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Robert Weinert
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Not a Live and Let Live Movement Any More
By Jennifer Roback Morse
Monday, September 4, 2006
Many people of libertarian inclinations, of whom I am one, have sympathy for a particular style of gay rights movement. Let and let live, we always say. If it isn't hurting any one else, it is no business of the government's.
Those days are over. The gay caucus of the California State Assembly is not interested in live and let live. This is an aggressive, intrusive movement that brooks no disagreement.
Consider the following recent developments.
The CA State Assembly passed legislation banning discrimination in state operated or funded programs on the basis of actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.
The bill, SB 1441, makes no provision for religious exceptions.
Religious universities and schools will be required to take no notice of same sex conduct, or risk losing any student financial assistance from the state.
This legislation was sponsored by Democratic state senator, Sheila Kuehl.
This bill curtails the ability of Christian schools to maintain their religious identity.
Even now, a California Lutheran high school is being sued because it suspended two female students who were having a sexual relationship, in violation of the school's code of conduct.
There is no place for religious disapproval of same sex sexual conduct in the topsy-turvy ideological universe of the LBGT caucus.
Evidently, we have to tolerate "gender non-conformity," but we don't have to tolerate diversity of religious standards of sexual behavior.
If the state of California were a "night watchman state," that simply enforced contracts and provided police protection, the claim that the state shouldn't discriminate based on sexual orientation might make sense. But no one believes for a moment that gay people can't get their contracts enforced in California.
The state continues to expand its already extensive redistribution of income and regulation of life far beyond any libertarian, mind-your-own-business philosophy.
The State Assembly recently approved a bill (SB 840) granting universal health insurance, and designating the state as the single-payer for health care.
If the governor signs this bill into law, the state will have increased leverage for regulating doctors and hospitals.
Every religious hospital and clinic will be receiving, not just part of their income, but all their income, from the state.
Even now, a lesbian is suing a Southern California doctor because the doctor refused perform an artificial insemination on unmarried women, citing religious objections to inseminating a woman whose child would have no father. Artificial insemination is an elective procedure if ever there was one. The woman found another doctor. As a matter of fact, the very doctor she is suing made the referral.
There is evidently no room for Christian doctors in the "live and let live" utopia contemplated by the LBGT caucus. The pressures on the health care industry to conform to the LBGT standards of non-discrimination can only increase if the State of California becomes the only payer for health care.
Guess who proposed the universal health care bill?
The very same Sheila Kuehl who sponsored the recently passed anti-discrimination bill.
This same Sheila Kuehl also wants the state to micro-manage the content of school textbooks so that gender non-conforming children don't feel bad. (SB 1437) The terms "husband" and "wife," "mother" and "father" could well be among the forbidden language that adversely affects homosexual self-esteem.
The LBGT caucus evidently believes that gay people need more than for everybody to mind their own business.
Prohibiting discrimination means forbidding people to take any notice of sexual orientation.
Sheila Kuehl and her allies are not going to be satisfied until they wipe out every religious group that teaches that being straight is preferable to being gay. Or until they shove religion safely into the closet.
The combination of anti-discrimination laws covering sexual orientation and expansive provision of state services adds up to increasing state-imposed ideological conformity. The LBGT caucus wants all gay people to be treated a certain way, by everyone, all the time. And they won't quit until they have used all the state power at their disposal to force people to conform. And they are expanding the set of state power tools.
Whatever the gay rights movement might once have been, whatever it might be in other places, the LBGT caucus of the California State Assembly in not a "live and let live" movement. This is an aggressive, intolerant bunch of bullies. No libertarian, no one who values freedom, can align themselves with such people.
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Seizure law riles Cooper City residents
By Thomas Monnay
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Posted September 9 2006
COOPER CITY · The city has given itself the right to seize its residents' personal property for public use in an emergency. And although commissioners say it would use its new law only in "an exceptional disaster," some residents are furious.
"These people, with their mindset, should be arrested and put in jail for even attempting to do something like this," said Tim Wilder, a mobile mechanic who owns emergency tools and equipment.
Commissioners on July 25 approved the law in anticipation of a busy hurricane season, to ensure the city could assist residents quickly. But they said they wouldn't enforce it unless there were no other options.
"There's always the possibility of abuse of power," Commissioner Elliot Kleiman said, "but it's not going to happen here."
Property that could be taken includes a truck to transport emergency workers or a building to shelter disaster victims.
Fort Lauderdale has had a similar law on the books since 2004. Mayor Jim Naugle said no one has complained about it because residents and businesses understand that governments must protect and assist them in times of disaster.
But he said, "We haven't had to exercise the authority. We try very hard to prepare ourselves for emergencies."
The state has the same power, but Mike Stone, a spokesman with the Division of Emergency Management, said he couldn't recall Florida ever using it. Still, he said, it's a necessary tool.
"You don't know what you are going to be facing," Stone said. "You don't want to limit your ability to render services."
Cooper City business owner John Sims owns two trucks, a 7,500-watt generator and chain saws. He said that despite the law, "I intend to not allow anyone on my property without a warrant. I'm going to use my equipment to protect my family prior to allowing the city to [take my equipment]."
Under the city law, once the city declares a state of emergency, officials would be able to regulate fuel and alcohol sales, close any place of public assemblage and prohibit public possession or display of firearms. In addition, they would be able "to confiscate merchandise, equipment, vehicles or property needed to alleviate any emergency condition."
Confiscated property would be returned within 30 days after an emergency ends. And the city must compensate an owner for using personal property, which would have to be returned in the same condition in which it was seized.
The plan was advertised in local newspapers for several days before it became law. Commissioner Bart Roper said only one resident complained during a public hearing, when the item was discussed and approved by a 4-0 vote.
Barry Butin, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in Broward County, said there is no need to confiscate property because both the state and federal governments help cities after disasters.
"It's just political grandstanding," Butin said.
Weston has an emergency management law, but it doesn't allow the city to seize private property, Mayor Eric Hersh said.
"We certainly do not have any desire to infringe on people's personal property," he said.
Lorie Mertens, an assistant city manager in Hollywood, said her city uses its own equipment and makes service arrangements with contractors before a hurricane strikes.
Kleiman said Cooper City residents should be happy because their city has taken preventative steps to ensure their well-being.
Wilder, who owns chain saws, a 45,000-watt generator and several trucks, said the law is unconstitutional because city officials could take his property against his will.
"These clowns think they can come to your home anytime they want," he said.
Thomas Monnay can be reached at tmo...@sun-sentinel.com or 954-385-7924.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/11/AR2006091100459_pf.html
Americans May Be More Religious Than They Realize
Many Without Denomination Have Congregation, Study Finds
By Michelle Boorstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 12, 2006; A12
A survey released yesterday posits the idea that the United States -- already one of the most religious nations in the developed world -- may be even less secular than previously suspected.
The Baylor University survey looked carefully at people who checked "none" when asked their religion in polls. Sociologists have watched this group closely since 1990, when their numbers doubled, from 7 percent of the population to 14 percent. Some sociologists said the jump reflects increasing secularization at the same time that American society is becoming more religious.
But the Baylor survey, considered one of the most detailed ever conducted about religion in the United States, found that one in 10 people who picked "no religion" out of 40 choices did something interesting when asked later where they worship: They named a place.
Considering that, Baylor researchers say, the percentage of people who are truly unaffiliated is more like 10.8 percent. The difference between 10.8 percent and 14 percent is about 10 million Americans.
"People might not have a denomination, but they have a congregation. They have a sense of religious connection that is formative to who they are," said Kevin D. Dougherty, a sociologist at Baylor's Institute for Studies of Religion and one of the survey's authors. Baylor is a leading Baptist university, located in Waco, Tex.
The finding reflects the new challenges involved in trying to categorize religiosity in the United States, where people increasingly blend religions, shop for churches and worship in independent communities. Classic labels such as mainline, evangelical and unaffiliated no longer have the same meaning.
For example, 33 percent of Americans worship at evangelical congregations, which sociologists say are places that espouse an inerrant Bible, the importance of evangelizing and the requirement of having a personal relationship with Jesus. But only 15 percent of respondents to the Baylor survey said the term "evangelical" describes their religious identity.
Scholars have been saying for some time that the relevance of denomination is decreasing. But the Baylor survey, which asks about such subjects as God's "personality" and what people pray about, adds to a debate about what that means. It reveals the complex ways Americans describe their religiosity, and the minefield for today's scholars in trying to measure it. Is someone religious if they attend church? If they believe in God? If they identify with a particular religious group? What if they do one but not the others? Which gets more weight?
Academics who study religious demographics disagree about the "nones," and the Baylor study won't end that debate. Some say they are mostly secular -- those who aren't atheist but don't consider religion important. Some say they are in interfaith families and have mixed identities.
Some say they are new immigrants, including many from China, and second-generation Hispanics.
One thing the experts agree on: "Nones" tend to vote liberal but tend not to identify with a political party.
"What is most associated with 'no religion' from a political point of view is independence," said Barry Kosmin, principal investigator of a telephone survey that queried tens of thousands of respondents. His American Religious Identification Survey found that the number of "no religion" Americans jumped from 14.3 million in 1990 to 29.4 million in 2001. "If you don't belong religiously, you don't belong politically," he said.
Among the most innovative aspects of the Baylor survey, say scholars who know about it, are questions about how Americans describe God's personality. Respondents were offered 26 attributes ranging from "absolute" to "wrathful," and were asked whether God is directly involved in and angered by their lives and what happens in the world.
The researchers separated God's attributes into four categories: wrathful, involved, benevolent and uninvolved. They found that the largest category of people -- 31 percent -- was made up of those who said they believe God is both wrathful and highly involved in human affairs.
Beliefs about God's personality are powerful predictors, according to the survey. Those who considered God engaged and punishing were likely to have lower incomes and less education, to come from the South and to be white evangelicals or black Protestants. Those who believed God to be distant and nonjudgmental were more likely to support increased business regulation, environmental protection and the even distribution of wealth.
The changing demographics of the United States demand different polls as well, religion pollsters say. For example, approximately 3 percent of Americans observe faiths other than Christianity and Judaism. While still small, this group is growing rapidly, and scholars say that if current trends continue, that number could reach 10 percent in coming decades.
According to Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg, who focuses on religion, that is already the figure for Americans younger than 25.
Questions about the frequency of attending religious services aren't as relevant to Hindus and Buddhists, who often have worship spaces in their homes. Questions about weekly prayer services aren't as relevant to Muslims, who pray five times a day, she said.
John Green, Jewish senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life focusing on religion and politics, said: "The broader point is that this country that's always been religiously diverse is becoming religiously diverse in a new way, because that is what we are planning for America."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
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http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060912-065839-9575r
AT&T launches PC-based TV service
NEW YORK, Sept. 12 (UPI) -- AT&T Inc., the biggest U.S. telecom group, is launching an Internet TV service for about $20 per month.
To be called AT&T Broadband, the browser-based service will enable subscribers to view a selection of live and streamed TV channels on a personal computer over wired or wireless broadband connections, the Financial Times reported.
The service will be the first of its kind in the United States and arises from a joint venture with California's MobiTV, a TV content aggregator, the report said.
"The AT&T Broadband TV service is part of our 'three screen' (phone, PC and TV) initiative," said Doug York, AT&T's senior vice-president of programming. "It will enable our customers to watch live television programming beyond the TV screen, on a PC when and where they want."
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http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51973
Chaplain convicted of saying prayers 'in Jesus' name'
Klingenschmitt jury to resume work in morning on punishment
Posted: September 13, 2006
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
Lt. Gordon James Klingenschmitt
A military jury today convicted a Navy chaplain of a misdemeanor count of disobeying his commanding officer for wearing his uniform while delivering a prayer "in Jesus' name" at an assembly in front of the White House.
"But I had prior written permission to wear my uniform if it was a religious observance, (so) prayers are not a religious observance," Lt. Gordon James Klingenschmitt told WND after the military court-martial recessed for the night.
"Therefore I disobeyed my commanding officer's order not to pray in uniform," he said.
Klingenschmitt, who raised immediate concerns with this superiors when the Navy issued a new order that prayers could only be "non-sectarian," also has alleged he was punished for raising those concerns, and later notifying Congress and President Bush of the situation.
(Story continues below)
Klingenschmitt told WND that his lawyer rested the case without calling any witnesses, one of whom was scheduled to be former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, because of the Biblical injunction in Isaiah, where the prophecy about Jesus says he "was oppressed and afflicted yet he did not open his mouth."
Klingenschmitt told WND that there is an appeal process that will be pursued, up to the U.S. Supreme Court if needed.
