Sunday, September 30, 2012



Homosexual couples should be allowed to marry in church, says British Leftist leader

Ed Miliband last night said gay couples should be allowed to marry in church.  The Labour leader backed Government proposals to change the law to allow gays to be married in a register office or other civil ceremony.

But he insisted the reforms should go further by enabling churches and faith groups to conduct ceremonies if they wish to.

Mr Miliband is expected to impose a three-line whip on his MPs - the strongest possible instruction on how to vote - when the Commons decides whether to back gay civil marriages following a consultation by the Home Office.

David Cameron will offer Tories a free vote, as he regards the issue as one of conscience.

The Government is committed to introducing legislation before the next election in 2015 and polls suggest a significant majority of MPs will back a change in the law.

At the moment, it is illegal for gay couples to be married in church. The Home Office intends to keep this ban.

Its consultation paper states: `It would not be legally possible under these proposals for religious organisations to solemnise religious marriages for same-sex couples.'

Gay couples can already enter a civil partnership, which can be carried out in church and gives them many of the rights of marriage.

But many religious leaders fear that if same-sex civil marriages are allowed, gay activists will use human rights laws to force churches to marry them.

In a video recorded for the Out4Marriage campaign, Mr Miliband said:

`Whether you are gay or straight, you should be able to signify your commitment, your love with the term "marriage".

`Where faith groups want to provide that opportunity for gay couples as well as straight couples, they should be able to do so. Equal marriage is... a sign of us being a modern country.'

Quakers and liberal Jews have suggested they would host services. But many Tories say gay marriages should not be carried out in church.

Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said he was in favour of civil marriage, but added: `Churches should be protected.'

Colin Hart, of the Coalition for Marriage, said: `Poll after poll shows a majority of the public oppose these changes.

Voters have not had the opportunity to have their say and even within the gay community it is not a priority.' However, Benjamin Cohen, of

Out4Marriage, said: `There are many gay couples of faith and many faith groups that embrace gay people.

`It's only right for faith groups that wish to conduct same-sex marriages to be allowed to do so.

`We need full marriage equality, not a half-step that continues to deny gay couples the right to marry in churches, synagogues and meeting houses that are happy to accommodate them.'

SOURCE






Betrayed by the PC brigade: How politically correct British police and social workers betrayed underage white victims

For 20 years or more, there has been a shameful silence about the sexual exploitation of young girls in this country. Hundreds of children - some of them still at primary school - have been groomed by street gangs and turned into sex slaves.

And it is still going on today.

When I have written about this subject after investigations in towns and cities in the North of England, I have been reviled as a hater of our immigrant communities in abusive emails, letters and phone calls by those who continue to deny such things are going on.

For there is an uncomfortable truth about this abhorrent crime which we must not flinch from: the majority of girls ensnared by the street gangs are white, while most of the perpetrators come from the Pakistani and South Asian communities.

Of course, the great majority of people from these communities are decent citizens, and people from all races are capable of evil.

But I believe the controversial issue of these street gangs has been swept under the carpet, regarded as a taboo subject by police officers and social workers terrified of being labelled racist in ever more politically correct modern Britain.

Worried parents alerting social services and police about gangs have been ignored. NHS health clinics, treating the girls for sexual diseases, injuries and pregnancies, have sounded the alarm. Yet nothing has been done.

Teachers who reported teenage girls with hangovers and bruises taking constant calls on their mobiles from older men during school hours have been met with a wall of silence from officialdom.

Shockingly, one middle-class father from Rochdale, Greater Manchester, who told social workers that his 15-year-old daughter had been lured into an underage sex ring based at a local kebab shop, was told by them that the girl was making a `lifestyle' choice to be a prostitute.  The social services refused to help the teenager escape.

Meanwhile, the police told the father there was `no prospect' of convicting the gang members, who drove his daughter to `cash-for-sex' sessions with scores of Muslim men in rented houses or public car parks all over the North of England.

