Tag: biology

‘Biology and science is offensive?’ Watch WNBA fans get ordered to conceal their XX-XY T-shirts

America’s well-known freedom speech, which actually protects even offensive language be, uhm, darned!

A security guard at a WNBA game between the Indiana Fever and the Atlanta Dream has imposed his own, and presumably the team’s, speech code on fans.

That is, that they are not allowed to have scientific facts emblazoned on their T-shirts. Cover up or begone, he orders.

It is in a report posted by Fox that the details appear:

The report explains Kasey Thomason and daughter Annie had tickets just two rows back from the court, and they chose to wear XX-XY Athletics T-shirt to support Sophie Cunningham “and the ongoing fight to keep women’s sports and spaces female.”

Through much of the action there was no difficulty.

Then overtime, and a security guard appeared. He ordered them to cover their shirts or leave.

The report explained the guard claimed that other “fan(s)” were offended so they could wear the Atlanta Dream “Wellness & Health Night” shirts or be taken out of the building by escort.

Kasey wondered, so “biology and science is offensive?”

Mother and daughter “reluctantly” agreed to put on the offered shirts so they didn’t miss the end of the game.

Then, the report pointed out, “the Thomasons are seen on the ESPN broadcast with the tan Dream shirts in hand. They can be seen talking to fans around them, who they said loved their shirts and showed support for them and Cunningham throughout the game.”

The report said the prohibited items at State Farm Arena include, “Clothing, garments or signs displaying explicit language, profanity or derogatory characterization towards any person(s).”

Fox reported, “If State Farm Arena and the Atlanta Dream were really trying to claim the shirts worn by the Thomasons were a ‘derogatory characterization’ or ‘indecent messages’ on clothing, that would be an arbitrary way of enforcing their rules, at best. Discrimination, at the worst. But the fact remains, the security guard didn’t claim any of these things from the prohibited items list or the Fan Code of Conduct. He just said the shirts were ‘offensive.'”

Kasey told Fox she assumes a “trans rights” promoter sitting at courtside had complained.

The Fox report said, “This whole situation is discriminatory, disgusting, and quite frankly, Orwellian. In no shape, manner, or form, is a shirt that displays four prominent letters, representing a biological truth that women have XX chromosomes and men have XY chromosomes, ‘offensive.'”

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Transgender ‘experts’ just made an earth-shattering admission in court

Democrats, activist groups, and medical associations have long cited the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s Standards of Care as the ultimate authority on a scientific “consensus” for sex-rejecting procedures, but WPATH just made an admission in court that threatens to undermine that exalted authority.

The Federal Trade Commission and four state attorneys general sued WPATH in June, alleging that the association engaged in deceptive practices by promoting “gender-affirming care” that causes harm to patients, particularly minors who cannot provide informed consent. Late last month, WPATH urged the court to dismiss the lawsuit, claiming that the government was retaliating because it disagreed with the association’s protected speech.

The association defended its Standards of Care as “opinion” protected by the First Amendment on subjects considering “medical and scientific uncertainty” in a debate with more than one reasonable position. The group also cited a Supreme Court ruling that upheld state laws forbidding “gender-affirming care“—a decision WPATH itself has loudly condemned in the past.

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The Left Can’t Erase Moms And Dads, No Matter How Hard They Try

This past month, our organization, Them Before Us, put up a handful of billboards across the country with a message that has been uncontroversial for all of recorded history: “No child has two dads. No child has two moms.”

Within days, LGBT activists were organizing against them, trying to bully the billboard company, raising funds for counterprotests, and lobbing accusations at our organization, calling us a hate group. The collective outrage has now begun trending on X, drawing millions of views across platforms, thousands of comments, and tens of thousands of likes in just a few short days. All of that fury is aimed at a sentence that every person alive knows to be true, because every person alive arrived here through one biological mother and one biological father.

The rage begins to make sense once you understand why these words pose such a threat to a certain ideology. “Mother” and “father” are real words with real definitions that carry real responsibilities anchored to the creation of a child. If we turn “mother” and “father” into feelings, into roles anybody can claim or set aside, we allow adults to abdicate (or sell) their responsibility by way of this redefinition, detaching them from the children they have created. These detached children then sit in a legal limbo, waiting to be assigned to whichever adults the state sees fit. This transformation from a person who needs protecting to an asset that needs allocating is a project extremists across history have long dreamt about.

Children have always come into the world making a claim on the adults around them. If a parent takes home a child, refuses to care for her, and the child is injured as a result, we do not arrest the nurse who sent her home or the neighbor across the street. We arrest the mother or father, because built into how we define a child is a biological responsibility laid at the feet of the people responsible for her creation. That definition is how every child has always known who she is, whose she is, and what she is owed: to be known and loved by her mother and father.

