Originally a comment by Seanna Watson on Mandatory Xianity.

Canada still has one too:

The purpose of the National Prayer Breakfast is to unite leaders in our capital in order to pray together, build relationships, and seek to walk together in the spirit of Jesus Christ. The National Prayer Breakfast is an annual Christian event and is historically offered under the auspices of the Speaker of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Commons on behalf of the Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast Group.

It’s also sponsored by the Canadian Fellowship Foundation, which appears to be related to the US group of the same name (though details are sparse, and I occasionally have wondered if Sharlet might know anything about the relationship). Though the event is no longer held in government buildings, it still consumes public resources, since there is an designated official MP whose office staff does planning and mailing etc.

I attended one about 10 years back with a small group of CFI Canada people, when it was billed as “an ecumenical event in the spirit of Jesus Christ”. At that time, they were claiming to welcome everyone, including Muslims (well, except for the pork sausages), and even gave lip-service to dialoging with atheists (but not surprisingly ignored all our attempts at followup). More recently, it has turned back inwards as the theoCons have been increasingly seeing themselves as a downtrodden persecuted minority, and they have become rather more explicitly Christian in their marketing.

Khadija Khan at the Freethinker:

The culture of intolerance that has grown over time in the UK has undermined the ethos of British schools. As Islamist zealots grow stronger in influence in our society, a number of schools known for their secular, inclusive and apolitical approach, such as St Stephen’s Primary School, Parkfield Community School, Batley Grammar School, Kettlethorpe High School, and Barclay Primary School, have been caving in to their demands one after the other.

There has been an attempt by Muslim fundamentalists in the UK to politicise educational institutions, in order to gain clout in [the] social and political sphere.  And now these nefarious elements have come out in force to assert their intolerant beliefs under the pretext of religious freedom. They use religious identity and political grievances to subvert the secular democratic system.

As do theocratic Christians in the US. It’s very annoying.

[I’t was only a matter of time before the Michaela Community School in north London was added to the list of schools singled out for their secular principles and inclusiveness.

Michaela was founded by headmistress Katharine Birbalsingh in 2014. The school, known for its outstanding academic results, is facing a lawsuit for maintaining its longstanding secular character by banning prayers.

Prayers don’t belong in schools. Education is a secular project, and should not be mixed up in religious certitudes.

The manner in which the Michaela case has been framed, with the accusations of victimisation and discrimination against Muslim pupils, demonstrates that Islamists will stop at nothing to bully people into compliance. They use the language of human rights to assert their supremacist beliefs. They attempt to use English legislation pertaining to religious freedom as leverage to force the schools to comply with their requests.

As fundy Christians do in the US.

Concerningly, the threat posed by religious extremists remains present and has often gone unnoticed. The Commission for Countering Extremism has reportedly revealed that research on radical groups is ‘skewed’ towards the far right. Consequently, Britain has ‘substantial gaps’ in its understanding of Islamist extremism, which has been ‘systemically under-researched’. 

Islamism is far right. The useful idiots who want to protect it may be lefty, but Islamism itself is very far right indeed.

A highly polarised society where differences are valued more than similarities is a breeding ground for extremists. Parallel legal and educational systems based on extremist religious beliefs are operating in plain sight, contributing to further division in society. Disproportionate emphasis on religious freedoms has given minority ethnic or religious groups too much leeway to live according to their own cultural and religious norms, in disregard of the law, human rights principles and British values. Unfortunately, the main culprits at present are the Islamists.

The Michaela lawsuit and the threats and violence out of which it comes ought to be a wake-up call for progressives. They should acknowledge the perils of being in denial about the threats which Islamist extremism poses to the sort of peace, fair treatment and mutual harmony which are encouraged by a code of school rules that is universally applied, with no exceptions. In a modern secular society, it is surely in everyone’s interests if religion, like politics, is kept out of the classroom.

See also: trans ideology.

Good news but with a catch.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected former President Donald J. Trump’s claim that he was immune to charges of plotting to subvert the results of the 2020 election, ruling that he must go to trial on a criminal indictment accusing him of seeking to overturn his loss to President Biden.

