Woman, 74, first to be charged in Scotland under abortion buffer zone law
Topic: Abortion
Source: Sky News
The legislation came into force last September and aims to prevent anti-abortion protesters from gathering within 200 metres of the 30 clinics across the nation where terminations are carried out. Officers attended and a 74-year-old woman was arrested and charged in connection with an alleged breach of the exclusion zone in Hardgate Road. A force spokesperson said: "She will be reported to the procurator fiscal." This is the first arrest and charge in Scotland under the Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Scotland) Act 2024.

Two Free Speech/Gender Identity/Sexual Orientation Cert. Petitions
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: The Volokh Conspiracy
...that the Court Will Consider Friday. [1.] In L.M. v. Town of Middleborough (briefs at link, if you're interested), the question presented is: L.M. is a student whose public school promoted the viewpoint that sex and gender are limitless, based on personal identity, and have no biological foundation. The school invited students to voice their support for this view. But L.M. disagreed and responded by wearing a t-shirt to class that said "There are only two genders." After the school censored him, he wore a protest t-shirt that said "There are [censored] genders." Despite no past or present disruption, the school district prohibited both t-shirts.

NCAA's new trans-participation policy is 'as clear as mud,' Riley Gaines says
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: FOX News
The NCAA flipped a switch and appeared to alter its gender-participation policy to bar biological males from competing in women's sports in the wake of President Donald Trump's executive order. Two weeks after Trump's No Men in Women's Sports executive order, long-standing critics of the top collegiate athletic association in the U.S. have pointed out the new policy leaves a lot to be desired. Riley Gaines, Jennifer Sey, Kim Jones and others who have championed the protection of women's sports have pointed out the possible loopholes in the NCAA's policy. The major criticism is the policy fails to go far enough or establish clear barriers to protect women's athletes in the college ranks. The most common criticism has been that the policy allegedly allows trans athletes to bypass the restriction by changing the gender on their birth certificate.

Fed judge in TX officially strikes down Biden admini's Title IX expansion
Topic: Gender Discrimination
Source: Just the News
U.S. District Court in northern Texas granted summary judgment on Wednesday, stating the rule "undermines the purpose of Title IX, endangers students, and has '[n]o basis in reality.'" A federal court in Texas on Wednesday officially struck down the Biden administration Department of Education's Title IX expansions, which added protections for LGBTQ students related to gender identity and sexual orientation. The ruling comes after two judges last year granted a preliminary injunction that blocked the rule from taking effect. The rule intended to protect students from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and was expected to take effect last August.

Charting America's Single Mothers By Ethnicity
Topic: Children and Family
Source: Zero Hedge
There are 7.3 million single mothers in the U.S., as well as 1.9 million single fathers. Single parents often face the dual challenge of being both the primary breadwinners and caregivers for their families. This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Bruno Venditti, represents the percentage of mothers in the U.S. who are single, by race/ethnicity, in 2023.

Airline Under Fire For DEI Policies After Nearly-Tragic Crash Landing In Toronto
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Trending Politics
A regional airline operating the Delta Air Lines flight that flipped upside down upon landing on Monday is being criticized for aggressively promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion policies that critics allege may have contributed to the near-fatal incident. Air travel was brought to a standstill over Toronto on Monday after Delta Flight 4819 capsized while attempting to land at Pearson International Airport, where wind gusts were reported to be as high as 65 mph. Video of the harrowing incident shows flames bursting from the bottom of the jet before a wing breaks off, and the intact cabin rolls onto its roof.

The NHS’s cruel witch-hunt of a gender-critical nurse
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Spiked Online
Sandie Peggie could be sacked for refusing to get changed alongside a man. Nurse Sandie Peggie is facing a witch-hunt by her employer because, like the majority of the British public, she believes that magic words can’t change a person’s sex. In an extraordinary show of contempt for common sense and the taxpayer, the NHS Fife health board has summoned Peggie to a disciplinary hearing to make her answer charges of harassment. This is while an employment tribunal centred on the same allegations is still ongoing. The outcome of the NHS’s inquisition could lead to the nurse, who had an unblemished 30-year career, being fired.