Now, our billboard detractors were quick to recite a list they thought disproved biology: children growing up in divorced homes; those who no longer have a father or mother on earth due to death; and those said to have multiple mothers or fathers because of stepparents, blended families, or adoption.

Their concerns highlight an unfortunate reality: Millions of children do live without or apart from their biological parents. But every situation on that list is also a result of a circumstance nobody premeditated or desired. Society has long recognized this and even constructed a process in response to the worst of these tragedies, called adoption, which is a process for a child who has already lost his or her mother or father and sees those responsibilities pass to two vetted adults. Adoption honors the biological definition rather than undermining it, because it begins by admitting the child lost something.

On the other hand, this new regime of redefinition deliberately deprives a child of her mother or father before she is born, through purchased eggs, purchased sperm, and rented wombs. This is not a difference in degree, but in kind: a market in which the child is the product of adult manufacture and state assignment.

Just this past week, news broke that Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier was intervening in a surrogacy case that shows this ideology carried to its logical end. A single man in China rented the womb of a Florida woman, and when she gave birth to his triplets, he never came. Their birth was met with silence. The death of one of the boys from RSV complications was met with the same silence. For 20 months, the woman cared for the boys; then, the moment she moved to terminate his parental rights and adopt the survivors, the Chinese national hired a lawyer, who has since had the two boys pulled from the only woman they have ever known and placed in foster care while he fights to ship them to a country from which no court could ever bring them back.

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TRIGGER WARNING: NBC News Grovels to Viewers for Using Terms ‘Biological Male’ and ‘Biological Female’ in Report About SCOTUS Ruling on Trans Athletes 

When NBC News reported on the Supreme Court decision on transgender athletes in sports today, journalist Craig Melvin fell all over himself top explain that he was using the terms ‘biological male’ and ‘biological female’ because that is the language the court used in the ruling.

He did not come right out and tell viewers that he was giving them a trigger warning but this is exactly what a trigger warning looks like. It was like he was apologizing to viewers for using these words.

This is how far we have gone down this ridiculously stupid road. Journalists on TV are afraid of offending the audience with completely normal and non-offensive words.

NewsBusters reports:

NBC News debased itself Tuesday with its Special Report on the Supreme Court decision allowing state bans of transgenderism in sports to remain in place, delivering a trigger warning about the use of “biological male” and “biological female” as well as scoffing at President Trump for “boil[ing] it down into bumper sticker language” when it’s unclear men have advantages over women and more care should be shown to a “deeply personal issue” that involves a “small” number of people…

Today co-host Craig Melvin also embarrassed himself with Orwellian verbiage, posing what seemed to be a trigger warning for any trans person watching: “Just a quick note here. The terms that we’re using here during our reporting, biological male, biological female, the high court put those terms in quotations in their decision and their dissent. But just so you know, we’re using those terms from the decision itself, biological male, biological female.”

Melvin should consult both Genesis 1 and 5 as well as Matthew 19 to name a few chapters in the Bible laying out male and female.

Jarrett thankfully returned and dispensed with analysis of the ruling without the ludicrous rhetorical throat-clearing.

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SCOTUS To Decide If Free Speech Applies To Biology-Affirming Therapists And Their Clients

n Oct. 7, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in Chiles v. Salazar. This is the latest in a seemingly unending series of cases from Colorado that my colleagues at Alliance Defending Freedom have argued. The cases stem from the state’s apparent aversion to the First Amendment.

Not content with their failed attempts to coerce speech from artists like Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop or Lorie Smith of 303 Creative, and not deterred by clear rebukes from the Supreme Court in those cases, the state of Colorado has set its sights on professional counselors.

The law in question bans specific, voluntary counseling conversations, silences the viewpoint disfavored by the government, and leaves struggling youth and their parents with only one government-approved option. Colorado’s law bans counselors like Kaley Chiles from helping minors realign their thoughts and feelings with their biological sex — even when that is the young person’s goal for counseling.

Counseling that affirms so-called “gender transition” is fine by Colorado. Counseling that affirms biological reality is fined by Colorado, up to $5,000 per offense, and could include the loss of licensure.

This is not just an esoteric debate for law school faculty lounges; children’s health and well-being are at stake. Colorado’s defense of this blatant viewpoint discrimination and government censorship hinges on the contention, without a hint of irony, that the state is regulating conduct, not speech. How do Kaley Chiles and her clients engage in the “conduct” of talk therapy without it being speech? Perhaps a high-stakes game of charades? The notion would be laughable if the consequences were not so serious.

