“No one who had once fallen into the hands of the Thought Police ever escaped in the end.
They were corpses waiting to be sent back to the grave.” ~ George Orwell, 1984

On Tuesday, there was a looong article in the Chicago Tribune’s business section on Starbucks “unconscious bias” training (which, unless Starbucks’ employees are unconscious, should probably be called “subconscious-bias training,” but—to borrow from millennials—whatever).

For those sub-rock dwellers among us, some background: Last month, one young white barista in Philadelphia told a black Starbucks visitor—who bought nothing—that he couldn’t use the restroom as per policies in some Starbucks’ stores. Subsequently, he and his friend—who also purchased nothing—were asked to leave and refused, after which the store manager called the police who arrested them. Calling the police seems an odd response since many people linger for hours doing work at Starbucks after buying one cup of overpriced coffee, but the response from the corporate office seems equally odd.

In addition to paying an undisclosed amount of money as a financial settlement to the two men who spent several hours in police custody and offering to pay for their college educations via an online program available to Starbucks employees, Starbucks management closed 8,000 stores at 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday in order to re-educate 175,000 employees on their “unconscious bias.” What this means is that re-educators will attempt to replace the bias of all 175,000 unconscious employees with a new set of biases.

The looong article recommends that bias “trainers… measure people’s understanding of the concepts before they start, so there is a baseline for measuring progress,” and that companies “bake parts of [the bias training] into performance reviews.”

One bias-training program sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League, even includes a written test. Gotta make sure all unconscious employees regurgitate back the RIGHT biases.

To be perfectly clear, I’m opposed to social injustice. Any stores that limited restroom-usage to those who bought something should have applied such policy equally to humans of color as well as colorless humans—well, except for colorful and colorless young mothers in the midst of toilet-training toddlers. They should have access to every restroom in the known universe.

This costly effort in virtue-signaling from the perpetually virtue-signaling Starbucks got me to cogitating. Since, according to Erin Thomas, head of a “diversity and inclusion strategy consulting firm in Chicago,” “everyone harbors” bias, I’m wondering if people of color harbor any biases against whites or if “progressives” harbor any biases against theologically orthodox Christians that undermine social justice, tolerance, unity, peace, and comity.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Starbucks-and-Its-Unconscious-Employees.mp3

For up-to-the minute news, action alerts, coming events and more you can now sign up for IFI Text Alerts!

Stay in the loop by texting “IFI” to 555888 or click here to enroll right away.

Click HERE to donate to IFI

A fast-food restaurant has started blocking Internet pornography from its Wi-Fi-enabled restaurants while a second chain is refusing to do so.

McDonald’s has been lobbied for nearly two years to block Internet pornography in its restaurants and has finally done so according to pro-family group Enough is Enough.

Enough is Enough lobbied both McDonald’s and Starbucks but so far only McDonald’s has made the decision to block porn from public view.

Enough spokeswoman Donna Rice Hughes says McDonald’s first started filtering Internet porn in company-owned restaurants then expanded that ban to franchises.

“And now there are over 14,000 McDonald’s restaurants in the United States that are filtering pornography and child pornography,” she says.

Starbucks was among the corporations that abided by such a ban in Great Britain, she says, and Enough has asked Starbucks to protect children and families in in the United States, too.

“And Starbucks has yet to respond to any of our emails, any of our certified letters,” she says.

Enough has said it will direct a new campaign directed at Starbucks soon.

This article was originally posted at OneNewsNow.com

*WARNING: Explicit content not suitable for younger readers*

A recent New York Post story  illuminates the tragic consequences of the sexual revolution that separated sex from procreation, sex from marriage, and marriage from children. Children are intentionally and cavalierly separated from their biological parents.

The Post tells the story of peculiar 40-year-old City University New York (CUNY) math professor Ari Nagel who has sired 22 children with 18 women over the past 12 years.

Sometimes he “donates” his sperm the old-fashioned way by having sex with women. Sometimes he “donates” his sperm by masturbating—with the help of porn viewed on his cell phone—into a cup in Target or Starbucks men’s bathrooms and rushing it to an ovulating recipient, who then scampers into the women’s restroom to deposit the donation where the sun don’t shine. Nagel says, “‘It’s better when it’s fresh.’”

With Target’s new co-ed bathroom policy, he will no longer have to make that long trek from the men’s restroom to a waiting recipient. He can masturbate in the women’s restroom with the recipient waiting in the neighboring stall to make her deposit. His donation will be uber-fresh.

