Credit: Telegraph - women bishops vote by 2015 at the earliest Photo: ALAMY
From the Telegraph: Final hurdle for women bishops to overcome - Church of England General Synod meets amid hopes of swift end to years of wrangling over women bishops ? But row looms over the precise meaning of ?Trust?.
Yesterday there was a debate on Gender-Based Violence [GS 1933]. Forgive me if I appear a little cynical but this debate appeared to be firmly in the camp of 'men have been beastly to women' so women must be ordained to redress the balance, notwithstanding the fact that it is not women but men who are becoming increasingly marginalised in the Anglican Church and in society in general if television coverage of events is anything to go by.
Alternative statistics which showed the balance of gender based violence was not as marked as suggested were rejected as were two amendments to ‘Leave out “violence based on gender” and insert “sexual and domestic violence”' and ‘In paragraph (c), leave out “boys and men” and insert “all people” ' (amendment details here).
Violence in all its forms is un-Christian and violence by males against females is particularly abhorrent even in this gender neutral age but it was no surprise and perhaps no coincidence that we were reminded of a familiar theme that the brutalisation of women has at its core the absence of women in the episcopate.
Only one thing appears to really matter now in the Church of England: women bishops. Never mind how or what has to be said. Hence all the rule bending and the never ending drip, drip of how tough it is for women in the Church. After yesterday's debate you could have fooled me.
It is an ill society which chooses to confuse and worry children in order to appease adults with an extreme agenda. Sadly, our national broadcaster continues to do just this.
This coming Wednesday, August 16th, BBC2 will screen a documentary titled No More Boys And Girls: Can Our Kids Go Gender Free?
In the programme, Dr Javid Abdelmoneim sets out to prove that there are no significant physical or psychological differences between young boys and girls.
To this end a classroom of seven-year-olds is subjected to an experiment in which books with characters “squarely aimed at boys” are thrown away, distinct male and female toilets abolished, and a male make-up artist is brought in to persuade boys to aim for less masculine careers.
Girls vulnerable
The children themselves are horrified at having to share lavatories, with Dr Abdelmoneim admitting that girls feel particularly uncomfortable as a result of the new arrangement.
This is the latest in a series of programmes by the BBC which appear determined to promote transgenderism as a positive, natural development in children.
Last week the Victoria Derbyshire programme renewed its coverage of two pre-pubescent children living as members of the opposite gender.
A nine-year-old boy who uses the name ‘Lily’ is featured along with his friend ‘Jessica’ who is a ten-year-old boy, and ‘Jessica’s’ step-mother who has decided to live as a member of the opposite sex named ‘Alex’.
BBC bias
The BBC’s persistent undermining of children’s natural genders is deeply upsetting for parents and children, as is the claim that gender is a question of feelings and not biology. Without an ability to meaningfully distinguish between man and woman, traditional marriage is greatly undermined.
Under section 6 of its charter, the BBC is required to “provide impartial news and information”. Its editorial guidelines also say:
“When dealing with ‘controversial subjects’, we must ensure a wide range of significant views and perspectives are given due weight and prominence, particularly when the controversy is active. Opinion should be clearly distinguished from fact.”
Raising pre-pubescent children to have no gender or to believe that they are members of the opposite sex is clearly controversial but there is no discernible effort to balance any of the Corporation’s output on the subject.
We believe the BBC’s decision to dispense with editorial impartiality on this issue is a breach of its legal duty. In the coming weeks, the Coalition for Marriage will continue to do all that it can to push the Corporation to demonstrate the balance and neutrality required of it by law.
ENDS
From theMirror:
Star-Cloud being raised as gender fluid Source Mirror/Mark Pinder
Family where mum is daddy, dad is mummy and son, 4, is being raised as gender neutral
Star Cloud's mum is Louise, who was born a man but is transitioning to become a woman, while dad is pansexual Nikki, born a woman but who dresses some days as male.
