Month: April 2024

A man with a history of sexually predatory behavior has been sentenced for voyeurism after it was discovered he had been using the “gender-neutral” changing room of a local recreation center to watch women undress.

Mark Istephan, 52, has been sentenced to 18 months in jail after he attempted to watch a woman shower at a community pool on Vancouver Island. Istephan was previously convicted for the attempted kidnapping of a 13-year-old girl.

During court proceedings, Western Communities provincial court Judge Ted Gouge heard that the incident occurred on the morning of May 4, 2023, at the Sooke and Electoral Area Parks and Recreation Commission (SEAPARC). The SEAPARC is a designated “LGBTQI+ Safe Space,” and highlights that it prioritizes inclusivity and “does not tolerate violence, bullying, or hate speech towards the LGBTQI+ community”

The victim, identified only as Z.R. in court documents, had been swimming at the community centre and returned to the gender-neutral change room before showering in a private cubicle. As she was getting dressed, she saw the shadow of a man in the next cubicle who appeared to be trying to watch her through the gap between the bottom of the cubicle divider and the floor.

Z.R. ran to the reception desk and informed staff, who promptly called police and Istephan was arrested. In his decision, Judge Gouge noted that Z.R. was left traumatized by the experience, and continues to suffer anxiety as a result, specifically when using public recreation facilities.

During the hearing, Istephan refused to participate in a psychological assessment, something the judge called “unique.” Istephan claimed he did not have any mental health concerns, and declined a pre-sentence interview with a forensic psychologist.

The court heard that in 2001, Istephan attempted to force a 13-year-old girl at a bus stop into his car. He was ultimately convicted of attempted kidnapping and received a conditional sentence of 18 months, which he served in the community.

In 2007, Istephan was convicted of public indecency when he was arrested for masturbating on a lakeside wharf in Victoria, resulting in a 60-day jail sentence and three years of probation.

According to a Port Moody Police release from 2018, Istephan briefly went missing after being discharged from Eagle Ridge Hospital. At the time, he was described as being a male of Middle Eastern descent who was approximately 6 feet tall.

Since his initial conviction for attempted kidnapping in 2001, Istephen has been further convicted of breach of probation for failing to complete a sex offender counseling program in 2009, and another breach of probation in 2014 for being within 200 meters of a school.

The incident in Sooke further accentuates the concerns surrounding the safety of “gender-neutral” restrooms that have emerged over the past year.

As previously reported by Reduxx, the city of Cambridge, Ontario, recently sparked outrage after announcing that plans for a new recreation center would completely eliminate traditional male-female changing rooms. Instead, a glass-walled “universal gender-neutral common area” would be established where males and females would share a common space and cubicles.

A city in Ontario, Canada is set to build a new recreation center featuring a glass-walled "universal gender neutral common area" instead of male-female changing rooms.

One woman who expressed concerns about the plan was thrown out of a city council meeting last week. pic.twitter.com/mEcgoHjQoo

— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) March 4, 2024

During a meeting on April 29, the Mayor of Cambridge had a woman removed from a city council meeting for expressing her worries about the safety of the proposal.

In the United Kingdom, just under 90% of complaints regarding changing room sexual assaults, voyeurism and harassment that occurred between 2017 and 2018 were found to have taken place in gender-neutral or unisex facilities.

https://reduxx.info/canada-sex-offender-convicted-after-using-gender-neutral-changing-room-to-watch-women-undress

Exclusive data from a joint study into those occupying social housing in France has revealed that sub-Saharan African migrants are benefiting from taxpayer-subsidized living more than any other migrant background or French national to a hugely disproportionate degree.

The report conducted by the Immigration and Demography Observatory in collaboration with the Foundation for Political Innovation (Fondapol) think tank found that 57 percent of those originating from the African region are living in social housing across France.

Even more concerning is the fact that 63 percent of descendants of these immigrants also occupy social housing, suggesting a generational trend of sub-Saharan migrant communities continuing to live off the state.

The study contrasts this figure with other migration backgrounds including those from China, of whom just 8 percent enjoy subsidized living arrangements. Similarly, just 14 percent of Southeast Asian migrants and 14 percent of those arriving from other EU countries live in social housing.

