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.

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.

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 depicting a bikini-clad female model was neither offensive nor irresponsible.

Being a Yank, I feel unease about setting up official bodies to manage advertising…but being a woman, I also feel unease about the drip drip drip effect of the way women are displayed in advertising, including the Protein World posters.

Mr Khan said: “As the father of two teenage girls, I am extremely concerned about this kind of advertising which can demean people, particularly women, and make them ashamed of their bodies. It is high time it came to an end.”

Graeme Craig, TfL commercial development director, said: “Advertising on our network is unlike TV, online and print media.

“Our customers cannot simply switch off or turn a page if an advertisement offends or upsets them and we have a duty to ensure the copy we carry reflects that unique environment.”

Getting someone at Transport for London to take the issue seriously is better than having outsiders do it, I think – although I also hate it that London transport went private under Thatcher.

On the BBC London Facebook page many people were quick to praise the mayor’s initiative. Magdalena Michalik who lives in Greenwich said: “Please ban it. I don’t want my children to look at it!” but others warned it was the start of the “Islamification” of London and said the mayor was adopting this policy because of his religious values.

That’s the other tricky bit. I’ve seen reporting saying this is just Khan telling women to cover up.

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 another compelling reason for taking it seriously. The belief has consequences.

The preachers who shouted from the pulpit that these 49 people, whose sole crime was going out to a club to have a good time, were deviants, were sodomites, were perverts, and would be tortured for all eternity by a loving God for no reason other than who they chose as sexual partners, cannot now cry crocodile tears and pretend to mourn their violent deaths. While the ministers and imams who rail weekly against homosexuality did not pull the trigger on the AR-15 – that was done willingly by Omar Mateen, whose individual responsibility shall not be understated – they loaded the magazines he used.

Preaching a deserved eternity of torture against a group of people dehumanizes that group. If God, or Allah, the perfect, unflawed, ever-loving Father, himself is willing to torture a group for all time, how worthless must that group be? How valueless is their life, their happiness? When firebrand religious ministers and radicalized Imams spout attacks on abortion providers as baby murders, accuse homosexuals of targeting children for abuse, or blame Jews for killing Jesus or murdering Islamic children, they lay the foundations for the next murder like that of Dr. Tiller, the next Pulse Nightclub Massacre, or the next Kristallnacht.

When you dehumanize a group by damning them to never ending pain and torture, you legitimize attacks on them.

And that includes attacks on their rights and civil liberties.

It isn’t enough to condemn the murders in Orlando (though some religious groups are, sickeningly enough, refusing to do even that and are celebrating it). As long as homosexuality is seen as a sin worthy of eternal torture, the LGBT community will be seen as less than human by religious extremists across the spectrum. It is the job of faith (and non-faith) leaders to consider the true impact of their rhetoric, to stop dehumanizing others. Hate crimes such as this do not occur in a vacuum. So forgive me for doubting the sincerity of your prayers and condolences when next Friday, or next Sunday, you will go back to decrying the sodomites and seeking to deny LGBT people basic civil rights.

Saudi Arabia had the gall to claim it condemns the Orlando slaughter:

Saudi Ambassador to the United StatesAbdullah Al-Saud issued the following statement on Sunday:

“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia condemns in the strongest terms the attack on innocent people in Orlando, Florida, and sends its deepest condolences to the families and friends of the victims and to the people of the United States. We stand with the American people at this tragic time. We pray for the recovery and the healing of all those injured in the attack, and we will continue our work withthe United States and our partners in the international community for an end to these senseless acts of violence and terror.”

That is a tasteless joke.

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 at trailheads, campgrounds, a post office and gas stations in San Juan County show that the debate surrounding the proposed 1.9-million-acre national monument is getting nasty.

Dirty tricks department – but nobody knows who created and distributed the fliers.

Few in San Juan disagree that enhanced protections are needed for the Bears Ears region, which includes Cedar Mesa, a scenic expanse of juniper and pinyon forests, winding sandstone canyons, and an estimated 100,000 archaeological sites, including Native American cliff dwellings, rock art and burial pits.

