Because Religious Freedom Means Performing Whatever Rituals You Want, Just as Long As You Don't Actually BELIEVE Any of the Things You Profess, Much Less ACT As If You Did

And no, you can't just live and let live and help those whom you cannot in good conscience advise to continue on the path they have set themselves find someone who can advise them.

You must either allow us to rub your nose in it or be driven from any active role in society.
A student was

dismissed from a master’s program in counseling at the university after his advisor claimed that it was unethical for him to decline to counsel same-sex couples and refer them to another counselor instead....
was almost finished with his degree in the program...when he sought to fulfill the degree program’s internship requirements,... at the Springfield Marriage and Family Institute. The university had approved the Christian-based counseling agency as an internship site.
[The student] asked his internship supervisor at the institute to speak to his class about Christian counseling, with the approval his instructor. ...
During the presentation, the counselor answered questions about the institute’s treatment of homosexual clients. It counsels these clients on an individual basis, but prefers to refer same-sex couples for relationship counseling to counselors whose religious views would better fit that purpose.
[Another] student complained to [the student's] faculty advisor... 
the faculty advisor ordered him to stop attending the institute and told the institute it was no longer a proper place for an internship. The university later stripped the internship hours from [the masters student's] record....
When [he] sought another internship, his advisor required him to meet certain suitability standards. The advisor later wrote to department officials and claimed that it appeared the student had not renounced his religious views and his support for the institute.

A Tale of Two Cities Washingtons, Catholic Edition

Yeah, ones a state and ones a city, so...

I suppose I could have called it a tales of two blondes...
Have you ever noticed how only women are ever identified as such nominalized adjectives? as if their hair color were the sum total of their identities, or at least among the most important facets thereof. It's a kind of synecdoche, isn't it? or is it a metonym? or are they the same thing?
In an case, it's demeaning, (when it is not ironic.)
Strangely, I think it's meant to be complimentary.
A frazzled, homely, overweight woman is never identified in headlines as "the brunette," is she?
I digress.

Anyway, there are many difference in the two situations, but the points of similarity make the whole thing deliciously risible.
I think it's funny that a famous, out-spoken blonde, invited to speak at a Catholic institution, in one case causes the sponsoring organization to be denied any promotion or publicity for the event within the diocese because on another topic entirely she has opposing views to that of the local bishop on a prudential matter although the bishop hasn't really come up with any specifics to which he objects; and in the other, when her entire claim to fame is as the nation's most notable champion of a grave sin that cries out to heaven on which her view is opposed to the Truth always and everywhere by the Church Universal, in a matter that is non-negotiable, it's um, you know... free expression, and people of good will agreeing to disagree, and of course she's publicly welcomed!
It's just funny.
Sad, but funny.
(And I say this as someone who would probably agree with the bishop in the first case, if he were to make his objections known, and who doesn't hold with most of the views of his blonde.)

Really? REALLY???

That's right... in your FACE, pro-lifers!

One last thing - can I just say how smarmy I think it is that Georgetown University values their "faith tradition" as opposed to valuing the actual Faith?

Young Yahoos at Yale: Hollow Wienies, or Wugwats Wooking Faw a Widdoo Home Away Fwom Home

The kiddies men and women of Yale did not have much fun with their trick or treating this year.
Was somebody faced with a shortage of the special orange and white chocolate Halloween Kit Kats?
Not exactly.
What happened was, one administrator sent out a missive to all the children suggesting that offensive masquerade costumes were.... well, you know - offensive.
Some children thought they were being treated like children.
Then another administrator sent one reminding the children that on their way to becoming grown ups, one of the ways we become big boys and girls is by being freed to make the kind of stupid decisions little boys and girls do.
Some of them then proceeded to lie down in the middle of the mall and kick and scream.
Others threatened to hold their breath until they tuned blue.
One or two peed themselves, I think, but that may not have been deliberate, or "transgressive," but just nervous shpilkes, from the thrill and the pressure of being allowed to try their hands at growing up, maybe even going out trick or treating without a baby sitter!
 (That may just have been too much...)
Crowds gathered, screaming and yelling at the Master of Slytherin and his wife, (she's something to do with the Ministry of Getting Us All Fitted Out In Big Kid Panties.)
Hundreds of the little ones surrounded them, told them what they ought to think and when offered the chance to dialogue or talk over sandwiches or something were told, "No, don' wanna," and sucked their thumbs to bolster their side of the reasoned discourse.
Fortunately, one little miss  was brave enough to speak, and explained to one of the nannies, in, er.... robust tones,

"Be quiet...It is your job to create a place of comfort and home for the students… Do you understand that? Why the f*** did you accept the position? Who the f*** hired you?... step down! If that is what you think about being a Master, then you should step down. It is not about creating an intellectual space! It is not! Do you understand that? It’s about creating a home here! You are not doing that. You’re going against that"

which, when you think about it is really pretty funny, since if most people used that kind of language when negotiating with the adults upon whom they depend, and whom they expect to warm their bottles and change their diapers "create a home" for them, they would, to use words the darling babes can understand, get the s*** beat out of their f****** a****.

Doncha think?

The Empress Has No Only Clothes

The Woman of the Year Empress has only clothes, but no lady parts.

