Target’s dangerous policy of allowing men into women’s dressing rooms has claimed another innocent victim of sexual voyeurism.

According to NBC10 News, a 36-year-old man secretly filmed women trying on clothes in the dressing room of a New Jersey Target store. The news report stated that as many as 100 victims could have been spied on.

A victim told police she saw a man’s hand creep under her fitting room wall inside the store. The hand was holding a cell phone, she said. The victim attempted to confront the voyeur, but he ran out of the store.

The police were able to catch him, and they also caught onto the fact that he may have been performing this crude, invasive, and illegal behavior for some time.

“It’s frightening,” a local Target shopper told NBC10, “when you run into a store, you don’t expect to be targeted or stalked and it’s frightening.”

Target’s policy purposely places employees in a position of allowing men to enter a dressing room when they know very well that innocent women are at risk.

In effect, Target employees who work in clothing departments (most often women) are to turn a blind eye and allow potentially illegal activity to occur in their very presence without raising any objection to stop it.

As long as Target continues to allow men free and unrestricted access into women’s dressing rooms and restrooms, these sexual violations against women and little girls will continue to occur.

TAKE ACTION

There are still women who are unfamiliar with Target’s dangerous policy. Will you help spread the warning and let your family and friends know about the Target boycott?

1. Forward this information to friends and family. Invite them to sign the boycott pledge at www.afa.net/target.

2. Call Target headquarters at 612-304-6073 and personally let them know you are boycotting their stores.

3. Support our ongoing efforts to promote the Target boycott. Make your tax-deductible donation today!

So I don’t have to repeat myself throughout the article, I’ll say things loudly and clearly at the outset.

The KKK, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis are evil. I deplore what they stand for and denounce it – as a follower of Jesus, as a Jew, as an American, and as a human being. I pray that they would repent and find mercy from God, and to the extent that the media exposes their lies, I applaud the media.

But I cannot applaud the media when it comes to its reporting of acts of hatred and violence on the radical left. Their double-standard is glaring, ugly, and inexcusable.

You see, the question is not, “Is Antifa as bad as the KKK? Are radical leftists as evil as neo-Nazis?”

Rather, the question is, “Should the media highlight acts of hatred and violence when carried out by the left?” And, “Should the media call out political leaders who do not denounce these acts?”

I’m not talking about Charlottesville here or making a moral comparison between the groups involved. I’m talking about a consistent pattern of dangerous words and deeds from the radical left, most of which get scant attention from the media.

Shall we do some math?

Over the last 12 months, how many campuses have succumbed to pressure from white supremacists and cancelled a talk by a well-known liberal? Can’t think of any?

Well, let’s keep going. How many campuses have even received threats of harassment or disruption from white supremacists should they try to host such a talk? Still somewhere around zero?

In contrast, over the last 12 months, how many campuses have succumbed to pressure from radical leftists and cancelled a talk by a well-known conservative? If my memory serves me right, Berkeley did it twice (once with Milo and once with Ann Coulter), while other campuses, like De Paul, refused to allow Ben Shapiro to speak. And all this because of security concerns – meaning, because of threats of disruption from the left. Toronto University just cancelled a “free speech” event featuring Prof. Jordan Peterson and others because of security concerns as well.

It looks like the left can get pretty nasty too. (For more examples, see here.)

Author Charles Murray, along with Prof. Allison Stangler, who invited him, was physically attacked by protestors at Middlebury College after his speech. “One threw a stop sign with a heavy concrete base in front of the car Murray was in, and several others rocked, pounded, and jumped on the vehicle. One protester pulled Stanger’s hair and injured her neck. She was taken to a hospital, where she was treated and released.”

Heather MacDonald’s speech at Claremont was shut down when protestors blocked entrance to the building, after which she said, “This is not just my loss of free speech. These students are exercising brute force against their fellow students to prevent them from hearing me live.”

And what were the protestors chanting? “[Expletive] the police, KKK.”

Where was the consistent outcry from the leftwing media? How many hours were devoted to covering this? How many liberal politicians were called on to denounce it?

More recently, when protestors pulled down a Confederate statue in Durham, North Carolina, NPR reported that they were chanting, “No KKK, No Fascist USA.”

Actually, they were chanting, “No cops, no KKK, no fascist USA!”

Why did NPR omit “No cops”? What were they hiding? Why not make clear that, in the eyes of these vandals, the cops are no different than the KKK? (Listen to NPR’s audio here.)

As evil as the KKK and neo-Nazis are, they were not the ones carrying out these acts of hatred, violence, and vandalism. All this is coming from the radical left. Why, then, put so much focus on the so-called alt-right and so little (if any) on the radical left?

Here are some more specifics.

As reported by the Daily Caller, “Antifa’s violence ranges from stabbing a police horse in the neck to beating people with bike locks. Antifa physically assaulted a reporter with The Daily Caller News Foundation in January and a search on YouTube reveals hours of footage displaying Antifa violence from protests across the nation. Antifa thugs are additionally known for assaulting police officers and chasing down fleeing people in order to beat them.”

How much of this was covered by CNN?

The Caller continues: “CNN also fails to mention that Antifa was declared a domestic terrorist group by New Jersey’s Office of Homeland Security and that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security stated certain actions from Antifa were acts of “domestic terrorism” in a memo from March.

How many of you knew that? Antifa branded a domestic terrorist group by an official government security agency?

As for Antifa’s handiwork at Berkeley when Milo was scheduled to speak, “Antifa groups … rioted, destroyed property, beat people with flagpoles and pepper-sprayed a women [sic].”

I guess it’s not all about peace and love and equality and tolerance?

And this is not just taking place in America. How about the attack last December on the Australia Christian Lobby building in Australia? As reported by the Australian, “The man accused of driving a burning van laden with gas bottles into the Australian Christian Lobby headquarters was a gay activist who disliked the group because of its ‘position on sexuality’ and had searched online how to make plastic explosives and a pressure-cooker bomb.”

Shades of Floyd Lee Corkins trying to carry out an act of mass murder at the FRC headquarters in DC in 2012, inspired to do so by the radical-left SPLC.

But it gets worse.

Both the Washington Post and the Nation carried pieces this week calling for physical violence against the alt-right, with the Post headline calling for “direct action” and the Nation headline reading, “Not Rights but Justice: It’s Time to Make Nazis Afraid Again.”

With this logic, even if the “Unite the Right” marchers in Charlottesville had not engaged in any violence, their ideologies are so evil that they should be violently attacked. Is this the America you want to live in?

And let’s not forget that, for years now, those of us who lovingly oppose LGBT activism have been branded Nazis, KKK, and worse. Perhaps we should be subject to violence too? Perhaps the gay activists who held up signs in 2008 calling for Christians to be thrown to the lions will get their wish?

Without a doubt, the media should report on something like the “Unite the Right” march that drew 500 militants to Charlottesville. And with one voice, every American should denounce it. Let those 500 be shamed and isolated, and let their ideology be exposed.

But the media should give equal attention to radical leftists who engage in violent words and acts in other settings, be it Antifa activists vandalizing a campus, student protestors assaulting a professor, or Black Lives Matter marchers chanting (about cops), “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon.”

If the leftwing media wants to regain even a shred of credibility, it will have to step up its game. Lives are literally at stake.

There is a new Harris Poll that finds that audiences are growing tired of profanity-filled movies coming from Hollywood.  However the study also seems to reveal a lack of discernment as well in my opinion.  Perhaps the pervasiveness of profanity has already lowered standards.

Three profanities, two blasphemous ones and one vulgarity were measured and found to be offensive to the point of losing some audience members.   The use of Jesus’ name as a swear word was the biggest offense with 33 percent of the general public saying they would be less likely to see a movie if they knew this profanity would appear beforehand.

There were demographic differences of interest in this study. Republicans were almost twice as likely (45 percent vs. 25 percent) to avoid profanity-laced movies with certain words than were Democrat moviegoers.  More than half of viewers over the age of 72 avoid movies with profanity.  Young people are the least offended by profanity in movie dialogue.

However, among all groups, Evangelical Christians were the most likely to avoid movies with profanity.  Nine out of ten said they might avoid a film using Christ as a swear word.  Other words I can’t reference also came in as strong deterrents.

