and they can all express themselves and … they’re not, you know, fighting with each other,” he told the Los Angeles Times in December.

In other words: Damigo might not want to harm or subjugate the other identities; but he thinks that both the Middle East and America should be even more ethnically-divided than they already are. Not good.

I believe in a melting-pot, American identity based on America’s founding principles of Human Freedom under Limited Government and the Rule of Law. Yes, the Left has pulled us all away from it with cheap, divisive identity politics. So let’s restore it.

When I come across identity-politics material of any kind (white, black or otherwise), the word “stupid” keeps popping into my head. I’ve been thinking about why that is. First, here is how I define the term. Interactions between 2 parties will have one of four outcomes.

• I win, you win: That’s smart.
• I win, you lose: That might be justice; if it’s not, then it’s predatory on my part, masochistic on your part.
• I lose, you win: That might be justice; if it’s not, then it’s masochistic on my part, predatory on your part.
• I lose, you lose: That’s just stupid.

With identity politics, everyone loses. Even the hucksters who gain financially from it are still losers – because they’re hucksters. If it’s stupid when Blacks or Asians or Latinos do it – and I’m afraid that it is – then it is equally stupid when whites do it.

All identitarians oversimplify their group’s history, and Identity Evropa is no exception. Their materials highlight Western civilization with majestic Greco-Roman-appearing figures next to slogans like “Let’s become great again”, “Serve your people”, “Discover who you are”, “Protect your heritage”. Fine. I like greatness and heroic art. But these guys seem unaware that Jesus was a Mediterranean Jew, and that the Greco-Roman civilizations (I dare not say “races”) were highly mixed, with a good deal of Mediterranean, Semitic (Phoenician), African and European heritage together.

They seem to forget that *culture is culture*. It isn’t about ethnicity, or tribe, or race, or genes, or color. It’s ideas; principles; the arts; laws and legal practices; philosophy; sciences; means of production and trade; food; ethics; things that can be adopted by anyone, of any ethnicity, at any time.

I am a Western supremacist. That is: I think that the Judeo-Christian-Greco-Roman-Lockean/Enlightenment civilization, while not perfect, is better than the others; it has the most elements from which an ideal civilization could be built. And I want to spread those good elements, by example and persuasion, to all ethnic groups (in America and the world).

It’s about the ideas/principles, and the individuals everywhere who may hold them. I couldn’t care less about the survival of *any* ethnicity as such. Ethnic identity is a sideshow, a rabbit hole where everyone loses, if we keep going down it.

And sorry Mr. Damigo, but if it does turn out that you’re one of those people who dwells on racial categories and uses them to pre-judge your fellow human beings: then yes, at that point you would be a racist. If you don’t want to wear that shoe, kindly make sure it never fits.

After Milo’s trouble in February, I knew he’d be back. He has a lot to say, he needs the attention, he’s fun and the camera loves him.

Via Breitbart.com, it’s MILO’S FREE SPEECH WEEK. (I think the all-caps are part of the shtick?)

In light of recent controversies, I am planning a huge multi-day event called MILO’S FREE SPEECH WEEK in Berkeley later this year. We will hold talks and rallies and throw massive parties, all in the name of free expression and the First Amendment. All will be welcome, regardless of political affiliation.

[…]
During MILO’S FREE SPEECH WEEK, we will give out a new free speech prize — the Mario Savio Award — to the person we believe has done most to protect free expression at UC Berkeley and its surrounding area. Each day will be dedicated to a different enemy of free speech, including feminism, Black Lives Matter and Islam.

If UC Berkeley does not actively assist us in the planning and execution of this event, we will extend festivities to an entire month. We will establish a tent city on Sproul Plaza protesting the university’s total dereliction of its duty and encourage students at other universities to follow suit.
I intend to return Berkeley to its rightful place as the home of free speech — whether university administrators and violent far-left antifa thugs like it or not.
– MILO

Mario Savio was, per Wiki, “a key member in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. He is most famous for his passionate speeches, especially the ‘put your bodies upon the gears’ address given at Sproul Hall…on December 2, 1964.”

P.S. I respect and admire Ann Coulter, but do you want to know the difference between her and Milo? A penis and $20,000. (My understanding is that she charges 20K to speak to College Republicans, while he charges them zero. If that’s incorrect, I would be happy to hear it in the comments.)