The five-officer military jury is scheduled to return to work on Thursday to determine what punishment, if any, Klingenschmitt should receive.
"I do respect the verdict of my peers. I am a humble man and respect the authority of the jury. I do not respect the authority of the military judge who declared worshipping in public is not the same as public worship," he said.
Judge Moore, who lost his own job over his refusal to obey a federal judge's order that conflicted with constitutional authority and remove a Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama Supreme Court building, had been set to testifying about the White House assembly where he and Klingenschmitt were.
Moore, also a columnist for WND, said, "When the Legislature of Indiana or a chaplain in the Navy, Army or Air Force says a prayer in the name of Jesus, no religion is being established and no religious freedom is abused. On the contrary, the religious freedom enjoyed by all our people is being exercised in the finest American tradition."
Klingenschmitt had pleaded not guilty yesterday.
As WND reported, Klingenschmitt was at the White House March 30 with Moore to protest Navy policy requiring non-sectarian prayers outside of worship services.
Klingenschmitt had been ordered not to wear his uniform during media appearances without permission, unless he was conducting a "bona fide worship service." The chaplain, ordained in the Evangelical Episcopal Church, has said the March 30 event qualified.
Klingenschmitt could forfeit two-thirds of his pay per month for one year and receive a reprimand as punishment.
The chaplain also is promoting a bill in Congress he says aims to overrule a policy passed by the secretary of the Navy that requires non-sectarian prayers.
The Navy secretary, Klingenschmitt said, is "deliberately censoring the content of our prayers."
This court martial, he said, was over that new Navy policy.
The judge, refusing Klingenschmitt's motion earlier this month to drop the case, concluded chaplains are protected only inside the chapel on Sunday morning. If ordered not to worship in public, and they disobey, chaplains can be punished at a criminal court martial.
"There is no more fundamental right than the inalienable right to worship our creator, and I pray in Jesus name," Klingenschmitt said. "For any government official to require non-sectarian prayers is for him to enforce his government religion upon me, to censor exclude and punish me for my participation."
Several dozen other chaplains also have joined in a civilian lawsuit that alleges the Navy hierarchy allows only those Christian ministers who advocate only non-sectarian blandishments to be promoted. Those with evangelical beliefs, they say, are routinely drummed from the Navy.
Janet Folger, president of Faith2Action told WND she couldn't even express the horror of such an outcome.
"If they can silence a chaplain, they'll come after you next," she told WND. "The Navy has ruled that chaplains have just one hour of freedom of religion on Sunday morning."
Folger, the author of "The Criminalization of Christianity," said what is incomprehensible is that the judge concluded that public worship is not the same and worshipping in public.
"While our soldiers fight for freedom abroad, our own chaplains are facing court martial for praying for them," said Folger. "Where does the Constitution say that freedom of religion is limited to one hour?"
Previous stories:
Navy chaplain pleads not guilty in prayer case
Chaplain opposes bill aimed at protecting prayer
Court hearing held for praying chaplain
Chaplain faces punishment for gospel message
Christian chaplain to be court-martialed?
Air Force still no-Jesus zone?
Pastors sue Navy for discrimination
Navy surrenders: Chaplain eating
Navy rebuts fasting chaplain's claims
Chaplain 'starves himself' over Navy no-Jesus zone
Clergy to protest at White House
Effort afoot to protect military prayers
New Air Force rules: No religion
Air Force cracks down on Christian 'coercion'
Wiccans meet on Air Force base
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20060913/wl_csm/ocello
Why British cellists may no longer fly to New York
By Mark Rice-Oxley, Correspondent of The Christian Science MonitorWed Sep 13, 4:00 AM ET
For more than 30 years, Ralph Kirshbaum bought two airline tickets for his trips. The world-renowned American musician, who lives in England, bought one seat for himself, and the other for his strong, silent companion - a priceless 250-year-old Montagnana cello.
But British authorities say Mr. Kirshbaum must now sit alone. Since police broke up an alleged plot to blow up transatlantic flights last month, restrictions have been placed on travelers: Nothing larger than a laptop bag can be carried into airplane cabins. But cellists, violinists, and French horn players are loath to consign their instruments, often antiquities worth millions of dollars, to cavalier baggage handlers and the rough-and-tumble conditions of the aircraft hold.
As a result, hundreds of musicians in Britain are complaining that the measures designed to thwart terrorists are in fact punishing virtuosos with nothing more malicious in mind than a Saint-Saëns solo.
The performers, who shuttle around the world to concerts, rehearsals, and festivals with ancient instruments in tow, are warning that their performances - and even livelihoods - are in jeopardy because the new rules make international travel almost impossible.
"The kind of international movement that musicians have come to rely upon and audiences have come to expect will be altered dramatically," says Kirshbaum. "If these policies are kept in place for any significant length of time, artists will rethink how frequently, if at all, they are going to make trips to Britain. There is enough stress and pressure in preparing properly for concerts to then have to add hours of needless travel on top."
Checking their instruments, often priceless, into the cargo hold isn't an option for most top musicians.
"Something like one in eight instruments gets damaged - no matter how much they assure [that the instruments will] be taken care of, they are very likely to get smashed," says British cellist Steven Isserlis, who travels with a 276-year-old Stradivarius instrument. "It's irreplaceable," he adds. "It's my responsibility to pass it on to the next generation."
The rules have resulted in some distinctly odd itineraries, as musicians resort to road and rail to get from A to B. Mr. Isserlis, for example, has already endured a 10-hour journey by train to Germany for a rehearsal instead of a simple one-hour flight. Kirshbaum says a quick hop to a festival in Italy this week turned into a 24-hour ordeal on Europe's rail network.
Many are finding that the only way to travel with their instruments is to take the three-hour Eurostar train to Paris and fly on from there. "A lot of British musicians work abroad," says Keith Ames of Britain's Musicians Union, which has been arguing over the restrictions with transport officials and intends to lobby Parliament about them. "If they can't take an instrument with them, how are they supposed to play? You can't ask them to borrow: That's like saying to Tiger Woods, 'Can you just borrow a set of clubs when you get there?' "
Mr. Ames says that the situation has become so bad that some appearances abroad are already in jeopardy, threatening cancellations, lawsuits, and insurance rows.
Already, the New York-based Orchestra of St Luke's has cancelled a tour of Britain. And the issue burst into the open on Saturday night when the conductor Mark Elder used the high-profile Last Night of the Proms concert at the Royal Albert Hall to plead for an end to the "unfair" restrictions. "Otherwise," he added "it seems to me that next year we should all look forward to Concerto for Laptop and Orchestra."
British officials say there is little they can do for musicians given the tight restrictions in place. One government official noted that musicians are not the only professionals affected: photographers, camera crews, and even lab technicians are finding it hard to live with the new rules. The government says it is consulting with airlines and airports to see if the restrictions can be modified or relaxed in the near future.
Musicians are not arguing that art should take precedence over security. But they are insisting on a special dispensation for those traveling with instruments that they argue are scannable and contain no internal working parts. Laptops, by contrast, would be more easily adapted to a terrorist's needs, argues Ames. "The idea that some bloke with a cello is a terrorist is laughable. Any terrorist would be more subtle than that," he says.
Kirshbaum says that the restrictions are not so much about enhanced security as about ensuring that staff are not overwhelmed by passengers with awkward baggage. "I was told it was not specifically a security issue; it was an issue of the volume of work that was put on the people manning the machines in the central search area. They were trying to minimize that."
But the outcome, he says, has been an enormous imposition on "the largest body of cultural ambassadors representing Britain." "We are flying the flag for Britain and they are putting shackles on us."
He says it is unthinkable to expect top musicians to travel without their instruments and beg or borrow replacements at their destination. "Our instrument is our voice," he says. "We spend hours every day living with, relating to, getting to know our instrument so that when we go on stage we are in the best possible position to give the best possible performance."
Isserlis, who has planned trips to New York and Japan in the fall, says it is audiences and culture in general that will suffer. "[Instruments are] much less dangerous than laptops and duty-free bottles of highly flammable liquids [such as liquor and perfume], but because they [airport authorities] make money out of that they'll never crack down on it," he says. "It's a threat to our livelihood and a threat to culture."
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http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51732
Gov. Arnold tosses school moral codes
Bill forces condoning of homosexuality, critics say 'the gates of hell are prevailing'
Posted: August 29, 2006
9:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has tossed out all sexual moral conduct codes at colleges, private and Christian schools, daycare centers and other facilities throughout his state, if the institutions have any students who get state assistance.
The governor yesterday signed a bill that would require all businesses and groups receiving state funding -- even if it's a state grant for a student -- to condone homosexuality, bisexuality and transsexuality.
There is no exception for faith-based organizations or business owners with sincerely held religious convictions, critics note.
"The gates of hell are prevailing against the church," Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and Families, told WorldNetDaily. "It's because Christian colleges and churches have ignored the political process for so long. Now the political process, absent religious values, is coming back to assault the church."
"This isn't even a veiled attempt at subtly advancing the radical homosexual agenda," said Karen England, executive director of Capitol Resource Institute. "SB1441 is an outright, blatant assault on religious freedom in California."
Her group's analysis of the legislation concluded it will prevent parochial schools such as private, Christian and other religious institutions from getting financial assistance for students if they maintain a code of conduct that does not endorse such behavior.
Whether that behavior is approved by their religious beliefs is, at this point, irrelevant, the analysis showed.
"As a citizen of California and a religious person, I am terribly disappointed in Gov. Schwarzenegger," said Meredith Turney, the legislative liaison for CRI. "It is bad public policy to add to the list of protected classes a sexual behavior.
"Equating sexual preference with the immutable characteristics of age, national origin or race will result in other variable behaviors being added to the list of invariable classes rightfully protected," she said.
Constitutional assurances of freedom of assembly and freedom of speech both are destroyed by the action, CRI said. And Thomasson believes it is "setting up a tremendous church-state conflict in the courts."
"Arnold Schwarzenegger has two faces," said Thomasson. "He speaks at churches and says he believes in religious freedom and family values, yet he's stabbing pro-family Californians in the back."
"This bill is yet another attempt to prevent citizens with moral and religious principles from expressing their beliefs and educating their children according to those beliefs," said England. "On behalf of California families, private schools and other private organizations, I express our outrage at this attack on our freedom."
"Today's disastrous action by Schwarzenegger means Christian and other faith-based colleges in California will be forced to promote transsexuality, bisexuality, and homosexuality if they accept students with Cal Grants," concluded Thomasson's organization.
He said the governor "has trampled religious freedom to satisfy hyperactive sexual activists."
"He's not the lesser of two evils, he's doing evil," Thomasson said.
CCF earlier had publicized the situation, and generated thousands of telephone calls, e-mails and faxes opposing the plan.
But it was supported by Democrats in the state legislature and specifically requires "any program or activity that receives any financial assistance from the state" to support the alternative sexual lifestyle choices.
CCF said the change also will affect any program or activity at the local level that gets any state funding from programs including Medi-Cal, State Disability Insurance, CalWORKS, food stamps, Unemployment Insurance, Workers' Compensation, child support services, veterans services, home loan assistance programs and others.
And as bad as the single bill is, the CCF said, several other "sexual indoctrination bills" are heading to the governor. One would prohibit textbooks or school-sponsored activities from "reflecting adversely" on a certain list of sexual choices.
Another would allow the California superintendent of public instruction to arbitrarily withhold state funds from any district that does not adequately promote the State Department of Education's "model policy" promoting transsexuality, bisexuality or homosexuality in its school policies.
Still another would spend state money promoting transsexual, bisexual and homosexual lifestyles.
As WND reported, James Dobson, president of the action affiliate of Focus on the Family ministries, earlier broadcast an urgent call to the millions of radio program listeners to contact Schwarzenegger about the homosexual promotions.
Mona Passignano, the state issues analyst for Focus, told WND the combination of bills would reinforce homosexuality and a limited number of other sexual choices but also prevent people from reflecting on their religious beliefs that may address those choices.
"You cannot preach the Gospel. If you want to preach about Romans 1, you can't. Someone could say, 'That makes me feel bad,'" she said. "You cannot preach what the Bible says.
"If you're a Christian, it's got to be alarming. If you are not a Christian, it's got to be alarming," she said. "Because what comes next?
"The Gay Agenda: It's Dividing the Family, the Church, and a Nation"
Previous stories:
Dobson: Tell Arnold to halt 'gay' agenda
Bill promoting homosexuality in schools OK'd
Arnold to veto bill nixing 'mom,' 'dad'
Bill barring 'mom,' 'dad' from texts passes
Bill to ban 'mom, dad' from texts advances
'Mom,' 'dad' to be axed from school textbooks?