At the time, despite her parents raising the alarm and subsequent DNA swabs from the girl's underwear directly linking her to one of the gang, the police did not act and the gang's members remained free and continued to sexually abuse her - and many other girls in Rochdale - for another two years.

As this father told me just the other day: `The police were scared stiff of being called racist, so for years they didn't go after these men. `The social workers were just as bad. They were afraid of saying it is a crime against white girls.'

His is not a lone view. Mohammed Shafiq, director of the Lancashire-based Ramadhan Foundation, a charity working for ethnic harmony, has warned: `The police are over-cautious because they fear being branded racist. That is wrong. These gangs of men are criminals, and should be treated as criminals whatever their race.'

But I have discovered that it is not only the police and social workers who turn a blind eye. The very agencies set up to help the girls recover from the abuse are equally reluctant to admit there is a strong racial element to these hideous crimes.

One charity, Risky Business, operating in Rotherham, refused to answer any of my questions on the racial make-up of the men in the sex gangs.

At another, the Coalition for the Removal of Pimping, in Leeds, the chief executive told me: `This is a crime committed by men. We are trying to work in certain communities to change their attitudes to women. I cannot comment on the race of the criminals involved.'

This week, at last, the full truth began to emerge about the cover-up of crimes Scotland Yard estimates have affected 5,000 British-born children, the majority girls.

At least ten towns and cities on both sides of the Pennines have been particularly plagued by the gangs. Their members get rich because they can reap four times as much money trading young girls for sex as they can trading in drugs.

I have established that in the small city of Blackburn alone, at least 385 girls were groomed by men in a recent two-year period. Sheila Taylor, chairwoman of the National Working Group for Sexually Exploited Children and Young People, has told me that this figure will be similar in any other town of the same size in the North of England or the Midlands.

What is most shocking is the fact that a series of new reports show police and social services have missed hundreds of opportunities to protect the child victims.

Yesterday, an official review of sexual exploitation of girls in Rochdale - ordered after the jailing of nine men aged between 22 and 59 for multiple child sex offences in the town - revealed that 50 children, the vast majority aged ten to 17, were identified [by the authorities] five years ago as having `clear links to take-away food businesses and to associated taxi companies'.

The girls, repeatedly raped, were treated by social workers as `wilful' young teenagers `engaging in consensual sexual activity'.

`When complaints reached the police, their investigations were inadequate,' the review said.

From South Yorkshire, confidential documents told the same sorry story. A police intelligence report compiled in 2010 says thousands of sexual exploitation crimes against young white and mixed race girls have gone on in the county.

`There is a problem with networks of Muslim offenders both locally and nationally,' it reported. `This is particularly stressed in Sheffield, even more so in Rotherham, where there appears to be a significant problem with Asian males exploiting young white females.'

Yet local police, social workers and councils ignored the growing crisis.

One white girl in Rotherham, who was sexually abused by one such gang, was - incongruously - offered lessons in Urdu and Punjabi by social services to help get her over her ordeal.

According to the documents, 54 girls in Rotherham were sexually exploited by three brothers from a `British Pakistani' family. Eighteen of the girls identified one of the brothers as their `boyfriend', and he had made several of them pregnant.

Three brothers from another `British Pakistani' family and 41 associates were linked to the sexual abuse of another 61 girls in the same area. Denis MacShane, the local Labour MP, says the serial sexual abuse of young girls should be a wake-up call for the police, local authorities and Britain's Asian community. He is demanding an independent public inquiry, and blames a `misplaced racial sensitivity' for the crisis.

So how are such vile crimes taking place in so-called civilised Britain, and why have such gangs been allowed to flourish so they now believe they can act with impunity?

`They are laughing at the police,' one youth worker in South Yorkshire told me this week. `These men may get called into the police station for a dressing down, but so few are taken to court.

