Tag Archives: Anti-Christian

News

University of California Davis: only Christians commit religious discrimination

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From an Alliance Defense Fund press release.

Excerpt:

An Alliance Defense Fund allied attorney sent a letter to the University of California at Davis Wednesday on behalf of more than 25 students who object to a policy that defines religious discrimination as Christians oppressing non-Christians.

“Christians deserve the same protections against religious discrimination as any other students on a public university campus,” said ADF Senior Counsel David French. “It’s ridiculously absurd to single out Christians as oppressors and non-Christians as the only oppressed people on campus when the facts show that public universities are more hostile to Christians than anyone else.”

The UC-Davis policy defines “Religious/Spiritual Discrimination” as “The loss of power and privilege to those who do not practice the dominant culture’s religion.  In the United States, this is institutionalized oppressions toward those who are not Christian.”

The letter from ADF-allied attorney Tim Swickard, one of nearly 1,900 attorneys in the ADF alliance, explains, “It is patently clear that UC Davis’s definition of religious discrimination is blatantly unconstitutional under both the Federal and California State Constitutions. The policy singles out some faiths for official school protection while denying the same protection to others solely on the basis of their particular religious views….. Moreover, the UC Davis policy is simply nonsensical given the environment on most University campuses where Christian students, if anything, are among the most likely to be subjected to discrimination because of their faith.”

The letter cites a recent study of more than 1,200 faculty at public universities that showed that professors admitted to having a significant bias against Christian students, particularly evangelicals. Fifty-three percent admitted to having negative feelings about evangelical students solely because of their religious beliefs. Mormon and Catholic students did not fare much better in the study. A 2004 Harvard Institute of Politics poll indicated that only 35 percent of college students call themselves “born again,” and only 22 percent identify as evangelical Christians. A 2000 study of teens by the Barna Research Group found that only 26 percent claim to be “committed to the Christian faith.”

But that’s not all. Apparently, laws can be applied differently to certain groups.

Consider this interesting column from the Toronto Sun.

Excerpt:

When Ontario’s McGuinty government and the leadership of the OPP sided with First Nations protesters against local residents in Caledonia in 2006, it outraged many people.

In her seminal book about the issue, Helpless, Christie Blatchford avoided the native rights issue and concentrated on the abandonment of rule of law which, curiously (or maybe not so curiously), offended many rank and file OPP officers who were ordered not to provoke Indians, but to hammer down locals who protested against the protesters.

Two of the victims of the temporary policy — Gary McHale and Mark Vandermaas, once arrested for raising the Canadian flag!

And here’s an example from Denmark:

When historian Lars Hedegaard was charged with making disparaging remarks about Muslims and Sharia law, Jesper Langballe, a Danish MP was similarly charged for supporting Hedegaard’s right to free speech.

Both were charged under Article 266b of a Danish law which, extraordinarily for a democratic country, does not allow “truth” as a defence.

Article 266b says “whoever publicly … issues a … communication by which a group of persons is threatened, insulted or denigrated … is liable to a fine or incarceration for up to two years.”

In other words, the truth of whatever might be said is irrelevant.

MP Langballe pleaded guilty, because he realized the Danish law doesn’t recognize “truth” as a defence.

And here’s an example from Austria:

Meanwhile in Austria, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff faces three years in prison if convicted on Tuesday, of denigrating religious teachings — specifically Muslim teachings with quotes from the Koran — and inciting hatred against a religious group.

Among other things, Ms. Wolff felt Sharia law was not compatible with a free and secular society, and referred to Paris, Brussels, Rotterdam where there are “no-go zones where Sharia is effectively the law … (where) immigrant youths (mostly Muslim) torch cars, throw stones at police, etc.”

She denies she sought to incite hatred and violence, but “we need to be informed, make people aware, to inform our politicians and write letters to the newspapers.”

It’s so strange because these laws are never applied equally – only some groups are protected, while other groups can only be offenders.

 

News

Do universities discriminate against conservatives?