A sign seen at the recent Berkeley riots:

Hate speech IS Free speech

My thoughts on the above:

The Left tries to criminalize “hate speech” because, as Milo likes to point out, the Left wants to justify their own physical violence. Defining offensive speech as a crime will blur the line between speech and actions. Then lefties can claim that their many crimes of physical assault, vandalism, robbery, murder, etc., are self-defense, or justified by the victim’s beliefs/speech that are so offensive. Muslims try to pull the same trick.

I believe in keeping a strong line between speech and actions. For example, I believe that someone’s taunting (words) or alleged political-social beliefs or drawings of Mohammed can never justify your throwing the first punch at them.

The world does have some hateful people in it and genuine occurrences of “hate speech” – and I don’t like them. But that’s what my own right of free speech is for: to refute others’ dumb/wrong speech. And my right to free association, also: so that I may avoid people I don’t like, kick them out of my own house at least, and so on.

In this dim and confused world, any truthful speech will offend somebody, somewhere. The right to speak your conscience freely is the same as the right to say things that will offend others and hurt their feelings. The two are inseparable.

From the comments: A pointer to the Neal Boortz quote,

Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection.

UPDATE: On April 20 and as if on cue, Howard Dean said “Hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment.” Wrong, Mr. Dean. Threats and “fighting words” may not be protected, but Ann Coulter’s political speech (what you choose to call “hate speech”) is protected. And should be.

In Britain, there’s a severe shortage of men willing to become Scout leaders or schoolteachers. Mainly because they are terrified of being labeled as sexual predators. Britain has embraced the feminist ideal of “One accusation against a man should ruin his life,” just like American Universities.

Via the Toronto Star.

By Paisley Dodds
The Associated Press
Wed., April 12, 2017

In the ruins of a tropical hideaway…abandoned children tried to make a life for themselves…they never could scrape together enough to beat back the hunger, until the UN peacekeepers moved in a few blocks away.

The men who came from a far-away place and spoke a strange language offered the Haitian children cookies and other snacks. Sometimes they gave them a few dollars. But the price was high: The Sri Lankan peacekeepers wanted sex from girls and boys as young as 12.

…An Associated Press investigation of UN missions during the past 12 years found nearly 2,000 allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers and other personnel around the world — signalling the crisis is much larger than previously known. More than 300 of the allegations involved children, the AP found, but only a fraction of the alleged perpetrators served jail time.

…Here in Haiti, at least 134 Sri Lankan peacekeepers exploited nine children in a sex ring from 2004 to 2007, according to an internal UN report obtained by the AP.

RTWT.

My thoughts:

• These were OFFICIAL U.N. PEACEKEEPERS. “Blue helmets”
• We’ve had rumors about U.N. pedophilia and child trafficking, for years.
• The Controlled Media usually either ignores/buries this story, or goes out of its way to discredit the people saying it. So, the rumors have been mostly “fringe”.
• If the Controlled Media is reporting on it now as a legitimate topic… Whoa. Could this be a one-off story? Or will it grow?
• Hmm, Haiti. Is there anyone in U.S. politics who visited Haiti a lot in the 2000s to “help the kids”? Anyone famous and corrupt, who might have overlooked a few things at the least? But I don’t want to name names. Especially no names involving “pizza”, a cluster-F of a story if there ever was one.

According to The Hill, Suicide hotlines receive record number of calls after Trump win.

Phones have been ringing off the hook at suicide hotlines since Donald Trump was named president-elect Tuesday.

According to multiple reports, many of those calling or texting into hotlines are members of the LGBTQ community, minorities and victims of sexual assault who are worried about Trump’s victory…

The article, to its credit, at least attempts to mention real-world facts that could be relevant:

On the campaign trail, Trump told Fox News that he hoped to put Supreme Court judges on the bench who could “change things” in regards to current rulings on same-sex marriage, adding that he wished the ruling “was done by state.”

Trump’s multiple accusations of sexual assault have also been triggers for women, as well as the lewd 2005 tape recording of Trump in which he makes light of sexual assault saying, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”

But notice the bad job it does: the hysterical framing. For example, the repeated and vague use of the term “sexual assault” to imply great danger to women.

Fact: Trump does not condone rape and, unlike Bill Clinton, Trump has never been credibly accused of rape. From what I remember of Trump’s comments, at worst, he condoned locker-room talk and leaning in for a kiss or proposition after the other party had signaled her interest. And yes, that could be bad – because mistakes could be made; advances could be unwanted; cheating or diseases or painful regrets could happen if things did consensually go farther. Even so, sane people must admit that Trump does not rise to the level of “Bill Clinton bad”.

