gdp's Comments

Wonkette : Study Finds Kids Of Gay Parents Doing Great; Expect Further Parenting Studies To Be Outlawed

Wed, 9 Jul 2014 00:38:39 +0000

But seriously folks - this is a convenience sample, and compares kids whose parents are in stable relationships with a mix of those whose parents are and are not. It is corrected for socioeconomic factors though, poverty being the biggest correlate with poor outcomes. Unlike the Regnerus study, it's not cherrypicked, but you can't say kids of gay parents do better, just that they do about the same as others in similar circumstances with straight parents. Slightly better in a few areas, sightly worse in a few others, the latter being correlated with the homophobia in their area. Homophobia is bad for the kids of gay parents. Poverty is worse. Unstable relationships worse still.

MercatorNet : MercatorNet: What is the real story behind Ireland’s mass grave?

Fri, 6 Jun 2014 10:41:00 +0000

The problem is that when you're dealing with an organisation with a well-documented history of serial cover-up and concealment of wrongdoing... then there will be no benefit of the doubt given. Nor, perhaps, should there be. But more facts would be good.

The New Civil Rights Movement : Tennessee Passes Bill Allowing LGBT Students To Be Bullied In The Name Of 'Religious Freedom'

Fri, 28 Mar 2014 07:13:02 +0000

VISHNU PURANA says that sun is 800,000 miles and moon is 2,200,000 miles away from the earth respectively. How many Hindus believe that, I don't know. But that's what their scripture says, just as Genesis says the Earth is covered by a transparent firmament keeping the waters above from flooding it.

The New Civil Rights Movement : Tennessee Passes Bill Allowing LGBT Students To Be Bullied In The Name Of 'Religious Freedom'

Wed, 26 Mar 2014 02:39:42 +0000

Why do you despise Santa Claus and any influence of the sex goddess Aphrodite on our culture? Having read the bill, it really depends on how its interpreted and implemented. Historically, the record strongly suggests that only the majority religion in any school will get a look-in. Furthermore, how would a teacher know how to mark the simple question: "Is the Sun closer to the Earth than the Moon, Y/N?" without knowing if the student is Hindu or not. Or how about: "The shape of the Earth is a) An oblate spheroid b) a flat disc c) a circle d) a square"? Any of those answers could be correct, depending on the religion of the student. Or "What is the distance of the Earth to the Sun?" - according to 3 Baruch, the Firmament is at an altitude of 463 cubits - about half the height of the Empire State building. The conservative christian Pacific Justice Institute has already filed a complaint, now working its way through the Kansas courts, that teaching science (which assumes no supernatural intervention in experiments) provides a "hostile environment to those of faith" so should be prohibited. That's the environment this bill is embedded in. With goodwill and reason, there'd be no problem. But as Martin Luther said, quite correctly, ""Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but -- more frequently than not -- struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God." - reason itself is prohibited by this bill. "

Canon City Daily Record : Joseph Pennock: Lunacy of transgender definition - Canon City Daily Record

Wed, 1 Jan 2014 07:56:08 +0000

The reason that legislation tends to refer to "Gender Identity" rather than "Transgender" is because everyone has a Gender Identity - though that may not be unambiguously male or female, especially in the case of Intersex people - those born with *bodies* neither unambiguously male or female. 1 in 300 men don't have 46,XY (male) chromosomes for example. Some women do. Rarely, so do the daughters they give birth to, as described in J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2008 January; 93(1): 182–189. " A 46,XY mother who developed as a normal woman underwent spontaneous puberty, reached menarche, menstruated regularly, experienced two unassisted pregnancies, and gave birth to a 46,XY daughter with complete gonadal dysgenesis." This gets especially complex in some cases - 5ARD, 17BHSD, 3BHSD etc syndromes, where someone can be born looking like one sex (so have documentation for that sex), but who change to look like the other (unless they get medical treatment to prevent the natural change). See : Gender change in 46,XY persons with 5alpha-reductase-2 deficiency and 17beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase-3 deficiency. Cohen-Kettenis PT. Arch Sex Behav. 2005 Aug;34(4):399-410. 5ARD and 17BHSD only cause Female to Male changes. These changes can thus either cause, or cure, transsexuality, depending on the Gender Identity. Girls who it happens to desperately seek treatment to prevent it. Boys who it happens to rejoice that they no longer look like the wrong sex. 3BHSD can cause a change in either direction. 45,X/46,XY MGD causes Male to Female only. There are other syndromes too. There are so many different situations that it's just plain simpler to go by Gender Identity in segregating the sexes. Kinder too. Being forced to live as the wrong sex causes "Gender Dysphoria", a dangerous,serious medical condition that can lead to suicide or death from stress-related illness. I hope that explains things? The point is, there are far more kids in such situations than most realise. In the past it could always be kept quiet and private, if a child changed sex they'd just move to another school. I suspect most readers had no idea that this could possibly happen. These days, with databases, documentary trails, and inflexible regulations, hiding like that is not possible. I have 3BHSD. It's a source of some quiet amusement to both my OB/GYN and myself that my birth certificate says "boy", as that's what I most looked like before the change. We exist. We walk among you. We try not to make waves. Sometimes though, in order to inform others, we have to stick our heads up over the parapets and make ourselves vulnerable. Or things will never get better for Transsexual, Intersex, or Transgender kids.

