SelwynDuke.com

Supreme Constitutional Trespass: Marriage

By Selwyn Duke

Courts and marriage, courts and marriage; they go together like a cat and carriage. With the Supreme Court possibly poised to strike down the remaining state bans on official recognition of same-sex relationships, it’s lamentable, but important to note, that things have gone this far only because of a universal failure to acknowledge and argue the central point in the faux-marriage debate. This is not merely that, as our Constitution dictates, marriage is no business of the feds. It is something more fundamental, something informing that — except insofar as a state constitution may contain marriage prescriptions — it is, in fact, no business of any court.

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Biker Shootout: Libs Going Wacko over Race in Waco

By Selwyn Duke

Leftists are upset about what they view as a double standard with respect to the Baltimore/Ferguson affair and the recent Waco gang shootout. They’re right, too — there sure is a double standard.

And, as usual, it’s their own.

Consider, for example, an Associated Press piece by one Jesse J. Holland titled “Differing perceptions of Waco, Baltimore bothering some.” Holland starts out writing that the “prevailing images of protests in Baltimore and Ferguson, Missouri, over police killings of black men were of police in riot gear, handcuffed protesters, tear gas and mass arrests. The main images of a fatal gun battle between armed bikers and police in Waco, Texas, also showed mass arrests — carried out by nonchalant-looking officers sitting around calm bikers on cellphones.” The idea is that while the black thugs in Baltimore and Ferguson received harsh treatment and coverage, the primarily white thugs in Waco were, relatively speaking, handled with kid gloves.

Homosexual Boy Scout Leaders=Preferential Treatment for Homosexuals

By Selwyn Duke

Fresh off making people’s eyes roll with a ban on water-gun play fights, the Boy Scouts of America has found an even better way to lose members: propose that homosexuals be allowed to serve as Boy Scout troop leaders.

Wow, what could possibly go wrong?

The suggestion came from Boy Scouts of America (BSA) president Robert Gates, a former defense secretary with a history of taking the offense against tradition.

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Louisiana Gov. Jindal Signs Religious-freedom Executive Order

By Selwyn Duke

Taking a stand for religious liberty, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal (shown) signed an executive order Tuesday granting new protections to businesses that do not wish to service faux weddings. The move came mere hours after the Louisiana House Civil Law and Procedure Committee killed a religious-freedom bill that would have accomplished the same goal.

Commenting on the legislators’ failure to act, Jindal said in a statement, "We are disappointed by the committee's action to return the Louisiana Marriage and Conscience Act to the calendar....

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Proposed Federal Law: Don’t Sway People from Homosexuality — or Else

By Selwyn Duke

In the beginning, the homosexual agenda was about the right to be an “out” homosexual without government interference.

Now it’s about using the government to prohibit efforts to get out of homosexuality.

And the latest attack on this front is the ominously named “Therapeutic Fraud Prevention Act” (TFPA), which would ban same-sex-attraction and “gender identity” reparative therapy. This is psychological counseling whose goal is to help people mitigate or eliminate unwanted same-sex attractions or the phenomenon whereby a person’s perceived sex doesn’t match his actual one.

The TFPA was introduced in Congress today by Representative Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), who authored his state’s 2012 ban on reparative therapy. After the Golden State’s action, D.C. and New Jersey (with Governor Chris Christie’s signature) followed suit in prohibiting the therapy, and a similar ban is in front of openly bisexual governor Kate Brown of Oregon.

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Was Politician Forced Into Mental Institution for “Islamophobia”?

By Selwyn Duke

One tactic Soviet-bloc countries would use to stifle dissidents was involuntary confinement to mental institutions. After all, you have to be crazy to oppose state ideology, right? Now, though, 26 years after the Berlin Wall’s fall comes a similar shocking story — from well west of where the wall stood.

It is alleged that a French mayor has been involuntarily confined to a mental asylum for “Islamophobia.”

The story involves Robert Chardon, mayor of the southern French town of Venelles; the problems began when, participating in a public Twitter discussion initiated by former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, the mayor proposed a prohibition against Islam in France.

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The U.K. Election and the Myth of Dying Liberalism

By Selwyn Duke

When someone describes his location and says he’s right or left, the obvious answer is “Of what?” It’s interesting that we never ask this in politics.

This could occur to one given the recent headlines after U.K.’s May 7 election, in which the Tories defied pollsters and won a resounding victory. Business Insider wrote, “Liberal Britain just got slaughtered,” while the Independent lamented, “Election results: Britain has become a bluer, looser and less liberal country.” Note that while blue in the U.K. is the color of the “conservatives,” in the United States it’s the color assigned to the liberal Democrat Party — and this similarity is fitting. This brings us to the Telegraph’s Tim Stanley, closer to correct in his election analysis in writing:

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Obama Plays Class-warfare Card — Calls Wealthy “Society’s Lottery Winners”

By Selwyn Duke

Resurrecting his “You didn’t build that; somebody else made that happen” theme, Barack Obama called for higher taxes on people whom he characterized as “society’s lottery winners.”

The comments were made Tuesday at a poverty summit at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where, alluding to his longstanding proposal to raise taxes on “carried interest,” Obama said, “If we were able to close that loophole, I can now invest in early childhood education that will make a difference. That’s…where the question of compassion and ‘I’m my brother’s keeper’ comes into play. And if we can’t ask from society’s lottery winners to just make that modest investment, then, really, this conversation is for show.”

Using the “isolate ... personalize ... polarize” Alinsky tactic he has relied on ever since winning society’s lottery and attaining the presidency, Obama singled out one specific group for scorn. After claiming that “where a previous CEO of a company might have made 50 times the average wage of the worker, they might now make a thousand times or two thousand times,” he lamented that “The top 25 hedge fund managers made more than all the kindergarten teachers in the country.” And according to a Washington Post analysis, this statement is accurate. Yet what’s implied may not be.

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Boston U. Professor: White Males a “Problem Population”

By Selwyn Duke

“White masculinity is THE problem for America’s colleges,” opined the professor, a person who also believes undergraduate white males are a “problem population.” These weren’t the only anti-white comments sent in tweets by new Boston University hire Saida Grundy, an assistant professor of sociology and African-American studies. Despite this, the school’s initial response was that Grundy was merely exercising “free speech.”

As the Washington Times reported, “The tweets were first discovered by University of Massachusetts Amherst student Nick Pappas, who compiled them on his website ‘SoCawlege.com’” in order to “show the rest of America how nasty people on the far left can get at colleges.” Pappas also questions Grundy’s fitness to teach a diverse student body, writing, reports Fox News, “You have to teach college aged white males eventually, no?... This seems like you are unqualified to grade their work as you clearly demonstrate some kind of special bias against them.”

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Survey: U.S. Christians in Decline; Atheists Rising

By Selwyn Duke

The number of Christians has declined precipitously in the United States during just the last seven years, while atheists have almost doubled their share of the population. So discovered the Pew Research Foundation via a massive study involving more than 35,000 Americans.

Those identifying as Christian lost almost 8 points in population share between 2007 and 2014, declining from 78.4 percent to 70.6 percent. In contrast, the religiously “unaffiliated” now comprise almost a quarter of the U.S. population, with their share increasing 6.7 points from 16.1 percent to 22.8 percent. Within that group are atheists, whose population share rose from 1.6 to 3.1 percent; and agnostics, whose share grew from 2.4 to 4.0 percent.

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