The percentage of French citizens living in social housing is 11 percent, the report adds.

A high degree of African migrants in general benefit from HLM (low-income housing) across France, with those arriving from the Maghreb region also disproportionately represented in the statistics. A total of 49 percent of Algerians and 44 percent of Moroccans and Tunisians also enjoy lower costs of living, courtesy of the state.

The large concentration of migrant populations in social housing neighborhoods “has generated recurring difficulties which result in particular in phenomena of great violence and the establishment of the criminal economy,” noted Michel Aubouin of Fondapol.

He added that those living in social housing form their own communities that are “isolated from the rest of the urban fabric.”

The report notes that 35 percent of all immigrants living in France benefit from HLM, adding that “this over-representation of immigrant families reinforces the idea that the French have a habitat intended primarily for foreigners.”

The HLM scheme is widespread across France after being set up in the 1950s to help low-income families and was designed to be a temporary measure to help them get back on their feet.

A quarter of the 21 million social housing units across the European Union are located in France, with French taxpayers paying €34 billion every year for HLM. However, Aubouin believes the model has proven to be profoundly ineffective “in that the most modest do not have access to it,” unless, it would seem, they are not born in France.

The report notes that turnover rates in social housing units are now “very low,” and it is common for generations of immigrants to remain in residences in the long term, effectively making them the “quasi-owners” of the properties and instilling a welfare culture while creating parallel communities.

The report makes several recommendations designed to refocus social housing efforts in France on “welcoming precarious families” while also facilitating “better integration of non-Europeans.”

One suggestion is a moratorium on new social housing initiatives while a full review is conducted by government agencies in order to “allow in-depth reflection without waiting for the financial situation to require it.”

It also calls for a social housing applicant’s duration within France to be added as a factor for prioritizing those granted social housing so that “families of French origin are no longer discriminated against,” as well as introducing a “limited-term lease” to reaffirm the temporary nature of social housing and redefine it as a step towards accession to property.

https://www.rmx.news/france/frances-social-housing-crisis-exposed-57-of-sub-saharans-living-in-subsidized-housing-french-families-discriminated-against

On today’s Deprogrammed, hosts Harrison Pitt of the European Conservative magazine & freelance journalist Evan Riggs are joined by writer and columnist Ben Sixsmith, Online Editor and podcast critic for The Critic.

by Giulio Meotti

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland are accused of “white supremacy”. The two children’s classics are being treated ike Hitler’s Mein Kampf never was.

York St John University, England, has added a moral censure to the two books and Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days. “Colonialist narratives,” say the academics. The vocabulary and illustrations are “racist,” “upsetting and offensive.” Peter Pan is lethal with references to “savages”. In Verne, Phileas Fogg travels across continents divided by imperial powers. Another university censored Peter Pan for its “gender stereotypes.”

In a long essay in Quillette magazine it is explained that the fans of Islamic fundamentalists in our universities are not a minority nor an accident, but the heart of a monstrous barbarism that we cultivate within us.

And while we Westerners were busy censoring children’s books as “racist” and shutting universities for Islamic holidays like in Italy, Saudi Arabia assumed the presidency of the UN Commission on Women’s Rights. The Saudis were elected unanimously.

Strange? Not after seeing Iran assume the presidency of the UN Disarmament Forum.

Schadenfreude!

But for the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, there is a “worldwide epidemic of Islamophobia” and the UN has thus adopted a resolution sponsored by Pakistan at the General Assembly on “measures to combat Islamophobia”. Forget the massacres of Jews and Christians. A “special envoy to fight Islamophobia” is now arriving at the UN.

The same United Nations that asked that the word “mankind” must be replaced with “humanity”. Man must disappear.

The same United Nations that asked to go beyond the “stereotypes of men and women” to “create a more egalitarian world”.

That is the same United Nations for which Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh worked as a teacher at UNRWA.