Canon City Daily Record : Joseph Pennock: Lunacy of transgender definition - Canon City Daily Record

Wed, 1 Jan 2014 07:12:58 +0000

Here's a bit more: Sexual Hormones and the Brain: An Essential Alliance for Sexual Identity and Sexual Orientation Garcia-Falgueras A, Swaab DF Endocr Dev. 2010;17:22-35 " The fetal brain develops during the intrauterine period in the male direction through a direct action of testosterone on the developing nerve cells, or in the female direction through the absence of this hormone surge. In this way, our gender identity (the conviction of belonging to the male or female gender) and sexual orientation are programmed or organized into our brain structures when we are still in the womb. However, since sexual differentiation of the genitals takes place in the first two months of pregnancy and sexual differentiation of the brain starts in the second half of pregnancy, these two processes can be influenced independently, which may result in extreme cases in trans-sexuality. This also means that in the event of ambiguous sex at birth, the degree of masculinization of the genitals may not reflect the degree of masculinization of the brain. There is no indication that social environment after birth has an effect on gender identity or sexual orientation."

Canon City Daily Record : Joseph Pennock: Lunacy of transgender definition - Canon City Daily Record

Wed, 1 Jan 2014 07:01:56 +0000

" Rarer still, if not nonexistent, are children whose parents have subjected them to gender reassignment surgery. " Nonexistent in the USA. The patient has to be at least 18. There are an awful lot of misconceptions about transsexuality, intersex, and transgender. Unfortunately the reporting in the Daily Record hasn't just not helped, it's made things worse. Maybe this will help dispel the "whatever sex they want to be" myth? Gender Identity is the knowledge of which sex you are. It can crystallize as early as 2, usually around age 5, nearly always by age 10. How it forms is described in Biased-Interaction Theory of Psychosexual Development: “How Does One Know if One is Male or Female?” M.Diamond Sex Roles (2006) 55:589–600 It's based on congenital brain anatomy. In transsexuals, the brain is cross-sexed in certain areas, so a Gender Identity forms which differs from appearance. See Male–to–female transsexuals have female neuron numbers in a limbic nucleus. Kruiver et al J Clin Endocrinol Metab (2000) 85:2034–2041 That picture is overly simplistic (there are intermediate situations for example) but captures the essence.

Canon City Daily Record : Parents voice concern about transgender student at Florence High School - Canon City Daily Record

Thu, 12 Dec 2013 04:43:42 +0000

Oh yes - the "victims"- according to Clemonson "“The [other] girls are the victims because, they’re the one’s who are being victimized, they cannot ridicule him [sic] and they have to show him [sic] respect.”