Arnold to terminate same-sex marriage
Same-sex marriage bill on Arnold's desk
California Senate OKs same-sex marriage
California Dems endorse same-sex civil unions
Same-sex marriage bill advances in California
Federal Marriage Amendment dead?
How homosexual activists took America by surprise
California high court blocks S.F. 'marriages'
Bush announces support for marriage amendment
Activists respond to Bush amendment stance
Marriage defenders slow same-sex tide
Mayor facing charges for same-sex weddings
Another city backs same-sex marriage
Arnold: Terminate same-sex marriage
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http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2006/09/06/the_new_nomenklatura
The new nomenklatura
By Thomas Sowell
Wednesday, September 6, 2006
One of the bitter ironies of the 20th century was that communism, which began as an egalitarian doctrine accusing capitalism of selfishness and calloused sacrifices of others, became in power a system whose selfishness and callousness toward others made the sins of capitalism pale.
The ruling elites of the Soviet Union, called the "nomenklatura," had their own separate and superior stores where ordinary citizens were not allowed to shop, their own separate and superior medical facilities, as well as their own separate and superior living quarters, all off-limits to the masses.
Everyone in communist societies addressed one another with the egalitarian term "comrade." But some comrades had the arbitrary power of life and death over other comrades.
Soviet communism is now history but people who talk equality and practice elitism, who wrap their own selfishness in the mantle of idealism, and who sacrifice others on the altar to their own vision without a moment's hesitation are not only still with us but have become the norm on the left.
They don't have nearly the power that the Soviet dictatorship had. But they use whatever power they do have in the same spirit. The green ideology of today, like the red ideology of the past, takes it for granted that other people do not have the same rights as the new nomenklatura.
Where the new nomenklatura enjoy a particular lifestyle in a particular community, then the power of government is used to preserve that lifestyle and freeze that community where it is, even if that means freezing out other people who may not have the same money or the same lifestyle preferences.
Monterey County, California, is a classic example, though by no means unique. A recent story in the Wall Street Journal quoted residents of that coastal community as saying how much they liked its lifestyle and ambiance -- as a justification of laws that make it nearly impossible for anyone with less money to live there.
First of all, laws forbid building anything on three-quarters of the land in that county. Existing residents who support such laws don't own that land but they can politically keep others from living on it, which is the whole point of much rhapsodizing about "preserving" this and "saving" that.
Land prices skyrocket when the supply of land is artificially and drastically reduced, which means that housing prices become astronomical. The consequences for those on the outside looking in were illustrated by the story of a farm worker in Monterey County whose family had been living in a room for years but who now could finally afford to buy a small house.
This farm worker was described as "thrilled" to the point of tears as he bought a 1,013-square-foot home for $490,000, even though it would take 70 percent of his income to make the mortgage payments. He planned to rent out one of the rooms to try to make ends meet.
His situation was not as unusual as it would be in most other places. The average share of income required for someone with the average income in Monterey County to buy the average home there is 60 percent.
But of course this does not apply to the existing residents who bought or inherited their homes in years past. Far from suffering economically from the laws they pass, they see the market values of their own homes go up by leaps and bounds.
One of these residents describes herself as a liberal Democrat and an ardent environmentalist. Election results in this and other affluent counties in coastal California suggest that she is very much the norm among the new nomenklatura.
The green nomenklatura talk egalitarianism like the old red nomenklatura and similarly ride roughshod over others while doing it. Their economic ethnic cleansing has driven tens of thousands of blacks out of some liberal Democratic counties.
There were 79,000 blacks living in San Francisco in 1990 and 46,000 today. So many people with children are leaving these bastions of liberal Democratic environmentalists as to force many schools in these counties to close.
But the new nomenklatura go around feeling good about themselves while leaving havoc in their wake.
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http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/9/132006f.asp
Edited Film Distributors Lose Their Case But Make Their Point
CleanFlicks Founder Feels Companies Like His Showed Hollywood What Families Want
By Ed Thomas and Jenni Parker
September 13, 2006
(AgapePress) - The attorney for a film distribution company, which edited and sold Hollywood movies with profane language and sexual content deleted, has confirmed that it won't appeal a Colorado federal judge's ruling that the pro-family venture is illegal.
David Schachter, attorney for the Utah-based company CleanFlicks, says it was not the act of editing out sex, nudity, profanity, and gory violence that the court, after a three-year legal battle, ruled unlawful. "The problem wasn't so much that they were making edits," he notes; "the problem was that they were then making copies of the edited films -- and that is where they went afoul of federal trademark law."
The gist of the July court decision that helped put CleanFlicks and several of its distribution affiliates out of business was that buying Hollywood's copyrighted movies and editing out profanity, nudity, and other offensive content is legal. Distributing those edited copies, however, is not.
Ultimately, it was not filmmakers' claims that their creative rights were being violated by editing that Judge Richard Matsch upheld under U.S. copyright law, Schachter points out. Where the edited film distribution companies "got crosswise" with Hollywood, he explains, "was when they started making multiple copies of these edited movies and then offering them for rental or sale to the public."
In other words, the attorney continues, the point on which Judge Matsch agreed with the filmmaking industry plaintiffs in his ruling was that renting and selling these edited movies "is infringement of their copyright, because you're violating their reproduction rights."
CleanFlicks, Family Flix USA, and Play It Clean Video were all ordered to stop distribution and turn over all of their edited movie material within five days of the July order. But despite the verdict, Schachter says CleanFlicks founder Ray Lines feels his distribution business made an important point to the movie studios -- that being that American families today want cleaner content in their movie entertainment.
Lines wanted to get some recognition of the problem, to make the movie studios aware of the niche the edited film distributors were trying to fill, CleanFlicks' legal representative explains. "And I certainly think he did that," the lawyer adds. "I mean, he got their attention; whether in the long run we will look back and say that they learned something from it and started offering more family-oriented content -- that remains to be seen."
Meanwhile, Schachter notes, families looking to enjoy popular movies without being exposed to mature, obscene, or excessively graphic content still have some options. He says a law passed by Congress last year, the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, allows the sale of equipment that skips objectionable parts of movies for use at home or private viewings.
Also, some CleanFlicks store owners and customers are exploring yet another means of making family-edited films available to the public. According to a recent report in Utah's Deseret News, a group of video store customers and store owners gathered at an August 5 petition-signing party aimed at urging Hollywood directors to release the already edited versions of their films shown by many commercial airlines.
Currently, many film producers and directors edit their own films and distribute them for use on airline flights, where R-rated movies are not permitted. The owners and customers' pro-family petition pushes for the Hollywood directors involved with the case against CleanFlicks and similar distribution companies to agree to release edited versions of their movies.
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http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/9/132006b.asp
NY Transsexual Teacher Inappropriate Role Model, Says Knight
By Jim Brown
September 13, 2006
(AgapePress) - A school district in western New York has denied requests from five parents who asked that their children be taken out of high school classes being taught by a transsexual teacher. In doing so, says one pro-family leader, the school is deliberately placing children at risk.
Batavia schools superintendent Richard Stutzman says the reason the written requests were denied is because they did not meet the guidelines set out by the district. Without providing specifics, Stutzman told Associated Press "That's all between the school, the teacher, [and] the parents."
The community has been embroiled in controversy since school officials announced a male teacher at the high school -- who has been diagnosed with a "transsexual disorder," says AP -- is going through a medical transition and is dressing as a woman. Bob Knight with the Culture and Family Institute says the district should be putting the interests of its students first, but "like much of the public educational blob, is [instead] showing utter contempt for the parents."
Knight contends that, by its actions, the district is telling parents it does not care if children become "sexually confused" by the transsexual teacher, or that someone "with a serious gender-identity disorder is being placed as a role model" in front of the students. In addition, he suggests the district is so committed to what he calls the "pansexual revolution" that it is telling parents "you're going to go along with it, and we're not even going to give your kids an out."
Such an attitude, says the pro-family spokesman, is "arrogance at its worst." He also feels the district, which has instructed students to refer to the teacher as "Mrs.," is failing to ensure students have the best possible role model before them.
"I think that the district is well within its authority to tell the teacher ...'If you can't figure out that you're really a man -- you've got the DNA, the genetic sequence for being a man -- you can't be a teacher,'" says Knight. "I think a serious gender identity confusion like this would rule this man out as a good teacher, regardless of his other capabilities."
School officials says the teacher will instruct about 100 students this year. Knight contends that because the district is putting children at risk by allowing the teacher to continue classroom instruction, the parents have grounds for a lawsuit.
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They Shot The Wrong Lincoln
By: Ann Coulter
In addition to supporting Democrat Joe Lieberman over Republican Alan Schlesinger in Connecticut, President Bush is supporting the Democrat over the Republican in Rhode Island, too. In the Republican primary, Bush supports Lincoln Chafee – who votes with Bush on the important issues less often than Sen. Lieberman does – over the only actual Republican in the race, Stephen Laffey.
Apart from Bush, the only person who hasn't figured out that Lincoln Chafee is a Democrat is Lincoln Chafee. As the expression goes, if Chafee switched parties, the average IQ on both sides of the aisle would go up.
It's hard to figure why Bush would support a half-wit like Lincoln Chafee. Maybe he believes his own poll numbers and is trying to help the conservatives by endorsing their opponents.
After Chafee's family money got him into Andover and Brown, he made his living shoeing horses for seven years. In fact, I've often wondered if an errant kick to the head by one of his charges would account for Chafee's rudimentary cognitive abilities.
That remains Chafee's only professional accomplishment – unless you include the "fun zone" for kids on his official Senate website. Perhaps we could install a "play zone" like they have at McDonald's in the Senate well to keep Chafee occupied while the real senators go about their business.
When the farrier business proved too taxing for Chafee's intellect, he went into the family business – politics. His father died in office, and Lincoln was appointed by the governor to serve out the remainder of Pop's term in the U.S. Senate. (I know Rhode Island is small, but couldn't they find someone who reads books right side up to fill the seat?) In terms of qualifications for the job, Chafee makes Michael Brown look like Donald Rumsfeld.
Chafee is everything the Democrats like to claim Republicans are, which we are not and they are: silver-spoon morons who get ahead on the basis of family connections (for example, Ned the Red Lamont in Connecticut).
The only reason Chafee calls himself a Republican is that he believes that everyone above a certain income level is required by law to do so.
He learned this from reading "Doonesbury" and watching "The West Wing" while studiously ignoring blindingly obvious facts like: Sens. Teddy Kennedy (inherited millions), John Kerry (married millions – twice, lucky guy), Sen. Herbert H. Kohl (inherited millions), John D. Rockefeller (inherited millions), Mark Dayton (inherited millions), Dianne Feinstein (married millions) and aspiring senator Ned the Red (inherited millions). All Democrats.
In addition to the Democratic trait of having absolutely no idea how wealth is generated, Chafee's other Democratic characteristics include:
* supporting gay marriage;
* supporting abortion;
* opposing the war in Iraq;
* opposing tax cuts.
Stop complaining about taxes – just live off your trust fund like a normal person! Taxes, I note, have virtually no bearing on someone who is not currently earning an income but living off incomes earned generations ago by better men than he.
Chafee even voted against Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court.
Republicans are always told we're supposed to vote for Fidel Dumbo if he has an "R" after his name so Republican nominees will be confirmed to the Supreme Court. That is true: Save terrorism, there is no more important issue than a president's Supreme Court nominees. But Bush had two Supreme Court nominees and Chafee voted against 50 percent of them, so Chafee doesn't even have that argument going for him.
Chafee explained his vote against Alito – but for John Roberts – by invoking the Democrats' idiotic talking point about maintaining "balance" on the court.
"Balance," like "meaningful consultation with the Senate before choosing the nominee," means precisely one thing: a Republican is in the White House. Democrats subscribe to the Brezhnev doctrine: "What we have, we hold." Their interpretation of elections they win by a plurality is that they have a mandate for Ruth Bader Ginsburg; their interpretation of elections they lose is that this means they get to block all Republican nominees.
Steve Laffey is the molecular opposite of Chafee: He is smart, self-made – and a Republican. He is one of five children and was the first member of his family to go to college – Bowdoin College, and then on to Harvard Business School. He was president of a brokerage firm, a position he acquired by hard work and native talent, not by attending his father's funeral.
Laffey is the sort of decent, talented person that makes you wonder why he would bother entering an irritating profession like politics. But he did, becoming mayor of Cranston, R.I., when the city was near bankruptcy. Within two years, Laffey had raised Cranston's bond rating from the lowest in the country to investment grade, earning him the sobriquet "the anti-Dennis Kucinich."
