Sir Robert Baden-Powell is spinning in his grave.

Yahoo News:

The Boy Scouts of America, one of the country’s largest and oldest youth organizations, decided on Thursday to break 103 years of tradition by allowing openly gay members into its ranks.

The controversial move was approved by more than 60 percent of the approximate 1,400 votes cast by the BSA’s national council. According to the new resolution, beginning Jan. 1, 2014, “no youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone.”

“The resolution also reinforces that Scouting is a youth program, and any sexual conduct, whether heterosexual or homosexual, by youth of Scouting age is contrary to the virtues of Scouting,” the BSA stated in a press release.

Lifting the organization’s ban on gay adult volunteer leaders and paid staff was not considered and remains in place.

Pascal Tessier, a gay Scout from Maryland, told Yahoo News that he was ecstatic with the outcome.

“Proud, happy and on top of the world,” he said.

Tessier, 16, had feared that a no vote would mean he would not earn his Eagle award next year.

“The delegates proved me wrong,” Tessier said.

Texas Governor Rick Perry told the Texas Tribune, “While I will always cherish my time as a Scout … I am greatly disappointed with this decision.”

These kinds of large national organizations commonly have far too many cowards and conformists on their boards. Time for the portion of the Scouting Movement that does not agree to separate from the corrupt national organization.

Men who chose a transgressive and perverse lifestyle are not all onboard with the professionally-managed public relations campaign aimed at domesticizing and taking homosexuality mainstream. The novelist Brett Easton Ellis finds all this whitewashing and all the appeals to sentimentality “infantilizing and condescending.”

Was I the only gay man of a certain demo who experienced a flicker of annoyance in the way the media treated Jason Collins as some kind of baby panda who needed to be honored and praised and consoled and—yes—infantilized by his coming out on the cover of Sports Illustrated? Within the tyrannical homophobia of the sports world, that any man would come out as gay (let alone a black man) is not only an LGBT triumph but also a triumph for pranksters everywhere who thrilled to the idea that what should be considered just another neutral fact that is nobody’s business was instead a shock heard around the world, one that added another jolt of transparency to an increasingly transparent planet. It was an undeniable moment and also extremely cool. Jason Collins is the future. But the subsequent fawning over Collins simply stating he is gay still seemed to me, as another gay man, like a new kind of victimization. (George Stephanopoulos interviewed him so tenderly, it was as if he was talking to a six-year-old boy.) In another five years hopefully this won’t matter, but for now we’re trapped in the times we live in. The reign of The Gay Man as Magical Elf, who whenever he comes out appears before us as some kind of saintly E.T. whose sole purpose is to be put in the position of reminding us only about Tolerance and Our Own Prejudices and To Feel Good About Ourselves and to be a symbol instead of just being a gay dude, is—lamentably—still in media play.

The Gay Man as Magical Elf has been such a tricky part of gay self-patronization in the media that you would by now expect the chill members of the LGBT community to respond with cool indifference. The Sweet and Sexually Unthreatening and Super-Successful Gay is supposed to be destined to transform The Hets into noble gay-loving protectors—as long as the gay in question isn’t messy or sexual or difficult. The straight and gay sanctimoniousness that says everyone gay needs to be canonized when coming out still makes some of us who are already out feel like we’re on the sidelines. I’m all for coming out on one’s own terms, but heralding it as the most important news story of the week feels to me, as a gay man, well, kind of alienating. We are apart because of what we supposedly represent because of… our… boring… sexuality—oh man, do we have to go through this again? And it’s all about the upbeat press release, the kind of smiling mask assuring us everything is awesome. God help the gay man who comes out and doesn’t want to represent, who doesn’t want to teach, who doesn’t feel like part of the homogenized gay culture and rejects it. Where’s the gay dude who makes crude jokes about other gays in the media (as straight dudes do of each other constantly) or express their hopelessness in seeing Modern Family being rewarded for its depiction of gays, a show where a heterosexual plays the most simpering ka-ween on TV and Wins. Emmys. For. It? Why isn’t the gay dude I have always known and the gay dude I have always wanted to be not front and center in the media culture now? But being “real” and “human” (i.e. flawed) is not necessarily what The Gay Gatekeepers want straight culture to see.

