Archives for March 2009

Some news are so horrifying one can hardly believe one’s eyes. Like in this instance:

Lesbians living in South Africa are being raped by men who believe it will ‘cure’  them of their sexual orientation, a report has revealed.

Women are reporting a rising tide of brutal homophobic attacks and murders and the widespread use of ‘corrective’  rape as a form of punishment.

The report, commissioned by international NGO ActionAid, called for South Africa’s criminal justice system to recognise the rapes as hate crimes as police are reportedly failing to take action over the spiralling violence.

Horrific crimes against lesbians in South Africa are reportedly going unrecognised by the state and unpunished by the legal system

The extent of the brutality became clear when Eudy Simelane, former star of South Africa’s national female football squad, became one of the victims last April.

Simelane, one of the first women to live openly as a lesbian and an equality rights campaigner, was gang-raped and beaten before being stabbed to death 25 times in the face, chest and legs.

Eudy Simelane died after being gang-raped, beaten and stabbed 25 times

Triangle, a gay rights organisation, said it deals with up to 10 new cases of ‘corrective rape’ every week.

Okay. First, rape is not a “hate” crime. It’s a crime, period. Doesn’t matter why you rape. It matters that you rape. Second, what the heck kind of “culture” puts up with idiots “explaining” that rape will “cure” homosexuality? (“Oh yeah, so far you weren’t interested in men and that’s because you hadn’t been raped… let us show you how nice men can be.”) This is by no means the first disturbingly outrageous thing coming out of that country. Yet authorities there are, at best, sluggish to respond. I don’t have a solution. The only thing I can think of at the moment is adding my voice to those demanding an end to the brutal mistreatment of South African women so that is what I am doing. If you have a better suggestion, please send it in.

This beautiful little girl’s parents are suing:

A Quebec couple is launching a lawsuit against Montreal Children’s Hospital after their severely-ill newborn daughter was put back on life support without their consent….They said they agreed to withdraw respiratory support and later, at the suggestion of doctors, to withdraw the artificial feeding.

Point one: babies don’t feed themselves. “Withdrawing artificial feeding” amounts to starving a baby to death. 

Now, 15 months later, Laurendeau has been forced to quit her job to take care of Phebe full time. Phebe is neither deaf nor blind. But she cannot hold up her head, sit up, or babble as another baby her age would, and she is fed through a hole in her stomach. She does smile at her parents, though, a recent breakthrough they are thrilled with, CTV’s Genevieve Beauchemin reported.

Let’s sum this case up. These parents are suing because their baby is not dead. That thrill from her smile? Apparently, only if the price is right.

David Frum is starting to annoy me:

The news that Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston have canceled their engagement doesn’t come as very much of a surprise. The arrangement looked from the start like an election-season pretense. With the election decently behind us, the pretense can be dropped.

Now Bristol and her baby can recede into private life for the next 3 years or so. But as she goes, Republicans and conservatives need to think seriously about the lesson she has taught us – or more precisely, about the illusion she has punctured.

Many conservatives carry in their heads a mental image of American society that’s a generation out of date. They imagine the existence of a huge class of socially conservative downscale voters, ready to vote Republican because of abortion and gay marriage.

The story of Bristol Palin should help puncture this illusion.

“Socially conservative downscale voters”? Who, exactly, does he think he is? Someone who puts on his socks two feet at a time?

I would venture to guess that young Ms. Palin is not the first, nor the only, American teenager (white, educated, rich or otherwise) who finds herself pregnant without meaning to. I’m almost certain it’s happened before. Possibly even in nice liberated upscale neighbourhoods. And that in many of those cases, the young mother decides (or “decides,” under pressure from her parents, boyfriend, teachers or all of them combined) to “erase” the mistake.

Are we to consider these young women more “upscale” than Bristol Palin, who chose to keep her baby in extremely difficult – and public – circumstances? Ms. Palin has an awful lot of moral courage. Calling her ugly names says more about you, Mr. Frum, than it does about her. And no, I don’t mean that in a good way.

[h/t Paul Tuns]

________________________

Andrea adds: What is interesting to me is that absent the word “downscale” this would be a valid question about whether those voters interested in abortion or marriage exist, or not. (Though for Pete’s sake, Mr. Frum, we already know you think they do not.) Or, one could refute the notion that unplanned pregnancy didn’t exist in those happy Leave it to Beaver days… it did, of course, but was dealt with differently with a quick wedding, and generally occurred under different circumstances too, ie not with someone you hooked up with once and didn’t actually know. “Unplanned” pregnancy has been happening for a while. The “upscale” response to these problems is this: Above all, do not wed! You might be saddled in a lifelong relationship that is not right. This allows young people to go from sexual relationship to sexual relationship, experiencing heartbreak after heartbreak such that by the time they reach 30 they are cynical and truly unable to form a lifelong relationship of any meaning at all. It’s really so much more civilized. (Turn up nose here.)

Oh dear. If this were George Bush… But when Bill Clinton makes a mistake like this, most of us just move along. Including the interviewer who, if I’m not mistaken, plays a doctor on TV. [Yes, I’m trying to be cute – it’s been a long day. I know who he is.]

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zmh9p1rlkQk]

[h/t Hot Air]

____________________

Andrea adds: The interviewer addresses Clinton saying this: “as someone who has studied the issue, do you think…” Someone who has studied the issue? Study again, my friend, because this is…alarming. I actually think the interviewer looks a little disquieted: Do I stop him? Correct him? Do we pull out a chart and explain the basics? Change the topic entirely? (Anyone see the game last night?) Very funny.

____________________

Tanya says: Let’s not get Clinton to write up all the legal mumbo-jumbo regarding this issue.  “Embryos that has no chance of ever being fertilized”… why, that would be all embryos, wouldn’t it?

The engagement between Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston is off. I suppose that’s why they kept not announcing a wedding. That’s really too bad.

Is inflaming anti-Muslim sentiment worse than beheading your estranged wife?

A coalition of eight family and women’s groups are calling on the National Organization for Women to retract comments by its New York president linking the death of Aasiya Z. Hassan to a Muslim “honor killing.”

“We were so shocked by her comments,” said Laura Grube, coordinator for Child & Family Services Haven House, a coalition member.

The comments by Marcia Pappas, NOW’s state president, were insensitive and harmful to domestic violence victims, she said.

But Pappas stood her ground and said that dozens of Muslim women have written to thank her for speaking out.

“There will be no retraction,” she said.

Hassan was found beheaded Feb. 12 in the office of Bridges TV in Orchard Park. Her husband, Muzzammil Hassan, the chief executive officer of the television channel, is charged with her slaying.

In a statement Feb. 16, Pappas criticized the media for paying little attention to the case, which came to light the same day as the crash of Continental Flight 3407 in Clarence.

“Why is this horrendous story not all over the news?” Pappas asked in the news release.

“Is a Muslim woman’s life not worth a five-minute report? This was, apparently, a terroristic version of ‘honor killing,’ a murder rooted in cultural notions about women’s subordination to men.”

Linking the death to the couple’s religion “inflamed anti-Muslim sentiment and let the non-Muslim community off the hook for addressing the real issue—ending domestic violence,” the coalition said in a statement.

[h/t James Taranto]

Michael Ignatieff threw a party and I wasn’t invited. I wonder why?