And again at the UN, Guterres ordered Western countries to pay reparations to the descendants of slaves. Even to the Christian slaves raided by the caliphs who ended up on the Arab and African markets? In Nigeria, Christian girls are sold for 2,000 naira, the Nigerian currency (equivalent to 10 euros). The NGO Free the Slaves estimates a profit of 1.6 billion dollars (an amount greater than the GDP of eight African countries) resulting from African slavery every year.

Algerian scholar Marc Chabel reveals that today “more than two million people in the Islamic world are in slavery.”

But the West that feeds on Third Worldism, Hamassism and “Black Lives Matter” does not care about this slavery. An estimated 250,000 people live under slavery in Mali. It is estimated that in Mauritania 20 percent of the population is held as slaves. Domestic workers in Saudi Arabia are sold online in a slave market.

Meanwhile Ali Mahmud, photojournalist for the Associated Press (AP), won the Photo of the Year award. The winning photo captured the half-naked corpse of Israeli-German influencer Shani Louk transported by Hamas terrorists on October 7.

Clear?

They gang-raped Shani and then beheaded her. She had taken part in the “Peace Festival” in Re’im. But she died not as a pacifist, but as a “Jewish infidel”, together with 365 other Israeli peers. Shani will be identified by part of her skull: the rest of her body was not together with it.

For two months after October 7, representatives of the United Nations Agency for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women refused to meet with Israeli women.

In mid-November, UN Women released a short statement criticizing the “numerous reports of gender-based atrocities and sexual violence” perpetrated by Hamas.

On November 20, Miriam Schler, director of the Tel Aviv crisis center, accused international women’s rights groups of “going out of their way to justify atrocities and rationalize rape.”

The UK’s Sisters Uncut say allegations of sexual assault on October 7 are “Islamophobic.”

The National Women’s Studies Association of the United States, while condemning gender violence in war, does not mention October 7.

The United Nations internationally observes the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Not a word about Hamas.

On March 4, five months after October 7, the United Nations releases a report on “clear and convincing evidence of sexual violence, rape, sexualized torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” employed by Hamas.

“We are Allah, you are Satan,” the Taliban leader said when announcing the return to stoning women.

False. We Westerners care so much about the dignity of women that Saudi Arabia, the Taliban’s ATM, will participate in Miss Universe, the Taliban are reopening the embassies of Afghanistan and Hamas is a paladin of rights at UN.

World upside down.

The new Alice is Agam Goldstein-Almog, a 17-year-old Israeli girl who was in the hands of Hamas for two months, who gave her a name taken from the Koran, “Salsabil”, forced her to wear a full veil and a long dress, to always look at the ground and to recite Islamic prayers.

Welcome to the Wokeland of civilization deceivers, sharia scoundrels and the Mad Hatter West.

Alice and Hamas in Wokeland | Israel National News – Arutz Sheva

A Syrian migrant attacked and seriously injured a four-year-old girl in a supermarket (photo) in Baden-Württemberg on Wednesday. “According to what we know so far, the man suddenly approached the four-year-old girl and injured her with a knife,” the police said. The attack took place in Wangen in the district of Ravensburg.

A witness was able to disarm the attacker, who has a Dutch passport, and informed the security forces. “The girl was in for surgery immediately and is now in a stable condition,” said the police. According to initial findings by investigators, there was no previous relationship between the child, who was travelling with her mother, and the migrant.

The attacker is to be brought before a magistrate in the course of Thursday. When asked by the newspaper JUNGE FREIHEIT, a police spokeswoman was unable to say whether the man was already known to the police in Germany.

Mayor Michael Lang was shocked. “The fact that a child is suddenly attacked is something that shocks us all and makes us incredibly concerned and upset.” The politician, who is not a party member, said he knew the victim’s family. Around 25,000 people live in Wangen.

Syrischer Migrant sticht vierjähriges Mädchen in Supermarkt nieder (jungefreiheit.de)

A 13-year-old French schoolgirl was so severely beaten up by a gang of other teens she had to be placed in an induced coma.

Two days after the attack, on April 4 her mother said there was a religious motive behind the vicious assault and that her daughter Samara was targeted because she dressed in a “European style”.

