Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Certificates determine reality.

They have to work backward to the justification on the spot, which isn’t easy when there’s no valid argument that can get you there from sound premises.

Having failed to think very long or hard about trans “rights” when they took them on board means they’re having to defend claims that are impossible and extreme.

Humans have gender identities.

Humans can be “born in the wrong body.”

Gender identity over-rides sex.

In humans, sex is a spectrum.

Humans can change sex.

Each of these claims about the nature of material reality requires evidence and proof on its own, yet they’re usually sold together as a package, and discussed as if they were self-evidently true and necessarily connected. It’s not a single claim, but a whole mess of them, all of which are bullshit. Even if there were such things as “gender identities” none of the other claims would follow from that fact. There is nothing about the existence of putative “gender identity” that overturns the immutable, binary nature of human sexes. Even if being “born in the wrong body” was a thing, the brute fact of two, unchangeable and unchanging human sexes stands. Why wouldn’t it? Genderists still have all their work ahead of them. As an analogy, proving the existence of a god or gods would not prove the existence of Jesus. It could be that the gods are the Olympian or Hindu pantheons, or some other yet to be (or no longer) worshipped deity. Christians would still have to demonstrate the existence of their particular god before they could claim victory/hegemony/whatever.

The University of Reading (or, perhaps, just its Twitter jockey) does not believe in women’s rights. Trans rights yes, of course, but women’s, no. If you want to talk about women’s rights you can’t, you have to call them people’s rights.

Clash of the monotheisms:

French police have killed a man after a synagogue was set on fire in the north-western city of Rouen. The man was armed with a knife and a metallic tool and was shot after he threatened officers, the Rouen prosecutor said…French reports say the suspect was Algerian and was appealing against an order to leave France.

You could also call it clash of the colonizers and the colonized, but then colonization itself is often entangled with monotheistic rivalry. Christian countries get to colonize Muslim countries because they have The Correct God™ – and vice versa. It’s basically the same god, but it doesn’t do to say so.

Earlier this week a memorial in Paris that honours 3,900 men and women who helped rescue Jews during the Nazi occupation of France in World War Two was daubed with red-painted hands.

Yeah that’s nice. That’s a lovely sentiment. Let’s bring back ol’ Adolf while we at it, yeah?

Coup plotters signal each other in broad daylight:

Matt Gaetz echoed Donald Trump’s infamous remarks about the far-right Proud Boys on Thursday, as the Florida Republican congressman and other rightwing supporters of the former US president attended his criminal trial in Manhattan.

“Standing back, and standing by, Mr President,” Gaetz wrote on social media, with a photo of his group of supporters standing behind Trump outside the court where Trump is on trial…

Standing by to overthrow the government is it?

The Proud Boys, a “western chauvinist” group, were involved in street violence during Trump’s years in power, clashing with leftwing protesters.

Identifiable by their black and yellow colors, they participated in the attack on Congress of 6 January 2021, when Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” to block certification of his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, in service of Trump’s voter fraud lie.

Fight like hell to overthrow the government, in other words.

Gaetz offered a form of a famous Trump utterance. In a debate with Biden in September 2020, the then president was asked if he would condemn white supremacist and militia groups who clashed with social justice protesters that summer, following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.

Trump said: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by. But I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about antifa [anti-fascist groups] and the left.”

…

In the current campaign, Proud Boys have shown up at Trump rallies. At some rallies, Trump has played a chorus of January 6 prisoners singing the national anthem. Vowing to pardon January 6 rioters, he has called such prisoners “hostages”.

All totally normal and acceptable.

Pathetic.

Gillian Keegan has said men who undergo gender reassignment are women.

Last month, the Education Secretary told The Telegraph that she would no longer say that trans women were women, saying her understanding of the issue had “evolved”.

But in an interview with Radio 4’s Today programme, she said it depended whether the person was self-identifying as the opposite sex or whether they had actually obtained a gender reassignment certificate from a doctor.

That’s so idiotic. You might as well say it depended whether the person was self-identifying as an airplane or whether they had actually obtained an object reassignment certificate from a doctor.

A doctor issuing a “certificate” doesn’t and can’t make a man into a woman. That’s something that can’t be done. Changing appearance just changes appearance, it doesn’t change the underlying reality. Sometimes appearance is all there is, but being a woman or a man is not one of those times.

