The ongoing trend of children&#8217;s shows featuring LGBTQ characters continued recently during an episode for the &#8220;Clifford the Big Red Dog&#8221; reboot.
&#8220;The beloved animated show &#8216;Clifford the Big Red Dog&#8217; in recent weeks became the second PBS Kids series with a recurring LGBT character when one of Emily Elizabeth’s friends brought her two moms to a dinner party,&#8221; reports <a href="https://www.christianheadlines.com/contributors/michael-foust/pbs-kids-clifford-the-big-red-dog-introduces-lgbt-characters.html">Christian Headlines</a>. &#8220;It was rebooted by PBS and Amazon Prime last year with new animation and new voices. It is within this reboot that two lesbian characters were introduced – although it may not be obvious to many children.&#8221;
The episode, titled “The Big Red Tomato/Dogbot,” introduced the lesbian couple when Emily&#8217;s friend, Samantha, invites her &#8220;two moms&#8221; to an outdoor dinner party she&#8217;s hosting.
“Won’t you please join us?” Emily Elizabeth asks.
“It would be our pleasure,” one of the women replies. “Oooh, something smells delicious!”
The two characters, Dr. Mulberry and Ms. Mulberry, appear in several episodes in which Samantha refers to them both as &#8220;Mom.&#8221;
&#8220;In other episodes, Samantha calls each of the women &#8216;Mom,'&#8221; continued Christian Headlines. &#8220;In the episode titled &#8216;The Birdwell Island Blues/The Big Red World,&#8217; she calls Dr. Mulberry &#8216;Mom,&#8217; and in &#8216;Making Lemonade Out of Lemons/The Watering Hole,&#8217; she calls Ms. Mulberry &#8216;Mom.'&#8221;
LGBTQ representation in children’s shows has been on the uptick this past decade, beginning in 2014 on the Disney show “Good Luck Charlie,” <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/good-luck-charlie-lesbians_n_4675943">which featured</a> a lesbian mom couple.
“In the storyline, parents Amy and Bob Duncan (Leigh-Allyn Baker and Eric Allan Kramer) set up a playdate for preschooler Charlie (Mia Talerico) and one of her new friends,” TV Guide reported at the time. “When the kid arrives, the Duncans learn that Charlie’s pal has two moms. That’s fine, but the potential new friendship is put to the test as one mom chats with Amy, and the other is stuck listening to Bob’s dull stories.”
In 2019, the PBS television show “Arthur” made waves when a beloved character came out as gay by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/14/arts/television/ratburn-arthur.html">marrying his male partner</a>. That was later followed by the Disney show &#8220;Andi Mack&#8221; featuring the first <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/50097/disney-features-first-teenage-gay-couple-andi-mack-paul-bois">teenage gay couple on the network, </a>which was then followed by the &#8220;Rocko&#8217;s Modern Life&#8221; reboot featuring a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/rockos-modern-life-reboot-features-transgender-paul-bois">transgender storyline</a>.
Last year, Maria Vera Whelan, the senior director of marketing, communications and social media for children’s media and education at PBS, defended the network&#8217;s decision to include LGBTQ characters in response to backlash from some parenting groups.
“PBS Kids programs are designed to reflect the diversity of communities across the nation,” said Whelan. “We believe it is important to represent the wide array of adults in the lives of children who look to PBS Kids every day.”
Disney will also be <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/disneys-animated-movie-onward-to-feature-first-explicitly-lgbtq-character">breaking new ground this Friday</a> with the release of &#8220;Onward&#8221; – the studio’s first animated movie to feature an openly LGBTQ character. The character, voiced by Lena Waithe, will be a lesbian police officer whose sexuality will be explicitly pointed out in the movie as opposed to just being implied, such as the alleged lesbian couple in “Finding Dory” or the “exclusively gay moment” in the “Beauty and the Beast” live-action remake.

Clifford The Big Red Dog Lights The Empire State Building

‘Clifford The Big Red Dog’ Reboot Features Two Lesbian Moms

LGBT

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg received a topical question during a rally in Colorado on Saturday when a 9-year-old boy asked him for advice on coming out as gay.
According to <a href="https://abc7.com/amp/5961586/">ABC News</a>, Buttigieg read 9-year-old Zachary Ro&#8217;s question aloud before inviting the boy to join him onstage, prompting thunderous applause and cheers of &#8220;love is love&#8221; from the audience.
&#8220;Would you help me telling the world that I&#8217;m gay, too? I want to be brave like you,&#8221; the question read.
Buttigieg recalled the difficulty of his own coming out story and applauded the boy for revealing his identity before thousands of strangers.
&#8220;I don&#8217;t think you need a lot of advice for me on bravery. You seem pretty strong to me. It took me a long time to tell even my best friend that I was gay, let alone to go out there and tell the world, and to see you willing to come to terms with who you are in a room full of a thousand people, thousands of people you&#8217;ve never met, that&#8217;s really something,&#8221; said Buttigieg.
Buttigieg then proceeded to tell Zachary &#8220;a couple things that might be useful.&#8221;
&#8220;The first thing is that it won&#8217;t always be easy, but that&#8217;s okay, because you know who you are,&#8221; he said, as <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/23/politics/pete-buttigieg-denver-rally-moment/index.html?utm_source=twCNNp&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_term=image&amp;utm_content=2020-02-23T18%3A34%3A02">reported</a> by CNN. &#8220;And that&#8217;s really important because when you know who you are, you have a center of gravity that can hold you together when all kinds of chaos is happening around you.&#8221;
Buttigieg also told Zachary to be mindful of &#8220;who&#8217;s taking their lead from you, who&#8217;s watching you and deciding that they can be a little braver because you have been brave.&#8221;
&#8220;When I was trying to figure out who I was, I was afraid that who I was might mean that I could never make a difference,&#8221; he added. &#8220;And what wound up happening instead is that it&#8217;s a huge part of the difference I get to make. I never could have seen that coming, and you&#8217;ll never know whose life you might be affecting right now, just by standing here. There&#8217;s a lot of power in that.&#8221;
After the rally, Zachary told reporters that Mayor Pete&#8217;s advice inspired him.
&#8220;I just feel inspired by Pete being openly gay and running for president at the same time, and someday, I want to be like him,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I feel like he gave me some really good advice.&#8221;
When asked what advice he&#8217;d give other boys out there in similar situations, Zachary said he would tell them to &#8220;be themselves.&#8221;
&#8220;I&#8217;d probably tell them to just be themselves,” he said. “Don&#8217;t worry about what other people think.&#8221;
&#8220;I&#8217;m very proud for him,&#8221; Zachary&#8217;s dad added.
President Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-id-vote-for-a-gay-president">recently exclaimed</a> that he would support an openly gay candidate for office. His comments were made shortly before the openly gay Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell was tapped to be Head of National Intelligence.
<iframe title="POWERFUL MOMENT: Nine-Year-Old Boy Asks Pete Buttigieg Advice on Coming Out" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ukrk85Zi-Ls?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
&nbsp;
&nbsp;

Pete Buttigieg,

WATCH: 9-Year-Old Boy Asks Buttigieg For Advice On Coming Out As Gay

2020 Election

Pete Buttigieg

Disgraced former Rep. Katie Hill (D-CA), who was the first woman in U.S. history to resign from Congress over a sex scandal, told ABC News on Thursday that she had to resign because of &#8220;biphobia.&#8221;
Hill made the remarks during an interview with &#8220;Good Morning America&#8221; that featured softball questions from host George Stephanopoulos, who used to work in the Clinton administration.
&#8220;Your story exploded,&#8221; Stephanopoulos said. &#8220;How much of it is tied to the fact that, in your mind, that you&#8217;re bisexual?&#8221;
&#8220;I think a lot of it is, and it&#8217;s also partly because I&#8217;m a woman, we haven&#8217;t seen as many of the sex scandals with women, but the bisexuality is a huge part of it, right?&#8221; Hill responded. &#8220;There is a fantasy element of it, there&#8217;s biphobia that is rampant still, and certainly misunderstanding of what bisexuality is, and it&#8217;s sensationalizing, right?&#8221;
Hill resigned after the House Ethics Committee announced that it was opening a formal investigation into the allegations that Hill had a prohibited sexual relationship with a congressional staffer. Hill&#8217;s decision to resign shielded her from being investigated over the allegation.
WATCH:
<iframe title="Former Rep. Katie Hill opens up about her resignation from Congress | GMA" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/X8gdmHLH0O0?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
TRANSCRIPT:
<blockquote>STEPHANOPOULOS: Was the biggest mistake having a relationship with a campaign staffer?
HILL: Absolutely. When I started to run for Congress, I was a nobody. I was a non-profit director that was 29-years-old when I jumped in. I did not have any political experience and so I was a complete long shot, but my team, which built over time, was, especially the people who were there in the beginning, it never felt like an employer-employee relationship in the way that I&#8217;d been an executive at a large organization before. The boundaries were completely different because you are truly in the trenches with this very small team, where I think I made the biggest mistake was not setting those boundaries from the very beginning.
STEPHANOPOULOS: The photos were released. You&#8217;re also accused, not only of having a relationship with a campaign staffer, but having a relationship with someone on your congressional staff, which obviously would cross all kinds of ethical lines.
HILL: That accusation came from my ex-husband and it launched a&#8211;
STEPHANOPOULOS: It&#8217;s not true?
HILL: No, especially, the person he was accusing me of, was somebody, who was my first hire, right? He was the first person who worked on my campaign and he came with me to Washington and we were friends and it shows you how easy it is to, when you&#8217;re talking about someone, especially a woman being a victim of something like the photos, or cyber exploitation, or revenge porn, or whatever you want to call it&#8211;
STEPHANOPOULOS: What do you want to call it?
HILL: Well, there&#8217;s a problem with the term &#8220;revenge porn&#8221; because it implies, A, that there is something to be taking revenge for, right? That the woman maybe did something wrong in the first place and pornography could imply that it was consensual, and it&#8217;s not.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And how much have you regretted the decision to actually resign? Any part of you that thinks you should have stayed and fought?
HILL: I strongly feel that I made the right call in stepping down, for several reasons. One of which is that I, I did not want to be a liability to my colleagues. We knew from the people who had the photos that had obtained the photos that there were hundreds more images and text messages that were out there that I had no idea what they could be or how they could be taken out of context.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Your story exploded. &#8230; How much of it is tied to the fact that in your mind that you&#8217;re bisexual?
HILL: I think a lot of it is, and it&#8217;s also partly because I&#8217;m a woman, we haven&#8217;t seen as many of the sex scandals with women, but the bisexuality is a huge part of it, right? There is a fantasy element of it, there&#8217;s biphobia that is rampant still and certainly misunderstanding of what bisexuality is and it&#8217;s sensationalizing, right?</blockquote>

Katie Hill

Disgraced Democratic Congresswoman Katie Hill: I Had To Resign Because Of ‘Biphobia’ And I’m A ‘Woman’

