Any natural redhead can tell you how mean people can be. Redheads are often called "carrot-top" as an insult. The juvenile instigators might be miffed if redheads reacted by calling them "manure-head" for brown hair or "cockroach-head" for black hair. And bullying often goes much farther.
The percentage of the population which has natural red or orange hair lies between one and two, coincidentally the same figure for the percentage of homosexuals in the general population (CDC PDF or Atlantic Magazine article). In the UK, people with red or orange hair are described as having ginger-colored hair. The UK, Ireland, and the Baltic States are countries where the percentage of people with ginger-colored hair is much higher than the average.
Helena Farrell, a 15-year-old redheaded Irish girl, killed herself because of harassment.
"People need to realize that when they say the things they do, it can have deeply traumatizing effects and can lead to self-harm and suicide," said her father, Enda Farrell. He believes that the harassment his daughter and other redheads suffered should be outlawed via hate-crime legislation.
Simon Walters, a 14-year-old redheaded British boy, killed himself for the same reason. He had dyed his hair brown to avoid the hate.
Britain only officially recognizes five categories of hate crimes: race / ethnicity, disability, religion / belief, sexual orientation, and transgender identity. The fact that two of the five categories protect the LGBT community speaks volumes about how politically-correct Britain is. Alternative sub-cultures (e.g. goths), redheads, and albinos (read here, here, here, and here) are on their own.
Harassment against redheads dramatically increased after the two fruitcakes who created South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, released a "Ginger Kids" episode of their hate-filled show containing an exhortation to kick kids with ginger-colored hair, which was at least partially responsible for additional attacks on redheads in Canada, the U.S., and Britain.
There was no condemnation of the show by any government or celebrity on the basis of hate speech. Some people claim that the "Ginger Kids" episode was actually poking fun at people who discriminate against redheads, but that would imply that Parker and Stone were brilliant masters of satire, something difficult to believe of two people who often fart in the faces of other people, both in-person and vicariously through their on-screen children.
Of course, when Parker and Stone were faced with a violent threat from Muslims after releasing an episode making fun of the second-ranked god of Islam, Muhammad, they canceled a follow-up episode with more anti-Islam content. They can dish it out but cannot take it.
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In November 1996, two teenagers, Antonio Scott Farrell and Kevin Blankenship, kidnapped Barbara Castor, a 76-year-old grandmother, from a Brighton parking lot, and drove her to a ranch northeast of Strasburg where they tied her to the remnants of an old dam. She died there of exposure during the night. Then in October 1998, Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay Wyoming student, was lured from a Laramie bar by two men, tied to a split-rail fence, beaten, and left to die, which he did in a Fort Collins hospital shortly thereafter. Yet Barbara Castor's case attracted only local attention while Matthew Shepard was made a cause célèbre by President Bill Clinton, sending two members of his administration to the funeral. At the time I wondered how liberals could possibly believe that the life of a gay man was worth much more than that of an older woman.
More than a few years ago I was working in downtown Denver. I needed to visit a retail establishment around a mile from my office, so I took a bus to the store during my lunch break. The bus ran down Broadway, one of the two busiest and longest surface streets of Denver with the other being Colfax, which at that point is nothing but retail establishments. As I left the bus, a young man left behind me. I walk fast so I put a few feet between me and the other guy. As I was walking I heard him loudly ask, almost in a demanding tone of voice, "Will you suck my dick for $20?" I kept right on walking.
The same experience, only with slightly different words, happened to me inside Denver's main library, also on Broadway, and in the tourist areas of San Francisco and London. In my experience, there is just as much harassment committed by gays as there is against them.
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Jimmy Carter heavily politicized the 1980 Moscow Olympics by refusing to allow the American team to compete because of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. 64 Western countries joined the boycott, but not the UK; so much for that much-vaunted special relationship. Margaret Thatcher was British prime minister at the time and always claimed to be anti-communist; so much for her convictions.
But she did manage to indirectly kill just under 1000 people with her violent reaction to the invasion of the Malvinas / Falkland Islands in late Spring, 1982. She also did not understand that Poland's Solidarity movement in the 1980s was a genuine fight for freedom and she was opposed to German reunification, saying in 1989, "I am firmly against a unified Germany." So much for her competence and vision.
Behind the scenes, Carter ordered the CIA to arm the Afghan Mujaheddin in order to fight the Soviets, with many of those weapons being used against Westerners in the years following. Carter is remembered for few things, but the Olympic boycott which hurt mainly Western athletes and his creation of the Taliban stand out.
The Soviet Union returned the favor at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics by boycotting the games along with their minions in the Warsaw Pact.
Barack Obama does not lose much sleep worrying over the many Christians being killed by Muslims in a global war or the rights of redheads. He has, however, made the protection of gays around the world one of his very top priorities. In December 2011 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that "gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights." Obama instructed the State Department to consider how a country treats its LGBT community before it assigns foreign aid.