Hat tip to James Coulter Harberson.

Maynard Keynes saying: “Hello, Sailor!” to Duncan Grant

Michael Cook described the hair-pulling, fingernails-clawing, Hell-hath-no-fury media reaction to a comment on Keynes’ economics by Niall Ferguson.

Conservative economic historian and media star Niall Ferguson touched a raw nerve this week with the gay lobby. He was addressing a gabfest of millionaire investors in California when he made an unscripted remark. It ran something like this:

“Ferguson asked the audience how many children Keynes had. He explained that Keynes had none because he was a homosexual and was married to a ballerina, with whom he likely talked of ‘poetry’ rather than procreated.”

This is about 40 words.

The response was as immediate and impassioned as North Korea’s threats to turn its southern neighbour into “a sea of flames”.

The media artillery barrage moved in stages from simple outrage at the implication that gays were indifferent to future generations, to repudiations of Ferguson’s immediate and forthright apology, to sneers at his economic competence (the tail end of his “awesome arc of insanity”, according to Paul Krugman in the New York Times).

It culminated in the full Monty, a 7,800 word review by a professor at University of Missouri-Kansas City of Ferguson’s degeneracy, his dishonesty, his economic incompetence, his political conservatism, his documented homophobia dating back to 1995, and so much, much more.

The firepower lobbed onto Ferguson would have made Kim Jong-un proud.

But what exactly was the problem with what Ferguson said? Parsing his words – as reported by a very indignant reporter – he implied four things:

1. Keynes’s ideas were flawed. This is widely accepted by many economists today, certainly by those of a neoclassical bent. In fact, he was probably invited to the speak at the conference to dump on the Keynesian-inspired stimulus of which the Obama Administration is so proud.

2. Keynes was gay and not interested in children. There’s no disputing that Keynes was a homosexual, or at least a bi-sexual. He married at 42 and had no surviving children from his marriage to the Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova. Whether or not his heart melted at the thought of the pitter-patter of little feet is largely surmise.

3. Our care for the future comes through utility derived from our descendants. This is a standard economic assumption. Economists assume that everyone is selfish and only cares about his private consumption. In models of economies over time they assume that we care about the welfare of our children, our children’s children, and so on. Is this reasonable? Evolutionary biologists will tell you that it is. And it is reasonable from a Darwinian point of view to ask whether a homosexual economist would have as much interest in the welfare of future generations as an economist with a large family.

As British journalist Brendan O’Neill pointed out, there is one sense in which Keynes cared deeply about future generations. He was a fervent eugenicist and served as the director of the Eugenics Society in Britain from 1937 to 1944. None of the Ferguson’s critics mentioned this.

4. Keynes’s ideas were influenced by his sexual orientation. This point also cannot be known definitively, but it is hardly homophobic. Why wouldn’t our sexual orientation (whatever it is) influence how we think about the world? We all see and interpret the world around us through a theoretical lens.

In fact, politics at the moment is dominated by the notion of sexual orientation. Positions on big issues like the nature of marriage, on the limits of discrimination, on the role of government in enforcing human rights, on free speech are bound to be influenced by sexual orientation. Why should economic theories be exempt from the subtle influence of sexual orientation and sexual behaviour?

No, the vehemence of the reaction to Ferguson’s remarks has little to do with what he said. The real problem is the hyper-sensitivity of the gay community to the least slight.

The enormity of the reaction by the Hominterm’s representatives and allies in the media to Niall Ferguson’s basically conventional observation on the limited perspective associated with the culture of sexual perversity reveals just how much the truth stings.

The homosexual subculture has always had a recognizable air of sadness, of bitterness and melancholy associated with the knowing choice of futility, of perversity, of rejection of normal life and ordinary morality. Homosexuals have always partied furiously, plunging determinedly into the pursuit of sensual pleasure, precisely because they understand how limited a period of time they actually have.

