News

Tennessee Senate candidates Phil Bredesen and Marsha Blackburn differ on sexual harassment

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A conservative lady is running for Senate in Tennessee
A conservative lady is running for Senate in Tennessee

Let’s take a look at the differing records of the two leading candidates for the open Senate seat in Tennessee on the issues of sexual harassment and sexual assault. First, the Democrat candidate Phil Bredesen and then second, the Republican candidate Marsha Blackburn.

Here’s the Washington Free Beacon.

Excerpt:

The Tennessean, a Nashville-based publication owned by Gannett, first began investigating the ethical processes of Bredesen’s office after the May 2005 news that a top official appointed by Bredesen was being suspended for workplace harassment. Reporting on the incident proved difficult as state investigators shredded all the notes taken during the investigation, with the top investigator admitting to being “keenly aware” that documentation could later be requested as public records.

The details of the 2005 harassment claims against Mack Cooper, Bredesen’s senior adviser for legislation and policy, were never revealed.

Bredesen denied that shredding documents was part of a “cover up.” Instead he argued it was part of an effort to protect the identities of victims. He admitted, however, that there was no way to prove his point.

“There’s nothing to be covered up here,” Bredesen told the AP in reference to the Cooper case. “I don’t have any way of proving that to you.”

Equally damning for Bredesen’s office was the case of Quenton White, appointed commissioner of Tennessee’s Department of Corrections by Bredesen shortly after he was elected governor in 2002.

White resigned from the post in July 2005, just two months after Cooper’s suspension, due to “mounting questions about a sexual harassment allegation against him, his handling of a sexual harassment case against his executive assistant, and circumstances surrounding his relationship with a former subordinate,” the Tennessean reported.

White, reporters discovered, had been accused of sexual harassment a year before his resignation. Bredesen confirmed the 2004 sexual assault allegation but said investigators found “no corroboration” of the claim.

Bredesen again had to explain to reporters, however, that he could not give any proof for his statement because the top investigator shredded her notes and had no written report on what was found.

[…]The Tennessean‘s then editor, Everett J. Mitchell II, slammed Bredesen’s secrecy on high-profile cases, writing in his paper, “How is the public to be assured that the problem has been appropriately and adequately addressed if the public business is done in secrecy?”

Mitchell argued “the shredding of documents raises the specter there was more to it and that there was something to hide.”

The paper even sued the state of Tennessee for access to sealed sexual harassment files, but had its case dismissed by a state judge who ruled Bredesen could withhold documents on grounds of attorney-client privilege. Bredesen had previously told the paper he would “consider” opening withheld case files.

So there’s the record of the Tennessee Democrat on sexual harassment and sexual assault.  The striking thing about all this is that the Nashville Tennessean is actually left-of-center on political issues.

The record of the Tennessee Republican candidate Marsha Blackburn, is very different from the Democrat candidate.

The Washington Times explains:

Rep. Marsha Blackburn said Thursday that any member of Congress who used taxpayer dollars to fund sexual harassment-related settlements needs to refund that money.

“They need to pay that money back with interest,” Ms. Blackburn, Tennessee Republican, said on Fox News.

She said she did not know who or how many congressmen are on the list of those who have used this money for such a purpose, but said the issue needs to be addressed.

“It is inappropriate that there has not been transparency with members of Congress and the American taxpayer. So let’s clean this up,” Ms. Blackburn said.

Ms. Blackburn is helping push forward a bill sponsored by Rep. Ron DeSantis, Florida Republican, to end these so-called “hush funds” used to fund sexual harassment settlements.

So far, Rep. John Conyers is the only member publicly known to have used this money to settle a sexual harassment claim. He was accused of harassment by a former employee and settled a lawsuit with her using taxpayer money.

John Conyers is, of course, a Democrat.

So, Marsha’s position on sexual harassment and sexual assault is that the investigation documents should not be shredded, but that they should be made public. The names of the accused should be made public. The settlements paid to the accusers at taxpayer expense should be made public, and paid back with interest. And payouts to accusers should stop being made using taxpayer dollars. That all sounds good to me.