Sometimes when Nagel is “donating” the old-fashioned way to a lesbian who has never had sex with a man, her partner will sit in bed with them holding her partner’s hand for moral support. Loss of virginity can be traumatic, so it’s nice to see that human compassion still exists.

Single women and lesbians all over the country have found Nagel via word-of-mouth, Craigslist, and “Known Donor Registry, a free website for those looking for sperm donors.” They solicit his services because of his “’good looks, personality and high sperm count.” Man-boy Nagel toots his own horn, claiming that his sperm count is “off the charts.”

Nagel’s children range in age from 11 months to 12-years-old and live in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Florida, Virginia, Illinois, and Israel. According to the Post, “Some he sees once a week, some he sees once a year, some he’s never met.”

Half of Nagel’s paycheck is garnished as a result of five mothers successfully suing him for child-support. But that’s okay with Daddy Nagel: “‘Financially, it’s bankrupted me, but I’m still very happy with the way things turned out….I got 22 million in the bank — in my kids.’”

His kids? Does he mean the ones he sees once a week, or the ones he sees once a year, or the ones he’s never met? How valuable to his kids is he, if his primary investment in them was a porn-induced teaspoon of semen delivered in a Target men’s bathroom.

Glib New York television news anchors, Sukanya Krishnan and Scott Stanford, interviewed a smirking Nagel on his unseemly hobby, mischaracterizing Nagel’s rejection of normal sperm donation channels as evidence of his desire for a more “rewarding experience.” Waxing sycophantic, Krishnan exults, “He knows most of the children and has connections with them, which I think is great!”

Only fools would think that men who know most of their children but raise none are “great” fathers.

In the world of “progressivism” where virtually every desire transmogrifies into a “right” which society is obligated to accommodate, facilitate, and celebrate, the rights of children are little discussed. Women who are not blessed with marriage or choose not to marry are not entitled to children. And those  who choose to be in intrinsically sterile homoerotic unions—that is, unions that are by design non-procreative—should not be procuring children. Children have intrinsic rights, one of which is to be raised whenever possible by a mother and a father, preferably their own biological parents. This right supersedes the desires of single women and lesbians to bear and raise children.

Follow IFI on Social Media!

Be sure to check us out on social media for other great articles, quips, quotes, pictures, memes, events and updates.

Like us on Facebook HERE.
Subscribe to us on YouTube HERE!
Follow us on Twitter @ProFamilyIFI

She was only 17 years-old when she died. Her father cut out her tongue and burned her alive.

What was her crime, and why did this man kill his own daughter in the most horrific imaginable way?

He was a Saudi Arabian official who worked with the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice – the religious police – and when his daughter became a Christian, he butchered and murdered her.

What does this have to do with Starbucks and Apple?

Both these companies blast Americans who stand for religious liberties and conservative moral values, even threatening states that will protect those liberties and values, claiming this discriminates against gays and lesbians.

Yet they have stores all over Saudi Arabia, a country where gays can be executed and where Muslims can kill their own family members if they convert to Christianity, as happened with this 17-year-old in 2008.

What sickening hypocrisy.

Last year, when Indiana passed a religious freedoms bill, ensuring that its citizens would not be forced to violate their consciences and participate in things like gay weddings, Tim Cook, the openly gay CEO of Apple, wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post, stating, “There’s something very dangerous happening in states across the country.”

Cook opined that, “America’s business community recognized a long time ago that discrimination, in all its forms, is bad for business. At Apple, we are in business to empower and enrich our customers’ lives. We strive to do business in a way that is just and fair.”

His words sounded noble: “This isn’t a political issue. It isn’t a religious issue. This is about how we treat each other as human beings. Opposing discrimination takes courage. With the lives and dignity of so many people at stake, it’s time for all of us to be courageous.”

And so Cook, acted “courageously,” threatening Indiana with a loss of business if the state did not reverse itself, and in a matter of days, the governor and legislature caved in to the pressure, as Apple, along with other major players, succeeded in bullying the people of Indiana.

But when it comes to countries like Saudi Arabia, where adulterers are beheaded on Friday afternoons in city squares, where thieves have their hands cut off, where those who speak against the government can be lashed 1,000 times, where someone posting openly gay messages on social media can be imprisoned, and where the beheaded victims are hung on crosses and displayed publicly for days, Apple is silent, content to make its money and not rock the Muslim boat.