That may not mean Christians have a high sense of moral discernment.   The poll also found that while Christians object to other “milder” words like Hell, “S” or “D” . . . none of those words scored above 50% offensive among Evangelicals!    Have those words become so common that they now fail to concern most of this large segment of society?   (Pastors searching for a sermon this month may want to revisit James chapter 3.)

Read more HERE.

This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana.

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Earlier this week, I mentioned that I had submitted a commentary on the “trans” ideology to the Chicago Tribune on July 31 that was rejected. I noted this only because several days after I submitted this commentary, Trib reporter Kim Janssen wrote an article about my article that urges Christians to exit public schools in part because public schools promote the irrational, incoherent, and destructive “trans” ideology. Here is my commentary that the Trib rejected:

Progressives refer to the “right side of history” a lot, always in reference to their own views and usually in reference to the newest sexuality fad. Currently, they’re using the phrase to ridicule those who believe that biological sex per se is intrinsically and profoundly meaningful. Progressives believe that “gender identity”—that is, one’s subjective, internal feelings about one’s sex—trumps sex in every context, including those in which persons engage in private activities.

Progressives believe that segregating humans by sex in spaces where undressing, showering, and engaging in bodily functions take place constitutes not only being on the wrong side of history but also reflects hatred, lack of compassion, ignorance, bigotry and unjustifiable exclusion.

The “trans” community argues that maleness and femaleness have nothing to do with anatomy, biology, interests, abilities, or the “arbitrary, socially constructed expectations or behaviors that society assigns, imposes, or associates with males or females (e.g., types of toys, clothing styles, hairstyles, make-up).”

 The “trans” ideology rejects the idea that the human species is binary.

And the “trans” community believes that since maleness and femaleness have no intrinsic connection to anatomy, physiology or arbitrary socially constructed phenomena, there is no need for those who identify as “trans” to take cross-sex hormones, have surgery, or cross-dress.

The end game for the “trans” community is not permission for a few gender-dysphoric men and women to have unfettered access to the private spaces of opposite-sex persons. Their end game is the eradication of public recognition of and respect for sexual differentiation. This means allowing objectively male persons with all their bodily accouterments intact in women’s private spaces and vice versa based merely on their claim that they identify as the opposite sex.

“Trans”-identified men and women seek unrestricted access to the restrooms, locker rooms, showers, shelters, semi-private hospital rooms, nursing home rooms, and sports teams of persons of the opposite sex. They seek to impose hefty fines on citizens who refuse to refer to them by pronouns that correspond to the sex they are not. They seek to force all citizens to pretend that men can menstruate, become pregnant, and “chest-feed” infants.

Minnesota has adopted school guidelines that permit the “segregation” of students who object to sharing private spaces with classmates of the opposite sex unless such accommodations result “in stigmatizing the transgender and gender nonconforming student.” So, what happens if a “trans” student feels stigmatized? Will school administrations force objecting students to share locker rooms and restrooms with opposite-sex peers?

Some questions remain unanswered:

How does the “trans” community define maleness and femaleness? If, for example, maleness has nothing to do with biology, anatomy, clothes, make-up, hairstyles, interests, or behaviors, what is it?

If in the “trans” ideology, maleness and femaleness have nothing to do with biology, anatomy, make-up, hairstyles, interests or behaviors, how do they know that maleness and femaleness are different?

Which private spaces do “progressives” think “gender fluid,” “gender-questioning,” “bi-gender,” and “tri-gender” persons should be allowed to use?

Either the objective, immutable sex of humans matters or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t matter, then all sex-segregated spaces, contexts, and activities should be eradicated. Everything should be co-ed for everyone everywhere. If objective, immutable biological sex has no intrinsic and profound meaning, then there should exist no single-sex restrooms, locker rooms, dressing rooms, showers, shelters, semi-private hospital rooms, nursing home rooms, athletic teams, jails, or prisons. If objective biological sex has no more meaning than hair color, then sex-segregation should end.

And this would constitute being on the most perverse side of history—a side of history no civilization has ever before witnessed.

These seem like reasonable issues to explore before news “reporters” assert that “trans”-identifying persons have the “right” to access the private spaces of opposite-sex persons. Apparently the Trib believes that winning a debate through demagoguery masquerading as objective news reporting is easier than winning through reason. Didn’t Neil Postman kind of warn us about this in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death?

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Yesterday, Larry Yellen of Fox News 32 Chicago sought a comment from IFI for a segment he was doing on Trump’s “transgender” tweet.

Here are the comments that were included in Yellen’s segment from opponents of Trump’s ban on gender-dysphoric men and women serving in the military:

• From “Danielle” Love, a cross-dressing man who works at the “LGBTQ” Center on Halsted: “It’s disheartening to the say the least. I think that transgenders of all kinds are just as equally able to provide for our country just as anyone else would be.” (30 words)

• From “Vanessa” Sheridan, a cross-dressing man who works as the director of transgender relations at the Center on Halsted: “That’s a shame. It keeps people from moving forward with their lives, from being the full contributors that they might otherwise be.” (22 words)

• Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, bristling melodramatically with unrighteous indignation: “I cannot think of a thing that is more abhorrent on the 69-year anniversary of President Truman integrating the Armed Forces racially.” (22 words)

• Senator Tammy Duckworth: “I didn’t care about the gender identity of the soldiers who were risking their lives to save me. I only cared that they were American troops and that they were there to rescue me.” (34 words)

• Colonel “Jennifer” Pritzker, the cross-dressing brother of gubernatorial candidate Jay Pritzker. Yellen reported this about Jennifer Pritzker: “While she’s [sic] a long time Republican, she [sic] has reached out to the president to express her [sic] disappointment.” (17 words)

• Ed Yohnka, ACLU Chicago spokesperson: “This is really beneath what we want America to be and certainly what we want our military to be.” (19 words)

IFI sent this statement to Yellen:

Gender dysphoric men and women who wish they were the opposite sex seek to force all citizens to pretend that subjective, internal feelings about one’s sex are more important than objective, immutable biological sex. They seek to force all of society to treat them as if they are the sex they are not. They also seek to serve openly in the military, which means impersonating and being housed with persons whose sex they do not share. That is a violation of the rights of the men and women who serve every American and every non-citizen who lives in this once-great nation. It’s outrageous that the military stood poised to force men and women who are willing to sacrifice their lives for us to suffer the indignity of showering and toileting with persons of the opposite sex.

Never in the course of human history has a society denied the reality, immutability, and meaning of the sexual binary. Subjective feelings do not trump reality. No matter how Americans feel about President Trump, his tweets, or his positions on other issues, the position he expressed this morning is something for which all Americans who care about the military should be thankful.

This is what Yellen’s segment included from IFI’s statement:

“All Americans who care about the military should be thankful.” (10 words)

144 words from “progressives,” 10 words from conservatives.

So much for fair and balanced.

IFI did not expect our entire statement to be included but maybe two sentences, one of which would have addressed the substantive privacy issue. And perhaps if IFI were to be the only conservative voice included in the segment, Fox could have included even four sentences, which would still have been only half the number of words allotted to “progressive” voices.

Here are some thoughts about the comments made by “progressives” in Yellen’s segment:

• Is it the responsibility of the military to help soldiers ‘move forward’ with their lives as Sheridan claims? And what precisely does ‘moving forward’ mean?

• Since the faux-enraged Emanuel clearly believes that pretending to be the opposite sex is analogous to race, perhaps he could enlighten everyone as to what specific ways these two conditions correspond.

• If I were lying bleeding on a battlefield, I, like Duckworth, wouldn’t care about the gender identity or anything else about those risking their lives to save me. I wouldn’t care if they were anemic, or had orthodontic braces, gout, polydactyly (an extra finger), irregular menstrual cycles, or undescended testicles, all of which are conditions that preclude military service. If I were bleeding to death on a battlefield, I wouldn’t care if the person rescuing me were an infantilist, frotteurist, voyeur, or kleptomaniac. But does the military assess fitness for service based on what criteria matter to those being rescued from imminent death? If that is how fitness should be determined than there would be virtually no criteria.

• What is beneath America and beneath the military is adopting the reality-denying view that objective, immutable biological sex has no intrinsic meaning or value, particularly with regard to modesty and privacy.