Congress

During Tuesday&#8217;s episode of &#8220;The Ellen DeGeneres Show,&#8221; former NBA star Dwyane Wade discussed the gender transition of his 12-year-old child Zion Malachi Airamis, who is biologically male but now &#8220;identifies&#8221; as female.
Wade said preteen Zion, who now goes by Zaya, is a &#8220;leader&#8221; in the LGBTQ+ community, and noted that he and his wife, actress Gabrielle Union, are also &#8220;proud&#8221; allies of the community.
Host Ellen DeGeneres, to massive applause, praised Wade for being a &#8220;loving and supportive&#8221; father to Zaya.
&#8220;We are proud, when I say proud, we are proud parents of a child in the LGBTQ+ community, and we are proud allies, as well,&#8221; responded Wade.
The former Miami Heat guard said he and Union take their role as parents &#8220;very seriously.&#8221;
&#8220;When Zaya, 12 years old, came home,&#8221; explained Wade, noting that Zion &#8220;was born as a boy,&#8221; the child told he and Union that he wanted to &#8220;live his truth.&#8221;
&#8220;I think going forward I&#8217;m ready to live my truth,&#8221; Wade recalled his son telling him at age 12. &#8220;I wanna be referenced as &#8216;she&#8217; and &#8216;her&#8217; and I would love for you guys to call me Zaya.&#8221;
&#8220;We wanted to give our child the best opportunity to be her best self,&#8221; added Wade.
In December, Wade made similar comments about his child. “I watched my son, from day one, become into who she now eventually come into,” he <a href="https://people.com/parents/dwyane-wade-watched-child-become-who-she-now-eventually-is/">told</a> the “All the Smoke” podcast.
“And for me … nothing changes in my love. Nothing changes in my responsibilities. So, all I had to do now is get smarter educate myself more. And that’s my job,” he continued, noting, “You want to talk about strength and courage, my 12-year-old has way more than I have. You can learn something from your kids.”
“Me and my wife are having conversations about, you know, us noticing that, you know, [Zion] wasn’t on the boy vibe that Zaire was on,&#8221; Wade said. &#8220;And I had to look myself in the mirror and say, ‘What if your son comes home and tell you he’s gay? What are you going to do? How are you going to be? How are you going to act?’ It ain’t about him. He knows who he is. It’s about you. Who are you?”
“This is the new normal,&#8221; the former NBA star contended. &#8220;So, if anybody different, we’re looked at as different. The ones that don’t understand it. The ones that don’t get it. The ones that get stuck in the box, you know, they’re different. Not the people out here living their lives.”
In November, after a Thanksgiving family photo was posted to social media, wherein the young boy was sporting long, colored, manicured nails and a crop top, Wade responded via social media.
<div>
“I’ve seen some post-thanksgiving hate on social about my family photo,&#8221; he posted. &#8220;Stupidity is apart of this world we live in — so i get it. But here’s the thing — I’ve been chosen to lead my family not y’all. So we will continue to be us and support each other with pride, love &amp; a smile!” 
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dwyane-wade-talks-about-transgender-son-turning-into-who-she-is-hits-folks-questioning-his-parenting">Dwyane Wade Talks About Transgender Son Turning Into Who ‘She’ Is, Hits Folks Questioning His Parenting</a>
</div>
WATCH:
<iframe title="Dwyane Wade’s Candid Talk About Supporting His 12-Year-Old&#039;s Gender Identity" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AG9-Q6UabfQ?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Dwyane Wade And Gabrielle Union

WATCH: Dwyane Wade Says 12-Year-Old ‘Trans’ Son Changed ‘Her’ Name; Ellen DeGeneres Praises Him On Parenting Skills

Dwyane Wade

Ellen Degeneres

Transgender

Rarely do we see businesses, small or large, voluntarily abandon a tax credit. When those tax credits are used to help low-income and inner-city kids escape failing schools and find a pathway to success, it’s even more surprising.
Several days before President Donald Trump called on Congress during his State of the Union Address to pass legislation providing a million students with an opportunity scholarships, the Orlando Sentinel published a lengthy investigative <a href="https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/education/os-ne-voucher-schools-lgbtq-discriminate-20200123-s5ue4nvqybcgrbrxov5hcb46a4-htmlstory.html">article</a> detailing how corporations support these low-income families by way of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program. Pushing more of an ideological agenda than straight reporting, the Sentinel suggests that the use of these funds by many religious schools is meant to be “anti-gay.”
I went to one of the school (whose mascot, ironically, happens to share a name with the Sentinel) on the list. My parents sent me to Christian school because they believed no education was complete without a thorough understanding of the Bible. If you’ve never been to one of the schools on the list, let me tell you what you will find there.
First, you will see students from every corner of America represented: Black, white, Hispanic, rich, poor, middle income. As a fifth grader, when I started attending Evangelical Christian School in Fort Myers, Florida, it struck me as completely ordinary that my classmates looked pretty much the same as any room I ever entered in America. Selma, my friend of Indian-American descent, was just Selma. We played football together during recess and tried not to get in trouble during lunchtime.
My school was very disciplined, growing out of a religious conservative tradition that valued respect for elders and one another. We stood to answer questions when called upon. We did not talk during the lunch hour or in the hallways. We wore uniforms. Mrs. Dunn, the headmistress, was feared by all, but it was clear she cared for her students.
And there was chapel and prayer and Bible study. In fact, by the time I got to high school, we had an entire class period dedicated to Bible. It was insightful: We studied not only the Scriptures that formed the basis of our faith, but also learned to appreciate and respect the differences of our faith with that of others&#8217; faith.
Of course, we also studied math, science, literature, and the rest. Each class had a distinctive approach of not only mastering the subject at hand, but evaluating what our Christian worldview had to say about it. Before every baseball practice, Coach Kieffer would lead the team in a brief devotion drawn from the Bible and pray for us. I respected that man for his commitment to “the Man in the chair,” an empty chair meant to remind us that God is ever present, a help in time of need.
Florida’s tax scholarship program came about after I was out of school. Thanks to the Sentinel (the newspaper, not our mascot), I know that my alma mater receives scholarships through the Florida Tax Credit program to assist students to attend school. I believe there are families who have always wished to send their kids to a school that unashamedly teaches according to the Christian tradition but, for financial reasons, never could afford to do so.
But because of this newspaper article, fewer low-income families will have that choice. Wells Fargo, Wyndham Vacation Properties, Fifth Third Bank, and others <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/third-company-pulls-florida-voucher-donations-over-anti-gay-school-n1126686">pulled their funding</a>. (Fifth Third, perhaps realizing the error, <a href="https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/02/07/fifth-third-continue-funding-scholarships-anti-lbgtq-florida-schools/4691279002/">reversed that decision</a>). Activists are hard at work trying to convince Waste Management, and others, to do the same.
Rather than let inner-city kids or low-income families from the rural areas of Acadia and Belle Glade pursue private education that meets the needs of their children, they would cancel their scholarship to score “woke” points with the Left. It’s a shame.
In 2018-19, over 104,000 students received scholarships because of this program.  The typical <a href="https://www.stepupforstudents.org/research-and-reports/">student</a> receiving the scholarship lives at the poverty line (roughly $29,000), has only one parent in the home, and struggles academically. Sixty-eight percent of them are Africa-American or Hispanic.
Wells Fargo, Wyndham, and others are literally taking money away from poverty-stricken, minority children and the Left is praising them for doing so. Why? In their mind (and that of the Sentinel), it is less risky to a child’s future to live in poverty, with one parent in the home, and continue to struggle academically than attend a Christian school.
Such hostility toward religion should have no place in Florida, the news room, or a corner office. Businesses are welcome to forgo whatever tax credits they want. If they want to pay more in taxes, I suppose we cannot stop them. Still, they should understand that the price of appeasing the Sentinel and other ideologues is a low-income child’s future.
&nbsp;
Jeremy Dys (<a href="https://twitter.com/jeremydys">@JeremyDys</a>) is Special Counsel for Litigation and Communications for First Liberty Institute, a non-profit law firm dedicated to defending religious freedom for all Americans. Read more at <a href="https://firstliberty.org">FirstLiberty.org</a>.

Human hand placed on the Bible, pray to God.

DYS: Pulling Scholarship Funds Punishes Low-Income Children

Bible

Christianity

Donald Trump

Florida

Homosexuality

Leftism

Media Bias

Progressivism

After taking a surprising lead in the faith-focused Iowa caucuses, presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg is now being discussed as a Democratic Party presidential frontrunner. But despite being a self-proclaimed Christian, Buttigieg’s rhetoric and policies undermine rather than support religious liberty.
Buttigieg has unabashedly embraced House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-house-democrats-equality-act-both-josh-hammer">Equality Act legislation</a> that would strike a massive blow to our nation’s religious institutions. Specifically, the Equality Act would create a federally protected status for gender identity, defined as the “gender-related identity, appearance, mannerisms or other gender-related characteristics of an individual, regardless of the individual’s designated sex at birth.”
Any faith-based establishment — including churches, schools, and hospitals — with theological beliefs in conflict with this definition would likely face expensive legal battles, lawsuits, and public scrutiny. Case in point: A <a href="https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-wa-and-peacehealth-agree-settle-lawsuit-involving-transgender-healthcare" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-wa-and-peacehealth-agree-settle-lawsuit-involving-transgender-healthcare&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1581100427416000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGAth8sOEO3vpXX7ZIu4u4Xmi5vXA">Catholic hospital</a> was sued last year by the ACLU because it would not perform a risky sex-change surgery on a 16-year-old girl.
Unfortunately, the Equality Act would coerce health care and mental health professionals into providing dangerous gender-transition treatments for young children and adolescents, counter to their medical advice — and for many, against their religious beliefs.
Just as alarming, Buttigieg has imposed litmus tests based on what he deems theologically acceptable. We witnessed this first-hand when the former South Bend, Indiana mayor attacked Second Lady Karen Pence for teaching at a private school that adheres to her Judeo-Christian belief about marriage. In response, Buttigieg ridiculed the Pences and likened their religious views to that of “<a href="https://twitter.com/PeteButtigieg/status/1086297780514115585?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1086297780514115585&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fthefederalist.com%2F2019%2F11%2F11%2Fwhy-pete-buttigieg-is-the-most-destructive-candidate-for-christianity%2F" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/PeteButtigieg/status/1086297780514115585?ref_src%3Dtwsrc%255Etfw%257Ctwcamp%255Etweetembed%257Ctwterm%255E1086297780514115585%26ref_url%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fthefederalist.com%252F2019%252F11%252F11%252Fwhy-pete-buttigieg-is-the-most-destructive-candidate-for-christianity%252F&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1581100427416000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGwUBGJvLf5CXMJu3hcs6dg6abQ5g">Pharisees</a>.”
As a private institution, like thousands of such private schools that have long existed in our country, the school where Mrs. Pence teaches has the right to govern its school according to its own religious beliefs. Islamic schools, Buddhist schools, and Jewish schools are also free to do so under the United States Constitution.
As an individual running for our nation’s highest office, Pete Buttigieg is signaling how a Buttigieg administration would handle religious liberty. And his signals should frighten many.
When explicitly asked about religious freedom, Buttigieg <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/10/10/buttigieg_religious_freedom_makes_god_smaller_when_used_used_as_an_excuse_to_harm_other_people.html" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/10/10/buttigieg_religious_freedom_makes_god_smaller_when_used_used_as_an_excuse_to_harm_other_people.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1581100427416000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGJ6Rk7gZclZ3HMbhwVWW9qPgHRiw">claimed</a>, “the right to religious freedom ends where religion is being used as an excuse to harm other people.” He gave no further explanation of his definition of “harm,” placing the ironclad religious protections that our nation has valued for generations at considerable risk under his vague interpretation.
Our founding charter, the Constitution, defends and supports the belief that America was established on the freedom of ALL religions. Furthermore, it is not just freedom afforded to spiritual individuals to put their trust in religious faith or belief. Rather, it is an essential aspect of a well-ordered society to respect that human beings are made in the image of a higher power and should be able to order their lives around their personal religious beliefs.
Mayor Pete has ignored that right, choosing instead to weaponize his beliefs as a litmus test against the beliefs of others. If an individual or entity gets in his way, he will marginalize them — no questions asked.
This complete disregard for our nation’s freedom isn’t how freedom actually works. Our rights aren’t good enough when a leader deems them acceptable to their standards; they stand on their own because the Constitution says so.
&nbsp;
Ms. Vought is executive director of the <a href="https://www.senateconservatives.com">Senate Conservatives Fund</a>. Her husband, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/author/russ-vought">Russ</a>, is acting director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.