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From the radically-leftist New York Times. (H/T The Blog Prof)

Excerpt:

Discrimination is always high on the agenda at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s conference, where psychologists discuss their research on racial prejudice, homophobia, sexism, stereotype threat and unconscious bias against minorities. But the most talked-about speech at this year’s meeting, which ended Jan. 30, involved a new “outgroup.”

It was identified by Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who studies the intuitive foundations of morality and ideology. He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three.

“This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing that 40 percent of Americans are conservative and 20 percent are liberal. In his speech and in an interview, Dr. Haidt argued that social psychologists are a “tribal-moral community” united by “sacred values” that hinder research and damage their credibility — and blind them to the hostile climate they’ve created for non-liberals.

“Anywhere in the world that social psychologists see women or minorities underrepresented by a factor of two or three, our minds jump to discrimination as the explanation,” said Dr. Haidt, who called himself a longtime liberal turned centrist. “But when we find out that conservatives are underrepresented among us by a factor of more than 100, suddenly everyone finds it quite easy to generate alternate explanations.”

[…]The politics of the professoriate has been studied by the economists Christopher Cardiff and Daniel Klein and the sociologists Neil Gross and Solon Simmons. They’ve independently found that Democrats typically outnumber Republicans at elite universities by at least six to one among the general faculty, and by higher ratios in the humanities and social sciences. In a 2007 study of both elite and non-elite universities, Dr. Gross and Dr. Simmons reported that nearly 80 percent of psychology professors are Democrats, outnumbering Republicans by nearly 12 to 1.

And yet all we ever hear from the academic left is how open-minded they all are – how they love to celebrate diversity. What diversity? They’re more bigoted and segregated than the Ku Klux Klan. At least the Klan isn’t taxpayer-funded by the very people who are being discriminated against!

News

How the government forces Christians to affirm homosexuality

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Here’s the first story from Life Site News.

Excerpt:

It is illegal in Britain for guesthouse keepers to refuse to allow two homosexual men to share a bed in their homes, according to a ruling by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) in a test case sponsored by the country’s leading homosexualist lobby group.

Peter and Hazelmary Bull, devout Christians who own a guesthouse in a popular holiday resort in Cornwall, were ordered by the EHRC to pay a fine of £1,800 each to Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy, two men who had booked a room in September 2008.

The Bulls explained to the Commission that they have a long-standing policy of refusing double rooms to any unmarried couple, no matter what their “orientation,” at the Chymorvah Private Hotel in Marazion near Penzance.

Mrs. Bull commented after the hearing, saying she and her husband were “disappointed” with the result.

“Our double-bed policy was based on our sincere beliefs about marriage, not hostility to anybody. It was applied equally and consistently to unmarried heterosexual couples and homosexual couples, as the judge accepted,” she told media.

“We are trying to live and work in accordance with our Christian faith. As a result we have been sued and ordered to pay £3,600. But many Christians have given us gifts, so thanks to them we will be able to pay the damages.”

She added, “I do feel that Christianity is being marginalized in Britain. The same laws used against us have been used to shut down faith-based adoption agencies. Much is said about ‘equality and diversity’ but it seems some people are more equal than others.”

According to Judge Rutherford’s ruling the crucial factor in the decision was the fact that Hall and Preddy were in a legal civil partnership. Under recently passed equalities laws, civil partners must be treated the same as couples in natural marriages.

Judge Rutherford acknowledged that the Bulls had good reason to want to preclude what they regarded as immoral sexual activity in their home, but commented, “Whatever may have been the position in past centuries it is no longer the case that our laws must, or should automatically reflect the Judaeo-Christian position.”

I think that some well-meaning Christians do get tricked into voting for the Labour party, because it sounds so good to “help the poor” and “bring our troops home”. But it can lead to results like this “Human Rights” inquisition.

But wait! There’s more from Life Site News.

Excerpt:

In yet another instance of the growing conflict between believing Christian professionals and the homosexualist movement in Britain, a Christian psychotherapist who helps individuals overcome homosexual inclinations may be “struck off,” or barred from practicing her profession.

