Oh no, says Amrou Al-Kadhi at the Guardian, London Pride is not just corporate but also Militantly Secular.

Pride’s corporative makeover contributes to an image that I find politically troubling – that neoliberal ideology is the generator of LGBT rights. As a gay person of Muslim heritage, the inescapable secularism of Pride makes me anxious. When western capitalism is painted as a haven for gay rights, I experience a friction between the Muslim and queer parts of my identity. This is particularly sensitive in a context where, for instance, a large number of gay men in Paris voted for Marine Le Pen in 2017, persuaded by her rhetoric that Islam was a threat to civic liberties.

And last year’s Pride saw its fair share of Islamophobia, with groups holding placards reading “Fuck Islam”, with some specifically damning the East London local mosque.

Well, let’s be real: religion has not always been a fan or ally of LGB rights, and conservative religions still are not. In places where Islam is the government being gay can be fatal.

And while the treatment of LGBT people remains dire in many Muslim countries, this militant secularism mutes the fact that many queer Muslims also hope to march at Pride, and that a majority of Muslims condemn homophobia…

That’s not what the surveys say:

Of those questioned, 88% said Britain was a good place for Muslims to live in, and 78% said they would like to integrate into British life on most things apart from Islamic schooling and some laws.

However, when asked to what extent they agreed or disagreed that homosexuality should be legal in Britain, 18% said they agreed and 52% said they disagreed, compared with 5% among the public at large who disagreed. Almost half (47%) said they did not agree that it was acceptable for a gay person to become a teacher, compared with 14% of the general population.

Al-Kadhi continues:

With Pride’s corporate redesign comes some exclusionary pragmatics. Despite organisers stipulating that marchers can’t be drunk, there is a lot of alcohol at the parade, and this can be difficult for many Muslims who don’t drink, or for those who are fasting during the month.

Oh come on. It’s a huge public event, where people are going to do what they feel like doing. It’s a celebratory event, and for a lot of people that involves alcohol. Deal with it.

The enormous media presence also makes it more difficult for queer minorities who don’t have the privilege of being safely out to their families.

But the majority opposes homophobia, so what’s the problem? He hasn’t really ironed out the wrinkles, has he.

As a reaction against Pride’s increasing inaccessibility, queer people of colour and faith are creating alternative events. Make-up artist Umber Ghauri, who identifies as Muslim and queer, helped set up Queer Picnic, which offers an alternative space to Pride that is safer for people of colour and faith. Umber tells me how the secular nature of “mainstream Pride” fragments their sense of self, “forcing you to chop off your Muslim identity in order to celebrate your LGBT identity”. Queer Picnic, however, is an inclusive gathering without any media intrusion, offering predominantly sober spaces, giving intersectional queer identities the chance “to celebrate all of who we are”.

Inclusive? Is it? Is it inclusive of people who dislike religion? Of atheists? Of secular human rights activists?

You can’t always have everything. You can be devout or Out and Proud but not necessarily both. Liberal religions are fine with being out but – newsflash – not all religions are liberal.

Terry Sanderson commented on Facebook:

Here we go again, with religious people (or person in this case) whinging that they aren’t being given special privileges. This time its gay Muslims and Pride. This writer complains about Pride’s apparent “militant secularism” which he says excludes “people of faith”.

But surely secularism is there to ensure that everyone – people of all faiths and none – can take part on an inclusive basis. It tries to avoid the “I refuse to take part if they take part” mentality – and as we know, religions are very good at objecting to one another.

So now, apparently, we have a separate Pride event just for “people of faith”. This is so sad. I haven’t seen restrictions in the main parade on anyone with religious leanings. I have seen people marching under religious banners.

What this man seems to want is some kind of special privilege for religious marchers.

A new level of ugly:

In the flourishing world of baseless conspiracy theories, this one, part hoax, part smear, has been having its moment.

The idea that people whose experiences speak to some of the consequences of government policies are not to be taken at face value, and are actually “crisis actors” working for a nefarious purpose, has taken on particular prominence in the wake of mass shootings, such as those in Newtown, Conn., and Parkland, Fla.