Presidential Candidate Pete Buttigieg Begins Bus Tour Across NH Ahead Of Primary

VOUGHT: Pete Buttigieg Is No Friend Of Religious Liberty

ACLU

Constitution

Democratic Party

First Amendment

Lawsuit

Nancy Pelosi

Actress Jameela Jamil, a radical feminist and ethnic minority who made the news recently for bragging about her abortion, discovered this week that she still somehow lacks in Identity Points. As the BBC <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-51399416">reports</a>, controversy erupted and backlash ensued when HBO hired Jamil as a judge for an upcoming &#8220;unscripted voguing contest.&#8221; We&#8217;re informed that voguing is a dance genre &#8220;founded by black and Latino LGBT people.&#8221; The trouble is that Jamil is not LGBT, which somehow makes her unqualified to judge a dance competition, despite the fact that this style of dance was apparently popularized by the white, heterosexual Madonna.
Jamil knew just what to do. Taking to Twitter, the actress promptly announced that she&#8217;s &#8220;queer&#8221; — marking, after Kevin Spacey, the second time in recent history that an actor has come out of the closet as a defensive tactic. Smartly, especially because she has a boyfriend, Jamil did not claim any definitive sexual orientation or label. &#8220;Queer&#8221; can mean just about anything. All that matters is that it&#8217;s in the Sacred Acronym.
I don&#8217;t know if Jamil is really &#8220;queer,&#8221; or even what it would mean if she were, nor do I care in the slightest. The point is simply that her residence in the LGBTQ camp provides her cover from criticism and gives her access to just about any opportunity in Hollywood without fear of &#8220;appropriation&#8221; charges. On the Left, victimhood is currency. And LGBTQ victims are the wealthiest of all. They stand at the very top of the Victim Hierarchy, over and above mere women and racial minorities.
<iframe title="The Collapse Of Identity Politics | The Matt Walsh Show Ep. 421" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/enWkXLLHpo0?start=1076&#038;feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Whenever there are competing victimhood claims — for example, when transgender males say they are &#8220;victimized&#8221; by a lack of access to female locker rooms while females say they would be victimized by the privacy infringement such access would entail — the victory will always go to the claimant with the larger victimhood cache. And when one claimant is LGBT and the other is not, the former will win every time. This is why leftists feel perfectly comfortable screaming at adolescent girls to shut up and know their place as boys come into their locker rooms and get naked beside them.
On the Left, all that matters is identity. Your identity will decide what you have the right to say, think, do, and feel. Your identity will decide the content of your character and your value as a person. Your identity will decide if you are persecutor or persecuted, oppressor or martyr, slobbering racist bigot or bold and beautiful hero above reproach. But there is a rather massive problem with this system. Well, there are many problems, starting with its fundamental incoherence, but let&#8217;s focus on just one.
The problem is that the Left hangs everything on the hook of identity, but that hook is not connected to anything itself. It&#8217;s hanging precariously in the ether, not nailed into any sort of sturdy surface. According to their doctrines, identity is a nebulous, fluid, largely arbitrary, and entirely subjective concept. All that matters is how you identify, but anyone can identify as anything, so the edifice collapses in on itself. It becomes like a monetary system where everyone has a money-printing machine at their house. Just look at how the great scourge of white men have been able to manipulate things to their benefit.
By all rights, white men should be at the very bottom of the Victim Hierarchy. They are the serfs, the scum, the class beneath the peasant class. They are inherently bigoted, inherently oppressive, and inherently possessing a mythical privilege that renders all of their achievements moot. All victimhood claims supersede the white man&#8217;s claim, because the white man can make no claim. He is always the scoundrel and bully in every situation. But all that a dastardly white man need do is announce that he is a woman. This will not just move him onto the same victim status as real women, but in fact will put him above women. Five seconds ago he was a patriarchal pseudo-rapist for spreading his legs too wide on the subway. Now he is an awe-inspiring hero for barging into the women&#8217;s bathroom. He has ascended the pyramid all the way to the top simply by speaking a word. And nobody may question it or demand that he prove it or explain himself.
This is the trouble with declaring that everyone in such-and-such category is a drooling bigot and everyone in this other category is a blameless champion of human rights, and then following that declaration with the further declaration that everyone has the absolute and unquestioned power to decide the category in which they belong. It&#8217;s not hard to see why there is now a rush to get to the top of the Victim Hierarchy, with more and more people discovering their inner LGBT identity just in time to get whatever they want.
Consider the timely self-realization of Jonathan Yaniv, who found out he was a woman and then immediately sued a bunch of female estheticians for <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/transgender-activist-jessica-yaniv-loses-wax-her-balls-complaint-against-salon-workers">refusing to wax his genitals</a>. Indeed, Yaniv seems very much to be a <a href="https://www.thepostmillennial.com/the-truth-about-jessica-yaniv-is-beginning-to-emerge/">degenerate and predator</a> who uses his &#8220;womanhood&#8221; to manipulate and prey upon girls. And yet even now, the media will report about him while reverently using his preferred pronouns, still feeling obliged to pretend that his &#8220;transgenderism&#8221; is anything but a perverse ploy by a deranged and despicable adult male. The only doctrine cherished more than the one that gives Yaniv ultimate victimhood privileges is the one that forbids us from questioning the self-identification that accorded those privileges in the first place.
The Left has a tangled mess on its hands. I don&#8217;t think there is any way out of it, aside from abandoning one or all of their key doctrines. But I don&#8217;t think they will ever do that. So all that the rest of us can do now is sit and watch, not without satisfaction, as the house of cards comes tumbling down.

62nd Annual GRAMMY Awards – Arrivals

WALSH: The Left’s System Of Identity Politics Is Collapsing On Itself, And It’s A Fascinating Sight To Behold

Jameela Jamil

Political Correctness

Sexuality

After bravely bearing the cruel slings and arrows of the woke scolds that launched a cancel campaign against him for old jokes that offended some members of the LGBT community, Kevin Hart has now apologized for how he handled the situation, which culminated in him <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/kevin-hart-steps-down-from-oscar-hosting-gig-after-past-staments" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">stepping down as host </a>of the Academy Awards in 2019.
Though Hart recently expressed regret for being immature at the time in the Netflix documentary “Kevin Hart: Don’t F**k This Up,” he doubled-down on that sentiment in an interview with Men&#8217;s Health.
“With the whole Oscars thing, there was a big gap between what I thought the problem was versus what the problem really was,” <a href="https://www.menshealth.com/trending-news/a30469053/kevin-hart-car-accident-recovery-interview/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Hart told the magazine</a>. &#8220;I got 10 years where I made sure not to joke or play in the way that I did back then because it was a problem. I don’t care if you’re gay or not gay. I’m a people person. I’m going to love you regardless.”
Hart, however, feels that he should have become an ally to the LGBT community by speaking up about violence.
“It wasn’t until close friends like Wanda Sykes, Lee Daniels, and Ellen talked to me and explained what they didn’t hear me say that I understood. Then I was like, ‘Oh, s*** — I did f*** up.’”
Kevin Hart had been slated to host the 2019 Oscars but stepped down within 48 hours of accepting the gig after the Academy demanded he apologize for his past jokes.
“I’m not going to continue to go back and tap into the days of old when I moved on, and I’m in a completely different space in my life,” Hart said in a video on Instagram at the time. “I’m going to be me; I’m going to stand my ground.”
Hours later, Hart stepped down from his dream of hosting the Oscars and apologized to the LGBTQ community for his “insensitive words.”
“I have made the choice to step down from hosting this year’s Oscars … this is because I do not want to be a distraction on a night that should be celebrated by so many amazing talented artists,” he wrote on Twitter. “I sincerely apologize to the LGBTQ community for my insensitive words from my past.”
The <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/kevin-hart-regrets-how-he-handled-oscars-controversy-i-was-immature">Netflix documentary </a>explored how the comedian disregarded the advice of his publicists and other members of his team at the time, leading him to eventually conclude that he was acting “immature.”
“What I thought was going to blow over ended up becoming a bigger mess than I expected,” Hart says in the documentary.
“You need to learn how to stop and think,” Hart’s publicist tells a team member in the documentary. “He’s not used to being the person that’s not loved and cherished. He needs to just shut up and put his head down for the next few weeks. &#8230; What he needs to remember is he’s feeding 50-60 people. When he takes a sh***er, everybody takes a sh***er and that’s a big issue now.”
Nine days after his stepping down, Hart then told members of his staff at an emergency meeting that he had no desire to keep addressing the controversy, fearing he would be “making it okay to go backward.” Looking back, Hart now feels that he “missed an opportunity.”
“I missed an opportunity to say simply that I don’t condone any type of violence in any way, shape, or form to anyone for being who they are,” Hart now says. “I f***ed up. &#8230; Instead, I said, ‘I addressed it.’ I said, ‘I apologized.’ I said, ‘I talked about this already.’ I was just immature.”

