UK: Man Demoted for His Christian Views Wins under £100 in Compensation Case

A country where you can demote an employee because he does not share your views and get away with it - Mr Smith remains in his demoted position - is getting dangerously close to a totalitarian state where there is control over what people may or may not think.

We can jokingly call it "political correctness" but it is deadly serious.

My definition of political correctness is this: the orthodoxy, namely the ideology that is dominant in both senses of the term - dominant because most widespread, and dominant because it is imposed with non-democratic means, through the use of force.

What I find most ironic is that the people who hold politically correct views and force everyone else to embrace them are the very same people who are horrified at the Counter-Reformation times' Catholic Church's use of dogma and heresy as a way of controlling ideas and hence people.

The only difference between the methods used by the masters of PC and the Inquisition is that in the intervening centuries the penal system of punishment has changed and instead of torture and burning at stake we have destructions of heretics' careers and livelihoods.

A Christian who was demoted for posting his opposition to gay marriage on Facebook will receive less than £100 compensation after winning his legal action for breach of contract.

Adrian Smith, 55, lost his managerial position, had his salary cut by 40% and was given a final written warning by Trafford Housing Trust (THT) after posting that gay weddings in churches were "an equality too far".

The comments were not visible to the general public, and were posted outside work time, but the trust said he broke its code of conduct by expressing religious or political views which might upset co-workers.

To be allowed to upset or offend is the essence of freedom of speech: there is no call for restriction on expression that does not offend anyone.

Mr Justice Briggs, in London's High Court, said the trust did not have a right to demote Mr Smith as his Facebook postings did not amount to misconduct. He added that the postings were not - viewed objectively - judgmental, disrespectful or liable to cause upset or offence, and were expressed in moderate language.

As for their content, they were widely held views frequently to be heard on radio and television, or read in the newspapers. He said he had "real disquiet" about the financial outcome for Mr Smith, whose compensation was limited to the small difference between his contractual salary and the amount actually paid to him during the 12 weeks following his assumption of his new, but reduced, role.

If Mr Smith had begun proceedings for unfair dismissal in the Employment Tribunal, rather than for breach of contract in the county court, there was every reason to suppose he would have been awarded a substantial sum - but Mr Smith had said that by the time he had raised the necessary funds, the time limit for such proceedings had expired.

The judge said: "Mr Smith was taken to task for doing nothing wrong, suspended and subjected to a disciplinary procedure which wrongly found him guilty of gross misconduct, and then demoted to a non-managerial post with an eventual 40% reduction in salary. The breach of contract which the trust thereby committed was serious and repudiatory. A conclusion that his damages are limited to less than £100 leaves the uncomfortable feeling that justice has not been done to him in the circumstances."

Later, Mr Smith said: "I'm pleased to have won my case for breach of contract today. The judge exonerated me and made clear that my comments about marriage were in no way 'misconduct'. My award of damages has been limited to less than £100. But I didn't do this for the money - I did this because there is an important principle at stake."

Matthew Gardiner, chief executive at Trafford Housing Trust said: "We fully accept the court's decision and I have made a full and sincere apology to Adrian. At the time we believed we were taking the appropriate action following discussions with our employment solicitors and taking into account his previous disciplinary record.

"We have always vigorously denied allegations that the trust had breached an employee's rights to freedom of religious expression under human rights and equalities legislation and, in a written judgment handed down on 21st March 2012, a district judge agreed that these matters should be struck out. This case has highlighted the challenges that businesses face with the increased use of social media and we have reviewed our documentation and procedures to avoid a similar situation arising in the future. Adrian remains employed by the trust and I am pleased this matter has now concluded."

France: Over 100,000 March against Gay Marriage

The photo above is of a previous, unrelated pro LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) demonstration.

This is the current story:

More than a hundred thousand people attended rallies across France Saturday in protest at plans to legalize gay marriage, according to police figures obtained by AFP.

In Paris alone, 70,000 people turned out at one rally, said police — organisers put the figure at 200,000 — while another 22,000 protested in the southeastern city of Lyon, said police, and up to 8,000 in the southern city of Marseille.

Good News: Half of Voters Got Their Campaign News from the Web

A little piece of good news after the US election disappointment: half of voters got their campaign news from the Internet.

A pew survey released yesterday shows a steep increase in voters who got their campaign news from the Internet. The number went up from 36 percent in the 2008 election to 47 percent in this year’s election.

