Tag Archives: Discrimination

News

How universities discriminate against evangelical Christians

12 Comments

From the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ). (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

We are preparing for trial in a very important religion discrimination case in Kentucky that’s likely to attract a lot of attention.

We represent Professor Martin Gaskell, an internationally-respected astronomer who was turned down for the post of Observatory Director at the University of Kentucky in 2007 after concerns were voiced that some of his writings contained in a personal website discussing the relationship between science and religion showed him to be “potentially evangelical.”

Professor Gaskell has filed suit against the University claiming that, by considering his religion in the hiring process, Kentucky violated Title VII, the Civil Rights Act of 1964…

The University of Kentucky tried to avoid a trial, but Judge Karl Forester ruled that there was enough evidence to go to trial, such as:

  • The record contains “substantial evidence that Gaskell was a leading candidate for the position until the issue of his religion” became part of the search committee’s deliberations.
  • The head of the search committee wrote in an email to the Chair of the Physics & Astronomy Department that “no objective observer could possibly believe that we excluded Martin [Gaskell] on any basis other than religious . . .”
  • The Department Chair admitted “that the debate generated by Gaskell’s website and his religious beliefs was an ‘element’ in the decision not to hire Gaskell.”
  • One member of the search committee admitted that Gaskell’s “views of religious things” were “a factor” in his decision not to support Gaskell’s candidacy.
  • Another member of the committee, having discovered Gaskell’s website, warned fellow committee members that Gaskell was “potentially evangelical.”
  • The search committee head, anticipating a decision against Gaskell by his fellow committee members, wrote that “Other reasons will be given for the choice . . . but the real reason we will not offer him the job is because of his religious beliefs in matters that are unrelated to astronomy or to any of the other duties specified for this position.”

This is why I blog under an alias. And I recommend it to any evangelical Christian who aspires to have an influence in academia.

 

Humor

Friday night funny: a conversation with a radical feminist

6 Comments

Everybody likes Friday Night Funny, but no one ever sends me anything funny to post.

Well, I found this video on Jojo’s Facebook page: (some swearing)

This video summarizes almost everything I have ever said about feminism on this blog in two years.

I actually got into a debate with a feminist on Facebook over this video.

Here it is:

  • Feminist: If that video is done with its many straw men we could really use them to keep the crows away from the corn.
  • Wintery Knight: Hey, can you pick the absolute worst straw man out of your blanket statement and tell us about him? It really isn’t much help to make blanket statements like that since we have no reason to believe something that makes no specific claims.
  • Feminist: You’re right, blanket statements and broad generalizations are seldom helpful. A good example of this would be… Oh yes, the video.
  • Wintery Knight: Yes, we know you don’t LIKE it in the same way that I don’t LIKE liver and onions. But what specific factual claim do you think is mistaken, and what evidence do you have that this factual claim is mistaken?
  • Feminist: Not interested in going blow by blow. They’re consistantly silly claims and I’m sure you’ve debated this enough that we could go in circles for a long period of time.That said, liver and onions done well is delicious and I hope you’ll give it another shot.

That was it. If you guys want more funny stuff posted, you have to send me more funny stuff.

By the way, last month was our best month for traffic ever! Please share the blog with all your friends! You may have noticed that I have gotten rid of all the Google ads by paying for the no-ad upgrade on WordPress. I really hated those stupid ads! By the way, if you ever start a blog, WordPress is the best place to start one.

Also, if you are on Facebook, then please follow my blog!

Also, if you are ever trying to find the blog and can’t remember the URL, just type in https://winteryknight.com/ instead of the normal wordpress URL. That shorter one works just as well.

One other quick note. If you ever want to search the blog by a tag, just enter the main URL, then add “/tag” then add “/<tag_name>” where tag name is the name of the tag you are searching for.

Like this:

Happy Friday!

Commentary

Are boys performing poorly in schools?

5 Comments

From the Charlotte Observer.

Excerpt:

In American schools, boys are underachieving and girls are excelling. This gender gap in academic achievement is evident as early as kindergarten. The longer students are in school, the wider the gap becomes.

Boys are more likely than girls to earn poor grades, be held back a grade, have a learning disability, form a negative attitude toward school, drop out or get suspended or expelled.

The education gender gap is affecting colleges, the workforce, the marriage rate and the fatherlessness rate in America.

Women outnumber men in college by 4 to 3. Four decades ago, men outnumbered women in college by 4 to 3. The tipping point occurred in the late 1970s. Not only are men less likely than women to go to college, they’re also less likely to graduate once there. Among 25-to-29-year-olds, 33 percent of women have earned at least a bachelor’s degree compared with just 23 percent of men. This is the first generation of women to be more educated than their male counterparts.

This shift means that women will increasingly get the highly paid jobs while men will experience a drop in earnings. This is already happening. Men in their 30’s are the first generation to earn significantly less than their fathers’ generation did at the same age. As jobs that require little education increasingly shrink, more and more men will become unemployed.

As the gap continues to grow, fewer college-educated women are able to find college-educated men to marry. Many of these women are choosing not to marry at all rather than marry non-college-educated men who are likely to earn significantly less than they do.

This is not to say that college-educated women and non-college-educated men never get married. But these marriages tend not to last. Marriages are more likely to end in divorce when wives earn more than their husbands.

This is increasingly becoming a problem. Thirty years ago, wives earned more than their husbands in 16 percent of marriages. Now it’s 25 percent and continuing to rise. By 2050, nearly half of the married women will earn more than their husbands.

The rise in the number of single American women has given birth to another trend: the rise in single motherhood. The non-marital birth rate rose sharply from 18 percent in 1980 to 39 percent in 2006. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, this trend is not being fueled by teenage mothers but by women in their 30s and 40s.

The National Center for Fathering found that 72 percent of Americans think that fatherlessness is the most significant social problem facing our nation. America is the world’s leader in fatherless families.

I tried to think of a “balance” for this, but I can’t think of any way that the schools discriminate against girls.