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Boy defends his right to say there are ‘only two genders’
19 Nov, 2021 12:46
Mother of a New Hampshire boy suspended by the school for claiming that there are “only two genders” is prepared to defend his rights to free speech and religious freedom in court.
"My first reaction was that I was shocked," the woman who prefers to stay anonymous told Fox News.
She added that she had agreed with her son’s opinion and defended him during a conversation with Exeter High School’s vice principal Marcy Dovholuk by saying that “he has a right to his opinion."
Now the student and his mother are suing the school and Dovholuk on the grounds of violation of the boy’s right to free speech. The documents filed on November 4 in Rockingham Superior Court also say that the views expressed by the boy were in line with his Catholic faith and therefore can be considered as an expression of religious freedom.
According to the family’s lawyer Ian Huyett, this case demonstrates that schools not only view the implantation of “the correct ideological beliefs in students” as their mission but also are actively enforcing these beliefs. Therefore the lawsuit seeks not only nominal damages but also an injunction that would prevent school from enforcing the “Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Students” policy.
The teen who is named as M.P. in the court files, first mentioned that there were “only two genders” during a conversation with a group of schoolmates prompted by a request of one student to be referred to as “they”. The discussion continued in a text message exchange that later was brought to the attention of the school administration. Next day M.P. was suspended for one week from playing football for “not respecting pronouns” and for use of impolite language, though later the punishment was cut to one day.
M.P. does not deny that his claims were contradicting the school rules stating that “intentional or persistent refusal to respect a student's gender identity” is considered as a violation of the policy.
However, according to the lawyer, he continues to believe that there are only two genders and therefore will never refer to any other person as “they”.
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Christian emigration from US to Russia shows Moscow now
‘leader of the free world’ – Church Patriarch
20 Nov, 2021 14:34
The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, has argued that his country’s independence from negative outside influence is what makes it truly free, in his eyes.
In an interview broadcast on the Rossiya-1 TV channel on Saturday, the religious leader was asked to comment on instances of Orthodox Christians having emigrated from the US to Russia.
“I can imagine the types of reaction to my words from different corners, but I can prove that Russia today is the true leader of the free world,” Kirill said.
We’re free from the most powerful influences from abroad. We’re developing in accordance with our own path and, by God’s will, our path shall be successful. Russia can serve as an example for others.
“We have many problems, but these problems are solvable,” Kirill said.
Speaking about the state of Russian society, the patriarch said, “We currently don’t have a hot-button issue that would make societal interests collide and produce deep, irreconcilable contradictions.”
He added that the country benefited from a healthy diversity of opinion that “doesn’t destroy the foundations of human … and spiritual life.”
Russia is one of the few Christian countries that have not succumbed to the PCMadness of gender fluidity and gay rights.
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Leaked Audio Reveals How California Teachers Recruit Kids
Into LGBTQ Clubs
BY BRAD JONES
November 21, 2021
A leaked audio recording reveals two teachers at a recent California Teachers Association (CTA) conference mocking parents over their concerns about homosexual and transgender indoctrination at school, says a source who attended the event in Palm Springs, Calif.
The recording, obtained by The Epoch Times, captured two seventh-grade teachers, Kelly Baraki and Lori Caldeira from Buena Vista Middle School in Salinas, Calif., telling other teachers how to recruit students into LGBTQ clubs, also known as “Gay-Straight Alliance” (GSA) clubs, at school.
“It was horrifying to listen to not just one teacher but really all of the teachers in all of these seminars, excoriating parents,” said the source, who goes by the pseudonym Rebecca Murphy.
Murphy attended the teachers union conference in late October. She told The Epoch Times the teachers “mocked” parents for their concerns, and suggested they know better than parents about what’s best for their children.
“They laughed at the parents,” Murphy said.
The sold-out CTA conference, billed as the “2021 LGBTQ+ Issues Conference, Beyond the Binary: Identity & Imagining Possibilities,” was held Oct. 29 to 31.