So, why this hysteria of feeling unsafe or “triggered” with Trump elected and not, say, with Bill Clinton around? Or with a prospect of Hillary Clinton being elected – given that she allegedly devastated the lives of women in helping to cover up her husband’s alleged raping? By any objective standard, the Clintons endanger women more than Trump does.

As to the gay-marriage aspect: The Supreme Court decision to make it nationwide was only last year. For thousands of years, gay men, women and teenagers have survived without that particular U.S. court decision. Believing that gay marriage should be decided by the States is hardly a dangerous position. Again, why the hysteria – among some people?

I believe the answer is this. Leftism harms you. As a philosophy, leftism discourages personal responsibility – and is objectively unrealistic. Therefore, it makes you less able to think clearly about your life; more mentally and emotionally vulnerable. Plus, in the specific case of 2016 and the Hillary Clinton campaign, leftism exposes you to manipulation via many untruths and exaggerations.

To anyone who may be genuinely suicidal over Trump’s election victory: You have my pity. Yes, that’s the correct word.

pit·y
noun
1. the feeling of sorrow and compassion caused by the suffering and misfortunes of others.

Because your suffering, at least in regard to Trump, is unnecessary.

To be clear: I did not support Trump for President. And I have my doubts about what will happen now, with him. But I’m not suicidal about him. Neither was I suicidal about Obama. Why not? Because, at a fairly young age, I made a conscious choice to value my own life, to make it better no matter what, and to develop common sense and my ability to think about reality clearly.

To all sufferers of TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome): There is still time for you to make good choices to improve your mental health and your life. I hope and pray that you will.

Alethephobia: Fear of Truth.

It is treated as irrational fear putting the person in an incapacitated state of mobility to a racing anticipation at the mildest. It can be fear of discovery. Fear of hearing anticipated bad news. It is knowledge of the truth being potentially disclosed and disseminated. It transverses other well known and otherwise described phobias but always is rooted in fear of the truth subjectively, objectively, relatively, or as a primary motivator of basis in individual condition.

Our contemporary culture and politics are an illusion built on lies, which are called “Narratives.”  Those who promote these Narratives will punish anyone who challenges the narrative.

Examples:

• Professional baseball team suspends player for expressing the opinion that burning down and looting one’s own neighborhood is not a good way to protest.
• The statement “Boys have penises, girls have vaginas” is now considered “transphobic.”
• Politicians assure us the Entitlement State can grow indefinitely without limit or consequences; those who challenge this narrative are denounced as “whackobirds.”
• Politicians assure us that “Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people, and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism” even though Mohammedans have committed 28,000 acts of terrorism since 9-11-2001. Those who point this out are attacked as “Islamophobes.”
• A candidate for president displays signs of serious cognitive dysfunction; pointing this out is attacked as an act of “sexism.” 
• Illegal immigrants are causing an epidemic of rape and violence across Europe; politicians pressure police and the media to hide this fact from the masses and maintain the lie that mass immigration is all upside.

Is the left correct when they assert that it’s okay to believe in lies and promote lies to achieve the ultimate end of a society they claim will be perfectly just and fair? Can any society based on embracing lies ever be just and fair? Can it even survive? Or is it just that The Truth is the biggest single threat to the Left achieving all of their goals?

So justice is driven back, and righteousness stands at a distance; truth has stumbled in the streets, honesty cannot enter. Truth is nowhere to be found, and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey. – Isaiah 59: 14-15

So, this post is written by Jeff; but I may say we/us/our in the following, meaning that I’m pretty sure that other GP authors would agree with me.

From time to time, trolls show up in GayPatriot’s comments section: people who are here not to provide new info or discuss anything for real, but only to throw accusations. They are usually left-wing. It’s fun, because they so often provide evidence for our points about how the Left thinks (or rather, doesn’t think).

You can tell a troll because his accusations are illogical. He usually shows little understanding of our viewpoints as the writers of GP, which may differ among us on some issues, but which are always rooted in our respect for human life including liberty (human freedom).

For example, if you understood anything about our viewpoints, you would know that we condemn violence^^ against gays and lesbians. And against women. And against black people or any minority. We condemn physical violence against anybody who isn’t a perpetrator of physical violence, because we condemn all physical violence that isn’t necessary for self-defense. No peaceful citizen should have to live in fear for his or her physical safety.

Likewise, we condemn anyone who -calls for- violence^^ against gays and lesbians, against women, or against anybody else who hasn’t committed criminal violence. To our way of thinking, we shouldn’t have to say the preceding, because it should be SO OBVIOUS that it flows from our principles. But if it’s important to you that we say it: there it is. Easy to say. Done.