Now, with political victory, with official patronage, protection, and formal certification that vice is even more privileged than virtue, within their grasp, a comment like Ferguson’s rudely breaks the spell of fantasy and self-delusion and spoils all the fun they have been having.

Hat tip to Maggie Gallagher.

If anyone doubted that the regime of political correctness in Great Britain, there is this story in the Telegraph to change his mind.

A Welsh woman has been made to pay compensation for using a racist slur against an English woman after calling her “an English cow”.

len Humphreys, 25, of Garndolbenmaen, near Porthmadog, pleaded guilty to racially aggravated harassment, after she branded Angela Payne, who had an affair with her father, an “English cow.”

The court in Prestatyn in North Wales heard that Humphreys levelled the insult at Ms Payne when she went to her house in Rhyl to collect some of her father’s property and told her : “Leave well alone, you English cow”.

For Angela Payne it was the final straw, said prosecutor James Neary, as Humphreys’s mother had previously been warned by the police about her conduct. The court heard Humphreys had also called the victim other names previously.

Andrew Hutchinson, defending, said that Humphreys’s parents had been married for 32 years but her father had then started the other relationship, going “backwards and forwards” between the two women. “Emotions were running high,” he explained.

Humphreys was given a 12-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay Angela Payne £50 in compensation.

Someone is seriously supposed to be injured by the application of the term “English” as a pejorative? Absurd.

Hat tip to Clarice Feldman.

The Mercedes SUV hijacked by the Chechen bombers bore this bumper sticker.
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Full size

Bowdoin’s Art Museum

Back in the 1960s, Bowdoin’s College Bowl team mopped up on the television contest show whose questions focused on academic knowledge. I thought seriously of going there, but took Yale’s offer instead simply because the larger university offered an even greater selection of course offerings.

Bowdoin is still generally regarded highly. In fact, it is ranked sixth in liberal arts by U.S. News & World Report. But a new study by the National Association of Scholars, released on Wednesday, contends that Bowdoin has become an instrument for partisan indoctrination with Progressive ideology.

Bowdoin boasts of training its students in critical thinking. The NAS study concludes:

[Allegedly] Bowdoin’s emphasis [is] on “critical thinking,” but the real… emphasis [is] on politics. Politics is enthroned at Bowdoin where Reason once reigned. Like all usurpers, this one presents itself as the legitimate heir of the old order. Bowdoin manages this substitution by claiming that Reason all along was political and that “truth claims,” seen accurately through the lens of “critical thinking,” are only assertions of self-interest by the powerful. Since everything was politics anyway, why not promote the politics you prefer? This is the short route to replacing open-minded liberal education with political activism centered on diversity, multiculturalism, same-sex marriage, sustainability, etc.

So, despite Bowdoin’s lack of cohesive intellectual order, it is a “whole” and can be examined as something that possesses organic unity. In that light, our guiding questions were: What kinds of knowledge does Bowdoin emphasize or prize? What does it want all Bowdoin students to learn? What does it want all Bowdoin faculty members to teach? What intellectual habits and attitudes does it cultivate? What understanding of the unity of knowledge does it prompt students to recognize? What divisions of knowledge? What abiding perplexities and matters for lifelong study? What moral yearnings does it plant in the souls of students? How does it urge students to comprehend the self, and what qualities does it uphold as worthy of pursuit? What qualities as better restrained or overcome? How should we treat other people? What obligations do we have as citizens? What are our obligations of stewardship to the achievements of past generations? What are our obligations to the generations to come? What combination of knowledge and character represents an ideal towards which students should strive? What is the good life? What is the good society?

Bowdoin does not spend much time debating possible answers. Rather, it has settled doctrine that informs students what sorts of knowledge, habits, dispositions, and aspirations are desirable. What does Bowdoin want all students to learn? The importance of diversity, respect for “difference,” sustainability, the social construction of gender, the need to obtain “consent,” the common good, world citizenship, and critical thinking. The answers embedded in these terms are not, as we have noted, arrived at by careful weighing of arguments and evidence. The general procedure has been for the college president to announce a “commitment,” such as President Mills’s announcement in 2007 that he had signed the “College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment,” or the College’s 2009 release of its “Carbon Neutrality Implementation Plan.” The same procedures underlie Bowdoin’s creation of the Studies programs, its commitment to minority student recruitment, and its determination to increase the number of minority and women faculty members.

