Oregon, My Oregon

 At City Journal, In Portland, the Sexual Revolution Starts in Kindergarten

Portland Public Schools has launched a war against the “gender binary” and adopted a radical new curriculum teaching students to subvert the sexuality of “white colonizers” and begin exploring “the infinite gender spectrum.”

I have obtained a cache of documents from a source inside Portland Public Schools that exposes the nature of this curriculum. The lessons seek to turn the principles of academic queer theory into an identity-formation program for elementary school students; it has been adopted in many of the district's K-5 classrooms.

The premise is simple: privileged white heterosexuals have created an oppressive gender system in order to dominate racial and sexual minorities. As the curriculum explains, “gender is colonized,” and Western societies have used language to erase alternative sexualities. “When white European people colonized different places, they brought their own ideas about gender and sexuality,” the curriculum reads. “When the United States was colonized by white settlers, their views around gender were forced upon the people already living here. Hundreds of years later, how we think and talk about gender are still impacted by this shift.” (When reached for comment, Portland Public Schools wrote: “We make certain that our curriculum is LGBTQ+ inclusive for students who identify as transgender, gender non-conforming, gender-queer, and queer to create a safe and inclusive environment for all of our students.”)

The curriculum begins in kindergarten with an anatomy lesson featuring graphic drawings of children’s genitalia. The lesson avoids the terms “boy” and “girl” in favor of the gender-neutral variants “person with a penis” and “person with a vulva,” because, according to the curriculum, some girls can have penises and some boys can have vulvas. “Any gender and kid can have any type of body,” a related presentation reads.

In first and second grade, students are introduced to the key tenets of gender-identity theory. “Gender is something adults came up with to sort people into groups,” the curriculum states. “Many people think there are only two genders, girls and boys, but this is not true. There are many ways to be a boy, a girl, both or neither. Gender identity is about how you feel about yourself inside.” Next, students work through a lesson called “Our Names, Genders, and Pronouns.” The lesson tells them that “gender is like outer space because there are as many ways to be different genders as there are stars in the sky.” Students, the curriculum explains, can “change their name to match who they are, like their gender, culture, or just what they like better.” They can be “boys,” “girls,” “cisgender,” “transgender,” or “nonbinary,” and experiment with pronouns such as “they/them” and “ze/zir,” according to their personal preferences. “Only you can know what your gender is,” they are told.

In third through fifth grade, the district begins lessons on “LGBTQIA2S+” activism. The curriculum presents the categories of “man” and “woman” as manifestations of the “dominant culture” that has used sexual norms to oppress minorities. “The culture, systems, and assumptions that everyone is straight is called heteronormative. The culture, systems, and assumptions that everyone is cisgender is called cisnormative,” the curriculum claims. “Therefore, the culture, systems, and assumptions that everyone is straight and cis is called cisheteronormativity.” This system, according to the lesson plan, is a form of “oppression” designed to benefit “white straight cis boys” and to punish “LGBTQIA2S+” people.

The solution, according to Portland Public Schools, is to obliterate the “white colonizer” conception of sexuality, with its rigid male-female binary, and encourage students to inhabit “the infinite gender spectrum.” This means destroying the system of “cisheteronormativity” and promoting “queer” and “trans” identities. Teachers are told to eliminate the terms “girls and boys,” “ladies and gentlemen,” “mom and dad,” “Mrs. Mr., Miss,” and “boyfriend, girlfriend,” in favor of terms such as “people,” “folx,” “guardians,” “Mx.,” and “themfriend.” Students are shown photographs of “gender non-conforming” individuals and encouraged to celebrate the flags for “nonbinary,” “genderqueer,” “gender fluid,” and “Two-Spirit” identities. For some students, the subversion of the gender binary might also involve a gender transition. The curriculum provides a detailed explanation of how to “pause puberty” through “hormones and/or surgeries” and advice on adopting a “nonbinary” identity and set of pronouns.

By the end of fifth grade, the curriculum explicitly asks students to make a “commitment to change,” according to the dictates of gender ideology. Students receive a list of six commitments, including: “I commit to learning more about what LGBTQIA2S+ words mean and how they have changed over time”; “I commit to learning about the history and leadership of Black trans women”; “I commit to practicing pronouns and correcting myself EVERY time”; “I commit to attending QSA/GSA and being a leader at my school”; and “I commit to watching and reading books, movies, and TV shows that have LGBTQIA+ characters.” In other words, they commit to becoming political activists for queer theory and the broader sexual revolution.

They voted poorly. Fortunately, they're not reproducing at a great rate,  Trend continues: Fewer babies being born in Oregon

Obama Administration Finds Use for Catholic Church

SoCal Churches Provide Temporary Shelter, "Spiritual Food" for Immigrants

An estimated 50 immigrants carrying temporary visas arrived Thursday aboard Homeland Security buses at two churches in San Bernardino County that are working with federal agencies to help the families through the immigration process.

Officials with the Catholic Diocese of San Bernardino told NBC4 Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials reached out to them in an effort to address the border crisis stemming from a wave of undocumented immigrants from Central America who have recently crossed into the United States at the Texas-Mexico border. President Barack Obama has described the situation as a "humanitarian crisis."

If I were the Catholic Church, I'd be very reluctant to go along with the Obama administration on anything else, given how much the Administration has tried to chip away at church freedoms with it's attacks on the Little Sisters of the Poor.  But I guess the church is serious about helping the poor.