It’s an example of something so basic that we would expect any commenter on GP who wants to be taken seriously to feel the same way. A similar example of something basic would be condemning violence against children – including the sexual exploitation of minors, such as child pornography or pedophilia**.

Rejecting the sexual exploitation of minors is so obvious and basic to being a decent human being that a person should not normally be asked to condemn pedophilia – but, if she is asked to, it should be quite easy for her to say “Of course I condemn it – Done.”

The thing is: When it comes to the Gay Left, and because the Gay Left sometimes tolerates NAMBLA or promotes certain individuals who do condone sex with minors, it may be legitimate to ask the person to condemn it. And when they condemn it, that’s good. You got your answer, and you move on to other topics.

At this point, a gay leftie might say “But then we’re right to ask you if you condemn violence against gays!! Because you tolerate or associate with Christians, and Christians promote or condone violence against gays!!!1!11!1!”

And the answer is: No, Christians don’t. Of course you can find some crazy/fringe person who happens to call themselves “Christian” and calls for violence against lesbians or gays; but the key words there are “crazy” and “fringe”. The words apply because the real world is different. In the real world, all major denominations of Christianity reject violence against gays.

But, sadly, it is not equally true that all major Gay Left groups, Pride parades, etc. shun NAMBLA and condemn anyone who has sex with teenage boys. Sadly, no.

All this came up in a recent GP thread. A leftie commenter asked me if I condemn violence against gays, and/or anyone calling for violence against gays. I replied readily that I do.

Thinking that I was throwing the guy a softball, I said, now you can reciprocate my example by condemning pedophilia, right? He couldn’t or wouldn’t. Instead, he claimed that Christian leaders typically call for violence against gays. I demanded contemporary examples – and the one example that he provided (after some stalling and further hand-waving) was just a fringe nutcase, a worthless example.

To summarize.

1. We (authors at Gay Patriot) condemn violence^^ against gays. (and always have)
2. We condemn anyone who promotes or calls for violence^^ against gays. (and we always have)
3. We condemn pedophilia**. (and always have)
4. We find these things easy to say, when we are challenged about it.
5. We think that any decent person should find these things easy to say, if they are challenged.
6. We do NOT normally want people to be challenged on these things, in GP comments. (Why not? For staying on topic, for goodwill / presumption of innocence, etc.)
7. But, if a troll is going to make challenges on these things, then he or she may expect to be challenged back – and had better come up with the right answers. As we do.
8. In the future, when we are challenged, we may simply refer the troll back to this post.

(^^Violence meaning: real violence, which of course is physical violence.)

(**Pedophilia broadly also including hebephilia/ephebophilia, the sexual exploitation of teenagers or of any/all minors.)

Last month, there was a brief internet infatuation with James Robertson, a resident of the Democrat Stronghold of Detroit, Michigan. People were inspired by his 20 mile daily commute… on foot… to his factory job, and were so moved that they raised over $3oo,000 for him on GoFundMe, and a local Ford dealership presented him with a new car. And this was all done voluntary, without any bureaucratic coercion from the Federal Government, because people wanted to show support for someone who demonstrated good values and a good work ethic.

But after his story went viral, the parasites who make up the city that has been run (into the ground) by progressive left Democrats for fifty years decided that Robertson should… gee, how to say it… “Spread the wealth around.”

After that, everybody knew him. And everybody wanted something. The neighborhood started showing up on his porch with their palms out, though Robertson has yet to receive any of the money. His girlfriend — the one who owns the house and charges him 200 bucks for the bedroom — demanded a payout, he said. So did her ex-husband who lives with them. So did her adult son who lives with them. So did the other dude who lives with them.

Safe bet that none of those people would ever walk 20 miles a day to get to a job. The upshot is, Robertson had to move to a secret location, under police protection, because in Detroit, if people think you have some money, they will kill you to get to it.

I just wonder where they got the idea that just taking stuff from people who are better off than you was fair and just.

Well, one is a hate group that disrupts the lives of innocent people with obnoxious public tantrums and the other is… um… which is which?

Hmmmm….

Hey, what’s more annoying than protesters blocking traffic? Protesters interrupting your meal. Anti-cop protesters embarked on a mission today to ruin brunch for people in New York City.

Social Justice, Inc,. presents the 2015 White Guilt calendar.