• What is beneath America and the military is forcing men and women to share barracks, restrooms, and showers with persons of the opposite sex.

• What is beneath America and the military is coercing Americans to pretend to believe that subjective, internal feelings about one’s biological sex determine maleness and femaleness.

• What is beneath America and the military is facilitating the rejection and mutilation of healthy bodies and compelling Americans to bear false witness in the service of disorders of the mind, heart, and will.

• Either the objective, immutable sex of humans matters or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t matter, then all sex-segregated spaces, contexts, and activities should be eradicated. Everything should be co-ed for everyone everywhere. If objective, immutable biological sex has no intrinsic and profound meaning, then there should exist no public recognition and accommodation of sex differences. No single-sex restrooms; locker rooms; dressing rooms; shelters; semi-private hospital rooms; nursing home rooms; athletic teams; or prisons. No more single-sex military barracks, restrooms, or showers. And this would constitute being on the most perverse side of history–a side of history no civilization has ever before witnessed.

The Leftist mainstream press has been on its heels for months now for its biased and erroneous reporting. The more it’s criticized for biased reporting, the more biased it becomes while declaring itself unbiased. Next time Leftist journalists take (or fake) umbrage over President Donald Trump’s criticism of the mainstream press, pretending they think his criticism of bias is an attack on the foundation of our republic, or when a “progressive” talking head goes all middle-school snotty on a guest for his or her criticism of press bias, remember their responses–if you can–to these comments from Barack Obama and his water-carriers who routinely accused Fox News of being a de facto fake news network and shill for the Republican Party:

Obama:

“We’ve got a tradition in this country of a press that oftentimes is opinionated…. [Y]ou had folks like Hearst who used their newspapers very intentionally to promote their viewpoints. I think Fox is part of that tradition—it is part of the tradition that has a very clear, undeniable point of view. It’s a point of view that I disagree with. It’s a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world. But as an economic enterprise, it’s been wildly successful. And I suspect that if you ask Mr. Murdoch what his number-one concern is, it’s that Fox is very successful.”

“If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you’ll see more of them doing it.”

“I’ve got one television station entirely devoted to attacking my administration.”

Implying that negative views of him result from the misrepresentation of him on FOX News, Obama said, “They’re responding to a fictional character named Barack Obama who they see on Fox News or who they hear about through Rush Limbaugh.”

“I am convinced that if there were no Fox News, I might be two or three points higher in the polls.[T]he way I’m portrayed 24/7 is as a freak!” 

Obama refers to fictional character Uncle Jim to imply that FOX News is inaccurate: “Uncle Jim, who’s been watching Fox News, thinks somehow I raised taxes.” 

“Look if I watched Fox News, I wouldn’t vote for me either. You’ve got this screen, this fun-house mirror through which people are receiving information.” 

Again accusing FOX News of disseminating false stories: “…Fed by Fox News, they hear Obama is a Muslim 24/7, and it begins to seep in.”

“There’s a reason fewer Republicans are running around against Obamacare—because while good, affordable health care might still be a fanged threat to the freedom of the American people on Fox News, it turns out it’s working pretty well in the real world.”

“And if all you’re doing is watching Fox News and listening to Rush Limbaugh and reading some of the blogs that are churning out a lot of misinformation on a regular basis, then it’s very hard for you to think that you’re going to vote for somebody who you’ve been told is taking the country in the wrong direction.” 

Obama’s team:

Obama communications director Anita Dunn: “We’re going to treat them the way we would an opponent. As they are undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House, we don’t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave.”

Anita Dunn also said that FOX News operates “almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party.”

White House senior advisor David Axelrod on This Week with George Stephanopoulos in 2009: “It’s really not news—it’s pushing a point of view. And the bigger thing is that other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way, and we’re not going to treat them that way.”

In an interview with ABC News in 2009, White House spokesman Josh Earnest described FOX News as “an ideological outlet,” saying, “We figured Fox would rather show So You Think You Can Dance than broadcast an honest discussion about health insurance reform.”

In CNN’s State of the Union, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel shared Obama’s view of  FOX News: “I suppose the way to look at it and the way…the president looks at it…It’s not a news organization so much as it has a perspective.”

Recently, Sebastion Gorka, military analyst and deputy assistant to Trump, was interviewed by CNN’s smug, disdainful Jake Tapper who was reduced to a mine-is-better-than-yours playground taunt in this exchange:

Gorka: The last 16 years, to be honest—disastrous. The policies that were born in the beltway by people who have never worn a uniform, the people who were in the White House like Ben Rhodes… helped to create the firestorm that is the Middle East, that is ISIS today. So, we are open to new ideas because the last 16 years have failed American national interests and the American taxpayer.

Tapper: There were plenty of people who wore a uniform who advised President Obama and advised President Bush.

Gorka: Not people as influential as Ben Rhodes who had a master’s degree in fictional writing. That is disastrous.

Tapper: Well, I’m sure [Rhodes] would put his graduate degree against yours any day of the week.

Yes, a news anchor actually said that.

In an interview with Anderson Cooper, Gorka called CNN on the carpet for the absence of substantive “reportage.” When Gorka asserted that CNN’s coverage of the White House was corrupted by the desire to increase ratings, a contemptuous Cooper responded, “Okay, I’m just going to ignore the insults because I don’t think it really gets us anywhere.” Apparently, an obtuse Cooper didn’t notice that in his retort he actually did respond to the “insults.”

After the interview, Cooper ridiculed Gorka, referring to him as the “Hungarian Don Rickles.” This from the anchor who in May said to a Trump defender, “If [Trump] took a dump on his desk, you would defend him.”

Cooper better never criticize Trump for lack of decorum.

MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle embarrassed herself as well. In answer to her question about where Trump would be during the August congressional recess, Gorka said, “[I]n the last 25 weeks, you’ve seen [Trump’s] leadership, from the Southern border, to NATO, to Warsaw, to the economy, to the stock market. We’re crushing it, and he can do that from anywhere.” For no apparent reason other than childishness, Ruhle responded, “Alright, well, the White House doesn’t ‘crush’ a stock market, but I do appreciate your time.”

Maybe I’ve forgotten, but I can’t recall hearing Special Report’s Bret Baier ever responding to a  guest like the adolescent Tapper, Cooper, or Ruhle did.

Some will argue that many of Trump’s tweets are inappropriate, distracting, or worse. Some will argue that Gorka’s comments were unnecessarily provocative (that said, it doesn’t take much to provoke self-righteous, brittle, thin-skinned “progressives”). Neither of those issues is my concern here. My concern here is with the hypocrisy, arrogance, and bias that now corrupt the Fourth Estate. Many on both sides of the political aisle believe a free and fair press remains a critical cultural institution. Many, however, also believe the absence of objectivity, neutrality, or impartiality in most mainstream press outlets (as in many other cultural institutions, especially academia) pose a danger to the republic, and that should concern all Americans.

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“Progressive” extremists, who are growing in number, volume, and oppressiveness, are managing to divide even “progressives.”

They’re dividing homosexuals from gender-pretenders (i.e., L’s and G’s from T’s) by claiming that anyone who cares about the genitalia of their sexual partners is “transphobic.”

They’re dividing feminists from gender-pretenders by claiming that women must allow objectively male persons in their restrooms, locker rooms, showers, and shelters.

And now they’re dividing the theater community by attacking critics who criticize plays—even tepidly—that espouse Leftist ideas.

A particularly virulent attack on one long-time Chicago theater critic has revealed the nastiness, intellectual myopia, and fascistic tendencies of actors who have deified themselves as paragons of tolerance, advocates for diversity, and free-thinkers. No joke. They believe that about themselves.

Hedy Weiss, who has been the dance and theater critic for the Chicago Sun Times since 1984, has been accused by Steppenwolf Theatre’s artistic director Anna D. Shapiro and Executive Director David Schmitz of ignorant bigotry in a Steppenwolf Facebook post dripping with histrionics and Leftist bias:

Some of the critical responses from this work have been shocking – not because of the actual critique of the art, but in the way that the responses revealed at best the ignorance of the critic and at worst, a racial bias that, when captured in print, wounded many people of color in this community and their allies, and served as a horrendous reminder of how far we still have to come in terms of racial equity in this community.