Parents Louise and Nikki Draven are raising Britain’s first gender-fluid family, bringing up their four-year-old son Star Cloud to “not get hung up” on being a boy.
Star’s mum is Louise, who was born a man but having hormone treatment ready to fully transition to a woman. Dad is pansexual Nikki, born a woman but who dresses some days as male and some as female.
Nikki, 30, says: “Neither of us gets hung up on the gender we were born as. “We don’t want our child constrained by that either. We’re just an ordinary family being who we want to be.”
Star is being brought up as gender neutral – told by his parents he is “a person” rather than “a boy”. He is free to wear make-up, paint his nails, pick out boys’ or girls’ clothes and play with dolls.
He will go to school for the first time in September wearing a boy’s uniform – but with pink vest and socks that he has chosen for the occasion.
And the youngster himself says he might grow up to be a man or a woman. But Nikki and Louise’s approach is likely to spark a national debate – on whether the urge not to force his birth gender on Star is projecting their own issues, denying him his true identity.
Camille Paglia explains why women's and gender studies departments should be defunded pic.Twitter.Com/LZyb3aJC1q
? Yeyo (@YeyoZa) October 16, 2017
"If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts." - Professor Camille Paglia
I spotted this video of Professor Camille Paglia on Twitter @YeyoZa explaining why women's and gender studies departments should be defunded. I found it rather amusing after all the feminist claptrap which has infected the Anglican Church over recent years.
The so-called glass ceiling in the secular world was broken years ago. There is no shortage of women presenters, commentators, interviewers, interviewees, etc, etc, etc but still Women And The Church (WATCH) and their allies whinged on, insisting that the church followed to set an example! So the stained glass ceiling has been shattered, as has the Anglican Church in Great Britain with further decline shown in the latest report.
For people who follow the downward spiral of the Church in Wales, the name of the Archdeacon of Llandaff will spring to mind. She torpedoed any meaningful alternative provision with her phony Code of Practice and is now a leading light in MAE Cymru, the WATCH sister organisation in Wales. MAE Cymru stands for ‘Merched a’r Eglwys’ (‘women and the church’). Their priority is parity dressed up as equality to ensure that merit plays no further part in the selection process.
The bishop of St Davids and the bishop of Llandaff are happily obliging with their first appointments, the first female Dean of St Davids and the bishop of Llandaff's new female chaplain. Both bishops are keen on advancing LGBTQI+ issues leading to more confusion especially among the young and vulnerable as the traditional male role model ceases to exist.
Reported in the Guardian,More than 60 children a day calling Childline with suicidal thoughts. Figures from Childline represent a 15% increase on the previous year. They list four main HELP categories:Sexuality,Peer pressure,Faith and religious bullying, andSexual abuse.
Social networking provides opportunities for contact undreamed of by a generation which recalls the age of the Telegram as the deliverer of urgent, often unwelcome, news. Today children can be in contact with anyone anywhere in the world and there are plenty of predators eager to exploit any opportunity leading children, literally, to expose themselves creating a vulnerability to be exploited.
Quite often children are much smarter than their parents when it comes to IT. They have tablets to aid their school work and smartphones to keep in touch, but with whom? The Xbox and similar consoles provide further opportunities for exploitation by the unscrupulous with parents often unable to keep tabs on all the electronic opportunities which many parents do not understand or ignore so long as their children are occupied.
Added to this, image, particularly among girls has reached crisis proportions. I often find it incongruous listening to an overpaid, excessively made-up presenter reporting on women struggling to feed their children. No heavy make-up with plucked and painted eyebrows for them. They are the grim reality, the victims in a society obsessed with image. So much so that if a boy prefers to be seen as a girl or vice versa he/she is actively encouraged while ignoring the well documented dangers suggesting a re-run of the problems complained of by Professor Paglia.
I see from the Telegraph in that the latest twist in the transgender debate is about to engulf the Monks of Mt Athos who fear that a new law will allow people to change their gender letting women into their all-male sanctuary.