Just so you know, the payouts for these sexual harassment claims is not a small amount of money. Democrat congressman Alcee Hastings paid out $220,000 to his accuser. Well, he didn’t pay it out, the taxpayers paid it out for him with our money.

Tennesseans certainly have a clear choice to make in this Senate race. There are clear differences.

Commentary

Can relationships succeed independently of the efforts of the people involved?

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Man helping a woman with proper handgun marksmanship
Man helping a woman with proper handgun marksmanship

A few years ago, I blogged about the soul mate / fairy tale view of marriage, which I think is the dominant view of marriage among young people today – even among Christians. This view of marriage basically says that there is a person in the world out there who will match up so perfectly with each one of us that we will have to expend no effort and perform no actions and take responsibility for nothing in order for the relationship to work. it will just work on its own!

I’ve decided to link to this recent article by Matt Walsh which is on that same topic.

He writes:

The disease is the fanciful, unrealistic, fictionalized perceptions that both males and females harbor about marriage.

For example, think of the glamorization of the “mysterious” and “damaged” guy from the “wrong side of the tracks.” Hollywood makes him seem alluring and sexy, but forgets to mention that most of the time, in the real world, that dude probably has herpes, a coke habit, and a criminal record.

Still, that bit of propaganda is nothing compared to the underlying misconception that so many of us carry around consciously or subconsciously, because we’ve seen it on TV and in the movies, and read it in books a million times since childhood: namely, that there is just one person out there for us. Our soul mate. Our Mr. or Mrs. Right. The person we are “meant to be with.”

Matt thinks this view of relationships is not realistic:

I didn’t marry my wife because she’s The One, she’s The One because I married her. Until we were married, she was one, I was one, and we were both one of many. I didn’t marry The One, I married this one, and the two of us became one. I didn’t marry her because I was “meant to be with her,” I married her because that was my choice, and it was her choice, and the Sacrament of marriage is that choice. I married her because I love her — I chose to love her — and I chose to live the rest of my life in service to her. We were not following a script, we chose to write our own, and it’s a story that contains more love and happiness than any romantic fable ever conjured up by Hollywood.

Indeed, marriage is a decision, not the inevitable result of unseen forces outside of our control. When we got married, the pastor asked us if we had “come here freely.” If I had said, “well, not really, you see destiny drew us together,” that would have brought the evening to an abrupt and unpleasant end. Marriage has to be a free choice or it is not a marriage. That’s a beautiful thing, really.

God gave us Free Will. It is His greatest gift to us because without it, nothing is possible. Love is not possible without Will. If we cannot choose to love, then we cannot love. God did not program us like robots to be compatible with only one other machine. He created us as individuals, endowed with the incredible, unprecedented power to choose. And with that choice, we are to go out and find a partner, and make that partner our soul mate.

That’s what we do. We make our spouses into our soul mates by marrying them. We don’t simply recognize that they are soul mates and then just sort of symbolically consecrate that recognition through what would then be an effectively meaningless marriage sacrament. Instead, we find another unique, dynamic, wholly individualized human being, and we make the monumental, supernatural decision to bind ourselves to them for eternity.

It’s a bold and risky move, no matter how you look at it. It’s important to recognize this, not so that you can run away like a petrified little puppy and never tie the knot with anyone, but so that you can go into marriage knowing, at least to some extent, what you’re really doing. This person wasn’t made for you. It wasn’t “designed” to be. There will be some parts of your relationship that are incongruous and conflicting. It won’t all click together like a set of Legos, as you might expect if you think this coupling was fated in the stars.

It’s funny that people get divorced and often cite “irreconcilable differences.” Well what did they think was going to happen? Did they think every difference would be reconcilable? Did they think every bit of contention between them could be perfectly and permanently solved?