We denounce the viewpoints expressed in some of these reviews as they fail to acknowledge the very systemic racism that PASS OVER addresses directly. Particularly egregious are the comments from Sun Times critic Hedy Weiss, whose critical contribution has, once again, revealed a deep seated bigotry and a painful lack of understanding of this country’s historic racism.

Many wonder how Weiss’ deep-seated bigotry and ignorance of this country’s racist history could have escaped the notice of the liberal Sun Times management for over three decades.

What prompted this accusation—a pernicious accusation if false—were these purportedly “wounding” words Weiss wrote about the play Pass Over by Antoinette Nwandu, which uses a Waiting for Godot-like conceit to examine the plight of young black men in Chicago:

But, for all the many and varied causes we know so well, much of the lion’s share of the violence is perpetrated within the community itself. Nwandu’s simplistic, wholly generic characterization of a racist white cop (clearly meant to indict all white cops) is wrong-headed and self-defeating. Just look at news reports about recent shootings (on the lakefront, on the new River Walk, in Woodlawn) and you will see the look of relief when the police arrive on the scene. And the playwright’s final scenes — including a speech by the clueless white aristocrat who appears earlier in the story — and who could not be more condescending to Steppenwolf’s  largely white “liberal” audience — further rob the play of its potential impact.

Yes, these are the “shocking” words that Shapiro and Schmitz believe “wounded people of color and their allies.”

Weiss was making the point that the play offers a simplistic view of the causes of violence in Chicago’s black community by ignoring endemic problems, stereotyping police as racist, and ignoring the indispensable role police play in curbing violence. For that she is deemed an ignorant bigot.

Theaters have a longstanding practice of offering complimentary tickets to critics. Because of Weiss’ alleged racism, a coalition of theaters called Chicago Theater Accountability Coalition (ChiTAC) started a Change.org petition that urges theaters to stop giving complimentary tickets to Weiss. ChiTAC is also reportedly putting the squeeze on other theaters to join this effort to punish Weiss for expressing ideas that hurt the finely tuned feelings of Leftists.

ChiTAC is to the world of theater criticism what Will H. Hays was to the film industry.

Other theaters are going further. According to the Chicago Tribune, “Second City CEO Andrew Alexander on Monday requested the Sun-Times send an alternate theater critic to review its performances,” and Writers Theatre in Glencoe warned, “those who do choose to use language that espouses hate or ignorance will not be invited to attend as guests.” The problem, as conservatives know, is that “progressives” have redefined hate and ignorance to mean “moral or ontological propositions that ‘progressives’ dislike.”

In an open letter to the Goodman Theatre, Chicago actor Bear Bellinger expressed his discomfort with and unwillingness to perform if Weiss is in the audience, saying the theater should provide an understudy to replace him if she were in the audience. Some call this principle. Others call it self-indulgent, self-righteous, petulant “virtue-signaling.”

To put Weiss’ allegedly “racist” words in context, here’s a bit more from her review of Pass Over:

The essential premise of Antoinette Nwandu’s play, “Pass Over,” now in a brilliantly acted world premiere at Steppenwolf Theatre, is unquestionably inspired.

…

To be sure, no one can argue with the fact that this city (and many others throughout the country) has a problem with the use of deadly police force against African-Americans.

…

Hill and Parker are such sublime actors — possessed of wonderful physical grace and finely honed tragicomic instincts — that watching them bicker, tease, wrestle, put on Masterpiece Theatre-like British airs, and above all, dream of making it to the “Promised Land” (just as in the Bible story they learned as kids in Sunday school) is like a master class in dramatic interplay. (Parker is particularly charismatic — an actor who can make you hear his brain humming.) And Nwandu has written terrific, alternately playful and heartbreaking dialogue for them.

Does anyone think an actual racist would write those words?

Chicago theater “progressives,” practiced at the art of ferreting out speech that expresses ideas they don’t like, have had Weiss on their radar for some time. The theater community was beside itself with moral outrage when Weiss (aas well as Chicago Tribune theater critic Chris Jones) found fault with the Steppenwolf’s 2015 production of the play for teens titled This is Modern Art for its glorification of graffiti and its inclusion of a tutorial on how to vandalize property and elude authorities.

Weiss wrote:

I lived in New York throughout the 1970s, when graffiti became the medium of protest. I watched as thousands of subway cars, street signs, historic bridges and building walls were defaced — becoming a sort of visual virus that the city could neither control nor afford to erase.

That graffiti (which later surfaced as America’s “gift” to European cities, too) became the most self-destructive marker — a warning sign that a neighborhood was dangerous, infected with crime, on the decline, and a bad place to set up a business. In short, it was a form of grand-scale urban self-inflicted mugging, even if people like Norman Mailer tried to ennoble it. And while you might have been able to pick out a few bits of truly “artful” scrawl, most of the stuff was desecration, pure and simple. And the scourge of graffiti continues: After a recent reconstruction of the Diversey Harbor area, graffiti ruined a beautiful new wall, and the shadows of removed paint still linger.

…

No amount of classroom discussion will scrub clean the irresponsible ideas promulgated in this play. 

It’s an odd moral universe that the theater community has constructed in which homosexuality, transvestism, and public nudity are celebrated while criticism of graffiti is condemned.

Particularly obtuse, deceitful, and/or kooky theater blogger Mark Schreppe, who calls Weiss’ review of Pass Over “vomit-inducing,” accuses Weiss of a whole host of nasty things including “body-shaming” an actress in Weiss’ positive review of a “gender-bending” play in which females played male historical characters. This is the only comment I could find in Weiss’ review that even touches on an actress’ appearance:

Kelli Simpkins, the tall, reed-thin actress with an easily androgynous bearing and brainy aura, 

That’s it. That description of Simpkins as tall and reed-thin constitutes body-shaming in the rhetorical police state occupied by Leftist language vigilantes.

Schreppe goes on to make this truly baffling comment in reference to Weiss’ review of the play Monster: “Hedy seems unwilling to believe that a young black boy could be talented.” To ascertain the soundness of this charge, you must read the review by Weiss on which this allegation is based (Click here). Trying to find even a hint of justification for the allegation that Weiss is unwilling to believe a young black boy could be talented is like trying to find Waldo in a Richard Scarry book.

Schreppe excoriates Weiss for racism in her review of the play Gloria because Weiss described an Asian American character as Asian American and an African American character as African American. Oddly, he didn’t criticize Anne Spiselman for using the exact terms to describe those characters in her review in the Hyde Park Herald. Nor did he criticize Paul Taylor who described the Asian American character as a “work-shy Asian-American rich kid.”

Unfortunately, the theater world has long been an insular echo chamber in which deviant ideas and images flourish to the detriment of human flourishing. With this attack on the not-really-conservative Hedy Weiss, it’s clear just how little room there is in the arts for dissenting views of human nature and human flourishing to be expressed. The theater community is a body of believers so thoroughly infected with systemic bigotry that it has no healthy organ of discernment left: no eyes to see, no ears to hear, no mind capable of clear thinking.

For those who love theater, there is a theater company well worth supporting: Provision Theater, whose mission is to produce “works of hope, reconciliation and redemption; works that challenge us to explore a life of meaning and purpose.”

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Imagine if families could enjoy a movie together without the fear of being bombarded with nudity, crude language, or excessive gore. Up until recently, families could do just that. That is, until Disney and its Hollywood cohorts wielded their dark magical legal powers.

VidAngel enabled families to stream a huge array of mainstream movies and tv shows from the internet into their homes. But unlike other streaming services, the service allowed customers to filter out potentially offensive material like vulgar language, gore, drug use, and sexual content. VidAngel would bleep out any words or simply skip over scenes that were selected by the user to be filtered out.

Though it did not improve the overall cinematic production of movies (a filtered version of Batman vs. Superman was still painful to sit through), VidAngel, in many ways, made family movie nights safe again.

But in December 2016, Disney, LucasFilm, Warner Bros. and 20th Century FOX sued VidAngel, arguing the movie streaming and filtering subscription service violated copyright law.

The District Court granted the plaintiff’s preliminary injunction, forcing VidAngel to shut down the video streaming service while the litigation is underway.