We should damn well hope so. But he’ll just take it to the Supremes and they’ll roll over for him.

The unanimous ruling, by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, handed Mr. Trump a significant defeat. But it was unlikely to be the final word on his claims of executive immunity: Mr. Trump, who is on a path to locking up the Republican presidential nomination, is expected to continue his appeal to the Supreme Court.

…

The panel, composed of two judges appointed by Democrats and one Republican appointee, said in its decision that, despite the privileges of the office he once held, Mr. Trump was subject to federal criminal law like any other American.

“For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant,” the panel wrote. “But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as president no longer protects him against this prosecution.”

The three judges cast Mr. Trump’s immunity claims as a danger to the nation’s constitutional system.

“At bottom, former President Trump’s stance would collapse our system of separated powers by placing the president beyond the reach of all three branches,” they wrote. “Presidential immunity against federal indictment would mean that, as to the president, the Congress could not legislate, the executive could not prosecute and the judiciary could not review. We cannot accept that the office of the presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter.”

It’s not supposed to be like royalty.

Another win.

More from The Courier:

A campaign group controversially excluded from Dundee Women’s Festival is now being invited to take part in the programme.

Women Won’t Wheesht, a grassroots women’s rights organisation in Scotland, heard on Monday from solicitors acting on behalf of the festival to confirm their inclusion.

The climbdown comes after the group claimed it would consider legal action after being told by festival organisers last month that their application had been rejected.

It’s so inspiring when feminist women are excluded from women’s events because they’re not sufficiently deferential to men who pretend to be women.

Last year, the Stand Comedy Club in Edinburgh reversed a decision to cancel a fringe event with SNP politician Joanna Cherry, after stating some of its staff were not comfortable with her views on self-ID.

The venue apologised, after Ms Cherry threatened legal action, and the event went ahead as planned.

On Monday, responding to the Dundee Women’s Festival development, the MP wrote on X: “Well done sisters. Another victory for #WomensRights thanks to #humanrights and #equality law.”

Carry on not wheeshting!

The BBC squeals:

Royal Court play Cowbois aims to put ‘trans joy’ centre stage

Surely that should be joi?

A Royal Court play aims to bring trans stories to a new audience in London with an LGBTQ+ take on the Wild West.

Which is it? Trans, or LGBTQ+? Trans, apparently, so why does the BBC call it LGBTQ+?

I suppose we know why. They do it to further the campaign to force-team the LG with the T. Why that’s part of the BBC’s job is a mystery too profound for me to solve.

The producers of Cowbois say the play, first seen at the Royal Shakespeare Company, is for everyone but particularly those less familiar with trans identities.

Writer Charlie Josephine said they wanted to highlight “trans joy”. They also wanted to show forgotten transgender histories, in a playful and joyous way. “I knew I was writing for people who were less familiar with trans people,” says Charlie, who also co-directs the play and uses he/they pronouns, says.

Because of this, Charlie says they stuck with a classic narrative but threw in a less classic romantic lead – a trans-masculine bandit named Jack.

Trans trans trans trans trans. One trans for each sentence.

This was particularly apparent through the character of the sheriff, Charlie explained, who they described as a cis-gendered man who learned he could like wearing feminine clothing.

It’s all about the clothes. It’s a profound deep ineradicable part of the self plus it’s all about the clothes. Lots of intense intellectual work going on here.

Bea, a non-binary Londoner who also goes by the name Alan, came to the theatre with their dad Phil. They said the play’s trans representation had the family in tears. A particular scene stood out to Phil: “When Lou said, ‘how I feel on the inside and how I feel on the outside matches’, that was amazing.”

And so original.

The stately Beeb concludes:

The team behind the production hopes the play will give Londoners a fun night out.

The team hopes the play will sell tickets.

BBC reports excitedly on another installment of Mock Women:

The first Derbyshire Drag Showcase has been announced.

