Steamy Love Letters Found in Wall Take a Twisty Turn
Topic: Unspecified
Source: Baltimore Banner
'Baltimore Banner' helps fill in the cracks of tale told by century-old love letters. When Joanna Meade's contractor opened up the walls of her 1910 Baltimore home during a bathroom renovation, out came a tin box painted with golden stripes. Inside were 67 love letters postmarked between 1920 and 1921, the paper browned and delicate with age. As she began pouring through them, a story unspooled that was so intimate, it made Meade feel as though she were "eavesdropping." Writers Tim Prudente and Stokely Baksh of the Baltimore Banner divulge what comes next as Meade opened the mystery of the addressee, Mrs. R.A. Spaeth, to her Roland Park neighbors on Nextdoor. They became just as hooked on the juicy correspondence, with lines that could have come straight from a romance novel recalling "the sensation of your warm mouth fast upon mine."

Gender Doctor: Genital Surgery is an 'Adventure for Young People'
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Hot Air
The Daily Caller has been running a series of investigative reports into the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). In the latest installment, they feature a video of a presentation given by a Canadian transgender surgeon named Dr. Alex Laungaini. I will warn you in advance that if you read the article or watch the video, it contains some absolutely gruesome, disturbing descriptions of genital mutilation surgery so the faint of heart may want to avoid this one. Laungaini focuses on phalloplasty (the process of creating a fake penis on a female patient) and describes the lengthy list of horrible complications that typically arise in patients, as well as the shockingly high rate at which such complications occur. Despite all of that, he tells his "young" patients that they are about to embark on "an adventure" together. But this is nothing like what you might expect to find in Wonderland or somewhere over the rainbow.

All the Evidence of Hamas Rape on October 7
Topic: Violence Against Women
Source: Haaretz
However, at Shura Base, to which most of the bodies were taken for purposes of identification, there were five forensic pathologists at work. In that capacity, they also examined bodies that arrived completely or partially naked in order to examine the possibility of rape. According to a source knowledgeable about the details, there were no signs on any of those bodies attesting to sexual relations having taken place or of mutilation of genitalia. At the same time, because there were only five forensic pathologists at work, they managed to oversee the examination of a quarter of the bodies at most. In other words, about 75 percent of the bodies were buried without having undergone a professional examination.

California School District Settles $360K Lawsuit With Teacher Fired
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: DC Enquirer
...After Refusing To Use Students’ Preferred Pronouns. California’s Jurupa Unified School District settled a lawsuit on Tuesday, agreeing to pay $360,000 to a former high school teacher who was fired after refusing to use students’ preferred pronouns, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Advocates for Faith and Freedom filed suit in May 2023 after then-gym teacher Jessica Tapia was terminated for refusing to comply with the school district’s requirements in 2022 regarding her religious beliefs and students’ gender identity. The school district will give $285,000 to Tapia and $75,000 to her lawyers, according to the Chronicle.

CSIS suggests those who oppose gender ideology are a 'violent threat' in Canada
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: The Post Millennial
CSIS suggested that Canadians having issues with the gender ideology are driven by “beliefs stemming from misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, religious interpretations, conspiracy theories, or a generalized fear of sociocultural change.” In its annual report for 2023 the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) says that Canadians opposed to gender ideology are a possible “violent threat.” The annual report states, "CSIS assesses that the violent threat posed by the anti-gender movement is almost certain to continue over the coming year and that violent actors may be inspired by the University of Waterloo attack to carry out their own extreme violence against the 2SLGBTQIA+ community or against other targets they view as representing the gender ideology agenda."

Federal Court Rules MD Parents Can’t Opt Kids Out Of Classes With LGBT Content.
Topic: Gay/Lesbian Issues
Source: The Daily Wire
The Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled 2-1 against Maryland parents who sued their local school board for not letting their children in grades K-5 opt out of reading books supporting transgender ideology and gender transitioning. The Montgomery County Public Schools board denied the parents their request to be notified when the books would be read to their children and the opportunity to opt out. “The Board is violating the parents’ inalienable and constitutionally protected right to control the religious upbringing of their children, especially on sensitive issues concerning family life and human sexuality,” The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, litigated the lawsuit, stated.

She's Guilty of Killing 7 Newborns.
Topic: Violence Against Women
Source: New Yorker
Or Is She? 'New Yorker' casts doubt on the guilt of UK nurse Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby might be the most reviled person in all of the UK. The former nurse was convicted last year of murdering seven newborns and trying to kill six more. She is, in the eyes of the British press, evil personified. Now Rachel Aviv takes an in-depth look at the case for the New Yorker and declares: Not so fast. Her 13,000-word piece raises serious questions about the evidence and Letby's guilt. Of those seven newborns who died under Letby's watch in a neonatal unit, six were premature and three weighed less than 3 pounds, notes Aviv. "No one ever saw Letby harming a child, and the coroner did not find foul play in any of the deaths," she writes. Prosecutors instead relied heavily on a diagram charting 24 "suspicious events" alongside nurses' schedules, and Letby (who's appealing her conviction) was the only one who synced perfectly.

