Facebook, Google, Youtube, Twitter purging conservative speech (Source: The Stream)
Wow, big social media companies like Facebook, Google, Youtube and Twitter are really ratcheting up their suppression of any accounts that challenge their allies in the Democrat Party. For example, on the weekend Twitter decided to suspend the account of the new pro-life movie “Unplanned”. And then they deleted 99,000 of their followers.
The pro-life movie Unplanned surprised at the box office its opening weekend, taking 5th place with $6.1 million. That didn’t stop Twitter from attacking the film twice in one weekend, however.
The movie’s Twitter account was briefly suspended on Saturday, mere hours after its release on Friday. On Sunday, the account seems to have mysteriously lost 99,000 of its 100,000 followers.
There was a backlash against the suspension of the account. Twitter didn’t provide any rule that was violated, but they reinstated the account – with zero followers. People trying to re-follow the account were prevented from doing so, including the author of the PJ Media article:
I attempted to follow the page, but the same thing happened to me.
However, the movie performed so well at the box office that they are expanding the number of theaters next week to 1,700:
Despite the Twitter suspension and sudden mysterious loss of followers, Unplanned racked up more than $6.1 million at the box office, despite being predicted to take in only $2-3 million. Even more impressive, the film only played on 1,060 screens, earning an average of $5,770 per screen.
On Sunday, the film announced that its distributor, Pure Flix, will add an additional 600 screens for a count of 1,700 screens next week.
The movie also earned an A+ rating from CinemaScore, and it has a 93 percent positive rating on RottenTomatoes.
I’d make sure that you go see it as soon as possible. Remember what happend to the Gosnell movie, last time? The theaters pulled it very early, even though it was doing very well.
I understand that companies make mistakes, but why are all the mistakes made by these big social media companies in favor of their allies in the Democrat Party? Is it because they don’t want their allies in the Democrat Party to lose elections?
What’s the best explanation of this transgenderism data? Genetics or cultural pressure?
I blogged before about a study out of Brown University, which concluded that transgender behavior in children developed rapidly as a result of factors like peer pressures, social media, mental disorders, trauma, etc. I.e. – it’s not genetic. Brown University retracted it because some people complained. Well, it’s now been republished. Let’s see if there were any mistakes found.
Here’s how the study was first reported by Science Daily:
This month, a Brown University researcher published the first study to empirically describe teens and young adults who did not have symptoms of gender dysphoria during childhood but who were observed by their parents to rapidly develop gender dysphoria symptoms over days, weeks or months during or after puberty.
[…]The study was published on Aug. 16 in PLOS ONE.
Peer pressure / The Internet:
The pattern of clusters of teens in friend groups becoming transgender-identified, the group dynamics of these friend groups and the types of advice viewed online led her to the hypothesis that friends and online sources could spread certain beliefs.
[….]”Of the parents who provided information about their child’s friendship group, about a third responded that more than half of the kids in the friendship group became transgender-identified,” Littman said. “A group with 50 percent of its members becoming transgender-identified represents a rate that is more 70 times the expected prevalence for young adults.”
Mental disorders / traumatic events:
Additionally, 62 percent of parents reported their teen or young adult had one or more diagnoses of a psychiatric disorder or neurodevelopmental disability before the onset of gender dysphoria. Forty-eight percent reported that their child had experienced a traumatic or stressful event prior to the onset of their gender dysphoria, including being bullied, sexually assaulted or having their parents get divorced.
This article at The Federalist had a few examples to illustrate the conclusion of the study. I’ll pick two.
The study includes other eye-opening information, such as case studies of several children’s stories.
“A 14-year-old natal female and three of her natal female friends were taking group lessons together with a very popular coach. The coach came out as transgender, and, within one year, all four students announced they were also transgender.”
“A 14-year-old natal female and three of her natal female friends are part of a larger friend group that spends much of their time talking about gender and sexuality. The three natal female friends all announced they were trans boys and chose similar masculine names. After spending time with these three friends, the 14-year-old natal female announced that she was also a trans boy.”
I thought this quote from that article was interesting as well, given the culture’s obsession with “bullying”, which is a nebulous term that can mean actual bullying, or mere disagreement.
The study also may indicate that school “anti-bullying” programs typically created by LGBT activist organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign may help accelerate children identifying as transgender by pushing peers and authority figures to profusely express their support.
Coming out as transgender means instant fame and popularity, because you’re a victim, and everyone has to be nice to you… or else:
“Great increase in popularity among the student body at large. Being trans is a gold star in the eyes of other teens,” wrote one parent on the study response form. Another wrote, “not so much ‘popularity’ increasing as ‘status’ … also she became untouchable in terms of bullying in school as teachers who ignored homophobic bullying …are now all at pains to be hot on the heels of any trans bullying.”
Well, we’ve had a delay of 6 months for Littman to answer her critics and submit her work to even more extensive peer-review. And now the study has been re-published in PLOS One. So were there any mistakes in it? Does it still reach the same conclusions?
