Meghan Murphy wishes the mayor of Vancouver would uphold the law.

At 5:30 on Tuesday evening, just over 100 people gathered on the front steps of Vancouver City Hall to demand Mayor Gregor Robertson follow through on his commitments to women and girls. The event, organized by Creating John-Free Communities, Asian Women Coalition Ending Prostitution, and REED, was clear in its aims: Make Vancouver a john-free zone.

In 2009, Robertson signed a declaration naming prostitution as violence against women. Just last year, he signed a second declaration, committing to end “abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of modern slavery, which are crimes against humanity, including forced labor and prostitution.” Today, the Mayor

Judge Aaron Persky now has to deal with the fact that prosecutors don’t trust him.

Santa Clara County prosecutors on Tuesday blocked Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky from hearing another sex crime case, citing his decision in the Turner case.

“We are disappointed and puzzled at Judge Persky’s unusual decision to unilaterally dismiss a case before the jury could deliberate,” Dist. Atty. Jeff Rosen said. “After this and the recent turn of events, we lack confidence that Judge Persky can fairly participate in this upcoming hearing in which a male nurse sexually assaulted an anesthetized female patient. In the future, we will evaluate each case on its own merits and decide if we should use our legal right to

Oxford Pro-Choice on Twitter:

Oxford Pro-Choice ‏@OxProChoice
What message does this send to Oxford’s female students, @OUSUCouncil?

The Oxford Student Union has not re-affiliated to Abortion Rights because “it has made no effort to become inclusive to trans people” – meaning, presumably, that it continues to talk about women in connection with abortion rights, when any fule kno the correct thing to do now is talk about people who need abortion rights rather than women who need abortion rights. Women are just cis-privileged bitches and everyone should stop talking about them.… Read the rest

Maajid Nawaz takes the opposite view from Mariella Mosthof:

The atrocious attack in Orlando, Florida, was an act of ISIS-inspired jihadist terrorism that targeted gays. It must concern us all.

Before any of our assumed multiple identities, we are human beings first and foremost. You don’t have to be black to condemn racism, nor Jewish to condemn anti-Semitism, nor Muslim to condemn anti-Muslim bigotry, and you certainly don’t have to be gay to condemn the evil that just descended upon Orlando.

Exactly that. The attack was targeted, but it does not follow and it is not the case that we can’t all respond to it, even if we’re not part of the group that Omar Mateen wanted … Read the rest

Sadiq Khan has an interesting plan.

Adverts promoting negative body images will be banned across the Transport for London (TfL) network from next month.

As part of his mayoral election manifesto Sadiq Khan pledged to ban adverts promoting “unhealthy or unrealistic” body images.

The advertising watchdog received 378 complaints in 2015 about a weight-loss advert that asked customers if they were “beach body ready?”

Mr Khan has now asked TfL to set up its own advertising steering group.

The ASA rejected the complaints.

The Protein World “beach body ready” promotional posters were defaced in Tube stations and a petition was started calling for the adverts to be banned, however the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) watchdog later ruled the advert

Nick Little has a blistering post on hell and the slaughter in Orlando. Like me, he takes the idea of hell seriously as an evil harmful concept.

…like many people, what moved me away from religion (including a brief sojourn in Universalism) was the concept of hell as understood by the general believer, not by the academic or apologist. Hell was, I was taught, an unspeakably bad place. A place of torture, torment, and pain that would last for all eternity. And so I became unable to hold the existence of such a place, where people were actually sent, as consistent with the idea of a loving God.

Exactly. It’s not.

But it’s a mainstream belief – which is … Read the rest

Environment and Energy Daily reports:

One flier advertises an open hunting season on southeast Utah backpackers, with no harvest limits and all weapons permitted.

Another carries a fake news release from Interior Secretary Sally Jewell: The federal government plans to seize more than 4 million acres of the Navajo Nation’s land.

A third flier advertises a July 17 party in Blanding, Utah, to celebrate President Obama’s designation of a Bears Ears National Monument that would supposedly happen that day. But Utah Navajos aren’t invited, the flier states. They can kiss access to their sacred lands goodbye.

“Utah Navajos, stay away from our party,” it reads. “Everyone else come and celebrate with us.”

The postings discovered in the past month

Originally a comment by Ariel on They all stated without hesitation that it was wrong and forbidden.

Catholics, huh? Well, if you are interested in reactions of people in more distant and exotic parts of the world, here it goes.

Here in Poland we have a nationalist-Catholic organization called „All-Polish Youth”. Sweet people. Soon after the Orlando attack, on their Facebook site you could read the infamous quote from Leviticus (“If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them”), attached to a photo of the Orlando club.

This provoked a lot of outrage and the Facebook post was … Read the rest

So if you’re a woman in Qatar and you get roofied, you’d better just shut up about it, because if you accuse the roofier of rape you’ll be charged with a crime yourself, and most likely convicted. The BBC reports:

A court in Qatar has convicted a Dutch woman of having sex outside marriage after she told police she was raped.

The 22-year-old was handed a suspended sentence and fined $824 (£580). She will also be deported.

Her lawyer said her drink had been spiked at a Doha hotel in March and she had woken up in a stranger’s flat, where she realised she had been raped.

The stranger was sentenced to 100 lashes for the “sex outside marriage,” … Read the rest

Adele Wilde on Facebook:

I taught a group of Algerian Muslim men here a couple of months ago. Without any provocation from my side, they asked me what I thought about gay people.

I had been warned by my boss (eager not to lose paying students) not to be pro-gay or say anything that might offend them (what like expressing views of a decent, tolerant human being?). He told me that a male teacher had said something to the class that showed he supported LGBT rights. They were deeply offended and told my boss to get another teacher for them, which he did.

So I turned the question on the men and asked them what they thought. They all