The event, which is being held at Derby’s Museum of Making, has been set up to support Derby and Derbyshire’s drag scene and local LGBTQ+ performers.

We get not one not two but three glam photos of men in exaggerated womanface. Next up: the BBC reporting giddily on a minstrel show, with three photos of people in exaggerated blackface. Right? That’s going to happen, isn’t it?

Mr Webber explained why the museum was the place of choice for the first-ever drag showcase the county has had to offer.

“We fully appreciate that drag is an art form and it’s all about making, so we really want to champion that art of making and it should be celebrated at the museum.”

As is blackface, right? And so should blackface, right? It’s an art form and should totally be celebrated at the museum? Right?

The showcase is free to enter but will only be available for people aged 18 and above.

Huh? Why? It’s an art form and all about making, why is it only for people 18 and older?

Apparently there’s an epidemic of women not being kind enough, so the manufacturers of T shirts for women and girls are stepping up to fix the problem. Julie Burchill has the details:

We may no longer accept the old saw, ‘boys will be boys’, as an excuse for everything from arson to zoophilia. But the icky trend for ‘be kind’ clothing is aimed squarely at one sex. As the social commentator, Laura Bishop, tells me: ‘While shopping for my kids I noticed that there are so many items of clothing which say “be kind”. They are all in the girls’ and women’s section. Every. Single. One. It’s like indoctrination.’

Indoctrination into what?

Submission. Self-abnegation. Putting up with whatever is dished out. Silence. Obedience. Being less than.

Enforced kindness started out as a conditioning process for female children. Until recently, it was quite rightly rejected by any fun-loving woman with a soupçon of self-respect. But it has now become a shaming mechanism to be used against adult human females who refuse to toe the line. Everything from single-sex toilets to sporting trophies must be sacrificed on the ‘be kind’ bonfire. In this era of gender ideology, women are called upon to give up our rights and our spaces so as to appease men who think they are women.

Kindness goes only one way, you see. Women must be kind to men. There’s no parallel obligation for men to be kind to women.

Now comes a new survey by the Crown Prosecution Service, which appears to suggest that there has been a ‘stark regression’ of attitudes among young men regarding rape over the past decade. It reveals that more than two-thirds of 18- to 24-year-olds believe you cannot withdraw consent in-person after agreeing to have sex with someone online. Nearly half believe that it’s not rape if a victim doesn’t fight back. And more than half don’t believe rape can be committed in an existing sexual relationship. Rape (effectively ‘decriminalised’, according to Dame Vera Baird) and domestic murders (two a week, of women by men) continue to be two of this country’s most thriving areas of endeavour.

We know the “effectively decriminalized” part is true because we’ve seen the horrible failures at every stage. A tiny fraction of rapes are even reported; a tiny fraction of those are prosecuted; a tiny fraction of those result in convictions. You do the math.

“Gender studies” academic Susan M. Shaw muddies the waters:

We don’t really have much research-based evidence to say definitively that trans women have a disproportionate advantage in sports. Right now, we’re mostly working out of our deeply-held and rather largely unexamined assumptions about biology and gender.

We do have much research-based evidence to say definitively that men have a disproportionate advantage in sports, and that’s all that’s required.

We could live in a different world. We could live in a world where male advantages simply evaporated the instant the man says “I’m a woman.” But we don’t live in that world. Multiple male advantages are baked in, and don’t go away even for men who take cross-sex hormones.

As someone who went through male puberty, Thomas has developed height and muscular advantage in her sport. All elite athletes, however, have physical advantages that they develop to their fullest to compete at the highest levels. Try though I might, at 5’ 4” I could never play power forward in the WNBA.

Look at all that mud in the waters. Yes, duh, successful athletes tend to have physical advantages, but it doesn’t follow that male advantages over females don’t matter.

We don’t gender-segregate because women can’t compete with men. Rather, we create sports that play to men’s typical strengths (football, for example) and value them over sports in which women are more likely to excel (balance beam). We then use this as proof that men are better at sports, and so men and women couldn’t possibly compete together.

No we don’t.

