Culture
Clips —
September 20, 2006
Look Out for Supremacist Judges
on Lower Federal Courts
Each year, the U.S. Supreme Court
grants fewer and fewer petitions for review, and now hears only
about half the cases it heard 25 years ago. This means that many
lower federal court decisions are final.
Because lower-court federal judges
know how unlikely it is that the Supreme Court will reverse them,
they are becoming increasingly aggressive in handing down supremacist
decisions that are biased against parents' rights and religion,
and in favor of feminist and gay-rights agendas.
Parents' rights cases are seldom
accepted by the Supreme Court. This year, rather than hear a single
case about parents' rights to control the upbringing of their
own children, the Supreme Court heard the appeals of Osama bin
Laden's driver and of prisoners demanding the right to read pornographic
magazines…
While state marriage amendments
are typically receiving approval of 70 percent of the voters,
the gay-rights lobby is winning numerous lawsuits that advance
their agenda in public schools. This spring, federal District
Court Judge David L. Bunning ordered a Kentucky school district
to allow a gay club in its high school.
Bunning imposed a consent decree
that required mandatory staff and student diversity training,
"a significant portion of which would be devoted to issues
of sexual orientation and gender harassment." Included in
the mandatory one hour video were dogmatic claims that homosexuality
is immutable and that it is wrong to object to the gay lifestyle.
A lawsuit was then filed by students
who objected to being forced to watch a pro-homosexual video.
They lost; Bunning sided with the school and upheld the mandatory
video.
Phyllis Schlafly
Townhall
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/column.aspx?UrlTitle=look_out_for_
supremacist_judges_on_lower_federal_courts&ns=PhyllisSchlafly
&dt=09/18/2006&page=2
--
Why Liberals are Crushing Dissent
Liberals are actively undermining
first amendment rights to free speech by trying to crush opposing
views.
Perhaps that's why this week in
one of the boldest moves yet by a sitting liberal, Democrat Assembly
Speaker Fabian Nunez proclaimed, "The real purpose of SB
1437 is to outlaw traditional perspectives on marriage and family
in the state school system."
He continued, "The way you
correct a wrong (perspective) is by outlawing. ’Cause if you don't
outlaw it, then people's biases tend to take over and dominate
the perspective and the point of view."
Nunez's solution to the people he
disagrees with is to outlaw their ability to disagree with him.
And Nunez's viewpoint is one that
pervades liberals in his party and in the nation. That is why
Nunez and his fellow democrats in the California State Assembly
voted in unison to pass four bills that are all designed to punish
people who disagree with them. To incarcerate someone for daring
to criticize a different point of view — over a purely behavioral
issue.
The bills in question have passed
both houses and await Governor Schwarzenegger's signature or veto.
...
These four bills are also dangerous
in what they outlaw. No single teacher — not even in science classes
— would be allowed to talk about the negative health impact of
homosexual behavior. No school counselor would be allowed to confirm
to a molested student that they felt wrong about continuing in
a homosexual relationship that they were primarily drawn into
because of earlier molestation to begin with. No mention of moral
aspects of sexual behavior would be permitted unless immoral activity
were praised and in fact referred to as moral.
In other words, the pushing of the
sexual envelope would be unleashed with a nitro-fueled explosion
the likes of which has never been seen in America's history.
The liberals in the state assembly
knew that the average Californian would never support these radical
measures, but they also knew that they will not be up for re-election
this year and they are counting on Californians having very short
term memories.
Kevin McCullough
Townhall
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/KevinMcCullough/2006/08/27/
why_liberals_are_crushing_dissent
--
NBC’s “Crazy Christians” Show
Maybe it's a good thing that television
writers don't try too hard to get involved with plots about religion.
The thoroughly secular TV world seems to tolerate about one seriously
religiously themed series at a time. It's much more common to
engage the topic of religion as an odd joke, as an intensely greedy
racket of quacks or as the inspiration for a flock of oppressive
mind-numbed zombies out to ruin everyone's guilty pleasures. Usually,
they're simply "crazy Christians."
That's the central plot twist in
the premiere of the new NBC drama "Studio 60 on the Sunset
Strip," created by "West Wing" producer-writer
Aaron Sorkin. The show goes behind the scenes of a fictional sketch-comedy
program resembling "Saturday Night Live" at a fictional
network called UBS. The censors at UBS have scratched a skit titled
"Crazy Christians," and now all hell will break loose.
We're never shown the skit, but we're told repeatedly that it's
demonstrably hilarious.
Sorkin uses his first script to
throw sharp knives and rusty razors at the Americans who've lobbied
for less filthy television. The show begins with an improbable
"standards and practices" censor telling the producer
of the fictional "SNL" that he can't run "Crazy
Christians" because "what do you want me to say to the
50 million people who are gonna go out of their minds as soon
as it airs?" The producer cracks wise: "Well, first
of all, you can tell 'em we average 9 million households, so at
least 41 million of them are full of [garbage]. Second, you can
tell 'em that living where there's free speech means sometimes
you're gonna get offended."
But Hollywood writers know that
in a free-speech society, people are free to denounce Hollywood's
shows when they are vile and disgusting. There's also a remarkable
double standard at work here. While denouncing the free-speech
rights of "crazy Christians," Hollywood exercises its
own restrictions, zealously avoiding on camera the many social
taboos — smoking cigarettes, say — to which it subscribes.
What Hollywood likes is having the
almighty power to offend — to "challenge" society, as
they like to describe it — freely. But only some people are sought
out for offending. For every supposedly crazy parent who worries
about sex, violence and smutty talk on TV, perhaps there's another
supposedly crazy parent who worries about different offenses,
such as Twinkie commercials or scenes with cool, beautiful people
smoking cigarettes. But those parents don't get mocked by scriptwriters.
It is those with religious objections who get singled out.
Brent Bozell
Parents Television Council
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/BrentBozellIII
/2006/09/15/nbcs_crazy_christians_show
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