Liberal Tolerance and Compassion

[Ryan Ruck]

I couldn't help but laugh at the outrage over the "making a mockery of their institution". "lool"

Gay Rights Groups Outraged As Straight Friends Marry for Rugby Tickets

September 11, 2014

Two men are going to take advantage of New Zealand's liberal same-sex marriage laws tomorrow when they tie the knot, but gay rights campaigners in the Commonwealth nation have called it an "insult", as both partners in the union are straight best friends.

Rugby-mad engineer Travis McIntosh, 23, and teacher Matt McCormick, 24, have known each other nearly twenty years. They entered a "bromance" competition run by a local NZ radio station last month hoping to win an all expenses-paid trip to the UK for the 2015 Rugby World Cup.

Edge FM launched the "Love You, Man" campaign back in August as part of the build-up to the competition, in which two straight best friends would be chosen to enjoy the trip, on the condition they would go as a legally married couple.

Despite the apparently innocent enjoyment afforded by the competition, local gay rights groups are "horrified" by the move, according to the New Zealand Herald. A "queer support" coordinator from Otago University criticised the union, saying it was an "insult", and that it "trivialises what we fought for".

The co-chairman of a local group called LegaliseLove ironically echoed the words of groups who originally opposed same-sex marriage when he said the competition "attacked the legitimacy of gay marriage". Despite that, he took a more philosophical view on the long term implications, saying: "Maybe on the day that statistics around mental health for LGBTI (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender and Intersex) people are better, when high schools are safe places for LGBTI youth, we can look back on all this and laugh".

Edge Radio has previous form in using marriage as a pretext for its shows and promotional stunts. According to New Zealand entertainment magazine Media Works: "The Edge has built a reputation on creating outrageous weddings that create successful marriages. It started 13 years ago when they married two complete strangers, Paula Stockwell and Zane Nicholl.

"Since then they’ve married two more sets of strangers, eloped three couples to Las Vegas, married a couple without clothes in Nudie Nuptials, left the groom to do all the work in Man Made Wedding and last year celebrated same sex marriage by marrying two gay couples".

Fortunately for the couple, under New Zealand law couples no longer have to physically consummate marriage for it to be legal, so they can remain happily friends-without-benefits despite their new legal status.




Why Travis McIntosh And Matt McCormick’s Wedding Angers Gay Groups

September 12, 2014

TRAVIS McIntosh and Matt McCormick will get married tomorrow yet the matrimonial union has horrified gay rights groups.

Heterosexual best mates McIntosh and McCormick, who have known each other since the age of six, are getting married as winners of a competition run by The Edge radio station in New Zealand.

After more than 200 entries, McIntosh, a 23-year-old engineering student at Otago University, and McCormick, a 24-year-old teacher at Musselburgh School in Dunedin, were chosen from three bromance couples to win an all-expenses paid trip to the 2015 Rugby World Cup in England.

The catch was that the buddies had to get married — a same-sex wedding — and they will do that tomorrow in front of 60 family and friends at New Zealand’s home of rugby, Eden Park, in Auckland.

A celebrant will make the union legally binding, the marriage will be streamed live on the radio station.

“We are not here to insult anyone. We are here to do our own thing and travel our own path,” McCormick told the Otago Daily Times.

McIntosh said the wedding was not mocking the institution of marriage.

“It’s just seeing how far two good mates would go to win a trip to the Rugby World Cup.

“We picked up our wedding certificate and the nerves are starting to really hit home.”

McIntosh said they were still to decide if they would a hyphenated surname but thought their marriage would last at least two years.

“Matt and Travis, or Mattress as I have affectionately named them, are great guys. They are excited about next year’s trip to London but are just as pumped about their big day. It’s not going to be your traditional wedding. In fact, this may be the first wedding in history where the newlyweds will try to crack onto the guests,” said Dom Harvey from The Edge Breakfast Show.

Same-sex marriage became legal in New Zealand in August last year, yet gay groups have condemned the marriage of McIntosh and McCormick.

Otago University Students’ Association Queer Support co-ordinator Neill Ballantyne told the Otago Daily Times that the wedding was an “insult” as marriage equality was a “hard fought” battle for gay people.