True, Rhode Island is an overwhelmingly Democratic state, and the chances of any Republican winning the general election are slim. But that's no reason for the Republican Party to debase itself by running someone dysfunctional and illiterate enough to appeal to Democrats.
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Source URL: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/sep/06091204.html
LifeSiteNews.com
Tuesday September 12, 2006
Princeton Professor Singer: And I repeat, I would kill Disabled Infants
He is consistent. States "there is no sharp distinction between the foetus and the newborn baby"
By John-Henry Westen
PRINCETON, September 12, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In a question and answer article published in the UK's Independent today, controversial Princeton University Professor Peter Singer repeats his notorious stand on the killing of disabled newborns. Asked, "Would you kill a disabled baby?", Singer responded, "Yes, if that was in the best interests of the baby and of the family as a whole."
People who oppose Singer's position have maintained that Singer is the logical extension of the culture of death and that society will eventually embrace his stance if there is no shift to the culture of life. Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition commented to LifeSiteNews.com about Singer saying, "at least he's consistent."
In fact, Singer himself uses the abortion debate to justify his murderous stance.
"Many people find this shocking," continued Singer, "yet they support a woman's right to have an abortion." Concluding his point, Singer said, "One point on which I agree with opponents of abortion is that, from the point of view of ethics rather than the law, there is no sharp distinction between the foetus and the newborn baby."
Singer's position, similar to the culture of death, is that there is no inherent dignity in man, there is no sanctity of human life. Man deserves no special treatment since, Singer rejects that man was created in the image and likeness of God.
Asked about the choice between killing 10 cows or a human, Singer said he would kill the cows, but not because they were of less value, but because humans would mourn the death more. "I've written that it is much worse to kill a being who is aware of having a past and a future, and who plans for the future. Normal humans have such plans, but I don't think cows do. And normal humans have family and friends who will grieve their death in ways more vivid and longer-lasting than the way cows may care about other cows. (Although a cow certainly misses her calf for a long time, if the calf is taken from her. That's why there is a major ethical problem with dairy products.) If I really had to make such a decision, I'd kill the cows."
Schadenberg commented saying, "Once again Singer is making distinctions between human beings he would consider normal and those he would consider not normal, thus he is deciding who is a person and who is not. Non-persons are allowed to be killed." The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition leader concluded, "even though Singer does not like to be compared to the Nazi's especially since his parents died in the Holocaust, his philosophical position is identical to what the Nazi's proposed.
The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is primarily concerned for the lives of people with disabilities and other vulnerable persons."
See the whole interview:
http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article1466409.ece
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http://www.newswithviews.com/Levant/nancy51.htm
EXECUTIVE ORDER 13397 - CHURCH AS GOVERNMENTAL AGENCY
Nancy Levant; July 25, 2006; NewsWithViews.com
The separation of church and state - gone with the stroke of a pen.
As of March 7, 2006, our nation's leader signed another Executive Order, which tied the Department of Homeland Security to our leader's "faith-based" churches. Okay, all you non-profit churches out there -- you now serve the federal government's primary spying agency. That is now your primary function. You are now and officially an organized den of thieves.
I would feel sorry for the pastors, ministers, priests, and rabbis except for the fact that I just can't and won't. How stupid and positively corrupt can you possibly be to take money in exchange for manipulating your flocks of idiot sheep to the national slaughter? And will you also spy on your flocks and provide reports to your new master?
In exchange for money, have you agreed to pacify and organize your flocks in the event of a national emergency? You certainly have, for you have been ordered to do so. And have you been ordered to offer your buildings, your resources, and your labor forces called congregations to serve your newly declared administrator?
I try to come up with words to describe how I feel about this Executive Order and the churches that have "partnered" themselves to this system. The words don't come minus the fact that the church has completely and irreversibly fallen to the lowest and darkest common denominator, which is the total betrayal of the souls of the faithful. I would pray for your forgiveness, but I don't want to.
Nor do I want to write about this sickening topic. But, I appeal to Christian people to 1) ask your church leaders if they are "faith- based" funded, and 2) to leave those churches and start home-based churches with your friends and family members. Do not support Executive Ordered, Department of Homeland Security churches with your presence or your money. You are being manipulated and reported upon -- guaranteed.
You are being told what to do when more "crisis" hits the nation, and will hit the nation, as all is now planned down to our "weather emergencies," which are providing the training and relocation exercises for the real crisis to come -- the one that permanently collapses Constitutional America.
The church needs to regroup and gather in homes, where faith is restored, private, and truth is real. Forget the church leadership. They are padding their pockets and socially re-engineering your mind with think tank religion and crisis management, and they're getting paid to do so -- much like the public schools and mass media.
Raise your churches in your homes. All you need is a Bible -- one will do. Save yourselves and your souls and leave your new and improved church buildings, fancy organs, fundraisers, and colorful windows behind.
As in all Communist countries, the church will survive underground, so to speak, and with genuine prayer. And serve your Constitutional America. Don't give up on freedom -- even as it dissolves before your eyes. Be courageous in truth and gather together in truth.
Again and again, I strongly recommend that you contact A.C.E. -- Americans for Constitutional Enforcement " at cont...@a4ce.org - and request their Information Packet. Work to preserve your unalienable rights. There is no other choice but to fall -- much like the American church. And please remember that faith-based churches are now governmental agencies -- just like public schools, mass media, and mass communications -- nothing more and nothing less.
A.C.E. will help you, your family, and your neighbors to learn the truth about today's America. What you don't know is allowing for the total destruction of your rights and your individual freedom. What you don't know is rapidly, rapidly destroying your country. Your continued ignorance is why we are falling. Please contact A.C.E. right now. May God bless the American people.
© 2006 Nancy Levant
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GOOGLE Hispanics "A Statistical Portrait" "New Century Foundation"
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http://amren.com/Reports/Hispanics/Hispanics.htm
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Hispanics: A Statistical Portrait
September 2006
New Century Foundation
Oakton, Virginia 22124
Major Findings
Income and Wealth
*Per capita income of Hispanics is one half that of non-Hispanic whites, and household net worth is less than one tenth.
*Fifty percent of Hispanic households use some form of welfare, the highest rate of any major population group.
Crime
*Hispanics are 3.3 times more likely to be in prison than whites; they are 4.2 times more likely to be in prison for murder, and 5.8 times more likely to be in prison for felony drug crimes.
*Young Hispanics are 19 times more likely than young whites (and slightly more likely than young blacks) to be in youth gangs.
Education
*Hispanics drop out of high school at three times the white rate and twice the black rate.
*Even third-generation Hispanics drop out of school at a higher rate than blacks and are less likely to be college graduates.
*From 1992 to 2003, Hispanic illiteracy in English rose from 35 percent to 44 percent.
*The average Hispanic 12th-grader reads and does math at the level of the average white 8th-grader.
Families and Health
*At 43 percent, the Hispanic illegitimacy rate is twice the white rate, and Hispanic women have abortions at 2.7 times the white rate.
*Hispanics are three times more likely than whites not to have medical insurance, and die from AIDS and tuberculosis at three times the white rate.
*In California, the cost of free medical care for illegal aliens forced 60 hospitals to close between 1993 and 2003.
Attitudes
*Only 33 percent of citizens of Hispanic origin consider themselves "Americans" first. The rest consider themselves either "Hispanic/Latino" or their former nationality first.
Hispanics: A Statistical Portrait
Hispanics are the fastest-growing major population group in the United States, and have outstripped blacks as the largest minority.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau's medium or most likely projection, they will account for one in four of the American population by 2050. Large majorities of both legal and illegal immigrants are Hispanic, and would be the major beneficiaries of any program to offer undocumented residents a path to legal status.
In May, 2006, for example, the Senate passed S. 2611, which would amnesty10 million illegal immigrants and triple legal immigration from one million to three million people every year.(1)
Decisions on amnesty, guest-worker programs, or any other immigration-related measures will therefore determine whether the United States retains its current demographic characteristics or becomes increasingly Hispanic. These decisions should not be made without regard to the impact Hispanics have already had on the United States.
The Population
In 2005, there were 42.7 million Hispanics in the United States, and they were 14.4 percent of a population that was 66.9 percent white, 12.3 percent black, 4.2 percent Asian, 1.4 percent Pacific Islander, and 0.8 percent American Indian.(2)
The great majority of Hispanics--66 percent--are of Mexican origin. No less than ten percent of the population of Mexico now lives in the United States, and one out of every seven Mexican workers migrates here.(3) Many more would like to come: According to a recent survey, almost half of all Mexicans said that they would move to the United States if they had the chance.(4)
The 33 percent of Hispanics who are not from Mexico have mainly the following heritages: 17 percent Latin American, nine percent Puerto Rican, and four percent Cuban (See figure to the right).(5) The characteristics of these populations are often quite different, with Cuban immigrants generally more economically successful than those from Mexico, Central America, or Puerto Rico.
Between 2000 and 2005, the Hispanic population increased at a rate of 3.7 percent a year, no less than 14 times the growth rate for whites and more than three times the black rate.(6) This increase was due both to high birthrates and to immigration of about 800,000 Hispanics every year.(7) Much of this immigration was illegal. The best estimates are that Hispanics account for 78 percent--and Mexicans for 56 percent--of the roughly 11 million illegal immigrants in this country.(8) What are some of the characteristics of this group?
Income and Wealth
In 2004, the median per capita income of Hispanics was about half that of whites--$14,100 as opposed to $27,500 (Figure 2). Because of their large households, Hispanics had a higher median household income than blacks, but on a per capita basis they were behind the black figure of $16,000.(9) Since 1972, the gap between white and Hispanic household incomes has increased while the gap between whites and blacks decreased. In 1972, whites earned 34 percent more than Hispanics, but in 2004 they earned 43 percent more.(10)
Part of the difficulty Hispanics face is their adjustment to a new culture. Their incomes rise as they become better assimilated, but the white/Hispanic gap stops narrowing after the second generation. A California study found that first-generation Hispanic immigrants who arrived before 1980 were making only 56 percent of the average white income even after they had been living in the United States for 20 years or more.
Second-generation Hispanics saw the percentage rise to 79 percent, but this closing of the gap then stalled, with third-generation immigrants earning 81 percent of the wages of California whites. By contrast, by the third generation, Asian immigrants earned 12 percent more than whites.(11)
In 2005, nearly a quarter of Hispanic families--23 percent--were living in poverty, a rate close to that of blacks, and 2.6 times the white rate. As can be seen in Figure 3, however, Cubans were considerably less likely than other Hispanics to be poor. Greater familiarity with the United States should result in better earnings, but US-born Hispanics are still more than twice as likely as whites to be living in poverty (Figure 4--the dotted line is at 1.0 for whites).(12)
According to economist Robert J. Samuelson, the growth in the number of poor Hispanics is the main reason poverty is growing in the United States despite decades of efforts to fight it.(13)
The median net worth of Hispanic households in 2002 was $7,932, or nine percent of the median white net worth of $88,651.(14) At $10,425, the net worth of US-born Hispanics is not much higher than that of all Hispanics.(15) Again, as Figure 5 makes clear, there are sharp differences by area of origin.(16) The white/Hispanic gap is not shrinking over time: In 1996, Hispanic net worth was about 9 percent of that of whites, just as it is today.(17)
Part of the problem is unemployment. Although Hispanics have the reputation of accepting work others will not take, with an unemployment rate of 7.6 percent in 2004, Hispanics were about 50 percent more likely to be unemployed than whites.(18)
Casual day labor is some of the most difficult, badly-compensated work in the United States, and is done overwhelmingly by Hispanics. Of the estimated 118,000 day laborers in the country working on a given day, 59 percent are of Mexican and 28 percent are of Central American origin. Day laborers can earn about $15,000 if they work all year.(19)
Because of their low incomes, Hispanics are the major population group most likely to use welfare: In 2004, 50 percent of Hispanic households used at least one form of welfare, compared to 47 percent of blacks and 18 percent of whites (see Figure 6).(20) In 2005, 13 percent of Hispanic households used food stamps, as opposed to five percent of white households. Puerto Rican households were more than four times more likely than whites to use food stamps and Mexicans almost three times more likely.(21) Non-citizens are generally ineligible for many forms of welfare; if many Hispanics were to gain citizenship, Hispanic welfare use would rise.
