A Wisconsin school district is under fire after reportedly responding harshly to an op-ed written by a 15-year-old high school student. The anti-gay adoption article, penned by Brandon Wegner, a Christian, ignited intense debate in the district. According to lawyers defending Wegner, he was “censored” and “punished” by school officials following the publication of his article. Some people in the district, though, claim the article, itself, constituted “bullying.” The contentious piece was written for “The Hawk’s Post,” a student-led newspaper. In it, Wegner highlighted his Christian worldview on marriage and adoption, expressing his view that children are best off being raised in families with a mother and father. A portion of the article (read a PDF version here ) reads : “If one is a practicing Christian, Jesus states in the Bible that homosexuality is (a) detestable act and sin which makes adopting wrong for homosexuals because you would be raising the child in a sin-filled environment. A child adopted into homosexuality will get confused because everyone else will have two different-gendered parents that can give them the correct amount of motherly nurturing and fatherly structure. In a Christian society, allowing homosexual couples to adopt is an abomination.” The Christian Post reports about the situation: He cited various authorities and sources, including Scripture, in defense of his opinions. Wegner argued that children raised in an environment in which the mother and father are present had the best chance for success and that homosexual adoption should be prohibited. His article was released in conjunction with an opposing viewpoint provided by another student, Maddie Marquardt, also “The Hawk’s Post” copy editor. Marquardt countered in her argument that gay couples should be able to adopt because the foster system is broken and children need a two-parent home. Also, it should be noted that controversial bible verses — most notably Leviticus 20:13 — were included in the article. It reads , “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” It was his rejection of same-sex adoption and the inclusion of controversial verses that led a Nick Uttecht, a gay parent, to file a complaint with the district. Uttecht claimed that the expressed views in the article “constituted as hate speech” and could potentially “cause kids to commit suicide.” The complaint sparked quite a response from officials. What happened next, critics say, was unfair treatment of Wegner by Shawano School District officials. Following the complaint, the district released a formal statement apologizing for the publication of the column. “We sincerely apologize to anyone we may have offended and are taking steps to prevent items of this nature from happening in the future,” CP quotes the statement as reading. In addition to the statement, the school’s principal allegedly told Wegner, “in a public school, you can’t use the Bible as a source because we can’t impose our religious beliefs on other people.” He purportedly also said: “…the school newspaper is not the place to be talking about your religious beliefs at your age…because of this article you can’t write about religion, politics, or social issues in the school paper.” Liberty Counsel, a non-profit, Christian law firm decided to take up Wegner’s case, calling the district’s treatment of him “shocking” and “outrageous” (they also dubbed it a form of bullying). On the group’s site, the following is written about how the group responded to the situation: Liberty Counsel sent a letter to school officials at Shawano High School after they censored and punished Brandon Wegner, a 15-year-old, for writing an op-ed article explaining the Biblical view of homosexuality and supporting natural mother-father adoption. The letter demands that the school apologize for its unconstitutional and irrational censorship and humiliation of Brandon. The First Amendment protects the opinions of all, including student journalists. The bullying at Shawano High School is by Superintendent Todd Carlson and the school officials, not the student, Brandon Wegner. The school officials have displayed blatant intolerance of a view on homosexuality held by many people. The school’s actions are shocking and unjustified. The superintendent should immediately apologize and stop the bullying. Clearly, this is a battle over values, with both sides maintaining that the other has violated moral and ethical guidelines. Whether the district will, indeed, apologize is yet to be seen, but it’s unlikely this issue will simmer unless individuals from both sides strike some sort of agreement. Legal action may be on the horizon. (H/T: Christian Post )
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Christian Teen Allegedly ‘Censored’ & ‘Punished’ Over Anti-Gay Adoption Newspaper Op-Ed
At last night’s debate , Newt Gingrich indicated that English should be the official language of government business. Perhaps he had this article in mind, at New York Times , ” Arizona Candidate Challenged Over English Skills “: SAN LUIS, Ariz. — When Alejandrina Cabrera speaks English, her face takes on an expression somewhere between deep discomfort and outright despair. Her tongue, which darts around her mouth in her native Spanish, slows to a crawl. “I speak little English,” she said in a hesitant and heavily accented interview in her lawyer’s office. “But my English is fine for San Luis.” Mrs. Cabrera may be able to get her point across in English, but whether she is proficient enough in the language to serve on the governing board of this bilingual border city has deeply divided the 25,000 residents. What began as an effort by political opponents to block Mrs. Cabrera from the ballot for a seat on the City Council has mushroomed into an uncomfortable discussion of just how fluent Arizona officeholders need to be. Like many other states, Arizona has long required politicians at all levels to speak, read and write English, but the law fails to spell out just what that means. Is grade-school knowledge enough? Must one speak flawlessly? Who is to decide? “I do feel this opening a box of Pandora, and we don’t know where it’s going to lead,” said Mayor Juan Carlos Escamilla, who filed a legal challenge of Mrs. Cabrera’s English ability. He acknowledged on local television that his own English was far from perfect. “I feel I don’t dominate 100 percent, but I can still get by,” said Mr. Escamilla, who graduated from the same Arizona high school as Mrs. Cabrera. “I can write, read and understand it very well.” It was Guillermina Fuentes, a former San Luis mayor, who first raised Mrs. Cabrera’s English skills as an issue last month. Former