“Something like this trivialises what we fought for,” he said.

The competition promoted the marriage of two men as something negative, “as something outrageous that you’d never consider”, Ballantyne said.

LegaliseLove Aotearoa Wellington co-chairman Joseph Habgood told the Otago Daily Times that the competition attacked the legitimacy of same-sex marriages.

“The point of this competition is that men marrying each other is still something they think is worth having a laugh at ...

“Maybe on the day that statistics around mental health for LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex) people are better, when high schools are safe places for LGBTI youth, we can look back on all this and laugh.

“But competitions like this don’t bring that day any closer.”

The Edge has a reputation for outrageous weddings. They married two complete strangers, Paula Stockwell and Zane Nicholl, 13 years ago.

Subsequently The Edge has married two more sets of strangers, eloped three couples to Las Vegas, married a couple without clothes in Nudie Nuptials, left the groom to do all the work in Man Made Wedding and last year celebrated same sex marriage by marrying two gay couples.

[Ryan Ruck]

Protester Has Benghazi Sign Ripped Away at Obama VFW Speech

Published on Jul 22, 2015

A protester has his sign taken away while being grabbed by two other members of the crowd at a VFW event in Pittsburgh, Pa., while President Obama was speaking.

John Johnson of District of Columbia (far right) reaches and takes away the sign as other delegates wrestle with a protester during the start of President Barack Obama's address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars at the VFW Convention at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh on July 21, 2015.

Interestingly 2 of the 3 that assault him are black. Just sayin'...

[vector7]

Police Launch ‘Don’t Touch Me’ Wristbands to Stop Migrant Sex Attacks in Sweden

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Police Launch ‘Don’t Touch Me’ Wristbands to Stop Migrant Sex Attacks in Sweden



by Virginia Hale30 Jun 2016

Sweden’s police chief unveiled the force’s latest weapon in the fight against sexual assault: wristbands reading “Don’t touch me”.

A recent Swedish press release warns that groping is a crime. In it, the country’s national police chief Dan Eliasson said: “No one should have to accept sexual molestation. So do not grope. And if you are groped, report it to the police.”

Mr. Eliasson mentioned a variety of actions such as “a hand tucked between the legs”, “a hug from behind in the crush at a club or festival”, and “one person holding somebody while another grabs their breasts”, describing them as “situations many young people recognise too well”.

The press release announced that police intend to equip young women with wristbands with the slogan “don’t touch me”. This will happen over the summer, at festivals and other events for young people. “By wearing these wristbands,” Sweden’s police chief said, “young women will be able to make a stand”.

It is unclear how effective the wristbands, which read “don’t touch me” in Swedish, will be in preventing attacks, as the majority of sex attack perpetrators are thought to be recent migrants who are unlikely to be able to read them.

Mr. Eliasson suggested that by wearing these accessories, women would also be able to “draw attention to the issue [of sexual assault], and urge those affected to report”.

A Swedish police report released last month noted that the country had the worst rates of sexual violence against women in Europe. The report acknowledged migrants were responsible for the bulk of the problem but the police were accused of making excuses for the perpetrators.

Although sexual harassment and assault are commonplace in many Muslim countries, the report blamed “Nordic alcohol culture” and “masculinity” for the wave of assaults that have terrorised Swedish women.

Migrant sex gangs are alleged to have been roaming the Sthlm music festival for 12 to 17-year-olds for the past two summers. One leaked police memo indicated that “unaccompanied youth” migrants, from the Middle East, were responsible for most of the attacks.

Sexual assaults were reported at Swedish music festivals Arvika in 2006 and 2010, Emmaboda in 2014 and Bråvalla in 2015. Police were accused of covering up the attacks.

Breitbart London reported that Stockholm Council and festival organisers in the country knew sex attacks by migrants were endangering women, but thought it would have been “irresponsible” to speak out about the trend.

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016...p-sex-attacks/

[Ryan Ruck]

Not mentioned right away, this is Charles Murray of The Bell Curve fame...

College Protestors Send Professor to the ER

March 3, 2017

On Thursday, hundreds of students at Middlebury College shouted down political scientist Charles Murray, forcing him to deliver his remarks in a private room via a live web stream.