To gain a gender recognition certificate, a person must have a signed report from a specialist doctor showing they have “gender dysphoria”, which means they are distressed because of the mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity.

Being unhappy about being X does not make you not X. You could be unhappy about not being a plant or a house or a sandwich, but that wouldn’t make you a plant or a house or a sandwich. Issue all the certificates you like, but it won’t change that.

Grilled on the subject by new Today presenter Emma Barnett, Ms Keegan said she had “always known that trans women aren’t women”.

She said there was a “huge difference between self-identification, people who want to identify but still have a male body, biologically are male: and then there are a very, very small number of people … who do have and have had gender reassignment and reassignment surgery”.

Which still doesn’t make them women.

Asked if she would say that people who had gone through gender reassignment were women, she said: “Well, this is what we should say. I personally believe if you have gone to that level of, you have got the gender recognition, you have got the reassignment, then you are legally and medically allowed to say that you are a woman.”

But that’s a different thing. Being allowed to say you’re a woman is not the same as being a woman.

Labour’s shadow education minister Catherine McKinnell said: “Teaching children about the facts of the world in which they grow up must include an understanding that there are people who are transgender, that people can go through a process of change of their gender, and that the law provides for that.”

No, it mustn’t. That’s a stupid fantasy and there’s nothing educational about it.

It turns out Daniel Perry isn’t a very nice fella.

So Greg Abbott pardoned him.

In Texas news…

Daniel Perry, a former US Army sergeant who was convicted of murdering a protester at a Black Lives Matter rally in 2020, was released from prison Thursday after he was pardoned by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

Abbott’s decision comes after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted unanimously Thursday to recommend a full pardon and the restoration of firearm rights for Perry, who was sentenced last year to 25 years in prison. Shortly after he was pardoned, Perry was released from Texas Department of Criminal Justice custody, a spokesperson for the agency told CNN.

…

Perry faced between five and 99 years in prison for fatally shooting 28-year-old Air Force veteran Garrett Foster at an Austin, Texas, racial justice rally two months after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

…

“Texas has one of the strongest ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive District Attorney. I thank the Board for its thorough investigation, and I approve their pardon recommendation,” Abbott said.

…

Prosecutors said Perry, who was stationed at Fort Hood, initiated the fatal encounter when he ran a red light and drove his vehicle into a crowd gathered at the protest. Foster was openly carrying an assault-style rifle – legal in Texas – and approached Perry’s car and motioned for him to lower his window, at which point Perry fatally shot him with a handgun, prosecutors said.

“Today, a convicted murderer will walk the streets of Texas. Texas Republicans have once again proven that they cannot keep the public safe, they are not the party of ‘tough on crime,’ and they are not the party of ‘law and order,’” Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa said in a statement responding to the pardon.

He added: “Make no mistake: Daniel Perry is a murderer who was on a mission to commit violence against Texans, and today our justice system was hijacked for political gain.”

In a statement on Thursday, Foster’s former fiancée, Whitney Mitchell, said she is “heartbroken by this lawlessness,” adding Abbott has shown that “only certain lives matter.”

“He has made us all less safe. Daniel Perry texted his friends about plans to murder a protestor he disagreed with,” she said. “After a lengthy trial, with an abundance of evidence, 12 impartial Texans determined he that he carried out that plan, and murdered the love of my life.”

“With this pardon, the Governor has desecrated the life of a murdered Texan, impugned that jury’s just verdict, and declared that citizens can be killed with impunity as long as they hold political views that are different from those in power,” Mitchell said.

Do we think Abbott would have done this if the races had been reversed? If Foster had shot Perry instead of the other way around?

No we do not.

Mister Menno!

“But then trans comes along and says [air quotes] ‘We are going to identify into what you are, objectively, because of how we feel, subjectively.’ And that is not a human right. That is a colonizer’s privilege.”

Yet another one of these.

Nonsense. Of course a Sex Matters event couldn’t “compromise the safety” of students and staff. They just say that because they want to shut Sex Matters and Jo Phoenix up, and they don’t have a good reason so they offer a bad and dishonest one.

As for “extremist,” look in the mirror, ya punks.

Finally: a win.

Opposition Leader John Pesutto has settled defamation actions launched against him by two women who joined a controversial rally on the steps of state parliament that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis last year.