EJI is proud to announce the release of our 2015 calendar, A History of Racial Injustice. This full-color wall calendar expands on EJI’s previous calendars with new historical entries and short essays highlighting historical events and issues in our nation’s racial history.

The 2015 calendar is part of a series of reports and educational materials that explore (America’s) legacy of … slavery, racial terror, and legally supported abuse of racial minorities.

Then again, this calendar may not be for you guys, because some elements of the Racial Justice Movement have decided that Gays are the Oppresor.

We can no longer sit idly by as you, mainstream LGBT organizations, center your movements and advocacy work on some within our varied communities but not others. We are no longer OK with the mainstream LGBT organizations among you who signal your complicity in anti-Black violence through your loud silence and deliberate ignoring of the types of systemic, institutionalized forms of anti-Black racism that negatively impact Black queer and trans people (and all Black people), disallow Black well-being, and deaden us.

Imagine the dillema now faced by Chris Lemon, Michael Sam, and RuPaul.

This Washington Post article is everywhere today, and with good reason. I just want to catch up anyone who may have missed it.

It appears that the fakery we’ve been discussing in the Rolling Stone / U-Va rape case is worse than we thought, and may have come from both “Jackie” (the alleged rape victim) and Sabrina Rubin Erdely (the Rolling Stone writer who turns out to be a past writing associate of the infamous fabulist, Stephen Glass).

First, a bit about Jackie’s seeming fakery. Going by the WaPo article, it’s possible that she invented her admirer “Drew”, whom Rolling Stone identified as her rapist:

Jackie told her three friends that she accepted the upperclassman’s invitation for a dinner date on Friday, Sept. 28, 2012.

Curious about Jackie’s date, the friends said that they tried to find the student on a U-Va. database and social media but couldn’t. Andy, Cindy and Randall all said they never met the student in person. Before Jackie’s date, the friends became suspicious that perhaps they hadn’t really been in contact with the chemistry student [via text messages to “his” number which Jackie had given the friends] at all, they said.

U-Va. officials told The Post that no student with the name Jackie provided to her friends as her date and attacker in 2012 had ever enrolled at the university.

Randall provided The Post with pictures that Jackie’s purported date had sent of himself by text message in 2012. The Post identified the person in the pictures and learned that his name does not match the one Jackie gave friends in 2012. In an interview, the man said he was Jackie’s high school classmate but “never really spoke to her.”

The man said he was never a U-Va. student and is not a member of any fraternity. Additionally, he said that he had not visited Charlottesville in at least six years and that he was in another state participating in an athletic event during the weekend of Sept. 28, 2012.

“I have nothing to do with it,” he said. He said it appears that the circulated photos were pulled from social media Web sites.

The WaPo article covers much other ground, including tidbits such as Erdely having painted Jackie’s friends as callous and as having refused Erdely’s interview requests, while the friends say that they had always encouraged Jackie to report her rape story to the police and that Erdely never made the slightest effort to interview any of them.

It looks as though 2 troubled women, acting somewhat separately (or deceiving each other), managed between them to cook up a fraternity-blaming hoax that liberals rushed to believe because it fit liberals’ prejudices. Or as V says, because it fit The Narrative that liberals are out to push. Get this:

U-Va. President Teresa A. Sullivan…wants the university community to focus on prevention of sexual assault.

That may be good, but perhaps Sullivan should have the U-Va. community also focus on *prevention of hoaxes and/or witch hunts* that only punish scads of innocent U-Va. students.

UPDATE: A link to Erdely putting down Stephen Glass. Your daily dose of irony.

Was it “Fake but accurate”? Or just fake? You decide. Rolling Stone’s apology, via Ace:

To Our Readers:

Last month, Rolling Stone published a story titled “A Rape on Campus” by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, which described a brutal gang rape of a woman named Jackie at a University of Virginia fraternity house; the university’s failure to respond to this alleged assault – and the school’s troubling history of indifference to many other instances of alleged sexual assaults. The story generated worldwide headlines and much soul-searching at UVA. University president Teresa Sullivan promised a full investigation and also to examine the way the school responds to sexual assault allegations.

Because of the sensitive nature of Jackie’s story, we decided to honor her request not to contact the man she claimed orchestrated the attack on her nor any of the men she claimed participated in the attack for fear of retaliation against her. In the months Erdely spent reporting the story, Jackie neither said nor did anything that made Erdely, or Rolling Stone’s editors and fact-checkers, question Jackie’s credibility. Her friends and rape activists on campus strongly supported Jackie’s account. She had spoken of the assault in campus forums. We reached out to both the local branch and the national leadership of the fraternity where Jackie said she was attacked. They responded that they couldn’t confirm or deny her story but had concerns about the evidence.