The CTA has hosted similar “Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity” (SOGI) professional development training for at least the last two years, according to an event notice posted on the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) website, which asks teachers: “Do you have the courage to create a safe environment that fosters bravery to explore sexual orientation, gender identity and expression?”
However, according to Murphy, the conference in Palm Springs appeared to include teachers showing other teachers how to undermine the authority of parents and school administrators and conceal activities related to gender inclusion and sexual orientation from them.
Teachers also suggested that parents who refuse to call their child by pronouns of the child’s choosing should be arrested and charged with child abuse, Murphy said.
Teachers who draw students into SOGI clubs should be charged with child abuse.
The three classes Murphy attended were designed to recruit middle school students to GSA clubs, she said.
“The overarching theme of the classes that I attended were California Teachers instructing other teachers on how to sneak in the LGBTQ+ curriculum in a manner that does not alert parents,” Murphy said.
Caldeira and Baraki led a workshop called “How we run a ‘GSA’ in Conservative Communities,” and they described the obstacles they faced as activist teachers in concealing the activities of these clubs from parents.
In the audio clip, Caldeira advised teachers who lead LGBTQ clubs to maintain an air of plausible deniability so they can play dumb if they are questioned by parents.
“Because we are not official, we have no club rosters. We keep no records,” said Caldeira, who is also an LGBTQ club leader. “In fact, sometimes we don’t really want to keep records because if parents get upset that their kids are coming? We’re like, ‘Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe they came?’ You know, we would never want a kid to get in trouble for attending if their parents are upset.”
Baraki backed up Caldeira’s advice, suggesting activist teachers to disguise the nature of GSA clubs by calling them something less obvious. Baraki provided an example of this deception, pointing out she avoided naming her LGBTQ club a GSA. Instead, she called it the “Equity Club” and later changed the name to the “You Be You” club.
The teachers bragged about spying on students’ online searches and activity as well as eavesdropping on their conversations to identify and recruit sixth-grade students into these LGBTQ clubs whose membership rolls are kept hidden from parents.
“We totally stalked what they were doing on Google,” Baraki said.
Buena Vista Middle School falls under the jurisdiction of the Spreckels Union School District (SUSD). Another nearby district, Salinas Union High School District (SUHSD) has been a center of controversy over its mandatory ninth grade ethnic studies program, which teaches elements of critical race theory.
SUSD Board President Steve McDougall, Superintendent Eric Tarallo, and school board members did not respond to Epoch Times inquiries about the leaked audio. Neither did Caldeira and Baraki.
Anti-Bullying Presentation
Caldeira also discussed a yearly anti-bullying presentation she provides to students along with Baraki, and she said LGBTQ issues were not the only topics they discussed.
“We also covered religious differences, race, cultural backgrounds, family status poverty—everything that is listed in the Parents’ Rights handbook.”
However, when the kids went home and talked to their parents about the presentation, the parents complained about the LGBTQ content. Baraki suggested a different strategy to avoid resistance from parents.
“Next year, we’re going to do just a little mind-trick on our sixth graders. They were last to go through this presentation and the gender stuff was the last thing we talked about. So next year, they’ll be going first with this presentation and the gender stuff will be the first thing they hear about. Hopefully to mitigate, you know, these kind of responses, right?” Baraki said.
Baraki ridiculed a parent who complained she hadn’t planned on having a conversation about sexual orientation and gender identity issues with her middle-schooler but was pushed into it by the school.
“I know, so sad, right? Sorry for you, you had to do something hard!” Baraki told her audience. “Honestly, your 12-year-old probably knew all that, right?”
When a principal “invited” another parent to enroll their child in a private school more aligned with the parent’s beliefs, Caldeira said, “we count that as a win.”
Controlling Morning Announcements
Caldeira also spoke about how she controls morning announcements at the school.
“That’s another type of strategy I can give you,” she said. “I’m the one who controls the messaging. Everybody says, ‘Oh, Ms. Caldeira, you’re so sweet, you volunteered to do that.’ Of course, I’m so sweet that I volunteered to do that, because then I control the information that goes out. And, for the first time this year, students have been allowed to put openly LGBT content into our morning announcement slides.”