The private settlements – with UK anti-trans rights activist Kellie-Jay Keen and Melbourne woman Angela Jones – leave Pesutto to fight just one defamation action in the Federal Court, brought by exiled Liberal MP Moira Deeming.

…

Keen and Jones alleged Pesutto defamed them in an effort to have Deeming removed from the Liberal party room, after the three women helped organise the Let Women Speak rally that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis outside parliament in March last year.

The women all alleged Pesutto defamed them by suggesting they were associated with far-right extremists, which Pesutto has denied. He has always said he would defend the claims.

Deeming had initially survived a motion to expel her from the parliamentary Liberal Party in the days after the Let Women Speak rally. She was suspended from the party room in a compromise deal but was ultimately expelled in the fallout in May last year.

For the crime of defending women’s rights.

Keen told radio station 3AW in March that she was ultimately seeking an apology.

“Whilst he said these things about me, what he’s actually doing is trying to tell all women that they really do have to shut up,” she said while preparing to launch the court action. “That is what is happening everywhere. And so I would like a full and frank apology.”

And here she is saying she got one.

Next up: get rid of everyone who says the earth is not flat.

Scottish Greens expel gender rebels

Rebel members have been kicked out of the Scottish Green Party for declaring that “sex is a biological reality”.

Signatories to the Scottish Green Declaration for Women’s Sex-Based Rights were accused of making the party less safe for trans and non-binary members in an official complaint.

Did anyone point out that the obsession with “trans and non-binary members” is making the party less safe for women? And that there are far more women than “trans and non-binary” people? That in fact half of all people are women and girls? Did anyone ask why it’s better to make the party “less safe” for women?

Did anyone point out that sex is a biological reality and it’s bizarre to expel people for uttering a basic and significant and non-pejorative truth of that kind?

In documents seen by Holyrood, a total of 13 Scottish Green Party members were accused of breaching its code of conduct by signing the declaration, which was published online in November last year.

The eight-point statement stated that “sex is a biological reality”, asserted that women have a right to maintain the sex-based protections enshrined in the Equality Act, said lesbians are same-sex attracted and declared that “women and girls have the right to discuss policies which affect them without being abused, harassed or intimidated”.

It stated: “We know that globally women, as a sex, are disproportionately affected by climate change and environmental degradation, and that their empowerment is essential to our work as environmentalists.”

The declaration was signed by current and former Scottish Green Party members and supporters.

13 people who signed it were reported to the CCC.

Complainants, including the then-co-convenors of LGBTQI+ group the Rainbow Greens and a co-convenor of its Women’s Network, said the signatories had failed to “maintain political discipline” and broken rules that prohibit the undermining of party policy, bullying, “behaviours that constitute prejudice based on sexual orientation or gender identity” and “behaviours that constitute a threat to others”.

Bullying?? Prejudice?? Threat to others??

Now officials of the party, which since 2018 has had a rule which states that “trans-exclusionary individuals of any kind are not welcome as members”, have issued letters of expulsion.

All of the group have been expelled.

These people are insane. (Can you imagine trying to work with them?) Just plain bonkers loony nuts. Half of humanity is a bit of trivia while a tiny almost-invisible minority matters more than anyone else on the planet.

The document, in which MSP Ross Greer is cited as a witness, states that: “Given the serious nature of this complaint and the serious breaches of the SGP CoC [Code of Conduct], the only appropriate action to be taken on this occasion is that all current members who are signatories on the ‘declaration’ MUST be removed from the party with immediate effect, to ensure the safety of all trans and non-binary members of the SGP.”

Why? Is the idea that the signatories are going to murder all trans and non-binary members of the SGP? Or beat them all to a pulp? Or confine them to a tiny cell and there torture them?

A spokesperson for the Scottish Green Party said: “We can confirm disciplinary action was taken against 13 individuals over a breach of our membership policy, which has resulted in their immediate expulsion from the party. The welfare of all our members is our primary concern. The CCC process found that the members were in breach of our code of conduct. 

“Next month is Pride month and we hope this decisive action will send a clear message that we stand in solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community now and forever.”

No, it sends a message that you stand in hyperbolic excessive “solidarity” with people who claim to be trans, and that you will ditch everyone else in a heartbeat merely for saying women have rights. That’s not a message a reasonable political party would want to send.