Amidst all this so-called equality, inequality has become more marked. Just try joining a women's class as a man if you doubt it. Where will it end?
Postscript [19.10.2017]
'Heartbreaking' rise in self-harm among young teenage girls
Self-harm among young teenage girls rose nearly 70 per cent after 2011, due partly to ?Extreme? Obsession with social media compared to boys, a new study has found. Full report here.
Yesterday morning three youngsters were interviewed on BBC breakfast TV with theirQuidditch equipment, a semi-inflated bladder and a tennis sized ball in a long knotted sock which would have been instantly recognizable to Harry Potter fans.
Had the third guest not left it on the train, there would also have been a broomstick which, as can be seen in the illustration, is somewhat awkwardly straddled as the player 'flies' down the pitch.
The three youths (from their appearance, one female and two males) explained how the game was played. When the interviewer asked if the teams were mixed, the girl (from her appearance) confidently explained in the most matter of fact manner that the participants did not have to be binary.
There were mixed genders, males, females, transgenders and anything in between but no more than four of a particular 'gender' would be permitted. This self assured answer gave the impression that the interviewer was somewhat backward in his understanding of gender.
Checking blog traffic after breakfast I noticed this headline on Anglican Mainstream: Transgender Advocates ?Aim to Destroy? Common Sense, Says Analysis
In March last year it was reported that there was a shortage of chicken sexers in the UK. The procedure can be read in the BBC report but suffice to say a bump makes the difference. If it has one, it is male.
Generally speaking humans are identified at birth as being either male or female by being with or without the bump which translates into being registered as a boy or a girl. That is not to say that behavioural differences go unnoticed in later life. Indeed many performers have profited by making capital out of contrary behaviour.
Julian and his friend Sandy in 'Around the Horn' on steam radio were the cause of considerable merriment in the 1960s but in retrospect many of us may not have fully understood the full extent of the innuendo, since translated into law. No longer the subject of humour, self-deprecating or otherwise, we are now expected to accept 'gender fluidity', an issue nicely put into perspective by Melanie Philips in The Spectator.
I have no desire to trivialise what may be a serious masalah for a minority of people but gender fluidity is quickly becoming the new in thing after homosexuality under the sponsorship of Her Majesty's Government. In a government backed survey, children as young as 13 are asked to pick from a list of twenty-five genders:
Source: Mail Online
Critics have accused the sponsors of ?Exploiting? Teenagers for political ends. Too right. Following on from the same-sex marriage debacle this smacks of another government campaign biased towards harvesting votes from minorities regardless of the consequences.
To exploit the adult population for political ends was a disgrace but to exploit vulnerable children in the same manner is inexcusable.
Gillian Anderson features as Jane Bond in this mocked-up 007 poster posted by the actor on Twitter.
Source: Guardian Photograph: @GillianA/Twitter
Never mind the character, feel the liberation. The star of The Fall and The X-Files, Gillian Anderson has "expressed her desire" to take over from Daniel Craig as the world’s most famous secret agent, 007, tweeting alongside the poster: "It’s Bond, Jane Bond".
Sian Ian Fleming may have or may not have had a specific gender in mind when she he created her his British secret agent although everything does point to the fact that he did. Most of us are happy to accept Fleming wrote what he intended but that is not good enough for today's gender benders. A male doesn't have to be male if he prefers to identify as a female but if 007 has the wrong equipment one can only imagine the endless possibilities available for the steamier Bond scenes.
Anglicans have been forced to confront the notion that silence gives licence to innovation. The fact that Christ appointed all male Apostles is seen as irrelevant because the Anglican Church decided that there was no theological bar to the ordination of women despite all the evidence to the contrary. So it goes on. Not only can silence be taken to mean yes but 'no' can be 'yes' if we really love one another as Christ commanded, ignoring the first and greatest commandment to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind".
No wonder the brightest have difficulty in accepting that men are male and women are female. In this further video by the Family Policy Institute of Washington, students struggle to explain the obvious.
