Planet Fitness Bans Woman From Gym For Complaining About Transgender in Locker Room
6 March, 2015 by Bill Muehlenberg
All over the West there is a war against Christians and Christianity taking place, and each day this is hotting up even more. Indeed, on a daily basis we find further ugly examples of anti-Christian bigotry taking place. I could easily stop writing about everything else and simply document all this as a full time job.
Consider a shocking case in California as an example:
A school in California has caused controversy by banning all Christian material from its library. Staff at the library were told to remove all books with a Christian message, authored by Christians or published by a Christian company. One of the books to be removed was Corrie ten Boom’s ‘The Hiding Place’, the story of a Christian family who helped Jews escape the Holocaust.
Or take this recent case from Georgia: “An Army chaplain was punished for discussing matters of faith and quoting from the Bible during a suicide prevention training session with the 5th Ranger Training Battalion.” And things are just as bad in the UK:
A Christian magistrate has been disciplined by a Tory Cabinet Minister for expressing the belief that children should be raised by both a mother and a father. Richard Page told colleagues behind closed doors during an adoption case that he thought it would be better for a child to be brought up in a traditional family rather than by a gay couple. He was shocked a week later when he found he had been reported to the judges’ watchdog for alleged prejudice, and was suspended from sitting on family court cases.
Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali said that the Lord Chancellor and Lord Chief Justice “have declared war on even residual notions of the faith having any place in our legal process. The Government, and law officers, it seems are intent on preventing Christians from manifesting their belief in the public square.”
The situation in Europe is equally alarming, if not even worse. An article on all this in today’s press begins this way:
Discrimination against Christians is being “ignored” by governments and courts, MPs from across Europe have warned in the wake of a string of cases involving the rights of British workers to wear crosses or discuss their beliefs.
The parliamentary arm of the Council of Europe has issued a formal declaration urging states to recognise the principle of “reasonable accommodation” for the beliefs of traditionalist Christians on issues such as homosexuality for the first time.
The first test of the new call will come as early as this week with the opening of an employment tribunal case involving a London nursery worker who claims she was dismissed for telling a lesbian colleague her beliefs on same-sex marriage.
Sarah Mbuyi denies claims that she harassed the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, during the conversation in January last year. She also alleges that she was asked to act against her beliefs by reading stories about same-sex couples to children. Ms Mbuyi is supported in her case by the Christian Legal Centre which has instructed the human rights barrister Paul Diamond to represent her at the tribunal in Watford.
The legal team is planning to cite a new declaration issued through the Council of Europe, the international body which operates the European Court of Human Rights, insisting that Christians are now subject to “intolerance and discrimination” across the continent. Members of the Council’s Parliamentary Assembly, made up of MPs from national parliaments, passed the resolution in response to a report detailing a series of cases involving British Christians.
The article concludes;
Ms Mbuyi said: “In a Christian country one should be free to explain what Christians believe on issues if asked. And in any country, to state the agreed view of the historic Abrahamic Faiths on sexuality should simply be a matter of fact and history, and not taken by anyone, whether employee, or employer as personal or abusive.”
Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre said: “Sharing Biblical truths out of genuine love for colleagues is being outlawed in the workplace by an oppressive ‘cultural correctness’. There is a culture of fear which shuts down freedom of speech and the expression of faith.
“It’s indicative of the sad state we’re in that we’re using EU Law in Sarah’s case because she was prevented from living out her faith in a country which once led the world in freedom and justice. This culture tries to portray the liberating good news of the Gospel as oppressive and regressive. Sarah’s case demonstrates the confusion we’re experiencing in current times.”
And another recent article also highlighted this ongoing war against Christianity in the so-called free West. And so much of it is coming directly from the Christophobic homosexual militants:
Christian churches are under increasing assault all over Europe, reports a Vienna-based group charged with monitoring such attacks. They report that Christian churches have been increasingly vandalized in Switzerland, Christian graves desecrated in France, and churches graffitied in Italy. Much of the vandalism comes at the hands of those opposing church teachings on homosexuality.
Earlier this month, someone vandalized a Catholic Church in the Swiss Canon of Jura, two hours north of Geneva. The vandals wrote, “Jesus is Gay” and “Your Religion is Not Mine” along with satanic symbols on the outside of the church.
Also this month, in the Calvados region of France, dozens of Christian symbols in a graveyard were vandalized.
The Observatory reports the Church of Saint John the Baptist in the Italian town of Lecce was spray painted, “God is a transgender” and “Priests are pedophiles.” Other graffiti indicated that the attack was related to a recent pro-family conference held nearby.