The 13-year-old was set upon in front of her school on April 2 in Montpellier. The gang was said to have numbered 20 to 25 individuals.

Samara had to be put in an induced coma as a result of the brutal assault, from which she awoke a day later. Her mother Hassiba said her daughter does not remember the beating.

“She asks me to tell her what happened. She seems like an empty shell,” said Hassiba.

“She is still in intensive care at the hospital in Montpellier. I don’t know more about the cerebral haemorrhage she has, I’m waiting for the doctors.

“She was a little worried, anxious. She was scared. She didn’t know what had happened, where she was – she was confused.”

Samara’s mother told a local newspaper that 20 to 25 teenagers, all minors it seemed, were waiting for her daughter before rushing her, beating her, throwing her to the ground and violently kicking her.

Hassiba added that her daughter was then rescued by middle-school students and parents.

The gang seemed to have been led by three youngsters. The Montpellier prosecutor’s office took those three into custody on April 3 on charges of attempted murder of a minor under the age of 15.

One of the three, the alleged ringleader was a 14-year-old girl from the same school as Samara who has allegedly admitted attacking her.

The two others are aged 14 and 15, said Fabrice Bélargent, the Montpellier court prosecutor. One of the minors arrested was apparently known to the justice services.

Talking on the radio station Europe 1, Hassiba said the 14-year-old alleged ringleader was one of her daughter’s classmates who “had been making her miserable for a year and a half, two years”.

She said the student who bullied Samara was expelled from the school for two days in June last year after using social media to call for Samara to be raped, which Hassiba reported to the school authorities.

“It was this student who called for a gathering in front of the school, with the group of young boys waiting for my daughter. And from there, it was an onslaught of blows. They destroyed her,” the victim’s mother claimed.

Hassiba said the bully wears a veil, while her daughter likes to “wear a little make-up”.

“She [the attacker] called her a ‘kouffar’, which means infidel or disbeliever in Arabic. My daughter dresses in a European way.

“All day long, it was insults, she was called a ‘kahba’, which means slut in Arabic. It was no longer physically and psychologically bearable,” Hassiba told the station.

On TV network CNews, she added that the bully was constantly spitting on her daughter.

“She [Samara] even stopped talking to me because she was exhausted from recounting every week, ‘Mom, this happened, etc’. And then, at the middle-school level, sometimes we believe her, sometimes we don’t.

“But when I see the extent of this student’s actions, I’m convinced she premeditated my daughter’s murder,” Hassiba alleged.

She added she and her daughter are part of the same community as the girl. “I’m a Muslim, my daughter is a Muslim and we don’t understand this version of religion that these people have,” she said.

Bélargent stressed that “investigations are continuing in order to identify the suspects, to determine the motive and the exact course of events”.

Le Figaro claimed the school had a reputation for violence.

In a reaction to the attack on Samara, Collective Némésis, a nationalist feminist organisation, claimed that, contrary to what is often stated, it is not “Islamophobia” that is putting women in danger, but “Francophobia”.

François-Xavier Bellamy, who leads the European Parliament list for Les Républicains in the June elections, said: “Serious violence against pupils, teachers and headteachers occurs on a daily basis in schools.

“Our education system is going through an existential crisis but the denial [of such] has not stopped.”

https://brusselssignal.eu/2024/04/french-13-year-old-girl-savagely-attacked-by-teen-gang-for-being-a-disbeliever

Georg August University in Göttingen has stood for enlightenment, freedom of science and democratic values for almost 300 years. Now a Muslim university group with links to the Islamist Al-Quds movement has organised an Islamic group prayer at the famous university – with participants shouting “Allahu Akbar” at the top of their voices. It is one of the largest and most important traditions in the Islamic faith: the fasting month of Ramadan, which lasts 30 days this year. During this time, Muslims abstain from food and liquids during the day and break their fast together after sunset. This breaking of the fast, called “Iftar”, is usually practised in private circles or in mosques.

This year, however, the Muslim University Group Göttingen (MHG) organised a Ramadan celebration in the foyer of the Georg-August University. There were lectures and speeches by Muslim preachers, a buffet and a gender-segregated prayer – in the middle of the state-subsidised university.