All of these decisions may well have captured the prevailing views of Bowdoin faculty members and students. They might well have, therefore, prevailed in open debate. But as far as we can tell, there was no meaningful debate. Without hesitation, Bowdoin skips to certainties on some of the most contentious issues of our time. What most should be subject to debate never is.
When critical thinking is most necessary, it is most absent. What happens at the level of college policy is reflected at the level of college culture. When Bowdoin speaks of the “common good,” when it promotes “diversity” and “inclusivity” and apotheosizes “difference,” it is similarly by-passing debate on the idea s that are at the center of the great debates in America today. Rather than give these debates a respectful and full hearing, the college pre-empts them with closed-minded orthodoxies.

Of course, not only Bowdoin practices this same kind of one-sided, ideological indoctrination. Yale certainly does, as well—to one degree or another—as every other elite university and college in America.

Just look at those unruly Bryn Mawr girls hazing one another in the old days!

Like most elite schools, Seven Sisters member Bryn Mawr, Katherine Hepburn’s alma mater, has certain traditions. One key Bryn Mawr tradition has always been Hell Week, a series of mock ordeals and festivities designed to provide an interlude of mid-Winter amusement as well as to welcome the freshman class to full college citizenship and to cement undergraduate ties of fellowship.

The mock hazing of freshman and (non-sexual) undergraduate festivities prove this year too dreadful to be tolerated by Bryn Mawr’s administration.

The dean of undergraduates recorded such atrocities having occurred as:

Requiring first-year students to swear alliance to Radnor over a keg.

Shouting at first-year students with and without bullhorn.

Throwing items in common room (toilet paper, cardboard). Some items thrown into audience (may have been at first-year students).

Creating potential for injury by playing wiffle beer (essentially baseball with beer cans and a wiffle bat).

Requiring first-year students to go outside for “class photo” but in reality dumping water on them. (Unclear if photo was really taken.)

Telling first-year students to stand outside, wet and some without shoes, and forcing them to listen to the Radnor goddess speech.

Smoking indoors (cigarettes during the trial; a hookah during the party).

Being on the roof (roof was accessed from second floor kitchen window).

Violating the party policy by holding an unregistered party after Trials.

Underage drinking (most sophomores and juniors are not 21) and excessive drinking during trials.

That Dean (presumably named Wormser) responded vigorously:

“It is clear from this long list of violations…that immediate steps must be taken to foster significant culture change in Radnor,” the letter states. As a result of the night’s activities, all Radnor Dorm Presidents resigned, all current Radnor customs people were relieved of their duties, and every upperclass student in Radnor is required to write a letter of apology to the Radnor first-years.

He even leaked the news of all this to the vulgar-deviant-commie blog cesspool Jezebel, which piously congratulated his pompous fraudulence for conspicuous political correctitude:

It’s definitely refreshing that there’s at least one university administration that’s actively committed to changing a culture it feels is problematic.

Regrettably, I think there is a lot more than one university administration staffed by equivalent nincompoops and adhering to the same ridiculous standards of sanctimony.
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Alumna Scarlett looks on Hell Week very differently, and testifies that it even changed her mind about the college.

Hell Week is the most complicated tradition, and very difficult to describe on paper. For me, it was the turning point when I decided that I did indeed want to stay at Bryn Mawr.

Hallway, Yale Law School

A letter posted to the Yale Law School listserv by an alleged soon-to-graduate third year student expressed hostility toward his politically correct schoolmates in such vehement and colorful terms that it was published on the legal blog Above the Law and is being discussed on other sites (1 and 2).