Republicans are the party of liberty liberty liberty.

The North Carolina Senate voted along party lines Wednesday to ban anyone from wearing masks in public for health reasons, following an emotional debate about the wisdom of the proposal.

So people with compromised immune systems just have to stay home or die. Peak liberty!

The proposal faced strong opposition from Democratic lawmakers, community activists, and advocates for people with health issues — who are concerned about the consequences of the proposal.

House Bill 237 would ban everyone, not just protesters, from wearing masks in public for medical reasons if it becomes law. It passed 30-15, with every Republican in favor and every Democrat opposed.

“It’s unconscionable,” said Sen. Lisa Grafstein, D-Wake.

Nah nah nah, it’s liberty. People’s faces are public property, and we get to control them.

Democratic lawmakers proposed different ways to amend the anti-mask bill to protect people who want to wear masks for health concerns. Republicans shot each of those proposals down, without explaining their opposition.

Oh come on, what is there to explain? Everyone knows masks are a communist plot to steal our faces and make us eat granola.

As Republicans have shrugged off Democrats’ concerns, they’ve said they trust police officers not to abuse the power to arrest anyone for wearing a surgical mask out in public. Newton said Tuesday that it wasn’t intended to “prosecute granny for wearing a mask in the Walmart.”

You have got to be kidding. Republicans said that? Republicans said oh just past a law restricting what people can wear and trust that the cops won’t enforce it?

Ayn Rand would not approve.

A tiny step back at last.

Schools in England should not teach about gender identity, according to new draft guidance from the government. Government sources told BBC News about plans to ban sex education for under-nines, as well as teaching about gender identity, on Wednesday.

…

Under the plans, secondary-school pupils will learn about protected characteristics, such as sexual orientation and gender reassignment. But the updated guidance makes clear schools “should not teach about the concept of gender identity“, the government says.

There’s a problem already: what is “gender reassignment”? How will these pupils learn about it minus the concept of “gender idenniny”? In short why not delete “gender reassignment” from the curriculum too?

It said it was right to take a “cautious approach”, adding teaching materials that “present contested views as fact – including the view that gender is a spectrum” should be avoided.

But then what does “gender reassignment” mean?

The pathetic truth is that “gender reassignment” should be kicked out too, but it can’t be, because a bunch of damn fools made it a “protected characteristic” so schools are stuck with it.

Ms Keegan said the new guidance had been motivated by a request from teachers “to provide more clarity” on age-appropriate sex education, but she had also seen reports of “campaign groups’ or lobby groups’ materials” being used in classrooms. She said she had received evidence of lesson slides including “things like choosing lots of different genders and identities and saying which ones of these are gender identities – the spectrum. The sort of, ‘it can be a spectrum, it’s fluid, you can have different genders on different days’ or ‘there’s 72 of them’. That kind of thing”.

Quite so, but unfortunately you’re still stuck with gender reassignment, which is as bullshit as the rest of it.

Originally a comment by Nullius in Verba on Just going with what a lot of other people have said.

The purpose of the thought experiment, indeed any thought experiment, is to force you to confront the intersection of your intuition and your reason. It is not to stack the deck and make one choice seem absurd.

It is exactly the thing that we do when we work in idealized frictionless environments of perfect elasticity. If you, as a physics student, refuse to answer the exam question because the real world is messy and not frictionless, you’re missing the point. We idealize the situation in full knowledge that it’s unrealistic. Why? Because it allows us to focus on the interactions and consequences of specific theoretical frameworks. Extracting value from the idealization requires playing along with it.

We construct idealized philosophical thought experiments the same way, in full knowledge that they’re unrealistic and that there are many interesting, relevant things left not captured. The question posed by the Trolley Problem is not, “What ought you do when there’s a trolley hurtling toward civilians?” If that’s how you approach it, you’re doing it wrong. Rather, the experiment asks, “Consequentialist, how far does your imperative to maximize aggregate good go? Are numbers really sufficient to decide? Deontologist, how far does your injunction against treating people as ends go? Can you really never take numbers into account? Virtuist, what happens when there’s no Aristotelian mean? Is one extreme preferable to another? All of you, how does this square with your intuition? If it doesn’t, how so, and what would need to change to make it jibe?” Refusal to engage with the problem is a refusal to engage with these questions. If you, as an ethics student, instead object that the fat man is too massive for you to move, you’re missing the point. Extracting value from the idealization requires paying along with it.