friends, the two women had a political falling out. “You’re hearing my broken English,” Ms. Fuentes said in a telephone interview. “I know people have a hard time understanding me at times, but I understand the language and I was the one always interpreting for Alejandrina Cabrera.” Ultimately, the matter is to be decided in court. On Jan. 13, Judge John Nelson of the Yuma County Superior Court ordered a linguist to evaluate Mrs. Cabrera after she took the stand and failed to answer a straightforward question from her lawyer, John Minore, about where she went to high school. Mrs. Cabrera explained later that it was anxiety, not failure to understand the question, that had her tongue tied. She went to a hearing specialist in an effort to show that auditory problems were also an issue. “I was in shock,” she said. “My brain, my mind was white. That was my first time in court.” Continue reading . I think this lady should forget about running for office and instead focus on learning the language. This is utterly ridiculous. That said, the town’s 90 percent Mexican-American and everybody speaks Spanish. At city council meetings an interpreter is on hand and participants can wear audio headphones to follow the discussions. This is where things are going in the U.S. Honestly, we’re to the point where candidates for office feel as though English proficiency is irrelevant. And who can blame them? Who needs English anyway? This is exactly what Samuel Huntington warned about years ago, and he was widely attacked as “racist.” It’s going to take some political willpower among state officials to prevent the elimination of the language requirement for public office, which has been on the books since 1910. Clearly, many in the Hispanic population simply to not care. Reconquista anybody?
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Arizona Candidate’s English Under Challenge
Another fine essay from Barry Rubin, at Pajamas Media , ” Are You Left-Wing or Right-Wing? Hopefully, I’m Honest-and-Accurate Wing “: I ran into an older, retired Israeli colleague who is a fine scholar in his field. We hadn’t met for 25 years and agreed to have coffee in a nearby Tel Aviv cafe. In the ensuing conversation I learned some key things about why current
Regarding the video of alleged Marines urinating on the dead bodies of Taliban fighters that went viral Thursday, Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) had some intense words for anyone criticizing the military. Here’s an email he sent to The Weekly Standard: “I have sat back and assessed the incident with the video of our Marines urinating on Taliban corpses. I do not recall any self-righteous indignation when our Delta snipers Shugart and Gordon had their bodies dragged through Mogadishu. Neither do I recall media outrage and condemnation of our Blackwater security contractors being killed, their bodies burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah. “All these over-emotional pundits and armchair quarterbacks need to chill. Does anyone remember the two Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division who were beheaded and gutted in Iraq? “The Marines were wrong. Give them a maximum punishment under field grade level Article 15 (non-judicial punishment), place a General Officer level letter of reprimand in their personnel file, and have them in full dress uniform stand before their Battalion, each personally apologize to God, Country, and Corps videotaped and conclude by singing the full US Marine Corps Hymn without a teleprompter. “As for everyone else, unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth, war is hell.” West is a former Army Lieutenant colonel.
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Allen West tells critics of Marine-pee video to ‘chill’
This is an amazing story. At New York Times, ” Suit by Conservative Sees Bias in Law School Hiring “: WASHINGTON — Teresa R. Wagner is a conservative Republican who wants to teach law. Her politics may have hurt her career. An official of the University of Iowa College of Law, where Ms. Wagner applied for a job in 2006, certainly seemed to think so. “Frankly, one thing that worries me is that some people may be opposed to Teresa serving in any role, in part at least because they so despise her politics (and especially her activism about it),” Associate Dean Jonathan C. Carlson wrote in 2007 to the law school’s dean, Carolyn Jones. Ms. Wagner, who graduated from the law school in 1993 and had taught at the George Mason University School of Law, was not hired. She sued, alleging discrimination because of her political beliefs. Late last month, a unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in St. Louis, ruled that her case should go to trial, saying she had presented enough evidence to suggest that “Dean Jones’s repeated decisions not to hire Wagner were in part motivated by Wagner’s constitutionally protected First Amendment rights of political belief and association.” Ms. Wagner’s lawyer, Stephen T. Fieweger, said the decision was a victory for an important sort of academic freedom. “It’s gotten to the point where the law school’s diversity efforts are to eliminate everyone from the mainstream,” he said. “They espouse cultural diversity, but won’t consider the conservative viewpoint.” According to Ms. Wagner’s lawsuit, the law faculty at Iowa in 2007 included a single registered Republican among its 50 or so members. The Republican professor was appointed in 1984. In 2009, The Des Moines Register found that there were two registered Republicans on the faculty. Ms. Wagner would have added some balance, her lawyer said. “My client is an ideologue,” Mr. Fieweger said. “She does believe in conservative values.” Ms. Wagner has worked for the National Right to Life Committee, which opposes abortion and euthanasia, and the Family Research Council, which takes conservative positions on social issues. Althouse posts on this, focusing on libertarian scholar Walter Olson’s comments at the article. I don’t have misgivings about the lawsuit. I can’t imagine Ms. Wagner going to work at the law school, however. This kind of stuff generates an enormous amount of ideological hatred. Seriously. To call out the law school deans for that kind of bigotry and win the matter at the appellate level? It’s a crushing repudiation of the left’s hypocrisy on difference and diversity, to say the least. And here’s hoping that Ms. Wagner prevails should there be further appeals. Universities need to hold their faculty accountable to the very principles of inclusion they mouth when allegations of bias are lodged against those bastions of discrimination and favoritism so historically hated by the left.