Finally, regarding his own marriage:

There were literally millions of things that either of us could have done. An innumerable multitude of possible outcomes, but this was our outcome because we chose it. Not because we were destined or predetermined, not because it was “meant to happen,” but because we chose it. That, to me, is much more romantic than getting pulled along by fate until the two of us inevitably collide and all that was written in our horoscopes passively comes to unavoidable fruition.

We are the protagonists of our love story, not the spectators.

I see this problem everywhere, even with Christian women who have been raised as Disney princesses. I was just told by one last week that she will marry when she meets “the right man” – the man who will require her to do nothing. This magical relationship will require no communication, no working through disagreements, no problem solving, no compromise, no effort, no self-sacrifice of any kind. it will just “work”, without any growing up by anyone. Two unemployed people with degrees in English can have a fine marriage, I suppose, traveling the world and skydiving every Tuesday.

I think that when problems arise between two people who are largely compatible, the right thing to do is to engage and solve the problems. Yes, work isn’t required in pop culture notions of romance, but those things don’t reflect the real world anyway. In the real world, actions to solve a problem count for more than words that avoid the problem. Engineering principles and self-sacrificial attitude are infinitely more useful in a relationship than all the pop culture descriptions of ideal men and ideal women and ideal relationships combined.

By the way, the best book on this problem is Dr. Laura’s “The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands”, which clearly sets out how a woman’s choices influence her husband’s ability to perform well. The myth of the mind-reading “right man” is also debunked.

News

Porn star bullied to commit suicide for refusing to have sex with bisexual men

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HIV infection rates from Center for Disease Control
HIV infection rates from Center for Disease Control

Recently there was a news story about a porn star actress who refused to act with men who were known to have sex with men, claiming there was a higher risk of getting STDs.

Fox News reports on what happened next:

A porn star relentlessly bullied on Twitter after saying she did not want to have sex with someone who had shot gay porn committed suicide by hanging.

August Ames, a 23-year-old rising star in the adult film industry, died Tuesday in California. The Ventura County Medical Examiner confirmed to The Blast that Ames died of asphyxiation due to hanging.

“She was the kindest person I ever knew and she meant the world to me,” her husband, Kevin Moore, told industry trade magazine Adult Video News (AVN), which first reported the news.

[…]Close friends told The Blast that they suspect her social media presence and recent harassment may have contributed to her death.

In recent days, Ames’ Twitter feed has been littered with cyberbullies accusing her of being homophobic after she publicly chose to not work with an unidentified actor who had previously shot gay porn.

So, the gay rights bullies basically killed her with bullying. Very interesting considering the bullying of Christian businesses also being conducted by gay rights fascists today. But was she right about her claims that men who have sex with men are more likely to catch sexually transmitted diseases?

This is from the far-left CNN, of all places.

Excerpt:

There were more reported cases of sexually transmitted diseases last year than ever before in the United States, according to the latest STD surveillance report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The annual report, which was released on Wednesday, showed that the rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis — the three most commonly reported STDs in the nation — increased between 2014 and 2015, reaching an all-time high.

Reported cases of primary and secondary syphilis rose by 19%, gonorrhea cases rose by 12.8%, and chlamydia cases rose by 5.9%, from 2014. All three STDs are curable with antibiotics, but most infections go undiagnosed and untreated, according to the CDC.

What is interesting is how overspending by bureaucrats on social welfare, amnesty, refugees, etc. has left less money to combat sexually-transmitted diseases:

In a foreword to the new report, Bolan wrote that some 21 health department STD clinics across the country have closed due to many state and local programs experiencing budget cuts. Therefore, fewer people have access to the testing and treatment resources provided by such clinics.

Meanwhile, as more STD cases emerge, treating infections costs the country nearly $16 billion annually.

With the national debt doubled from 10 to 20 trillion under Obama, Obama’s free-spirited supporters can look forward to not having access to the “health care” they now need.