In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie’s account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced. We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account. We are taking this seriously and apologize to anyone who was affected by the story.

Will Dana
Managing Editor

Emphasis added. Once again, let’s underscore that Rolling Stone originally published their inflammatory story with zero attempt to check with the accused men. The accused fraternity is preparing to defend itself. Meanwhile, the media give minimal scrutiny to actual rapists – if they’re Democrats.

From the comments: Left-wing feminists go full-meltdown over losing The Narrative. SooperMexican has many examples of jaw-dropping Twitter illogic from Sally Kohn, Amanda Marcotte and others.

I simply must comment on one of the examples. Amanda Marcotte said “What I don’t get is if rape apologists are so sure rapes are hoaxes, why oppose investigating them and getting out that fact?” That’s mind-blowing revisionism, Amanda. The skeptics’ point was that we SHOULD investigate the UVa rape charges, thoroughly. Left-wing feminists had abandoned the duty to investigate.

One more: Melissa McEwan tweeted “I can’t state this more emphatically: If Jackie’s story is partially or wholly untrue, it doesn’t validate the reasons for disbelieving her.” Melissa, I can’t state this more emphatically: Your tweet is psychotic. The reason one would believe or disbelieve Jackie is PRECISELY IF her story happens to be true or untrue. So, the reasons for disbelieving Jackie are BY DEFINITION validated, if it turns out that Jackie’s story is partially or wholly untrue.

Update: In today’s world of smug fake-apologies, let’s give credit when we see a genuine apology. Anna Merlan wrote, “when I dismissed Richard Bradley and Robby Soave’s doubts about the story and called them ‘idiots’ for picking apart Jackie’s account, I was dead f*cking wrong, and for that I sincerely apologize.” Kudos!

Not to participate in the latest media frenzy after just criticizing such frenzies, but Garner’s story is tragically interesting. Because of that video. (Trigger warning: not for the faint of heart; shows a man dying.)

Here’s what I think:

• I don’t know enough of the background to second-guess the NYPD officer who chose to take Garner down.
• Having said that, apparently, the chokehold was a violation of the NYPD’s own procedure manual.
• And the NYPD does appear negligent in just standing there while Garner was dying. (Rather than trying to revive him. Remember, Garner was cuffed by then.)

Your thoughts?

UPDATES:

• Via Althouse, An NYPD Officer Opens Up About What Went Wrong in the Eric Garner Case.
• Hint: It wasn’t race. Garner’s arrest was overseen by a female black sergeant in the NYPD.
• Good commentary from Robert Tracinski. He says, “The contradiction of the left is that they want to inject government into every little aspect of our lives and mandate that the police confront us all the time over everything—and then they scream when some of those confrontations go wrong.” And much more about policing and the use of force, that is sensible.

This article at Breitbart is spot on about how America and Europe are essentially countries under Amazonian occupation; feminists dominate the institutions of law, academia, and Government and are using their positions of power to degrade and ultimately destroy masculinity.

Marriage is dead. Divorce means you’re screwed for life. Women have given up on monogamy, which makes them uninteresting to us for any serious relationship or raising a family. That’s just the way it is. Even if we take the risk, chances are the kids won’t be ours. In France, we even have to pay for the kids a wife has through adulterous affairs.

Social commentators, journalists, academics, scientists and young men themselves have all spotted the trend: among men of about 15 to 30 years old, ever-increasing numbers are checking out of society altogether, giving up on women, sex and relationships and retreating into pornography, sexual fetishes, chemical addictions, video games and, in some cases, boorish lad culture, all of which insulate them from a hostile, debilitating social environment created, some argue, by the modern feminist movement.

In schools today across Britain and America, boys are relentlessly pathologised, as academics were warning as long ago as 2001. Boyishness and boisterousness have come to be seen as “problematic,” with girls’ behaviour a gold standard against which these defective boys are measured. … Boys are falling behind girls academically, perhaps because relentless and well-funded focus has been placed on girls’ achievement in the past few decades and little to none on the boys who are now achieving lower grades, fewer honors, fewer degrees and less marketable information economy skills. Boys’ literacy, in particular, is in crisis throughout the West. We’ve been obsessing so much over girls, we haven’t noticed that boys have slipped into serious academic trouble.

But why are we, as men, letting this happen? Why is there a phenomenon of men withdrawing into videogames and pornography instead of fighting back?