`They now think they are invincible, and, of course, they're not frightened of accusing the police of racism themselves if things get tricky for them. Then everything is dropped.'

At the heart of the scandal are uncomfortable cultural issues. Many men of Pakistani heritage believe white girls have low morals compared to Muslim girls.

The same youth worker explained to me: `These girls wear what the men call "slags' clothing" and show too much of their bodies.'

To add to this cultural divide, the men are often in loveless arranged marriages with wives from Pakistan who speak no English. They want to have sex, and a young virgin free of sexual diseases is the perfect victim.

Gang members are often unemployed, so have time to groom girls - luring them into a trap which is nearly always sprung in the same way.

The girl might be out with her friends in the town centre, often on a Saturday afternoon. She is bored, and when a group of smiling men pull up in a flashy car with blaring rap music, she is flattered.

Tanya's story illustrates their modus operandi. In 2001, Tanya, a 13-year-old, became Britain's youngest mother after she was coerced into becoming the sex slave of a gang in Yorkshire.

Tanya went to the local secondary school and lived with her single mother in a neat terraced house.  At the shops one day, a group of men came up to her. They took her off in their car and plied her with vodka. They gave her a mobile phone to receive calls from them, and bought her gifts and meals.

After a week or two, they said they wanted to have sex with her in return. Frightened of them, she agreed. She became pregnant, but by then she had slept with so many men from the Pakistani community that she did not know who the father was.

DNA tests by police on five of the most likely candidates did not prove paternity. Two of the gang members who were tested confessed to sleeping with Tanya when she was 12.  Shockingly, they were never charged with any offence for having sex with an under-age child.

The birth was hushed up, and the gang got off scot-free. The local council and social services department then went to the High Court in London and secured an injunction stopping anyone - including Tanya and her family - ever talking about the matter again. They have never done so.

The terrifying question is just how many other girls like Tanya have been let down by a system that does not dare tell the truth?

Lessons need to be learnt. And they need to be learnt with great urgency.

SOURCE






Men and women are different in terms of genetic predispositions

A team of researchers from UNIGE shows that men and women do not have the same propensity to develop certain diseases

We are not all the same when it comes to illness. In fact, the risk of developing a disease such as diabetes or heart disease varies from one individual to another. A study led by Emmanouil Dermitzakis, Louis-Jeantet Professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Geneva (UNIGE) reveals that the genetic predisposition to develop certain diseases may differ from one individual to another depending on their sex. Together with his collaborators, the professor has shown that genetic variants have a different impact on the level of gene expression between men and women. The results of this research have been published in the scientific journal Genome Research.

For decades geneticists have been interested in genetic variants that affect the level of gene expression. These variants spark the interest of researchers because they play a role in the predisposition to certain diseases. Professor Dermitzakis' team from UNIGE, in collaboration with Oxford University, focused on the fundamental differences in the genetics of gene expression between men and women. After analyzing the impact of genetic variants on the level of gene expression in women, and then in men, the scientists have found that the effect of certain variants affecting gene expression and the genetic risk of developing a disease resulting from these genetic variants is different depending on the sex of the individual.

Everyone will agree that men and women are different but, beyond the obvious, genetics brings to light more subtle differences. The researchers found that even with the same DNA mutation in men and in women, the impact on the level of gene expression will be different. Of all the genetic variants that have an impact on the level of gene expression, about 15% work differently depending on whether they are acting upon a man or a woman.

«We already knew that certain environmental factors like diet had a variable impact depending on the sex of an individual. Today, we are able to confirm that genetic variants have a different impact on the level of gene expression in men and women; that is to say that although two individuals of opposite sex both have a same variant predisposing them to a disease, they will not have the same propensity to develop it,» states Professor Dermitzakis.

SOURCE





Butt: a new biography

Naomi Wolf has written a whole book about her sacred space under the title Vagina: A New Biography. She argues the vagina is the most important body part, the seat of all wisdom and the key to a woman's sense of self. As she puts it at one point: ''the vagina is a gateway to women's happiness and to her creative life''.