Punishing pro-Palestine protests
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Al Jazeera
As pro-Palestine protests on US campuses grow smaller, advocates point to increasingly harsh disciplinary measures. It was December, and the end of the quarter was fast approaching at the University of Chicago. Mamayan Jabateh, a fourth-year student, was working on a final paper about the politics of the "carceral state", inside a dorm on campus, when a knock came at the door. Four Chicago police officers were standing on the other side. They presented Jabateh, who uses the pronoun "they", with a printed photograph. It showed them at a pro-Palestinian campus protest two months earlier, on October 11.

CU Boulder ends ‘underrepresented minority’ med school scholarship after being sued
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: The College Fix
The University of Colorado Boulder has revised a scholarship for “underrepresented” minorities following a federal lawsuit from Do No Harm. The medical reform group sued the public university for its med school scholarship focused on radiation oncology. The scholarship now says it is “open to all applicants.” “[T]he Underrepresented Minority Visiting Elective Scholarship was available only to students from groups that are historically underrepresented in medicine,’ excluding white and Asian American students,” according to Do No Harm’s news release.

Trump's IVF Order Is Praised—and Picked Apart
Topic: Women's Health
Source: Newser
A look at the executive order signed Tuesday... President Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order intended to expand access to and reduce costs of in vitro fertilization. As Trump put it, "I've been saying we are going to do what we have to do and I think the women and families, husbands, are very appreciative of" the executive order on IVF, which can be extremely expensive, can require multiple rounds, and doesn't always succeed. Axios puts the per-cycle cost at $12,000 to $25,000. Some, like GOP Sen. Katie Britt, hailed the move as a "promise kept"; others swung at that narrative. What you need to know:

The first openly gay Muslim imam is killed in South Africa
Topic: Gay/Lesbian Issues
Source: The Associated Press
...prompting claims of an assassination. Muhsin Hendricks was ambushed by two men in a pick-up truck while visiting the southern city of Gqeberha on Saturday. Police said the men involved in the killing had their faces covered. A security video of the shooting shows one of them jumping out of their vehicle, running up to the car Hendricks was in and firing a pistol multiple times through a side window. Police said Hendricks was with a driver, who survived.

Colleges celebrate Valentine’s with ‘ethical porn,’ abortion ‘party’ and ‘Genital Diversity Gallery’
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: The College Fix
Meanwhile, new government report shows widespread concerns about campus sex ed ‘misinformation’. It’s Valentine’s week, and there is no shortage of bizarre and morally troubling campus events about sex and relationships again this year. In many cases, university health centers and “reproductive rights” groups celebrate “sex week” at the same time. This year’s events include education about “healthy hookups” and an abortion “party.” Here are some of the lowlights:

How porn swallowed everything
Topic: Porn, Prostitution, and Sexual Freedom
Source: Unherd
The endgame of the sexual revolution is here. During the Super Bowl, some 127 million viewers witnessed an up-close parade of gleamy-creamy jiggling breasts covered in cantaloupe-coloured spandex as part of an advertisement for . . . breast-cancer awareness, sponsored by pharmaceutical company Novartis. The message was that we’re looking at breasts all the time, yet neglecting the regular medical screening they need. It also underscored the fact that no frontier of human experience, not even breast cancer, is safe from the aesthetics of pornography.

The diversity industry is bad for your health
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Spiked Online
The NHS is wasting obscene amounts of time and money on woke training schemes. It’s ‘our’ NHS, we are repeatedly told. Britain’s ‘best loved’ institution, apparently. Yet more evidence has emerged this week to show that its ability to provide the patient care we expect is being undermined by its obsession with diversity. UK health secretary Wes Streeting complained earlier this month that there are ‘some really daft things being done in the name of equality, diversity and inclusion’ (EDI). There is also now a mountain of evidence showing that workplace EDI interventions are not only ineffective at increasing racial diversity in the workplace – they may also, in some instances, actually be counterproductive and encourage racial tensions. Yet it seems that woke training schemes and awareness-raising exercises are so thoroughly embedded in the lifeblood of our health system that a huge effort will be needed to flush them out.