2020 Winter TCA Tour &#8211; Day 3

Kevin Hart Caves, Apologizes Over Oscars Controversy: ‘I Did F*** Up’

Hollywood

Kevin Hart

Netflix

Oscars

Feminist, avid social justice activist, and NBC&#8217;s &#8220;The Good Place&#8221; actress Jameela Jamil came out as queer on Wednesday.
The timing of the announcement, however, has raised eyebrows.
The day before her queer declaration, Jamil, who is in a relationship with singer James Blake, was swarmed with criticism concerning LGBTQ representation and her new gig as a judge on a vogueing TV show.
According to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/feb/06/jameela-jamil-comes-out-as-queer-following-voguing-show-backlash">The Guardian</a>, the new contest show set for HBO, called &#8220;Legendary,&#8221; is &#8220;based around the predominately black and Latinx subculture of drag balls in the LGBT community.&#8221;
Jamil, who was known as a straight woman until Wednesday, took flak for &#8220;taking&#8221; a role from a deserving member of the community around which the show is based.
&#8220;The public response to Jamil’s appointment focused on her perceived lack of ties to its subject matter,&#8221; The Guardian explained.
One such example of this, as highlighted by <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jameela-jamil-queer-jameela-jamil-comes-out-as-queer-twitter-today-2020-02-05/">CBS News</a>, came from comic artist Adam Ellis.
&#8220;Look I get that we&#8217;re all out here just trying to get a paycheck,&#8221; he posted via Twitter. &#8220;But [Jameela Jamil] how are you gonna work tirelessly on behalf of underrepresented people and then turn around and accept a job on a panel that should be populated with queer and trans people?&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Look I get that we&#39;re all out here just trying to get a paycheck, but <a href="https://twitter.com/jameelajamil?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@jameelajamil</a> how are you gonna work tirelessly on behalf of underrepresented people and then turn around and accept a job on a panel that should be populated with queer and trans people? <a href="https://t.co/iiCriF5YBt">https://t.co/iiCriF5YBt</a>
&mdash; adam ellis (@moby_dickhead) <a href="https://twitter.com/moby_dickhead/status/1224837706389303296?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 4, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Jamil&#8217;s response, apparently, was to come out as queer.
According Jamil, she largely kept her queer identity a secret until Wednesday because she &#8220;was scared of the pain of being accused of performative bandwagon jumping&#8221; and also noted that it&#8217;s hard for actresses, in particular, to be truthful about their sexuality.
&#8220;I added a rainbow to my name when I felt ready a few years ago,&#8221; her Twitter statement explained, &#8220;as it&#8217;s not easy within the south Asian community to be accepted, and I always answered honestly if ever straight-up asked about it on Twitter.&#8221;
&#8220;But I kept it low because I was scared of the pain of being accused of performative bandwagon jumping, over something that caused me a lot of confusion, fear and turmoil when I was a kid,&#8221; she continued.
&#8220;It&#8217;s also scary as an actor to openly admit your sexuality,&#8221; Jamil said, &#8220;especially when you&#8217;re already a brown female in your thirties. This is absolutely not how I wanted it to come out.&#8221;
The actress added that her announcement doesn&#8217;t &#8220;qualify&#8221; her for her new gig.
“I know that my being queer doesn’t qualify me as ballroom,&#8221; Jamil wrote. &#8220;But I have privilege and power and a large following to bring to this show … sometimes it takes those with more power to help a show get off the ground so we can elevate marginalised stars that deserve the limelight and give them a chance.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
✌🏽 <a href="https://t.co/YcB6H7YCT0">pic.twitter.com/YcB6H7YCT0</a>
&mdash; Jameela Jamil 🌈 (@jameelajamil) <a href="https://twitter.com/jameelajamil/status/1225165342965669888?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 5, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Along with her social justice activism, Jamil is an avid abortion promoter. In December, for example, the actress attacked pro-lifers as “clueless,” likened them to trolls, and instructed them to “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/suck-on-that-abortion-loving-jameela-jamil-posts-expletive-laced-tweet-ripping-clueless-pro-lifers">suck on that</a>” if they disagree with her.
Jamil, who has called her own abortion the “best decision” of her life, posted an expletive-laced message after she was criticized for agreeing with fellow abortion-promoting feminist Gloria Steinem that democracy is impossible without on-demand abortion.
“To the people trolling me and (feminist) [Gloria Steinem] because we said there is no democracy without a woman’s right to choose … I SAID WHAT I F***ING SAID and you’re clueless if you think I’m going to take it back,” she wrote.

Actress Comes Out As ‘Queer’ After Her New Gig Sparks LGBTQ Diversity Concerns

LGBTQ

On Tuesday evening, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, a constitutional attorney by training who previously served as a judicial law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-HnMAHs3-c">joined</a> “Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler” on One America News Network (OANN) to discuss the news from earlier this month that a divided Fifth Circuit panel, in the case of <a href="http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/19/19-40016-CR0.pdf">U.S. v. Varner</a>, denied a motion from a biological male litigant who formally moved to have the panel address him using female pronouns.
Earlier this month, Hammer <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/culture-war-in-the-courts-federal-appeals-panel-divides-on-transgender-pronouns/">summarized</a> and briefly opined upon the case for The Daily Wire, referencing the &#8220;fascinating&#8221; development that Trump nominee Judge S. Kyle Duncan&#8217;s majority opinion used male pronouns, whereas Clinton nominee Judge James L. Dennis&#8217;s dissent used female pronouns:
<blockquote>Alas, the latest and most disputatious, headline-grabbing front of our ceaseless culture war has fully hit the federal judiciary. &#8230;
Ultimately, Duncan concluded, “[c]ourts would have to do the same. We decline to enlist the federal judiciary in this quixotic undertaking.” &#8230;
Good for Judge Duncan for both adhering to the letter of the law and for defiantly standing athwart the modern cultural Left’s pernicious insistence on gaslighting the American citizenry into thinking that words may not mean what they so clearly do, in fact, mean.</blockquote>
Earlier this week, prior to the OANN appearance with Wheeler, Hammer also wrote a <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/transgender-pronouns-fifth-circuit-rejects-them-and-lie-they-stand-on/">column</a> about the case for National Review:
<blockquote>To capitulate to the Pandora’s box of transgender pronouns is to pretend that, exceedingly rare intersex exceptions aside, there is more to sexual differentiation than the duality of chromosomal male and chromosomal female. To yield to the soft tyranny of transgender pronouns is to pretend that gender dysphoria is an anodyne lifestyle on which societal legitimacy should be conferred, not a psychological malady requiring compassion and psychological treatment. It is to act as if simple words that have meant the same thing for centuries can change their meanings overnight without ruinous consequence for the language’s durability. It is to encourage the <a href="https://time.com/5767844/transgender-youth-legislation/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-reader-unique-id="21">premature sexualization</a> of children and accede to <a href="https://transcare.ucsf.edu/article/information-testosterone-hormone-therapy" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-reader-unique-id="22">often irreversible</a> tampering of their hormones. It is to undermine the ancient Hippocratic oath: “First, do no harm.” Paul McHugh, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, maintains that to encourage “surgical intervention is in reality to collaborate with and promote a mental disorder.”</blockquote>
Wheeler and Hammer touched upon many of the same substantive themes during the OANN TV appearance, with Hammer stating that Judge Duncan&#8217;s fearless majority opinion made him a &#8220;very proud Fifth Circuit alum&#8221;:
<blockquote>You know, I finished clerking on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit barely over a year ago, so I&#8217;m very familiar with this court. I know both Judge Duncan and Judge Jerry Smith, who was also in the majority, personally, actually. Judge Duncan, Trump nominee — a wonderful jurist based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
So basically what happened here was a very unusual procedural posture. I mean, this took the format of an order — it was more of an order than a traditional &#8220;case&#8221; or &#8220;controversy,&#8221; we might say. But the litigant formally moved to be addressed by a transgender pronoun, which is very unusual. Certainly, in my time clerking, I never came across something like that. That is not a typical motion that as a judge or a law clerk, you see on a day-to-day basis &#8230; [but] I was a very proud Fifth Circuit alum when I saw this opinion.</blockquote>
Wheeler said that she agreed with &#8220;every word&#8221; of Hammer&#8217;s.
WATCH:
<iframe title="Court Rules on Gender Pronouns" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QVp0Vdif0KA?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Hammer OANN 1.28.20

WATCH: Hammer On ‘Tipping Point With Liz Wheeler’: The Fifth Circuit Rejects Transgender Pronouns

Judicial Branch

Judiciary

On Sunday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) bashed Christian schools she deemed to have &#8220;anti-LGBTQ+ policies.&#8221;
According to <a href="https://www.cnsnews.com/blog/cnsnewscom-staff/warren-whacks-christian-schools-anti-lgbtq-policies-such-making-boys-use-boys">CNS News</a>, Warren tweeted out an <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/supreme-court-montana-schools-lgbtq-discrimination_n_5e1f688ec5b674e44b91af5d">article from HuffPost</a> that highlighted a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/supreme-court-hears-blockbuster-case-on-religious-school-choice">U.S. Supreme Court case out of Montana</a> where a law has been challenged that grants tax credits to donations to private and religious schools — many of which the Left would deem anti-LGBT for having such policies as bathrooms corresponding to students&#8217; biological sex and faculty who live according to biblical sexual morality.
&#8220;States should focus on funding public schools, not private ones—especially not ones that maintain anti-LGBTQ+ policies,&#8221; Warren said in her tweet. &#8220;We must ensure every kid—especially LGBTQ+ kids—can get a high-quality public education.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
States should focus on funding public schools, not private ones—especially not ones that maintain anti-LGBTQ+ policies. We must ensure every kid—especially LGBTQ+ kids—can get a high-quality public education. <a href="https://t.co/hxKap5Ofjm">https://t.co/hxKap5Ofjm</a>
&mdash; Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) <a href="https://twitter.com/ewarren/status/1221473458976149504?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 26, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Here&#8217;s how leftist HuffPost described the current situation in Montana:
<div class="content-list-component yr-content-list-text text" data-rapid-cpos="1" data-rapid-subsec="paragraph" data-rapid-parsed="subsec">
<blockquote>Nearly a third of the schools that participated in a Montana education tax credit program at the center of a controversial Supreme Court case maintain explicitly anti-LGBTQ policies, according to a HuffPost analysis.</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="content-list-component yr-content-list-text text" data-rapid-cpos="2" data-rapid-subsec="paragraph" data-rapid-parsed="subsec">
<blockquote>The program at the center of Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, which the Supreme Court is hearing later this month, provided tax credits to individuals and corporations that donated to private school scholarship groups. However, because Montana has a constitutional provision barring public dollars for religious schools ― and nearly all of the schools participating in the program were religious ― the Montana Supreme Court found the program unconstitutional and shut the program down in 2018.</blockquote>
</div>
The &#8220;anti-LGBTQ policies&#8221; on the books in these schools include student handbooks that say “God wonderfully and immutably creates each person as male or female” and “God created marriage to be exclusively the union of one man and one woman.” Some schools, such as Stillwater Christian School, even demand that “students and campus visitors must use restrooms, locker rooms, and changing facilities conforming with their biological sex.” Other schools, such as Foothills Community Christian School, says homosexual behavior is “sinful and offensive to God” while barring non-Christians from teaching.
<div class="content-list-component yr-content-list-text text" data-rapid-cpos="19" data-rapid-subsec="paragraph" data-rapid-parsed="subsec">
&#8220;Religious schools, in general, are not subject to the same anti-discrimination policies as public schools and are thus allowed to exclude students and employees based on sexual orientation or on religious grounds,&#8221; continued HuffPost. &#8220;Only one school voucher program in the country, in Maryland, forbids participating schools from discriminating based on sexual orientation.&#8221;
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, told reporters that the case could flip America&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-bladensburg-cross-memorial-case-supreme-josh-hammer">supposed</a> understanding of &#8220;separation of church and state&#8221; on its head.
“It will basically change over 200 years of practice in the United States,&#8221; said Weingarten.
The question over whether such private schools violate the civil rights of students and faculty has become a major controversy in recent years. Marcia McCormick, a professor of law and gender studies at Saint Louis University, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/can-religious-school-fire-gay-teacher-it-s-complicated-n1046291">argued to NBC News</a> that such institutions can be sued if Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act were to be interpreted as including sexual orientation.
“Title VII has an expansive definition of religion — not just of beliefs but also practices,” she explained. “There are a lot of rules in a lot of religions about how people ought to behave when it comes to what it means to be male and female, or to sexual or romantic activity.”
The Supreme Court has taken up consolidated cases this term that could decide whether Title VII indeed covers sexual orientation.
</div>