"As a church, we want to let them know that there are people here in the United States who love and support them, they're praying with them and for them," said John Andrews, of the Catholic Diocese of San Bernardino County. "Maybe that can give them some of that spiritual food for the next leg of their journey."

"We were told that this would likely be going on through the month of July, but we are prepared to serve for however long we need to," Andrews said.

The Pill: Two Generations from Development to Entitlement

More Hobby Lobby material from Stacy McCain: Sex, Science, Nature and ‘Choice’

Four years ago, I wrote a 4,000-word essay called “The Pill at 50: Unhappy Un-Birthday,” which included this observation:

The Pill fostered a prevalence of the belief that sex without pregnancy is normal. This utterly unnatural idea is the foundation of the Contraceptive Culture.
Throughout human history, recognition of the natural connection between sex and procreation was fundamental to society’s laws, customs, attitudes and behaviors in regard to relationships between men and women. These traditions had varied from place to place, and shifted slowly from time to time, but in all times and all places, social norms had been founded on the understanding that sex and pregnancy were intrinsically linked. Indeed, from a strictly biological perspective, reproduction is the sole purpose of sex.
The Contraceptive Culture, by contrast, is based on the negation of what we may rightly call natural sexuality. . . .

You can (and certainly I wish you would) read the whole thing, because so few Americans now have any memory of life before the advent of the Contraceptive Culture, the origin, history and goals of which are generally distorted by academics and the media. For example, it is often claimed or implied that the development and promotion of oral contraceptives in the 1960s was undertaken in order to “liberate” women; in fact, this project was funded by billionaires (especially David Rockefeller) who were fanatically devoted to a eugenics-influenced vision of population control. . .

I take issue with Stacy on some of his science, certainly in biology almost everything has multiple functions, including sex.  In addition to reproduction, it is essential in pair bonding (marriage, if one dares use word neutrally anymore).

Being even older than Stacy, I remember the advent of the birth control pill well (they showed up on our kitchen sink when I was a teenager)  and watched the changes in society as a consequence. For years, people debated how they would effect society (if the changes observed are related, probably negatively), and whether or not they were generally safe.  We have, without really resolving those issues (safety is debatable), skipped right to the point that the debate is now whether or not any women is entitled to free pills as a consequence of breathing.

So here we have a court decision, brought about as a consequence of an ObamaCare mandate, which says simply that an employer may refrain from providing insurance coverage for certain types of birth control. That’s it — no one is being forbidden to purchase birth control, nor are any forms of birth control going to be outlawed by this decision. It is strictly a question of whether the federal government has the authority to mandate insurance coverage for birth control. Yet to judge from the reaction of some liberals, the Surpreme Court has unleashed the Sex Police upon us, and we are on the verge of a return to the Dark Ages, when people were expected to pay for their own birth control. It’s as if liberals believe birth control is a right guaranteed by the Constitution.

No Plan B for Fat Chicks

Morning-After Pill Doesn't Work for Women Over 176 Pounds

The European manufacturer of an emergency contraceptive pill identical to Plan B, also known as the morning-after pill, will warn women that the drug is completely ineffective for women who weigh more than 176 pounds, and begins to lose effectiveness in women who weigh more than 165 pounds. HRA Pharma, the French manufacturer of the European drug, Norlevo, is changing its packaging information to reflect the weight limits. European pharmaceutical regulators approved the change on November 10, but it has not been previously reported.

So, Alex posted this on Facebook.   What do you call a fat computer? Adele. Block over to see answer.

This development has implications for American women. Some of the most popular emergency contraceptive pills sold over-the-counter in the United States—including the one-pill drugs Plan B One-Step, Next Choice One Dose, and My Way, and a number of generic two-pill emergency contraceptives—have a dosage and chemical makeup identical to the European drug. Weight data from the Centers for Disease Control suggests that at 166 pounds, the average American woman is too heavy to use these pills effectively.

This is patently unfair. Isn't it every American woman's right, from birth to death, to use whatever form of birth control they want?  Somehow I'm sure this is all the patriarchy's fault.

These pills, which use a compound called levonorgestrel to prevent pregnancies, are the most effective morning-after pills available without a prescription. Other pills sold in the US require a prescription, are less effective at preventing pregnancy, or cause side effects such as nausea or vomiting. Plan B One-Step, which retails for $50, is the only emergency contraceptive drug in the United States available to women of all ages without a prescription.

Emergency contraception advocates reacted to the news about Norlevo with dismay. "There's a whole swath of American women for whom [these pills] are not effective," says James Trussell, a professor of public affairs at Princeton University and a senior fellow with the Guttmacher Institute, a think tank for reproductive health issues.

Another casualty of  America's war with calories.

Data for the years 2007 to 2010 show the average weight of American women 20 years and older is 166.2 pounds—above the weight at which emergency contraceptive pills that use levonorgestrel begin to lose their effectiveness. The average weight of non-Hispanic black women aged 20 to 39 is 186 pounds, well above the weight at which these pills are completely ineffective. A CDC survey published in February found that 5.8 million American women used emergency contraceptive pills from 2006 to 2010.

So, chubby chasers (and you know you're out there) or even normal men around 2 AM, willing to settle, you might just want to be extra sure to have a condom at hand and be willing to use it.