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Macro-Tantrums by Mizzou and Yale Students

By now everyone except off-the-grid cave-dwellers has heard about the student protest at University of Missouri which began when thirty black football players and other teammates, supported by the coaching staff, threatened to boycott practices and games until the university president resigned, which he did, along with the chancellor. The reason for the threatened boycott and subsequent campus protest is the belief on the parts of student protestors that the administration had not adequately addressed campus racism. I suppose the team is busy now interviewing candidates to fill those positions.

Shortly thereafter, a student journalist attempting to exercise his First Amendment rights by reporting on the campus tent city “triggered” a marauding horde of anti-microaggression protestors to commence (to quote Richard Scarry) “pushing and shoving, shrieking and shouting.” Methinks the response of the delicate orchids, deeply traumatized by a reporter reporting, veered dangerously close to ordinary run-of-the-mill aggression.

The events at Mizzou followed close on the heels of another campus brouhaha, this one at Yale where some Ivy League hackles were raised when university lecturer Erika Christakis in a carefully worded, politically correct-ish email challenged a silly administrative warning against insensitive Halloween costumes. Following Christakis’ email, her husband, Yale professor Nicholas Christakis, was accosted on campus, where a young woman of color shrieked and swore at him saying among other things, “Who the f*** hired you?” Now scores of socially-just Yalies are seeking the Christakis family’s removal from their positions and home in a Yale residential college.

All this because Christakis dared to suggest that perhaps college students should have the freedom to choose to be a bit provocative or even “transgressive” on Halloween. And by provocative she means costumes that social justice fanatics may view as “appropriative”—not inappropriate—appropriative. So, for example, no non-indigenous female should wear a Pocahontas costume because that would suggest she’s attempting to “appropriate” Native American culture. The merest hint that these hothouse flowers may see an image that sets off their finely-tuned, offense-o-meters sends them into fits of infantile pique.

The seeds for these cultural weed patches were sown years ago when campus radicals, heavily influenced by Brazilian Marxist and educator Paulo Freire, took over academia and began propagating their doctrinaire ideology about oppression. Proponents of Freire’s critical pedagogy—sometimes referred to as “teaching for social justice”—have imposed on all of society their obsession with the notion of systemic oppression, dividing society into two groups (i.e., oppressor and oppressed) and imputing guilt or victimhood respectively.

For example, colorless people, males (more precisely “cismales”), and heterosexuals are automatically oppressors regardless of whether they have engaged in any acts of oppression. “Progressives” rail against members of the purported oppressor group, telling them that the only way to expiate their imputed sins is to engage in endless self-flagellation.

Conversely, people of color, females, trans-everyone, and homosexuals belong to the oppressed group and, therefore, cannot be found guilty of, well anything, no matter how nasty and oppressive their actions. This is the ideology promoted at the annual White Privilege Conference that many educators attend.

To get a sense of how silly and doctrinaire this oppression ideology has become, look no further than Jonathan Butler, the black Mizzou student whose hunger-strike and demand that the university president “acknowledge his white male privilege” played a pivotal role in this burlesque of a civil rights protest. Jonathan Butler is the son of Eric L. Butler, an executive vice president for sales and marketing for the Union Pacific Railroad, whose 2014 compensation was $8.4 million and whose total net worth is upwards of $20 million. Clearly, Jonathan is systemically oppressed.

“Progressives” have added another layer of ideological slime to their unstable foundation. They have for decades disseminated propaganda via accommodating government schools, academia, the mainstream press, and Hollywood, brainwashing our young’uns into believing that among the gravest social injustices that plague patriarchal, colonialist America is the presence of unpleasant ideas. Oppressed peoples are entitled to be free of exposure to ideas and images they don’t like

Devotees of diversity tacitly teach children and teens that they have a right not to be offended—well, “progressives” have a right not to be offended.

Exalters of emotion extol the supreme value of subjective feelings—well, the subjective feelings of those who belong to the designated oppressed groups. It is their feelings that dictate what may or may not be seen or heard.

Teachers of tolerance tolerate only that which they approve and affirm.

Masters of moral relativism proclaim that there exist ideas so absolutely evil that they must not be spoken or heard. And they alone are the arbiters of truth. Violating their commandment to speak no evil requires prior trigger warnings to prevent oppressed victims and their genuflecting allies from being reduced to puddles of tears, or, as at Mizzou and Yale, rivers of rage.

In the service of their cultural mission to cleanse the university and universe of ideas that offend liberals, teachers help students grow tissue-paper skin in their school laboratories, which they can don whenever they may encounter a “microaggression”—you know like Romans 1:26.

Agents of change have taught their malleable changelings how to feign macro-umbrage to get their way. Now they are stupid-drunk with the power they’ve gained from the supposed “right” to be free from micro-ickiness. Students at once possess oh-so-delicate sensibilities and an incongruent lust for the freedom of others. At Mizzou and Yale, we witnessed the macro-tantrum of a macro-monster with a micro-brain.