US medical establishment rejects Cass Report
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Unherd
A month after the publication of her report into youth gender services in the UK, Dr Hilary Cass has been doing the rounds in the American media. This week, she gave an interview to the New York Times on her research, which found “remarkably weak” evidence for paediatric gender transitions. Speaking to the NYT, she said that “the real problem is that the evidence is very weak compared to many other areas of paediatric practice”, adding, “I can’t think of any other situation where we give life-altering treatments and don’t have enough understanding about what’s happening to those young people in adulthood.” [Ed: the Cass Report is thorough and convincing.]

State Department issues unusual worldwide LGBTQ+ travel alert
Topic: Gay/Lesbian Issues
Source: Politico
[Ed: a distraction? A continuing search for panic on the issue? The alert comes as Pride Month approaches in June.] Americans traveling abroad for Pride Month should take precautions because of an increased risk of terrorist violence, the State Department said Friday in an unusual message to LGBTQ+ people. The State Department said in a travel advisory that U.S. citizens should stay alert in tourist areas and places popular with LGBTQ+ people. It did not mention specific threats or advise against travel.

Air Force Celebrates ‘Pride Month’ Amidst ‘Worst’ Recruiting Crisis In Modern History
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: The Federalist
As Joe Biden’s reckless foreign policy puts the world on the edge of catastrophe with conflicts already raging in Ukraine and the Middle East, the Air Force is directing its focus toward the biggest issue implicating U.S. national security: LGBT “pride.” In an under-the-radar maneuver, Marianne Malizia, the Air Force’s chief diversity officer, issued a memo Monday informing service members that the Department of the Air Force recognizes June as “LGBTQ+ Pride Month 2024.” In doing so, she claimed the month represents “a time to celebrate the diversity and inclusivity of our force, and to honor the contributions of our LGBTQ+ Airmen, Guardians, and dependents.”

Netherlands Approves Assisted Suicide Death for Young Healthy Woman Battling Depression
Topic: Violence Against Women
Source: The New York Post
[Ed: I think people should be able to commit suicide but the state has no proper role to play in this process.] The young, physically healthy Dutch woman who decided to be euthanized because of her crippling depression has been granted approval to end her life. Officials in the Netherlands gave the final approval for Zoraya ter Beek, 29, to die by assisted suicide on the grounds of unbearable mental suffering, according to the Guardian. Ter Beek first applied for assisted suicide in 2020, following battles with depression and suicidal thoughts caused by difficulties in her early childhood. The once-aspiring psychiatrist suffers from chronic depression, anxiety, trauma, borderline personality disorder and was diagnosed with autism. Ter Beek believed that the safe environment her partner offered would help her mentally heal, but it didn’t and she reportedly continued to have suicidal thoughts and self-harmed.

The dodgy data behind the DEI crusade
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Spiked Online
The Biden administration’s diversity efforts are based on easily debunked research.. DEI has been pitched to Americans as an effort to foster workplace harmony. But if a scathing new report is anything to go by, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is nothing more than a cynical marketing ploy founded on corporate doublespeak. And the Biden administration has fallen for it.
An exposé published by the College Fix this week reveals that at least 51 federal agencies have justified their DEI policies by citing four studies by McKinsey and Company, an American consultancy firm. These glossy studies – ‘Diversity matters’, ‘Delivering through diversity’, ‘Diversity wins’ and ‘Diversity still matters’ – make the so-called business case for DEI. But critics are now eviscerating McKinsey’s research as shoddy, agenda-driven and riddled with weak data.

From Caregivers to Social Reformers
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: The Quillette
Directing physicians to treat their patients as racial statistics rather than an individuals is a grievous misdirection of their skills. A quiet revolution in the practice of medicine in North America has taken place within the last decade. Professional associations, medical schools, and an increasing number of physicians no longer consider the primary duty of the physician to be care of the individual patient, but rather social reform—in particular, the urgent goal of achieving equity by addressing the social needs of identity groups perceived as marginalised. Evidence of this transformation of the physician’s role may be found in the express commitments and strategic plans of medical associations, admission requirements, curricula, and programes of medical schools, and the initiatives, statements, and actions of numerous physicians. Individual behaviour and an individual’s genetic inheritance are significant causes of diseases and disorders.