Canon City Daily Record : Parents voice concern about transgender student at Florence High School - Canon City Daily Record

Thu, 12 Dec 2013 04:36:00 +0000

Turns out that "parents" isn't quite true. Of the three "parents" quoted, only one has a child at that school - the others are out-of-town political activists. Perhaps the reporter should have reported some of the other things said: "“They aught to castrate the sucker. That’s what I told the School Board Monday night. ‘Ya aught to castrate the sucker before you let him [sic] into any girl’s restroom.’ That way, I know that he [sic] can’t rape anybody, but he [sic] could.” - http://www.transadvocate.com/fact-checking-anti-t... To continue: "There’s so much that the gay rights have gotten, so much, that a lot of people are thinking that way so that they can get into a lot of different things and get a lot of free stuff, and be able to have the gay marriages, the insurance – because it’s cheaper for two people than for one – and, there’s just so many things that… I’ll be honest with you. I don’t know except that it’s just sick and it’s against the constitution, it’s against the bible! Obama is destroying America. Completely. We have no respect. Countries were afraid of us because we stood up for what we believed in. And so many people – just like Israel, they took god out of Israel and look what happened. It got blown up. Alright, they’re rebuilt Israel, we can rebuild the United States if we get enough people together. There’s not enought people that have the guts to stand up and say ‘No!’ and fight for what they want because too many people have gotten too much stuff – FREE – from Obama, they say, ‘Why would we fight it when we just don’t have to do nothing and we get all this stuff. We get food stamps, we get cars, we get this, we get that.’ I mean, there’s too many people who’s got a free handout. I won’t accept the free handout. I don’t take the stimulus money. It’s been offered to me, but I ain’t gonna take it because it’s money that doesn’t belong to me and this is what people’s done. ‘You’re gonna give me $1000? Or sure, fine! I’ll take it!’ They don’t ask, but the strings are attached to it." Maybe the "reporter" here missed that lot out, because it makes the "parents" seem like they're motivated by something other than child safety. “I don’t support transgenders.” Clemonson elaborated, “It’s not right at all, because I do not support it. I think it’s wrong and, it’s just wrong… If they’re going against god’s will, they are dangerous and you need to watch out for them because they will destroy you.” One might even call them paranoid nutters. Some questions for the Canon City News: Clemenson clearly states that she said – at the School Board meeting – that the School Board should castrate trans children and yet none of that made it into Canon City Daily Record. Why did Charlotte Burrous, reporter for the Canon City Daily Record paper edit out Clemenson’s true feelings? Why did Burrous claim that Clemenson was the parent of school children that went to school in that district if it wasn’t true? Burrous claimed that a second speaker, Jerry Hoel, was also parent of a school child in the School Board’s district but he lives in Clemenson’s town as well. Why did the reporter fail to mention that the town supports Jane Doe? Over to you, Canon City News. Or should that be Canon City "News"?

Canon City Daily Record : Parents voice concern about transgender student at Florence High School - Canon City Daily Record

Wed, 11 Dec 2013 10:00:56 +0000

So... exactly how are girls being victimised? "According to the article, the transgender student allegedly had been harassing girls in the bathroom, which prompted the parents of other female students to complain" The harassment consisted of her going to school, if you read the details. That's all they claim. They saw a trans girl leaving a stall and washing her hands - that's it. That they claim is "harassment". " Penezik asked. "You're teaching my child to go against my wishes." She said the students were told they had to go against what their parents had taught them. "I want to know why that it was justified," Penezik said." OK, it's simple. Because you're an irrational bigot. You're perfectly allowed to hold whatever odious opinions you want to, to say that Jews shouldn't be permitted in schools, or Trans kids, or whoever. But you're not allowed to make up stuff like bogus claims of "harassment", nor impose your foetid beliefs on others. Next question?

Sheila Reports : Obama, Gettysburg and God

Fri, 22 Nov 2013 14:42:22 +0000

"if those rights truly are inalienable, then we MUST have been endowed with them by our Creator " Why? Can there not be good without gods?