The monster created by the Left is now a rapacious, oppressive beast, mindlessly trampling the First Amendment, intellectual diversity, and intellectual freedom. Feeding at the slop trough of narcissism and solipsism, the oppressed have become the oppressors.


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High School Rule-makers Endanger Female Athletes

The inmates are running the asylum in Indy.

Until recently I had not heard of the National Federation of State High School Associations, or NFHS. This Indianapolis-based organization has, since 1920, developed and published playing rules for high-school sports in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Like so many other national organizations charged with establishing curricula, policies and practices for primary and secondary education (consider the NEA), the NFHS has become completely overrun by radical leftists and sexual extremists. It has placed political correctness and the adult “LGBT” political agenda above the welfare and safety of the boys and girls it purports to serve.

Last week, I received an email from a concerned public educator. He is also an NFHS member and high-school sports announcer: “I wanted to pass along to you an advisory that the National Federation of State High School Associations recently released on ‘Developing Policies for Transgender Students on High School Teams,’” he wrote, adding that, “in light of [his] positions,” and the threat of near-certain employment termination, he wished to remain anonymous.

And so I clicked on the link provided. It led me to an NFHS advisory penned by University of Massachusetts “social justice education” professor emerita Pat Griffin. (In other words, “Dr.” Griffin has a PhD in BS and has made a good, taxpayer-funded living shoveling it into that expansive black hole known as the “collegus craniumus.” As I have addressed before, “social justice” is simply code for “social-ism,” or, more precisely, cultural Marxism.)

Writing on behalf of the NFHS, Griffin advises every high school administrator in America that, according to the Federal Office of Civil Rights, Title IX requires that boys pretending to be girls, and girls pretending to be boys, must be permitted to compete on, and share locker room and showering facilities with, the sports teams of the opposite sex.

This is a bald-faced lie.

Griffin then lays the fantastical foundation for her entire “advisory”: “It is important for policy-makers to understand that transgender girls (who were assigned a male gender at birth) are not boys.”

This, of course, is objectively, “I am Napoleon,” house-full-of-kitty-cats cray cray. (Figure out a way, Ms. Griffin, to do a full override of a “transgender” kid’s reproductive system, give him a fertile uterus, vagina, birth canal and the like, preform a complete DNA/chromosome reversal, and we might at least have a place to begin a discussion. Until then, seek therapy. Your Huxleyan delusions are hurting, not helping, the sexually confused children you claim to serve. Besides, it makes you look nuttier than squirrel poop.)

Griffin then states the obvious, complaining, “School officials often see transgender students’ interest in participating in sports according to their affirmed gender identity as disruptive.” She further objects, “[P]ractices such as requiring them to use locker rooms and bathrooms that correspond to their gender assigned at birth discourage participation.”

“Gender assigned at birth.” Get that? Orwell would be proud. As if a person’s immutable, biological sex is both subjectively determined and arbitrarily “assigned” to them by our “heteronormative” American patriarchy.

You’re assigned homework, Ms. Griffin. You’re not assigned “gender.”

Therefore, administrators have a “responsibility,” she demands, “to ensure that transgender athletes have access to athletic teams according to their affirmed gender identity and that these students are safe in locker rooms and on the playing field.”

Girls playing boys’ football, boys playing girls’ basketball and coed showers – what could possibly go wrong?

Griffin then acknowledges, and promptly dismisses, “four major concerns” raised by mentally stable parents and school administrators. To the person who even dabbles in objective reality and speaks English only, the following will appear as gibberish. Fortunately, I speak fluent Moonbat and have translated accordingly.

“These concerns,” she writes, “are: 1) transgender girls [meaning boys pretending to be girls] are really boys [meaning real boys] despite their affirmed gender identity as a girl; 2) fear that non-transgender boys [meaning boys not pretending to be girls] will pretend to be girls [like ‘transgender girls’ do, only, in this case, just pretending to pretend to be girls] to win championships or get more playing time on girls teams; 3) transgender girls [meaning boys pretending to be girls] pose a safety risk for non-transgender girls [meaning real girls] in some sports, like basketball or field hockey; and 4) transgender girls [meaning boys pretending to be girls] have a competitive advantage over non-transgender girls [meaning real girls].”

“The belief that transgender girls are not ‘real’ girls is sometimes expressed as a concern,” she adds.

Ya think?

What a tangled web of gender identity disorder and “progressive” pathology we weave. Note that all of the “concerns” Griffin rejects happen to be 100 percent legitimate and fact-based. It is not a “belief” that “transgender girls are not real girls.” It is an empirical, biological fact that “transgender” girls are not real girls. They are, have always been and always will be boys, no matter how deep-seated their sexual confusion.

Still, the main issue here, the one that exposes the NFHS as nothing more than a dangerously reckless vehicle for radical “social change,” is the issue of safety.

Continues Griffin: “Some sports leaders and parents express concerns that allowing transgender girls [meaning high school boys] to participate on girls teams will pose a safety risk for non-transgender girls. This concern is based on an assumption that transgender girls are bigger, stronger and unable to exercise adequate body control resulting in an increased risk of injury to other participants.”