Here’s what actually changed, according to PLOS One:
Other than the addition of a few missing values in Table 13, the Results section is unchanged in the updated version of the article.
So, the results didn’t change, and that means that the conclusions stand. So what was the problem originally? The problem originally was that the research didn’t confirm the biased politically correct views of the secular leftists.
She lost her consulting job anyway
However, that’s not the whole story. I looked up her interview from this week on Quillette, and she got to tell her side of the story.
Two parts stood out to me.
This part, where she contrasted the favoral response of research scientists and clinical scientists with the angry outbursts of a social worker:
The third presentation was the smallest and least research-oriented audience of the three. In contrast to the other presentations, the vast majority of the comments were made by one person who I later learned was a social worker. Again, I tried to answer politely with comments such as “Actually, the scientific literature says the following…”; “Actually, social media can be both a positive and a negative influence, not just positive…”; “Actually, this method of data collection has been used in many studies…” But because her interruptions were so frequent and argumentative in nature, it quickly created a tense and adversarial tone in the room.
This part, where she explains the mob that contacted her employers and got her fired:
The worst outcome for me personally was losing my consulting job over this issue. Shortly after my paper came out, some local clinicians who are opposed to my research wrote a letter of complaint about the work and demanded that I be fired immediately. It was an interesting demand, as my consulting work was unrelated to gender dysphoria. Nonetheless, I was called in to several meetings to answer questions about my research… After the meetings, the leadership explained to me that their decision not to renew my contract was not related to the quality of my work but rather that they, as an agency, needed to remain neutral and not take sides regarding the issues raised in the letter.
Do you know what this whole episode reminded me of? It reminded me of the stories of scientists who publish work critical of Darwinian evolution, and work critical of the man-made catastophic global warming hypothesis. It seems as if the viewpoints of secular leftists are decide by emotions, and then defended with rage, coercion and harassment. What does it say about secular leftism that they respond to scientific progress with rage and censorship?
Hillary Clinton and her ally, the Human Rights Campaign
Hey, have you ever seen those bumper stickers with a yellow equal sign on a blue background? That is the symbol of the Human Rights Campaign. They have the support of prominent Democrats, like Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama, who have spoken at their events. Today’s post is about the co-founder of the HRC.
Prominent Democrat donor Terry Bean was indicted earlier this month on two counts of sodomy and one count of sex abuse for allegedly having sex with a teenage boy.
Bean was arraigned Thursday on the charges, TV station KGW8 reported. He pleaded not guilty and was taken into custody at Lane County jail in Oregon. He was released Thursday and told KGW8 he was “innocent.”
The indictment was filed on Jan. 4 but made public following the arraignment.
Bean, a gay rights activist who donated almost $70,000 of his own money to former President Barack Obama’s campaign, was charged with sexual abuse in 2014 but the case was dismissed after the alleged victim did not testify. Prosecutors refiled the charges after this, court records stated, according to The Oregonian. The “alleged victim is not named in the new indictment” but the dates are similar to the previous charges, KGW8 noted.
Bean, a real estate developer, and his former boyfriend, Kiah Lawson, allegedly had sex with a 15-year-old boy in a Eugene, Oregon, hotel in September 2013. They allegedly used the app Grindr to arrange the sexual encounter. Lawson was also charged but his case was dismissed.
The Human Rights Campaign has a lot of corporate partners, who agree with the vision of Terry Bean and his organization. You can see a list of HRC corporate supporters right here.
Anyway, this isn’t the first time that something like this has happened.
The mayor of Seattle, Ed Murray, said on Tuesday that he would resign after announcing in May that he would not seek a second term. Several men have come forward to accuse Mr. Murray of sexually abusing them decades ago, when they were underage.
The announcement came just hours after The Seattle Times published a story with an account by a fifth man, Mr. Murray’s cousin, who said Mr. Murray had abused him in the 1970s.
[..]Mr. Murray, 62, a Democrat, is the city’s first openly gay mayor, and had served in the State Legislature for many years before being elected in 2013.
[…]The liberal Mr. Murray is generally considered a father of Washington’s same-sex marriage law, which he pressed in the State Legislature for years.
a member of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission
two men who adopted nine children
two men who adopted a boy
an activist who ran an organization for boys
two men who adopted a boy from Russia
It happens all the time, and with very prominent people. Allies and donors to the secular left elite. Yet, the mainstream media never seems to have much to say about these cases. I wonder why.
What does morality mean to atheists?
Should we be surprised when wealthy Democrat men take advantage of underage boys? I don’t see why, given that belief in God is on the decline in our society.
Let’s review what objective morality (moral realism) really means in practice for atheists:
In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.
Whatever morality atheists try to claim, the truth is that their worldview cannot ground it rationally. This universe is an accident. There are no objective human rights. There is no objective morality. There is no free will nor moral agency. There is no judge of our actions when we die. Other human beings are just lumps of matter to be used for our own pleasure, as long as we are powerful enough to escape the disapproval of those accursed Bible-believers. Can you expect people to behave morally when public expressions of Christianity are effectively banned by the secular left?
WINTERY KNIGHT 