 As the world continues hurtling towards a reality composed mostly of a fantasy-based life forms, in which "adult women" who have been adults longer than they have been women are not just normal but exemplary, and Ol' Abe Lincoln's an idiot for not having realized that he actually  COULD have made a sheep's tail a sheep's leg by secular motu proprio,

a once cutting edge individual is being cut for making cutting remarks about what cutting can and cannot accomplish in helping one make the cut.

Germaine Greer’s views on transgender people are based on the kind of quasi-Freudian cod-psychology you’d think  a feminist critic would find embarrassing ....that it’s not possible to change from a man to a woman.

What exactly had the woman one would have thought the éminence dépoli of the feminist movement said?

“I’ve asked my doctor to give me long ears and liver spots and I’m going to wear a brown coat but that doesn’t turn me into a ****ing cocker spaniel....
I do understand that some people are born intersex and they deserve support in coming to terms with their gender but it’s not the same thing.
A man who gets his **** chopped off is actually inflicting an extraordinary act of violence on himself.”

Um, yes. Imagine someone having such an absurdly commonplace view of reality!
Could you EVAH?
The Otherkin among us must be squirming with anticipation, surely their time is next.

Why should Germaine Greer be banned from college campi?
Because academics, (all bow...) teach us that,

Universities should not provide platforms for claims that cannot be tested and improved

Now, I'm not sure if the claim that a man can turn into a woman can be, or when it has been tested and improved, but it must have been.
But this confuses me, since the counter claim would inherently be tested by the testing of the claim, so if...
My head hurts.

But academics tell us what to think, it is pop figures who tell us what to feel.
So remember,

“Most importantly never ever be ashamed of who you are, because who you are is ******** awesome, don’t let anybody make you think differently.”

Except you, Miss Greer, you're not awesome, and you should be ashamed of who you are apparently, you should let us make you think differently. (We don't care how you feel.)

Calling Laurence Fox and Kevin Whately!

Or rather, the producers of "Lewis".

Does this situation not seem like a tailor-made, (should I say "bespoke"?) milieu for an episode?
A group of pompous, nasty Oxford students?
They'd be so unlikable you'd really want one of them to be the murderer, less so that justice be meted out than to see the self-righteous child get her come-uppance; and then when one becomes a victim you have to confront your own blood-thirsty vindictiveness.
Damian Thompson meets James Hathaway!
The-

hard core of a feminist cult ...has gripped Oxford and makes life miserable for hundreds of undergraduates across the university. The cult uses Facebook to snoop on students who aren’t ‘proper’ feminists. It tries to force young women to use its extreme rhetoric and denounces them if they don’t.
Its digital tirades can poison college life. One young woman told me that new friends she’d made at Oxford suddenly shunned her in the dining hall after the word went out that she held ‘incorrect’ views on women’s rights. (She was so worried about repercussions that she asked me not to mention which area of women’s rights she felt strongly about.)
I’m going to call the cult ‘Country Living’. That’s not quite accurate: it’s actually spelled without the ‘o’, a gynaecological pun that’s the only evidence of a sense of humour you’ll find among its leaders. I reckon calling it Country Living will make them cross. Which, to be fair, is not difficult. These lasses are very, very cross all the time. If there was an Oxford blue for taking offence, they’d be champions.
Country Living is an internet cult that polices behaviour both online and offline. Its manifesto can be read by anyone who visits its page on the blogging platform Tumblr, which is mocked up to look like a 1970s student magazine. Here we learn that anyone can become a C-word, which is a badge of honour, not a term of abuse. Those four letters have been ‘reclaimed’ by the group. (Like feminists everywhere, Country Living does a lot of reclaiming.)
But to earn this honour you must pass tests as severe as the binge-drinking initiation rituals of an all-male Oxford dining society. You must promise to ‘accept that gender is a social construction and embrace its fluidity’. You must ‘recognise your place and privilege within intersectionality’.

Why are so many of the dumbest movements arising nowadays left-leaning? They give liberality a bad name.

And another thing...

Yes, yes, yes, I am in full rant mode.

Looking over some long ago recorded but never watched television, PBS has a program called Frontline, (which has often seemed to have a grudge against the Church, but this isn't about that.)

From Jesus to Christ, of course, in its very title denies one of the central tenets of Christianity, that Jesus was the Messiah, He, Who was "in the beginning," didn't somehow "become" the Anointed One.

So right off the bat, it is refusing to address the subject of who Jesus is in a way that has any objectivity, even any pretense of even-handedness.

No problem, their showing of some of Fr Barron's documentary on Catholicism is hardly a paragon of neutrality.

But in trying to answer the question of how a small Jewish sect become the Christian church in a stunning triumph, one of their talking heads, a Professor of Judaic Studies makes this claim:
In its first stage, Christianity begins not as a religion, it begins rather as the movement of people around a single charismatic teacher

Huh?
It's not, or rather, wasn't "a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons" or "a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs" or a "body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices," or "the practice of religious beliefs; ritual observance of faith" or "something one believes in and follows devotedly"?

Okay, I'll grant you, that last one is using the word "religion" as a metaphor,  (like "football is the established religion of the US -- come to think of it, that's not a metaphor either... never mind.)

But how do those other descriptions, each of which is an accepted definition of "religion," NOT apply?

Has the guy not read Acts? did he form his academic opinion on no... here I go again... primary sources?

Here ended the rant.