Again, this is utterly surreal. It is not an “assumption” that post-pubescent boys are “bigger” and “stronger” than girls, it is an irrefutable fact that they are. Girls, with the rare exception, are physically weaker, slower and less aggressive than boys. They have far less testosterone, muscle mass and a skeletal frame that is smaller, less dense and, therefore, more frail by comparison.

Pumping kids full of dangerous hormones or mutilating their genitalia changes none of this.

It’s easy enough to dismiss Ms. Griffin as the left-wing extremist she is. It’s not so easy, however, to dismiss the NFHS, which has both authorized her to represent the organization and to develop highly dangerous policies that will be adopted by high schools nationwide.

As a licensed attorney, and having once worked for years in the insurance industry, I can tell you that if a high school permits a sexually confused boy to play on a girls’ sports team, and that boy hurts a female player, that school has exposed itself to tremendous liability.

My suggestion to parents? If your high school allows boys to play on your daughters’ sports teams, sue, sue, sue.

And if, God forbid, one of those boys actually injures your daughter, then don’t just sue the school – sue the NFHS and Pat Griffin.

They’re ultimately accountable for this foolishness.


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The “Social Justice” Fallacy? Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing

By Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson –The Center for Vision & Values

Many Christians over many years have been beguiled by the Religious Left’s use of the term “social justice.” This is because Christians rightly love justice and hate injustice. But “social justice”-or, at least, how it’s often used by liberal Christians-isn’t necessarily biblical justice.

The standard of biblical justice is equal treatment by law: “Thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty” (Leviticus 19:15). Justice not only means that nobody is to be picked on because he is poor or favored because he is rich, but that (contrary to the doctrine of “social justice”) nobody is to be picked on because he is rich or favored because he is poor. Everyone’s rights deserve the same protection. Thus, nobody should be taxed at a higher rate than his neighbors, nor should anyone receive special government handouts.

The modern left’s “social justice” strives for economic equality. It endeavors to reduce, if not erase, the gap between rich and poor by redistributing wealth. This is “justice” more akin to Marx and Lenin, not according to Moses and Jesus. It is a counterfeit of real justice, biblical justice. Modern notions of “social justice” are often wolves in sheep’s clothing.

The fundamental error of today’s “social justice” practitioners is their hostility to economic inequality, per se. “Social justice” theory fails to distinguish between economic disparities that result from unjust deeds and those that are part of the natural order of things. All Christians oppose unjust deeds, and I’ll list some economic injustices momentarily. First, though, let us understand why it isn’t necessarily unjust for some people to be richer than others:

God made us different from each other. We are unequal in aptitude, talent, skill, work ethic, priorities, etc. Inevitably, these differences result in some individuals producing and earning far more wealth than others. To the extent that those in the “social justice” crowd obsess about eliminating economic inequality, they are at war with the nature of the Creator’s creation.

The Bible doesn’t condemn economic inequality. You can’t read Proverbs without seeing that some people are poor due to their own vices. There is nothing unjust about people reaping what they sow, whether wealth or poverty.

Jesus himself didn’t condemn economic inequality. Yes, he repeatedly warned about the snares of material wealth; he exploded the comfortable conventionality of the Pharisaical tendency to regard prosperity as a badge of honor and superiority; he commanded compassion toward the poor and suffering. But he also told his disciples, “ye have the poor always with you” (Matthew 26:11), and in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:24-30) he condemned the failure to productively use one’s God-given talents-whether many or few, exceptional or ordinary-by having a lord take money from the one who had the least and give it to him who had the most, thereby increasing economic inequality.

The Lord’s mission was to redeem us from sin, not to redistribute our property or impose an economic equality on us. In fact, the Almighty explicitly declined to undermine property rights or preach economic equality when he told the man who wanted Jesus to tell his brother to share an inheritance with him, “Man, who made me a judge or divider over you?” (Luke 12:14).

All that having been said, there is much injustice in our world, much needed reform that all Christians can unite in accomplishing. Around the world, many people are poor and will never realize their God-given potential due to lack of freedom and opportunity. Let us never be on the side of those who reject man’s God-given rights and biblical justice, and who oppress and impoverish in the name of a spurious economic equality.

In relatively free societies such as our own, we must continue to combat the economic injustices of theft, fraud, deceit, trickery, etc. We should strive to undo the injustices perpetrated by unethical public policies, such as the subtle theft of citizens’ purchasing power via central bank inflation; the corrupt government practice of doling out earmarks, subsidies, and myriad special favors, often to big businesses and wealthy individuals; destructive tax policies that decapitalize society, thereby retarding growth in labor productivity, wage increases, and higher standards of living; runaway government spending that imposes an incalculable and unconscionable debt burden on the next generations, etc. We should be charitable.

By all means, let us tackle these persistent injustices. But let us be careful to abide by the biblical standard of impartiality and equal treatment by law, lest we create additional injustices.