In other words, we use sports to maintain the illusion that men and women are more different than they are alike. This reinforces a whole world outside of sport that values men over women and questions women’s abilities to lead and succeed.

We do a lot of things to maintain the illusion of difference. Think about it for a minute. If women cut their hair the same way as men, wore “men’s” clothes, and didn’t shave their legs and underarms, wear makeup, or pluck their eyebrows, they wouldn’t look nearly as different from men as they do.

Please. That’s not even slightly true.

One non sequitur after another until we get to the bottom of the page. Pitiful stuff.

Aw look at Colin “Katy” Montgomerie bullying a teenage girl.

The 95+ replies are…acerbic.

We still have “National Prayer Breakfast.” In the government. FFRF tells us:

The Freedom From Religion Foundation reiterates its disapproval of the National Prayer Breakfast held today, including President Biden’s involvement, the U.S. Capitol venue and the overarching Christian message.

The 71st annual event, although technically private, had an even stronger appearance this year of being sponsored by the federal government because it took place for the first time in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall. Historically, when under the open sponsorship of the Fellowship, a shadowy Christian nationalist group, the main event took place at a hotel.

Steps, innit. Start out in private and inch your way into the god damn Capitol building.

There was reading from scripture, a rendition of “Amazing Grace” and countless long prayers “in Jesus’ name,” all recited exclusively by government actors, from event co-chairs Reps. Tracey Mann and Frank Mrvan to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. Gillibrand’s remarks were most shocking, calling for the president to put on the “full armor of God” and the “breastplate of righteousness” (favorite phrases of Christian nationalist politicians). A final prayer to Jesus was given by House Chaplain Margaret Kibben.

No secularism for you, peasants.

It’s a step.

Voters in Paris have approved an effort to drastically increase parking fees for large sport utility vehicles and other heavy cars, the latest move by Mayor Anne Hidalgo to reshape the French capital with environmentally conscious and pedestrian-friendly policies.

It’s nice how the two go together. Walking around does minimal harm to the environment, and massive cars are a bad thing in more ways than just the contribution to global hotting.

Paris residents who park in their neighborhood will not be affected. Neither will taxis or other professional vehicles, or people who use larger vehicles because of a disability.

The city authorities had argued that big S.U.V.s and other large cars emit more greenhouse gases than average-size cars and are more dangerous for pedestrians because of their bulkiness.

And, I think, because of their effect on drivers, especially the way they encourage aggression.

More on the Newcastle United craziness:

A female football fan was banned from matches over social media posts that were deemed transphobic after a “Stasi” spying investigation by the Premier League.

A special unit set up to root out racism in the game was used to comb through comments made by Linzi Smith, a gender-critical Newcastle United supporter, even though the posts had nothing to do with football.

And even though knowing that men are not women is not racism.

Ms Smith, who is gay and promotes lesbian, gay and bisexual rights and women’s rights, was put under investigation by the police, the Premier League and Newcastle United after expressing strong views on trans ideology on her personal account on X, formerly Twitter.

“Strong views” on the fact that men are not women. What kind of strength are we talking about here?

The 34-year-old was shocked to discover that the Premier League had compiled a dossier detailing where she lives, works and where she walked her dog. The 11-page “target profile”, marked confidential, included data on “associated aliases” and “vulnerabilities”.

How is any of this any of their business????

She was interviewed under caution by police after the dossier was handed to officers by Newcastle United. Officers took just two hours to inform her that she had not committed any crime, but the club, which had spent four months looking into her background, revoked her membership and banned her from games until 2026.

Because the club dislikes the fact that she knows men can’t become women.

It’s as if everyone had to submit a thousand-item questionnaire before attending a play or a concert or a movie. What next, a questionnaire and 6 hour interview before you can buy a quart of milk?

The Premier League had trawled through her social media posts to find her date of birth, where she lives, the area where she works, and discover that “they do appear to walk their dog by [XXXX] Church which is just off [the street where she lives].”

