Same-Sex Marriage vs. the Real Thing; Navy to require transgender training...more

The Response to This Weekend’s Terror Attacks Showed Willful Blindness in Real Time  In the all too familiar pattern, things are going boom, Americans are under attack, and the American political class is already busy playing the “See No Jihad” minuet.

In a rational world, where our highest imperative would be to understand the threat that confronts us rather than to find the least offensive way of describing it, it would be patently, undeniably obvious that we are targets of international terrorism fueled by Islamic supremacist ideology. Nevertheless, the political class can only bring itself to say this kicking and screaming, and only if there is no other plausible alternative — which basically means a terrorist caught in the act while wearing an ISIS T-shirt...

More Than 800 Immigrants Mistakenly Granted Citizenship The U.S. government has mistakenly granted citizenship to at least 858 immigrants from countries of concern to national security or with high rates of immigration fraud who had pending deportation orders, according to an internal Homeland Security audit released Monday.

The Homeland Security Department's inspector general found that the immigrants used different names or birthdates to apply for citizenship with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and such discrepancies weren't caught because their fingerprints were missing from government databases.

DHS said in an emailed statement that an initial review of these cases suggest that some of the individuals may have ultimately qualified for citizenship, and that the lack of digital fingerprint records does not necessarily mean they committed fraud...

Same-Sex Marriage vs. the Real Thing: A Gay Man’s View of the Big Picture   ...I am now a Christian, and even though I am same-sex attracted—or, more likely, because I am same-sex attracted—I marvel at the extraordinary significance of marriage in God’s eternal plan. Marriage is under siege because it stands at the heart of the Good News of the Gospel.

I am neither a philosopher nor a theologian, and I possess no advanced degree, but I try to be an informed observer and reasoning contributor as best I can. As a former apologist for the sexual revolution, and as a gay man who once promoted same-sex marriage, here's what I’ve concluded.

No matter what you read or hear, the heart of the battle over the redefinition of marriage and genderlessness in culture is not found in our courts, legislatures, ballot boxes, or media. This is not a tug of war between political parties, between left and right, conservative and liberal. Likewise, this is not a battle of “gay versus straight.” And while focusing on religious liberty is an absolutely necessary pursuit, if it stands by itself, it too misses the mark.

Taken as a whole, this is a war of one kingdom against another. At its heart, this is a spiritual battle...

Navy Requires All Sailors to Undergo Transgender Education by July 2017 ......It is unclear what exactly is in these training sessions yet, but the Navy will soon send out messages with more information.

In the meantime, leadership is putting together a commander’s tool kit that will guide training, said Lt. Jessica Anderson, a spokeswoman for Naval Personnel Command, to Military.com.

“Service members are expected to maintain standards of conduct and treat each other with dignity and respect,” Anderson said. “Training for sailors will be conducted by command triads via mobile training teams or DVD with a facilitation guide if the unit is in a remote area and unable to receive face-to-face training. There will also be webinars for COs to ask questions prior to delivering training to their commands.”

The training deadline is set to coincide with the date that the Navy will start accepting transgender recruits, July 1, 2017...

London Counterterrorism Officer Quits Over Double Standard For Muslims   ...Saeed claims Muslim officers working for London’s Metropolitan Police were often racist toward white officers. But few people take seriously the claim that a minority can be racist against a non-minority. What’s often called “reverse racism” is dismissed as being racist itself. The conversation, it would seem, is closed on this issue. Only whites can be racist. If minorities have negative views of whites, it must be because of their history of oppression...

The Worst Article Written By Anyone Ever
...Yasmin’s article – which I strongly recommend you don’t read: it’s the newspaper equivalent of the cursed videotape in The Ring – is a prolonged, victim-y whine about the horrors of cultural appropriation, prompted by her experiences at an Australian literary festival in which she objected to a talk by the US-born novelist Lionel Shriver.

Shriver, author of We Need To Talk About Kevin, is not impressed by Generation Snowflake’s obsession with cultural appropriation. Though she didn’t actually wear a sombrero on this occasion (she has in the past), she found plenty of opportunities in her keynote speech at Brisbane Writers’ Festival to mock the ludicrous SJW fad...