Crime
Hispanics were 3.3 times more likely to be in prison than whites, and twice as likely to be in jail.(22) There were 267,000 criminal aliens in all prisons and jails in 2003, about three quarters of whom were Hispanic.(23) Three point nine percent of Hispanic men aged 25-29 are in prison or jail, vs. 1.7 percent of whites (11.9 percent of black men of this age are incarcerated).(24)
As shown in Figure 7, Hispanic incarceration rates are especially high for violent crimes, motor vehicle theft, and drug offenses.(25) High drug offense rates reflect Mexico's role as an important source of drugs: 92 percent of the cocaine sold in the United States comes through Mexico, and it is our largest supplier of marijuana and second largest supplier of heroin.(26)
Hispanics are 2.9 times more likely to die from homicide than whites (blacks are eight times more likely), and are 3.4 times more likely than whites to die from gunshot wounds (blacks are 11 times more likely). (These figures are age-adjusted to take into consideration the younger average age of Hispanics--young people are more likely to be murdered than older people.)(27) As shown in Figure 8, a 15- to 24-year-old Hispanic man is more than six times more likely than a white of the same age to die from homicide (a black is 17 times more likely).(28) Murder rarely crosses racial boundaries; almost all murder victims are killed by people of the same race.
In Los Angeles in 2004, 95 percent of the 1,200 to 1,500 outstanding warrants for homicide were issued against illegal aliens, almost all of whom were Hispanic. Up to two-thirds of the city's 17,000 fugitive felony warrants were for illegal immigrants.(29)
In a disturbing sign for the future, Figure 9 shows that young Hispanics are no less than 19 times more likely than whites of the same ages to be members of youth gangs (blacks are 15 times more likely).(30)
Perhaps this explains why Hispanic high school students are three times more likely than whites to feel unsafe at school or on the way to and from school (Figure 10). This is a higher rate than for blacks, who feel unsafe at 2.7 times the white rate.(31) MS-13, the largest and most notorious Hispanic gang has an estimated 10,000 members and recruits heavily among young men.(32)
There are no nationwide ethnic breakdowns of domestic violence, but according to one study, Hispanic men are more than two and a half times more likely than whites to batter wives or girlfriends, and Hispanic women are twice as likely as whites to commit domestic violence. White and black women are slightly more likely than men of the same race to commit domestic violence, but this is not true of Hispanics, for whom the man is more likely to be violent (Figure 11).(33) A different study found Hispanic women nine times more likely than white women to report domestic violence.(34)
For some crimes there are no reliable national statistics, but state figures may give an indication. In California, Hispanics were 42 percent more likely than whites to be arrested for drunk driving in 2004.(35)
Education
Poverty and crime are invariably more common among Americans who do not finish high school, and most studies suggest Hispanics are more likely to drop out than any other group.
Because students move and change schools, it is not easy to calculate precise dropout rates, but for 2002, Jay P. Greene of the Manhattan Institute found a national graduation rate of only 52 percent for Hispanics, as opposed to 57 percent for blacks and 78 percent for whites.(36) The Civil Rights Project at Harvard reported similar results in a 2005 study: graduation rates of 50 percent for blacks, 53 percent for Hispanics, and 75 percent for whites.(37) According to a different measure that does not take into account prisoners or transients--many of whom are dropouts--57 percent of Hispanics had graduated from high school, versus 74 percent of blacks and 85 percent of whites.(38)
To some extent, Hispanics' low graduation rates reflect the language and cultural barriers faced by immigrants. US-born Hispanics do better than the foreign-born, but according to a government survey of adults, even Hispanics who have been in the United States for more than three generations (third generation+ on Figure 12) are twice as likely as whites and slightly more likely than blacks to report not having a high school diploma.(39) Hispanics who remain in school have lower test scores than whites. In 2004, their reading scores were the same as blacks. In a disturbing indication of future levels of productivity, on average, black and Hispanic 12th-graders read worse than white 8th-graders, and there is a similar pattern in math scores. Despite considerable efforts, the achievement gaps have grown wider since the 1990s (Figure 13).(40)
Hispanics are the least likely of the major population groups to attend college. In 2003, 28 percent of Hispanics aged 18 to 24 were enrolled in college, compared to 38 percent of blacks and 52 percent of whites. As shown in Figure 14, most groups have increased college attendance rates, but between 1974 and 2003, rates for Hispanic men declined.(41)
Enrolling in college does not ensure graduation. A study by the National Center for Education Statistics found that 62 percent of whites who started four-year colleges in 1995 had graduated six years later, but only 44 percent of Hispanics and an equal percentage of blacks.(42)
College graduation rates are only slightly better among US-born Hispanics than the foreign-born--11 percent versus 9 percent--and the rate stalls at 11 percent for both second and third generation US-born Hispanics. As Figure 15 indicates, Hispanics who have been in the country for three generations or more are still less likely than blacks to graduate from college. Once again, country of origin has a significant effect, as shown in Figure 16.(43) Hispanics who do receive degrees have excellent opportunities, and receive slightly higher wages than whites when matched for education and occupation.(44)
Low Hispanic education levels and the low incomes that follow have broader implications. If the Hispanic population increases as projected and Hispanics do not improve their graduation record, the average per capita income in California is estimated to drop by 11 percent by 2020. The average for the entire country would drop by two percent.(45)
One difficulty Hispanics face is that Spanish is so firmly entrenched in some areas that many immigrants may feel no pressure to learn English. In 2003, 44 percent of Hispanics did not speak and read English well enough to perform routine tasks, while in 1992 the percentage was 35 percent. This means the illiteracy rate for Hispanic adults rose during the decade (Figure 17), whereas it declined for every other major population group.(46)
Fifty-three percent of working age residents in Los Angeles County have trouble reading street signs and filling out job applications in English.(47) In the nation as a whole, nine percent of fourth-grade students are classified as "English Language Learners," but this number rises to 54 percent in heavily-Hispanic Los Angeles.(48)
Limited English can impose burdens on others. In 2002, the Office of Management and Budget estimated the costs of implementing Executive Order 13166, which required agencies receiving federal funds to serve people who do not speak English. OMB had not yet gathered the data to calculate a total figure, but it estimated the annual cost would be $268 million for hospitals and $8.5 million for state departments of motor vehicles. The annual cost of language services to food stamp recipients was expected to be $25.2 million.(49)
Fertility, Marriage, and Health
Hispanics have the highest fertility of any major population group, and their teenage birthrates are especially high (Figure 18).(50) Hispanic fertility stayed about even from 1980 to 2003, while that of whites dropped by six percent, and that of blacks by 26 percent.(51) Fifty-three percent of Hispanic women who gave birth in 2003 had a high school education, vs. 89 percent of white women.(52)
In 2003, the illegitimacy rate for children born to Hispanic mothers was 45 percent, nearly double the white rate (Figure 19). Between 1980 and 2003, the illegitimacy rate for Hispanics increased by 91 percent.(53) Hispanic women accounted for 20 percent of abortions in America in 2002, and were 2.7 times more likely than whites to end a pregnancy in this manner.(54) White and Hispanic divorce rates are about the same: According to a 2001 study based on older data, 34 percent of Hispanic women's first marriages ended in divorce within ten years; the figure for white women was 32 percent.(55)
One reason for high fertility among Hispanics is the large number of young people. In 2005, their median age was 27.2, whereas the median age for whites was 40.3.(56)
Although Hispanics are 14.4 percent of the total population, they are 22 percent of all Americans under age five. Figure 20 shows the percentage of whites, blacks, and Hispanics of various age groups. Whites, for example, account for 55 percent of Americans under age five years, but 85 percent of those 85 and older.(57)
Despite their youth, Hispanics are in relatively poor health and tend to receive infrequent medical attention. This is partly because they are the group least likely to have health insurance. Thirty-three percent of Hispanics are uninsured, vs. 11 percent of whites and 20 percent of blacks (Figure 21).(58) The majority of immigrants from Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are without health insurance, which means they must be treated at public expense, and are likely to put off doctor visits until their conditions are relatively serious.(59) Hispanics were nearly twice as likely as whites to report not going to a doctor over the previous year, and children under 18 were about twice as likely as white children not to have visited a doctor during the previous year (Figure 22).(60) Hispanics are three times more likely than whites to die of AIDS, and four times more likely to die of tuberculosis (these figures are age-adjusted to take account of the low average age of Hispanics). They have higher rates of other diseases as well (Figure 23); a high rate of death from cirrhosis of the liver is an indicator of alcohol problems.(61) Mexican adults ages 18-64 are 90 percent more likely than whites to have untreated cavities.(62)
Mexican and white men are about equally likely to be obese, but Mexican women are 24 percent more likely than white women to be obese. Children show a more disturbing trend. As shown in Figure 24, boys ages 6-11 of Mexican origin are 89 percent more likely to be obese than white boys, and Mexican girls in the same age group are 31 percent more likely to be obese than white girls. There are similar differences among 12- to 19-year-olds.(63) Hispanics are 32 percent less likely than whites to exercise regularly, and even Hispanics with incomes three times the poverty threshold or greater are 19 percent less likely to exercise than similar whites.(64)
Illegal immigrants enter the country without health screening, and some bring diseases not normally found in the United States. Polio, typhoid, tuberculosis, plague, leprosy, and dysentery are still rare but are increasing. Outbreaks are almost always traced to immigrants, many of them Hispanic.(65)
Because Hispanics are poor and often do not have drivers licenses, they walk more than other Americans, and immigrants from rural areas may not be accustomed to heavy American traffic. As a result, in 2001-2002 Hispanics were 77 percent more likely than whites to be hit and killed by cars.(66)
The health picture for Hispanics is not uniformly grim. They are less than half as likely as whites to smoke.(67) Also, health officials have found that despite infrequent doctor visits and a disproportionate number of teenage birth, Hispanics do not suffer from high rates of infant mortality. Although blacks, at a rate of 13.5 per 1,000 live births, are more than twice as likely as whites to die as infants, the mortality rate for Hispanic infants, at 5.5 per 1,000 live births, is lower than the white rate of 5.7.(68)
Adjusted for age, whites are also more than twice as likely to commit suicide as Hispanics. Every year, 21 white males per 100,000 commit suicide, as compared to 9.7 Hispanic males, and five white females vs. 1.7 Hispanic females. White men between the ages of 25 and 44 are about 3.5 times more likely than Hispanics of the same age to commit suicide (Figure 25).(69)
Costs
Low-income groups use more in government services than they pay in taxes. It is difficult to make precise calculations by population group because tax receipts and distribution of services are rarely broken down this way. However, the Center for Immigration Studies, using estimates developed by the National Academy of Sciences, calculates that over a lifetime, the average adult Mexican immigrant will collect $55,200 more in government services than he or she will pay in taxes.(70) A North Carolina study found that Hispanics as a group represented an annual net cost of $61 million, or $102 per Hispanic. This estimate considered only education, medicine, and corrections.(71)
There is more research on the costs of illegal immigration. The Federation for American Immigration Reform estimates Hispanic illegal immigrants are a net cost to the country as a whole of $45 billion.(72) FAIR estimates that the net cost to state and local governments for the education, incarceration, and emergency medical care of illegal aliens is $36 billion. The net cost to California is $8.8 billion, or $1,183 per native household, and for Texas it is $3.73 billion, or $725 per household.(73) The state of Mississippi, hardly an area know to attract large numbers of Hispanics, estimates that illegal immigrants are a net cost of $25 million.(74)
Children of illegal immigrants cost public schools $28.6 billion annually,(75) and 70 percent of the increase in enrollment in public schools from 1991 to 2001 is due to immigration.(76)
Whether they have immigrated legally or not, Hispanic students often cost more to educate because of language difficulties. In Arizona, for example, it costs $1,200 more each year to teach a student with limited English.(77) For the 2005-06 school year, Texas appropriated more than a billion dollars for language education, which constituted 3.5 percent of its total budget.(78) For fiscal year 2006, the federal government, which pays only a small fraction of local school expenses, spent $669 million on English teaching.(79)
These numbers reflect only language-related programs. For the 2006 fiscal year, the federal government allocated $13 billion for Title I schools, which have low achievement records and serve poor students.(80) Hispanics frequently attend schools that qualify for Title I aid.
The cost of imprisoning criminal aliens is considerable. From 2001 to 2004, the federal government spent $1.5 billion each year both for its own criminal alien prisoners and on reimbursements to state and local governments. Reimbursements do not cover all local costs. Every year, the states of Arizona, California, Florida, and New York spend a total of about $600 million more on criminal aliens than they receive from the federal government. Four local jail systems with large criminal alien populations spend a combined $160 million a year over their reimbursements.(81)
Federal law requires hospitals to treat all comers, whether they are legally in the country or not. In California alone, the heavy cost of free medicine for illegal aliens--the overwhelming majority of whom are Hispanic--forced 60 hospitals to shut down between 1993 and 2003; many more are on the verge of collapse.(82)
Hispanics are a relatively disadvantaged population that can be expected to require social services. However, their need for services is not independent of their own financial decisions. In 2004, Mexicans sent $20 billion in remittances to their home country, and other Latin American immigrants sent another $10 billion, sums that could have paid for a considerable amount of medical insurance.(83)
Political Attitudes
As noted earlier, two thirds of the Hispanics in the United States are of Mexican origin. For historical and geographic reasons, this is a potential cause for concern. Mexico is the only nation in the world that, at least in the popular mind, has a historical claim on portions of the United States. Mexicans are still bitter over the loss of territory that followed the Mexican-American War, and many believe the United States does not have the moral right to control its own borders.