The intelligence was accompanied by a picture Ms Smith had posted on social media of her dog, Chester, which has since died, being walked near the church, and two screenshots of the church and its environs from Google Street View.

Who needs Big Brother when we’ve got Big Football?

There’s just no pleasing some people. A high school in Brookfield, Connecticut, was kind enough to put a tampon dispenser in a boys’ toilet room only to have it torn out of the wall minutes later.

It’s all part of a new state law that goes into effect this fall. Local and regional boards of education shall provide free menstrual products in women’s restrooms, all-gender restrooms and in at least one men’s restroom for 3rd to 12th grade students. 

Just in case an 18-year-old boy decides he wants a tampon and can’t wait to go to a drugstore or ask a friend or steal one from a sister.

One parent in town, who wished to stay anonymous, was disheartened to learn what happened at the school. “I think anyone who menstruates has a right to get menstrual products, I think if anyone identifies with a certain gender, has the right to use the bathroom they want to use,” she said. 

And the girls who don’t want boys popping into their toilets? They don’t count. Everything for the gender fantasists, nothing for the residents of planet earth.

The Telegraph:

A coalition of gender-critical groups have accused Stonewall of “targeting” the female boss of Britain’s equalities watchdog. 

Led by women’s rights organisation Sex Matters, which believes biological sex takes precedence over self-identified gender, the 39 groups said Baroness Kishwer Falkner, chairwoman of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, was being attacked for taking action to protect women.

They said Stonewall had subjected her to the same sort of “unreasonable, vexatious complaints” used to harass ordinary women at work.

The groups have signed a letter to the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (Ganhri), which has been persuaded by organisations such as Stonewall to carry out a “special review” into the EHRC, claiming it is anti-trans.

What does Stonewall mean by “anti-trans”? The usual – not bowing to every demand no matter how destructive of other people’s rights.

Stonewall and other groups applied to Ganhri for the EHRC to be stripped of its UN accreditation as an “A” status national national human rights organisation.

They complained after the EHRC advised the government on the protected characteristic of sex in the Equality Act 2010, in which it said transgender people could be legitimately excluded from single-sex services if the reasons were “justifiable and proportionate”.

Reasons such as “for the safety of women.” Stonewall wants men who claim to be women to be able to force themselves on women’s services no matter what the women think. Rights are for trans people (especially the male ones); submission is for women.

Ok, we see his written answer. Now what?

Nasty stuff tucked away in among the boilerplate babbling about undefined “inclusion” and “rights.”

“I am completely committed to equality, inclusion, and freedom,” he says, as if others were committed to inequality, exclusion, and slavery. Inclusion of what? Freedom to what?

“UCU will never be baited into the right-wing culture war” – meaning what? That defending women’s rights is a right-wing culture war? Spell it out.

“even expressing views that ‘shock, offend, and disturb’ are [is] protected,” he says, signaling that he thinks Jo Phoenix’s views are shocking, offensive, and disturbing. How are they shocking etc? Spell it out.

He does not “share in Professor Phoenix’s conclusions about gender,” he says. Meaning what? He thinks men can literally be women? Spell it out.

He will “always act to defend our transgender colleagues rights,” he says. What are those rights? Spell out exactly what rights you mean, and explain how they are rights, and why you will defend them at the expense of your female colleagues’ rights.

He will have “zero tolerance for discrimination,” he says, implying that Jo Phoenix does tolerate discrimination. Knife right between the shoulder blades.

A “union” that treats women with contemptuous hostility. Brilliant.

Uh, yeah.

The tweet Iseult saw was then deleted, but there are others.

“They’ve captured our media, banks, academia”…golly gee that sounds familiar, i.e. exactly what the Nazis used to shout, when they weren’t too busy dropping the zyklon B pellets into the “showers.”

Well now that’s just silly.

Dead people should be able to change their gender, says Labour MP

Dead people can’t change anything, on account of being dead.

A Labour MP has called for the law to be changed so transgender people can have their gender changed posthumously in official records.

Well they can’t do that either, because people of any kind can’t do anything posthumously. They can leave instructions for other people to do things, but they can’t posthumously do them themselves. Aren’t journalists expected to know how to use words?

