Progressives claim that men are fundamentally precluded from appropriately addressing women’s issues.

Then why do Progressives who know nothing about guns get a say about guns at all?

http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/03/world/cambodia-child-sex-trafficking/index.html

“Mothers sell daughters”–the title is sensationalist. It does not weave a fictitious narrative, but rather, it misses the point. This paints human trafficking as parents profiting from selling their children, as though their children’s lives are worth so little in comparison to their virginity on the market. This particular girl’s mother received $1000 for selling her daughter, and what did she do with it?

Her mother used the money to pay down a debt and for food for the fish they raise under their floating house — their primary income source.

Paid down a debt. Bought fish food. Such senseless things.

But they miss the point: It is not simply “a debt.” As much as children are being sold into sexual slavery, so are their parents themselves slave in debt bondage. A loan of a hundred dollars or less incurs thousands upon thousands of dollars in interest, taking decades to be paid off–and if they aren’t paid off in one lifetime, their children inherit the debt, and by that time, the interests are virtually impossible to pay off, and generations are sentenced to bondage.

As repugnant as selling their children is, the parents should not be criminalized. What is criminal is that there are economies where the only source of income is sex trafficking, where individuals have no opportunities to earn incomes to make lives for themselves. Instead, they are forced to sell themselves and their children in every miserable form of human bondage there is.

The answer isn’t shaming their parents. The answer isn’t to further criminalize what is already criminal. It requires more: Removing the yoke of bondage, fostered by corrupt state and police, and letting people work for themselves, to make better lives for themselves.

The shame belongs to “journalists” focusing on the sensational–parents selling children–and overlooking the real problem, a dead economy that entraps generations in debt. Society does not willing sell their children to be raped, they only do so to survive.

Memories Pizza never said they would discriminate against customers in their restaurant, the owner simply said she wouldn’t cater a hypothetical gay wedding.

Chik-Fil-A never said they would discriminate against customers or employees in their restaurants, the executive simply said he believes in in traditional marriage.

Yet the outrage over such comments–even criticizing those who gave to the GoFundMe page for not giving their money instead to food banks–is astonishing. The irony is that their critics basked in the possibility of shutting down the livelihood of a married couple in a town smaller than some high schools. But suddenly they are the most vocal advocates of the poor.

For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you.

Whether 70 percent of black voters actually voted for Proposition 8 is irrelevant here, since people have come to accept the 70-percent figure as fact.

After Proposition 8 passed, did gay rights activists call for lynchings? Did they denounce blacks as “ignorant”?

Surely they must have, given the death threats sent to a Christian pizzeria owner in a small Midwestern town saying she wouldn’t cater a gay wedding (but would still serve every customer in her restaurant, gay or straight). Since banning gay marriage is more exponentially more significant than declining to cater a gay wedding, the proportional response should have been repealing the Fifteenth Amendment.

On a related note: Do pizzerias actually cater weddings, gay or straight?

If you’re gay and getting married, would you want to bring your business to a florist, baker, or event planner who’s against same-sex marriage?

If I were going to have an interracial marriage, I wouldn’t hire a photographer who was opposed to “miscegenation.” The same goes to doctors, if I were to have a biracial child. Why would I want to give my money to someone who’s opposed to the way I live? And if state laws prohibited anyone from refusing service, could I expect the photographer to take good pictures? Or the doctor to take good care for my child? Sure, if they were somehow negligent, I could take them to court and sue for some extraordinary punitive damages. But no amount of money would make up for the bad wedding pictures, I can’t repeat the wedding; or the harm suffered by my child.

If anything, I’d want to know who was opposed to my way of life, so I could keep them out of my life. As silly as these “religious liberty” laws are, the opposition to them is just as bad.

A society of experts

After Sandy Hook, “Adam Lanza’s mother” became an expert on mental illness and violence. After Robin Williams’ suicide, everyone became an expert on suicide and depression. And after the Germanwings crash, again, we are experts on suicide and depression.

Except Adam Lanza’s Asperger’s isn’t a mental illness. And Williams’ suicide likely had more to do with his Parkinson than depression generally. So rather than reveling in our omniscience, we should mourn the Germanwings crash as a tragedy beyond our comprehension.

Religious liberty

Outside of the wedding industry, I’ve never understood how refusing service to queers (and I use the term academically, rather than pejoratively) comports with religious liberty. Admittedly, my perspective is limited to Christianity–of course, I must necessarily believe that the faith I subscribe to is superior all others (why else would I subscribe to it?), but my ignorance of other faiths also keeps me from saying anything meaningful from any other perspective.

No form of exclusion is defensible under a literal interpretation of the Gospels (and by literal, I mean the original intent of the authors, not modern interpretations of English translations that miss the nuances of the original Greek and Aramaic texts). Were there state laws prohibiting service to queers, religious liberty would require civil disobedience. But with state laws permitting refusing service to queers, religious liberty should simply decline that permission.

In the wedding industry, I can understand refusing service to same-sex couples, if you don’t believe in same-sex marriage. But I highly doubt that there are florist monopolists. Take your business elsewhere, and let the loss of your business–and I’d imagine, the business of other sympathetic couples, especially in age of social media–be the cost of exercising their peculiar form of religious liberty.

Righteousness

“Just because you’re offended, doesn’t mean you’re in the right.” Ricky Gervais was directing this at conservatives, but it more readily applies to progressives. Consider Planet Fitness’ banning a female member for complaining that a transgendered woman was using the women’s locker room. Or Elton John’s boycotting Dolce & Gabbana for the designers’ opposition to in vitro fertilization. Why is the woman in the wrong for being uncomfortable sharing a locker room with a person who is still biologically male? Having children born through IVF, Elton John’s offense to their opposition is understandable. But why does that put him in right? I mean, really–the audacity of Italian designers to have beliefs consistent with Roman Catholicism.

Atheists as scientists

I find it amusing that individuals with no formal training in research are so rabid in their championing “science” over faith. They have no better an understanding of Richard Dawkins’ reductionist “selfish gene” theory than they do of the supposed superstitions of Christianity. Even the “pastafarians,” their mockery of religion is really an affront to the very scientific method: Certainly, I cannot disprove the existence of the “flying spaghetti monster,” but why should I? Forget hypothesis-testing, the issue is theory-building. I was unaware that research was formulated on arbitrary theories. Thomas Kuhn is rolling his grave.