But there’s a deep divide over how much of the landscape to preserve and whether those protections should come from Congress or from Obama using the Antiquities Act. A draft bill by House Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) would designate a 1.1-million-acre Bears Ears National Conservation Area, leaving far more acreage available to multiple uses like drilling, mining and motorized recreation.

Well they’re Republicans.

Use of the Antiquities Act touches raw nerves in southern Utah, where elected officials still fume over President Clinton’s surprise 1996 election-year decision to designate the 1.7-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, a move that quashed a proposed coal mine and drew accusations of federal overreach.

In subsequent years, elected officials and ranchers openly flouted new Bureau of Land Management restrictions. Kane County erected dozens of road signs allowing motorized travel on monument lands that BLM had closed to protect sensitive desert resources.

That’s nice. Let’s not protect anything, let’s just stomp it all into dust.

Fliers calling for the shooting of backpackers have heightened tensions.

Why yes, I daresay they have.

Meanwhile in Idaho –

The trap could have decapitated an unsuspecting mountain biker or runner.

A piece of barb wire was suspended about four feet off the ground, and it stretched across a downhill section of a road that was popular with motorcyclists, OHV users and mountain bikers in Custer County, Idaho.

…

Luckily, the sinister trap was taken down before anybody was hurt. But officials across the western and northeastern states have been advising trail enthusiasts, such as mountain bikers, hikers and campers, to be on the lookout for a variety of dangerous threats, ranging from booby traps to assassins.

Last month, the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation issued a warning because wire cables were found stretching across trails in four state forests. According to a spokesman with the agency, the intent of these cables was to cause harm to bikers and hikers.

I guess we should all just stay home forever.

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 removed. However, on their Facebook site we read now:

Dear leftists […] we are not ashamed of any quote from the Bible. Our previous post informing about the Orlando massacre was deleted by pure mistake. We didn’t insert it again because Robert Winnicki made a short and blunt comment describing this matter, which we decided to share. Please publish the screenshot with our previous post all over the net. We are not ashamed at all.

In Winnicki’s post, shared by the All-Polish Youth, we read:

Here are the facts. The massacre was done by an Afghan in a club where nobody could defend himself because it was declared a “gun-free zone”.

Let’s sum it up:

– homosexuals

– pacifism and disarmament

– a Muslim immigrant

Here you’ve got everything that the Left loves so much!

By the way, this tragedy is symbolic. It is exactly such a gun-free mess with plenty of immigrants* that you want to create both in the West and in Poland. We will not let it happen.

*Literally: “a gun-free brothel infested with alien immigrants”.

How do you like our Catholic youth, the future of our nation? Yup, I’m sure you are enchanted. Me too. Believe me.

On the other hand, soon after the massacre one of our most popular leftist politicians* has said in an interview that he sees “no difference between the religious radicalism of the Islamists and the radicalism of some Christians”. Literally speaking, this is of course quite correct (note the quantifier “some” in “some Christians”) … but as a political message just after the killings? Hmm…

*Which means that he can count on perhaps 10% of votes in the next presidential election – that is, if he is both lucky and smart enough to abstain from such remarks in the future.

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,” and 40 more for drinking alcohol.

The woman has been detained since making the allegation three months ago, but her case only came to light over the weekend when her family decided to go public.

So along with the fine she’s served three months in jail – for being drugged and raped.

The woman was arrested by Qatari police immediately after reporting that she had been raped on the night of 15 March, as was the alleged assailant.

During a holiday in the emirate, she went out with a friend for drinks at a hotel where the sale of alcohol was permitted, according to her lawyer Brian Lokollo.

“She went dancing but when she returned to the table after the first sip of her drink, she realised someone had added something to her glass,” he said.

The woman did not feel very well and she later woke alone in an unfamiliar flat and “realised to her great horror that she had been raped”, Mr Lokollo added.