According to the scientific service of the German Bundestag, colleges and universities are a religiously and ideologically neutral space and must “ensure that their students do not have a confession imposed on them and always have the opportunity to withdraw spatially or ideologically from the beliefs practised by others.” The central lecture theatre building at the University of Göttingen is a public space that connects various lecture theatres and must be visited by students of different disciplines and faiths in order to get to their lectures or seminars.

The public group prayer, which the Muslim University Group had called for in advance on various social media platforms, including Instagram, began with the call to prayer by a muezzin who used the exclamation “Allahu Akbar”. More than 80 Muslims then gathered on prayer mats provided by the Muslim Students’ Union (MHG) in the university building and performed the Islamic prayer. There were also numerous calls of “Allahu Akbar” from the prayer leader present.

Particularly controversial: while the University of Göttingen has its own Equal Opportunities Officer, has set up its own portal for “Gender and Diversity in Teaching and Studies” and repeatedly emphasises the importance of gender equality in public, there was a clear gender divide at the prayer of the Muslim University Group Göttingen: men and women prayed at a great distance from each other, with the women sitting far behind the men. The Muslim University Group is particularly active on Facebook and Instagram and advertises to young students with joint “Brothers’ Evenings”, “Al-Quds Empowerment” workshops or appearances by Muslim preachers.
“Don’t miss this evening”: the group advertises its “Brothers Evening” to young students on Instagram.

The problem is that not all of the group’s events are independent. For example, the self-proclaimed motivational speaker and Muslim preacher Ustad Mouhsine Chtaiti gave a lecture for the university group at the beginning of the year entitled “To what extent can religious beliefs serve as a guide for realising good intentions?”

In the past, the preacher has already given lectures for the Islamic organisation DITIB, which has attracted negative media attention on several occasions due to its links to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and radical Islamist groups.

The MHG shared this picture of a lecture by Islamic preacher Ustad Mouhsine Chtaiti on the premises of the University of Göttingen on Instagram.
The speaker Abdul Aleem from the Muslim Instagram blog “Land of the Prophets” has also given a lecture for the MHG. Aleem regularly shares pictures and videos of anti-Israeli events on his blog and maintains close links to the Islamic community Milli Görüs e.V. (IGMG). This is categorised as an Islamist movement by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which is said to have links to other radical Islamist and Salafist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood or the Turkish right-wing extremist Ülkücü movement.
Abdul Aleem gave a lecture on “Al-Quds” empowerment for the controversial IGMG organisation. He gave the same lecture last year for the Muslim University Community in Göttingen.

Financed by Döner King?

According to information from NIUS, the organisation is primarily financed by donations. For example, the dessert at the breaking of the fast at the university is said to have been financed by the Göttingen kebab shop Döner King. It is unclear whether the group receives money from Islamic organisations such as DITIB or the IGMG.

During the event, adverts for the Göttingen kebab shop Döner King were displayed in the university building.

Attempts at religious proselytising in the context of the university are classified by the Federal Government’s scientific service as an encroachment on fundamental rights. The programmes offered by the Muslim University Community are primarily aimed at young students and are partly held on university premises. The President of Göttingen University, Metin Tolan, has so far refused to comment on the incident when asked by NIUS.

Nach Männern und Frauen getrennt: Islamisches Gruppengebet in der Uni Göttingen | NIUS.de

Scotland recently took a giant step towards becoming one of the most restrictive countries in Europe. The adjective ‘Orwellian’ trips too easily off of the lips these days, but with severe and significant restrictions to free speech being introduced in the contents of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021, which came into force on 1 April 2024, it is hard to imagine a more apt description.

According to the Scottish government’s own website, the Act “creates new stirring up of hatred offences for protected characteristics including age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, and transgender identity.” At face value, this seems reasonable. It is not nice to express hateful feelings towards people on the basis of their characteristics, immutable or adopted, and it cannot be pleasant to be at the receiving end of hateful abuse. But to elevate verbal abuse and hurt feelings to the status of a crime is to pave the way towards a police state or, as is the case of Scotland, to take another step towards a police state. Scotland already has a unitary police force, Police Scotland, formed in 2013.