Sheila Reports : Obama, Gettysburg and God

Fri, 22 Nov 2013 14:40:46 +0000

"the great traditions of Jefferson" You mean these ones - "To the corruptions of christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence, and believing he never claimed any other." "They have been still more disfigured by the corruptions of schismatizing followers, who have found an interest in sophisticating and perverting the simple doctrines he taught, by engrafting on them the mysticisms of a Grecian Sophist (Plato), frittering them into subtilties and obscuring them with jargon, until they have caused good men to reject the whole in disgust, and to view Jesus himself as an impostor. Notwithstanding these disadvantages, a system of morals is presented to us which, if filled up in the true style and spirit of the rich fragments he left us, would be the most perfect and sublime that has ever been taught by man. The question of his being a member of the Godhead, or in direct communication with it, claimed for him by some of his followers, and denied by others, is foreign to the present view, which is merely an estimate of the intrinsic merits of his doctrines." Calling the idea of the divinity of Christ "mysticisms of a Grecian Sophist" would be entirely in keeping with omitting any mention of gods. To continue: "I, too, have made a wee-little book from the same materials (The Gospels) which I call the Philosophy of Jesus. It is a paradigma of his doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the book and arranging them on the pages of a blank book, in a certain order of time or subject. A more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen. It is a document in proof that I am a REAL CHRISTIAN, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call ME infidel and THEMSELVES Christians and preachers of the Gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its author never said nor saw. They have compounded from the heathen mysteries a system beyond the comprehension of man, of which the great reformer of the vicious ethics and deism of the Jews, were he to return on earth, would not recognize one feature." Like Jefferson, I try (however imperfectly) to follow the precepts of the man, Jesus. Like Jefferson, I discard the supernatural accretions as at best irrelevant, at worst harmful. Unlike Jefferson, I don't describe myself as a "Christian", REAL or otherwise. 200 years after Jefferson, the religion of Christianity is now wholly about Christ as a divine figure, through whom salvation may be gained through supernatural intervention. Following His teachings is regarded as purely optional, and usually ignored as it's too hard.

Sheila Reports : Obama, Gettysburg and God

Fri, 22 Nov 2013 14:29:08 +0000

The only two copies that were made before the event, rather than from memory after, are the Nicolay and Hay copies. Neither has the words "Under God" in them. Did Lincoln say those words in the oration? I think it highly likely, as the AP reported version, taken down in shorthand at the time, reads "That the nation shall, under God." But that doesn't matter. What matters is that 5 different people were tasked with reading the 5 different manuscript versions, word for word, without inserting or deleting anything. The honour of giving the first version went to the President. To go into wild flights of fancy speculating why the words were omitted, imputing nefarious plots, when all that was done was to read the text as written, indicates not just shoddy research, but an uncharitable eagerness to see evil where it doesn't exist. Exactly contrary to 1 Corinthians 13:4-5 4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, 5 doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

Sheila Reports : Obama, Gettysburg and God

Fri, 22 Nov 2013 10:11:00 +0000

I'm Australian. But even I know there are 5 different texts of the Gettysburg Address. The version that your president was asked to read was apparently the original draft, the oldest, in Lincoln's own writing, the so-called "Nicolay copy" because it was given to his private secretary, John Nicolay. Others read all the other versions, in sequence. That you are so oblivious to your own history, and that you didn't bother checking before authoring such an ill-informed article is unfortunate. I'm told that Wikipedia is quite good on the subject. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Address

MercatorNet : MercatorNet: Same-sex marriage has an unexpected foe

Wed, 13 Nov 2013 02:58:27 +0000

You know this, how? "very few homosexuals are actually interested in marriage, and almost all of them are in on the scam" Oh I see, it's all a vast international conspiracy, right? Sure it is. Well, I guess it makes a change from blaming the Jews for everything.

Canon City Daily Record : Transgender case under investigation - Canon City Daily Record

Thu, 17 Oct 2013 11:52:49 +0000

Today, PJI issued a statement to the TransAdvocate via their apparent mouthpiece,... While the statement still offered no evidence to support the claim that this trans kid is a predator, they finally revealed the nature of the supposed “harassment” endured by the cisgender school kids. In a statement delivered to the TransAdvocate by attorney Cathy Brennan, the PJI claims that a trans person in the restroom is “inherently intimidating and harassing.” Brennan, vocal critic of trans equality measures, became somewhat infamous after she outed a trans teen to his parents and school, and recently attempted to intervene in the medical care of a transgender person. After days of sidestepping any explicit statements about the exact nature of the supposed “harassment,” PJI now asserts that the mere presence of a trans person constitutes harassment and intimidation to cisgender people.