No fewer than 58 percent of Mexicans agree with the statement, "the territory of the United States' Southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico." Only 28 percent disagree. Likewise, 57 percent agree that "Mexicans should have the right to enter the U.S. without U.S. permission," while 35 percent disagree.(84)
Perhaps historic resentment helps explain why only 36 percent of Mexicans say they hold a positive view of Americans whereas 84 percent of Americans say they hold a positive view of Mexicans. Seventy-three percent of Mexicans say Americans are racist, and only 16 percent say Americans are honest.(85)
After they come to the United States, Mexicans retain longer and stronger attachments to their country of origin than do immigrants who have come greater distances. Only 34 percent of Mexicans eligible for US citizenship actually become Americans, the lowest figure for any national group.(86)
When they become citizens, Hispanics remain emotionally attached to their countries of origin. In a poll taken by the Pew Hispanic Center, only 33 percent of American citizens of Hispanic origin considered themselves first or only American. Forty-four percent still described themselves as their original, pre-immigration nationality (Mexican, Salvadoran, etc.), and another 22 percent considered themselves first or only "Latino or Hispanic." Surrounded by compatriots, and with their country of origin just across the border, it is likely that U.S. citizens of Mexican origin identify even less strongly than other Hispanics with the United States. When citizens and non-citizens of Mexican origin are taken together, 55 percent consider themselves Mexican, 25 percent Latino or Hispanic, and only 18 percent American.(87)
It is legitimate to wonder whether it is wise for the United States to welcome large numbers of a potentially irredentist population within its borders, especially when that population is concentrated in those parts of the United States to which Mexicans have an emotional claim. An organization known as MEChA (the Spanish acronym for "Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan") actively promotes the view that the southern border of the United States is illegitimate, and even flirts with the idea of expelling non-Hispanics from the territories lost by Mexico and establishing an all-Hispanic nation to be known as Aztlan. It has an estimated 400 chapters in universities and high schools, mainly in the American West.(88)
One would hope this project appeals only to a youthful minority, but the political interests of Hispanic citizens remain anchored in ethnic loyalties. A poll by Investor's Busines Daily found that amnesty for illegal immigrants and easing of restrictions are so important for 70 percent of Hispanic-Americans that their vote hinges on this question alone.(89) Should there ever be a sharp conflict between the United States and Mexico or any other Hispanic country, it is not difficult to predict on which side of the controversy many Hispanics--citizens or non-citizens--would fall.
Good Americans?
Many Hispanics are loyal, productive Americans, and there is a definite trend towards assimilation and economic success as Hispanics put down roots. At the same time, it is disturbing to note that assimilation flattens out so that even after three generations, Hispanics are still at a considerable disadvantage compared to the majority population. This is in sharp contrast to Asian immigrants, many of whom surpass white achievement levels after several generations.
At the same time, most Americans believe a citizen's first identification should be as an American, not as a "Honduran" or a "Latino." It is not reassuring for non-Hispanics to learn that only one third of Hispanic citizens think of themselves as Americans first. Mexico changed its laws in 1998 to permit dual nationality, which encourages Mexicans to take American citizenship while maintaining Mexican loyalty.(90)
Even staunch advocates for Hispanics recognize that large-scale immigration brings potentially serious problems. Roberto Suro of the Pew Hispanic Center has written that "Latino immigration could become a powerful demographic engine of social fragmentation, discord, and even violence," adding that Hispanics could "replace blacks as the face of intergenerational poverty."(91) High Hispanic dropout rates and young-gang affiliation are ominous indicators of this possibility.
For the past 50 years, the United States has poured tremendous efforts into fighting poverty, disease, crime, and school failure. We should think very carefully about policies that encourage demographic changes that may lead to setbacks in these efforts and that could burden future generations with increasingly difficult problems.
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WHEN WILL WE SAY "ENOUGH!"?
========================================
MILWAUKEE - An 11-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by as many as 20 boys as a 16-year-old girl watched and told her what sex acts to perform, authorities say in the latest mob attack to rock Milwaukee and set off another round of civic soul-searching.
"It almost leaves me speechless. It is just senseless acts of violence. It is inhumane. It is embarrassing to the city of Milwaukee and its people. ... There should be outrage," Barbara Nuell-Moore, director of the neighborhood-improvement group Project Respect.
The 16-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy have been charged in juvenile court in the alleged attack, which authorities say took place Monday in a house on the city's north side. A 40-year-old man said in court papers to have confessed to having sex with the child may also be charged, authorities said.
As for the others, "we're dealing with a lot of nicknames so we're trying to track down these people," said prosecutor Matthew Torbenson
Numerous violent crimes have shocked the city this summer, starting with a Memorial Day weekend in which 28 people were shot. Homicides overall are down this year, but two other categories of violent crime are up from 2005 — assaults by 22 percent and robberies by 36 percent, Police Chief Nan Hegerty told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Hegerty's spokeswoman said the chief had no comment on the alleged gang rape.
According to court papers, the 11-year-old girl told police she was interested romantically in the 16-year-old girl, who looked and dressed like a boy.
The alleged victim and two friends went to the 16-year-old's house, where the child performed oral sex on three teenage boys, according to court papers. The 40-year-old uncle of the 16-year-old admitted he also had sex with the 11-year-old and told police that the 16-year-old was directing the child, the papers said.
The 11-year-old then went to the basement, where there were about 15 males and she told police she "began to choose who she wanted to perform oral sex on," court papers said.
The 16-year-old told police that the 11-year-old had told her she wanted to perform oral sex on the boys in the house. The 16-year-old denied encouraging her.
The 16-year-old girl and the 15-year-old boy were charged with being a party to sexual assault. Torbenson said he will probably seek to have them tried as adults.
Several mob attacks have taken place in Milwaukee's inner city in recent years. In 2002, more than a dozen people, mostly boys, chased a man through the streets and beat him to death with shovel handles, rakes and tree limbs.
A mentally ill man died after being beaten and robbed by a group in 2004.
Four days after that attack, a 14-year-old boy was kicked, punched and hit on the head with a piece of lumber after he exchanged words with a girl. He was in a coma for two weeks.
Also that summer, four brothers were beaten by a group armed with bats, bottles, sticks and socks stuffed with canned food.
On Thursday, Alderman Mike McGee Jr. walked through the neighborhood where the alleged sexual assault happened and talked to residents. He later declared there is a crisis in the city's neighborhoods.
"We have to have the community held responsible, parents held responsible. That's the bottom line," he said.
Willie Brown, 26, who lives in the area, said Thursday that neighbors are outraged.
"If all those brains couldn't get together and figure out that was a baby?" he said, adding he has a 3-year-old daughter. "I don't have no respect or no love for people who do that." He added: "Whatever they get, they got it coming."
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Big Bang at Knob Creek
Posted by: "David Lindstedt" semper...@juno.com okinawa5859
Sat Sep 9, 2006 7:57 pm (PST)
Big Bang The Knob Creek machine gun shoot attracts people of all kinds,
including neo-Nazis and other extremists. But Folks get along just fine
as they revel in an orgy of firepower.
by David Holthouse
http://www.splcente r.org/intel/ intelreport/ article.jsp? pid=1089
WEST POINT, Ky. -- Wearing orange foam earplugs to muffle the nearby
thunder of relentless automatic weapons fire, a grizzled man with SS
lightning bolt tattoos on his forearms pulls a little red wagon loaded
with rifle ammunition. Carefully picking his way through the teeming
crowd, he passes table after table laden with machine guns, gas masks,
combat knives, war memorabilia and bomb-making guides. The man sheds his
camouflage tactical vest to reveal a worn black T-shirt emblazoned with a
Totenkopf, the Death's Head symbol of the Waffen SS. Then he parks his
wagon to join a huddle of shoppers surrounding a hard-faced spokeswoman
from Valkyrie Arms who's extolling the virtues of the Olympia,
Wash.-based arms maker's new product, the Valkyrior 556 Rotary Gun. "It's
.223-caliber, six barrels, basically you're looking at a hand-cranked
mini-gun," she says.
The man asks, "What's the rate of fire?"
"Just as fast as you can crank it," she replies. "We just shipped a load
of these babies to civilian security contractors in Iraq for convoy
protection. When I go to sleep tonight, I'll dream of towel heads
splattering all over the place."
"We need to ship a few to the border and start splattering Mexicans," he
says.
Then he picks up his wagon handle and continues browsing the wares. Two
hundred yards away, around the Knob Creek Gun Range's lower shooting
area, hundreds of men, women and children are lined up like kids at
Disneyland to rent and shoot M-16s, Uzis, AK-47s, SPAS 12 full-auto
shotguns, vintage Tommy Guns and Heckler & Koch MP-5s. A teenaged boy
wearing a shirt with a grinning Jane Fonda and the words "Commie Traitor
Bitch" pays $25 to rip 20 bullets through a .30-06 caliber BAR (Browning
Automatic Rifle). "Man," he says, grinning and shaking the BAR owner's
hand. "That's one hell of a rush."
'Go Hot!' At a former naval proving ground near Fort Knox, the hills are
alive with the sound of gunfire, as the semi-annual Knob Creek Machine
Gun Shoot gets under way. Billed as "the nation's largest machine gun
shoot and military gun show," the Knob Creek festival, which takes place
every April and October, is a frenzied exhibition of firepower to rival a
bad day in Mogadishu. On the upper range, which is reserved for heavy
weaponry, the rental guns include a belt-fed M-60 ($40 for 50 rounds, $75
for 100), a 1917 British-made Vickers Mark 1, and a Civil War-era Gatling
gun. The main attraction, though, is a six-barrel M134 Minigun, which is
powered by a General Electric motor and sends 4,000 rounds of hot lead
per minute downrange. Retail price: roughly $225,000.
Every half hour or so, the upper range master declares a cease-fire.
Festival workers remove the smoldering wreckage of junker cars and
household appliances and then freshen up the supply of targets. During
these breaks, a flamethrower operator suits up rental customers in silver
stunt man suits and lets 'em rip for $195 per tank. Nearby, the crew of a
privately owned field artillery gun pumps huge shells into a denuded
hillside, drawing cheers from the bleachers. The concussive force of the
explosions trigger hundreds of car alarms inside the vehicles lining both
sides of a rural highway half a mile away, up a muddy hill and across a
creek from the Knob Creek Gun Range entrance. The whoops and buzzes of
the alarms are nearly drowned out by the dragon's roar of the
flamethrower, and then sonically obliterated by dozens of machine guns
that erupt when the upper range master announces, "Go hot!"
'R-2' The Knob Creek shoot started in 1979 as a local event, but now
attracts machine gun enthusiasts from across the county. Attendance tops
10,000. Throughout the 1990s, it was a major gathering point and
recruiting ground for antigovernment, paramilitary militias. They held
meetings in the festival campground and leadership summits at hotels in
nearby Shephardsville. In April 1998, a dust-up between leaders of the
U.S. Theater Command and the Southeastern States Alliance at a militia
unity conference during the Knob Creek shoot caused a lasting split that
weakened the movement. Knob Creek organizers have for years insisted that
the majority of people who come to their machine gun festivals are not
white supremacists or militia members. While that's probably true, a
survey of tattoos, patches, T-shirt symbols, and merchandise at the April
2006 events provided strong evidence of a significant extremist presence.
Sonny Landham, the 1980s action movie star who now shills for the white
supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens, signed autographs and
distributed CCC literature at his booth near a hot-dog stand. Print and
CD editions of the racist fantasy novel The Turner Diaries were widely
available, along with copies of the U.S. Militiaman's Handbook, a guide
to armed insurrection during "R-2," the second American Revolution.
"When municipal, township, county, or local area law enforcement agents
attack or seek to confine or control the U.S. Militia or its individual
members, those agencies should be totally eliminated in the initial
attack," the handbook advises. "Do not allow any law enforcement agents
to escape. Kill them all."
While most of the violent extremist materials for sale were scattered
amidst more innocuous items, one booth at the April 2006 shoot, housed in
gun show stall C-22, offered nothing but hate paraphernalia: hundreds of
neo-Nazi, white power, and hate rock T-shirts; Adolf Hitler, Rudolf Hess
and Eva Braun coffee mugs; Hitler youth flags; and Celtic cross "White
Pride World Wide" banners.