The formation of Police Scotland abolished the regional police authorities in Scotland and put policing across the whole country under the control of the Scottish Police Authority, a body of the government. Police Scotland has enthusiastically taken to its role in policing hate crime. They have developed a training package which contains the apparently contradictory statement that the package includes “examples of a range of scenarios where offences might take place, but this does not mean officers have been told to target these situations or locations.” If so, then why include those “situations or locations”?

The precise nature of the “situations or locations” is not in the public domain. However, leaked documents suggest that police training goes beyond the already wide-ranging bounds of the Act to include public performances such as plays and comedy acts where the content could be deemed offensive. The Act already covers not only the generation of speech, writing, or performance considered hateful, but also the sharing of it by any means, including social media and private emails. In fact, as explained recently in The Spectator, the Act “covers anything said anywhere—even in your own home. Children will in theory be able to report their parents. Scots can inform on each other anonymously, through an expanded network of ‘third-party reporting centres’.” Mao’s Cultural Revolution meets 1984.

Police Scotland have signalled how seriously they will be taking hate crimes, saying “Police Scotland treats all hate crimes seriously. We want you to report it.” But so vague is the notion of hate crime that they urge the public, “If something happens and you are not sure if it is a crime, please remember, if it feels wrong, report it and let us help.” Their proclamation that they will investigate every complaint must be reassuring to the perpetually offended, but is probably less so to the victims of vandalism or theft, crimes which, under their investigation policy, will no longer be investigated where there are “no witnesses or evidence.” It is estimated that there is a burglary every two hours in Scotland. The policy is intended to free up police time so that they may tackle more serious crimes, but this seems unlikely if they are going to be constantly engaged in following up on reports of ‘hate crimes,’ many of which will be subjective and without witnesses.

Police Scotland have made it clear whom they will be targeting in their campaign, which seems itself akin to a campaign of hate. According to the ‘Hate Monster’—a cartoon character which drew so much ridicule from the people of Scotland that it was downplayed within days of first appearing but which is being used to promote their hate crime action—they will be targeting young, white, working-class males. In their own words: “We know that young men aged 18-30 are most likely to commit hate crime, particularly those from socially excluded communities who are heavily influenced by their peers. They may have deep-rooted feelings of being socially and economically disadvantaged, combined with ideas about white-male entitlement.” Thus, Police Scotland, presumably at the behest of the Scottish government, have shown their hand early. They have already decided who is guilty of a hate crime that, at the time the campaign launched, did not exist.

Developments in Scotland should be viewed against the backdrop of the economic and social disaster that has become a hallmark. Scotland depends on financial aid from England, particularly the southeast of England, for its survival. The block grant delivered to Scotland under the Barnett formula currently amounts to £41 billion a year for 2022-2025, outweighing most other sources of income to the Scottish government such as oil, whisky, tourism, and income tax. Simultaneously, Scotland has a burgeoning drug problem and its drug-related deaths are the highest in Europe. Tragically, while drug deaths amongst men are higher than amongst women, the drug death rate among women is growing, indicating an increasing use of illegal drugs by women. Concomitant with this increasing use of drugs amongst women is the birth of more drug-dependent babies, with over 1,300 born since 2017. 

Meanwhile, the Scottish government pursues policies which it can ill afford, such as welcoming refugees and asylum seekers (at least the ones who can stand the climate), and adopts policies which defy logic, such as insisting that tampons are available under their Period Products Act—at public expense—in all male (as well as female) toilets in government buildings. In another move that was quickly reversed, the ruling SNP party appointed a man to the position of “period dignity officer.” Scotland has been at the forefront of gender recognition rights and aimed to be the first part of the United Kingdom to permit self-identification followed by rapid legal recognition of that status under its proposed Gender Recognition (Scotland) Bill. Unfortunately for the Scottish government and the SNP, they discovered that they were still part of the United Kingdom when, under section 35 of the Scotland Act 1998, the Secretary of State for Scotland prevented the Act from receiving Royal Assent.