Not surprisingly, the reckless young people who voted for Obama are the most reckless with sex. And so they are the most affected by STDs:

Young people, 15 to 24 years old, accounted for nearly two-thirds of last year’s chlamydia diagnoses — and half of the gonorrhea diagnoses.

Not only are there more STD infections, but the diseases have adapted to beat our antibiotics.

The Center for Disease Control reports:

Gonorrhea has progressively developed resistance to the antibiotic drugs prescribed to treat it. Following the spread of gonococcal fluoroquinolone resistance, the cephalosporin antibiotics have been the foundation of recommended treatment for gonorrhea. The emergence of cephalosporin-resistant gonorrhea would significantly complicate the ability of providers to treat gonorrhea successfully, since we have few antibiotic options left that are simple, well-studied, well-tolerated and highly effective. It is critical to continuously monitor antibiotic resistance in Neisseria gonorrhoeae and encourage research and development of new treatment regimens.

Gonorrhea is the second most prominent STD, right behind chlamydia.

One reason for the upsurge in STDs might be society’s growing celebration of male homosexuality.

The Center for Disease Control explains:

P&S syphilis among men who have sex with men (MSM) has been increasing since at least 2000. In 2014, rates of P&S syphilis increased among MSM, who account for 83 percent of reported cases among men when the sex of the partner is known. Also concerning is that more than half of MSM (51 percent) diagnosed with syphilis in 2014 were also HIV-positive. Infection with syphilis can cause sores on the genitals, which make it easier to transmit and acquire HIV.

Syphilis is currently the only STD for which information on the sex of the sex partner is reported. However, a growing body of evidence indicates that MSM are experiencing similar increases in gonorrhea and chlamydia infections– underscoring the need to further understand what is contributing to the rise.

Gay and bisexual men face a combination of social, epidemiologic, and individual risk factors that can fuel high levels of STDs. Higher prevalence of infection within sexual networks increases the likelihood of acquiring an STD with each sexual encounter.

And on a different CDC page:

Gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men made up an estimated 2% of the population but 55% of people living with HIV in the United States in 2013. If current diagnosis rates continue, 1 in 6 gay and bisexual men will be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetime, including 1 in 2 black/African American gay and bisexual men, 1 in 4 Hispanic/Latino gay and bisexual men, and 1 in 11 white gay and bisexual men.

The CDC’s solution to this disparity is to ask for more taxpayer money, of course. No disapproval here, just take the money from the moral people and pay for the choices of the reckless people.

Right now, many people are freely choosing to engage in these behaviors, and to celebrate the lifestyles of those who engage in these behaviors, because they think that the government has unlimited taxpayer money to pay for all the costs of these decisions. Little do they know about the national debt, and what happens to “government-provided” health care when the interest rates on that debt increases. As a society, we have decided that it is better to be forgiving and compassionate when people make reckless, risky decisions. “Oh, we can just make the prudent people pay for the mess – they have money”, the progressives say. And that works fine, until the money runs out, and people realize that the mean, judgmental, controlling bullies who were defending chastity, fidelity, marriage, moral standards and personal responsibility were right all along.

Polemics

The Economist: marriage is still the best place for children

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Marriage and family
Marriage and family

I stopped reading The Economist when they endorsed the socialist failure Barack Obama, who doubled the national debt to $20 trillion in only 8 years. However, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. And here is one of those times.

Excerpt:

However, there is one big reason to worry about the quality and longevity of people’s intimate bonds. It is that relationships often produce children, and children are profoundly affected by how their parents get on.

You could make enough confetti for a summer of weddings with all the academic papers that show how much children gain from being brought up in stable, loving families, and how much they suffer when those families break down. Culture and customs make little difference. In Japan, four-fifths of single-parent households emerge when couples divorce—a much higher share than in the West, where people usually slip into single parenthood without marrying. Japanese children living with only one parent nonetheless perform significantly worse in school tests, just as children from single-parent families do in Europe and America. In poorer countries, family breakdown can kill. According to one recent estimate, the chance that an African child will die before turning five is about 25-30 per 1,000 for those born into stable families, but 35-40 per 1,000 for the children of single, divorced or widowed parents.