Individuals as well as properties are being targeted:
Not only are Christian buildings coming under attack in Europe, but Christians themselves. A year ago, leftist activists attacked Christian parents who organized a protest against a new sex-ed curriculum in Germany. According to the Observatory, the parents were spit at, and eggs and “little bags of feces” were thrown at them. Additionally, “Pages were ripped out of the Bible and used to wipe backsides then formed into a ball and thrown at the parents.”
During the massive demonstrations against same-sex marriage in France, protests that drew upwards of one million of mostly Christians in the streets of Paris, peaceful demonstrators – men, women, children, and at least one former French Cabinet minister – were gassed by French security forces under orders from the Socialist President François Holland.
In Sweden, Mona Sahlin, national coordinator against violent extremism for the Swedish Ministry of Justice, compared a midwife who refused to participate in abortion to the terrorists of the Islamic State. The Observatory was founded to provide information on discrimination against Christians to the institutions of the European Union, the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the United Nations.
A combination of factors – the secularization of the West, political correctness, the intolerant homosexual lobby, judicial activism, etc. – are all leading to increased persecution of all things Christian in the West today. Given that it was the Judeo-Christian worldview which helped to bring about Western civilization in the first place, and all of its freedoms, it is ironic that the West is now targeting those whose faith gave rise to the West.
Christians cannot sleep through their own execution. We must wake up to the new anti-Christian hysteria sweeping the West. While these are still democratic lands, we have every right to stand up for our faith, not just in the private arena, but in the public square as well.
We may not have gotten to the place of being thrown to the lions as a form of entertainment for the masses. But the way things are going, we cannot rule anything out. Secular left governments are not going to stand up for Christian freedoms. So we need to start raising our voices here before it is too late to do so.
http://barbwire.com/2015/03/06/1000-the-gathering-storm-against-christians/
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The Chicken and Egg Dilemma about Marriage
6 March, 2015 by Dr. Janice Shaw Crouse
Just as relentless, powerful winds and waves pounding against a strong sea wall can over time bring it down, the institution of the family today is beset by a perfect storm of hostile cultural influences and bad policies that threaten to cripple it, even destroy its existence.
Some experts, instead of attempting to identify the root of the problem, are spending their time debating “chicken and egg” dilemmas. For instance, currently there is controversy over whether the breakdown of the married-mom-and-dad family is from economic or social reasons. Is the decline in marriage the result of the hard economic times or is the bad economy causing the decline in marriage?
One thing all agree on — the evidence is overwhelming — is that children in traditional mom-and-dad married family homes are significantly better off in all measurements of well-being than those who grow up in a single parent, cohabiting, or any other type of household structural arrangement.
While researchers have amply documented that the marital status of parents has significant influence on the well-being outcomes of the children in a home, some dissidents are arguing that the problems associated with family breakdown really stem from a household’s economic situation rather than its composition and whether the parents are married or not.
A recent analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by the Council on Contemporary Families (CCF) concluded that a family’s economic status is “more important” for children’s well-being than their marital status. The CCF is a coalition of scholar/researchers for whom Stephanie Coontz serves as the co-chair of the Board of Directors. Dr. Coontz’s writing often contradicts conservative research about marriage, family, children and gender. The CCF takes the position that the drop in incomes is causing the marriage rate decline in the U.S. The CCF report states bluntly, “Depressed household incomes are fueling a rise in single-parent households.”
The bald facts as cited by CCF are clear: Most children (68 percent) grow up in two-parent families (which is a drop from 90 percent in 1960), with only 24 percent living with a single mother (though this number is a dramatic increase from the less than 10 percent in 1960). The connection between single mothers and poverty is well-established fact. In my book “Children at Risk,” citing U.S. Census Bureau poverty data, I note, “In the simplest terms: The poverty rate of single mothers with children is 5 times higher than the rate for married couples with children.” I also point out that poor children in single-parent households constitute almost two-thirds of all poor children (in contrast to 1960, when poor children in single-parent families comprised only 25 percent of all poor children).
The CCF study cites other disadvantages for children in poor families: For instance, far fewer graduate college (9 percent from poor parents vs. 77 percent from higher-income parents) and fewer participate in extracurricular sports (22.5 percent vs. 42.5 percent). The CCF also points to the fact that more children today “receive food stamps than received them before the Great Recession.”
