Lives in a Shoe

Central Scrutinizer

Frank Zappa, prognosticator: 

British conductor Matthew Halls may be understandably confused.  He was joking with a friend in the Oregon Bach Festival who is from the South. Halls adopted a Southern accent and asked his friend if he wanted from grits.  A white woman was standing nearby and went immediately to officials to object to racist comments by Halls to his black friend.  Halls was quickly fired even though is longstanding friend, the African-American classical singer Reginald Mobley objected that there was nothing racist in the joke.  It does not seem to matter to the Oregon Bach Festival.

Then there's Lena Dunham, ever vigilent:

“I’m at the airport. And I think people now know, when I’m at the airport, they have to f---ing watch out for me, because I hear and I see all.”

On August 3, Dunham had been waiting on a delayed flight when she claimed to have overheard the AA flight attendants say “trans kids are a trend,” and that they would “never accept a trans kid and transness is gross.”

She followed up by tweeting her complaints directly to American Airlines, which launched an investigation into the matter. Ultimately, though, a representative for American Airlines told Fox News that they were “unable to substantiate” any of Dunham’s allegations.

Army Welcomes First Openly Transgender Military Working Dogs

JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. — Meet Tracker, a five-year-old, sixty-pound Belgian Malinois and a graduate of the Military Working Dog School at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. He’s also one of the Army’s first five openly transgender military police dogs, assigned to the 42nd Military Police Brigade at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

Read more: http://www.duffelblog.com/2014/12/army-military-working-dogs/#ixzz4ZotiTUBj

A Better Rant

 

Gay Air France Stewards Understandably Reluctant to Fly to Iran

By V the K, writing at the always-excellent gaypatriot.net:

None of the corporations (PayPal, Pepsi, and so on) raising a stink about North Carolina’s bathroom law have any reservations about doing business in countries like Saudi Arabia where homosexuality is severely punished as a matter of law. But a few Air France flight attendants aren’t happy about doing business with Obama’s best friends, the Iranians.

A steward from Air France has launched an online appeal against gay cabin members having to travel to Iran. It’s titled: “Gay stewards from Air France don’t want to fly to the death penalty in Iran”.

The letter points out that homosexuality in Iran is illegal and comes with a penalty of 74 lashes for a minor, while adults can be given the death penalty.

Death penalty for homosexuality? No big deal. Now, if they were denied wedding cake or forced to use the bathroom that corresponded to their physiology, that would be the worst injustice and suffering ever inflicted on any people anywhere at any time in history.

 

North Carolinians Might Be Relieved

Muslim Teens Stone Transgender Women in Germany

From Jammie Wearing Fools.

The three men are between 16 and 18 years-old and are known to the authorities because of theft and assault arrests.

The Dortmund police official Kim-Ben Freigang said the suspects told the police that “such persons must be stoned.“ German media reported that one suspect said “You whores must be stoned.” Yasmine installed a security camera at her residence where she lives with Elisa after the attacks. “That was barbaric what they did. They are barbarians,” Yasmine said.

We recommend mass deportations if you’d like to keep your country.

She added that she could not believe that such an act of shamelessness occurred. “In 2016, in Germany with stoning!” According to the SATI.NRW report, Yasmine said it was the first time in 30 years she felt unsafe as a transgender woman.

The three men, according to Yasmine and Elisa, propositioned them. After the men realized that Yasmine and Elisa are transgender women, the men launched their assault with stones...

Stoning people to death is a penalty used in Muslim-majority countries.

Lethal homophobia is widespread in the Arab world and Iran. A 2008 British Wikileaks dispatch noted that the Islamic Republic of Iran executed “between 4,000 and 6,000 gays and lesbians” since the Islamic revolution in 1979.

The Islamic State in Syria and Iraq has murdered dozens of gays by tossing the men off buildings. Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen and Qatar, to name just some of the most anti-gay countries, persecute LGBTs with the death penalty and imprisonment.

Yet the LGBT crowd and the U.S. media is pretty much silent. Weird, that.

 

You Will Be Made To Care

One more time.  A wedding is a sacrament to some, not the same as a dinner party.  Why could we not just leave the bakery owners alone to practice their faith as they see fit?  If this was tried with a Muslim bakery, not that it would be, what would happen?  Why?

The owners of the now-closed Sweet Cakes Bakery in Gresham, Oregon have paid out more than $135,000 in damages for refusing to bake a cake for a lesbian wedding.

Finger-Wagging International

Ya think? U.S. Support of Gay Rights in Africa May Have Done More Harm Than Good, says NY Times.

Fierce opposition has come from African governments and private organizations, which accuse the United States of cultural imperialism. Pressing gay rights on an unwilling continent, they say, is the latest attempt by Western nations to impose their values on Africa.

“In the same way that we don’t try to impose our culture on anyone, we also expect that people should respect our culture in return,” said Theresa Okafor, a Nigerian active in lobbying against gay rights.

Also -- way, way down in the body of the article, there is this:

Since 2012, the American government has put more than $700 million into supporting gay rights groups and causes globally. More than half of that money has focused on sub-Saharan Africa — just one indication of this continent’s importance to the new policy.

More than $700 million.  Of our money.  So dignitaries including the president can swan around the world in full preen mode sharing our moral superiority with the benighted denizens of Africa -- oh, wait.  Maybe I could get with the program if I thought that lecturing was directed to the mullahs of Iran, say, while they take a break from tossing gays from rooftops, or the royalty of Saudi Arabia.  But I can find no indication that is happening. What a crock.