Lesley Pilkington was the object of a sting operation by undercover journalist Patrick Strudwick, who approached her to ask her for help with his sexuality. He had told Pilkington that he wanted to leave the homosexual lifestyle and she informed him that she only worked within a Christian counseling framework.

Strudwick, who went to two counseling sessions with Pilkington and published the transcript of the meetings in The Independent newspaper, was awarded journalist of the year by the homosexualist organization Stonewall for the sting. After the sessions, he lodged a complaint to the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy alleging that Pilkington had failed to respect the “fixed nature” of his homosexuality.

Pilkington, who is scheduled to appear before a professional conduct panel January 20 and faces losing her accreditation with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, said, “He told me he was looking for a treatment for being gay.

“He said he was depressed and unhappy and would I give him some therapy. I told him I only work using a Christian biblical framework and he said that was exactly what he wanted.”

Commenting on the case, Conservative MEP Roger Helmer said, “Why is it OK for a surgeon to perform a sex-change operation, but not OK for a psychiatrist to try to ‘turn’ a consenting homosexual?”

“If, for whatever reasons – moral, religious, personal – a homosexual man wants to have help to cure this, he should be allowed to seek treatment. I’m not being critical about homosexuality at all, but if we have people who want to change, why should they be prevented from that happening?” Helmer continued.

The Christian Legal Centre, which is handling Pilkington’s defense, said, “Those offering counselling for men and women wanting to change their homosexual behaviour have been increasingly targeted by the homosexual lobby, many of whom do not accept that people can change their behaviour.”

Andrea Minichiello Williams, CEO of the Christian Legal Centre said, “Lesley is a wonderful Christian counsellor who has practised for many years with an unblemished record.”

“It is shocking that she was targeted, lied to and misrepresented by this homosexual activist and even worse that her professional body consider her actions worthy of investigation.

“It seems that what the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy object to is Lesley Pilkington holding the professional and personal view that homosexuality is not a fixed orientation.”

The person responsible for the Humanist Inquisition is none other than famous Harriet Harman.

Excerpt:

Social mobility is actually the antithesis of equality, because if people are able to progress higher up the social and income ladder it follows that others will be left behind.

Social mobility inevitably rests upon a meritocracy in which people are rewarded for what they have achieved. This is the only fair system. Imposing ‘equality’ – which is really a kind of ‘identicality’, a belief that everyone must end up in exactly the same place – is monumentally unfair.

It amounts to institutionalised discrimination based on the highly subjective and ideological prejudices of those in power to decide just who deserves to be privileged and who to be discriminated against.

Accordingly, any moves to apply it are inevitably deeply coercive and in the end unattainable – as was proved so appallingly under Soviet communism. For the British government to introduce this Orwellian agenda is not just sinister – it is positively unhinged.

The person said to be behind this is that middle-class paragon, the Equalities Minister Harriet Harman, who is said to have convinced her Cabinet colleagues of the need to enshrine the class war in law.

In a speech this weekend, she will hail this move as a step towards ‘a new social order’.

‘We want to do more than just provide escape routes out of poverty for a talented few. We want to tackle the class divide,’ she will say.

This is but the latest bit of cack-handed injustice from Harman, an ultra-feminist gender warrior who has spent much of her political career trying to institutionalise injustice against men and privilege women on the basis of ‘sexual equality’.

The moral of the story is… don’t vote for left-wing parties if you want to have the freedom to not celebrate views that you disagree with on moral grounds.

Raising influential children matters

I distinctly remember the disagreement I got from some commenters when I posted the Amy Chua story about effective parenting. Well consider this story about the U.S. Supreme Court and this story about the co-founder of Facebook. These stories demonstrate why I suggest that Christian parents ought to push their children a little harder in school, so that they get into positions of influence, e.g. – Supreme Court judges and founders of major Internet companies. We need to be able to put our children into positions of influence so that we can counter things like this. It does no good to sit back and complain when we are not doing all we could be doing!