Marriage is not always good for children. They do not benefit when a parent marries somebody who is not their mother or father, and seem to suffer if the parent they live with cycles through several relationships. What they seem to need most is for their biological parents to stick together. And one strong claim that can be made for marriage is that it appears to glue parents together more tightly than any other arrangement.

This part is key, especially for those millennials who think that cohabitating before marrying makes the marriage more secure:

Analysis of one large American data set by Kathryn Edin and Laura Tach, two sociologists, shows that 27% of marriages broke down within nine years of a child being born. By contrast, among couples who were merely cohabiting when a child appeared, 53% separated within nine years—and most of the remaining 47% were married by that point. Among couples who were dating but not living together when the child was born, 81% had split up.

Again, this pattern runs across national and cultural borders. Cohabiting couples behave a bit more like married couples in countries where giving birth outside marriage is very common, such as Estonia and Norway. But they seldom attain the same level of stickiness as married couples, even after controlling for the mother’s level of education.

Cohabitation doesn’t work, because it’s basically saying that I’m going to try the other person and see if I like the other person, and that sex is required to know if I like the other person. It doesn’t really matter that you know the other person really well, because you can always get out of cohabitation just by leaving. Marriage says that I’m going to commit to the other person for life, through thick and thin. Here, both people tend to do a more thorough job of selecting their partner, perhaps even consulting fathers for advice. Why? Because getting out of a marriage is a lot harder to do, and more expensive.

In the past, I’ve blogged about some factors that can make your marriage pretty much divorce proof: things like chastity, not spending too much on the wedding, age of the man and woman at marriage, education levels of each spouse, number of people attending the wedding ceremony, isolation from other divorced people, church attendance, and so on. The truth is that you can engineer a marriage that’s practically divorce proof. But if you insist on spontaneity and following your heart, then you aren’t going to care what studies say works best.

Podcasts

Greg Koukl and Michael Krueger discuss Bart Ehrman’s skepticism of the gospels

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I have a key that will unlock a puzzling mystery
I have a key that will unlock a puzzling mystery

Here is a recent episode that I’m sure you’ll enjoy.

Details:

Michael Kruger on Bart Ehrman’s claim we can’t trust the  Gospel accounts (April 1, 2016)

The MP3 file is here.

Topics:

  • Who is Bart Ehrman? What are his books about?
  • Conservatives tend to agree with Ehrman on the facts, not on his interpretation of the facts
  • Ehrman has an article claiming that the Holy Week gospel accounts are untrustworthy
  • do the variants in the NT texts undermine the reliability of the texts?
  • the difference between reasonable scholar-Bart and hyper-skeptical popularizer-Bart
  • where does Ehrman’s view of gospel reliability fit in the broad spectrum of NT scholars?
  • there are 200,000 to 400,000 variants in the copies of the gospels: what is a “variant”?
  • can a person be an authentic Christian if the gospels are not actual historical events?
  • Ehrman’s view: Christians can have feelings about events that never happened = not Biblical
  • was Jesus just an itinerant preacher who spoke pithy slogans? what about his Jewish background?
  • is there scholarly agreement regarding the minimal facts underlying the resurrection of Jesus?
  • is there a disconnect between uneducated eyewitnesses and educated Greek gospel authors?
  • is the early church an “oral culture” or a “textual culture”? Is oral transmission reliable?
  • was text of the New Testament was inspired by God or dictated by God?
  • do we have any reasons to think that the gospel authors were in contact with eyewitnesses?
  • should be be hyper-skeptical of the gospels when we have an early creed in 1 Cor 15:3-8?

Stand to Reason does a nice job with their podcast. Not only can you download the MP3, but they have a transcript, and links to resources mentioned in each episode. First class!

…integrating Christian faith and knowledge in the public square

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