VidAngel has appealed the injunction and the two sides will present oral arguments before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on June 8 in Pasadena, California.

What the appellate court decides is not the end of the matter, but will determine whether VidAngel can continue to stream content until the lawsuit is over. The decision on the injunction will come down in the upcoming months. The ultimate fate of VidAngel will not be known for quite some time.

Hollywood has long disdained the filtering of offensive content and the major studios religiously sue any filtering service they can. VidAngel and other services have offered to pay for licensing rights but are continuously refused.

To circumvent Hollywood’s refusal to license videos, VidAngel purchased massive amounts of physical DVD’s from retail stores. The customers then would purchase the movie from VidAngel, stream and watch the movie and then sell it back after they are done watching. VidAngel claims to only sell and buy back the same number of movies in proportion to the number of physical DVDs it has in its warehouse. Thus, VidAngel argues it is not breaking copyright and licensing law because the customers actually own copies of the films being filtered.

Yes, it’s confusing.

This video provides clarity about the business model and the lawsuit, described by Studio C’s Matt Meese.

Until the lawsuit is settled, families can use review sites such as PluggedIn.com and CommonSenseMedia.org to see in advance what offensive content is  in their movies, TV shows, video games, music, and even books.

Take ACTION:  Please pray that the Family Movie Act is upheld and that VidAngel’s family-friendly streaming business can resume.

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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 with IFI by texting “IFI” to 555888 to be enrolled right away.

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Always tolerant, liberty-loving, diversity-desiring “progressives” are fuming about a Texas bill that would prevent child welfare services providers, foster families, and adoptive families from being penalized for their faith. While Leftists claim the intent of the bill, titled “The Freedom to Serve Children Act,” is to discriminate against non-Christians, homosexuals, and unmarried couples in child placement, it’s really about stopping discrimination against Christians for exercising their First Amendment rights.

Leftists who view the shifting sands of social science as their sacred texts for determining virtue and parental wisdom hold in contempt those who look instead to Scripture for guidance. Moreover, “progressives” are either ignorant, delusional, or deceitful when it comes to both the content and reliability of their sacred texts, including social science research that compares children raised by heterosexual parents to those raised by homosexual parents.

Heidi Stevens, who writes the “Balancing Act” column in the Chicago Tribune, which focuses on “work-life balance, relationships and parenting from a feminist perspective” provides a perfect exemplar of such “progressives.” Stevens issued a full-throated unequivocal condemnation of the Texas law that if passed would allow Christian foster care and adoption agencies to refuse to place babies and children in non-Christian homes and homes headed by homosexuals.

And what was her justification for this condemnation?

With startling certainty, absolutist Stevens proclaims that “the science is clear: Children raised by same-sex parents fare just as well as children raised by opposite-sex parents.” To prove that the science is clear, Stevens pointed to a review of studies conducted by Columbia Law School researchers that found that 75 of the 79 studies–that they selected–some dating back over 30 years, “concluded that kids whose parents are gay face no disadvantages.” According to the researchers Stevens cites, “‘Taken together, this research forms an overwhelming scholarly consensus, based on over three decades of peer-reviewed research, that having a gay or lesbian parent does not harm children.’”

Whoa, Nelly.

Based on analysis provided by Leftist researchers at Leftist Columbia Law School, Leftist Stevens proclaims that social science—as distinct from hard science—proves conclusively that no harm comes to children raised by homosexuals.

In addition to her absolute certainty based on woefully unstable social science that being deprived of either a mother or father has no effect on children, Stevens fails to define “harm.” For example, one of the studies cited found that “those [young adults] who had grown up in a lesbian family were more likely to consider the possibility of having lesbian or gay relationships, and to actually do so” than those who grew up with a mother and a father. Whether the increased likelihood of experimenting with homoerotic activity constitutes harm depends on one’s definition of harm.  Stevens seems to arrogate to herself the right to define harm for everyone.

So, let’s spend a moment looking at the one study that Stevens specifically singles out for the conclusiveness of its conclusions: the “US National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study: Psychological Adjustment of 17-Year-Old Adolescents”  (NLLFS) published in 2010 in the journal Pediatrics.

Stevens wrote that the study “found that children raised by two lesbian mothers actually scored higher by social and academic measures than kids raised by opposite-sex parents. And they scored significantly lower in social problems, rule-breaking and aggressive behaviors.”

Curiously, Stevens omitted even a cursory description of the study, so here’s a bit about the study that may help illuminate whether Steven’s absolute confidence in the current state of research is warranted [emphases added]:

Between 1986 and 1992, 154 prospective lesbian mothers volunteered for a study that was designed to follow planned lesbian families from the index children’s conception until they reached adulthood. Data for the current report were gathered through… interviews and Child Behavior Checklists that were completed by their mothers at corresponding times.

According to their mothers’ reports, the 17-year-old daughters and sons of lesbian mothers were rated significantly higher in social, school/academic, and total competence and significantly lower in social problems, rule-breaking, aggressive, and externalizing problem behavior than their age-matched counterparts in Achenbach’s normative sample of American youth.

…

Between 1986 and 1992, prospective lesbian mothers…were recruited via announcements that were distributed at lesbian events, in women’s bookstores, and in lesbian newspapers throughout the metropolitan areas of Boston, Washington, DC, and San Francisco.

The study’s own authors point to several study limitations that undermine Stevens’ claim that the research is conclusive:

1.)  It was a non-random sample.

2.)  “[S]ome…participants expressed fears that legislation could be enacted to rescind the parenting rights of lesbian mothers.” In other words, participants may be motivated to skew their answers out of fear they may lose their children.

3.)  “[T]he data did not include the Achenbach Youth Self Report or Teacher’s Report Form. A more comprehensive assessment would have included reports from all 3 sources.”

4.)  The study participants and the representatives from the “normative” group “are neither matched nor controlled for race/ethnicity or region of residence.”

If Stevens had bothered to read some of the comments following the study, she may have been surprised to learn that this study isn’t quite as conclusive as she assumes. Or perhaps she did read the comments, but for political reasons, chose to ignore the inconvenient ones. Here are two comments from physicians:

“The conclusions…that children of lesbian mothers demonstrate superior psychological adjustment compared to children of traditional families, even when the parents separate before the children are fully grown, are, on their face, a bit fantastic. Is the implication, that fathers are an undesirable component of the family, to be taken at face value? Such a conclusion, notwithstanding the caveats acknowledged by the authors in their discussion, begs for a better study with randomly selected subjects, objective measurement and followup, and appropriate control groups” (Robert P. Sundel, Pediatric Rheumatologist).

“I must take issue with the interpretation and conclusions of the authors as well as the decision by Pediatrics to publish the article. The study conclusions were based solely on the parental responses to the Child Behavior Checklist. Parents who complete CBCL’s on their own children for a study that could potentially report negative findings on the outcomes of children raised in lesbian homes have a clear, self-serving bias. The fact that the study chose not to include the self reported CBCL or the teacher CBCL is mentioned, but it begs the point? Why? Were the results contradictory? On the surface it appears that the study authors are only reporting data that supports a specific, predetermined view-point. I will not be referencing this article or results as valid until ALL of the data is made public for review” (Daniel Trementozzi, Pediatrician).

This study included an alarming statistic that Stevens didn’t mention: By 2009 when the study concluded, 56 percent of the lesbian couples were no longer together. While the study didn’t include divorce statistics for the traditional families, research shows that in 2009 the divorce rate in the United States was  somewhere between 3.5 percent – 16.9 percent. The average age of the lesbians at the conclusion of the NLLF study was 52. The divorce statistic for women ages 50-59 in 2009 was 41.1 percent. It appears that lesbian relationships are really, really  unstable.

Whenever studies emerge that undermine the sacred tenets of the homosexuality-affirming ideology, Leftists point to the organizations that funded the research to cast doubt on undesirable conclusions. So, who funded this particular study that Stevens finds as unassailable as evidence that Earth is round?  Here’s who:

1.)  The Gill Foundation: Tim Gill is the infamous multi-millionaire founder of QuarkXPress and homosexual activist who pours money into state legislative races around the country to transform state legislatures into pro-homosexual political machines.

2.)  The Lesbian Health Fund of the Gay Lesbian Medical Association

3.)  Horizons Foundation: A San Francisco grant-making organization whose motto is “Fueling the LGBTQ Movement.”