While he delivered his remarks, student troublemakers pulled the building’s fire alarm multiple times. Shouting could be heard in the background throughout the live-streamed lecture and subsequent conversation with Political Science Professor Allison Stanger.

When Stanger and Murray left the building, things turned violent, the Addison County Independent reports:

As Stanger, Murray and a college administrator left McCullough Student Center last evening following the event, they were “physically and violently confronted by a group of protestors,” according to Bill Burger, the college’s vice president for communications and marketing.

Burger said college public safety officers managed to get Stanger and Murray into the administrator’s car.

“The protestors then violently set upon the car, rocking it, pounding on it, jumping on and try to prevent it from leaving campus,” he said. “At one point a large traffic sign was thrown in front of the car. Public Safety officers were able, finally, to clear the way to allow the vehicle to leave campus.

“During this confrontation outside McCullough, one of the demonstrators pulled Prof. Stanger’s hair and twisted her neck,” Burger continued. “She was attended to at Porter Hospital later and (on Friday) is wearing a neck brace.”

On Tuesday, we wrote about the brewing storm at Middlebury, commending administrators and faculty for supporting Murray’s visit in the face of tremendous pressure. We’ve come to be pretty pessimistic about campus discourse, but this is a far worse outcome than we anticipated. Students responsible for physical violence should be punished with suspension, expulsion, and the worst offenders should be charged in court.

Middlebury administrators and others are trying to frame this flare up as simply about respect for free speech and open discourse. But it is about more than that. Academics and administrators need to take a hard look at the ideology many of them have been directly and passively incubating on campuses.

Before Murray’s lecture, over 500 alumni signed a letter which claimed that Murray’s visit sends “a message to every woman, every person of color, every first-generation student, every poor and working-class person, every disabled person, and every queer person that not only their acceptance to and presence at Middlebury, but also their safety, their agency, their humanity, and even their very right to exist are all up for ‘debate.'” The letter closes by asserting that Murray’s presence on campus “directly endangers members of the community.”

If Murray genuinely were directly endangering the Middlebury community and threatening the “existence” of its members, he probably shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the State of Vermont. But, of course, Murray isn’t actually the kind of threat these students imagine. As their letter makes clear, and echoing what Middlebury Sociology Professor Michael Sheridan freely admitted to a reporter the other day, few if any of the protestors have ever read Murray’s books. If they had, they would know that he’s been grossly mischaracterized. In The Bell Curve, Murray and his coauthor clearly stated that environmental factors are at play—i.e. that socioeconomic and other pressures have some effect on IQ and thus on later success. And Coming Apart, the relatively uncontroversial and well-reviewed book Murray was invited to Middlebury to speak about, doesn’t talk about race at all. Meanwhile, the idea that Murray is anti-queer is especially odd: Murray was publicly pushing Republicans to support marriage equality before Hillary Clinton had flip-flopped on the issue.

If students (and especially professors, who really ought to know better) want to criticize an author, they should read what he’s written first. That so many clearly did not speaks to the deteriorating academic rigor of colleges today. If college students are not internalizing the need to engage primary sources, what exactly are they learning in their undergraduate years?

The ideology that has taken hold of academia is intellectually lazy and thus leads to sloppy, emotion-driven conclusions. Murray may be deeply unsettling and even terrifying to some. We’ll take students at their word about such subjective matters. But, objectively, a Charles Murray lecture does not pose a literal threat to anyone’s existence. That is lunacy.

It’s also genuinely scary; it’s this line of thought that led some hot-headed protestors to justify physically assaulting Murray and Stanger. This is why it won’t be enough for professors and administrators merely to defend open discourse in vague, principled terms. They need to engage students (and clueless, supportive faculty) in a debate about deeper substance.

There are many ironies contained in this story. Protestors shouting fire falsely (with the help of the alarm) in a crowded building is one of them. Another is that an effort to silence Murray has raised his profile and guaranteed that many thousands more people will now watch his lecture and perhaps even buy his books. But the greatest irony of the whole mess is that the people who said Charles Murray was directly threatening their safety ended up participating in a demonstration that resulted in the physical assault of two distinguished scholars, one of whom went to the emergency room.