'This is America' "I do not think of us as an extremist or militia
gathering, but we do not regulate any items sold," Knob Creek Gun Range
owner and festival chief Kenny Sumner wrote to the Intelligence Report,
responding to E-mailed questions about booth C-22. "If someone wants to
sell white supremacist and neo-Nazi crap, that's OK with me. If it
offends anyone, they don't have to stop at that vendor's table. It's just
like strip clubs. I don't care nothing about them and they can be
wherever they want. I have the ability to stop in or drive by. This is
America and we do have the right to choose. That's why I do not restrict
any of the vendors at our show."
Rob Walker, who describes himself as "the fat, happy guy handing out
Shotgun News," has attended the past 15 Knob Creek shoots as part of his
job for a New York City magazine publishing house. "I have never
perceived an air of hate," Walker says. "In fact, I've seen people of all
races having a great time together."
In past years, Walker says, "The militia groups simply used the huge draw
of the KCR [Knob Creek Range] shoot to entice a greater amount of
attendance at their little meetings, but they were never officially
affiliated with KCR. Now, I've never seen anything more disturbing than
some truly tasteless T-shirts. While I'd prefer to not even stand next to
someone wearing a few of those shirts, it's the First Amendment and I
won't argue with that."
Beginning in 2004, Walker has distributed materials on "genocide and gun
ownership" produced by the far-right JPFO (Jews for the Preservation of
Firearms Ownership) at Knob Creek shoots. "Not only was that well
received, it was never scoffed at," he says. "The materials were well
marked as being from a Jewish group. Never have I heard a single
anti-Semitic utterance."
Saturday Night Special The Saturday night climax of every Knob Creek
machine gun festival is the famous "night shoot." On the upper range,
heavy machine gunners load their weapons with phosphorus tracer rounds
and take aim through night vision goggles at glow sticks marking
50-gallon drums filled with gasoline and strapped with sticks of
dynamite. The signal for the night shoot to begin is the whirring arrival
of a black helicopter, its M-60 door gun spewing chartreuse tracer rounds
from the sky.
The fiery explosions illuminate the grinning faces of thousands. The vast
majority of them are white. But just as Walker claimed, there are a few
blacks and Hispanics. All are unified, at least for the moment, in the
taboo joy of mass destruction as spectator sport.
Intelligence Report Summer 2006
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Racial Gangrape: Another Diversity Disaster
By Sam Francis
No doubt because of the influence of xenophobia and nativism in this country, America has not yet had an opportunity to welcome a new sport that the glorious multiracial diversity of the new millennium has already created. But in more cosmopolitan centers like Paris and Australia, the game is blossoming. It consists in the ritual gang rape of white women by non-white immigrants.
Back in April, 11 young black males went on trial in Paris for the gang rape of a 14-year-old white girl seven years ago. Rapes happen all the time, of course, but this one was unusually notable. It turned out to be a ritual for initiation into a gang. (VDARE note: The Guardian story on this case refers to the rapists as "French youths". See Peter Brimelow's review of Paved with Good Intentions for a discussion of this media phenomenon.)
The ritual is known as a "tournante," meaning "Take your turn," and it consists of a black male becoming "friendly with" (seducing) a white female, preferably a teenager. Once they've become chums, the male lures the girl to a location where his buddies in the gang "take their turns" with her. In the case on trial in Paris, it was no fewer than 14 buddies. Unlike many victims of such fun, this young lady lodged a complaint with the police. As a result, she was gangraped a second time—this time, allegedly, by the 11 who went on trial in April.
The incident is not isolated. Police investigations of similar rapes were underway in three other French cities, and one French magistrate says the game has been going on since at least the 1980s. "Their technique was to pick up a young girl—a white girl—and once she had become the girlfriend of one of the members, he would allow his mates to make use of her," magistrate Sylvie Lotteau told the press last spring. (VDARE: Click here to read it in the French language. Computer translation here.)
But France isn't the only nation to experience the pleasures of diversity. Reports from Australia reveal that racially motivated rapes of white women are catching on there as well.
The Australian Sun-Herald reports that police data show that some 70 racially motivated rapes of young white girls, one as young as 13, by Middle Eastern immigrants have taken place in the last two years. "Fifteen youths and men have so far been charged with more than 300 offenses relating to matters since mid-2000 alone. They are all of Middle Eastern extraction. None of those involved is presently before the courts. Their alleged victims have all been Caucasian, aged between 13 and 18."
Unlike the French white rape sport, those in Australia don't seem to be part of a gang initiation, but they are nonetheless clearly racially driven. "Before being brutalized," the Australian paper reports, "other victims have reportedly been questioned about their Australian heritage or forced to endure taunts about their attackers' prowess." But, like the rapes in France, those in Australia follow a similar pattern in which one non-white male becomes intimate with a white girl, whom he then delivers to his friends for sexual violation, beating and humiliation.
As I remarked, these particular sports, rather like soccer a few years ago, have just not caught on in the United States—at least not yet. But a recent report from Sacramento suggests that times are changing. There four men who are immigrants from Fiji are facing trial for kidnapping and rape as part of a gang initiation, and they are part of a group of 11 suspects facing similar charges of kidnapping and raping at least nine women, most of them prostitutes. There's no word in the Sacramento Bee story that reported these facts as to the race of the victims—no doubt because race just isn't important, you know. (VDARE note: The Sacramento Bee did a year-long project on rape in the Sacramento area. Both their breakdown on the details of Sacramento area rapes, and their "profile of a rapist" avoid any mention of race, culture, or citizenship. They do use the word macho, but with reference to Americans.)
And that of course is the whole point, isn't it? In the glorious diversity of the new millennium the brutal truth is that race is important—so important that non-whites who know this truth will commit rape against white women because of it. Importing millions of non-whites into what for centuries have been majority white countries doesn't diminish the importance of race; it increases it.
Because American and some other Western governments refuse to protect their own citizens, rape, like other violent crimes, is no longer uncommon. What is uncommon—so far—is for rape to be openly committed for racial reasons, and the diversity mania and its supportive ideologies have utterly destroyed the capacity of white Westerners to understand this. Human beings aren't really motivated by racial loyalties and racial hatreds, are they? Human beings are just interested in getting better jobs and making more money.
Racial rape is only the latest contribution of multiracialist diversity to the growth of Western civilization and its narrow-minded ethic and world-view. Just imagine what other contributions multiracialism will make possible once whites cease to be a majority in their own countries and the immigrants who are now on trial are able to take control.
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What Is Racism?
The 'racist' double standard: how Whites are made to feel guilty and "hateful" for loving their own people and culture.
by Thomas Jackson
There is surely no nation in the world that holds "racism" in greater horror than does the United States. Compared to other kinds of offenses, it is thought to be somehow more reprehensible. The press and public have become so used to tales of murder, rape, robbery, and arson, that any but the most spectacular crimes are shrugged off as part of the inevitable texture of American life. "Racism" is never shrugged off.
For example, when a White Georgetown Law School student reported earlier this year that black students are not as qualified as White students, it set off a booming, national controversy about "racism." If the student had merely murdered someone he would have attracted far less attention and criticism.
Racism is, indeed, the national obsession. Universities are on full alert for it, newspapers and politicians denounce it, churches preach against it, America is said to be racked with it, but just what is racism?
Dictionaries are not much help in understanding what is meant by the word. They usually define it as the belief that one's own ethnic stock is superior to others, or as the belief that culture and behavior are rooted in race. When Americans speak of racism they mean a great deal more than this. Nevertheless, the dictionary definition of racism is a clue to understanding what Americans do mean. A peculiarly American meaning derives from the current dogma that all ethnic stocks are equal. Despite clear evidence to the contrary, all races have been declared to be equally talented and hard- working, and anyone who questions the dogma is thought to be not merely wrong but evil.
The dogma has logical consequences that are profoundly important. If blacks, for example, are equal to Whites in every way, what accounts for their poverty, criminality, and dissipation? Since any theory of racial differences has been outlawed, the only possible explanation for black failure is White racism. And since blacks are markedly poor, crime-prone, and dissipated, America must be racked with pervasive racism. Nothing else could be keeping them in such an abject state.
All public discourse on race today is locked into this rigid logic. Any explanation for black failure that does not depend on White wickedness threatens to veer off into the forbidden territory of racial differences. Thus, even if today's Whites can find in their hearts no desire to oppress blacks, yesterday's Whites must have oppressed them. If Whites do not consciously oppress blacks, they must oppress them Unconsciously. If no obviously racist individuals can be identified, then societal institutions must be racist. Or, since blacks are failing so terribly in America, there simply must be millions of White people we do not know about, who are working day and night to keep blacks in misery. The dogma of racial equality leaves no room for an explanation of black failure that is not, in some fashion, an indictment of White people.
The logical consequences of this are clear. Since we are required to believe that the only explanation for non-White failure is White racism, every time a non-White is poor, commits a crime, goes on welfare, or takes drugs, White society stands accused of yet another act of racism. All failure or misbehavior by non-Whites is standing proof that White society is riddled with hatred and bigotry. For precisely so long as non-Whites fail to succeed in life at exactly the same level as Whites, Whites will be, by definition, thwarting and oppressing them. This obligatory pattern of thinking leads to strange conclusions. First of all, racism is a sin that is thought to be committed almost exclusively by White people. Indeed, a black congressman from Chicago, Gus Savage, and Coleman Young, the black mayor of Detroit, have argued that only White people can be racist. Likewise, in 1987, the affirmative action officer of the State Insurance Fund of New York issued a company pamphlet in which she explained that all Whites are racist and that only Whites can be racist. How else could the plight of blacks be explained without flirting with the possibility of racial inequality?
Although some blacks and liberal Whites concede that non-Whites can, perhaps, be racist, they invariably add that non-Whites have been forced into it as self-defense because of centuries of White oppression. What appears to be non-White racism is so understandable and forgivable that it hardly deserves the name. Thus, whether or not an act is called racism depends on the race of the racist. What would surely be called racism when done by Whites is thought to be normal when done by anyone else. The reverse is also true.
Examples of this sort of double standard are so common, it is almost tedious to list them: When a White man kills a black man and uses the word "nigger" while doing so, there is an enormous media uproar and the nation beats its collective breast; when members of the black Yahweh cult carry out ritual murders of random Whites, the media are silent (see AR of March, 1991). College campuses forbid pejorative statements about non-Whites as "racist," but ignore scurrilous attacks on Whites.
At election time, if 60 percent of the White voters vote for a White candidate, and 95 percent of the black voters vote for the black opponent, it is Whites who are accused of racial bias. There are 107 "historically black" colleges, whose fundamental blackness must be preserved in the name of diversity, but all historically White colleges must be forcibly integrated in the name of... the same thing. To resist would be racist.
"Black pride" is said to be a wonderful and worthy thing, but anything that could be construed as an expression of White pride is a form of hatred. It is perfectly natural for third-world immigrants to expect school instruction and driver's tests in their own languages, whereas for native Americans to ask them to learn English is racist.
Blatant anti-White prejudice, in the form of affirmative action, is now the law of the land. Anything remotely like affirmative action, if practiced in favor of Whites, would be attacked as despicable favoritism.
All across the country, black, Hispanic, and Asian clubs and caucuses are thought to be fine expressions of ethnic solidarity, but any club or association expressly for Whites is by definition racist. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) campaigns openly for black advantage but is a respected "civil rights" organization. The National Association for the Advancement of White People (NAAWP) campaigns merely for equal treatment of all races, but is said to be viciously racist.
At a few college campuses, students opposed to affirmative action have set up student unions for Whites, analogous to those for blacks, Hispanics, etc, and have been roundly condemned as racists. Recently, when the White students at Lowell High School in San Francisco found themselves to be a minority, they asked for a racially exclusive club like the ones that non-Whites have. They were turned down in horror. Indeed, in America today, any club not specifically formed to be a White enclave but whose members simply happen all to be White is branded as racist.
Today, one of the favorite slogans that define the asymmetric quality of American racism is "celebration of diversity." It has begun to dawn on a few people that "diversity" is always achieved at the expense of Whites (and sometimes men), and never the other way around. No one proposes that Howard University be made more diverse by admitting Whites, Hispanics, or Asians. No one ever suggests that National Hispanic University in San Jose (CA) would benefit from the diversity of having non-Hispanics on campus. No one suggests that the Black Congressional Caucus or the executive ranks of the NAACP or the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund suffer from a lack of diversity. Somehow, it is perfectly legitimate for them to celebrate homogeneity. And yet any all-White group - a company, a town, a school, a club, a neighborhood - is thought to suffer from a crippling lack of diversity that must be remedied as quickly as possible. Only when Whites have been reduced to a minority has "diversity" been achieved.