She went on to boast about the students she recruited to help with the announcements.
“Three of the kids on the team, two of them are non-binary, and the other one is just very fluid in every way. She’s fabulous. So, it’s actually a nice group,” she said.
Not a straight person in sight!
Caldeira pointed out more than once that she can’t be fired, and she thanked CTA for her tenure and for providing resources and tools.
“You can’t fire me for running a GSA,” she said. “You can be mad, but you can’t fire me for it.”
“CTA has made it very clear that they are devoted to human rights and equity,” she added.
Caldeira tells teachers, that she and Baraki have acted with “great integrity.”
“We never crossed a line,” she says. “We’ve wanted to, but we never have.”
School Response
After information about the leaked audio was made public this week, Supt. Tarallo, SUSD President McDougall and Kate Pagaran, the principal at Buena Vista Middle School, issued a letter Nov. 19 addressed to the “SUSD Community” that the “UBU (You Be You)” club has been suspended.
“Any future student clubs will be required to submit an outline of all activities and materials before being allowed to meet,” the letter states. “Student sign-in sheets will be maintained and parent/guardian permission slips will be sent home prior to a club holding a meeting.”
The letter states that “all messaging shared in the morning announcements” will be controlled and distributed by the principal, a practice that “will be in place permanently.”
SUSD states clearly: “Teachers are prohibited from monitoring students’ online activity for any non-academic purpose.”
SUSD will follow state-approved standards and curriculum on all presentations involving “sensitive themes such as sexuality” and “materials of any sensitive themes will be shared with parents/guardians before being shown to students,” the letter states.
Good response! Now, if you can fire that teacher...
Professor Removed from Campus for Writing and Talking About
People Who Have Sexual Attraction to Minors (Paedos)
EUGENE VOLOKH | 11.18.2021 3:50 PM
Inside Higher Ed (Colleen Flaherty) has the story:
Old Dominion University put a professor who studies pedophilia on administrative leave this week …. "Reactions to Dr. Walker's research and book have led to concerns for their safety and that of the campus," the university said in a statement announcing that Allyn Walker is on leave. "Furthermore, the controversy over Dr. Walker's research has disrupted the campus and community environment and is interfering with the institution's mission of teaching and learning."
Walker, an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice, was recently interviewed by the Prostasia Foundation about their book, A Long Dark Shadow: Minor-Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity. The foundation describes itself as a "child protection organization combining an evidence-based approach to child sexual abuse prevention with its commitment to human rights and sex positivity." Walker was asked a series of questions about their research on "non-offenders," or adults who are sexually attracted to minors but do not act on those attractions.
I believe there are no non-offenders as such. I think Walker and Protasia would have you believe that viewing child sexual abuse online is not an offence against children, but, of course it is. Anyone who can't see that is not using their brain for anything useful.
In the interview, Walker advocated calling those who are attracted to minors "MAPs," or "minor-attracted people," because that is a term that non-offender advocacy and support groups prefer over "pedophile" or other terms.
"A lot of people, when they hear the term 'pedophile,' they automatically assume that means a sex offender, and that isn't true, and that can lead to a lot of misconceptions about attractions toward minors," Walker told Prostasia.
Walker also recommended affirming therapies, as opposed to conversion therapies, for people who need help navigating their attractions, and made a clear moral distinction between those who are attracted to children and those who act on those impulses. The latter severely harms children, whereas the former does not, they said.
"Having an attraction to minors, as long as it isn't acted on, doesn't mean that the person who has those attractions is doing something wrong," Walker said in the interview. "From my perspective, there is no morality or immorality attached to attraction to anyone, because no one can control who they're attracted to at all. In other words, it's not who we're attracted to that is either OK or not OK, it's our behaviors in responding to that attraction that is either OK or not OK."
Ultimately, Walker said, help for those who need it "is not widely available, and it should be more widely available."
The interview, posted to YouTube last week, quickly proved controversial on campus and off. Several petitions call on Old Dominion to "release" or otherwise act against Walker, suggesting that they are a pedophilia apologist and that their comments make the campus less safe….