Do you see the archbishop chatting-up the ex-minister? He hasn't a clue what he has started. Llandaff next! Photo source: Wales Online
Love is the thing. Presiding bishop Michael Curry drawled it out at the marriage of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle:
The liberal infiltrators who have targeted Anglicanism continually talk of love, rolling all forms of love into one. It embraces every desire.
The liberal propaganda machine is spread widely, so much so that when discussing gender fluidity with a group of secondary school pupils they confidently predicted that pansexuality would become the norm. [See Postscript: Dangerous People Are Teaching Your Kids]
Schools, television, newspapers, church, in fact everywhere, 'education' has become the means of encouraging almost anything and everything except traditional marriage resulting in a massive increase in sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
'Love' without qualification is all. We should not be surprised, then, when impressionable teenagers interpret the message as 'do as you please'.
The zeitgeist has been promoted shamelessly by people, including clergy, as a means of advancing their own preference. 'Get used to it', is their response. 'People will think nothing of it in time' as if that were justification for not defending traditional marriage, the foundation of family life.
If these people are right, why are church pews emptying?
In a recent twist, the Right Rev Rachel Treweek reportedly argued that only God can provide unconditional love. Previously she has argued that the Church of England should stop using male pronouns when referring to God in order to counter the erroneous belief that the Almighty has a gender.
From The Times (£).You can’t have love without faith, says woman bishop
"The first woman to become a senior Anglican bishop has questioned whether people can really have love or hope if they do not believe in God. The Right Rev Rachel Treweek shattered the so-called ?Stained-glass ceiling? When she was made Bishop of Gloucester in 2015, less than a year after the Church of England had voted to allow women to join its House of Bishops. At the time, she said that she would encourage British Christians to ?Speak out with confidence about their faith? After years of reticence over mounting robust public defences of Anglican belief."
She seemed to be implying that people in extraordinary loving relationships, with whoever/whatever must have a greater belief in God.
Following a tweet from Humanists UK which said how "deeply, profoundly offensive it was to the 53% of people in the UK that have no religion" the bishop has sincedenied that she said anything of the sort.
In an anxiousvideo response the bishop wondered aloud "if without faith we can really know deep hope and love", which appeared to take her back to what she said she did not say.
Unable to stop digging a deeper hole for herself she mentioned love sixteen times referring to her 'own brokenness', the 'bomb attack in Manchester' and 'bishop Michael Curry's Royal wedding sermon'.
Persecution has reared its head in anothercontroversy. Church of England evangelicals are claiming that they being "forced out" for being gay.
"Jayne Ozanne, 'an influential Church of England evangelical who is gay', has promised to raise the issue at the General Synod next month and ask whether churches are breaching the official guidelines of the House of Bishops. Speaking to The Sunday Times, she had "learnt of dozens of cases recently" and said she expected a #MeToodanquot; moment for the Church to be stirred up."
The Bishop of Maidstone, the Rt Revd Rod Thomas, had criticised a letter extending welcome to same-sex couples last month by Lichfield diocese. Bishop Thomas, who chaired the conservative Evangelical pressure class Reform until 2015, was responding to recent guidelines issued by the Bishops in the diocese of Lichfield to all clergy and lay ministers which seek to end ?Intrusive questioning? On sexual practices.
The Dean of St Paul?S, the Very Revd David Ison, expressed concern about the Bishop of Maidstone?S comments on the Lichfield diocesan letter seeking to define ?Radical Christian inclusion?. In a blog contribution, he also criticises the Church of England bishops more generally for ?Institutional dishonesty? About clergy in same-sex relationships, which, he says, is damaging to mental health as well as corrupting of the institution.
With so much talk of love and inclusion you might have thought that a place at the table could be found for traditionalist Anglicans but not a bit of it.
The only chance of a welcome is to become a Muslim or ignore one's conscience and fall in behind those who already have.
Postscript [13.06.2018]
From The Conservative Woman blog (H/T Twitter)
Jordan Peterson: We are funding the destruction of Western civilisation