Those on the political Left, where the SNP firmly sit, are not renowned for their sense of humour, and they clearly lack a sense of irony. But it is hard not to contrast the emphasis within the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 that blasphemy laws are no longer on the statute book in Scotland while, in the meantime, they create a new law which establishes what amounts to a new set of blasphemies. While religion is included as a protected characteristic, it is strongly suspected that this will favour Islam—the religion of Scotland’s current First Minister Humza Yousaf—while ignoring hate against Christians. The Scottish Catholic Bishops, not prone to hysteria or exaggeration, already fear that, under the 2021 Act, owning a bible or Christian catechism could become illegal, since these texts contain forthright views on the practice of homosexuality. I am certain that Muslims will have little to fear for having the Quran in their homes, containing as it does all manner of advice on how to treat both women and those of other faiths.

However, against the bleak landscape that is Scottish politics, all may not be lost in Walter Scott’s land of ‘brown heath and shaggy wood.’ Jim Telfer, a legend of Scottish rugby with 22 caps for Scotland, is clearly not in accord with recent developments. He has called for that dreariest of dirges, the ‘national anthem’ of Scotland, Flower of Scotland, to be banned due to its anti-English content. This would be a great service to sport and politics—and to music.

https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/scotland-no-country-for-young-men

 A decorated swimmer who won a silver medal at the 1980 Moscow Olympics is the latest athlete to criticize men competing in women’s sports.

“It’s not rocket science it’s not hard,” British swimmer Sharron Davies wrote on X today. On March 31, she wrote that it’s “simply cheating” for male athletes to compete in female races.

51% of humans are biological females, they simply deserve their own category of sport, free from any person, who is not female. It’s not rocket science it’s not hard. Let’s be kind to that 51% because for the whole of the modern Olympic era they have not had anywhere near parity

— Sharron Davies MBE (@sharrond62) April 3, 2024

Spot the male athlete in the women’s race! It’s simply Cheating https://t.co/e5AhnCuRCF

— Sharron Davies MBE (@sharrond62) March 31, 2024

Last year, Davies released a book, Unfair Play: The Battle for Women’s Sport, which argues that allowing men who “identify” as women to compete as females “is merely the latest stage in a decades-long history of sexism on the part of sport’s higher-ups.”

“Sharron Davies is no stranger to battling the routine sexism the sporting world,” the book’s blurb explains. “She missed out on Olympic Gold because of blatant doping among East German athletes in the 1980s, and has never received justice. Now, biological males are being allowed to compete directly against women under the guise of trans ‘self-ID’, a development that could destroy the integrity of female sport.”

Davies has reposted a number of stories about “trans” athletes dominating female sports. She is also critical of Scotland’s new “hate crime” law, which critics such as Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling have warned will effectively criminalize free speech as related to transgenderism.

The rise of male athletes being allowed to compete in women’s sports has allowed men to steal victories from at least 635 female athletes, according to the website shewon.org, which tracks such incidents. It has also led to injuries of female athletes and forced them to undress in locker rooms alongside males.

“My teammates and I were forced to undress in the presence of Lia (sic), a six-feet, four-inch-tall biological man fully intact with male genitalia, 18 times per week. Some girls opted to change in bathroom stalls and others used the family bathroom to avoid this,” University of Pennsylvania swimmer Paula Scanlan told the U.S. House Judiciary Committee last year.

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/former-olympic-swimmer-says-its-not-rocket-science-that-men-dont-belong-in-womens-sports/?utm_source=featured-news&utm_campaign=canada

For many years now, it has been clear that America has been in a steep moral and spiritual decline, despite some genuine revival movements along with some holy pushback against the growing cultural insanity. But two recent examples confirm that we are now in moral freefall.

The first is Pres. Biden’s proclamation that March 31, which this year falls on Resurrection (Easter) Sunday, is now “Transgender Day of Visibility.”

This is not a poorly timed announcement. It is not even a slap in the face. It is a kick below the belt accompanied by a laugh and a smile. It is as insulting as it is perverse, no matter how much we care for our trans-identified friends and colleagues and want them to experience wholeness and freedom in the Lord.