If government places an authoritarian thumb on the scale, allowing only one viewpoint, invading the vulnerable space between counselor and client, and dictating one outcome, the victims are children and their families. If the Supreme Court does not protect the speech of counselors like Kaley Chiles and her clients, children in Colorado and more than 20 other states with similar censorship laws will be trapped on a one-way journey to the perils of “gender transition.”

The eventual destination is one of irreversible physical damage, potential sterilization, and a lifetime of being a patient. Our nation’s struggling youth deserve compassionate counseling directed by their goals with assistance from loving parents and professionals, not a government-sponsored pathway to chemicals and surgeries that can leave permanent mental and physical scars.

Adding rhetorical insult to injury is the fact that under Colorado’s law, counseling clients to align their feelings with their biology is deemed “conversion therapy,” while counseling a client to transition from his or her sex to the opposite sex is “gender affirming care.” The assault on common sense and the English language may pale in comparison to the harm suffered by Chiles and her clients, but the First Amendment protects speech because words matter, truth matters, and any attempt by government to silence citizens matters.

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Basic biology has become blasphemy – a call for true Canadian physicians

“I would beg the wise and learned fathers [of the church] to consider with all diligence the difference which exists between matters of mere opinion and matters of demonstration.”

Galileo Galilei.

What has Canadian health care come to? We could be talking about how an estimated 28,000 Canadians died on waitlists last year for surgeries and diagnostic scans. Canada is the only developed country that imposes a government run monopoly on citizens to get health care.

We could talk about how Canadian medical school admissions to train doctors have become about woke bigotry instead of merit. Canadians just want the best doctors – whatever their background.

No. The latest debacle of health care amounts to radicals toppling the leadership of Canadian evidence-based medicine at McMaster University.

As a result, I will describe three main aspects to this story. First, it has become apparent that our institutions have been hi-jacked by the equivalent of a woke church that cannot be questioned. Second, I will describe how other countries have dealt with this affront to common sense – in particular gender ideology. Finally, I will describe a call to action for true Canadian physicians – to bring back empirical scientific method and to end compelled speech.

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Scientists Fear “Mirror Life” Synthetically Produced in the Lab Could Create a Dangerous New Form of Biology

Scientists are warning that creating “mirror life,” a radical new concept in synthetic biology, could potentially have dangerous repercussions if such organisms escaped the lab, where they may cause irreversible damage to humans and the world around us.

The concerns were detailed in a recent report that warned that mirror cells—artificially constructed living systems assembled from reversed molecular building blocks—might pose “unprecedented and irreversible harm” if they were ever created.

The concept, initially born out of an ambitious laboratory challenge, now has scientists and ethicists warning that the pursuit of such creations could represent one of the most dangerous frontiers in biology, which experts say should prompt global restrictions before further experiments are conducted.

What Is Mirror Life?

When it comes to life on Earth, all organisms share a fundamental and rather peculiar property: what scientists call chirality, or “handedness.”

DNA and proteins are assembled from molecules that fit together in a consistent orientation, much like right and left-handed gloves. With this in mind, a “mirror” cell would essentially flip these orientations, with its DNA and proteins becoming versions of our own, albeit reversed as though being viewed in a mirror.

In theory, a mirror cell would function much like a normal one, in that it grows, reproduces, and essentially thrives in the same ways our cells would do. However, since its molecular structure would be functionally alien to the biology of other living things on our planet, scientists warn that there could be grave consequences if it were ever created.

“The first mirror bacterium would likely be a fragile microbe exhibiting metabolic defects, which would limit its growth and durability outside the laboratory,” the authors of the recent report write. “Once created, however, mirror bacteria could be readily engineered to become more robust by using standard techniques to deliver mirror versions of existing bacterial genes.”

“This could confer new capabilities or even transform them into 1 Summary mirrored versions of robust existing bacteria,” the report states.

Why Scientists Are Concerned

At the outset, the premise for creating mirror life seemed promising. Since our immune systems wouldn’t recognize these cells, one might assume that they could one day be used for medical applications such as medicines that wouldn’t trigger harmful immune responses.

However, it is this same quality that experts are now warning could make them so dangerous.

Imagine, for instance, a mirror bacterium that was essentially invisible to our immune systems. Such an organism could feasibly infect the human body, where it could grow undetected, allowing it to spread rapidly throughout the body without it recognizing anything was amiss.

Going beyond the worrying possibility of such “stealth infections,” mirror life could also have devastating implications for our environment. If ever freed into the wild, mirror bacteria would be able to thrive with no natural predators, which may allow them to outcompete ordinary microbial organisms, eventually leading to their infestation of ecosystems where their proliferation could advance unchecked.