4.)  Roy Scrivner Fund of the American Psychological Foundation (which is a grant-making foundation associated with the American Psychological Association). To be eligible for a grant from this fund, one must “Demonstrate commitment to LGBT family issues” and provide a “description of” the “proposed work’s…expected outcomes.” This grant is named in honor of Roy Scrivner, a homosexual activist and the founder of “the APA division of Family Psychology’s Committee on Lesbian and Gay Family Issues.”

5.)  Special thanks were offered to Dr. Ellen Perrin, an activist in support of all things homosexual whom I mentioned in a recent article on the AAP; UCLA’s Williams Institute, an “LGBT” advocacy think tank; lesbian professor Esther Rothblum; and lesbian researcher Heidi Peyser who is raising twin sons with her partner. Peyser “holds a degree in LGBTQQ psychology, and has been a reviewer for the Journal of Lesbian Studies.”

Stevens dismisses research indicating that children raised by homosexuals suffer negative consequences and seems untroubled by the fact that some of the studies she cavalierly dismisses have fewer methodological flaws than studies she and her ideological compeers at Columbia Law School favor. As one would expect, Leftists critique research whose conclusions they don’t like with a vigor and rigor they don’t apply to research whose conclusions they do like.

For those who care about diversity and critical thinking, click here, here , here and here for more information.

Stevens, presumably a defender of diversity, is offended that theologically orthodox Christian foster care and adoption agencies might want to place children with families that affirm theological orthodoxy and that don’t affirm homoerotic behavior—behavior that is clearly condemned in both the Old and New Testaments:

As for the non-Christian part of the bill: We could take a look around the world, where Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and atheists have been successfully raising children for centuries. We could take a look around our country, where the same is true…. Christians don’t have a monopoly on kindness, understanding, commitment or unconditional love — all things children need from their parents. Neither do heterosexuals.

The problem with Stevens’ claim is that no one argues that Christians or heterosexuals “have a monopoly on kindness, understanding, commitment or unconditional love” or that homosexuals, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews or atheists are incapable of loving children. This is a quintessential straw man argument.

What theologically orthodox Christian child care organizations believe is that proper parenting requires more. Here again, we first need to define “successful.” Just as Stevens may believe that the successful raising of children includes more than just teaching them about kindness, understanding, commitment, or unconditional love, so too do many Christians (and Jews and Muslims). Many Christians believe that the successful raising of children includes teaching them about Jesus and teaching them moral virtues including virtues that pertain to sexuality.

Parents from the aforementioned groups will likely not raise up children in the way they should go with regard to faith in Christ as the only way to salvation and eternal life. And homosexuals will surely not teach children that homoerotic activity jeopardizes eternal life. Does it shock Stevens or anyone else that people who follow a faith tradition believe in its precepts?

Christians believe that great harm—indeed, the greatest harm imaginable—comes to those who do not accept the substitutionary work of Christ on the cross. Those in homosexual relationships will not teach children about the need of all to repent of sins articulated in Scripture.

Stevens believes that “there’s a problem with accepting state funding while discriminating against members of the public.” There is no problem with some child placement agencies helping children (and the state) by placing children in good homes. If Leftists really cared about the needs and welfare of children, they would not force organizations like Catholic Charities to stop serving children. How does increasing the burden on other agencies and making fewer homes available for children serve the needs of already suffering children? Once again, Leftists put the desires of homosexual adults above the needs of children.

The more serious constitutional issue pertains to the violation of First Amendment religious Free Exercise protections that Leftists pursue with an unholy passion. Denying state monies to only theologically orthodox Christian child placement organizations would be unconstitutional in that it would represent favoring either non-religious organizations over religious or favoring some religious organizations (e.g., “progressive” Christian organizations) over others. All child placement agencies “discriminate.” That is, they make distinctions about what criteria best serve the needs and rights of children. “Progressives” want the unilateral right to determine what those criteria are.

Stevens quotes from a 2013 statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) that says—and I paraphrase—while the number of parents is important (i.e., the magic number 2), parental sexual differentiation is not. Maybe Stevens could write a column “libsplaining” why either mothers or fathers are dispensable but having two parents is important.

Because AAP leaders are water carriers for “progressivism,” AAP statements have no credibility on matters homosexual and “trans.” As I wrote in April, fewer than two dozen AAP members create and vote on policy, and the vast majority of members see policy statements for the first time when the public sees them via press releases.

Stevens concludes with this amusing Deep Thought: “Children deserve devotion, not dogma.” Once more for the road, some definitions:

Dogma: A principle, belief, or statement of idea or opinion, esp. one authoritatively considered to be absolute truth.

Dogmatism: Unfounded positiveness in matters of opinion; arrogant assertion of opinions as truth.

Stevens looks to Columbia Law School researchers as the authoritative arbiters of truth. Others look to the Bible.

Children deserve devotion to Scripture, not “progressive” dogmatism.

Listen to this article as a podcast!

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Remember learning about the Pavlovian experiment where every time he rung a bell, he gave a dog a treat, resulting in the dog connecting the sound of bell with food? (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just watch this clip from The Office and you’ll see what I mean).

This experiment best explains what has happened today with the conversation around religious freedom.

Every time the topic comes up, folks on the left immediately cry “discrimination,” regardless of the facts. This has conditioned the media to cover all efforts to protect religious freedom as underhanded ploys of persecution and marginalization.

Case in point: Texas is advancing a bill that ensures state agencies don’t deny funding and licensing to religious adoption agencies because of the agency’s religious beliefs. So for instance, Catholic adoption agencies can’t be forced to place children in single parent homes or in homes with same-sex parents.

Religious adoption agencies in Texas represent 25% of the state’s agencies. This means:

• There are plenty of other adoption agencies that will place children in other homes.
• If the state were to start denying funds or licenses to religious adoption agencies because of their beliefs, the state would be thrown into a crisis, because there is no way they could replace 25% of the state’s adoption agencies.

So here’s the key: Typically when the left talks about “discrimination” in this context, there is an implication of hate and anger towards the LGBT community. And what they left is really trying to do is make this discussion about how the parents/adults feel, not about what’s best for the kids.

But religious adoption agencies have good reasons to want to place children in homes with a mom and a dad, that have nothing to do with any anger or malice towards the LGBT community.

And it’s especially hard to make the case that this is discriminatory when the adoption agencies aren’t investigating the sexual orientation or gender identity of the adults, but rather looking to see what the home situation is like: namely if a mother and father are present.

If we want to truly live in a diverse society, that respects differing view points, then the government has to leave space for Christian and religious groups to serve our community, even if some don’t like their beliefs.

Written by Dale Wilcox

Last week, my organization, an immigration-control advocate, publicly released a 2016 disciplinary opinion from the Obama-era U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) officially reprimanding a Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) attorney for unprofessional and frivolous behavior in immigration court proceedings.

For decades, DOJ’s asked us to contribute briefs in difficult and complex immigration cases and in one such case the SPLC, a tax-exempt “anti-hate” organization, took it upon itself to file an unsolicited brief with the immigration court attacking us as “white supremacist,” “anti-Semitic,” and “anti-Catholic.” It was an odd bit of name-calling considering my small team happens to include Catholics, Jews, and non-whites.

Thankfully, even the Obama DOJ saw the move as a shameful and discreditable attack. DOJ’s disciplinary counsel fulsomely reprimanded the SPLC attorney, as well as attorneys from its partner-organizations, sending them a letter calling their attacks “frivolous behavior,” “derogatory name-calling,” and generally showing “a lack of professionalism.” DOJ also stated that the involved attorneys abused the briefing process and failed to aid the administration of justice.

DOJ’s reprimand actually builds on an existing trend for the SPLC. Over the last few years, the group’s “shoot-first, debate-never” approach has been skewered by a number of outlets, including Philanthropy Roundtable, Harpers, Counterpunch, Weekly Standard, Huffington Post, Reason, Washington Times, and Foreign Policy. The criticism seems to be correlated with the group’s ever-evolving and increasingly incoherent “hate-group” standard, a problematic feature inherent in the group’s business-model. Like the proverbial shark that has to keep swimming, the SPLC must keep fear-mongering and expanding its “hate-group” narrative lest its donors begin to stray. As JoAnn Wypijewski at The Nation once wrote, the SPLC knows “hate sells” and, hence, must continue telling donors that the Klan’s just around the corner.