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Lisa Wagner’s Lawsuit Against University of Iowa Law School
This is an amazing story. At New York Times, ” Suit by Conservative Sees Bias in Law School Hiring “: WASHINGTON — Teresa R. Wagner is a conservative Republican who wants to teach law. Her politics may have hurt her career. An official of the University of Iowa College of Law, where Ms. Wagner applied for a job in 2006, certainly seemed to think so. “Frankly, one thing that worries me is that some people may be opposed to Teresa serving in any role, in part at least because they so despise her politics (and especially her activism about it),” Associate Dean Jonathan C. Carlson wrote in 2007 to the law school’s dean, Carolyn Jones. Ms. Wagner, who graduated from the law school in 1993 and had taught at the George Mason University School of Law, was not hired. She sued, alleging discrimination because of her political beliefs. Late last month, a unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in St. Louis, ruled that her case should go to trial, saying she had presented enough evidence to suggest that “Dean Jones’s repeated decisions not to hire Wagner were in part motivated by Wagner’s constitutionally protected First Amendment rights of political belief and association.” Ms. Wagner’s lawyer, Stephen T. Fieweger, said the decision was a victory for an important sort of academic freedom. “It’s gotten to the point where the law school’s diversity efforts are to eliminate everyone from the mainstream,” he said. “They espouse cultural diversity, but won’t consider the conservative viewpoint.” According to Ms. Wagner’s lawsuit, the law faculty at Iowa in 2007 included a single registered Republican among its 50 or so members. The Republican professor was appointed in 1984. In 2009, The Des Moines Register found that there were two registered Republicans on the faculty. Ms. Wagner would have added some balance, her lawyer said. “My client is an ideologue,” Mr. Fieweger said. “She does believe in conservative values.” Ms. Wagner has worked for the National Right to Life Committee, which opposes abortion and euthanasia, and the Family Research Council, which takes conservative positions on social issues. Althouse posts on this, focusing on libertarian scholar Walter Olson’s comments at the article. I don’t have misgivings about the lawsuit. I can’t imagine Ms. Wagner going to work at the law school, however. This kind of stuff generates an enormous amount of ideological hatred. Seriously. To call out the law school deans for that kind of bigotry and win the matter at the appellate level? It’s a crushing repudiation of the left’s hypocrisy on difference and diversity, to say the least. And here’s hoping that Ms. Wagner prevails should there be further appeals. Universities need to hold their faculty accountable to the very principles of inclusion they mouth when allegations of bias are lodged against those bastions of discrimination and favoritism so historically hated by the left.
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Lisa Wagner’s Lawsuit Against University of Iowa Law School
Newt Gingrich got his first mention in the press when he was 11 years old. It was in the Aug. 15, 1954 issue of the Syracuse Post Standard. “An 11-year-old is fighting city hall here in an attempt to establish a zoo in the city’s Wildwood Park,” the article read . Fast forward more than a half a century later and Gingrich is still in politics and it’s fitting that his presidential campaign created the site “Pets With Newt.” The web page is nothing more than photos of animals whose owners support Gingrich. Each photo has a caption with the pet’s name followed by “I’m with Newt !” There are also photos of Gingrich with different animals. Here he is with a polar bear . And While he doesn’t actually own a pet, he told ABC News in late December that he’d like to get a dog if he makes it to the White House.
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Have you seen ‘Pets With Newt’?
A load of old cobblers in the article below. Difficult to know where to start but I was amused to read in the journal abstract (also below) that they got their results by using “a refined version of the modified Mediterranean diet index”. First you modify your index then you refine it to
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How the Mediterranean diet can add 3 years to your life… even if you don’t start until you’re 70 (?)