US-VOTE-ELECTION-IOWA-politics

Elizabeth Warren Bashes Christian Schools With ‘Anti-LGBTQ Policies’

Education

Elizabeth Warren

Judeo-Christian Values

Religion

Earlier this week, Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer joined &#8220;The Chad Prather Show&#8221; on BlazeTV for a wide-ranging (and oftentimes humorous) discussion with the eponymous host and Blaze Media resident cowboy, Chad Prather. The conversation ran the gamut of topics, covering such diverse terrain as impeachment, recent rumors and revelations pertaining to former National Security Advisor John Bolton, the debate over transgender pronouns, and &#8230; Chad&#8217;s traveling crew getting kicked out of a bar in Bakersfield, California.
The conversation kicked off around impeachment, with Prather asking Hammer why Republicans seem so opposed to calling witnesses in the current Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. Hammer said he wasn&#8217;t sure why Republicans are so opposed — a skepticism that the podcast host shared:
<blockquote>I don&#8217;t really understand why Republicans and the president are so opposed to witnesses. I mean, look, in theory, here&#8217;s how this is supposed to work. Okay, the House and Senate are supposed to &#8230; actually do what they&#8217;re &#8230; supposed to do and write bills and pass laws and all that stuff that the Constitution talks about.
It ain&#8217;t gonna happen this year because it&#8217;s very simple: The Democrats control the House, Republicans control the Senate, [and] it&#8217;s also an election year, everyone&#8217;s risk-averse, no one&#8217;s trying to stick his or her neck out, put their foot on the line. So in that context, I don&#8217;t really understand this Republican resistance to calling witnesses. Drag this thing out. How is Hunter Biden getting up there not going to help with the president and Republicans come November? I don&#8217;t see it.</blockquote>
The conversation quickly shifted to the news surrounding Bolton, with Hammer offering his take on what we know so far:
<blockquote>So the worst part is &#8230; The New York Times got a copy of his book before anyone in the administration did. You know, I&#8217;m not gonna say John Bolton had anything to do with that, but it&#8217;s pretty unforeseeable that John Bolton had nothing to do with that. That&#8217;s just not a good look.
And like you, I&#8217;m a longtime defender of John Bolton&#8217;s. &#8230; He&#8217;s a lifelong conservative, he really is. I mean, he went to Yale for both undergrad and law school. At Yale undergrad, he was a member of what the nerds of Yale call the Yale Political Union&#8217;s Party of the Right, which in their kind of nerdy political club is the most right-wing party possible. So he&#8217;s a lifelong Barry Goldwater-, Ronald Reagan-like conservative, so it&#8217;s a little weird to see what&#8217;s happening now.</blockquote>
Later in the conversation, the topic shifted to transgender pronouns in the federal courts — a topic that Hammer, a former judicial law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, wrote about earlier this week for <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/transgender-pronouns-fifth-circuit-rejects-them-and-lie-they-stand-on/">National Review</a>. Hammer explained the three reasons why he thinks conservatives must not cave on this issue:
<blockquote>There are &#8230; three reasons why I think we really should care. One is the truth, inherently, is worth defending. Truth should be defended for the sake of truth. I mean, that&#8217;s kind of historically speaking, the entire purpose of debate in the academy, going back to Socrates, Aristotle, going back to all the ancients. They literally engaged in this Socratic dialogue in order to reach the truth. So if we feel like we have the truth, then it&#8217;s worth defending for its own sake.
Second, language cannot change this much, and this drastically, and remain viable. Now, some words can change meaning over time, of course. And plenty of words do change meaning over time. Like, for example, &#8220;decimate&#8221; — the word &#8220;decimate&#8221; — back in the day, the letters &#8220;dec&#8221; mean 10, so it was literally to take out one out of ten of the opposing military. Today, it just means more generally to kind of wipe out. So words can change their meaning, but words as basic as pronouns, the building blocks of distinguishing, as you quite aptly put it, between male and female genitalia — that cannot change. Words like that just cannot change for the English language to be viable.
Third, and probably the most important reason &#8230; is because there are actually really bad side effects to the transgender movement. We saw it here in Texas with <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-father-of-7-year-old-trans-child-james-younger-speaks-out-before-gag-order/">James Younger</a>. We are encouraging the premature, preteen sexualization of children. We are encouraging children to choose their own gender and engaging in oftentimes-irreversible hormonal tampering — chemical castration, frankly, is really what&#8217;s going on here. There are really corrosive, actual real-life effects of this.</blockquote>
The whole lengthy conversation is available on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj804eZqF_M">YouTube</a>.
WATCH:
<iframe title="The Impeachment of an American President | Ep 191" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Dj804eZqF_M?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-at-national-review-the-fifth-circuit-rejects-the-lie-of-transgender-pronouns">Hammer At &#8216;National Review&#8217;: The Fifth Circuit Rejects The Lie Of Transgender Pronouns</a>
RELATED: <a href="http://lp.dailywire.com/getelectionwire/">Sign up here for Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer’s weekly newsletter on election news, polling data, and analysis: “Election Wire”</a>

Hammer on Chad Prather Show 1.27.20

WATCH: Hammer Breaks Down Impeachment, Bolton, Transgenderism On ‘The Chad Prather Show’

Children

Hunter Biden

Impeachment

John Bolton

U.S. Senate

Daily Wire Editor-at-Large Josh Hammer, who is a former judicial law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, has the following piece today at <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/transgender-pronouns-fifth-circuit-rejects-them-and-lie-they-stand-on/">National Review Online</a>.
Cultural progressives, who reject the very humanity of unborn children but confidently assure us that there are upward of <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/10930654/Facebooks-71-gender-options-come-to-UK-users.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-reader-unique-id="8">70 distinct genders</a>, tend to have an uneasy relationship with the truth. And the proliferation of transgender pronouns — the use of biologically inaccurate pronouns to describe those afflicted with gender dysphoria — is among the <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/transgender-pronouns-conservatives-should-not-use/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-reader-unique-id="9">more pernicious tools</a> in the broader arsenal that progressives use to have us question that truth.
Earlier this month, in U.S. v. Varner, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit boldly refused to appease those who would muddle truth. Over the dissent of a Clinton-nominated judge who used female pronouns in his opinion to refer to the biologically male defendant, the majority <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/transgender-pronoun-conflict-in-the-fifth-circuit/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-reader-unique-id="12">refused to subordinate</a> the integrity of the judiciary to a litigant who had moved to require the court to address him as something other than what plain English would indicate he is. In so doing, the Fifth Circuit panel has provided a roadmap for how public officials interested in preserving the commonality and vitality of the English language can resist contemporary progressivism’s attempts to obfuscate truth through the propagation of biologically inaccurate and linguistically imprecise transgender pronouns.
Writing for the Varner majority, Trump-nominated judge Kyle Duncan first observed that “no authority supports the proposition that we may require litigants, judges, court personnel, or anyone else to refer to gender-dysphoric litigants with pronouns matching their subjective gender identity.” Second, because “federal courts today are asked to decide cases that turn on hotly-debated issues of sex and gender identity,” Judge Duncan feared that the court’s use of subjectively felt but biologically inaccurate pronouns would “unintentionally convey” a “tacit approval of the litigant’s underlying legal position.” Third, referring to “Pronouns—a How To Guide,” a colorful five-column-by-nine-row matrix from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee LGBTQ+ Resource Center, Duncan argued that “deploying such neologisms” could “well turn out to be more complex than at first it might appear” and could “could hinder communication among the parties and the court.”
Ultimately, the panel majority logically “declined to enlist the federal judiciary in this quixotic undertaking.” Duncan’s courageous refusal to engage in it amounts, in progressive parlance, to “deadnaming” or “misgendering.” For transgender activists and the rest of the “woke” mob, such rogue behavior is akin to malicious aggression. But it is reflective of both the biological truth that sex is immutable and the linguistic truth that, for a language to remain viable, words must have readily discernible meanings.
To capitulate to the Pandora’s box of transgender pronouns is to pretend that, exceedingly rare intersex exceptions aside, there is more to sexual differentiation than the duality of chromosomal male and chromosomal female. To yield to the soft tyranny of transgender pronouns is to pretend that gender dysphoria is an anodyne lifestyle on which societal legitimacy should be conferred, not a psychological malady requiring compassion and psychological treatment. It is to act as if simple words that have meant the same thing for centuries can change their meanings overnight without ruinous consequence for the language’s durability. It is to encourage the <a href="https://time.com/5767844/transgender-youth-legislation/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-reader-unique-id="17">premature sexualization</a> of children and accede to <a href="https://transcare.ucsf.edu/article/information-testosterone-hormone-therapy" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-reader-unique-id="18">often irreversible</a> tampering of their hormones. It is to undermine the ancient Hippocratic oath: “First, do no harm.” Paul McHugh, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, maintains that to encourage “surgical intervention is in reality to collaborate with and promote a mental disorder.” &#8230;
<a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/transgender-pronouns-fifth-circuit-rejects-them-and-lie-they-stand-on/">Read the rest here</a>.