Conservative commentator Ann Coulter on Sunday became the latest figure to spread a similar claim, as a guest on a Fox News show, when she charged that some of the migrant children who have been photographed in varying stages of distress were “child actors,” in a bit of messaging she directed at President Trump.

Yes, certainly, that’s highly plausible, because of course it would be terribly difficult to find real children who were distressed by being yanked away from their parents by strangers. Real children in that situation are all smiling happily as they settle down on the floor of the small room walled with chain link and filled with other children, foil “blankets,” and water bottles. What child wouldn’t be delighted to have a journey interrupted in that way?

“These child actors weeping and crying on all the other networks 24/7 right now; do not fall for it, Mr. President,” she said, staring directly into the camera. “I get very nervous about the president getting his news from TV.”

She says, on TV, staring into the president’s eyes via the camera.

Coulter’s remarks went unquestioned by Fox News host Steve Hilton, on whose show she appeared. He did try to move the conversation forward as a break in the show approached.

“I don’t know if that’s …” he said, trailing off as Coulter continued. “I told you we wouldn’t get a word in,” he said to the two other guests, Republican former congressman Jason E. Chaffetz and Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle.

But Coulter continued.

“These kids are being coached,” she said. “They’re given scripts to read by liberals. . . . Don’t fall for the actor children.”

She said her information came from New Yorker magazine, though it was not immediately clear which report she was referring to.

Over a series of emails with The Post, Coulter did not provide evidence for her claim.

Well she couldn’t, could she.

Erdoğan could be our future.

Public schools are closing, on little or no notice, and being replaced by religious schools. Exams are scrapped by presidential whim. Tens of thousands of public teachers have been fired. Outside religious groups are teaching in schools, without parental consent.

The battle over how to shape Turkey’s next generation has become a tumultuous issue for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as he seeks re-election on Sunday in a vote that is shaping up as a referendum on his deepening imprint on the country after 15 years at the helm.

Mr. Erdogan has already chipped away at Turkey’s democratic institutions, purging the courts and civil service of suspected opponents, bringing the media to heel, and leaving in place a state of emergency after a failed coup in 2016 that has added a new level of precariousness to the campaign.

His opponents fear that his re-election to a newly empowered presidency after constitutional changes last year will give Mr. Erdogan almost unchecked authority to push his agenda even further and fundamentally alter Turkish society.

He’s already done a lot to ruin the schools.

Even while prime minister, six years ago, Mr. Erdogan declared his desire to “raise a pious generation.”

“Do you expect that a party with a conservative, democratic identity would raise an atheist youth?” he said, challenging his opponents about the aims of his Justice and Development Party. “You may have such an aim, but we don’t.”

The words revealed a cause close to Mr. Erdogan’s heart and those of his supporters in his conservative, rural and religious base.

More forced god, less freedom from enforced god. Erdoğan has replaced many of the secular public schools with religious ones.

The Imam Hatip schools teach the national curriculum, but roughly half their courses are religious and their core classes — those which a student has to pass to matriculate — are the Quran and Arabic.

Mr. Erdogan has vastly expanded the schools, from just 450 schools 15 years ago to 4,500 nationwide today. His government increased the budget for religious education this year by 68 percent, to $1.5 billion.

…

In early May, an Islamic organization visited and gave a talk to girls from the seventh and eighth grade.

“They said don’t wear leggings as it will arouse men’s attention,” said Oya Ustundag, an accountant who has a son in the eighth grade. “They said only hands, eyes and feet should be shown.”

They told girls that girls should be erased.

[M]any link Turkey’s recent fall in international rankings — it dropped in the PISA index, which evaluates critical thinking, from 44th to 49th out of 72 countries — to constant disruptions and the focus on religion.

“When I started 18 years ago the quality was high,” said Aysel Kocak, a district leader of the Union for Laborers of Education and Science, who teaches math at a technical school in Istanbul’s third district. “Now I cannot teach them as intensively as I would wish.”

She pointed to a working-class district of Istanbul, in Kagithane, that has two public high schools, but seven Imam Hatip schools — five for girls — and eight technical schools.

“This illustrates what this government proposes for low income people,” she said, “that your son will end up as cheap labor and your daughter in an Imam Hatip.”