But with the KKK now basically extinct, what’s a “hate-crusader” like the SPLC to do? Apart from opening up an attack on us (31 years after our founding), the SPLC has recently labelled opponents of Common Core as “far-right extremists,” they’ve attacked almost every GOP presidential candidate as either homophobic or racist this past election cycle, and they’ve even attacked The Hobbit for apparently reinforcing the “White Patriarchy.”

So inflammatory and irresponsible is the group’s “hate-watch” commentary, in 2012 they inspired an armed gay-rights activist to enter the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the Family Research Council (a pro-Christian “hate organization” according to the SPLC) in an attempt to, in his words, shoot and kill “as many people as possible.”

Why their “hate-expertise” can’t be taken seriously was reinforced recently when they reportedly snuck-in death statistics from Islam-inspired terrorist-attacks, including Florida’s Pulse Club, in a report that “proved” the US was undergoing a surge in “radical-right” terrorism.

But arbitrariness has apparently been the group’s maxim for some time. In 2007, they teamed up with the Hispanic lobbying group, La Raza, when the latter mounted a massive public relations-push in support of the Kennedy-McCain amnesty bill. As part of the initiative, the SPLC named and shamed as a “hate group” the bill’s biggest opponent, the decades-old Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR, our sister organization). La Raza, which means “The Race” in Spanish, is an explicitly race-centric organization that has close ties with and once gave an award to Jose Angel Gutierrez, a former leader of the ethno-nationalist Unida Raza party (‘United Race’) and who once declared, “We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him.”

Then there’s the SPLC’s mercurial founder, Morris Dees. Despite his outward appearance as a fighter of “hate,” before starting the group, Dees reportedly worked for segregationists George Wallace and then-candidate for Alabama Attorney-General, McDonald Gallion. Elsewhere, he’s claimed that the Confederate flag is part of his southern heritage.

But, of course, guilt-by-association’s an easy game to play. No one knows this better than the SPLC. For years, the group’s tried to smear FAIR by publishing random quotes from an early founder, Dr. John Tanton; quotes which are not only presented out of context but date back as early as the mid-1970s—ancient history for many Americans and prior to FAIR’s founding. These attempts to tar the good name of a legitimate organization with a long public record that shows no sign of favoritism or discrimination are as infantile as they are shameful.

Whatever the SPLC’s intentions, one thing’s certain: Those in the media that still use them as a legitimate “hate-watch source” have to stop doing so. What the SPLC wants is to insert into American public life a kind of extreme moral surveillance; one which creates an atmosphere of soft oppression that says “become passive and be unmolested.” This is absolutely not something America values as a nation and my organization will never bow down to such bullying tactics.

Who really deserves smearing are fear-mongers like the SPLC; not immigration reform-advocates like ourselves. We embrace debate, not hate. The SPLC should do the same.

Dale Wilcox is the Executive Director & General Counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute (irli.org), a public interest law firm that advocates for immigration policies that serve the national interest. Article originally published at Breitbart.com.

The series The Handmaid’s Tale based on the novel of the same title by Margaret Atwood just premiered on Hulu and is generating a flurry of excitement from ever-excitable “progressives.” It depicts a dystopian world in which Christians have established a totalitarian theocracy where fertile women are conscripted into producing children for infertile members of society’s elites. Paranoid “progressives” are calling this series “timely.”

Yes, today, as Christians face greater oppression than they have ever faced in the history of this country, “progressives” believe the country is a risk of becoming a conservative Christian theocracy.  Well, here’s a tale to tell your children.

The True Handmaid’s Tale: The Story of Ba’albeck

Written by Chris Pandolfo

Are all Trump supporters violent white supremacists? Clearly not. But you might not know that based on some of the reporting flying around this week.

The mainstream media are oversimplifying what happened when riots broke out in Berkeley, California, during a rally for free speech put on by Trump backers. In doing so, the reporting implies that those supporting the president were prepared for violence while those in opposition are simply opposing “fascism.”

Twenty-one people were arrested Sunday after fistfights broke out near Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, where a rally for free speech put on by a pro-Trump group Liberty Revival Alliance was scheduled. Rocks were thrown, and sticks and skateboards were used to beat people. Of course, the MSM reporting is slanted.

The Los Angeles Times report on the fighting, for example, takes pains to show how a member of a “citizen militia group” originating from Montana who came to the rally to protect Trump supporters might’ve been looking for a fight. “I don’t mind hitting” the counter-demonstrators, one man tells the Times. “In fact, I would kind of enjoy it.”

The paper also interviewed a woman on the Left fed up with the violence, a vendor selling organic produce, and a guy handing out “empathy kisses.” The message, clearly, is that those on the “Right” were looking for trouble and those on the Left responded.

What the Times and other outlets don’t tell you is this was not simply a clash of “Trump supporters and counter-protesters.”

Just who are the groups involved?

As some in the mainstream media tell it, on the one hand you have racist white nationalists in support of Trump. This is true. Alt-Right activists such as Nathan Damigo — who founded the white supremacist organization “Identity Europa” — can be seen delivering a vicious right-hook to a woman (who, in turn, was assaulting him). But by no means was every Trump backer at this rally for “free speech” a violent neo-Nazi.

On the other hand, as SFGate reported, several “liberal groups” were there to counter protest in opposition to Trump. But these were not just milquetoast liberals there to oppose a president they don’t like. Specifically, as the Los Angeles Times notes in a different piece, officials raised concerns about the militant “black bloc” of anti-fascist (Antifa for short) rioters. But don’t take the term “anti-fascist” on its face, as the mainstream media is wont to do. Understand who these people actually are.

“Antifa” is made up of self-described anarchists — radical left-wing thugs who employ violence and intimidation to advance their beliefs.

They’ve shown up previously at Berkeley to shut down a “free speech” event hosted by provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, leaving damaged property, fires, and assault victims in their wake. They also violently disrupted a “March 4 Trump” event in March. But you aren’t hearing as much about Antifa violence as you are about the Alt-Right.

In fact, some outlets are offering outright praise for Antifa.

Ask Esquire magazine and Antifa rioters are noble, anti-racist counter demonstrators — a sort of Justice League vigilante group dedicated to shutting down fascist protests.

But this is a radical movement that traces its roots back to World War II, as Mother Jones recounts in “The long history of ‘Nazi punching.’” They employ so-called “righteous violence” against what they consider to be the forces of fascism. What “fascism” is nowadays seems to be a subjective definition belonging to whichever particular Antifa thugs show up en force.

One might say Antifa’s violent tactics, employed around the world, are fascist.

Here in the contemporary U.S., waves of Antifa-driven riots are on the rise in in an effort to silence President Trump and his supporters by any means necessary. Antifa thugs show up at left-wing demonstrations to breed chaos, destruction, and bloodshed. They blend in with and are sometimes aided by the crowd, as National Review’s David French explained in the aftermath of Yiannopoulos’ Berkeley event in February:

The “Battle of Berkeley,” as some are calling it, was a dangerous, violent, bloody mess. Instigators, Antifa and Alt-Right, should be roundly condemned.

But at the moment, the American people are only getting one side of the story from the mainstream media. The majority of the MSM’s intense focus is applied to white nationalist groups, while Antifa is being cast in a heroic role opposed to the Alt-Right’s violence.

The mainstream media wax poetic on the dangers of the nationalist populist Alt-Right. They ought to be wary of normalizing Antifa’s brand of radical Alt-Left violence.

Editor’s note: The title to this piece has been updated to correct a grammatical error. 

Chris Pandolfo is a staff writer and type-shouter for Conservative Review. He holds a B.A. in Politics and Economics from Hillsdale College. His interests are Conservative Political Philosophy, the American Founding, and Progressive Rock. Follow him on Twitter for doom-saying and great album recommendations @ChrisCPandolfo.

This article was originally posted at ConservativeReview.com

Those with ears to hear fear it’s coming. They fear the impending death of FOX News as a voice for conservatism. They see FOX gasping for air in its miasmic studio spaces, but they fear too little life-sustaining air remains. Retaining conservative views on defense and fiscal policy cannot sustain either the health of a political party or the soundness of political punditry.