Originally a comment by Acolyte of Sagan on It woz the volcanoes wot dunnit.

Another indication that human emissions dwarf those of volcanoes is the fact that atmospheric CO2 levels, as measured by sampling stations around the world…

This reminded me of conversations I’ve had with climate change deniers who have argued that the global temperature isn’t rising, there are plenty of cold areas that would lower the average that the scientists calculate if only there were more measuring stations. In other words, there are large areas between measuring stations and that’s where ithe colder regions are that would lower the measured average. Some even go so far as to claim that the scientists deliberately avoid those areas in order to keep the lie going!

When I point out that more measuring stations are put in place all the time to enable more accurate measurements, and that the result is still increasing temperatures, the reply has been that it’s because where there was once one unmonitored gap, now there are two – placing a station c in the gap between stations a and b just creates gaps a-c and c-b.

They are playing the creationist ‘God of the gaps’ argument with climate change.

Jo Phoenix takes a wide-angle look at the sitch:

Random observations after nearly two weeks:

1. By trying to shut me up and because I stood up to them, the harassers and bullies and discriminators at OU have given me a platform I would never have had. Own goal there. Misjudged the strength of my conviction and belief in academia. Or you are all just too bloody arrogant.

2. I win a case of harassment, discrimination, unfair and constructive dismissal along with post-employment victimisation and within days I get those who seem to possess “irrational fears” or are palpably “uncomfortable” with sex realism swarming around my X feed like flies on shit.

3. For years I get told *any* expression of my views harms trans ppl – with no evidence and then when a court says I have said and done nothing unlawful or transphobic, the little flies tell me my logically and factually derived position is toxic, that I am fat, look masculine, get told to shut up, get misquoted, get called a bully. My replies have been a effing train wreck of offensive and personal abuse.

4. I’ve spent my life researching and fighting against male violence, have experienced a fair bit of it myself and now I call bullshit on the self styled trans /queer progressive flies – including those doing it under the veil of academia. I know the tactics of male violence when I see them – even when they come from women. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck … It’s an effing duck.

Thanks @OpenUniversity. What a bloody lovely legacy being employed by you has left for me. I get traumatised by the unlawful actions of your employees and in fighting them and you successfully, the flies and trolls try to carry on what your staff started. Imagine what would have happened if someone told Leigh Downes, Deb Drake, Chris Williams etc to stop acting in such prejudicial discriminatory ways, or that constantly complaining about GC expressions looks like harassment. Imagine if someone had put these discriminators back into their bloody box and stood up to the bullying. It was never AF. It was *always* bullying.

Imagine how different things might be now.

Anyone know what “AF” means here? Obviously not as fuck; administrative something?

Anyway. That whole thing reminds me of the atmosphere of Freethought Blogs in my last few weeks there. It’s pathetic that the Open University can be compared those “freethinkers.”

A thing dissenters say about global warming is that volcanoes contribute way more than human activities. Back in 2009 Scientific American said nuh-uh.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the world’s volcanoes, both on land and undersea, generate about 200 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually, while our automotive and industrial activities cause some 24 billion tons of CO2 emissions every year worldwide. Despite the arguments to the contrary, the facts speak for themselves: Greenhouse gas emissions from volcanoes comprise less than one percent of those generated by today’s human endeavors.

200 million v 24 billion. Hard to argue that it’s close.

Another indication that human emissions dwarf those of volcanoes is the fact that atmospheric CO2 levels, as measured by sampling stations around the world set up by the federally funded Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, have gone up consistently year after year regardless of whether or not there have been major volcanic eruptions in specific years. “If it were true that individual volcanic eruptions dominated human emissions and were causing the rise in carbon dioxide concentrations, then these carbon dioxide records would be full of spikes—one for each eruption,” says Coby Beck, a journalist writing for online environmental news portal Grist.org. “Instead, such records show a smooth and regular trend.”

You also have to wonder why the whole warming thing started around the same time the first railroads were built.