Dear tYLS or tWall or whatever dumb shit you call it these days:

I am a second-semester 3L. How exciting. In a surprising turn of events, I decided I want to work for a couple of years at a law firm but eventually try to become a published author, or, if that fails, get a Ph.D. and try to become a professor.

Why am I telling you all of this? It’s because I wanted to thank you all for inspiring me to follow my passions and my dreams. Specifically, these passions and dreams are writing and making fun of people.

I realized I hate law and politics. Why? Because I literally hate like 90% of you, and honestly I don’t really feel like going down the path that involves being stuck with even more people like you who literally have no sense of humor and get offended over literally everything. You think Clarence Thomas hates YLS? Clarence Thomas ain’t got SHIT on me.

I’ve watched as you guys get offended over the dumbest shit and wax political over the dumbest shit. LOL. I mean wow, and seriously, this fucking school. If the sticks up your asses were any larger, you guys would give Muslim extremists a run for their money. ...

Read the whole thing.

YAHWEH

Just as Louis Giglio, previously scheduled to perform the benediction at President Obama’s second inauguration, has been removed from the program as the result of previous anti-gay comments, the Obama Administration announced today that the well-known Semitic mountain deity, YAHWEH aka Jehovah aka Allah, will be voluntarily withdrawing as the object of prayers and invocations during the event.

YAHWEH is on the record as authoring the Old Testament book of Leviticus containing an explicit prohibition against “lying with mankind as with womankind.” He additionally reported first-hand, in his Book of Genesis and in the al-Koran (which he allegedly dictated to Mohammed), that he personally destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, a pair of “cities on the plain” near the Jordan River as a personal expression of His intolerance of homosexuality.

The Thracian Dionysius, famous for his personal androgyny will be stepping in as object of prayers and requests for benedictions. He is additionally reported in an account expected soon to appear in Gawker to have volunteered personally to take responsibility for the catering and to be in charge of arranging the Inaugural celebrations’ evening entertainment.

Dionysius

Hat tip to Clarice Feldman.

The religious-symbol-neutered version previously scheduled for production.

Original story

After strong objections by the Catholic Church which were taken up in the national parliament of Slovakia by the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH), Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKÚ) and some representatives of the Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OĽaNO) caucus to the elimination of halos from the heads of Sts. Cyril and Methodius and the removal of the image of the cross from the saints’ vestments, the Board of Directors of the National Bank of Slovakia has announced that the halos and crosses will be restored on the 2-Euro coins scheduled to be released in 2013 to commemorate the 1150th Anniversary of the Mission of Cyril and Methodius to the Slavs.

Slovak Spectator reported, however, that restoring those halos might preclude the Slovakian €2 coin being released throughout the European Union.

The NBS [National Bank of Slovakia, country’s central bank – ed. note] Bank Council approved the original proposal of the design, even though it realises that the new approval process may lead to frustrating the original goal of releasing the commemorative coin throughout the 17-nation eurozone,” said spokesperson for the bank Petra Pauerová, as quoted by TASR.

The European Commission earlier stated that the commemorative coin cannot contain crosses and halos in order to observe the principle of religious neutrality in the European Union. Later it was revealed that it was not the EC as such, but certain eurozone members that objected to releasing the coin with religious symbols.

It was certain eurozone member states that expressed disagreement with the original artistic proposal for a Slovak commemorative coin depicting Saints Cyril and Methodius with crosses and halos set to be released in 2013, Andrej Králik from the Representation of the EU Commission in Slovakia said on Thursday, November 22.

The commission subsequently asked Slovakia to submit a modified proposal, which was later approved by the EU Council, Králik told the TASR newswire. He rejected statements by certain Slovak politicians who said that the case involved a ‘dictate of Brussels’ and ‘high-handedness of officials from the EU Commission’, describing these assertions as untrue and deceptive.

The commission stated that the removal of the religious symbols was due to the need to observe religious neutrality, as set out in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU. German MEP Martin Kastler earlier on Thursday revealed that the countries that had raised objections to the original Slovak proposal were France and Greece

Careful what you call him!

Call someone an Australian in today’s politically correct Britain and you can get arrested and fined for racial abuse.