What “courage.”

Or, more accurately, what hypocrisy.

Starbucks has also been an outspoken advocate of “gay rights,” with CEO Howard Schultz telling those “who support traditional marriage over gay marriage that their patronage is not needed at the coffee chain.”

Earlier this month, Starbucks joined more than 100 companies (including Apple) in urging North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory to repeal the bathroom safety bill, which allegedly discriminates against LGBT rights.

How bold and courageous of Starbucks.

But when it comes to Saudi Arabia, not only does Starbucks operate all over this religiously-oppressive country, but the coffee giant completely capitulated to strict Islamic standards, removing the mermaid from its corporate logo.

Yes, you read that right.

Starbucks changed its logo so as not to offend Muslim sensibilities, since the mermaid image apparently displayed too much flesh.

But when it comes to offending Christians, Starbucks could care less, introducing “Holiday” cups last December in place of “Christmas” cups and trashing Christian sensitivities when they are in conflict with gay sensitivities.

Now, I don’t doubt that Cook and Schultz feel strongly about their views and actually believe that these important religious liberties bills are a threat to LGBT rights.

But their selective outrage is sickening and their moral hypocrisy glaring.

And so, when they pull their businesses from countries like China, with all its human rights violations, and Saudi Arabia, with its atrocities carried out in the name of Islam, we can take their indignation seriously.

Until then, the louder they protest here in America, the louder they shout their hypocrisy.

This article was originally posted at TownHall.com

Written by Chris Walker

This past Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court of the United States heard arguments for Obergefell v. Hodges in what is shaping up to be a landmark case in the national marriage debate. At issue are the questions of whether the Fourteenth Amendment requires states to license marriages between two people of the same sex and whether the Fourteenth Amendment requires states to recognize marriages between two people of the same sex licensed and performed out-of-state.

By now, conservatives should be very familiar with an influential organization that has carried the banner for same-sex marriage advocacy, the Human Rights Campaign. However, many may be unaware of the powerful network of corporations that are involved with HRC’s longstanding push to overturn marriage laws in America.

2nd Vote has compiled a resource page that list the companies involved with HRC, as well as the companies advocating against traditional marriage laws. This page also includes a list of all the signers of the amicus brief and links to the language contained in the brief.

CLICK HERE to see the list of corporate sponsors.

In dissent of Windsor, Justice Antonin Scalia appears to have been eerily prescient in his criticism of the majority’s ruling when he wrote: By formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency, the majority arms well every challenger to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition. Indeed, the ruling in Windsor gave groups like HRC a valuable rhetorical tool to enlist the support of major corporations to fund their agenda.

However, that agenda that we actually fund by doing business with many of these companies goes against our values on several levels. Recently, we have seen major corporations in Indiana eagerly joining the campaign to spread disinformation on laws protecting religious liberty. Perhaps just as concerning, we see the business alliance with HRC pushing for judicial activism that could threaten the very tenets of the legislative process and federalism.

Conservatives should inform themselves on the potential ramifications of Obergefell and hold these companies accountable for their advocacy that benefits their own self-interest, which the evidence shows is not constitutionalism, nor is it the defense of our most sacred social unit.

Chris Walker is the Executive Director of 2nd Vote, a conservative shopper app. To find out more, download the free app or visit 2ndVote.com. Originally posted at Redstate.com.

Last fall, Enough is Enough launched the national Porn Free Wi-Fi campaign to convince the two companies to voluntarily remove pornography and child porn from their Wi-Fi services. Donna Rice Hughes, who heads Enough is Enough, says the campaign has drawn a lot of support.

“As of December of this past year, right around Christmas time, we hit 25,000 online petition signatures,” she tells OneNewsNow. “The petition urges both of these companies to extend their friendly Wi-Fi policies – which they have already been implementing in the United Kingdom and in Australia – to the United States.”

The question arises as to whether there have been many instances of people accessing porn in view of other customers in the stores.

“In December, there was an incident in a local Starbucks where a convicted sex offender went into a Starbucks, got on the Wi-Fi services provided by Starbucks and was caught downloading child pornography, which is a federal offense,” she says.

In that particular case, the offender was arrested, but others viewing porn in stores nationwide are typically not punished.

Now there is another big push for signatures on the petition. Enough is Enough plans to contact both companies within the next few weeks, present the petitions and request that they filter out porn on their Wi-Fi networks.

This article was originally posted at the OneNewNow.com website.