Let us put it bluntly: To "celebrate" or "embrace" diversity, as we are so often asked to do, is no different from deploring an excess of Whites. In fact, the entire nation is thought to suffer from an excess of Whites. Our current immigration policies are structured so that approximately 90 percent of our annual 800,000 legal immigrants are non-White. The several million illegal immigrants that enter the country every year are virtually all non-White. It would be racist not to be grateful for this laudable contribution to "diversity." It is, of course, only White nations that are called upon to practice this kind of "diversity." It is almost criminal to imagine a nation of any other race countenancing blatant dispossession of this kind.
What if the United States were pouring its poorest, least educated citizens across the border into Mexico? Could anyone be fooled into thinking that Mexico was being "culturally enriched?" What if the state of Chihuahua were losing its majority population to poor Whites who demanded that schools be taught in English, who insisted on celebrating the Fourth of July, who demanded the right to vote even if they weren't citizens, who clamored for "affirmative action" in jobs and schooling?
Would Mexico - or any other non-White nation - tolerate this kind of cultural and demographic depredation? Of course not. Yet White Americans are supposed to look upon the flood of Hispanics and Asians entering their country as a priceless cultural gift. They are supposed to "celebrate" their own loss of influence, their own dwindling numbers, their own dispossession, for to do otherwise would be hopelessly racist.
There is another curious asymmetry about American racism. When non- Whites advance their own racial purposes, no one ever accuses them of "hating" another group. Blacks can join "civil rights" groups and Hispanics can be activists without fear of being branded as bigots and hate mongers. They can agitate openly for racial preferences that can come only at the expense of whites. They can demand preferential treatment of all kinds without anyone ever suggesting that they are "anti-white."
Whites, on the other hand, need only express their opposition to affirmative action to be called haters. They need only subject racial policies that are clearly prejudicial to themselves to be called racists. Should they actually go so far as to say that they prefer the company of their own kind, that they wish to be left alone to enjoy the fruits of their European heritage, they are irredeemably wicked and hateful.
Here, then is the final, baffling inconsistency about American race relations. All non-whites are allowed to prefer the company of their own kind, to think of themselves as groups with interests distinct from those of the whole, and to work openly for group advantage. None of this is thought to be racist. At the same time, whites must also champion the racial interests of non-whites. They must sacrifice their own future on the altar of "diversity" and cooperate in their own dispossession. They are to encourage, even to subsidize, the displacement of a European people and culture by alien peoples and cultures. To put it in the simplest possible terms, White people are cheerfully to slaughter their own society, to commit racial and cultural suicide. To refuse to do so would be racism.
Of course, the entire non-white enterprise in the United States is perfectly natural and healthy. Nothing could be more natural than to love one's people and to hope that it should flourish. Filipinos and El Salvadorans are doubtless astonished to discover that simply by setting foot in the United States they are entitled to affirmative action preferences over native-born whites, but can they be blamed for accepting them? Is it surprising that they should want their languages, their cultures, their brothers and sisters to take possession and put their mark indelibly on the land? If the once-great people of a once-great nation is bent upon self-destruction and is prepared to hand over land and power to whomever shows up and asks for it, why should Mexicans and Cambodians complain?
No, it is the White enterprise in the United States that is unnatural, unhealthy, and without historical precedent. Whites have let themselves be convinced that it is racist merely to object to dispossession, much less to work for their own interests. Never in the history of the world has a dominant people thrown open the gates to strangers, and poured out its wealth to aliens. Never before has a people been fooled into thinking that there was virtue or nobility in surrendering its heritage, and giving away to others its place in history. Of all the races in America, only whites have been tricked into thinking that a preference for one's own kind is racism. Only whites are ever told that a love for their own people is somehow "hatred" of others. All healthy people prefer the company of their own kind, and it has nothing to do with hatred. All men love their families more than their neighbors, but this does not mean that they hate their neighbors. Whites who love their racial family need bear no ill will towards non-whites. They only wish to be left alone to participate in the unfolding of their racial and cultural destinies.
What whites in America are being asked to do is therefore utterly unnatural. They are being asked to devote themselves to the interests of other races and to ignore the interests of their own. This is like asking a man to forsake his own children and love the children of his neighbors, since to do otherwise would be "racist."
What then, is "racism?" It is considerably more than any dictionary is likely to say. It is any opposition by whites to official policies of racial preference for non-whites. It is any preference by whites for their own people and culture. It is any resistance by whites to the idea of becoming a minority people. It is any unwillingness to be pushed aside. It is, in short, any of the normal aspirations of people-hood that have defined nations since the beginning of history - but only so long as the aspirations are those of whites.
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http://education.guardian.co.uk/faithschools/story/0,,1708826,00.html
Can a Catholic school be made to convert?
Most of the pupils are Muslim. Now campaigners want the school to change its faith. Mian Ridge reports
Tuesday February 14, 2006
The Guardian
St Albert's Primary school, built from concrete and glass, sits rather uncomfortably amid the elegant sandstone villas of a wide, leafy street in the south Glasgow suburb of Pollokshields. It is not only the school's architecture that is incongruous. St Albert's is Roman Catholic. It has a Catholic headteacher, Catholic teachers, Catholic prayers to start the day and, once a month, holds a celebration of Catholic mass. Yet the majority of its pupils, certainly more than 75%, are Muslim. At 3pm, when the school doors burst open and children swarm out, most are met by mothers swathed in black; their heads, even their faces, are veiled.
For most of the children at St Albert's, the day does not end there. One mother, Shazia Hussain, is about to take her two daughters, aged five and nine, for their daily Arabic lesson at a neighbour's house. "I'm worried they don't know enough about Islamic history and art," she says. Mohammed Kaleem is gathering up his three sons to drive them to a nearby mosque for an hour and a half of Islamic instruction. He does so five times a week. "It's very important that they know these things," he says.
This is the lot of many Muslim children at non-Muslim schools - and Scotland has not a single state-funded Muslim school. In an effort to change this, Glasgow's biggest mosques and Muslim organisations formed the Campaign for Muslim Schools last year. In December, it called for Willowbank Primary in Glasgow - another school with a majority Muslim intake - to be saved from likely closure and converted into an Islamic establishment. In January, it switched its attentions to St Albert's, sparking a much greater controversy. Unlike Willowbank, St Albert's is a popular and successful school.
Pollokshields was an obvious target for the campaign. It is home to Scotland's largest Pakistani community. In its streets, there are as many shop signs in Urdu as in English. The windows of boutiques are draped in salwar kameez and beauty salons have "women only" signs on their doors. There are posters advertising Hindi and Urdu films and earthquake appeal collection buckets on shop counters.
It is not surprising, then, that St Albert's position should be challenged. It teaches an RE syllabus that is distinctly Catholic. The Scottish Catholic Education Service, set up by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of Scotland to oversee Catholic schools, says RE "takes place in the context of faith". But at St Albert's, where most pupils do not belong to the Catholic faith, it is unclear what this could mean.
Inappropriate
Osama Saeed, a spokesman for the Campaign for Muslim Schools, says it has focused on St Albert's because it is inappropriate for Muslim children to be roped into Christian observances. Under the law, parents may withdraw their children from religious practices. This is explained to them when they enrol their children at St Albert's. But Saeed believes that children being withdrawn from prayers might feel they were being excluded. It would be better if their parents had the option to send them to a Muslim school.
"The national policy on faith schools is that, whenever there is a demand from a faith community, there should be a school," says Saeed, who is also a spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain. "Ergo, there should be a Muslim school here."
Faith schools are contentious in Scotland. They have been blamed for sectarian tensions between the Protestant and Catholic communities. While Tony Blair's enthusiasm for faith schools is undimmed - his education white paper proposes that 100 Muslim schools be taken into the state fold - Scotland's first minister, Jack McConnell, seems to have acknowledged their potentially divisive effect. In January, he announced that children from denominational and non-denominational schools would be brought together for activities like school trips and drama.
Glasgow City Council refutes Saeed's claim that there is a demand from local Muslims for their own school. It says that, while it is not opposed to Muslim schools in principle, there is no evidence of "a consensus in favour of such a school from the diverse Muslim community itself, nor from across the wider community".
This view is echoed by Amanullah de Sondy, a research fellow at the Centre for Islam at Glasgow University. "The campaign does not speak for all Muslims," he says. "It is too simple to say that because the Catholics have a school the Muslims must too. The church has a long history of running schools in Scotland; but the Muslim community does not have the hierarchy or the structures to run schools yet. And taking an isolationist approach is not the right way forward."
In the streets of Pollokshields, opinion is divided over the call for St Albert's to switch its religion. Some Catholics are furious. Lynne McKee, working behind the counter in a supermarket, is worried that her seven-year-old daughter would have a long journey to school if St Albert's became Muslim - there are no other Catholic schools nearby. Sheila McGeehan, whose four children were educated at St Albert's, is sorting through donations of clothes in a charity shop. She is adamant it should remain Catholic. "Please! Live and let live," she says.
Among Muslims, there seems to be no clear consensus. In Aap Ki Passand, a Pakistani marriage bureau, Mohammed Manir says there are few marriages between people of different faiths in Pollokshields, but he would like to see more. "I grew up in Pakistan, where children were taught together in Catholic schools and it was fine," he says.
Sultana Maqbol, a sales assistant in East Meets West, a store selling fashionable salwar kameez outfits, is opposed to faith schools. She went to Pollokshields primary, which is non-denominational. "They say children won't learn about their own beliefs, but parents take them to the mosque all the time anyway," she says. "My wee nephew goes to St Albert's and learns about Islam at the mosque."
Back at the school gates, however, there seems to be broad agreement that Pollokshields should have a Muslim school and that the building that is presently St Albert's should be it. Several mothers nod in agreement when Shamin Akhtar, who is picking up her two grandsons, says that St Albert's should convert. "There are Muslim schools in Lancaster and other cities - this should be too."
But standing nearby, a Sikh father who is waiting for his children to come out of school, is quietly fuming. "I am happy for my children to go to a Catholic school," says Karnal Singh. "I don't want it to become Muslim." It is often forgotten that some 13% of pupils at St Albert's are Sikh. Newspapers tend to band Sikhs together with Muslims and report that 90% of pupils are Muslim. A Sikh taxi driver says that there is more tension between these communities than there is between the Asian and white populations. "We are not asking for our own schools. Why do they have to?" he asks.
As the debate rages, the school's headteacher, Winifred Diver, refuses to talk to Education Guardian. But the local priest, who is also the school chaplain, Fr John Gannon, represents the school's position. "There is probably no organisation in Scotland more supportive of the notion that there should be Muslim faith schools than the Catholic church," he says. "But it may be that to poach schools is not the best way to go about it."
When Gannon was saying mass at the school recently, a number of parents interrupted the service at staggered intervals, removing 12 children. The interruption was "deliberately designed to disrupt the mass", Gannon says, and showed "gross discourtesy and contempt". He does not believe these parents were representative of most parents in the school.
Strong relationship
Gannon adds that the staff at St Albert's has built up a strong relationship with Pollokshields's Muslim community. "When parents say they want the school to become Muslim, they seem to think that the teachers would stay on, but of course that wouldn't happen," he says. "There is some serious confusion about what such a change would mean."
Campaigners for a Muslim school are stepping up their efforts and have, met members of Glasgow City Council. But no one knows how such a school would be organised and run, because the legal provisions for denominational schools in Scotland were laid out in 1918, when there were few Muslims in the country.
While the proposal has caused resentment among Catholics and Sikhs, it has fed a growing sense of injustice among some Muslims. Many people, though, think faith schools are simply divisive.
Alec Macadie, an ebullient lollipop man, sees children in Pollokshields across the road on their way home from school every day. He chats to everyone - parents, children, shopkeepers - and he approves of the way the area has changed over the years. "People don't mix, though," he says. "They tolerate each other." It is for this reason that he believes children of all cultures should be educated together and that religious differences should not be allowed to divide them.
Related articles
13.02.2006: Poor
children underrepresented in church schools, study finds
12.02.2006: Faith
schools 'too selective'
31.01.2006: Scotland
introduces school twinning plan to beat sectarianism
26.01.2006: Church
denies its schools exclude poor
18.01.2006: Integrated
schools 'dilute sectarianism'
28.10.2005: Kelly
accused over faith school interviews
24.10.2005: Secular
society warns Kelly over faith school expansion
15.10.2005: Faith
schools warned: open gates to all or be shut down
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