This is all very well but what about the rest of our bodies?

It only seems fair that other body parts are given the same intense, somewhat poetic, attention.

Index Finger: A New Biography The vagina might be a really terrific body part, you'll have no argument from me on that one, Naomi, but so is the index finger. Oh, mighty body part that can turn from admonishing a fellow road user, to beckoning a prospective lover and yet still be pressed into service when the need comes to pick your nose. Everyone praises Steve Jobs for developing the smartphone and the tablet computer, but where would he be without the index finger? There would just be a whole lot of people on the bus mashing vainly at their smartphones with their elbows.

Leg: A New Biography Legs are the loneliest body part, particularly male legs, asked to work away in the dark, rarely allowed to see their identical twin toiling away next door. From an early age they are covered by trousers, a sort of bottom-half burqa, and spoken about only when they fail. "Oh, you're limping" or "Here's old Hopalong". No mention, you'll notice, of the large and growing stomach that the legs are required to carry around; no acknowledgment that the slightly uneven gait might be caused by the increasing load being silently borne. Oh no, it's all down to the poor old legs. It's like a Third World country down there: legs forced to do all the donkey work yet afforded so few of life's pleasures. All they ask is the occasional compliment: "Oh, I notice you're not limping.'' Or: "Gee, your legs are doing an awfully good job.''

Butt: A New Biography Naomi may well believe in the supremacy of what is sometimes termed "the front bottom" but where would she be without a real bottom? As the writer Tim Winton established in his influential tome The Bugalugs Bum Thief, human beings missing their bums are not able to sit down. They lower themselves onto a chair and simply slip off. Yes, a vagina is absolutely terrific but only if you have enough energy to make the most of it, having not been on your feet all day.

Elbow: A New Biography You can imagine a world without elbows: it's basically the zombie apocalypse. Offices would have to be bigger, with people typing with their arms outstretched; to drive a car you'd have to be seated a full metre away from the wheel. Frankly, it's a pretty bleak place. A world without elbows is a world without soup: the stuff becomes impossible to consume. Solid foods could be eaten directly off the plate, in the same way as cows in the field, or - for a special occasion - food could be suspended on thin ropes from the ceiling, whereupon guests could stretch their necks like so many hungry giraffes, nibbling on a low-hanging lamb chop. Alcohol is more problematic: serving it in dog bowls is probably the best idea, with guests on hands and knees slurping up the last of your Penfolds 2010 Koonunga Hill Shiraz.

Mouth: A New Biography Talk about multitasking: breathing, eating and speaking, all through the same slot worked into the front of the face. The lips can be opened, the sides curling upwards, to create a friendly smile when you walk into a shop. The same device is then used to issue a polite instruction to the person running the shop: "I'll have a pie with sauce, thanks mate", the tongue leaping around the mouth like a Russian gymnast in order to create the appropriate sounds. There's then a two-minute wait - during which the mouth is being used to inhale and exhale air, in order that you might stay alive - after which the microwave goes ''ping'' and the pie is handed over. At this point the same device is used to a) thank the man ("Thanks, mate") and then b) eat the pie. Then - oh, what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry? - the lips narrow to create an airtight vacuum around a straw, the better to drink the milkshake that you have subsequently purchased to wash down the pie. The sigh of satisfaction at the end again employs the same slot, installed conveniently in the front of the face, just where you'd want it to be, so the eyes might better assess the food being ingested, while the nose double-checks it's not off.

After all of that, you'd be mad not to offer the world a smile, the better to express your satisfaction at the joyful service provided by your mouth, bum, index fingers, elbows and legs.

The vagina? Don't get me wrong: absolutely marvellous. It's the whole machine, though, that's really something special.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCHAUSTRALIAN POLITICSDISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL  and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine).   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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