"No practice or tradition trumps the human rights that belong to all of us, and this holds true for inflicting violence on LGBT people. It is a violation of human rights when people are beaten or killed because of their sexual orientation, or because they do not conform to cultural norms about how men and women should look or behave," Clinton said before the U.N. Human Rights Council.
Too bad someone did not ask her why we should concentrate on LGBT people. Is it not an equal violation of human rights when redheads, goths, or albinos are killed?
Now Obama is continuing his quest for homosexual rights by including three prominent ones -- Billie Jean King, Brian Boitano, and Caitlin Cahow -- in the group sent to the Sochi Olympics.
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Years ago I read some comments on a long-forgotten Internet forum based in Denver. One person's comments were a window into his soul. He commented on some other subject, but he always included something regarding his personal life. He was born a man, decided that he was actually a woman, and started living as a woman. He had made the decision to have sex reassignment surgery. After his operation, he commented that he now realized that he actually preferred women to men, saying something like: "Now I 'R' a lesbian." He thought it was amusing, but the truth is that if he cannot decide which sex he is, how are the rest of us supposed to react?
Coy Mathis, a Colorado elementary school boy, has self-identified as a girl from birth. He was allowed to use the girl's restroom until late 2012 when the principal informed his parents that he must use either the boys' restroom or a gender-neutral staff lavatory. As is typical of these cases, the parent sued over his civil rights, filing a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Division. They want him to be able to use the girls' restroom.
But what about the rights of the other girls to use a restroom restricted to girls? Why do the rights of one individual trump the rights of the many? Why can't he simply use the staff lavatory?
Idaho had a similar situation involving 25-year-old Ally Robledo, a man who self-identifies as a woman. He used the women's restroom in Rosauers supermarket in Lewiston until he was banned from the store. Many of the women using the restroom found the situation "very uncomfortable." The situation was accentuated because he stood to pee like a man and might have been able to look over into the next stall.
If he self-identifies as a woman, why doesn't he sit down to pee?
An Oregon high school solved the problem fairly by converting existing restrooms into individual unisex restrooms which any student can use.
California, the land of fruits, nuts, and flakes, dreamed up a nonsensical policy. It passed a law allowing public school students to choose which school lavatories and locker rooms to use based on their self-identified gender. The law also allows students to choose which sport teams to join.
The problem with locker rooms is only one way for the most part. Boys generally wouldn't mind if a girl takes showers with them, but girls might not find the reverse situation comfortable at all.
We also have the situation where a boy will be allowed to play girl's basketball and volleyball where his superior strength and height will give him an unfair advantage.
"Just because they're confused doesn't mean they have to confuse everybody else," said Maria Garcia, who one assumes is a concerned parent.
"Society has yet to define exactly what makes a transgender. Far be it from a police department in Idaho to try to define that," said Lewiston Police Captain Roger Lanier.
My Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary from 1985 does not even include an entry for "transgender"; there is nothing in between "transfusion" and "transgress."
Contrary to Lady Gaga's assertion that she and all other LGBTs were "born that way," it appears that "social and parental influences may influence the expression of non-heterosexual identities and/or behaviour," especially for girls with lesbian parents, according to the NIH. Intergenerational transfer of sexual orientation, as the authors termed it, bodes rather poorly for advocates of adoption by homosexuals.
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The website of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea contains more depressing statistics, photos, and maps than a sane person can tolerate, especially on the subject of its labor camps where approximately 200,000 people are being held and where "human lives were worth less than those of flies." The vast majority are political prisoners. The founder of the DPRK, Kim Il-sung, devised the camps as a way to prevent dissent. People are imprisoned for mere curiosity, e.g. for watching South Korean soap operas, listening to South Korean music, watching or listening to South Korean news programs, possessing leaflets carried by balloons over the DMZ, gossiping about the Kim family, or trying to escape the country to seek a better life.
Kim Il-sung's evil genius manifested itself in two philosophies.
The first was the categorization of all people into three groups according to his songbun system -- core (25%), wavering (55%), and hostile (20%) -- with core people residing in the capital and other choice locations. This explains why we see mass gatherings of Pyongyang residents -- Stepford citizens -- paying homage to Kim Il-sung, his son Kim Jong-il, and the current dictator, Kim Jong-un.
The second was the policy of imprisoning not just the offender, but also the generation above and below that person. That way, everyone knows that actions opposed to the state will result in their loved ones suffering the same fate, a motivational technique unique in the world.
Shin Dong-hyuk is the only person known to have been born in and escaped from one of the camps. He witnessed his mother and brother being executed there, along with many other people executed for trivial offenses. He knows about torture on a personal level, having had one of his fingers cut off as punishment for dropping something. No doubt he knows that women in the camps are often raped by the guards and then killed to prevent them from telling anyone of their experience.