All of this is presented as evidence, says Shannon Cavanagh, Ph.D. an Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin and principal expert on the study, that “marriage isn’t magic,” as she told Brian Alexander of NBC News. She added, “There is a clear economic bar to marriage and to the extent people cannot meet that bar they are less inclined to marry.” In other words, she claims, “People who can afford marriage get married.”
While there is certainly an economic factor in the marriage equation, there is also a clear association of marriage with education. Increasingly, marriage is more prevalent among those with more education than among the less well-educated. Pew Research Center found in 2013 that “Among parents who live with a child under the age of 18, 89% of college graduates are married, compared with 64% of parents with less than a high school diploma and 70% of those with just a high school diploma.” Further, Pew found that the trend had persisted for decades among those with less education. “At the same time,” they reported, “the share of non-marital births for the less educated has risen dramatically and the likelihood of divorce remains significantly higher among those lacking a college degree than among those who have one.”
In his recent interview with the journal First Things, Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project and senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, talked about the marriage divide (a topic that he addressed at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Spring General Assembly in New Orleans in June 2014). Mr. Wilcox talked about the strength of marriage among college-educated Americans: “50 percent of babies to mothers who don’t have college degrees are born outside of wedlock, compared to less than 10 percent of babies born to mothers with college degrees.” Mr. Wilcox warns that marriage is “in trouble” and “losing ground” even among Middle Americans; that is, everywhere “outside of the privileged precincts of upscale inner suburbs and affluent urban neighborhoods.”
Scholars like Kay S. Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute were warning as early as 2007 that cultural changes and bad public policies that discouraged marriage were creating disadvantageous situations for poor and uneducated women. In her book, “Marriage and Caste in America: Separate and Unequal Families in a Post-Marital Age,” Ms. Hymowitz shows how “separating marriage from childrearing” is “bad news not only for children, but also, in ways little understood, for the country as a whole.”
We are certainly seeing, especially in African-American communities, “growing inequality and high rates of poverty” as well as all the social ills predicted by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, just as Ms. Hymowitz, Mr. Wilcox and other family researchers (including this writer) have chronicled. It is important for those of us who care deeply about the family to keep pointing out that just as wrongly-based values and policies shockingly destroyed the once great city of Detroit, other wrongly-based values and policies are devastating the historical bulwark of communities, cultures and civilizations, the traditional mom-and-dad-family.
http://barbwire.com/2015/03/06/needs-image-0900-the-chicken-and-egg-dilemma-about-marriage/
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Planet Fitness Bans Woman From Gym For Complaining About Transgender in Locker Room
Gym says members can use whatever locker room corresponds to their “personal gender identity”
March 7, 2015 by Kit Daniels
Planet Fitness cancelled a woman’s membership after she complained about a transgender using the women’s locker room.
The gym’s corporate office told the woman, Midland, Mich., resident Yvette Cormier, that the transgender person in question identified as female and that members could use whatever locker room corresponded to their “personal gender identity.”
“Our gender identity non-discrimination policy states that members and guests may use all gym facilities based on their sincere self-reported gender identity,” McCall Gosselin, public relations director for Planet Fitness, said in a statement. “The manner in which this member expressed her concerns about the policy exhibited behavior that management at the Midland club deemed inappropriate and disruptive to other members, which is a violation of the membership agreement and as a result her membership was cancelled.”
Cormier said the incident began on Feb. 28 when she was startled by the transgender person in the woman’s locker room.
“I was blocked, because a man was standing there,” Cormier said. “It freaked me out because, why is a man in here?”
She also said an employee told her that the individual identifies as a woman.
After Cormier told other female members about the transgender person, she received a call from the corporate headquarters claiming she was violating the gym’s “no judgment” policy and asked her if she would stop talking to the other women about the incident, to which she declined.
That’s when the corporate representative told her she was banned.
“I feel it’s kind of one sided,” Cormier said, adding that Planet Fitness should offer separate accommodations for transgender people. “I feel like I am the one who is being punished.”
A similar incident occurred in 2013 when female students at Florence High School in Colorado were threatened with hate crime charges after they complained about being harassed by a transgender in the girls’ bathroom.
School officials firmly sided with the transgender student and they even suggested the girls give up access to most of their restrooms altogether, reported CBN News.
In response, the Pacific Justice Institute sent a letter to the school warning them against placing transgender rights over the privacy of female students.
“We’re not going to stand by and let 99.7% of our students lose their privacy and free speech rights just because 0.3% of the population are gender-confused,” the letter stated.
http://www.infowars.com/planet-fitness-bans-woman-from-gym-for-complaining-about-transgender-in-locker-room/
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