Judge holding gavel, close-up

Hammer At ‘National Review’: The Fifth Circuit Rejects The Lie Of Transgender Pronouns

Earlier this month, Netflix premiered a new show co-created and starring famed drag queen RuPaul, called &#8220;AJ and the Queen.&#8221;
In the show&#8217;s second episode, drag queens relate inappropriately to a 10-year-old gender-confused girl named AJ brought around the performers by RuPaul. One of the men dressed in drag is admonished by RuPaul for &#8220;tucking&#8221; his &#8220;junk&#8221; in front of the girl. Another drag queen refers to the child as a &#8220;top,&#8221; a sexual term for the person on top during sexual intercourse.
The disturbing commentary exchanged before the boy doesn&#8217;t stop there. One drag queen suggests AJ&#8217;s character is a product of closed down Planned Parenthood abortion clinics.
The show, according to the <a href="https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/elise-ehrhard/2020/01/13/sick-rupauls-netflix-show-calls-10-year-old-child-sexual-top">Media Research Center</a>, &#8220;is about a 10-year-old child who accompanies Robert (RuPaul), a gay male drag performer who goes by &#8216;Ruby Red,&#8217; as he travels across the country performing in drag shows at mostly gay bars.&#8221;
&#8220;The child, AJ (Izzy G.), is the daughter of a drug-addicted prostitute,&#8221; the outlet explains. &#8220;She wants to be a boy &#8216;because people leave boys alone.&#8217; She hides her long hair under a boyish hat and does her best to look and act like a 10-year-old boy instead of a girl. The show is one long exposure of this child to sexualized adult situations in which she does not belong, all under the guise of the drag queen and the child &#8216;bonding&#8217; cross-country.&#8221;
Below is a transcript of the alarming exchange in episode two, via the Media Research Center (emphasis added):
<blockquote>Magda: Well, look what the p***y dragged in. And you have a child. I knew closing those Planned Parenthood clinics would create a problem. [Laughs.]
Magda and Robert: Mwah. Mwah.
Robert: Girl, this is AJ. AJ, this is Magda. One of Pittsburgh’s finest queens.
Edie: Which tells you a lot about the Pittsburg scene.
Robert: Uh, maybe don’t tuck in your junk in front of a minor.
Edie: There are no miners in Pennsylvania, no matter what the president promised.
Robert and Edie: Mwah. Mwah.
Robert: AJ, this is Edie. She used to be pretty.
Magda: I’m still pretty thought, right?
Robert: Well…
Alma Joy: Wait till you…
AJ: What’s his problem?
Robert: That’s Alma Joy and, trust me, she may have a couple of nuts, but there is no joy&#8230;
Robert: Good to see you, Alma.
Alma Joy: Have we met?
Robert: Oh, okay. No high road. Michelle Obama taught us nothing?
Alma Joy: Surprised to see you all the way out here in the sticks, Ruby. Wasn’t that what you called us? I guess she’d know all about sticks. She has that big one stuck up her a**.
Magda: You say that like that’s a bad thing.
Alma Joy: What are you even doing in Pittsburgh? I thought you were opening your own New York club.
Robert: Oh, I am. We’re in the middle of huge renovations and it is going to be major.
Man: Here you go, Edie.
Edie: Oh, Ruby, girl, there are burgers at the bar. Are you hungy?
AJ: I am. Take me. Come on. Let’s go.
Edie: Okay. Follow me. First kid I ever met that’s a top.</blockquote>
WATCH:
<iframe title="MRC TV video player" src="https://www.mrctv.org/embed/546290" width="640" height="360" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>

RuPaul

Drag Queen ‘Tucks Junk’ In Front Of ‘Trans’ Child, Refers To Her As Sexual Term ‘Top’ In New Netflix Show

Sexual Abuse

Sexual Harassment

When Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947, he was subjected to racist jeers from fans, discrimination from some of his teammates, death threats, and sometimes physical abuse. During his first year on the Brooklyn Dodgers, a player from an opposing team intentionally slid into him cleats-first, leaving a gash in his leg. This treatment was all due to the simple fact that he was a black man playing baseball. His willingness to endure heckles, taunts, and worse, while blazing a trail for other black athletes to follow, has led many people to label him the bravest athlete in sports history.
But now, according to the gay sports outlet Outsports, Robinson&#8217;s reign has come to an end. Cyd Zeigler, writing for the publication, has <a href="https://www.outsports.com/2020/1/14/21062012/fallon-fox-trans-athlete-mma-courage-brave">declared</a> that the bravest athlete of all time, the sports figure who best embodies the virtues of courage and heroism, is a biological male who beat the hell out of a bunch of women in MMA. Zeigler gave the &#8220;trans&#8221; athlete Fallon Fox that moniker in a recent article, explaining that the professional woman-beater &#8220;is an indelible part of LGBTQ sports history&#8221; and has &#8220;opened possibilities for trans athletes in women’s sports that will be felt for generations.&#8221; Why any of this requires courage — much less the most courage of any athlete ever — is never explained.
It also isn&#8217;t explained how courage is involved when a biological male, with his testosterone and greater muscle mass and denser bone structure, <a href="https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/transgender-female-boxer-gives-female-opponent-concussion-breaks-her-eye-so">fractures the skull of a female opponent</a> and leaves her lying on the mat, concussed, and bleeding. One would think that the female opponent at least has more courage than the man who is beating her half to death.
<iframe title="AOC&#039;s Cartoon Version Of Reality | The Matt Walsh Show Ep. 410" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tnIug6FuTAw?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
We&#8217;re assured that it&#8217;s okay for a male to physically brutalize a female because females sometimes brutalize each other. This is how Fox himself justified it. &#8220;I’m not the first female MMA fighter who’s broken another fighter’s bones,&#8221; he said. &#8220;And people will of course, because I’m trans, hold it up as this devastating thing that couldn’t possibly happen if I weren’t trans. But there are many different examples of similar things happening.&#8221;
He&#8217;s right, of course. He&#8217;s not the first female fighter to break another fighter&#8217;s bones. Mostly because he&#8217;s not a female fighter at all. Notice here how the arbitrary sex versus gender distinction has been collapsed and disregarded. The large, muscular man with a penis and XY chromosomal structure isn&#8217;t just a woman by gender. He is, in fact, a female.
Don&#8217;t count on Zeigler to grapple with that difficulty. We are just supposed to dutifully applaud, accepting at face value whatever lame excuses and justifications are put forward. Zeigler doesn&#8217;t present actual arguments in favor of allowing men like Fox to fight women because there are no arguments available to him. It is objectively wrong on every conceivable level — morally, ethically, scientifically. A coherent defense of the practice cannot be offered, and never has been offered. The most the other side of this debate can do is make vague emotional appeals, hoping we&#8217;ll forget that the women being abused and cheated have emotions, too. But their emotions are irrelevant, we&#8217;re told. Just as science is irrelevant. Just as fairness is irrelevant. All that matters, for some reason, is how this one guy feels. And his insistence on doing what makes him feel good, at any cost, is admirable. Not just admirable, but also heroic. Not just heroic but the most heroic thing anyone has ever done or could ever do.
Heroic. Courageous. Beautiful. Keep repeating it until you believe it.

woman MMA

WALSH: Male Trans MMA Fighter Who Beat Up Women Dubbed ‘Bravest Athlete In History’

Sports

The news media, which never tires of cake-related controversies, spent some time last week ginning up outrage towards a Christian school in Louisville, Kentucky. According to the headlines, the stodgy bigots over at Whitefield Academy expelled a 15-year-old student for the crime of eating a multi-colored birthday cake.
The headlines were breathless and unanimous:
<a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=11&amp;ved=2ahUKEwiUrP3c8pLnAhVPSN8KHSYnDwAQFjAKegQIAhAB&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Freligion%2F2020%2F01%2F15%2Frainbowcakewhitefieldacademy%2F&amp;usg=AOvVaw16WHM_dWE0BANQg_rOvYae">Christian school expels teen after she posed with rainbow birthday cake, mother says.</a>
<a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/whitefield-academy-kentucky-christian-school-expels-15-year-old-over-rainbow-cake-mom-says">Kentucky Christian School Expels 15-Year-Old Over Rainbow Cake, Mom Says.</a>
<a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/01/14/kentucky-christian-school-expels-girl-gay-rainbow-cake-mom-says/4468374002/">Christian school expelled student over a &#8216;gay&#8217; rainbow cake, family says.</a>
<a href="https://nypost.com/2020/01/15/teen-expelled-from-christian-school-after-rainbow-shirt-cake-photo/">Teen expelled from Christian school after rainbow shirt, cake photo.</a>
<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/christian-school-whitefield-academy-expels-teen-girl-rainbow-sweater-birthday-cake-violate-christian-values/">Christian school expels teen for rainbow sweater and birthday cake that violate &#8220;Christian values.&#8221;</a>
And so on.
Some of the headlines include the &#8220;mother says&#8221; qualifier, while others simply assert the family&#8217;s claims as objective fact. But in either case, the point is to paint the school as clear villains in the situation.
Here&#8217;s how the body of the CBS report, linked above, frames the story:
<blockquote>A teenager from Kentucky celebrated her 15th birthday last month by blowing out the candles on a rainbow cake while wearing a rainbow sweater. After her mother posted a photo from her birthday party on Facebook, the teen was expelled from her Christian high school.
<div class="ad-wrapper">
<div id="mpu-plus-top-right-rail" class="ad-mpu-plus-top-right-rail lazypreload lazyloaded" data-ad="mpu-plus-top-right-rail" data-ad-unit="&quot;mpu-plus-top-right-rail&quot;" data-google-query-id="CMmu34P0kucCFdIchwodfTsOaw">
<div id="google_ads_iframe_/8264/aw-cbsnews/us_4__container__">Kayla Kenney was a freshman at Whitefield Academy, a private Christian school in Louisville, until she was expelled last week. Her mother said the school called her daughter&#8217;s sweater and cake &#8220;lifestyle violations.&#8221;</div>
</div>
</div>
Kenney&#8217;s mom, Kimberly Alford, told the Louisville Courier-Journal that she received an email from Whitefield Academy&#8217;s head of school, Bruce Jacobson, expelling her daughter. He wrote that the picture she posted on Facebook &#8220;demonstrates a posture of morality and cultural acceptance contrary to that of Whitefield Academy&#8217;s beliefs.&#8221;
While the rainbow flag is a symbol of LGBTQ rights, Alford said when she ordered the cake, the design was described as having &#8220;assorted colors&#8221; and was not meant to have a deeper meaning.</blockquote>
Already, even without any more information than what the media has deigned to provide, a thoughtful person should be extremely skeptical. It is not a simple or easy process to expel a student. At a private school, the expulsion comes with a financial cost. You aren&#8217;t just kicking the student to the curb, but her tuition alongside her. Why would a school go through that trouble and absorb that cost over something as trivial as a cake? And if they do issue expulsions so easily, shouldn&#8217;t there be dozens of other stories of students getting tossed out for similarly arbitrary reasons? There are almost always two sides to a story like this. Could this be the exception where the first version of the story, as presented by a partisan for one side of the dispute, is entirely accurate and faithful to the facts? Maybe. But probably not.
<iframe title="Another Media Narrative Falls Apart | The Matt Walsh Show Ep. 408" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4u2ETYGS0Z8?start=359&#038;feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Social media is not a place for this sort of healthy skepticism, so thousands of people hopped on the outrage train and issued angry tweets about the stupidity and pettiness of this school, in particular, and Christian schools, in general, and Christians, in general. And then, after the reputation of Whitefield Academy had been sufficiently injured, the train moved on and the media lost interest. The outrage mob always descends like a tornado, rips everything to shreds, and dissipates as quickly as it formed. By the time the other side of the story is presented, nobody cares any longer.
Predictably, the other side of the story in this case, <a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-rainbow-cake-girl-what-the-media-are-hiding/">as reported by Rod Dreher over the weekend</a>, paints a very different picture from the one offered by the family and the media. After looking at the student&#8217;s social media posts, talking to insiders at the school, and reading the school&#8217;s public statements, Dreher reports that the student was allegedly a perpetual troublemaker who had been given numerous warnings about her behavior. She also allegedly promoted the LGBT lifestyle both at school and in her social media posts. The rainbow cake and sweater were a part of this pattern — and by far not the most egregious example of it — and it is this pattern of flouting the rules and violating school policy that got her expelled. The apparently purposeful trolling she did with the cake may have been the last straw, but it is dishonest to report that it was the only straw.
School principal Dr. Bruce Jacobson, while limited in his ability to defend his actions due to confidentiality concerns, <a href="https://www.wave3.com/2020/01/15/whitefield-academy-defends-decision-expel-student-after-picture-rainbow-sweater-birthday-cake/">explained</a> in a letter to parents that the student had been specifically warned &#8220;that any further promotion, celebration, or any other actions and attitudes that are counter to Whitefield’s philosophy would not be tolerated.&#8221; I suppose you could choose to believe that the rainbow cake and sweater weren&#8217;t intended to promote or celebrate anything, and didn&#8217;t have any &#8220;deeper meaning&#8221; at all, as the mother contends, but Dreher&#8217;s report makes that extremely hard to believe. From his piece:
<blockquote>When Alford says her daughter “is no angel,” and confirms that she has had “disciplinary issues,” she’s understating matters. My understanding is that Kayla Kenney had a long, specific list of repeated infractions — bullying, disrespecting teachers, vaping in school (as Alford acknowledges), and so forth. Part of what she has allegedly done is promoting LGBT consciousness in the school, including aggression on that front. I’m trying to be delicate here, but I can tell you that she has transgressed against other students on this front, to promote bisexuality. For example, she allegedly drew rainbows and wrote slogans like “bi pride” on other kids’ papers, and gave at least two different girls the impression that she was sexually harassing them. Kayla has been presenting herself as gay on her Instagram account.</blockquote>
Granted, many people will feel that expelling a student for promoting the LGBT lifestyle isn&#8217;t any better than expelling her for eating a cake. But one&#8217;s personal feelings about Christian teaching on homosexuality are irrelevant. This is a private Christian school. In that role, it understandably seeks to advance Christian teaching on all matters, including sexuality. If you do not agree with those teachings, if you think those teachings are barbaric and bigoted and so on, you are quite free to attend any other school. Nobody forced this student&#8217;s parents to enroll her in this particular academic institution. Louisville is not some outpost in the wilderness with no other schools around for hundreds of miles. This family must have had many options. They chose the one place where waving a gay flag will get you into trouble. They gave this place their money. They signed an agreement swearing to follow its rules. And then, apparently, they decided they didn&#8217;t like the rules anymore. Whose fault is that? Not the school&#8217;s, as far as I can tell.