We use imaginative thought experiments rather than just asking the questions directly (even though we often do that, too) because imagination elicits more of our intuition. Things we’re fine with saying in the abstract (e.g., never ever lie!) suddenly collide with sentiments we might not have expected (e.g., a Nazi knocks on your door asking about Jews, and you have a Jewish family hiding in your attic.) This confrontation between conviction and intuition, between conviction and conviction, or between intuition and intuition forces us to see their limits.

This is in the Guardian?? Oooooh she gonna be in TRUBble.

I have some inspiring news for heterosexuals who may be struggling with their lifestyle choices: Dannii Minogue has bravely come out as straight.

She has a long-term boyfriend, see, but she was doing a presser and was asked if she fancies women.

Minogue replied: “You girls are hot. You know it. I love it. I’m here for it. Is that an answer?” Not really, to be honest. Still, she also helpfully clarified that she identifies “as queer in a weird way”.

Whoops, the Australian singer obviously thought, when she looked at the papers the next day and saw a million headlines along the lines of “Dannii Minogue ‘fights back tears’ as she announces she identifies as queer”. She quickly explained that she didn’t mean queer queer, she meant queer as in straight but spicy.

Which in turn means…well…nothing.

It’s probably fair to say that Minogue’s awkward expression of LGBTQ+ allyship was overblown by the media. But you know what? It’s also fair to think that if someone says they’re queer, that means they’re not a zero on the Kinsey scale.

Why is it fair? Because that’s one of the meanings of the word right now, hence the Q in LGBTQ.

In recent years the word queer, always an amorphous term, has become essentially meaningless. Can Straight People Be Queer? Vice asked in a 2016 article, capturing the general vibe. The answer to that seems to be: “Yes, if they’ve done their homework.” Last month, for example, Glee star Darren Criss, who is straight but played a character in a gay relationship on the show, said he’s “culturally queer”. He went on to elaborate: “The things in my life that I have tried to emulate, learn from and be inspired by are 100% queer as fuck.” So for the avoidance of future Minogue-like embarrassments, let’s all agree on this new definition, shall we? Queer now means a heterosexual who has read Oscar Wilde.

Good punchline! And to think it’s in the Graun of all places…is the giant ship beginning to turn?

Amsterdam is tired of being a tourist spot for disgusting people.

The local politician Sofyan Mbarki believes the major problem is Amsterdam’s image as a place where anything goes. With the quiz, he hopes to change the way visitors think about the city. But the truth is that a problematic image can’t be changed overnight. You will actually have to adjust reality too.

The mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema, is aware of this. Five years ago, she boldly proposed closing the window brothels in the red light district – an audacious move considering that many local people still considered window prostitution an integral part of the city’s folklore. Gradually, more people are realising that what goes on in the red light district has nothing to do with folklore.

Isn’t that fascinating? Pause for a second to think about it. Many local people think that women sitting in windows offering paid fucks are a charming bit of local folklore. How about carving the women up and putting them on platters in the windows along with a nice Chianti? Would that be delightfully folkloric too?

Halsema has often faced fierce opposition. Interestingly, it was leftwing parties (including her own GreenLeft party) that resisted her plans.

Interestingly? It’s not a bit interesting. It’s typical of leftwing parties these days; they love to blither about “sex workers” and “sex positivity” and how awesome it is for other people to be prostitutes.

Originally a comment by Freeinder on The rights of mariners.

Sadly, this is not unusual. Even if the crew are issued shore passes, they may still be blocked from stepping ashore. Many ports in the USA are private property, and therefore declare crewmembers trespassers if they leave the ship. Many ports, globally, do not allow crew changes anymore, as they ban non-company vehicles from entering. This was common before 9/11, but afterwards it became virtually impossible in too many ports (here’s looking at you, Oakland, New York, Norfolk). Seattle, LA and San Francisco used to allow crew swaps, but then a mariner has just 24 (or in some cases 12) hours to leave US territory, on pain of arrest. My company preferred Vancouver, Halifax or Singapore to swap crew. Twice I had to extend a voyage, as the US blocked anyone leaving the ship. (Only Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait had enforced laws banning even stepping off the gangway, keeping a machine gun handy in case anyone was foolish enough. And using a camera on deck, even taking a picture of the ship, was illegal. But several US ports had armed guards patrolling the quay).