Television continued to serve as the primary source with 67 percent of voters saying they turned to the TV for campaign news coverage. Another interesting bit of info: Cable news was by far preferred to the networks:

Among TV news outlets, 42% cite cable news as a main source. Network television is named by 19% of voters, while 11% cite local TV news. These percentages are little changed from 2008.

Among cable networks, 23% of voters name the Fox News Channel as a main source; 18% cite CNN and 9% MSNBC. There also is little change in the percentage naming any of these cable networks from 2008.

If this trend continues and the number of voters consulting the internet for their news keeps increasing, there is a better likelihood that people will be able to go beyond the myths constructed by the mainstream media.

A Woman's Body Does Not Have Two Heads: Pro-Abortion Irrationality

Your body does not have 2 heads and 2 different sets of DNA.

Clever image that sums up one part of the illogicality in the feminist claim that the moral issue of abortion is largely limited to the assertion that a woman does what she likes with her body.

The other part of the irrationality in that pseudo-argument is illustrated by what I wrote in my previous post Legalizing Infanticide or Limiting Abortion:

What is absurd is for women to shut all the discussion by saying "it's my body, so I decide".

It makes as much sense as for a killer to say "I used my hand to kill, the hand is part of my body, therefore no-one can tell me what I can or cannot do with it".

The fact remains that, even if a foetus is inside a woman's body, it is still a different living, and in some stages sentient, being, so should not be treated just like an appendix of her body.

Why Paedophilia Concerns Have Come to Override Basic Rules of Law

Whether or not the BBC, as the Conservative Mayor of London Boris Johnson argues, should prove that the programme Newsnight was not acting with malice towards senior Tory politician Lord McAlpine wrongly accused of paedophilia by an abuse victim, one thing is clear.

The current obsession with paedophilia seems to have erased or greatly diluted the basic legal principles that a person is innocent until proven guilty and, even more importantly, that the burden of the proof is on the accuser.

Paedophilia and, to a lesser extent, rape have become such politically incorrect crimes that they are treated as if they were worse than even murder or mutilation.

Yet losing life or a limb is certainly worse than being a victim of sex crimes.

When another child abuse scandal connected to the BBC, that of Jimmy Savile, emerged, we heard a never-ending number of celebrities and commentators repeating ad nauseam that children must absolutely be believed without a doubt in the world when they make this kind of accusations, almost implying that disbelief is a crime in itself and echoing similar assertions made about rape and women who claim to have been raped.

Nobody should be believed absolutely and undoubtedly: children, adults, women and men. People who say they have been victims of a crime are witnesses; and it is a well known fact that crime witnesses are highly unreliable, as this latest case concerning Lord McAlpine confirms for the umpteenth time.

This applies to all crimes: the least unpopular as much as the most hated ones. It has nothing to do with the severity of the crime, or how much it is disliked, or how strong emotions it arises.

It is a simple rule of law. To punish an innocent is worse than to let a guilty off the hook.

In the case of paedophilia, even accusing an innocent may be worse than to let a guilty off the hook.

"To call someone a paedophile is to consign them to the lowest circle of hell – and while they are still alive" correctly writes Boris Johnson.

But why have we got to this point of insanity, where paediatricians have been lynch mobbed for having the same prefix as paedophiles (from the Greek for "child") in their name and accusations can fly around and be believed so liberally?

The reason is very simple. Starting from the 1960s "sexual revolution", strongly if not entirely consciously influenced by Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich theories that repressing sexual impulses is not good for you, sexual activity has been removed from the moral sphere.

Contemporary, influential moral philosopher Peter Singer writes in his Practical Ethics that ethics should not concern itself with sexuality, and that driving a car, due to what he believes to be its environmental impact, raises more moral issues than having sex.

This new dogma has been readily and happily accepted by a majority opinion, leading to such nice results as multiplication of marriage breakdowns, adultery, divorces, broken families, abortions, illegitimate births, multiple partners and fathers, AIDS, increase in sexually transmitted diseases, homosexualist agenda being imposed on everybody, incest and Muslim polygamy made quasi-legal or accepted.

But public opinion, seeing where all this was going, namely that sex with children woud be next on the list of morally permissible activities, strongly drew a line at that. Something similar happened with rape.

Given the very confused ideas about sexuality and morality that prevail in our societies (and I grant that the subject is complex), all the furore about paedophilia (and to a lesser degree rape) derives from and is directly proportional to the eagerness and almost desperation with which all other forms of sexuality have been embraced without a thought in the world.

It turns out that sexual activity is not beyond the realm of ethics after all.