A slice of rainbow cake

WALSH: Media Claims A Christian School Expelled A Student For Her Rainbow Birthday Cake. Now The Truth Has Come Out.

Fake News

Kentucky

Media

<div class="content-list-component yr-content-list-text text" data-rapid-cpos="1" data-rapid-subsec="paragraph" data-rapid-parsed="subsec">
In a historic Sunday night episode of &#8220;Batwoman,&#8221; the lady caped crusader came out as a lesbian to Gotham City, thereby making her sexual orientation official.
According to <a href="https://deadline.com/2020/01/batwoman-comes-out-ruby-roses-cw-superhero-tells-gotham-shes-a-lesbian-1202835688/#comments">Deadline</a>, the midseason premiere episode, titled &#8220;How Queer Everything Is Today,&#8221; featured actress Ruby Rose&#8217;s Batwoman revealing her sexual identity after learning about a teenager whose parents refuse to accept her sexuality.
&#8220;The big reveal came in a magazine article published by CatCo, and the scoop belonged to none other than Kara Danvers, a.k.a. Supergirl (Melissa Benoist), the title hero from Batwoman’s Arrowverse sister show,&#8221; the outlet reported of the big moment.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
&quot;What&#39;s next for Lena? Lena Luthor spotted in Gotham&quot; What was Lena doing there?! jajaja and, also, Kara wrote the article of Batwoman being a lesbian!!!! Kara and Kate BROTP! <a href="https://t.co/TH2QbLMV3B">pic.twitter.com/TH2QbLMV3B</a>
&mdash; 𝗗𝗿. 𝗗𝗮𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀 (@lKDanvers_) <a href="https://twitter.com/lKDanvers_/status/1219082978292391937?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 20, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div>
Speaking with <a href="https://ew.com/tv/2020/01/19/batwoman-coming-out-caroline-dries-1x10/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-ylk="subsec:paragraph;cpos:5;elm:context_link;itc:0" data-rapid-parsed="slk">Entertainment Weekly</a>, series showrunner Caroline Dries, who wrote the episode, said she wanted the character to &#8220;stand in her truth.&#8221;
“For me, it was so important for this character to stand in her truth,” said Dries. “The girl underneath the costume is so comfortable with who she is and so comfortable with being truthful, and she never really has been in the closet.”
<div class="content-list-component yr-content-list-text text" data-rapid-cpos="1" data-rapid-subsec="paragraph" data-rapid-parsed="subsec">
The character Batwoman first came onto the comic book scene in the 1950s as a potential <a href="https://comicvine.gamespot.com/kathy-kane/4005-81174/">love interest</a> for Batman, but she eventually took a backseat in the 1960s and did not become a lesbian until being reintroduced in DC’s “<a href="https://comicvine.gamespot.com/batwoman/4005-9052/">New 52</a>.” A previous Hollywood Reporter <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/batwoman-series-poll-elseworlds-recap-1168339">poll</a> showed that 85% (more than 2,000 people) of respondents wanted a separate “Batwoman” series.
Though Batwoman certainly has her own woke pedigree, SJWs were reportedly upset over the openly gay Ruby Rose’s casting, prompting her to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/34435/ruby-rose-quits-twitter-after-leftist-critics-emily-zanotti">leave social media</a> after enough people complained she was “not gay enough” to play the title character.
“A #RecastBatwoman hashtag started circulating, with people also wondering why the role couldn’t have gone to a lesser-known LGBTQ+ actress in need of an acting break,” <a href="https://www.glamour.com/story/ruby-rose-quit-twitter-after-getting-bullied-about-her-batwoman-casting">Glamour reported</a> at the time. “Critics also accused Rose of not being a lesbian since she also refers to herself as gender-fluid.”
In response, Rose said she could not believe people were actually insinuating she was not gay enough when her entire career has been people accusing her of being too gay. “Where on earth did ‘Ruby is not a lesbian, therefore she can’t be Batwoman’ come from — has to be the funniest most ridiculous thing I’ve ever read,” the actress tweeted at the time. “I came out at 12? And have for the past five years had to deal with ‘she’s too gay’ how do y’all flip it like that? I didn’t change.”
The CW network broke barriers on the SJW-themed “Supergirl” with the arrival of Nia Nal, the first transgender hero in television history, played by transgender actor Nicole Maines and based on the <a href="http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Nura_Nal_(Pre-Zero_Hour)" data-rapid-parsed="slk" data-ylk="subsec:paragraph;cpos:2;elm:context_link;itc:0">DC Comics character Nura Nal</a>. Sometimes called “Dream Girl,” the character Nia Nal is a humanoid alien that also sees into the future.
Marvel has separately announced that phase four in its cinematic universe will feature more LGBTQ representation, starting with “The Eternals,&#8221; which will introduce the universe’s<a href="https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/12/16/the-eternals-marvel-openly-gay-superhero-trailer-mcu-brian-tyree-henry-angelina-jolie-gemma-chan/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> first openly gay superhero, Phastos</a>. The character will be married to a man and will be portrayed by actor Brian Tyree Henry.
</div>

Celebrity Sightings in Los Angeles &#8211; September 11, 20199

HISTORIC: ‘Batwoman’ Tells Gotham City She’s A ‘Lesbian’ In Latest Episode

Lesbian

Social Justice

On Wednesday, a divided panel of the New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled, in 2–1 fashion, that a transgender litigant — a biological male who suffers from gender dysphoria and subjectively feels that he is a female — cannot require a court to address him using female pronouns.
The case, <a href="http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/19/19-40016-CR0.pdf">U.S. v. Varner</a>, pitted Reagan nominee Judge Jerry E. Smith and Trump nominee Judge S. Kyle Duncan in the panel majority, against Clinton nominee Judge James L. Dennis as the lone dissenter. What made the opinion particularly fascinating was that Duncan&#8217;s majority opinion used male pronouns, whereas Dennis&#8217; dissent used female pronouns.
Alas, the latest and most disputatious, headline-grabbing front of our ceaseless culture war has fully hit the federal judiciary.
As highlighted by legal blogger extraordinaire and Ethics and Public Policy Center President Ed Whelan <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/transgender-pronoun-conflict-in-the-fifth-circuit/">noted yesterday</a> at National Review&#8217;s &#8220;Bench Memos&#8221; blog, Duncan&#8217;s majority opinion provided three distinct reasons for denying the plaintiff Varner&#8217;s motion for the &#8220;use [of] female pronouns when addressing&#8221; him:
<blockquote>
First, no authority supports the proposition that we may require litigants, judges, court personnel, or anyone else to refer to gender-dysphoric litigants with pronouns matching their subjective gender identity. &#8230;
Second, if a court were to compel the use of particular pronouns at the invitation of litigants, it could raise delicate questions about judicial impartiality. &#8230; Increasingly, federal courts today are asked to decide cases that turn on hotly-debated issues of sex and gender identity. In cases like these, a court may have the most benign motives in honoring a party’s request to be addressed with pronouns matching his “deeply felt, inherent sense of [his] gender.” Yet in doing so, the court may unintentionally convey its tacit approval of the litigant’s underlying legal position.
Third, ordering use of a litigant’s preferred pronouns may well turn out to be more complex than at first it might appear. &#8230; [O]ne university has created this widely-circulated pronoun usage guide for gender-dysphoric persons.
</blockquote>
Duncan then inserted the &#8220;pronoun usage guide for gender-dysphoric persons,&#8221; borrowed from the &#8220;LGBTQ+ Resource Center&#8221; at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which is a colorful five-by-nine matrix. This is potentially confusing, to say the least, as Duncan noted, and &#8220;[d]eploying such neologisms could hinder communication among the parties and the court.&#8221;
Duncan then referenced New York City&#8217;s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/05/17/you-can-be-fined-for-not-calling-people-ze-or-hir-if-thats-the-pronoun-they-demand-that-you-use/">regulation</a> that &#8220;prohibit[s] &#8216;intentional or repeated refusal&#8217; to use pronouns including &#8216;them/them/theirs or ze/hir&#8217; after person has &#8216;made clear&#8217; his preferred pronouns&#8221; as an example of his point that &#8220;[w]hen local governments have sought to enforce pronoun usage, they have had to make refined distinctions based on matters such as the types of allowable pronouns and the intent of the &#8216;misgendering&#8217; offender.'&#8221;
Ultimately, Duncan concluded, &#8220;[c]ourts would have to do the same. We decline to enlist the federal judiciary in this quixotic undertaking.&#8221;
It was something of a proverbial &#8220;mic drop&#8221; moment for the Louisiana-based judge, who has been on the Fifth Circuit for less than two years. Formerly the general counsel for the prominent Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, Duncan was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in April 2018 by a narrow 50–47 margin.
Along with fellow Trump-nominated Fifth Circuit Judges Andrew S. Oldham and James C. Ho (for whom, in the interest of full disclosure, I previously served as a judicial law clerk), Duncan has frequently been mentioned as someone who should be added to any new Supreme Court nominee &#8220;list&#8221; produced by the Trump administration. In fact, in some ways, Duncan seemed to be following the lead of his colleague Ho. Duncan&#8217;s opinion cited twice a March 2019 opinion, <a href="http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/16/16-51148-CV0.pdf">Gibson v. Collier</a>, written by Ho, which similarly used male pronouns to refer to a biological male individual who subjectively felt that he was a woman.
Good for Judge Duncan for both adhering to the letter of the law and for defiantly standing athwart the modern cultural Left&#8217;s pernicious insistence on gaslighting the American citizenry into thinking that words may not mean what they so clearly do, in fact, mean.