Daily Mail:

A woman has been found guilty of racially abusing her New Zealand-born neighbour – by calling her an Australian.

Petra Mills called Chelsea O’Reilly a ‘stupid fat Australian’ during a drunken tirade outside her home.

The insult was witnessed by police officers who Mills herself had called after a domestic row with her husband. Czech-born Mills, 31, was arrested and charged with racially aggravated public disorder. She denied the charge but was found guilty at a trial this week.

Miss O’Reilly, 21, who has dual British and New Zealand nationality, told magistrates: ‘She called me a stupid fat Australian b****. Because of my accent there can be some confusion over my nationality.

‘She knew I was from New Zealand. She was trying to be offensive. I was really insulted.’

The incident happened in Macclesfield, Cheshire, on September 4 after Mills had been involved in a row with her husband, Michael. Iain Mutch, prosecuting, said Miss O’Reilly and Mills had been neighbours for 18 months…

Mills also admitted assaulting a police officer by kicking him. She was fined £110 for racially aggravated public disorder and £200 for assault, and ordered to pay both victims £50 compensation and £500 court costs.

Translated from Polish Catholic DEON.pl news item:

A Two-Euro coin design by Miroslav Hric to be released into circulation in May of next year by the National Bank of Slovakia (NSB) in commemoration of the 1150th anniversary of the arrival of the two saints in Moravia was changed.

Currently, there is the image of the two saints, and between them a double cross representing the national emblem of Slovakia. However, the symbol of the cross was removed from the saints’ vestments, and halos were removed from around their head. NSB spokeswoman Petra Pauerova told the Slovak newspaper “Pravda” that “the European Commission, assenting to the ‘request of some Commonwealth countries’ prescribed the removal of these attributes from the original coin design.” Since the coin will be released into circulation in all euro area countries, the project should respect the principle of “religious neutrality,” explained Pauerova.

The removal of those features from the Slovakian coins was announced on Sunday on public television and radio stations in Slovakia.

The Slovakian Bishops’ Conference in a statement did not hesitate to use the word “disgrace”. “The resignation of the key attributes associated conceptually with Saints Cyril and Methodius demonstrates the lack of respect for the Christian tradition of Europe.” indignantly remarked Church spokesman Rev. Jozef Kovaczik. He added the Church only learned that the two symbols would not appear on the Two-Euro coin via the media.

“In 1988, before the Velvet Revolution, the faithful in Slovakia risked their lives, preaching the doctrine of the two saints. Do we really live in a nation of law, or in a totalitarian system, which dictates to us what attributes we may use?” asked Rev. Kovaczik, noting that Slovakia is a Catholic country.

St. Cyril (926-869) and St. Methodius (815-885) were the first missionaries to the Slavs. It was to their mission that the Slavic portions of Europe owe the adoption of the Christian faith and their own roots in the culture of Europe.

These saints in both the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church are called the Apostles of the Slavs, and came from Byzantium to the Moravian state in 862 A.D. at the request of the local ruler Rostislav. They knew both the language and customs of the Slavs, having dealt previously with Christianized Southern Slavs living in the area around the Byzantine Thessalonica. Both had already made a translation of the Bible into Slavonic, having for purposes of translation created a special 40-letter alphabet, the Glagolitic script.

Cyril and Methodius’ students continued their mission to the Eastern and Southern Slavs. The complicated Glagolitic script ultimately replaced in liturgical writings by the simpler Cyrillic alphabet, modeled upon the Greek alphabet.

Pope John Paul II gave Sts. Cyril and Methodius the title of patron saints of Europe.

In church iconography the saints are depicted dressed in pontifical garb as Greek or Latin bishops. Their attributes are a cross, a book and an unrolled scroll displaying the Slavic alphabet.

The NBS web-site. announcing the winning design, says blandly:

The original competition design was modified in line with recommendations made within the notification and approval procedure conducted pursuant to Council Regulation (EC) No 975/98 on denominations and technical specifications of euro coins intended for circulation, as amended.

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