It’s sad that human beings can’t get free of this horrible god myth.

Jesse Singal starts his piece in the Atlantic with Claire, age 14.

During the course of the evening I spent with Claire and her mother, Heather—these aren’t their real names—theater, guitar, and track tryouts all came up. We also discussed the fact that, until recently, she wasn’t certain she was a girl.

Sixth grade had been difficult for her. She’d struggled to make friends and experienced both anxiety and depression. “I didn’t have any self-confidence at all,” she told me. “I thought there was something wrong with me.” Claire, who was 12 at the time, also felt uncomfortable in her body in a way she couldn’t quite describe. She acknowledged that part of it had to do with puberty, but she felt it was more than the usual preteen woes. “At first, I started eating less,” she said, “but that didn’t really help.”

The thing is, though, how much did she, how much could she know about the usual preteen woes? Not that much, because of being twelve. When you’re twelve you don’t really understand that your experiences and feelings and woes are generic…at least I didn’t, and now that I’m not twelve I no longer think I’m Unique and Special, including uniquely dorky or wrong or weird or any of that.

Around this time, Claire started watching YouTube videos made by transgender young people. She was particularly fascinated by MilesChronicles, the channel of Miles McKenna, a charismatic 22-year-old. His 1 million subscribers have followed along as he came out as a trans boy, went on testosterone, got a double mastectomy, and transformed into a happy, healthy young man. Claire had discovered the videos by accident, or rather by algorithm: They’d showed up in her “recommended” stream. They gave a name to Claire’s discomfort. She began to wonder whether she was transgender, meaning her internal gender identity didn’t match the sex she had been assigned at birth. “Maybe the reason I’m uncomfortable with my body is I’m supposed to be a guy,” she thought at the time.

Except that there’s no such thing as one’s “internal gender identity.” That’s a made-up label, and it sows a lot of confusion.

So Claire thought she should transition.

Claire initially kept her feelings from her parents, researching steps she could take toward transitioning that wouldn’t require medical interventions, or her parents’ approval. She looked into ways to make her voice sound deeper and into binders to hide her breasts. But one day in August 2016, Mike asked her why she’d seemed so sad lately. She explained to him that she thought she was a boy.

This began what Heather recalls as a complicated time in her and her husband’s relationship with their daughter. They told Claire that they loved and supported her; they thanked her for telling them what she was feeling. But they stopped short of encouraging her to transition. “We let her completely explore this on her own,” Heather told me.

https://twitter.com/dabeard/status/1007315106634522624

My faves: pic.twitter.com/i5KqqeHSwu

— Angela Suh Law (@Angelasuhlaw) June 14, 2018

David Aaronovitch suggests that it’s difficult to figure out what we think about a new and contentious package of truth claims if we’re not allowed to discuss them openly and without fear.

Last year the government promised changes to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) which
would, among other things, give legal status to the gender choice of an individual, rather than to the biological sex that they were born with, without the need for lengthy psychiatric assessment.

Needless to say, such a change would be welcome for many trans people, who would no longer have to prove that they suffered from a nebulous condition dubbed “gender dysphoria”.

Then again, if gender dysphoria is nebulous, what exactly are “trans people”? What do we mean by “trans”? What are we talking about when we talk about trans rights? What is it that makes a trans person trans if it’s not “gender dysphoria”? (And if it is “gender dysphoria” then what is that, and how do we know, and how do people who say they suffer from it know? There are a lot of hard-to-knows in this subject.)

But you don’t have to be a tabloid leader writer to see that there are some big problems to be dealt with here, some practical, some anthropological, some philosophical. “What,” my sportiest daughter asked, “about women’s sports?” People born biologically male are physically bigger, stronger and faster than biological women. So what about places designed to protect women from the possible consequences of that physical difference? Do we really want to say that we will not see the difference in experience between, crudely, someone with a womb and someone with a willy?

Maybe you do. Maybe I agree. But wouldn’t you also say that if ever there was a case for an “open debate” this was it? You can’t just make a change like this without arguing it through and hearing the other side. Yet that seems to be exactly what many people, largely on the left, want to do.

