Pure In Heart UK

A Catholic girls’ school in Croydon is telling students a bunch of bullshit about what secks will do to them.

Students at a Catholic girls’ school have been warned that sex outside marriage can “destroy their soul” and “make their bodies sick”.

The “warnings” were handed out to 17 and 18-year-olds during a Sixth Form talk at Coloma Convent Girls’ School, in Shirley, Croydon.

Leaflets handed out during a personal, social and health education session (PSHE) warned that condoms and the morning-after pill put people “at risk” and make them “isolated”. [Read more…]

It is no joke when people start talking like this

Zoe Williams wrote a good piece about Katie Hopkins on Sunday (which no doubt Brendan O’Neill would call a bad piece, because what she says is so literal and unparadoxical). Hopkins’s piece was two days before that, then came the capsized ship on Sunday, then Williams’s piece.

The controversialist Katie Hopkins, writing in the Sun 48 hours before the latest mass drowning, suggested using gun boats on migrants; her idea proved unnecessary, of course. Why waste the money when you can let people die by doing nothing, for free? But Hopkins’ phrasing was interesting: “These migrants are like cockroaches. They might look a bit ‘Bob Geldof’s Ethiopia circa 1984’, but they are built to survive a nuclear bomb.” The following morning, as an LBC shock jock, she rolled back her position slightly, suggesting the best way to solve the refugee crisis was not to shoot them once they were in the water, but to “burn all the boats in North Africa”.

A rather niche debate is underway about whether “Katie Hopkins” is a construct of its owner – like Mrs Merton, an entertainment turn spun out for money – or whether Katie Hopkins is a real person with an antisocial personality disorder. With more urgent questions and so many people dead, this distinction shouldn’t detain us. The fault is with those who broadcast her: this is serious stuff.

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On the other hand

In contrast, there’s the predictably and reliably flippant opinion (or pretend-opinion) of the always flippant and callous Brendan O’Neill.

I know we’re all supposed to be spitting blood over Katie Hopkins’ Sun column about African migrants. In fact, anyone who isn’t currently testing the durability of their computer keyboard by bashing out Hopkins-mauling tweets risks having their moral decency called into question.

There you go – predictable and callous. The important thing is to register disdain for people who object to a high-circulation newspaper’s publication of a piece calling African migrants cockroaches. Nicely done, Brendan; your priorities are an inspiration to us all.

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Actual dehumanization

I didn’t know who Katie Hopkins was until just now. I’m catching up. She was once on The Apprentice, therefore she’s a “media personality.” She wrote a column for the Sun in which she called migrants such as the ones who drowned in the Mediterranean on Sunday “cockroaches.”

Now the UN High Commission for Human Rights has compared that to propaganda for genocide.

Well, yes. It is comparable. That’s what genocide propaganda sounds like. That’s how it works. It persuades people that certain kinds of humans are not human. [Read more…]

Sabeen Mahmud

Terrible news out of Pakistan – another valuable person murdered. Sabeen Mahmud was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Karachi today.

The Mary Sue did a write-up about her two years ago.

Sabeen Mahmud (above, in blue), who says she fell in love with technology the first time she ever saw a Mac, just organized Pakistan’s first ever Hackathon last month, aimed specifically at finding ways to use technology to fix or at least alleviate Pakistan’s political problems. According to a piece by Wired, the gathering was pretty amazing for everyone involved.

Mahmud runs a small technology firm, but hosted the gathering of forty (whittled down from 120 applications) in her café The Second Floor, which she founded because she felt Karachi, the most populous city in Pakistan, needed “a space where people could gather around shared interests, an interdisciplinary space for collaboration and brainstorming.” And even though she’d done no research and was living with family at the time, Mahmud felt that she was the woman for the job.

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Movies probably are not for you

Surprise surprise, comedy that aims at the frat boy crowd turns out to be so obnoxious (aka racist and sexist) that actors actually walk off the set. Surprise surprise, it’s an Adam Sandler movie.

Nearly a dozen Native American actors and a cultural adviser walked off the set of an Adam Sandler movie that’s currently filming because of depictions they found insulting, according to a report by Indian Country Today Media Network.

Actor Loren Anthony said the script, penned by Sandler and his longtime screenwriting partner Tim Herlihy, was insulting to Native women and elders and inaccurately portrayed Apache culture. He said the actors, who were supposed to be playing Apache men and women, were made up to resemble Comanches. Anthony and David Hill were among the actors who walked off the set Wednesday.

Hey it was a joke. Can’t you take a joke? Can’t anybody take a joke? [Read more…]

Stripping these protections in the name of religious liberty

Wow – evil in America. The ACLU blog has the details:

A committee of the US House of Representatives decided that employees in the District of Columbia could be fired for using in vitro fertilization to start a family or for becoming pregnant while unmarried.

That’s right, people of D.C.: members of Congress just voted to let your boss fire you for personal decisions you make at the doctor’s office — because your boss believes those decisions aren’t consistent with his religious beliefs. Now, the whole House may take a vote on this discriminatory measure.

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“Dan Savage recently made a lewd smear against Pope John Paul II”

Catholic thought leaders are upset and angry about a proposed new sitcom that they say is based on the life of Dan Savage. Well they say it’s based on the life of anti-religious bigot Dan Savage, to be exact.

April 21, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Catholic leaders joined the Media Research Center (MRC), the Family Research Council (FRC), and the American Family Association (AFA) in a national campaign to educate the public about a Disney ABC sitcom pilot based on the life of anti-religious bigot Dan Savage. MRC and FRC sent a letter to Ben Sherwood, president of Disney/ABC Television Group, nearly four weeks ago urging him to pull the plug on the new show but have still not received a response.

Still no response! Sounds like anti-Catholic bigotry, for sure. Normally entertainment executives are eager to get into discussions with people who tell them to pull the plug on shows that aren’t Catholic enough. [Read more…]