Kids Reported and Arrested for Being Non Politically Correct

A rather illiterate, in terms of both grammar and ideas, profanity-laden website called Jezebel has "named and shamed" young teens for twitting about Obama in politically incorrect ways by reporting them to their schools.

Teachers as well have been the target.

Several public school teachers are facing investigations for posting items on social networking sites that opposed President Obama and his agenda. Parents raised concerns regarding the teachers’ posts, prompting the school districts to launch investigations. Similarly, teens who posted anti-Obama messages on social networking sites are being targeted by a website called Jezebel, which not only reveals the identities of the students who made the posts, but reported the students to their schools.

In Rock Hill, South Carolina, a middle-school teacher was placed on leave after posting a message on her personal Facebook page about Obama and food stamps. “Congrats Obama,” she allegedly wrote. “As one of my students sang down the hallway, ‘We get to keep our food stamps’ … which I pay for because they can’t budget their money … and really, neither can you.”

According to a school spokesperson, several parents had called the school complaining about the teacher’s post. The teacher was forced to apologize.

What had she done wrong, except expressing political views that differ from those of her bosses?

“People outside the school system ... saw her posting and some of them said they were offended by it,” spokesperson Elaine Baker said. “She used poor judgment according to our social media policy. Teachers are kept to higher standards.” Baker continued, “Sometimes you just can’t speak out publicly about what you’d personally like to say, about anything.” She told television station WSOC that teachers in general should “watch what they post on Facebook.”

I didn't know that the First Amendment does not apply to teachers.

This is not as bad as the British 14-year-old girl who was arrested for making "racist remarks" at a school in Greater Manchester, but it is going in the same direction of policing speech and thought from a very young age, so they learn soon how narrow the limits to free speech have become, even for children.

All she had done was asking her science teacher to be moved from a class of Asian pupils only one of whom could speak English.

For this the 14-year-old girl, Codie Stott, was reported to the police by the school, arrested and questioned.

Codie said: "I asked the teacher could I change groups because I didn't understand them and she said I was being racist and started shouting at me."

A complaint was made and she was taken to a police station.

Her mother said her Codie's jewellery and shoelaces were removed, her fingerprints and DNA samples were taken and she was put in a cell.

The school said it wanted to ensure it had a caring and tolerant attitude to pupils of all ethnic backgrounds and it did not stand for racism in any form.

Greater Manchester Police said it took hate crime reports very seriously and its treatment of the teenager was in line with normal procedure.

What "hate crime" was that, I'd like to know?

80,000 Citizens in 33 US States Submit Petitions for Secession

Here is what creates division. People in the US are understandably getting tired of a situation that is on the edge of unsustainability.

The presidential election, with very close results and marred by voter fraud mostly committed by Democrats and losses of military absentee ballots and of military votes which would have been overwhelmingly Republican, has not resulted in a clear mandate for Obama.

This lack of legitimacy, together with his anti-American policies, are the real cause of division in the country, so much so that people in the United States want to secede from the union. 

Citizens From Over 30 States Submit Secession Petitions to White House:

Seventy-seven thousand seven hundred and thirty-two people have signed the petition created by a citizen of Texas to secede from the union.

The petition, posted on the White House website, lays out the signatories' reasons for seeking to separate from the United States and form its own independent government:

"The US continues to suffer economic difficulties stemming from the federal government's neglect to reform domestic and foreign spending. The citizens of the US suffer from blatant abuses of their rights such as the NDAA, the TSA, etc. Given that the state of Texas maintains a balanced budget and is the 15th largest economy in the world, it is practically feasible for Texas to withdraw from the union, and to do so would protect it's citizens' standard of living and re-secure their rights and liberties in accordance with the original ideas and beliefs of our founding fathers which are no longer being reflected by the federal government."

At the time of writing this article, individuals from 33 states have filed similar petitions calling for secession.

The “We, the People” program includes a “create a petition” tab on the White House website. The explanation of the site claims that "if a petition gets enough support," — more than 25,000 signatures within 30 days — the "White House staff will review it, ensure it's sent to the appropriate policy experts, and issue an official response." The Houston Chronicle reported that “shortly after 2:30 p.m. Central time on Monday, the [Texas] petition passed that threshold.”

Since that report, Louisiana’s petition has also crossed the 25,000 signature threshold.

Regardless, President Obama has made no statement regarding the crescendo of calls to bust up the union.

Although Texas Governor Rick Perry in 2009 said “one of the deals” made at the time Texas entered the union was that the Lone Star State could leave at any time, a spokeswoman for the former GOP presidential candidate repudiates that position and declares the governor’s preference for union.