Once the Dali left the berth, and was heading out of US waters, any shore passes can be, and probably were, voided. As her next port was in Asia, immigration can simply refuse to re-issue new passes. The only time the crew might leave now is wearing handcuffs. If the ship comes alongside, expect the Coastguard to make their lives hell: drills, searches, interrogation, ripping the accommodation apart as they go. From the very bitter experience of having 9mm pistols pointed at me, because I was sticking to the international law that allows seafarers to have a locked cabinet in their cabin. CG broke it open when they found it locked, and then threatened me with arrest when I returned to my cabin to find broken furniture. It was not a pleasant day, and that made me seriously question how safe we were. And that was a British ship, with a British crew!

Once repaired, the crew of the Dali might be allowed to leave, without setting ashore, when she sails. But they are probably terrified of arrest.

It’s like, like.

Serious students of language have a hard time knowing what to do with this all-too-familiar use of like. They call it “filler,” and it’s hard not to regard it as something bordering on the sublinguistic, an almost intolerable torturing of the magnificent instrument bequeathed to us by Shakespeare and his successors. For those of us who teach and spend a lot of our time talking to young people, the endless supply of self-interrupting likes that litter their speech and impede the flow of their thoughts can be very hard to take.

I’ve been noticing that lately – the way the filler-like has expanded to the point that it excludes other words almost entirely. How do I notice it? By being on buses, overhearing those Young People. It’s no longer the single “like” that introduces a noun or verb, it’s a stuttering of “likes” all through a short sentence, such that there is more “like” than anything else. I don’t know how they can stand each other. They don’t have time to say anything of interest, because they have to fit in so many empty “likes.” They’re making noise at each other, but they’re not talking.

The redoubtable linguist John McWhorter has written entertainingly and well about the ubiquitous like, and he mostly approves of it. One might even be justified in saying that he likes it. Yes, he is willing to admit that its use does betray a certain diffidence or “hesitation,” a fear of “venturing a definite statement.” But in the end, he contends that like as verbal filler is better understood as “a modal marker of the human mind at work in conversation,” of thought in motion.

I can buy that when it’s used relatively sparingly. I used to do it myself. But expressing hesitation ten times in one short sentence is way beyond the necessary or desirable. It becomes just maddening clutter that displaces actual meaning.

Horrors – I didn’t realize the crew of the ship that destroyed the Key Bridge in Baltimore are stuck on the damn ship.

As a controlled explosion rocked the Dali on Monday, nearly two dozen sailors remained on board, below deck in the massive ship’s hull. The simultaneous blasts sent pieces of Baltimore’s once iconic Francis Scott Key Bridge into the dark waters of Maryland’s Patapsco River, seven weeks after its collapse left six people on the bridge dead and the Dali marooned.

Authorities – and the crew – hope that the demolition will mark the beginning of the end of a long process that has left the 21 men on board trapped and cut off from the world, thousands of miles from their homes.

They’re bound to be used to being trapped on the ship for long periods, but not that long, and not with nothing to do but wait. Makes me claustrophobic just thinking about it.

The crew, made up of 20 Indians and a Sri Lankan national, has been unable to disembark because of visa restrictions, a lack of required shore passes and parallel ongoing investigations by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and FBI.

Jeez. You’d think officialdom could come up with some way to keep track of them but still let them off the ship.

Among those who have been in touch with the crew is Joshua Messick, executive director of the Baltimore International Seafarers’ Center, a non-profit organisation that works to protect the rights of mariners. According to Mr Messick, the crew has been left largely without communication with the outside world for “a couple of weeks” after their mobile phones were confiscated by the FBI as part of the investigation.

“They can’t do any online banking. They can’t pay their bills at home. They don’t have any of their data or anyone’s contact information, so they’re really isolated right now,” Mr Messick said. “They just can’t reach out to the folks they need to, or even look at pictures of their children before they go to sleep. It’s really a sad situation.”

The owners and bosses of course remain free and comfortable.

Return to Gardencourt…not an obscure Henry James sequel but a new window into just how brazen the Stonewall bullying is.

“I trust that you will do what is right.” Aka “Nice little place you got here, would be a shame if something happened to it.”

Pdf of the full letter.