“An Old White Cultural Institution”
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Jonathan Turley
Professor Denounces Romance as a Creation of White Supremacy. In higher education, there is a virtual cottage industry of academics declaring everything from math to meritocracy to be forms of white supremacy and racism. Now, it appears romance will be added to the list. University of California Santa Barbara Black Studies Professor Sabrina Strings has written how romance promotes white supremacy and “global pigmentocracy.” In The End of Love: Racism, Sexism, and the Death of Romance, Strings recounts having “endured” her own bad relationships and maintains that “Romance is an old white cultural institution that began in the Middle Ages.” In an interview with The Current, Strings explains that “I am only one of the millions of Gen X-to-Gen Z women who have endured a seemingly endless array of miserable relationships with men.”

Biden's Morehouse Speech Is a Mess With Pandering in Overdrive
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Red State
As Students Turn Their Backs on Him. But after all that mess, they still decided to give him an honorary degree. I think they should have given an extra degree to all the people who had to sit through and endure his remarks.

The agony of sex education Knowledge isn't power — it's just TMI
Topic: Unspecified
Source: Unherd
“In matters of sexuality we are at present, every one of us, ill or well, nothing but hypocrites”, said Freud — a sentiment that came to mind as I watched reactions to the government’s announcement about sex education on Wednesday. Responding to criticism that existing “Relationships, sex, and health education” (RSHE) resources tend to be outsourced to dubious commercial agencies and hidden from parents, a curriculum overhaul is on the cards in English schools. Under proposed new guidelines, teachers rhapsodising about inner gender identities will henceforth be silenced, but that’s not the only welcome change. Information about the birds and the bees will be withheld to the ripe old age of nine; and “explicit discussion of sexual activity” put off until 13.

Are Poor Schools Underfunded? It's More Complex Than You'd Think.
Topic: Children and Family
Source: Reason
Despite headlines pointing to the contrary, high-poverty schools get more funding than low-poverty schools in almost all states. One of the most persistent myths in K-12 education is the idea that high-poverty schools are near-universally, significantly underfunded. However, the truth is much more complicated. As it turns out, poor districts get more money in almost every state—and school spending has an incredibly weak relationship with school quality in the first place. This week, USA Today published another example of fearmongering, giving a Thursday article the inexplicable headline, "Enrichment only for the rich? How school segregation continues to divide students by income." However, the research the article presents doesn't exactly show the apocalyptic outcomes implied by the headline. In fact, the research it cites concluded that "poverty rates do not have a clear relationship" with local and state funding.

How safetyism fuelled the Gaza campus protests
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Spiked Online
Infantilised students are lashing out at a Western civilisation they have been taught to loathe. In nearly every respect, the universities, academics and students of the 1960s are very different to those of today. Crucially, the student movement of the 1960s directly challenged the prevailing cultural norms. In inspiration and aspiration, it was counter-cultural. It called into question the dominant values and norms of its society. In contrast, the current anti-Israel movement, in outlook and attitude, is not opposed to the prevailing cultural norms. It merely represents a more radical version of the attitudes shared by the dominant cultural institutions of the Anglo-American world. Contemporary students’ animosity towards Israel is merely the more youthful and unedited version of the more carefully expressed sentiments of our cultural elites. This was clear at December’s Congressional hearings into anti-Semitism on campus, when the heads of Ivy League universities seemed unwilling to condemn the hatred towards the Jewish State on display from their own students.

Department of Education’s Hollow Response to Campus Antisemitism
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Times of Israel
Last week’s “Dear Colleague” letter from the US Department of Education (DOE) is just another bureaucratic exercise, rather than a meaningful step toward combatting discrimination and antisemitism on campuses. While this glaring example of governmental nonsense pays lip service to the protection of students from diverse backgrounds, its content is simply repetition of a long list of guidance, and particularly redundant of its own May 2023 letter and fact sheet. This reeks of continued complacency rather than genuine commitment to combating the issue of rampant antisemitism on college campuses. When will the DOE recognize that all previous guidance has been ignored and that legal policies have been violated for years despite all warnings? Political diversion tactics may have worked in the past, but I am not buying it anymore and neither should you. At a time when Jewish students are deeply fearful to step onto campuses, this guidance is more toothless rhetoric that lacks an appropriate level of urgency.

Revolution Number IX
Topic: Men's Movement
Source: Commentary
The bad old days are back, courtesy of the Biden administration. In areas where the new regulations don’t entirely revoke existing procedural safeguards, erosion is the preferred option. The presumption of innocence remains—but now schools can, before the adjudication, remove ostensibly innocent students from classes or dorms, or impose one-sided “no contact” orders, provided the school deems the interim punishment a “supportive service” rather than a disciplinary action. Training material no longer will be posted on university websites, on grounds that doing so is too “burdensome” for schools; instead, accused students will need to request the information formally. The most significant erosion involves access to evidence.