He wrote an open letter to Dennis Rodman, "the famous, retired American basketball player with many tattoos" who is a soul mate of Kim Jong-un, the brutal dictator of North Korea. He asked Rodman simply to share the horrors of the camps with Kim Jong-un -- to be "a friend to the North Korean people." Shin wrote:
At this very moment, people are starving in these camps. Others are being beaten, and someone soon will be publicly executed as a lesson to other prisoners to work hard and obey the rules. I grew up watching these executions, including the hanging of my mother.
On orders of the guards in [the camps], inmates are forced to marry and create children to be raised by guards to be disposable slaves. Until I escaped in 2005, I was one of those slaves. My body is covered with scars from torture I endured in the camp.
I happen to be about the same age as your friend Kim Jong-un. But if you ask him about me, he is likely to refer to me as "human scum." That is how his state-controlled press refers to me and all other North Koreans who have risked death by fleeing the country. Your friend probably also will deny that [the camps exist], which is the official position of his government. If he does, you can show him pictures of it on your phone.
I cannot presume to tell you to cancel your trip to North Korea. It is your right as an American to travel wherever you wish and to say whatever you want. It is your right to drink fancy wines and enjoy yourself in luxurious parties, as you reportedly did in your previous trips to Pyongyang. But as you have a fun time with the dictator, please try to think about what he and his family have done and continue to do.
Severe malnutrition has stunted and cognitively impaired hundreds of thousands of children. Young North Korean women fleeing the country in search of food are often sold into human-trafficking rings in China and beyond.
More than anything else, I want Kim Jong Un to hear the cries of his people. Maybe you could use your friendship and your time together to help him understand that he has the power to close the camps and rebuild the country’s economy so everyone can afford to eat.
Shin is wasting his eloquence. Rodman only cares about himself, just like almost everyone on the American celebrity circuit, a virtual Kardashian with enough facial metal to construct a child's bicycle. The media no longer fawns over him after basketball games, so he now plays to that crowd before and after his jaunts to North Korea.
Rodman is already on record as having called Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton assholes in response to reporters' queries on Kenneth Bae, an American being held in a North Korea camp for taking photos of starving Korean children. Rodman is an recognized expert on what constitutes being an asshole, with him being a world-class example of one.
Rodman has returned to North Korea to help train its national basketball team and to schedule games between the DPRK team and former NBA players. He naively said that Kim Jong-un "really actually wants to change things."
Rodman clearly does not know or care that Kim Jong-un recently executed both his former girlfriend and his uncle, is expanding the labor camps, has increased the propaganda campaigns to further indoctrinate North Koreans, allows medicine donated by aid groups to be seized and sold in local markets by DPRK elite, allows military officers to resell donated milk powder, forces North Koreans of all ages to help build more monuments to the Kim family in a country already overrun with them, and does not lift a finger when orphans are forced to live in caves and beg for food.
Rodman is not the first American to visit a totalitarian government and fawn over its leader. From 2005 to 2010, Mariah Carey, Beyonce, Usher, Lionel Richie, Nelly Furtado, 50 Cent, and others gave private performances for Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi's family on the Caribbean island of St. Barts and other locations for large paychecks. We only found out about their illicit performances via Wikileaks. Some of them promised to donate their ill-gotten gains to charity, but that was never confirmed.
And we must not forget Jane Fonda's excellent adventure in Vietnam in 1972. Today she attempts to deny the ferocity of her attack on the U.S., but the evidence is clear. She made a statement that all U.S. Prisoners of War were being well treated and were not being tortured, which was not true as we later found out.
North Koreans who have been able to flee their country and go to China live in constant fear of being caught and sent back. They are always arrested, imprisoned, and often executed upon their return. China sends them back because it wants to retain its buffer zone on its eastern border.
Kim Jong-un's father, Kim Jong-il, prided himself on being a gourmet, with live lobsters and fine wines / liqueurs being air-lifted to him wherever he was, eating with silver chopsticks. Kim Jong-il also ordered the destruction in 1987 of an airliner, Korean Air 858, with the loss of 115 lives, merely to disrupt the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
And we can look forward to the same types of speeches from North Korean Sochi Olympic athletes as we saw at the London Olympics praising the current Kim-family dictator, with language such as, "Thanks to our Dear Leader’s love and support, I was able to win the gold medal."
Nazi Germany would never have fallen if not for the Soviets invading from the east and the American, British, Canadian, Australian, Polish, French, and other forces invading from the west. The Soviet Union would never have fallen if Gorbachev had not announced that the USSR would no longer employ machine guns against its people. North Korea will never fall until the Kim family is removed from power; if the West is not willing to use force to remove Kim Jong-un, we should at least limit the fun he has by preventing Western celebrities from visiting the country.
Obama could easily have denied Rodman and the other basketball players the right to travel to North Korea similar to how we restrict Americans from traveling to Cuba, a country which is orders of magnitude less hostile, contrary to what American right-wing demagogues would have us believe. This would have infuriated Kim Jong-un and slapped the basketball-playing human scum.
If North Koreans were all homosexuals, Obama would send in the U.S. Marines to free them. But since they aren't, they will continue to be imprisoned, tortured, and executed in the saddest place on Earth.