‘Acting’ like leaders at the Department of Education
Topic: Children and Family
Source: The Washington Examiner
While America eagerly awaits the order to close down the Department of Education entirely, political appointees with “acting” titles are enforcing Trump’s education agenda and executive orders with gusto. Before we review the work by the acting appointees at the Department of Education, it’s important to acknowledge what a huge change this effort represents. In years gone by, a Republican administration often struggled to simply stop the enforcement of bad regulations foisted on the country by Democratic administrations complicit in the left-wing culture war. Sometimes, a partial revision would be made to realign the department. The president’s bold beginning is being magnified by willing and capable “acting” officials who are taking full advantage of the moment.

Demystifying Critical Race Theory
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: The Quillette
Activists on both sides have an incentive to keep Critical Race Theory undefined and ambiguous. Critical Race Theory (CRT) originated in higher education, but its political relevance has become more than academic, especially in the United States. Although CRT sprung from legal scholarship, proponents have pushed for its wholescale integration into education, medical training, psychology, and the social sciences as a whole. CRT has also been the subject of intense political controversy. Many US states have introduced bills to restrict its teaching, sometimes on the grounds that it is not “factual and objective” or that it can “distort historical events.” As a result, both proponents and opponents have a vested interest in defining CRT in whatever way supports their agendas.

Viz has picked the wrong side in the culture war
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Spiked Online
Comic magazine Viz suffered the humiliation of its account being kicked off Bluesky earlier this month, just days after it had flounced off from X. The kinder, more inclusive social network banned Britain’s leading toilet-humour magazine for posting content deemed ‘harmful’ to the site’s infamously sensitive users. Viz was later reinstated after promising to be on its best behaviour in future. Time was when this incident would have made excellent fodder for Viz, a comic that’s always been savagely contemptuous of attempts to shame it. But now, this minor culture-war skirmish is unlikely to result in it publishing a scabrous article or cartoon about woke authoritarianism. Because after more than four decades of gleefully slaying sacred cows left, right and centre, Viz has picked a side – and Britain is the poorer for it.

Of course all cultures aren’t equal
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Spiked Online
Kemi Badenoch’s comments weren’t controversial in the slightest. Once again, UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has restated her view that not all cultures are created equal. And, once again, this statement of obvious fact has been greeted with predictable outrage. This week, Badenoch made a speech at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship in east London, in which she criticised cultural relativism. She warned that some migrants who come to Britain bring with them ‘behaviours, cultures and practices’ that undermine Western civilisation and ‘the values that helped make us great’.

There Is No Antisemitism Crisis In Australia.
Topic: Political Correctness
Source: Lew Rockwell
It’s A Carefully Constructed Lie. The Murdoch-owned Daily Telegraph has been caught trying to orchestrate what can only be described as a mass media psyop to inflame public hysteria about antisemitism in Australia. In a project internally titled “UNDERCOVERJEW” supposedly designed to show “what it’s like being Jewish in Sydney”, a man wearing a Star of David hat and video glasses went around targeting Muslim and Arab businesses trying to instigate hostility from staff members trailed by a video producer and a Telegraph reporter. The man, who is reportedly associated with the Australian Jewish Association, entered an Egyptian cafe called Cairo Takeaway and postured with his Star of David hat without getting any reaction from anyone. He then started making comments to cafe staff, who caught on to what he was doing and started recording him. Police were then called and it caused a big scandal.

The Weak, Weird Case Against a Supposed 'Orgasm Cult'
Topic: Porn, Prostitution, and Sexual Freedom
Source: Reason
Snakes. Magic. Orgasmic meditation. And a dubious federal case against the leaders of a supposed sex cult. When Nicole Daedone co-founded OneTaste in 2004, she presented it as a facilitator of female pleasure and power. OneTaste emphasized "orgasmic meditation," or OMing—a 15-minute partnered clitoral stroking practice meant to foster focus, connection, and mindful sexuality. OMing can help people "discover richer relationships, an embodied sense of self and the uncompromised feeling of wholeness," the OneTaste website advertised in 2009. To OM, "one person strokes another person's clitoris for 15 minutes with no goal other than to feel the sensation," it said in 2018.