Doha-based lawyer Najeeb al-Nuaimi, Qatar’s former justice minister, told the Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera the woman’s lawyers would have had to prove there had been “no voluntary actions” between her and the man for him to be charged with rape.

And of course it’s impossible to prove that, so…

In 2013, a Norwegian woman in the United Arab Emirates was given a 16-month prison sentence for perjury, extramarital sex and drinking alcohol after she told police she had been raped. She was later pardoned and allowed to return to Norway.

Just don’t go there. Not Qatar, not the UAE, not the whole damn peninsula. Stay away.

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 stated without hesitation that it was wrong and forbidden by the Koran. I am sure many Catholics and members of other major religions would say the same thing too.

These were not extremists or radicals, they were educated, middle-class Muslim men. I am sure this is just the tip of the iceberg. Let´s face it, patriarchal religion was, and is, like a cancer on this planet. It oppresses women, children and men. We cannot let multi-cultural tolerance become tolerance of the totally unacceptable (and yes that includes women wearing hijab).

We know all too well that many Catholics and members of other major religions would say the same thing.

There are people who identify as victims of an organized group of stalkers, who are everywhere.

At first, Mr. Trespas wondered if it was all in his head. Then he encountered a large community of like-minded people on the internet who call themselves “targeted individuals,” or T.I.s, who described going through precisely the same thing.

The group was organized around the conviction that its members are victims of a sprawling conspiracy to harass thousands of everyday Americans with mind-control weapons and armies of so-called gang stalkers. The goal, as one gang-stalking website put it, is “to destroy every aspect of a targeted individual’s life.”

Mental health professionals say the narrative has taken hold among a group of people experiencing psychotic symptoms that have troubled the human mind since time immemorial. Except now victims are connecting on the internet, organizing and defying medical explanations for what’s happening to them.

The community, conservatively estimated to exceed 10,000 members, has proliferated since 9/11, cradled by the internet and fed by genuine concerns over government surveillance. A large number appear to have delusional disorder or schizophrenia, psychiatrists say.

Well psychiatrists are part of the conspiracy.

For the few specialists who have looked closely, these individuals represent an alarming development in the history of mental illness: thousands of sick people, banded together and demanding recognition on the basis of shared paranoias.

They raise money, hold awareness campaigns, host international conferences and fight for their causes in courts and legislatures.

It’s a new intersection.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the community is divided over the contours of the conspiracy. Some believe the financial elite is behind it. Others blame aliens, their neighbors, Freemasons or some combination.

What about fluoride?

And now, in Los Angeles…

Authorities in Santa Monica found possible explosives as well as weapons and ammunition Sunday in the car of a man who told them he was in town for the L.A. Pride festival in West Hollywood, a law enforcement source said.

Early Sunday,  Santa Monica police received a call of a suspected prowler near Olympic Boulevard and 11th Street. Patrol officers responded and encountered an individual who told officers he was waiting for a friend. That led officers to inspect the car and find several weapons and a lot of ammunition as well as tannerite, an ingredient that could be used to create a pipe bomb.

The car had Indiana plates. The man, was was arrested, made comments that he was in town for the Pride event in West Hollywood this weekend. The source said they believed there was no connection between the gay nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla., early Sunday morning and the Santa Monica incident. The investigation has been taken over by the FBI. The source said the man appeared to be white.

Well let’s hope there’s no connection.

A city official in West Hollywood also confirmed the arrest and stressed that officials were beefing up security at the gay pride event.

“They found him with weapons that were very disconcerting,” said the source, adding officials are “taking the appropriate safety precautions.”

…

One source in West Hollywood said there was discussion of calling off the parade but that officials decided to go forward, with heavy security including undercover officers in the crowd.

The sources spoke to The Times on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

West Hollywood City Councilwoman Lindsey Horvath said in a statement that Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials are stepping up security efforts around Sunday’s parade and other festivities. But she said officials do not believe there is any threat around Sunday’s activities.

But, of course, they don’t know.