Canon City Daily Record : Transgender case under investigation - Canon City Daily Record

Wed, 16 Oct 2013 04:55:02 +0000

Partial transcript of testimony by the school superintendent: "VENDETTI: "Nothing has actually been verified with us. This is one parent basically bringing their viewpoint about this situation to the media because they weren't getting the responses that they hoped they would get from the district, from parents of students at the high school, or from the board and myself. So I think it's just an attempt to elevate the situation to a point where maybe some more attention can be drawn to that in the hope of having a different outcome. But to our knowledge and based on our investigation, none of those things have actually happened. We do have a transgender student at the high school and she has been using the women's restroom. There has not been a situation." Source : this interview - https://soundcloud.com/cristan-williams/fact-chec... Accounts by commenters claiming to be students at the school ColoradoKix (comment on TheExaminer) "I am a girl at the school and a friend of the girl in question. I have to say that she is awesome! There are a few problems that the principal isn't mentioning. I think they always like to cover things up? She has been both physically and verbally threatened by some of the boys. They can be pretty scary. And the girls can say some hateful things. But it's much less than half. More than anything she just wishes everyone would quit talking about her." HonestJane (Comment on Charisma News) "As a Christian girl who attends FHS, I'd just like to say that I've never been harassed by this individual not have I ever seen him harass anyone else. He's actually shy and a nice person. Do I think he should be able to use the girls bathroom? I'm torn. He either uses our bathroom and makes MAYBE 30% of the girls uncomfortable, or he uses the boy's restroom and gets beat up. I don't feel uncomfortable by him. Also, there are a lot of holes in this story. No parents initially complained. There was a mass Facebook message that included 150+ students and parents, outing him publicly. It was such a big deal, all electronic devises were confiscated if seen that day. THEN it was a problem and parents complained. This boy wasn't treated fairly. As a Christian, I had to put the truth out there. He didn't hurt or harass anyone."

MercatorNet : MercatorNet: Does same-sex parenting really make “no difference”?

Fri, 11 Oct 2013 05:21:15 +0000

"When comparing common law parents to gay parents, gay parents actually perform better (Table 3 of his study)" Obviously including a table showing that the data directly contradicts the conclusions was a serious mistake. The table should be omitted, and the facts concealed.

BioEdge : BioEdge: Bradley Manning transitions from whistleblowing traitor to transgender heroine

Sun, 25 Aug 2013 11:30:39 +0000

1. It's been known (though not publicised) that Chelsea Manning was Gender Dysphoric over 3 years ago. Only the degree was unknown. 2. Rather than Germany "experimenting with Gender Bending", it merely legally acknowledges a biological reality. It's Mother Nature that does the bending. Sometimes extremely so, in conditions like 5ARD, 17BHSD or 3BHSD which can cause a natural sex change. Those most people don't know about that, and some flatly deny such situations can happen out of religious belief.

MercatorNet : MercatorNet: Redefining marriage in NZ: lessons for Oz

Thu, 22 Aug 2013 04:53:00 +0000

Until 2004, marriage was not defined as being between a man and a woman, except through caselaw (see for example "In the Marriage of C and D (falsely called C)" where it was ruled that someone who is Intersex may not marry anyone under any circumstances,, and thus the children of such people are by definition bastards in law) "The wife was contemplating immediately prior to marriage and did in fact believe that she was marrying a male. She did not in fact marry a male but a combination of both male and female, notwithstanding the fact that the husband exhibited as a male; (iv) further, the definition of ``marriage'' as understood in Christendom is the voluntary union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others for life and a marriage in the true sense of the word within that definition could not have taken place and did not exist." Approximately 1 in 300 men do not have 46,XY chromosomes, and some women do. Rarely, so do their daughters. Karyotyping of those in supposed "opposite sex" marriages would cause over 1 in 300 to be voided, due to the Christian nature of Australia. " A 46,XY mother who developed as a normal woman underwent spontaneous puberty, reached menarche, menstruated regularly, experienced two unassisted pregnancies, and gave birth to a 46,XY daughter with complete gonadal dysgenesis. " -- The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism January 1, 2008 vol. 93 no. 1 182-189 In law currently in Australia, neither mother nor daughter would be allowed to marry. They would be considered "a combination of male and female notwithstanding their presentation as female". I feel that "The running dogs of rampant liberalism" is not exactly a phrase which will be persuasive to the majority of Australians. It's as unpursuasive as the Marxist version was in the past.