US. Fifth Circuit Court Of Appeals

Culture War In The Courts: Federal Appeals Panel Rejects Transgender Pronouns

Over the weekend, a gay conservative and right-wing college group leader <a href="https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2020/01/gay-right-winger-protested-drag-queens-marriage-equality-died-suicide/#.Xhyx7DGCCPA.twitter">reportedly</a> took his own life after receiving abuse online for publicly opposing &#8220;drag queen story hour&#8221; events for children.
Twenty-one-year-old Wilson Gavin led a group of 15–20 protestors from the University of Queensland’s Liberal National Club (which is right-wing) to protest a &#8220;drag queen story hour&#8221; event being held at the Brisbane Square Library in Australia this weekend, according to <a href="https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2020/01/gay-right-winger-protested-drag-queens-marriage-equality-died-suicide/#.Xhyx7DGCCPA.twitter">LGBTQ Nation</a>.
Gavin and fellow right-wingers chanted that “drag queens are not for kids” and voiced opposition to the indoctrination of children via “radical gender theories,&#8221; the outlet noted.
The videos went viral online and Gavin became a target for abuse, receiving &#8220;savage criticism and abuse from those purporting to represent the LGBTI community and others on social media,&#8221; <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/drag-queen-protest-has-tragic-fallout/news-story/e32fba37f6341b2ff48c5122704f6016">The Australian</a> reported.
Hinting at the abuse Gavin reportedly received following the protest, Liberal National Party of Queensland member Dawson George Christensen announced that he was leaving &#8220;broken&#8221; Twitter for good.
&#8220;Suicide happens when Twitter keyboard warriors pile on an individual for a political protest,” Christensen tweeted. “Twitter is broken. It’s for ad hominem attacks &amp; pile-ons, not real discourse. And it’s aided &amp; abetted by the media. I can’t delete the media but I am deleting my Twitter account. Bye.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
George Christensen says he&#39;s quitting Twitter, saying it&#39;s &quot;broken&quot; <a href="https://t.co/XjU3LQWLb9">pic.twitter.com/XjU3LQWLb9</a>
&mdash; Josh Butler (@JoshButler) <a href="https://twitter.com/JoshButler/status/1216581913915187200?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 13, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Gavin died by suicide over the weekend, <a href="https://www.starobserver.com.au/news/story-time-protest-leader-wilson-gavin-dead/191866">The Star Observer</a> of Australia reported Monday: &#8220;Gavin was found dead at Chelmer Railway Station this morning at 7:07am. Ambulance officers who attended say he died from critical injuries, but have provided no further details.&#8221;
As highlighted by Federalist writer and openly gay conservative Chad Felix Greene, folks in the LGBT community celebrated the young man&#8217;s death. Some of the screenshots captured by Greene reveal Gavin being trashed for having supposed &#8220;self-hatred,&#8221; while other commenters emphasized that they have &#8220;absolutely no sympathy&#8221; for the conservative.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
<a href="https://t.co/uxt5xZ1I3Z">pic.twitter.com/uxt5xZ1I3Z</a>
&mdash; Chad Felix Greene (@chadfelixg) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadfelixg/status/1216784517815504899?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 13, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
<a href="https://t.co/dzwQApSw7s">pic.twitter.com/dzwQApSw7s</a>
&mdash; Chad Felix Greene (@chadfelixg) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadfelixg/status/1216784527433064448?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 13, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
<a href="https://t.co/1lNaKz6cSz">pic.twitter.com/1lNaKz6cSz</a>
&mdash; Chad Felix Greene (@chadfelixg) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadfelixg/status/1216784535276466179?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 13, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
<a href="https://t.co/W1qRAB4SO1">pic.twitter.com/W1qRAB4SO1</a>
&mdash; Chad Felix Greene (@chadfelixg) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadfelixg/status/1216784548396224513?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 13, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
<a href="https://t.co/IQoelMXxol">pic.twitter.com/IQoelMXxol</a>
&mdash; Chad Felix Greene (@chadfelixg) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadfelixg/status/1216784558772887553?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 13, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
<a href="https://t.co/98Z8AuyN9J">pic.twitter.com/98Z8AuyN9J</a>
&mdash; Chad Felix Greene (@chadfelixg) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadfelixg/status/1216784568545660933?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 13, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
<a href="https://t.co/ohegiQQY3H">pic.twitter.com/ohegiQQY3H</a>
&mdash; Chad Felix Greene (@chadfelixg) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadfelixg/status/1216787591909068800?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 13, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
<a href="https://t.co/UvdrxrHflA">pic.twitter.com/UvdrxrHflA</a>
&mdash; Chad Felix Greene (@chadfelixg) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadfelixg/status/1216787649924620288?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 13, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
<a href="https://t.co/n9jxNi3Irm">pic.twitter.com/n9jxNi3Irm</a>
&mdash; Chad Felix Greene (@chadfelixg) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadfelixg/status/1216787741259726849?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 13, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
<a href="https://t.co/kFD5D4WNdd">pic.twitter.com/kFD5D4WNdd</a>
&mdash; Chad Felix Greene (@chadfelixg) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadfelixg/status/1216787814467219457?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 13, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
<a href="https://t.co/Eg2HcAFro6">pic.twitter.com/Eg2HcAFro6</a>
&mdash; Chad Felix Greene (@chadfelixg) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadfelixg/status/1216787900920205313?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 13, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
<a href="https://t.co/KiUmx8BoxK">pic.twitter.com/KiUmx8BoxK</a>
&mdash; Chad Felix Greene (@chadfelixg) <a href="https://twitter.com/chadfelixg/status/1216787994725822466?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 13, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Notably, one of the drag queen performers shared kind words of support to Gavin&#8217;s family following the news of his passing.
“My heart goes out to the family and friends of the affected,” wrote Johnny Valkyrie via Facebook. “If the family are reading this please know that I support you, and I am here to gather support and I know you are good people.”
&#8220;To those of you who follow me,&#8221; continued Valkyrie, &#8220;if you require support, please reach out to community services and hotlines which are freely available￼ to the community. I cannot say anymore at this stage. ￼￼￼￼￼￼I have to reflect on the events, heal, and extend my love to the community.&#8221;
According to The Australian, Gavin was a high-profile student activist who &#8220;was forthright in his ­opposition to same-sex marriage in 2017, giving interviews in the national media and organising protests backing a No vote in the plebiscite held to decide the issue.&#8221;
&#8220;His role in that campaign ­attracted vociferous criticism, but he insisted there were thousands of gay people like himself who ­opposed same-sex marriage,&#8221; noted the outlet.
&#8220;They hate me because I’m a conservative, and they hate me more because I’m a gay conservative,” Gavin said during an interview with Sky News.
“I’m not a homophobe,&#8221; he noted. &#8220;I love gay men. You can’t call me a homophobe just because I’m opposed to same-sex marriage.”

red remors &#8211; stock photo

Gay Conservative Reportedly Kills Himself After Being Harassed For Publicly Opposing Drag Queen Story Hour. Celebrations Erupt Online.

Conservatism

Suicide

Political observers in the year 2020 know that, for the Democratic Party and the broader political Left alike, intersectionality often reigns supreme. For those still wondering what exactly &#8220;intersectionality&#8221; is, Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro has produced a helpful explanatory video on the topic:
<iframe title="What Is Intersectionality?" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rc7VUoytoU4?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&#8220;Intersectionality is a form of identity politics in which the value of your opinion depends on how many victim groups you belong to,&#8221; Shapiro <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ben-shapiro-what-intersectionality-jacob-airey">explained</a>. &#8220;At the bottom of the totem pole is the person everybody loves to hate: The straight, white male. And who’s at the top? Well, it’s very hard to say, because new groups claim victim status all the time. No one can keep track.&#8221;
Alas, it should come as no surprise that contemporary Democrats would rally around what is perhaps one of the most readily identifiable sub-identity groups boasting immense &#8220;intersectional&#8221; street credibility: The transgender illegal alien.
&#8220;House Democrats plan to call on a key immigration agency to release all transgender people who are currently being detained, arguing that the U.S. has failed to follow guidelines to protect individuals who face more perilous conditions in detention than other migrants,&#8221; The Hill <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/477954-lawmakers-to-call-on-ice-to-release-all-transgender-detainees">reported</a> yesterday.
The outlet then reported on the precise contents of the early copy of the letter it obtained. The letter will be sent to Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Matthew Albence. Per <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/477954-lawmakers-to-call-on-ice-to-release-all-transgender-detainees">The Hill</a>, the letter reads, in relevant part:
<blockquote>We write to demand the release of all transgender people currently detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Transgender migrants and asylum seekers are particularly vulnerable to sexual harassment, solitary confinement, physical assault, and medical neglect. These inhumane conditions and systematic abuses are evidenced in countless reports and accounts by formally detained people.</blockquote>
According to the outlet, the letter cites research from left-wing organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign, Amnesty International, and the Center for American Progress in order to argue that &#8220;due to their gender identity, transgender migrants are more likely to face &#8216;the pervasive use of solitary confinement&#8217; and that they are &#8217;97 times more likely to be sexually victimized&#8217; compared to &#8216;their cis-gender and straight counterparts in detention.'&#8221;
The effort is being led by Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL), who TheBlaze <a href="https://www.theblaze.com/news/house-democrats-want-ice-to-release-all-transgender-detainees">notes</a> is of the belief that ICE is actually required to release all transgender detainees. In order to advance that claim, the letter cites a 2015 ICE memo and the Department of Homeland Security&#8217;s 2020 appropriations bill.
&#8220;Quigley&#8217;s office is working to get lawmakers&#8217; signatures on the letter and expects to send it to acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf and ICE Director Matt Albence later this week,&#8221; the Washington Examiner <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/house-democrats-to-ask-ice-to-release-all-transgender-immigrants-in-custody">reports</a>.
The year 2019 was a busy year for ICE, especially over the first six months. Record numbers of illegal aliens seemed to flood over America&#8217;s porous southern border on a seemingly monthly basis, although the tide has stemmed over the <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/month-decline-unauthorized-border-crossings-nearing-million/story?id=66134521">past few months</a>. As the 2020 election heats up, President Donald Trump is continuing to emphasize border security and immigration enforcement as key political priorities.

Menu