And some of them want to do it with the help of baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire, or at least imagery of same. (It’s hard to know how seriously to take the threats implied by the imagery. It’s hard to know how risky it is to assume it’s just Twitter militancy and no actual threat to anyone.)

So the LGBT website Pink News will carry a report of a Women’s Place meeting beginning “Women’s Place UK, which are known to propogate (sic) discrimination against the transgender community, will be hosting an event at Manchester Quaker Meeting Hall this evening.” Debate in itself becomes propagation of discrimination and the pickets turn up.

The pickets turn up, and they shout “TERF!” at women, and they block the doors. In Vancouver they vandalize a women’s library, at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park they punch a woman repeatedly, in St Louis they beat up a lesbian and then brag about it on Twitter.

Feminists who don’t buy the “choose your gender” position have now been classified as “Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists”, for whom the hostile acronym “TERF” is widely used. The word’s closeness to “turd” is not accidental. The term is used widely on the left now.

So you can see how dissent has become propagating discrimination, and that has morphed into hate. Over to Bristol university students’ union for the final step in the declension. “Opening the debate,” wrote the student newspaper recently, “FemSoc’s vivacious president made the case for no-platforming, arguing that TERF rhetoric, by encouraging trans-exclusionary legislation, has a ‘direct impact on safety’ for trans people. She cited the frequency with which trans people are murdered as a further argument against accommodating anti-trans activists on campus.”

And thus, in easy, treacherous steps dissent is deemed accessory to murder. It is an utterly pernicious logic.

And pervasive. It’s the first thing a hostile commenter said on a recent post about the difficulty of talking about the issues – But Their Suicide Rate. If you try to talk about it you are driving them to suicide.

Meanwhile, take a good look at this baseball bat, bitch.

The cover of today's @NYDailyNews. pic.twitter.com/sAphChxH5W

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 16, 2018

https://twitter.com/Kokomothegreat/status/1008160509718392832

Michael Harriot at The Root explains about Romans 13:

Around A.D. 49, the Roman emperor Claudius expelled the Jews from the city of Rome. Historians argue about the exact date and the reasons, but we know that Claudius did not want them holding office or bringing in more immigrants. Instead, he wrote that the Jews (pdf) “should rest content with what belongs to them by right and enjoy an abundance of all good things in a city which is not theirs. They must not bring in or invite Jews who sail in from Syria or Egypt; this is the sort of thing which will compel me to have my suspicions redoubled.” The Jews, according to Claudius, were running in gangs, opening the borders and taking the good jobs from the true Romans.

Sound familiar?

As this was happening, one of the early Jewish leaders of a new sect called “Christianity” was composing a letter to his church. In the epistle, he told his oppressed minority of followers to avoid causing trouble with the most powerful government in the world.

He wrote Romans 13.

Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same. —A Letter to the Roman Church From the Apostle Paul, Chapter 13, Verses 1-3

Great stuff, isn’t it. The powers that be are ordained of God. Never mind who they are, never mind what they do, mind your own business – they are ordained of god. If they’re Hitler, they’re ordained of god; if they’re Stalin, they’re ordained of god; if they’re Mugabe or Pinochet or Genghis Khan or Marcos or Duterte or Berlusconi or Trump, they’re ordained of god. Suck it up, buttercup. Nobody gets to be on top without god’s ordinance, therefore anyone who is on top is there because god said so, therefore you have to accept and bow and obey. Power is ordained by god, so all power is sacred and Meant To Be and to be obeyed. God loves a bully.

If you have ever wondered why slaves adopted the religious philosophy of their slave masters, Romans 13 is your answer. If you wanted to know why slaves, who often outnumbered slave masters, rebelled so rarely, the answer lies in Romans 13. To understand why the Bible was the only book many slaves were allowed to own, read that verse again.

Christianity was adopted by people, rulers and governments all around the globe because it tells its followers to comply. It boasts of a benevolent God who knows best; even when you are the subject of brutality, the Bible tells you that this is what God wants. At the root of Romans 13 is an edict to obey authority.

The 13th chapter of Romans is white supremacy, explained.

So it’s no wonder Jefferson Beauregard invoked it to justify Trump’s “take their kids away” policy.