The university statement about Walker quotes President Brian O. Hemphill as saying, "I want to state in the strongest terms possible that child sexual abuse is morally wrong and has no place in our society. This is a challenging time for our university, but I am confident that we will come together and move forward as a Monarch family."
In a separate statement, Hemphill said, "Many individuals have shared with me the view that the phrase 'minor-attracted people' is inappropriate and should not be utilized as a euphemism for behavior that is illegal, morally unacceptable and profoundly damaging. It is important to call pedophilia what it is. As a father, I am troubled by this narrative and its potential consequences for my children and that of future generations."
Hemphill continued, "Ideally, we would be able to debate even the most challenging issues without disruption or threats of violence, but that is not the world we live in today. Our campus has recently become the target of threats and other unacceptable disruption."
He added, "I am confident that our Monarch family will rise to the occasion in our continuing campus dialogue, and I am equally confident that we share a common starting point for the discussion: rejection of any form of sexual abuse of children." …
Adam B. Steinbaugh, a program director at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, said that FIRE is "concerned by the deteriorating situation at ODU."
"We should be concerned whenever protected expression—and Professor Walker's speech falls well within the protection of the First Amendment and academic freedom—is met with threats of violence, regardless of viewpoint. And we should be alarmed when universities take action against faculty members in response to alleged threats or protest targeting the speaker."
The appropriate response to credible threats of violence made in response to "unpopular, controversial or dissenting speech" is to "punish those who are attempting to silence a speaker through threats, not silence the speaker on the threateners' behalf," Steinbaugh said. "By doing the latter, ODU is effectuating a classic heckler's veto."
Steinbaugh called on ODU to immediately and "transparently explain why it has removed a professor from the classroom and why less drastic measures were not taken."
Another appropriate response to offensive speech is "more speech," not less, Steinbaugh said, adding that FIRE is also concerned by some student social media reports that messages written on campus in chalk calling for Walker to be fired have been removed.
Beyond academic freedom hawks, some academics who study sexuality have defended Walker's views as being well within the realm of the disciplines….
If you're interested, you should read the whole Inside Higher Ed piece. My view is the same as Steinbaugh's: Studying people who are attracted to minors is clearly protected by academic freedom principles, and is indeed important to figuring out ways to prevent them from acting on these impulses. It seems likely that there are many millions of people like that; whether we want to change their attraction (if that's even possible) or just to get them not to act on that attraction, we need to study them and to study what allows some of them to resist their impulses.
Many adults, after all, resist their sexual impulses; adults who might prefer having multiple sexual partners, or who fantasize about multiple sexual partners, nonetheless remain faithful to their spouses. Many adults who are deeply attracted to someone with whom they know they shouldn't be sexually involved resist such temptations. Many priests or monks or nuns who have normal sexual interests in others resist that attraction because they believe that abstinence from sex is part of their religious calling.
Perhaps this is possible for adults who are attracted to children (I certainly hope it is). Perhaps it's not. But only being open to seriously studying this, including in ways that morally condemn only people who act on their attraction and not those who merely feel the attraction, can help us figure that out.
Indeed, I think that has long been understood by many in the great religions of the world: Temptation is everywhere. The goal is to acquire and strengthen tools for resisting temptation. Acknowledging the existence of temptation can help us avoid giving into it; it doesn't by itself make giving into it more acceptable. And that's so even as to temptations that afflict only a small subset of people (as opposed to temptation generally, which is universal).
And while I understand why some bristle at euphemisms such as "minor-attracted persons," I think Prof. Walker's has at least a plausible point that "pedophile" is often used to refer to child molesters and not just to people who experience an unacted-upon attraction—and that a different term is useful to stress the attraction rather than the action.
I should note that even advocacy of legalizing such sex is likewise protected by academic freedom principles. But from what I have seen, Prof. Walker does not advocate this.
From what I have read, he is advocating child pornography - sexual abuse online. There is no way that an adult who is sexually attracted to children is mentally or emotionally healthy. They need serious help or their attractions will get worse.
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