Although there have long been troubling signs, it was first Bret Baier’s and then Tucker Carlson’s references to objectively, immutably male persons by female pronouns that signaled that perhaps FOX News is too far gone. What some argue is a triviality—that is, grammatically incorrect pronoun use—is in reality momentous. If FOX News show anchors and commentators start using politically correct, grammatically incorrect pronouns it will signal that they have lost either their moral compasses or their countercultural courage or both. And it has been these values that enabled FOX News to thrive in the midst of cultural collapse.

For quite some time, FOX political commentators have either studiously avoided addressing matters related to homosexuality or “trans”-cultism or have addressed them in a pallid, opinion-free way that thinly cloaks itself in the pseudo-nobility of “neutrality.” But using female pronouns to refer to objectively male persons is a leap down from impartiality into the pit of “progressive” partisanship. It signals a cowardly capitulation to the dogmatic rhetorical diktats of sexuality anarchists.

Do Carlson and Baier rationalize their emasculated acquiescence by telling themselves that pronouns are only insignificant parts of speech or that referring to men who pretend to be women by opposite-sex pronouns is a matter of compassion or civility? Or in the privacy of their homes, do they confess to their wives that the motive for their complicity in rhetorical fraud is their all too human but still indefensible desire to keep their well-paying jobs? Is it cravenness, foolishness, or venality that impels their capitulation?

While florists, bakers, photographers, and calligraphers with far less resources risk everything in the service of truth, will Baier and Carlson sell their souls for a mess of pottage? Okay, maybe not their souls, but surely their integrity.

When will conservatives understand what Leftists understand, which is that language matters? Have conservatives not read George Orwell? Orwell warned against what he deemed Newspeak, which is exactly what politically-correct pronouns for biological sex-rejecting persons constitute:

Newspeak was the official language of Oceania, and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of IngSoc, or English Socialism….

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all…a heretical thought…should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever….

[T]he special function of certain Newspeak words… was not so much to express meanings as to destroy them….

[W]ords which had once borne a heretical meaning were sometimes retained for the sake of convenience, but only with the undesirable meanings purged out of them.

Integrity and wisdom are precious commodities these days, certainly not found often on television—not even on FOX News. The situation is going to get only worse now that Rupert Murdoch’s sons Lachlan and James have taken over the reins. Sure, they’re mopping out the lecherous serial harassers of women, but they’re cleaning house with dirty water. Swish, out goes boorishness. Back-swish, in comes Newspeak.

In a profile of the Murdoch men, the New York Times reported that last fall at FOX broadcast network, “James and Lachlan introduced additional benefits, including…vastly enhanced reproductive coverage for women and ‘expanded coverage for our transgender colleagues.’” Do the Murdoch brothers’ efforts to facilitate their colleagues’ quest to conceal their actual sex end with medical insurance or do their efforts include requiring Newspeak at FOX News?

The New York Times piece explains that “James and his progressive-minded wife, Kathryn, have long been embarrassed by certain elements of Fox News.” Maybe their embarrassment, informed by “progressivism” as it appears it to be, will accelerate the pace of Leftward-leaning changes already taking root at FOX:

“The brothers have even shaken up 21st Century Fox’s profile in Washington, replacing their father’s Republican lobbying chief with a Democratic one. One Hollywood friend equated their mind-set to moving into an outdated house and looking for wood rot.”

I’m all for getting rid of wood rot, but I suspect the Murdoch boys have redefined “rot.” Good things like recognizing the human species as sexually binary and marriage as an intrinsically sexually complementary institution are likely now considered wood rot.

In addition to Baier’s and Carlson’s troubling  use of Newspeak, there are the gaseous exhalations of homosexual FOX host Shepard Smith who never misses an opportunity to make snide remarks about conservative beliefs on homosexuality, thereby poisoning his reporting. While not as overtly and relentlessly in the tank for homoeroticism as Smith, other former and current FOX stars, including Megyn Kelly, Bill O’Reilly, Eric Bolling, Dana Perino, Greg Gutfeld, and Kimberley Guilfoyle, have expressed their support for the legal recognition of homoerotic unions as “marriages.” And those whom the public suspects still hold conservative views on matters related to homosexuality or gender dysphoria, like Sean Hannity, rarely address the issues and almost never offer substantive and hearty defenses of conservative positions as they do on fiscal or defense issues.

All is not yet lost, however. On Monday night, Carlson managed to avoid using female pronouns when talking about his guest “Caitlyn” Jenner. And Carlson did press Jenner—albeit just a little with his pinky finger—asking him, “Do you think it’s possible for people of good will, people of faith, people of generous spirits to be confused at least, or baffled and say ‘I’m not exactly sure I understand this’ and still be good people?”

But Carlson’s question is problematic in that it implies that opposition to “trans”-cultic assumptions is driven by confusion or bafflement rather than truth. And Carlson never confronted “trans”-activist Jenner the way he confronts other guests who hold inane views. For example, why didn’t he ask Jenner, who now has a spanking new birth certificate that identifies his gender at birth as female, if he should relinquish his Olympic decathlon gold medal since he claims he has always been female. Either his birth certificate is fraudulent or his Olympic participation as a male was. Both cannot be true.

Hope springs eternal that FOX will one day soon hire some true conservative commentators who are smart, wise, and courageous enough to offer full-bodied, unashamed, articulate, intelligent defenses of conservative positions on issues related to homosexuality and who will invite guests with more to offer than Jenner–people like Ryan Anderson, Michael L. Brown, Anthony Esolen, Robert George, Jennifer Roback  Morse, and Doug Wilson.  Boy oh boy would I like to see those interviews. They would provide the fresh air FOX needs and its viewers deserve.

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It’s dangerous to paint with a broad brush. I think we do that too often when we, as conservatives, go after the press for media bias. Many times when I see conservative leaders decry media bias, I ask “was that a biased story, or were you just unprepared for the interview?”

Now that’s not to say media bias isn’t real – everyone knows that the majority of the press comes from a liberal perspective.  Even CNN’s Jake Tapper has admitted that media bias is real, and Mark Leibovich of the New York Times agrees that most of the media is center-left.

One of the most obvious examples of media bias shined through in the last few weeks.

Here’s the situation: You have two high profile state Attorney Generals. Both have clear and distinct ideologies:

Attorney General #1 is a conservative.

Attorney General #2 is a liberal.

As such, they work with and receive donations from organizations that support their ideologies.

When Attorney General #1 is making national news, these ties are reported in the Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post, etc, etc. When Attorney General #2 is in the news, these ties are conspicuously left out. You get one guess on which one is the conservative…

If you guessed the Attorney General #1, you win!

Attorney General #1 is Scott Pruitt, the former Oklahoma Attorney General, who is now President Trump’s head of the EPA (a great selection in my opinion). As Oklahoma Attorney General, Pruitt sued the EPA more than a dozen times because, under President Obama, the agency continually issued unlawful regulations on states and businesses.

The coal and gas industries Obama was attempting to regulate were supportive of these lawsuits, and therefore, supported Pruitt. I think most people would agree that it’s noteworthy and good journalism for the media to report on Pruitt’s ties with the oil and gas industry as he’s taking on a job like this. This certainly doesn’t disqualify him, but it’s relevant information.

Meanwhile… in California. Two Attorney Generals have investigated David Daleiden and The Center for Medical Progress. Daleiden is the undercover journalist who exposed Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted baby-body parts.

Yet instead of going after Planned Parenthood for their inhumane business practices, the California AG’s have turned their wrath on Daleiden: first raiding his home, and now pressing charges.

The two California Attorney Generals Kamala Harris (who is now a U.S. Senator) and Xavier Becerra have received tens of thousands of dollars in donations from Planned Parenthood and other backers of the abortion industry.

Yet when this story broke in the Associated Press, this detail was left out. Don’t you think it’s a little relevant that the person pressing charges against Daleiden received campaign contributions from the organization that was embarrassed and exposed by his reporting?

Apparently none of the major media outlets did. Showcasing once again why trust in the media is at an all time low.

Read more:  62% in U.S.: News media has party favorites