And the students are the ones who say they need a safe space?

[Ryan Ruck]

MiniAOC Deletes All Social Media Accounts After Death Threats and Harassment Of Family

July 3, 2019



Sadly, MiniAOC is gone.

Ava Martinez, the 8-year-old girl who perfectly impersonated Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was forced to delete all of her social media accounts after she and her family were harassed by liberals.

Ava will not being doing any more MINI AOC content.

The Left's Harassment and death threats have gone too far for our family. We have been getting calls on our personal phone numbers.
For our safety and for our child's safety, we deleted all Mini AOC accounts.

— SickenTirade (@sickentirade) July 3, 2019

Ava’s stepfather, Salvatore Schachter, who goes by “Sicken Tirade” on Twitter, said things had just gotten out of hand.

“We had to delete our accounts because the threats, harassment, negativity and hate directed at Ava and our family grew too much to bear,” Schachter told The Gateway Pundit. “The calls, texts, posts and emails from angry, hate-filled people were quite frankly, disturbing.”

“We started Mini AOC because Ava is a natural performer who loves to entertain and she enjoyed the praise she was getting for her sense of humor and charming personality,” he said. “It’s with some sadness that she will not get to share her talent with the many people who enjoyed her videos because of others who use violence as a means to an end. I do find it odd that people feel the need to protect a congressperson with such hate and disgust.”

Twitter exploded on Wednesday morning as rumors flew that someone had hacked the MiniAOC account or that Twitter had suspended it.

Someone has hacked into the Mini AOC account and deleted her tweets. pic.twitter.com/rl5fxBFwYb

— Pearl (@pearlparky) July 3, 2019

The original #aoc parody account was banned, and now Twitter has suspended #miniaoc as well. If parody leads to gulags, should we expect the same treatment to all the accounts that mock/parody @realDonaldTrump ?

— Thomas Passarini (@RandomIbis2k12) July 3, 2019

Others pointed out the hypocrisy of liberals — who endlessly preach tolerance — bashing an 8-year-old girl for simply mocking a member of Congress.

Gonna miss the hilarity of #MINIAOC. Sad to see that the "peaceful, loving, tolerant left" are the most violently intolerant people on planet earth, and that any speech they don't like is apparently worthy of doxing and death threats.

— Chris W. (@Chris_W12345) July 3, 2019

Welcome to 2019. Where people celebrate parents who dress their kids in drag, but harass and threaten little girls who poke fun at politicians.#MINIAOC https://t.co/VNzb9BJRsB

— Dale Johnson (@daleismyname) July 3, 2019

Death threats for a parody account…sad ..mini aoc was the best on Twitter

— CJRoth (@cjroth1) July 3, 2019

In her videos, Ava nailed AOC’s Valley Girl speech patterns. “Like, hello America, AOC here again,” Ava said one video. “But this time from Washington, D.C., which is named after our first president — George Washington D.C.”

“Like, I want to tell you about my plan to single-handededly save the planet. I call it the Green New Deal. I picked green because I’m still learning my colors. I came up with my plan after we were watching, like, the most important documentary on climate change. It’s called Ice Age 2: The Meltdown,” she said, referring to the animated 2006 hit movie. “That’s not me saying it, that’s science.”

“My Green New Deal will cost, like, 93 trillion dollars. Do you know how much that is? Me neither. Because it’s totally worth it. If sea levels keep rising, we won’t be able to drive to Hawaii any more,” she said.

Sitting in a little pink car, Ava said: “I just got this electric car. it’s eco-friendly and everyone has to drive one under my deal. And that’s why I bought one for my boyfriend, too, illegally, using campaign donations. Well, you bought it for him.” Her so-called boyfriend drives up and she tells him not to speak. “I do the same thing to Pelosi and Schumer,” Ava says, referring to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, both Democrats.

As the boyfriend drives away, you can see a sign on the back of the car that reads: “Free @RealJamesWoods.”

Hilarious. And how is that different from “Saturday Night Live” bashing President Trump week after week?[/indent]