Overall, mirror life would represent a global invasive threat, and if they were to begin adapting to the environment, they could potentially infect not only humans but also plants and animals throughout ecosystems worldwide.

“It therefore appears plausible,” the report states, “even likely, that sufficiently robust mirror bacteria could spread through the environment unchecked by natural biological controls and act as dangerous opportunistic pathogens in an unprecedentedly wide range of other multicellular organisms, including humans.”

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North Carolina Democrat Governor Josh Stein VETOES Common Sense Bill Affirming Only TWO Genders — Chooses Radical Woke Ideology Over Basic Biology

North Carolina’s Democrat Governor Josh Stein has VETOED a bill that simply affirms what every sane American already knows: that there are only two genders — male and female.

The House Bill 805, passed by the state legislature, sought to “to officially recognize two sexes in North Carolina, to prevent the sexual exploitation of women and minors, to limit the use of state funding, to modify the law related to birth certificates, to modify the law related to civil remedies for gender transition procedures on non-minors, to allow students with religious objections to be excused from certain classroom discussions or activities, and to allow parent access to library books and to provide for restrictions on school sleeping quarters.”

But instead of standing with science and sanity, Governor Stein caved to the radical transgender lobby and vetoed the legislation on Thursday.

Stein said,

“The initial version of House Bill 805 protected people from being exploited on pornographic websites against their will. I strongly support that policy, which is a continuation of my work to protect children from sex abuse, modernize our sex crime statutes to address artificial intelligence, and eliminate the largest backlog of untested rape kits in the country. Instead of preventing sexual exploitation, the General Assembly chooses to engage in divisive, job-killing culture wars.

North Carolina has been down this road before, and it is a dead end. My faith teaches me that we are all children of God, no matter our differences, and that it is wrong to target vulnerable people, as this legislation does. I stand ready to work with the legislature when it gets serious about protecting people, instead of mean-spirited attempts to further divide us by marginalizing vulnerable North Carolinians.”

In addition to vetoing HB 805, Gov. Stein struck down three more bills targeting DEI initiatives: Senate Bill 227 (banning DEI in K–12 schools), Senate Bill 558 (eliminating DEI in public higher education), and House Bill 171 (prohibiting DEI positions and programs in state and local government).

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The Ideological Subversion of Biology

Biology faces a grave threat from “progressive” politics that are changing the way our work is done, delimiting areas of biology that are taboo and will not be funded by the government or published in scientific journals, stipulating what words biologists must avoid in their writing, and decreeing how biology is taught to students and communicated to other scientists and the public through the technical and popular press. We wrote this article not to argue that biology is dead, but to show how ideology is poisoning it. The science that has brought us so much progress and understanding—from the structure of DNA to the green revolution and the design of COVID-19 vaccines—is endangered by political dogma strangling our essential tradition of open research and scientific communication. And because much of what we discuss occurs within academic science, where many scientists are too cowed to speak their minds, the public is largely unfamiliar with these issues. Sadly, by the time they become apparent to everyone, it might be too late.

We’re all familiar with the culture wars that pit progressive Leftists against centrists and those on the Right. In the past, those skirmishes dealt with politics and sociocultural issues and in academia were restricted largely to the humanities. But—apart from the “sociobiology wars” of the seventies and our perennial battles against creationism—we biologists always thought that our field would avoid such struggles. After all, scientific truth would surely be immune to attack or distortion by political ideology, and most of us were too busy working in the lab to engage in partisan squabbles.

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Justices Alito, Thomas blast SCOTUS for passing on censorship of ‘only two genders’ student

When the Supreme Court put the onus on states to set their own abortion policies with 2022’s Dobbs ruling, it unexpectedly subjected pro-life activists and their legislative allies to an onslaught of abortion-expansion proposals that made it into even red states’ laws, with a pro-life research group concluding last week that abortions are rising.

By passing on a case that sought to protect student expression that questions gender ideology from censorship in public schools, SCOTUS may similarly send free speech, gender-critical, religious freedom, conservative and pro-life advocates scrambling at the state and school district levels to protect nondisruptive speech at odds with progressive shibboleths.

The high court Tuesday turned away pleas from those advocates and Republican state attorneys general to hear and reverse the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against Liam Morrison, upholding his Massachusetts middle school’s ban on wearing shirts that read “there are only two genders” and, after his first punishment, “there are only censored genders.” 

First Circuit Chief Judge David Barron – previously a Justice Department lawyer known for secretly advising the president who later nominated him that Barack Obama could legally kill Americans by drone strike – had portrayed the issue as a matter of judicial deference.

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