The second example is a post by Baptist leader William Wolfe, contrasting this presidential announcement, which was made on Good Friday, with Good Friday, 1956:

“Good Friday, 1956: Three crosses on the NYC Skyline

“Good Friday, 2024: The White House celebrates ‘Transgender Day of Visibility’

“America didn’t become ‘less religious.’

“We just traded Christianity and the cross for the religion of LGBTQIA+ and the rainbow flag.”

This prompted David Limbaugh to repost Wolfe’s post with the comment, “Is it fair to say that we are now a full-blown pagan society?”

Yes, it is quite fair – at least for those celebrating the Biden proclamation and for the symbolic significance of this act, emanating from the White House itself.

Of course, this twisted trend (in the name of compassion and, at times, “Christian” love) is nothing new. That’s why, in February 2020 I wrote an article titled, “As We Mindlessly Careen Our Way Down the Slippery Slope.”

It began with these words: “Is anyone surprised that HGTV recently featured its first “throuple,” in this case, a man and two women? But what else should we expect? This is the inevitable direction of our society’s slippery slide down. The avalanche goes downward, not upward.”

In that regard, we have been in moral freefall for many years, with Christian philosophers like Francis Schaeffer calling America a “post-Christian nation” over 50 years ago.

As noted by Elliot Clark in December 2020, “Yes, back in 1970, Schaeffer says the United States—not just continental Europe—was already post-Christian. He writes about the reality of historic Christianity becoming the minority in the West, stripped of cultural power and influence.” (Schaeffer also had this prescient warning: “in this situation, Schaeffer identifies a great danger for evangelicals: taking sides with political elites in order to retain comfort, affluence, and personal peace. In the face of societal chaos and upheaval, Schaeffer doesn’t want Christians to compromise for the sake of short-lived comfort.”)

So, to repeat, we have been in spiritual and moral and cultural decline for decades, despite, as I noted above, some positive developments in the midst of the decay.

And it is true that, back in 1944, 9 years before the first edition of Playboy was published, Rev. Peter Marshall declared, “Surely the time has come, because the hour is late, when we must decide. And the choice before us is plain — Yahweh or Baal. Christ or chaos. Conviction or compromise. Discipline or disintegration.”

Similarly, in 1959, Prof. Robert Coleman proclaimed, “In a day when unprecedented numbers of people have a form of religion while at the same time the church seems unable to stem the rising tide of degeneracy that threatens the land, the question must be raised: Why this paradox? Should not the church have influence for righteousness in proportion to her numbers? However one may seek to answer this question, it is obvious that what we need is not more religion, but more power. In short, we need real revival!”

I’m confident that we can go all the way back to the American colonies and find similar, thunderous warnings, speaking of our spiritual apostasy and moral rot. After all, the first Great Awakening, which presupposed a great falling way, took place in the 1730s and 1740s, “at a time when the idea of secular rationalism was being emphasized, and passion for religion had grown stale.”

There’s even a danger of becoming so accustomed to our nation’s precipitous condition that we just yawn at the latest example of our depravity.

Drag queens reading to toddlers with the enthusiastic support of the American Library Association? No big deal.

Thirteen-year-old girls having their healthy breasts removed and 11-year-old boys getting chemically castrated because of short-lived struggles with their gender identity? Nothing to fuss about.

Radical feminists launching a “Shout Your Abortion” movement? No big deal.

Christians being canceled because they dare to hold to their biblically-based values in public? Let’s not get too worked up.

How deadly complacency can be!

That’s why we need to feel the full force of the outrage of the moment, as the President of the United States, himself a professing Catholic, uses his bully platform to mock the followers of Jesus worldwide. First, he announced “Transgender Day of Visibility” on Good Friday. Then, he timed things so that it would be celebrated this year on Good Friday.

Wake up, America! It really is revival or we die – and that revival, that awakening, that coming to life again, that returning to the Lord with all our hearts and souls, repenting of our own sins – must begin with each of us.

To pray it again, “Lord, let the awakening start with me!”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/america-in-moral-freefall